I

In one of many letters to Charles V relaying the fraught process of Mary's proclamation as queen, the imperial ambassadors reported with, we imagine, a sigh of relief, that on 3 August ‘the Queen accomplished two regal acts: she was proclaimed, and took possession; the third, remaining, is the coronation, which will take place as soon as the necessary preparations can be made’.Footnote ⁸ What exactly the ‘necessary preparations’ for the coronation of England's first queen would be, however, was not quite so straightforward. There was no precedent for the anointing and crowning of an English queen regnant, and the 1534 act of supremacy and Mary's formal proclamation meant that she, much to her dismay, would be inaugurated as supreme head of the church of England.Footnote ⁹ In addition, although Mary's legitimacy as rightful heir could never have been disputed successfully, despite Edward's signed letters patent, her bastardy had not been revoked since Henry's first act of succession of 1534. The third act of succession, of 1544, had reinstated both Mary and Elizabeth as rightful heirs should Edward die childless, but this act did not retract their bastard status.Footnote ¹⁰ Henry VIII's acts of succession – acts which no English monarch had ever passed before – brought the legitimacy of kings and queens under the authority of parliament. Only parliament could undo what parliament had done, even when the issue at stake was divinely ordained monarchy.

Lady Jane Grey's and Princess Mary's competing proclamations of July 1553 highlight this tension between the roles of the monarch and parliament in legitimizing successors. Jane's proclamation promoted the prerogative of Edward and his ‘devise for the succession’, which, crucially, was never sanctioned by parliament.Footnote ¹¹ At the same time, Jane's proclamation ironically drew attention to the fact that, despite Henry's will and royal prerogative, the illegitimacy of the princesses Mary and Elizabeth still held because their mothers' divorces had been ‘ratified and confirmed by authority of special Parliament in the XXVIII year of the said King Henry's Reign, which ratification is still in force, power and effect’.Footnote ¹² By contrast, Mary's proclamation, read out at the Cross on Cheapside on 19 July 1553, appealed to the authority of the divine laws governing English succession: it is God's will and Edward's death ‘whereby the crown imperial of the realms of England and Ireland, with the title of France and all other things appertaining unto the same, do most rightfully and lawfully belong unto us’.Footnote ¹³

Despite the confident wording of her proclamation, Mary had not automatically become queen on Edward's death. Her proclamation, read out nine days after Jane's, urgently attempted to claw back the right she was so nearly denied. Consequently, the terms of her legitimacy and the grounds of her queenship remained ill-defined because she was brought to power by a bloodless coup. Recent research into the rebellion that secured Mary's throne has shown that her supporters, and her subsequently large council, comprised different groups of people with different motives: loyal members of Mary's household, co-religionists and former Edwardian councillors who recognized Mary's legitimacy as Henry VIII's daughter, or who were forced to acknowledge this once it became clear that Northumberland's plot was falling apart.Footnote ¹⁴ Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, for example, had been reluctant to accept Lady Jane Grey, as was William Cecil, and William Lord Paget, who had fallen from Northumberland's favour in 1551, was never involved with the succession plot.Footnote ¹⁵ In a speech to the wavering council in London, Arundel backtracked and, in doing so, attempted to reconcile ‘true Religion’ with rightful succession and lawful governance. ‘I am sure … you know,’ he told the council, ‘that this Crown belongs rightfully, by direct succession, to My Lady Mary lawful and natural daughter of our King Henry VIII … and that will be true Religion, because you will enforce justice, restoring his right to the lawful heir.’Footnote ¹⁶ What exactly this ‘true Religion’ might look like, however, was left unsaid.

It is likely that it was the crowd of experienced Edwardian councillors who had joined the co-religionists and household members in support of Mary who attempted to push through the unprecedented proposal concerning her coronation. On 19 September 1553, the imperial ambassadors reported that some ‘novelty’ was afoot:

The ambassadors return to the plan to delay the coronation at the end of their letter. Here they refer to a ‘writing’, and then a ‘leaflet’, a copy of which they enclosed with their despatch. They report:

They then go on to comment that ‘the publication of such leaflets, intended to bring about the Parliament before the coronation, is no doubt made with the object of traversing the Queen's affairs, and is not exempt of danger and suspicion’.Footnote ¹⁹ This ‘leaflet’ was likely to be a manuscript bill; it is described first as ‘un escript’ (a writing or manuscript) in the original French letter, and then as ‘billet’ which translates most clearly as ‘bill’.Footnote ²⁰ No copies of any such bill are extant, but something in writing was clearly circulating beyond the council. The proposal was a serious one and, as the ambassadors' report implies, significant pressure seems to have been exerted on the queen to accept it. However, as the ambassadors also describe, the council was divided. ‘[T]he Council could not agree as a whole with the opinion of Paget and others that the coronation should take place and the established order be followed’, they write and, later, ‘We hear from a good source that the Queen's Councillors are divided among themselves and cannot agree, and that they take sides violently.’Footnote ²¹

The purpose behind the proposal as outlined by the ambassadors is sevenfold, and not as explicit as we – or the ambassadors – would like. The ambassadors refer twice to feeling ignorant of the proposal's real agenda. To ‘better … establish and confirm the reign’ and to ‘discover the intentions of the estates in general’ seem vague and unpersuasive reasons, as does the fear that ‘some attempt might be made against’ the queen's person, for how and why could parliament confirm Mary's queenship more securely than the ancient rite of coronation? The implication is that parliament is more legitimizing than sacred ceremony. Furthermore, by discovering ‘the intentions of the estates in general’ and the ‘tendencies of individuals’ during the session, is it implied that this headless parliament could then somehow deal effectively with any intentions deemed troublesome? And troublesome according to whom: the nobles or the uncrowned queen? More persuasive is the plan that parliament should finally annul ‘the declaration of bastardy’ against Mary, and yet Henry's will had legitimized her as the rightful successor to Edward and had thereby always rendered her claim stronger than Jane's. The ambassadors' report remains silent on the issue of the supremacy. Possibly, a parliamentary session before the coronation could both insist that Mary accept the supreme headship and delineate the terms of her supremacy. A concomitant possibility is that behind the proposal was the belief that Mary, as an unanointed monarch, would not be head of that parliament, and would thus be, and remain, under parliament's authority. Indeed, it is further implied in this report that Mary's subsequent coronation would seal and bind her to any acts that this parliament might pass.

Traditionally, the English monarch opened parliament, not the other way round. If parliament was sitting when a monarch died, as was the case in 1547, the session was automatically dissolved and not re-opened until after the successor's coronation via a state ceremony, with the monarch bearing the regalia that had been consecrated and bestowed during the coronation. The parliamentary session was thus legitimized by the anointed and crowned monarch; it was not the role of parliament to render that monarch legitimate. As the ambassadors were only too aware, a proposal to ‘better … establish and confirm’ Mary's queenship by parliament first suggested a magnification of the role of the council and parliament over Mary and the direction of her reign. They saw that the proposed reversal would render Mary ‘more dependent on Council and Parliament than she should be; bridle her so that she cannot marry a foreigner, and bring about her marriage to Courtenay according to the Bishop of Winchester's design; prevent the establishment of religion, and generally, put their intrigues into execution’.Footnote ²² As is implicit here, the council's various ‘intrigues’ were not necessarily in line with one another or religiously motivated. Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, for example, wanted to bind Mary to a marriage with Edward Courtenay rather than with Philip of Spain, whom William Lord Paget supported, but Gardiner would not have wanted to ‘prevent the establishment of religion’. At the heart of the proposal is an anxiety about the correct role of council and parliament in determining monarchy and, since Mary was England's first queen, in determining female monarchy.Footnote ²³ Many of the experienced men in Mary's early council were, however, predominantly political men, who had advocated and carved out a system of government-by-council, begun towards the end of Henry's reign and advanced in Edward's.Footnote ²⁴ The precedent of Edward's minority rule meant that, to a certain extent, the proposition of a headless parliament to confirm the successor was not wholly unthinkable, regardless of that successor's religion and gender. In this way, a pre-coronation parliament was entirely compatible with the developing notion of parliamentary monarchy. The question, then, of whether or not such a constitutional reversal would have been proposed if Mary had not been a woman becomes more difficult to answer. Gender is inextricable from Mary's situation and the circumstances underpinning her succession, and yet, at the same time, the relationship between monarchy and parliament had shifted ever since the supremacy had been established, and gender was not a principal factor in this.

The ambassadors advised Mary to reject the proposal, which she duly did, thereby asserting her independence from her council and from the parliamentary process. Indeed, her coronation on 1 October 1553 proceeded counter to established ecclesiastical law. Despite the 1552 Second Act of Uniformity, Mary's coronation service proceeded as a full Roman mass.Footnote ²⁵ Since England was still technically schismatic, she asked Henry Penning to request that Cardinal Pole absolve her and her bishops so that they ‘might be able to say mass and administer the sacraments without sin’.Footnote ²⁶ In addition, fearing that the Edwardian oils used for her anointing ‘may not be such as they ought because of the ecclesiastical censures upon the country’, Mary asked for special oil to be sent to England by the bishop of Arras.Footnote ²⁷ She also ensured that her coronation oath did not mention the new religion. A copy of the oath that Mary swore is not extant, but the ambassadors (whose advice Mary again consulted and who urged her to ‘follow the old and accustomed’ form) reported that she ‘told us afterwards that she had seen the old form of oath wherein no mention was made of the new religion, but it was said that she should observe the laws of England; and in order to remove every uncertainty she would have the words just and licit laws added’.Footnote ²⁸ Henry Penning also referred to the oath that Mary amended, and in doing so, preserved her royal prerogative: ‘Her Majesty gave me the copy of the oath taken by her at the coronation, which she had thoroughly considered beforehand, and added a few words having for object to maintain her Majesty's integrity and good-will; as may be seen by the identical copy.’Footnote ²⁹ Despite such assertiveness about her full monarchical authority, Mary appeared at the end of her coronation holding two sceptres: the ‘one of the King, the other bearing a dove which, by custom, is given to the Queen’, according to the papal envoy Commendone.Footnote ³⁰ This double image may well have been the result of an innocent muddle or an entirely acceptable (if contradictory) expression of the status of a queen regnant, but its symbolism is striking. The newly anointed Mary was presented as both prince of her realm and consort to that realm, as both in charge of her country and its governing, and, as the laws of marriage dictate, subordinate to it.

There seems, then, to be a dichotomy between presentation and intention at the beginning of Mary's reign. Mary may have been forced to acknowledge the experience of certain ‘men of position’ by admitting them to her council, but she was not necessarily going to heed their advice. The plan to delay the coronation may have come to nothing, but what remains significant is that, in 1553, the possibility of holding a parliamentary session without an anointed monarch at its head, in order to secure the succession, had been presented to the queen. Confronted with a delicate and complex legal problem, governing men conceived of, and articulated, an alternative understanding of monarchical authority. At times, Mary seems acutely aware of a degree of subordination to her council. Just before the coronation, Mary summoned her councillors to the Tower and, sinking to her knees before them, pledged her intention to rule ‘to the public good and all the subjects’ benefit'. As the imperial ambassadors reported, she informed them that she had ‘entrusted her affairs and person … to them’. In response, her councillors were reportedly moved to tears by this unprecedented action: ‘amazed as they were by this humble and lowly discourse, so unlike anything ever heard before in England’.Footnote ³¹ A little later in her reign, Mary again acknowledged her dependency on those who had supported her claim to the throne and on parliament's ratification of her queenship. In 1554 when she addressed the Guildhall to counter Sir Thomas Wyatt's uprising against her Spanish marriage, she argued, according to one report of the event, that her subjects owed her more obedience than was ordinarily due to a monarch because she was not only a consecrated monarch, and thus a type of David, but also a queen who had been elected and confirmed by ‘unanimous acclamations and votes’.Footnote ³² In a chronicle account of this Guildhall speech, Mary referred to her coronation as a marriage, pointed to her coronation ring and reminded her audience of their coronation oaths of allegiance – but also of their ‘actes of parliament’ confirming her legitimacy:

II

In 1553, Richard Taverner wrote An oration gratulatory made upon the joyfull proclayming of the moste noble Princes Quene Mary Quene of Englande.Footnote ³⁴ Taverner was former clerk of the privy seal (having been appointed by Cromwell in 1536–7) and the author and translator of several humanist and reformist works. An oration was dedicated to Mary (although not necessarily ever read by her), and Taverner was probably hoping to protect his position at court by presenting the new queen with an account of her right to rule England. If this was his intention, it was unsuccessful: Taverner lost his place in the signet office. But Taverner, ‘Cromwell's principal propagandist for religious reform’,Footnote ³⁵ was also undoubtedly taking an opportunity to counsel Mary.

Taverner's neglected accession text lurches between fixing Mary's legitimacy to the will of God and to the authority of parliament. In doing so, it encapsulates the dilemma of a divinely ordained Catholic queen and her status vis-à-vis the law and established religion. As a solution, it advocates a system that looks remarkably like a monarchical republic: it presents Mary as bound by her parliament in order to protect the interests of the commonwealth. There is no doubt, Taverner wrote, that Mary is ‘the true and undoubted heire to the Crowne imperiall’, who has been restored to her rightful throne by God: ‘God, god, it is I saye O England that hath delivered the. Wherefore geve the onely glorye to hym and prayse herof. God it is and none other that hathe of hys profounde wysdome broughte to passe, and wroughte thys whole matter.’Footnote ³⁶ But Mary's legitimacy confronts the primacy of law when it comes to matters of religion. God may have delivered England from the wrongful blood heir, but this was not the same as delivering England from the true religion. Taverner pauses:

In answer to this, Taverner, careful to distance himself from his own opinion with ‘I nothing doubt’, appeals to the authority of parliament, and to Mary's duty to observe this:

This is a clever piece of admonishing counsel. Mary's authority hails from God, whose will has been miraculously recovered, but she is also represented as being subject to the authority of parliament, a public authority as opposed to the ‘pryvate aucthority’ of men – Mary's trusted intimates perhaps, rather than her councillors? For Mary to be a legitimate governor, Taverner's text implies, she will need to understand her relationship to parliament, and the relationship between supremacy, religion, and parliament that the Henrician reformation established. In Taverner's text, ‘true religion’ is that established justly and correctly by parliament. It is not distinct from the Catholic religion, but is a purged, purified ‘ryght & catholike’ religion, and one ratified by the parliamentary process for the good of the commonwealth.

Taverner's published oration belongs to an arena of counsel surrounding Mary on her accession. The unique circumstances of England's first queen, while not necessarily controversial on sole account of her gender, occasioned the voicing of new ways of thinking about monarchy. Respublica is a play that, like Taverner's oration, also casts a version of Mary's queenship in the identifiable mould of a monarchical republic. It is surely significant that one of the first plays of the reign of England's first queen is called ‘commonwealth’. The eponymous heroine, ‘Respublica’, is not a historical or classical character, but instead represents the abstract concept of the English ‘common weal’ and, furthermore, is aligned with Mary herself. Respublica dramatizes the paradox, or perhaps the perfectly acceptable balance, of a divinely ordained queen whose power is negotiated and limited by parliament.

Evidence is shadowy about the exact authorship and performance history of Respublica.Footnote ³⁹ The title page of the manuscript dates the play to ‘1553 and the first yeare of the moost prosperous Reigne of our moste gracious Soveraigne Quene Marye the first’ and the play text refers to itself as a ‘Christmas devise’, indicating that a performance did take place during Christmas 1553, and possibly at court.Footnote ⁴⁰ Since the play also refers to its actors as ‘boys’, this could refer to the children of the Chapel Royal.Footnote ⁴¹ The Poet in the prologue also refers directly to the newly crowned Queen Mary, and the end of the play incorporates, as was customary, a short prayer to the queen and her council. Neither of these facts constitutes hard proof, unfortunately, that Respublica was ever performed before Mary, but in its reference to Christmas 1553 and its direct addressing of the queen, and in its subject matter, this play offers an invaluable glimpse into early Marian politics. What is similarly intriguing is that if indeed Nicholas Udall was the author of this play, then his material did not offend: Udall went on to enjoy success as one of the court's most favoured playwrights.Footnote ⁴²Respublica offers Mary a limited, and conciliar, version of her rule, but adroitly cloaked throughout the play in the guise of flattery that would appeal to a queen who wanted to believe in her autonomy.

By Christmas 1553, the first parliament of Mary's reign had just closed and Mary had announced her intention to marry Philip. This parliament had declared Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon legitimate, and restated Elizabeth's illegitimacy. It had also repealed the Edwardian laws of treason and the acts of uniformity, ruled against clerical marriage, and reinstated religious images, communion in both kinds, and the form of consecration. Religion was thus brought back into line with the law of 1547. Consequently, Respublica is often read in terms of its critique of Edwardian policies, particularly the ransacking of church wealth and land, or for its religious position.Footnote ⁴³ The allegory is not subtle: Respublica exclaims, ‘O lorde howe have I bee used these five yeres past?’ (l. 1776), and she is held hostage by corrupting vices (representing rogue Edwardian councillors) who disguise themselves pointedly as Reformation, Policy, Authority, and Honesty. The play has not, however, been discussed in terms of the relationship it creates between Respublica and Mary – between the English state and a female monarch.

If Respublica was indeed performed at court before Mary in 1553, it would, in many ways, have been an appropriate and flattering choice. Respublica can be read as a celebration of sacred and absolute monarchy.Footnote ⁴⁴ The character of Nemesis, the ‘mooste highe goddesse of correccion’ (l. 1782) who is sent by God at the end of the play to alleviate Respublica and restore the impoverished commonwealth, is explicitly aligned with the newly crowned queen of England:

These words, uttered by the Poet in the play's prologue, anticipate Nemesis's entrance at the end of the play and, by aligning her with ‘Marye our soveraigne and Quene’, mean that, when Nemesis appears on stage, she does so as a mirror image of Mary: with ‘powre from godde all practicse to repeale’ (l. 1786), able to ‘reforme thabuses [the abuses] which hithertoo hath been’ and forever correct the path of history. Tom Betteridge has described this apocalyptic version of Mary's accession as depicting a ‘once and for all redemption’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Mary's queenship will end all corruption and stem the uneasy contingency of history, the knowledge that, as the Poet in the prologue expresses, ‘all Commen weales Ruin and decaye/from tyme to tyme’ (ll. 19–20).

At the same time, however, the play does not fully subscribe to the redemptive version of history that it sets up with the arrival of a divine body in the form of Nemesis/Mary. Throughout Respublica, allusion is made to the capriciousness of history.Footnote ⁴⁶ Respublica's first words when she enters the stage are ‘Lorde what yearethlye thinge is permanent or stable,/or what is all this worlde but a lumpe mutable?’ (ll. 439–40). Underlying the play is a distinct sense that divine majesty may not be sufficient to restore or sustain the health of a commonwealth. Nemesis may appear on stage as an image of Mary I, sent by God and surrounded by the four traditional monarchical virtues of Truth, Mercy, Justice, and Peace, but Nemesis then leaves the play. She flies to another realm altogether, leaving Respublica alone to govern the People, with her male councillors. The final scene of the play represents a tableau of a commonwealth, complete with governors and People but no sacred ruler: ‘Now dearling Respublica ye are in tholde goode estate/and they taken awaie that spoiled youe of Late’ (ll. 1922–3). More powerfully, this commonwealth is represented by the older female character, Respublica. Indeed, Respublica looks like a type of queen at the end of this play, touched by the fleeting divinity of Nemesis, accompanied by the heaven-sent virtues of Mercy, Truth, Peace, and Justice, and surrounded by councillors. Consequently, as Nemesis devolves her power to Respublica, it is with Respublica that Queen Mary is finally identified in this play: the queen is collapsed into the ‘commonwealth’.

Crucially, Respublica has to recognize her dependency on the men of governance – her councillors. In many ways, this play teaches monarchs a lesson about heeding the advice of unreliable and untrustworthy councillors, and thus appeals to a more absolutist version of monarchy. Typical of this play's bifocality, however, Respublica simultaneously emphasizes a state's unequivocal need for good councillors and ‘good governement’ (l. 1360). The causes of the previous five years of decay are attributable not to the monarch's competence, but to that of the ‘governors’. Respublica says:

At the end of the play, Respublica's supposedly ‘faithfull/and trustie counsailours’ (ll. 1824–5) are punished, but moderately and not solely by the monarchical figure of Nemesis. Avarice, for example, is handed over to the People ‘that he maie bee pressed’ (l. 1903) and Adulation is forgiven and swears to ‘mooste duelie servie god and the Commonweale’ (l. 1891). And as Mercy, Justice, and Peace turn outwards at the end of the play to address Queen Mary and her council, they emphasize the council's role in ‘maintaining’ the respublica. This serves as a warning to the councillors to serve their monarch well, but also to the monarch to trust her councillors:

III

As Mary's reign progressed, she distanced herself increasingly from her privy council and their meetings.Footnote ⁴⁷ But Collinson's moment of an Elizabethan monarchical republic has a prologue in Marian England. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, a message to the new queen to create a monarchical republic was rehearsed again, and this time in the city and parliament man Richard Mulcaster's commissioned account of the coronation pageants designed for Elizabeth's procession through the city of London on the eve of her coronation. Echoing Respublica, the pageant scene erected at the little conduit on Cheapside in that snowy January in 1559 featured two hills representing two contrasting types of republic: one barren, the ‘Ruinosa Respublica’, and one flourishing and fertile, ‘Respublica bene instituta’.Footnote ⁴⁸ When Elizabeth's chariot drew near, so Mulcaster's text tells us, Time appeared from a cave in between the two hills, carrying a Bible and leading his daughter, Truth, by the hand. Visually, this scene clearly equates a successful commonwealth with the restoration of the ‘true’ religion. However, it also associates successful monarchy, and a restored ‘respublica’, with successful conciliar and parliamentary process. The words decorating the pageant boards and describing the cause for a flourishing commonwealth do not mention religion, but instead mention ‘Lovers of the common weale.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Furthermore, this pageant is explicitly linked in Mulcaster's text to the next and final pageant of the series, on Fleet Street, in which Elizabeth was represented by Deborah ‘consulting for the good government of Israel’, and as a queen-in-parliament.Footnote ⁵⁰ Never before had an English coronation procession depicted the monarch in this way, dressed in crimson parliament robes.Footnote ⁵¹ Mulcaster glosses this pageant for its message of ‘good counsell’: it is this that will revive the wilting ‘respublica’ witnessed in the previous pageant:

This is the version of the monarchical republic dramatized in the 1553 Marian play, and repeated here as a warning to England's second queen.

This article has not argued that Marian England should be understood as a monarchical republic. Rather, it has argued that the moment surrounding the crisis of Mary's accession forced the articulation, in various ways, of a monarchical republic as a viable solution to the particular and overlapping issues of legitimacy, religion and gender – issues that were not so distinct from those surrounding Edward's minority rule or the accession of the third Tudor sibling, Elizabeth. Constitutionally, perhaps, the idea to reverse the order of coronation and the opening of parliament did not necessarily need to be controversial, and could be justified. And yet, to hook the monarch into parliament in this way, before they are anointed and crowned, signals undeniably that, for some Marian subjects at least, the ship of state could sail, momentarily, without a monarch at its helm.