vii. 46, says that the name Denmark House was adopted by proclamation in

honour of King Christian, but I can find no such proclamation. Arthur Wilson (_Compleat Hist._ ii. 685) dates the change _c._ 1610, and says that the new name 'continued her time among her people; but it was afterwards left out of the common calendar, like the dead Emperor's new-named month'. On the other hand I find Cecil dating from 'Queens Court' on 6 March 1605 (_S. P. D._ xiii. 15), Chamberlain writing in Feb. 1614 of the performance of Daniel's _Hymen's Triumph_ that it was in a 'little square paved court' at 'Somerset House or Queens Court, as it must now be called' (W. W. Greg in _M. L. Q._ vi. 59, from _Addl. MS._ 4173, ff. 368, 371), and plays acted by Anne's men 'at Queenes Court' in 1615 (cf. App. B). The reason suggested in the text for the second attempt to change the name seems to me a plausible conjecture. Perhaps 'Denmark House' was tried at Christian's second visit in 1614. In any case, neither novelty permanently established itself. The first use of 'Denmark House' I have noticed is in 1615; that of 'Somerset House' was resumed under Charles I.]

[Footnote 29: Lodge, iii. 62; Birch, i. 279; Devon, 63, 176; _V. P._ x. 87; xiii. 81; _S. P. D., Jac. I_, xxvii. 31; lxv. 79, 80; _V. H. Surrey_, iii. 478; _V. H. Herts._ iii. 447; Goodman, i. 174; J. E. Cussans, _Hist. of Herts._, pts. ix, x. 209; Nichols, _James_ ii. 127. Theobalds, in Cheshunt, had been often visited by Elizabeth; cf. App. A. James had already been there yearly in 1603-1606, and found it convenient for Waltham Forest.]

[Footnote 30: Green, 7; _V. P._ x. 71.]

[Footnote 31: Green, 8, 17; _V. P._ xii. 194; Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering (3 Jan. 1633) in _Court and Time of Charles I_, ii. 213: 'In case the Queen [of Bohemia] do come for England, I hear that her lodging appointed in court is the Cockpit, at Whitehall, where she lay when she was a maid.' On the Cockpit, cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 32: Birch, _Life of Henry_, 330; Cunningham, viii; _V. P._ xii. 194, 207; Devon 153, 164, 179; _S. P. D., Jac. I_, viii. 104; Marshall, _Woodstock_, 174.]

[Footnote 33: Devon, 37, 80; _V. P._ xiii. 81; Birch, i. 41.]

[Footnote 34: James was at Richmond in 1605, 1606, 1607, and 1611, at Oatlands in 1604, 1606, 1607, 1608, 1610, 1611, 1613, and 1615, and at Woodstock in 1603, 1604, 1605, 1610, 1612, and 1614. Some of his hunting trophies are still preserved at Ditchley Park; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Lee. Theobalds, like Royston, he visited several times a year. Evidently it was more his than Anne's. In 1607 and 1615 his departure from London is spoken of as going 'home' (Birch, i. 68, 298).]

[Footnote 35: _V. H. Herts._ iii. 253.]

[Footnote 36: _Abstract_, 52.]

[Footnote 37: T. F. Ordish in _L. T. R._ viii. 6. The road crossed Holborn at Kingsgate.]

[Footnote 38: Law, _Hampton Court_, i. 1.]

[Footnote 39: At the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 (Rimbault, 163) James went 'from his Privie Chamber, throughe the presence and garde chamber, and throughe a new bankettinge house erected of purpose for to solemnenize this feast in, and so doune a paire of stayers at the upper end therof hard by the Courte gate, wente alonge uppon a stately scaffold to the great chamber stayers, and throughe the greate chamber and lobby to the clossett, doune the staiers to the Chappell'; cf. Pegge, i. 68. Traces of the Great Chamber at Whitehall possibly still exist, over the building known as Cardinal Wolsey's cellar (_L. T. R._ vii. 40).]

[Footnote 40: Davison to Leicester (1586, _Hardwicke Papers_, i. 302): 'I found her majesty alone, retired into her withdrawing chamber'; Lord Talbot to Anon. (1587, _Rutland MSS._ i. 213): 'She had my wife called in to the withdrawing chamber, where no one but the Queen, my Lord, and Secretary Walsingham were'; Sussex to Burghley (1573, 2 Ellis, iii. 27): 'The Queen sate in the grete Closette or Parler [at Greenwich]'; R. Cecil to Essex (1596, Devereux, i. 347), reporting that Sir A. Shirley was 'used with great favour, both in the privy and drawing chambers'. The 'Withdrawing Chamber' of Law's Hampton Court plan appears to be the Privy Chamber. They were certainly distinct at Richmond in 1600, for Vereiken was taken through the Privy Chamber for an audience in the Withdrawing Chamber (_Sydney Papers_, ii. 170).]

[Footnote 41: Cf. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 42: _H. O._ 154 (1526); _Procl._ 962 (1603).]

[Footnote 43: Pegge, i. 68.]

[Footnote 44: _V. P._ vii. 91 (1559, Montmorency); ix. 531 (1603, Scaramelli).]

[Footnote 45: Cf. App. F. Von Wedel (_2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 250) describes the ceremony at Hampton Court in 1584.]

[Footnote 46: _V. P._ x. 46, 121; xi. 430; xii. 273, 547; Gawdy, 132; Birch, i. 69; Sully, _Mémoires_, 469. Von Wedel, however, saw Elizabeth dine in state at Greenwich in 1584 (loc. cit., 262).]

[Footnote 47: Cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 48: The position of the Hall at Whitehall can be fairly well identified as extending across Horse Guards Avenue; cf. _L. T. R._ vii. 41.]

[Footnote 49: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 189; Reyher, 336.]

[Footnote 50: _Tudor Revels_, 17; _Hatfield MSS._ i. 92, from which it appears that there was one house only, with a kitchen, and also stands in Hyde and Marylebone Parks.]

[Footnote 51: _V. P._ vii. 91; Holinshed, iii. 1510; Machyn, 203: 'The x day of July was set up in Greenwich park a goodly banketting-house made with fir powlles, and deckyd with byrche and all manner of flowers of the feld and gardennes, as roses, gelevors, lavender, marygolds, and all maner of strowhyng erbes and flowrs'; Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 81: 'Robert Trunckewell ... woorking ... vppon toe modells of the Masters device for a rowfe and a cobboorde of a bancketinge howse', 97, 106.]

[Footnote 52: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 163: 'The Banketting House made at Whitehall for thentertaynement of the seide duke did drawe the charges ensving for the covering therof with canvasse: the decking therof with birche & ivie: and the ffretting, and garnishing therof, with fflowers, and compartementes, with pendentes & armes paynted & gilded for the purpose. The ffloore therof being all strewed with rose leaves pickt & sweetned with sweete waters &c.' The details include £9 14_s._ 4_d._ 'for flowers broughte into the Cockpitt at White hall with other necessaries, viz. fflowers of all sortes taken vp by comyssion & gathered in the feeldes', while William Hunnis, who was keeper of the gardens at Greenwich, as well as Master of the Chapel, provided 79 bushels of roses, with pinks, honeysuckles, and privet flowers.]

[Footnote 53: Holinshed, iii. 1315, from _Harleian MS._ 293, f. 217: 'A banketting house was begun at Westminster, on the south west side of hir maiesties palace of White hall, made in maner and forme of a long square, three hundred thirtie and two foot in measure about; thirtie principals made of great masts, being fortie foot in length a peece, standing vpright; betweene euerie one of these masts ten foot asunder and more. The walles of this house were closed with canuas, and painted all the outsides of the same most artificiallie with a worke called rustike, much like to stone. This house had two hundred ninetie and two lights of glasse. The sides within the same house was made with ten heights of degrees for people to stand upon: and in the top of this house was wrought most cunninglie upon canuas, works of iuie and hollie, with pendents made of wicker rods, and garnished with baie, rue, and all maner of strange flowers garnished with spangles of gold, as also beautified with hanging toseans made of hollie and iuie, with all maner of strange fruits, as pomegranats, orenges, pompions, cucumbers, grapes, carrets, with such other like, spangled with gold, and most richlie hanged. Betwixt these works of baies and iuie, were great spaces of canuas, which was most cunninglie painted, the clouds with starres, the sunne and sunne beames, with diuerse other cotes of sundrie sortes belonging to the queenes maiestie, most richlie garnished with gold. There were of all manner of persons working on this house, to the number of three hundred seuentie and fiue: two men had mischances, the one brake his leg, and so did the other. This house was made in three weekes and three daies, and was ended the eighteenth daie of Aprill; and cost one thousand seuen hundred fortie and foure pounds, nineteene shillings and od monie; as I was crediblie informed by the worshipfull maister Thomas Graue surueior vnto hir maiesties workes, who serued and gaue order for the same, as appeareth by record.' Stowe, _Annales_, 688, copies Holinshed; cf. _Sp. P._ iii. 91. Von Wedel (_2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 236) saw the house in 1584, and was told that birds sang in the bushes overhead, while entertainments were in progress. A Record Office was constructed below the banqueting house in 1597 (_Hatfield MSS._ vii. 431).]

[Footnote 54: Camden, _Annalium Apparatus_, 6 (c. 12 Oct. 1607), 'Camera convivialis de novo construitur apud Whitehall'; Stowe, _Annales_, 688, 892, 910, 'the beautiful room at Whitehall'; Devon, 44, 302, 'James Acheson ... hath, by our direction, formed a model for the roof of our Banqueting-house at Whitehall'; _V. P._ xi. 86, 'At the close of the ceremony [mask of Jan. 1608] he said to me that he intended this function to consecrate the birth of the Great Hall which his predecessors had left him built merely in wood, but which he had converted into stone'. But James had been displeased with the building when he first saw it about 16 Sept. 1607 (_S. P. D._ xxviii. 51). Goodman, ii. 176, says that the City had to bear the cost in return for the transfer to them of Blackfriars, Whitefriars, and other liberties (cf. ch. xvii, s.v. Blackfriars).]

[Footnote 55: Chamberlain to Carleton (Birch, ii. 124): 'One of the greatest losses spoken of is the burning of all or most of the writings and papers belonging to the offices of the Signet, Privy Seal, and Council Chamber, which were under it'; cf. Reyher, 342; Goodman, ii. 175, 187.]

[Footnote 56: _V. P._ xii. 533; Stowe, 916; Birch, i. 229; Finett, 11; cf. p. 14.]

[Footnote 57: Stowe, 787, 789, 791; Von Wedel in _2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 256; P. P. Laffleur de Kermaingant, _Mission de Jean de Thumery_, i. 368, both describing the procession at length; _Mission de Christophe de Harlay_, 252, 'la coustume a tousjours esté, et mesmes du temps de la feue Royne de trés heureuse memoire, que les ambassadeurs residens en Angleterre sont priez d'accompagner les roys, lorsqu'ilz retournent en leur ville de Londres, après leur progrès'; Goodman, i. 164, 'The Queen's constant custom was a little before her coronation-day to come from Richmond to London, and to dine with my lord Admiral at Chelsea, and to set out from Chelsea at dark night, where the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen were to meet her'. Precepts by the Lord Mayor and other records of civic expenditure on the receptions are in Arber, i. 510; v. lxxvii; Kitto, 538; Young, _Barber Surgeons_, 108; Welch, _Pewterers_, ii. 33.]

[Footnote 58: Camden, 191, 'Anno iam regni Elizabethae duodecimo feliciter exacto, in quo aureum ut vocarunt diem creduli Pontificii sibi ex ariolorum predictione expectabant, boni omnes per Angliam laetanter triumphabant et xvii Novembris Anniversarium regni inchoati diem, gratiarum actionibus, concionibus per Ecclesias, votis multiplicatis, laetisona campanarum pulsatione, hastiludiis, et festiva quadam laetitia celebrare coeperunt, et in obsequiosi amoris testimonium, dum illa viveret, non destiterunt'; La Mothe, v. 204; Arber, i. 561, 566, 578; _Sydney Papers_, i. 371, 'the Triumphes of her Coronation'; Ellis, II. iii. 160, citing _Pauls Cross Sermon_ of T. Holland on 17 Nov. 1599, published 1601, with a _Defence of the Church of England for keeping Queen's Day_, for the origin at Oxford under Vice-Chancellor Cooper, which is perhaps confirmed by the records of the tilt (cf. ch. iv). But the City churches rang their bells on the day before 1570; cf. _Westminster_, 18 (1568), 'ringing for the prosperous reign of the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth'; Kitto, 248, 'ringing for the quene the xvij of November 1569', 269 (1572), 'ringing at the quenes maᵗᶦᵉˢ chaunginge of her raign', &c. _The Chamber Accounts_ for 1595-6 use the term 'Raigne day'. Goodman, i. 98, notes the Jacobean revival.]

[Footnote 59: Birch, _Eliz._ i. 92.]

[Footnote 60: _Sp. P._ iv. 494; cf. Kitto, 407: 'Pᵈ ye iijᵈ of November to yᵉ Parritoʳ for a warrant to kepe holy yᵉ xixᵗʰ day At wᶜʰ tyme heʳ maᵗᶦᵉ should a gone to Powles'. The ceremony, however, was deferred to 24 Nov. There was also a tilt on 19 Nov. in 1590. Von Wedel (_2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 236, 256) says in 1584 that this was a regular day for tilting; but he also says it was the royal birthday, which was 7 Sept.]

[Footnote 61: I find no prolonged stay at Whitehall between May 1584 and Jan. 1589. If her presence in London was necessary during this period Elizabeth seems to have preferred St. James or Somerset House. She opened Parliament in Feb. 1586 from Lambeth; there were other visits to Lambeth and the Lord Admiral's house (Hance's) in Westminster.]

[Footnote 62: _V. P._ vii. 374 (6 Jan. 1566). Machyn, 273, records a visit to the court of a lord of misrule from the city in 1561.]

[Footnote 63: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 238. Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 108; ii. 65, 249; iii. 1, 445, prints rolls of gifts to and from the Queen for 1562, 1578, 1579, 1589, and 1600 from manuscripts in the British Museum and in private hands. A roll for 1585 is noticed in _Arch._ i. 11. Those for 1563, 1577, 1598, and 1603 appear to be among the _Miscellaneous Rolls of Chancery_ in the R. O. (Scargill-Bird², 363), but are unprinted. Nichols also prints shorter lists of jewels given to the Queen for a number of years.]

[Footnote 64: Machyn, 195, 232, 257, 280, 305; _V. P._ vii. 74; Hawarde, 74, 109; _Sydney Papers_, ii. 44; cf. E. Ashmole, _The Institution of the Order of the Garter_ (1672); N. H. Nicolas, _Orders of Knighthood_ (1841); G. F. Beltz, _Memorials of the Order of the Garter_ (1841). Henri IV was installed by proxy in Apr. 1600, and the attendance of the Admiral's men perhaps implies a play (_Hatfield MSS._ x. 118, 269; Henslowe, i. 120). There are Garter allusions in _Merry Wives of Windsor_.]

[Footnote 65: Cf. Appendix A. The Chamber Accounts show an annual payment for a bonfire on Midsummer Day.]

[Footnote 66: _Westminster_, 19 (1579), &c., and Kitto, 364 (1584), &c., record the ringing of London bells. It can hardly have been a day for tilting (cf. p. 19) as the Court was usually in progress.]

[Footnote 67: _V. P._ xi. 57, 59, refers to an 'old custom' of keeping All Saints' Day in the city (i.e. Westminster) with the Knights of the Garter and the court; cf. Nichols, _James_, ii. 155. It can only have been a Jacobean custom, for Elizabeth did not as a rule reach Westminster by 1 Nov.]

[Footnote 68: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 124, 248. _V. P._ xii. 237, notes ringing on 5 Nov. 1611. Williams, _Founders_, 86, prints a guild order of 1611 for sermons at Paul's Cross and dinners on 'Coronation' day, 5 Aug. and 5 Nov., as days 'of meeting for the kings majesties sarves'.]

[Footnote 69: Cf. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 70: Camden, _Annalium Apparatus_, 2 (Aug. 1603), 'Indicitur ut hic dies festus celebretur ob Regem à Gowriorum conjuratione liberatum'; cf. Goodman, i. 3; Boderie, i. 283; _V. P._ xii. 26, 196, 409. The question as to the bona fides of the plot commemorated is discussed by A. Lang, _James VI and the Gowrie Mystery_ (1902).]

[Footnote 71: Goodman, i. 247.]

[Footnote 72: _S. P. D._ xii. 13; _V. P._ x. 81, 90, 95, 195, 218; xi. 276; xii. 41, 381; Lodge, iii. 41, 108, 110, 141; Sully, 455, 458; Boderie, i. 310; Winwood, iii. 182.]

[Footnote 73: _V. P._ vii. 23, describes the ceremony in 1559, and Von Wedel, _2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 260, in 1584.]

[Footnote 74: Cf. ch. iv and App. A. In 1612 the Elector Palatine attended the banquet on Lord Mayor's Day; Henry's illness kept him away.]

[Footnote 75: _Conspiracy of Byron_, iv. 25. An undated letter from Elizabeth to Henri regrets that in spite of 'nostre sejour en deux lieux si proches l'un de l'autre ... nous sommes tous deux empeschez de passer la mer'; she adds, 'je me resoudray dans peu de jours de m'en retourner à Londres' (Sully, 364; Berger de Xivrey, _Lettres missives de Henri IV_, v. 464). This was doubtless written early in Sept. 1601 when Elizabeth was at Basing and Henri at Calais. Sully, followed by Strickland, 678, has an elaborate account of the business, including an interview between himself and Elizabeth at Dover, but the itinerary (cf. App. A) makes it impossible that she can have gone to Dover.]

[Footnote 76: _V. P._ viii. 496; cf. ch. v.]

[Footnote 77: Cf. ch. v for Harington's description of a drunken mask at Theobalds; there is confirmatory evidence in _V. P._ x. 386; Boderie, i. 241, 283, 297.]

[Footnote 78: Cf. ch. xiii, s.v. King's.]

[Footnote 79: Gilles de Noailles, Abbé de Lisle (1559), Michel de Seurre (1560-2), Paul de Foix (1562-6), Jacques Bochetel, Sieur de la Forest (1566-8), Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1568-75), Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissière (1575-85), Guillaume de L'Aubespine, Baron de Chasteauneuf (1585-9), Le Sieur de Beauvoir (de La Nocte) (1589-98?), Le Sieur Thumery de Boissise (1598-1601), Christophe de Harlay, Comte de Beaumont (1601-5), Antoine Le Fèvre, Sieur de la Boderie (1606-11), Samuel Spifame, Sieur des Bisseaux (1611-15), Gaspard Dauvet, Sieur des Marets (1615-18). Complete lists of lieger and extraordinary ambassadors, with notes of the manuscripts containing their dispatches, are given by A. Baschet in _Reports of Deputy Keeper of the Records_, xxxvii, App. 1, 188; xxxix, App. 573; and C. H. Firth and S. C. Lomax, _Notes on the Diplomatic Relations of England and France_, 1603-88 (1906); cf. _General Bibl. Note_, s.v. Beaumont, Boissise, La Boderie, La Mothe.]

[Footnote 80: The Spanish ambassadors during 1558-84 were Don Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count of Féria (Jan. 1558-May 1559), Don Alvaro de la Quadra, Bishop of Aquila (May 1559-Aug. 1563), Don Diego Guzman de Silva (Jan. 1564-Sept. 1568), Don Guerau de Spes (Sept. 1568-Dec. 1571), Don Bernardino de Mendoza (March 1578-Jan. 1584); their dispatches are in _Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España_, lxxxvii, lxxxix-xcii, and are calendared, with those of Antonio de Guaras, a merchant who acted as agent 1573-7, in M. A. S. Hume, _Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas_ (1892-9, cited as _Sp. P._). The ambassadors 1603-16 were Don Juan de Taxis, Count of Villa Mediana (Aug. 1603-July 1605), Don Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and Constable of Castile, and Alessandro Rovida, Senator of Milan (extraordinary as commissioners, with John de Ligne, Prince of Brabançon and Count of Aremberg, Juan Richardot, Councillor of State, and Ludovic Verreyken, Audiencier, representing the Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella of Flanders, for the treaty of Aug. 1604), Don Pedro de Zuniga (July 1605-May 1610), Don Fernando de Giron (extraordinary, 1608-9), Don Alonzo de Velasco (May 1610-Aug. 1613), Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, afterwards Conde de Gondomar (Aug. 1613). Their dispatches are not in print, but a _Relacion de la Jornada del Excᵐᵒ Condestable de Castilla_ is in the _Colección de Documentos Inéditos_, lxxi. 467.]

[Footnote 81: The Venetian ambassadors were Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli (Secretary, Feb.-Nov. 1603), Pietro Duodo (extraordinary, 1603), Nicolò Molin (Nov. 1603-Dec. 1605), Giorgio Giustinian (Dec. 1605-Oct. 1608), Marc' Antonio Correr (Oct. 1608-Apr. 1611), Francesco Contarini (extraordinary, 1610), Antonio Foscarini (Apr. 1611-Dec. 1615), Gregorio Barbarigo (Sept. 1615-May 1616). Reports of the state of England by Molin, Contarini, and Correr are in N. Barozzi e Guglielmo Berchet, _Le Relazioni degli Stati Europei ... nel secolo decimosettimo_, iv (1863). The current dispatches are calendared in _Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs ... in Venice and ... Northern Italy_ (cited as _V. P._). A report to the Senate by Zuanne Falier and others who visited England privately in 1575 states that they were advised by a Bolognese groom of the privy chamber, favoured by Elizabeth as an excellent musician [? Alfonso Ferrabosco], to suggest the desirability of an embassy (_V. P._ vii. 524). Retiring Venetian ambassadors were sometimes knighted and given a lion of England to quarter on their shields (_V. P._ xii. 163; xiv. 85).]

[Footnote 82: _Sp. P._ i. 382, 385, 403, 451, 545.]

[Footnote 83: _S. P. D., Jac. I_, vi. 21; xii. 16; Winwood, iii. 155; P. L. de Kermaingant, _Mission de Christophe de Harlay_, 173, 252; De la Boderie, _Ambassades_, i. 240, 262, 271, 277, 291, 353; iii. 1-192 _passim_; _V. P._ x. 139, 149, 212, 234, 388, 408; xi. 83, 86, 212. I have given some details in relation to the masks in ch. xxiii; cf. also ch. vi. There is a connected narrative of the Franco-Spanish disputes in M. Sullivan, _Court Masques of James I_, which perhaps lays insufficient stress on incidents occurring at state ceremonies and tilts as distinct from masks.]

II

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

[_Bibliographical Note._--There is no systematic history of the household, but the growing tendency, notable in such recent works as those of Professor Baldwin and Professor Tout, to dwell on the administrative, as distinct from the 'constitutional', aspect of politics suggests that the gap may some day be filled. A useful short study is R. H. Gretton, _The King's Government_ (1913). Of the numerous books bearing more or less directly on the subject, I give here mainly those which I have found of practical value in writing this chapter. Professor Tout's _Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England_, of which the first two volumes have subsequently (1920) appeared, is of course of fundamental importance. The best worked section is that of mediaeval origins. The general surveys of W. Stubbs, _The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development_ (1880), and W. R. Anson, _The Law and Custom of the Constitution_ (1886-92), may be supplemented for the earliest period by L. M. Larson, _The King's Household in England before the Norman Conquest_ (1904); for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries by H. W. C. Davis, _Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum_, i (1913), T. Madox, _History and Antiquities of the Exchequer_ (1769), R. L. Poole, _The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century_ (1912), J. H. Round, _The King's Serjeants and Officers of State_ (1911), and L. W. Vernon Harcourt, _His Grace the Steward and the Trial of Peers_ (1907); for the fourteenth century by T. F. Tout, _The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History_ (1914), J. C. Davies, _The Baronial Opposition to Edward II_ (1918), F. J. Furnivall and R. E. G. Kirk, _Life Records of Chaucer_ (1875-1900), and J. R. Hulbert, _Chaucer's Official Life_ (1912); for the fifteenth century by C. Plummer, _Sir John Fortescue's Governance of England_ (1885), and by the 'courtesy books' or treatises on domestic service and etiquette in F. J. Furnivall, _The Babees Book_, &c. (1868, _E. E. T. S._), _Queen Elizabeth's Achademy_, &c. (1869, _E. E. T. S._), and R. W. Chambers, _A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book_ (1914, _E. E. T. S._); for the Privy Council by N. H. Nicolas, _Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council_ (1834-7), J. R. Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_ (1890-1907), A. V. Dicey, _The Privy Council_ (1887), J. F. Baldwin, _The King's Council in England during the Middle Ages_ (1913), T. F. T. Plucknett, _The Place of the Council in the Fifteenth Century_ (1918, _4 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ i. 157), E. Percy, _The Privy Council under the Tudors_ (1907), and C. Hornemann, _Das Privy Council von England zur Zeit der Königin Elisabeth_ (1912); and for the Star Chamber, W. P. Baildon's edition of John Hawarde's _Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata_ (1894), and C. Scofield, _The Court of Star Chamber_ (1900). Some of the above extend to the sixteenth century; but in the main the Tudor-Stuart period has received less attention than it deserves. Even the lists of the great officers, as given in the ordinary books of reference, are generally incorrect. The most valuable summary is the quite recent one of E. P. Cheyney, _History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth_, i (1914). Samuel Pegge set out to write an account of the Hospitium Regis and published four sections, on the Esquires of the Body, the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the Gentlemen Pensioners, and the Yeomen of the Guard as a first volume of _Curialia; or an Historical Account of the Royal Household_ (1791). From the material left at his death, J. Nichols published two more, on Somerset House and the Serjeants at Arms, in a second volume of _Curialia_ (1806), and some fragments in _Curialia Miscellanea_ (1818). Other special studies are F. S. Thomas, _Notes of Materials for the History of Public Departments_ (1846), and _The Ancient Exchequer of England_ (1848), N. Carlisle, _An Inquiry into the Place and Quality of the Gentlemen of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Chamber_ (1829), E. K. Chambers, _The Elizabethan Lords Chamberlain_ (1907, _Malone Soc. Collections_, i. 31), W. Nagel, _Annalen der Englischen Hofmusik_ (1894, _Beilage zu den Monatsheften für Musikgeschichte_, 26), H. C. De Lafontaine, _The King's Musick_ (1909), _Lists of the King's Musicians_ (_Musical Antiquary_, i-iv, _passim_). A. P. Newton's valuable paper on _The King's Chamber under the Early Tudors_ (1917, _E. H. R._ xxxii. 348) appeared after my paragraphs on the Treasurer of the Chamber were written, but has helped me to revise them. An account of the post-Restoration household is given in J. Chamberlayne, _Angliae Notitiae, or The Present State of England_ (1669), which became an annual; and this, with the works of Pegge and Carlisle, were drawn upon for the historical part of W. J. Thoms, _The Book of Court_ (1838). The modern household is the subject of W. A. Lindsay, _The Royal Household_ (1898). A summary, useful for comparison, of the sixteenth-century French household, is in L. Batiffol, _The Century of the Renaissance_ (1916, tr.), 92.

There is, of course, ample material for the historian of the Tudor-Stuart Household when he presents himself. The personal references of annalists, diplomatists, and letter-writers (cf. _Bibl. Note_ to ch. i) help out the more formal documents preserved in large numbers in the Record Office (cf. S. R. Scargill-Bird, _Guide to Various Classes of Documents in the Public Record Office_³, 1908) and the British Museum (cf. sections on _Public Revenue and State Establishments in Classified Catalogue of Manuscripts_), of which a few have been printed in _A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household_ (_Society of Antiquaries_, 1790, cited as _H. O._), in J. Nichols, _Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth_² (1823), and _Progresses, Processions, and Festivities of James I_ (1828), and elsewhere. The Record Office, in addition to many records, such as those of the Auditors of Prests (cf. App. B), which relate to the Household, contains the special archives of the Lord Chamberlain's Department and the Lord Steward's Department themselves; both, however, are very fragmentary. The earlier documents of the Lord Chamberlain's Department mainly relate to the Wardrobe. The Warrant books only begin about the reign of Charles I; a selection of entries bearing upon the stage is given by C. C. Stopes in _Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 92. The papers in the British Museum are partly official records which have strayed from their proper custody, partly the collections of antiquaries, and partly the administrative memoranda of ministers such as Lord Burghley, Lord Salisbury, and Sir Julius Caesar. Similar collections in private hands are calendared in the reports of the _Historical Manuscripts Commission_, and in particular in the _Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury_ (1883-1915, cited as _Cecil MSS._ or _Hatfield MSS._). The most important documents for tracing the history of the household consist (_a_) of account-books, (_b_) of royal ordinances and of ceremonials either for the household as a whole or for some branch of it, to the more comprehensive of which are sometimes attached schedules of offices with the fees and other allowances belonging to them, and (_c_) lists of the actual occupants of offices drawn up from time to time for various administrative purposes. The most complete lists seem to be those of officers receiving liveries at coronations and funerals. These are appended to the special _Accounts_ of the Masters of the Wardrobe for such ceremonies, and copies, covering _inter alia_ the coronation (1559) and funeral (1603) of Elizabeth, the coronation (1604) and funeral (1625) of James, the funeral (1612) of Henry, and the funeral (1619) of Anne, are preserved as precedents in _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, ii. 4-6. On the other hand, it is necessary to exercise caution in using the very numerous lists which bear some such title as 'A Generall Collection of all the Offices in England with their Fees in her Maiesties Gift'. Of these I have noted the following: _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 6 (1552); _Harl. MS._ 240 (1545-53); _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 133 (1575-80); _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 159 (1587-90); _Lansd. MS._ 171, f. 246ᵛ (1587-91); _Cotton MS._, _Titus_ B iii, f. 163ᵛ (1585-93); _S. P. D._, _Eliz._ ccxxi (1588-93); _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, v. 33 (1593); _Hargrave MS._ 215 (1592-5); _Stowe MS._ 572, f. 26 (1592-6); _Harl. MS._ 2078, f. 6 (1592-6); _H. O._ 241 (misdated 1578) from Peck, i. 51 (1598); _Addl. MS._ 35848 (1605-7); _Addl. MS._ 38008 (1605-7); _Archaeologia_, xv. 72 (1606); _Stowe MS._ 574 (_temp._ Jac. I); _Stowe MS._ 575 (1616). The dates are mostly approximate, rendered possible by the fact that the occupants of a few of the chief posts are usually named. The list of 1552 alone has all the names and is in the full sense an Establishment List. The rest should probably be regarded not as official lists but as convenient handbooks prepared for courtiers seeking patronage. Errors of transcription are frequent, and often recur in several manuscripts. _Stowe MS._ 574 is interesting, because a second hand has corrected several errors. It seems pretty clear that the names of offices were sometimes retained on these lists after the offices were in fact obsolete. They are not limited to Household Offices, but are usually arranged in four sections, Courts of Justice, Household (1, Household proper, 2, Standing offices; cf. p. 49), Military Posts, Keeperships (cf. p. 11). They include fees payable in the household, as well as at the Exchequer; and have prototypes, in less fixed form, in lists _temp._ Hen. VIII (Brewer, ii. 873; iii. 364; iv. 868). A more careful list, of somewhat similar type, with names appended, but limited to fees payable at the Exchequer, is to be found in the abstract of revenue and expenditure in 1617 printed with the pamphlet _Truth Brought to Light and Discovered by Time_ (1651, cited as _Abstract_).

But there are no comprehensive ordinances for the Tudor-Stuart Household, which must largely be studied from its origins. The best text of the _Constitutio Domus Regis_ of Henry I (_c._ 1135) is in T. Hearne, _Liber Niger Scaccarii_² (1774), i. 341; a less good one in H. Hall, _The Red Book of the Exchequer_ (1896, Rolls Series), iii. 807. For Edward I we have unprinted ordinances of 1279 (_Addl. MS._ 4565 H; _Lord Steward's Misc._ 298), and the description of the palace jurisdictions by a contemporary lawyer (_c._ 1290) in John Selden's edition of _Fleta, seu Commentarius Juris Anglicani_ (1685); for Edward II ordinances of 1318 and 1323 edited from the French original in Tout, 267, and from a translation by Francis Tate (1601) in _Life Records of Chaucer_, ii. 1, together with related Exchequer ordinances in Hall, iii. 908, 930. Ordinances of Edward III, not known to be extant, are referred to by the compiler of the _Liber Niger Domus Regis Angliae_ in the reign of Edward IV. Of the _Liber Niger_ a large number of manuscripts exist (_Lord Steward's Misc._ 299; _Exchequer T. of R. Misc._ 230; _Harl. MSS._ 293, f. 19; 298, f. 41; 369, f. 56ᵛ; 610, f. 1; 642, f. 196ᵛ; _Soc. Antiq. MS._). It is not certain from which of these the bad text in _H. O._ 13 is printed; probably it used the last two. The _Liber Niger_ is less an ordinance than an unfinished literary treatise by a household clerk, probably motived by the actual ordinances of 1478, of which an unprinted copy is in _Exchequer T. of R. Misc._ 206. An ordinance of Henry VII (1493) and a ceremonial of the same reign are in _H. O._ 107. The documents of Henry VIII's time are complicated. There appear to be three sets of ordinances: (_a_) the Eltham Articles drawn up by Wolsey (Halle, ii. 56) in Jan. 1526 (_Lord Steward's Misc._ 299, ff. 158, 163; _Exchequer T. of R. Misc._ 231; _H. O._ 137-61, from _Harl. MS._ 642); (_b_) ordinances related to a 'new book of household', _c._ 1540 (_H. O._ 228-40); (_c_) scattered ordinances, _c._ 1532-44 (_H. O._ 208-27). Subsidiary lists and documents of about the period of (_a_) are in _Lord Steward's Misc._ 299, and, perhaps with some of other dates, in Brewer, IV. i. 860. Those printed from a _Dunch MS._ in _Genealogist_, xxix, xxx, appear to belong to the 'new book' of (_b_). A third set, of _c._ 1544-6, are in _H. O._ 165-207. Much other material is scattered through the twenty-one volumes of the _Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII_ (1862-1910, cited as Brewer), including some of earlier date than the Eltham Articles.--I need hardly add that for the purposes of this chapter I have rarely been able to go beyond printed sources.]

The ordering of court life and ceremonial was in the hands of a group of departments which made up the somewhat complicated establishment of the royal Household. But the Household, at a time when the personal capacity of the Crown was as yet imperfectly differentiated from its national capacity, was not merely a domestic organization; it was still to a large extent an instrument of central executive government. It must in fact be regarded as the direct descendant of the eleventh-century _curia regis_, through which all the important functions, deliberative, judicial, financial, and administrative, had been carried out. The _curia_ had consisted partly of the territorial magnates, earls, and barons, who had been, or whose fathers had been, the King's _comitatus_ in battle; partly of knights still in attendance upon the King's person, and hoping some day, in reward for their services, to become territorial magnates in turn; partly, and to an increasing extent as government became more complicated and difficult, of clerks whose trained skill with the pen and with figures made them more practically useful than the lay knights in all those branches of affairs which entailed book-keeping and correspondence. All the members of the _curia_, in smaller or greater numbers, according to the magnitude of the business to be transacted and the willingness of the lords to leave their estates, sat with the King from time to time, and advised him as his _consilium_; but except on great occasions of state it was left to the knights to wait at his table and order his servants about, and to the clerks to write and send his letters, and to act as his assessors or his deputies in the exercise of justice or the collection and spending of his revenue. In course of time some of the functions of the original _curia_ had become specialized in distinct departments, which acquired a permanent habitation at Westminster, ceased to follow the King's wanderings, and were no longer regarded as part of the personal Household. Thus the _curia_ as a judicial body became the Courts of Law; the _curia_ as a financial body became the Exchequer; while at a somewhat later date the Chancery undertook the double function of issuing royal grants and other formal correspondence of the Crown, and of supplementing the Courts of Law by exercising an equitable jurisdiction in cases which ordinary law was inadequate to cover. To the central _curia_ or Household, still composed of lay and clerical officers lodged in the King's palace and eating in his hall, wherever that might happen to be, three things were left. It ministered to the material well-being and splendour of the Sovereign himself; it exercised under his personal direction such functions of administration, for example the control of foreign policy and war, as had not passed to the specialized departments; and, perhaps most important of all, it remained potentially able to resume at his will the exercise of functions precisely analogous to those which had so passed. This paradox of the duplicate exercise of royal functions, through the specialized departments and through the Household, lies at the bottom of an understanding of mediaeval government.

The differentiation of the Courts of Law, the Exchequer, and the Chancery from the Household was complete by the thirteenth century; but the same tendency towards the budding off of quasi-independent departments of state from the administrative nucleus continued to manifest itself in a minor degree up to and even, for all their centralizing instinct, within the period of the Tudors. Moreover, as the scale of the Household became larger and its individual ministers began to require assistance, there grew up a corresponding tendency towards the formation of separate offices within the nucleus itself. The staffing of these offices with servants of various grades, their responsibilities and interrelations, and the control of them through the chief officers of the Household, were determined by royal ordinances, which go into minute detail, and reveal a complex organization, based upon long-standing tradition, and at the same time flexible in its capacity of adaptation to shifting circumstances. The main structure of the Household, as we find it under Elizabeth, appears to have been already fixed in the time of Edward IV and even in that of Edward II, although minor changes had been introduced, largely through Tudor imitation of the French _hôtel du roi_, just as there had been minor changes under Richard II and his Lancastrian successors, some of which are noted to our advantage by a clerk of literary tastes, who about 1478 bethought him to compile in the so-called _Liber Niger_ a systematic account or _rationale_ of the establishment in which doubtless he played a part. And the beginnings of the same structure can be traced back farther still, through ordinances of Edward I in 1279 to the _Constitutio Domus Regis_ as it stood at the end of Henry I's reign in 1135, and even perhaps, so far as the principal officers are concerned, to the Normanized Anglo-Saxon Court of pre-Conquest days. And after Elizabeth's reign the structure lasted, again with modifications of detail, for nearly two centuries more, until it was somewhat severely overhauled, in a moment of reforming zeal, by what is known as Burke's Act of 1782.[84] This conservatism of structure may perhaps justify us in finding an explanation of the tripartite character which the organization of the Household at every stage displays, as arising naturally out of the local arrangement of a primitive royal habitation. The palace stood in a court-yard, and it consisted essentially of a hall where the King feasted and took counsel with his _comitatus_, and of a chamber where he retired to sleep and to be private, and where he probably kept his treasure-chest. The duties of his personal servants fell either in the court-yard or in the hall or in the chamber. In the court-yard the _constabularii_ drilled the royal body-guard and the _marescalli_ looked after the horses; in the hall the _dapiferi_ and the _pincernae_ ministered food and drink; in the chamber the _camerarii_ or _cubicularii_, aided as time went on by the _clerici_, watched the King's treasure and his bed, and stood ready to receive and transmit his personal mandates. Originally, it would seem, there were several officers of each class. Afterwards they were reduced to one, or one was chosen as _magister_ over the rest; whatever the process, a single chief officer, with a group of subordinates beneath him, emerges as representative of each of the three departments. Perhaps the change was assisted by the demand of the barons, jealous of the rise in their absence of new men at Court, to have Household posts conferred upon them as part of their hereditaments. By the middle of the twelfth century there were already a hereditary Great Chamberlain, a High Steward, a High Constable, a Chief Butler, and an Earl Marshal.[85] But, obviously, if the King was in the habit of appointing two chamberlains or two stewards, he could make one of each pair hereditary, and still have another at his own appointment. And he could call on the hereditary officer to officiate on state occasions and the appointed officer to officiate in daily life. The hereditary man would have the greater dignity and the appointed man the greater power. This, rather than deputation by the hereditary officers, seems to be the explanation of the existence of a Chamberlain of the Household side by side with the Lord Great Chamberlain and of a Steward of the Household side by side with the Lord High Steward. It is really only another example of the duplication of functions, through officers of state on the one hand, and Household officers on the other, to which attention has already been called; with the added feature that in this case the officers of state seem to have had sinecures from the beginning.

The tripartite organization is traceable clearly enough in the Household of Elizabeth, as in that of her predecessors. There was, of course, a close co-operation at many points between the different departments; and, indeed, the simplicity of the original scheme had inevitably been interfered with, as the sovereigns began more and more to retire from their hall and to subdivide their chamber in order to adapt it to the complicated needs of an increasingly luxurious private life. The department of the court-yard, moreover, would appear, long before Elizabeth's time, to have shed many of what must be supposed to have been its original functions. The hereditary Lord High Constable had left no _constabularius_ behind him at court, and although the Earl Marshal, also hereditary, continued to exercise certain functions, such as an oversight over the heralds, he was in no sense the head of a Household department. The Knight Marshal, who exercised a jurisdiction over breaches of peace within the verge (_virgata_) of twelve leagues round the court, was nominally at least his deputy, but the only other marshals in the Household were officers of the Hall. Similarly the oversight of the guard seems to have passed to the Chamberlain. Nor had the Marshal any longer the responsibility for the stable which the etymology of his name suggests.[86] The Stable was, indeed, still a distinct department, but its head was the Master of the Horse, who, although he ranked as one of the three chief officers of the Household, was of comparatively recent origin.[87]

By a somewhat troublesome variation in the use of terms, the Lord Steward's department is sometimes called the 'Household' in a very narrow sense, which excludes the Chamber and the Stable. The author of the _Liber Niger_ distinguishes it as the _domus providentiae_ from the Chamber as the _domus magnificentiae_.[88] Roughly speaking, it concerned itself with the material necessities, the food and drink, the lighting and the fuel, of the Sovereign and his court, while all else that ministered to his personal life and the dignity of his state, his lodging and his apparel, his entertainments, his study and his recreations, fell within the sphere of the Chamber. Its original nucleus was still represented under Elizabeth by the officers of the Hall, Marshals, Sewers, and Surveyors; but the Hall had shrunk in importance since the Sovereign had ceased to dine in it, and some of these posts had long been duplicated within the Chamber itself, and even there were tending to become honorific rather than effective.[89] The real functions of the department were now exercised in the subsidiary offices of provision, which had grown up round the Hall. Of these there were twenty, each under a Serjeant or other head with an appropriate staff of clerks, yeomen, grooms, pages, and children. They were the Kitchen, the Bake-house, the Pantry, the Cellar, the Buttery, the Pitcher-house, the Spicery, the Chandlery, the Wafery, the Confectionery, the Ewery, the Laundry, the Larder, the Boiling-house, the Accatry, the Poultry, the Scalding-house, the Pastry, the Scullery, and the Woodyard. The department also included the Almonry under a Lord High Almoner, who was an ecclesiastic, and the Porters. Administrative control was exercised by the Board of Green Cloth, consisting of the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household, and the Cofferer or household cashier.[90] These had the assistance of a staff of clerks and clerk comptrollers, known as the Counting House. Above all was the chief officer of the department, the Lord Steward of the Household. The Steward, whose name seems to be an exact equivalent for both the Latin terms _dapifer_ and _Senescallus_, is not likely to have had in the beginning any priority over the _camerarius_; but historical reasons had brought him to the forefront towards the end of the thirteenth century, and thereafter he continued to rank as first officer of the Household. Henry VIII, following a French analogy, had renamed him Grand Master of the Household, but the new term had not permanently succeeded in establishing itself. Under Elizabeth the post was sometimes left vacant. But it was always filled during the session of a Parliament, for it was the ancient custom for the lords of Parliament to dine at the Lord Steward's table in the court.[91] In the absence of a Lord Steward, the department was managed, under some general supervision from the Lord Chamberlain, who then became first officer, by the Treasurer and Comptroller, who were important personages with seats on the Privy Council. The original _dapiferi_ had had as colleagues the _pincernae_, but the Chief Butlership was now an hereditary sinecure, and the duties were divided between the subordinate office of the Cellar and the Cupbearer, who was an officer of the Chamber.

We come now to the Lord Chamberlain, incomparably the most important figure at court in all matters concerned with entertainments. The _camerarii_ and _cubicularii_ are discernible before the Conquest, and the corresponding Anglo-Saxon terms appear to be _burþegn_, _bedþegn_, and _hræglþegn_. Perhaps the _hrægl_ or wardrobe was already becoming separated from the _bur_ or bed-chamber.[92] In the days of William Rufus one Herbert was _regis cubicularius et thesaurarius_.[93] This was before the Exchequer under its Lord High Treasurer had branched off as a separate department of state, but the post of Chamberlain of the Exchequer continued for many centuries to testify to the original location of the treasure chest in the _camera_. About 1135 there was a _magister camerarius_, the equal in salary and allowances of the _cancellarius_, the _dapiferi_, the _magister pincerna_, the _thesaurarius_, and the _constabularii_. There were also other _camerarii_ of lower degrees taking turns of duty, and a special _camerarius candelae_, ranking lower still.[94] Presumably the _magister camerarius_ became the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, whose coronation services, which are connected with the charge of the King's bed-chamber, the handing of a basin and towel at the banquet, and the preparation of the royal oblations, afford a sufficient indication of the duties of the court office.[95] And on the retirement of the hereditary officer from court, it seems probable that one of the other _camerarii_ advanced to the position of acting _magister_. At any rate, when the treatise known as _Fleta_ was compiled about 1290, there was a single _camerarius_ with a _sub-minister_ and other officers beneath him. Perhaps he was by this time barely the equal of the _senescallus_, to whom he sat as assessor in the court _de placitis_ _Aulae Regis_, although he had also an independent jurisdiction over his own officers and those of the Wardrobe, who were exempt from the Steward's court.[96] On the other hand he was, as Robert of Westminster calls him, 'custos capitis regis', and the author of _Fleta_ tells us in another connexion that 'in hospitio pro regula habetur, quod quanto propinquior sit quis Regi, tanto dignior'.[97] On the whole it seems probable that, whatever his traditional status may have been, the practical tendency of the extensive political use made by Edward I of the Steward and the clerical officers of the Wardrobe was to throw the Chamberlain into the background.[98] We also learn from _Fleta_ that it was the business of the Chamberlain to look after the King's bed and chamber, and that as fees he had his keep in court, fines from ecclesiastic and lay homagers, the disused plenishings of the _camera_, and a share of all gifts and offerings of food made to the King.[99]

After the break-up of the power of the Wardrobe in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, the propinquity of the Chamberlain to the King gave him an increasing political importance, and attempts were made by the barons to secure his appointment in Parliament. Both in that assembly and in the Privy Council he frequently served as the royal mouthpiece, and he became the regular channel through which petitions for the exercise of the royal prerogative of pardon reached the King.[100] But he continued to discharge his domestic responsibilities, which are detailed both in the _Liber Niger_ about 1478 and in early Tudor documents.[101] The Tudor change in the relation between the Crown and the nobility is well indicated by the fact that, while in the fourteenth century the Chamberlain had been a banneret or even a simple knight, in Elizabeth's time the office was an object of ambition for earls and barons. But the dual functions, political and domestic, remained unaltered. The 'Lord' Chamberlain, as he was now generally called, was in regular attendance at court, where his power and responsibility were alike considerable.[102] He gave personal attention to the distribution of lodgings in the palace.[103] He made the arrangements for the progress.[104] He received the ambassadors and others entitled to a royal audience and conducted them into the presence.[105] He was liable to be rated by the Queen if there was not enough plate on the cupboard.[106] He not merely planned the revels but himself kept order in the banqueting-hall. And for this purpose the white staff, which was the symbol of his office, was a practical instrument ready to his hand.[107] The delivery of this white staff to him by the Sovereign constituted his appointment, which was during pleasure; and at its determination he delivered it up again. The Lord Steward and the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household were similarly appointed, and it is a picturesque touch that at the funeral of the Sovereign the Household officers broke their white staves over the bier.[108] Elizabeth's Chamberlains had a fee of £133 6_s._ 8_d._ and a table and other allowances at court; also a livery from the Great Wardrobe of fourteen yards of tawny velvet, which had been converted by 1606 into an additional fee of £16.[109]

Elizabeth's first Lord Chamberlain was her great-uncle, Lord William Howard, a younger son of the second Duke of Norfolk, who had been created Lord Howard of Effingham in 1554.[110] He was appointed by 20 November 1558, and resigned on becoming Lord Privy Seal in July 1572. His successor was Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, who appears to have held office continuously, in spite of occasional absence from his duties, until his death on 9 June 1583. Then came Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, for a short period from Christmas 1583 or earlier until his appointment as Lord Admiral about June 1585; and then on 4 July 1585 Elizabeth's first cousin, Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon, who established and handed down to his son the famous company of players which included William Shakespeare. Hunsdon was himself a soldier rather than a courtier.[111] He died on 22 July 1596, and the Chamberlainship passed to William Brooke, seventh Lord Cobham. But on 5 March 1597 Cobham himself died, and the office reverted to the house of Hunsdon in the person of George Carey, second lord, who retained it to the end of the reign. By this time he was in ill health, and although he was at first formally continued in his post with the rest of the household, he was replaced on 4 May 1603 by Thomas, Lord Howard of Walden, who on the following 21 July was created Earl of Suffolk. He died on 9 September 1603. Suffolk remained Lord Chamberlain during the palmy days of the Jacobean revels. But in 1614 he became Lord Treasurer, and on 10 July the Chamberlainship was conferred upon the then reigning royal favourite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, much to the disappointment of Shakespeare's patron, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who had to content himself with a promise of the reversion.[112] This, however, fell in sooner than might have been hoped for. Somerset came to disaster for his share in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1615, and on 2 November, shortly before he was sent to the Tower, Lord Wotton, the Comptroller of the Household, came from the King to demand his seals and the white staff. He handed over the seals, says our informant, the Venetian ambassador, 'and as for the staff, which he pointed out to him in a corner of the room, he might take it'. Lord Wotton replied that the King did not order him to take it, but Somerset to give it, 'which he did'.[113] Pembroke was appointed on 23 December 1615 and remained Lord Chamberlain until 3 August 1626, when he was succeeded by his brother Philip Earl of Montgomery.[114]

The illness, or employment elsewhere, of a Lord Chamberlain sometimes rendered necessary the appointment of a deputy. Both Howard of Effingham and Hunsdon appear to have acted in this capacity during Sussex's tenure of office; Howard in 1574-5 and Hunsdon in 1582. Similarly Howard de Walden acted without having the white staff during the second Lord Hunsdon's illness in 1602, and again for a month before his own appointment in 1603.[115] There was indeed provision for the regular assistance of the Lord Chamberlain by a Vice-Chamberlain, an officer who had existed at least as far back as the fourteenth century, and is probably indeed the 'subminister' of the thirteenth.[116] Elizabeth's fee lists provide for a Vice-Chamberlain at a fee of £66 13_s._ 4_d._ and a table at court. But the post was not always filled up. Sir Edward Rogers held it from 1558 to 1559, Sir Francis Knollys from 1559 to 1570, Sir Christopher Hatton from 1577 to 1587, and Sir Thomas Heneage from 1589 to 1595. There seem to have been vacancies from 1570 to 1577 and from 1595 to 1601, although Sir William Pickering's appointment was under consideration in 1572 and Sir Henry Lee's in 1597. During Hunsdon's illness there was much speculation as to the probability of a Vice-Chamberlain being appointed. Sir Walter Raleigh hoped for the post, but in February 1601 it was given to Sir John Stanhope, afterwards Lord Stanhope of Harrington, who kept it until 1616.[117]

The Chamber was less divided up into semi-independent working sections than the Lord Steward's department, although three of these, the Jewel House under a Master, and the Wardrobe of Robes and the Removing Wardrobe of Beds, each under a Yeoman, looked after the Queen's plate and jewels, her clothes, and the furniture of the Chamber respectively.[118] But there was an elaborate hierarchy of individual officers and groups of officers, each with definite and recognized functions to perform under the general superintendence of the Lord Chamberlain. The main basis of grading goes back to the social organization of the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century every lay household officer fell within one or other of five well-defined grades. He was a knight banneret, a knight bachelor, an esquire (_scutifer_, _armiger_) or serjeant (_serviens_), a yeoman (_valettus_), or a groom (_garcio_). Pages and boys were later additions.[119] Each grade had its uniform rates of salary and allowances, and there was regular promotion from one to another. And while some officers of each grade were definitely assigned to special duties (_mestiers_), others were more loosely attached either to the Household as a whole or to the _camera_ in particular. The clerical officers were similarly arranged in grades distinct from, but parallel to, those of the laymen. But between the fourteenth century and the sixteenth a good many changes had come about. The most important of these were due to the early Tudors, who had not merely made a distinction within the Chamber itself between the Privy Chamber and the Outer or Presence Chamber and their respective staffs, but had also, perhaps following a French model, brought into existence two hybrid grades in the Gentlemen and Grooms of the Privy Chamber.[120] 'Gentleman' has the same significance as 'Esquire', but this particular group, whose members were intended to be the personal companions of the Sovereign, seems to have been an amalgamation of two groups belonging to the earlier establishment, one squirely, the Esquires of the Household, the other knightly, the Knights of the Body. And if the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were more nearly knights than esquires, the Grooms of the Privy Chamber were in like manner more nearly esquires than grooms or even yeomen.[121] Probably, however, they replaced an earlier group of Yeomen of the Chamber. The duties of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, in addition to those of companionship, seem to have consisted chiefly in dressing and undressing the Sovereign. The Grooms attended to the orderliness of the rooms, and were supervised, under the Chamberlain, by officers holding a very ancient post, the _hostiarii camerae_ or Gentlemen Ushers.[122] Obviously the normal staffing of the Privy Chamber required some modification in the case of a virgin queen. Elizabeth appears usually to have had no more than two or three Gentlemen and from five to ten Grooms, in place of the eighteen Gentlemen and fourteen Grooms provided for in the fee lists, and to have supplemented these by making feminine appointments in corresponding grades. There were Ladies or Gentlewomen, some of the Bedchamber and some of the Privy Chamber, and beneath these Chamberers, who appear also to have been known as 'the Queen's Women'.[123] The First Lady of the Privy Chamber acted as Mistress of the Robes, and she or another of the Ladies took charge of the jewels actually in use by the Queen and accounted for them to the Jewel-house.[124] In addition there were the six Maids of Honour, who were not salaried officers, but girls of good birth, for whom the court served as a finishing school of manners, and who attended the Queen in public, sat and walked with her in the Privy Chamber and Privy Garden, and kept her entertained with the dancing which she delighted to witness. They were generally dressed in white, and were lodged in the Coffer Chamber under the care of a lady called the Mother of the Maids.[125] And they learnt other things at the court besides manners. Gossip is full of the troubles which Elizabeth underwent in the attempt to establish the cult of Cynthia amongst the maids of honour and the younger ladies of the Privy Chamber.[126] A few older ladies of rank, some of them relatives of the Queen, were also assigned lodgings in court, and were apparently known as Ladies of the Presence Chamber.[127]

The Outer Chamber was also supervised by Gentlemen Ushers, some in daily, others in quarterly waiting, with Grooms of the Chamber, headed by a Groom Porter, and Pages of the Chamber under them to maintain the apartments in order, Yeomen Ushers to keep the doors, and a body of Messengers of the Chamber, ranking with the Yeomen, who besides their domestic uses were at the disposal of the Privy Council and the Secretaries for political purposes, and become very numerous by the end of the reign.[128] The Gentlemen Ushers also took part in the arrangements for lodging the court during progresses, in co-operation with a Knight Harbinger and four subordinate Harbingers who went in advance as billeting officers.[129] To the Outer Chamber, moreover, belonged the Esquires of the Body, who slept in the Presence Chamber, and took charge of the whole Chamber after the ceremony known as the All Night at nine o'clock, and a group of officers 'for the mouth', including Carvers, Cupbearers, Sewers for the Queen, and Surveyors of the Dresser.[130] These had anciently been of importance, all ranking as esquires, and the Carvers and Cupbearers from the fifteenth century as knights.[131] But their functions had dwindled, like those of the Hall officers at an earlier date, when the Tudor sovereigns ceased as a rule to dine even in the Presence Chamber, and by the end of the reign the posts of Carver and Cupbearer were claimed by great nobles as dignified sinecures.[132] The actual service of Elizabeth's meals was done by her ladies.[133] Similarly the Sewers for the Chamber, who apparently represent those of the Esquires of the Household who did not become Gentlemen of the Chamber, had probably neither duties nor salaries under Elizabeth.[134] It had long proved convenient to the Crown to entertain a number of nominal servants, who without giving actual attendance in the household upon ordinary occasions, could be called upon for the great ceremonies of state or for the household array in times of battle, and at other times helped to increase the royal prestige and to strengthen the royal hold upon the localities in which they lived.[135] And naturally there were many aspirants to the _status_ and the protection which even a nominal membership of the royal household afforded. Survivals, such as the Sewerships for the Chamber, were well adapted to this purpose, but it was also possible to meet it by appointing supernumerary members to effective groups.[136] Elizabeth certainly made many 'extraordinary' as well as 'ordinary' appointments, especially of Esquires of the Body and Grooms of the Chamber, and a status midway between the ordinary and extraordinary Grooms seems to have been assigned to the players belonging to companies under the royal patronage.[137] It may be that the 'extraordinary' appointments were sometimes of the nature of grants in reversion, and that the holders looked forward to passing on to 'ordinary' posts in due course.[138]

Duties in the Outer Chamber were also fulfilled by the various bodies of royal guards. Of these there were three. The oldest was constituted by the Serjeants-at-Arms, who held the rank of Esquires, and were appointed by investment with the collar of SS at the hands of the Sovereign on the way to chapel.[139] They are little heard of under Elizabeth, and their posts were probably to a large extent honorific. The Yeomen of the Guard were a foot-guard established by Henry VII in 1485. The Yeomen Ushers of the Chamber were selected from amongst them, and on their establishment an older body of Yeomen of the Crown, itself in origin a guard of archers, seems to have been allowed to lapse.[140] The Yeomen were the working palace guard, and were under a Captain, a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque.[141] The Gentlemen Pensioners or 'Spears' were a horse-guard established by Henry VIII in 1509.[142] Both these Tudor guards seem to have been modelled on analogous French establishments. The Pensioners had a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque. They were gentlemen of good birth, and to them the Court looked for its supply of accomplished tilters. They attended the Queen, bearing gilded battle-axes, on her way to chapel, and in public processions.[143] By the sixteenth century the control of the guards clearly fell within the sphere of the Lord Chamberlain. Both the Hunsdons themselves acted as Captains of the Pensioners, and the Captaincy of the Yeomen was sometimes, although not always, attached to the Vice-Chamberlainship.

The Secretaries, with the Clerks of the Signet and Privy Council, the Master of the Posts, and the Masters of Requests, although they had grown out of the Chamber, and were still, like the Lords Treasurer, Chancellor, Admiral, and Privy Seal, lodged in the Household, cannot at this period be regarded as under the Lord Chamberlain.[144] But he had some responsibility for the royal Chaplains, the Chapel, the Vestry, and the Clerks of the Closet, whence the Queen heard prayers, especially after Elizabeth suppressed the Deanship of the Chapel.[145] And he controlled the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, the astronomer, the serjeant-painter, the surveyor of ways, the various hunting equipages, the rat-taker and mole-taker, and a number of artificers ministering to the diverse needs of the Queen and the palace. Probably he controlled the royal fools and other survivals of that characteristic mediaeval interest in mental and physical abnormality.[146] And, what is more to our purpose, he certainly controlled the players, and the extensive establishment of musicians. Amongst these the old royal _ministralli_ or _histriones_ of the Middle Ages, with their _marescallus_, were still represented by a body of trumpeters under a serjeant.[147] But the personal taste of Henry VIII for music had brought a stream of new performers to court, and this had continued under Elizabeth. Many of them were of foreign extraction, and certain families, such as the Laniers, the Ferrabosci, the Bassani of Venice, or rather, as their name denotes, of Bassano in the Veneto, the Lupi of Milan, formed little dynasties of their own at court, father, son, and grandson succeeding each other, in the royal service through the best part of a century. At the end of her reign Elizabeth was entertaining at least seven distinct bodies of musicians, whose members numbered in all between sixty and seventy. For wind instruments there were, besides the trumpeters, the recorders, the flutes, and the hautboys and sackbuts; for string instruments the viols or violins and the lutes. There were also an organist attached to the chapel and possibly players on the virginals.[148] The most important of these were the lutenists, who sang as well as played, and often composed their own songs, and appear to have been of higher standing than the mere instrumentalists. One of them was specially designated as the Lute of the Privy Chamber.[149] It seems probable that some of the superfluous Sewerships for the Chamber were conferred on them, and Alfonso Ferrabosco may have been about 1575 a Groom of the Chamber.[150]

Finally, there were a number of offices, called in Elizabethan parlance 'standing offices', each under a Master or other head of its own, which can only be regarded as on the borderline of the Household. These were the Great Wardrobe, the Revels, the Tents, the Toils, the Works, the Armoury, the Ordnance, and the Mint. They were financed separately from the Household, and had their various head-quarters in London away from the palace. But their officers were regarded as members of the Household, and although largely independent, they were in many or all cases subject to some kind of supervision by the Lord Chamberlain.[151] Probably the explanation of their origin is given by a phrase used about 1478 by the writer of the _Liber Niger_. Here the Wardrobe is spoken of as 'an office of chaumbre outward'.[152] In these standing offices, and also in the Secretariat, we seem to have examples of that budding off from the main administrative organization by which those great departments of state, the Exchequer and the Chancery, had already come into existence. Doubtless the process was facilitated, when considerations of practical convenience and a desire to reduce the number of mouths to be provided for in the palace led to the location of particular branches of work in permanent and independent premises. The history of the Revels Office, which will form the subject of another chapter, well serves to illustrate the kind of development involved.[153]

Members of the standing offices were generally appointed for life, those of the regular Household during the royal pleasure. The former received letters patent; the latter were only sworn in before one or other of the chief officers, and as most of the early records of the Lord Chamberlain's department have perished, no complete list of them is upon record. The uniform rates of pay and allowances for each grade of officer which prevailed in the fourteenth century had undergone many complications by the middle of the sixteenth. Each officer had, of course, his fee or wages, payable either at the Exchequer or by the Treasurer of the Chamber, whose functions will shortly be described, or, as in the case of most of the regular officers of Household and Chamber, by the Cofferer of the Household. The rates had gradually increased, perhaps with a decrease in the purchasing power of money. Those for the recently established Tudor posts were reckoned in pounds; the older ones in marks. Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and Pensioners got £50, Esquires of the Body £33 6_s._ 8_d._ (fifty marks), Gentlemen Ushers of the Privy Chamber £30, Grooms of the Privy Chamber £20, Grooms of the Chamber £2 13_s._ 4_d._ (four marks). These may serve for examples. Obsolete mediaeval rates of so many pence a day still survived here and there.[154] The Grooms and Pages of the Chamber had also a traditional 'great reward' of £100 among them at Christmas, while the fees payable to the officers of the Chamber by lay and ecclesiastic homagers were not--and are not yet--extinct.[155] Exceptional 'rewards', from foreign visitors of rank and so forth, were naturally forthcoming from time to time, and, as naturally, largesse often became indistinguishable from bribe. The allowances, other than salary, were of several kinds. Firstly, there was diet, that is to say, dinner and supper at the appointed tables in hall or chamber. Most of the officers of the regular Household enjoyed this; a few, whose attendance was not required daily or at all times in the day, received instead a money allowance from the Cofferer known as 'board wages'.[156] Secondly, there was, 'bouche of court', a commons of bread and ale, candles and fuel, served only to those of sufficient rank to be lodged in the palace itself.[157] It is probably an evidence, not of economy, but of change of social habits, that in the sixteenth century ale had replaced the wine of the fourteenth. Originally the 'bouche of court' had to suffice for breakfast, but under Elizabeth the Maids of Honour and a few other favoured groups were allowed to share the queen's breakfast of beef.[158] Thirdly, there was 'livery' in the narrow sense, clothes or the material for clothes from the Great Wardrobe, or a money payment in lieu thereof. Even in the fourteenth century there was already much commutation of livery, which in the case of yeomen and grooms also included an allowance for shoes, known as _calciatura_. By the end of the fifteenth century it was definitely thought derogatory for men of rank to wear even the sovereign's livery, except in some quite symbolical form.[159] Under Elizabeth some of the salaries seem to have had livery allowances added on to them. The process of commutation can still be traced. But liveries were issued in kind to the yeomen, messengers, grooms, pages, and stable footmen. These seem to have been of two kinds; 'watching' liveries issued from the Wardrobe in the winter, and 'summer' liveries, for which payment was made direct from the Exchequer.[160] The latter were gorgeous and costly, of scarlet cloth, with spangles and embroidery of Venice gold, taking the shape of a rose and crown and the letters 'E. R.', with some distinction between yeomen and grooms. The present costume of the Yeomen of the Guard, or 'beef-eaters', is a later modification of this livery.[161] In their capacity as Grooms of the Chamber the royal players were entitled to wear the Queen's 'coat'.[162] The officers of the standing offices had livery or livery allowance, if it was appropriate to their rank. They did not have diet or 'bouche of court'. But they were in some cases entitled to supplement their fees by charging 'wages' for actual days of service in the accounts which their Masters annually rendered to the Exchequer.[163] 'Extraordinary' officers probably got no salaries or allowances of any kind, unless they were called up for special duty. But it must be added that all royal servants, whatever their office, and whether 'ordinary' or 'extraordinary', received a customary allowance of red cloth at the coronation and of black cloth at a royal funeral, and that the schedules of recipients on these occasions form the most complete establishment lists available.

The accession of James did not materially alter the general structure of the Household. The chief changes were in the Privy Chamber. The Wardrobe of Robes was placed under a Gentleman, afterwards called a Master. The Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were increased in number, reduced to quarterly terms of waiting, and deprived of salary.[164] The salaries of the Lord Chamberlain, Gentlemen Ushers, and Grooms were raised. And what was practically a new department was brought into existence in the Bedchamber, which had a staff of Gentlemen, Grooms, and Pages, independent of the Lord Chamberlain and controlled by their own First Gentleman, who was also known as Groom of the Stole.[165] The Bed Chamber, chiefly composed of Scots, furnished James with his most confidential servants.[166] As might be expected, James enlarged his hunting establishment, and one of his new appointments was a Cockmaster.[167] He had a conspicuous Fool in Archie Armstrong.[168] And he instituted in the Lord Chamberlain's department an officer known as the Master of the Ceremonies, whose function was to look after the lodgings and the general well-being of ambassadors, and to grapple with the knotty problems entailed by their inveterate stickling for precedence and etiquette.[169] A separate household was formed for the Queen, to which the various grades of ladies found at Elizabeth's court were transferred.[170] There were minor households for the royal children. That of Henry was much enlarged when he was created Prince of Wales in 1610, and in many respects, especially on the literary and artistic side, came to rival his father's.

One other officer, whose name has already been mentioned, must now, in virtue of his special relation to the playing companies, be fully considered. This is the Treasurer of the Chamber. His history affords an admirable example of that capacity of duplicating the functions of the departments of state, which was inherent in the Household as the successor in a direct line of the undifferentiated _curia regis_. After the development of the Exchequer was completed in the course of the twelfth century, the great bulk of the royal revenue was dealt with by that organization, and payments into and out of the royal account were made through the clerks of the branch known as the Receipt of the Exchequer. The posts of _camerarius_ and _thesaurarius_ were now distinct. But the change was never quite exhaustively carried out. Presumably the sovereign found it convenient to retain a certain residue of his funds under his personal control. Side by side with the Exchequer and its great officer it is still possible to trace into the thirteenth century a _thesaurus camerae regis_ and a _thesaurarius camerae_; and the Pipe Rolls continue to refer to payments made _in camera curiae_, or _ipsi regi in camera curiae_, and to receipts taken by debtors _de camera curiae_, both of which were certified to the Exchequer _per breve regis_ and put on final record there.[171] There were also _clerici camerae_, who probably wrote these _brevia_, and it is conjectured that the privy seal, as distinct from the great seal of Chancery, came into existence as a means of authenticating the _brevia_ as impressed with royal authority. Thus the _camera_ was able to duplicate the functions of the Chancery as well as those of the Exchequer.[172] About the middle of the thirteenth century the Pipe Rolls take to referring to the exceptional financial transactions as taking place not in the _camera_ but in the _garderoba_. There are _clerici garderobae_ and a chief officer called indifferently the _custos_ and the _thesaurarius garderobae_.[173] Presumably the _garderoba_ or 'wardrobe' was at first merely that apartment of the _camera_ in which the financial work was done, and there are still indications of some such early relationship in the position of the Wardrobe when we first get a clear view of the operations at the very end of the century.[174] But by this time its scope had greatly increased, owing to the policy of Henry III and Edward I, who found in it a financial and administrative instrument, both more ready to hand and less subject to baronial control and criticism than either the Exchequer or the Chancery. Much of the revenue had come to pass through its hands, under a system of tallies, which were issued to it in block by the Exchequer on the authority of a royal warrant dormant, exchanged for incomings with accountants, and ultimately presented as vouchers at the Exchequer of Account. As part of the same process, the clerical head of the Wardrobe had acquired an importance almost equal to that of the Chamberlain. Indeed, so far as he was controlled by any lay officer, it was less the Chamberlain than the Steward, under whom he sat at the daily review of household expenditure which formed a feature of the Wardrobe system, and was continued into Tudor times by the Board of Green Cloth. Here also sat a _consocius_ of the Treasurer, the _contrarotulator_, who kept duplicates of his accounts as a check upon him, and had the charge of the privy seal. The Wardrobe held not only the money and jewels of the King, but also his 'secrets'. Its officers were his _secretarii_ in the earlier unspecialized sense, his confidential agents, both in finance and in diplomacy and other affairs of state. The extant account-books show that it not merely defrayed the expenses of his household, his alms, and his amusements, but also those entailed by the fortification and victualling of his castles, and the wages and equipment of his army and navy and his ambassadors and other _nuntii_.

During the reign of Edward II the power of the Wardrobe was broken up, partly by the direct action of baronial hostility, partly by a discreet process of reorganization within the household, in the face of baronial criticism. The responsibilities of the Treasurer and Comptroller were limited to the purely domestic expenditure of the Steward's department, much as we find them in Tudor times. The charge of the privy seal was dissociated from the Comptrollership; its use, like that of the great seal before it, was subjected to regulation in the baronial interest; and it soon became superfluous. Offices, such as the Great Wardrobe for the purveyance of cloth, furs, and other bulky commodities, which had recently come into existence as branches of the Wardrobe, were now placed on an independent footing, and began to account direct to the Exchequer. And now once more, after remaining in obscurity for the best part of a century, emerges into renewed activity the financial organization of the Chamber. To it appears to have been assigned, as part of the scheme of reform, such expenditure as could not with propriety be withdrawn from the personal supervision of the sovereign.[175] With this as a nucleus, it was not particularly difficult to convert the Chamber into just such a financial and administrative organ as the Wardrobe had been before it. The funds at its disposal were gradually increased, as opportunities offered themselves of adding to them the revenues of one escheated manor after another. Its clerks in turn became the _secretarii_, out of whom the royal Secretaries in the Tudor sense were in course of time developed. Even the lost privy seal proved capable of replacement by a series of other small seals, the 'secret' seal under Edward II, the 'griffin' seal under Edward III, and finally the 'signet', which remained to the end in the hands of the Secretaries. It was only up to a point that the trained bureaucrats, with the power of knowledge behind them, proved amenable to baronial control. It is probably only up to a point that they will prove amenable to democratic control.

The actual use made of the Chamber varied considerably in different reigns. It flourished at the end of the reign of Edward II, and again during the first half of that of Edward III. Soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, it lost much of its political status, owing to the separation from it of the Secretaries, who now had their own clerks in the Signet Office, and on the financial side it was for long little more than a privy purse in strict subordination to the Exchequer. It was still, however, capable at need of serving as a medium of war expenditure, and with the appointment of Thomas Vaughan by Edward IV in 1465 its financial importance began to revive.[176] Up to the end of the fourteenth century, its financial officers are generally called Receivers of the Chamber; during the next the double title of Treasurer of the Chamber and Keeper of the King's Jewels establishes itself.[177] They are sometimes, although perhaps not always, appointed by patent, and at any rate from the time of Henry IV are only accountable to the King in person.[178] On the execution of Vaughan in 1583 the posts of Treasurer of the Chamber and Keeper of the Jewels were divided; and it may serve as an illustration of the conservatism of courts that this was still a subject of grievance in the Jewel House two hundred years later.[179]

At the beginning of Henry VII's reign the functions of Treasurer of the Chamber were discharged by Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas, Lovell.[180] On his appointment as Treasurer of the Household in August 1592, he was succeeded by John, afterwards Sir John, Heron, who had in fact acted as his assistant and kept his books from 1487.[181] Under the Tudors, with their general tendency to elaborate the personal control of government by the sovereign, the post remained one of first-class importance. It was regulated in 1511 by a statute, the recital of which sets out that it had been the practice for certain Receivers of royal lands to account before persons appointed by Henry VII 'for the more speedy payment of his revenues and the accounts of the same to be more speedily taken than could have been after the course of the Exchequer', and after accounting to pay sums to the use of the King in his chamber.[182] The record of these transactions, signed by the King or 'his trusty servant John Heron' had been no legal discharge to the accountants in the Exchequer. Henry VIII had set up by patent a body of General Surveyors and Approvers of the King's Lands to take the accounts, and the statute confirms this proceeding and appoints John Heron to be Treasurer of the Chamber, and to be answerable, with his successors, direct to the King, and not to the Exchequer.[183] John Heron continued in office until 1521.[184] His successor was John Miklowe, who had been Comptroller of the Household.[185] But Miklowe's tenure of office must have been short, for in 1523 a statute, passed in renewal of that of 1511, names as Treasurer Sir Henry Wyatt, who was the father of the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt.[186] In 1526 Wyatt was placed on the Privy Council[187]; and on 13 April 1528 he was succeeded as Treasurer by Sir Brian Tuke, who held office until 1545.[188] In 1541 a new statute was passed which erected the Surveyors of the King's Lands into a court of record, appointed the Treasurer of the Chamber as Treasurer of the Court, and required him to account before the Court or such other persons as the King might appoint, both in this capacity and also for 'all and every the receytes issues profyttes dettes and thinges concernyng his office of Treasurership of the Kinges Chamber'.[189] Tuke was succeeded on 25 November 1545 by Sir Anthony Rous, to whom one John Dawes acted as deputy[190]; and Rous on 19 February 1546, by Sir William Cavendish, to the disappointment of Stephen Vaughan, Henry's financial agent at Antwerp, who had hoped for the post. Cavendish also had the assistance of a deputy, Robert Oliver.[191] During Cavendish's tenure of office, two further changes in the position of the Treasurership took place. A patent of 1547, subsequently confirmed by statute under Edward VI in 1553, dissolved alike the Court of Surveyors and the analogous Court of Augmentations, created to deal with the revenues of surrendered religious houses in 1535, and established in place of these a combined Court of Augmentation and Revenues of the King's Crown, of which the Treasurer of the Chamber was to continue to act as Treasurer.[192] Hardly, however, had this readjustment received legislative sanction, when it was upset again. A patent of 1554, under the authority of an Act of Mary's first Parliament, suppressed the Court of Augmentation, by annexing its business to the Exchequer, and directed the revenues to be paid into the Exchequer and accounts to be audited there, as before the Court was set up.[193] Cavendish did not find the Treasurership a bed of roses. On Tuke's death it was anticipated that his successor would receive a legacy of official debts.[194] A book containing copies of 'certificates' or reports made by Cavendish to the Privy Council show that he soon had occasion to be perturbed.[195] About Lady Day 1546 he represented that his receipts had been dislocated to the extent of about £14,000, and that in view of his liabilities, which he detailed, there was urgent need to consider the state of the office. In another paper he called attention to the enormous number of securities for old debts to the Crown, some of them dating from the time of Henry VII, with which he found from Tuke's books that he was charged; and, as 'a yonge officer not long exercised in the same', prayed that these might be reviewed, and a decision arrived at as to how much of the total nominal amount of £322,980 covered by them stood for 'sperat' and how much for 'desperat' debts. The book also contains summaries of his liabilities during 1547, at the end of 1548, when he declared that he had debts of £14,000 and no ready money in the office, and finally at Lady Day 1554. This last item does not disclose how far his revenue had in the interval been made sufficient for his needs. It is possible that it had been made more than sufficient, for on 17 August 1556 the Privy Council called upon him to appear before them with 'Cade his clerc', and on 9 October 1557 they returned his book of account, stating that he owed £5,237 5_s._ 0¾_d._ and must appear and answer particularities, either in person or, if ill, by his clerks.[196] It seems clear that the Tudor period had seen a very considerable increase in the scope of the financial transactions with which the Treasurer of the Chamber had to deal. In addition to privy purse expenditure in the narrower sense, such as the royal pocket-money, alms and oblations, largesse and rewards, and the like, he became responsible for many wages and annuities, some of which, including those of the royal players, had formerly been charged direct upon the Exchequer.[197] He purchased the jewels and costly stuffs in which much of the Tudor wealth was invested. He financed or helped to finance the Surveyor of Works, the Great Wardrobe, and even for a time the Cofferer of the Household. And beyond the limits of anything which could be called domestic expenditure, he undertook much that was concerned with 'the King's outward causes', the maintenance of posts and ambassadors, royal loans, secret service; even, it would appear, although perhaps out of a special account, the service of war. His income, originally derived from the Exchequer, was put on to an independent basis, by the direct assignment to him of numerous revenues, both ordinary and extraordinary, including most of the new sources of wealth on which the financial policy of Henry VII had firmly based the power of the Crown. Some of his payments were made in accordance with old established custom or under household ordinances or other standing instructions.[198] But the great majority depended upon the personal authority of the sovereign, communicated either by word of mouth or by warrant under the sign manual or the signet, or in course of time through the medium of a minister such as Wolsey or the Privy Council. Similarly he rendered his accounts at first to the King in person, and the early books bear the signatures of Henry VII and Henry VIII in token of audit on many pages.[199] The responsibility grew to be a very heavy one, with a turnover of some £100,000 in the course of a year, and we find Brian Tuke in 1534 writing of it as 'a charge that far surmounteth any in England', and pressing 'that for things ordinary I may have for payments an ordinary warrant, and that for things extraordinary I may always have special warrant or else some such way as I, dealing truly, may be truly discharged', lest if there were any misunderstanding, 'I might be undone in a day, lacking any warrant when I sue for it'. It would appear to have been the special difficulty of the Treasurer's position which led to the system of audit by means of a 'Declared Account', as a substitute at once for the cumbrous method of the earlier Exchequer, and the more recent practice of personal verification by the sovereign. When Sir Henry Wyatt left office he was directed to declare his account before a General Surveyor of the King's Lands, and this method was adopted when the Surveyors became a statutory court in 1541 and ultimately passed after the dissolution of the special courts into ordinary Exchequer practice.[200]

Sir William Cavendish, who was ill when the Privy Council asked for details of his account on 9 October, died on 25 October 1557. An account for 1 April to 31 December 1557 is in the name of Edmund Felton, perhaps only an _interim_ administrator.[201] The Treasurership of the Chamber, together with the Mastership of the Posts, was granted by patent on 29 October 1558 to Sir John Mason, with a fee of £240 and 1_s._ a day.[202] Mason was continued in office by Elizabeth, and on 23 December 1558 the Lord Chamberlain, the Comptroller of the Household, the Secretary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were appointed as a committee of the Privy Council 'to survey the office of the Treasurer of the Chamber and to assigne order of paymente'.[203] As a result, considerable changes seem to have been made, which reversed the policy of the last half-century and much reduced the Treasurer's responsibilities. On the one hand, the funds assigned to the Cofferer of the Household, the Surveyor of Works, the Master of Posts, and the Ambassadors no longer passed through his account; on the other, a separate account was established for the more personal expenditure of the Queen, which was put into the charge of a Groom of the Privy Chamber, acting as keeper of the Privy Purse. Both accounts seem to have become subject to audit and declaration at the Exchequer; but while that of the Treasurer of the Chamber was declared annually, the only extant Privy Purse account of the reign is one for the ten years 1559-69 declared after the death of the first keeper, John Tamworth.[204] This was a small account, mainly fed by New Year and other gifts to the Queen. The expenditure out of it only averaged about £2,500 a year. Most of it was upon gifts and rewards, which were detailed in a book of particulars under the sign manual, unfortunately not preserved. A payment of £5,000 to the Earl of Moray suggests that it proved a convenient channel for secret service funds. It also includes items for the keep of the royal fool, for the purchase of jewels, and for certain annuities, wages, riding charges, and expenses of the stable and hunt. The Treasurer of the Chamber, under the new arrangement, spent about £12,000 a year.[205] Out of this he defrayed the royal alms, certain rewards, wages, annuities, and riding charges, the maintenance of prisoners, and the expenses of 'apparelling' the Queen's houses and keeping her gardens. Obviously the two accounts come very near overlapping at several points. One may suppose that in the main the Treasurer of the Chamber was responsible for customary payments and such as could be made on the authority of officers of state or household; the Keeper of the Privy Purse with those which depended on the personal pleasure of the sovereign. The officers borne on the Treasurer of the Chamber's wage list were those who belonged neither to the household proper nor to the 'standing' offices; the Yeomen of the Guard, the Watermen, the Apothecaries, the Musicians and Players, the Hunt, the Footmen and Boys of the Stable, the Artificers, the Rat and Mole Takers, the Keepers of Paris Garden, the Surveyor of Gates and Bridges, the Chester Post. That they should also have included the officers of the Jewel House is explicable from the original connexion between these and the Treasurer. The Treasurer's own salary and his office expenses also appear in his account.

The distinction now drawn between the Treasury of the Chamber and the Privy Purse must have had the effect of putting the Treasurer in a position analogous to that of the Secretaries. He was on the way to becoming an officer of state rather than an officer of the household.

The order of payment determined upon by the Privy Council appears to have been that salaries chargeable to the Treasurer of the Chamber should be payable upon 'warrants dormant', 'riding charges' for messengers upon warrants from the Secretary, and miscellaneous payments, such as rewards for plays at court, upon warrants from the Privy Council itself.[206] Sir Francis Knollys became Treasurer of the Chamber when Mason died upon 21 April 1566[207]; and Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas, Heneage, when Knollys was appointed Treasurer of the Household, on 15 February 1570.[208] Knollys, throughout his period of office, and Heneage, from 1589, combined the Treasurership with the duties of Vice-Chamberlain of the Household. Heneage died in October 1595, and there was some delay before a successor was appointed.[209] A trial of strength seems to have taken place between Essex and Burghley, who regarded the filling of the vacancy, together with the much more important vacancy in the Secretaryship, as critical to his chances of prolonging his dynasty. Burghley's candidate was John Stanhope; Essex's Sir Henry Unton, to whom he wrote about his prospects on 24 October 1595, telling him that Robert Cecil was troubled at the competition, and thought that neither would carry it.[210] I am not sure that Cecil had been quite straightforward with Essex. Another aspirant was Sir Edward Wotton.[211] There is gossip about the matter in Rowland Whyte's letters to Sir Robert Sidney.[212] On 29 October he wrote, 'Probi is comanded to wayt at court; hath spoken with her Majestie, and is sayd he shall haue the Disbursing of the Treasory of the Chamber, till her Majestie be pleased to bestow yt. Sir H. Umpton and Mr. John Stanhope, stands for yt.' On 5 November, 'Peter Proby paies the money till a Treasorer of the Chamber be chosen, which will not be in hast'. Peter Proby was a useful hanger-on of Burghley's, and had been his barber. On 20 November 'Sir Thomas Heneges Funerals were solemnised, his Offices all vnbestowed'. By 7 December Whyte ventures a prophecy:

'I heare that Mr. Killigrew shall receve and pay the Treasure of the Chamber, till the Queen find one fitt for it; but if this continew true, Mr. Killigrew will haue it in the End himself.'

Whyte was wrong, however. William Killigrew was a mere stop-gap.[213] On 20 December, Whyte has an inkling of what is going on, and commits his new information to cipher.

'The Queen hath promised him [Sir H. Unton] the Thresureship of the Chamber, and stands constant in it, and at his return to haue it. But if 900 [Burghley] and 200 [Cecil], that would 40 [Stanhope] had it, can hinder it, the other shall goe without it.'

It was not until 5 July that, according to an amused letter from Anthony Bacon, 'Elephas peperit' with the swearing in of Sir Robert Cecil as Secretary and John Stanhope as Treasurer of the Chamber, 'so that now the old man may say with the rich man in the gospel _requiescat anima mea_'.

Burghley himself notes the appointment without comment in his diary.[214] John Stanhope, who was knighted on his appointment and created Lord Stanhope of Harrington on 4 May 1605, did not get the Vice-Chamberlainship until 1601. He remained Treasurer until his death in 1617. There was some characteristic Stuart traffic in the reversion. Sir Thomas Overbury held it at his death in 1613. Lord Rochester then bought it from Stanhope for £2,000, and offered it to Sir Henry Neville, who declined to take it from a subject. Finally it passed to Sir William Uvedale, who in fact became Treasurer in succession to Stanhope.[215]

During Stanhope's tenure of office, some changes in the 'order of payment' took place. The account for 1607-8 recites a privy seal of 27 January 1608 as authority for the transfer from the Privy Purse to the Treasurer of the Chamber of certain payments made on warrants from the Lord Chamberlain. Similar payments thereafter form a regular section of the account from year to year. By a later privy seal of 11 October 1614, still extant, an additional sum of £1,500 a year is put at the disposal of the Treasurer to enable him to meet them.[216] His total assignment was thus increased to about £20,000 or rather more than half as much again as the office had cost under Elizabeth. That of the Privy Purse was now about £6,000.[217] We have seen that there had been possibilities of overlapping between the two accounts, but it is rather odd that amongst the items transferred should be specified allowances for plays, bear-baitings and other sports, since such allowances had regularly been paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber for something more than a century past. It is, however, the case that from 1614-15 onwards, the payments were made on warrants from the Lord Chamberlain instead of the Privy Council.

It is rather surprising that the Privy Council, whose members were carrying out duties roughly analogous to those of a modern Cabinet, should at any time have concerned itself with such trifling matters of domestic routine as the signature of certificates authorizing the payment of rewards at recognized rates to companies of actors and other entertainers. The explanation, however, is that the Privy Council, like the Household and the Departments of State themselves, was a direct representative of the Norman _curia regis_, and that the _curia regis_ had been the organization through which the King's subjects and servants gave him assistance in all his affairs, small and great, domestic as well as political.[218] For all practical purposes, indeed, the Elizabethan Privy Council consisted of little more than the chief officers of the State departments and Household, sitting together, and acting collectively. The great territorial magnates, who at certain periods of its history had turned it into an instrument for the control rather than the exercise of the royal prerogative, were now, unless they happened to hold official positions, rarely sworn amongst its members; but upon it, side by side with the Chancellor and the Treasurer, the Admiral and the Privy Seal, sat not only the Secretaries, but also the Steward and the Chamberlain, the Master of the Horse, the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household, and often the Vice-Chamberlain or the Treasurer of the Chamber. It was therefore natural enough, to Tudor no less than to mediaeval ways of thinking, that among its numerous and imperfectly defined activities should be included some which give it the aspect of a Household board of control. It was in fact by means of a Household ordinance that Henry VIII regulated the composition of the Privy Council and directed the constant attendance of the members upon his own person[219]; and throughout Elizabeth's reign we find the Council in the closest possible association with the Court, following it from palace to palace, and even from stage to stage of the progress, so that the record of its meetings serves practically as a royal itinerary, and sitting under the most direct Household influences in some convenient apartment of the Privy Chamber. There was even no longer, as in the time of Henry VIII, a 'council at London' as well as a 'council with the King', with the exceptions that, if the Court was very far from head-quarters, a few of the lords sometimes stayed behind to look after current affairs, and that the council as a whole seems occasionally to have met at Westminster when the Court was not there, either in connexion with the sittings of the Star Chamber, or for special business in the lodgings of one or other of its members.[220] This tradition of propinquity between the Sovereign and his council was, however, broken through by James, who at an early date in his reign took to leaving the lords to transact business at court, while he went hither and thither on his endless hunting journeys.

In the absence of any contemporary _ordinale_ for the Privy Council, some idea of its methods can be gathered from the register of transactions kept by its clerks and from other sources.[221] It is probable that the Queen sometimes sat with the lords, although her attendance is never recorded in the register.[222] The usual president was the Lord Chancellor; the earlier Tudor post of President of the Council was rarely, if ever, filled up by Elizabeth.[223] But the general supervision of the clerks and the preparation of business for consideration, other than that which lay directly within the department of some particular officer, seems to have fallen to the Secretary. The number of councillors was gradually reduced from twenty-four at the beginning to thirteen at the end of the reign. Of these not more than half were generally present at any one sitting. But there appears to have been no fixed quorum; occasionally only two members or even one transacted business. At first three meetings a week sufficed; later they were often held daily, both by morning and afternoon, and even on Sundays. Wednesday and Friday were generally set aside for petitions and other private business, and the remaining days devoted to public affairs. Drafts of proclamations were passed by the Council before they received the royal sign manual, and thus became of the nature of Orders in Council.[224] Where a proclamation was not in question, the conclusions arrived at by the Council were embodied in a minute, and submitted through the Secretary for royal approval. When this had been obtained, any executive action was then taken in the form of warrants or letters to administrative officers, central or local, or to individuals, according to the nature of the business. These required the signature of not less than six councillors, who were not necessarily those present when the business was discussed. Before they were put forward for signature they were subscribed by the Secretary or one of the clerks. Warrants to the Treasurer of the Chamber or other paymasters were also impressed by the clerk with the special seal of the council. The minutes were ultimately placed in the council chest, which is unfortunately lost. But copies or abstracts of those which related to public affairs, or in some cases copies of the letters finally issued, were made by the clerks and from time to time bound up in volumes, of which a series, far from continuous, is preserved.[225] Even at their fullest, however, these 'Acts of the Council' cannot be supposed to form a complete record of its proceedings. Council letters are to be found in many local archives of which no note exists in the register. There were four or five Clerks of the Council who took duty, two at a time, according to a monthly rota, and it is clear that some of them were more business-like than others. But it is also probable that much business of a confidential character was deliberately left without record. In addition to the clerks, there was a Keeper of the Council Chamber door, probably one of the Ushers of the Chamber, and the Messengers of the Chamber were available to carry such letters as could not conveniently be entrusted to the regular staff of the Master of Posts.[226]

The ordinary sittings of the Privy Council were of course held in private, and each member took a special oath of secrecy upon appointment. But on each Wednesday and Friday during term time they resolved themselves into the Court of Star Chamber, and held a public sitting to inquire into cases of riot, libel, disregard of proclamations, and the like. Herein they were exercising the old power of the _curia regis_ to duplicate the functions of the law courts.[227] For Star Chamber purposes they associated with themselves judges, who ranked as 'ordinary' but not 'privy' councillors.[228] 'Ordinary' councillors also were the Queen's 'counsel learned in the law', who included the Attorney- and Solicitor-Generals and the Queen's Serjeants, and the Masters of Requests who, by another exercise of curial jurisdiction, sat in the old 'white hall' at Westminster to deal, under the general direction of the Privy Council, with civil cases arising out of the suits of poor men or of royal servants.[229] The political functions of the Privy Council lie beyond the scope of this study, but their concern with all matters affecting breach of the peace, sedition, heresy, and public health entailed, under more than one of these heads, a general supervision of the stage, which will be the subject for discussion in a later chapter.[230] Similarly, the players, or those of them who were royal servants, came as such under the jurisdiction of the Court of Requests, and some interesting information as to their contracts and disputes is derived from the records of that tribunal.[231]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 84: _22 George III_, c. 82.]

[Footnote 85: Stubbs, i. 382; Round, 68, 76, 82, 112, 140; Tout, 67. By Elizabeth's accession the High Stewardship and High Constableship had reverted to the Crown, and the offices were only temporarily conferred for occasions of state. The Great Chamberlainship was _de iure_ in the same position, but was accepted under a misunderstanding as hereditary in the house of De Vere, Earls of Oxford. The Chief Butlership was hereditary in the house of Fitzalan, Earls of Arundel, and the Earl Marshalship in that of Howard, Dukes of Norfolk. It reverted on the attainder of Thomas 4th Duke in 1572. On 28 Dec. 1597 it was conferred on Robert Earl of Essex, and after his execution on 25 Feb. 1601 was placed in commission. These great offices, granted as hereditaments, are to be distinguished from serjeanties, or grants of land _per servientiam_ to the holders of minor household posts, which thus became hereditary. Grants of serjeanties ceased early in the thirteenth century, and the only household duties exercised by their holders in the sixteenth century were formal ones on special occasions.]

[Footnote 86: The derivation is through the French from O. H. G. _marascalh_ (_marah_, horse; _scalh_, servant). Round, 84, traces an early connexion of the marshal with the stable.]

[Footnote 87: A Squire of the Body held the office of Master of the Horse in 1480 (Nicolas, _Wardrobe Accts. of Ed. IV_). The term 'Master', generally applied to heads of offices in the outer ring of the Household, does not seem to be of very early origin. It probably replaces the fourteenth-century 'Serjeant'. Sir Thomas Cawarden got a 'Mastership' of the Revels in 1544, as he 'did mislyke to be tearmed a Seriaunt because of his better countenaunce of roome and place beinge of the kinges maiesties privye Chamber' (_Tudor Revels_, 2). The Mastership of the Horse was held by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester (11 Jan. 1559-87), Robert Earl of Essex (23 Dec. 1587-25 Feb. 1601), Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester (deputy Dec. 1597; Master 21 Apr. 1601-2 Jan. 1616), Sir George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham (3 Jan. 1616). The appointment, like that of other 'Masters', but unlike that of the Chamberlain and Steward, was by patent and carried a fee of 1,000 marks (£666 13_s._ 4_d._). Amongst the lesser Stable officers were the royal Footmen, whom we might expect to find in the Chamber.]

[Footnote 88: _H. O._ 19, 55.]

[Footnote 89: For the functions of Hall officers, as understood in the fifteenth century, cf. the 'courtesy' books, especially J. Russell's _Boke of Nurture_, the anonymous _Boke of Kervynge_ and _Boke of Curtesye_ (Furnivall, _Babee's Book_), and R. W. Chambers, _A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book_.]

[Footnote 90: The Treasurers of the Household were Sir Thomas Cheyne (1558-9), Sir Thomas Parry (1559-70), Sir Francis Knollys (1570-96), Roger Lord North (1596-1600), Sir William Knollys, afterwards Lord Knollys (1602-16); the Comptrollers, Sir Thomas Parry (1558-9), Sir Edward Rogers (1559-67), Sir James Croft (1570-90), Sir William Knollys (1596-1602), Sir Edward Wotton, afterwards Lord Wotton (1602-16); cf. _D. N. B._, _passim_ (with some errors); Dasent, vii. 3, 43; _V. P._ vii. 1; _Sp. P._ ii. 227; Wright, i. 355; _Sadleir Papers_, ii. 368; _Carew Correspondence_ (C.S.), 152.]

[Footnote 91: The Lords Steward were Henry Earl of Arundel (1558-64), William Earl of Pembroke (1567-70), Edward Earl of Lincoln (1581-4), Robert Earl of Leicester (1585-8), Henry Earl of Derby (1588-93), Charles Earl of Nottingham (1597-1615), Ludovick Duke of Lennox and afterwards Richmond (1615-24); cf. Dasent, xxviii. 60, 107; _S. P. D. Eliz._ clxxiii. 94; Stowe, 664; _Sc. P._ ix. 611; _Sp. P._ i. 18, 368, 631; ii. 239, 455; iv. 122; _V. P._ vii. 3; _Hatfield MSS._ i. 452; xi. 478; _Sydney Papers_, ii. 75, 77; Hawarde, 84; Camden (trans.), 124, 226, 373, and _James_, 14; La Mothe Fénelon, ii. 332; iv. 437; v. 60; Goodman, i. 178, 191; Cheyney, 28; _Lords Journals_, i. 543, 581; ii. 21, 62, 64, 116, 146, 169, 192, 227, &c.; Wright, _Arthur Hall_, 194-7.]

[Footnote 92: Larson, 132; J. H. Round, _The Officers of Edward the Confessor_ in _E. H. R._ xix. 90.]

[Footnote 93: _Hist. Mon. Abingdon_, ii. 43.]

[Footnote 94: _Constitutio Domus Regis_ in H. Hall, _Red Book of Exchequer_, iii. 807; Hearne, _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, i. 352: 'Magister Camerarius par est Dapifero in lib[er]acione ... Camerarius qui vice sua servit, ii solid. in die ... Camerarius Candelae, viiiᵈ in die ... Camerarii sine liberacione in domo comedent, si voluerint'; cf. Stubbs, i. 391; Poole, 96; Round, 62.]

[Footnote 95: Round, 112.]

[Footnote 96: _Fleta_, ii. 2: 'Auditis querimoniis iniuriarum in aula regia audire et terminare [Senescallum], assumptis sibi Camerario, hostiario, vel marescallo aulae militibus, vel aliquo illorum, si omnes interesse non possint'; ii. 6: 'Camerarius autem et subminister Camerarii a jurisdictione Senescalli et Marescalli exempti sunt, veluti omnes garderobarii ut in quibusdam; non enim extendit se iurisdictio Senescalli ad modica delicta Camerariorum vel garderobariorum audienda vel terminanda, eo quod ex consuetudine hospitii sunt exempti, dum tamen illi de quibus exigi contigerit curiae coram Senescallo Cameris Regis et Reginae, et garderobae assidue sunt intendentes; sed coram ipsis Thesaurario et Camerario audiantur querimoniae de huiusmodi ministris et subditis suis, et terminabuntur, praesente tamen clerico Regis ad placita aulae deputato; ita quod de finibus et amerciamentis ex huiusmodi placitis provenientibus nihil Regi depereat.']

[Footnote 97: _Flores Historiarum_, iii. 194; cf. _Fleta_, ii. 16.]

[Footnote 98: Tout, 12, 68, 169. The 'Seneschal' and 'chambirleyne' are on the same footing as regards fees and allowances in the ordinances of 1318 (Tout, 270). They are knights, and may be bannerets.]

[Footnote 99: _Fleta_, ii. 6: 'Debet enim Camerarius decenter disponere pro lecto Regis, et ut Camerae tapetis et banqueriis ornentur, et quod ignes sufficienter fiant in caminis, et providere ne ullus defectus inveniatur quatenus officium suum contigerit'; ii. 7: 'Foeda autem Camerarii sunt haec, parata sibi debent esse quaecunque pro corpore suo sint necessaria; videlicet, cibus, potus, busca, et candela; et de caeteris foedis sic statuitur. Camerarii Domini Regis habeant de caetero ab Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Abbatibus, Prioribus, et aliis personis Ecclesiasticis, Comitibus, Baronibus, et aliis integram Baroniam tenentibus, rationabilem finem, cum pro Baroniis suis homagium fecerint aut fidelitatem; et si partem teneant Baroniae, tunc rationabilem finem capiant secundum portionem ipsos contingentem.... Permissum est etiam quod Camerarius ex antiqua consuetudine habeat omnia vetera banqueria et tapetos, curtinas et lecta Regis, nec non et omnia ornamenta Camerae usitata et derelicta, et de omnibus exeniis Regi factis Cameram ingredientibus, dum tamen de victualibus aliquam portionem.']

[Footnote 100: Nicolas, _P. C._ vi. ccxix.]

[Footnote 101: _H. O._ 31 (1478): 'A chamberlayn for the King in household, the grete officer sitting in the Kinges chambre.... He presenteth, chargeth, and dischargeth all suche persounes as be of the Kinges chaumbre, except all suche officers of household, as ministre for any vytayle for the Kinges mouthe, or for his chambre; for all those take theire charge at the grene cloth in the countynghouse. This is the chief hed of rulers in the Kinges chambre.... Item, he hath the punition of all them that are longing to the chaumber for any offence or outrage.... The Chaumberlayne taketh his othe and staffe of the King or of his counsayle; he shall at no tyme within this courte be covered in his service.... Within the Kinges gates, no man shall harborow or assigne but this chambyrlayn or ussher, or suche under hym of the King's chambre havyng theyr power. This chamberlayn besyly to serche and oversee the King's chambres, and the astate made therein, to be according, first for all the array longing to his proper royall person, for his proper beddes, for his proper boarde at meale tymes, for the diligent doyng in servyng thereof to his honour and pleasure; to assigne kervers, cupbearers, assewers, phisitians, almoners, knyghts, or other wurshypfull astate for the towell, and for the basyn squires of the body to be attendaunt'; 116 (1493): 'In the absence of the chamberlaine, the usher shall have the same power to command in like manner; alsoe, it is right necessarie for the chamberlaine and ushers to have ever in remembrance all the highe festival dayes in the yeare, and all other tymes, what is longing to their office, that they bee not to seeke when neede is; for they shall have many lookers-on. And such thinges as the ushers know not, lett them resort unto the chamberlaine, and aske his advice at all tymes therein; and soe the ushers bee excused, and the chamberlaine to see that hee reveale himselfe at all tymes, that hee may bee beloved and feared of all such as belong to the chamber.']

[Footnote 102: Goodman, i. 178, speaking of Hunsdon's time: 'The lord chamberlain, there being at that time no lord steward, is the greatest governor in the King's house; he disposeth of all things above stairs, he hath a greater command of the King's guard than the captains hath, he makes all the chaplains, chooseth most of the King's servants, and all the pursuivants; there being then no dean of the King's chapel, he disposeth of all in the chapel.']

[Footnote 103: Young, _Mary Sidney_, 16, gives from _Sydney Papers_, i. 271, and manuscripts several letters of 1574-8 from Lady Sidney to Lord Chamberlain Sussex about her accommodation at court. Heneage reported to Hatton on 2 Apr. 1585 (Nicolas, _Hatton_, 415) the Queen's anger with the Lord Chamberlain for allowing Raleigh to be put in Hatton's lodging. Lord Hunsdon apologizes to Sir Robert Cecil for his ill lodging in 1594 (_Hatfield MSS._ iv. 504).]

[Footnote 104: Cf. ch. iv.]

[Footnote 105: Cf. App. F. Secretary Walsingham in 1590 refers an applicant for an audience to the Lord Chamberlain, 'who otherwise will conceave, as he doth alreadie, that I seke to drawe those matters from him' (_Hatfield MSS._ iv. 3).]

[Footnote 106: _Sp. P._ ii. 606. The default was at the reception of Alençon's envoys in Aug. 1578. The Calendar makes Sussex 'Lord Steward', but the original (_Documentos Inéditos_, xci. 270) has 'gran Camarero'. In 1582, at the reception of a lord mayor, 'some young gentilman, being more bold than well mannered, did stand upon the carpett of the clothe of estate, and did allmost leane upon the queshions. Her Highnes found fault with my Lord Chamberlayn and Mʳ Vice-Chamberlayn, and with the Gentlemen Ushers, for suffering such disorders' (Fleetwood to Burghley in Wright, ii. 174).]

[Footnote 107: Cf. ch. vi, p. 205, on the misadventure of Jonson and Sir John Roe in 1603; also Jonson's _Irish Mask_ (1613), 12, 'Ish it te fashion to beate te imbasheters here, and knoke 'hem o' te heads phit te phoit stick?', and Beaumont and Fletcher, _Maid's Tragedy_ (_c._ 1611), 1. ii. 44, 'I cannot blame my lord Calianax for going away: would he were here! he would run raging amongst them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye'. John Chamberlain says of Comptroller Sir Thomas Edmondes in 1617 (Birch, i. 385), 'They say he doth somewhat too much flourish and fence with his staves, whereof he hath broken two already, not at tilt, but stickling at the plays this Christmas', and Osborne, _James_, 75, of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, that 'he was intolerable choleric and offensive, and did not refrain, whilst he was Chamberlain, to break many wiser heads than his own [_vide supra_]: Mʳ. May that translated Lucan having felt the weight of his staff: which had not his office and the place, being the Banqueting-house, protected, I question whether he would ever have struck again'. This was in Feb. 1634 (_Strafford Papers_, i. 207).]

[Footnote 108: Machyn, 183, of Mary's funeral, 'All the offesers whent to the grayffe, and after brake ther stayffes, and cast them into the grayffe'; Gawdy, _Letters_, 128, of Elizabeth's, 'I saw all the whit staves broken uppon ther heades'.]

[Footnote 109: _Lord Chamberlains Books_, 811, ff. 178, 206, 236, contains warrants to the Wardrobe for the liveries of Lord Sussex, Lord Howard, and George Lord Hunsdon. The fee of £16 appears in a memorandum of 1606-7 (Nichols, _James_, ii. 125).]

[Footnote 110: The ordinary books of reference give a very inaccurate list of Elizabethan Chamberlains. I have collected the evidence in _M. S. C._ i. 31.]

[Footnote 111: Goodman, i. 178, says that Hunsdon was 'ever reputed a very honest man, but a very passionate man, a great swearer, and of little eminency'. Naunton (ed. Arber, 46) gives a similar account.]

[Footnote 112: Stowe, _Annals_, 936; Birch, _James_, i. 336; Wotton, _Letters_, ii. 40, 41.]

[Footnote 113: _V. P._ xiv. 65; Camden, _James_, 14.]

[Footnote 114: Birch, _James_, i. 382; Camden, _James_, 15; _V. P._ xiv. 100. Philip Herbert himself became Earl of Pembroke at his brother's death on 10 Apr. 1630. He took the parliamentary side in politics, and surrendered his staff on 23 July 1641. Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, although also a parliamentarian, succeeded him from 24 July 1641 to 12 Apr. 1642 (_L. Ch. Records_, v. 96).]

[Footnote 115: _M. S. C._ i. 34, 40. Howard of Effingham is described in the _Revels Accounts_ (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 238) as 'my L. Chamberlayne the L. Haward' on 5 Dec. 1574, and more precisely in the Chamber Order Book of Worcester as 'Lord Chamberlayn in the absence of the E. of Sussex' in Aug. 1575 (Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 533).]

[Footnote 116: Nicolas, _P. C._ vi. ccxxi; cf. p. 37.]

[Footnote 117: Dasent, vii. 3, 43; Wright, i. 355; La Mothe, v. 60; _Sadleir Papers_, ii. 368, 410; _Sydney Papers_, ii. 89, 198, 216; Chamberlain, 100; _D. N. B._]

[Footnote 118: Hearne, _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, i. 352, 'Portator lecti Regis in domo comedet, & homini suo iii ob. & i summarium cum liberacione sua'; cf. _H. O._ 39, 42, 251. These Wardrobes were distinct, alike from the Great Wardrobe and from the standing Wardrobes, to which the furniture of the permanently equipped palaces was committed (_H. O._ 262).]

[Footnote 119: _H. O._ 39.]

[Footnote 120: Carlisle, 11, assigns the institution of the Gentlemen to Henry VII, but this is inconsistent with the official document of 1638 printed by him (112), which definitely refers it to Henry VIII. He also gives from _Addl. MS._ 5758, ff. 263ᵛ, 269ᵛ, a list described by him as of Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber at the time of the King's 'French expedition, in 1513'. But in the manuscript the list is simply headed 'The Kinges prevy chamber'; it is part of an enumeration of 'the King's Trayne to Bulloyne', is not dated 1513, and probably belongs to 1544. Similarly a list of Gentlemen, printed by Brewer, ii. 871, from _Royal MS._ 7, F. xiv. 100, and dated by him 1516, proves on scrutiny to be certainly later than 1520, and may therefore be later still, while a number of alleged grants to Gentlemen and Grooms of the Privy Chamber between 1510 and 1514 (Brewer, i. 148, 195, 205, 280, 364, 748) may be seen by comparison with other entries for some of the same personages (i. 11, 18, 91, 96, 113, 243, 410, 425, 448, 493, 600, 612) to be merely due to bad abstracting. Evidently Brewer, when working upon his first volume, had not distinguished between a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and a Gentleman Usher of the Chamber, or between a Groom of the Privy Chamber and a Groom of the Chamber. The first clear example of Grooms and Pages of the Privy Chamber which I have come across is in a military list of June 1513 (Brewer, i. 634). Here there are no Gentlemen, but in Sept. 1518 a parallel list of French and English names (Brewer, ii. 1357) has a section of Gentlemen of the Chamber, in which occur, besides French names, those of Sir E. Nevell, Arthur Poole, Nicolas Carewe, Francis Brian, Henry Norris, William Coffyn. I believe the categories of this list to be French rather than English. In 1520 (Brewer, iii. 244) a Chamber list gives the names of four squires for the body followed by 'William Cary in the Privy Chamber', and in the same year a list of quarterly wages due from the Treasurer of the Chamber (Brewer, iii. 408) has, besides four Grooms of the Privy Chamber at 50_s._ each, 'Henry Norris and William Caree of the privy chamber' at £8 6_s._ 8_d._ each. On the other hand, a list of Chamber officers of 1526, probably just before the Eltham Articles (_Lord Steward's Misc._ 299, f. 153), has still no Gentlemen, though it has Grooms of the Privy (here called 'King's') Chamber. As I read these facts, the distinction between the Outer and the Privy Chamber was made in Henry VII's reign or early in Henry VIII's. The Grooms were then divided into two classes. But the institution of the Gentlemen was later and apparently upon a French model. At first, about 1520, one or two Squires were personally assigned to attendance in the Privy Chamber. Then the arrangement was regulated, and a definite class of Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber established, by the Eltham Articles in 1526. As to _status_, the duties of the Gentlemen seem to have been in practice much those of the Squires of Household in the _Liber Niger_ (1478), which were probably already exercised by Chaucer in the same capacity a century before. 'These Esquiers of houshold of old be accustumed, wynter and somer, in aftyrnoones and in eveninges, to drawe to lordes chambres within courte, there to kepe honest company aftyr theyre cunnynge, in talkyng of cronycles of kings and of other polycyes, or in pypeyng, or harpyng, syngyng, or other actes martialles, to help occupy the courte, and accompany straungers, tyll the tyme require of departing' (_H. O._ 46). Stowe (_Annales_, 565), describing the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533, calls the Gentlemen 'Esquires of Honour'. Their precedence under Elizabeth was after that of the Esquires of the Body (Carlisle, 86). On the other hand, some of the Gentlemen appointed in 1526 had been Knights of the Body, and the office of Knight of the Body appears shortly after to have become obsolete. Knights are included as chamber officers in the Elizabethan fee lists, but I can find no evidence that any were in fact appointed.]

[Footnote 121: The Grooms were distinguished from the Gentlemen in the post-Restoration court (Chamberlayne, 247) by not wearing sword, cloak, or hat in the Chamber.]

[Footnote 122: _Constitutio Domus Regis_ (_c._ 1135) in Hearne, _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, i. 356, 'Hostiarius Camerae unaquaque die, quo Rex iter agit, iiijᵈ ad lectum Regis'; cf. _H. O._ 37, and p. 37, _supra_. On the etiquette of Bedchamber service, as inherited from the fifteenth century, cf. Furnivall, _Babee's Book_, 175, 313.]

[Footnote 123: The feminine posts do not appear in the fee lists. _Lansd. MS._ lix, f. 43, gives (_c._ 1588) two ladies at 50 marks (£33 6_s._ 8_d._) and one at £20 as 'The Bed chamber', five at 50 marks as 'Gentlewomen of yᵉ privey Chamber', and four at £20 as 'Chamberers'. The term 'The Queen's Women' appears in the list of liveries for Elizabeth's funeral. Beyond these there were probably only a few women, e. g. a 'lawndrys', employed at court; cf. Cheyney, i. 18. In the New Year Gift lists the official women are mixed up with wives of men officers and others in attendance at court.]

[Footnote 124: Katharine Astley seems to have been First Lady in 1562 (Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 116), Katharine Howard, afterwards Lady Howard of Effingham, from 1572-87 (_Sloane MS._ 814; Nichols, i. 294; ii. 65, 251; _Sp. P._ ii. 661), and Dorothy Lady Stafford in 1587 (_Sp. P._ iv. 14). But Mary Ratcliffe had charge of the jewels from July 1587 to the end of Elizabeth's reign (Nichols, iii. 1, 445; _Egerton Papers_, 313; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, i. 79; _Addl. MS._ 5751, f. 222; _Royal MS. Appendix_, 68), apparently in succession to Blanche Parry.]

[Footnote 125: For the white dresses, cf. App. F; _Sydney Papers_, ii. 170; _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxxii. 48 (vol. iv, p. 114); L. Cust in _Trans. Walpole Soc._ iii. 12; for the lodging in the Coffer Chamber, doubtless where the 'sweet coffers' were kept, _Sydney Papers_, ii. 38. Elizabeth's predecessors, at least from the reign of Edward II (Tout, 280; cf. _H. O._ 44), had maintained some of the young lads who were royal wards at court under the name of Henchmen, but on 11 Dec. 1565 Francis Alen wrote to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, i. 438), 'Her Highness hath of late, whereat some do much marvel, dissolved the ancient office of the Henchmen'.]

[Footnote 126: This may be exemplified from the histories of Robert Dudley and Mrs. Cavendish, of Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth Throgmorton, of Robert Tyrwhitt and Bridget Manners, of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon, of Essex and Elizabeth Brydges, Mary Howard, Elizabeth Russell and Elizabeth Southwell, and of Pembroke and Mary Fitton.]

[Footnote 127: Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 24; _Sp. P._ i. 45; ii. 675.]

[Footnote 128: Philip Henslowe (ch. xi), George Bryan (ch. xv), and John Singer (ch. xv) were Grooms, and Anthony Munday (ch. xxii) and possibly Lawrence Dutton (ch. xv) Messengers of the Chamber.]

[Footnote 129: Cf. ch. iv. I doubt whether the Harbingers were originally Chamber officers, but they seem to be so classed under Henry VIII (_H. O._ 169) and in the Elizabethan fee lists.]

[Footnote 130: An order of 1493 'for all night' is in _H. O._ 109; Pegge, ii. 16, has a long account of the same usage in the post-Restoration Household. John Lyly (ch. xxiii) and Sir George Buck (ch. iii) were Esquires of the Body. A brawl in 1598 between the Earl of Southampton and Ambrose Willoughby, who was in charge of the Presence Chamber as Esquire of the Body after the Queen had gone to bed, is recorded in _Sydney Papers_, ii. 83.]

[Footnote 131: _H. O._ 33 (_c._ 1478), 'In the noble Edwardes [Ed. III] dayes worshipfull esquires did this servyce, but now thus for the more worthy'.]

[Footnote 132: At Elizabeth's funeral the Earl of Shrewsbury had a livery as Cupbearer and the Earl of Sussex as Carver.]

[Footnote 133: Cf. App. F.]

[Footnote 134: Philip Henslowe (ch. xi) became a Sewer of the Chamber.]

[Footnote 135: Brewer, ii. 871 (assigned to 1516, but probably later than 1526). The livery list for Elizabeth's coronation includes 7 Ladies of the Privy Chamber 'without wages' and 11 others 'extraordinary', 4 'ordinary' Esquires of the Body, and 6 Gentlemen Waiters (i. e. of the Privy Chamber) 'unplaced'; that for her funeral 16 Grooms of the Chamber 'in ordinarie' and 23 'extraordinary, but daily attendant', 5 Pages of the Chamber 'in ordinary' and 3 'extraordinary', and a number of Esquires of the Body and Sewers of the Chamber far in excess of anything contemplated by the fee lists.]

[Footnote 136: Batiffol, 93, describes a similar practice in the French household.]

[Footnote 137: Cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, King's).]

[Footnote 138: Philip Henslowe (ch. xi) seems to have passed from the 'extraordinary' to the 'ordinary' status as Groom of the Chamber.]

[Footnote 139: Pegge, v. 49. There were 'xx servientes, unusquisque jᵈ in die' in the _Domus_ of Henry I (Hearne, _Liber Niger Scaccarii_, i. 356).]

[Footnote 140: Pegge, iii; Tout, 304 (1318): 'Item xxiiij archers a pee, garde corps le roi, qirrount deuaunt le roi en cheminant par pays'; _H. O._ 38 (1478).]

[Footnote 141: Sir Christopher Hatton was Captain of the Guard 1572-87, Sir Walter Raleigh 1587-1603, Sir Thomas Erskine, afterwards Viscount Fenton (1605) and Earl of Kelly (1619), 1603-32.]

[Footnote 142: Halle, i. 14; ii. 294; Pegge, ii. An Elizabethan book of orders for the Pensioners (1601) is in _H. O._ 276.]

[Footnote 143: Cf. App. F.]

[Footnote 144: On the development of the Secretaries, cf. Tout, 175; Davies, 228; Nicolas, _P. C._ vi, xcvii; Cheyney, i. 43; R. H. Gretton, _The King's Government_, 25; L. H. Dibben, _Secretaries in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries_ (_E. H. R._ xxv. 430).]

[Footnote 145: On the Chapel, cf. ch. xii, s.v.]

[Footnote 146: Payments on account of Robert Grene, a court fool, appear in the _Privy Purse Accounts_ for 1559-69 (Nichols, i. 264). Apparently the post was hereditary; a warrant of 1567 for the clothes of 'Jack Grene our foole' is in _Addl. MS._ 35328. C. C. Stopes, _Elizabeth's Fools and Dwarfs_ (_Shakespeare's Environment_, 269), adds from a Wardrobe book of 1577-1600 (_Lord Chamb. Books_, v. 36) 'Thomasina', a dwarf or _muliercula_, and from another (_Lord Chamb. Books_, v. 34) 'The Foole', 'William Shenton our Foole', 'Ipolyta the Tartarian', 'an Italian named Monarcho', 'a lytle Blackamore'. References to Monarcho, including _L. L. L._ IV. i. 101, are collected in _Var._ iv. 345, and McKerrow, _Nashe_, iv. 339. Dee, 7, records a visit from the Queen's dwarf 'Mʳˢ Thomasin' on 7 June 1580.]

[Footnote 147: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 50.]

[Footnote 148: Lafontaine, 45. Numerous records of the musical establishment are collected by Lafontaine from the _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, and by W. Nagel, _Annalen der englischen Hofmusik_ (_Beilage zu den Monatsheften für Musikgeschichte_, Bd. 26), and more completely in the _Musical Antiquary_ (Oct. 1909-Apr. 1913) from the _T. C. Accounts_. The fee lists are not to be relied upon.]

[Footnote 149: This was Mathias Mason. The lutenists also include Robert Hales (1586-1603), Henry Porter (1603), also described in the same year as a sackbut, and Philip Rosseter (1604-23), on whom cf. ch. xv.]

[Footnote 150: John Heywood was certainly a Sewer of the chamber to Henry VIII (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul's), and Edward VI had a group of singers holding these posts (Lafontaine, 9), but there is no definite evidence of a similar arrangement under Elizabeth. On Alfonso Ferrabosco, cf. ch. xiv (Italians).]

[Footnote 151: On the relation of the Lord Chamberlain to the Revels in particular, cf. ch. iii. The issues from the Great Wardrobe were mainly upon his warrants.]

[Footnote 152: _H. O._ 37. The post of Clerk of Works is also called an 'office outward' (_H. O._ 54).]

[Footnote 153: Cf. ch. iii, especially Tilney's list of 'standing offices' _c._ 1607. The 'maisters of the standing offices' also appear in the description of James's coronation (Nichols, _James_, i. 325).]

[Footnote 154: Thus the curious fee of £11 8_s._ 1½_d._ a year represents 7½_d._ a day, the regular wages of esquires, serjeants, and many clerks under Edward II (Tout, 270).]

[Footnote 155: The £100 was 'from the King's privy coffers' _c._ 1478 (_H. O._ 41), but by 1508 it was from the Exchequer (Henry, _Hist. of Great Britain_, xii. 454), and here it was still paid in the seventeenth century (Sullivan, 252, from _Pells Order Books_).]

[Footnote 156: Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 47, from return of Board of Green Cloth (1576).]

[Footnote 157: Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 45, 51. 'Bouche' or 'bouge' of court is clearly from _busca_, bush, firewood. The allowance was as old as 1290, for _Fleta_, ii. 7, notes _cibus_, _potus_, _busca_, and _candela_ amongst the Chamberlain's fees (cf. p. 37). It is set out for each officer in 1318 (Tout, 270) and _c._ 1478 (_H. O._ 15).]

[Footnote 158: Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 44.]

[Footnote 159: _H. O._ 34, 'because ray clothinge is not according for the king's knightes, therefore it was left'. But an order of June 1478 (_T. R. Misc._ 206, f. 11) required Lords, Knights, Squires of the Body, and others within the household to wear 'a colour of the kings livery about their nekkes'.]

[Footnote 160: Cheyney, i. 32; Devon, 24, 43, 67, 83; _Abstract_, 8; Pegge, iii. 27; Nichols, _James_, ii. 125; _V. P._ vii. 12; Hentzner, _Itinerarium_ (quoted App. F); _Addl. MS._ 5750, f. 114; _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, v. 90, 91. The 'watchyng clothing' is as old as Edward IV (_H. O._ 38, 41). It seems to have been 4 yards of medley colour at 5_s._ a yard (Sullivan, 253). The sovereigns seem to have made some use of personal colours as distinct from the royal scarlet. Those of Edward VI were green and white (Von Raumer, ii. 71); those of Elizabeth black and white; cf. pp. 142, 161 (1559, 1560, 1564).]

[Footnote 161: Pegge, iii. 92.]

[Footnote 162: Cf. ch. xiii (Queen's).]

[Footnote 163: Cf. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 164: Carlisle, 90, with a list of many of James's Gentlemen.]

[Footnote 165: The order of 1526 for the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber prescribes that one of them, Henry Norris, 'shall be in the roome of Sir William Compton, not only giveing his attendance as groome of the Kings stoole, but also in his bed-chamber, and other privy places, as shall stand with his pleasure' (_H. O._ 156). Naturally the post had lapsed during female reigns, although a hope of Sir Robert Sidney for a 'Bedchamber lordship' in 1597 suggests that a renewal may have been contemplated (_Hatfield MSS._ vii. 225). James had had Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber in Scotland. Later court usage, represented already by Chamberlayne, 262, in 1669, interpreted 'stole' as 'vestment', but I suspect that in origin it was the close stool, which was kept _c._ 1478 by the Wardrobe of Beds (_H. O._ 40); cf. Marston, _Fawn_, 1. ii. 46, 'Thou art private with the duke; thou belongest to his close-stool'.]

[Footnote 166: Goodman, i. 389, says that the prime gentleman of the bed chamber and groom of the stole was 'a man of special trust' and had a table for guests 'employed in the king's most private occasions'. Viscount Fenton combined the post with that of Captain of the Guard under James. According to Newcastle, 213, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke laboured in vain to be of the Bed Chamber throughout the reign. Carey, _Memoirs_, 79, 91, describes the heart-burnings to which the office gave rise. Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset, began his career as a Page of the Bed Chamber (Nichols, _James_, i. 600).]

[Footnote 167: _S. P. D. Jac. I_ (8 Nov. 1604). The French ambassador wrote in 1606 (Boderie, i. 56) that the king 'vit combattre les cocqs, qui est un plaisir qu'il prend deux fois la semaine'.]

[Footnote 168: Cf. _D. N. B._. Anne also had a 'jester', Thomas Derry, in 1612 (Cunningham, xliii).]

[Footnote 169: _Abstract_, 46; Devon, 17, 72 and _passim_; _Cott. MS. Vesp._ C. xiv, f. 108; _Addl. MS._ 33378, f. 34ᵛ; _V. P._ x. 102; Sully, 443; Boderie, i. 39, 272, 362. Sir Lewis Lewknor received a formal appointment as Master of Ceremonies by patent, with a salary of £200, on 7 Nov. 1605, but had in fact been exercising the functions since 1603. Amongst his assistants were Sir William Button, who was employed by 1607 and obtained a reversion of the post on 10 Sept. 1612, and John Finett, who ultimately himself became Master, and published a record of his service from 1612 in his _Philoxenis_ (1656).]

[Footnote 170: Worcester to Shrewsbury, 2 Feb. 1604 (Lodge, iii. 88); 'Now, having done with matters of state, I must a little touch the feminine commonwealth, that against your coming you be not altogether like an ignorant country fellow. First, you must know we have ladies of divers degrees of favour; some for the private chamber, some for the drawing chamber, some for the bed-chamber, and some for neither certain, and of this number is only my Lady Arabella and my wife. My Lady Bedford holdeth fast to the bed-chamber; my Lady Harford would fain, but her husband hath called her home. My Lady Derby the younger, the Lady Suffolk, Ritche, Nottingham, Susan, Walsingham, and, of late, the Lady Sothwell, for the drawing-chamber; all the rest for the private-chamber, when they are not shut out, for many times the doors are locked; but the plotting and malice amongst them is such, that I think envy hath tied an invisible snake about most of their necks to sting one another to death. For the present there are now five maids; Cary, Myddelmore, Woodhouse, Gargrave, Roper; the sixth is determined, but not come; God send them good fortune, for as yet they have no mother.']

[Footnote 171: Madox, i. 262; Thomas, 24; Tout in _E. H. R._ xxiv. 496.]

[Footnote 172: Tout, 63.]

[Footnote 173: Madox, i. 267; _P. R. O. Lists and Indexes_, xi. 102; Tout in _E. H. R._ xxiv. 496. The following summary of the history of the wardrobe and chamber in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is largely based on Tout, _The Place of Edward II in English History_ (1914). Additional material has since been published in J. C. Davies, _The Baronial Opposition to Edward II_ (1918).]

[Footnote 174: _Fleta_, ii. 6, quoted on p. 37.]

[Footnote 175: J. C. Davies, _The First Journal of Edward II's Chamber_ (1915, _E. H. R._ xxx. 662), gives extracts from a Chamber account of 1322-3, including a payment of 7 Jan. 1323 'a iiij clers de Sneyth iuantz entreludies en la sale de Couwyk deuant le Roi et monsire Hugh [le Despenser] de doun le Roi par les mayns Harsik liuerant a eux les deniers xlˢ', which adds an interesting early use of the term 'interlude' to those given in _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 181, 256.]

[Footnote 176: Newton, 351; Ramsay, _Lancaster and York_, i. 317; ii. 466. Henry VIII's Treasurers of the Chamber sometimes kept separate war accounts (Brewer, iv. 1. 82), and there is a similar example as late as 1599 (_R. O. Audit Office_, _Various_, 3, 108).]

[Footnote 177: _P. R. O. Lists and Indexes_, xxxv. 220, and _Cal. Patent Rolls_, both passim.]

[Footnote 178: _C. P. R._, _1 Hen. VI_, p. 3, m. 5 (3 May 1423), _5 Edw. IV_, p. 2, m. 28 (29 June 1465), _1 Rich. III_, p. 5, m. 21 (26 Apr. 1484). I think Newton is wrong in regarding Vaughan's appointment by patent as exceptional. The _Liber Niger_, _c._ 1478 (_H. O._ 42), fully describes the Jewel House, with its 'architectour, called clerk of the King's, or keeper of the King's jewelles, or tresorer of the chambyr', and says 'all thinges of this office inward or outward, commyth and goyth by the knowledge of the Kyng, and his chamberlaynes recorde'.]

[Footnote 179: Sir Gilbert Talbot, Master of the Jewel House in 1680, represented (_Archaeologia_, xxii. 118) that anciently the Master was Treasurer of the Chamber, 'till that branch was taken out and made an office apart; and is now five times more beneficiall than the Jewell-House; all the regulation of expence being apply'd to the remaining parts of the perquisites of the Jewell-House, the fees of the Treasurer of the Chamber and Master of the Ceremonys being left entire'.]

[Footnote 180: Campbell, i. 228, 316; ii. 105, 296, 320, 445. Newton, 351, 353, thinks the exact dates of Edmund Chaderton's and Lovell's appointments uncertain, and supposes the keepership of the jewels to have been detached on the latter occasion. But it was clearly on the former, the date of which is given in _C. P. R._, _1 Rich. III_, p. 5, m. 21, as 26 Apr. 1484. Lovell is described as Treasurer of the King's Chamber on 26 Feb. 1486 and of the Queen's Chamber about the following Easter (Campbell, i. 228, 316). There is no patent for him, and my impression is that both posts had been annexed to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, granted him on 12 Oct. 1485 (_C. P. R._, _1 Hen. VII_, p. 1, m. 18).]

[Footnote 181: Newton, 354, with a full account of Heron's career.]

[Footnote 182: This arrangement had already been legalized by _1 Hen. VIII_, c. 3 (_Statutes_, iii. 2), which authorizes the payment of certain revenues to Heron as General Receiver, 'and to other persons ... hereafter in like office to be deputed and assigned as in the time of the late ... King Henry the vijᵗʰ hath been used', but does not refer to him as Treasurer of the Chamber.]

[Footnote 183: _3 Hen. VIII_, c. 23 (_Statutes_, iii. 45). It is provided by § 6 'that the Kinges forenamed trusty servant John Heron be from hensfurth Tresourer of the Kinges Chamber, and that he by the name of Tresourer of the Kinges Chambre be named accepted and called; and that he and every other persone whom the King hereaftur shall name and appoint to the said roome or office of Tresourer of his Chamber be not Charged ne chargeable for any suche his or their Receipt of any parte or parcell of the premisses as before ys expressed or therefor to accompte answere or make repayment to any persone or persones other then to the King or his heires in his or their Chamber, and not in the said Eschequier'. The Act only had force to 30 Nov. 1512, but it was continued by _4 Hen. VIII_, c. 18, _6 Hen. VIII_, c. 24, _7 Hen. VIII_, c. 7, _14-15 Hen. VIII_, c. 15, and made permanent by _27 Hen. VIII_, c. 62 in 1535 (_Statutes_, iii. 68, 145, 182, 219, 631). The account of this legislation in Newton, 361, treats the Act of _6 Hen. VIII_ as its starting-point.]

[Footnote 184: His salary was at first £10, afterwards £25 a quarter (Brewer, iii. 407). He died on 10 June 1522 (Newton, 358).]

[Footnote 185: A letter in Brewer, iii. 781 (N.D. but dated by Brewer 2 Dec. 1521), speaks of 'Master Myclo the new treasurer in Master Heron is room'. Certain payments were made by John Myklowe, 'late treasurer of the King's chamber', from 1 June 1521 to 1 May 1522, and thereafter by Edmund Peckham (Brewer, iii. 1156), until 1 Jan. 1523. Conceivably Peckham, who had been a clerk in the counting-house, and was cofferer by 1524 (Brewer, iv. 422), may have been Treasurer for a short period between Miklowe and Wyatt, unless indeed these payments belong to a special war loan or subsidy account, such as Wyatt himself rendered in 1524 (Brewer, iv. 82), probably not strictly in his capacity as Treasurer of the Chamber. Miklowe is described as Treasurer on 10 Apr. 1522 and was dead by 28 June 1522 (Brewer, iii. 924, 998). For his earlier history, cf. Brewer, ii. 436; iii. 332; xxi. 2. 426; Ellis, iii. 3, 271.]

[Footnote 186: Wyatt is described as Treasurer in an indenture of 18 Feb. 1523 (Brewer, iii. 1190). In one of Cavendish's memoranda as printed in _Trevelyan Papers_, ii. 12, the name of Sir Thomas has been substituted for that of Sir Henry as a predecessor of Cavendish. This is an error, or more probably a forgery, as Collier edited the volume, and called special attention to the entry. Sir Thomas Wyatt was riding in 1524 on war loan business, payment for which is in his father's account (Brewer, iv. 85). On 21 Oct. 1524 he became clerk of the jewels. It is just possible that the old connexion of the Treasurer with the Jewel House suggested the confusion, on which cf. Simonds, _Sir Thomas Wyatt_, 19.]

[Footnote 187: _H. O._ 159.]

[Footnote 188: Brewer, iv. 1843.]

[Footnote 189: _33 Hen. VIII_, c. 39 (_Statutes_, iii. 879).]

[Footnote 190: Brewer, xx. 2. 452; Dasent, i. 323, 470.]

[Footnote 191: Brewer, xxi. 1. 125, 147; _Trevelyan Papers_, i. 197.]

[Footnote 192: _7 Edw. VI_, c. 2 (_Statutes_, iv. 1, 164).]

[Footnote 193: _1 Mary_, Sess. 2, c. 10 (_Statutes_, iv. 1, 208); Thomas, 15.]

[Footnote 194: Wriothesley to Paget in Brewer, xx. 2. 338 (5 Nov. 1545). A later letter of 11 Nov. (Brewer, xx. 2. 365) refers to debts of the Surveyors' Court 'which is the Chamber'. In 1552 Charles Tuke was called on by the Privy Council to bring his father's accounts to the Lord Chamberlain for view and consideration (Dasent, iv. 164).]

[Footnote 195: _Trevelyan Papers_, ii. 1. The book is now in the R. O. It is in the statement of 1548 that Sir T. Wyatt's name has been inserted.]

[Footnote 196: Dasent, v. 329; vi. 182; _Hatfield MSS._ i. 256.]

[Footnote 197: Cf. ch. xiii (Interluders).]

[Footnote 198: Examples are in _H. O._ 120, 139, 147.]

[Footnote 199: Cf. App. B.]

[Footnote 200: A fuller account of the Tudor Chamber finance is given by Newton, 360; cf. M. D. George, _The Origin of the Declared Account_ (_E. H. R._ xxxi. 41).]

[Footnote 201: Felton was cofferer in 1553 (_Archaeologia_, xii. 372).]

[Footnote 202: _S. P. D. Mary_, xiv. The fee of £240 represents the old fee of £100 attached to the Treasurership, together with allowances of £100 for board wages, £20 for clerks, £10 for boat-hire, and £10 for office necessaries, which Cavendish's accounts show that he enjoyed. The 1_s._ a day was presumably the fee for the Posts.]

[Footnote 203: Dasent, vii. 15, 27; _S. P. D. Eliz. Addl._ ix. 3.]

[Footnote 204: Nicholas, _Eliz._ i. 264, printed the accounts of Edmund Downing as executor to John Tamworth for 1559-69 from the audited copy in _Harleian Rolls_, A. A. 23. Copies are also in the _Pipe Office Declared Accounts_, 2791, and the _Audit Office Declared Accounts_, 2021, 1. No later Elizabethan Privy Purse Accounts are known, but it appears from the lists of New Year gifts for 1561, 1578, 1579, 1589, and 1600 (Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 108; ii. 65, 249; iii. 1, 445) that Henry Sackford succeeded John Tamworth as custodian of gifts given in cash, and he is described as Keeper at Elizabeth's death (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, vi. 2). His successor was Sir George Home, afterwards (1605) Earl of Dunbar (_S. P. D. Docquet_ of 17 May 1603). Jacobean accounts for 1603-5 are in _Pipe Office Declared Accounts_, 2792, and in _Audit Office Declared Accounts_, 2021. Some extracts are in Cunningham, xviii. In 1617 (_Abstract_, 6) the Privy Purse disposed of £5,000 and an additional £1,100 from New Year gifts.]

[Footnote 205: This estimate is based on the account for 1594-5; doubtless there was some variation from year to year. A memorandum of _c._ 1596 (_Hatfield MSS._ vi. 571) gives the annual assignment to the office by warrant dormant as £13,800.]

[Footnote 206: On 23 July 1581 Heneage wrote to Hatton (Hatton, 181) that he could only grant allowances to couriers sent to Mr. Secretary in France if signed for by the Lord Treasurer, Lord Chamberlain, or Vice-Chamberlain. On 26 May 1590 (_Cecil Papers_, iv. 35) a royal warrant directed Heneage to pay on warrants subscribed by Burghley, as formerly by Walsingham. Both documents refer to temporary arrangements in the absence of a Secretary. When Herbert became Second Secretary in 1600, it was 'doubted that his warrants for money matters will be of no force to the Treasurer of the Chamber, which office depends upon the principal Secretary's warrants' (_Sydney Papers_, ii. 194).]

[Footnote 207: Camden (tr.), 130; Haynes-Murdin, ii. 761; _S. P. D. Eliz._ xl. 20.]

[Footnote 208: Wright, _Eliz._ i. 355; Hatton, 39; Heneage's accounts begin on 15 Feb. 1570.]

[Footnote 209: Camden (tr.), 450; Dasent, xxv. 4.]

[Footnote 210: _Cecil Papers_, iv. 68.]

[Footnote 211: _D. N. B._ from _Lansd. MS._ lxxix, No. 19.]

[Footnote 212: _Sydney Papers_, i. 356, 357, 363, 373, 382.]

[Footnote 213: _Cecil Papers_, v. 500; Haynes-Murdin, ii. 808. Killigrew rendered an account from 16 Dec. 1595 to 3 July 1596.]

[Footnote 214: Birch, _Eliz._ ii. 61; Haynes-Murdin, ii. 809.]

[Footnote 215: Birch, _James_, i. 277; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxxi. 15.]

[Footnote 216: _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, v. 81-3. The recital runs: 'Whereas we have thought fitt to disburden our privy purse of certaine paymentes used of late to be made out of it, And to assigne the said paymentes to be henceforth made by you our Tr_easur_er of our Chamber ... for allowances to players, for playes made before vs., for bullbayting, beare-bayting, and anie other sport shewed vnto vs.' The Treasurer is to pay 'vpon billes rated allowed and subscribed by our Chamberlaine'. Warrants for rewards for plays were still signed by the Privy Council during 1608-14, but by the Chamberlain from 1614.]

[Footnote 217: _Abstract_, 7, 12. During 1603-17 the Treasurer of the Chamber had also had £21,362 for 'extraordinary disbursements'.]

[Footnote 218: The development has been fully worked out by Professor Baldwin.]

[Footnote 219: _H. O._ 159 (1526).]

[Footnote 220: Cheyney, i. 67, 106; Hornemann, 52; Dasent, _passim_. Certain regulations called Orders in Star Chamber (cf. App. D, No. cxx) appear to proceed from the Council sitting in the Star Chamber, but in an administrative, not a judicial, capacity.]

[Footnote 221: Cf. generally for this paragraph Cheyney, i. 65; Hornemann, 19, 49; E. R. Adair, _The Privy Council Registers_ (_E. H. R._ xxx. 698); and prefaces to Dasent, _passim_.]

[Footnote 222: La Mothe, iv. 29 (22 March 1571): 'J'y suys arrivé sur le poinct que ceux de son conseil venoient de débattre, devant elle, les poinctz du tretté.']

[Footnote 223: Hornemann, 54, cites _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxviii. 55 as evidence that Essex was President of the Council; but surely it was the Council in Ireland. Scaramelli (_V. P._ ix. 567) reports an interview with the Council on 24 Apr. 1603, at which he says the Archbishop of Canterbury, President of the Council, was not present. This suggests that James had appointed a President. 'These Lords of the Council', adds Scaramelli, 'behave like so many kings.']

[Footnote 224: Steele, xiv.]

[Footnote 225: Cf. App. D, _Bibl. Note_.]

[Footnote 226: Robert Laneham was Keeper and describes his functions (Laneham, 59): 'Noow, syr, if the Councell sit, I am at hand, wait at an inch, I warrant yoo. If any make babling, "peas!" (say I) "woot ye whear ye ar?" if I take a lystenar, or a priar in at the chinks or at the lokhole, I am by & by in the bones of him; but now they keep good order; they kno me well inough: If a be a freend, or such one az I lyke, I make him sit dooun by me on a foorm, or a cheast: let the rest walk, a God's name!']

[Footnote 227: Baldwin, 439; Cheyney, i. 81; Dicey, 68, 94.]

[Footnote 228: Baldwin, 450; Percy, 17.]

[Footnote 229: Cheyney, i. 109; Percy, 48.]

[Footnote 230: Cf. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 231: Cf. chh. xiii (Pembroke's, Worcester's), xvi (Theatre, Globe), xvii (Blackfriars).]

III

THE REVELS OFFICE

[Sixteenth-century material is collected by A. Feuillerat, _Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth_ (1908, _Materialien_, xxi), and _Documents relating to the Office of Revels in the Time of Edward VI and Mary_ (1914, _Materialien_, xliv), which replace the extracts from Sir Thomas Cawarden's papers in A. J. Kempe, _The Loseley Manuscripts_ (1835), and the report by J. C. Jeaffreson in _Hist. MSS._ vii. 596 (1879), the Audit Office records in P. Cunningham, _Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court_ (1842), and Sir Henry Herbert's copies of official papers in J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents respecting the Office of Master of the Revels_ (1870, cited from its running title as _Dramatic Records_). A study of the documents is contained in A. Feuillerat, _Le Bureau des Menus-Plaisirs et la Mise en Scène à la Cour d'Elizabeth_ (1910). Much of my own _Notes on the History of the Revels Office under the Tudors_ (1906) is incorporated in the present chapter. Cunningham's book is still useful for the seventeenth century; the authenticity of some of his documents is discussed in Appendix B. Of earlier historians of the stage, George Chalmers, _Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare-Papers_ (1797), deals most fully with the Revels Office; it is matter for regret that Sir George Buck's 'particular commentary' of the 'Art of Revels' has disappeared. In his _Supplementary Apology_ (1799) Chalmers made many extracts from the office books, now apparently lost, of Sir Henry Herbert (1623-73). Others had already been published by Malone (_Variorum_, iii). These have now been collected with other material, including the later documents from _Dramatic Records_, in J. Q. Adams, _The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert_ (1917, cited as Herbert).]

One of the 'standing' offices which, from the general oversight exercised over them by the Lord Chamberlain, may also be regarded as 'offices outward of the Chamber' was the Revels Office. This, in its fullest establishment, consisted of a Master, a Clerk Comptroller, and a Clerk, whose services it shared with the analogous Office of Tents, a Yeoman, and a Groom. It was of Tudor origin. The first mention of a Master of Revels is in a Household order of 31 December 1494.[232] But the post appears to have been at this period a purely temporary one, conferred upon some existing officer of the Household, who had been selected to supervise and defray the expenses of the revels for a particular feast. Several of these _ad hoc_ Masters are recorded at the court of Henry VIII; the most prominent was Sir Henry Guildford, who held various offices, including that of Comptroller of the Household. The Masters appear to be distinct from the Lords of Misrule, who were also appointed _pro hac vice_ during the Christmas season, but whose duties were ceremonial and quasi-dramatic, rather than administrative.[233] In dealing with the details of Revels organization, the transitory and fluctuating Masters had, from the beginning of the reign, the assistance of a permanent official, who belonged originally to the establishment of the Wardrobe. It was his business to carry into effect the general directions of the Master; to obtain stuffs from mercers or from the Wardrobe itself, and ornaments from the Jewel House and the Mint; to engage architects, carpenters, painters, tailors and embroiderers; to superintend the actual performances in the banqueting-hall or the tilt-yard, and attempt to preserve the costly and elaborate pageants from the rifling of the guests; to have the custody of dresses, visors, and properties; and finally, to render accounts and obtain payment for expenses from the Exchequer. These duties, with others of like character, were long performed by one Richard Gibson, whose careful accounts, compiled in an execrable orthography, preserve many curious details of forgotten pageantries, including the employment of none other than Hans Holbein in the decoration of a banqueting-hall at Greenwich. Gibson had a double qualification for his functions. In addition to his office as Porter and Yeoman Tailor of the Wardrobe, he had been, as far back as 1494, one of the King's players.[234] He had apparently the art of making himself indispensable, for he gradually accumulated both posts and pensions. He held the ancient office of Pavilionary or Serjeant of Tents, and in this capacity made the arrangements for the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. By 1526 he was one of the royal Serjeants-at-Arms.[235] Machyn, who records the burning of his son for heresy at Smithfield in 1557, describes him as 'sergantt Gybsun, sergantt of armes, and of the reywelles, and of the kynges tenstes'.[236] It is not, however, clear that he held a distinct post as Serjeant of Revels, and when a patent was issued to his successor, John Farlyon, in 1534, it was not as Serjeant, but only as Yeoman.[237] Farlyon also became in course of time Serjeant of Tents, and the traditional connexion between Tents and Revels was never wholly broken.

Whether John Travers, who became Serjeant of Tents on Farlyon's death in 1539, had any supervision over John Bridges, who became Yeoman of Revels, is rather doubtful.[238] But the position becomes quite clear in 1545, when the Serjeantship of Tents was converted into a Mastership, and its holder, Sir Thomas Cawarden, was also appointed, under a separate patent of 11 March 1545, to an entirely new post as a permanent Master of the Revels, to whom the Yeoman naturally became subordinate.[239] This continued to be John Bridges until 1550, when he was succeeded by John Holt, who had acted as his deputy since 1547.[240] Cawarden enlarged the establishment by securing the appointment of a Clerk Comptroller to check and of a Clerk to keep the books, thus leaving the Yeoman free to devote himself to the practical side of the business.[241] Both these officers served, and continued throughout our period to serve, alike for the Tents and the Revels. John Barnard was Clerk Comptroller from 1545 to 1550, when he was succeeded by Richard Lees.[242] The first Clerk was Thomas Philipps, who was appointed in 1546, and held his post until 1560.[243] But from 1551 most of the duties were performed by a deputy, Thomas Blagrave, who succeeded to the Clerkship on 25 March 1560.[244] Blagrave was a personal 'servant' of Cawarden, who probably saw to it that all the subordinate officers appointed after the retirement of Bridges were his own nominees. Each, however, held his post under a patent direct from the Crown, and this arrangement bore the promise of administrative complications when the personal relation with the Master had terminated. The following document illustrates the organization of the office as settled by Cawarden about 1546:[245]

_Constituc_i_ons howe the King's Revells ought to be usyd_:

Fyrst, an Invyntory to be made by the Clarke controwler and Clarke, by the Survey and apowentinge of the mastyr of the Revells, Aswell of all and singular masking garments w_i_th all thear furnyture, as allso of all bards for horsis, coveryng of bards and bassis of all kynds, w_i_th all and singular the appurtenances, which Invytory, subscribyd by the yoman and clarke, ought to remayne in the custody of the Master of the Offyces and the goodes for the saeffe kepyng.

It_e_m, that no kynd of stuff be bowght, but at the apowyentment of the Master or his depute Clarke controwler, being counsell therin, and that he make menc_i_on therof, in his booke of recept w_hi_ch ought to be subscribyd as afforseyd by the Master.

It_e_m, that the Cla_r_ke be privey to the cutting of all kynds of garments, and that he make menc_i_on in his booke of thyssuing owt howe moche it takyth of all kynds to ev_er_y maske, revelle, or tryumph, w_hi_ch boke ought to be subscrybyd as afforseyd by the Master.

It_e_m, that the Clarke kepe check of all daye men working on the p_re_misses, and to make two lyger boks of all wags and provisions of all kynd whate so ev_er_, th_e_ one for the paye master and th_e_ other for the Master.

It_e_m, that no garments forseyd, bards, cov_er_ying of bards, bassis, or suche lyck, be lent to no man w_i_thout a specyall comaundment, warrant, or tokyn, from the Kyng's Ma_ies_tie, but that all be leyd up in feyr stonderds or pressis, and every presse or stonderd to have two locks a pece, w_i_th sev_er_all wards, w_i_th two keys, th_e_ one for the Master or Clarke, and th_e_ other for the yoman, so that non of them cum to the stuff without th_e_ other.

In Farlyon's time the Revels stuff had been housed at the royal mansion of Warwick Inn in the City.[246] Cawarden moved it in 1547 to the Blackfriars, where various parts of the old Priory buildings served at different times as store-rooms and work-rooms or as residences for the officers.[247] Much material bearing upon the activities of the Revels during 1544-59 is preserved at Loseley Hall, amongst the papers of Cawarden's executor, Sir William More, who also acquired his interest in the Blackfriars. Cawarden lived just long enough to superintend the festivities at Elizabeth's coronation. After his death on 29 August 1559, his offices were distributed.[248] The Mastership of the Tents was given to Henry Sackford of the Privy Chamber. Banqueting houses, however, which had originally been the concern of the Tents, seem now to have been put in charge of the Revels. The Mastership of the Revels was given, by a patent dated 18 January 1560, to Sir Thomas Benger.[249] The Clerk Comptroller and Clerk continued as in former years to be joint officers for the Tents and the Revels. Benger is a somewhat shadowy personage. It is upon record that he gave Elizabeth a ring as a New Year's gift in 1562; that the Westminster boys rehearsed the _Heautontimoroumenos_ and _Miles Gloriosus_ before him in 1564 and spent 6_d._ on 'pinnes and sugar candee'; that he got a licence to export 300 tons of beer in 1566; that he had players of his own at Canterbury in 1569-70; and that the corporation of Saffron Walden spent 3_s._ 6_d._ upon a 'podd' of oysters for him at Elizabeth's visit to Audley End in 1571.[250] Apparently he began his administration with good intentions. The following note is affixed to his first Revels' estimate, that for the Christmas of 1559-60:

'Memorandum, that the chargies for making of maskes cam never to so little a somme [£227 11_s._ 2_d._] as they do this yere, for the same did ever amount, as well in the Quenes Highnes tyme that nowe is, as at all other tymes hertofore, to the somme of £400 alwaies when it was leaste.

'Mᵐ. also, that it may please the Quenes Maᵗᶦᵉ to appoint some of her highnes prevy Counsaile, immediatly after Shroftyde yerely, to survey the state of the saide office, to thintent it may be knowne in what case I fownd it, and how it hathe byn since used.

'Mᵐ. also, that the saide Counsailors may have aucthoritie to appoint suche fees of cast garments as they shall think resonable, and not the Mʳ. to appoint any, as hertofore he hathe done; for I think it most for the Mʳˢ. savegarde so to be used.'[251]

The cast garments were a perquisite of the officers, and were sold by them, doubtless to actors. The change in the Mastership led also to a change in the local habitation of the Revels. It is to be supposed that the buildings with which Cawarden had supplemented the official storehouse were no longer available after they had passed to his executors. In any case, it is clear from the survey of 1586-7 described below that upon Cawarden's death the Office of the Revels was removed to the 'late Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem' in Clerkenwell. Probably the transfer had taken place by 10 June 1560, as an inventory was drawn up on that date of 'certeyne stuff remaynynge in the Black Fryers in London'.[252] The Tents, as well as the Revels, seem to have been moved to St. John's.[253]

In accordance with Benger's request, a survey of the Revels was undertaken, under a warrant from the Privy Council of 27 April 1560, by Sir Richard Sackville and Sir Walter Mildmay, the Under Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a draft of a document submitted to them is preserved at Loseley.[254] This contains a detailed account of the transactions of the Office since the last audit in 1555, as a result of which Cawarden's executors established a claim for a balance or 'surplusage' of £740 13_s._ 10½_d._ against the Exchequer. The total expenditure of the Office for the period covering Elizabeth's coronation and first Christmas had been £602 11_s._ 10_d._ To the account are appended inventories showing the sets of masking garments which existed in 1555, the materials since issued from the Wardrobe, the use made of both of these in the fashioning of new garments and the 'translation' of old ones, and the sets found in the Office at the time of the survey. These are marked as either 'serviceable' or 'not serviceable' or 'chargeable', but 'fees', and the warrant from the Council instructs the commissioners that cast garments 'being fees incydente to the saide office may be taken by yᵉ Master of yᵉ Revelles & dystributed in soche sorte as haue bene accostomed'. Probably the officers sold them to players.[255] No further detailed accounts are available until the last year of Benger's Mastership, but there are summaries which show an average annual expenditure of about £570.[256] For some reason, there was a great increase of cost in 1571-2, which is the first of a series of years for which elaborate accounts exist in the Record Office. These are of a detailed nature, much like that of Cawarden's accounts at Loseley, and arranged more or less under heads. Schedules of the plays and masks given during the periods to which they relate are in some cases attached. A brief analysis of the account for 1571-2 will show the general character of the entries. I can only dwell here upon those which relate to the organization of the Revels Office, and not upon those of merely dramatic or scenic interest. The main account runs from the end of Shrovetide, 1571, to the end of Shrovetide, 1572, and covers, firstly, a period of nine months from March to November, during which the occupation of the Office was limited to the airing and safeguard of 'stuff' and attendance upon the Master during the progress, and, secondly, an active three months of revels and preparation for revels, from December to February. This expenditure is accounted for under two main heads, _Wages and Allowances_ and _Emptions and Provisions_. It may be abstracted as follows:

A. WAGES AND ALLOWANCES.

(i.) _March to November._

£ _s._ _d._ £ _s._ _d._

Tailors and Attendants 26 0 0 Attendants (9) on Progress 13 19 0 Porter (60 days) 3 0 0 Diet of Officers (60 days) 30 0 0 Necessaries bought by Yeoman 3 13 0 76 12 0

(ii.) _December to February._

Tailors and Attendants 113 8 8 Property-makers, Embroiderers, Haberdashers 39 1 2 Painters 35 18 2 Porter (80 days, 15 nights) 4 15 0 Diet of Officers (80 days, 15 nights) 47 10 0 240 13 0

B. EMPTIONS AND PROVISIONS.

(i.) _March to November._ Nil.

(ii.) _December to February._

Mercers (4) 938 8 7 Draper 52 15 3 Upholster 32 5 8 Silkwomen (Joan Bowll and another) 74 14 4½ Petty Cash (Comptroller) 1 0 0 Petty Cash (Yeoman) 80 11 2 Implements for Properties 14 11 1 Furrier 2 2 6 Colours 13 16 1 Wiredrawer 6 16 0 Vizards (Thomas Giles) 4 5 0 Necessaries for Hunters 1 1 8 Device for Thunder and Lightning 1 2 0 Chandler 5 15 5 Hire of Armour 3 9 8 Buskin-maker 0 11 4 Brian Dodmer (travelling expenses, &c.) 3 0 0 Boat-hire, &c., for Comptroller 1 0 0 " " Clerk (_per_ John Drawater) 1 0 0 Green cloth, &c., for Clerk 3 6 8 1,241 12 5½

_Summa Totalis._

£ _s._ _d._ Wages and Allowances 317 5 0 Emptions and Provisions 1,241 12 5½ ------------------ £1,558 17 5½ ==================

In many cases reference is made to the bills of the tradesmen for further details. At the end of the account is appended a supplementary account, amounting to £26 3_s._ 2_d._, for the three months from March to May, 1572, during which a further airing took place. The airings involved an elaborate process of what would now be called the 'spring-cleaning' of all the stuff in the office. There is also a list of six plays and six masks performed during Christmas and Shrovetide. The plays were acted by companies of men or children who were 'apparelled and ffurnished', and provided with 'apt howses, made of canvasse, fframed, ffashioned and paynted accordingly' by the Revels Office. It is noted that the six plays were 'chosen owte of many and ffownde to be the best that then were to be had; the same also being often perused and necessarely corrected and amended by all the afforeseide officers'. Four of the masks were new; the other two 'were but translated and otherwise garnished being of the former number by meanes wherof the chardge of workmanshipp and attendaunce is cheefely to be respected'. It will be observed that the Account does not include any items for the fees of the officers or for the hire of lodgings or storehouses. The former were payable under their patents at the Exchequer, the latter provided in the royal house of St. John's. The officers get an allowance for diet when on active duty, either in the time of airings or in that of revels; and this is fixed, for each day or night, at 4_s._ for the Master, 2_s._ for the Clerk Comptroller, 2_s._ for the Clerk, and 2_s._ for the Yeoman. There is a similar allowance of 1_s._ for a Porter, described more fully in a later account as the Porter of St. John's Gate. His name was John Dauncy.[257] The Account discloses some changes in the establishment since 1559. Thomas Blagrave is still Clerk. Richard Lees had been succeeded as Clerk Comptroller on 30 December 1570 by Edward Buggin.[258] During the earlier part of the period John Holt is still Yeoman, but exercises his functions through a deputy, William Bowll, a Yeoman of the Chamber; he was replaced by John Arnold on 11 December 1571.[259] There is a letter to Cecil from William Bowll, written at some date after March 1571, in which he recites that he has recently delivered to Cecil letters from the Lord Treasurer (the Marquis of Winchester), Sir Thomas Benger, and John Holt, for a joint grant of the Yeomanship to himself and John Holt; that he has long served as Holt's deputy and paid him money on a composition as well as meeting some of the debts of the Office; that Holt is now dead and that he and his family will be undone unless Cecil procures him the post.[260] His suit, however, was obviously unsuccessful. Holt's tenure of the Yeomanship had thus extended from 1547 to 1571. He may himself have been an actor, if, as seems likely, he is the 'John Holt, momer', who received rewards for attendance on the Westminster boys at a pageant in 1561.

If Arnold was appointed in the winter of 1571, it was against him, rather than against Holt or his deputy Bowll, that a complaint was lodged with Burghley about a year later by one Thomas Giles. Giles was one of the tradesmen of the Revels. He is described in the Accounts as a haberdasher, and purchases of vizards were made from him. The burden of his complaint was that the officers of the Revels, and particularly the Yeoman, who had the custody of the masking garments, were in the habit of letting these out on hire, to their manifest deterioration, and, one fears, also to the injury of Giles's business. He enumerates twenty-one occasions upon which masks, including the new cloth of gold, black and white, and murrey satin ones, made for the Queen's delectation during the previous Christmas, had been so let out to lords, lawyers, and citizens, in town and country, between January and November 1572.[261]

It is probable that Burghley, who became Lord Treasurer in July 1572, took early steps to look into the administration of the Revels Office, for which the death of Sir Thomas Benger about June of the same year afforded an opportunity.[262] Certainly there was no possibility of bringing about any immediate economy, for the embassy of the Duc de Montmorency from France had already caused a great increase of cost. The Revels bill for 1572-3 amounted to £1,427 12_s._ 6½_d._ or very little less than that for 1571-2. Of this about £1,000 was directly due to Montmorency's visit. Moreover, the greater part of the expenditure upon revels was not directly defrayed through the Office. They bought some stuff in the open market, and employed some workmen. But they had also large supplies from the Great Wardrobe, while the structure of banqueting-houses and the like was undertaken by the Office of Works. The total cost, therefore, for any one year would have to be pieced together from the accounts of all three offices. This task has never been essayed, but on Montmorency's coming an imprest of £200 was made to Lewis Stocket, Surveyor of the Works, and another of £300 to John Fortescue, Master of the Great Wardrobe, while a memorandum in Burghley's papers cites a warrant of 12 July 1572 which authorizes the delivery by Fortescue to Benger of stuffs to no less value than £1,757 8_s._ 1½_d._[263]

Pending Burghley's investigation no patent was issued for a successor to Benger. During the Christmas of 1573, the oversight of the Office was committed jointly to Fortescue and to Henry Sackford, the Master of the Tents, and the whole of the account for the period from 1 June 1572 to 31 October 1573 is signed by them, together with the inferior officers of the Revels. There are signs of an ambition towards economy in entries showing that on several occasions during the year claims upon the Office were reduced after examination by the Comptroller and other officers.[264] The auditors in their turn had an eye upon the Office. A sum of £50 was originally included in the account with the explanation:

'Item more for new presses to be made thorowowte the whole storehowse for that the olde were so rotten that they coulde by no meanes be repayred or made any waye to serve agayne. The Queenes Maiesties store lyeng now on the ffloore in the store howse which of necessitie must preasently be provyded for before other workes can well beginne. Whiche presses being made as is desyred by the Officers wilbe a greate safegarde to the store preasently remayning and lyke-wise of the store to coome whereby many things may be preserved that otherwyse wilbe vtterly lost and spoyled contynually encreasing her Maiesties charge.'

To this is appended a note:

'Not allowid for so moche as the said presseis ar not begonn.'[265]

It may be admitted that the cost of the Revels would have been less if the officers had been in a position to pay for the goods supplied to them in ready money. They probably got small 'imprests' or advances at the beginning of the year when they could, but for the most part they had to obtain credit and satisfy their tradesmen with debentures, redeemable when the accounts had been audited and a warrant under the privy seal for the payment of the certified expenses issued. Elizabeth succeeded to an exchequer already burdened with the debt of past reigns, and the issue of these warrants was often delayed. William Bowll had made it part of his claim to be appointed Yeoman in succession to John Holt that he had made advances for 'payment to the workemen and other poore creditors for mony due unto them in the said office, accordinge to thear necessities before any warant graunted, only for to mayntayn the credit of the said office'. An undated letter is preserved amongst Burghley's papers in which he makes an attempt to recover a sum of £236 due to him for goods supplied over a period of two years and nine months.[266] A similar letter, written on behalf of the creditors and artificers serving the office, and signed by 'Poore Bryan Dodmer a creditour, to saue the labour of a great number whose exclamacion is lamentable', refers specifically to the unpaid balance of the office account on 28 February 1574, which stood at £1,550 5_s._ 8_d._[267] Bryan Dodmer had received a legacy from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1559, and is shown by the account of 1571-2 to have been at that time occupied in the affairs of the Revels Office, although not on the establishment. To 1573 and 1574 may be ascribed three memoranda, which were evidently prepared for Burghley's assistance in considering schemes of reform. Two of these, although longer than can be printed here, are singularly illuminating to students of departmental history. One, in particular, gives a very capable summary of the situation, and is informed by a good deal of sound administrative sense.[268] It begins with a short historical notice of the origin and foundation of the Revels and a suggestion for a fresh amalgamation of the Mastership with those of the Tents and Toils. The writer then considers the possibility of either farming out the office, or fixing a definite allowance for all ordinary charges, and rejects both proposals as impracticable. Nor does he see much room for economy in the 'airings', or in a reduction in the number of officers; on the contrary, he is in favour of supplementing the Master, who must give attendance at Court, by a working head of the Office with the rank of Serjeant. He lays stress on the importance of co-operation amongst the officers, and while not prepared to abrogate the quasi-independence of the Master which the appointment of the inferior officers by patent gave them, submits an elaborate draft of new ordinances provisionally dated in the regnal year 1572-3, and intended to replace those which he understands to have been delivered 'before my time' to some of the Queen's Privy Council.[269] This deals, not only with the functions of each officer, but also with the time-table of the year's work, the control of the artificers, the economical employment of wardrobe stuff, the books to be kept, and the avoidance of debt by a liberal imprest. An historian of the stage can wish that the suggestion had been adopted for order to be annually given 'to a connynge paynter to enter into a fayer large ligeard booke in the manner of limnynge the maskes and shewes sett fourthe in that last seruice, to thende varyetye may be vsed from tyme to tyme'. I think that the author of this document was probably Buggin, the Clerk Comptroller, since the two other memoranda are clearly on internal evidence the work of Blagrave, the Clerk, and one of the Yeomen, and Burghley is likely to have given each officer a chance of expressing his views. It might, however, have been Henry Sackford, in view of the suggestion for amalgamation with the Tents, and in any case Buggin probably had Sackford's interests in mind, not to speak of his own chances of obtaining the contemplated Serjeanty. Blagrave's proposals are in matters of detail not unlike Buggin's, but he does not endorse the suggestion of a Serjeant, and is less skilful in keeping his personal ambitions in the background.[270]

If it please her highnes to bestowe the M_aste_rship of the office vpon me (as I trust myne experience by acquayntaunce w_i_t_h_ those thaffaires and contynuall dealing therein by the space of xxvij or xxviij yeres deserveth, being also the auncient of the office by at the leaste xxiiij of those yeres; otherwise I wolde be lothe hereafter to deale nor medle w_i_t_h_ it nor in it further then apperteyneth to the clerke, whose allowaunce is so small as I gyve it holy to be discharged of the toyle and attendaunce). I haue hetherto w_i_t_h_oute recompence to my greate chardge and hynderaunce borne the burden of the M_aste_r, and taken the care and paynes of that, others haue had the thankes and rewarde for, w_hi_ch I trust her Ma_ies_tie will not put me to w_i_t_h_oute the fee, alowaunce, and estimac_i_on longing to it, nor if her highnes vouchesafe not to bestowe it vpon me to let me passe w_i_t_h_oute recompence for that is done and paste.

If the Fee and allowaunce be thought to muche, then let what her Ma_ies_tie and Honerable counsaile shall thinke mete for any man that shall supplie that burden and place to haue toward_es_ his chardg_es_ be appointed of certeyntie, and I will take that, and serve for as litle as any man that meanes to Deale truly, so I be not to greate a loser by it.

The Yeoman's _Memorandum_ is short enough to be given in full.[271]

A note of sarten thing_es_ which are very nedefull to be Redressed in the offys of the Revelles.

1. Fyrste the Romes or Loging_es_, where the garments and other thing_es_, as hedpeces and suche lyke, dothe lye, Is in suche decaye for want of rep_a_racions, that it hath by that meanes perished A very greate longe wall, which parte thereof is falne doune and hath broke undoune A greate presse, which stoode all Alongest the same, by w_hi_ch meanes I ame fayne to laye the garment_es_ vppon the grounde, to the greate hurt of the same, so as if youre honoure ded se the same it woolde petye you to see suche stoffe so yll bestowed.

2. Next there is no convenyent Romes for the Artifycers to wourke in, but that Taylours, Paynters, Proparatiue makers, and Carpenders are all fayne to wourke in one rome, which is A very greate hinderaunce one to Another, w_hi_ch thinge nedes not for theye are slacke anowe of them selves.

3. More, there ys two whole yeares charg_es_ be hinde vn payde, to the greate hinderaunce of the poore Artyfycers that wourke there. In so mvche that there be A greate parte of them that haue byn dryven to sell there billes or debentars for halfe that is dewe vnto them by the same.

4. More, yt hath broughte the offyce in suche dyscredet with those that dyd delyver wares into the offyce, that theye will delyuer yt in for A thirde parte more then it is woorthe, or ellce we can get no credet of them for the same, which thinge is A very greate hinderaunce to the Queenes ma_ies_tie and A greate discredet to those that be offecers in that place, which thinge for my parte I Ame very sory to see.

This is endorsed,

'For the Reuels. Matters to be redressed there.'

The documents are proposals for reform rather than statements of existing practice; but proposals for reform made by permanent officials are not generally very sweeping, and I think it may be taken that we get a pretty fair notion of the actual working of a Government department in the sixteenth century, not without certain hints of jealousies and disputes between the various officers as to their respective functions and privileges, which in those days as in these occasionally tended to interfere with the smooth working of the machine. The determination of these functions and privileges by regulation; the keeping of regular books, inventories, journals, and ledgers; the institution of a system of finance which would avoid the necessity of employing credit; the prohibition of the hiring-out of Revels stuff; these are amongst the improvements in organization which suggested themselves to practical men who were not in the least likely to suggest the transference of the duties of their own rather superfluous Office to the Office of Works or the Wardrobe. Both Buggin and Blagrave ask that the hands of the officers might be strengthened by a commission; that is, apparently, a warrant entitling them to enforce service on behalf of the Crown, such as the Master of the Children of the Chapel had to 'take up' singing-boys, and other departments of the Household, including probably the Tents, had for the purveyance of provisions and cartage. Probably the Revels had already enjoyed this authority upon special occasions. The _Account_ for the banqueting house of 1572 includes an item for 'flowers of all sortes taken up by comyssion and gathered in the feeldes'.[272] At the bottom of the documents there is a feeling that the weak point in the organization is the Mastership. The Master had to be a courtier, dancing attendance on the Queen and the Lord Chamberlain, and was likely to have the qualities and failings of a courtier; and then he came to the office, and gave instructions to people who knew their own business much better than he did.

Blagrave's ambitions to become Master of the Office were not wholly gratified. He was allowed to act as Master for some years, but he never received a patent, and after Benger's death he had the mortification of seeing the post given to another, while he was left to content himself with his much despised Clerkship. His regency lasted from November 1573 until Christmas 1579, and his signature stands alone or heads those of the other officers upon the Accounts relating to that period, with the exception of the last, on which the name of the incoming Master appears.[273] His appointment was presumably from year to year. It is stated in the Account for 1573-4 to have been made by 'her Majestie's pleasure signefyed by the right honorable L. Chamberlaine', and in that for 1574-5 to appear from 'sundry letters from the Lorde Chamberlayne'. And the vacancy emphasized the dependence of the Revels upon that great branch of the tripartite Household, the Chamber, over which the Lord Chamberlain presided. All Blagrave's activities were subject to control by his superior officer. He and his subordinates were constantly going by boat or horse to Richmond, or wherever the Court might be, to take instructions from the Lord Chamberlain, to submit patterns of masks and alterations of plays, and to obtain payment of expenses.[274] Blagrave himself had a house at Bedwyn in Wiltshire, and couriers were sometimes sent after him when his presence in London was urgently needed.[275] Upon his entrance into office the officers were called together 'for colleccion and showe of eche thinge prepared for her Maiesties regall disporte and recreacion as also the store wherewith to ffurnish, garnish and sett forth the same; wherof, as also of the whole state of the office the L. Chamberlayne according to his honours appointment was throughly advertised'.[276] The store was also carefully perused and the inventories checked upon the death of John Arnold the Yeoman, and the appointment on 29 January 1574 of Walter Fish in his room.[277] The Accounts continue to include allowances for the diet of the Clerk as well as that of the Master. I have no doubt that Blagrave was quite capable of drawing them both; but it is also likely enough that some unestablished person undertook the duties of 'Acting' Clerk. If so, this was most probably Bryan Dodmer, who was very useful on financial business during 1573-4 and 1574-5. After this year he disappears from the Accounts and his place is apparently taken by John Drawater. William Bowll, the ex-Deputy-Yeoman and silkweaver, and Thomas Giles, the haberdasher, in spite of their complaints against the Office, continue to supply it with goods.[278]

The general character of the Accounts, both under Fortescue and Sackford, and under Blagrave, is much the same as that of the one, already analysed, for 1571-2. Periods of activity, mainly at Christmas and Shrovetide, still alternate with periods of quiescence, stock-taking, and 'airing'. Occasionally the Office has to bestir itself to accompany a progress.[279] Some unusually detailed entries in 1576-7 give interesting information as to the rates of wages ordinarily paid to workmen. The head tailor got 20_d._ for each day or night, and other tailors 12_d._ Carpenters got 16_d._; the Porter and other attendants 12_d._ Painters, haberdashers, property-makers, joiners, carvers, and wire-drawers were paid 'at sundrie rates'. In a later year, 1579-80, the first and second painter got 2_s._ and 20_d._ respectively, and the rest 18_d._ The first wire-drawer got 20_d._, and the rest 16_d._[280] The payments for night-work really represent double wages for overtime, since we learn from Buggin and Blagrave that the length of a night was reckoned at about half that of a day. The workmen who waited on the mask before Montmorency in 1572 got extra rewards, because they 'had no tyme to eat theyer supper'; and while the banqueting-house was building Bryan Dodmer had to buy bread and cheese 'to serve the plasterers that wroughte all the nighte and mighte not be spared nor trusted to go abrode to supper'.[281] An important function of the Office consisted in 'calling together of sundry players and pervsing, fitting and reformyng theier matters (otherwise not convenient to be showen before her Maiestie)'.[282] Dodmer paid 40_s._ in 1574-5 for 'paynes in pervsing and reformyng of playes sundry tymes as neede required for her Maiestie's lyking', and it is a pity that the name of the payee is left blank in the Account.[283] When the plays had been chosen and knocked into shape, they had to be rehearsed. Now and then they were taken before the Lord Chamberlain for this purpose; but as a rule the rehearsals went on in the presence of the officers at St. John's. Here were a 'greate chambere where the workes were doone and the playes rezited', a storehouse, and the mansions of the officers. The Clerk had an office with a nether room next the yard.[284] Fish complains of the inconvenience of having only one room for every kind of artificer to work in. Items for yellow cotton to line 'the Monarkes gowne' and for his jerkin and hose perhaps point to the use of a lay figure.[285] One Nicholas Newdigate was extremely useful in hearing and training the children who frequently performed.[286] Naturally these gave a good deal of trouble. At Shrovetide 1574 nine of them were employed for a mask at Hampton Court. They had diet and lodging at St. John's, 'whiles thay learned theier partes and jestures meete for the mask'. They were taken from Paul's Wharf to Hampton Court in a barge with six oars and two 'tylt whirreys'. They arrived on Monday, but the Queen would not see them until the Tuesday, and they were lodged for the two nights at Mother Sparo's at Kingston. An Italian woman and her daughter were employed to dress their heads. When they got back to London on Ash-Wednesday, 'sum of them being sick and colde and hungry', fire and victuals were provided at Blackfriars. Each child received a reward of 1_s._[287] Trouble was caused also sometimes by the behaviour of the courtiers who took part in festivities. Six horns garnished with silver were provided at a cost of 18_s._, for a mask of hunters on 1 January 1574, and there is a note in the Account that these horns 'the maskers detayned and yet dooth kepe them against the will of all the officers'. This sort of difficulty was traditional. It was already perplexing the worthy Gibson more than half a century before.[288] That the practice of lending out the Revels stuff was not wholly abandoned is shown by an application from Magdalen College, Oxford, to Tilney in 1592 for furniture for a play.[289] Finance was also a cause of trouble. On his appointment in 1573 Blagrave succeeded in obtaining a 'prest' of £200 to begin the year upon. In 1574 he did the same, but not until Dodmer had applied in vain to the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Walsingham, and was finally 'after long attendaunce (and that none of the afore-named coulde get the Queenes Maiestie to resolve therin) dryven to trouble her Maiestie himselfe and by special peticion obtayned as well the grawnt for ccˡᶦ in prest as the dettes to be paid'. At the end of each year there were formalities and delays to be gone through before the bills could be paid. The accounts had to be made up, to be passed by the auditors, and to be declared before the Lord Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then a royal warrant had to be obtained for a privy seal, then the privy seal itself, and finally actual payment at the Exchequer. All these processes necessitated constant fees and gratuities. In 1579 the estimated charges for audit and payment amounted to £8. For his considerable financial services in 1574-5 Bryan Dodmer demanded £13 6_s._ 8_d._, but this was ruthlessly cut down by the officers to £6 13_s._ 4_d._ They in their turn found the auditor disallowing a small payment because it had been entered in the books after the sum had been cast, and was not properly certified. Dodmer had advanced the money, but he could not be repaid until the following year.[290]

A letter of 8 April 1577 from Leicester to Burghley reminds him that a certain suit of Sir Jerome Bowes and others 'touching plays' had been referred to them, together with the Lord Chamberlain, by the Queen for consideration. They had 'myslyked of the perpetuytie they sutors desierd', but a report still had to be made.[291] There is nothing to show the nature of this 'suit', but it is not unnatural to conjecture that it arose in some way out of the vacancy in the Mastership. No more, however, is heard of Sir Jerome Bowes in this connexion. It was not until seven years after Benger's death that Blagrave met with the rebuff of finding himself passed over in favour of an outsider, and reduced to his former position of Clerk, with its subordinate duties and its miserable allowances for the 'ordynary grene cloth, paper, incke, counters, deskes, standishes', and so forth. The new Master was Edmund Tilney, who had dedicated to Elizabeth, in 1568, a dialogue on matrimony under the title of _The Flower of Friendship_. Tilney was a connexion of Lord Howard of Effingham, to whose influence at Court he probably owed his appointment. His patent is dated on 24 July 1579, but the fee was to run from the previous Christmas, and he may therefore have formally assumed his duties at that period. His signature is attached with those of Blagrave and the other officers to the Account for the whole of the period from 14 February 1578 to 31 October 1579, but the details do not afford any evidence that he took a personal share in the work of the Office.[292] In 1581 he was spoken of as a possible ambassador to Spain, but this does not appear to have led to anything.[293]

Only a few detailed Accounts belonging to Tilney's Mastership are in existence. These are made up regularly from each 1 November to the following 31 October. They do not disclose any noteworthy change in the previous routine of the Office. On 8 August 1580 Thomas Sackford, a Master of the Requests, and Sir Owen Hopton, the Lieutenant of the Tower, were instructed by the Council to take a view of the Revels stuff upon the appointment of the new Master, and to deliver inventories of the same to Tilney. Accordingly, a charge of 40_s._ 'for the ingrossinge of three paire of indentid inventories' appears in the Account.[294] Blagrave appears to have sulked at first, for in 1581 the employment of a professional scribe to make up the accounts was explained by the absence of a clerk. The auditors, very properly, made a marginal note of surprise, and Blagrave resumed his duties.[295] In 1582-3 considerable repairs were required at the Revels Office, owing to the fact that a chamber which formed part of Blagrave's lodging had fallen down. An office and a chamber for the Master seem for a time to have been provided at Court during the attendance of the Master, and warmed with billets and coals at the expense of the Revels, but by 1587-8 they had been crowded out, and an allowance of 10_s._ was made for the hire of rooms.[296] Another entry for 1582-3 marks an epoch of some importance in the history of the Elizabethan stage. On 10 March 1583 Tilney was summoned to Court by a letter from Mr. Secretary [Walsingham] 'to choose out a companie of players for her Ma_ies_tie'. Horse hire and charges on the journey cost him 20_s._[297] Outside the Accounts there is one document of considerable interest belonging to the early years of Tilney's rule. This is a patent, dated 24 December 1581, and giving to the Master of the Revels such a 'commission' or grant of exceptional powers over the subjects of the realm, as had been stated in the _Memoranda_ of 1573 to be eminently desirable in the interests of the office.[298] The Master is authorized to take and retain such workmen 'at competent wages', and take such 'stuff, ware, or merchandise', 'at price reasonable', together with such 'carriages', by land and by water, as he may consider to be necessary or expedient for the service of the Revels. He or his deputy may commit recalcitrant persons to ward. He may protect his workmen from arrest, and they are not to be liable to forfeit if their service in the Revels obliges them to break outside contracts for piece-work. The licensing powers also conferred upon the Master by this patent are considered elsewhere.[299]

Tilney's accession to office coincided with the beginning of the period of heightened splendour in Court entertainments, due to the negotiations for Elizabeth's marriage with the Duke of Anjou.[300] A magnificent banqueting-house was built at Whitehall, and Sidney, Fulke Greville, and others, equipped as the Foster Children of Desire, besieged the Fortress of Perfect Beauty in the tilt-yard. One might have expected to find a considerably larger expenditure accounted for by the officers of the Revels. But this was not so, except for the one winter of Anjou's visit. The cost of the Office, which in 1571-3 had grown to about £1,500 a year, rapidly fell again. In 1573-4 it was about £670; in 1574-5 about £580; and thereafter it generally stood at not more than from £250 to £350. In 1581-2, however, it reached £630.[301] It is probable that the figures do not point to any real reduction of expenditure, but only mean that, after the experience of John Fortescue, the Master of the Wardrobe, as Acting Master of the Revels in 1572-3, it was found economical to supply the needs of the Office, to a greater extent even than in the past, through the organization of the Wardrobe and the Office of Works, instead of by the direct purchase of goods or employment of labour in the open market. Stowe records, for example, that the banqueting-house of 1581 cost £1,744 19_s._, but no part of this appears in the Revels Account, although the banqueting-house of 1572 had cost the Office £224 6_s._ 10_d._[302] Probably it was all met by the Office of Works. About 1596 a further reform in the interests of economy was attempted, by the establishment of a fixed annual allowance for expenses, including the 'wages' or 'diet' hitherto allowed to the officers for each day or night of actual attendance at 'airings' or at the rehearsals or performances of plays. The last payment under the old system was made on 30 May 1594 by a warrant to Tilney for a sum of £311 2_s._ 2_d._ in respect of works and wares and officers' wages for 1589-92, together with an imprest of £100 for 1592-3.[303] The next warrant was made out on 25 January 1597, and directed the payment of £200 for 1593-6, together with an annual payment of £66 6_s._ 8_d._, 'as composition for defraying the charges of the office for plays only, according to a rate of a late reformation and composition for ordinary charges there'.[304] The amount of £311 2_s._ 2_d._ paid for the three years 1589-92 is so small as to suggest that the distinction between 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' charges may have already existed during the period, and may thus have preceded the reduction of 'ordinary' charges to a 'composition'. The warrant of 25 January 1597, however, never became operative. There is an entry of it in the Docquet Book of the Signet Office, and in the margin are the notes 'Remanet: neuer passed the Seales' and 'Staid by the L_ord_ Thre_a_s_ore_r: vacat'. Fortunately we are able to trace the causes which led to this interposition by Burghley. It will perhaps be remembered that Edward Buggin, in his _Memorandum_ of 1573, had considered a possible reform of the administration of the Revels Office on lines very similar to those now adopted, and had decided that it was impracticable.[305] Doubtless the same view was held by the officers of 1597, and after the manner of permanent officials they took steps to ensure that it should be impracticable. Disputes arose between the Master and the inferior officers as to the distribution of the sum allowed for ordinary charges, and, pending a settlement of these, all payments out of the Office were suspended. The result was a memorial to Burghley from the 'creditors and servitors' of the Revels, which called attention to the fact that five years' arrears due to them were withheld 'only throughe the discention amoungest the officers'.[306]

This was in the first instance referred to Tilney for his observations, and he writes:

All _tha_t I can saye Is, _tha_t _th_er Is a Composition layd vppo_n_ me by Quens ma_ies_te and signed by her self, rated verbatimly by certayn orders sett down by my L_ord_ Treasorer vnder his L_ordshippes_ Hand, whervnto I haue appealed, because _th_e other officers will nott be satisficed w_ith_ ayni reason, whert_o_ I am now teyd & nott vnto there friuilus demandes. Wherefore lett _th_em sett down In writtinge _th_e speciall Causes why they shuld reiect _th_e forsayd orders and _th_e Compositio_n_ gronded theron, Then am I to reply vnto _th_e same as I can, for tell then _th_es petitioners can nott be satisfied.

Ed. Tyllney.

The document was then referred to Burghley, with the following summary of its contents:

5 November 1597.

They shewe _tha_t theie are vnpaid theise five yeares last past for wares deliuered and service done in _th_e office of _th_e Revells, throughe _th_e dissencion amongest _th_e officers to _the_ir greate hinderance theise deare yeares beeinge poore men.

Vppon _thei_r_e_ mocion to _th_e m_aste_r of _th_e office, his answere is, _tha_t _th_e faulte is not in him, but he is redy to satisfie _th_em all such allowances as are dew vnto _the_m, either by yo_u_r L_ordshippes_ former order, or in righte theie can challeng, vppon _whi_ch order _th_e m_aste_r doth wholly relie but _th_e other reiect _th_e same.

for _tha_t _the_re is no licklyhood of _thei_re agreem_en_t, whereby _th_e petecioners may be satisfied, Theie Humbly pray yo_u_r L_ordshippe_ to Command som order for _th_e releving _thei_re poore estates.

Burghley then gave this direction:

One of the Awdito_u_rs of the prest w_i_th one of the Barons of _th_e Eschecqr to heare the officers of the Revels, and thes petitioners, and either to ende the questions betwene them, or to certefie theyre opinions.

W. Burghley.

The document is then further endorsed with the report of Burghley's referees:

quinto Januarii 1597 [1597/8].

Pleaseth it yo_u_r good Lordeship to be advertized that, after longe travaile and paines taken betwene the M_aste_r of the Revells and the Officers thereof, It is agreed by o_u_r entreaty that, out of the xlˡᶦ by yeare allowed for Fees or wage for their attendaunces, the M_aste_r of the Revell_es_ shall yearely allowe and paye the severall Somes of mony vnd_e_r written, viz.

To the Clarke Comptroller of that office viijˡᶦ To the Yeoman of the Revell_es_ viijˡᶦ To the Groome of the Office xlˢ To the Porter of St. Johns xxˢ

whereof xxˢ, p_ar_cell of the saide viijˡᶦ allowed to the yeoman, is to be aunswered by the same yeoman after this yeare to the said Groome.

Which yf it may stande w_i_th yo_u_r good Lordshippes lyking, wee truste will bring contynuall quietnes and dutifull service to her ma_ies_tie.

John Sotherton. Jo. Conyers.

Hereon Burghley comments:

My desire is to be better satisfied howe the Credito_u_rs shall be payd.

W. Burghley.

Here the minutes stop, but Burghley must have been satisfied and must have allowed the arrangement to go forward, for on 10 January 1598 a new warrant was issued, in the place of that previously stayed, for the £200 due on account of 1593-6, and for the annual £66 6_s._ 8_d._, 'by way of composition for defraying the ordinary services of plays only'. Apparently the fixed rate was made retrospective for 1593-6.[307] Two or three points of interest arise from the document just printed. It seems curious that no share in the composition is awarded to the Clerk. Possibly Blagrave, old and disappointed, was in practical retirement at Bedwyn; but in that case he would naturally have appointed and claimed allowance for a deputy. On the other hand, a new post, of Groom of the Revels, corresponding to that of Groom of the Tents which had existed since 1544, seems to have been created, probably for the benefit of Thomas Clatterbocke, who, unless two generations are involved, had served the Office continuously as a foreman tailor since 1548;[308] and it is to be gathered that some redistribution of duties and emoluments between the Yeoman and the Groom was in progress. The Porter of St. John's Gate, also, now seems to be classed as an officer, or perhaps rather a 'servitor', of the Revels; and in this post John Dauncy has been succeeded since 1588-9 by John Griffeth.[309] The sum of £66 6_s._ 8_d._ allowed for ordinary charges was evidently made up of £40 for officers' 'wages' and £26 6_s._ 8_d._ for tradesmen's bills and miscellaneous expenses. This last sum is so small as to suggest that the Office had been relieved both of the emption of stuffs and of the payment of tailors and property-makers. After paying £19 to the inferior officers, Tilney had £21 left for his own 'wages'. This amount is out of proportion to the double rate, of 4_s._ as against the 2_s._ paid to each inferior officer, which the Master had been accustomed to receive for each day's or night's attendance. But the accounts for 1582-3, 1584-5, and 1587-8 show that the attendances made by Tilney, who possibly exercised a much more detailed supervision of his Office than either Benger or Cawarden had attempted, were far in excess, during those years, of those of his subordinates. Every officer attended for the twenty annual days of 'airing' and for the actual nights, which were sixteen in 1582-3, and fourteen in 1584-5 and 1587-8, of the performances. In addition, Tilney attended for 106, 117, and 116 days respectively, and the other officers for only 60, 51, and 28 (in the case of the Yeoman, 38) days respectively, in these three years.[310] Probably he liked to be at Court, whether there was much to do or not. The average allowances for wages had therefore been about £29 10_s._ a year for the Master and £7 10_s._ a year for each inferior officer, so that the composition was by no means unduly in Tilney's favour. Moreover, he had introduced a practice of taking to Court a doorkeeper and three other attendants, and charging 1_s._ a day as diet for each. Probably these were his personal servants, and he got no further allowance for them under the composition. The precedence of the Master of the Revels at Court was fixed by a certificate of the Heralds in 1588, which directed that in the procession to St. Paul's for a thanksgiving after the Armada he should walk with the Knights Bachelor.[311]

Of course, the 'wages' dealt with by the composition and charged to the Revels Account were quite distinct from the 'fees' payable to the officers out of the Exchequer in virtue of their patents. These had been settled in Cawarden's time, and, so far as the inferior officers were concerned, do not appear to have been varied since. The Clerk Comptroller was entitled to 8_d._ a day, together with four yards of woollen cloth, worth 6_s._ 8_d._ each, from the Wardrobe. In practice, however, the livery had been replaced by a money allowance of 26_s._ 8_d._ charged half on the Revels and half on the Tents.[312] The Clerk had 8_d._ a day, and a money payment from the Treasury of 24_s._ a year in lieu of livery; the Yeoman 6_d._ a day, and a livery 'such as Yeomen of the household have' at the Wardrobe. The Master's fee, alike in the patents of Cawarden, Benger, and Tilney, is given as £10. But Tilney, according to a statement made by his successor about 1611, received £100 'for a better recompence'.[313] In addition to fee and wages, each of the officers was entitled under his patent to an official residence. The Master held his place 'cum omnibus domibus mansionibus regardis proficuis iuribus libertatibus et advantagiis eidem officio quovismodo pertinentibus sive spectantibus vel tali officio pertinere sive spectare debentibus'. The Clerk Comptroller could claim a house, 'ubi paviliones ... positi sunt aut erunt' to be assigned by the Master of the Tents; the Clerk, one at the _staura_ of the Revels or the Tents, to be assigned by the Master of one or other Office; the Yeoman 'one sufficient house or mancion such as hereafter shall be assigned to him' for the keeping of the vestures. Cawarden had provided these houses at the Blackfriars and had taken allowances in his accounts of £10 for his own and £5 each for those of his three subordinates, as well as one of £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the work and store rooms of the Office.[314] After his death suitable lodgings were available at St. John's. During the interregnum the Master's lodging was utilized as a supplementary storehouse. It was consequently not ready for Tilney on his appointment, and he was allowed £13 6_s._ 8_d._ a year for lodgings elsewhere.[315] An undated letter from him at the Revels Office to Sir William More, complaining of the conduct of a neighbour, suggests that he found these at the Blackfriars, and here he seems to have remained, at any rate until 1582.[316] But by 1586-7 he had moved to St. John's, where he occupied not his proper lodging but that of the Comptroller, for which he paid £16 a year. This we learn from a careful survey made at that date by Thomas Graves, Surveyor of the Office of Works.[317] He was comfortably housed enough, for he had thirteen chambers, with a parlour, hall, kitchen, stable and other appurtenances, and a 'convenient garden'. The Clerk had eleven rooms and a stable, and the Yeoman seven and a barn. The addition of the Master's lodging to the space available for official purposes had presumably removed the difficulties of accommodation of which Fish had complained in 1574. In addition to the 'Great Hall' and a 'great chamber', there were a cutting house and three 'woorking housez' below the hall. It may be added that there had been some changes during Tilney's Mastership, both of Clerk Comptroller and of Yeoman. On 15 October 1584 William Honing was appointed Comptroller in place of Edward Buggin.[318] On 25 June 1596, Honing having resigned, Edmund Pakenham was appointed as from 29 September 1595.[319] The last Yeoman of the reign was Edward Kirkham. His patent, in succession to Walter Fish, then dead, is dated on 28 April 1586.[320] But it refers to his 'service done in the Revels', and it is clear from the account for 1582-3 that he was already employed during that year, probably as deputy to Fish, in whose place he signed the book.[321] Fish signed that for 1580-1, and that for 1581-2 is missing. Kirkham's activities as a member of the syndicate formed to finance the Chapel plays in 1601 are a matter for discussion elsewhere.[322]

Tilney remained Master of the Revels until his death on 20 August 1610. But with the new reign he appears to have exercised most of his functions through his nephew, Sir George Buck, as his deputy and prospective successor. Buck had been in the Cadiz expedition of 1596, and was not improbably the Mr. Buck who carried dispatches for Cecil to Middelburgh in the Low Countries and afterwards in England during the autumn of 1601.[323] At the funeral of Elizabeth he received livery as an Esquire of the Body, probably extraordinary.[324] Hopes of the Mastership seem to have been held out to him as early as 1597, to the despair of another Esquire of the Body, John Lyly, the dramatist, who considered that he had claims upon the reversion to the Mastership, and pretty clearly regarded the bestowal of it upon another as a distinct breach of faith on the part of the Queen. Several letters of his referring to the matter are preserved at Hatfield and elsewhere. The earliest and most important of these is dated 22 December 1597 and addressed to Sir Robert Cecil. Herein Lyly says:

'I haue not byn importunat, that thes 12 yeres w_it_h vnwearied pacienc have entertayned the p_ro_rogui_n_g of her ma_ies_ties promises, w_hi_ch if in the 13 may conclud w_it_h the Parlement, I will think the greves of tymes past but pastymes ... Offices in Reuersion are forestalld, in possession ingrost, & that of _th_e Reuells countenanced upon Buck, wherein the Justic of an oyre shewes his affection to _th_e keper & partialty to _th_e sheppard, a french fauor.'

To the Queen herself Lyly wrote:

'I was entertayned yo_u_r Mai_es_ties servant by yo_u_r owne gratious ffavo_u_r, stranghthened w_i_th condic_i_ons, that I should ayme all my courses att the Revells (I dare not saye, w_i_th a promise, butt a hopeffull Item, of the Reversion); ffor the w_hi_ch, theis tenn yeares, I haue attended, w_i_th an vnwearyed patience, and I knowe not whatt crabb tooke mee ffor an oyster, that, in the middest of the svnnshine of yo_u_r gratious aspect, hath thrust a stone betwene the shelles, to eate mee alyve, that onely lyve on dead hopes.'

The date of this petition is probably 1598, since a second letter to Cecil, dated 9 September 1598, specifies the same period of 'ten yeres', during which Lyly had had 'nothing applied to my wantes but promises'. On 27 February 1601, a third letter to Cecil, asking for his aid in obtaining a grant out of property forfeited after the Essex conspiracy, suggests that 'after 13 yeres servic and suit for _th_e Revells, I may turne all my forces & frends to feed on _th_e Rebells'. This was written in connexion with a second petition to the Queen, in which occurs the following passage:

'It pleased yo_u_r Mai_es_tie to except against Tentes and Toyles. I wishe, that ffor Tentes I might putt in Tenem_en_tes: soe should I bee eased with some Toyles; some landes, some goodes, ffynes, or fforffeytures, that should ffall, by the just ffall of these most ffalce Trayto_u_rs, that seeinge nothinge will come by the Revells, I may praye vppon Rebells. Thirteen yeares, yo_u_r Highnes Servant, butt yett nothinge....'[325]

The general drift of these documents is fairly clear. It would seem that Lyly received promises of advancement from Elizabeth about 1585, probably as a result of the success of his plays; that in 1588 he was 'entertained the queen's servant', with a more or less authorized expectation of place in the Revels; that in 1597 his claims were set aside in favour of Buck; and that, after unavailing protests, he made the best of the situation and attempted to obtain what compensation he could for his disappointment. I find some confirmation of the view that about 1588 Lyly came to be regarded, possibly on account of the aid rendered by his pen to the bishops against Martin Marprelate, as having some right of succession to a place at Court, in an allusion of Gabriel Harvey, who in his _Advertisement for Papp-Hatchett_, dated 5 November 1589, but not published until it was included in his _Pierce's_ _Supererogation_ of 1593, says of Papp-Hatchett, who is almost certainly Lyly, 'He might as truly forge any lewd or villanous report of any one in England; and for his labour challenge to be preferred to the Clerkship of the whetstone'; and again, 'His knavish and foolish malice palpably bewrayeth itself in most odious actions; meet to garnish the foresayd famous office of the whetstone'.[326] The actual phrasing of Lyly's letters is, of course, characteristically obscure. It is possible that the 'keper' referred to in the first of them is the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, to whom, if Collier may be trusted, Buck sent, in 1605, a copy of a poem called [Greek: DAPHNIS POLYSTEPHANOS], with some lines referring to an obligation of long standing towards his patron.[327] The allusion to 'Tentes and Toyles' may mean that, after giving up hope of the Mastership of the Revels, Lyly had turned his thoughts to the Mastership of the Tents and Toils, the actual holder of which, in 1601, Henry Sackford, had been appointed to the Tents as far back as 1559, and must therefore have been an oldish man; or possibly that, if he could not have the higher place, Lyly would have been content with the reversion of one of the two subordinate appointments, the Clerkship or the Clerk Comptrollership, which the Revels shared with the Tents.[328]

I may complete the story by pointing out that Buck, no less than Lyly, was making interest with Cecil. As a connexion of the Howards, he had of course a powerful influence behind him, and after the death of Nicasius Yetswiert, French Secretary and Clerk of the Signet, Lord Howard of Effingham had written to Cecil on 28 April 1595[329]:

'In favour of Mʳ. Buck, whom Her Majesty, talking with Mʳ. John Stanhope, herself named, showing a gracious disposition to do him good, and think him fit, as sure he is, for one of the two offices of Mʳ. Necasius, that is called unto God's mercy. For the French tongue he can do it very well to serve her Majesty.'

Four years later, on 1 June 1599, Buck himself wrote to the Secretary[330]:

'I understood by a friend of mine, not many months since, that you were very well affected to mine old long suit, and of your own disposition offered to move the Queen in my behalf. Ever since I reckoned myself in your good favour till yesterday that I heard you had given your goodwill to another, and besides had persuaded one of my chiefest friends to be solicitor for him. My interest therein accrued out of frank almoin, and therefore I can claim no estate but during pleasure, yet I hoped, as other poor true tenants do, not to be turned out so long as I performed my honest duties.'

This may reasonably be taken as referring to the Mastership of the Revels, and makes it clear that, whatever Elizabeth had said or done in 1597, she had not given Buck any irrecoverable promise. Very likely she never did. But early in the new reign, on 23 June 1603, Buck received a formal grant by patent of the reversion to Tilney.[331] On the same day was issued a new commission for the office, similar to that of 1581, but in Buck's name instead of Tilney's, from which it is to be inferred that he had become the acting Master.[332] On 23 July 1603 he was knighted.[333] Tilney, however, continued to render the accounts, which, with two exceptions, only exist for the whole of the reign of James in a summary form. The account for 1609-10 is by Tilney's executor, Thomas Tilney; and from 1610-11 onwards Buck is accounting officer, and in full enjoyment of the Mastership.[334] One of the two detailed accounts is Tilney's for 1604-5, the other Buck's for 1611-12. These are made interesting by their schedules of Court performances, the authenticity of which may now be regarded as fairly vindicated.[335] They show that the establishment remained precisely upon its sixteenth-century lines. The close of Elizabeth's reign witnessed the termination by death of Blagrave's fifty-seven years' service in the Revels.[336] William Honing, the former Comptroller, returned to the Office as Clerk in his room, under a patent made retrospective to 25 March 1603.[337] He was still there, as was Edward Kirkham, the Yeoman, in 1617.[338] On the other hand there was a rather rapid succession of Clerk Comptrollers: Edmund Pakenham to 1605-6, Edmund Fowler from 1606-7 to 1608-9, William Page in 1609-10, and Alexander Stafford from 24 April 1611 to 1617 or later.[339] The Groom or Purveyor, like the Porter of St. John's, appears to have been a servitor and not an officer by patent. During 1603-15 he was Stephen Baile, who had succeeded Thomas Clatterbocke. The Porter of St. John's, during the same period, was Richard Prescot.[340]

The change of reign brought with it another change in the financial arrangements for the office. The 'composition' introduced by Burghley in 1597 was abandoned, and henceforth the Master regularly received an imprest of £100 at the beginning of each financial year, together with the balance due on an account rendered by him for all charges since the time of the last imprest. The total amount passing through his hands was not large. During the earlier years of the reign it varied from £150 to £300, and during 1611-15 from £300 to £500.[341] In 1617 the 'ordinary' issues for the Revels were still estimated at £300.[342] Nor was there any special need for 'extraordinary' issues, since the organization of the masks, in which Jacobean Court extravagance centred, was not entrusted to the Revels at all, but to some nominated officer, under the direct supervision of the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Horse, who received funds direct from the Treasury for any expenditure which did not fall within the provinces of the Wardrobe or the Office of Works.[343] The Revels Officers continued indeed to give their personal attendance on mask nights, and to charge for their diet accordingly. But their actual responsibility for the entertainments appears to have been limited to the supervision of the fittings, such as the 'music house' in the hall or banqueting-house, and in particular of the elaborate arrangements for lighting. The wire-drawer's bill is the chief outgoing represented in the annual accounts. There is very little else except the personal allowances for the officers and the Master's four servants, their office expenses and boat-hire, the audit and exchequer costs, and occasional repairs to the 'tiring-house' used for rehearsals and other parts of the premises which they occupied. The Master charges diet for himself and his men for every day between All Hallows and Ash Wednesday, together with an extra amount for each actual night of play or mask, and for a varying number of days of tilting and running at the ring and twenty days of 'airing' in the summer. The Comptroller, Clerk, and Yeoman get £13 6_s._ 8_d._ each and the Groom £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the whole of their required attendance. Beyond a stray property or garment here and there, there is nothing spent on emptions of stuff or on tailors and the like. I think it is clear that the result of the policy initiated by Burghley had been to reduce the Revels, regarded as a branch of the Household organization, to comparative insignificance. Henceforward its domestic duties sink into the background of the quasi-political functions given to the Master as stage censor by the commissions of 1581 and 1603. But these functions were peculiar to the Master, who carried them out with the aid of his personal servants.[344] The other Revels officers had no claim to share in them, and though Tilney and Buck built up a considerable income out of licensing fees, which probably accounts for the discontinuance in Buck's case of the 'better recompense' of £100 granted by Elizabeth to Tilney, no penny of these fees ever passed through the Revels Accounts.

The slight increase of cost observable in course of time is mainly due to charges for lodgings. The want of accommodation at Hampton Court in the winter of 1603-4 obliged the officers to rent rooms at Kingston for a month at a cost of £4.[345] In 1607 a far more serious problem was presented by the impending loss of St. John's. This had remained in Crown hands throughout Elizabeth's time, although on 31 October 1601 we find John Chamberlain writing to Dudley Carleton, 'The Quene sells land still and the house of St. Johns is at sale'.[346] James, however, after leasing the Gatehouse for life to Sir Roger Wilbraham in 1604, carried out his predecessor's intention by selling the greater part of the Priory to Ralph Freeman on 9 May 1607.[347] Presumably the premises which had been assigned to the Revels were not covered by this sale, for of these the King made a gift in the same year to his cousin Esmé Stuart, eighth Lord Aubigny.[348] The Revels therefore had to be dispossessed. But the Office had to be housed somewhere; and the officers were all entitled to official residences under the terms of their patents. It was doubtless in connexion with this transaction that the following memorandum, which is preserved amongst Sir Julius Caesar's papers and endorsed 'Mr. Tilney's writinge touching his Office', was drawn up.[349]

The Office of _th_e Revells Is noted to be one of _th_e Kinges Ma_ie_st_e_s standinge Offices, as are the Jewellhowsse, _th_e wardropp, _th_e Ordinance, the Armorye, and the Tentes with _th_e like Allowances everie wayes _th_at any of _th_em haue.

W_hi_ch Office of _th_e Revells Consistethe of a wardropp and other severall Roomes for Artifficers to worke in (viz. Taylors, Imbrotherers, Properti makers, Paynters, wyerdrawers and Carpenters), togeather with a Convenient place for _th_e Rehearshalls and settinge forthe of Playes and other Shewes for those Services.

In w_hi_ch Office _th_e Master of _th_e Office hath ever hadd a dwellinge Howsse for him self and his Famelie, and _th_e other Officers ar to haue eyther dwellinge Howsses Assigned unto _th_em by _th_e M_aste_r (for so goeth the wordes of _th_er Pattent_es_) or else a Rente for _th_e same as _th_ei had before they Came unto St. Johnes.

For by ther Pattents, w_hi_ch be all eyther new graunted or Confirmed by the King_es_ Ma_ies_tie, They ar Allowed as the Master Is to haue eache of them a dwellinge Howsse w_i_th garden and Stable for Terme of _th_er lyues, as ther Predicessors hadd (viz. w_i_thin St. Johnes), w_hi_ch Cannot well be taken from vs w_i_thout good Consideration for the same: or _th_e lyke Allowance for Howssroome.

Elye Howsse Is possessed agayne by _th_e Byshopp as I doe heare.

But S_i_r Thomas Knevitt hath vnder neathe his keepershipp of Whitehaull, dyvers howsses, as Hawnces and Baptistas with ij or iij howsses more Appertayninge ther vnto, near vnto _th_e olde Pallas In westminster w_hi_ch I doe doubte be all rented out by him for Terme of his lyeffe.

The difficulty was met by a plan which had served before in the history of the Revels. The officers were allowed to provide their own lodgings, and to charge £15 each for the purpose in the Office account. A similar allowance (£20) was made to the Master for the provision of an office.[350] The actual removal, so far as the office was concerned, took place in the spring of 1608. The accounts show expenses 'in providing a place for th'office of the Revells' between 10 February and the middle of April, and there is independent evidence that on the 10th of March, it was located next door to the Whitefriars theatre.[351] Tilney's personal allowance first appears in the account for 1608-9, and is made retrospective to Michaelmas 1607. Perhaps the Clerk and Yeoman were not disturbed quite so soon. Their allowances first appear in 1610-11, and are retrospective to Hallowmas 1608.[352] It may be assumed that the Comptroller's lodging was treated as a charge on the Tents. On Tilney's death, Buck was allowed £30 to cover both the Office and his own lodging, and the payment antedated to Michaelmas 1608. He protested that he had in fact to pay a rent of £50, and although Salisbury probably turned a deaf ear, his appeal was allowed when his Howard connexions, Suffolk and Northampton, became Treasury Commissioners in 1612, and the allowance was finally fixed at £50.[353] It should be added that Buck also secured in 1612-13, and very likely in other years, a quite distinct allowance of £16, under a warrant from the Lord Chamberlain to the Treasurer of the Chamber, as compensation for the absence of a lodging for him at a crowded Court during the winter revels season.[354] The Office cannot have stayed long in the Whitefriars, for on 24 August 1612 Buck dedicated a treatise on _The Third University in England_ to Sir Edward Coke 'from his Majesties office of the Revels, upon St. Peter's Hill'.[355] This is an account of the seats of learning in London, and was printed by Howes as an appendix to the 1615 edition of Stowe's _Annales_. Chapter 47 is _Of the Art of Revels_, and is worth quoting:

'I might add herunto for a corollary of this discourse the Art of Revels which requireth knowledge in Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy, History, Music, Mathematics, and in other Arts (and all more than I understand I confess) and hath a settled place within this City. But because I have described it and discoursed thereof at large in a particular commentary, according to my talent, I will surcease to speak any more thereof: blazing only the Arms belonging to it; which are Gules, a cross argent, and in the first corner of the scutcheon, a Mercury's petasus argent, and a lion gules in chief or.'[356]

It is matter for deep regret that Buck's 'particular commentary' is lost. He made other contributions to letters, writing commendatory verses to Thomas Watson's [Greek: EKATOMPATHIA] (_c._ 1582) and to Camden's _Britannia_ (1607), and a poem called [Greek: DAPHNIS POLYSTEPHANOS] (1605).[357] His _History of the Life and Reigne of Richard III_ was published posthumously in 1607.[358]

Reversions of the Mastership were granted during Buck's lifetime to Edward Glasscock in 1603, to John, afterwards Sir John, Astley or Ashley on 3 April 1612, to Benjamin Jonson on 5 October 1621, and to William Painter on 29 July 1622.[359] His actual successor was Sir John Astley. On 30 March 1622 John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton, 'Old Sir George Buck, master of the revels, has gone mad'.[360] On 29 March 1622 a warrant was issued by the Lord Chamberlain to swear Astley in as Master, followed on 16 May by a letter requiring Buck to deliver up the books and other property of the Office.[361] His death took place on 20 September 1623.[362] Astley almost immediately sold his office to Sir Henry Herbert, whose tenure of it belongs to the history of the Caroline stage.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 232: _Order for Sitting in the King's Great Chamber_ (_H. O._ 113): 'If the master of revells be there, he may sitt with the chapleyns or with the esquires or gentlemen ushers.']

[Footnote 233: Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 404.]

[Footnote 234: Cf. ch. xiii.]

[Footnote 235: Brewer, i. 24, 283, 690, 828; ii. 875, 1044, 1479; iii. 129; iv. 868; cf. _Tudor Revels_, 6.]

[Footnote 236: Machyn, 157.]

[Footnote 237: Brewer, vii. 560; Feuillerat, _M. P._ 22; cf. _Tudor Revels_, 7.]

[Footnote 238: Brewer, xiv. 1. 574; 2. 102, 159.]

[Footnote 239: Patent in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 53. The appointment was retrospective from 16 March 1544. Cawarden had taken an inventory of Revels stuff for the King as far back as 10 Dec. 1542 (Feuillerat, _M. P._ 27). The historical memorandum of 1573 (cf. p. 82) printed in _Tudor Revels_, 2, says, 'After the deathe of Travers Seriaunt of the said office. Sir Thomas Carden knight, beinge of the kinges maiesties pryvie Chamber, beinge skilfull and delightinge in matters of devise, preferred to that office, did mislyke to be tearmed a Seriaunt because of his better countenaunce of roome and place beinge of the kinges maiesties privye Chamber. And so became he by patent the first master of the Revelles.']

[Footnote 240: Patent in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 70; cf. Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 4, 9.]

[Footnote 241: _Tudor Revels_, 2, from memorandum of 1573.]

[Footnote 242: Brewer, xx. I. 213; Feuillerat, _M. P._ 28; _Edw. and M._ 49; Patent to Lees in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 56.]

[Footnote 243: Patent in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 66.]

[Footnote 244: Patent in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 68; cf. _Edw. and M._ 74, 180, 272. Blagrave is described as Cawarden's 'servant' in 1546-7, and again in Cawarden's will of 1559. He was aged about 50 on 27 June 1572 (_M. S. C._ ii. 52).]

[Footnote 245: Kempe, 93.]

[Footnote 246: Brewer, i. 636, 757; ii. 179; xvi. 603.]

[Footnote 247: Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 3; cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).]

[Footnote 248: _Tudor Revels_, 3, from memorandum of 1573. An account of Cawarden's life by T. Craib is in _Surrey Arch. Colls._ xxviii. 7 (1915). There is a doubt as to the exact date of his death. The i.p.m. gives 29 Aug.; his epitaph 25 Aug. Similarly the Blechingley register gives 29 Aug. for his funeral; Machyn, 208, gives 5 Sept.]

[Footnote 249: Patent in Rymer, xv. 565; Collier, i. 170, from privy seal; Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 54.]

[Footnote 250: Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 115, 280; _Athenaeum_ (1903), i. 220; _3 Library_, ix. 252; Collier, i. 185. A reference to the Master of 'Revels' in _Hatfield MSS._ i. 551 is a mistake for 'Rolls'. Benger was son of Robert Benger or Berenger of Marlborough (_Harl. Soc. Visitations_, lviii. 10), was knighted 2 Oct. 1553 (Machyn, 335), and was auditor to Elizabeth as princess (Hearne, _John of Glastonbury_, 519). Further personal notes are in Stopes, _Hunnis_, 104, 311.]

[Footnote 251: Collier, i. 171 (assigned in error to Cawarden); Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 110, from _S. P. D. Eliz._ vii. 50.]

[Footnote 252: _Hist. MSS._ vii. 615.]

[Footnote 253: Lady Derby writes to Sir Christopher Hatton in 1580 that she had been with her cousin Sackford (Master of the Tents) in 'his house at St. John's' (Nicolas, _Hatton_, 148).]

[Footnote 254: Printed by Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 180; _Eliz._ 18, 77.]

[Footnote 255: Sometimes garments no longer useful for masks, but not yet cast as fees, had been altered for players, and either kept in the office and 'often used by players', or given to the players or musicians 'by composicion' or 'for their fee'. Some were missing because 'the lordes that masked toke awey parte', or they had been 'gyven awaye by the maskers in the queenes presence'. Some were treated as fees, because 'to moche knowen'; in an earlier inventory of 1555 we find 'ffees because the King hath worin hit' (Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 299; _Eliz._ 24, 25, 27, 40.)]

[Footnote 256: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 109, 119, 124, 125, 126. Possibly the amounts of imprests are in some years to be added.]

[Footnote 257: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 130, 135.]

[Footnote 258: Patent in Feuillerat, 58.]

[Footnote 259: Patent in Feuillerat, 72.]

[Footnote 260: Feuillerat, 408, from _S. P. D. Eliz. Add._ xx. 101; Collier, i. 230, who thinks that the application was for the Mastership of the Revels.]

[Footnote 261: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 409; Collier, i. 191; from _Lansd. MS._ 13; cf. ch. v.]

[Footnote 262: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 429. He died in debt, and his will was not proved until 1577 (Chalmers, 482). This led me into thinking (_Tudor Revels_, 26) that during 1572-7 he was alive, but not actively exercising his functions, and possibly into some injustice in suggesting that he had 'in the end proved an extravagant and unbusinesslike Master'. Yet Blagrave's memorandum of 1573 (_vide infra_) seems to lay a special stress on the importance of appointing a Master who shall be 'neither gallant, prodigall, nedye, nor gredye'.]

[Footnote 263: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 187, 456, correcting Collier, i. 198 and _Tudor Revels_, 26.]

[Footnote 264: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 157, 160, 172, 178.]

[Footnote 265: Ibid. 186.]

[Footnote 266: _Tudor Revels_, 28; Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 416; from _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 145, misdated in pencil 'July 1597'.]

[Footnote 267: _Tudor Revels_, 29; Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 412; from _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 147. Dodmer was still pursuing a claim in the Court of Requests in May 1576 (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 413).]

[Footnote 268: Text in full in _Tudor Revels_, 1, 31, and Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 5, from _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 158.]

[Footnote 269: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 432, points out that, as Elizabeth's Privy Council is referred to, these ordinances can hardly have been those of Cawarden (cf. p. 74) as I suggested in _Tudor Revels_, 34.]

[Footnote 270: Text in full in _Tudor Revels_, 42, and Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 17, from _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 154. The time-references agree with 1573 or 1574, if Blagrave's unestablished service in the Revels began as early as 1546.]

[Footnote 271: _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 149. The reference to two years' debts suggests a date, when compared with Dodmer's, in the summer of 1574; if so, the writer will be Fish, rather than Arnold.]

[Footnote 272: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 164.]

[Footnote 273: A _Declared Account_ for 14 Feb. 1578 to 14 Feb. 1579 is in Blagrave's name.]

[Footnote 274: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 212, 218, 238, 247, 267, 277, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300.]

[Footnote 275: Ibid. 192, 266, 277, 297, 301.]

[Footnote 276: Ibid. 191.]

[Footnote 277: Patent in Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 73; cf. 191, Collier, i. 227, and _Variorum_, iii. 499.]

[Footnote 278: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 197, 204, 212, 228, 247, 268, 277, 291, 300.]

[Footnote 279: Ibid. 182, 225.]

[Footnote 280: Ibid. 256, 321.]

[Footnote 281: Ibid. 162, 165.]

[Footnote 282: Ibid. 191.]

[Footnote 283: Ibid. 242.]

[Footnote 284: Ibid. 179, 186, 277, Table III.]

[Footnote 285: Ibid. 185.]

[Footnote 286: Ibid. 204, 219, 268.]

[Footnote 287: Ibid. 218.]

[Footnote 288: Ibid. 202; cf. _Tudor Revels_, 5.]

[Footnote 289: _Hist. MSS._ iv. 300.]

[Footnote 290: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 227, 247, 277, 300, 310, 457.]

[Footnote 291: App. D, No. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 292: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 55 (text of patent), 285, 302, 310, 312; _Variorum_, iii. 57; Chalmers, 482; Collier, i. 230, 235; _Dramatic Records_, 2.]

[Footnote 293: Digges, 359.]

[Footnote 294: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 330.]

[Footnote 295: Ibid. 434.]

[Footnote 296: Ibid. 354, 358, 370, 381, 391.]

[Footnote 297: Ibid. 359.]

[Footnote 298: See text in App. D, No. lvi.]

[Footnote 299: Cf. ch. x.]

[Footnote 300: Cf. ch. i.]

[Footnote 301: Feuillerat, _Eliz._ Table II.]

[Footnote 302: Stowe, _Annales_, 689; Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 168; cf. ch. i.]

[Footnote 303: _S. P. D. Eliz._ ccxlviii, p. 512.]

[Footnote 304: Ibid, cclxii, p. 351. The calendar does not, however, note the _marginalia_ to the docquet referred to below.]

[Footnote 305: Cf. p. 82.]

[Footnote 306: _Tudor Revels_, 64, and Feuillerat, 417, from _Lansd. MS._ 83, f. 170.]

[Footnote 307: _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxvi, p. 5.]

[Footnote 308: Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 29; cf. p. 100.]

[Footnote 309: Feuillerat, 394, 417.]

[Footnote 310: Feuillerat, 352, 360, 367, 372, 379, 382.]

[Footnote 311: _S. P. D._ cclxxix. 86.]

[Footnote 312: Feuillerat, 108.]

[Footnote 313: Chalmers, 486, 490; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxv. 2. The fee lists (cf. p. 29) confirm this, sometimes adding 'diet in court'.]

[Footnote 314: Feuillerat, 108.]

[Footnote 315: Ibid. 310, 463.]

[Footnote 316: _Hist. MSS._ vii. 661; Feuillerat, 467.]

[Footnote 317: Feuillerat, 47. Owing to the omission of Burghley's title in the address of the report, I misdated it in _Tudor Revels_, 20. The history of St. John's is given by W. P. Griffith, _An Architectural Notice of St. John's Priory, Clerkenwell_ (_1 London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans._ iii. 157); A. W. Clapham, _St. John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell_ (_St. Paul's Ecclesiological Soc. Trans._ vii. 37). It was a Priory of the Knights Hospitallers, founded _c._ 1100, and enlarged in the fifteenth century. The Gatehouse, which still stands, was rebuilt by Prior Thomas Docwra in 1504. After the dissolution in 1540, the stones of the church were used for Somerset House, and the rest granted to Dudley. Mary resumed it and refounded the Priory. After the second dissolution by Elizabeth, the property remained in the hands of the Crown.]

[Footnote 318: Patent in Feuillerat, 60.]

[Footnote 319: Patent in Feuillerat, 63.]

[Footnote 320: Ibid. 74.]

[Footnote 321: Ibid. 360.]

[Footnote 322: Cf. ch. xii.]

[Footnote 323: _Hatfield MSS._ xi. 359, 379, 380. The 'Mr. Buck' implicated in the Essex rebellion of 1601 (_Hist. MSS._ xi. 4. 10) was Francis Buck (_Hatfield MSS._ xi. 214).]

[Footnote 324: _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, 554. Can he also have been a Gentleman of the Chapel? A Gentleman was sworn in 'in Mr. Buckes roome' on 2 July 1603, just after he became acting Master (Rimbault, 6).]

[Footnote 325: The letters are printed in full in Bond, _Lyly_, i. 64, 68, 70, 378, 392, 395. A contemporary note by Sir Stephen Powle to a copy of the 1601 appeal says, 'He was a suter to be Mr. of the Reuelles and tentes and Toyles, but eauer crossed'.]

[Footnote 326: Grosart, _Harvey_, ii. 211.]

[Footnote 327: Collier, i. 361.]

[Footnote 328: The conjecture of R. W. Bond (_Lyly_, i. 41) that Lyly was actually Clerk Comptroller is rendered untenable by our complete knowledge of the succession to that post; cf. _Tudor Revels_, 60, and Feuillerat, _Lyly_, 194, who shows that Lyly was the Queen's 'servant' as Esquire of the Body.]

[Footnote 329: _Hatfield MSS._ v. 189.]

[Footnote 330: Ibid. ix. 190.]

[Footnote 331: _Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I_, p. 24, m. 25; Text from seventeenth-century copy in _Dramatic Records_, 14; docquet, dated 21 June, in _S. P. D. Jac. I_, ii. p. 16. The terms, which follow those of earlier patents, are recited in the Declared Accounts of the Office from 1610-11 onwards.]

[Footnote 332: _Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I_, p. 24, m. 31. The date 1613 given by Chalmers, 491, is an error. An imperfect copy is in _Dulwich MS._ xviii. 5, f. 51 (Warner, 338). The docquet in _S. P. D. Jac. I_, ii. p. 16, is dated 21 June.]

[Footnote 333: Nichols, _James_, i. 215.]

[Footnote 334: He did not, however, get Tilney's fee of £100 (cf. p. 103) but only the original £10 (_Abstract_ of 1617) or, according to some of the manuscript fee lists (_Stowe MSS._ 574, f. 16; 575, f. 22ᵛ), £20. Tilney's monument is in Streatham church (Lysons, _Environs_, i. 365) but does not give the exact date of his death.]

[Footnote 335: Cf. App. B.]

[Footnote 336: The pedigree in _Middlesex Pedigrees_ (_Harl. Soc._ lxv), 83, dates his death in error 18 Jan. 1590, but it is interesting to note that his daughter Mary married William, brother of Thomas Lodge. He was buried at Clerkenwell.]

[Footnote 337: Patent in _Dramatic Records_, 9, dated 5 (? 15) June; docquet of 10 June in _S. P. D. Jac. I_, ii. p. 14; draft of 30 May in _S. P. D. Eliz. Addl._ ix. 58.]

[Footnote 338: _Abstract_, 60.]

[Footnote 339: _Dramatic Records_, 63; _Accounts_, _passim_.]

[Footnote 340: _Accounts_, _passim_. Feuillerat, 475, names Thomas Cornwallis as Groom Porter in 1603. But there was no such post at the Revels. Cornwallis was Groom Porter of the Chamber.]

[Footnote 341: Cunningham, 209, 217; _Declared Accounts_, _passim_; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, x. p. 178; xxxi. p. 410; lviii. p. 652; lxii. p. 17; lxviii. p. 110; Collier, i. 347, 363; Devon, 118.]

[Footnote 342: _Abstract_, 8.]

[Footnote 343: Cf. ch. vi.]

[Footnote 344: Henslowe took receipts for licensing fees from Michael Bloomson, John Carnab, Robert Hassard, William Hatto, Robert Johnson, William Playstowe, Thomas and William Stonnard, Richard Veale, and Thomas Whittle, 'men' of the Master of the Revels, between 1595 and 1602. Johnson was of Leatherhead, where Tilney had a house. I regret to say that on one occasion Henslowe thought fit to make a loan to William Stonnard (Greg, _Henslowe_, i. 3, 5, 12, 28, 39, 40, 46, 54, 72, 83, 85, 103, 109, 116, 117, 121, 129, 132, 148, 160, 161; _Dulwich MSS._ i. 37).]

[Footnote 345: _Declared Account._]

[Footnote 346: Chamberlain, 120. A proposal (_c._ 1589) for the establishment of an 'Accademye for the studye of Antiquitye and Historye' (_Anglia_, xxxii. 261) contains a suggestion that its library might be housed in St. John's.]

[Footnote 347: _S. P. D._ (22. xi. 04); _1 London and Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans._ iii. 157.]

[Footnote 348: The gift to Aubigny is recited in the Treasury warrants of 10 Nov. 1610 and 31 March 1611 for lodging allowances cited below.]

[Footnote 349: _Lansd. MS._ 156, f. 368.]

[Footnote 350: _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxviii, p. 391. The authority was given by a privy seal.]

[Footnote 351: Cf. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 352: Cunningham, xxi, from _Audit Office Enrolments_, ii. 108. The authority is a Treasury warrant to auditors of 10 Nov. 1910.]

[Footnote 353: _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxv. 2, contains (i) a letter of 1 July 1611 from Buck to Salisbury's secretary, Dudley Norton, asking for authority to be given by privy seal and not a mere letter to the auditors, and enclosing (ii) a letter to Salisbury, putting his case and pleading that Tilney had £35, 'besides £100 for a better recompense which had not been continued to Buck, (iii) a copy of a Treasury warrant to the auditors for the £30, dated 31 March 1611, and (iv) a draft of the privy seal asked for. Chalmers, 490, printed (ii) and (iii), and Cunningham printed a draft for (ii) from _Harl. MS. 6850_ in _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 143. On 19 Dec. 1612 the Treasury sent a warrant to the auditors to allow the £50 (Cunningham, xxii). But Buck's preference for a privy seal was sound, for at a later date Auditor Beale complained that authority for the lodging allowances was wanting (_Dramatic Records_, 84; Herbert, 129).]

[Footnote 354: _Chamber Accounts._ Similar expenses for earlier years were charged in the _Revels Accounts_; cf. p. 89.]

[Footnote 355: There was yet another change later. Herbert said after the Restoration (_Dramatic Records_, 39; Herbert, 108) that the Office had been 'time out of minde' in the parish of St. Mary Bowe, in the ward of Cheap. St. Peter's Hill is divided between Queen Hithe and Castle Baynard wards.]

[Footnote 356: Chalmers, _Apology_, 531, 628, has an engraving from a block of the Revels Office seal or stamp, as used by Thomas Killigrew under Charles II. It has Killigrew's arms with the legend 'Sigill: Offic: Iocor: Mascar: Et Revell: Dni: Reg.']

[Footnote 357: Cf. p. 98. The verses to the _Britannia_ are headed 'Georgij Buc Equitis aurati Reg[iorum] Sp[ectaculorum] C[uratoris] Heptastichon'.]

[Footnote 358: This is sometimes ascribed to a younger Buck, but the manuscript copy in _Cott. MS. Tiberius_, E. x, is dated from the Revels Office on St. Peter's Hill in 1619.]

[Footnote 359: Feuillerat, _Lyly_, 237; _Dramatic Records_, 11, 39; Herbert, 7, 102; _S. P. D. Jac. I_ (cxxxii, p. 432). Chalmers, 492, says, 'Yet, this was not old Ben, as it seemeth, who died in 1637, but young Ben, who died in 1635'. This seems rather improbable. Was Jonson already a suitor for the post in 1601, when Dekker wrote _Satiromastix_, iv. i. 244, 'Master Horace ... I have some cossens Garman at Court, shall beget you the reuersion of the Master of the Kings Reuels, or else be his Lord of Misrule now at Christmas'?]

[Footnote 360: _S. P. D. Jac. I_, cxxviii. 96.]

[Footnote 361: Murray, ii. 193, from _Inner Temple MS._ 515; cf. Collier, i. 402; Gildersleeve, 64.]

[Footnote 362: Herbert, 67, 109.]

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 1_s._ 9_d._, while that of 1614 cost them £102 12_s._ 6½_d._[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 18_s._ 4_d._, of which £1,255 12_s._ 0_d._ was apparently for provisions, £199 9_s._ 11_d._ 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]

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_.]

[Footnote 430: I borrow from Boas, 383, De Silva's description to the Duchess of Parma as given in Froude's transcript (_Addl. MS._ 26056 A, f. 237) of the original in the Simanças archives. There is a translation in _Sp. Papers_, i. 375. Froude, vii. 205, paraphrases the story. After premising that during the Queen's visit 'they wished to give her another representation, which she refused in order to be no longer delayed', and that, 'those who were so anxious for her to hear it followed her to her first stopping-place, and so importuned her that at last she consented', De Silva continues, 'Entráron los representantes en habitos de algunos de los Obispos que estan presos; fué el primo el de Londres [Bonner] llevando en las manos un cordero como que le iba comiendo, y otros con otras devisas, y uno en figura de perro con una hostia en la boca. La Reyna se enojó tanto segun escriben que se entró á priesa en su camara diciendo malas palabras, y los que tenian las hachas, que era de noche, los dexáron á escuras, y assí cesó la inconsiderada y desvergonçada representaçion.' Of course, there is nothing about this in the academic narratives. It was an indecent proceeding, but in view of the character of the _farsa_ or mummery which enlivened Elizabeth's first Christmas (cf. ch. v), the misunderstanding of her taste is perhaps explicable.]

[Footnote 431: There are five narratives: (_a_) _Twyne MS._ xvii, f. 160, in the University archives, by Thomas Neale, Professor of Hebrew, used by A. Wood, _Hist. of Oxford_, ii. 154, and Boas, 98; (_b_) Richard Stephens, _A Brief Rehearsall_, a summary of (_a_), printed by Nichols, _Eliz._¹ i. 95, and C. Plummer, _Elizabethan Oxford_, 193; (_c_) _Twyne MS._ xxi. 792, by Miles Windsor of Corpus; (_d_) Nicholas Robinson (of Queens', Cambridge), _Of the Actes done at Oxford_, printed from _Harl. MS._ 7033, f. 142, by Nichols, i. 229, and Plummer, 173; (_e_) John Bereblock (of Exeter), _Commentarii de Rebus Gestis Oxoniae_, printed by T. Hearne (1729) and Nichols, _Eliz._¹ i. 35, and from _Bodl. Addl. MS._ A. 63, by Plummer, 113, and translated by W. Y. Durand in _M. L. A._ xx. 502. Bereblock gives full analyses of the plays. Boas, 106, adds extracts from a Christ Church account of the expenditure.]

[Footnote 432: Bereblock (Plummer, 128) says, 'Hoc malum quamvis potuit communem laetitiam contaminare, nihilominus tamen eandem commaculare non potuit. Ad spectacula itaque omnes, alieno iam periculo cautiores, revertuntur'.]

[Footnote 433: Cf. Boas, 106, 390.]

[Footnote 434: _Sp. Papers_, i. 578; cf. Boas, 385.]

[Footnote 435: Sometimes the Chancellor brought distinguished foreign visitors, who were entertained with plays. In May 1569 Thomas Cooper, Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Christ Church, wrote to Leicester (_Pepys MSS._ 155), proposing 'a playe or shew of the destruction of Thebes, and the contention between Eteocles and Polynices for the governement therof', for a projected visit on 15 May by Odet de Coligny, Cardinal de Châtillon, and asking help 'for provision for some apparaile' (not 'apparaiti', as the _Hist. MSS._ report on the _Pepys MSS._ has it). It is not certain that the visit actually took place (Boas, 158). But in 1583 Leicester brought Albertus Alasco, Prince Palatine of Siradia in Poland, who saw the _Rivales_ and _Dido_ of William Gager (q.v.) on 11 and 12 June. The plays were given at Christ Church by men of that and other colleges, with the assistance of George Peele (Boas, 179, from Holinshed and academic archives). In Jan. 1585 Leicester came again, with Pembroke and Philip Sidney, and saw Gager's _Meleager_ at Christ Church, and possibly also a comedy at Magdalen. Apparel was borrowed from John Lyly, who was then connected with the Blackfriars theatre (Boas, 192, from academic archives).]

[Footnote 436: There is only one narrative, by Philip Stringer (of St. John's, Cambridge), printed by Nichols, _Eliz._¹, and Plummer, 245. Wood, _Hist. of Oxford_, ii. 248, follows an independent source. Boas, 252, makes some additions from academic archives, and cites from _Twyne MS._ xvii, f. 174, an order that 'the schollers which cannot be admitted to see the playes, doo not make any outcries or undecent noyses about the hall stayres or within the quadrangle of Christchurch, as usually they were wont to doo'. This was repeated at the visit of 1605. John Sanford's _Apollinis et Musarum Eidyllia_, reprinted by Plummer, 275, contains verses laudatory of the various guests.]

[Footnote 437: _M. S. C._ i. 198, from _Lansd. MS._ 71, f. 204.]

[Footnote 438: There are four narratives: (_a_) Anthony Nixon, _The Oxford Triumph_ (1605, S. R. 19 Sept. 1605); (_b_) Isaac Wake, _Rex Platonicus, sive Musae Regnantes_ (1607); (_c_) a Cambridge report, probably by Philip Stringer, printed from _Harl. MS._ 7044, by Leland, _Coll._ ii. 626, and Nichols, i. 530; (_d_) a letter from John Chamberlain in Winwood, ii. 140. F. S. Boas and W. W. Greg (_M. S. C._