Elizabeth

by Lisa Hilton

  Elizabeth I enjoyed the most seamless accession to the crown since that of Henry VI over a century earlier. Just six hours separated the announcement of Mary Tudor’s death and Elizabeth’s proclamation as queen. Governing queens were no historical novelty, especially as Elizabeth was succeeding one, and so far as contemporaries were concerned, “there had never been so many women in charge at the same time in European history.” Yet someone, apparently, still had not gotten the message. No study of Elizabeth is complete without a quote from the sixteenth-century shock jock John Knox, in his 1558 First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women:

  To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordinance and finally it is the subversion of good order, and all equity and justice.

  Knox’s target (to his great subsequent embarrassment) was not Elizabeth herself but the ruling Catholic women who in his view were thwarting the spread of Protestantism—the regents Catherine de Medici and Marie de Guise in France and Scotland, and Mary Tudor in England. Knox was a vociferous and powerful fanatic, but his views were by no means so representative of those of his period as it may seem. His invective is a tower of furious rhetoric, peculiarly personal. One might as well take Fox News, perennially outraged, permanently panicked that civilization teeters on the cusp of destruction, as indicative of the progress of twenty-first-century history. Knox certainly had his adherents, but the idea that women were unfit to rule was outdated before he put pen to paper, both biologically and biblically.

  In 1560, a Geneva translation of the Bible, dedicated to Elizabeth I, features a marginal note on the creation of Eve, arguing that man before the creation of woman was “like to an unperfect building.” Eve’s appearance signified that man was “perfect.” This is not quite what one expects to find within the Judeo-Christian tradition of original sin ruining the party before it even got started, but it does signal an insight into the flexible definitions of gender present in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon linguistic structures, as well as the mutable femininity of the medieval virago. Before the eighteenth century, female biology was viewed very differently. Until it was possible to understand the structure and function of the female genitals, it was assumed that women’s essential sex organs were the same as those of men, simply inverted. No technical term existed in Latin, Greek, or the European vernaculars for the vagina as a tube or sheath. When the eighteenth century discovered the make-up of the sexual organs, “an anatomy and physiology of incommensurability replaced a metaphysics of hierarchy in the representation of woman in relation to man.” In other words, the Renaissance privileged cultural understandings of gender (like the early Scandinavians) over distinctions based upon biological difference. This is not to suggest that society was anything other than “intensely gendered,” as Knox’s hysteria exemplifies, but that Enlightenment relegated a person’s rank, economic role, or social function to second place behind the incontrovertible absolute of biological sex.5 In the Renaissance, however, “there was no true, deep, essential sex that differentiated cultural man from woman.” Where gender intersected with power, at the highest political and social levels, the distinction could be negated. It was perfectly possible for a woman to be considered, in the words of one of Elizabeth’s defenders, the Marian exile John Bale, an “ideal prince.” Consequently, Knox’s objections to female rule are much less significant than might first appear.

  Bearing in mind the legal and theological distinction between the king’s two bodies, John Aylmer suggested in An Harborow for Faithful and True Subjects that female rulers might simply be treated as honorary men, since their “body natural” was not the salient issue: “If it were unnatural for a woman to rule because she lacketh a man’s strength, then old kings which be most meet to rule for wit and experience, because they lack strength, should be unmeet for the feebleness of the body.”

  Moreover, dissent towards God’s anointed on the grounds of gender teetered precariously on the edge of heresy. In a 1554 letter to Knox, his correspondent observed that “it is a hazardous thing for godly persons to set themselves in opposition to political regulations, especially as the gospel does not seem to unsettle or abrogate political rights.” Aylmer similarly justified female rule as the acceptance of God’s will:

  If nature hath given it to them by birth, how dare we pull it from them by violence? If God hath called them to it … why should we repine at that which is God’s will and order… . If He able women, should we unable them? If he meant not they should minister, He could have provided other.

  God’s will was unequivocal, and while Elizabeth was never averse to playing upon the conventions of her gender, obedience to the Providential instrument of her body politic was what she demanded.

  Practically, hostility to the very idea of female rule was both ambivalent and short-lived. Equal power had already been conferred on England’s first Queen Regnant, Mary, in an act passed two months after the Wyatt rebellion, which declared that “the regal power of this realm is in the Queen’s Majesty as fully and absolutely as ever it was in any of her most noble Progenitors Kings of this realm.” Despite the persistent demands that Elizabeth marry, her own sovereignty had to be kept discrete, as Mary’s had been, lest an erosion of royal power degrade that of her subjects. It was very much Mary’s marriage, rather than her gender per se, which began her descent into unpopularity. The arguments of figures such as Knox seem ultimately to have been based more on hostility to Catholicism than female rule, and even Knox in the end conceded his point, recognizing Elizabeth as another Deborah, the Old Testament heroine who brought peace to the tribes of Israel. But perhaps the best comment on the ambiguous interplay between the natural and political bodies of the monarch came from the old lady who, glimpsing Elizabeth on progress, remarked in astonishment: “What? The Queen is a woman?”

  8

  TO THE MANTOVAN envoy Il Schifanoya, Elizabeth’s arrival for her coronation at Westminster Abbey on 16 January 1559 sounded like the “end of the world.” Bells, organs, fifes, trumpets, and drums banged and blasted in a chorus of triumph that was impressive, if not refined. Political prince she may have been, but Elizabeth went to her coronation as a woman, “in her hair,” as her sister, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had done. Loose hair was a symbol of virginity: the queen came to the sacred ceremony of her anointing as a bride.

  Both Elizabeth and Cecil were anxious about the form of the coronation service, as the last time it had been employed was for Mary, and it might therefore have contained objectionably Catholic emphases. Elizabeth was aware that the staging of her coronation was an essential opportunity to cement her legitimacy with her new subjects, but something more was required than a display of magnificence: namely, a means of accommodating a new, but as yet not fully realized, religious order within the ceremony itself. Effectively, from Henry VIII onwards (with the brief exception of Edward VI’s minority), the Tudor monarchy had evolved as one sustained succession crisis, and as the third of her dynasty to be crowned in a space of twelve years, it was essential that Elizabeth’s coronation oath reflect the altered relationship between the crown and the Church imposed by her father’s assertion of royal supremacy. The ceremony had to be carefully calibrated against those of Elizabeth’s siblings, between continuity with Mary’s reign, emphasizing the legitimacy of a Queen Regnant, and the coronation of Edward VI, which had established the Protestant settlement which many in Elizabeth’s council had already determined the reign should pursue.

  “In pompous ceremonies a secret of government doth much consist, for that the people are naturally both taken and held with exterior shows,” observed Sir John Hayward, and Elizabeth was determined on maximum pomp.1 In a rare instance of extravagance, the outlay on her coronation exceeded £20,000, more than 10 percent of the projected revenue for the first year of the reign. The City of London also spent
a fortune on the pageants the corporations chose to devise for the event, so much so that they rather gauchely reminded the queen of their expenditure twice during the proceedings, once at Fleet Bridge and once at Cheapside. Coronations proceeded in four stages: the journey to take ceremonial possession of the Tower, thus securing London; the procession to Westminster; the coronation itself; and the state banquet.

  Il Schifanoya estimated the coronation procession at more than a thousand people. Two mules drew the queen’s chariot, which was covered in cloth of gold and gold and silver tissue, while those of her ladies were draped in gold and crimson satin with crimson damask cushions (somehow Schifanoya learned that 24,000 gilt nails had been used in their construction). Elizabeth wore a gold crown covered with jewels, glowing like a jewel herself in her cloth of gold gown with a gold coif over her red-gold Tudor hair. She might have been the star of the show, but this was very much an interactive performance, a unique psychological opportunity to place herself not only in her people’s eyes but in their hearts. Thus the procession proceeded slowly, allowing maximum opportunity for ordinary folk to view the queen (and indeed the coronation tableaux remained in place for three days afterwards, the better that people could study their meanings). At Fenchurch, Elizabeth was welcomed by a child on behalf of the city, and as the little boy concentrated fiercely on his lines, onlookers observed “a perpetual attentiveness” in Elizabeth’s face and “a marvellous change in look as the child’s words touched … her person.” Whatever her personal view of the poetry—and it was the City, not she, who had commissioned the pageants—Elizabeth was attentive to every nuance of its reception in her countenance. She was often to compare the role of prince with that of an actor on a stage, and in this, effectively her debut performance, she acquitted herself perfectly.

  The next tableau had a deep personal significance for Elizabeth. At Gracechurch Street she encountered a triple-gated structure with three stages erected above the central gate, festooned in red and white Tudor roses, the lowest of which featured Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, the next Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and at the top Elizabeth herself, standing alone. The queen had, of course, made this journey before, a quarter of a century earlier, in her mother’s belly, and here now was Anne, her disgrace formally obliterated at the moment of her daughter’s triumph. Anne’s placement between the Yorkist heiress, her daughter’s namesake, and Elizabeth herself not only legitimated her marriage and thus Elizabeth’s place in the Tudor line, but inevitably invoked comparisons with the Virgin, whose mother was another Anne. The City could not have sent a clearer message of their acceptance of the new order.

  At Cheapside, Elizabeth was given a crimson satin purse containing a thousand marks in gold, and her simple, gracious acceptance speech drove the crowds wild:

  I thank my Lord Mayor, his brethren and you all. And whereas your request is that I should continue your good Lady and Queen, be ye assured that I will be as good unto you as ever queen was unto her people. No will in me can lack, neither, do I trust, shall there lack any power. And persuade yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you all, I will not spare if need be to spend my blood. God thank you all.

  One old man was moved to tears, to which Elizabeth kindly responded: “I warrant you it is for gladness.” In Little Conduit, Elizabeth inquired as to the meaning of another display, and heard that it signified Time, leading his daughter Truth from a cave. “And Time,” she responded “hath brought me hither.” In St. Paul’s churchyard, Elizabeth heard a Latin address from the schoolboys, then moved down through Ludgate to Fleet Street where the last pageant stood. In political terms, this was perhaps the most significant. Once again, Anne Boleyn’s coronation was invoked, this time by association with that of Edward VI. In 1533, Anne’s symbol, the falcon, had flown from a “cloud” of fine sarsenet into a nest of Tudor roses, accompanying verses declaring that God had conferred imperial authority on her as queen and on Henry’s issue by her. The bird had appeared in the same manner at Edward’s 1547 ceremony, this time transformed into Jane Seymour’s phoenix. (It is tempting for scholars to read much significance into this mirroring, but it should be recalled that the Tudors had a tendency to economize in public displays—in 1501, for the marriage of Katherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur, Henry VII had painted up four “beasts,” two lions, a hart, and an elk, from previous pageants, which reappeared relentlessly throughout the festivities.) The scriptwriter for Anne’s ceremony, Nicholas Udell, was the tutor of Richard Mulcaster, who wrote the scenario for Elizabeth’s Fleet Street reception. Mulcaster, as John Knox was grudgingly to do, invoked the biblical queen Deborah, whose judgment enabled the Israelites to take the pagan land of Canaan, in a staged riposte to attacks on female rule.

  In the pageant, Deborah was Anglicized into a conciliar ruler, dressed in parliamentary robes and standing above the figures of the three estates, nobility, commons, and clergy. Mulcaster elaborated that the purpose of the pageant was to “put [Elizabeth] in remembrance to consult the worthy government of her people … that it behoveth both men and women so ruling to use advice of good council.” The powers of royal supremacy, for this imperial Deborah, would be subject to parliamentary limitation. According to one writer, this argument “infuriated” Elizabeth, but this is rather unsubtle speculation, given the quiet constitutional revolution about to be enacted at the Abbey.2

  On leaving the City, Elizabeth returned to Whitehall to await the coronation itself, which was to take place on Sunday, 16 January. For the spectators this was the chance to see the full Elizabethan court and administration assembled together. At the head of the procession marched the messengers of her chamber, the sergeant porter, and the gentleman harbinger (whose charge was the preparation of royal residences). Servants of the chamber, squires, ushers, chaplains, and clerks of the Privy Seal followed, then the sergeant at law and the queen’s judges, then a crocodile of the Lord Chief Baron, Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas, the Master of the Rolls, and the Lord Chief Justice of England. After them the knights and peers, then the officers of state, led by the Earl of Arundel bearing the royal sword. The Duke of Norfolk, as Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Oxford, Lord Chamberlain, preceded four foreign ambassadors, followed by the Marquess of Winchester, the Lord Treasurer, and Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. The Archbishop of York had to walk alone, as the see of Canterbury remained vacant, then came the treasurer and comptroller of the royal household, after that the Secretary, William Cecil. Next was Elizabeth, in her magnificent litter, surrounded by footmen, with Robert Dudley leading her own horse behind her. Six ladies on palfreys came after, then the three chariots containing the peeresses and her ladies. The royal guard brought up the rear.

  On coronation day, the streets around the Abbey were prepared with fresh gravel and blue cloth. The cloth of gold carpet and blue velvet and cloth of gold cushions were laid out ready for the ceremony. From Whitehall, Elizabeth proceeded to Westminster Hall to be dressed in her robes of state and to greet Bishop Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle, who was to crown her. (The Archbishop of York, Nicholas Heath, remained unconvinced—with reason—as to Elizabeth’s commitment to Catholicism, and Thomas Cranmer had “unfortunately been burned by Mary.”3) The reformist tone of the coronation was also set by the appointment of the Earl of Huntingdon to carry the royal spurs and the Earl of Bedford to carry the staff of Saint Edward, Protestants both. And for those who had an ear, it was notable that Elizabeth entered the Abbey not to the glorious—and very Catholic—Laudes Regiae, used since the coronation of Charlemagne, and for English monarchs from Queen Matilda of Flanders in 1068 to her father Henry VIII, but to Salva Festa Dies, “Hail Thee, Festival Day.”

  Elizabeth was already committed to the use of the reformist liturgy, as indicated by the appointment of the evangelical Edmund Allen as her chaplain. She had instructed that the host no longer be elevated during Mass and had famously stalked out of the service in the Chapel Royal on her first Christmas Day as queen in 15
58 when this was done in contravention of her wishes. On 27 December, she issued a proclamation ordering the Litany, Lord’s Prayer, and Creed to be recited in English, and announced that her first parliament would debate changes in “matters and ceremonies of religion.” Her opinion of the idolatrous practices of the religion to which she had declared herself so devoted just months before is summed up in her verdict on the chrism with which she was anointed. Elizabeth was crowned with the oil used by Mary, who had procured it from the Bishop of Arras. The new queen complained that it was greasy and smelly: “Likewise for their holy oil, it is great superstition to give credit to it, or to any such feigned things invented by Satan to blind the simple people. Their oil is olive oil, which was brought out of Spain, very good for salads.”

  Elizabeth herself rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, yet the coronation Mass followed the Order of Communion of 1548, which remained technically in force. The queen made three modifications—the Epistle and Gospel were read in English, the host was not elevated after the Latin consecration, and, in plain contravention of the law as it then stood, Elizabeth received communion in both kinds (that is, she received both the sacred bread and the wine), discreetly administered by George Carew, new Dean of the Chapel Royal, behind a traverse on the south side of the altar. At the moment of her crowning, the dukes, marquesses, earls, and viscounts raised their coronets “and then they put on the same and so to continue all day long until the Queen’s Highness be withdrawn into her chamber at night.”