Procrastinate like Elizabeth I

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2:28Queen Elizabeth I had a secret superpower, procrastination. By delaying decisions and prevaricating positively, she was able to stay on the throne for half a century, despite huge challenges from both within and without her court. Welcome to Life Lessons from History with me, Dave Musgrove. The concept is simple. I find a great historian and I ask them to propose a life lesson from history. Some learning from the past that will help us today to live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.

3:05Today I'm talking to Professor Tracey Borman, Chief Curator at the Historic Royal Palaces and an expert on all things Tudor. Her latest book is The Stolen Crown, Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty. In this episode, she explains what we can learn from the Virgin Queen about the art of delaying decisions. Tracey, how are you?

3:23Tracy Borman:I'm very well, Dave. Thank you very much for having me back. Always a joy. Always, always welcome on the podcast, Tracey. Top line the story for us. What are you suggesting we should do? Ah, so, of course, I'm predictable. It had to be to do with Elizabeth I, but she was the absolute master of procrastination, or at least that's how it appeared. So really, her strategy was to resist the pressure that she was constantly under from her male advisors, her parliaments, her people even, to do things like marry, have an heir, go to war. and she played the procrastination card absolutely brilliantly because instead of being pressured into making a decision she would say hang on you know I just need a bit of time I'm gonna just think about that I'm only a woman what do I know I can't make decisions so I'm just gonna you know twiddle my thumbs for a while and maybe the right thing will come to me so she bought herself valuable time with this strategy of just basically putting things off.

4:32Tracy Borman:And I think partly it was driven by politics. It was a very, very good strategy to play the gender card, say that she's not capable of making a decision, she's just a woman. But partly too, she probably just wanted to delay it a bit, have a think, go for a walk. She loved having walks in her palaces and in the gardens early in the mornings, have a bit of a think. And maybe actually, while she put off the decision, the right thing would actually become very obvious anyway, as it tended to do, actually, in most of the major decisions of her reign. So yeah, I love this one, because I'm rubbish at decisions.

5:12Tracy Borman:I hate having to make a decision. I'm paralysed by it. And I often channel my inner Elizabeth when faced with a dilemma. I think, you know what, I'm going to do absolutely nothing and just see what happens. Now, OK, several things. Firstly, I don't believe that you do absolutely nothing because you're constantly working and writing books, but we'll come back to that. Now, OK, so what are kind of the big decisions that Elizabeth I had to contend with? What are the issues that she was trying to deal with? So first and foremost, her marriage was a biggie because she comes to the throne, she's single, she's 25 years old.

5:52Tracy Borman:Of course, the first thing everybody expects her to do is to take a husband and thus secure the dynasty, the succession. It's the right thing to do, not just for a queen, but for any woman. Why wouldn't she? But she famously declares to her first parliament, I will live and die a virgin. I ain't going to marry. So you might say she didn't procrastinate. She made a decision. But the thing is, then she faffed around quite a lot. And she sort of showed herself willing to entertain foreign suitors and indeed homegrown ones as well. She lent them a willing ear. She entered into negotiations. She delayed.

6:31Tracy Borman:She put off with, there was this wonderful phrase that her councillors used about Elizabeth, that she gave answers answerless. She was very, very good at kind of, they would leave thinking she'd given them an answer. And then they realised actually, she didn't give us an answer at all. She's just delaying again. And so you sense that they're literally tearing their hair up with Elizabeth, particularly over the issue of her marriage. And she plays this game for a good 20, 30 years, actually. I mean, her last suitor, serious suitor, really, is the Duke of Anjou in the early 1580s, by which time Elizabeth can no longer have children.

7:12and nobody really believes she's ever going to marry, but she still makes a good go at it and

7:18Tracy Borman:kind of strings it out a bit and flirts with him and calls him her little frog. And then eventually he goes back to France and the whole thing is forgotten. But she's brilliant at just playing for time. So that was really the first and one of the biggest things that Elizabeth procrastinated over. And the next one is related to that because it's the succession. So of course, the easiest way to settle the succession is to get married and to have a child, preferably a spare or two as well. Elizabeth has made it clear, you know, that's not going to be straightforward. She's, you know, going to not make a decision about that.

7:56Tracy Borman:But neither does she show herself willing to name her kind of backup plan successor if she doesn't get married. and this becomes pressing four years into her reign when in 1562 she's staying at my home palace Hampton Court and she falls ill with smallpox which is one of the most deadly diseases of the age so everybody thinks she's about to die Elizabeth herself thinks she's about to die and it brings this question of the succession right to the fore and from that moment on even though Elizabeth survives, it never goes away. So Elizabeth is under constant, increasingly intense pressure. Just name your heir.

8:38Tracy Borman:Who's it going to be? Mary, Queen of Scots or Lady Catherine Grey or even Philip II of Spain. But just name an heir. We need to know. And this really is Elizabeth procrastinating par excellence, because she manages it for 40 years. She just keeps putting them off. Do you know what? I'll have a think about it. Or she says things like, when I am dead, he shall succeed that has the most right. And so people are like, okay, well, what does she mean by that? And so they carry on urging her to settle the issue. And so she carries on saying, I just need a little bit more time and goes to her grave never doing it, as I claim in my new book, Dave.

9:27Why was that politically expedient for her? Why did she do that? Did that help her to reign because she hadn't settled it?

9:35Tracy Borman:Yeah, it was a masterstroke, actually, because she knew from direct experience that the minute she named her heir, she was in trouble. The same had happened during her sister Mary's reign, where it was very obvious, actually, that Elizabeth was the only viable successor. And everybody started to gather around her and turn against Mary. And Elizabeth became the focus of rebellions against her sister. And she was absolutely determined that wasn't going to happen to her. The only way of holding on to her power, to securing her throne, was not to give somebody the power of knowing that they were going to succeed her.

10:11Tracy Borman:and certainly not the likes of Mary, Queen of Scots, her deadliest rival. So it was politically expedient not to name an heir, although admittedly, you've got to take your hat off to her for still refusing to do so on her deathbed when you kind of think she's got nothing to lose now. Just say it's going to be James of Scotland, who is the sort of front runner her by that time. But no, she doesn't. And so she just continues to her last breath to keep the focus entirely on herself. And that must have created a problem right at the end. Surely she should have stopped procrastinating and laid out when she knew that her time was almost up.

10:55Tracy Borman:Well, I don't know. I'm never going to speak against Elizabeth and her policies, Dave. You know that by now. It did create some turbulence, but what it did was to prompt her advisors, and in particular Robert Cecil, to do something about it. So really in the years leading up to Elizabeth's death, he'd started this secret correspondence with James of Scotland, the man he decided to back as the future King of England. And so it was sort of a done deal. By the time Elizabeth died, they'd arranged James's accession almost as a foregone conclusion. And then they created this fiction that actually on her deathbed, Elizabeth had named him, even And though we've since discovered, thanks to research commissioned by the British Library, that that was a one big whopping fib and that Elizabeth never named James or anybody else to succeed her.

11:46And that's your new book?

11:48Tracy Borman:My new book, thanks for mentioning Dave, is The Stolen Crown. All about this, the fiction that was the Stuart succession and all of the turbulence and the double dealing that led to the demise of the Tudors and the rise of the Stuarts. Well, we will have you on the podcast to talk about that, I am very sure. Now, another sort of example of procrastination I was thinking about was Mary, Queen of Scots, as you mentioned there. She spent a long time not doing anything about Mary, even though she sort of had her in her grasp. What was going on there? She did, and that's another great example. Almost 30 years she strung that one out.

12:30Tracy Borman:So really, this was the most important relationship of Elizabeth's life. It wasn't With a man, it was with Mary, Queen of Scots, who, of course, she never met. But Mary was Elizabeth's deadliest rival. She's Catholic, Elizabeth's Protestants. Half of Elizabeth's subjects want to see Mary on the throne even before Elizabeth's dead. And so she's very, very dangerous to Elizabeth, possibly even more dangerous once she's Elizabeth's prisoner, when she loses her crown in Scotland and flees to England, one of the worst moves ever made in history. And then as prisoner, of course, there are plots about Mary.

13:07Tracy Borman:And again, Elizabeth's advisors are constantly pressurizing Elizabeth to do something about the Queen of Scots. Put her to death, you've got enough evidence, but Elizabeth always holds them at bay and says, you know, I just need a bit more time. I'm not sure whether it's the right thing. I'm going to think about it. I'm going to think about it. And this works for quite a long time, all the way up to 1586 when Elizabeth's great spymaster, Walsingham, sets a trap for Mary. And she really signs her own death warrant by corresponding with a Catholic plotter named Anthony Babington. And Walsingham, when his agent sees that letter, they draw a gallows on it because they know, you know, we've got her.

13:49Tracy Borman:This is it. Even Elizabeth can't put it off now. She has to go. She has to die. But still, Elizabeth strings it out for a little bit longer. Well, yes, she writes letter after letter to Mary. How could you? How could you do this? But she puts off that decision for as long as she possibly can. And the weeks wear on. And then she does it all of a sudden. She just calls for the execution warrant. She signs it and off it goes. But then, even then, when she's finally made the decision, Then she tries to backtrack and say, hang on a minute, though. I didn't tell you to actually dispatch it. I signed it, but I didn't give the order for you to carry it out.

14:33So, oh, what did you do?

14:35Tracy Borman:That wasn't me. I didn't make that decision. I needed more time. So, yeah, really good example. Could I hear Cromwell the dog barking in the background? I started to talk over him in the valiant attempt just to mask Cromwell the dog. You know this, Dave. He's always trying to get in on the podcast. So just on Mary Queen of Scots, was Elizabeth procrastinating because she was genuinely conflicted? She didn't want to have this woman executed? Or was she just unable to make a decision? What was going on doing? I think Elizabeth was genuinely conflicted because this was going to set a very dangerous precedent.

15:18Tracy Borman:Putting an anointed queen to death. Elizabeth herself was an anointed queen. Somebody could just come along and do the same to her. I think as well, undoubtedly, it evoked memories of the last anointed queen to be executed in England, who was Elizabeth's own mother, Anne Boleyn. So of course, she flinched from it. But as well, this was a huge deal. Mary had royal blood flowing through her veins. She was the closest blood relative Elizabeth had. I think Elizabeth knew she was probably the rightful heir to her throne, if anybody was. And so I do think there was a lot of genuine conflict here. She knew it was probably the biggest decision of her reign.

16:02Tracy Borman:And so she did put it off for a few more weeks. But in the end, I think even she realised she had to die. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready. Because Quakers coming in hot with morning nutrition, 100 % whole grain oats, and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26.

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17:21Ooh, you guessed it, didn't you? $10! The$10 bucket of the day deal Every weekday, only at KFC It's finger-lickin' good Prices and participation vary While supplies last night Available on third-party ordering platforms Tax Extra You mentioned earlier When we were at the top of the interview You talked about the fact that obviously she was a woman, famously she was a woman. How far was this a kind of a gendered strategy that she could employ or had to employ because she was a queen rather than a king?

17:48Tracy Borman:Yeah, she did this brilliantly. So basically she played her quite chauvinistic male courtiers at their own game because, of course, she was a weak and feeble woman. What am I going to do? I can't make decisions. I don't understand weighty matters. I need time to think about it. She does this again and again, and she employs that language to make sure that people are aware that it's just her womanly weakness. And so don't put me under pressure. You can't expect anything better from a woman. And all the time, it's a very, very clever ploy of buying herself just that precious time. And particularly when it came to war.

18:25Tracy Borman:So this was one realm that was very male dominated. And Elizabeth made no secret of the fact she hated wars. They had uncertain outcomes. They were expensive. She was much more like her grandfather, Henry VII, than her warmongering father, Henry VIII. And she again tried to buy time with diplomacy by using her hand in marriage as a bait to keep the great superpowers of Europe on side. And then it was only when forced that she really had to kind of rally and take action notably in 1588 when Philip II launched his armada against England. And then she did finally agree, yes, okay, we can go to war.

19:13So if she was employing this as a kind of a womanly device, and you've been clear that it was a strategy rather than a weakness, what was the masculine response to this? Did kings not procrastinate?

19:25Tracy Borman:It was seen as a weakness and compare Elizabeth to her father, Henry VIII, who I tried to say that in a respectful voice and failed. But Henry was just the ultimate kind of knee jerk kind of guy. He's, yeah, oh, Francis I has said something to upset me. I'm going to go to war. Come on, let's get the troops, sail across the channel and spend a huge amount of money and come back having failed spectacularly and wasted all of the country's money. But he was always making snap decisions, often to do with his wives. Let's execute one of those today. Or ministers, poor old Thomas Cromwell came a cropper, and along with numerous others.

20:04Tracy Borman:He didn't flinch from just making a decision very, very quickly. And often it was the exact opposite to the way he seemed to have been leaning the day before. And this was a bit of a strategy on Henry's part. He often said things like, if my cap knew what I was thinking, I would throw it in the fire. So he didn't want to be predictable. So he was always making snap decisions. Elizabeth was the exact opposite and used her womanly weakness to buy her time and have a think. But it was a much wiser strategy. It saved her country a lot of money. It actually kept England at peace with her European neighbours for many years.

20:47Tracy Borman:And she also managed to settle the vexed question of religion. Now, you might say, and Elizabeth's critics have said, that actually she didn't settle religion. She just stored up problems for later on because she sort of came up with this uncomfortable compromise that pleased neither Catholics nor Protestants. But it was very, very pragmatic, the Elizabethan religious settlement. And yeah, it might have kind kind of kick the ball a bit further down the line. But it did at least bring much needed security, peace, after 30 years of religious turmoil. I wanted to pick up on what you were just saying there about snap decisions and unpredictability.

21:28I mean, that has resonance today to some world leaders. I wonder whether you take anything from that. Do you think that Elizabeth was a better ruler because of the stability and predictability that she provided? Did she provide predictability?

21:49Tracy Borman:I think Elizabeth, to an extent, provided predictability. I think particularly as her reign wore on and both her advisors, her members of parliament and her people got used to this is the way it's going to be. The Queen is going to make a quick decision. She's going to take her time. She likes to be pragmatic as well. And so she became predictable, but she could also be mercurial as well, certainly where her favour was concerned. So it said that it all could be sunshine one moment and then anon came a sudden gathering of clouds and somebody would be banished from court. But I think when she was at her mercurial best, it was usually over relatively minor things.

22:36Tracy Borman:She might get cross with Essex and kick him out for a while. It wasn't great state affairs that she would make snap decisions on like her father had done. But it wasn't necessarily seen as a good thing, even though now we would actually hold that up as quite a good example for world leaders. Take your time, really make sure you suss out the territory, don't rush into anything and do rash things with the country's money and people at the time it it was seen as it's not it's not very masculine it's not very decisive um and elizabeth got quite a lot of flack for her procrastination um and going back to the the religious settlement so i was just sort of thinking about this before um before we chatted about um questions that i'm asking and i was thinking reflecting on the fact that edward and mary before her obviously there was so much turmoil in religion and the lack of religious settlement or the flip-flopping of religion.

23:34Do you think that, did that give her, Elizabeth, a sense that she really had to take her time and she had to be very careful to guide her country through what was clearly very murky waters?