The Elizabethans / Timeline
ALAMY/BRIDGEMAN1560
The Elizabethan age
Susan Doran explores the key events that
marked the long reign of England’s ‘Virgin Queen’A self-employed Tudor labourer works
at home in a contemporary printElizabeth is shown praying in a frontis-
piece illustration for a 1569 prayer book1558
Mary I dies on 17 November, and
her half-sister, aged 25, succeeds
to the throne as Elizabeth I. She
immediately appoints Sir William Cecil
(below) as her principal
secretary and intimates
that she intends to
break with Rome (like
her father Henry VIII)
and to re-introduce
the Protestant
religious
settlement of
her half-
brother,
Edward VI.1563
Parliament petitions Elizabeth to marry
or name a successor. Protestants in both
the Commons and Lords fear that, if
Elizabeth dies childless, Catholics will try to
put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne.
This parliament also passes important
social legislation: a new Poor Law, an Act
of Artificers regulating apprenticeships,
and an act concerning witchcraft.1560
After Elizabeth sends
military help to the
Protestant ‘Lords of
the Congregation’
against the Catholic
regent of Scotland
and her French allies,
Cecil negotiates the
Treaty of Edinburgh.
This agrees to the
evacuation of the
French from Scotland
and recognises
Elizabeth’s legitimacy
as queen of England.
Mary, Queen of
Scots refuses to
1559 sign the treaty.
Elizabeth pushes her religious
settlement through parliament: the
Act of Supremacy, which declares her to
be ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of
England, and the Act of Uniformity, which
demands conformity to a new Protestant
English Prayer Book. The main task
ahead is to persuade or compel the
many Catholics in England to convert.1562
Elizabeth signs a treaty
with the Huguenot leaders
in France. To secure the
return of Calais and
prevent the ultra-Catholics
led by the powerful Guise
family from gaining control
of the realm, she agrees
to send troops to France
under Ambrose Dudley,
Earl of Warwick, to fight
with the Protestants. The
war goes badly for
England, and the following
year its garrison in Le
Havre is decimated by
plague, which later
spreads to England.