All my possessions for a moment of time. - Elizabeth I☆1533 †1603
Elizabeth I reigned as Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death, becoming the longest-serving Tudor monarch. She established the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and presided over a flourishing cultural era that produced Shakespeare and Marlowe, earning her the epithet “Virgin Queen” for never marrying. She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, her reported last words a weary lament from a ruler who, for all her power, could not buy herself more time.