On This Day…1603

24 March 1603

On this day in 1603 Queen Elizabeth I died drawing the Tudor Dynasty to an end.

Elizabeth was the only child of the marriage between Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn.  She was born on 7 September 1533.  Her mother was beheaded having been found guilty of High Treason two and a half years later.

Elizabeth became Queen, on the death of her half-sister Queen Mary I, on 17 November 1558 and reigned for 44 years, the longest reign of any Tudor monarch.

Queen Elizabeth’s health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Catherine, Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow and in March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a “settled and unremovable melancholy” from which she never recovered.

Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs, died on at between 2 and 3 am on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace. A few hours later King James VI of Scotland was proclaimed King James I of England and the Stuart dynasty in England was established.

Killer Quotes – Robert Bolt on the taking of oaths

“When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn’t hope to find himself again. Some men aren’t capable of this, but I’d be loath to think your father one of them.”

Robert Bolt – A Man for All Seasons

In the play A Man For All Seasons this line is said by Thomas Moore when explaining to his daughter why he refuses to sign the Act of Succession proclaiming Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid and that to Anne Boleyn valid and making Henry VIII supreme head of the Church in England.  Moore’s convictions of conscience ultimately lead to his execution for treason.