Book excerpt: What Life Was Like In the Realm of Elizabeth tells the fascinating story of Queen Elizabeth's steely determination and skillful political manoeuvring along with many other compelling tales of the men and women of Elizabethan England. One volume in a world-history series from Time-Life Books, In the Realm of Elizabeth focuses on the daily lives of the Elizabethans in London and in the English countryside, on board ship with Sir Francis Drake, and alongside Sir Walter Raleigh's colonists in Virginia. From contemporary letters, diaries, church and government documents, and other historical sources come the intriguing stories of commoners and kings: among them Elizabeth's feisty father, the much married Henry VIII, the fiery playwright Ben Jonson; Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth's cousin and rival for her throne, and the so-called counterfeit crank, Nicholas Jennings, who made a nice living pretending to be destitute.