Tracy Borman, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about life during the reign of the Virgin Queen
1 Elizabeth was certainly no feminist
Although she is often hailed as a feminist icon, Elizabeth I was deeply conventional in her views of the female sex. In the most famous of her speeches, delivered as the Armada threatened England’s shores, she regretfully observed: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman.” She made many similar remarks during the course of her long reign and constantly referred to herself in masculine terms to assert her authority. For her contemporaries, this neatly explained the otherwise nonsensical idea that a woman was ruling over them – and doing a damned fine job of it: Elizabeth must have the body of a woman, but the mind of a man. There was even a rumour that she was really a man in disguise.
In part, of course, Elizabeth was playing her misogynistic courtiers at their own game, pretending that she shared their regret that a woman was ruling over them when everyone knew that men were the superior sex.
But if the Virgin Queen secretly prided herself on her own abilities, that did not extend to her view of the female sex in general. In 1597, when a foreign visitor to court complimented her upon her ability to speak many languages, she retorted: “It was no marvel to teach a woman to talk; it were far harder to teach her to hold her tongue.” She also strictly limited the number of women at her court. There was only room for one Queen Bee in the hive.
2 Elizabethans kept themselves clean
Elizabeth I once declared that she would take a bath once a month “whether she needed it or no”. Her contemporaries considered this excessive. The leading physicians of the day cautioned against regular bathing in hot water because it opened the pores and allowed deadly diseases such as the sweating sickness to enter the body. This has led to the (understandable) assumption that the Elizabethans stank to high heaven.
In fact, personal hygiene was very important to Elizabeth and her subjects. To be considered respectable, one had to smell ‘sweet’, which meant that body odour was something to be dealt with, not ignored. Because of the perceived peri
