I am watching the Cate Blanchett film…which is brilliant…and Mary has just died. Why didnt Sussex and the other Catholic nobles just kill Elizabeth?
I’m assuming you’re talking about real life, and not the movie, because I don’t know the movie, but why would they kill her? She was the Queen, before Mary’s death, she confirmed her as heir, and, well, you don’t kill the Queen.
I meant Norfolk…
She was also not Catholic in a time when war was raging between Protestant and Catholic and she was so vulnerable. Also, in the film so Im not sure if its historical, Norfolk and others were petitionong Mary to have Elizabeth executed. This sort of killing happened all the time in Asia.
It would have been absolutely unacceptable in England or any other European country at the time for senior nobles to kill the monarch simply because they didn’t like the monarch’s religion. Had Norfolk, etc, engineered such a thing it is unlikely that they could have survived themselves. Plus, there was no clear and generally acceptable heir in default of Elizabeth; killing her would have opened up a power vacuum.
Elizabeth was in danger during Mary’s reign not simply because she was thought to have Protestant sympathies but because she was thought to have been involved in the conspiracy that led to Wyatt’s rebellion which, if true, would have been treason on her part.
Right - it was system breaking. It would take a truly radical mind to take that step and the nobility generally were quite conservative, no matter what their faith.
Monarchs killed royal rivals very rarely - Mary executing Jane Grey was the elimination of a usurper, came about under intense international pressure from ally and superpower Spain and in the end probably only happened because there was a half-assed rebellion seeking to restore her. But even the likes of John and Richard III ( or Henry VII, whoever you prefer ) couldn’t openly slaughter legitimate heirs without taking propaganda damage. Folks like Henry I simply liked to imprison rivals until they died ( his elder brother spent some 28 years in prison and died still locked up ). Non-royals committing regicide were generally in for a lot worse - at the very least the next monarch in line is highly unlikely to place you in a position of trust no matter what their religious faith. Because once you’ve crossed that line the first time, each subsequent coup becomes easier on the conscience…
This is the thing. Henry (and Edward) bit the bullet, so to speak, and allowed Mary to be heir because monkeying with the lines of inheritance was an open invitation to chaos. (Yes, Henry originally disinherited both daughters, IIRC, but in the end took the logical high road.)
Mary likewise tried to disinherit Elizabeth but in the end chose not to.
Also remember the upshot of Henry VIII’s taking over the church. He distributed his spoils widely among the nobility to bribe them and make them complicit in the break with Rome. (Many of those picturesque ruined British abbeys are due to even the building material being absconded along with contents and lands). The nobles would perpetually be suspicious that a permanent Catholic return would mean they would have to return some of their ill-gotten gains. Mary tread lightly (at least regards former church property) knowing that her replacement would not demand repayments. An attempt to remove the protestant succession would likely be considered the opening salvo in a holy war and lose the support of many nobles.
But the main problem is precisely the succession. Henry VII became king on a pretty flimsy pretense, and Henry VIII was well aware of this. He spent a paranoid reign keeping a close eye on anyone with a remote possible claim to the throne. The mess of the War of the Roses was not forgotten.
The war ended in 1486 with odd rebellions after that. Mary ascended in 1553; died in 1558. The people of significance in her reign would at the very least would be the children of people who lived through that war.
Also note that even Richard III secure in control of his throne (supposedly) and with his main rivals imprisoned, chose to kill them very secretively - to this day, people dispute whether they were actually murdered, and it certainly was not advertised.
[QUOTE=יהוה Yahweh, God of the Jews and Christians]
לֹא תִרְצָח
(Thou shalt not kill.)
[/QUOTE]
Why expect someone motivated by religion to violate a fundamental precept of that religion? And Elizabeth was no ordinary mortal; by inheritance she was God’s Steward of England.
Twelve years after she was crowned, Pope Pius V excommunicated the Virgin Queen but UIAM, even then did not condone her murder.
If you are interested in this sort of thing I highly recommend “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hillary Mantel. They are about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Chief Minister and lawyer - until his head was cut off. His twisted genius was precisely his ability to manoeuvre people and manipulate facts in order to provide a figleaf of legality and propriety for the nefarious things that Henry VIII wanted to do.
In the monarchy at that time lip service was paid to the idea that the monarch had absolute power, but the reality was that a monarch only had power to the extent they brought sufficient of the other powerful people and institutions along with them.
Just offing people based upon no justification beyond a blatant power grab would be highly risky. For all those that might cheer you on, there would be many who would be turned against you based on fear they might be next.
The pope didn’t do fatwahs?
Elizabeth was only a twenty-five year old woman when she became queen. A lot of potential plotters probably thought they’d be able to control her and it would be better to keep her on the throne rather than take a chance on another monarch who might be less pliable. By the time the plotters learned Elizabeth was not an easy person to manipulate, it was too late for them to remove her easily.
Thank you for your answers and recommendations. I will be reading/watching. 
I’m warning you now: Hilary Mantel is a tough read till you get used to her. She writes in a highly unconventional way. I almost threw the first book away halfway through the first chapter but then managed to get into her style and would now rate her books as some of my all time favourites. She didn’t win a Booker prize for each of them for nothing.
If reading Wolf Hall is a bit of a challenge, you can buy the excellent film made by the BBC of the book.
If you’re looking for a lighter history, I’d recommend The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer. It’s a decent readable history that covers all the highlights. It’s a good book if you want to learn the historical background before watching some movie or miniseries.
Another possible factor is that people thought she’d likely marry, and if it was someone they approved of, policy would go their way.
You can also try the Matthew Shardlake novels by CJ Sansom. These are less literary, more crime novels, but entertaining and give a flavor of the period and the manipulations; Cromwell figures heavily. “Dissolution” is the first and best.
While that was true of Henry VIII, it was emphatically not the case with Edward VI, who did everything he could to try to disinherit both Mary and Elizabeth. That was the basis for Lady Jane Grey’s claim to the throne. She was Edward’s preferred candidate.
In 1558 Elizabeth had two major advantages. The first was her religion. One unintended side-effect of Mary’s suspicions towards her was that Elizabeth had had to be exceptionally circumspect about her actual religious beliefs. Everyone assumed that she was some sort of Protestant. But in 1558 no one knew for certain. There were many different shades of Protestantism that she might adopt. Elizabeth was smart enough that she made sure that when her sister died, she kept everyone guessing as long as she could. It wasn’t until Parliament met, over two months after her accession, that the sort of religious settlement she envisaged began to become clear.
Her other big advantage was the possible alternatives. The two Grey sisters were even younger than she was, also unmarried and even more obviously Protestant. Then there was the Queen of Scots, who, although clearly Catholic, was married to the eldest son of the King of France. Accepting her would have amounted to a French takeover and would have been opposed by the late Queen’s widower, Philip II, who was only too happy to recognise Elizabeth as the lesser of two evils. English Catholics only began to view Mary Stuart as a viable pretender after the death of François II in 1560.
I’m going to disagree with the Hillary Mantel recommendations…not because I don’t think Wolf Hall or Bring Up the Bodies are good books, because they are. They’re funny and really well written. But they’re not good books for somebody to learn about the time period. They’re good books, though, for somebody who already knows about the time period and can understand the choices Mantel makes in shaping her characters and the ironic revisionist way she considers them.
This is the other point - what’s the replacement? It’s not like there was a singular anti-Elizabeth movement (other than identifying mainly as Catholic), or that they had a single preferred alternative. So losing Elizabeth pretty much guaranteed fighting between multiple claimants and puppet masters… but that really meant civil war and widespread destruction. Very few nobles put their religion or ambition ahead of peace and stability. The Lady Jane Grey fiasco no doubt was in everyone’s thoughts too - staking a claim with a weak power base would lead to personal disaster.
So Elizabeth was queen because - what’s the alternative?