All,
Below, please find a couple of articles exploring the Elizabeth’s spy network. It is a fascinating topic, and particularly timely for the Lower Sixth, as we are currently exploring the Catholic threat to Elizabethan religion.
In addition, below is the excellent BBC series – Elizabeth’s secret agents.
Enjoy,
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will get to the PowerPoint used in today’s session. This has the jpegs of our boardwork.
If you click here you will get to my notes, including the examiner report (and others) that I discuss in the podcast. The class see-saw tasks are also very helpful for revision.
If you click here you will get to a model (marked) parliament essay. 17/20 – new spec (AS – 2016). The question here was “should co-operation of conflict be seen as the dominant theme of Elizabeth’s relationship with her parliaments?” As this was the first year, it was marked rather generously.
Click here for a class essay from 2019.
Below you will find the podcast.
Please also remember to copy of Dicken and Fellows, and the support materials that I have put in the library.
Mr Kydd
If you click here you will get to my pre-mock revision PowerPoint on the skills required for the Y107 paper. Below is the audio to go with this (many thanks Luke).
Mr Kydd.
Why is this the way to do it?
If you follow the hyperlinks (part one and part two) you will get to an excellent article from Ryan Hunter exploring what we can learn about the two queens, and their attitudes from their correspondence.
As he suggests, “Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I’s letters to each other were their only sources of communication, and they remain to this day historians’ most insightful and formative sources on the quarter century-long rivalry between the two queens, as they show how Mary and Elizabeth’s relationship changed over time. They reveal fascinating insights into the two cousins and rivals’ personalities, and above all else, their fundamentally different approaches to their respective positions as two queens regnant living on the same isle with a claim to the same throne.”
Hunter divides the relationship into four phases – have a read, and see if you agree. For those of you that want to push yourself, the full essay A rivalry in Letters can be found on his excellent blog.
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you can read a review of “Rival Queens” by Professor Williams in The Herald. The book suggests “that story needs re-tuning”, and would be excellent summer reading for Year Twelve historians.
“Mary crossed the Solway Firth to England in the hope her cousin Elizabeth I would help restore her to the Scottish throne, but instead Mary was kept a prisoner and eventually executed. It’s a story that has produced two of the strongest images in the history of these islands: Elizabeth as regina triumphant, the woman with the heart and stomach of a king, and Mary as the tragic sovereign, duped by men and unsupported by the woman she turned to for help.”
Below Professor Williams discusses her motivations for writing the book. I have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it.
Mr Kydd.
All,
Something rather special for you today. If you click here you will get to last night’s In Our Time on Radio 4. In it, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact on the British Isles of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the most poweful man in the court of Elizabeth I. He was both praised and attacked for his flexibility, adapting to the reigns of Protestant and Catholic monarchs and, under Elizabeth, his goal was to make England strong, stable and secure from attack from its neighbours. He sought control over Ireland and persuaded Elizabeth that Mary Queen of Scots must die, yet often counselled peace rather than war in the interests of prosperity.
With;
Enjoy,
Mr Kydd.
