“A golden age”

For some. The 1590s brought failed harvests, plague and a vagrancy crisis serious enough to need new law. A pupil who writes the reign as forty-five years of theatre and exploration cannot explain why the Poor Laws were passed at the end of it.

The useful habit is to ask: a golden age for whom? That question earns marks in almost any question on the period.

“The weather beat the Armada”

The storms finished it. What broke the formation first was the fireship attack at Calais and the fighting at Gravelines the next day, which forced the Spanish fleet north with no way back down the Channel. The weather destroyed ships that were already beaten and already going the wrong way.

Pupils who give the credit to the wind have removed every English decision from the answer, which is usually the thing being examined.

“The Religious Settlement ended the conflict”

It began one. The Settlement of 1559 was followed by a reign of plots, a papal bull in 1570 releasing Catholics from allegiance, and open war with Spain. Calling it a settlement is to take its name for its effect.

The move a strong answer makes

Asked why Mary, Queen of Scots was a threat, weaker answers list the plots. Stronger ones separate what she was from what she did:

Mary was dangerous for what she was rather than what she did: a Catholic claimant, so after the 1570 bull every plot could name her — which is why Walsingham’s evidence in 1586 finally forced Elizabeth to act.

That sentence does the work of a paragraph. It explains why she was a threat for nineteen years before anything was proved, and why proof changed the outcome when it came.

Figures here are the ones used on that sheet, which cites Royal Museums Greenwich, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the History of Parliament, UK Parliament and the Library of Congress. Nothing is reproduced from a past paper, a textbook or a specification.