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Stephen Greenblatt sheds light on the brief life of playwright Christopher Marlowe, one of the great rivals of William Shakespeare, whose death in a Deptford tavern in 1593 still leaves a great many unanswered questions
From his possible espionage work for the Elizabethan state to his open flirtations with atheism and subversive sexual themes, the brief life of playwright Christopher Marlowe tells us much about the shadowy edges of 16th-century England. Stephen Greenblatt joins Elinor Evans to discuss the subversive, dangerous life of 'Kit', who became both a collaborator and rival of his contemporary, William Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt is the author of Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe (Bodley Head, 2025). Buy it now from Amazon
Tracy Borman shares explosive new research that challenges what we thought we knew about the end of Elizabeth I's reign
On her deathbed Elizabeth I named the Scottish James VI as her successor, ensuring a smooth transition from the Tudor to Stuart monarchies. That, at least, is what we've long believed. But an explosive new discovery casts doubt on this version of events, suggesting that the Stuart succession was far less secure than we may have thought. In her new book, The Stolen Crown, historian Tracy Borman draws on this research to paint a vivid new picture of these turbulent years, which she explores in conversation with Rob Attar. Tracy Borman is the author of The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
Elizabeth I’s shadowy spy network was tasked with uncovering secret conspiracies. Here’s what it found
In a kingdom recently divided by faith, Elizabeth I’s government turned to espionage to defend the Protestant crown. This is how her spymasters built a culture of fear that reshaped England’s religious and political life
Elizabeth I’s England of the late 16th century was a Protestant nation riven by anxieties that were a consequence of a bitter divorce. The blame lay at the feet of her father. But it wasn’t Henry VIII’s famous separations from Catherine of Aragon or Anne of Cleves that were the source of the trouble. It was his divorce from Rome. Only a generation earlier, England had been a staunchly Catholic country. That had changed when Henry VIII, seeking to wrest power away from the papacy, had broken from Rome in the 1530s. Following his death, Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I, had tried to reverse that, burning Protestants and restoring the pope’s authority. But, when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, she reinstated her father’s Protestantism through the Elizabethan Religious Settlement: a middle way that was designed to bring the realm back. It only partly worked. To Protestant hardliners, Elizabeth’s church was still too Catholic. To Catholics, she was a heretic and an illegitimate queen. Abroad, Philip II of Spain and the papacy viewed her as an enemy of the faith, and in 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated her – releasing her subjects from allegiance to the English Crown. From that moment on, the Catholic institutions across Europe became Elizabeth’s greatest enemies. And Catholics in England now lived under intense suspicion. The myth of the Tudor ‘secret service’ As fears of foreign invasion and internal rebellion grew, Elizabeth’s court increasingly viewed intelligence as a potent weapon to be wielded against the Catholic threat, and it fell to two men to spearhead its use: Sir Francis Walsingham, her shrewd and zealous secretary of state; and Robert Cecil, the brilliant son of Elizabeth’s long-time advisor William Cecil, Lord Burghley. “Both of these men, Robert Cecil and Francis Walsingham, have got a reputation of being the M figure out of MI5 – the head of a vast and highly organised secret service,” says Professor John Cooper, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast’s four-part series on the Gunpowder Plot. But how much are their reputations as England’s pioneering spymasters deserved? “I don’t think that the intelligence networks, either of Francis Walsingham or Robert Cecil, were ever as vast as people believe them to be,” says Cooper. “But that’s part of the illusion they create. They deliberately create that sense that everywhere is infiltrated with spies.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2664424-348e757-e1763028515692.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This depiction of Anthony Babington (1561–1586) shows the Catholic conspirator whose plot to assassinate Elizabeth I and place Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne was uncovered in 1586. Behind him, executions in St Giles’s Field reflect the brutal fate that awaited Babington and his fellow plotters after their failed conspiracy." title="Babington Plot" /> Building the network Under Walsingham, Elizabeth’s government professionalised the business of espionage. “He puts a lot of secretly accounted-for money into paying informers,” Cooper explains, “and also paying people to be something like modern-style professional intelligence agents. “The most dangerous thing about their spies is how they go into deep cover.” Through these networks, he exposed plots like the 1586 Babington Plot, which aimed to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. Coded messages were intercepted and double agents were deployed to great effect. The unravelling of that conspiracy sealed Mary’s fate, and confirmed the crown’s conviction that Catholicism and treason were inextricable. Spies in the pews By the 1580s, attending or hosting a Catholic mass was illegal. Despite the suppression, Catholics still found covert ways to worship in secret gatherings. And it was these kinds of meetings that were ripe for infiltration. “One of the most extraordinary things about Francis Walsingham’s intelligence network is the extent to which he secretly penetrated the English Catholic community,” says Cooper. The Elizabethans | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, you’ll discover everything you need to know about the life and reign of Elizabeth I, guided by historian and broadcaster Professor Tracy Borman Explore the course now “As a Catholic celebrating and attending the mass in late Elizabethan England, you were never quite sure who the other people in the room were; whether one of them might actually be a secret plant – a counterfeit Catholic as it were, in the pay of Francis Walsingham.” Read more | The dark side of Elizabethan England The information that was gathered had direct consequences. Priests who had returned from exile to minister in secret were hunted, often betrayed by those they thought allies. Many were captured, tortured and executed. Walsingham’s reach extended abroad too. “[He] managed to place young men in the English Catholic training colleges in Europe,” Cooper says. “These men are supposed to be training to be Catholic priests alongside their fellow students, but they're actually reporting back this stream of intelligence to Walsingham on which of the priests are going to be coming on this secret Catholic mission to England.” For every priest who landed on the English coast, there was a real chance his name was already known in London and marked down for monitoring. As much as the intelligence gathered was intended to have direct results, there was another outcome too. Walshingham’s goal was to spread a climate of fear, and the impact was the creation of a kind of panopticon. Catholics knew that spies were watching, but they didn’t know where, or when. “They know that they have to be suspicious,” Cooper says. Robert Cecil’s inheritance After Walsingham’s death in 1590, the work continued. “Robert Cecil, after Walsingham’s death, picks up a lot of these individual agents and these contacts, and continued to maintain these intelligence networks,” says Cooper. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1036112824-c61b75f-e1763028287714.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1607 engraving shows Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the statesman and spymaster who served both Elizabeth I and James I. A key architect of early modern government, Cecil steered foreign policy, managed intelligence networks, and helped secure the Stuart succession." title="Robert Cecil" /> Those networks proved their worth to Cecil in 1605, when informants helped uncover the Gunpowder Plot – arguably the clearest demonstration of how deeply the state’s surveillance culture had taken root. But even under Cecil’s control, espionage networks had become amorphous and difficult to control. “In fact,” Cooper says, “there were rival intelligence networks operating at the court of Elizabeth I and James VI and I. It isn't all one organised secret intelligence service, because knowledge is power, information is power. “Everybody is competing to try and be the person who is reporting to the government, because it increases your power at the royal court.” In this way, factions used informants to outmanoeuvre rivals and advance their own ambitions, too. While the Elizabethan spy networks might not have been as extensive as later rumour suggests, those rumours alone speak to its influence, and its impact was certainly profound. “They deliberately create that sense that if you're a Catholic, you need to be fearful,” says Cooper. This created a pervasive feeling that someone, somewhere, was always watching, working to stabilise the Protestant state in what was a moment of significant fragility, and exposing genuine plots along the way. John Cooper was speaking to Danny Bird on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Crystal balls & contacting angels: predicting the future in early modern England
Martha McGill delves into the world of divination in the 16th and 17th centuries – and shares some tips on how to gain supernatural insight
Eating the palpitating heart of a mole. Sleeping with a wolf's tooth under your pillow. Communicating with angels through a crystal ball. In the 16th and 17th centuries, people had many cunning methods for predicting the future. Historian Martha McGill shares some extraordinary stories of early modern divination with Ellie Cawthorne, from fraudulent money-spinning scams to astrologers and palmreaders who offered supernatural insights.
420 years ago, a deadly conspiracy to kill Britain’s king nearly succeeded. What if it had worked?
In 1605, a small band of English Catholics tried to destroy the king, his family and parliament in a single explosion. This is what might have happened if Guy Fawkes had successfully lit the fuse
It's the evening of 4 November 1605, and a search party has descended into the cellars beneath the Palace of Westminster. Among the stacks of firewood, they find a man, calm and composed, guarding dozens of casks of gunpowder. That man was Guy Fawkes, and within hours from him being found, he was due to light a fuse that would have upended English history. The discovery of Fawkes foiled the conspiracy and exposed a broader network of Catholic conspirators whose aim was to blow up King James VI and I, along with his government, during the ceremonial opening of parliament. The Gunpowder Plot, as it came to be known, had failed. But what if Fawkes had succeeded? As Professor John Cooper explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the explosion would have changed the course of British history overnight. The explosion that would have destroyed Westminster Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder had been smuggled into the undercroft beneath the House of Lords; more than enough to obliterate the heart of English government. “If it had all ignited,” explains Cooper, “it would have created an almighty explosion, certainly sufficient to destroy most of the Palace of Westminster.” “The House of Lords would have been blown to pieces,” he continues. “The House of Commons across the courtyard would also have gone. Westminster Hall would also have been very badly damaged.” Calculations suggest that the blast radius might have even reached parts of Westminster Abbey. “So we're talking about an almighty explosion,” Cooper notes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-55322642-1-3fe2264-e1762257614104.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A contemporary Dutch print of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot shows divine light guiding the authorities to capture Guy Fawkes beneath the House of Lords. His arrest, moments before he could ignite 36 barrels of gunpowder, thwarted the Catholic conspirators’ bid to destroy Parliament and King James I." title="Gunpowder Plot" /> A kingdom without a king But it wasn’t just the buildings. It was the hundreds of prominent people inside who were the real target, including King James VI and I. “It would have killed the people seated in the House of Lords: the peerage, the Privy Council, bishops and senior judges,” says Cooper. “It would have killed the king, and the heir, and the government, and all of the judges, as well as most of the nobility, most of the House of Commons, all in one go. It would have completely decapitated English society in one fell swoop.” Read more | A very short history of bonfire night The result would have been unprecedented chaos. The blast would also have filled the air with deadly gases, so even survivors of the initial explosion might have suffocated in the fumes that followed. With the royal succession destroyed and the machinery of parliament obliterated, there would have been no clear centre of power left in England. So, what would have happened next? How government might have collapsed “It’s actually very difficult to imagine what would have happened if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded,” Cooper says. “It could have gone one of two ways. The local systems of the shrievalty, the sheriffs, and the lord-lieutenancy were sufficiently robust that government would have continued at a county level until some sort of solution was found. That's one possibility.” Those sheriffs and lord-lieutenants, appointed by the Crown, were responsible for enforcing justice, collecting taxes and raising local militia. While many would have been killed, those who escaped the blast might have tried to maintain order until a new monarch was named. But as Cooper notes, there’s another possibility: “Or the whole system would have folded in on itself, and actually a lot of those sheriffs and lord-lieutenants would have been at Westminster for the opening of Parliament.” If they too perished, the country’s administrative network would have vanished. Read more | Stuart Britain: what was life like for ordinary people? It was highly possible that England could have descended into panic and chaos, collapsing into crisis with no precedent since the Wars of the Roses. And that wouldn’t have been the end of it. Cooper says that religious violence almost certainly would have exploded throughout the country. A spark for religious civil war “I think there was a very strong chance that a religious civil war would have followed on from the Gunpowder Plot,” Cooper argues. The Gunpowder Plot grew out of decades of religious tension. Since Henry VIII’s break from Rome in the 1530s, English Catholics had faced persecution and heavy fines for refusing to attend Protestant services. Under Elizabeth I, Catholic priests were executed as traitors. James VI and I initially adopted a softer stance but largely maintained continuity with the precedent set by his predecessor. The conspirators, led by Robert Catesby and including Fawkes, believed that killing the king would open the way for a Catholic restoration. But by 1605, England had changed from its recent Catholic past. “That long reign of Elizabeth had really changed the religious and social fabric of England,” Cooper explains. “Protestantism was deeply embedded in the English establishments – among parliamentarians, amongst lawyers and in the universities – but also among a lot of ordinary people. There was a lot of popular Protestantism that also at its edges connected with anti-Catholic sentiment.” Read more | The Elizabethan era: your guide to life during the 'Golden Age' Had the plot succeeded, Protestant England would have seen it as evidence of a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the nation. Retaliation would have been inevitable, with local uprisings, reprisals and massacres on both sides. England could have slipped into the kind of sectarian warfare that was already consuming parts of continental Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. The puppet monarchy that never was But what were the plotters themselves hoping for beyond wanton chaos? Despite their revolutionary and regicidal intentions, they certainly weren’t republicans. “The principle of monarchy was very strong,” says Cooper. “The Catholic plotters were not trying to set up some kind of republic. Their thinking is entirely monarchical. They're trying to put in a substitute Catholic puppet monarchy, but it's still a monarchy.” Their intention was to replace the Protestant dynasty, not abolish kingship itself. In the confusion after the explosion, they hoped to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, the king’s daughter, and crown her as a Catholic monarch under their control. Instead, the failure of the plot reinforced Protestant unity and the divine authority of the crown. Looking back, Cooper calls the conspiracy “a fantastically audacious operation […] There’s something horribly spectacular about the level of vision, the level of hubris and the violence that the Gunpowder Plotters were prepared to consider.” John Cooper was speaking to Danny Bird on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
This unassuming accessory gave the poor of Tudor England a vital way to survive
How did a law passed by Elizabeth I turn fashion into welfare? Ruth Goodman explains the story behind one garment and the difference it made to the 16th-century poor, and examines the origins of England’s first social safety net
Imagine losing your livelihood in 16th-century England. There was no welfare state, no pensions, no hospitals or residential homes for the elderly, and no benefits for the sick. If you were injured, widowed or simply too old to work, you were faced with a life of financial instability at best, or permanent penury at worst. “What if things had gone wrong, and somehow you didn’t have a patch of land to make a living from?” asks historian Ruth Goodman in episode three of her new HistoryExtra Academy series, Tudor Life. For most working people, life in Tudor England was precarious. Labourers worked the land for local farmers, often earning just enough to get by. Women and children contributed through spinning, domestic service or working in dairies. In this situation, one bad harvest, a bout of illness, or the loss of a spouse could tip a family into destitution. “That happened to a lot of people,” says Goodman. “Even if your dad had a patch of land, he might have had seven kids, and by the time it’s divided up there’s next to nothing left. So there were plenty of people who didn’t have enough land to sustain their families, and plenty of people who couldn’t find other skilled work.” For many, the looming prospect of eventual poverty was an inevitable part of life. The Tudor population was rising faster than its economy could support, prices were soaring due to inflation, and the enclosure of common land (once a lifeline for the poor) was stripping people of access to grazing, wood and food. Before the 1530s, much of the kingdom’s informal welfare system had been provided by monasteries. Religious houses offered food to the hungry, lodging for travellers, and small pensions for the sick and elderly. But when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries between 1536 and 1540, that network disappeared almost overnight. Centuries of charitable provision were gone, and nothing stood ready to replace them. Read more | The dissolution of the monasteries Unsurprisingly, begging and vagrancy surged. Rebellions broke out in the countryside, often sparked by hunger and enclosure. England had to find new ways to care for its poor, and to maintain order. How did they do it? From medieval charity to Tudor law <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-51246484-0366570-e1761316938127.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of Tudor musicians perform in a church around 1550, playing early brass instruments. Music was central to Tudor worship and courtly life, blending sacred ceremony with the rich sound of England’s Renaissance culture." title="Tudor Musicians" /> In medieval England, helping the poor had been seen as a Christian duty, not a state responsibility. Almsgiving was believed to benefit the soul of the giver as well as the receiver. But in the newly Protestant world of the Tudors, this form of salvation was no longer earned through good works. This theological shift left a vacuum: if the church no longer guaranteed charity, who would? The answer, gradually, was left to the people of each local parish. Tudor monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I began to pass laws that made poor relief a local civic obligation rather than a purely religious one. The Statute of 1536, under Henry VIII, allowed parishes to collect voluntary alms; the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1552, under Edward VI, made it compulsory for each parish to register and oversee the poor. By Elizabeth’s reign, this system had evolved into the first recognisable welfare structure in English history. The parish poor fund Eventually, this led to a formalised, but meagre, form of help that someone could access. Goodman explains: “Legally the parish was supposed to give you a bit of help, and everybody in the parish was supposed to pay a poor rate, a few pence that went into the pot which was to help someone in trouble – somebody newly widowed, for example, or children who’d been orphaned, or somebody really sick who couldn’t carry on with producing the necessary parts of life.” Read more | Tudor England had no standing army, but this humble hobby kept its people ready for war This ‘poor rate’ – a small local tax – was collected by parish officials known as overseers of the poor. The money was distributed to those deemed “deserving”: the sick, elderly and orphaned. It was a fragile safety net, but it still represented a profound shift in thinking. Poverty was now a community’s shared responsibility. “There was a small part of money that could be distributed to deserving causes,” Goodman adds. “But it was always a very small pot of money, and never really enough to go around.” This system, established in piecemeal form across the mid-Tudor decades, eventually fed into the Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601. Those statutes formally divided the poor into categories: the ‘impotent’ (unable to work), the ‘able-bodied,’ and ‘vagrants’ – and set rules for relief and punishment. It was the foundation of English poor relief for the next two centuries. A nation of knitters But charity alone could never meet the scale of need. Tudor governments believed that idleness wasn’t just wasteful, but dangerous, and that it bred disorder and rebellion. A better solution to charity was to turn the poor into workers. “There were a couple of initiatives,” Goodman says. “Knitting a hat is something that doesn’t require strength, it doesn’t require any major capital outlay, and it’s a skill that can be learned quite quickly.” Read more | Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn: the Tudor queen’s undying love for her mother So, in 1571, Elizabeth I’s Parliament passed a law requiring people to buy something the poor could make: the knitted woollen cap. “Every man above the age of six, apart from gentlemen, was required to wear a knitted cap on Sundays,” Goodman explains. “Women were also supposed to wear knitted caps, with exceptions, so a large section of the population were required to wear knitted caps. They get called statute caps, because it was a law.” It was, arguably, one of the canniest pieces of social lawmaking in Tudor history. The statute cap law By mandating that nearly everyone own and wear a knitted cap, the government both guaranteed a steady market for wool and created work for those unable to perform heavy labour – while also creating a more stable market for farmers and others whose work involved wool. “The idea is to stimulate demand for knitted caps, which a poor person could make a living from. Particularly somebody who was perhaps elderly and infirm, or had had a broken leg for example, or even a young person who hadn’t much strength: this was a way to make a living.” For those unable to plough, harvest or carry loads, knitting provided an accessible trade. It could be done at home, required little equipment and fit around domestic life. In towns, caps were sold in markets and fairs; in villages, merchants collected them in bulk. Thousands of poor households suddenly had work. The parish poor fund, the local poor rate and the statute cap all represented early experiments in welfare and were practical steps toward a society in which the state and communities, not the church alone, shared responsibility for the vulnerable. Want to step even further into the world of the Tudors? In her brand-new HistoryExtra Academy series, Ruth Goodman takes you inside everyday life in the 16th century — from food and fashion to faith, work, and even love and marriage. All episodes are available now on the HistoryExtra app. Start watching today. Want to ask Ruth a question? Join our live virtual Q&A on 19 November. Find out more here.
Who laid the fuse for the Gunpowder Plot?
Historian John Cooper introduces us to the conspirators behind the infamous plot to blow up king and parliament
In the autumn of 1605, Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes led a desperate band of Catholic gentlemen in one of history's most daring conspiracies. Having smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the Palace of Westminster, their plan was to blow up James VI & I, along with the majority of England’s Protestant elite, paving the way for the restoration of Catholicism. In this first episode of our four-part series on the plot, Danny Bird speaks to historian John Cooper to uncover a world of persecution, espionage and faith-driven extremism. They unfurl the conspirators’ bold plan and interrogate the powerful spy networks of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England that set the scene for an explosive act of treason. Want to know more about the Gunpowder Plot? Danny Bird has curated a selection of essential reading from the HistoryExtra and BBC History Magazine archive to help you explore the religious tensions, political intrigue and lasting impact of this infamous act of treason. Go beyond the podcast. John Cooper is the author of The Lost Chapel of Westminster: How a Royal Chapel Became the House of Commons (Apollo, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon
What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century
From the importance of female pleasure to why you might need ribbons in the bedroom, historian Ruth Goodman explores the world of Tudor sex
Is there any better way to understand the deadly politics and high drama of the Tudor era than through the lens of their audacious romantic entanglements? After all, King Henry VIII had six wives, instigating the Reformation in the name of love (and presumably lust, too), meanwhile Queen Elizabeth I grew a cult of personality around her virginity, developing it into a sharp instrument of power and control. Sex, or lack thereof, was clearly important to the Tudor royals. But away from the courts of kings and queens, what role did intimate romance play in the lives of ordinary Tudors; the people who were farmers, millers, bakers and blacksmiths? What did they get up to in the bedroom, and what was the role of sex in their lives? Good vs bad sex “[Sex] was seriously important to people in Tudor Britain,” says Ruth Goodman, speaking in her newest HistoryExtra Academy course, Tudor Life, “it marked the moment of adulthood. A single person [as opposed to someone who was married] wasn’t considered to be fully adult”. Watch now | Ruth Goodman on Tudor life As a watershed moment in a person’s life, sex was incredibly important, both practically and symbolically. However, it wasn’t necessarily straightforward – there were social norms that dictated how people should be having sex. Sex was only considered ‘good’ if it took place within marriage and, as Goodman explains, “so long as it fulfilled one of two purposes: one was to bond a couple together, and the other was procreation”. No matter what sort of sex it was, if it happened outside of the marital bed, it was immoral. Anything that fell outside of the “traditional marriage picture of a man and a woman creating babies” was a transgression and ‘bad’ sex. But that didn’t mean that the Tudors discouraged pleasure. The importance of pleasure One of the main Tudor beliefs about sex was that a woman could only conceive if she was enjoying the act, and this would ideally include a female orgasm. “Just as a man needed to be interested in order to produce seed, a woman needed to be interested in order for that union to occur”, explains Goodman. It may seem surprising that there was such a focus on women’s pleasure in what was a largely patriarchal society. But, while some good husbands may have used this belief to ensure their wives had a good time, there were some more sinister repercussions to this too. “The bad side of [this belief] is that if a woman is forced [to have sex] and she conceives, then nobody in society believes she was raped; they think she must have been enjoying it,” explains Goodman. So, while female pleasure was considered to be a crucial part of sex, and essential to procreation, it was a double-edged sword that had inadvertent negative consequences too. Getting the position right But pleasure wasn’t the only thing needed for procreation, according to Tudor ideas about sex. There was some biological backing to their understanding of reproduction too. “It’s thought in the Tudor period that a woman’s reproductive organs are a mirror image of a man’s … if you want to have children, you should [be positioned in] a nice straight line to allow the seed to get where it needs to go”, says Goodman. Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love This meant that the ultimate position to optimise conception was the missionary position. The idea was that the straighter the couple’s bodies were lined up, the more likely they were to conceive. “Any [position] in which the bodies were bent, particularly a woman’s body, which might prohibit the movement of the seed [was] not so good,” notes Goodman. It wasn’t just the position of the couple that mattered, though. The Tudors had detailed notions about how the testicles affected the success of conception and the gender of the baby. Tudor understandings of the body proposed that the right-hand side of the heart carried fresh, more vigorous blood around the body, so the right side had more energy than the left. It followed that the more ‘powerful’ right testicle would therefore be responsible for creating male children – and the left, female. As we know from Henry VIII’s succession crisis, having male babies was of great importance. So, what did Tudor men do if they wanted to ensure a male heir? Well, as Goodman reveals, “if you wanted to be sure of having a boy, it was a really good idea to tie a ribbon around the left-hand testicle, just to ensure that the correct seed made the journey”. Although we now know that this would not have had any impact on a baby’s sex, it’s intriguing to think that men in the 16th century – including King Henry VIII himself – may have been tying ribbons around their genitals in an attempt to conceive a much-wanted boy. What did Tudors think was sexy? While the main reason for sex in the 16th century was to conceive a child, that doesn’t mean people were only having sex to procreate. Many couples were simply in love and just wanted to have fun. To do that, they had to be attracted to each other. But what was considered sexy in the Tudor period? According to Ruth, linen was considered a very sexy material because it was the “layer that sits next to the skin, [highlighting] that intimacy between you and your clothes”. Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn't know about Tudor fashion The same principle applied to a woman’s hair. As something that would usually be either covered or pinned back in polite society, a woman unveiling her hair to a man was considered a great honour and an intense act of intimacy. “A woman’s hair is her crowning glory and her husband’s delight”, says Goodman. “It is a private sexual pleasure, not something to be shown to [just anyone]”. For Tudor women, they might be drawn to a man’s legs. Those tight stockings that are a familiar image of the Tudor period were a way for men to show off the shape of their “nicely turned calf”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/HM0CN5CALF-ee388bc.jpg" width="1552" height="1610" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in white stockings and a dark brown doublet and cape. He has an orange beard. He is standing in a marble arch, surrounded by marble statues and two red and blue shields" title="A 1546 portrait of Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, sporting the characteristic tight Tudor stockings (Image by Alamy)" /> The Tudors had rules – but they weren’t prudes With all these rules and expectations, and the notion that hair and calves were sexy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Tudors were prudes. In reality, they were quite open about sex. Tudor society had its deep-rooted beliefs about what sex was for, who could have it and how they should do it, but they weren’t shy about it. As Goodman explains, “The Tudor world was not particularly prissy. There was an awful lot of talk, and quite open talk, about relations between men and women, about attractiveness and sexiness”. Want to step even further into the world of the Tudors? In her brand-new HistoryExtra Academy series, Ruth Goodman takes you inside everyday life in the 16th century — from food and fashion to faith, work, and even love and marriage. The first three episodes are available now on the HistoryExtra app, with more to come soon. Start watching today Want to ask Ruth a question? Join our live virtual Q&A on 19 November. Find out more here
The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
In 1579, the queen embarked on a romance with a French duke she affectionately dubbed her “frog”. The pair seemed destined for marriage. Yet, writes Elizabeth Tunstall, the people of England had other ideas…
On 17 August 1579, a ship sailed up the Thames and dropped anchor in Greenwich. Moments later a duke emerged, dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy, and conversing with his entourage in French. The prince’s nationality might have provoked the suspicion – if not the outright hostility – of many residents of Tudor London. Yet this Frenchman was about to be welcomed into the heart of Richmond Palace. There he would be entertained lavishly, wined and dined at parties and balls. And all with good reason. For this Frenchman was being lined up to marry Queen Elizabeth I. Over the centuries, Elizabeth’s romantic travails have become one of the great soap operas of English history. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne in 1558 as a 25-year-old, it was widely expected that she would find herself a husband and produce an heir to carry on the Tudor dynasty for another generation. However, while the queen had several suitors over the years, each proposed match hit the rocks before she could be tempted to offer her hand in marriage. From English earls to Scandinavian kings, none quite fitted the bill. And so, by the time the party of Frenchmen disembarked in Greenwich in the summer of 1579, Elizabeth was well on her way to securing her place in the history books as the ‘Virgin Queen’: the woman who would, so we’re told, sacrifice her heart for the good of the nation. Yet she wasn’t done with trying just yet. As her 46th birthday closed in, Elizabeth would embark on one final bid to find a husband. And this one would take her closer to marriage than perhaps any courtship yet. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/FFWM82-cmyk-WL-0294cdd.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A cow stands in the middle of the image, being ridden by a man in a dark cloak and hat. Behind the cow, a man wearing light pink holds its tail, while another man milks the cow. In front of the cow stands Elizabeth I, dressed in white and another man dressed all in black" title="his painting, dating to the 1580s, depicts the fraught diplomatic backdrop to Elizabeth I’s courtship with the Duke of Anjou. The queen feeds a cow (representing the Dutch Provinces), which defecates on the duke (left). Philip II of Spain attempts, in vain, to ride the cow away, while Dutch leader William of Orange holds the animal steady by its horns (Image by Alamy)" /> So who was the Frenchman who almost changed the course of English history? And why – as she entered the embrace of middle age – was the queen considering marrying him now? The suitor’s name was François de Valois, Duke of Anjou, fourth son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. Anjou had begun life as a royal also-ran, with little prospect of ascending the French throne. Yet, by the early 1570s, he found himself heir to his childless brother, Henri III. The duke was now odds-on to succeed his sibling as King of France. That made him a figure of immense importance. Read more | Elizabeth I's accession day celebrations Anjou was also eager to make his mark on Europe by campaigning against Spanish forces in the Netherlands. And it’s this last fact that brought him into Elizabeth’s orbit in the late 1570s. With England becoming increasingly isolated from Europe – and relations with Spain deteriorating fast – Elizabeth’s advisors were desperate to forge enduring ties with allies across the channel. What better way to achieve exactly that than by suggesting a match between Elizabeth and the French duke? The union had been proposed as early as 1572, but it wasn’t until 1579 that Elizabeth herself fully committed to the courtship. At the outset, the queen’s interest in Anjou was purely the product of political necessity, for a marriage alliance with France would help stave off the growing military threat presented by Spain. But, as the two got to know one another in August 1579, the relationship became personal, the first courtship to do so since the queen’s flirtation with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester two decades earlier. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/BAL106934cmyk-WL-17415c0.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A portrait of Elizabeth I in c1575–80. The middle-aged queen was 21 years older than her French suitor (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="A portrait of Elizabeth I in c1575–80. The middle-aged queen was 21 years older than her French suitor (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> French connections While Anjou was not a physically impressive figure – possessing bandy legs and a scarred face from a bout of smallpox – Elizabeth undoubtedly grew fond of him, calling him her “frog” on account of his appearance and his gravelly voice. He was highly attentive, which she very much enjoyed. The two conversed in French, as it was the only language they shared. And, despite the fact that Anjou was 21 years younger than the queen, they found plenty to talk about. Also playing to the duke’s advantage was the fact that he had made the journey to England at all. Throughout her many courtships, Elizabeth had stuck to the firm position that she “would never marry with any person whom she should not first herself see”. Her demand to meet a potential husband before committing herself to marriage was viewed at the time with astonishment. Royal courtships were long-distance affairs in the 16th century – to such an extent that even the marriage itself could be carried out with ambassadors standing in as proxies for the bride. Through each courtship Elizabeth had held her ground, yet no suitor had chosen to make the journey to her court. All that changed with Anjou. Read more | Anne Boleyn's youth: how her years on the continent made her a match for Henry VIII Violent opposition The duke could not stay in England for long and, on 29 August, sailed back to France. His visit had, to all intents and purposes, been a diplomatic and personal success. Yet there was a catch. And it was a major one. This had been a trip that the English government had attempted to keep secret. Anjou had travelled to London under a pseudonym: Seigneur du Pont de Sé. However, it didn’t take long for the true identity of the queen’s guest to seep beyond the confines of the court – and, once it did, it triggered a firestorm of opposition. But why? In short, Elizabeth was a Protestant; Anjou was a Catholic. And in a Europe riven by the Reformation and religious war, marriage between two people of differing beliefs was, to most, simply unthinkable. Within one week of Anjou’s visit, England was awash with a public outcry against the match. London preachers decried the marriage from their pulpits. Popular ballads made their rounds. Anonymous verses and pamphlets lampooned the match. Threats to meet French attention with violence began to appear in public spaces. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/J2WF3A-WL-ce28264.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The English court laid on lavish dinners and balls at Richmond Palace (shown in an engraving) to impress the duke during his 1579 visit (Image by Alamy)" title="The English court laid on lavish dinners and balls at Richmond Palace (shown in an engraving) to impress the duke during his 1579 visit (Image by Alamy)" /> It was into this tumult that John Stubbs, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, published a pamphlet with the catchy title ‘The discovery of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes, by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof’. Stubbs’ work argued that the clandestine nature of Anjou’s visit demonstrated a “very strange this unmanlike, unprincelike, secret, fearful, suspicious, disdainful, needy French kind of wooing in monsieur”. It wasn’t only the French duke who Stubbs pursued in his work. He also questioned why Elizabeth would consent to marry “an imp of the crown of France”. In his view, and many others, at Elizabeth’s age any pregnancy would likely result in her death. If a child was born it was feared that it would result in England becoming a vassal state to France rather than securing an independent future for the Protestant realm. Upon learning of Stubbs’ pamphlet, Elizabeth was furious. For her, the matter of her marriage was deeply personal and a matter of royal prerogative. And it didn’t escape her notice that Stubbs’ arguments mirrored those that had also been raised against the Anjou match within her Privy Council. Could her own councillors have leaked information to the wayward lawyer? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/HIP2806978WL-d5e2fa6.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A man with a ruff collar and wearing a black hat with a feathered embellishment on the left of it stands against a black background" title="A portrait of the future Duke of Anjou from 1572. The prospect of Elizabeth I marrying a Catholic Frenchman triggered a firestorm of hostility across England (Image by TopFoto)" /> It wasn’t long before the authorities attempted to suppress public opposition to the match. Stubbs was tried for seditious writing and taken to the public scaffold in the marketplace of Westminster on 3 November. There his right hand was removed with a cleaver before an unusually silent crowd. It was not only the wider public that challenged Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Anjou. Sir Philip Sydney, the courtier and poet, wrote a letter to his queen that circulated in the court, and though he did not face the same punishment as Stubbs, he shared much of the same fears over the match. He argued that, should Elizabeth marry Anjou, her people’s “hearts will be galled, if not alienated, when they shall see you take to husband a Frenchman, a papist, in whom, howsoever fine wits may find further dangers or painted excuses, the very common people well know this: that he is the son of the Jezebel of our age”. To Sydney, Anjou represented the worst possible suitor, a Catholic Frenchman who would only lead Protestant England to ruin. A name but no power Despite the ferocity of these objections, the marriage negotiations continued. In late November, a delegation of Elizabeth’s Privy Council, led by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, worked with Anjou’s representative, Jean de Simier, to create a draft marriage contract. This document was based on the union of Elizabeth’s sister, Mary I, with Philip II of Spain, and would see Anjou granted the title of king but little real power in England. But it did have one new clause: it gave Elizabeth the right to withdraw within two months of signing the contract. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/RCXA6Xcmyk-WL-c6aab09.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A painting shows Elizabeth I being carried through the streets, surrounded by a large crowd of courtiers" title="Elizabeth I surrounded by her courtiers. The queen’s Privy Council ploughed on with marriage negotiations, even when it was clear that the public despised the idea (Image by Alamy)" /> And sign the contract is exactly what Elizabeth did. Now, with 1579 drawing to a close, the queen was further along the road to marriage than she would be at any point in her reign. Yet she wasn’t married yet. And such was the continuing strength of the hostility towards the match that within a few short weeks she felt she had no choice but to turn back. She wrote to Anjou that “I do not want this negotiation to trouble you thus any more”, but still hoped “that we may remain faithful friends and assured in all out actions”. Her contractual get-out clause was duly activated. Elizabeth’s change of heart would, you might think, signal the end of her courtship with Anjou. But it was revived on one more occasion. In April 1581 a French delegation arrived in England to discuss once more the prospects of a marriage alliance between the two kingdoms. Elizabeth herself had turned away from the courtship, but – with Spain still threatening English security – she allowed the negotiations to recommence. Those negotiations reached an impasse and would have faded away – but for the return of Anjou to England. Read more | “Elizabeth I was in charge of her fate. Perhaps that’s why Catherine de Medici despised her” On 31 October 1581, the duke arrived at Rye and then travelled onwards to Richmond Palace. In contrast with his first visit, he moved openly and spoke more of alliance than marriage. Both the duke and queen were fully preoccupied by the issues of their nations’ finances and conflict with Spain, but the question of marriage had not disappeared entirely. Three weeks after his arrival, as Elizabeth and Anjou walked along a gallery, they were approached by the French ambassador. The ambassador asked the queen what he could tell his king about the chances of her marrying. In response Elizabeth smiled and replied: “You may write this to the king: that the Duke of Anjou shall be my husband.” She then proceeded to give Anjou a ring from her finger, accompanied by a kiss. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/T1ME64cmyk-WL-72572d1.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A man and a woman sit opposite each other, both dresses in orange and black. They are on a black and orange checkered floor with an orange wall behind them" title="Like Philip II (shown with Mary I), Anjou would have been called ‘king’, but given little power in England (Image by Alamy)" /> Elizabeth’s response to the ambassador sent her court into uproar. That night her ladies expressed their shock. The next morning saw members of her council advising strongly against the match, as it would undermine her relationship with her people. With doubts playing on her mind in the cold light of day, Elizabeth performed yet another volte face, withdrawing her offer to Anjou and telling him that she would be a better friend than a wife. Anjou left London for the Netherlands on 1 February 1582. However, he did not travel the whole way alone. Elizabeth accompanied him as far as Canterbury where she said her farewell to her final suitor. As the duke sailed away from England, he took with him the queen’s last chance at marriage. Anjou’s departure also closed the door on the queen’s youth: at 48-years-old, the games of courtship were no longer hers, and her unmarried state would now define her reign. Today, more than 400 years after these events, it’s tempting to assume that Elizabeth was always destined to be the Virgin Queen – and it was a role in which she revelled. But in the first half of her reign, she engaged in numerous courtships and came close to marrying twice. These two men – the Earl of Leicester and Duke of Anjou – found a special place in the queen’s heart, even when it was unwise for her to allow them that space. On each occasion it was the resistance of her people that prevented her from taking that final step towards matrimony. Elizabeth understood that without the support of her subjects, she risked deposition and civil war. It was this cold, hard reality that prevented her from taking a husband. So maybe it’s time to look upon the Virgin Queen in a new light: as the creation of the people rather than the queen herself. The image of an untouchable woman who preserved the state through her own person was crafted, it seems, not by an individual but a nation. It was a role Elizabeth committed to as she bid Anjou farewell. And it was one that she would play until her final days. Romancing the throne Three other men who were in the frame to marry the Virgin Queen The dashing favourite When Elizabeth took the throne there was some support for the queen to marry an Englishman. But while most looked to the peers of the realm, it was Robert Dudley who had caught both her eye and her heart. Indeed, she once commented that “she thought she could find no person with better qualities”. Dudley was made Master of the Horse shortly after Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, a position that allowed him frequent access to his queen. After Dudley’s wife, Amy, died in September 1560 it appeared that Elizabeth might marry her dashing favourite. However, the suspicious circumstances of Amy’s death made the marriage impossible. While their chance was lost, the two would remain close friends until Leicester’s death in 1588. The controversial Catholic After closing the door on marriage with Leicester, Elizabeth consented to the opening of a courtship with Archduke Charles of Austria, the third surviving son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I. For the English, the archduke was seen as a means of easing the escalating tensions with Spain (based on his family ties with the king of Spain), while providing some safety from France. This idea of the match was first raised in 1559 but was only seriously explored from 1563. As with so many of Elizabeth’s foreign courtships, the question of religion proved unresolvable. The potential marriage of Elizabeth to a Catholic caused unrest, leading her to observe that “two persons of different faiths could not live peaceably in one house”, even if that house was England itself. At the end of 1567 she turned Charles down. The eager Swede Elizabeth was first approached by Swedish ambassadors about a courtship with Erik XIV of Sweden in 1558 while still a princess. Erik presented fewer difficulties than many of her other suitors, being a Protestant – and wealthy. This courtship was also elevated by its timing, as leading members of Elizabeth’s Privy Council sought to use his suit to counter that of Dudley. Erik was highly persistent and offered to travel to England to meet Elizabeth in person. Upon hearing of Erik’s intentions, Elizabeth wrote to him, asking “that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship”. Elizabeth was thoroughly unconvinced by the arguments in favour of the match, and it all came to an end in 1562. Elizabeth Tunstall is a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Master the art of procrastination, with the help of the Virgin Queen
Elizabeth I knew that delaying decisions was her secret superpower, Professor Tracy Borman tells Dr David Musgrove, and it's a technique we could all learn something from
I’ve been putting off writing this piece for quite a while. Not because I’m plain lazy, but because I’m channelling my inner Tudor queen. My Life Lesson from History this week, as proposed by Professor Tracy Borman, is that we should master the art of procrastination. Helping us in this endeavour will be Elizabeth I, the procrastinator par excellence. I know what you’re thinking. Procrastination is a bad thing. It’s what you do when you can’t make a decision, or you’re unwilling to knuckle down to a task. This is the territory of urgently needing to tidy up your bedroom when you should be revising for your exams. We’re not talking avoidance procrastination here though – we are looking at deliberate, strategic procrastination. For Elizabeth, it was a case of good things coming to those who wait. “Elizabeth was the absolute master of procrastination, or at least that’s how it appeared. So really her strategy was to resist the pressure that she was constantly under from her male advisors, her parliaments, her people even, to do things like marry, have an heir and go to war,” says Borman. “She played the procrastination card brilliantly because instead of being pressured into making a decision, she would say, ‘Hang on, I just need a bit of time. I’m only a woman: what do I know?’” Avoiding the altar Let’s have a quick recap of who Elizabeth I was. She was queen of England from 1558 to 1603, and daughter of King Henry VIII. She was Good Queen Bess and Gloriana, the virgin queen who never married, and who navigated a half century of rule as a woman in a man’s world. Part of her success and longevity as a monarch was because she was slow to play her hand. The way she managed the pressure to marry is a case in point. “When she comes to the throne, she’s single, she’s 25 years old. Of course, the first thing everybody expects her to do is to take a husband and thus secure the dynasty, the succession. It’s the right thing to do, not just for a queen, but for any woman,” explains Borman. “But she famously declares to her first parliament that she will live and die a virgin and that she wasn’t going to marry. So you might say she didn’t procrastinate: she made a decision.” That’s true, but it was the delivery of that decision over several decades that required a long-running masterclass in misdirection, time-wasting and delay. “She showed herself willing to entertain foreign suitors and indeed homegrown ones as well. She lent them a willing ear. She entered into negotiations. She delayed, she put off. There was this wonderful phrase that her counsellors used about Elizabeth that she ‘gave answers answerless’,” says Borman. “She plays this game for a good 20 or 30 years. Her last serious suitor is the Duke of Anjou in the early 1580s, by which time Elizabeth can no longer have children. Nobody really believes she’s ever going to marry, but she still makes a good go at it and strings it out a bit and flirts with him and calls him her little frog. And then eventually he goes back to France and the whole thing is forgotten. But she’s brilliant at just playing for time.” Smallpox, strategy and succession The fact that Elizabeth didn’t marry meant that she didn’t have an obvious heir, so the next matter on which she procrastinated at length was the vexed question of who would succeed her. Everybody in her court and realm wanted to know who was next in line to the throne, particularly when it looked like she was going to die. “In 1562 she’s staying at Hampton Court and she falls ill with smallpox. This is one of the most deadly diseases of the age. Everybody thinks she’s about to die. Indeed Elizabeth herself thinks she’s about to die, and it brings this question of the succession right to the fore. From that moment on, even though Elizabeth survives, it never goes away.” As Borman explains, after the smallpox incident, she is under constant pressure to name her heir – to make a choice from Mary, Queen of Scots, or Lady Katherine Grey, or even Philip II of Spain. “This really is Elizabeth procrastinating par excellence because she manages it for 40 years,” says Borman. “She just keeps putting them off”. The queen either just doesn’t answer or offers gnomic utterances like “when I am dead, he shall succeed that has the most right”. That sort of response left a wide open goal for interpretation, but importantly made sure that Elizabeth did not have to stay on the defensive throughout her reign. Watch now View Green Video on the source website “ It was a master stroke because she knew from direct experience that the minute she named her heir, she was in trouble. The same had happened during her sister Mary’s reign, where it was very obvious that Elizabeth was the only viable successor and everybody started to gather around her and turn against Mary, and Elizabeth became the focus of rebellions against her sister,” notes Borman. “Elizabeth was absolutely determined that wasn’t going to happen to her. The only way of holding onto her power was not to give somebody else the power of knowing they were going to succeed her and certainly not the likes of Mary, Queen of Scots – her deadliest rival. “So it was politically expedient not to name an heir, although admittedly you’ve got to take your hat off to her for still refusing to do so on her deathbed when you kind of think she’s got nothing to lose. She just continues to her last breath to keep the focus entirely on herself.” You’ll want to have a read of Borman’s new book The Stolen Crown (Hodder & Stoughton, out September 2025) to find out the latest thinking on how James VI and I did eventually succeed, and why Elizabeth never did actually name him as her heir. A war of wits Elizabeth had really good reasons to prevaricate on these decisions then, and a lot of her problems boiled down to the fact that she was a woman. “She played her quite chauvinistic male courtiers at their own game because of course she was a weak and feeble woman. ‘What am I going do? I can’t make decisions. I don’t understand weighty matters. I need time to think about it’. “She does this again and again, and she employs that language to make sure that people are aware that it is just her womanly weakness. All the time it’s a very clever ploy of buying herself that precious time, particularly when it came to war. “This was one realm that was very male-dominated, and Elizabeth made no secret of the fact she hated wars. They had uncertain outcomes. They were expensive. She was much more like her grandfather, Henry VII, than her warmongering father Henry VIII. She tried to buy time with diplomacy by using her hand in marriage as a bait to keep the great superpowers of Europe on side. It was only when forced that she really had to rally and take action, notably in 1588 when Philip II launched his Armada against England, and then she did finally agree to go to war.” Even though her procrastination was probably intensely annoying for those around her, it did provide a certain predictability. Her courtiers probably knew that they didn’t need to worry about snap decisions or being caught off guard by sudden changes of plan (though she could be very mercurial about her favourites). Should any of our modern global leaders take heed of this? I wouldn’t like to say, but it’s food for thought, certainly when you consider that Elizabeth did navigate a huge international crisis in the form of the religious settlement over the bloody rift between Catholicism and Protestantism. Some would argue that her religious compromise simply laid the foundations for future strife, but as Borman notes, “ It did at least bring much needed security and peace after 30 years of religious turmoil”. You shouldn’t take from this that Elizabeth didn’t make decisions or get stuff done – quite the opposite. According to Borman, she was one of the hardest-working monarchs ever to sit on the throne of England. She procrastinated because that was the best tool in her armoury to stay in power. The power of procrastination If you’re interested in becoming a productive procrastinator like Elizabeth, might I suggest an amusing and informative little book by the philosopher Professor John Perry. It’s called The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing (Workman Publishing, 2012). Perry argues for a policy of structured procrastination, whereby you get lots of things done by not doing other things. You accomplish stuff and deliver projects by actively avoiding other things that you think you should be working on. It’s a mind-trick of self-deception, via clever manipulation of your internal to-do list, according to Perry. Queen Elizabeth was actively not doing things too, but perhaps without that slice of self-deception. If I’m hearing Borman correctly, the Tudor queen knew exactly what she was doing with her delaying techniques, because she was operating in a very fraught power-play at home and abroad. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-601100326-85a48a1.jpg" width="5109" height="4105" alt="Queen Elizabeth I in the Armada Portrait, painted by George Gower, which marked the failed Spanish invasion of England. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Queen Elizabeth I in the Armada Portrait, painted by George Gower, which marked the failed Spanish invasion of England. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Given that you’re probably not a global leader struggling with geo-political challenges, what’s the lesson that we can take from Elizabeth’s reign? I guess it’s that procrastination has its place in life, if you’re using it strategically rather than as an excuse. Personally, I have found once or twice that problems that seemed somewhat insurmountable one day just resolved themselves quite nicely the next, because some external circumstance had shifted. Sometimes, it’s best to just do nothing, deliberately, to see where the pieces land. As Borman says, “ I often channel my inner Elizabeth when faced with a dilemma and I think, you know what? I'm going to do absolutely nothing and just see what happens”. Procrastination doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of decision either – it could be that you just need a bit of thinking time. Elizabeth I was a great one for going for walks in her palaces and gardens early in the morning, presumably to free up her mind for whatever the day held. So again, we can take a prompt from her that you don’t have to rush into decisions. Take your time, go for a walk, think before you leap in. That’s what Good Queen Bess would have done, and, as Borman concludes, “if it was good enough for Queen Bess, I think it’s good enough for us”.