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 1s. 9d., while that of 1614 cost them £102 12s. 6-1/2d.[1] Anything in the way of a mimetic entertainment would probably fall by civic custom on the guilds.[2] And the establishment of the Revels, which followed the progress, was ready to help at need, with a mask or banqueting house.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]
- ↑ Kelly, Progresses, 298, 320, 345, 359; Nichols, Eliz. i. 551.
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ 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 8s. 11-1/2d.; of 1571, when the Master took nine men, three horses and a wagon; of 1573, when they spent £21 10s. 8d. 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 1s. 11d. 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.
- ↑ 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'.
- ↑ 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'.
