Queen Elizabeth I

1533 – 1603

Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the House of Tudor, reigned as Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603, in a period subsequently celebrated as the "Elizabethan era." Her government conducted the Tudor conquest of Ireland with sustained brutality, including the 1565–1576 Desmond Rebellions, the 1574 Rathlin Island massacre in which her forces under Walter Devereux slaughtered approximately 600 Scottish and Irish civilian inhabitants, and the 1579–1583 second Desmond Rebellion in which her commanders pursued a deliberate scorched-earth famine policy across Munster. She personally licensed the slave-trading voyages of Sir John Hawkins between 1562 and 1568, the first English crown-backed entries into the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and signed the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in February 1587.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM