Religion, Dynastic Politics, and Public Discourse

Abstract

Abstract Focusing on the politics surrounding Elizabeth I’s last courtship by Francis of Valois, duke of Anjou, the chapter examines the intertwining of dynastic and religious politics at multiple levels, from the international arena down to rivalries between landed families within English localities. The queen’s proposed marriage to Anjou was intended to strengthen England against growing threats from Spain, but it also seemed likely to unsettle the balance of religious and noble dynastic power at the English court and in many localities. It triggered a controversy in which tropes of dynastic loyalty and dynastic libels—of which the most notorious was John Stubbs, The Gaping Gulf—both figured prominently. These fed into competing representations of public reactions to the match, intended to persuade the queen to embrace or reject it. The public was consistently pictured, not as a body of independent individuals, but as collections of people led by dynastic leaders, including the queen, Anjou, and individual nobles and gentry, whose virtuous or vicious conduct would determine the health of the state or polity.