Parliament: To Legislate or Advise the Succession?

During the sixteenth-century Parliament held two main functions, those being to create legislation and to provide advice for their monarch, usually in the form of a petition. While the succession issue has been discussed elsewhere the extent of the succession debate within Elizabeth’s Parliaments has not been fully examined. Of the thirteen sessions of Parliament during Elizabeth’s reign the succession was debated in eight sessions, making these Succession Parliaments. This chapter explores the Succession Parliaments and the ways in which the Elizabethan political classes sought to manage the issue, either through the creation of legislation or by petitioning Elizabeth to settle the matter herself. The unsettled succession had many unintended side effects, one of which was agitation for an expansion of the liberty of freedom of speech within Parliament which ran alongside the succession debate in many sessions and is considered here.