Birth of a Princess
Elizabeth I was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. When the little Princess was born on Sunday, the seventh of September, 1533, few could have predicted the glittering life ahead of her. Her birth was undoubtedly a great disappointment to her father, and a political disaster for her mother and all her supporters. For many years, Henry's main goal in life had been to father a healthy son to succeed him to the throne of England. Despite twenty years of marriage to the Spanish Catherine of Aragon, and the birth of several children, by 1533, Henry had only one living legitimate child, a daughter, Mary. Although there was no law in Tudor England preventing the accession of a woman to the throne as there was in France, the rule of a woman was considered undesirable. Not only was it thought that a woman was incapable of ruling a kingdom, there were also practical considerations that made female sovereignty problematic, such as her......
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Approximate Word Count: 4720
Approximate Pages: 19 (260 words per double-spaced page) |