Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
70 free Elizabeth I trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was Elizabeth I's mother?
Anne Boleyn
She was beheaded when Elizabeth was two years and eight months old.
Q 02The princess was named after her two grandmothers, who were?
Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard
Archbishop Cranmer stood as one of her godparents at Greenwich in September 1533.
Q 03How old was Elizabeth when her mother was executed?
Two years and eight months
She was promptly declared illegitimate and struck from the succession, restored only when she was ten.
Q 04Which governess, appointed in 1537, taught the young Elizabeth French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish?
Kat Ashley
Born Catherine Champernowne, she remained Elizabeth's friend until her death in 1565.
Q 05At 12, Elizabeth I translated whose Prayers or Meditations into Italian, Latin and French as a gift for her father?
Catherine Parr's
A translation of Tacitus in her own hand was identified at Lambeth Palace Library in 2019.
Q 06Which tutor taught Elizabeth from 1548 and left memoirs describing her precocity?
Roger Ascham
By the time her schooling ended in 1550 she was one of the best-educated women of her generation.
Q 07Which stepfather engaged in romps with the 14-year-old Elizabeth, entering her bedroom in his nightgown?
Thomas Seymour
He was beheaded in 1549 for scheming to marry her and control the boy king; some think the episode put her off marriage for life.
Q 08How long did Lady Jane Grey reign before being deposed in favour of Mary in 1553?
Nine days
Edward VI's will had bypassed both his half-sisters for their Protestant cousin.
Q 09After which 1554 rising was Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity?
Wyatt's rebellion
Discontent at Mary's plan to marry Philip of Spain had made Elizabeth a focus for opposition.
Q 10Where did Elizabeth spend almost a year under house arrest after her release from the Tower in May 1554?
Woodstock Palace
Crowds cheered her all along the road there.
Q 11Where was Elizabeth living when she learned she had become queen in November 1558?
Hatfield
Her council and peers came there to swear allegiance and hear her first speech.
Q 12How old was Elizabeth when she became queen?
25
Her half-sister Mary had recognised her as heir just eleven days before dying.
Q 13Who chose 15 January 1559 as the date of Elizabeth's coronation?
Her astrologer John Dee
She was crowned by Owen Oglethorpe, the Catholic bishop of Carlisle, at Westminster Abbey.
Which chief adviser did Elizabeth create Baron Burghley?
Q 21What frog-shaped gift from her French suitor did Elizabeth wear?
An earring
Public tributes to the Virgin around 1578 doubled as coded opposition to the match.
Q 22Which Scandinavian king's proposal did Elizabeth entertain for several years early in her reign?
Eric XIV of Sweden
Denmark's Frederick II countered with his own proposal in late 1559.
Q 23Which tsar, whom she wrote to on amicable terms about trade, once proposed marriage to Elizabeth?
Ivan the Terrible
He also asked for a guarantee of asylum in England if his rule collapsed.
William Cecil
He served her until his death in 1598, when his political mantle passed to his son Robert.
Q 15What title did Elizabeth accept as head of the English church, in place of her father's?
Supreme Governor
Many thought Supreme Head unacceptable for a woman to bear.
Q 16What was one of Elizabeth's mottoes, meaning 'I see and keep silent'?
Video et taceo
Semper eadem, always the same, was another of hers.
Q 17Which childhood friend was Elizabeth evidently in love with in 1559, and later made Earl of Leicester?
Robert Dudley
After her death a note from him marked 'his last letter' in her hand was found among her most personal belongings.
Q 18How did Amy Dudley, wife of the queen's favourite, die in September 1560?
A fall down a flight of stairs
The inquest said accident, but many suspected her husband had arranged it so he could marry the queen.
Q 19Whom did Leicester finally marry in 1578, earning the queen's lifelong hatred?
Lettice Knollys
Elizabeth reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure.
Q 20Elizabeth's last serious courtship, in her forties, was with which French prince 22 years her junior?
Francis, Duke of Anjou
She wore a frog-shaped earring he had sent her.
Q 24In 1563 Elizabeth told an envoy that if she followed her nature she would rather be what?
A beggar-woman and single
Far rather than queen and married, she said.
Q 25A man arrested in Spain in 1587 claimed to be Elizabeth's son by Leicester. What name did he use?
Arthur Dudley
Philip II kept him very secure and he was never heard of again; scholars call the story impossible.
Q 26Which 1560 agreement removed the French threat from Scotland after Elizabeth aided Protestant rebels?
The Treaty of Edinburgh
Mary, Queen of Scots refused to ratify it when she returned from France in 1561.
Q 27Whom did Elizabeth propose as a husband for Mary, Queen of Scots in 1563, without asking either party?
Robert Dudley
Both were unenthusiastic; Mary married Darnley instead in 1565.
Q 28For how many years was Mary, Queen of Scots held in England before her execution?
Nineteen
She had fled south after her defeat at Langside in 1568.
Q 29Which pope's 1570 bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicated Elizabeth and released her subjects from allegiance?
Pius V
He believed the Northern Rising of 1569 had succeeded; it had not, and over 750 rebels were executed.
Q 30Who ran the secret service that defeated the Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth?
Francis Walsingham
He built the case against Mary, Queen of Scots from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 to the Babington Plot of 1586.