Abstract
Within the Elizabethan polity, which, given the rule of an unmarried woman with no identified or universally acknowledged successor, was unprecedented and unique, the conviction among the queen's subjects that they were also members of a commonwealth, citizens, which they owed to their educational formation and religious world-view, was reinforced. After briefly examining the careers of a number of public-spirited Elizabethans, members of parliament biographed by the late Joan Henderson, this article focuses on Robert Beale, ardent Protestant, polymath, diplomat and long-serving clerk of the privy council, as the supreme example of a citizen concealed within a royal and loyal servant.
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