Today is Queen Elizabeth I's birthday, which made me want to create a card for a friend of mine who loves Queen Elizabeth. No time to shop for a card--but I did have time to make a quick sketch:
She looks rather ghastly, but then again, most of the portraits that I've seen of her show her as a rather ghastly visage.
I thought about what I had written for a weekly writing about her for Church HistoryII. My writing time is short this morning, so here's what I wrote in February of 2023:
This week, I am thinking about all the ways of governing a country (and governing a Reformation):
--Hearing that so many French Huguenots survived King Louis XIV because they fled or were forced out—that fact made wonder why a country decides to burn so many “heretics” at the stake, as England did, and why some countries evict people (like the Jews from Spain) and some countries seems to manage to have a more flexible live and let live approach (although I realize that most countries did not manage to create a live and let live approach for very long, even if they were successful for a certain time period). I realize the reasons may be very complicated: control by fear/terror of the remaining population, not wanting to lose valuable people as they flee, royal connections to other countries that might temper the tendency to terror or inflame it. And of course, some of these rulers, like Mary Tudor, believe they are doing the Lord’s work by purifying the country (and yes, I do realize her motives may have been more mixed).
--Thinking of different approaches to heretics made me think of Elizabeth I and how I have admired her for so many years now. When I was very young, I read a biography of her: the kind that was marketed for elementary grades, a whole biography series on a shelf in the library, with orange binding, and I worked my way through the whole series. I remember how much the biographer praised her for how smart she was not to get married, to keep her suitors waiting and hoping, how she avoided wars with other countries this way. It may have been a gross oversimplification, but I do remember thinking, she got to be a queen and rule all by herself, which is better than any other option she had. Why on earth would you want to be married when you could be the queen? And yes, I am married, but I’m married to a philosopher who delights in these kinds of questions, so it’s not a slight against my spouse or even against marriage, so much as it’s an insight into my way of thinking about patriarchy and leadership.
--I am also thinking about another lesson in how to rule a country that I learned as an English major in college. We were taught that Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans failed because they were a joyless bunch, and when they cancelled Christmas, that was the last straw: bring back the king! Happily, Charles II had been safe in Europe, waiting for just this change in sentiment. Again, an oversimplification, but as is the way with many oversimplifications, a bit of truth.
--Lessons learned if ever I am a ruler: don’t cancel Christmas or the holidays/events that are relatively harmless, good for the economy, and bring people joy. Don’t commit to one suitor (or in contemporary terms, one ally), so that everyone remains on their best behavior. And be aware that just because I think I’m doing the Lord’s work, I may not be, so don’t institute reigns of terror. I say this with a bit of humor, but also with the realization that we’d have a better world if more leaders governed this way.
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