Elizabeth’s accession was neither as theoretically improbable as her grandfather’s nor as practically troublesome as her sister’s, but it was not without its curiosities and potential problems. As the daughter of Anne Boleyn, born while Henry Vlll’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was still living, Elizabeth was illegitimate under the Catholic canon law which Mary had restored in England. If that was not enough, she was also strictly speaking illegitimate under the law of the land. The vicissitudes of Henry Vlll’s succession laws had seen Elizabeth first in line for the throne under the first Act of Succession (1534), then bastardised and displaced by the second act (1536), before being restored as third in line for the throne under the third act in 1544.
However, the massive repeal of Henry’s laws which had taken place under Mary had left Elizabeth in a kind of legal limbo from which there was no escape. Elizabeth could hardly pass an act retrospectively remedying this mess without acknowledging that she was illegitimate, which would have implied that she could not lawfully have taken the throne in the first place. This dilemma, while constitutionally amusing, was not of great moment, and was passed over in tactful silence. In the event, Elizabeth’s accession was domestically untroubled, as the arrival of a young and probably fertile queen offered the realm new hope in the gloom which had overwhelmed Mary’s last year. Mary’s final illness gave both Elizabeth and the English elites ample time to prepare for the transition. The loss of Calais, the epidemic of influenza, and the phantom pregnancies which were all the fruit of her unpopular marriage with Philip II had dissipated the stock of popular support which had swept Mary to power five years before.
However welcome Elizabeth may have been domestically, there were also foreign interests to be taken into account, primarily those of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whose legitimacy none could call into doubt, and who was married to the Dauphin of France (soon to become King Francis II). Although tacitly excluded from the throne by Henry VIII’s legislation, in terms of blood and lineage Mary Stuart certainly had the best claim after Elizabeth.
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