tents.'[1] 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'.[2] 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.[3] 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
- ↑ Lodge, iii. 38.
- ↑ Winwood, ii. 155.
- ↑ 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.
