Chapter XI: Book I: The Court (8)

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]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 363: Thomas Herbert to Robert Cecil, 26 Aug. 1601 (_Hatfield MSS._ xi. 362): 'Her Majesty, God be praised, liketh her journey, the air of this soil, and the pleasures and pastimes showed her in the way, marvellous well'; cf. p. 111 (1577). In March 1581, Thomas Scot reported to Leicester (_S. P. D._ cxlviii. 34) the scurrilous statement of one Henry Hawkins, 'that my Lord Robert hath had fyve children by the Queene, and she never goethe in progress but to be delivered'.]

[Footnote 364: Machyn, 262, 267, describes the start from and return to London in 1561. Puttenham, iii. 22 (ed. Arber, 266), has a story of Elizabeth's mirth at one Serjeant Bendlowes, 'when in a progresse time comming to salute the Queene in Huntingtonshire he said to her Cochman, stay thy cart good fellow, stay thy cart, that I may speake to the Queene'.]

[Footnote 365: Hunsdon to Cecil, 31 Aug. 1599 (_S. P. D._ cclxxii. 94): 'She ... will go more privately than is fitting for the time, or beseeming her estate; yet she will ride through Kingston in state, proportioning very unsuitably her lodging at Hampton Court unto it, making the Lady Scudamores lodging her presence chamber, Mrs. Ratcliffes her privy chamber.' James said of certain law courts, 'They be like houses in progress, where I have not, nor can have, such distinct rooms of state as I have here at Whitehall or at Hampton Court' (Bacon, _Apophthegms_, in _Works_, vii. 166). The distribution of rooms at Theobalds for a visit of 1572 is given in _Hatfield MSS._ xiii. 110.]

[Footnote 366: Dasent, vii. 238; viii. 401; x. 284, 286, 305.]

[Footnote 367: The Duchess of Suffolk wrote to Cecil in 1570 (_Hatfield MSS._ i. 481) to 'speak but one good word for me to the harbingers, in case my man shall not be able to entreat them to help me to some lodging near the court'. The harbingers, as in origin Hall officers, would provide for the Court generally; the Gentlemen Ushers of the Chamber for the Queen in person. A P. C. warrant of 29 June 1575 (Dasent, viii. 402) is for post-horses for Simon Boier, Gentleman Usher, 'being this progresse tyme appointed to prepare her Majesties lodginges' (cf. App. A, _Bibl. Note_).]

[Footnote 368: For references to the 'gestes', cf. 1 Ellis, ii. 274; Wright, ii. 16; Kempe, 266; Birch, _Eliz._ i. 87; Hunter, _Hallamshire_, 123. Copies of those for 1603 and 1605 are at the Heralds' College (Lodge, _App._ 97, 99, 108, 109). Those for 1605 are printed (from _Harl. MS._ 7044?) by Leland, _Coll._ ii. 626, and those for 1614, with the corporation's endorsement of receipt, from the Leicester archives by Nichols, _James_, iii. 10.]

[Footnote 369: A survey of houses for a progress in Herts is in _S. P. D._ CXXV. 46.]

[Footnote 370: _Hatfield MSS._ v. 19, 309; vii. 378.]

[Footnote 371: Kelly, _Progresses_, 302, 319, 345, 360; Nichols, _James_, iii. 11; Wright, ii. 16; Howard, 211. A 'Remembrance for the Progress' of 1575 (_Pepys MS._ 179) contains elaborate notes for routes (not those ultimately followed) and mileage, for the provision of vehicles, for instructions to sheriffs about corn and hay, and justices about flesh, fish, and fowl, for the carriage of wine from London, and the brewing of beer locally. If the country ale doesn't please the Queen, a London supply must be provided, or a brewer taken down.]

[Footnote 372: Kempe, 265. Wingfield's letter is only dated 2 Aug.; Lord Clinton, who is named, became Earl of Lincoln in May 1572. More preserved a letter of 5 Aug. 1567 from William Lord Howard to the Mayor of Guildford, asking for a close to graze his horses in during the Queen's visit to the town. On 24 Aug. 1576 a Mr. Horsman wrote to More (Nichols, ii. 7), 'Tis thought the Queen will not come to your house this summer'.]

[Footnote 373: 1 Ellis, ii. 265.]

[Footnote 374: Ibid. 266. In 1570 Bedford had written to urge on Cecil the unsuitability of Chenies for the Queen (_Hatfield MSS._ i. 477).]

[Footnote 375: 1 Ellis, ii. 267.]

[Footnote 376: Ibid. 271.]

[Footnote 377: Ibid. 272.]

[Footnote 378: _Sussex Arch. Collections_, v. 194.]

[Footnote 379: Nicolas, _Hatton_, 269. Lady Norris, to whom Elizabeth wrote affectionately as her 'crow', was the daughter of Lord Williams of Thame, who had befriended her as a prisoner at Woodstock; on the Rycote entertainment of 1592, cf. p. 125.]

[Footnote 380: Kelly, _Progresses_, 296. On 6 July 1576 Gilbert Talbot wrote to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, ii. 75): 'There hath been sundry determinations of her Majesty's progress this summer.... These two or three days it hath changed every five hours.']

[Footnote 381: 1 Ellis, ii. 274.]

[Footnote 382: Sir Charles Danvers to the Earl of Southampton (_Hatfield MSS._ ix. 246). For other letters of courtly deprecation, which I have no room to quote, cf. Hatton, 223; _Hatfield MSS._ v. 19, 299, 309.]

[Footnote 383: _Parker Correspondence_, 148.]

[Footnote 384: Harington, ii. 16, 'She gave him very speciall thanks, with gratious and honorable tearms, and then looking on his wife; "and you (saith she) _Madam_ I may not call you, and _Mistris_ I am ashamed to call you, so I know not what to call you, but yet I do thanke you".']

[Footnote 385: Lodge, ii. 119: 'This Rookwood is a Papist of kind newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Ewston, far unmeet for her Highness, but fitter for the blackguard; nevertheless (the gentleman brought into her Majesty's presence by like device) her excellent Majesty gave to Rookwood ordinary thanks for his bad house, and her fair hand to kiss; after which it was braved at. But my Lord Chamberlain, nobly and gravely understanding that Rookwood was excommunicated for Papistry, called him before him; demanded of him how he durst presume to attempt her real presence, he, unfit to accompany any Christian person; forthwith said he was fitter for a pair of stocks; commanded him out of the Court, and yet to attend her Council's pleasure; and at Norwich he was committed. And, to decipher the gentleman to the full; a piece of plate being missed in the Court, and searched for in his hay house, in the hay rick such an image of our Lady was there found, as for greatness, for gayness, and workmanship, I did never see such a match; and, after a sort of country dances ended, in her Majesty's sight the idol was set behind the people, who avoided. She rather seemed a beast raised up on a sudden from hell by conjuring, than the picture for whom it had been so often and long abused. Her Majesty commanded it to the fire, which in her sight by the country folks was quickly done, to her content, and unspeakable joy of every one but some one or two who had sucked of the idol's poisoned milk.' Rookwood's committal and release are recorded in the P. C. Acts (Dasent, x. 310, 312, 342). He suffered at a later date as a recusant and died in gaol. His cousin, Ambrose Rookwood of Stanningfield, was a Guy Fawkes conspirator (_D. N. B._; Dasent, xxv. 118, 203, 252, 371, 419; Copinger, _Manors of Suffolk_, i. 292).]

[Footnote 386: _H. O._ 145: 'It is often and in manner dayly seene, that as well in the kings owne houses, as in the places of other noblemen and gentlemen, where the kings Grace doth fortune to lye or come unto, not onely lockes of doores, tables, formes, cupboards, tressells, and other ymplements of household, be carryed, purloyned, and taken away, by such servants and others as be lodged in the same houses and places; but also such pleasures and commodities as they have about their houses, that is to say, deer, fish, orchards, hay, corne, grasse, pasture, and other store belonging to the same noblemen and gentlemen, or to others dwelling neere abouts, is by ravine taken, dispoiled, wasted and spent, without lycence or consent of the owner, or any money paid for the same, to the kings great dishonour, and the no little damage and displeasure of those to whose houses the Kings Highnesse doth fortune to repaire....']

[Footnote 387: 1 Ellis, ii. 277, evidently misdated 'ann. 15' for 'ann. 16'.]

[Footnote 388: Kelly, _Progresses_, 325.]

[Footnote 389: The Cofferer's Account for the progress of 1561, printed in Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 92, from _Cott. Vesp._ C. xiv, shows expenditure while the court lay or dined at several private houses. On 24 July 1560 Sir N. Bacon wrote to Parker, 'The Queen's majesty meaneth on Monday next to dine at Lambeth; and although it shall be altogether of her provision, yet I thought it meet to make you privy thereto, lest, other men forgetting it, the thing should be too sudden' (Parker, 120). This was a dinner on a remove from Greenwich to Richmond, not during a progress; but the principle was probably the same. The older practice was certainly for the crown to pay. Puttenham, iii. 24 (ed. Arber, 301), records that Henry VII, 'if his chaunce had bene to lye at any of his subiects houses, or to passe moe meales then one, he that would take vpon him to defray the charge of his dyet, or of his officers and houshold, he would be maruelously offended with it, saying what priuate subiect dare vndertake a Princes charge, or looke into the secret of his expence?' And the discreet courtier adds, 'Her Maiestie hath bene knowne oftentimes to mislike the superfluous expence of her subiects bestowed vpon her in times of her progresses'.]

[Footnote 390: Cf. p. 17.]

[Footnote 391: 1 Ellis, ii. 265, from _Lansd. MS._ 16, f. 107.]

[Footnote 392: In 1576 the Board of Green Cloth paid £3 6_s._ 8_d._ by way of 'rewards given to inns in progress time where her majesty hath been' (Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 48).]

[Footnote 393: Kelly, _Progresses_, 298, 320, 345, 359; Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 551.]

[Footnote 394: At Coventry in 1566 'The tanners pageant stood at St. Johns Church, the drapers pageant at the Cross, the smiths pageant at Little Park Street End, and the weavers pageant at Much Park Street' (H. Craig, _Coventry Corpus Christi Plays_, xxi, misdated 1567; cf. ibid. 106).]

[Footnote 395: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 105, 109, 118, 130, 182, 225, shows that the Revels followed the progresses of 1559, when they furnished a banqueting house and mask at Horsley; of 1566, when their expenses came to £187 8_s._ 11½_d._; of 1571, when the Master took nine men, three horses and a wagon; of 1573, when they spent £21 10_s._ 8_d._ on carriage and apparently the mask at Canterbury; and of 1574, when they furnished the Italian players at Windsor and Reading. A Green Cloth document of 1576 (Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 50) also records the expenditure of £109 1_s._ 11_d._ by the Woodyard on 'necessaries, as plancks, boards, quarters, tressets, forms, and carpenters, hired in time of progresses'. Another of 1604 (Nichols, _James_, i. xi) is a record of wood felled to furnish the king's house with fuel during the recent progress.]

[Footnote 396: _Ch. Ch. Accts._ 1566 (Boas, 107), 'to the clerkes of the greene clothe for unburdeninge at our requeste the universitie & us of the lightes & rushes iij payre of gloves ... xviijˢ ... to the yeoman of the woodyarde for helpinge us to a recompence of our woode & cole spent ... xˢ'. Kelly, _Progresses_, 328, 'for the which you shall have satisfaction'.]

[Footnote 397: Kelly, _Progresses_, 361, prints the precept for the jury at Leicester in 1614. Jacobean proclamations (_Procl._ 950, 994, 1096, 1098, 1135), regulating the functions of the Clerk of the Market, claim that local prices, especially on progress, are often extortionate. Nichols, _Eliz._ iii. 252, prints a memorandum of Puckering's for Elizabeth's intended visit in 1594, which contemplates 'purveyed diet'.]

[Footnote 398: 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 2_d._ 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.]

[Footnote 399: Birch, _Eliz._ i. 12.]

[Footnote 400: Parker, xii.]

[Footnote 401: Peck, _Desiderata Curiosa_, 25.]

[Footnote 402: Thomas Tooke to John Hubbard (Goodman, ii. 20).]

[Footnote 403: _Egerton Papers_, 340. The second of the documents there printed is one of Collier's forgeries. On 27 April 1603 Sir Robert Cecil wrote to Egerton (_Egerton Papers_, 369) to borrow some plate, 'because of my self I am not able to furnish my house at Theobalds of all such necessarys as are convenient for his Maiestys reception without the helpe of my frends'.]

[Footnote 404: La Mothe, vi. 478. Gossip said that Leicester's magnificence was in return for an 'octroy de quelques vaquanz' worth 200,000 crowns.]

[Footnote 405: _V. P._ xii. 409.]

[Footnote 406: Northumberland to Cobham (_S. P. D._ cclxxxiv. 97).]

[Footnote 407: Wright, i. 370; Hawarde, 311.]

[Footnote 408: Nichols, i. 601, prints from _Lansd. MS._ 16, 'The Q. Prayer after a Progress, Aug. 15 [1574] being then at Bristow'. It contains a thanksgiving for 'preseruinge me in this longe and dangerus jorneye'.]

[Footnote 409: Kelly, _Progresses_, 301, from _Harl. MS._ 6996. The letter is undated, but as the court was going to Kenilworth, it may belong to 1575.]

[Footnote 410: Wright, ii. 16.]

[Footnote 411: 'I am old, and come now evil away with the inconveniences of progress. I followed her Majesty until my man returned and told me he could get neither fit lodging for me nor room for my horse,' writes Sir Henry Lee in 1591 (_Hatfield MSS._ iv. 136).]

[Footnote 412: _Sydney Papers_, ii. 210.]

[Footnote 413: Walsingham wrote to Shrewsbury from Oatlands on 2 Sept. 1584 (Lodge, ii. 245), that the Privy Council was divided 'by reason of a little by progress her Majesty hath made for her recreation'.]

[Footnote 414: Chamberlain, 166, 169, 'All is to entertain the time, and win her to stay here if may be'.... 'These feastings have had their effect to stay the Court here this Christmas, though most of the cariages were well onward on theire waye to Richmond.']

[Footnote 415: Harington, i. 314: 'Her Highness hath done honour to my poor house by visiting me, and seemed much pleased at what we did to please her. My son made her a fair speech, to which she did give most gracious reply. The women did dance before her, whilst the cornets did salute from the gallery; and she did vouchsafe to eat two morsels of rich comfit cake, and drank a small cordial from a gold cup. She had a marvelous suit of velvet borne by four of her first women attendants in rich apparel; two ushers did go before, and at going up stairs she called for a staff, and was much wearied in walking about the house, and said she wished to come another day. Six drums and six trumpets waited in the court, and sounded at her approach and departure. My wife did bear herself in wondrous good liking, and was attired in a purple kyrtle, fringed with gold; and my self, in a rich band and collar of needle-work, and did wear a goodly stuff of the bravest cut and fashion, with an under body of silver and loops. The Queen was much in commendation of our appearances, and smiled at the ladies, who in their dances often came up to the stepp on which the seat was fixed to make their obeysance, and so fell back into their order again. The younger Markham did several gallant feats on a horse before the gate, leaping down and kissing his sword, then mounting swiftly on the saddle, and passed a lance with much skill. The day well nigh spent, the Queen went and tasted a small beverage that was set out in divers rooms where she might pass; and then in much order was attended to her palace, the cornets and trumpets sounding through the streets.']

[Footnote 416: Lodge, iii. 38.]

[Footnote 417: Winwood, ii. 155.]

[Footnote 418: Many of the numbers in the song-books of the madrigalists and lutenists probably had their origin in entertainments. _The Triumphs of Oriana_ (1601), for example, may have been written as a whole for a royal birthday or maying; cf. also examples in Fellowes, 121, 328, 434, 464, 485.]

[Footnote 419: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 154.]

[Footnote 420: Cf. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 421: Cf. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 422: _M. N. D._ 11. i. 148:

'Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory.
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.'

On the chronology, cf. _Sh. Homage_, 154.]

[Footnote 423: On the _débat_, cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 79, 187; ii. 153, 201.]

[Footnote 424: _V. P._ x. 25. Leicester left the Queen by will in 1588 (_Sydney Papers_, i. 71) a 'Jewel with three great Emrodes with a fair large Table Diamond in the middest, without a foyle, and set about with many Diamonds without foyle, and a Roape of fayre white Pearl, to the number six Hundred, to hang the said Jewel at; which Pearl and Jewel was once purposed for her Majesty, against a Coming to Wansted'. Rowland Whyte says of the visit to Lord Keeper Puckering at Kew in 1595 (_Sydney Papers_, i. 376), 'Her Intertainment for that Meale was great and exceeding costly. At her first Lighting, she had a fine Fanne, with a Handle garnisht with Diamonds. When she was in the Midle Way, between the Garden Gate and the Howse, there came Running towards her, one with a Nosegay in his Hand, deliuered yt vnto her, with a short well pened speach; it had in yt a very rich Iewell, with many Pendants of vnfirld Diamonds, valewed at 400_l_ at least. After Dinner, in her Privy Chamber, he gaue her a faire Paire of Virginals. In her Bed Chamber, presented her with a fine Gown and a Juppin, which Things were pleasing to her Highnes; and, to grace his Lordship the more, she, of her self, tooke from him a Salt, a Spoone, and a Forcke, of faire Agate'. Of the visit to the Earl of Nottingham in 1602, Chamberlain, 169, writes, 'The Lord Admiralls feasting the Quene had nothing extraordinarie, neither were his presents so precious as was expected; being only a whole suit of apparell, whereas it was thought he wold have bestowed his rich hangings of all the fights with the Spanish Armada in eightie-eight'. These hangings were bought by James at the Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1613 (_Abstract_, 15; _V. P._ xii. 499) for £1,628, and were long preserved in the House of Lords.]

[Footnote 425: Cf. ch. vi, p. 172.]

[Footnote 426: Cf. p. 116.]

[Footnote 427: Cf. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 428: Nichols, ii. 673; _V. P._ xiii. 36; _Hist. MSS._ i. 107.]

[Footnote 429: There are four narratives: (_a_) MS. by Matthew Stokys, the University Registrary, printed by Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 151, and from a transcript in _Harl. MS._ 7037 (_Baker MS._ 10) and with a wrong ascription to N. Robinson, by Peck, _Desiderata Curiosa_, ii. 259; (_b_) Anon. in _Camb. Univ. Library MS._, Ff. v. 14, f. 87, printed by Nichols, i. 183; (_c_) Abraham Hartwell (of King's), _Regina Literata_ (1565), reprinted by Nichols, _Eliz._¹ (1788), i; (_d_) Nicholas Robinson (of Queen's), _Commentarii Hexaemeri Rerum Cantabrigiae actarum_, printed by Nichols, _Eliz._¹ iii. 27. The ascription of _Dido_ to Halliwell is due to Hatcher's biographies of King's men in _Bodl. Rawl. MS._ B. 274. Hartwell gives some analysis both of _Dido_ and of _Ezechias_.]