=History Department

Unit 1C THE TUDORS: ELIZABETH I

AQA

Revision Booklet Summer 2019

NAME……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

1 | Page

=

2 | Page

Information from AQA

Assessment Objectives: HOW ARE YOU ASSESSED?

AO1 Demonstrate, organise and communicate knowledge and understanding to analyse and evaluate the key features related to the periods studied, making substantiated judgements and exploring concepts, as relevant, of cause, consequence, change, continuity, similarity, difference and significance. UNIT 1 & 2 ESSAYS

AO2 Analyse and evaluate appropriate source material, primary and/or contemporary to the period, within its historical context. UNIT 2 SOURCE QUESTION

AO3 Analyse and evaluate, in relation to the historical context, different ways in which aspects of the past have been interpreted UNIT 1 EXTRACT QUESTION

Knowledge:

The triumph of Elizabeth, 1563–1603

• Elizabethan government: court, ministers and parliament; factional rivalries• Foreign affairs: issues of succession; Mary, Queen of Scots; relations with Spain

● Religion: the Settlement, relations with Catholics and Protestants• Society: continuity and change; problems in the regions; social discontent and rebellions• Economic development: trade, exploration and colonisation; prosperity and depression• Regional developments; change and continuity; the English renaissance and ‘the Golden Age’of art, literature and music

3 | Page

• The last years of Elizabeth: the state of England politically, economically, religiously and sociallyby 1603

ELIZABETH I KNOWLEDGE TASKS

Topic Page numbers

Vocab test Summary diagram/mind

map

Symbol story

Extract Q/Essay

Government

Religion

Foreign PolicySociety, economy & culture

The Final Years

THE EXAM

● Two sections; 2 hours 30 minutes

● Section A - one compulsory question linked to three interpretations (30 marks)

● Section B – two questions from three (25 marks each )

● Spend 60 minutes on Section A

● Spend 90 minutes (2 x 45) on Section B

Extract Question Technique

You’re encouraged to spend one hour on the extract question, so it’s best to view it as three 20-minute mini-essays.

Structure of each mini-essay

4 | Page

1. Identify/summarise interpretation2. Use knowledge to agree3. Use knowledge to disagree4. Conclusion, focused on how convincing that particular extract is (no need to

compare to other extracts here.)

Learning activities

Always Sometimes Never

Step one

Reading through class notes

Using textbooks

Mind maps / diagrams

Making / re making class notes

Highlighting

Flashcards

Revision walls

Step two

Writing exam answers under timed conditions

Reading model answers

Using past questions & planning answers

Step three

Marking your own work to a mark scheme

5 | Page

Studying mark schemes or examiner’s reports

Working with other students in groups / pairs

Comparing model answers against your own work

Creating our own exam questions

One to one discussions with teachers / tutors

MARK SCHEME FOR THE EXTRACT QUESTION

Answer will explicitly demonstrate:

Level 5 (25-30)

A*

● Well-supported analysis and evaluation of how convincing each

interpretation is

● Excellent understanding of the historical context

● Very good identification and understanding of the interpretations

Level 4 (19-24)

A* 23-24

● Good understanding of the historical context

● Good identification and understanding of the interpretations

6 | Page

A = 19-22 ● Good analysis of how convincing each interpretation is, though occasionally

lacking in depth and range

Level 3 (13-18)

18 = A

15-17 = B

13-14 = C

● Shows an understanding of the historical context

● Identifies and comments on each of the interpretations

● Some analysis of how convincing each interpretation is, though this may be

weaker on some of the extracts.

Level 2 (7-12)

12=C

9-11 = D

7-8 = E

● Some understanding of the historical context

● Accurately identifies at least two of the interpretations

● Very limited analysis of how convincing each interpretation is- comments

may be generalised or inaccurate

Level 1 (1-6)

6=E

● EITHER: Shows an accurate understanding of just one interpretation

● OR: Addresses two or three interpretations, but with limited understanding

of their argument, and generalised comments on historical context/how convincing.

7 | Page

Mark Scheme for the Essay Question

Answer will explicitly demonstrate:

Level 5 (21-25)

● Excellent understanding of the issues and historical concepts in the

question

● Analytical and focused answer, leading to a well-supported judgement

● Well-structured essay, featuring a range of detailed and precise knowledge

Level 4 (16-20)

A-20

B-18

● Good understanding of the issues and historical concepts in the question

● Effectively structured essay, with some analysis and range of largely

accurate factual information; there may be a little generalisation.

● Some balance; clear judgement, though it may be only partly supported.

Level 3 (11-15)

C-15

D-13

● Reasonable understanding of the issues in the question, though some points

may lack range, depth or accuracy.

● Reasonably well structured essay, which largely focuses on the question

though there may be occasional irrelevant points.

Level 2 (6-10)

E-10

● Descriptive or partial answer, which fails to address the question fully.

● Some attempt to structure the answer, though communication skills may be

limited, and some points may lack relevance.

● Mainly generalised statements, which lack range and depth, or contain

inaccuracies.

Level 1 (1-5) ● Little understanding of the question- points are generalised

● Very limited structure; unsupported, irrelevant, or inaccurate information.

8 | Page

EXTRACT QUESTIONS

Using your understanding of the historical context, assess how convincing the arguments in these extracts are in relation to Elizabeth’s relations with Parliament during her reign.

EXTRACT A

In the view of the Tudor sovereigns – and Elizabeth held it to the end – parliaments were summoned to do three things, and three things only: to vote such taxes as were required, to legislate on topics submitted to them, and to give advice on policy when asked. Elizabeth’s parliaments certainly fulfilled these functions. Each session was called with some principal object in view…[However], it was during these sessions that the House of Commons began to group towards one another…and in the process to join issue with the Crown. That issue is epitomised in the immortal words ‘freedom of speech.’

‘Matters of state’ could come up only on the royal initiative. Unfortunately, the two questions which touched Members most keenly were by definition ‘matters of state’…Succeeding parliaments went on urging the Queen to ease her subjects’ minds by marrying or naming a successor, or at least by disposing of the claim and person of Mary Stuart.

From Tudor England by S. T. Bindoff (Penguin) 1950

EXTRACT B

Some historians have argued that Parliament became politicised under Elizabeth; ordinary MPs, especially puritans and common lawyers, according to this view, ventilated their “opposition” to her conservatism. But this interpretation endows the House of Commons

9 | Page

with a preconceived status and fails to recognise the influence of the Lords in an aristocratic age. It also falsely presupposes that ‘adversary politics’ prevailed in the sixteenth century…Those who have posited the ‘rise’ of the Commons have studied Tudor Parliaments from the perspective of a determinist interpretation of the ‘origins’ of the Civil War and Interregnum. By seeking the origins of the Stuart conflict in the so-called ‘apprenticeship to future greatness’ of the Elizabethan House of Commons, the leading exponent of this interpretation [J. E. Neale] was driven to manufacture a ‘puritan choir’ supposedly operating within Elizabeth’s early Parliaments.

From Tudor England by John Guy, (OUP), 1988

EXTRACT C

[In 1601 Elizabeth’s] touch was as sure as ever. Before Christmas her words to the deputation in the Council Chamber were in print and later generations were to call it her ‘golden speech’, for she had here put into words, without attempting a definition, the essence of that remarkable relationship between sovereign and people in the golden age of monarchy that passed with her death…The Commons had responded loyally with voting four subsidies and eight fifteenth and tenths…Before they dispersed to their homes for Christmas, she gave members….a masterly survey of policy during the forty-four years as queen, a statesman’s swan-song, for with taxation voted for the next four years she knew, surely, she would be unlikely to survive to address another Parliament.

From Elizabeth I, Queen of England by Neville Williams (1967)

Using your understanding of the historical context, assess how convincing you find thearguments in relation to a possible crisis in Elizabeth’s government, 1589–1603.N.B. One extract only

10 | Page

Historian Stuart Minson provides an interpretation of the last years of

Elizabeth’s reign.

During the final decade of Elizabeth’s reign, back-to-back harvest failures

and a period of price inflation across Europe saw the wages of workers

reach their lowest value relative to the price of goods at any time between

the Black Death and the present day. Yet weather conditions and the course

of the European economy were not really in the government’s control. It

was perhaps the structural inequalities of early modern English society

which actually made harvest failures and price increases problematic, but

it is neither a surprise nor an aspect of crisis that Elizabethan governors

should have failed to address this. In fact, the government’s responses

to these problems were better co-ordinated and more effective than

elsewhere in Europe. If the severity of the dearth is measured in terms of

actual mortality, it appears that northern France and the Rhineland fared

worse than England, while for the English themselves the 1590s were not

as bad as the 1550s or 1630s. Moreover, deaths far above the norm were

limited to the terrible year of 1597–98, and only in particular areas, such

as Cumberland or Newcastle, did many people actually perish. In some

regions like Kent people rioted repeatedly over grain supplies, but these

episodes were small in scale and limited in aim. London experienced only

one serious riot, in 1595, and the city’s government did much to alleviate

famine and build solidarity. The Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 were not new

ideas, but they turned the strategies of poor relief, pioneered in towns

and national legislation since the early 1500s, into a form that could be

systematically implemented. In themselves they had little effect in the

11 | Page

1590s, but they reflect the extensive apparatus of poor relief which was

already in operation at this time.

Certainly there was an acute ‘sense’ of crisis among the elite, as seen in the

terrified reports of the Somerset JP Edward Hext on the breakdown of law

and order or the dangerous over-reaction by the Privy Council to a failed

attempt at a popular march in Oxfordshire in 1596. There was also a sense

of desperation among the wider population. Analysis has shown that peaks

in prosecution for theft coincided with times of greatest dearth. However,

it must be noted that capital convictions, while significantly increasing in

1598, only did so after a third harvest failure followed the previous two.

Indeed, the fear and desperation which people experienced was not just a

product of conditions during Elizabeth’s final years. They were also part of

a longer-term process of social polarisation which was dividing families

of middling wealth and status down the centre, some being pushed into

poverty while others enlarged their property and began to identify with the

values of the social elite. Importantly, while the latter were terrified of the

possibility of popular rebellion, this also spurred action. A combination of

preventative measures, attempts to mitigate the worst suffering and severe

repression of those caught in agitation served to contain unrest.

For instance, in London, the provision of subsidised grain stocks and the

central organisation of poor relief was combined with the execution of

rioters and the appointment of new officials like the Provost Marshal to coordinate

policing across the wider metropolitan area.

It must be understood that an actual crisis involves either a breakdown

or transformation as a result of problems. In some respects, the harvest

failures and unrest of the 1590s did contribute to change. The management

12 | Page

of the agricultural economy became more co-ordinated and strategies for

insulating communities against problems like famine, plague and disorder

were improved. But again, these were part of a longer process, and if

the stresses of the 1590s affected this, they were neither a necessary or

sufficient cause. Ultimately, the government continued to function, the

strategies employed were traditional in themselves and the structures

of government were not drastically transformed. The poor faced crisis

on a daily basis and many lost their lives, but society as a whole did not;

the broadening of the elite turned those who might previously have led a

popular uprising into loyal supporters of the status quo. The government

saw itself as facing crisis conditions, but that is not the same as a ‘crisis of

government’. Of course, that is not to say that Elizabethan government was

just or successful. As J.A. Sharpe has pointed out, although Elizabethan

England survived, it did so at the unjustifiable expense of society’s most

vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Dr Stuart Minson is a guest teacher at the London School of Economics

and Political Science

ONE EXTRACT ONLY:

Assess how convincing the argument in Extract A is in relation to poverty and vagrancy in Tudor times.

13 | Page

Assess how convincing the argument in Extract A is in relation to Elizabeth’s ‘second’ reign (1585 to 1603).

14 | Page

15 | Page

16 | Page

Extract 2 continues on the next page…

17 | Page

18 | Page

19 | Page

Continued on the next page…

20 | Page

21 | Page

Extract 3 continued on the next page

22 | Page

23 | Page

24 | Page

25 | Page

26 | Page

ESSAY QUESTIONS

GOVERNMENT:

● ‘Rebellions in the years 1549 to 1571 stemmed from the weakness of

central government.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘Throughout her reign, Elizabeth I controlled her ministers with masterly

political skill.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● How effectively, by 1571, had Elizabeth I established her authority as

Queen?

● By 1572, how secure was Elizabeth’s hold on the English throne?

● To what extent, by 1571, was England in a healthier position than it had

been in when Elizabeth had come to the throne in 1558?

● ‘By 1571, Elizabeth I had solved most of the internal and external

problems that had faced her at the start of her reign.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘Both national and local government suffered from fundamental

weaknesses in the years 1571-88.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘Throughout the whole of her reign, Elizabeth I was faced with significant

opposition in parliament.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● Assess how successful the young Elizabeth was in consolidating the

powers of the monarchy compared with her brother and sister, Edward VI and Mary, in her reigns.

● ‘Elizabethan government had more weaknesses than strengths in the

years 1558 to 1588.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● To what extent did the plots and rebellions faced by the Crown during

the reign of Elizabeth pose a real threat to the stability of the Elizabethan State?

27 | Page

● ‘A state of crisis existed in England between 1540 and 1563.’ Assess the

validity of this view.‘Elizabeth’s management of government could be described as 30 years of success followed by 15 years of decline.’ Assess the validity of this view.

RELIGION

● ‘Between 1571 and 1588, the Catholic threat to Elizabeth, both at home

and abroad, was easily dealt with.’ How convincing is this view?

● Why did Puritans pose less of a challenge to the Elizabethan Church in

the 1590s than they had done earlier in the reign?

● "Elizabeth's Settlement effectively stabilised the religious situation in England between 1559 and 1566." Assess the validity of this view.

● “It was easier for Elizabeth to deal with the Protestant threat than the

Catholic one between 1565 and 1603”. To what extent do you agree?

● ‘The challenge posed to the Elizabethan Crown by Catholicism was never

as strong as Elizabeth I and her ministers believed.’ Assess the validity of this claim.

● ‘The Elizabethan religious settlement was successfully established in the

years 1558 to 1603.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘The Elizabethan religious settlement was a balanced response to twenty

years of religious division.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● How important were government policies and actions in the decline of

Catholicism in England between 1558 and 1603?

ECONOMY/SOCIETY

● How far were the problems of poverty in England successfully addressed

during Elizabeth’s reign?

28 | Page

● ‘By 1603, it was clear that the English people had benefited little in social

and economic terms from the rule of Elizabeth I.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● Is it true to say that by 1603, England was economically and socially

more diverse than it had been at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign in 1558?

● To what extent was the transformation of society under Elizabeth I

accomplished without any social disorder?

● ‘The economy of England was in a much stronger position in 1603 than it

had been in 1558.’ Assess the validity of this view.

FOREIGN POLICY

● How successful, and why, was Elizabeth in dealing with foreign threats

to her rule?● ‘Elizabeth’s foreign policy was mostly a series of disasters’. Assess the

validity of this view.● ‘Elizabeth I’s policy toward Spain was always weak and unconvincing.’

Assess the validity of this view with reference to the years 1568 to 1603.● To what extent was the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1586 the

key turning point in England’s relationship with Spain in the years 1558 to 1603?

FINAL YEARS

● ‘During the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, England became an unstable kingdom, menaced by crisis.’ Assess the validity of this view.

29 | Page

● ‘Rebellions against Tudor rulers were totally ineffective in the years

1536 to 1569.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘Rebellion sparked by religious belief was more dangerous to rulers than

courtly conspiracies in the years 1536 to 1569.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘Despite a change in authority, England remained a largely Catholic

country in belief and structure between 1547 and 1564.’ Assess the validity of this view.

● ‘The crisis faced by the Tudors in the years 1540-63 was primarily

caused by economic factors.’ Assess the validity of this view.

30 | Page