Lucy Worsley Investigates

Nearly 500 years ago on the 1st of October 1553, Mary walked down this very aisle in Westminster Abbey to be crowned.

Mary was at the front of this whole long procession of her knights and her councillors and her dukes.

She did have some ladies with her, but the focus was all on Mary herself.

For the first time as a coronation, a woman was leading the men.

But a coronation designed for Kings presented some problems for the first Queen.

Her coronation regalia included the spurs of a knight.

But unlike King's before her, Mary didn't put them on.

She did receive the sword, a symbol that she was now defender of the realm.

It seems to me that Mary had a very difficult line to tread here.

She almost had to blur the genders.

She had to portray herself as a King for legitimacy and authority.

But she also had to tear up the rulebook and make the rituals suitable for a woman.

And what she did would set the pattern for all the female monarchs who followed.

This area up here is off limits because that mosaic is over 750 years old.

It's much too fragile to be walked on.

But that's the exact spot where Mary was crowned.

And it's still the exact spot where monarchs are crowned to this day.

At the actual moment of crowning, Mary was on the coronation chair, it was placed on a platform and the Crown Imperial was put onto her head.

The coronation service was a full Catholic mass.

Mary couldn't officially restore the Catholic faith until Parliament reconvened.

So she was crowned Supreme Head at the Protestant Church of England.

The country celebrated and there were parties in the streets of London.

But within just five years, hundreds of ordinary people would be killed in Mary's name.

The new Queen's Catholic beliefs would make her rule hugely polarising.