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 indisposition. Addressing the assembled Lords and Commons on 25 Jan.
Freeman, Haberdashers’ Co. 1560, asst. 1583, master 1584 – 85, 1590 – 91, 1595 – 96, 1605–6;
Collector of customs, strangers’ goods, London by 1572-at least 1579,
Commr. prize goods 1587, 1589, 1591, 1596, 1598,
BILLINGSLEY, Sir Henry (c.1538-1606)
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 monopolies than had hitherto been attempted concerning any single issue in the earlier Parliaments of the reign.Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. T.E. Hartley, iii.
S. Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds, 136-7.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.
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 Parliament despite Elizabeth being generally ‘most loth’ to do so.
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 usually reserved to her prerogative. By this time radical Puritan sectaries were perceived to be as great a threat to the Church of England as Roman Catholic seminary priests and the Jesuit mission.
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 especially worrisome since Philip II had added Portugal to his extensive dominions, thereby increasing the resources with which he could mount an invasion.
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. The first session was the only meeting of Parliament during Elizabeth’s reign in which there was no request for supply. A former troublemaker Robert Bell, MP for King’s Lynn, was appointed Speaker.