Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603), the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ruled for 45 years and never married. Her reign saw the consolidation of the Protestant settlement at home and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 — a vast invasion fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain that was scattered by English ships and bad weather in the English Channel.
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Elizabethan England was also a golden age of culture. William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe wrote for the new commercial theatres in London; Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580; Sir Walter Raleigh promoted English settlement in North America. Elizabeth was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.
You may be asked the year of the Armada (1588), who Elizabeth's father was (Henry VIII), or which playwright wrote for Elizabethan London.
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