Between 1553 and 1603 England found itself in the unprecedented situation of being ruled by two queens, Mary (1553–1558) and her sister Elizabeth (1558–1603). This book brings together a selection of the best recent research which, for the first time, challenges commonplace arguments about Mary's and Elizabeth's relative successes or failures. Scholarship to date has tended to focus on the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth in isolation. This volume, in thinking about both queens, and in addressing issues as diverse as politics, religion, personnel, ceremony, diplomacy and costume, asks us to reconsider Tudor queenship.

Mary and Elizabeth, England’s first crowned queens, share the same tomb in Westminster Abbey. In 1606, James I dug up Elizabeth’s body from its place in the tomb of Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York, moved it to the left-hand side of Henry VII’s chapel where Mary was buried, and commissioned a monument heralding the reign of his predecessor. But the plaque on the tomb (see Figure 1.1) also acknowledges the presence of Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary. It reads: Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection.

This article reconsiders Mary Tudor's victory in the succession crisis of July 1553. It challenges the traditional interpretation which accounts for Mary's unexpected triumph as the result of a ‘spontaneous’ rising of the East Anglian gentry. Instead it reclaims a central role for Mary's household affinity in the succession crisis and as such presents a longer-term perspective than accounts of Mary's coup d’état have provided hitherto. It concludes by pointing to the implications of the role of Mary's household for interpreting the politics and religion of her reign.