The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

by E. K. Chambers

The arrangement of the principal rooms of a Tudor palace can be well studied on the plan of Hampton Court.[38] There is a great Hall, and at the back of it the entrance to a Great Chamber. At Hampton Court and Richmond this appears to have served also as a Guard or Watching Chamber, but at Whitehall the Guard Chamber and the Great Chamber were distinct.[39] Out of the Great Chamber opens the Presence Chamber, and out of this again the Privy Chamber, which gives admittance to the private apartments of the sovereign. These included one or more Parlours or Withdrawing Chambers, as well as the Bed Chamber.[40] From the opposite end of the Great Chamber runs a gallery, which passes round two sides of a court and leads to the royal Closet, overlooking and forming part of the Chapel. Into this gallery also opens the Council Chamber. The Presence Chamber and the Privy Chamber were the essential elements of the scheme, and had to be contrived, no matter how humbly the Court was lodged.[41] The Presence Chamber seems to have been open to any one who was entitled to appear at Court at all. Access to the Privy Chamber, on the other hand, where Elizabeth dined and supped and sat with her ladies, was jealously reserved for privy councillors and other favoured persons.[42] At Whitehall there were also a Privy Gallery and a Privy Garden, which counted as parts of the Privy Chamber.[43] Occasionally ambassadors or distinguished foreign visitors might have audience there, or even in a Withdrawing Chamber.[44] But ordinarily presentations were made in the Presence Chamber, and here the crowd of courtiers waited on Sundays for the ceremony of the Queen's going to chapel. Paul Hentzner has described the scene as he saw it at Greenwich in 1598.[45]

In the Presence Chamber, too, Hentzner saw the royal table laid and the ceremony of tasting performed, before the royal dishes were carried to a more private apartment. An ancient custom by which the sovereign occasionally dined in state in the Presence Chamber, and was served by great nobles of the realm upon the knee, from cupboards of massy plate, had fallen into disuse, but was revived by James.[46] In the Hall, or if more convenient in the Great Chamber, plays were given.[47] For this purpose the dimensions, in the larger palaces, were fully adequate. The hall of Hampton Court is 115 ft. × 40 ft., that of Windsor 108 ft. × 33 ft., that of Eltham, locally known as King John's Barn, 100 ft. × 36 ft. These alone survive, but the hall of Richmond is known to have been 100 ft. × 40 ft., and that of Whitehall 100 ft. × 45 ft.[48] But for an exceptional entertainment, such as a great banquet or mask, more space was desirable, and temporary structures, known as banqueting-houses, were erected as required. The device had already been employed by Henry VIII. A banqueting-house had been one of the splendours at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and two others, one of which was called the 'long house', or 'disguising house', were decorated by Holbein for the reception of a French embassy at Greenwich in 1527.[49] Edward VI also had had a banqueting-house in Hyde Park for the reception of another French embassy in 1551.[50] In the first year of Elizabeth's reign she used four banqueting-houses, one for the French ambassadors at Westminster in May, two others at Greenwich and Cobham Hall in July,[51] and a fourth at Horsley in August. A later one, prepared at Whitehall in June 1572 for the reception of the Duke of Montmorency, required 116 workmen to decorate it at a cost of £224. It was hung with birch and ivy, and garnished with bushels of roses and honeysuckles from the royal gardens.[52] Finally, one even more elaborate was erected, also at Whitehall, for the coming of Alençon's ambassadors in 1581.[53] This, although only constructed of fir and deal, was strong enough to stand until 1606. James then had it pulled down and replaced by a new one of brick and stone, which was ready in time for the Christmas festivities of 1607.[54] This in its turn stood until 12 January 1619, when it was destroyed by fire, and in its place arose the stately edifice of Inigo Jones, which still glorifies Whitehall.[55] A supplementary room of more temporary character was put up for the Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1613.[56]

The mediaeval court had been largely an ambulatory one. The principal feasts, at which the King wore his crown, were generally kept in one of the great cities—Westminster, Winchester, Gloucester; and for the rest of the year the household passed by short 'removes' from castle to castle and manor to manor throughout the realm. For this there were economic as well as political reasons. Many mouths had to be fed, and it was easier and less onerous upon the country to devour one local storehouse after another, than to organize an effective transport from the various sources of supply to a single capital. But with the new political stability and the enhanced royal wealth, which followed the coming of the Tudors, a more settled order of things prevailed. Henceforward the greater part of the year was spent at one or other of the 'standing houses' within reach of the administrative head-quarters on the Thames, and the wanderings were confined to a 'progress' of one or two summer months, during which the sovereign took the air, and hunted, and made his presence familiar to his outlying subjects. Under Elizabeth the year may be said to have begun in the middle of November, when she returned to London, generally by road from one of the Surrey palaces through Chelsea. The event, at any rate during the later years of the reign, almost took rank as a ceremony of state. The Queen came by night, with the Master of the Horse leading her palfrey by the bridle and a great noble carrying the sword. Ambassadors were invited to be present, and the Lord Mayor and citizens were called upon to don their rich gowns and chains and give a torchlight welcome.[57] The date was no doubt determined, partly by the approach of winter, partly by that of Accession Day or, as it was often but incorrectly called, Coronation Day, on 17 November. This anniversary, from 1570 onwards, was kept with a solemn celebration, which appears to have originated spontaneously in or near Oxford, to have been adopted throughout the country, to have been revived during the next reign as an indication of popular discontent with James, and to have been still traceable in the form of a holiday at the Exchequer and at the schools of Westminster and Merchant Taylors in 1827.[58] It was on this day that the tilt-yard of Westminster blazed with the pageantry and rang with the spears of the manhood of England, gathered under the leadership of Sir Henry Lee to do honour to the virgin Queen. The Earl of Essex gave the final touch of flattery to the occasion in 1592 by appearing in his collar of SS, 'a thing unwonted', except on days of the most solemn ceremony.[59] In 1588, after the Armada, Elizabeth ordered a renewal of the tilting upon 19 November, which happened to be St. Elizabeth's day, but this second triumph seems to have been only occasional.[60]

Christmas was ordinarily kept at Whitehall; the occasional substitution of Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court, or even Windsor is sometimes to be explained by the prevalence of the plague in London, sometimes perhaps by nothing more than a royal whim. But during the years of strain which preceded the Armada Elizabeth appears to have shunned Whitehall as much as possible, not merely at Christmas but at all times, probably from a sense that her personal security could be better provided for in some more compact and less accessible abode.[61] Whether in Whitehall or elsewhere, the twelve days of Christmas, from the Nativity to the Epiphany, were a season of high revels. I do not find that Elizabeth, like her father and brother, ever appointed a Lord of Misrule, although there is some trace of an election of a King of the Bean on the last and greatest day of all, Twelfth Night.[62] But Twelfth Night itself, with St. Stephen's, St. John's, Innocents', and New Year's Day, were regularly appointed for plays and masks, which often overflowed on to other nights during the period. Sometimes, too, there was another tilt, or a barriers in the hall or banqueting-room. And on New Year's Day it was etiquette for the lords and ladies at Court and many of the officers of the household to present the Queen with the New Year gifts or strenae which had been immemorial in European courts since the days of the Roman Empire, while she in turn rewarded the donors with gilt plate from the royal jewel house and distributed largess amongst her personal attendants and other customary recipients.[63]

The revels were renewed for Candlemas (2 Feb.) and for Shrovetide, either at the Christmas head-quarters or at some other palace to which the Court had meanwhile removed. Some part of the early spring was nearly always spent away from Westminster, and during her later years Elizabeth not infrequently left part of the household behind her and made a short 'by progress' to the house of Lord Burghley at Theobalds or that of Sir Thomas Gresham at Osterley or some other favoured courtier. The rest of the spring and summer was divided between Westminster and the river palaces, to and from which the Queen went by land or water, dining on the way, often at Chelsea or at the house of one John Lacy at Putney, and breaking the long journey from Greenwich to Richmond or Hampton Court by a night's rest, generally at the archiepiscopal abode of Lambeth. It was customary to ring the church bells as she entered or left a parish, and the entries of payments to ringers in the accounts of churchwardens serve as a convenient clue to her comings and goings. Easter, with the distribution of alms and washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, and Whitsuntide were kept as ecclesiastical, rather than secular, feasts. On 23 April, St. George's Day, the Queen went in procession about the Court with the Knights of the Garter and the Chapel in their copes. This was the occasion for the choosing of new knights, but their subsequent installation at a Garter feast took place without the Queen at Windsor, whither they rode in great and costly splendour.[64] During the summer there might be another tilt, and the Queen is recorded to have kept 'Mayings' on 1 May and to have taken part from time to time in other survivals of the ancient folk festivals.[65] About July she started for her 'progress', which might occupy from one to two months, according to her fancy, or if there was to be no regular progress, departed for one of the more sequestered houses, Windsor or Reading, Oatlands or Nonsuch, where she delighted to spend the autumn. During this period fell her birthday, on 7 September.[66]

The Jacobean calendar underwent certain modifications, largely determined by the King's sporting instincts. James kept his Court for the most part at Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Windsor. After the winter of 1603, when plague held him at Hampton Court, his Christmasses and Shrovetides were invariably at Whitehall, and hither he always proceeded at the end of October, in time for the celebration of All Saints' Day on 1 November.[67] On 5 November was kept, after 1605, the anniversary of Gunpowder Plot, and to this day, in course of time, the winter bonfires of folk custom transferred themselves.[68] The Twelve Nights, with Candlemas and Shrovetide, remained the chief seasons for plays and masks, but the plays were greatly increased in number. One was often given on All Saints' Day (1 Nov.) to usher in the winter, and others were called for at intervals during the winter months. James was also regularly at Whitehall on his Accession Day, 24 March, which, like his predecessor, he honoured with a tilt.[69] He maintained the tradition of the progress, generally choosing the direction of such hunting grounds as Sherwood, Wychwood, the New Forest, or Salisbury Plain; and during the course of his progress, on 5 August, he celebrated another anniversary, that of his delivery from the Gowry conspiracy in 1600. On this day ambassadors were expected to pursue him from London and offer their congratulations.[70] The progress generally ended at Havering early in September.[71] Thereafter the household was established at Windsor or Hampton Court until winter began again. But James's personal life was a far less settled one than that of Elizabeth. He disliked London, and at all times of the year, and wherever the Court might be, he was constantly leaving the greater part of it behind, referring the transaction of business to the Privy Council, and betaking himself with the Master of the Horse and Sir Thomas Lake, a clerk of the signet who acted as his private secretary, to Theobalds or Royston, or some other hunting box, at which his favourite pursuit might be conveniently enjoyed. From thence he would hurry back, often for a day or two only, when some office of state or Court ceremony urgently demanded his attendance. There is abundant evidence that this abnormal passion for the chase had much to do with the early unpopularity of James. It led to neglect of business, the grave inconvenience of ministers, excessive purveyance, and the trampling of crops; and the popular discontent soon found vent in libels on the stage and elsewhere. But James said that he could not lead a sedentary life and must study his health above all things.[72]

During both reigns the normal tenor of Court life was naturally disturbed from time to time by some exceptional event. Parliaments required to be opened in state, although neither Sovereign was fond of summoning Parliaments.[73] The thanksgiving for the Armada on 24 November 1588 was a notable day of triumph for Elizabeth. James did not win battles, but he created his son Prince of Wales in 1610 and married his daughter in 1613 with considerable pomp. In 1607, being in need of a loan, he fluttered city life by dining with the Lord Mayor on 12 June and the Merchant Taylors on 16 July.[74] The arrival of extraordinary ambassadors or other foreign visitors of importance necessitated frequent provision for their entertainment. The constant relations which Elizabeth maintained with France led to a number of special missions, for one purpose or another, diplomatic or complimentary, throughout the reign. The most interesting of these, from the point of view of an annalist of Court revels, were concerned with the negotiations, already referred to, for a marriage with the Duke of Alençon, afterwards Duke of Anjou and 'Monsieur' of France, the brother of Henri III. These began in 1578 and came to a head in 1581, when a visit by Francis de Bourbon, Dauphin de Montpensier, and other commissioners in the spring was followed by another by Anjou himself in November, which lasted over Christmas to the following February. Both occasions were honoured with sumptuous tilts and other entertainments. Before and after Monsieur came in 1572 Francis Duke of Montmorency and Marshal of France, in 1601 Marshal Biron, and in 1602 the Duke of Nevers. Biron appears to have been a substitute for his master, Henri IV, whom Elizabeth would have welcomed, but who apparently could not bring himself to face the perils of the Channel crossing. Chapman puts the comment in the Queen's mouth: