Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth by Anna Whitelock, Alice Hunt
Authors: Anna Whitelock, Alice Hunt
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and anxieties about Protestant queenship?
II
Mary died on November 17, 1558. Elizabeth’s succession went smoothly; the burnings ceased; and England withdrew from the continental war. Yet even if the danger of national disunity had seemingly diminished, fundamental questions and uncertainties remained. What would be the shape of the new religious settlement? Would Elizabeth marry and, if so, would she choose an Englishman or a foreigner? A Protestant or a Catholic? How would she interact with her parliaments? What would be the tenets of her foreign policy? Like the published and unpublished addresses with which she was inundated during the preceding two months, the coronation pageantry and the speeches that accompanied it were designed to give the new queen advice on how to deal with most of these issues. Throughout the entertainment, the City’s—and by implication the nation’s—love and loyalty were being pledged even as their expectations of the new sovereign were being spelled out.
Along the customary processional route from the Tower to Westminster, the queen saw five pageants accompanied by explanatory speeches: “The uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York” at Gracechurch Street; “The seat of worthy governance” at Cornhill; “The eight beatitudes” at Soper Lane; “A decayed commonweal,” “A flourishing commonweal,” and Truth and Time at the Little Conduit in Cheap Street; and “Deborah with her estates” at the Conduit in Fleet Street. She was also presented with a purse of gold and a copy of the English Bible. A detailed account of the occasion, The Quenes majesties passage through the citie of London , was available in print within nine days, in time for the planned opening on January 23 of the first Elizabethan Parliament. 2
Many people had had a hand in preparing the progress, and in designing and building the pageants. The verses delivered by the child actors were probably composed by Richard Mulcaster, future schoolmaster and MP, who in due course put together the commemorative booklet. Elizabeth herself authorized the loan of costumes from the Revels Office and not only viewed the tableaux and listened to orations attentively but also responded to them with verve and astuteness. Given the range of those involved in the planning and execution of the entry, its coherence of concept and iconography are remarkable. Spoken by a child dressed as a poet, the “farewell in the name of the whole City” insisted on the structural and semantic unity of the pageant sequence (95). The queen’s replies, in so far as they have been recorded by Mulcaster, too appear to have endorsed its drift. Reshaping the event for a mass audience, the quarto pamphlet publicized it as an auspicious expression of a pact of love between England and her new queen. 3
Individual pageants and the sequence as a whole invited a comparison between the Marian past and the Elizabethan present and future. Albeit united in its opposition to everything that the Catholic sister had stood for, the visual and verbal properties of the entry as much as the new queen’s responses to them drew heavily on the rhetoric and imagery hitherto applied to Mary. So too did the published account. Yet if the stock of materials was old, the uses to which it was put were not.
III
Elizabeth’s entry was exceptional in its preoccupation with the past. Royal entries frequently included name-based pageants of historical personages and presented genealogical tableaux, often with a sharp partisan edge. Yet none of them had focused so persistently on the recent past or deployed historical themes and images so dynamically and with such heavy ideological bias.
The welcoming oration at Fenchurch proffered to the queen the seemingly innocuous gift of the citizens’ “blessing tongues” and “true hearts.” These “true hearts” were not merely loyal but also Protestant. The “triumph” they celebrated in greeting the new sovereign
II
Mary died on November 17, 1558. Elizabeth’s succession went smoothly; the burnings ceased; and England withdrew from the continental war. Yet even if the danger of national disunity had seemingly diminished, fundamental questions and uncertainties remained. What would be the shape of the new religious settlement? Would Elizabeth marry and, if so, would she choose an Englishman or a foreigner? A Protestant or a Catholic? How would she interact with her parliaments? What would be the tenets of her foreign policy? Like the published and unpublished addresses with which she was inundated during the preceding two months, the coronation pageantry and the speeches that accompanied it were designed to give the new queen advice on how to deal with most of these issues. Throughout the entertainment, the City’s—and by implication the nation’s—love and loyalty were being pledged even as their expectations of the new sovereign were being spelled out.
Along the customary processional route from the Tower to Westminster, the queen saw five pageants accompanied by explanatory speeches: “The uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York” at Gracechurch Street; “The seat of worthy governance” at Cornhill; “The eight beatitudes” at Soper Lane; “A decayed commonweal,” “A flourishing commonweal,” and Truth and Time at the Little Conduit in Cheap Street; and “Deborah with her estates” at the Conduit in Fleet Street. She was also presented with a purse of gold and a copy of the English Bible. A detailed account of the occasion, The Quenes majesties passage through the citie of London , was available in print within nine days, in time for the planned opening on January 23 of the first Elizabethan Parliament. 2
Many people had had a hand in preparing the progress, and in designing and building the pageants. The verses delivered by the child actors were probably composed by Richard Mulcaster, future schoolmaster and MP, who in due course put together the commemorative booklet. Elizabeth herself authorized the loan of costumes from the Revels Office and not only viewed the tableaux and listened to orations attentively but also responded to them with verve and astuteness. Given the range of those involved in the planning and execution of the entry, its coherence of concept and iconography are remarkable. Spoken by a child dressed as a poet, the “farewell in the name of the whole City” insisted on the structural and semantic unity of the pageant sequence (95). The queen’s replies, in so far as they have been recorded by Mulcaster, too appear to have endorsed its drift. Reshaping the event for a mass audience, the quarto pamphlet publicized it as an auspicious expression of a pact of love between England and her new queen. 3
Individual pageants and the sequence as a whole invited a comparison between the Marian past and the Elizabethan present and future. Albeit united in its opposition to everything that the Catholic sister had stood for, the visual and verbal properties of the entry as much as the new queen’s responses to them drew heavily on the rhetoric and imagery hitherto applied to Mary. So too did the published account. Yet if the stock of materials was old, the uses to which it was put were not.
III
Elizabeth’s entry was exceptional in its preoccupation with the past. Royal entries frequently included name-based pageants of historical personages and presented genealogical tableaux, often with a sharp partisan edge. Yet none of them had focused so persistently on the recent past or deployed historical themes and images so dynamically and with such heavy ideological bias.
The welcoming oration at Fenchurch proffered to the queen the seemingly innocuous gift of the citizens’ “blessing tongues” and “true hearts.” These “true hearts” were not merely loyal but also Protestant. The “triumph” they celebrated in greeting the new sovereign
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