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2. THE STUARTS AND THE ELIZABETHAN LEGEND
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2. THE STUARTS AND THE ELIZABETHAN LEGEND CC59 THE ELIZABETHAN CULT In 1603 the Stuarts inherited a throne that had stood for a genera .. tion as a bulwark against the ambitions of Spain and the Counter .. Reformation. England's intemationalleadership of the Protestant cause was, to be sure, due largely to circumstances beyond her ruler's control. Elizabeth did her best to keep out of the religious wars sweeping across the continent, knowing how ruinously expensive they were and how dangerous to all constituted authority. Given the chance, she would gladly have compromised with moderate Catholics on most doctrinal issues, disciplined puritans, and maintained cordial relations with the great European powers. But events forced her to ally herself with Prot .. estants more radical than she and to become progressively involved in continental wars until she was the chief European defender of the Reformation. The Elizabethan royal cult reflected this heroic role far more than it did the queen's cautious and conservative temperament. Drawing upon courtly, popular, and Protestant traditions, the English constructed an image of their ruler as a champion both of secular liberties and of pure religion. She became the chief symbol of a cultural tradition embodying the aspirations, the religious values, and the patriotism that grew out of the lengthy victorious struggle against domestic and foreign enemies. 1 16 CULTS OF MONARCHY AND WARS OF RELIGION So long as the religious wars lasted, this image provided invaluable support to royal authority. The moment tensions began to lessen, how.. ever, it proved in some ways a liability. Wartime propaganda acquired a life of its own, bedeviling efforts to make peace. Elizabeth died before having to rule a kingdom no longer united by a clear external threat, but this only made matters worse for her successors. Around her mem.. ory grew a legend of a uniquely glorious reign, when England held at bay Europe's greatest power. James I had to rule against the backdrop of a tradition inimical to his own pacific ideals and his desire for friendship with Spain. Many of the political difficulties he and his son faced derived from their inability to surmount this problem. In the early seventeenth cen .. tury the Crown could draw upon substantial reserves of loyalty, which not even the events of Charles's reign entirely exhausted. But devotion to the throne was conditioned by strong prejudices about how an Eng.. lish monarch ought to behave, largely defined by Elizabeth's golden leg.. end. In cultivating the Habsburgs and bickering with Parliament, the Stuarts seemed to depart from this tradition, undermining the heritage of their own royal office. THE DECENTRALIZATION OF PATRONAGE We need to begin by asking how the Elizabethan legend attained such immense symbolic importance. Part of the explanation lies in the mili.. tary crisis itself, which gave every patriotic Protestant Englishman compelling reasons to rally behind the throne. But equally important was the skill of the queen and her entourage at encouraging devotion from men beyond the orbit of the royal household. Elizabeth's cult owed much of its vitality to the fact that it was never entirely the prod.. uct of a narrow, courtly milieu. Paradoxically, the queen inspired a rich and multifaceted tradition glorifying her rule because she did not create an elaborate court culture financed and controlled from the center. In this she was at odds with the dominant trend of her own times. The sixteenth century was a golden age of royal patronage across Europe.' A generation earlier, Elizabeth's own father had erected a string of opulent palaces as he patronized Holbein and put together the most distinguished musical establishment in Christendom. By contrast, Elizabeth built no palaces and recruited no foreign artists or musicians of the first rank. She did patronize the miniaturist Hilliard, along with a [44.200.27.175] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:02 GMT) The StuartsandtheElizabethan Legend 17 number of important composers, but by and large her reign marks a low point in the history of English royal patronage, between the pinnacles of Henry VIII and the early Stuarts. 3 This did not mean that the royal court ceased to lend crucial sup" port to English high culture, for the monarchy's great servants largely filled the vacuum created by the decline in Crown patronage. Burghley and Leicester appear to have been the most generous and systematic patrons, although lesser figures, like Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh, also created their own affinities of writers and...