Coronation of the British monarch on Christmas Day, possibly in imitation of the Byzantine emperors, and John's was on Ascension Day. Elizabeth I consulted her astrologer, John Dee, before deciding on an auspicious date. The coronations of Charles II in 1661 and Anne in 1702 were on St George's Day, the feast of the patron saint of England. Under the Hanoverian monarchs in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was deemed appropriate to extend the waiting period to several months, following a period of mourning for the previous monarch and to allow time for preparation of the ceremony. In the case of every monarch
Thomas Palmer (died 1553) 19 August 1553. Palmer was the only accused man on that day to protest and he shouted that the judges themselves had formed Jane's council and they deserved as much or more punishment than him, and the trial was unlawful. He was brought out for execution on 22 August, with Sir John Gates and the Duke of Northumberland. He had heard mass before execution, and taken the sacrament in one kind; but when he came on the scaffold, covered with the blood of those who had just been beheaded, he made a speech in which he said that he died