Elizabeth I Trivia
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69 free Elizabeth I trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Elizabeth I trivia quiz covers the last Tudor: the two-year-old declared a bastard when her mother was beheaded, the prisoner in the Tower under her sister Mary, the 25-year-old crowned on a day chosen by her astrologer, the Virgin Queen who juggled suitors for a quarter of a century, the cousin she kept locked up for nineteen years and finally beheaded, the Armada, Tilbury, Essex, and forty-four years that gave their name to an age. The easy questions cover the outline: her parents, her nickname, her chief minister, her spymaster, the fleet of 1588 and the cousin who succeeded her. The harder half is for readers of Neale and Doran: the languages her governess taught her, the stepfather who romped in her bedroom, the year under house arrest at Woodstock, the bishop who crowned her, the title she took instead of Supreme Head, the wife who fell down the stairs, the man who claimed to be her son, the papal bull of 1570, the secretary blamed for the death warrant, the fire ships off Gravelines, the tsar who proposed, the earl who lost his head after a botched coup, and the words she snapped at Robert Cecil on her deathbed. Every answer was checked against Elizabeth I's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots and Shakespeare quizzes next.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was Elizabeth I's mother?
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII broke with Rome to marry her in hope of a son, yet before their daughter turned three he had her executed on charges of adultery and treason.
Q 02Elizabeth I shared her first name with both grandmothers; which one was the mother of Henry VIII?
Elizabeth of York
Elizabeth of York. Her marriage to Henry VII joined the rival houses of York and Lancaster after the Wars of the Roses, so their granddaughter carried the blood of both sides.
Q 03Which wife of Henry VIII gave Elizabeth I a half-brother, the future Edward VI, and died days after the birth?
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour. Henry married her eleven days after the execution of Elizabeth's mother, and the arrival of her son pushed Elizabeth, already declared illegitimate, still further from the throne.
Q 04Which governess, at Elizabeth I's side from early childhood, served as her chief gentlewoman until dying in 1565?
Kat Ashley
Kat Ashley. Sent to the Tower in 1549 over the Lord Admiral's pursuit of the princess, she was cleared of treason and back in Elizabeth's household within months.
Q 05At 12, Elizabeth I translated whose Prayers or Meditations into Italian, Latin and French as a gift for her father?
Catherine Parr's
Catherine Parr's. Henry VIII's sixth wife had taken her stepchildren's schooling in hand, and her own small book of prayers sold so well that it ran through edition after edition.
Q 06Which Cambridge scholar, Elizabeth I's tutor in Greek and Latin from 1548, went on to serve as her Latin secretary?
Roger Ascham
Roger Ascham. He argued that pupils learn through gentleness rather than beatings, the case he made in The Scholemaster, and the queen kept up her Greek reading with him until he died.
Q 07Which stepfather engaged in romps with the teenage Elizabeth I, entering her bedroom in his nightgown?
Thomas Seymour
Thomas Seymour. Once widowed, he schemed to marry Elizabeth and control the boy king, and was executed for treason in 1549; some historians think the episode put her off marriage.
Q 08How long did Lady Jane Grey reign before being deposed in favour of Mary in 1553?
Nine days
Nine days. Edward VI's will had passed over his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth for their Protestant cousin, but the country rallied to Mary and even Jane's own father ended up proclaiming her queen.
Q 09After which 1554 rising was Elizabeth I imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity?
Wyatt's rebellion
Wyatt's rebellion. The rebels marched on London to stop Mary's Spanish marriage and may have meant to crown Elizabeth, but two months of questioning turned up no proof that she had joined them.
Q 10Where did Elizabeth I spend almost a year under house arrest after her release from the Tower in May 1554?
Woodstock Palace
Woodstock Palace. She was called back to court in 1555 to attend the birth of Mary's heir, but no child ever came, and Elizabeth was left next in line for the throne.
Q 11Where was Elizabeth I living when she learned she had become queen in November 1558?
Hatfield
Hatfield. She held her first council in the great hall there, and many of the household who had shared her years of waiting at the Hertfordshire house were given posts at the new court.
Q 12Which king, Mary I's widower, courted Elizabeth I?
Philip II
Philip II of Spain. She turned him down early in 1559, and three decades later the rejected suitor sent the Armada to conquer her kingdom.
Q 13Which court astrologer and mathematician picked the day for Elizabeth I's coronation in January 1559?
John Dee
John Dee. He judged the stars most favourable on 15 January, and in later life he spent years trying to talk with angels through a medium who may have been duping him.
Q 21What pet name did Elizabeth I give her last serious suitor, a prince half her age who courted her in person?
Her frog
Her frog. He was the only foreign suitor to woo her face to face, and the nickname fitted a habit: Leicester was her 'eyes' and Christopher Hatton her 'mutton'.
Q 22Which Scandinavian king's proposal did Elizabeth I entertain for several years early in her reign?
Eric XIV of Sweden
Eric XIV of Sweden. She wrote, with every show of regret, telling him not to come, yet months later he was about to sail for England to woo her when his father died.
Q 23Which tsar wrote to Elizabeth I for years and asked her to promise him refuge in England if he lost his throne?
Ivan the Terrible
Q 14Aboard which ship did Elizabeth I knight its captain in 1581, after his three-year voyage around the world?
Golden Hind
Golden Hind. It had set out as the Pelican and was renamed mid-voyage after the golden deer on the coat of arms of the expedition's patron, the courtier Christopher Hatton.
Q 15What title did Elizabeth I take over the English church in 1559, in place of the one her father had used?
Supreme Governor
Supreme Governor. Many thought 'Supreme Head' unfit for a woman to bear, and the gentler wording also spared her the charge of claiming Christ's place at the head of the church.
Q 16What does Elizabeth I's Latin motto 'Video et taceo' mean?
I see and keep silent
I see and keep silent. She lived by it: for decades she refused to name an heir, reasoning that a known successor would become the centre of plots against her.
Q 17At which castle did Leicester entertain Elizabeth I for almost three weeks of pageants and fireworks in 1575?
Kenilworth Castle
Kenilworth Castle. It was the longest stay she ever made with a courtier, and he laid out a private garden for her in a last attempt to win her hand, yet she left unmarried.
Q 18How did Amy Dudley, wife of Elizabeth I's favourite, die in September 1560?
A fall down a flight of stairs
A fall down a flight of stairs. The inquest ruled it an accident, but talk that her husband had arranged it killed any chance of the queen marrying him.
Q 19Whom did Leicester marry in 1578, earning the lifelong hatred of Elizabeth I?
Lettice Knollys
Lettice Knollys. She was the queen's own cousin, and Elizabeth banished her from court for good while the bridegroom kept his place at the royal side.
Q 20Elizabeth I's last serious suitor, 22 years her junior, was which youngest son of Catherine de' Medici?
Francis, Duke of Anjou
Francis, Duke of Anjou. The match was so unpopular that a pamphleteer who attacked it in print, John Stubbs, had his right hand cut off for sedition.
Ivan the Terrible. He grumbled that she cared more for trade than for a military alliance, and after sounding her out about marriage he tried for her kinswoman Mary Hastings instead.
Q 24In 1563 Elizabeth I told an envoy that, if she followed her own nature, she would rather be what?
A beggar-woman and single
A beggar-woman and single. 'Far rather than queen and married,' she told an envoy who had come to discuss a husband, in the year Parliament begged her to wed or name an heir and she did neither.
Q 25Before the 1601 rising against Elizabeth I, the plotters paid Shakespeare's company to stage which play about a deposed king?
Richard II
Richard II. The actors took 40 shillings over their usual fee, were questioned and let off, and the queen is reported to have said months later, 'I am Richard II, know ye not that?'
Q 26Which 1560 agreement removed the French threat from Scotland after Elizabeth I aided Protestant rebels there?
The Treaty of Edinburgh
The Treaty of Edinburgh. The French garrisons went home, but Mary, Queen of Scots, in whose name it was made, refused for years to ratify it, however hard England pressed her.
Q 27Whom did Elizabeth I propose as a husband for Mary, Queen of Scots in 1563, without asking either party?
Robert Dudley
Robert Dudley. Offering her own favourite was meant to give Mary a husband England could trust, but neither of the pair was keen and Mary chose Darnley instead.
Q 28How was Mary, Queen of Scots, long held captive in England, related to Elizabeth I?
Cousins
Cousins. Mary was the granddaughter of Henry VIII's elder sister Margaret, which gave her a claim to the English throne and made her the focus of one Catholic plot after another.
Q 29Which pope's 1570 bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicated Elizabeth I and released her subjects from allegiance?
Pius V
Pius V. He had no means to enforce it, and the bull rebounded on the people it was meant to help: Parliament answered with harsher laws against English Catholics, now suspected of treason.
Q 30Who ran the secret service that uncovered the Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth I?
Francis Walsingham
Francis Walsingham. His double agents had Mary, Queen of Scots smuggle her coded letters out in beer barrels, so each one crossed his codebreaker's desk before it was delivered.