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.[1] 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.[2] 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
- ↑ 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'.
- ↑ 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'.
