ABSTRACT
The flight of Mary Queen of Scots to England in 1568 initiated four years of intense political and diplomatic maneuvering that would do much to determine the survival and success of the Elizabethan regime. The series of crises formed, in Wallace MacCaffrey’s words, “the great testing time of Elizabeth’s reign.”1 The course of these four years would establish many of the mythic images through which future generations would understand the English queen: Protestant, nationalist, virginal, just, and wise. Although Elizabeth may not have had all of these qualities-indeed, even William Cecil, whose actions during these crisis years would do so much to create the myth, probably did not believe most of it-all future portraits of the queen would derive in part from these events and how they were represented by her and her government. The basic outlines of Elizabeth’s myth thus developed from the confrontation with her opposite: a tyrannical Scottish, French queen from the Catholic Guise family, failed in politics, routed on the field of battle, and thrice married-the third time to her husband’s murderer.
