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= Elizabeth I = Elizabeth I was born to King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, in 1533. The public were disappointed with the birth of a girl. Henry had divorced Catherine of Aragon and split from the Catholic Church just to marry Anne and have a male child and Elizabeth’s birth was a severe disappointment. This slowly led to the downfall of Elizabeth’s mother and when Elizabeth was two and a half, Anne was executed.
 * [[image:elizabeth-1/queen_elizabeth_1_armada_portrait.jpg align="left" caption="Figure 1: This painting was made after the Spanish Armada was defeated. Elizabeth commissioned this painting to show that she was “queen of the world”."]] ||

Elizabeth was then forced to live a different life style as an illegitimate child. While this would have made little impression on her personally as she still had her own household she had her title removed and was largely forgotten about by her father. Elizabeth and her half-brother, Edward, were educated together and were reputed to have been close friends. Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, was also interested in Elizabeth and regularly played with her. It was during this time that she met Robert Dudley, her lifelong friend. Elizabeth was thirteen when her father died in 1547 and was reputed to have “cried bitterly”.

Elizabeth lived with her step mother during her brother’s reign in relative peace. Once Edward VI died she was travelled with her half-sister and the new Queen, Mary, into London for Mary’s coronation. This good relationship soon degraded due Mary and Elizabeth’s different religions (Mary was a Catholic and Elizabeth was a Protestant). Due to this religious difference many Protestant plots to depose Mary intended to put Elizabeth on the throne. This made Mary more suspicious and Elizabeth was imprisoned in the tower. She was soon released but kept as a prisoner in the manor of Woodstock. Mary never had any children and so she was forced to proclaim Elizabeth heir to the throne. Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth’s coronation was on the 17th November 1558. In her reign Elizabeth passed through parliament a variety of reforms,the most prominent of which was the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity. Both these acts made England a Protestant country.However, opposed to Mary and Edward, her policies and punishments were milder. While attending church services were compulsory, failure to comply with the reforms were not punishable by death. It is believed that Elizabeth was ultimately forced to make her laws harsher than she wished by some of her Puritan supporters. Elizabeth was also unique in that she never married and never wanted to marry. The primary reason for this is simple. Elizabeth was a woman, so when she married, due to the customs of the time, part or all of her power passed to her husband. Since she wanted to rule completely, probably for the benefit of her people, she never married. Other people guess that she wanted to marry Lord Robert Dudley, her childhood friend, and since he was already married couldn't. Her unmarried status gave the public the view of Elizabeth being a virgin queen. This view increased the public’s approval of her and was subsequently encouraged by Elizabeth. Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603 with no heir. All of England were stunned and mourned for her. She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland.
 * **“Better beggar woman and single than Queen and married.” ** ||
 * Figure 2: This was said by Elizabeth I and shows that she never intended to get married ||