Historical Notes: Why did Elizabeth I never marry?

"I WILL never marry," the future Elizabeth I declared at the age of eight, and, to the consternation of her subjects, the Great Queen kept her word. She even promoted the cult of virginity that was to form the substance of her legend.

For four centuries, historians have speculated as to why Elizabeth never married. In her own day, her decision to remain single was considered absurd and dangerous. A queen needed a husband to make political decisions for her and to organise and lead her military campaigns. More important, she needed male heirs to avoid a civil war between rival claimants after her death.

There was no shortage of suitors for the Queen's hand, both English courtiers and foreign princes, and it was confidently expected for the best part of 30 years that Elizabeth would eventually marry one of them. Indeed, although she insisted that she preferred the single state, she kept these suitors in a state of permanent expectation and even lust. This prevarication was a deliberate policy on the Queen's part, since by keeping foreign princes in hope, sometimes for a decade, she kept them friendly when they might otherwise have made war on her realm.

There were, indeed, sound political reasons for her avoiding marriage. The disastrous union of her sister Mary I to Philip II of Spain had imposed an unwelcome foreign influence upon English politics. The English were generally prejudiced against the Queen taking a foreign husband, particularly a Catholic one. Yet if she married an English peer, jealousy might lead to the formation of dangerous factions at court.

There were other, deeper reasons for Elizabeth's reluctance to marry, chief of which, I believe, was her fear of losing her autonomy as Queen. In the 16th century, a sovereign was regarded as holding supreme dominion over the state, while a husband was deemed to hold supreme dominion over his wife. Elizabeth knew that marriage and motherhood would bring some erosion of her power. "I will have but one mistress here and no master," she told the Earl of Leicester, the man she loved more than any other and to whom she was close for over 30 years.

She once pointed out that marriage seemed too uncertain a state for her. She had seen several unions in her immediate family break down, including that of her own parents.

Some writers, on the flimsiest of evidence, have argued that Elizabeth was frightened or incapable of the sex act, but it is more likely that she feared childbirth. Two of her stepmothers, her grandmother and several acquaintances had died in childbed. Moreover, in pregnancy she was bound to lose her grip on affairs.

Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, had had her mother, Anne Boleyn, executed for treason and adultery; her stepmother Catherine Howard later suffered the same fate. When Elizabeth was 14 she was all but seduced by Admiral Thomas Seymour, who also went to the block within a year for treason. Witnessing these terrible events at an early age, it has been argued, may have put Elizabeth off marriage.

Elizabeth had to decide her priorities. There was no contraception in those days, and to risk an illicit pregnancy would have jeopardised her already insecure throne. A woman's reputation was paramount, especially that of a queen who bore the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Marriage or celibacy were her only choices. Elizabeth was far too intelligent to compromise herself. The choice she made was courageous and revolutionary, and, in the long run, the right one for England.

From Alison Weir's book Elizabeth the Queen (Cape, pounds 18.99)