Elizabeth: Is Elizabeth Anti-Catholic?

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16th Century England, 16th century Europe, Elizabeth, Elizabeth I, John Ballard, Religious Issues, Ridolfi Plot, Shekhar Kapur, The Catholic League

When Elizabeth ((1998, dir. Shekhar Kapur) came out, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights accused it of anti-Catholic bias, and it’s worth considering whether the film can reasonably be accused of hostility to Catholicism. (Full disclosure: I’m a Lutheran, which obviously influences how I view the events of the Reformation.)

The 16^th century was a genuinely brutal time for religious tensions, and the film is correct that Catholics participated in the brutality with considerable zeal. The opening scene shows three anonymous Protestants executed under Mary I, out of an actual total of 283. Both the Ridolfi and Babington plots were very substantially driven by Catholic hostilities toward Elizabeth, who for much of her reign was the target of plans by Catholic rulers to remove her from office and replace her with her Catholic cousin, Mary of Scotland. Pope Pius V did support the Ridolfi plot (he made Ridolfi his agent in England, and gave him a letter of support for the plot), and John Ballard really was a Jesuit priest, though he does not seem to have enjoyed papal support for his scheme. So the Catholic League’s complaint about a “scheming pope who sends a priest to plot against and assassinate Elizabeth” is a reasonable only because Pius didn’t send John Ballard; but both details they complain about are historically true when taken separately.

The heart of the Catholic League’s complaint, however, is that the film doesn’t give equal time to Protestant atrocities against Catholics. They object that the movie says nothing about Henry VIII or the execution of Sir Thomas More, an odd argument to make about a film that begins more than a decade after Henry’s death. More was executed by Henry VIII in 1535, and thus can reasonably be considered a victim of Protestant hostility to Catholicism, but More was also an enthusiastic proponent of the public execution of Protestants, so citing his (again, not relevant to a film set twenty years later) example is something of a double-edged sword. This complaint feels like they are simply looking for something to complain about.

Elizabeth did persecute Catholics in the later part of her reign, but she did so largely in response to Pius V’s excommunication of her, which had the unfortunate effect of meaning that a devout Catholic could not be trusted to support Elizabeth as monarch (which is not to say that all Catholics opposed her, only that they almost automatically came under suspicion). The early part of her reign was marked by attempts to reach religious unity between Protestants and Catholics, which the film also largely glosses over. However, later in her reign, some Catholics were executed, such as Cuthbert Maine, and the film entirely fails to acknowledge this. An argument could be made that the film is focusing entirely on court life and therefore the execution of Cuthbert Maine in Cornwall is not relevant, but it’s undeniable that the film does present almost all of the aggression as coming from Catholics.

Another reasonable point is the League’s objection that the film depicts its Catholic characters negatively. Mary I is shown as harsh, fanatical, and somewhat unstable. Norfolk is a sneering villain. De la Quadra is dark and creepy, Henri d’Anjou is just weird, and Stephen Gardiner is given a disturbing cataract in one eye. The film’s chief villain, Norfolk, was not in fact Catholic at all, so making him a scheming Catholic is hard to justify from the standpoint of historical accuracy, even if it does make the narrative simpler. Nor did the earl of Leicester convert to Catholicism. And the film treats the priest Ballard as if he were personally an assassin, for which there is no evidence; in Ballard’s plot, he was the organizer, not the killer. So the film’s strong tendency to associate Catholicism with villainous behavior is definitely a problem. As the Catholic League points out, the film suggests that all the religious tension in England was driven by Catholics, which is not true. There were most definitely Protestants who enthusiastically called for the death of Catholics.

But it is not true that every Catholic in the film is depicted negatively. Arundel is shown as being kind to Elizabeth when he is ordered by Mary to imprison her, and when Arundel is caught during the plot, Elizabeth makes a point of saying that she will remember his earlier kindness to her. Unlike the creepy Spanish ambassador, the French ambassador comes across as a fairly decent man. And of course Leicester, who supposedly converted to Catholicism, is given sympathetic treatment; his conversion is presented as an expression of his frustrated love for her.

The film distorts historical facts in a way that negatively depicts Catholicism. Is the motive for that anti-Catholic bigotry? Obviously that’s hard to know, since only Shekhar Kapur could answer that for certain, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the film’s perspective. Elizabeth and Walsingham are the heroes of the film, and about half the film’s plot revolves around attempts to assassinate her. Having decided to build the film around that aspect of Elizabeth’s reign, it’s easy to see why the Catholics became the villains of the story; from Elizabeth’s viewpoint, the Catholics are the bad guys, and I think that much of the film’s negative depiction of Catholics is driven chiefly by the desire to have clear villains and a simple narrative rather than any strong animus against Catholics. That doesn’t exonerate the film from its strongly anti-Catholic stance, but I do think it helps explain it.

So while a lot of the Catholic League’s charges are, in my opinion, unreasonable, it is certainly true that the film largely makes the Catholics the villains, in a way that distorts the facts. In part this is because the Protestant position is represented by Elizabeth, the heroine of the film and Catholic efforts to kill or depose her must therefore be presented negatively. But the film makes little attempt to explain the Catholic position or explore the deeper religious or moral issues at stake. In fact, the film makes virtually no attempt to explore what the Protestant/Catholic divide was about at all. In that sense, the film could just as easily have been Democrats vs Republicans. The Catholics in Elizabeth are evil mostly because they’re Catholics and Catholicism is bad in this film. So in the end, I think we have to admit that Elizabeth is anti-Catholic the way that Braveheart is anti-English or 300 is anti-non-straight-white-physically-perfect-people. The factual distortions required for the plot create a bias even if there was no actual hostility there.

Patterns mean something, and the meaning of a film emerges from the patterns it creates. This, more than anything, is what I try to teach my students about how to read historical films. The Catholic devil is in the Protestant details, I guess.

Want to Know More?

Elizabeth is available on Amazon.

Norman Jones’ The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation focuses on the ways that families tried to manage the challenges of the Reformation over the course of the 16th century. He looks at the ways that families sought to overlook or rewrite the religious differences between three generations while remaining families. It’s a book that really changed my view of the English Reformation.

An interesting window into the plots against Elizabeth is Jessie Child’s God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, which examines the struggles of one Catholic family to navigate the political currents of Tudor religion.

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Elizabeth: Why Does Elizabeth Live in a Cathedral?

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16th Century England, Durham Cathedral, Elizabeth, Elizabeth I, Hampton Court Palace, Shekhar Kapur

When Shekhar Kapur decided to make Elizabeth (1998), he clearly decided he wanted striking interior visuals. So we see numerous shots of an unidentified palace in which first Mary and then Elizabeth live in. It has tall narrow chambers with pillared arcades, and the pillars are decorated with geometric patterns. It’s definitely a gorgeous set. You can get a brief look at the set in this clip from the film, starting at the 3:45 mark.

Notice the column on the left, with the diamonds, and the one in the middle right, with the chevrons. The column on the far right is composed of multiple smaller columns. Notice also toward the back of the shot you can see that the pillars are actually columns in a rounded arcade with windows above to let in some light. The sense it offers is that Elizabeth’s palace is a long, wide stone hall with extremely high ceilings and massive columns.

But this scene wasn’t shot on a Hollywood set.  It was shot on location. And it wasn’t shot in a Tudor palace. If they had wanted to go that route, they could have filmed here:

Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court was built during the reign of Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, who liked it so much he forced the original owner to trade it to him.

Instead, this scene was shot here:

Durham Cathedral

Durham Cathedral was built in northern England in the late 11^th century in the Romanesque style, and decorated (uniquely, as far as I know) with massive pillars with geometric banding. It’s one of the most famous churches in England, and easily recognizable because of its distinct style.

Let’s take a look at the interior of the nave:

Durham Cathedral interior

Note the pillars with chevrons, the composite pillars, the rounded arches, and the clerestory windows letting in much of the light.

Here’s another shot:

Durham Cathedral pillar

That’s right; this film has Mary and Elizabeth using Durham Cathedral as a royal palace.
Actual royal palaces weren’t built with massive columns and high ceilings, and during the Tudor period they generally had wood-paneled interiors, not bare stone. Here’s the interior of the Tudor-era Great Hall at Hampton Court:

The Great Hall at Hampton Court

It’s a pretty impressive space in its own right, and much more indicative of the interior of Tudor-era palaces (because it is one).

I can understand Kapur’s desire to find impressive locations that offered striking interior shots, but did he have to choose one of the most famous churches in all of England? Imagine a movie set in New York City, with a character who lives in a lavish skyscraper apartment, and then the film uses a shot of the Empire State Building for the exterior. Ok, Durham Cathedral isn’t quite as famous as the Empire State Building, but it’s not exactly obscure.

Want to Know More?

Elizabeth is available on Amazon.

Elizabeth: Dissing Queen Bess

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16th Century England, Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth, Elizabeth I, Geoffrey Rush, Kings and Queens, Shekhar Kapur, Tudor England

I mentioned in my previous post on Elizabeth (1998, dir. Shekhar Kapur) that the film reduces the complex political issues around Elizabeth’s (Cate Blanchett) marriage choices to a question of personal interest. Her indecisiveness is depicted entirely as Elizabeth wavering between a man she loves but knows is unsuitable and a repugnant suitor who would be a good choice politically. While her personal feelings were probably an issue in her choice, the real reason for her refusal to commit was she recognized that whichever choice she made would bring with it at least as many problems as advantages. There was no truly good choice for Elizabeth to make, so she changed the terms of the problem and made refusing to choose the best option. Doing this forced her to endure substantial pressure from her Privy Council, her Parliaments, and other European monarchs, as well as to defy social convention, so her choice required her to develop a variety of strategies for successfully managing this pressure.

Blanchett as Elizabeth

In other words, Elizabeth refused to choose a husband because she was an extremely savvy politician, not because she was an indecisive woman, and the way she enacted her choice demonstrated considerable finesse. So by downplaying the political issues and emphasizing her personal feelings, the film strips Elizabeth of much of her political skill and replaces it with a set of issues straight out of a rom-com. In a serious historical film, it’s degrading to one of the most intelligent people ever to sit on the English throne to depict her as little better than Kate Hudson or Drew Barrymore looking for love.

And unfortunately, the film does this fairly consistently. The film only shows her engaging in one piece of actual politics, when she works to persuade the English Parliament to pass the Act of Uniformity that helped resolve the kingdom’s religious problems. In the film, we see her struggling to craft and memorize a political speech that will win over the bishops in particular. On its own, this would be an interesting moment, but when time comes to give the speech, she remains hesitant and off-balance. Gradually she finds her feet, but even at the end of the speech, she doesn’t seem truly confident. We know from many sources, including her speeches, that Elizabeth was an extremely skilled public speaker. She may well have been less skilled at giving speeches when she was early in her reign, but the film never shows us a moment when her oratorical skills truly shine, which leaves the audience with the impression that she was not a gifted speech-maker.

Furthermore, during the speech the camera cuts to six Catholic bishops who are locked in a cellar somewhere, and therefore unable to participate in the voting. (This never happened.) Eventually, it is revealed that Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) is responsible for this, and that Elizabeth won the vote by five votes; if Walsingham hadn’t intervened, Elizabeth would have lost the vote. So according to the film, Elizabeth only triumphed on this issue because Walsingham secretly stacked the deck for her, and not because she skillfully managed the members of Parliament and the bishops to win their support.

As the film constructs its narrative, at the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth is a very emotional woman who lacks inner strength and is easily distressed by the difficulties she encounters. In many of her difficult moments, she requires the intervention of a man to calm her and stiffen her resolve. When her Privy Council bullies her into war with Scotland, Walsingham advises against it, and he proves right. Later on, it is Walsingham who teaches her that she needs to be more ruthless with her enemies, and it is Walsingham who tells her that she has to do without love. So as the film structures events, one of the greatest rulers in English history wouldn’t have been great at all if she hadn’t had a man standing behind her advising her how to win and occasionally intervening to ensure her triumph.

Rush as Walsingham

This is simply untrue. Elizabeth showed great political skill and savvy during the years of her sister Mary’s reign, when a wrong step could easily have gotten her executed. She prudently dissembled about her religious beliefs and at least nominally embraced Catholicism until she was able to admit she was a Protestant after she became queen. So she didn’t need Walsingham to teach her how to be an effective politician.

Additionally, Walsingham didn’t really become an important figure in Elizabeth’s government until the late 1560s, by which point she had already been in power for more than a decade, and had managed to enact the Act of Uniformity, begin dealing with the issue of her marriage, and confront the French build-up in Scotland; while the Scottish campaign was poorly conducted, it achieved her main goal of getting the French to withdraw most of their forces from Scotland. In all of these matters, Elizabeth generally set her own policy, often to the frustration of the men on her Privy Council. There is no doubt that Elizabeth was a skilled politician even at the start of her reign.

And then there’s the fact that for much of the second half of the film, the main plot revolves around a plot to kill Elizabeth that requires Walsingham to keep her safe. For a movie about Queen Elizabeth, the story is surprisingly dependent on the actions of men.  Indeed, in one scene, the assassin Ballard (Daniel Craig) catches her alone and gets within about 20 feet or so of her. Elizabeth is presented as helplessly demanding that he tell her his name; had other events not created a distraction, Ballard clearly would have killed her. This moment contrasts sharply with a real assassination attempt that she survived. In 1584, Elizabeth was surprised alone in her garden by Dr. William Perry, a member of Parliament and one of her spies, who had decided to kill her. But he was so daunted by her presence that he was unable to carry out the deed. (At least this is how some sources describe the incident; others suggest that he was trying to get her attention to raise his standing with her.) The notion that she was a helpless woman in the face of violence is false.

Elizabeth surviving an assassination attempt (note the emphasis on her fear)

For the film to undermine her accomplishments and attribute them to a man is, sadly, pure sexism. It feels as though the screenwriter, Michael Hirst, and Shekhar Kapur simply couldn’t imagine a strong political woman who wasn’t dependent on a man. If there was ever a woman who wasn’t dependent on men for her success, it was Queen Elizabeth I. Her story is one of a woman successfully navigating a male-dominated world and rising above the limitations men attempted to place on her. That’s a story I would much rather have seen than the one this film gives us.

Want to Know More?

Elizabeth is available on Amazon.

If you’d like to know more about Sir Francis Walsingham and his espionage efforts, try, The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth: Whose Plot is It Anyway?

Tags

16th Century England, Babington Plot, Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth, Elizabeth I, Joseph Fiennes, Kings and Queens, Ridolfi Plot, Tudor England

So now that start of the semester stuff is more or less done with, I finally had time to sit down at watch Elizabeth (1998, dir. Shekhar Kapur). The film tells the story of the early years of the famous Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett). Specifically, it focuses on the process by which she went from an extremely emotional young queen to a more mature, emotionally-reserved queen. She has to learn harsh lessons about love and political decision-making over the course of the film.

Let’s Marry the Queen!

After showing the danger Elizabeth was in during her older sister Mary I’s reign, the film largely focuses on two things. The major thread throughout the film, starting once she is queen, is whom she will marry, King Philip II of Spain, the French prince Henri d’Anjou (the future Henri III, played by Vincent Cassel), or Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester (Joseph Fiennes). While she loves Leicester and has sex with him, it gradually becomes clear that he is not good choice for emotional reasons; he is a weak man, not faithful to her, and presumptuous of his rights over her. He is also already married to another woman. The shock of learning this fact drives Elizabeth to end her relationship with him and increasingly shut him out.

In reality, Elizabeth knew all along that Leicester was married (Dudley did in fact marry his second wife in secret though, so the film is collapsing details about two marriages); while she was very intimate with him, she disliked his wife Amy, who only saw Leicester for a few days at a time and lived away from court. In 1560, Amy was found dead at her country house, having apparently fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck. There is no evidence that this was anything other than an accident, but speculation immediately began that Leicester had orchestrated Amy’s murder, because her death left Leicester free to marry Elizabeth. But many of Elizabeth’s counselors opposed the match, and argued that she could not afford to risk the scandal that would ensue if she married him. Elizabeth seems to have eventually accepted this fact, although she remained close to him the rest of his life.

Fiennes as Leicester

An additional factor in the opposition to Leicester as a suitable husband for Elizabeth was the unfortunate history of his father John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. He was Lord Protector of the realm during the short reign of Elizabeth’s young half-brother Edward VI. When Edward died, Northumberland attempted to engineer the accession of Edward’s cousin Jane Grey as queen, having married Jane to his son Guildford Dudley. The scheme collapsed in less than two weeks, Mary I took the throne, and Northumberland and Guildford were both executed. As a result, some English nobles may have feared that if he became king, Leicester would avenge the death of his father and brother on the nobles who had supported Mary.

Elizabeth’s other two suitors both brought with them the prospects of an alliance with a great power, but also the enmity of whichever great power she didn’t choose. As the movie emphasizes, England was not a great power in the 16^th century, and Elizabeth was therefore rightfully worried about getting pulled into the orbit of either France or Spain, which would have tended to overshadow her interests. With only a small army, it is unclear whether England could have won if either power had invaded, and France was allied to Scotland, which could easily invade northern England. As one famous British historian remarked, Elizabeth’s marriage was a weapon like a bee sting; it was powerful, but it could only be used once. So Elizabeth adopted a different strategy; instead of marrying, she played France and Spain off against each other, constantly dangling the possibility of marriage before them, but never committing to either side. This strategy kept England out of war for 30 years.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth barely touches on any of these issues. Instead, in general Hollywood fashion, it prefers to explain Elizabeth’s refusal to choose a husband in terms of her personal feelings. She loves Leicester but they are poorly matched as people, and she is shattered by the revelation that he is already married. She is uncomfortable with the prospect of marrying Philip of Spain because he was Mary’s husband. Henri d’Anjou is presented as vulgar, obnoxious, immature, overbearing, and, bizarrely, a transvestite. In reality, Henri never met Elizabeth, and there’s no basis for the film’s depiction of him. While historians have certainly seen deeper feelings in Elizabeth’s indecisiveness, all serious historians agree that her feelings were only one factor, and probably not the major one. By glossing over the political elements of the choice, the film unfortunately reduces Elizabeth to the status of a woman who just can’t make up her mind about whom she wants to marry.

No, Let’s Kill the Queen!

Starting in the second half of the film, a second plot element emerges, dealing with a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. The tension between Catholics and Protestants is a major issue throughout the film (which opens with the burning of three Protestants). Partway through the film, there are two unexplained assassination attempts. The first involves someone shooting crossbow bolts at Elizabeth while she is riding on a barge, although they only manage to kill one of her attendants. The second involves a poisoned silk dress that one of her ladies-in-waiting tries on so she can have sex with Leicester. From that point on, the marriage question gets relegated to the back burner as Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) works to uncover a wider plot. (The barge incident is basically true, although the would-be assassin used a gun, not a crossbow. Who was behind it does not seem to have ever been found out. The dress incident is completely fabricated, and seems lifted partly from Medea.)

The main assassination plot involves efforts to smuggle a Jesuit priest John Ballard (Daniel Craig) into England so he can murder Elizabeth. The goal of the plot is to replace Elizabeth with Queen Mary of Scotland and to marry her to Thomas Howard, the duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston), the leading Catholic noble in England. It’s a wide ranging plot, including Pope Pius V (John Gielgud) and the Spanish Ambassador Álvaro de la Quadra (James Frain), as well as Bishop Stephen Gardiner, the earl of Arundel, and the earl of Sussex. De la Quadra persuades Leicester to convert to Catholicism secretly and support the plot, apparently out of bitterness toward Elizabeth. Walsingham captures Ballard and Arundel (who is hiding Ballard) and finds a letter proposing the marriage between Norfolk and Queen Mary. He uses one of his spies to pass the letter to Norfolk, who signs it, thus providing Walsingham the evidence he needs to arrest Norfolk and Sussex. For good measure, Walsingham also assassinates Gardiner and de la Quadra. Elizabeth pardons Leicester so he can live on as a reminder to herself about how close she came to danger. Then the film ends in 1563 (as we know from an epilogue text that tells us that Elizabeth reigned for 40 more years).

Eccleston as Norfolk

There’s a lot wrong with this part of the film. Most importantly, it merges two separate plots against Elizabeth, neither of which had happened by 1563. In 1569, the Ridolfi Plot (as it has come to be known) involved a scheme conducted by a Florentine banker, Roberto Ridolfi, to marry Mary of Scotland to Norfolk and land Spanish troops in northern England; these troops would depose Elizabeth in favor of her cousin Mary. He won the support of Pius V and Philip II, as well as Mary and Norfolk, but the whole plot was badly planned out, and Ridolfi failed to discover that Norfolk wasn’t even Catholic but rather a committed Protestant. Several people warned Elizabeth about the plan and Norfolk was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. He was executed only in 1572. The Spanish ambassador (who was not de la Quadra, who had actually died years earlier) was expelled from the country. Arundel was arrested, spent time in the Tower, but was released and died peacefully in 1580.

In 1586, a different plot emerged, known today as the Babington Plot, after Sir Anthony Babington, one of the chief figures in it. The Jesuit priest John Ballard was seeking to free Queen Mary of Scotland from the house arrest that Elizabeth had placed her in, and he sought to use Babington to get in contact with her. Walsingham figured the plot out and allowed Babington to send a letter to Mary, who responded with a letter authorizing the assassination of Elizabeth. Walsingham used this letter to persuade Elizabeth to execute Mary for treason. Ballard and Babington were executed in such a brutal fashion that Elizabeth agreed to allow a less gruesome execution for the others implicated in the plot, although Mary’s execution also proved a disaster for Elizabeth’s reputation.

Bishop Stephen Gardiner died before Elizabeth even became queen, and de la Quadra died years before either plot. Leicester was never involved in any plot to murder Elizabeth because he was always a supporter of her, and he never became a Catholic. In the film, Ballard gets very close to Elizabeth before a distraction forces him to flee; in reality he got nowhere near the queen.

So the film has basically taken the Ridolfi plot and the Babington plot and just mixed them together. Both involved freeing Mary of Scotland, but the Ridolfi plot involved her marriage, while the Babington plot did not. Pius V and Philip II were involved in the Ridolfi plot, whereas Philip never committed to the Babington plot, and there is no evidence that Pope Sixtus V was involved in it at all. The Ridolfi plan was aimed as militarily deposing Elizabeth, not assassinating her, while the Babington plot involved assassinating Elizabeth but never got close to her. Walsingham was not involved in thwarting the Ridolfi plot at all, and used the Babington plot to entrap Mary, not Norfolk.

So while the first plot thread, about who will marry the queen, is basically accurate but oversimplified, the second plot thread, about efforts to kill her, is badly garbled history, and basically false in the facts it presents. However, the film does manage to tell a coherent story that is true to some of the spirit of Elizabeth’s reign. And it’s the film that brought Cate Blanchett to the attention of American audiences, which is definitely a big mark in its favor.

Want to Know More?

Elizabeth is available on Amazon.

Elizabeth has been the subject of dozens of biographies, many of them not very good. For a current scholarly view of her, try David Loades’ Elizabeth I.

An interesting window into the plots against Elizabeth is Jessie Child’s God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, which examines the struggles of one Catholic family to navigate the political currents of Tudor religion.