Discuss the achievements and legacy of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Her achievements, for instance, included English national unity, sovereign independence, settled Protestantism, and domestic peace. For the future, her legacy included sea power, emerging Atlantic trade; little used Parliament, scattered Puritans, monopolies and social neglect at the root of the coming English revolution. Use, in a comparative approach, books and films sources for her age, for example the films, Elizabeth or

Mary Queen of Scots is a fine material as well.
Pay particular attention to the way different sources treat her policy of delay, ensuring “little England’s” survival in the face of threats from Catholic France and Spain. Is there evidence that she had a vision of where she was taking the country, unlike her father, who unleashed forces (like the Protestant Reformation) that he could not restrain? Various English history books on Google books deals with all issues in detail — youth, reigning queen, Robert Dudley , avoidance of marriage, the challenge of Mary Queen of Scots, Catholic plots, the Spanish Armada, Essex’s betrayal, old age, death. The film Elizabeth compresses the first twenty years of her

reign into what seems like a year and stops short before the Spanish Armada, though it gives credible portrayals of Queen Mary, Elizabeth, William Cecil (Lord Burghley), Sir Francis Walsingham, Marie de Guise, the Duke of Norfolk, the love of her life Sir Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester), the French suitor Alencon, the

Jesuit Robert Parsons, and even Pope Paul V who excommunicated her.
Do devote a few remarks to the feminist (or simply complete) point of view of Elizabeth and the other historic women of her time, but try to write an account of her achievements from the most universal or lasting point of view. Was Elizabeth just a queen the like of whom will never again appear, or does she exhibit a capacity for

statecraft that, allowing for the varying circumstances of time, will come back again and again?