Directed by David Cressy
and Lori Anne Ferrell.
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A Summer 2003 NEH Institute. Directed by David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell. |
Parliament  Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). Civitatis Westmonasteriensis Pars, 1647. • Succession in Elizabethan Parliamentary Culture
Full-text of A Bloody Masacre Plotted by the Papists, 1641. Full-text of Lady Eleanor Davies's Samsons Fall (1624). Full-text transcription of John Hales's A Declaratyon of the Successyon of the Crowne Imperyall of England, 1563. Includes study questions. Full-text of An Acte whereby certayne offences be made treason, 1571. Includes study questions. |
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Succession in Elizabethan Parliamentary Culture
Despite this idealized portrait, all was not perfect in the initial years of her accession. One of the most pressing questions that faced Elizabeth during the first decade of her reign was something that would not need to be answered until after her death: who would succeed her to the English throne? In 1562, Elizabeth contracted a near fatal case of smallpox, which scared many of her councilors and members of Parliament. In the Parliament convened in 1563, therefore, one of the primary questions was that of succession. The largely Protestant Members of Parliament were nervous that Elizabeth might die without an heir of her blood. The Crown could then pass to a Catholic contender from another branch of the Tudor dynasty. Protestant fears were based on the rules of primogeniture, or the right of inheritance belonging to the eldest child, with sons preferred before daughters. The Tudor case was fairly straightforward. Elizabeth's grandparents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, had four children: Arthur, Margaret, Henry, and Mary. Prince Arthur died without offspring, and Prince Henry succeeded Henry VII to the throne as Henry VIII. Henry VIII married six times, producing, in order, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward. According to the rules of primogeniture and, importantly, to Henry's will, Edward would be crowned first, then Mary, and then Elizabeth. Henry VIII's will then specified that if no "heirs of the body" were produced by his children, the Crown should pass to the heirs of his younger sister Mary, a Protestant, instead of to the heirs of his older sister Margaret, a Catholic. This ran counter to the rules of primogeniture. A debate ensued in the early 1560s over who was best suited under English law to inherit the throne if Elizabeth did not have legitimate "heirs of the body" or name a successor. Both of Henry VIII's sisters, Margaret and Mary, had produced legitimate claimants. His older sister, Margaret, established two Scots Catholic lines with two different husbands that came into and out of favor throughout the last two-thirds of the sixteenth century. His younger sister, Mary, had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and with him founded a viable Protestant claim to the throne. If Elizabeth were to die without an heir, the chief rivals to the English throne were Margaret's granddaughter and grandson, that is, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, or, on the Protestant side, Mary's granddaughter, Catherine Grey. English Catholics naturally favored the lines descending from Henry VIII's older sister, Margaret. Protestants, for their part, circulated many documents demanding that Mary's granddaughter, Catherine Grey, be nominated as heir, and used as their justification the dictates of Henry VIII's will. 
Predictably, Elizabeth reacted badly to this tract and similar ones concerning the succession. To Elizabeth's mind, any attempt by others to address the succession question was an infringement of her prerogative as monarch. Despite these debates over competing claims, Elizabeth herself believed that the question of succession rested solely upon her shoulders and that Parliament or other advisors of the realm did not even have the right to discuss the questions of a potential marriage or of the succession. Many historians consider this the greatest tension between Parliament and the Crown that existed before the seventeenth century. The protracted debates of who should succeed the long-lived Elizabeth did not rest for almost four decades, but in the next few years, positions hardened. Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who married his cousin Mary, Queen of Scots in 1565, recombined and strengthened the two Catholic lines descending from Henry VIII's older sister Margaret. After Henry Stewart's assassination at the hands of Mary's lover, the Queen of Scots was held prisoner in England from 1568 until her execution in 1587, during which time she was repeatedly implicated as the focal point for plots against Elizabeth's life. Further complicating matters, the Pope encouraged Catholic insurgency with his Bull excommunicating Elizabeth in 1570, Regnans in Excelsis. Elizabeth and her Parliament responded with an act declaring that any attempt to determine or discuss the succession was an act of treason. Kristen Post Walton Salisbury University Full-text transcription of John Hales's A Declaratyon of the Successyon of the Crowne Imperyall of England, 1563. Includes study questions. Full-text of An Acte whereby certayne offences be made treason, 1571. Includes study questions. Suggestions for further reading: Alford, Stephen. The Early Elizabethan Polity: Cecil and the Succession Crisis, 1558-1569. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Graves, M.A.R. "Thomas Norton, the Parliament Man." Historical Journal 23.1 (1980): 17-35. Guy, J.A. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Jones, Norman L. "Parliament and the Governance of Elizabethan England: A Review." Albion 19 (1987): 327-46. Levine, Mortimer. The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, 1558-1568. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966. McLaren, Anne. Political Culture in the Age of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558-1585. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Neale, J.E. Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1559-1581. London: Jonathon Cape, 1953. |
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© 2004 Folger Institute | |
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