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This day in London’s history: on the 17th of November 1558 Mary Tudor (Mary I or Bloody Mary) died after a second phantom pregnancy. Mary had been desperate to have a child and after her death, her prayer book was found to be sodden with tears on the pages devoted to prayers for women in labour. Dying childless and in pain, possibly from some form of ovarian cancer, she reluctantly agreed that her half-sister Elizabeth should take over the throne, hoping that her sister would continue the Catholic practices that she had so fervently (and bloodily) instituted.

However, in 1559, the third Act of Uniformity was passed, repealing all the Catholic practices that had been re-established by Mary Tudor, and regulating ecclesiastical discipline for the next century. As a result, many of the Marian bishops vacated their sees, making it difficult for Elizabeth, as she had planned for Matthew Parker, chaplain to Ann Boleyn (the queen’s mother), to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. The story goes that, as there was a lack of officials in the church to preside at Parker’s consecration, he was irregularly consecrated at the Nags Head Tavern.

Some spoilsports point out that the story of consecration in a tavern is, entirely apocryphal and that Parker was actually consecrated at Lambeth Palace by four bishops who had held sees in the reign of Edward VI. Still, it is possible that those involved in the consecration did dine at the tavern afterwards.

The ‘Nag’s Head Fable’ was started up in 1604 by a Jesuit aptly named C Holywood, in an attempt to challenge the validity of the Apostolic Succession, which states that the continuing line of Christ’s teachings from the apostles is transmitted only through episcopal consecration.