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Profiles in Power
Elizabeth I
This celebrated and influential study of Elizabeth I is now revised and updated in an important new edition. Christopher Haigh reappraises her role in government and explores the ways in which she exercised her power.
209 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Christopher Haigh
14 books4 followersChristopher Haigh is a British historian specialising in religion and politics around the English Reformation. Until his retirement in 2009, he was Student and Tutor in Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford and University Lecturer at Oxford University. He was educated at Churchill College, Cambridge and the University of Manchester.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 19, 2011
This is one of the shortest of the various books I have read about Elizabeth I, and also one of the best. Haigh eschews the usual chronology of her life and reign and instead concentrates on her relations with the various centres of power: the church, the nobility, the Council, her own court, parliament, the military, and the people, dealing with each separately over the 44 years from late 1558 to early 1603.
I learned a lot from this revisionist account. The standard picture of Elizabeth as heroine of Protestantism doesn't sit well with her recorded restraint of the puritans, her refusal to persecute the Catholics to the extent that her Protestant advisers wanted, and indeed her flirtations with potential Catholic husbands. Indeed, Haigh points out convincingly that the Council was much more Protestant than the Queen, to the point of orchestrating demonstrations of popular and political enthusiasm for Protestantism to try and keep her in line; Elizabeth found it very difficult to make a firm choice - witness her vacillation over execcuting Mary Queen of Scots, or intervening in the Netherlands.
I must say this explains a lot for me; if Elizabeth was perceived as being soft on religious issues, her advisers who were more hardline must have always been desperate to ensure she stayed on the straight and narrow, particularly since they held office only on her whim. Though in fact she rarely changed the guard - of her eleven councillors in 1597, six were sons or stepsons of the councillors at the start of her reign (the Cecils being only the most visible example). In other ways, too, she did not change the set-up much; the only man elevated to the House of Lords in her entire reign who did not come from a noble family was William Cecil.
I still wish I understood a bit more about the workings of the court. On Haigh's account, it was a question of physical presence and ability to attract the right patrons, with devious machinations sometimes having dramatic results: for instance, both Sir John Perrot and the Earl of Essex were manipulated by their enemies into accepting the job of ruling Ireland in order to get them away from the royal presence, with ultimately fatal results for both. What I missed, from my selfish perspective, was any account of the opposite dynamic, the Irish presence at court. Haigh notes that Elizabeth packed her household and the court with her Boleyn relatives: well, the mother of her grandfather Sir Thomas Boleyn was an Irish noblewoman, and I know from other sources that her Butler cousins were able to short-circuit the Irish administration by going directly to her, but I found nothing more about that here.
A particularly interesting chapter concerns the queen's relationship with the military, both army and navy. Basically, in every single campaign, no matter how specific and direct the orders she gave her commanders, they simply ignored her and followed their own plans instead. Haigh chronicles instance after instance of this, very helpful for me because it makes Essex's disastrous Irish expedition not a baffling anomaly but simply another, if rather massive, instance in a fatally inevitable pattern of behaviour from leading noblemen given military command. After the first two, or three, or five, or ten commanders escape with impunity from disobeying the sovereign's orders, obviously there is no point in following them yourself. Haigh argues fairly convincingly that the military simply would not take instruction from a woman. It would be interesting to speculate a bit more on why Elizabeth took no action against her disobedient commanders; did she, perhaps, at some level, also feel that this was men's work? (It has to be said that the aristocratic commanders were almost all pretty rotten at the job, and would probably have done at least as well if they had followed her orders ratehr than making up their own.)
There were a bunch of details here that I had not previously seen in histories of the time. I had not heard of, or had forgotten about, the Newhaven (Le Havre) venture, when the English tried and failed to occupy a French port previously held by the Huguenots. I had forgotten, or not read about, the efforts of the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pickering, and King Eric XIV of Sweden to marry Elizabeth. And it hadn't really struck me before, though it seems obvious once it is pointed out, that after three decades of success culminating in the failure of the Spanish Armada, the last third of her reign was a comparative failure. Anyway, all very absorbing, and a useful corrective to the standard account of Elizabethan glory.
I learned a lot from this revisionist account. The standard picture of Elizabeth as heroine of Protestantism doesn't sit well with her recorded restraint of the puritans, her refusal to persecute the Catholics to the extent that her Protestant advisers wanted, and indeed her flirtations with potential Catholic husbands. Indeed, Haigh points out convincingly that the Council was much more Protestant than the Queen, to the point of orchestrating demonstrations of popular and political enthusiasm for Protestantism to try and keep her in line; Elizabeth found it very difficult to make a firm choice - witness her vacillation over execcuting Mary Queen of Scots, or intervening in the Netherlands.
I must say this explains a lot for me; if Elizabeth was perceived as being soft on religious issues, her advisers who were more hardline must have always been desperate to ensure she stayed on the straight and narrow, particularly since they held office only on her whim. Though in fact she rarely changed the guard - of her eleven councillors in 1597, six were sons or stepsons of the councillors at the start of her reign (the Cecils being only the most visible example). In other ways, too, she did not change the set-up much; the only man elevated to the House of Lords in her entire reign who did not come from a noble family was William Cecil.
I still wish I understood a bit more about the workings of the court. On Haigh's account, it was a question of physical presence and ability to attract the right patrons, with devious machinations sometimes having dramatic results: for instance, both Sir John Perrot and the Earl of Essex were manipulated by their enemies into accepting the job of ruling Ireland in order to get them away from the royal presence, with ultimately fatal results for both. What I missed, from my selfish perspective, was any account of the opposite dynamic, the Irish presence at court. Haigh notes that Elizabeth packed her household and the court with her Boleyn relatives: well, the mother of her grandfather Sir Thomas Boleyn was an Irish noblewoman, and I know from other sources that her Butler cousins were able to short-circuit the Irish administration by going directly to her, but I found nothing more about that here.
A particularly interesting chapter concerns the queen's relationship with the military, both army and navy. Basically, in every single campaign, no matter how specific and direct the orders she gave her commanders, they simply ignored her and followed their own plans instead. Haigh chronicles instance after instance of this, very helpful for me because it makes Essex's disastrous Irish expedition not a baffling anomaly but simply another, if rather massive, instance in a fatally inevitable pattern of behaviour from leading noblemen given military command. After the first two, or three, or five, or ten commanders escape with impunity from disobeying the sovereign's orders, obviously there is no point in following them yourself. Haigh argues fairly convincingly that the military simply would not take instruction from a woman. It would be interesting to speculate a bit more on why Elizabeth took no action against her disobedient commanders; did she, perhaps, at some level, also feel that this was men's work? (It has to be said that the aristocratic commanders were almost all pretty rotten at the job, and would probably have done at least as well if they had followed her orders ratehr than making up their own.)
There were a bunch of details here that I had not previously seen in histories of the time. I had not heard of, or had forgotten about, the Newhaven (Le Havre) venture, when the English tried and failed to occupy a French port previously held by the Huguenots. I had forgotten, or not read about, the efforts of the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pickering, and King Eric XIV of Sweden to marry Elizabeth. And it hadn't really struck me before, though it seems obvious once it is pointed out, that after three decades of success culminating in the failure of the Spanish Armada, the last third of her reign was a comparative failure. Anyway, all very absorbing, and a useful corrective to the standard account of Elizabethan glory.
March 26, 2024
Chapter 3: Elizabeth I is a bully (p. 51)
Chapter 5: Elizabeth I was a showoff (p. 90)
Chapter 7: Elizabeth I had a constant struggle to get men to do what she wanted. (p. 130)
Conclusion: Elizabeth died unloved and almost unlamented. (p. 170)
I'm struggling with why someone would write an academic work full of subjective slurs (with or without supporting evidence) about someone they don't seem to actually like or admire....
And for the record - if my counselors withheld or falsified data - I'd have thrown more than my slipper!
Chapter 5: Elizabeth I was a showoff (p. 90)
Chapter 7: Elizabeth I had a constant struggle to get men to do what she wanted. (p. 130)
Conclusion: Elizabeth died unloved and almost unlamented. (p. 170)
I'm struggling with why someone would write an academic work full of subjective slurs (with or without supporting evidence) about someone they don't seem to actually like or admire....
And for the record - if my counselors withheld or falsified data - I'd have thrown more than my slipper!
August 30, 2020
The author terms this a 'postmodernist' consideration of Elizabeth's regime, which looks primarily at power structures and the relationships between the monarch and her subjects. There is, perhaps, little obvious postmodernism in its conclusions, although it does provide an interesting overview of her reign, including some mention of press and popular culture, factionalism and favouritism, and posthumous reputation. More attention, however, is given to the standard topics of politics (both inside and outside parliament and privy council), religion, and war. Haigh's conclusions are perhaps a little harsh - he seems to have considerably more sympathy for Essex than is usual or deserved, and a few points (such as Elizabeth's interest in a 'British empire') are overlooked or briefly dismissed - but generally appear as forerunners of more recent historiographical conclusions: Elizabeth made indecision a political art, generally performed well as a woman in a man's world (excluding the final decade), and was an exceptional actress. Despite the second edition now being over 20 years old, it is still a good introduction to power and politics under Elizabeth I.
July 2, 2023
This is not a biography of Elizabeth but a series of chapters, useful to the student, of how the queen exercised power with various groups: the church, the nobility, the (Privy) Council, the Court , the Parliament, the Military and last but not least, the People. There are a few cringing phrases, presumably aimed at a 'modern audience' (e.g. "Elizabeth dressed to kill"), and an interpretation by the author on what todays audience might translate certain sentences attributed to the Queen. There are also quotations that are not attributed to anyone.
These points aside, I found the book relatively easy to read ( and put down) partly due to its boxing into discrete chapters of various narrow themes. I was somewhat baffled by why the Queen was not more exercised about the regular direct disobedience and many failures of her military leaders in costly campaigns. In the conclusion Haigh is severe in his criticism of the overall reign of Queen Elizabeth and successes were in many cases despite her rather than because of her. An interesting portrait that certainly does not add to Elizabeth's standing as one of English history's supposedly greatest monarchs.
These points aside, I found the book relatively easy to read ( and put down) partly due to its boxing into discrete chapters of various narrow themes. I was somewhat baffled by why the Queen was not more exercised about the regular direct disobedience and many failures of her military leaders in costly campaigns. In the conclusion Haigh is severe in his criticism of the overall reign of Queen Elizabeth and successes were in many cases despite her rather than because of her. An interesting portrait that certainly does not add to Elizabeth's standing as one of English history's supposedly greatest monarchs.
October 25, 2019
An interesting and well written history of Elizabeth I's reign. Eschewing a chronological approach and concentrating on a thematic dissection of Elizabeth's hold on power through the different elements of Tudor society, the writer describes Elizabeth as, I think, a conservative monarch with a good grasp of the tactics of political power, but limited in her strategic goals by her temperament, imagination and the attitude of society to a woman in power.
May 10, 2017
Very Good - for background reading
April 14, 2022
A bit dry, but a ver comprehensive look at Elizabeth’s approach to her rule on several fronts.
November 14, 2023
really a 3.5 imo; well-crafted but does contain a few issues that i had to interrogate in order to write about this book.
April 1, 2012
Christopher Haigh is an excellent writer. A few pages into this book, I stopped, went to my computer, and looked up every other book he'd written with the intention of reading them all. Having studied quite a lot of Tudor history, his thorough examination of Elizabeth I's reign brought to me a great deal of new information, and all presented in an engaging and thoughtful manner. That said, if you've never read anything about Elizabeth (or just seen the movie) this is not the best book with which to start. It is not a biography, but an examination of her power, how she wielded it, and how she related to all the salient groups of people in her kingdom (church, parliament, military, subjects, etc.). Haigh assumes a solid foundation in Elizabethan history, dropping names and referring to events with which the "average" reader will be unfamiliar. So pick up a good biography of the queen, then delve further into her reign with this insightful treatment.
March 29, 2013
I read this book as part of my University of Oxford 10 week course on the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland.
Haigh puts across a short punchy version of Elizabeth's reign, he comes to the point rapidly which is ideal for students in grasping ideas, formulating events and reaching conclusions in a short space of time. A very good book for study. On the negative side, Haigh can be quite scathing of Elizabeth and his conclusion is a little depressing!
Haigh puts across a short punchy version of Elizabeth's reign, he comes to the point rapidly which is ideal for students in grasping ideas, formulating events and reaching conclusions in a short space of time. A very good book for study. On the negative side, Haigh can be quite scathing of Elizabeth and his conclusion is a little depressing!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews