Parliaments 1558-1603 | History of Parliament Online

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Parliaments, 1558-1603

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1559 The main intention of the Parliament summoned shortly after Elizabeth’s accession to the throne was, in the words of Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon, to establish ‘an uniforme order of religion’. The state opening of the Parliament was delayed for two days by bad weather and the new queen’s... Read more	1563 Among the British Library’s Cotton manuscripts survives an eyewitness account of ‘Th’order in proceedinge to the Parliament on Tuesdaie 12 January’ 1563, a day later than intended due to ‘fowle wether’ and the queen being ‘somewhat sick of a styche’. It details Elizabeth’s... Read more	1571 In the interval of five years since her last Parliament Elizabeth had faced an uprising of rebellion fomented by Catholic nobles in the north of England, and received a bull of excommunication from Pope Pius V. Discontent and pressure for change was mounting on both sides of the Elizabethan... Read more
1572 Elizabeth hated summoning Parliaments and the decision to do so barely a year after the dissolution of the last assembly was forced upon her by the Privy Council in order to deal with the aftermath of the Ridolfi plot, a Catholic conspiracy to put Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, on the English throne.... Read more	1584 This Parliament, like the 1572 Parliament, was summoned following the discovery of a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, on the English throne. Spanish agents were implicated in the Throckmorton plot, and the ensuing diplomatic rift was... Read more	1586 Elizabeth refused to attend the state opening of her sixth Parliament, summoned as it was with the sole purpose of condemning her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who had been a prisoner in England since 1568. The 1584-5 Parliament stood prorogued when the Babington plot to assassinate... Read more
1589 Elizabeth delayed the opening of this Parliament that had originally been summoned in the autumn of 1588 in response to the defeat of the Spanish Armada for as long as she could afford to, knowing that the Commons would be eager to broach two topics, religious debates and foreign policy, that she... Read more	1593 At the state opening on 19 Feb. 1593 the Lord Keeper Sir John Puckering stressed the ‘weightie and urgent causes of this present tyme’, principally the ongoing threat of Spanish invasion, and the queen’s ‘extraordinarye and most excessive expenses’ as the reasons for summoning this... Read more	1597 Much had changed in the interval following the 1593 Parliament. Four successive bad harvests had plunged England into a crisis of dearth and spiralling inflation; by August 1597 the price of flour had tripled. Rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1594 led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, whose... Read more
1601 Monopolies, a grievance that had previously been raised in 1571 and 1597-8, became a major talking point in Elizabeth’s final Parliament. The queen’s failure to fulfil her promise to expose all patents to the ‘tryall and true touchstone of the lawe’ produced a more cogent attack upon... Read more