Volume 1 / Book 1 — IV PAGEANTRY

[Bibliographical Note. A mass of material on the progresses is collected in J. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth (ed. 2, 1823) and Progresses of James I (1828), which may be supplemented by W. Kelly, Royal Progresses and Visits to Leicester (1884), and F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914). Most of the contemporary descriptions of entertainments reprinted by Nichols will be found noticed in chh. xxiii, xxiv, and a more complete itinerary than his is attempted in Appendix A with the help of the dates of Privy Council meetings and the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, which he did not utilize. Most of the hosts of royalty can be identified with the aid of the Victoria County Histories, and of other local histories, to which some guide is afforded by J. P. Anderson, Book of British Topography (1881), of which a new edition is looked for, C. Gross, Bibliography of Municipal History (1897), and A. L. Humphreys, Handbook to County Bibliography (1917). Three of the most important home counties are described in J. Norden's Middlesex (1593), Herts (1598), and Essex (1840), and the main roads are surveyed at a date rather after the period in J. Ogilby, Britannia (1675), the progenitor of a long line of road-books.

On the Lord Mayor's show, J. G. Nichols, London Pageants (1837), and F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayor's Pageants (1843-4) and The Civic Garland (1845), may be consulted; and further details can be gleaned from C. M. Clode, Memorials of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1875) and Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1888), and other publications of individual guilds.

Elizabethan hunting is dealt with by D. H. Madden, The Diary of Master William Silence (1897). There is no adequate history of the dance; the chapter by A. F. Sieveking in Shakespeare's England, ii. 437, and the sources there cited may be consulted. The tilt has been recently dealt with by F. H. Cripps-Day, The History of the Tournament (1918), and R. C. Clephan, The Tournament, Its Periods and Phases (1919), which appeared after this chapter was written. Contemporary records are collected by W. Segar, Honor Military and Civill (1602), and armature is learnedly treated in J. Hewitt, Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe (1855-60), and C. Ffoulkes, Armour and Weapons (1909).

R. Withington, English Pageantry (vol. i, 1918), also published since this chapter was written, deals more fully with the origins and mediaeval history of pageantry than with its Elizabethan examples.]

THE tradition of pageantry had its roots deep in the Middle Ages. But it made its appeal also to the Renaissance, of which nothing was more characteristic than the passion for colour and all the splendid external vesture of things; while the ranging curiosity of the Renaissance was able to stimulate into fresh life the fading imaginative energies of the past, weaving its new fancies from classical mythology, from epic and pastoral, from the explorations of history and folk-lore, no less delightfully than incongruously, into the old mediaeval warp of scripture and hagiology and allegory. So that the Tudor kings and queens came and went about their public affairs in a constant atmosphere of make-believe, with a sibyl lurking in every court-yard and gateway, and a satyr in the boscage of every park, to turn the ceremonies of welcome and farewell, without which sovereigns must not move, by the arts of song and dance and mimetic dialogue, to favour and to prettiness.

The fullest scope for such entertainments was afforded by the custom of the progress, which led the Court, summer by summer, to remove from London and the great palaces on the Thames and renew the migratory life of earlier dynasties, wandering for a month or more over the fair face of the land, and housing itself in the outlying castles and royal manors, or claiming the ready hospitality of the territorial gentry and the provincial cities. This was a holiday, in which the sovereign sought change of air and the recreation of hunting and such other pastimes as the country yields.[363] But it cannot be doubted that it had also a political object, in the strengthening, by the give and take of gracious courtesies, of the bonds of personal affection and loyalty upon which much of the wisdom of Elizabeth's domestic statecraft so securely rested. And accordingly the procedure retained much of the solemnity of a state function. The Queen went on horseback or in a coach or litter, attended by her bodyguards and the great officers of state, with the Master of the Horse leading her bridle and a great noble carrying the sword before her.[364] The sheriff met her at the boundary of each county, and as she entered a castle or a city the constables offered up their keys and the corporations their maces, and received them again at her hands. And with the Queen came the Household in a body, Hall and Chamber and Stable, followed by a long train of carts bearing the royal 'stuff' which was destined to supply the needs of the household offices, and to furnish the often empty walls of temporary lodgings, where were reproduced, if only on a miniature scale, the conventional ordering of presence chamber, privy chamber, and the like, which were the essentials of a royal dwelling.[365] Careful arrangements had, of course, to be made in advance; on the one hand for the maintenance of communications with London and the transaction or postponement of business during the absence of Queen and Council, and on the other for the housing and provisioning of so great a multitude in the country districts.[366] The latter had of old been the care of a special group of Hall officers known as the Harbingers.[367] These still exercised functions of detail. But the general control, like so much else, had passed into the hands of the Lord Chamberlain. Early in the summer, as soon as the royal decision as to the direction and duration of the progress could be obtained, a document was drawn up, known as the 'gestes' or 'jestes', by which must be understood, I think, not a chronicle of res gestae, but a table of the 'gysts' or gîtes appointed for each night's lodging, which is what in fact it contained.[368] Copies of the 'gestes' were signed by the Lord Chamberlain and given with warrants from himself to Gentlemen Ushers of the Chamber, who took them as instructions to the mayors of towns, and doubtless also to the lord-lieutenants of counties, through which the progress would pass. The Ushers were directed to view and report upon the lodgings available.[369] The royal Waymaker studied the roads, and the Guard the security of the neighbourhood.[370] The local officials were required to see that a sufficient provision of food, drink, and fuel was secured, and to furnish that important safeguard, a certificate that their districts were free from the dangerous infection of the plague.[371] The 'gestes' were also published in the household, and individual courtiers hastened to send them to their friends, and to give advice to those scheduled as royal hosts about the kind of entertainment which the sovereign would expect. There is plenty of evidence in the private correspondence of the period that the honour of a royal visit was not anticipated without some anxieties. That of Sir William More at Loseley contains several references to the subject. There is a letter from Sir Anthony Wingfield, who tells More that he has reported to the Lord Chamberlain 'what fewe smal romes and howe unmete your howes was for the Quenes majesty'. She had decided to go to a manor-house of her own, but had again changed her mind. Wingfield had spoken to Lord Admiral Clinton, 'for that ytt shalbe a grete trouboul and a henderanes to you', and advises More to try his influence with Leicester. This must have been written before the present fine house at Loseley, built during 1562-8, was sufficiently completed to house the Queen. More, however, had a visit in 1567, and another in 1576, after which his neighbour, Henry Goringe of Burton, who expected one in 1577, wrote to ask him 'what order was taken by her Maiesties offycers at that tyme that her grace was with youe, and whether your howse were furnyshed with her highnes stufe, wyne, beer, and other provycion, or that you purveyd for the same or any parte thereof'. He had a third in 1583, of which he was warned by Sir Christopher Hatton in a letter of 4 August, directing him to see everything well ordered, and the house 'sweete and cleane'. There had been a 'brute' of infection, but this was now reported as 'a misinformation'. On 24 August, Hatton wrote again. More should 'avoyd' his family, and make everything ready 'as to your owne discretion shall seeme most needefull for her maiesties good contentation'. The sheriff was not to attend her on this occasion, but More and some other gentlemen had better meet her in Guildford. Finally, he had one in 1591, and one Mr. Constable came with a letter from Lord Hunsdon, asking for More's help in selecting suitable lodgings on the way to Petworth or Cowdray.[372] To these letters can be added others from various sources. In 1572 Sir Nicholas Bacon wrote to Burghley from Gorhambury that he understood 'by comen speche' that the Queen was coming, and being uncertain of the date and desirous to 'take that cours that myght best pleas her maiestie', begged for advice 'what you thinke to be the best waye for me to deale in this matter: ffor, in very deede, no man is more rawe in suche a matter then my selfe'.[373] Only a few days later Burghley also had a letter from the Earl of Bedford, then on his way to Woburn Abbey to make preparations. He wishes his rooms and lodgings were better, and says, 'I trust your Lordship will have in remembraunce to provide and helpe that her Maiesties tarieng be not above two nights and a daye; for, for so long tyme do I prepare'.[374] In the following year, 1573, it was the turn of Archbishop Parker to be both flattered and perturbed by the intimation of a visit to Canterbury. He can lodge the Queen, he tells Burghley, and also, at any rate 'for a progresse-tyme', the Treasurer himself, the Chamberlain, Leicester, and Hatton, 'thinking that your Lordships will furnisshe the places with your owne stuffe'. The house, indeed, was 'of an evill ayer, hanging upon the churche and having no prospect to loke on the people: but yet, I trust, the convenience of the building would serve'. Possibly the Queen would prefer 'her owne pallace at St. Austens', and the lords could go to the dean and prebendaries, several of whom have offered to take Burghley. In any case he would wish to dine the Queen, and the nobles and her train in 'my bigger hall'. Meanwhile he will write to the Lord Chamberlain on some things that concern his office.[375] In 1577 it was the Lord Chamberlain himself, the Earl of Sussex, who received a touching appeal from Lord Buckhurst for 'some certenty of the progres, yf it may possibly be'. Will the Queen come to Lewes, and if so, for how long? All the provision in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex is already taken up by the Earl of Arundel, Viscount Montagu and others, and he will have to send over to Flanders. Unless the Queen will 'presently determin', he does not see how he can perform that 'which is du and convenient.' And may it please God 'that the hous do not mislike her; that is my cheif care'. Apparently Buckhurst, like More a decade earlier, was building, for he adds, 'But yf her Highness had taried but on yere longer, we had ben to to happy; but Gods will and hers be doon'.[376] Sussex, though called upon to advise others, had his own subjects for reflection. He had offered the Queen hospitality at New Hall, apparently at short notice on some change of programme, and she replied that 'it were no good reason and less good manners' to trouble him. In forwarding her message Leicester had added, perhaps maliciously, for there was no love lost between him and Sussex, 'Nevertheless, my lord, for mine own opinion, I believe she wil hunt, and visit your house, coming so neer. Herein you may use the matter accordingly, since she would have you not to look for her.' Attempts were being made to dissuade her from having a progress at all, 'But it much misliketh her not to go some wher to have change of air', and the progress was 'most like to go forward, since she fancieth it so greatly herself'.[377] However, there was a good deal of plague about, and in the end the progress was abandoned, doubtless to the relief of both Sussex and Buckhurst. Perhaps the most amusing letter of all, in its delicate attempt to balance deprecation with loyalty, is one written by Sir William Cornwallis to Walsingham in 1583, on behalf of the Earl of Northumberland at Petworth. The earl wished to learn 'as much certeinty as he can' of the expected visit, and after mentioning 'the shortness of the tyme' for provision and the illness of Lady Northumberland, Cornwallis continues, 'Notwithstanding, Sir, this is very trew, yet it may not be advertysed, lest it might be thought to give impediment to her Majesties coming, wherof I perceyve my lord very glade and desirous'. Finally he ventures a discreet hint on his own account, fearing that 'her Majestie will never thank him that hath perswaded this progreyse, nor those lords that shall receive her, how great entertaynment soever they give her, considering the wayes by which she must come to them, up the hill and down the hill, so as she shall not be able to use ether coche or litter with ease, and those ways also so full of louse stones, as it is carefull and painfull riding for anybody, nether can ther be in this cuntrey any wayes devysed to avoyd those ould wayes. In truth, Sir, thus I find it, and I wyshe some others knew it, so I wear not the author; who though I write it for care of the Queen, yet might it be interpreted otherwise.'[378] Northumberland had at this time good reason to be diplomatic. Probably he was already under Walsingham's suspicion, and before the end of the year he was in the Tower, for his participation in the Throgmorton plot. Against all this uneasiness may be set the genuine spirit of welcome and personal affection for the Queen which appears to have prevailed in the much visited household of Lord Norris of Rycote. Leicester reports to Hatton in 1582 his own 'piece of cold entertainment' at the hands of Lady Norris, because he and Hatton 'were the chief hinderers of her Majesty's coming hither, which they took more unkindly than there was cause indeed'. Inverting Cornwallis's plea, he had alleged 'the foul and ragged way' as an excuse, and adds as his comment, 'A hearty noble couple are they as ever I saw towards her Highness'.[379]

Much additional inconvenience was evidently caused to voluntary and involuntary hosts alike by the characteristic indecision which led Elizabeth, in small things as well as great, to be constantly chopping and changing her plans. The 'gestes' might be set down, but they were never final, to the last minute. The good city of Leicester was warned four times to make preparation, in 1562, 1575, 1576, and 1585, and never had the felicity of beholding its sovereign at all.[380] The point comes out clearly enough in the letters already quoted; perhaps even more clearly in a final group written in August 1597 by one of Burghley's secretaries, Henry Maynard, from London to another, Michael Hicks, who was in fluttered anticipation of a visit at Ruckholt in Essex. Maynard wrote three times in the course of five days. On the 10th he warned Hicks to expect the Queen in the following week, 'if the iestes hold, which after manie alterations is so sett downe this daie'. He will let him know if there is any further change, 'for wee are greatlie aferd of Theobalds'. On the 12th there had been no change as yet and Hicks had better come to court for advice. There was still danger of Theobalds, 'but as yett it is not sett downe'. With a sigh, Maynard adds, 'This progresse much trowbleth mee, for that we knowe not what corse the Queen will take'. On the 15th he can at last announce that no change was now expected. He had told the Lord Chamberlain that Hicks was troubled at the insufficient accommodation he could provide for the royal train. 'His awnsweare was that you weare unwise to be at anie such charge: but onelie to leave the howse to the Quene: and wished that theare might be presented to hir Majestie from your wief sum fine wastcoate, or fine ruffe, or like thinge, which he said would be acceptablie taken as if it weare of greate price.' Maynard was still anticipating a descent on Theobalds, although nothing had been said about it.[381] As a matter of fact, his anticipation was justified, and Theobalds was visited in the course of September. In 1599 there was a scare lest the short progress planned should be extended, 'by reason of an intercepted letter, wherein the giving over of long voyages was noted to be sign of age'.[382]

Contact with the great is not ordinarily, for the plain man, a bed of roses; and there is no reason to suppose that it was otherwise in the spacious times of Elizabeth. You probably got knighted, if you were not a knight already, which cost you some fees, and you received some sugared royal compliments on the excellence of your entertainment and the appropriateness of your 'devices'. But you had wrestled for a month with poulterers and with poets. You had 'avoided' your house, and made yourself uncomfortable in a neighbouring lodge. You had seen your trim gardens and terraces encamped upon by a locust-swarm of all the tag-rag and bobtail that follows a court. And with your knowledge of that queer streak in the Tudor blood, you had been on tenterhooks all the time lest at some real or fancied dislike the royal countenance might become clouded, and the compliments give way to a bitter jest or to open railing. 'I have had hitherto a troublesome progress,' writes Cecil to Parker in 1561, 'to stay the Queen's majesty from daily offence conceived against the clergy, by reason of the undiscreet behaviour of the readers and ministers in these countries of Suffolk and Essex.'[383] Parker himself was something of a favourite with Elizabeth, yet John Harington can record an incredible insult to his wife on the doorstep of Lambeth.[384] And Richard Topcliffe, hunter of recusants, describes with indecent glee how the hospitality of Edward Rookwood in 1578 was rewarded with a committal to prison and a public obloquy on his religion.[385] The arrogance of the royal train had always to be reckoned with. As far back as 1526 Henry VIII had issued a formal household order against the spoliation of houses in progress.[386] In 1574 Leicester instigated a surprise visit to Berkeley Castle, which was not in the 'gestes', and so ruined the head of deer by killing twenty-seven in one day that Lord Berkeley in a passion disparked the estate. This appears to have been a deliberate scheme by Leicester to bring Berkeley into disfavour and secure the castle himself.[387] The Stuart households were probably just as bad. After Anne's visit in 1603, the Leicester corporation had to pursue the court 'aboute lynnyns and pewter that was myssinge'.[388]

It is not quite clear how far these annoyances were aggravated by the financial burden of the royal entertainment. There is some evidence that, so far as the essentials of food and drink and fuel were concerned, the household was prepared to pay its way, and that, although the hosts had to make provision of these necessaries, they were entitled to recoupment for the cost by the Cofferer.[389] Certainly the progress, once an economy for the Crown, had become an expense.[390] Burghley's papers contain an estimate, based on the accounts of 1573, showing an 'increase of chardgies in the time of progresse' to the extent of £1,034, 'which should not be if her Majestie remeynid at her Standing Howses within XX myles of London'.[391] This is not wholly conclusive, because in any case part of the time was usually spent, not in private houses, but at royal manors or even in inns.[392] But its indication is confirmed, so far as civic visits are concerned, by entries in corporation accounts, which appear to be limited to expenditure upon the hire or purchase of plenishing, the repair of streets and pavements and painting of gates and public buildings, the provision of a fairly costly gift in the form of a gold cup with money in it, and the payment of fees to the queen's waymaker for inspecting the roads, and to various officers of the chamber, hall, and stable. The visit of 1575 cost the city of Worcester £173, raised partly out of corporation funds, partly by a special levy. The city of Leicester met that of 1612 with a levy of £74 1s. 9d., while that of 1614 cost them £102 12s. 6½d.[393] Anything in the way of a mimetic entertainment would probably fall by civic custom on the guilds.[394] And the establishment of the Revels, which followed the progress, was ready to help at need, with a mask or banqueting house.[395] There are definite statements as to the recoupment of the cost of light, rushes, and fuel at Oxford in 1566, and of beer when Prince Charles passed through Leicester in 1604.[396] Of course, the Crown used its feudal right of purveyance; that is to say, of purchase within the verge at rates fixed by itself; and for this purchase a local jury was empanelled to assist the Clerk of the Market in drawing up a tariff and supervising weights and measures.[397]

But the abuses of purveyance, which included the impressment of vehicles by the royal cart-takers, cannot have borne very heavily upon districts rarely visited, although the home counties, which were more often traversed and contained standing houses, had no doubt their grievances.[398]

The Hicks correspondence suggests that, even in 1597, the household was still prepared to provision itself, at any rate in the smaller private houses. But there is a good deal of evidence to show that, where persons of wealth were concerned, a different practice grew up. A visit to Gorhambury in 1577 cost Sir Nicolas Bacon £577.[399] Parker's son recorded that his father's entertainment of the Queen at Canterbury and other houses, with his gifts to her and the lords and ladies, cost him above £2,000, and that in addition he spent £170 at Canterbury in rewards to the officers of the household.[400] Burghley's domestic biographer tells us that the twelve visits to Theobalds cost him 'two or three thousand pounds every tyme', which sufficiently explains why his adherents were not particularly anxious for a visit in 1597.[401] Parker had to find many nights' lodging, as the Queen passed up and down stream, and at Canterbury Elizabeth is known to have occupied a house of her own. But Burghley's heavy expenditure must surely have covered more than the mere gifts and the spectacular side of his entertainments. A visit to the Marquis of Winchester in 1601 was 'with more charge than the constitution of Basing may well bear'.[402] For that to Harefield in 1602 the bills are preserved, and amount to £2,013 18s. 4d., of which £1,255 12s. 0d. was apparently for provisions, £199 9s. 11d. for temporary buildings, and the balance presumably for gifts, spectacles, and the like. There is no indication of any repayments by the royal Cofferer, although Sir Thomas Egerton's friends came nobly to his assistance, and sent in innumerable presents, including no less than eighty-six stags and bucks, eleven oxen, sixty-five sheep, and forty-one sugar-loaves, as well as birds, fish, oysters, Selsea cockles, cheese-cakes, sweetmeats, wine, wheat, and salt.[403] Finally we have the definite statement of the French ambassador La Mothe Fénelon in 1575, that at Kenilworth Leicester 'a deffrayé toute la court a cent soixante platz d'assiette, l'espace de douze jours'.[404] And we have that of the Venetian ambassador Foscarini in 1612, that 'his Majesty's charges are borne by the owners of the houses where he lodges'. Foscarini had accompanied the progress to Belvoir, and was much struck with the large numbers, more than a thousand, who were housed there, and with the costly style in which things were done, 'far exceeding that of the court when in London or a neighbouring palace'. He found personally, as others have found since his day, that visiting was much more expensive than staying at home, on account of the largesse expected.[405] I am inclined to think that we have come here upon a point of honour, and that, while it was not in theory incumbent upon a poor man to feed as well as lodge his mistress, it gradually became customary for rich men to give a special proof of their devotion by omitting to claim the recoupment to which they were strictly entitled. And if this was so, of course in the long run the poor men had to follow suit. Sir William Clarke in 1602 was counted a churl, for he 'neither gives meat nor money to any of the progressors. The house Her Majesty has at commandment, and his grass the guard's horses eat, and this is all.'[406] The right to occupy the house of a subject was indeed a matter of feudal tradition. All manors were ultimately held of the Crown. We find Elizabeth dating from 'our manor of Cheneys' in 1570, although Chenies had long been in the hands of the Russells; and it was an obiter dictum of Lord Northampton in a Star Chamber case of 1606 that 'the kinge by his prerogative may take vp any howse in his progres'.[407]

Those who accompanied the progress had their own woes to bear. There was a good deal of 'roughing it'. The rate of advance, at ten or twelve miles a day, broken by a dinner at some wayside mansion or in a temporarily constructed 'dining house', was inevitably slow. The weather and the roads were often unkind; nor was the advance guard of two hundred and twenty carts carrying baggage likely to have mended the condition of the latter.[408] The numbers were great, and if accommodation was scant, some had to make shift with tents and booths. The commissariat was not always perfect. Even the Queen might come off badly. On one occasion Leicester reported to Burghley that the beer had been unsatisfactory. 'Hit did put her very farr out of temper, and almost all the company beside.' Happily, a better brew had been discovered. 'God be thanked she is now perfectly well and merry.'[409] Burghley himself was apparently timed to join the progress at Dudley, and he received a discreet hint from Walsingham that a change of programme would bring the Queen there earlier than had been expected, 'whereuppon your Lordship may take some just cause to excuse you not coming thither'.[410] No doubt Burghley's duties as Lord Treasurer often kept him at Westminster. But the fact is that the sixteenth-century growth of luxury was making a migratory court something of an anachronism.[411] The progress was by no means always on the same scale of elaboration. In some years it was limited to a month or so in the counties nearest to London; in others it extended over three or four months, and the Queen went fairly far afield. During the earlier years the most important progresses were those of 1564 and 1566, which included visits to Cambridge and to Oxford respectively. In 1562, 1563, and 1565 there were no progresses at all, owing to plague or other reasons. The period of the great progresses was the second decade of the reign; and it culminated in the 'Princely Pleasures' of Kenilworth of 1575. During 1572, 1574, and 1575 Elizabeth covered a large part of the Midlands; during 1573 Kent and Sussex; during 1578 East Anglia. She reached Southampton in 1560 and 1569, Dover in 1573, Bristol in 1574, Stafford and Chartley in 1575. Farther north or west I do not find her; visits were planned to the chief towns of the Presidencies of Wales and of the North, to Shrewsbury in 1575 and to York in 1584, but these never came off. Progresses were practically suspended during the troublous decade before the Armada, when the Queen's life was hardly ever safe from plots, and she generally spent the autumn quietly at Oatlands or Nonsuch. In 1591 and 1592 the old custom was revived; Southampton was revisited in the former year, Oxford and the Cotswolds in the latter. There was another revival towards the end of the reign, and there were short progresses in 1597, 1600, 1601, and 1602. Two unsuccessful plans were made to get as far as Wiltshire. Elizabeth's strength was failing, but the restlessness of her latter years was upon her, and she would not have it said that she was too old to travel. She had to reckon, however, with courtiers who had learnt to love their ease. 'The Lords are sorry for it,' wrote Rowland White to Sir Robert Sidney, when she determined to set out from Nonsuch in 1600, 'butt her majestie bids the old stay behind, and the young and able to goe with her. She had just cause to be offended, that at her remove to this place she was soe poorely attended; for I never saw so small a train.'[412] At all times, and particularly during the later years, the formal progresses were supplemented by short visits of a few days, or even a few hours, to favoured courtiers, sometimes by way of a 'by-progress' in spring or autumn, sometimes in the course of a remove from one standing house to another, sometimes merely to relieve a continuous residence at the same palace.[413] Several of the twelve visits to Theobalds, for which Elizabeth had evidently a liking, and which had been rebuilt to accommodate her, were by progresses. The household did not always accompany her on these occasions. Within London itself, she also occasionally paid a visit. In the last winter of her life, several entertainments were carefully arranged for her, in the hope of keeping her at Whitehall.[414] In 1601 and 1602 she went a-Maying at Highgate and Lewisham. Another day's visit, probably of 1600, is elaborately described by Sir Robert Sidney to Sir John Harington.[415]

With the arrival of James and his horde of hungry Scots, and the setting-up of supernumerary establishments for Anne and the royal children, the progress became a more unwieldy institution than ever. During the greater part of 1603 the court was abroad. The triumphal descent of the King in April and May was practically a progress. So was that of Anne in June. There was a regular progress in August and September, and the prevalence of plague compelled the prolongation of this throughout the autumn, until the weary court sank into its winter quarters at Christmas. A groan went up to Lord Shrewsbury from Robert Lord Cecil at Woodstock, which he found an 'unwholesome' and 'uneaseful' house, not able to lodge more than the King and Queen, the privy chamber ladies, and some three or four of the Scottish Council. 'Neither Chamberlain, nor one English counsellor have a room, which will be a sour sauce to some of your old friends that have been merry with you in a winter's night, from whence they have not removed to their bed in a snowy storm.' The plague was driving the court up and down. 'God bless the king, for once a week one or other dies in our tents.'[416] In the same strain wrote Levinus Muncke a little later to Winwood from Wilton of 'these arrant removes', in which 'we endure misserie apace and want of all things, which I never thought the country so unable to supply us'.[417] Nevertheless, James maintained the tradition, and devoted a month or two in each year to a progress, which, but for the occasional presence of the queen or prince, and the attendance, not quite invariable, of the council and household, did not differ much in character from his far more frequent hunting journeys. His direction was generally determined by the existence of hunting facilities, and such districts as the New Forest, Wychwood and Sherwood Forests, and Salisbury Plain figure again and again in the 'gestes'. He had reached Southampton and even the Isle of Wight in 1603, and probably repeated his visit in 1607 and 1611. He also touched the sea at Lulworth in 1615. He visited Oxford from Woodstock in 1605 and Cambridge twice during hunting journeys in 1615. Anne made an independent progress to the west, for the sake of the Bath waters, in 1613, and got as far as Bristol.

We have had sufficient peeps behind the court arras to give a pleasantly sub-acid flavour of irony to the effusive accounts of royal receptions contained in official chronicles, or in the semi-official narratives of poets who were anxious to preserve the memory of the verses and devices contributed by themselves.[418] These in their turn enable us to recapture something of whatever rapture the rather artless forms of mimesis employed may have awakened in Renaissance breasts; although of course the few devices of which details have reached us are but a tithe of those on whose fantasy and grace the dust of oblivion has for centuries lain thick. It was naturally at the visits to private houses that the spirit of sheer entertainment had fullest scope, and a glance at the diaries for Kenilworth in 1575 or for Elvetham in 1591 will show the variety of pastime which ministered spectacle to the eyes and flattery to the self-esteem of Oriana on her holidays. The visit to Kenilworth extended over three weeks. The Queen arrived on 9 July and was greeted with speeches by Sibylla, by a porter as Hercules, and by the Lady of the Lake, and that she might not forget that she was a scholar, with a Latin speech by a Poet. July 10 was a Sunday, and after divine service there was a display of fireworks. On 11 July the Queen hunted, and on her return listened to an out-of-door dialogue between a Savage Man—the mediaeval folk-personage known as the 'wodwose'—and the classical Echo. July 12 was a day of rest, and 13 July was again devoted to hunting. On 14 July came a bear-baiting, another display of fireworks, and acrobatic feats by an Italian. After two days' interval, the sports began again on 17 July, with country shows of a bride-ale, a quintain, and the Coventry Hock-Tuesday play.[419] This was followed in the evening by a play and banquet. A mask was held in readiness, but not used. On 18 July, after a hunt, came the principal show, an aquatic one of the Delivery of the Lady of the Lake, with the classical Arion riding on a dolphin; and the Queen held an investiture, and 'touched' poor folk for the 'evil'. On 19 July the Coventry show was repeated, and by this time the weather had broken up, and the royal zest for spectacles was perhaps exhausted. A projected show of Zabeta and a device of an ancient minstrel were laid aside, and the final week was uneventful, until the departure on 27 July after a show in farewell by Silvanus. All this was described, for the benefit of such of the Queen's lieges as had not the fortune to be present, in a printed narrative by George Gascoigne, who shared with William Hunnis of the Chapel Royal the main responsibility for the mimetic devices, and in another, racy and full of vivid detail, by one Robert Laneham, keeper of the council chamber door, who was in attendance as an officer of the household.[420] The entertainment at the much shorter visit to the Earl of Hertford at Elvetham in Hampshire, sixteen years later, was on very similar lines. The house was small, and a temporary 'room of estate' and other buildings had been constructed in the park, near an artificial pond, containing a Ship Isle, a Fort, and a Snail Mount. The Queen was greeted on arrival with a Latin speech by a Poet, and a ditty by the Graces and the Hours. A salute was fired from the pond. After supper there was a concert with a pavane by Thomas Morley. On the second day, after the Countess had made her offering in the morning, there was a great water-show on the pond, with Silvanus and the sea-gods Neptune, Oceanus, Nereus, and Neaera, which served to introduce further gifts. On the third day Elizabeth was awakened with a pastoral song of Phyllida and Corydon. After dinner there was an exhibition game of 'board and cord', which must have been a very close anticipation of lawn-tennis, and in the evening a banquet in the garden and a display of fireworks. On the fourth morning came Aureola, the fairy queen, with a round of dancing fairies, and as the Queen departed there were Nereus and Sylvanus and their companies at the pond, the Hours and Graces weeping, a speech from the Poet dressed in black, and a farewell ditty at the park gate.[421] I have set the Kenilworth and Elvetham entertainments side by side, partly to illustrate the permanence of type, and partly because, if any actual sea-maid and fireworks gave Shakespeare a hint for Oberon's famous speech in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, it must surely have been those which were comparatively fresh in the memories of his hearers.[422]

The medley of Kenilworth and Elvetham repeats itself elsewhere; nor is the imaginative range a very wide one. Classical, romantic, pastoral, and folk-lore elements blend in quite sufficient congruity. The pagan divinities called upon are the out-of-door ones, Pan and Ceres at Bisham, Apollo and Daphne at Sudeley; and these, with the Nymphs (Orpington, Cowdray, Harefield) and Satyrs (Harefield, Althorp), may make easy acknowledgement of fundamental kinship with Aureola or Queen Mab and the native fairies (Woodstock, Norwich, Hengrave, Althorp) and woodwoses (Cowdray, Bisham). So, too, the rustic revelry of morris or country dance (Warwick, Cowdray, Althorp, Wells) or the choosing of the Cotswold Queen (Sudeley) passes readily enough into the manner of the formal pastoral, as we find it in Sidney's Lady of the May (Wanstead) or his sister's later dialogue of Thenot and Piers; which in turn have their affinities to the mediaeval débat, surviving in the dialogue of Constancy and Inconstancy (Woodstock), and in the 'contentions' of Sir John Davies between a Gentleman Usher and a Poet, and a Maid, a Wife, and a Widow.[423] To a modern taste, perhaps the most attractive entertainments are the simple ones in which the Gardener and the Mole-catcher or the Bailiff and the Dairymaid offer the naïve welcome of the rustic folk, or those to which the circumstances of place and time give something of a personal touch; as at Theobalds, where the hermit's cell typifies the temporary retirement of Burghley from public life, or at Rycote, where messengers bring in letters and jewels from sons and daughters of the house in Ireland, Flanders, France, and Jersey. Only fragments are preserved of the Harefield entertainment in 1602, but here a delicate fancy must have governed the devices, suggesting, for example, the presentation of a robe of rainbows on behalf of St. Swithin, and the personification of Harefield itself as Place 'in a partie-colored robe, like the brick house', accompanied by Time 'with yeollow haire, and in a green roabe, with an hower glasse, stopped, not runninge'. Here, too, was repeated the pretty notion of Elvetham, and at the royal departure there was Place again 'attyred in black mourning aparell', to bid farewell. In many instances the mimesis is so contrived as to lead to the introduction of the gift, which we may gather from the Hicks correspondence to have been looked upon as an obligatory rite of hospitality. The frugal and ostentatious soul of Elizabeth loved gifts; but James is said, at any rate on his first coming, to have thought it the more kingly part to decline them.[424] The mimetic entertainment itself, indeed, seems to have lost something of its vogue with the change of reign; possibly the King was less tolerant than his predecessor of pedantries other than his own. There are, of course, the three Sibyls at Oxford in 1605, which are said to have given a hint for Macbeth, and the amazing Queen of Sheba show in 1606, which has been preserved for us by the wicked wit of Sir John Harington.[425] And there are three examples from the pen of Ben Jonson, to whose ingenuity and learning the genre made a natural appeal, and who had the art to give dramatic life and point even to such trifles. These are the Satyr, with which Lord Spencer welcomed Anne and Henry at Althorp in 1603, the Penates, written when James, like Elizabeth before him, went a-Maying with Sir William Cornwallis at Highgate in 1604, and the graceful Theobalds entertainment, in which the Genius of the house, first weeping for the loss of his master, and then consoled by Mercury, Good Event, and the Parcae, made symbolical delivery of it to the Queen on its exchange by Lord Salisbury with James for Hatfield in 1607.

The civic entertainments naturally followed more formal lines than those in private houses. The citizens rode in their official gowns of black or scarlet. There was a learned oration by the recorder, and very likely also by the schoolmaster or a promising scholar of the grammar school. In a cathedral town there was divine service to be attended in state. The gift was no fantastic trifle, but a solid cup with angels in it. The mimesis, too, was of a more old-fashioned type. Mercury or a nymph might be there, but there were also the traditional pageants of the guilds, bearing their scenes from the miracle plays, or more modern allegories, or representations of local history and industry. At Coventry, in 1566, stood the Corpus Christi cars of the Tanners, Drapers, Smiths, and Weavers.[426] The variegated Norwich entertainment of 1578 included a speech by King Gurgunt, a pageant of the Commonwealth, with local craftsmen working at their looms, and a pageant of the City of Norwich, with Deborah, Esther, Judith, and Queen Martia.[427] Even as late as 1613, it was with scriptural pageants, curiously contaminated with intrusive classical themes, that the citizens of Wells greeted Queen Anne when she visited them from the Bath. The Hammermen furnished the Building of the Ark, Vulcan, Venus, and Cupid, and part of St. George; the Tanners, Chandlers, and Bakers, St. Clément and his Friar, part of Actaeon and Diana, and 'a carte of old virgines' in hides; the Cordwainers Saints Crispin and Crispinian; the Tailors Herodias and John Baptist; and the Mercers the remaining parts of St. George and of Actaeon and Diana. Three morrises also accompanied the pageants.[428] George Ferebe's shepherd's song, as the Queen had crossed the Wansdyke at Bishop's Cannings, two months before, had struck a more up-to-date note.

In the university cities, municipal eloquence was redoubled by that of public orators and professors. The sovereign was expected to attend sermons and the academic exercise of disputations, and perhaps to wind up the latter with a Latin speech. The spectacles generally took the form of regular plays in Latin and occasionally in English. As the academic drama lies rather aside from the main purpose of this book, I confine myself to a brief chronicle. Elizabeth's first and only visit to Cambridge was from 5 to 10 August 1564.[429] The plays took place in the chapel of King's College, since the hall had been found unsuitable, and the two provided by the University were directed by Dr. Roger Kelke, the Master of Magdalene, with the aid of five others, one of whom was Thomas Legge of Trinity, himself a dramatist. On Sunday, 6 August, the Aulularia of Plautus was given by actors selected from colleges other than King's. Courtiers ignorant of Latin were wearied, but Elizabeth sat through the three hours' performance without sign of fatigue. On 7 August came Dido, a Latin tragedy by Edward Halliwell, formerly Fellow of King's, and on 8 August Ezechias, an English comedy by Nicholas Udall, who was an Oxford man. Both these plays were performed by King's men and both are lost. Elizabeth's patience was now exhausted, and she gave some disappointment by declining to hear a Latin translation of the Ajax Flagellifer of Sophocles, which men of various colleges had been appointed to give on 9 August. A contemporary letter from the Spanish ambassador gives an account of a singular epilogue to the royal visit. On 10 August Elizabeth had made her farewells, picking out Thomas Preston of King's for special favour on account of his performances both in the disputation and as an actor in Dido, and had reached the next stage in her progress, Sir Henry Cromwell's at Hinchinbrook.

Hither she was pursued by some of the scholars with what appears to have been a mask, originally intended to serve as an afterpiece to the Ajax Flagellifer. They were allowed to present it, but it proved to have been conceived in a spirit unsuited to the colour of the Queen's Protestantism, and gave considerable offence. It was, in fact, a burlesque of the Mass.[430] Two years later, from 31 August to 6 September 1566, it was the turn of Oxford.[431] The plays were in Christ Church Hall, and in them the University had the assistance of Richard Edwardes, formerly Student of Christ Church, and now Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. At the first, a Latin prose comedy called Marcus Geminus, on 1 September, the Queen was not present. But she attended Edwardes's Palamon and Arcite, an English play in two parts, given on 2 and 4 September, and expressed high appreciation of the play and the acting. The fact that three persons were killed by the fall of a wall near the entrance door was not allowed to interfere with the representation.[432] She also attended James Calfhill's Latin tragedy Progne on 5 September. The plays were all written by Christ Church men, but the actors appear to have been drawn in part from other colleges. John Rainolds of Corpus, afterwards a bitter opponent of the academic stage, played Hippolyta in Palamon and Arcite.[433] All the plays are unfortunately lost. The Spanish ambassador reported that there had been nothing about religion in them, and delivered himself of the compliment, 'Memorabilia profecto sunt Oxoniensium spectacula'.[434] More deserving, more felicitous, or less audacious than Cambridge, Oxford received the honour of a second royal visit in 1592.[435] It lasted from 22 to 28 September.[436] The plays, given on 24 and 26 September, were Leonard Hutten's Bellum Grammaticale and Gager's Rivales. Both performances were at Christ Church, but probably actors from other colleges took part. A jaundiced Cambridge visitor described them as 'but meanely performed'. Elizabeth, however, was gracious, and before departing 'schooled' John Rainolds, who had recently been fulminating against Gager, for 'his obstinate preciseness'. It was, perhaps, as a result of the mirth shown at Oxford, that both Universities were invited to produce English plays at Court during the following Christmas. This, however, Cambridge at any rate declined to do, giving as their excuse the shortness of time, but more particularly the customary limitation of their academic plays to the Latin tongue.[437] There is no evidence, and little probability, that Oxford were any more amenable.

James passed through the outskirts of Oxford in 1604, but plague deferred his formal visit until 1605, when he came with the Queen and Henry, and stayed from 27 to 31 August.[438] As he came down St. Giles', he was greeted from St. John's with Matthew Gwynne's device of the Tres Sibyllae. The plays were in Christ Church hall, and apparel was hired from the King's Revels company in London. Inigo Jones, 'a great traveller', was employed to furnish special machinery for changing the scenes, but opinions differed as to his success, and also as to the extent to which the King kept awake during the performances. Of these there were four. On 27 August a piece, variously named Alba and Vertumnus, and written in part by Robert Burton, was acted by Thomas Goodwin and other Christ Church men.[439] On 28 August actors from various colleges gave an Ajax Flagellifer, not apparently a translation from Sophocles, but an independent play. On 29 August St. John's men gave a play by Gwynne, also called Vertumnus, sive Annus Recurrens. These three, of which only the last survives, were in Latin. On 30 August, for the sake of the ladies, the fourth play, again by men of various colleges, was in English. It was Daniel's Arcadia Reformed, afterwards published as The Queen's Arcadia. The King was not present on this occasion. It is a little surprising that he did not visit Cambridge until 1615. He had been preceded by Henry, who was there with the Elector Palatine in 1613, and saw performances by Trinity men in their college hall of Samuel Brooke's Adelphe and Scyros on 2 and 3 March respectively.[440] James went from Royston, and stayed from 7 to 11 March 1615.[441] The plays, given in Trinity College hall, were successively Edward Cecil's Latin Aemilia, by St. John's men, which is lost, Ruggle's Ignoramus, by men from Clare Hall and other minor colleges, and Tomkis's Albumazar and Brooke's Melanthe, both by Trinity men. King's had prepared Phineas Fletcher's Sicelides, but the King did not stay long enough to hear it. The visit evoked an outburst of satirical verses, both from Oxford and from the lawyers, who were stung by the wit of Ignoramus, with which the King was so pleased that, after a vain attempt to get the actors to Whitehall, he paid another visit to Cambridge, and saw it again on 13 May.[442] In March 1616 Cambridge men played before him at Royston; the name of the play is not known.[443] Oxford did not get its chance again until 1618, which falls outside the scope of this record.

The opportunities for spectacular display, which provincial towns enjoyed during a progress, fell to London chiefly at the time of a coronation, when on the day before the actual ceremony the sovereign passed in state from the Tower to Westminster, through the principal streets of the city which claimed to be, in a special sense, the royal 'Chamber'.[444] The outstanding architectural features of these streets, St. Paul's, the gates at Ludgate and Temple Bar, the conduits in Cornhill and Fleet Street, the great and little conduits, the Standard, and the Cross in Cheapside, were recognized stations for music, speechifying, and pageantry. At some of them temporary arches, adorned with symbolical devices and hung with verses, spanned the highway. When Elizabeth started, in a slight snow-storm, on 14 January 1558, the City companies, in their black and red hoods, lined both sides of the way from Fenchurch to the Cross. The Queen, a coronetted and golden figure, rode in a litter, surrounded by her train of pensioners bearing their axes, and yeomen of the guard in their scarlet liveries with the Tudor rose and crown upon their backs. Behind came the Master of the Horse, leading a white hackney, and the Lords of the Council.[445] There were seven pageants, each with its verses in English or Latin and a child for interpreter. At the first, on a scaffold near Fenchurch, the child delivered a speech of welcome. At the upper end of Gracechurch Street was an arch bearing 'The Uniting of the two Houses of Lancaster and York'; at the Cornhill conduit another, with 'The Seat of Worthy Governance'; at the great conduit a third, with 'The Eight Beatitudes'. The first bore representations of Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth herself; the other two allegorical figures of the morality type. At the Cross stood the Mayor and Aldermen, with a speech by the Recorder, and a thousand marks in a purse. At the little conduit was the fourth and principal arch, with sterile and green mounts symbolizing 'A Ruinous and a Flourishing Commonweal'; and Time and Truth presented the Queen as she went by with an English Bible. At the door of the school in St. Paul's Churchyard, a boy of Colet's foundation delivered a Latin speech. At the Fleet Street conduit was 'Deborah, with her Estates, consulting for the good Government of Israel'. At St. Dunstan's church was another speech by a child of the hospital. And, finally, at Temple Bar stood those ancient folk-figures and palladia of the City, without whose beneficent presence no holiday could be complete, the giants Gotmagot and Corineus.[446] When James was crowned on 25 July 1603, a state entry on the traditional lines was planned, but when the arches were already up it was decided that the risk of plague was too great, and the ceremony was put off, first to the opening of a parliament contemplated in October, and ultimately to the following spring.[447] It took place on 15 March 1604. Jonson, Dekker, and Middleton were employed to furnish verses and devices, and the structure of the five pageants provided by the City was entrusted to Stephen Harrison, a joiner.[448] There were three additional ones, of which two were contributed by the Italian and Dutch traders in London, and the third, erected outside the City boundary, by the City of Westminster and the Savoy Liberty. The Venetian ambassador was perhaps prejudiced in reporting that the Italian pageant excelled the others in design and workmanship. But all the pageants, although they were enlivened by speeches and songs, for which the services of trained actors were enlisted, appear to have relied more upon architectural embellishment and less upon allegorical symbolism than those of 1559.[449] The order was as follows: At Fenchurch were the Genius of London and Thamesis, impersonated by Edward Alleyn of the Prince's men and a boy from the Queen's Revels; at the Exchange the Dutch and Italian arches, in neither of which a definite theme is traceable; at Soper Lane end 'Arabia Britannica', with a speech by a Paul's choir-boy and the song 'Troynovant is now no more a city'. In Cheapside stood once more the civic dignitaries, with a speech by the Recorder and three cups of gold for the King, Queen, and Prince. At the Cross were Sylvanus and Vertumnus, with the 'Garden of Eirene and Euporia'. In Paul's Churchyard the choristers sang, and a boy from the grammar school was ready with his Latin. The pageant at Fleet conduit, where William Borne of the Prince's had a speech as Zeal, represented the 'Globe of the World'; that at Temple Bar the 'Temple of Janus'; that of Westminster and the Savoy in the Strand the Rainbow, Sun, Moon, and Pleiades. Jonson seems to have been responsible for the devices at Fenchurch, Temple Bar, and the Strand; Dekker for those at Soper Lane and the Cross; Middleton for at any rate a part of that in Fleet Street. A few London entertainments of less importance are upon record. When Elizabeth first came to the Tower on 28 November 1558, there were 'in serten plasses chylderyn with speches, and odur places, syngyng and playing with regalles'.[450] When James first came to London on 7 May 1603, Dekker had prepared a show of the Genius Loci and Saints George and Andrew for performance at the Bars beyond Bishopsgate, which he afterwards printed; but he was disappointed, for James entered by another route, direct from Stamford Hill to the Charterhouse.[451] On 31 July 1606 he brought the King of Denmark to see the City, and there was an arch with Neptune, Mulciber, Concord, and the Genius of London, and a Summer Bower with a shepherd and shepherdess on the Fleet Street conduit.[452] On 16 July 1607 he dined with Henry at the hall of the Merchant Taylors, who spent £1,000 on the festivity. Ben Jonson wrote verses to be spoken by John Rice, then a boy actor at the Globe, as an angel of gladness, with a taper of frankincense in his hand, and the hall was filled with music. There were lutenists in the windows, wind-instruments on the screen, and three singers in a ship hanging aloft. The court musicians, Thomas Lupo and Mr. Lanier, and Nathaniel Giles and the Chapel were amongst those who made melody.[453] London was to the fore again in welcome to Prince Henry on his creation as Prince of Wales, sending the barges of the Lord Mayor and the companies to meet him, as he came up by river from Richmond on 31 May 1610, with Corinea on a whale to offer salutation on behalf of Cornwall at Chelsea, and Amphion on a dolphin to do the same for Wales at Whitehall. The speeches were written by Anthony Munday and delivered by Richard Burbage and John Rice.[454] A month earlier, on 23 April, another show in Henry's honour had been held at Chester. It was devised by Robert Amerie, an ex-sheriff of the town, and consisted of a horse-race on the Roodeye, after a procession in which the bearers of the bells that served as prizes were accompanied by St. George and his dragon pursuing a Green man or 'wodwose', while speeches were uttered by Fame, Mercury, Chester, Britain, Cambria, Rumour and Peace, and Joy composed a débat between Love and Envy.[455]

Even in the absence of the sovereign, London had pageantry for its own delight; folk-pageantry in the May-games, morrises and lords of misrule, which sometimes made their way to Court;[456] municipalized folk-pageantry in the Midsummer and St. Peter's Eve 'watches', which barely survived into Elizabeth's reign;[457] municipal pageantry fully established in the ceremony which has come down to our own day of the Lord Mayor's show. The Mayor was installed on St. Simon and St. Jude's Day, 28 October, and on 29 October he went by water to Westminster Hall to be admitted before the barons of the Exchequer in the Exchequer chamber. On his return he was met by his guildsmen and other citizens at the waterside, and escorted to dinner in the Guildhall, and after dinner to service in St. Paul's and back to his own house. There had been pageants on this occasion in the fifteenth century, but these were suppressed in 1481, and during the earlier part of the sixteenth century the spectacular element was limited to a 'foyst or wafter' upon the river, such as that with a device of a crowned falcon on a mount environed with white and red roses, which the City provided by royal command for the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.[458] But shortly after, and perhaps as a result of, the discontinuance of the 'watches' in 1538, the installation pageant makes its appearance again. It can be traced in 1540, and then, with the accompaniment of speeches, fireworks, devils, and wodwoses', in the pages of Machyn's diary during most years from 1553 to 1562.[459] Many details are preserved of the Merchant Taylors' pageant of 1561 for Sir William Harper, and of the Ironmongers' pageant of 1566 for Sir James Draper, in the device of which James Peele, clerk of Christ's Hospital, and father of George Peele, had a hand. On both occasions the speeches and songs were entrusted to boys from Westminster, under the 'Mʳ of the quirysters', John Taylor.[460] Some speeches are preserved from the Merchant Taylors' pageant of St. John Baptist for Sir Thomas Roe in 1568, while James Peele was again engaged by the Ironmongers to prepare a device, which, however, came to nothing, for Sir Alexander Avenon in 1569.[461] It must be doubtful whether there was a pageant in every year, but when William Smythe described the installation ceremonies in 1575, he included as regular features the 'deveils and wyldmen' which met the returning mayor at Paul's Wharf, and 'the pageant of Tryumphe rychly decked, whervppon by certayne fygures and wrytinges (partly towchinge the name of the sayd mayor) some matter towchinge justice and the office of a magestrate is represented'.[462] Von Wedel saw the Drapers' pageant for Sir Thomas Pullison in 1584.[463] Custom seems to have assigned the provision of the pageant to the 'bachelors' of the Lord Mayor's company, that is to say, those freemen who were not yet advanced to be members of the 'livery' or governing body. The Ironmongers paid for the printing of their pageant in 1566, but the first printed description now extant is that of the Skinners' pageant for Woolstan Dixie in 1585, which was written by George Peele. Peele seems to have inherited his father's connexion, for he had, according to the Merry Jests, 'all the oversight of the pageants', and certainly he devised the Drapers' pageant for Martin Calthorpe in 1588, which is now lost, and the Descensus Astraeae of the Salters for William Webbe in 1591. The Fishmongers' pageant for John Allot in 1590 was, however, by one T. Nelson, a stationer. The absence of Elizabethan prints later than these does not necessarily mean that pageants fell out of use. There was one in 1600;[464] the Merchant Taylors had one for Sir Robert Lee in 1602; there would have been one in 1603 but for the plague; and there was probably one in 1604.[465] On the other hand, it can hardly be inferred from the chaff of Munday as a 'peeking pageanter' in Histriomastix and as 'pageant-poet to the city of Milan' in The Case is Altered that he stepped regularly into Peele's shoes about 1591. Jonson's reference, at least, is subsequent to Munday's first 'book' of a pageant, which was, so far as we know, the Merchant Taylors' Triumphs of Reunited Britannia for Sir Leonard Holliday in 1605. I do not know on what evidence Campbell, or the Ironmongers' Fair Field, for Thomas Campbell in 1609, the only known copy of which has lost its title-page, is sometimes ascribed to him. But he was responsible for the Goldsmiths' Chryso-Thriambos for Sir James Pemberton in 1611, the Drapers' Himatia Poleos for Sir Thomas Hayes in 1614 and their Metropolis Coronata for Sir John Jolles in 1615, and the Fishmongers' Chrysanaleia for John Leman in 1616. His chief competitors in civic favour were Dekker and Middleton, the former of whom prepared the Merchant Taylors' Troja Nova Triumphans for Sir John Swinnerton in 1612, and the latter the Triumphs of Truth for Sir Thomas Middleton in 1613, to the 'book' of which he annexed an account of a quite exceptional entertainment on occasion of the opening of Hugh Middleton's New River on 29 September 1613.

Middleton's title-page refers scornfully to the 'common writer' of mayoral pageants, which may perhaps indicate Munday. A full analysis of all this municipal imagery would be extremely tedious. The original single pageant with its devils and 'wodwoses' underwent much elaboration in the seventeenth century. 'By this light', says a character in Greenes Tu Quoque (1611-12), 'I do not think but to be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn.' Dekker's Troja Nova Triumphans has three movable 'land-triumphs', a chariot of Neptune, a chariot of Virtue, and a House of Fame, which met the Mayor successively at Paul's Chain, Paul's Churchyard, and the Cross in Cheapside, while the little conduit was transformed into a Castle of Envy, and met an assault with fireworks. Sometimes the old 'foist' was revived, and part of the spectacle took place on the water. Or one of the land pageants was designed in the form of a ship. There were personages mounted on strange beasts. Speeches and dialogues afforded opportunities for laudation of the Lord Mayor and his brethren. There was generally some theme bearing upon the history of the company or the industry to which it was related. The Fishmongers made play, both in 1590 and 1616, with Sir William Walworth; the Drapers, both in 1614 and 1615, with Sir Henry Fitz Alwine, and with the Ram with the Golden Fleece. The Merchant Taylors, on whose roll Prince Henry had been inscribed at the dinner of 1607, proudly displayed an impersonation of him in 1611. Often the mimesis was renewed on the way to St. Paul's in the afternoon, or at the Lord Mayor's house in the evening. The Ironmongers have preserved an interesting series of coloured designs for Chrysanaleia, the notes on which indicate that the pageants were preserved as permanent decorations for the company's hall. The ship, which held musicians at the Merchant Taylors' dinner of 1607, was probably a relic of their pageant of 1602.

The growing maritime power of England during the sixteenth century and the significance of the river as a highway between London and the palaces up and down stream led naturally to a development of pageantry by water. There was a water triumph, with an assault of a castle, on Midsummer Day, 1561, and another, arranged by Captain Stukeley, when Elizabeth went down to Greenwich in June 1563.[466] Christian of Denmark gave James a show of the Burning of the Seven Deadly Sins' in 'wildfire' near his flag-ship at Gravesend on 11 August 1606.[467] The creation of Henry was celebrated by a mock sea-fight between merchantmen and Turkish pirates on 6 June 1610, and the effect of this spectacle was also enhanced by a display of fireworks. On the previous 31 May Henry had been given the welcome of the City, as he came up the river, with a device by Anthony Munday, in which Burbage and Rice of the King's men rode upon two great fishes to deliver the speeches. Burbage, as Amphion, represented Wales, and Rice, as Corinea, Cornwall.[468] Similarly the festivities at the Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1613 included a fight between Venetian and Turkish galleys on 11 February and a firework representation of St. George delivering the Amazonian Queen Lucida from Mango the Necromancer.[469] The City had to find a pension for a man who was maimed in this triumph.[470] Bristol, the second seaport of the realm, also favoured water shows, welcoming Elizabeth in 1574 with an assault on the forts of Peace and Feeble Policy, and Anne in 1613 with a version of the more modern theme of merchantman and pirate.[471] We do not know the nature of the Devises of Warre prepared by Thomas Churchyard for one of Sir Thomas Gresham's entertainments of Elizabeth at Osterley; but an example of the conversion of military training into mimesis is afforded by the archery show of Prince Arthur with his Knights of the Round Table, which was displayed by Hugh Offley before the Queen between Merchant Taylors and Mile End in 1587.[472]

More than two centuries before this, when Edward III associated this same Round Table with the foundation of his chivalric order of the Garter, pageantry had already begun to cast its mantle over the mediaeval exercises of knightly feats of arms. As the actual practice of warfare dissociated itself more and more from the domination of the mail-clad horseman, the spectacular tendency had naturally grown. Not that, even at Whitehall, the tournament had ever become a mere pageant and nothing more. It had still its value, both as part of the courtly training of a gentleman and as a test of physical endurance; and it was chiefly about the preliminaries, the challenge and the entrance of the knights into the lists, that the decorative fancy of the Renaissance gave itself free play. The double appeal of vigorous exercise and sumptuous spectacle was irresistible to the youthful temperament of Henry VIII, and the pages of Halle gleam with his tiltings as Cœur Loyal in 1511, of which a fine heraldic record is preserved, and with the international splendours of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.[473] It was largely to a desire to maintain the tradition of the spear that the existence of the Pensioners as an element in the royal household must be ascribed. Elizabeth had much of her father's blood in her, and to the end took delight in the strength of a man and a horse, so that it was still possible for an aspiring youth, such as Sir Henry Lee or Sir Robert Carey, to win his way to Court favour by the accuracy of his seat or the appropriateness of his trappings, no less than by his proficiency in the gentler antics of the mask. The rules for courtly combat had been laid down by John Tiptoft, Earl of Warwick and Constable of England in 1466, and revised for Elizabeth in 1562.[474] The generic term 'jousts of peace' covered three distinct varieties of exercise. The most important was the tilt, in which horsemen met in the shock of blunted spears across the 'tilt' or toile, a barrier covered with cloths, which ran longitudinally down the centre of the 'lists' or space staked out for the encounter. A record was kept of the courses run, in which marks were credited to the competitors for spears fairly broken or for 'attaints' on the head or body, and corresponding deductions made for spears ill broken. The tourney was also on horseback, with swords instead of spears; while in the foot-tourney or 'barriers' the assailants were dismounted and fought alternately with push of pike and stroke of sword across a wooden obstacle.[475]

The tilt and tourney took place by daylight. Henry VIII constructed a tiltyard in Whitehall, which was improved and closed in by Elizabeth in 1561.[476] It ran between the highway and St. James's Park, from the stables on the site of the present Admiralty to the tennis court and cockpit on the site of the present Treasury buildings, and at the south end was a gallery for spectators, communicating by another across the highway with the privy apartments. The sentries in the courtyard of the Horse Guards have been officially known to recent times as the Tiltyard guards. There were permanent tiltyards also at Greenwich and at Hampton Court; at the latter spectators were accommodated in five small towers, of which one still survives.[477] The less serious exercise of the barriers was sometimes conducted by torchlight, and even within doors, on the floor of a banqueting house.[478] Thus it could be introduced, in a purely mimetic form, as an episode in a mask, or even a play.[479] Tilts took place in almost every year of Elizabeth's reign.[480] The custom was for a few picked champions to issue a challenge for a given day, on which they would be prepared to meet the onset of all who chose to offer themselves as 'answerers' or defendants. Sussex, Leicester, Hunsdon, and of the next generation Oxford and Arundel, are prominent amongst the challengers. I do not find that any particular season was at first especially appropriated to tilts. There was often one early in the new year, but just as often one in the spring or summer. But at some date, possibly as early as 1570, and almost certainly as early as 1581, Sir Henry Lee was forward in establishing an annual tilt on Queen's Day, the anniversary of the accession on 17 November. He may have enrolled some kind of guild of tilters; certainly he undertook to appear personally as challenger year by year, and for this purpose received or assumed the designation of Knight of the Crown. In his devices he appears under the personal name of Loricus.[481]

Only occasional examples of the pageantry used at tilts are upon record. An account of the proceedings on the occasion of the wedding of Ambrose Earl of Warwick and Anne Russell, daughter of the Earl of Bedford, on 11 November 1565 will show how it was introduced. The challenge took place in August, at the churching of the Princess Cecilia of Baden. York Herald introduced Richard Edwardes of the Chapel, who assumed the character of a post sent from four strange knights, and announced their challenge to be defended before the Queen and Cecilia in November. On 11 November the Queen was in the gallery at the end of the tiltyard. Edwardes entered with a trumpeter, and delivered another speech. Then the challengers rode in from the mews, each accompanied by a patron and by an Amazon with his spare horse. They circled round the tilt and took up their position at the Queen's end, to await the defendants, hanging their shields on posts beneath her window. Then the actual tilting began. The programme, although departed from, was one which seems to have been conventional, of one day for tilt, one for tourney, and one for barriers.[482] The women leading the horses by their bridles perhaps appear more frequently in earlier hastiludia than in those of the sixteenth century.[483] They represent, I think, the 'damsels' of the ladies in whose names the knights fought, and whose colours they were accustomed to wear. Elizabeth's personal colours for this purpose were black and white.[484] It was a function of the ladies to award to the most successful of the defendants a jewel provided by the challengers. The principal opportunities for mimetic speechifying were afforded by the challenge, which was sometimes delivered in person, sometimes, as in the 1565 example, by deputy, and was probably also hung up on the court gates, and by the shields which bore imprese or mottoed emblems, and called for interpretation by the squires or pages who bore them.[485] Often, moreover, the tilters themselves entered in elaborately mimetic caparisons, incongruous enough to a modern taste with the vigorous manly exercise to which they were a preliminary, but no doubt attractive to that of the Renaissance, which for all its literary talk about 'decorum' cared at heart but little for congruity. The speechifying might be resumed when the tilting was over, or at the banquet which closed the day's festivity.[486] I gather together the few details of this tilt pageantry which have escaped a perhaps merited oblivion. There were speeches, and a chariot with a damsel and an old knight made their appearance at the torchlight tourney for the Duc de Montmorency in 1572.[487] In 1579 Oxford and his fellow challengers prepared a device, 'prettier than it happened to be performed', the nature of which is not specified.[488] In 1581 Arundel issued a challenge on 6 January, under the name of Callophisus, for a tilt which took place on 22 January, and there were 'devices in the mean season', to which some documents in a romantic vein amongst the Lansdowne MSS. probably belong.[489] The coming of the French commissioners in 1581 was the occasion of spectacular entertainments on an elaborate scale. There appear to have been two distinct jousts. One, at Hampton Court, probably on 6 and 7 May, is described in a French report. An antique tower with a triangular lantern at the top was rolled forward. Out of this issued a snake, which endeavoured to climb fruit-laden trees. Then followed six eagles, concealing musicians, and two Irish youths dressed in floating robes of silver tiffany, with long gilded hair and mounted on gilded horses. Finally came a triumphal car moving backwards, on which were the Fates, holding prisoner in a golden chain a knight in brown velvet and golden armour. The next day furnished new devices, including little coaches drawn by asses sewn up in white satin.[490] The second, at Whitehall on 15 and 16 May, is the famous triumph in which Sir Philip Sidney tilted before 'that sweet enemy, France'. The royal gallery was transformed into a Fortress of Perfect Beauty, and the four challengers, Arundel, Windsor, Sidney, and Fulke Greville, besieged it before each day's tilting as the Four Foster Children of Desire, finally making their submission, through a boy clad in ash-colour and bearing an olive-branch, to the unconquerable occupant. Each of the twenty-one defendants also had his 'invention' and speech, including Sir Thomas Perrot and Anthony Cooke, 'both in like armour, beset with apples and fruit, the one signifying Adam, the other Eve, who had hair hung all down her helmet'. In the midst of the first day's tilting came in Sir Henry Lee as an unknown knight, broke his spears, and departed in true romantic fashion without revealing his identity.[491] In 1587, when the tilting on Queen's Day was 'not so full of devises and so riche as I have seene', is a mention of books given 'for a token' to the spectators[492]; and to 1590 belongs such a book in the extant Polyhymnia of George Peele.[493] This was a notable occasion, for upon it Sir Henry Lee, now past his youth, resigned the post of challenger to the Earl of Cumberland. Peele describes the imprese of the tilters. But the principal device took place after the courses had been run. A Temple of Vesta rose out of the earth, and at its door Lee's emblem of the crowned pillar. An appropriate song was sung, the well-known

'My golden locks time hath to silver turned,'

and the Vestal Virgins presented the Queen with a veil and cloak and safeguard; after which Lee doffed his armour, put it on Cumberland as his successor, and himself assumed, as a sign of his retirement, a side coat of black velvet and a buttoned cap of the country fashion. He continued, however, by the royal direction, to attend the annual Queen's day, as a kind of Master of the Ceremonies. Cumberland, who took the name of the Knight of Pendragon Castle, probably remained knight of the crown until the end of the reign, but may have been rather overshadowed by the reputation, both as a courtier and a tilter, of the popular and magnificent Earl of Essex.[494] Robert Carey also claims to have played a considerable figure in the jousts, and tells us how in 1593 he appeared and made the Queen a present as 'the forsaken knight that had vowed solitarinesse' at a cost of £400.[495] To 1595 belongs the device of Eros and Philautia, in which Essex is believed to have had the assistance of no less a hand than that of Francis Bacon.[496] In 1598 it is noted that Queen's day passed 'without any extraordinarie matter more than running and ringing'. In 1600 Essex, then under a cloud, was, contrary to expectation, 'no actor in our triumphs', but Cumberland delivered a speech in the capacity of a Melancholy Knight. In 1602 one Garret came disguised, like Carey in 1593, and gave the Queen his scutcheon and impresa.[497] In 1601 there seems to have been a barriers, for which Sir John Davies was invited by Sir Robert Cecil through Cumberland to write an introductory speech.[498]

James transferred the annual tilting to his own accession day, and it continued to be regularly observed on 24 March. Shows 'costly and somewhat extraordinary' are recorded on this day in 1605.[499] In 1607 the French ambassador comments that there were 'plus de beaux habits que de bons gendarmes'.[500] In 1609 Sir Richard Preston made a sensation 'in a pageant which was an elephant with a castle on his back'.[501] James himself was no tilter; his horsemanship was considerable, but he employed it in the chase rather than in the onset. It is noteworthy that running at the ring, which was quite a subsidiary sport at the court of Elizabeth, tends under her successor to replace the more hazardous jousts. And even at the ring the marked inferiority of James to his brother-in-law Christian of Denmark during the latter's visit in 1606 became the subject of popular comment, and did not tend to improve the relations between the sovereigns. The 'incomparable pair of brethren', William Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Earl of Montgomery, shone in the tilt-yard[502]; and it was a fall from his horse at a joust that first attracted the King's attention to Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset.[503] But the most prominent man-at-arms, during the earlier years of the reign, was James's cousin, Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox. He led on one side for Truth, against the Earl of Sussex for Opinion on the other, at a barriers given to celebrate the wedding of the Earl of Essex on 6 January 1606, and the invaluable Jonson wrote a dialogue of Truth and Opinion as a setting for the combat.[504] Later in the same year Lennox was at the head of a plan to honour the visit of King Christian by a challenge to be issued by certain knights of the Fortunate Island, who fabled themselves to be inspired by the adventure of the Lucent Pillar, foretold by Merlin, and declared their intention to joust on behalf of certain amorous propositions in the valley of Mirefleur. The original idea was to publish the challenge in the courts of Europe, but this feature was dropped, somewhat to the relief of the French ambassador, who had received instructions from Paris to discourage it, as a coming royal baptism there would make sufficient demands on shrunken French pockets, and feats of arms had, moreover, fallen into disuse in France since the days of Henri II. A challenge was in fact proclaimed, for England only, in the royal presence and the public places of Greenwich, on 1 June. Then the death of the child-princess Mary supervened, and although there was a tilt, in which Christian took part, on 5 August, it does not appear that the romantic setting was used.[505] Merlin, however, was utilized by Jonson, some years later, when Prince Henry, to whom knightly exercises were as congenial as they were repugnant to his father, made his first public appearance in the barriers of 6 January 1610.[506] He issued his challenge under the name of Meliadus, Lord of the Isles, and Jonson's device, in which Merlin and the Lady of the Lake hail him as the awakener of Chivalry from her cave, reflects something of the enthusiasm with which Englishmen were beginning to look forward to the future of the high-spirited prince.[507] There was a joust on 6 June 1610, after Henry's creation as Prince of Wales, although Henry did not himself take part in it.[508] He was tilting daily in January 1612, and a challenge by Lennox, Southampton, Pembroke, and Montgomery is dated in this year.[509] But the chivalric revival was fated to be dashed for ever by the untimely death of its princely patron on the following 6 November. The Accession tilt of 1613 is made memorable by the fact that the Earl of Rutland had the signal honour of being furnished with an impresa by the united genius of Shakespeare and Burbage, whom we must presume to have been the poet and the painter respectively.[510] At Elizabeth's wedding in 1613 there was ringing only.[511] One more device by Jonson, with Cupids and Hymen, introduced a tilt on 1 January 1614, after the wedding of the Earl of Somerset, and my chronicle must end with the Accession tilt of 1616, for which again Burbage furnished the Earl of Rutland with a shield, although the name of Shakespeare, then probably on his death-bed, does not appear.[512]