The Coronation of Elizabeth I
By Silva Shahini, Second Year History
As King Charles III coronation date has been set and preparations begin, interest in the phenomenon of coronations is likely to grow. Now is therefore the perfect time to look back upon the significant coronation of Elizabeth I, 464 years ago today.
Elizabeth I’s coronation was a two-day spectacle, beginning on the 14th of January. The specific dates had been suggested to Elizabeth by the astrologer John Dee. A day-long procession through London was scheduled, which included five pageants that drew from her mother’s coronation. The scale of the procession and its composition aimed to help usher in a new social era.[1]
The first pageant compared Elizabeth’s “Englishness” to Mary I “Spanishness”. It also made references to Henry VII and Elizabeth I’s namesake, Elizabeth of York, aligning Elizabeth I with her peace-making grandparents after the tumult of her siblings’ reigns.
The second presented the virtues of her government through a pageant on the four virtues of ‘True Religion’, trampling vices like ‘Ignorance’. This was particularly important after the corruption of previous Tudor governments under Elizabeth’s father, grandfather and siblings.
In the third, the Lord Mayor presented Elizabeth with a gold gift, a gesture symbolising the interdependence of London and the Crown.
The fourth pageant contrasted Mary’s decaying commonwealth and Elizabeth’s thriving one. The figure of truth presented the Bible to Elizabeth who kissed it and laid it on her chest.
Finally, Elizabeth aligned herself with the biblical figure, Deborah, an Old Testament prophet who rescued the House of Israel and ruled for 40 years.[2]
These pageants were partially in response to previous issues within the Tudor dynasty but were also a way to establish Elizabeth within the fabric of the reign she was building. The building of Elizabeth’s legacy began at this coronation, and the details, which were of importance culturally and socially, were discussed for decades to come. There were elements, however, that had been overlooked.
Vitale investigates these elements.[3] While Elizabeth kissing a Protestant bible has been dissected in later works, the impact of her move beyond has not been significantly investigated. Vitale looks at how “her move proved a gesture worthy of imitation with lesser objects” and how the gesture spread into social behaviours almost immediately. After the scene in Cheapside, people began to “kiss their printed orations” before handing them to Elizabeth. The long-term social and cultural impact of Elizabeth I’s coronation cannot be overlooked. Even before Vitale’s investigation into this detail of Elizabeth’s coronation, many other works commented on Elizabeth’s gesture such as Mulcaster’s pamphlet, and even The Tempest parodies this moment, showing how even after she had died, her coronation’s cultural significance continued.
Location and symbolism were important for Elizabeth’s coronation procession.[4] Lees-Jeffries researches how locations function as a metaphor and how Elizabeth used practical elements to encode implicit messages. Conduits were used as markers in the procession as they were physically appropriate for a large number of people to gather by, but the fact they supplied water to the city meant their usefulness was also used as a metaphor Elizabeth was leaning into. They were ideal in a practical and metaphorical sense as they were ideal to build stages for the processions, but the fact they were established focal points in London represented the everyday life of citizens and emphasised the ‘priorities’ of the new Queen.
This coronation was deeply linked to the culture of Tudor England in its themes, its political metaphors, its physical location and its journey through London. The cultural significance of the coronation can be seen in the fact that moments from this coronation drew on elements of the Tudor legacy, but also in that some individual moments within the coronation created new elements of the dynasty’s legacy, which would outlive Elizabeth herself.
[1] The Elizabeth Files, ‘Elizabeth I’s Coronation Chart’, 2022 <https://www.elizabethfiles.com/elizabeth-is-coronation-chart/3477/>.
[2] Royal Museums Greenwich, ‘Queen Elizabeth I’s Coronation’ <https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/queen-elizabeth-coronation> [accessed 29 December 2022].
[3] Kyle Sebastian Vitale, ‘An Overlooked Detail in Elizabeth I’s Coronation’, Notes and Queries, 65.1 (2018), 25–27 <https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjx221>.
[4] Hester Lees-Jeffries, ‘Location as Metaphor in Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation Entry (1559)’, in The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I, ed. by Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 65–85 <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199673759.003.0004>.