1559–1577: The Cuckoo in the Nest

Abstract

When Elizabeth succeeded Mary on 17 November 1558, another change in religion was inevitable; every well-informed observer, including the late Queen’s husband, King Philip of Spain, realised that. Elizabeth’s symbolic role as Anne Boleyn’s daughter, her known Protestant sympathies and her often dangerous position as a semi-prisoner during Mary’s reign made her a focus for Protestant hopes, while the growing unpopularity of the disastrous war with France, a product of the Spanish alliance whose main result had been the loss of England’s last continental outpost at Calais, gave the new regime an obvious incentive to repudiate all the policies of the Marian government.¹ Even before Mary’s death, Elizabeth had shown her future intentions by choosing William Cecil as her Principal Secretary; Cecil’s friends dominated the Privy Council which she formed, and with his brother-in-law Nicholas Bacon, whom the Queen appointed as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Cecil was to be the architect of a Protestant transformation in the English Church.