Research Paper - UCLA Library

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political power as she approached death. Unfortunately, even the realm of glamorous portraiture
was not safe from the fragmentation of monarchical authority. The marginalization of the aging
monarch manifested itself in the rise in demand for the images of other admired court figures.
Strong notes, “By 1600 the royal image was having to share the stage with that of other heroes,
Essex, Cumberland, Nottingham and Mountjoy” (Strong, Gloriana 32). The old Elizabeth had
major competition in the popularity contest of early modern politics and, without an heir, she
was afraid of it. In August 1600, the Privy Council reacted to the popularity of engravings made
of noblemen and called in all such objects of admiration; in this reactionary order to purge the
market of non-royal images, “we are witnessing the breakdown of the cult of Elizabeth” (Strong,
Gloriana 32).
Elizabeth’s fear of being subjugated by the young noblemen of her court was a legitimate
one. The Essex rebellion of February 1601 threatened the image of stability that she had worked
so hard to maintain. Although the attempts of the second earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, to raise
a revolt against the Queen ultimately failed, the event drew attention to Elizabeth’s carelessness.
A king would not have allowed Devereux to overstep, but Elizabeth had allowed Essex to flatter
her and play the part of the supplicating suitor. She had indulged her old favorite, tolerating his
childish antics without curtailing the earl’s ambition; “the femininity which in many ways had
served her so well, in this case had betrayed her” (Loades 100). Despite decades of propaganda,
the cult of Elizabeth remained vulnerable and fragile, susceptible to physical and verbal attack.
Aside from the political problems of Elizabeth’s final years, English society also
“experienced a number of strains and dislocations between 1585 and 1603: demographic
pressures, poverty, bad harvests, plague, the burdens of warfare, all of these contributed to the
problems faced by government and the governed alike” (Sharpe 209). The final years of the