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The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

Note 398 — IV PAGEANTRY

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On the history of purveyance in general, the protests of Jacobean parliaments, and the attempts to persuade the shires to accept 'compositions', cf. Gardiner, i. 170, 299; ii. 113; Cheyney, i. 29; Bray in Archaeologia, viii. 329; Nichols, James, i. x; Kempe, 272; Procl. 1033. Nichols prints a table of c. 1604 showing the proportion of carts, 220 in all, charged on each of eight counties at removes from Richmond, Windsor, Hampton Court, Nonsuch, or Oatlands. The king paid 2d. a mile and required not more than twelve miles a day. A Green Cloth order of 1609 limits the charge on the bailiwick of Surrey (in Windsor Forest) to eight carts on a remove from Windsor or other houses in the bailiwick, or from Easthampstead, to Hampton Court, Oatlands, Richmond, or Farnham. The household officers were accused of blackmailing owners of carts to avoid impressment, and of requisitioning superfluous provisions and reselling them at a profit. In 1605 the Venetian ambassador reported (V. P. x. 267, 285) that James's servants were under less good control than Elizabeth's, and that the longer time now spent in the country and more frequent removes aggravated the burden of purveyance. The carts were wanted for harvest. Moreover, hunting destroyed the crops.

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