ABSTRACT
Between February 1547 and January 1559 three English sovereigns were crowned in Westminster Abbey, and none was an adult male. This fact alone rendered the rapid succession of Henry VIII’s children - Edward VI, a minor, and his unmarried half-sisters, Mary I and Eliza beth I - unique in the annals of English monarchy.1 In retrospect one can see that the coronations of all three marked an extraordinary ‘moment’ in the history of the Tudor polity, one that fatefully linked the course of the Reformation to that of the royal succession. Edward’s premature death and the duke of Northumberland’s botched attempt to bar Mary from the throne in 1553 marked only the first phase of a succession crisis, a crisis exacerbated by Mary’s demise without issue (17 November 1558) and Elizabeth’s decision not to marry. Mary’s catholicism and Edward’s and Elizabeth’s protestantism, as much as the religious inclinations of the men in their parliaments, underscored the historic significance of the outcome of this crisis; reformers and tradi tionalists alike might well ask whom God had chosen to nurture the faith of His true followers. Because at the moment of accession all three monarchs fell heir to the revolutionary headship of the church created by their father - the royal supremacy of the crown imperial that was established in law in 1533-4 - their coronation oaths, like the terms of their anointing, had to be changed to accommodate the changed rela
* The author wishes to thank the editors most heartily for their many kindnesses in the preparation of this essay, Richard Mortimer for his patient support throughout and Charles Knighton for his assistance in helping me clarify various matters, especially the ones cited in notes 102-4.
