Random Things Of Queen Elizabeth I's Personal Life That Was So Intense (13 items)

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  (#3) Whether Or Not Elizabeth Was Actually A Virgin Queen Remains A Mystery

  With all her suitors and rumored relationships, it's impossible to know if the Virgin Queen remained a virgin throughout her life. She told Parliament: 

  But if I continue in this kind of life I have begun, I doubt not but God will so direct mine own and your Counsels, that ye shall not need to doubt of a Successour which may be more beneficial to the Commonwealth than he which may be born of me, considering that the Issue of the best Princes many times degenerateth. And to me it shall be a full satisfaction, both for the memorial of my Name, and for my Glory also, if when I shall let my last breath, it be ingraven upon my Marble Tomb, Here lieth Elizabeth, which Reigned a Virgin, and died a Virgin.

  She knew she'd never produce an heir and was willing to proudly be called a virgin because of it.

  There has been speculation, however, that Elizabeth couldn't have a child. Historian Allison Weir wrote that the playwright Ben Jonson told a friend Elizabeth had "a membrane on her, which made her incapable of man." This assertion - likely gossip, per Weir - could mean she had an abnormally thick hymen or suffered from vaginismus, a condition that affects a woman's ability to engage in intercourse, making it painful or impossible.
   
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  (#9) She Entertained A Proposal From Charles Of Austria To Placate Parliament

  The issue of succession was always a concern when it came to Elizabeth and her unmarried status. Parliament was particularly concerned that Elizabeth did not have an heir and, upon her passing, the throne would be in the hands of her Scottish kinsman, James. As a result of the pressure Parliament, European leaders, and society put on her, the queen did her best to consider - or at least pretend to consider - marriage proposals when they arrived.

  One of the many proposals she received came from Archduke Charles of Austria in 1563. She even sent negotiators to Vienna to discuss a marriage agreement after both the House of Lords and the House of Commons entreated her to marry him. Elizabeth's men reported back to her that Charles was not deformed - she'd heard from French diplomats seeking to undercut the alliance that he was - but that he wanted her to pay his expenses and provide her own dowry. Elizabeth considered the demands, but once Charles demanded to be king of England, she rejected the match. The whole process lasted three years, and when all was said and done, one of Charles of Austria's negotiators commented that the queen was so cunning and difficult that she "must have a hundred thousand devils in her body."
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  (#2) Her Step-Uncle, Thomas Seymour, May Have Tried To Take Advantage Of Her When She Was 14

  Elizabeth's relationship with Thomas Seymour, brother to Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour, has raised a lot of questions over the years. Seymour was not only Elizabeth's former uncle (Jane Seymour perished soon after giving birth to the future King Edward VI in 1537), but was also married to Henry VIII's widow, Katherine Parr.

  After Elizabeth's father passed away in 1547, Thomas Seymour asked Elizabeth to marry him, although she was only about 14 at the time. Seymour was 25 years older than her and Elizabeth politely declined (there is some speculation that she may have been infatuated with him). He soon became engaged to Katherine Parr, the surviving wife of Henry VIII, with whom he'd previously been involved. Parr and Seymour were married in 1547 and established a household where Elizabeth spent much of her time.

  That didn't last long, however. Seymour would visit Elizabeth's bedchamber early in the mornings, playfully spanking her on "the back or the buttocks" and joking that he should have his way with her. He tried to kiss her and tickled her on different occasions, and while there's no evidence of Elizabeth's reaction, the nature of his relationship with the much younger princess was deemed inappropriate. After a final incident in which Parr found her husband and her step-daughter in an embrace, she sent Elizabeth away to her governess's brother's house in 1548. Elizabeth was secluded there, leading to speculation that she was pregnant with Seymour's child.

  There's some evidence that Seymour's advances were unwanted by Elizabeth. She supposedly wrote, "Thou, touch me not,” then deleted it, and wrote instead, “Let him not touch me," on the outside of a letter she once sent him. 

  Parr passed away in 1548, but it's not known whether her demise factored into Seymour's imprisonment and subsequent execution for treason in 1549 - although his plot to capture King Edward VI didn't help his chances for survival.
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  (#7) Elizabeth Demanded Her Attendants Put Her Before Motherhood

  When it came to Elizabeth I and her ladies-in-waiting, the queen insisted they put her needs over theirs, even if they were pregnant or had just given birth. The role of the mother in 16th- and 17th-century England was challenged by Elizabeth, who required pregnant women in her service to stay with her until they no longer could and to return to her as soon as possible after giving birth.

  Wet nurses and governesses existed for a reason and Elizabeth made sure her ladies used them. This actually gave her ladies more autonomy than most mothers at the time and rejected the veneration of wife and mothers above all others.
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  (#10) Elizabeth Announced On Numerous Occasions That She Would Never Marry

  Elizabeth supposedly told Robert Dudley when she was just 8 years old that she would never get married. She had just seen her third step-mother, Catherine Howard, executed. Given that and what had happened to her mother, Anne Boleyn - the "whore" who brought about the end of her father's first marriage and led to a break with the Catholic Church - Elizabeth probably didn't have a lot of warm feelings toward the institution. Her own legitimacy was canceled out after her mother's passing, again skewing her views on marriage and family.

  Elizabeth was surrounded by marriages that were political in nature, strategic, and managed through manipulation and fatality. The continued pressure she felt to get married - before becoming queen and most definitely after she took the throne - led to her playing the game, entering into marriage discussions on numerous occasions, but she most likely intended to stand by her earlier assertion. In 1559, she told Parliament that her mind was made up and famously announced that she was, in fact, married to England:

  Concerning Marriage, which ye so earnestly move me to, I have been long since perswaded, that I was sent into this world by God to think and doe those things chiefly which may tend to his Glory. Hereupon have I chosen that kind of life which is most free from the troublesome Cares of this world, that I might attend the Service of God alone. From which if either the tendred Marriages of most Potent Princes, or the danger of Death intended against me, could have removed me, I had long agone enjoyed the honour of an Husband. And these things have I thought upon when I was a private person. But now that the publick Care of governing the Kingdom is laid upon me, to draw upon me also the Cares of Marriage may seem a point of inconsiderate Folly. Yea, to satisfie you, I have already joyned my self in Marriage to an Husband, namely, the Kingdom of England.
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  (#12) Elizabeth's Last Suitor Was Executed For Treason

  Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, and Elizabeth I started their flirtation relatively late in the queen's life but his position in her heart seems to have been secure. As the son of Robert Dudley's wife, Lettice Knollys, and her first husband, Robert Devereux was more than 30 years younger than the queen. He was first noticed by Elizabeth in 1584 when his step-father brought him to court and, despite his youth, rash nature, and open defiance of the queen at times, the two seemed to love each other dearly. According to one of Devereux's attendants, "even at night my lord is at cards or one game or another with her, that he cometh not to his own lodging till the birds sing in the morning."

  Devereux did not meet a good end, however. In 1589, he participated in the English Armada - an effort by England to use the momentum of the failed Spanish Armada to their advantage. He did this in spite of the queen's orders that he avoid the conflict. This annoyed the queen, but she became truly furious with him when he married Frances Walsingham in 1590. 

  His disobedience and lust for power ultimately led to his demise. In 1601, he was connected to a coup against the queen, convicted of treason, and beheaded in London. Elizabeth granted him one last gift, however, by commuting his sentence from hanging, drawing, and quartering to a quick beheading.

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