ABSTRACT
The usual fate for a king’s daughter in the sixteenth century was an early dynastic marriage. Elizabeth’s two aunts, the daughters of Henry VII, for example, had both been espoused to foreign kings, Margaret to the king of Scotland at thirteen and Mary to the king of France at eighteen. Elizabeth, on the other hand, succeeded to the throne of England unbetrothed and unwed, although she had already turned twenty-five. During her childhood and adolescence there had been several suitors for her hand, but matrimonial schemes had come to nothing, largely as the result of her uncertain legal status.
