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Elizabeth Tudor grew up motherless and when her father's third wife bore him a son, Edward, there was little hope for Elizabeth to become Queen. She spent her childhood in the shadows of the court, overlooked as insignificant. Elizabeth I The Queen that gave her name to an epoch However, like most upper-class Elizabethan women, she received an education. Being a clever and gifted student, when she unexpectedly came to the throne in 1558, she was ready to make the most of her qualities. In a time when women were considered inferior to men, Elizabeth became England's most powerful and authoritative monarch, and ruled alone for nearly half a century. Reigning in an epoch of change, Elizabeth became its symbol, a true mover and shaker of her time; as an ideal Renaissance stateswoman she managed all aspects of her nation — political, religious, military and imperial — in a new and creative way. She was an accomplished woman herself, with an excellent knowledge of the classics, a perfect understanding of what was new and valuable in her age, and a remarkable ability to promote it: politically, she promoted the nation's power and wealth by encouraging exploration and trade on the one hand, and by keeping in check the nobility and religious extremists on the other; culturally, she promoted the New Learning and her fashionable court was home to many of the period's thinkers and artists who helped create the Renaissance; with her permission, professional theatres were built in England for the first time, and the universities of Cambridge and Oxford were granted recognition. In one sense, Elizabeth was the English Renaissance.