The coronation of Elizabeth I as Queen of England and Ireland took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on 15 January 1559. Elizabeth I ascended the throne at the age of 25 upon the death of her half-sister, Mary I, on 17 November 1558. Mary had reversed the Protestant Reformation which had been started by her two predecessors, so this was the last coronation in Great Britain to be conducted under the authority of the Catholic Church. Historians view Elizabeth's coronation as a statement of her intention to restore England to Protestantism, but to allow the continuation of some Catholic customs, a compromise known as the Elizabethan Settlement.
Background
The reign of Elizabeth I's father, Henry VIII, was one of great political and social change. Religious upheaval in continental Europe and Henry's dispute with the Pope over his marital difficulties led Henry to break from the Catholic Church and to establish the Church of England. Henry VIII was succeeded by his son Edward VI, under whom the Protestant reforms continued. However, Edward's early death in 1553 led to the accession of Henry's daughter Mary I. She returned England to Catholicism, burning at the stake some 300 Protestants as heretics and forcing others into exile. The Protestant-minded Elizabeth outwardly conformed with Mary, but became the focus of opposition to the increasingly unpopular government. Mary became ill in May 1558 and formally recognised Elizabeth as her heir presumptive on 6 November. Elizabeth was at Hatfield House to the north of London when she was informed of Mary's death on 17 November.
Preparations
Elizabeth I's first surviving state paper is dated 17 November 1558, the day of her accession, and is a memorandum for the appointment of "Commissioners for the Coronation"; a month later five had been selected, with Sir Richard Sackville taking charge. The date of Sunday 15 January 1559 was set: not, as in previous coronations, an appropriate Christian holy day but, following the advice of her court astrologer, Dr John Dee, one on which the stars and planets would be in favourable positions. The brief time between accession and coronation was also a product of Elizabeth's concern over her legal status; the First Succession Act of 1533 and the Second Succession Act of 1536 had declared both Mary and Elizabeth to be bastards and excluded them from the line of succession. Although the Third Succession Act of 1543/44 had restored their place in the succession, it had not restored their legitimacy. Elizabeth consulted Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, who warned against attempting to repeal the Succession Acts and the tangle of legislation relating to them. Instead, he advised that following her coronation, Elizabeth's right to rule would be beyond question since "the English laws have long since pronounced, That the Crowne once worn quite taketh away all Defects whatsoever".
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 vigil; on the day before the coronation, the royal entry procession through the streets of the City of London to the Palace of Westminster; the coronation service itself in Westminster Abbey, and finally the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. Although the religious ceremony at Westminster Abbey was theoretically the main event, Elizabeth was aware that it was the elaborate processions through London which would secure the new queen's popularity with her subjects: not a foregone conclusion given that she was an unmarried woman, that her claim to the throne rested on her executed mother and that there was likely to be a further period of religious upheaval. The queen spent some £16,000 of her own money on the coronation, while the aldermen, livery companies and merchants of the City contributed a very substantial amount; exactly how much is unknown. Unusually, the foreign merchants of the city were forbidden to contribute, making it a purely English display of loyalty; this contrasted with Queen Mary's procession, in which the most elaborate displays had been provided by merchants from Genoa and Florence. The stridently Protestant overtone of the royal entry pageantry not only reflected the desire of the City establishment for religious reform; the involvement of the Revels Office and the Royal Wardrobe in the preparations suggest at least a foreknowledge, if not active direction, by Elizabeth and her government.
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. 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, while the bishop of Chichester, John Christopherson, had died in prison on 28 December after preaching a similar sermon at St Paul's Cross. 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. 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.
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 Richard II and had been used at most coronations since.
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 Castellan of Mantua. The procession on Thursday 12 January was on the Thames from Whitehall Palace to the Tower of London; the fleet of "ships, galleys, brigantines &c. were prepared as sumptuously as possible" which Il Schifanoya thought "reminded one of Ascension Day in Venice".
Attended by members of her court, Elizabeth embarked on her royal barge, which was covered with tapestries, both inside and out, and was towed by a galley rowed by 40 men with "a band of music". The procession passed under the arches of London Bridge on the flood tide, and approaching the Tower, an artillery salute was fired. The queen entered the Tower "by a little bridge".
The royal entry
Starting at about 2 pm on Saturday 14 January, Elizabeth made her royal entry, a state procession from the Tower of London through the City of London and the western suburbs to the Palace of Westminster. Besides Il Schifanoya's account of the event, there is also a pamphlet called The Quene's Majestie's passage through the citie of London to westminster the day before her coronacion written by Richard Mulcaster, which was published almost immediately afterwards and had run to a second edition two months later. Il Schifanoya noted that it snowed a little; also that the route had been prepared with wooden barriers to hold back the crowds and that people had spread sand and gravel outside their houses to mitigate the muddy roads. The houses along the way were all decorated and the route lined with the City guildsmen in their hoods and black gowns, together with innumerable flags and banners. He reckoned that the whole procession consisted of a thousand horses. The queen was carried on a litter, covered in white cloth of gold and lined with pink satin. It was carried by two mules, attended on either side by a line of footmen in scarlet cloaks and escorted by a further line of Gentlemen Pensioners carrying halberds.
Elizabeth wore a gown of cloth of gold. Her hair was in a cloth of gold coif and she wore a gold circlet or plain gold crown on her head. Her lady in waiting, Kat Ashley, was given purple velvet and scarlet and tinsel fabrics to wear at this "Coronation eve". A plan of the procession made for the College of Arms lists all of the officers of the royal court, government ministers, judges, knights and baronets, peers, royal chaplains, bishops and archbishops, heralds, and foreign ambassadors. Towards the rear of the line were the ladies of the participants, the highest ranking in coaches or "chariots", others on horseback or on foot, and finally the royal henchmen and the Yeoman of the Guard.
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. 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".
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 an embroidered crimson satin purse containing a thousand marks in gold to Elizabeth.
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. The space was transformed with two artificial hills, one barren and wasted and the other green and fertile, representing bad and good governance. Between the hills, a cave had been constructed; upon the queen's arrival, an old man with wings and a scythe emerged representing "Time" followed by his daughter "Truth", carrying a book inscribed Verbum Veritatis. This was perhaps a satirical reference to Queen Mary's personal motto; Veritas Temporis Filia ("Truth the Daughter of Time"). Truth gave the book, a banned English translation of the New Testament, to the queen who kissed it, thanking the city for their gift.
At the Temple Bar Conduit, the queen saw herself portrayed in parliament robes as the Biblical judge Deborah accompanied by the three estates of England, the nobility, clergy, and commonalty. The pageant probably represented the forthcoming parliament which had already been summoned to decide the religious policy of the new government. The depiction of Elizabeth as Deborah was aimed at the supporters of Calvinist reformer John Knox, who in the previous year had published a polemic entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women. This pamphlet, intended to undermine Queen Mary and Mary of Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scotland, claimed that female leadership was contrary to the laws of nature and to Biblical teaching. Knox's qualified this assertion in the case of Deborah, who had freed the Israelites from the Canaanites and led them to an era of peace and prosperity, and whom Knox claimed had been a God-given and miraculous exception for the salvation of his people. This representation of Parliament underscored Elizabeth's legitimacy as ruler by good counsel, following and building on the Little Conduit pageant where her rule appeared justified by the Word of God.