Coronation of Elizabeth I
 Elizabeth I of England in her coronation robe; a miniature of circa 1600, after a lost original | |
| Date | 15 January 1559 |
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| Location | Westminster Abbey, London, England |
| Participants |
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The
Background
The reign of
Preparations
Elizabeth I's first surviving
Coronation festivities at that time consisted of four parts: the vigil procession to the Tower of London where the monarch would spend one or more nights in
It was not obvious which bishop should conduct the coronation service. That role traditionally fell to the archbishop of Canterbury, but the incumbent Reginald Pole had died of influenza on 17 November, only 12 hours after Queen Mary, and in the uncertainty of the new regime, a successor had yet to be appointed. The archbishop of York, Nicholas Heath, was a committed but moderate Catholic who had not participated in the burnings of Mary's reign. Although willing to attend the coronation, he declined to officiate because of the new queen's reforms at the Chapel Royal.[11] The next in seniority, the bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, was unacceptable to Elizabeth because of his role in prosecuting heretics, earning him the epithet of "Bloody Bonner". The bishop of Winchester, John White, was under house arrest for the anti-Protestant sermon he had preached at Queen Mary's funeral,[12] while the bishop of Chichester, John Christopherson, had died in prison on 28 December after preaching a similar sermon at St Paul's Cross.[13] Several other leading bishops also declined; others were suffering the effects of the same epidemic which had claimed the life of Archbishop Pole. Finally, the low-ranking bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe, was coerced into accepting the role.[12] Oglethorpe had already displeased Elizabeth at the Christmas mass at the Chapel Royal, when he performed the Elevation of the Host, despite instructions to the contrary since Protestant reformers connected this ritual with transubstantiation; the Queen therefore walked out of the service before its conclusion.[14]
The state processions
The instructions and etiquette for Elizabeth's state processions were laid down in a book known as the Little Device, which had originally been compiled in 1377 for
The vigil procession
An account of the vigil procession was made by Il Schifanoya, a native of the Italian duchy of Mantua who lived in London and regularly wrote accounts of events there to the Mantuan ambassador in Brussels and to the
The royal entry
Starting at about 2 pm on Saturday 14 January, Elizabeth made her
Along the route, the City had devised a series of eleven triumphal arches and tableaux vivants or "pageants", each having a theme loaded with political and religious allegory. The first arch at Gracechurch Street was three storeys tall and was labelled "The vniting of the two houses of Lancastre and York"; upon it was a huge representation of a rose bush on which were large statues of Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, with Elizabeth seated in majesty at the very top, pointedly underlining the legitimacy of her succession.[23] A small boy was perched above the central arch who gave an oration to the queen, explaining the details of the symbolism, to which the queen listened "most attentively, evincing much satisfaction".[24] Towards the western end of Cheapside, the Lord Mayor of London and the aldermen awaited the queen, and Ranulph Cholmley, recorder of the City, made a speech and presented a satin purse containing a thousand marks in gold to Elizabeth.[25][26]
Perhaps the most elaborate and important pageant was staged further along Cheapside at the Little Conduit near St Paul's Cathedral, where a small tower housed a water cistern serving as the water supply for the area. This was a customary public meeting place.[27] The space was transformed with two artificial hills, one barren and wasted and the other green and fertile, representing bad and good governance.[28] Between the hills, a cave had been constructed; upon the queen's arrival, an old man emerged representing "Time" followed by his daughter "Truth", perhaps a satirical reference to Queen Mary's personal motto; Veritas Temporis Filia ("Truth the Daughter of Time").[29] Truth was holding a book, inscribed in Latin Verbum Veritatis, "words of truth", a banned English translation of the New Testament, which was presented to the queen who kissed it, thanking the City for their gift.[30]
At
The coronation service
The coronation service was held on Sunday 15 January.
The abbey was decorated with tapestries depicting the
The various accounts of the service describe the traditional phases of the coronation liturgy, starting with the
The most controversial element of the ceremony was the Coronation Mass and Elizabeth's participation in it, since the three surviving eye-witness reports are either obscure or contradictory. There is no clear consensus amongst modern historians as to what actually occurred. It is evident that the
The coronation feast
Again, Il Schifanoya provides the most detailed description. Westminster Hall had been decorated by the hanging of two enormous tapestries which had been bought by Henry VIII, representing the
Historical significance
According to Roy Strong, Elizabeth's coronation and royal entry has attracted more scholarly attention than any other.[19] In the following centuries, historians from Raphael Holinshed onwards drew heavily on the tone of Mulcaster's The Quenes makesties pasage and presented the 1559 coronation and pageants as a turning point against imposed Catholicism and the triumph of popular Protestantism.[48] Modern historians have taken a more critical view, asserting that the events of January 1559 were carefully stage-managed by Elizabeth and her advisers.[4] Even the obscurity of the events surrounding the Coronation Mass has been interpreted as a signal that the future religious policy of the regime had yet to be fully determined.[49]
References
- ^ Fraser, pp.179–189
- ^ Fraser, pp.190–211
- ^ Hilton, Chapter 9
- ^ a b c d Strong, p. 212
- ^ Duncan & Schutte, p. 80
- ^ a b c d e Rowse (1953)
- ^ Collinson, Chapter 3
- ^ Strong, p. 221
- ^ Stevens, p. 263
- ^ Strong, pp. 214-215
- ^ Marshall, p. 424
- ^ a b Starkey, pp. 267-268
- ^ Colthorpe "1558", p. 11
- ^ Strong, pp. 208-209
- ^ a b Strong, p. 214
- ^ Brown and Bentink, preface: pp. viii-ix
- ^ Brown and Bentink, pp. 11-12
- ^ Archer 2014, p. 65. Lees-Jeffries, Hester, Chapter 4: Location as Metaphor in Queen Elizabeth's Coronation Entry
- ^ a b Strong, p. 222
- ^ Brown and Bentink, p. 12
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation (Cambridge, 2008), p. 53.
- ^ Strong, pp. 217-218
- ^ Strong, p. 223
- ^ Brown and Bentink, p. 13
- ^ Bartlett and McGlynn, p. 279
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), p. 166.
- ^ Knight, Chapter 4
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), p. 166.
- ^ Hester Lee-Jeffries, 'Location as Metaphor in Queen Elizabeth's Coronation Entry', Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, Sarah Knight, Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 2007), p. 67.
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), p. 166.
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 166, 168-9.
- ^ Strong, pp. 224-225
- ^ Guy p. 184
- ^ Alice Hunt, The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 168-9.
- ^ a b Brown and Bentink, p. 16
- ^ Strong, p. 174
- ^ Thomas P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (Yale, 2007), p. 349.
- ^ a b Strong, p. 211
- ^ Hook, p. 151
- ^ Strong, p. 84
- ^ Starkey, p. 276
- ^ Guy p. 179
- ^ Hilton, Ch. 9
- ^ Strong, pp. 208-210
- ^ Brown and Bentinck, p. 16
- ^ Colthorpe "1559", p. 14
- ^ Brown and Bentinck, p. 18
- ^ Hunt, p. 161
- ^ Hunt, p. 155
Books
- Archer, Jayne Elisabeth; Goldring, Elizabeth; Knight, Sarah (2014). The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199673759.
- Bartlett, Kenneth R.; McGlynn, Margaret, eds. (20 October 2014). The Renaissance and Reformation in Northern Europe. Toronto University Press. ISBN 978-1442607149.
- Brown, Rawdon Lubbock; Bentinck, George Cavendish, eds. (2013). Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Volume 7: 1558-1580. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108060639.
- Duncan, Sarah; Schutte, Valerie, eds. (2016). The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1137597489.
- ISBN 978-0297852179.
- ISBN 978-0192840905.
- Hamrick, Stephen (2009). The Catholic Imaginary and the Cults of Elizabeth, 1558-1582. Routledge. ISBN 978-0754665885.
- Hook, Walter F. (1872). Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury: Reformation period; Volume IX. London: Richard Bentley & Son.
- Hunt, Alice (2011). The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521182874.
- Starkey, David (2001). Elizabeth: Apprenticeship. London: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0099286578.
- Stevens, David (November 2011). Elizabethan Theatre History: An Annotated Bibliography of Scholarship, 1664-1979. Lulu Press Inc. ISBN 978-1105175213.
- ISBN 978-0007160549.
Articles
- Colthorpe, Marion E. (May 2017). "The Elizabethan Court Day by Day - Prologue and 1558" (PDF). folgerpedia.folger.edu. Folger Shakespeare Library. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- Colthorpe, Marion E. (May 2017). "The Elizabethan Court Day by Day - 1559" (PDF). folgerpedia.folger.edu. Folger Shakespeare Library. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- Rowse, A L (May 1953). "The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth". History Today. 3 (5). Retrieved 24 September 2017.