“However, considering the reign of queen Elizabeth in a great and political view, we have no reason to regret many subsequent alterations in the English constitution. For, though in general she was a wise and excellent princess, and loved her people; though in her time trade flourished, riches increased, the laws were duly administred, the nation was respected abroad, and the people happy at home; yet, the encrease of the power of the star-chamber, and the erection of the high commission court in matters ecclesiastical, were the work of her reign. She also kept her parliaments at a very awful distance: and in many particulars she, at times, would carry the prerogative as high as her most arbitrary predecessors.”
Queen Elizabeth the First
The most powerful queen in English history
Elizabeth the First may well be the most powerful queen in English history, because she held actual political power in a way that most later queens of
England did not.
Victoria and Elizabeth the Second had their power limited by the
British Constitution to a degree that Elizabeth the First did not. All of them had to contend with
Parliament, it is true; but the
monarchy still had real power in the years that we today call the "Elizabethan Era." This power was all the greater when the state religion was still under royal control. Just years before this, you see, the church had actually been under the control of the
Vatican in faraway Rome. But her father's divorce from his
Catholic wife had brought him the ire of the
Catholic Church, and led to England's conversion to the
new Protestant faith - a faith led by the monarch personally during the lifetime of Elizabeth.
King Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth's father
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