Elizabeth's accession to the English throne in 1558 posed a crisis of legitimacy to the English political nation, in large part because of her gender. Henry VIII transformed the meaning of kingship by defining England as an empire and himself (and his assumed successor ‘kings of this realm’) as Supreme Head of the Church of England, in the larger European context of Protestant reformation. The regnal sequence after his death and before Elizabeth's accession of a boy king and two queens (Lady Jane Grey and Mary I) of disputable legitimacy greatly complicated that legacy. It invested imperial identity – now seen as necessary to secure Protestantism as well as to preserve England's autonomous status as a nation – in weak vessels. That tainted sequence inevitably implicated religious conviction in political ideology in new ways.

At Elizabeth's accession this pre-history made it necessary for the queen and her apologists to innovate in order to legitimate her rule. They did so most obviously by exploiting elements of a conception of imperial rule first adumbrated in Henry VIII's reign: they identified the nation as elect, and appealed to godly men to act as citizens on behalf of the imperial crown. They also followed John Aylmer in defining monarchical authority as ‘mixed’.