Who were the 2 best and 2 worst English/British monarchs?

in LAKSHMI2 years ago

Who were the 5 best and 5 worst English/British monarchs?
Since the question specified British monarchs, which I take to mean the geographic island of Britain, I’m going to focus on England and Scotland (sorry, Brian Boru).

Best

  1. Robert I, King of Scots, 1306-1329 (Robert the Bruce) - liberated Scotland from English occupation following an arduous guerrilla campaign, laid the foundations for a successful independent kingdom, successfully manoeuvred opponents out of the way, inflicted a humiliating defeat upon a larger English army at the Battle of Bannockburn, invading Ireland to distract England was a stroke of genius even though it didn’t work out (famine played a part), or at the very least the idea of a grand Gaelic alliance between Ireland and Scotland showed vision, and he secured official English recognition of Scottish independence. Overall, competent, shrewd and extremely determined. Bad - he switched sides a lot, but Medieval politics were a dirty business, he stabbed a rival to death in a church (poor impulse control at the very least, albeit John Comyn had betrayed him), and he succumbed to leprosy shortly after winning (hardly his fault, but he spent very little time ruling Scotland in peacetime).

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  1. Elizabeth I, Queen of England - by far the most reasonable of the later Tudor clan, continued the Protestant Reformation (at this juncture, it was probably irreversible) but avoided the excesses of her younger half brother and older half sister (Catholics weren’t vigorously persecuted, there weren’t mass burnings like under her psychotic older sister, and she tried to make the English church as inoffensive to as many people as possible - a smart tactic considering the drama that proceeded her), shrewdly managed her situation as best she could (both given her gender and England’s geopolitical situation), the defeat of the Spanish Armada was a real coup, and England enjoyed an unprecedented cultural flowering under her reign (Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc). Bad - by keeping taxes absurdly low she engineered a fiscal crisis that would plague her Stuart successors (particularly Charles I), England was very lucky that her refusal to pick a successor until the last minute didn’t cause a civil war, she kind of tricked her cousin Queen Mary of Scots into fleeing to England under the promise of support and her forces pursued a barbarous scorched Earth policy in Ireland targeting women and children (against her wishes, but she didn’t do anything about it). Also, militarily her adventures were often poorly funded and badly organised.

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