Queen Elizabeth I, who came to power at the impossibly young age of 25 in 1558, was of critical importance to the English project in North America, and therefore to the history of the Americans. She would prove to be an extraordinarily adept leader who would fend off enemies to English sovereignty and Protestantism, both at home and abroad, for the next 44 years. In this episode we talk about Elizabeth the person, and William Cecil, her most important advisor for most of her long reign. The two of them, along with John Dee, other intellectuals and courtiers, English merchant adventurers, and the more successful pirates and privateers, invented imperial England, and defended her against enormous geopolitical and religious threats from Europe, particularly Philip II's Spanish empire. Eventually, they underwrote the first English settlements in the lands now making up the United States.

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Reference for this episode

Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I