While risking possible loss of power like her sister, who played into the hands of King Philip II of Spain, marriage offered the chance of an heir. There were only 16 sittings of the Commons during Elizabeth's reign, five of which She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island," marvelled Pope Sixtus V, "and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all".

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This followed the deaths in 1584 of the queen's allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Composers such as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis worked in Elizabeth's court and at the Chapel Royal, St. Queen Elizabeth survived smallpox as a young woman, though none of the portraits of her show the scars she probably had from the disease.

Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel.Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports. On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. Some people in Australia wanted a republic, with an elected or appointed president as Head of State instead of the Queen.