Elizabeth I before her accession
Say whatever else you like about Prince Philip, it takes a certain measure of grace and dignity to spend your life as a prince consort to a regnant queen. Elizabeth II was a thoroughly parliamentary, limited monarch, so Philip’s role called for less of a discrepancy between the spouses than it might have in an earlier year.
What if Elizabeth I had found an equally calm and disinterested spouse? It was possible though not common for a queen regnant to have a consort who did not rule — all of Mary Stuart’s husbands fit into that niche. How might it have changed English history? World history?
Let’s give Elizabeth such a spouse — not a Philip, a rather Spanish name of the time. Let him be Nikola, a Bohemian noble but not an heir to that throne. Protestant Bohemia had a long history of walking their own way religiously and had connections to England that went back to John Wycliffe. Nikola is well educated, certainly speaks Latin, probably French; he and Elizabeth could talk together in those languages while he learned English. Elizabeth’s family had a general tendency to having children; had Mary married at a younger age, England might be Catholic now. Let’s assume that Elizabeth and Nikola have children.
Those children would have been well educated. Elizabeth was one of the best educated monarchs of Europe; Nikola probably attended Charles University. These Tudor sprigs would, if they resembled their family, been lively, intelligent and engaged people, with good potential to become monarch in their time. (Tudor because, as a prince consort, Nikola did not give them his name.)
And if they did? We would have had no Stuarts. No James the I and VI, that Scottish/French hybrid with his fascination and concern with witches and his interest in the divine right of kings. Without James, no union with Scotland unless a later English monarch got itchy feet.
No Charles the I, so disinclined to govern with parliament, so high church, so devoutly married to a devout Roman Catholic Frenchwoman. Without Charles, no Long Parliament, no English Civil War? No Cromwell?
Without the theocracy of Cromwell, no restoration would have been needed. Perhaps then no surge of Puritans emigrating to avoid a new king? Would New England have remained as sparsely settled as Quebec? It’s not so very inviting if you aren’t moved by conscience. New York might have remained New Amsterdam.
And if no Stuart line to fail after Anne, would there have been no Hanoverian Georges? Elizabeth I was one of the most English of English monarchs since Edward the Confessor — how much did a German monarch shape England in the 18th and 19th centuries?
And what kind of monarch might those Tudor sprigs have made? Really, no way to know. But we can make some guesses. Thoroughly protestant parents, so the Elizabethan settlement would likely have continued. It’s difficult to know when broader religious tolerance would have emerged, but it would not have been in an atmosphere of suspicion toward the monarch as possibly Roman Catholic.
Would schooling have been available sooner? Elizabeth founded several schools and encouraged others, and the protestant mindset tended to favor wide education at that period. Would the general welfare have risen or fallen? Elizabeth in general favored peace over war; if her children and grandchildren did also, it would have saved their subjects the exactions of James and Charles for their misguided wars.
Would England have ever gained an empire? Hard to know: Scotland would not have necessarily become part of a United Kingdom, William II would not have developed England’s naval power, George I would not be there to start the slave and triangle trades.
How different do you think the world would be, if Elizabeth had her Nikola?
