INDEX

TO THE

AND SUBJECTS IN THE TWELFTH VOLUME.

{ONE PENNY

QUEEN ELIZABETH; HER PROGRESSES
AND PUBLIC PROCESSIONS.

No. I...
INTRODUCTION.

It was remarked in the last century by Bishop Percy,
that the splendour and magnificence of Elizabeth's
reign are nowhere more strongly painted than in the
little diaries which have come down to us of some of
her Progresses, or Summer excursions to the houses
of her nobility. It may be added with equal truth,
that nowhere do we meet with more interesting and
instructive illustrations of the manners and taste of

The practice of making progresses in different parts of her kingdom, is a striking feature in the plan of popularity which Elizabeth seems to have followed from the beginning of her reign. The spirit of the times encouraged those splendid recreations, when the habits and amusements of the great possessed so different a character from that which they have in more modern times. To show the impression which these progresses made upon the people generally we shall first quote the words of a contemporary poet, who was one of Elizabeth's gentlemen pensioners, we mean Puttenham, whose Arte of English Poesie has secured the transmission of his name to our days. In one of his poems in praise of the Queen, he thus addresses her:

Bohun, a writer of the seventeenth century, the
scheme of her progresses is thus explained:-

In her progress she was the most easy to be approached; private persons and magistrates, men and women, country people and children, came joyfully, and without any fear, to

that age—an age which, for many reasons, has always been particularly attractive to Englishmen. The same learned and accomplished prelate likewise observed that a more acceptable present could not be given to the world than a republication of a select number of the most interesting accounts, such as those relating to the entertainments which the Earl of Leicester gave the Queen at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, or to that which the Earl of Hertford gave her Majesty at Elvetham, in 1591. Several years have now elapsed since the desideratum then pointed out in our literature, was more than supplied by the able research and indefatigable industry of Mr. Nichols, who published, in three quarto volumes, all the accounts which he could collect from original contemporary manuscripts, or from scarce pamphlets, &c., concerning the pro-wait upon her and see her. Her ears were then open to gresses, public processions, and other ceremonials the complaints of the afflicted, and of those that had been which occurred in the reign of this celebrated queen. any way injured. She would not suffer the meanest of her Valuable, however, as were the labours of Mr. people to be shut out from the places where she resided, but the greatest and the least were then in a manner Nichols, his work is rather a book of reference, or levelled. She took with her own hand, and read with the collection of authentic records and documents, than greatest goodness, the petitions of the meanest rusticks: a narrative digested from the materials which he had and she would frequently assure them that she would take amassed; its character, therefore, no less than its a particular care of their affairs, and she would ever be as bulk, renders it not very well fitted to the general good as her word. She, by her royal authority, protected reader. Under these circumstances, we deem that those that were injured and oppressed: she punished the fraudulent, false, perfidious, and wicked. In all this variety we shall be offering an acceptable present, in the of affairs she was able to keep her temper, and appear with phrase of Bishop Percy, to our readers, in furnishing an equal and uninterrupted serenity and humanity to all them with a series of papers, descriptive of the pro- that came nigh her; she was never seen angry with the gresses of Queen Elizabeth, her public processions, most unseasonable or uncourtly approach: she was never and such other similar matters as tend to illustrate offended with the most impudent and importunate petitioner. the taste and manners which prevailed in our country There was no commotion to be seen in her mind; no reduring her reign. proaches, no reprehensions came from her. Nor was there anything in the whole course of her reign that more won the hearts of the people than this her wonderful facility, condescension, and the strange sweetness and pleasantness with which she entertained all that came to her. Thus, for the most part, she spent her Summer.

Thou that besydes forreyne affayres
Canst tend to make yerely repayres,
By Sommer progresse and by sporte,
To shire and towne, citye and porte,
To view and compasse all thye lande,
And take the bills with thine own hande
Of clowne and earle, of knight and swayne,
Who list to thee for right complayne,
And therin dost such justice yeelde,
As in thy sexe folke see but seelde;
And thus to do arte less afrayde,
With houshold trayne, a syllye mayde,
Than thyne anncestours one of tenne
Durst do with troopes of armed men.
In the Character of Queen Elizabeth, by Edward

In the Summer she for the most part lived in the countrey; and she took her royal progresses into the several counties of England, and she would amuse herself with considering and commending the pleasantness and goodness of her country, and the greatness and variety of the fruits goodness of God in diversifying the face of the earth, by England produced; she would also admire the wisdom and the mixture of fields, meadows, pastures, and woods; and she would, as occasion offered, hunt too. In all this she was intent upon that which was her main business, the government of her people, the management of her family and of her revenues, and the observing the state and condition, the carriage and designs, of the neighbour states and princes. Which way soever she went, she was sure to draw upon her the eyes of her people: innumerable crowds of them met her in all places with loud hearty acclamations, with countenances full of joy, and hearts equally filled with love and admiration: and this ever attended her in publick and in private: for what sight in this world can possibly please mortals like that of a just, beneficent, and kind prince? So that those places were accounted the most happy, in which, for the goodness of the air or the pleasantness of the fields, she was pleased to stay the longest.

He then proceeds to describe her extreme affability and condescension during these journeys, and the effect thereof upon her people:

When Queen Mary died, on the 17th of November, 1558, Elizabeth was at Hatfield. On the 23rd of November, she made a magnificent progress from thence to the Charter-house in London; which was the prelude to her passage through the city from the Tower to Westminster, on the 13th of January following, the day before her coronation. In the Summer of 1559, she made an excursion from Greenwich to Dartford and Cobham, and afterwards to Eltham, Nonsuch, and Hampton Court. In 1560, she went in progress to Winchester and Basing. In the third year of her reign, 1561, she began her progress through Essex, Suffolk, and Hertfordshire; and on her return, she passed from Hertford Castle through Enfield, Islington, and over St. Giles in the Fields (which did not then belie its name,) to St. James. In 1563, she received the congratulations of the Eton scholars at Windsor Castle, and in the next year, those of the University of Cambridge at King's College. In 1564 likewise, she went into Huntingdonshire and Leicestershire; in 1565, to Coventry, and the year following to Oxford, in compliment to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, then Chancellor of that University; and to Burghley, on a visit to her Treasurer, the great Cecil, In 1567,

The Puritans in Elizabeth's time, condemned much of the gaiety and splendour of the court, but the queen was exhorted from the poetical press, not to regard their objections. The poet and gentleman pensioner, George Puttenham, in a poem, or rather collection of poems, styled Partheniades, which he devoted as a new

she was in Berkshire, Surrey, and Hampshire; in | sixty-eighth year. In 1600, also, and the following 1568, in Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Northamp-year, she made progresses into Surrey, Hampshire, tonshire; in 1569, in Surrey and Hampshire. In Wiltshire, and Berks; and in 1602, she made short 1570, Elizabeth went into the city again, to honour visits from the capital into Middlesex and Kent. In Sir Thomas Gresham on the occasion of his building the year 1603, she closed her reign and life. the Royal Exchange; she was likewise entertained by him in 1573, at his mansion at Mayfield in Sussex; and some time between 1577 and 1579 at his house at Osterley near London. In 1571, she visited Hunsdon House, which had formerly been her nursery, and which she gave to her first cousin, Henry Cary, whom she had created Baron Hunsdon. On May-year's gift to the Queen in 1579, has some lines writday, 1572, she was entertained at Greenwich, with many warlike feats, by the citizens of London; the coming of the French ambassadors in the same year, was the occasion of great festivities, and after their departure, the Queen proceeded on a progress into Essex, Kent, Herts, Bedfordshire, to Kenilworth, Warwick, Reading, Windsor, and Hampton Court; at which last place, about the end of September, she fell ill of the small-pox. In 1573, she passed through a part of Surrey and Sussex, and honoured many places in Kent with her presence. She visited Archbishop Parker at Croydon; and seems to have intended paying him another visit in 1574; in which year also, she was amused at Bristol with the regular siege of a fort; was entertained by the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton, and visited the city of New Sarum.

In 1575, the Queen made a progress through the counties of Northampton, Oxford, and Worcester; and it was during this progress, that she was so magnificently entertained for nineteen days by the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth*. In 1577, she was again in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and spent three days at Sir Nicholas Bacon's mansion at Gorhambury. In 1578, she went over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire; and received the compliments of the University of Cambridge on her way, at Audley Inn. In 1579, she again visited Essex and Suffolk. In 1581, she received ten commissioners from the King of France concerning her marriage with the Duke of Anjou; and in their honour, a "Triumph" was performed with great solemnity.

From 1581 to 1588, the Queen appears to have remained quiet at Westminster; her amusements consisting of shows and tiltings on the reception of foreign princes and ambassadors. In the latter year, which is memorable for the projected invasion of her kingdom by the Spaniards, and the defeat of their grand Armada, Elizabeth paid her celebrated visit to her army at Tilbury Fort. In 1591 we find her recommencing her progresses over Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, and being entertained at Cowdry, Southampton, and Elvetham; and the next year at Bisham, Sudley and Ricott, with all the fantastic pomp which characterized the age. In 1592, likewise, she paid a second visit to Oxford, in compliment to Lord Burleigh, who was then Chancellor of that University. In 1594, the students of Gray's Inn entertained her with a masque; and next year the Earl of Essex celebrated the anniversary of her accession with a "device." In 1599, she went again over part of Berkshire. 1600, she honoured the wedding of Lord Herbert with her presence, in Black Fryers, and was there entertained with dancing and a masque at the Lord Cobham's, and even "dawnced +" herself, though in her

*See Saturday Magazine, Vol. I., p. 101.

In

The fondness of Queen Elizabeth for music and "dawncing" in her old age, is thus noticed in a letter from the Earl of Worcester to the Earl of Shrewsbury dated September 19, 1602, and printed by Mr. Lodge, from the Talbot MSS., in his Illustrations of British History: "Wee are frolyke heare in Courte; mutche dawncing in the privi chamber of contrey dawnces before the Q. M. (Queen's Majesty) whoe is exceedingly pleased therwth Irishe tunes are at this tyme most pleasing," &c.

ten for the purpose of maintaining "agaynste the Puritantes," that " amonge men many thinges be allowed of necessitye, many for ornament, which cannot be misliked nor well spared, without blemishe to the cyvile life;" and that all auncyent courtly usages, devised as well for the publique intertaynments, as for other private solaces and disportes," are "not scandalously evill or vicious." The muse Calliope, addressing the Queen, recounts a list of calamities which must result from adopting the obnoxious principles:

Deny honoure to dignity

And triumphe to just victorie
Pull puissance from soverayntie
And credit from authoritee

From holy-dayes and fro weddinges
Minstrells and feasts and robes and ringes
Take fro kinges courtes intertaynments;
From ladyes riche habillimentes:

And then indignantly exclaims-
Princesse! yt ys as if one take away
Green woodes from forrests and sunne-shine fro the daye.
The chances of success in this contest, were natu-
rally with the poets. The innovating spirit of the
Puritans rendered them very unacceptable to the
Queen; and the manner in which they put forward
their demands, was not at all calculated to ensure
their success. Camden thus describes the "Insolency
of the Puritans," in the year 1588, in which year, he
tells us, that England was "pestered with schism."

Certainly, (he says,) never did contumacious impudency and contumelious malapertness against ecclesiastical ma gistrates, show itself more bold and insolent. For when to innovatours in religion who designed (as she thought) to the Queen (who was always the same) would not give ear cut in sunder the very sinews of her ecclesiastical government and her royal prerogative at once, some of those men who were great admirers of the discipline of the church of Geneva, thought there was no better way to be taken for establishing the same in England, than by inveighing and railing against the English hierarchy, and stirring up the people to a dislike and hatred of the bishops and prelacy. These men, therefore, set forth scandalous books against both the church government and the prelates, the titles whereof were, Martin Marre-Prelate, Mineralis, Diotrephes, a Demonstration of Discipline, &c. In these libels they belched forth most virulent calumnies and opthat the authors might seem to have been rather scullions probrious taunts and reproaches in such a scurrilous manner, out of the kitchen than pious and godly men. Yet were the authors thereof (forsooth) Penry and Udal, ministers of the word, and Job Throckmorton, a learned man and of a facetious and gybing tongue. Their favourers and upholders were Richard Knightley, and Wigston, Knights, men otherwise good, grave, and sober, but drawn in by certain ministers, who aimed at some private respects of their own, for which the said knights had smarted by a heavy fine laid upon them in the Star-Chamber, had not the Archbishop of Canterbury, (such was his mildness and good nature,) with much adoe requested and obtained a remission thereof from the queen.

But if the Queen had been disposed to abolish what the Puritans disliked, she had not the power to do so. She did not, as Mr. Sharon Turner remarks, like Charles the Second, make the manners of her