Queen Elizabeth I A Timewatch Guide

Of all the monarchs that have ruled our nation,

there is one woman whose legacy

inspires intrigue and debate to this day.

To some, she was our first modern leader -

a feminist icon, a tolerant queen.

To others, she was a ruthless sovereign,

relentless in her pursuit of power.

Her image evokes admiration, wonder and mystery.

She is Queen Elizabeth I.

It's over 450 years since Elizabeth took the throne

and yet she still fascinates us.

She is the Virgin Queen, a woman married to her nation.

She's a portrait of power, of composure, of determination.

Her influence has never fallen out of fashion.

Elizabeth ruled for 45 years.

At the time, she was the longest reigning monarch in English history.

Since her death,

historians have interrogated every detail of her life and reign.

In recent years, documentary television -

and, in particular, the history series Timewatch -

has played a key role, exploring the truths,

the myths and the changing faces of Elizabeth's legacy.

In this programme,

I'll strip away the mystique of our most famous queen

and, using the BBC archive, I'll uncover who she really was,

how she maintained her power

and why an entire era of history belongs to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth I led her nation through a monumental time in our history.

She inherited a country in religious and political turmoil,

plagued with uncertainty,

and yet her reign would foresee an age of exploration

and discovery, of burgeoning imperialism

and it would even help foster the rise of the English language.

From the earliest years of the BBC,

as Queen Elizabeth II began her own reign,

the shadow of Elizabeth I loomed large.

On this day not quite 400 years ago,

the first Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne of England.

In a week's time, our own Queen, Elizabeth II,

leaves for her visit as Queen to her dominions overseas.

To mark this double occasion at the end of Coronation year,

we would like to proffer an evening's diversion.

So, now, we ask you to imagine that, in 1596,

the Elizabethans had a television service of their own

and join us as we put back the clock.

I bid you welcome.

Now, we take you to the courtyard of the Cross Keys Inn

in the City of London.

# We be players three

# Pardonnez-moi Je vous compris... #

It's easy to romanticise Elizabeth

and the England she helped to create.

She's become part of our national narrative,

but it could have turned out very differently.

Elizabeth Tudor was an unlikely candidate for Queen.

Born of the union between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,

whose marriage was annulled shortly after,

many saw Elizabeth as illegitimate.

She was also only third in line to the crown,

but, when her half-brother Edward and her half-sister Mary died,

Elizabeth was thrust into power and history.

The new queen embraced her power and, as historian Simon Schama found,

basked in her new role, even if the odds were stacked against her.

A cherished tradition has it

that when Elizabeth heard the news that she was to become queen

on November 17th, 1558, she was seated beneath an ancient oak tree.

Her first words were from Psalm 118 -

"A Domino factum est mirabile in oculis nostris" -

"This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes."

She was right - it was marvellous.

In fact, it was little short of being a miracle

that she had made it to that day alive.

Tudor royal politics were a bloody affair, especially for Tudor women.

DOOR SLAMS

She'd been only two, after all,

when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had gone to the scaffold.

Her sin - in Henry's mind, at least -

being her failure to produce a son.

It must have been a body possessed by others, by the Devil,

an unclean piece of flesh.

It had to be cut away.

So Elizabeth would never be free from suspicion.

Out of her dark Boleyn eyes, she watched herself being watched.

When her Catholic half-sister Mary came to the throne,

Elizabeth found herself in even deeper trouble.

In fact, she found herself in the Tower

when a Protestant plot to get rid of Mary backfired.

Elizabeth managed to talk herself out of being charged with treason,

but she remained under close surveillance.

Danger only turned to deliverance five years later

when Queen Mary died childless.

So, here she was, Elizabeth, under the oak,

about to be the Protestant queen.

She had survived...just.

But she must have been full of dark knowledge

and experience about how difficult it was all going to be.

Her mother had been killed for producing just a daughter

and a stillborn and her sister Mary's womb had produced nothing

but the tumour that had killed her.

So, however dazzling Elizabeth looked,

however clever she was, she has got to have known

how rough the road was going to be for a ruler of the wrong sex.

Elizabeth would go on to prove

she could rule as a woman in a man's world.

Many historians have tended to regard Elizabeth

almost as an honorary man.

She was regarded as someone who was unusually,

perhaps even unnaturally, masculine in the way she operated,

she didn't allow herself to be swayed by emotions

or pity in the way that women were praised for doing.

In the past, she was seen as an exceptional woman -

a woman who had suppressed her natural feminine instincts

in order to be able to rule so, in a way, she was like a man in drag.

However, the way that gender historians

and mainstream historians now look at Elizabeth is to appreciate

that this is really a very sexist way of looking at the queen.

England, of course, at the time is a deeply patriarchal society.

Men are there to govern, to rule.

Women are believed to be led by their emotions, not by reason.

They are seen to be the weaker sex.

They're also seen to be sexually voracious, in fact,

and the sense that women need to marry

because otherwise they would just be promiscuous.

Chastity is everything.

Women need to be married and they need a male partner

so that's the sort of broader expectation.

Of course, Elizabeth would never marry,

giving rise to her legend as the Virgin Queen.

In recent times, this defining trait has helped to build her modern image.

Elizabeth is part of the fabric of our nation,

her personality integral to British history.

But what is it about this queen that makes her so relevant

in the 21st century? Why does she still resonate today?

These questions were examined by Michael Portillo,

when he championed Elizabeth for the series Great Britons.

To understand Elizabeth, forget for a moment those very dated,

formal portraits and think instead of a woman far ahead of her time,

possessing qualities that we might think of as very modern.

These modern traits are seen through her work in Parliament

and, for Portillo, her political prowess

still has relevance for women today.

Maybe Parliament believed that Elizabeth,

a mere woman in a man's world, could be bullied.

They were so wrong. She used every tactic.

She flattered, she agreed, she changed her mind,

she lost her temper. She was a nightmare, but she was brilliant.

She stubbornly refused to bow to the establishment

or accept its conventional wisdom.

It was a formidable display of iron will by a leader

bent on getting her own way and on doing what she got was right.

For 45 years, she held out against them.

She went to her grave having never surrendered.

I think many women today can see Elizabeth as a role model.

Of course, she acquired the throne by an accident of birth,

but she held on to it because of her skills.

She had enough of the vigorous virtues of a man

to gain the respect of men, but the reason they adored her

was that she knew how to exercise power

without compromising her femininity.

It's complicated, I think.

I think it's very easy just to sort of see Elizabeth

as a stereotypical feminist pin-up,

but I think there's a more kind of complicated picture than that.

I mean, the caricature is she didn't need a man,

she didn't marry and she just proved that women could have it all,

but, actually, I'm not sure that that's totally the case.

I think Elizabeth can be considered a role model for leaders

because she displayed some essential qualities for leadership.

She had charisma, she took advice,

she made decisions after learning the facts and listening to advice.

She had a wonderful oratorical skill.

There are many ways in which she was a very fine leader.

I don't think she's a role model for women

and the reason she's not is because she accepted

the patriarchal assumptions of her own day.

Elizabeth succeeds in life as a woman in a period

in which that is particularly difficult to do.

She is very strong, she is very capable and she is a success

and, if women want to take that as a role model,

then I think they should be free to do so.

However we view her relevance today, there is no question

that modern Britain is still captivated by her life and times -

from grand Tudor architecture

to the glamour and glitz of the Royal Court.

We go to great lengths to understand

and even recreate what we believe it was like to be an Elizabethan.

It's Tuesday in Totnes and the Rev Kenneth Dafforn is doing it.

It's Tuesday in Totnes and Mrs Vicky Foster is doing it.

It's Tuesday in Totnes and just about everybody is doing it -

the housewife, the vicar and even the Post Office clerks.

Once a week, Totnes lives in the past.

There are about 400 people who call themselves the Totnes Elizabethans

and they have a way of giving the town a remarkable distinction.

Every Tuesday, they go about their normal business,

but in an engagingly barmy way.

Well, I've always enjoyed history

and this is a chance to go back into history

and live in the past for a whole day.

Do you find it easy to persuade lots of other people in the town

to dress up like this?

Well, at first, they're very hesitant,

but, once in costume, it's very difficult to get them out of it.

We love it, everybody loves dressing up, obviously.

We are all kiddies at heart.

Are the other people prepared to be commoners

or do they all want to be Anne Boleyn,

Anna, Queen of Spain, celebrities?

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is,

everybody sees themselves, obviously,

as Queen Elizabeth and royalty,

so we have an awfully difficult time, but I would love to see it -

the whole town as it would have been in Elizabethan times.

Tuesday stays Elizabethan right through to the dance in the evening.

There can be no doubt that it's a shot in the arm for the town

and it's getting through to the most unexpected people.

It's easy to look back with nostalgia,

but the reality is life in 16th-century England

was nothing like contemporary Britain.

Well, there you are - if you can't beat them, join them.

It was often dangerous and deeply divided.

Queen Elizabeth ruled during a tempestuous time

of religious conflict.

The Protestant Reformation had taken root just decades before her reign

and still Catholic Spain dominated Europe.

Elizabeth would hold on

to her childhood convictions as a Protestant.

Having inherited the throne from the Catholic Queen Mary,

Elizabeth faced a dilemma -

should she continue a relationship with Rome or return England

to the Protestantism of her father Henry VIII?

She appeared to do both,

re-establishing the Church of England,

yet not outlawing the Catholic faith.

For this balancing act, she would be revered as a tolerant queen.

However, as Timewatch found in 1984, despite her outward tolerance,

Catholicism was treated with suspicion.

In Elizabethan England, outlawed Roman Catholic priests

were constantly on the run from government intelligence agents.

Catholic priests were forced to travel secretly around England,

chased by government mercenaries known as pursuivants.

Families like the Huddlestons at Sawston Hall,

which built priest holes in which to hide them,

were subject to constant raids.

It looks very small.

There were usually three priests in hiding in this hole

and they may have to be there for quite a long time

because the pursuivants kept returning over and over again.

-So, how long might they have to stay there?

-Oh, weeks.

-Weeks?

Sometimes, they were really practically starving.

In the past, individuals, particularly in the United States,

have thought of reds under the bed

and I think in the late Elizabethan period,

there really is that kind of fear of a Jesuit under every bed,

a pair of Catholic plotters in every closet

and a Spanish Armada round every headland

so the kind of obsessive fear of international conspiracy is there.

There's the whole world of Smiley's People and espionage

and high politics and double agents and double-crossing

and a desperate sense of insecurity.

This insecurity would eventually lead to an unprecedented definition

of treason by which not just doing something,

but merely being something constituted treachery.

Nowadays, we tend to think of traitor simply as those

who sell secrets or give secrets to a foreign power,

but here we have a situation in which simply

to fall into the category, to be a priest or to have a priest,

to know a priest, to be involved with a priest,

is treated as treason.

It's a very, very different situation.

So sceptical was the government even now about Catholic loyalty

that it invented "the bloody questions",

put to Catholics under torture.

The most important was, "If the Pope invaded England,

"who would you support - the Pope or the Queen?"

Many Catholics, loyal to both and so unable to answer

the impossible question, went to their death.

So, do you think, looking back,

that those who were killed as Catholics

were martyrs or were some of them traitors?

I think they were martyrs

insofar as they died for a cause which they could have repudiated.

They could have apostatised.

They were given the choice and they chose death for their principles.

From the government's point of view, of course, they were traitors,

but the government has invented a new treason.

It's changed the rules.

When she first came to the throne, Queen Elizabeth had hoped

that Catholicism would die of spiritual malnutrition.

By the end of her reign,

every Catholic had become an enemy of the state.

Two years before her death,

approached with a final plea for toleration, she replied,

"if I grant this liberty to Catholics, I lay at their feet

"my honour, my crown and my life."

Treason was forced upon 16th-century Catholics.

Today, treason is a matter of choice.

Elizabeth's reputation for tolerance appears to have been overstated.

So there was a sense of Elizabeth as moderate, peace-loving,

very much against religious extremism

and a lot of this was seen in very much direct contrast

to, of course, her sister Mary, Bloody Mary,

who, of course, oversaw the execution,

the burning of almost 300 Protestants.

However, what historians are increasingly acknowledging

is of course that Elizabeth herself oversaw the execution

of hundreds of Catholics, not by burning,

but they were hung, drawn and quartered.

This is a period, let's not forget, where, all around Europe,

there are religious wars.

France, for most of Elizabeth's reign,

is plunged into 30-year-long civil religious war.

The same can be said of the Netherlands.

There are moments in Scotland and Ireland where the same is true,

but it doesn't happen in England so I think, in general,

Elizabeth has been seen as the woman

who didn't want to make windows into men's souls,

who wanted outward conformity, but was prepared to let people believe,

within reason, what they wanted.

What she really wanted was that everybody in her land

would worship in the same way.

This she wanted for political reasons -

that she was the monarch over Protestants

who were pursuing the same kinds of policies

and accepting what she said as Supreme Governor of the Church

was the way that they should worship.

Religious discord would last throughout Elizabeth's reign.

It would also underpin her most famous power struggle.

Few names conjure up as many connotations as Mary, Queen of Scots.

A disappointed heir to the English throne, a French queen,

a Scottish hero, a Catholic martyr.

For 30 years, she would be Elizabeth's greatest rival

and most acute threat to power.

Elizabeth would eventually sign Mary's execution order.

Ever since, the facts of the story have become tangled in myth

and legend with some stories constructed just hours

before the beheading by Mary herself.

"Carry this message for me

"and tell my friends that I died a true woman to my religion

"and like a true Scottish woman and a true Frenchwoman."

Mary would go down in history as a Scottish hero.

But, as Timewatch discovered on the anniversary of her death,

this portrayal does not necessarily match up with reality.

On the 8th of February 1587,

Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded on this site.

The crime for which she was executed

was her involvement in plots

against Queen Elizabeth I of England.

As the executioner raised her severed head aloft,

the Dean of Peterborough Cathedral shouted to the crowd of onlookers,

"So perish all the Queen's enemies!"

400 years later to the day, Fotheringhay Paris Church

witnessed an event not seen here since the days

of Tudor England - the celebration of a Roman Catholic Mass.

# Take every care to preserve the unity of the spirit

# By the peace that binds you together... #

Peace be with you.

-CONGREGATION:

-And also with you.

It is the death of a queen by execution 400 years ago

which brings us together this afternoon.

The extraordinary thing is that the junketing

in both England and Scotland

400 years after the execution has been massive.

When the news of her execution

actually reached Scotland in March 1587,

when it had just happened, there were quiet,

but audible sighs of relief

and the one person who was around shouting revenge

was told, very hastily, to shut up.

The story that has emerged over the centuries

is of a bitter rivalry between Elizabeth and Mary,

but even this portrayal is contested history.

I think the two of them

fit into the characters that have been assigned to them very neatly.

Elizabeth is portrayed as the strong, shrewd, confident,

rather ruthless, rather emotionless, rather masculine figure,

whereas Mary is the romantic, beautiful, charming, hapless,

doomed, martyr-to-be and they both fit very well

into those categories,

but neither of them is really completely accurate.

They are polar opposites -

that Elizabeth, on the one hand, is masculine

and Mary, Queen of Scots is feminine,

that Elizabeth was someone who was sophisticated and cultured

and Mary, Queen of Scots was a bit dim,

certainly made not very good political decisions

and, at the same time, Mary, Queen of Scots somehow,

over the centuries, has secured more and more sympathy.

She's become a romantic heroine.

Yes, she may have murdered her husband,

she may have been an adulteress, but she paid for it.

From the time of, well, Mary's life and, of course, her execution,

there were sort of two main ways in which Mary was represented -

either traitor, cruel traitor, or tragic heroine figure

and obviously that was dictated

by what side of the religious divide you were.

Today, Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth

lie under the same roof in Westminster Abbey.

Although they never actually met, the two women are indelibly linked.

History has its heroes and its villains.

The struggle between Mary, Queen of Scots

and Elizabeth would become iconic.

But, as so often happens, their clash reflected a much broader story.

England was a country deeply divided by religion.

So the Protestant Queen Elizabeth was not just fending off

a rival to the throne, she was the target for a Catholic uprising.

Up here in the north, Catholicism had not only not been rooted out,

it actually fed on the burning resentment and fierce independence

of the great aristocratic families who ran things around here.

They'd been here for centuries and they were not about

to be pushed around by a bunch of Tudor bureaucrats.

They were not going to be told what was what in their government

and their religion.

So, for them, Mary Stuart was not just a successor.

She was a replacement, as in IMMEDIATE replacement.

So the Catholic north fought the Protestant south.

For a while, it even looked as though the north might win.

As the rebels swept through Lancashire, Yorkshire

and Northumberland, it must have seemed

that Catholic Britain had been reborn.

Now, Elizabeth's government really knew what it was up against -

the latest act in the endlessly drawn-out religious war

that had begun when Henry VIII

had made himself Supreme Head of the Church.

12,000 troops were eventually mustered

and a rebellion brutally crushed.

DOOR SLAMS

For Elizabeth, crushing the northern rebellion would signal

a new era in her reign, one that would create

the most lasting image of her legacy - the image of herself.

Elizabeth was 20 years into her reign and suitors had come and gone,

but there was always something the matter with them -

too lowly, too Catholic, too stupid.

And, besides, now her suitors had rivals -

millions of Elizabeth's subjects, who had become jealously possessive

and thought that the Queen was theirs alone.

In the 1570s, they got her.

The cult, the religion of Elizabeth was spectacularly created.

# For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? #

Her accession day became the greatest of national holidays -

more sacred than all the heathen events on the papist calendar.

# The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting

# And so my patent back... #

Her image began to appear everywhere in allegorical pictures.

Elizabeth as the sun who gave the rainbow its radiant hues.

And even those on the inside that could plainly see

the elaborate scaffolding from which this image was projected,

who knew that the pale moonglow of the Queen's face

was just pulverised egg shell, borax, alum and mill water,

even these knowing types were still total captives to the cult.

We see her in our mind's eye as this sort of terrifying figure

with the white face and the red hair and all the rest of it.

I think historians now are much more keen

to look a bit more closely and see the wrinkles underneath the white

and the rotting teeth and the ageing skin and all the rest of it

and there's kind of a sort of grotesque, grisly fun to be had

with seeing her as she really was, as it were.

There is always this veneer of image around what Elizabeth says

and what Elizabeth does.

She is a great performer

and, whether she is actually the performance

or whether the performance is denying what she really is,

historians can disagree about, I think, forever.

We may never get to the bottom of the enigma

that is the true character of Elizabeth.

A more tangible legacy is her transformation of the British navy.

Britain's reputation has been built on it being a naval powerhouse.

As the saying goes, Britannia rules the waves.

But, at the start of Elizabeth's reign,

it was not yet an imposing maritime nation.

The new queen was determined to change this.

Her vision was of a navy that would compete around the globe

as master of the seas.

The British Navy would gain fame and glory under Elizabeth

and yet few physical legacies of it would survive.

A discovery off the coast of Alderney would help to change this.

It's a window in time

and it's exactly the same as it was on the day that it went down.

Nobody has seen it above water for the last 400 and whatever years.

Are they all right? What's wrong?

It would prove to be the first Elizabethan warship ever found.

A wreck as important to Elizabethan maritime studies

as the Mary Rose is to the reign of Henry VIII.

The BBC was there to chronicle every moment of the discovery -

from the process of raising the massive wooden rudder

to the final dating of the mystery ship.

By November, the rudder had arrived

at the York Archaeological Trust for conservation.

It had been cleaned up, revealing the pintles

which attached it to the hull and a slot for the tiller arm.

This is not desecration.

Conservator Ian Panter had to halve the five metre long rudder

so it could fit into the conservation tank.

After a year of treatment, the wood will be stuck together again,

leaving an imperceptible seam.

At the same time, the wood was analysed by Cathy Groves.

The wood that came last week...

Cathy and her colleague Jennifer Hillam

are dendrochronologists.

They are sent samples of wood from all over Britain

to determine their age and origin.

Are they all meant to be the same phase, or...?

Yes, it's the same structure.

Most people know that when you actually look at a tree

by counting its rings, you can actually tell

how long that tree lived for.

But what we are interested in

is actually not how long it lived for,

but when it was living.

-That's it!

-Wahey!

Now, whereas normally we would compare it

against the British Isles database,

we're actually going to have to compare it

with a European-wide database

and the reason we have to do that is because it's a boat.

It doesn't necessarily come from Alderney where it was found.

It may have come from anywhere within Europe,

possibly even further afield.

Let's hope this has got more rings than the rudder.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Among the artefacts from the wreck, a gun port cover was found.

It was sent to Cathy and Jenny.

Let's see what we've actually got.

That looks a bit more promising.

It appears to have over 100 rings

so the origins and a date for the wreck may finally be revealed.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

We have a date for the dendrochronology,

which puts the date that the timber was cut at 1575.

This timber has also been identified as being English,

grown in the south-east of England,

which means we have an English ship

and a ship from the reign of Elizabeth I.

Cheers!

The Alderney wreck would reveal unique artefacts

from one of Elizabeth's greatest accomplishments -

building a powerful British Navy.

And, in 16th-century Europe, a strong navy was essential

if you had ambitions to create an empire.

It's hard to imagine, but when Elizabeth took the throne,

barely half a century had passed

since Christopher Columbus had crossed the Atlantic.

In England, the push for new discoveries

would create legends of men like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh.

Their exploits would all be made in the name of their Queen,

putting Elizabeth at the heart of the enterprise.

America would become our most famous colony,

a conquest that would live large in the history of British imperialism.

On an April evening 400 years ago,

two small ships set sail from Plymouth for the Americas

and thus began, as the history books used to say, the British Empire.

In 1984, Timewatch visited the earliest American colony

in Virginia to examine the myths surrounding its origins

and how its history is told in the United States.

In the town of Manteo,

they've carved a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh

with chainsaws out of local timber.

It overlooks a civic developments being carried out

in his honour for here, 400 years ago, the English first settled.

The town commemorates the leading personalities

of the Elizabethan court.

Its citizens are even preparing a pageant

which re-enacts the occasion when Sir Walter Raleigh,

seeking royal patronage for his great enterprise,

approached the throne of England.

It is but a simple thing I request, Your Majesty -

-to save my colony of Virginia.

-Simple?

The people of Manteo,

in celebrating the foundation of their nation,

are perpetuating the myth that Raleigh brought English culture

to America and took away in exchange tobacco and potatoes.

It's Sir Walter Raleigh! Three cheers for Sir Walter!

Hip, hip, hooray!

But Raleigh never went to America

and the settlements that he organised there failed to take root.

Friends, pioneers of a nation soon to be!

So, what did colonisation mean to Raleigh and his contemporaries?

How close to reality

is the Elizabethan expansionism celebrated here today?

Certainly, in the Victorian era,

it was seen as one of the great features of the Elizabethan period.

Everybody had as their heroes Walter Raleigh or Francis Drake,

even Martin Frobisher, and these men were seen as gallant,

derring-do figures who had the support of the queen

and really laid down the foundations of the British Empire.

Now, we see things very differently indeed.

First of all, with post-colonial theory, we begin to look anew

at the way that these figures

approached foreign lands and foreign peoples.

Timewatch would continue the story,

examining documents from the Virginia colony,

records that laid bare the attitudes of the time.

In June, they approached the American coastline.

With smaller boats,

they found an island on which to establish themselves.

It was called Roanoke. At first, the settlers were enthusiastic.

"It is the goodliest and most pleasing territory of the world

"for the continent is of huge and unknown greatness

"and very well peopled and towned, though savagely,

"and the climate so wholesome."

For a while, the Indians were friendly,

but the settlers depended on them for food as their own seeds

had been lost or had rotted

and the Indians began to resent the persistent English demands.

This led to tension and, finally, to violence.

"The 15th, we came to Secotan

"and were well entertained there of the savages.

"The 16th, we returned thence to demand a silver cup,

"which one of the savages had stolen from us

"and, not receiving it according to his promise,

"we burnt and spoiled their corn and town.

"All the people being fled."

I think historians have increasingly focused

on what Elizabethan exploration meant,

and really perhaps focus much more

on Elizabethan exploitation and that profit meant plunder,

that meant pillaging,

that meant ill-treatment of native lands and the natives.

There's an effort to take the point of view of the oppressed,

if you like, and not simply the oppressors,

to take the point of view of not just the winners of history,

as it were, but the losers as well.

Elizabethan imperialism would transform

and often devastate the lives of indigenous people abroad.

But there are also changes at home.

Elizabeth presided over incredible changes in Britain.

Under her leadership, the country transformed itself

into an economic power, spurred on by international trade and commerce.

Along with wealth, the population grew and, with it,

the merchant class.

Suddenly, it was possible to move up in the world

and the Elizabethans grabbed the opportunity like never before.

Historian Ian Mortimer gave us a snapshot of this new world,

highlighting the urban changes wrought on Elizabethan England,

epitomised by an unexpected invention.

In towns like Stratford, a revolution is taking place.

It transforms the lives of ordinary people

and changes the face of every street in the land.

It's not a scientific discovery.

It's not a political development.

It is, in fact, the humble chimney.

The arrival of the chimney is just the beginning

of what becomes a wholesale change in living standards.

Driving this innovation is the availability of cheap bricks.

Mass manufacture means they are now affordable for the many,

not just the few.

Chimneys were previously found in castles and grand houses,

but never in the homes of ordinary people.

Thanks to the humble chimney,

you can now live in a state-of-the-art,

two-storey townhouse

and not an unfashionable single-storey medieval home.

Essential, if you want to show you're on the way up.

And, bear in mind,

that Elizabethan England is on average two degrees colder

than you're used to, with very cold snaps in the 1570s and the 1590s.

So a chimney means your stay will be a lot more comfortable,

especially if you want to have a bedchamber of your own,

rather than sleep in the hall with everyone else.

Across the land, medieval houses are being redeveloped,

not outwards but skywards.

So, you see,

adding value to your home isn't just a 21st-century obsession.

In 1558, a chimney is the way to keep up with the Joneses.

But, in 1598, it's glass that is the ultimate status symbol.

From now on, moderately wealthy gentleman can afford

to flood their houses with natural light. But it's still expensive.

You may have glass at the front of your house to show off

and still make do with shutters at the back.

In Stratford, old buildings are being converted

or demolished everywhere you look.

It seems as if almost everyone is moving into the town

and, in fact, many are.

Stratford's population grows from 1,500

to over 2,000 during Elizabeth's reign.

And, once you've outgrown a town like Stratford,

there's only one place to head for.

It's the epicentre of change in Elizabeth's England

and it's the next rung on your ladder to fame and glory...

..the city of London.

London's population would grow from 70,000

to over 200,000 during Elizabeth's reign.

It would become the third-largest city in Europe.

The momentum seemed to be unstoppable.

But trouble was brewing.

For over 30 years,

Queen Elizabeth had kept Britain out of war in Europe.

But, as the end of the 16th century approached,

a conflict was about to explode.

It would create one of her greatest legacies,

one that still inspires today.

In 1588, Spain was on the warpath.

It assembled an invasion fleet off the coast of Belgium,

intending to conquer London.

Elizabeth's England faced its biggest crisis.

As so often in our history since, England was ill-prepared.

A makeshift army was scratched together at Tilbury

on the Thames Estuary. On paper, there were no match for the Spanish.

Everything might hinge on morale.

Elizabeth would go amongst her soldiers

and use the full force of her charisma and majesty

to rouse the troops.

Often before, she'd used speeches to carry her through

the great moments of political crisis,

but addressing that ramshackle English army

required of her an eloquence never heard before

and the performance of a lifetime.

At England's darkest hour, as invasion loomed,

Elizabeth's brilliant oratory became her country's strongest weapon.

Here at Tilbury, she originated the rhetoric

of the plucky English underdog

and appealed to stoicism, self-sacrifice and glory.

She said, "I am come among you as you see at this time

"not for my recreation and disport,

"but being resolved in the midst

"and the heat of battle to live and die amongst you all.

"To lay down for my God and for my kingdom

"and for my people my honour and my blood, even in the dust."

She went on, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,

"but I have the heart and the stomach of a king

"and a king of England, too,

"and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any prince of Europe

"should dare to invade the borders of my realm,

"to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me,

"I myself will take up arms.

"I myself shall be your general, your judge

"and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."

Against the odds, Britain would defeat the Spanish,

inspired by their Queen.

The Armada speech is so powerful

because Elizabeth is represented as a vulnerable woman

who is in danger, but who is going to show great bravery

because of her position as queen.

Most of the monarchs who we remember as being truly great

were warriors and were victorious in war.

That's one of the few things that Elizabeth,

as a female monarch, simply can't do.

She can't go to the battlefield and command troops,

but the Tilbury speech enables her to take on that persona

and fit into her reputation

that role as being a successful military leader.

I think that's tremendously important for her reputation.

Elizabeth's speech at Tilbury will be forever linked

with her military success.

Defeating the Spanish Armada is, without doubt,

one of Britain's greatest victories.

An invasion had been crushed, the Armada scattered,

and all under the inspiration of Elizabeth herself.

This has become part of our national story,

one that would still capture the imagination four centuries later.

As for the Spanish Armada, things were about to get even worse.

As it fled, storms wrecked many of the ships.

In 1968, the BBC captured the extraordinary discovery

of one of these ships off the Northern Irish coast.

Cannonballs were everywhere.

We found most of the sizes corresponding to the 50 guns

we know were under Girona.

One must understand that the site has been subjected

to tremendous gales for nearly four centuries

and all parts of the ship and its cargo

have been scattered from the main site of the wreck in all directions

with the result that now the gold and the silver,

as most metal objects,

have finally found their way to the deepest crevices.

We must dig under the boulders and see what's underneath.

We found over 400 gold coins over two seasons

and we are very pleased that most of them were of different types.

We have gold coins from all the kings of Spain.

Many coins from Naples, for the galleass Girona

was from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Some coins from Portugal.

But, of course, more than finding coins,

what makes us very happy was to find some personal objects.

Objects that we could link to somebody who actually died there.

Suddenly, someone came and touched me on the shoulder

and I turned back and there was Louis looking at me

with a large smile with three rows of gold chain

round his black beard and we played with the chain,

there were about three yards of chain

and we could really imagine the poor rich man

having the chain around his neck and going headfirst to the bottom.

It was in excellent condition, completely unscratched,

just like the ones which you see in the paintings of the time.

You've had two spectacularly successful seasons here,

the sort of haul that most divers

dream about all their lives and never achieve.

But who actually owns all this stuff that you've brought out of the sea?

Nobody, presently.

And nobody will until a court makes a decision

or until I can reach an agreement with the Board of Trade officials.

-How long will that take?

-Years, probably.

Today, these treasures are hosted in the Ulster Museum in Belfast,

a testament to one of Britain's greatest victories

and one of Elizabeth's finest moments.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Elizabeth I

is something so mundane that most of us take it for granted -

our language.

During her reign,

English would begin its ascent to becoming a global language

and it was also under Elizabeth

that our most famous writer picks up his pen - William Shakespeare.

Queen Elizabeth I and her successor, James,

reigned for about 70 years.

During that time, the English language reached heights

that have inspired us ever since and even contemporaries marvelled at.

For the English, that was a time of national triumph.

They were as proud of their words as they were of defying the Pope

or defeating the Spanish Armada.

The self-confident English vernacular

borrowed a staggering total of 12,000 new words

and there was one writer whose work

lies at the heart of the Elizabethan miracle,

whom Johnson singled out

for what he called his mastery of the diction of common life

or, as we'd put it, everyday speech.

Of course, that was William Shakespeare.

The closest we can come to the sound of Shakespeare's own speech

is in the little villages around Stratford itself.

The cider drinkers of Elmley Castle in neighbouring Worcestershire

still speak English in a way that Shakespeare himself would recognise.

Two, Tom.

-WEST COUNTRY ACCENT:

-I used to take cider

or home-made wine to school

when I was five years of age, so that's 54 years ago, that is.

-WEST COUNTRY ACCENT:

-I shall have five this morning, I hope,

and three pints of beer tonight

and a pint of cider with my supper and then to bed.

And I don't catch a cold.

Bear in mind that cider drinking will kill you. It definitely will.

It killed my father, cider drinking did.

It took 84 years to do it, though.

-What's it like?

-Very good.

As we'll see, it was the speech of people like these

that went with the Elizabethan seafarers to America.

The strong voices of these fishermen

sound like the English of the West Country - Dorset, Devon or Cornwall.

-ACCENT WITH WEST COUNTRY INFLUENCE:

-It's four o'clock in the morning

to eight o'clock at night, six days a week.

Rain, snow, ice, wind - it doesn't make any difference, we have to go.

We're like the mailman, I guess.

In fact, this is America's Chesapeake Bay

and these are the descendants of some of the first settlers

to venture across the Atlantic.

They all say I talk slow so I'm aware of that

and that's the way I am, I can't help it.

In the coming centuries,

the English language would be carried around the globe.

Over 450 years ago, Elizabeth Tudor took to the throne.

In the 45 years that followed,

she would create a legacy that even today we're obsessed with.

I don't think Elizabeth ever has fallen out of fashion.

There has been a continual fascination with her

and, in some ways, it is a little hard to pin down

why that should be so,

why the Tudors have so possessed our imagination.

Her legacy is her image.

Historians now are much more interested in her image

than in the realities of the reign.

Not only her image at the time,

but the way in which her image has been interpreted in later periods.

She is an iconic figure and that's something that had a great legacy.

Elizabeth continues to fascinate. She's this kind of enigma.

So much is known about Elizabeth, but also

so much is not known about Elizabeth and that will remain the case.

21st-century Britain is still captivated by Elizabeth -

her image, her struggle for power, the drama of her reign.

Historians have debated her influence, exposed her flaws

and revealed the myths of her era.

But what can never be disputed is her staying power

and her impact on our country.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of all

is the part she played in creating Britain as we know it today -

helping to forge our identity as a nation.