ABSTRACT
Why then did Elizabeth I not marry? Eizabeth’s personal preferences provide no answer here, for as we have seen there was little room for them to operate in this crucial area of policy. Had her Council ever united behind any one of her suitors, she would have found great difficulty in rejecting his proposal; likewise, without strong conciliar backing Elizabeth would not or could not marry a particular candidate. In the case of those men whom she had no particular wish to wed, opposition from within the Council allowed her to elude their suits. Thus, it had required concerted conciliar pressure to force her into negotiations for a marriage with the Archduke Charles, and it was only when a significant number of councillors spoke out against accepting Habsburg demands for a private Mass in November 1567 that she felt able to bring the courtship to an end. Similarly, in 1572 she was able to slip out of the negotations with the duke of Montmorency for a marriage alliance with Francis duke of Alençon on the grounds that her Council was divided over whether or not to accept the French terms on religion. As she herself said on several occasions, she was only thinking of marriage to satisfy her subjects, so there was no point at all in taking a husband who would displease a significant number of them. In part such statements provided a convenient excuse to avoid the responsibility for the failure of particular sets of negotiations, but they also contained more than a grain of truth. Furthermore, on the practical side, she needed full conciliar support for a match so that the matrimonial treaty would not run into difficulties when presented to parliament for ratification.
