Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I (September 1533-March 1603) succeeded Queen Mary to the English crown. She was the daughter of Henry VIII's second wife, Ann Boleyn. Henry was disappointed to have another daughter, as he had already had one by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Henry changed the religion of the country in order to re-marry, and that risk seemed now seemed wasteful. Elizabeth's mother failed to provide a son for the King, and was executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and incest in 1536; Elizabeth and her half sister were declared illegitimate and deprived of their rights to the throne. She would succeed Edward VI and Queen Mary in January 1559, the culmination of a long period of political strife and religious turmoil in England.