The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power by Carole Levin

Author:Carole Levin
Format: epub

6. Elizabeth as King and Queen

Probably the most vital question for Elizabeth at her accession and throughout her reign was whether as a woman she could rule s u c c e s s f u l l y . ¹ This question echoes through the pressure on her to marry, through her religious role as sacred monarch, in the rumors around her sexuality, and in the belief in male pretenders. At the beginning of her reign Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, argued against Elizabeth becoming Supreme Head of the Church because she was “a woman by birthe and nature.” Yet his speech had another component that in many ways undermined this argument; he also stated that by the “appointment of God she [is] our sovaraigne lord and ladie, our kinge and quene, our emperor and empresse.” In this section of his speech, at the very beginning of the reign, Heath described Elizabeth as having two identities simultaneously, one male and the other female, both incorporating s o v e r e i g n t y . ² Though female, Elizabeth was also in part “kinge.” In some ways Heath echoed the 1554 Act Concerning Regal Power, in which Parliament during Mary I’s reign made clear to all “malicious and ignorant persons” that despite the fact that “the most ancient statutes of this realm being made by Kings then reigning, do not only attribute and refer all prerogative … unto the name of King,” a woman could rule in her own right, that “the regality and dignity of the king or of the Crown, the same [was] the Queen.” Constance Jordan suggests that this act states of the queen that “politically she is a man.” The construct implies something a bit more complex than that, however. Rather, it is stating that a woman as queen has the same rights as a male monarch. It may mean that politically she is a man or that she is a woman who can take on male rights. She may be both woman and man in one, both king and queen together, a male body politic in concept while a female body natural in practice. There are several possible interpretations. Yet the act does seem to suggest an aura of monarchy that goes beyond traditional representations of power as only male. A queen has as much right as a king to rule. “The same all regal power, dignity, honour, authority, prerogative … belong unto her Highness … in as full, large, and ample manner as it hath done heretofore to any other her most noble progenitors, kings of this realm.” The Act of 1554 may be suggesting that when a woman is on the throne she is both king and queen, an idea more explicitly stated by H e a t h . ³

We might well understand Heath’s speech as the encapsulation of the medieval concept of the king’s two bodies. The construct was current in the later Middle Ages and lawyers and theologians gave it new meaning in the reign of Elizabeth.

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