4 women were crowned in England between 1509 and 1559. Two Queens consult, Catherine

of Argonne and Ambulin and two Queens regnant, their daughters marry the first and Elizabeth

the first. The ritual of coronation was crucial for conferring legitimacy and sanctity.

But the 16th century was a period of change when many monarchs across Europe were ceasing to

crown their sovereigns. England's Tudor coronations included that of the country's first

acknowledged Queen Regnant, for whom decisions had to be made about what features to incorporate,

and they were performed during a time of religious upheaval and change which would potentially

alter the nature of the right. In short, performing this ancient ceremony meant calling

old verities into question. To explore these fascinating occasions and all they meant,

I'm joined by the very best person in the world to talk about this Dr. Alice Hunt. Dr. Hunt is

an associate professor at the University of Southampton and the author of a book which has received

much scholarly acclaim, the drama of coronation medieval ceremony in early modern England.

She was also the co-editor with Professor Anna Whitelock, another friend of this podcast,

of a collection of essays on Mary the First and Elizabeth the First, Tudor Queenship the reigns of

Mary Anna Lisbeth.

Dr. Hunt, Alice, it is such a pleasure to work in you to not just the Tudors. I am so excited to

talk to you about this because there's so much of interest in this subject and let's be honest,

it may be that there's a coronation in the next decade or so and so we are preparing ourselves

as a country for that. So I suppose the first question to ask is when regal power transfers

to the successor because I know that there are nowadays two principles at work, the sort of Rex

Nungquan-Morator, the King never dies, so that idea that the crown itself never dies so the sovereignty

will shift in the one instant from one to the next. And then from 1701 there's been the active

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