11. Transition

11. Transition

With no children of her own, what had Elizabeth I done to guarantee a smooth succession after her death? The answer is precious little. Which meant there had to be some clever footwork by her Chief Minister Robert Cecil, son of the William Cecil who had served so ably before, to ensure that the transition went well, peacefully and the way he wanted it. You'll not be surprised to learn that part of "the way he wanted it", was the way that ensured he kept his job. You can tell how that turned out by the illustration, which shows him confirmed in his post, a year later, at an international peace conference with Spain.

As well as clever footwork, the death of Elizabeth was followed by exciting hoofwork, as the crazy Robert Carey galloped at breakneck speed northward to bring the good news to James VI of Scotland, soon to be James I of England too. Not that it was that crazy, seeing how well he did out of his adventurous dash (eventually)...


The illustration shows the Somerset Conference of 1604, with Secretary of State Robert Cecil at the far right, with writing implements in front of him
©Juan Garcia/123RF.COM
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Jaksot(274)

249. Who governs Britain?

249. Who governs Britain?

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248. Withered Heath

248. Withered Heath

Ted Heath’s government had to deal with two problems drawn from Britain’s postimperial standing: • adapting to its loss of global status, by negotiating, at the third time of asking and for the first ...

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247. Hopes dashed

247. Hopes dashed

After talking last week about his government’s achievements in the social sphere, this episode looks at the difficulties Wilson faced in economics and foreign affairs.One way Wilson explored to addres...

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246. The sixties, swinging - high and low

246. The sixties, swinging - high and low

According to the English poet Philip Larkin, the sixties saw the invention of sexual intercourse. While that may not be quite the case, it was certainly a time when a lot of people decided that it was...

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245. Pressures preventing progress

245. Pressures preventing progress

The Wilson government got off to a pretty sticky start, with the new Prime Minister learning, more or less as he arrived at Downing Street in October 1964, that the trade deficit for the year was like...

1 Kesä 202514min

244. Harold gets Home

244. Harold gets Home

Here we’re focusing on the changes that took place in Britain after Supermac (Harold Macmillan) stood down as Prime Minister.A lot of how that went depended on the Opposition formed by the Labour Part...

25 Touko 202514min

243. Sex, spies and a slippery slope

243. Sex, spies and a slippery slope

Last time we looked at the continuing disintegration of the British Empire. In this episode we look at two other key aspects of Macmillan’s foreign policy, Britain’s relations with the US and with pot...

18 Touko 202515min

242. A wind of change driving the retreat from empire

242. A wind of change driving the retreat from empire

‘The wind of change’ was the other famous phrase of Harold Macmillan’s, along with ‘You’ve never had it so good’. It came in a speech in which he talked about how a movement had grown up in many count...

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