ABSTRACT
As has been suggested several times in this study, many of thesurviving sources for the reign of Elizabeth are imperfect, althoughshe is by no means the only monarch for whom 16th and 17th century sources are often dubious. Indeed, royal biographies in the early modern era have more generally been described as belonging ‘in the intersections of chronicle, politic history, panegyric, martyrology, hagiography, confessional polemic and … ballads, poems, sermons, pageants, and plays’. 1 That was indeed true in the case for Elizabeth Tudor, and identifying the actual Elizabeth within the propaganda that shaped her multiple representations remains a significant problem. Indeed, those polemics began even before she took the throne, at a time when her both personality and her abilities were hardly known beyond immediate court circles. As the only plausible Protestant counter to the triumphant Marian resurgence of Catholicism and as the legal heir to Mary, it was inevitable that she was widely praised and pronoetd by Protestant hopefuls.
