ABSTRACT
The rituals of Court life and the intimate relationships which developed there were used as techniques of political manipulation. When Elizabeth played upon the virginals for her councillors, she was playing politics as surely as when she presided at the Council board. Elizabeth had deliberately politicised her Court, by making courtiers into politicians and politicians into courtiers. The Queen sought to establish personal relationships in her Court in a relaxed and intimate fashion, in which all attention was upon her as a woman and therefore upon her as monarch too. The life of the Court was a routine of secularised rituals for an earthly goddess, interspersed with intimate attentions to an adored woman. In 1597 Elizabeth made Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham Earl of Nottingham, which gave him precedence over Essex, and the patent of creation gave him credit with Essex for the attack on Cadiz.
