Table Of Content

The Queen Portable Elizabeth and I the Politics of Ceremony SbVt MARY HILL COLE SbVSR The Portable Queen Elizabeth and I the Politics ofCeremony MARY HILL COLE EVERY spring and summer of her tonv-rouryears as queen, Elizabeth I (1533—1603) insisted thathercourtgo "on progress," a series of royal visits to towns and aristocratic homes in southern England. These trips provided the only direct contact most people had with a monarch who made popularity a cornerstone of her reign. Public appearances gave the queen a stage on which to interact with her subjects in a calculated eftort to keep their support. The progresses were both emblematic of Elizabeths rule and intrinsic to her ability to govern. In this book, Mary Hill Cole provides a detailed analysis of the progresses. Drawing on royal household accounts, ministerial cor- respondence, county archives, corporation records, and family papers, she examines the effects ofthe visits on the queens household and government, the individual and civic hosts,and themonarchyoftheVirgin Queen. Cole places the progresses in thesixteenth- centtiry world of politics and images, where the queen and her hosts exchanged ceremo- nial messages that advanced their own agen- das.Theheartofthe progresseswastheblend <>t politics, socializing, andceremonythaten- abled the queen to accomplish royal business <m the movewhilesatisfyingtheneedsofthose courtiers, townspeople, andcountryresidents who welcomed her into their communities. All Renaissance monarchs engaged in oc- CMionil travel, but in Elizabeth's case the THE PORTABLE QUEEN A VOLUME IN THE SERIES MassachusettsStudies in EarlyModern Culture Edited by Arthur F. Kinney Editorial Board A. R. Braunmuller, Donald Foster,Jean E. Howard, John Pitcher, Anne Lake Prescott, David Harris Sacks, R. Malcolm Smuts,JennyWormald Spenser'sLifeandtheSubjectofBiography edited byJudith H. Anderson, Donald Cheney, and DavidA. Richardson Divulging Utopia: RadicalHumanism inSixteenth-CenturyEngland by David Weil Baker English EpicuresandStoics:AncientLegaciesinEarlyStuartCulture by Reid Barbour ThePortable Queen: ElizabethIandthePoliticsofCeremony by Mary Hill Cole ReadingShakespeare's Characters: Rhetoric, Ethics, andIdentity byChristy Desmet CourtandCulturein RenaissanceScotland: SirDavidLindsayoftheMount byCarol Edington MappingMortality: ThePersistenceofMemoryandMelancholyin EarlyModern England byWilliam E. Engel ConceivedPresences: Literary Genealogyin RenaissanceEngland by Raphael Falco ThePoliticsofCourtlyDancinginEarlyModernEngland bySkiles Howard ThePoliticsofUneasein thePlaysofJohn Fletcher byGordon McMullan JohnDee: ThePoliticsofReadingand Writingin theEnglishRenaissance by William H. Sherman The Portable Queen Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony MARY HILL COLE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS AMHERST —— Copyright © 1999 by UniversityofMassachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United StatesofAmerica LC99-27676 ISBN 1-55849-214-3 Designed byMilendaNan OkLee Printed and boundbySheridan Books LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cole, MaryHill, 1957— The portablequeen—: Elizabeth I and the politicsofceremony/ MaryHill Cole, p. cm. (Massachusettsstudies in earlymodern culture) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-55849-214-3 (cloth : alk. paper)— 1. Elizabeth —I, Queen ofEngland, 1533—1603. 2. Great—Britain —Courtand—courtiers History 16th century—. 3. Ritesandceremonie—s England History 1—6th century. 4. Great Br—itain Politicsand government —1558—1603.—5. Engla—nd Social lifeandcustoms 16th c—entury. 6.—Visitsofs—tate England History 16th century. 7—. Royalvi—sitors England History 16—th century.—8. Proce—ssions England History 16th century. 9. Monarchy England History 16th century. I. Title. II. Series. DA356.C56 1—999 942.05Yo92 dc2i 99-27676 CIP British LibraryCataloguingin Publication dataareavailable. For my parents, Howson and Elizabeth Cole Roam and you will confound adversaries, sit and they will confound you. Clifford Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma'