Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (19 page)

CHAPTER 6

ELIZABETH I: AN OLD TESTAMENT KING

Susan Doran

I

Representations of Elizabeth as the Old Testament heroines, Deborah, Esther, Jael, and Judith, have been widely explored, thanks to the pioneering work of Professor John King.
¹
It is now well understood how these biblical figures were used both to counter attacks on the legitimacy of female rule and to provide exemplars of godly conduct to a Protestant queen. Much less fully appreciated, I think, is the extent and variety of associations made between Elizabeth and a long line of 
male
 prophets, judges, and kings in the Hebrew Bible: David, Gideon, Elias, Hezekiah, Joseph, Joshua, Josiah, Moses, Saul, Solomon, and more besides.
²
Scholars, moreover, seem not to have noticed that while biblical women tended to drop out of the contemporary literature after Thomas Bentley’s 
Monument of
Matrones
 in 1582, Protestant writers, preachers, and politicians continued to draw parallels between Elizabeth I and male biblical figures—especially David and Solomon—until the queen’s death.
³

Elizabeth was, of course, neither the first nor last early modern English monarch to be fashioned as David or Solomon. A 1486 pageant presented Henry VII as a David triumphing over Goliath (Richard III), while more than a century later John Davies called the first Tudor king “England’s Salomon
”
on the grounds that they both understood that “the safetie
,
 and weale 
”
 of their state “Rested in wealth and peace
,
 and quiet raigne / And not in forraine Conquests, and debate
.
 ”
⁴
Following his assertion of the royal supremacy, Henry VIII was regularly depicted as a theocratic king in the mold of David and Solomon; although after his death, Henry’s lust for Anne Boleyn was portrayed as analogous with David’s for Bathsheba. James I too was closely associated with both biblical kings. He came to be linked with David because of his sponsorship of a new English Bible and his own translation of the Psalms; comparisons with Solomon were made on the basis of their writings, their wisdom, their difficult minorities, their policies toward the church and state, and even their similar “white and ruddy” complexions.
⁵
Only Mary I was not connected to the Old Testament kings, no doubt because by 1553 they were primarily associated with the royal supremacy and theocratic kingship.

It is only because scholars have been so mesmerized by Elizabeth’s image as Deborah and the Virgin Queen that they have not emphasized this continuing tradition of royal representation. They have also not examined the various political messages and meanings in the queen’s image as David and Solomon. In this essay I aim to show how the identification of Elizabeth with these two biblical kings was used to offer a critique of the queen’s religious policies, to combat the Catholic challenge to the legitimacy of Protestant rule, to defend the royal supremacy, and to find a new rhetoric to discuss the succession.

II

Of course, some difficulties existed in drawing parallels between Elizabeth and the Old Testament kings. Given that Elizabeth had been dogged by sexual slanders as the bad seed of Anne Boleyn, the possible paramour of Thomas Seymour, and the putative lover of Robert Dudley, associating her too closely with figures well known for “their horrible luste” might give rise to some unwelcome comparisons.
⁶
Because of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and general polygamy, he was generally connected with the sin of lechery, while Solomon was said to have “lusted so muche that he did forget his God.”
⁷
Yet Elizabethans brushed this difficulty aside and from the very outset of the reign confidently drew analogies between Elizabeth and the two kings.

From the start, parallels with David were made in order to assert the queen’s providential status, exhort her to destroy their own “Goliath” (Roman Catholicism), and encourage her to set up God’s Ark of the Covenant (a typology for the true Church).
⁸
To take just one example, in a book of Psalms, printed in Geneva in 1559 and dedicated to Elizabeth, the anonymous translator and editor pointed out that the new queen had been miraculously saved during Mary’s reign “from the furie of suche as soght your blood” just as David had endured “perils and persecutions” before “he came to the royal dignitie.” So now, went on the dedication, Elizabeth had to follow the model of David and carry out God’s purpose. Like David of the Psalms, Elizabeth must put her faith in God “so to be zealous of his glorie, obedient to his wil, careful and diligent to suppress all papistrie, vice & heresie, and to cause the light of God’s holy worde spedely to shine throughout all your dominions.” If she did this, God “will honour you and make your kingdome stable, he wil blesse you with a godlie prosperitie and mainteine you in perfect peace and quietnes” just as He had preserved David from his enemies, once king, and enlarged his dominions.
⁹

Similarly, during the early years of the reign, Elizabeth was promised God’s favor if she behaved like Solomon. As part of his oration to the queen on her accession, John Hales urged Elizabeth to follow the example of this king and “build and set up the lively house of God.” If she did so, he declared, she would win earthly blessings and earn everlasting fame: “And as the queene of Sabe came from farr of to see the glorie of Kyng Salomon, a woman to a man: even so shell the princes of our tyme come men to a woman and Kinges marvell at the virtue of queene Elizabeth.”
¹⁰
A little later on, a production of 
Sapienta Salomonis
 also used Solomon as a model of kingship for Elizabeth. The original play, written by Sixt Birck, was adapted for a performance by the boys of Westminster School before Elizabeth and courtiers on January 17, 1566, and the speeches of the new prologue and epilogue rammed home the parallel between the two rulers. According to a modern English translation, the prologue announced that “blessed Solomon will see presently another ruler blessed by the same tokens and the same good omens and likewise administering justice and the law to the people whom God gave her to reign over.” The epilogue stated the significance of the parallel: “The model of a wise king, both just and righteous, is placed before our eyes in this play. The cause of his wisdom we have observed: he was pious and wholly dedicated to God...A Queen is given to us who is a rival of illustrious King Solomon.” Both were just and merciful. As for their godliness, “Solomon built a holy temple to God; our Queen held nothing more important than to renew quickly the ritual of holy worship which had been overthrown.”
¹¹
The tone throughout was laudatory, but the implication was that Elizabeth should keep up the good work, and then like Solomon she would receive her wish from heaven.

By the late 1560s, however, Elizabeth was rapidly losing her credentials as a godly ruler. Not only had she rebuffed attempts to introduce a program of religious reform, she was also forcing her clergy to wear surplices and perform ceremonies that they considered superstitious and unscriptural. To make matters worse, in 1576 she ordered the suppression of prophesyings; in 1577 she suspended the godly Archbishop Grindal; and in 1578 she began negotiations for a Catholic marriage to a member of the persecuting royal family of France. Her godly reputation plummeted still further after 1583 when Archbishop Whitgift started his drive to impose subscription to the 1559 prayer book and the Thirty-nine Articles. From the early 1570s until the mid-1580s, moreover, she was strongly criticized for giving succor to the enemies of the Protestant Church, because she rejected calls for the execution of the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots.

Critics of these policies dealt with this situation in several different ways. Some continued to use the histories of David and/or Solomon as a “mirror for magistrates” to hold up and show the queen examples of godly behavior to be followed and errors to be shunned. This was most easily done when it came to censuring Elizabeth’s clemency toward Mary Stuart. Here, Solomon offered a commendable model. As MPs pointed out in the November 1586 Parliament, the king had wisely put to death his brother Adonijah merely on suspicion of treason, just because Adonijah had earlier challenged his right to the throne.
¹²
However, David’s conduct in relation to his sons was an example to be avoided. Calling for Mary’s death in May 1572, the English bishops reminded Elizabeth “how greevously” God had punished David for showing leniency and sentimentality toward his “licentious sonnes” who had committed the same sins as the deposed Scottish Queen: “adulterye, murdere, conspiracye, treasones, and blasphemyes against God.” Absalom, one of those sons “towardes whome he used that excessive tenderness and pittye,” eventually raised a rebellion against him. Elizabeth too, they urged, should note the words of his counselor, Joab, who had rebuked David for weeping on hearing news of Absalom’s death: “yf Absolon [
sic
] had lived and all we had ben slayne, it would have pleased thee well?” If Elizabeth did not heed this biblical lesson, the bishops concluded, “God will reserve her [Mary] as an instrumente to put her [Elizabeth] from the royall seat of this kingdome and to plague the unthankefull and noughty subiectes.”
¹³

It was probably just before this Parliament that the archbishop of York, Edwin Sandys, delivered his sermon on Psalm 4 in which he too fashioned the story of David and Absalom to make its contemporary relevance immediately recognizable without referring to Mary by name.
¹⁴
Absalom, pointed out Sandys, had shown his true colors long before his rebellion, for he “had imbrued his handes in bloud, after he had cowardly slaine his brother.” As the Scottish queen was held responsible for the murder of her husband, she likewise could be said to have a history of blood on her hands. Also in Sandys’ telling, the character of Absalom resembled that of Mary. The prince, he said, pretended to be 
“
gentle & humble to everyone” and additionally was a “holie hypocrite [who] would hide his treason under the cloake of religion.” And, of course, the political troubles that followed under David were applicable to those under Elizabeth. “Manie of the nobles suspecting no treason liked well of him [Absalom], [and] honoured him as chiefe next to kinge David,” preached Sandys, alluding to the conduct of the duke of Norfolk and earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. Then, in preparation for his rebellion, Absalom had “sent closely abroade his secret messengers” as had Mary in plotting with the king of Spain. David, meanwhile, had acted like Elizabeth in showing “wonderfull patience,” winking at Absalom’s “former faultes” and pardoning them “sundrie times” in the hope that he would reform, but in the end “his lenitie was abused” for the son betrayed his father, as had Mary by her involvement in the Ridolfi Plot. The moral was clear: “Treason wil not be cured till traitors be extinguished: this hydra hath many heades; if you cut of one, mo[r]e will start up unlesse the neck be seared.” God required of the magistrate, concluded Sandys, that he offer justice as well as mercy.
¹⁵

When it came to Elizabeth’s unsatisfactory policy toward the English Church, some Protestant critics similarly chastised their queen by parading before her the relevant biblical examples, urging her to emulate David as well as Solomon. Famously, in his court sermon of February 1570, Edward Dering took as his text a verse in Psalm 78 and compared Elizabeth unfavorably with its author for neglecting to amend the abuses in her Church and make provision for its preachers. Citing the words and actions of David and Solomon on the duties of a prince, Dering ended his sermon with the prayer that “The Lord [would] encrease the giftes of his holy spirite in you, that from faith to faith you maye grow continually, till that you be zealous as good king David to woorke his will.”
¹⁶
With the same intent, though with considerably more subtlety and circumspection, John Foxe likewise tried to highlight Elizabeth’s failure to reform the Church by printing in the third edition of the 
Acts and Monumentes
 Hales’ accession oration voicing the hope that Elizabeth would rule as a new Solomon. Hales’ words re-expressed in 1576—a time when Elizabeth was facing a storm of criticism from Protestant laity and clergy alike—took on a new significance by exposing to readers the gap between the expectation and the reality. Similarly, Hales’ warning to Elizabeth of the dangers that would surely follow if she failed to remember what had happened to ungodly kings in Samuel II took on a more sinister note of urgency in the context of 1576 when many believed she had indeed fallen off the path of godly rule:

If ye feare him and seeke to do his will, then will he favour you, and preserve you to the end from all enemyes, as he did kyng David. If ye now fall from him, or juggle with him, looke for no more favour, then Saule had shewed to him.
¹⁷

A number of other Protestant critics, however, preferred to express their frustration and annoyance with Elizabeth’s religious policies by exercising the right of silence. They simply omitted all comparisons between their queen and the Old Testament kings in the very circumstances where they might be expected to make one. Edmund Bunny, in his 
Coronation of David,
a work written in response to England’s victory over the Spanish Armada, chose to identify David with the Gospel rather than with Elizabeth. By this device, he avoided presenting the queen as a monarch favored by God and praising her government as a model of godly rule, both of which would have been a natural course to follow given the triumphalist mood of 1588. Indeed, far from comparing Elizabeth with David, Bunny seemed to imply that she could be likened to Saul, for he noted that few princes of his day
(even those who had delivered their realms from Rome) were any better than Saul: “seldome is it seene,” he intoned, “that in all thinges they purpose, and fully determine, ever to await the direction of God, and then to frame their doings according.” The fate of Saul, he thought, should, therefore, be heeded by 
all
 princes, not just Catholic ones: