It was during the sixteenth and especially the seventeenth century that the grand heraldic funeral in Britain reached its heyday. In the first twenty-five years of the seventeenth century alone, there were four grand royal funerals. Throughout the century, grand funerals, not only of royalty but also of members of the nobility and of statesmen, were manifestations of power and status. The funerary elaboration very much included the music of these ceremonies: in this respect, the seventeenth century would turn out to have been almost more productive than the following three hundred years together.

Elizabeth I, 1603

According to the eighteenth-century historian Henry John Todd, for the funeral of Edward VI in 1553, Archbishop Cranmer had offered ‘to chant the mass and requiem’. However, Edward VI's funeral was clearly a Protestant affair and Strype reports that Cranmer celebrated it ‘after the reformed way, by the English Service-Book’. Similarly, Francis Sanford recorded that ‘The Service and Communion, by especial favour of his Sister Queen Mary, were performed in English.’ Loach has suggested that Mary I may have been persuaded to allow this Protestant ceremony by Charles V, while Leonard Elliott-Binns has observed that ‘Mary, for her part, had held a requiem in the Tower for her brother’. After all, with Mary I's attempt to reverse the Reformation, the first major royal funeral following the rites of the securely established Church of England was that of her sister, Elizabeth I.

The death of Elizabeth I on 24 March 1603 marked a great caesura in British history, not alone because of England's growing international importance during her reign but especially because her successor, James VI of Scotland, united the Scottish and the English crowns in one person, eventually leading to the formation of Great Britain. The queen's funeral on 28 April took place before her successor even entered the capital: it has been shown that James VI/I was recommended, if not asked, with reference to the ceremonial complications, not to come to London until after his predecessor's burial. Curtis Perry has shown that the king himself ‘gave order that Elizabeth's funeral should take place in his absence’ and, referring to the Venetian Secretary's report, he explains that this ‘was seen as a sign of the new king's lingering resentment of his predecessor’.