ELIZABETH THE FIRST

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 15 (Supplement)

ELIZABETH THE FIRST

Celebration Of Crowning BELLS AND BONFIRES

[Specially Written for "The' Press”!

[By

DERYCK ABEL

„ L LONDON, May 18. One hour before dawn on November 17 iosB Queen Mary Tudor died. Bells and oonnres greeted a new era. Parliament, having begun its morning session at eight and the peers having summoned the commons to their chamber, Archbishop Heath, Roman Catholic Chance.-or, urged that “without further tract of time” the Lady Elizabeth, half-sister of the dead Queen, and daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, be proclaimed Queen of this realm—“the only right heir by blood and lawful succession.”

No sovereign since Harold died in 1066 was more purely British in blood. Instructed in religion by Italian Protestants, loving ritual but lacking religious temperament, Elizabeth was deemed Italian in her ideas. “An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate.” So ran the jingle On November 20, 1558, Elizabeth gave her first reception at Hatfield, still the home of the Cecils. A marriage proposal, arriving on January 14, from her brother-in-law, Philip II of Spain, was later graciously enough, declined.

The Coronation in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, January 15, 1559, with its preceding ceremonies, , symbolised the happy mixture of precedent and innovation which was to characterise the reign. The previous week she resided, as was the custom, in the Tower of London. But Saturday was given over to pageantrv and procession to Westminster. “This Joyful Day” Mindful of the nearness of the scaffold and the execution of 300 Protestants in her sister’s reign, Elizabeth prayed, as she passed to her carriage through the Tower gates: O Lord, Almighty and Everlasting God I give Thee most humble thanks that thou hast been so merciful unto me to behold this joyful day; and I acknowledge that Thou has dealt wonderfully and mercifully with me. As Thou didst with Thy servant Daniel the prophet whom Thou deliverest out of the den, from the cruelty of the raging lions, even so I was overwhelmed and only by Thee delivered. To Thee, therefore, only be thanks, honour and praise for ever. Poor women flung nosegays into her lap; City wights made merry with kettle, trumpet, fife and drum; and old-timers bawled, “Remember old Henry VIII”; “fair children,” Holinshed tells us, nobly declaimed doggerel in her honour; the Corporation at Cheapside presented a Bible; she was hailed, in the last of the tableaux, as Deborah who had brought 40 years of peace to the tribes of Israel. Small wonder that John Knox’s “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” “painted forth by nature to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish,” inevitably missed its beat. Elizabeth’s reign was so gloriously to refute his argument By Water to Westminster Next day, January 15, by water o Westminster. The Queen’s mantle was of crimson velvet, furred in ermine with cordon and tassels of silk and gold, her train and surcoat of velvet, her skirt of ermine and on her head she bore not the conventional jewelled circlet but a cap of maintenance with passements of gold lace. Following the Royal litter, Lord Robert Dudley, Master of the Horse, led the Queen’s white hackney draped with cloth of gold. Oglethorpe, Bishop of Carlisle, in his own mitre and the borrowed vestments of Bishop Bonner, the notorious Pro-testant-baiter, was prevailed upon to perform the ceremony. The Archbishop of York, alarmed by the idea of rendering the litany in English, had refused. Maintaining, as had done Sir Thomas More in 1534,. that, though a Coronation was within the State’s competence, Church ritual and doctrine were outside it, Archbishop Heath could not in conscience crown Elizabeth. Coronation Described

Kneeling before the Bishop, she kissed the cover of the patten and the chalice. She heard the sermon, said the Lord’s Prayer and took the Coronation oath, whose form, though uncertain in its precise terms, was identical with that of James I of England (VI of Scotland). The Bishop having said mass the Queen was duly anointed, causing some annoyance by averring, Bishop Goodman reports, that the oil was grease and “smelt ill.” Sword and girdle were put upon her, next the Crown; the sceptre was given into her hands; bishops and nobles knelt in homage; Gospel and Epistle were read in English and in Latin; Elizabeth received the Eucharist. Such was the coronation ceremony in 1559 of the first Elizabeth. Leaving St.

Edward’s Chapel, the new Queen, with the State Crown now on her head, turned towards the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. Ten days later, on January 25, the lonely, 25-year-old girl faced her first Parliament. Not till February 10 did she make the famous reply, reported in the D’Ewes Journals, to Mr Speaker, the

Privy Council and 30 members of the Commons: This shall be for me sufficient; that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, died a virgin. Thus began the 45-year reign of one who (unless we rate Edward I 'higher) was England’s greatest sovereign, a

genius in the art of “public relations,” who spread England’s glory from Turkey to Peru, commanded admiration from Scottish laird, Italian princeling and Holy Roman Emperor, vanquished Spain’s Armada, consummated a religious revolution and founded a political empire and a trading commonwealth.