Meet Elizabeth I: The Queen Who Refused to Decide

Illegitimate, imprisoned, third in line

Elizabeth was two when her mother was executed and she was declared illegitimate. She was restored to the succession by an act of Parliament, not by anyone's affection, and she was third in line. At twenty she was imprisoned in the Tower by her half-sister on suspicion of conspiracy, and expected to be executed there.

She became queen at twenty-five in a country that had changed its official religion three times in twelve years.

Not making windows into men's souls

Her religious settlement is the clearest thing she ever did, and what it did was refuse. It set an outward form of worship everyone had to attend and then declined to enquire any further — she is said to have wanted no windows made into men's souls. Conform in public and your private belief was your own business.

It satisfied neither the Catholics nor the hotter Protestants, which was rather the point. It also held, for forty-four years, in the century where that question tore France apart.

The unsettled succession

She would not marry, and she would not name an heir, and both refusals were the same decision. A husband meant a faction, foreign or domestic; an acknowledged heir meant a living alternative for every plotter in England to rally to. Keeping the question open kept her the only answer.

Smallpox nearly killed her at twenty-nine and exposed how dangerous the gap was. She left it open for another forty years anyway.

The pope excommunicated her in 1570, which formally released her Catholic subjects from allegiance and turned every one of them into a potential assassin. Mary, Queen of Scots spent nineteen years in English custody as the focus of that hope, and when Elizabeth finally signed the death warrant she blamed her secretary for sending it.

What it cost

The Armada was beaten by a combination of English gunnery, Spanish misfortune and weather she could take no credit for, and she rode to Tilbury and told the troops she had the body of a weak woman and the heart of a king.

The reign has a darker ledger too: it saw the first English slaving voyages, under Hawkins, which she personally invested in. And the great refusal ended the way refusals do — she died leaving no heir and no plan, and the crown went to the Stuarts and the crisis that followed them.

Why they belong at your table

Seat her when everyone is demanding you commit and committing would cost you your position. She is the great practitioner of the productive non-answer, and she will make you say out loud what deciding would actually buy.