ABSTRACT
From the early years of Elizabeth Tudor’s reign up to almost the present day, there seems to have been a powerful need to believe that she was sworn to virginity, consecrated to a single life, wedded to God and country.1 Yet when Elizabeth was crowned in 1558, her marriage and its implications for England dominated discourse from gossip to Parliamentary debate.2 For the first half of her reign, until the Alençon courtship fizzled, Elizabeth represented herself, in her speeches, letters, audiences, and actions, not as a virgin forever married to God and country, ‘Chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon’,3 but as a marriageable virgin, who claimed the right to decide for herself whether or not she would marry, and whom she would marry. This was a highly unconventional position for Elizabeth to take, both as a woman and as a monarch.4
