An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen's Journey to East Anglia, 1578 Book

There is no detailed account of any of Elizabeth I's progresses and none of the many references in biographies mention more than the major occasions such as the spectacular visit to Kenilworth. In this pioneering work, Zillah Dovey has used contemporary documents to study in detail a single, though typical, long progress, covering the court servants' preparations, the stops en route and, in parallel, the work of the Council who had to go along too. The progress in question was an eleven-week journey during the summer of 1578 from Greenwich to Norfolk and back by a different route. This had the twin objectives of showing the Queen and her court in all their splendour to the people of a hitherto unvisited part of the realm, and of reducing the pockets of Catholicism which persisted, particularly in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Queen and the Privy Council constituted the government of the country so her ministers had to travel with her, conducting all their usual domestic and foreign business wherever they happened to be. With them went their staff, the court servants and the Queen's guards, totalling several hundred people and perhaps one thousand horses. The inconvenience was unimaginable. The route had to be surveyed, towns and householders advised, supplies set up and cash provided, the court officers' schedules carefully coordinated. Unless the roads were good - which they were usually not - only the baggage was carried on wheels. Everyone else, including the Queen and her ladies, rode. Where there were no great houses the Queen dined or stayed in the homes of the local gentry who had no choice but to abandon their houses to her officers; the rest of the vast party had to be accommodated wherever possible in the area, sometimes at a considerable distance. There was constant coming and going ambassadors, foreign envoys, petitioners and couriers had to catch up with the progress and move on with it, often waiting some time for an audience or instructions; letters f