Original subtitles

- Under tudor rule, England was taken

from a medieval kingdom plagued by civil war

and developed into one of the most powerful nations

in the renaissance world.

But from phantom pregnancies to the use

of bizarre methods of contraception,

it was often the most intimate and tragic moments

of these monarchs' lives that dictated

the fate of the country.

In this episode, we look at the life of queen Elizabeth I.

She was an attractive, charismatic and vivacious young girl

who took the throne at the age of just 25,

but her early years were lived in fear of assassination

by the supporters of Mary queen of scots.

Although she fashioned herself as the virgin queen,

she had a series of passionate liaisons.

Obsessed with her personal appearance,

she was also overly fond of sugar,

which left her teeth black and rotten.

As she grew older, there were ever more desperate attempts

to stay attractive and to cover her pockmarked face,

caking on thick layers of white lead and vinegar

to preserve the mask of youth.

Welcome to "the private lives of the tudors."

Princess Elizabeth was only third in line

to the throne of England,

so when her father, Henry viii, died aged 55

at his palace in whitehall,

the crown passed to her brother, Edward.

But not wanting to declare Henry dead,

his accession had to be kept a secret.

They didn't want to risk people knowing

that the country was without a king,

so they even had meals delivered to Henry's room

to make it look like he was still alive.

But three days later, on the 31st of January, 1547,

they announced the death of Henry

and proclaimed his son king Edward vi of England.

Aged just nine and under the charge of the privy council,

Edward was put into a rigid routine

of ceremony and official business, a stark contrast

to the glittering world of his father's court.

- The boy that arrives is a stranger.

We know little about him.

We see the king really only from a distance

and darkly, as it were, through a glass.

He has a very strong personality.

He's bright, like all of these children.

He's self-confident about himself.

But there's also this very cool, detached,

very willful personality, almost cold and peremptory.

- Evidence of this still survives

in the king's personal writings.

This is now my office at Hampton court palace,

but it was originally built for Edward vi.

And it may have been here

that the young prince started his journal, aged about 11.

Edward was the only one of the tudors to keep a diary,

but, sadly, it's rather lacking

in titillating gossip and scandal, as you might expect

for something written by someone so young.

But it's also lacking in emotion.

There's an entry from the day

that Edward's favorite uncle was executed,

and he simply records, "on this day, the Duke of somerset

"had his head cut off on tower hill."

The journal ends abruptly in 1553,

when Edward falls very seriously ill.

Edward is stricken with a mystery illness,

possibly some kind of chest infection brought on

by a recent bout of measles.

He is reported to be suffering

from shortness of breath and a dangerous fever.

- His reign is one of remarkably good health.

He only has a bout of measles in 1552.

That may be the start of things going wrong.

- It can be a much more serious disease

than we often give it credit for being.

It might have been tuberculosis.

It might have been fighting sickness.

But he was only weakened at the end of his life.

He wasn't weak from day one.

- It was his father's greatest fear.

Henry had obsessed about protecting Edward

from any illness during his lifetime,

but after only six years, five months and seven days

on the throne, Edward was dead at the tender age of 15.

The crown would now pass to his half-sister Mary.

She had a rocky start to her reign.

Edward had been a staunch protestant

and didn't want a catholic to inherit his crown.

A plot to usurp Mary and place the protestant

lady Jane grey on the throne of England

very nearly succeeded.

But Mary was made of stronger stuff,

and the attempt was short-lived.

Mary's first priority as queen is to find a husband,

and the man she chooses is Philip of Spain.

- The only reason she's having to think about a marriage

is because she's been given the responsibility

of being a queen; She now needs to ensure the succession.

It's the first duty of a monarch.

- There are many stories about Mary tudor,

and one of those stories is that she fell in love

with a portrait of Philip ii,

or Philip of Spain as he then was.

- Your majesty, it is my pleasure and honor

to present to you this image

of his most catholic majesty, king Philip ii of Spain!

- She falls instantly in love with him

after seeing only his portrait.

She's besotted, but she's also naive,

not blessed with good looks, and, age 37,

is some 11 years his senior.

- I trust this is a fair likeness.

- The artist, senor titian, has captured

his majesty most perfectly.

- He pleases us well.

- The reality was that the marriage

between Mary and Philip was a political marriage,

as indeed all royal marriages were.

She asked Charles v, Philip's father,

who had been her protector for many years,

who he wanted her to marry,

and it was his son Philip that he urged upon her.

Mary tried to present herself as a romantic wife

and may have gone through

certain expressions of romantic love.

But the reality for her

was that it was a political marriage.

For Philip, it was even more a political marriage.

He didn't want to marry Mary at all.

He was persuaded, if not coerced,

by his father to accept Mary as his bride.

- Your majesty, welcome.

- Upon arriving in England

and meeting Mary for the first time,

Philip finds her repugnant.

He confides to a close attendant that Mary is no good

from the point of view of fleshly sensuality.

But Philip does his duty and he marries the English queen.

- The marriage, when it happens in July 1554,

goes quite well, really.

Philip, he knows he's buying a woman who's past her best.

- Philip had been married before and he had fathered a son.

This gave Mary hope

that she could conceive a son for herself.

There was also a large age gap between them.

Philip was them 27 and Mary's 38,

so time was running out for him.

She was very keen to get the marriage started

and to share Phillip's bed.

- Within days of her wedding to Philip,

Mary believes she is pregnant.

As the weeks progress, she shows all the signs,

including morning sickness and a swollen belly.

When the ninth month approaches,

she enters her confinement at Hampton court.

Everything has been prepared for the royal birth.

- Mary believed she was pregnant

because she had the symptoms of pregnancy.

Her stomach swelled; It's even said that she was lactating.

She felt nauseous, and even her doctors were convinced

that she was pregnant.

The whole realm thought that Mary was pregnant.

- When Mary entered her confinement,

her midwives and other attendants would have given her

a special tonic known as caudle.

This comprised ale mixed with various other ingredients

such as sugar, honey, saffron and ginger.

It was believed that this caudle would strengthen

the expectant mother for the labor that lay ahead,

but the reality in Mary's case was that she didn't need it.

- At this stage, there is no way of knowing

you're pregnant for sure.

These sort of pregnancy tests that we have today,

way in the future.

Very difficult to know if you're definitely pregnant.

Very easy to mistake pregnancy

for a whole host of other things.

In November, she thinks that she can feel

the baby quicken inside her.

She takes to her chamber in may.

This is when you depart into your private apartment

and seal yourself off, which was a normal thing

for a wealthy tudor woman to do.

- But the due date comes and goes,

and many weeks later, there is still no sign of a baby.

Mary's stomach decreases in size

and it becomes obvious that it was a phantom pregnancy.

- It has been said that Mary was not the only woman

in the 16th century who did have symptoms of pregnancy

when they were not in fact pregnant.

- Phantom pregnancy is actually a known medical condition.

It's basically where a woman is so desperate to get pregnant

that her body is actually deceived into thinking

that she is pregnant.

Very sad, because of course Mary is made fun of

by lots of people after

the pregnancy is discovered to be false.

It must have been a terrible tragedy for her.

- Not only did she have to

suffer the public ridicule, but she was also

seemingly abandoned by her husband.

- One of the things that happened as a result

of her failing to bear a child

was that Philip then left England,

and for over a year she was without him,

begging him to return, knowing that

she couldn't fall pregnant without him.

So on a personal level and a dynastic level,

it was a terrible blow for Mary

as queen and as a woman.

- But it wasn't the last time

Mary would be mistaken in thinking she was pregnant.

Because two years later she began

to show signs of pregnancy again,

although many had their doubts.

- The queen believes herself to be pregnant.

She can only believe that for two reasons.

One, that Philip is back in England.

Secondly, that they must have had intercourse again.

- She wrote to Philip, telling him

that she was expecting a child.

His response was that he was delighted,

but in reality he was quite skeptical,

as was Mary's court.

- This time hardly anybody believes her.

I think it was just the closest of her ladies around her

played along because they didn't want to upset her.

- The gentlewomen of the privy chamber

don't seem to treat her as if she's pregnant.

And by the middle of the year it's quite actually

whatever the queen believed was happening,

it hasn't happened.

- Again, no arrangements were made for her lying-in.

By the time that her due date arrived,

there was a silence in court.

She didn't go into confinement,

and again the matter was dropped.

- Your majesty,.

- They were right to doubt her.

Mary wasn't pregnant, but she may have been gravely ill.

By may 1558, Mary had become weak and dangerously sick.

It seems possible that what she mistook for pregnancies

were in fact something far more serious.

- There are a number of possibilities.

The sweat was raging through England,

but it seems likely, given these two phantom pregnancies,

that she was suffering from some condition,

possibly some form of cancer

that created these symptoms in her too.

- Some doctors have argued

that what Mary was experiencing

was a form of stomach bloating

that was coming from some form of tumor,

whether it was a ovarian tumor

or whether it was a stomach tumor.

There might have been other illnesses, too,

that created those kinds of symptoms.

- Mary died later that year

at St. James's palace in London, aged 42.

Her husband, Philip, who was away in Brussels at the time,

wrote of his regret at the passing of his wife.

- The idea that Philip doesn't have any feelings for Mary

I think is probably false.

It may not be a love match,

but he sees it as an important match,

a family matter, if I can put it that way,

that touches him deeply and personally.

And he obviously respects her enormously.

And that tells us something about Mary, I think,

because to be respected by somebody like that,

a man brought up to be king of Spain, I think that implies

that Mary herself must have had more

than we often see from the distance,

that we're allowed to get.

- It had taken the death of both her younger brother

and her older sister, but it was finally time

for Elizabeth to take her turn on the throne.

Age 25, Elizabeth was greeted

with open arms by her subjects.

As she paraded through the city

on the Eve of her coronation,

she was met by enthusiastic and adoring crowds.

This was the start of England's golden age.

She was attractive, charismatic and vivacious,

and by the time she became queen,

Elizabeth had already won the love of her people.

But alongside the celebrations

that accompanied her accession,

there was an underlying unease among her new subjects

that they were once again being ruled by a woman.

- Women were the possessions of their men,

their husbands or their fathers.

They didn't own property.

Everything they had, including themselves, bodily,

was the possession of their husband.

- People even debated in certain circles

whether women had souls.

It was that kind of level.

- But Elizabeth made it perfectly clear

that she was no ordinary woman.

She was a queen ordained by god,

and whether they liked it or not,

she was going to rule them.

- We think of women during the 16th century

as being second-class citizens.

We have to remember that status always trumped gender.

Women who came from a noble or a gentry background

would be able to exercise authority and power

over men who were of a lower social status.

- It was a fairly unnatural concept

for most englishmen and English women

to be ruled by a woman who had the ultimate say,

politically, dynastically,

over how the country was run.

- Part of people's fear

of having a woman on the throne was practical,

in that they didn't think that women could keep order.

That's why Elizabeth's achievement was all the greater,

because she did so much manage to keep herself on top.

- Elizabeth understood PR

and knew how to market herself to the public.

One of the way-she did this was through

the beautiful and elaborate clothes she wore at court.

- Elizabeth was an iconic figure in terms of fashion.

She set the style.

Women wanted to look like her.

Men wanted to be in her favor.

- She was exceedingly clever

at making the best of what she had.

She was never a wealthy monarch.

All her clothes were recycled, time and time again.

You think of all that beautiful embroidery that she wore.

It could be taken off one dress and put onto another one.

She was styled on a budget.

- To better understand how Elizabeth would have dressed,

I've come to meet collections curator eleri Lynn

in the costume department at Hampton court palace.

I want to get some first-hand experience

in what it would have been like

to wear one of her exquisite dresses.

But to do that I need to get out of my 21st-century clothes

and into some historic underwear.

So I'm all set in my tudor undies, and do your worst.

- Now this very unassuming layer is very, very important.

So you're in your linen smock.

It absorbs the sweat of the body,

keeping the outer garments clean.

Most people would have changed their linens weekly,

but as a member of the royal family,

you're changing it many more times than that,

possibly several times a day.

- It's quite a cumbersome procedure, isn't it?

But I have to say it feels nice.

I suspect the other layers aren't gonna feel

quite as comfortable, but shall we get started?

- Absolutely, so the next layer is your bodice.

- The elizabethan bodice was a type of corset

worn by the women of the age.

- What the tudors didn't do

was to get into their bodices straight away

and just lace it up and that was that.

They would do it in increments,

because the whalebone in these bodies

would have warmed with your body heat.

- So it actually changes shape to your body?

- Yes, and becomes a bit more comfortable

and a bit more pliable.

- You say whalebone; They're not real whalebone, surely.

They don't go out hunting whales

just in the name of fashion.

- In the 16th century, they have great voyages

of discovery, crossing the Atlantic

and finding these huge whale fisheries.

And they're bringing back all this whalebone.

- Whalebone, during the elizabethan period,

was a highly prized commodity, so much so

that it was considered a royal fish,

meaning that to this day

any whale found in English waters belongs to the monarch.

- Elizabeth is dressing, not only for fashion,

but to project her might

and the power of her expanding empire.

And so she wants to show all of these wonders,

and what better way than to use whalebone

in as many different ways as possible?

- Next to go on is the bum roll,

a kind of padded cushion often filled with feathers

and tied around the waist so it hung at the back.

This would act as a support for the hoop skirt,

known as a farthingale, which would have been stiffened

with either bone or cane to add the rigid shape

we often associate with elizabethan women.

Now I've got the farthingale and the bum roll.

I'm beginning to get a feeling

of what it must have been like to be a larger lady.

And just the way I'm holding myself,

I have to put my hands in front.

You can't stand with them by your side

because it's uncomfortable and probably looks a bit stupid.

- You can suddenly understand why the tudors

are in the postures that they are.

Tudor portraiture always shows the ladies

with their hands sort of crossed or holding something.

- The next layer is the petticoat,

followed by the elaborately decorated outer garment.

This was the most opulent and expensive layer,

often made from hugely valuable fabrics

such as silk and cotton imported from the Middle East

or fine velvets from Italy.

And possibly the most recognizable item

of elizabethan clothing, the ruff,

made from the finest linen from Holland.

Okay, so I've got my dress, I've got my ruff.

Where's the bling?

I need some jewelry.

Elizabeth loved her diamonds and pearls and rubies.

Can we have a little bit of that, perhaps?

Elizabeth was particularly keen on her pearls

and is seen wearing them in many of her portraits.

This was because they were considered to be pure

and were used in tudor symbolism to represent virginity.

- She had a huge collection of jewels,

many of them she'd inherited off her father

from his many wives.

One ring that we know is missing from your fingers now

is a locket ring that she was found wearing when she died.

It was a jeweled ring like any other,

but it opened, and inside was a silhouette of herself

but also a lady in much earlier tudor dress

looking very, very much like the portraits

that we know of Anne boleyn.

- So before we quite finish,

there is the piece de resistance, the crowning glory

of course, the wig.

Thanks to my able dressers here,

I have all of my outfit complete: My wig, my jewels,

my beautiful gown and what lies underneath.

I'm ready to Sally forth into court, am I not?

- She knew how to make an entrance.

She knew how to capture her image in terms of portraits.

And that was really the prevailing ideal

of beauty of the time.

- One big advantage that Elizabeth had

was the fact that she had inherited

her mother Anne boleyn's sense of style.

She did start off reasonably good looking.

She had, oh that twist

of being able to just look particularly good,

and also had incredible charisma.

So Elizabeth was able to stand out amongst her ladies.

- Clothing was important to Elizabeth.

It wasn't just an aesthetic question,

it was about the status.

The more bling, the better.

So if she could incorporate jewels, pearls,

different rich fabrics into her costume,

the more status she projected.

It was a very important status symbol,

a very important sign of her power as queen.

- In public Elizabeth carried herself

with an air of self assurance.

She was confident and acted upon matters of state

with decisive action, defying the expectations

of many of her critics.

But for the most cynical members of her court,

there could be only one reason

for her display of strong leadership.

- There were many rumors about Elizabeth's sexuality,

about her gender, because she exhibited

various masculine qualities such as strength,

the ability to make a decision, authority.

And the belief was that a woman couldn't actually

display these, so the logical outcome

was that surely Elizabeth must be a man in disguise.

- Elizabeth was well aware of these attitudes

and played the game very cleverly.

She pretended to regret her sex,

famously lamenting that she was a weak and feeble woman.

But her reign would prove that this was just play-acting.

Far from being constrained by her sex,

she used it as a weapon.

- Elizabeth used her sexuality at court for certain,

because it was a function of her gender.

As a woman, she interacted with her male courtiers

in a different way than a king would have done.

She played up to them like lovers.

She had favorites, gave them nicknames.

This represented a very different style of queenship.

She vas inventing something new.

She was establishing a court where she was the queen bee.

- She expected men to write poetry to her

and pay her fulsome compliments,

treat her almost like a mistress.

And I think she enjoyed every minute of it.

- Elizabeth could be flirtatious or she could be teasing,

but for the most part she used something else, I think,

as a political weapon, and that was courtly love.

She was an object of devotion.

She would have knights who would do her service

and would be utterly devoted to her,

but they did not have any expectation

of a sexual relationship with her.

And Elizabeth played on that a great deal,

as did her courtiers.

- Like all monarchs, Elizabeth was expected

to marry and produce an heir, but she made it clear

from the outset of her reign

that she had no intention of taking a husband.

It has been assumed that this was pure statecraft.

She did not wish to be ruled by a man.

But the real reason behind Elizabeth's refusal to marry

lay in her private fears sparked by her childhood traumas.

She had just been shy of three years old

when her mother Anne had been executed

at the orders of her father.

Five years later, her stepmother, Catherine Howard,

had followed Anne to the block.

Horrified, the eight-year-old Elizabeth had confided

to her companion Robert Dudley

that she herself would never marry.

- Her big problem was that she couldn't marry

without compromising her authority.

Because at that time a man was always thought

to have authority over his wife,

and Elizabeth was certainly not going to do that.

- Elizabeth was faced by the question

of whether she would marry, because women were not perceived

to be able to govern themselves independently.

- When you married as a woman,

you literally became your husband's chattel.

Anything that you possessed before you were married

became your husband's.

So you could bring a fortune to that marriage,

and your husband could spend that entire fortune

on his mistress, and there was nothing

that you could do about it.

- But there was also another reason;

she was afraid of giving birth.

- Elizabeth had seen the dangers

of pregnancy and childbirth firsthand.

She had experienced the death

of her stepmother Catherine parr during her teens,

and she knew that that was something

that could derail her from the throne.

It also meant if she married,

she'd have to give power to her husband.

She would become second place,

and the idea of going through the pregnancy

and the birth itself, with all the physical weakness

that would cause, wasn't particularly compatible

with her presentation of either the virgin queen

or the ultimate power that she personally wanted to wield.

- Elizabeth was not inclined to marry,

but neither was she prepared

to completely restrain her sexual desires.

Whether or not Elizabeth I was really the virgin queen

has been one of the most hotly debated subjects in history.

Although her iconic image was rooted in her virginal state,

rumors about her sexual misconduct with a whole host of men

were forever breaking out.

- She did have relationships at court,

but just how far these went took place behind closed doors.

- She did have a relationship with some of her courtiers

which was more intimate,

sometimes expressed even in physical touching.

It was erotically charged,

and this created a style at her court

which was obviously very different

from that of her sister or her brother,

and indeed even that of Henry vii.

- Among Elizabeth's many flirtatious relationships

with her male courtiers, the one that inspired

by far the most gossip was that

with her long-standing confidant Robert Dudley.

Friends since childhood, by the time

that Elizabeth became queen, they were inseparable.

A year after her accession, she had Dudley's bedchamber

moved next to her own private apartments

in order to make it easier for them to meet in secret.

Before long, their relationship was causing so much scandal

that Elizabeth had to go to great lengths to conceal it.

- A very clear favorite from the start was Robert Dudley,

with whom Elizabeth seemed to be very much in love

in the early part of her reign.

She had nicknames from him, she kept his letters.

They spent a lot of time together.

I think it most likely that Elizabeth was aware,

as she said often, that she was married to her kingdom first

and everything else came second.

Possibly she had to subjugate the personal

into the domestic, the political.

Was prepared to have emotional connections

but not necessarily physical ones.

- What made their relationship

all the more scandalous

was that Dudley was already married.

Things came to a head when his wife, Amy Dudley,

was found dead at the bottom of a short flight of stairs.

Elizabeth and her alleged lover

were both implicated in the death.

- She couldn't marry him, particularly after his wife, Amy,

died in mysterious circumstances.

She simply couldn't allow her name to be linked

to what was possibly a murder plot.

- The rumors at court spread like wildfire.

There were accusations

that Dudley had his wife killed

so he was free to marry Elizabeth.

Although these claims were unsubstantiated,

they were enough to force the queen

to distance herself from Dudley.

There were even those who said

she secretly bore him a love child.

- Whether the relationship actually became physical,

we can't say for certain.

There was no recorded pregnancy as a result,

but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

- She was a very cautious lady, so that I don't think

she would have engaged in any sex that would risk pregnancy.

But that doesn't mean to say that it wasn't sexual

in the sense of erotic.

- Elizabeth probably was bearing in mind, though,

the danger to herself if she did conceive a child.

She didn't want to run that risk.

- Sex outside of marriage

in elizabethan England was widespread,

and there were even books published

on the subject of lovemaking, but having children

out of wedlock was a different matter altogether.

So they had to find ways to prevent this.

Birth control in the tudor period

was rudimentary, to say the least.

Some methods admittedly would still be employed today,

such as coitus interruptus or the rhythm method,

whereby a woman would abstain from sex

during her most fertile period.

But most of the tudor methods

of birth control were outlandish.

Some women wore amulets around the neck or thigh,

often containing herbs that they believed

to have contraceptive properties such as honeysuckle

or oil of mint, but, bizarrely,

they would also sometimes contain oddities

such as dried cat's liver, donkey dung,

or even weasels' testicles.

But the most common methods involved

inserting some kind of barrier,

whether that was, bizarrely, a slice of lemon

or perhaps a piece of wax molded to shape.

But the most popular was a sponge.

Now this would be cut up and soaked in vinegar.

The reason was that vinegar was believed

to be doubly effective, because not only did it help

the sponge to provide some sort of barrier,

but the vinegar itself was thought

to naturally repel a man's sperm.

Well, if Elizabeth had relied on any of these methods

in order to prevent herself from falling pregnant,

she would have been taking an enormous risk.

- I'm not sure that there was any contraception

that really worked in tudor England at all.

- There was a form of post-coitus contraception,

in other words, a form of early abortion

that was practiced through herbal remedies

being used to induce an abortion.

These were the ways in which historians now think

that contraception was practiced.

- Whether they worked or not,

most women would have learned

about these birth control methods

through their female friends.

Although Elizabeth did not have friends

in the true sense of the word, she did become very close

to a number of her most intimate attendants.

They included Elizabeth fiennes de Clinton,

who facilitated her royal mistress's meetings

with her male courtiers, and her old governess Kat astley,

who knew many of her most intimate secrets.

At least one of Elizabeth's ladies

would even sleep in the same room as her.

This meant they were able to run errands

for the queen at a moment's notice.

- She did have a lot of ladies who served her faithfully

all the way through her life.

Having said that, she was very bad-tempered,

and when her life got stressy,

the ladies could find themselves treated really quite badly.

They were pinched, and in fact she even broke the finger

of one of her ladies.

So she could be a very difficult woman to work for.

- As age began to overtake Elizabeth

and she had to face the fact

that she was no longer the most desirable woman at court,

she underwent an increasingly elaborate routine

of dressing and makeup, including the use

of a series of outlandish wigs

as well as white lead on her face,

which ironically did more to corrode her skin

than aging ever could.

- Elizabeth notoriously took a long time

to get herself ready, to make herself presentable.

It was very much a theatrical process.

She would have had her ladies ready

to help prepare her skin.

- She would use various compounds

in order to make it whiter, to make it softer

and also to hide the blemishes

which she had as a result of smallpox.

- But Elizabeth's looks also fell victim

to her ever-expanding empire.

This was the age of discovery,

and things that were once rare delicacies

were now commonplace in the royal court.

Elizabethan explorers were bringing back sugar

in greater quantities than ever before,

and nobody benefited more from this than the queen herself.

Elizabeth was said to eat sparingly,

but she had an incredibly sweet tooth.

She would add sugar to everything,

not just cakes and chocolates but to wine and even salads.

And to make matters worse,

Elizabeth used honey to clean her teeth.

Well, not surprisingly those teeth soon started

to rot and fall out,

which made Elizabeth' appearance change.

Her face seemed rather gaunt,

so she used what were known as plumpers,

pieces of cloth that she would stuff into her cheek

to make herself appear as she did before.

Well, these had another advantage,

because the plumpers would first be soaked

in some sweet-smelling oil or potion, which helped

to offset the stench of Elizabeth's foul breath.

Towards the latter part of her life,

Elizabeth was practically bald and toothless,

a secret that the young Earl of essex

accidentally discovered.

The audacious Earl, who was more than 30 years her junior,

played court to her like a lover,

and Elizabeth was obsessed with him.

But their liaison came to an abrupt end

when he burst into her bedchamber early one morning.

Who's there?

- Your majesty, it's the Earl of essex.

- How dare you come here unannounced?

Get away from here!

- He was aghast to see her

stripped of her usual thick makeup and wigs.

At court he laughed with his friends about what he had seen,

saying she had a crooked carcass.

But Elizabeth had the last laugh.

She had him executed shortly afterwards.

- This is a time when no person of any standing

is ever left on their own.

You are always surrounded by people

as a sign to how much influence you have.

So private life wasn't ever really in it for them.

As time went by, Elizabeth's reign continued

with strength and the love of her people.

But while the years brought her reverence and respect,

they also brought her loneliness.

She had outlived most of her longest-serving confidants,

and her flirtatious liaisons

and romances had all but ceased.

It was also noted by witnesses at court

that the once vivacious and beautiful queen

had started to fade.

- Elizabeth at the end of her life, in private,

would definitely have been no oil painting.

- In later years, as she aged she deliberately asked

for this to be concealed and portraits were created

to make her look youngster, youthful.

- By the age of 69, Elizabeth had sat on the throne

for 44 years, and having been married only to her country,

she was to be the last of the tudor dynasty.

But her memory and her family's legacy

would continue to live on.

- I think the tudors are remembered

the way they'd like to be remembered,

particularly Elizabeth I and Henry viii,

because I would imagine that most of our first thoughts

would be those famous portraits

by people like holbein of Henry,

the armada portraits for Elizabeth,

which show them in full splendor,

exactly the way they wanted to be remembered.

So I think you have to say they got it right.

- To the very last she continued with her public duties

and ruled with authority.

But she began to suffer from ill health,

which made her increasingly debilitated.

Elizabeth's reign was coming to a close.

She died in her private bedchamber

at Richmond palace in march 1603,

surrounded by only her closest female attendants.

It was a death that was both dignified

and fittingly private.