Elizabeth I Quotes

Legacy

The last fifteen years of her reign were harder. Essex, her favorite, led a rebellion against her in 1601 and was executed. The woman who had once commanded absolute loyalty was aging. She died on March 24, 1603, at Richmond Palace. She was sixty-nine years old. She had reigned for forty-four years. She was the last of the Tudors. During her reign, Shakespeare wrote his plays, Marlowe wrote his tragedies, Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene. Drake and Raleigh pushed English ships into every ocean. The language, the literature, the naval power that would define Britain for centuries, all of it took shape in her time. She never married. She never named an heir until she was dying. She held power in a world that did not believe a woman could hold it. And she held it for forty-four years.