GLORIANA’S CORONATION

The Countdown is officially over! The day has come when we remember Elizabeth I’s coronation:

Queen Elizabeth I by Unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery.

On Sunday, January 15 1559 Elizabeth Tudor was crowned Queen of England at Westminster Abbey.

The day began after Elizabeth made her way from the Tower of London, dressed in crimson parliament robes walking on blue cloth which had been laid for her all the way to the Abbey. The Spanish Ambassador, Feria, refused to be present but the Venetian Ambassador,Schifanoya was there and he reported everything he saw. According to him and other contemporary accounts, as Elizabeth made her way to the Abbey, there were stages erected for her that depicted once again her noble lineage through her father and his parents, and included Henry VIII’s collections of tapestries -especially one depicting the Acts of the  Apostles based on the designs by Raphael. This symbolized the late Tudor monarch’s devotion and Bess further emphasized hers after she emerged from a curtained sector where she changed into her new clothes, and then was led by the Bishop of Carlisle to the stage where she was proclaimed Queen.

The customary question was asked. If the people would like Elizabeth to be their Queen or not, and the people cried “Yea, yea!”. Then the trumpets sounded, the organs were played and the bells rang and Elizabeth and the Bishop descended to the altar where she knelt before it to hear the sermon and then took the oath.

After this was said and done, she withdrew to the traverse to change for the final part in the ceremony, the anointing. She emerged wearing a kirtle of gold and silver. Prostrating herself before the altar, leaning on cloth of gold cushions, she was anointed on the shoulders, breast, hands, arms and forehead.

Elizabeth I played by Anne-Marie Duff in the BBC mini-series “Virgin Queen” (2005)
With her hair hung loose and clothed in gold from head to toe, she was crowned looking every inch of a Queen and the icon she would later be revered.

Three crowns were placed on her head, after which she was completely arrayed in gold and to everyone who was there, she seemed indeed, seemed not human but like a golden figure, an icon, almost god-like as her father always tried to appear.

Elizabeth ever the pragmatist, had intended to create a hybrid of the Protestant Church her brother had enforced on the population and the Marian Catholic reformed Church her sister had also tried to enforce. As Starkey explains:

“It was now time of the coronation mass, which followed, with Elizabeth’s personally enforced innovations. The Epistle was read twice, first in Latin and then in English…. Then the bishop brought the Gospel. This too was read twice, in the old liturgical language and again in the Tudor vernacular, which has, to us, become almost as remote, beautiful and hieratic as the Latin. Elizabeth now repeated her gesture of the day before and kissed the Bible -and, it is safe to guess, the English one.”

Furthermore Jasper Ridley adds in his respective biography of Elizabeth:

“After he [Bishop of Carlisle] had crowned her, a Mass was held in Latin; but the celebrant, her chaplain, spoke the words of consecration in English and did not elevate the Host.”

The Coronation pardon was then given and the Queen traveled from Westminster Abbey to the Palace Great Hall to enjoy her coronation banquet. As she passed the great crowds, she greeted them with that same smile from her accession and it won them over again.

“She still wore the heavy weight of the crown and carried the orb and scepter. She was smiling broadly and greeted joyfully by the thousands who pressed up to congratulate her.” (Starkey)

Elizabeth was now the new undoubted Queen, her coronation had been a complete success.

Sources:

• Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne by David Starkey
• On This Day in Tudor History by Claire Ridgway
• Elizabeth I by Jasper Ridley
• Tudor by Leanda de Lise