7th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I 7th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I The 7th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I was summoned by Queen Elizabeth I of England on 18 September 1588 and assembled on 4 February 1589. Originally summoned in response to the defeat of the Spanish Armada in August 1588, the opening was delayed by Elizabeth as long as possible to avoid the inevitable debates on religious reform and foreign policy which she considered her own private prerogative. At the opening of Parliament on February 4 Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor, ordered the assembled Houses of Lords and Commons on behalf of the Queen
Elizabeth I of England both, not as a normal woman. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin". Later on, poets and writers took up the theme and turned it into an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. Public tributes to the Virgin by 1578 acted as a coded assertion of opposition to the queen's marriage negotiations with the Duke of Alençon. Ultimately, Elizabeth would insist she was married