Queen Elizabeth

3 Pages 662 Words

Queen Elizabeth was born on September 7,1533 at Greenwich

Palace near London. Her father was England's King Henry VIII; her mother was the

king's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth had an older half-sister, Mary, who was

the daughter of the king's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Several years later, when Anne

was unable to birth a son, Henry rid of her. When Elizabeth was four years old, Katherine

Champernowne became her governess. The well-educated Champernowne began

teaching her astronomy, geography, history, math, French, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and

other subjects. Elizabeth was an excellent student.


In 1540 Elizabeth's father married Anne of Cleves. Repelled by what he perceived

as his bride's ugliness, Henry quickly had the marriage annulled and instead married Anne

Boleyn's first cousin Katherine Howard. Katherine was very young - about fifteen - and

something of a featherbrain, but she was kind to Elizabeth, who was surely appalled when,

in a repetition of the past, the queen was arrested and charged with adultery. This time

the charges were true. Queen Katherine was beheaded in 1542, when Elizabeth was seven

years old. Katherine Howard's violent death seems to have had a lasting impact on

Elizabeth. At the age of eight she met one of Prince Edward's classmates, Robert Dudley,

and told him of an important decision she had made. "I will never

marry," she said. It was a decision that would shape her life. On November 17, 1558,

Mary (Elizabeth’s half-sister) died and Elizabeth's years of peril came to an end. She was

now the queen of England. Elizabeth's advisors urged the twenty-five-year old queen to

quickly marry some foreign prince and produce heirs so that the throne would not pass to

Henry VIII's great-niece, Mary Stuart, the queen of Scotland. Elizabeth stood by her early

decision never to marry. Although Eliz...