Elizabeth I

J. Hurstfield analyses social conditions in the Elizabethan age.

From Stubbes' angry Anatomie of Abuses, Sydney Carter unveils a revealing portrait of Elizabethan fashions and pastimes, from high-heeled shoes to football, and from ruffs to dicing and dancing.

Mathew Lyons finds stimulation in an allusive article on Sir Walter Ralegh, first published in History Today in 1998.

Judith Richards strips away the veils of illusion covering the last Tudor monarch.

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros explores the work and influence of William Allen, who fought to restore Roman Catholicism to England during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Stephen Alford admires a perceptive article on Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s ally and consummate political fixer, by the distinguished Tudor historian Joel Hurstfield, first published in the 1956 volume of History Today.

Retha Warnicke investigates one of the key questions of Tudor England.

The idea of a female monarch was met with hostility in medieval England; in the 12th century Matilda’s claim to the throne had led to a long and bitter civil war. But the death of Edward VI in 1553 offered new opportunities for queenship, as Helen Castor explains.

Sarah Gristwood on the complex issues raised by the restoration of a remarkable Tudor vision of victory over the Spanish Armada.

Ian Friel argues that popular ideas of the nature of Elizabethan seapower are distorted by concentration on big names and major events. Elizabethan England’s emergence on to the world stage owed much more to merchant ships and common seamen than we might think.

450 years ago this month, the young Elizabeth became queen of England. Norman Jones looks at evidence from the state papers, newly available online from Cengage, to show how those close to her viewed the challenges faced in the early days by Elizabethan England.

Marie Rowlands charts the changing fortunes of a religious minority.

Did it matter that the fifth Tudor monarch was a woman rather than a man? Retha Warnicke investigates.