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Sunday, April 04, 2021

Elizabeth I’s Progress to Cambridge University, 1564: The Host Makes Ready.

In the Progress to Cambridge University, 1564 series:

  • The host is notified
  • Preparations at Greenwich
  • The Host Makes Ready
  • Final Inspections
  • Her Arrival

  • While the Queen and the Royal party were in progress, hunting deer at Enfield, etc., Cambridge was a very busy place. Prodigious amounts of ale, wine and beer were being purchased and transported to awaiting cellarers of the university. Buyers had been sent out to buy the finest quality gloves, trimmed with real gold lace, to bring back in time for the finest local artisans to customize them with gold initials and other flourishes fit for gifts for a Queen and her Court. A lush canopy was being manufactured to be held over the Queen’s head to shelter her from sun and rain from the time she officially arrived at the entrance to the university.

    Only a very few roads were paved and those located in front of the University church before which Elizabeth would be officially welcomed.  Orders had gone out for wagons full of sand, as well, to fill the smelly ditches and prevent getting mud and muck on the hems of fine gowns. Wagonloads of rushes were arriving to be laid down on the day before the Queen’s arrival as a temporary pavement in order to prevent choking dust clouds from the many horse hooves and strewn in room and church spaces to freshen the floors.  Crews of day laborers were hard at work laying it all down.

    A succession of platforms were being built all along the route the Queen would take from the city limits to the place where she would receive her official welcome. On these the lesser officials of the town, of the trade guilds, officers of the various parishes  and other chartered groups, and children from upper-class families would wait for her to pass.  She would stop at each to hear their songs and orations of welcome,  their cries of “God save the Queen,”  and to accept their gifts of gloves, silver cups filled with coins, etc., and to collect the texts from which they’d recited and hand them along to footmen to be packed for the trip back.

    Houses along the main route were being painted. Every soul in the town and university that could afford it was at the tailor’s or seamstress’s having their clothing mended or new clothing made. Shop-stalls were being made as festive as possible for appearances and in order to attract  guests to stop back to make a purchase or two. More ale, still, was being shipped in by the ale houses to serve the celebratory citizens and the downstairs servants with the Royal progress. More such houses were being outfitted as the local authorities always issued additional temporary licenses when a progress was to pass through.

    The college and town stables were being cleared and cleaned. Hay and fodder (a.k.a. “horse meat”) was being laid in for the company’s many mules and horses. Rooms were being set aside, nearby, for the Royal grooms. Local blacksmiths were making themselves ready to provide the services that always proved necessary when traveling for such distances.

    Chamber servants were vigorously cleaning spaces appointed to house the august guests soon to arrive. Hundreds of beds were being commandeered from the college and town. Bedding had to be fumigated to assure the party did not leave with a  gift of vermin. The quality of the furniture and accessories was carefully assessed by university and/ or Royal grooms such that the higher ranking the guest the finer the accommodations.

    A special traveling staff called the “harbingers” arrived a day or two before the Queen trailed by drovers and carts. She traveled with her own accoutrements which were now assembled in the colleges’ most impressive private chamber together with furniture and wall hangings blazoned with the royal arms. In the kitchens, a clerk of the Royal kitchen was providing the Queen’s favorite recipes to the Clerk of the Cambridge  facility and checking to assure that only the finest the ingredients were at hand. All of the above preparations were closely inspected and directions given to bring them up to snuff.

    The local constabulary were combing the city to strictly isolate even the tiniest likelihood of a plague case. The local riff-raff were being escorted to the city limits with orders to make haste to distant parts. Should they fail to obey they might be marched off to the local prison.

    For their part, the prize students and fellows of the colleges were busily writing their own Latin orations to impress the guests, and, perhaps, even to make introductions that would lead to their own lives in service to the Court. Those who excelled at poetry would recite their poems or kiss the pages and hand them to the Queen to be preserved in the official record or tack them on the doors of the chambers of the lords. This might be followed up by having them published shortly afterwards as works that had been worthy to be presented in a “great entertainment” of the Queen herself. Others with designs for future fellowships were writing and rehearsing Latin plays to be performed in the evenings.

    Thomas Draunt, a young fellow of St. John's College, was also writing poems for the occasion in English which he would later publish, together with his Latin poems, in a volume dedicated to William Cecil’s wife, Mildred, who had been in attendance.   

    A prince extract from haughtie howse,

    A prince of pompouse port,

    Approchethe here, whose auncestours

    Triumphe in glorious sort.

    Come, noble lustie poete, come,

    Strike up in regall rate;

    To pennes, to pennes, pursue the chase,

    Ye have a game of state.

    If wit maye winne a woorthie name,

    Yf vertue purchase prayse,

    If heavenly hughe deserve an hire,

    Her brute then let us blase….

    His work would impress the 14 year old Earl of Oxford, who was in the Queen’s company, and was a member of Cecil’s household, as evidenced by the fact that it influenced his style in the 1584 play Ulysses & Agamemnon[1] as I have pointed out in my variorum edition of that play.

                                                



    [1] Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T The play was later incorporated into Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.


    Also at Virtual Grub Street:

    1 comment:

    EricJohnLarge said...

    How long did the Queen stay at Cambridge?