Cecil proposed a Great or Grand Council that would come into effect on the queen’s death, governing as a council of regency and summoning a Parliament that would choose a Protestant successor, whose authority would be confirmed by a statute. It was a quasi-republican solution to the succession issue, one that guaranteed Mary’s exclusion, since Catholics were ineligible to sit in Parliament after the legislation of 1571. But it was a risky proposition, and in Elizabeth’s view an almost scandalous subversion of the principles of monarchy and hereditary right. She wielded her power and instructed
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