5th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I dissolved in the prior September to allow a new Parliament to be urgently summoned. 5th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I The 5th Parliament of Queen Elizabeth I was summoned by Queen Elizabeth I of England on 12 October 1584 and assembled on 23 November 1584. The size of the House of Commons had by now increased further to 460 members, compared with only 402 in her first Parliament of 1558/9. Like the 4th Parliament of 1572, Elizabeth's 5th Parliament was called in response to a Catholic conspiracy aimed at putting Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots on to the English throne.
Succession to Elizabeth I of England Henry VII who reached adulthood, Margaret and Mary, was the first and main issue in the succession. Mary I of England had died without managing to have her preferred successor and first cousin, Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, nominated by parliament. Margaret Douglas was a daughter of Margaret Tudor, and lived to 1578, but became a marginal figure in discussions of the succession to Elizabeth I, who at no point clarified the dynastic issues of the Tudor line. When in 1565 Margaret Douglas's elder son Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, married Mary, Queen of Scots, the "Lennox claim" was generally regarded