On this day the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn, was crowned Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey in London. She was just twenty-five years old at the time and would soon become known as the ‘Virgin Queen’ because of her reluctance to cede any power through marriage. Her predecessor and half-sister, Mary I, the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, had passed a number of pro-Catholic laws in England during her five-year reign and Elizabeth’s primary mission was to transform the country back into a Protestant regime. It was also during her reign that England, under such commanders as Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, began to dominate the seas.
