ABSTRACT
During the reign of Elizabeth I, a variety of episodes from the history of King David become popular referents used to encourage support for the Queen and to suggest behavior appropriate for her subjects. Elizabeth was compared to the biblical hero both during and after her reign. Almost a decade after her death, William Leigh preached a sermon in which Elizabeth is ‘paralleled in her Princely vertues with Dauid’;2 Leigh’s principal focus compares David’s delivery of the holy ark to his people to Elizabeth’s delivery of ‘the Religion of her Christ, into the bowels of all her kingdomes’.3
