Have you ever wondered how the beautiful Coronation robes were embroidered with such magnificent goldwork? Or how Kate Middleton’s dress was embroidered so beautifully for her wedding to Prince William?  Or how was the amazing goldwork done on robes of the Herald’s of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant? Embroidery on royal or military robes and garments are incredible works requiring great skill and craftsmanship.

The only people able to embroider to such a high level of excellence are, of course, those trained by the remarkable  Royal School of Needlework based in Hampton Court Palace.

Whilst I can never claim to being as skilled and as experienced as the embroiders (known as ‘apprentices’) who made the Queen’s Coronation Robes, I can claim first-hand knowledge of how difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery – and how rewarding it is.  In 2010-2011, before my dissertation took hold of all my time and attention, I was fortunate enough to attend my first (out of four) embroidery techniques that comprise the Royal School of Needlework‘s Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery.  The technique I choose to be my first (and to date, only technique) was goldwork.

To celebrate the final day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend, my post today is images of my time at the Royal School of Needlework.  I hope these photos convey how technically difficult it is to do goldwork embroidery.

 

Day 1 – Finding a source for my work. I love the work of William Morris, so chose this pattern

 

 

 

Day 1 – the tiny portion of the amazing William Morris pattern which will form the basis of my work

 

 

 

 

Day 1 – Framing up. Attaching calico to a “slate” frame (which isn’t made of slate!)

 

 

 

 

Day 1 – Still framing up – this took hours!

 

 

 

 

Day 1 – My stitches aren’t very neat but it doesn’t matter because when I’d finished the work, I cut these stitches to remove the work from the frame

 

 

Day 1 – My design – this has been “pricked” so I can “pounce” it with white powder made from cuttlefish. The tracing is covered all along the design with
tiny pin-pricks about 2mm apart.

 

 

Day 1 – My black silk has been sewn to the calico backing (this took a couple of hours to do). Then the pricked tracing is placed over the black silk and “pounced”. The pounce is made of finely ground cuttle-fish which is then smeared over the tracing so the pounce falls through the tiny holes and leaves an outline on the black silk

 

Day 1 – All ready for the outline to be painted on.

 

 

 

Day 1 – This was so tricky as I don’t have a steady hand. Using a very fine paint-brush, the outline of the design is painted onto the black silk. It’s a bit too thick in place and too fine in others. When the goldwork is embroidered onto the fabric, it has got to cover all the paint lines so no lines are showing.

 

 

Day 1 – All framed, painted and ready to start…

 

 

 

Day 1 – My first bit of padding – a lot of the goldwork has padding underneath the metal threads to raise it up from the surface. This strip has 4 pieces of felt sewn down one on top of the other.

 

 

Day 1 – Some of the yellow padding. Most of this work has padding all over it before the gold can be applied.

 

 

 

Day 2 – It took me all day to sew the felt padding.

 

 

 

Day 2 – The 2 far out leaves have 2 layers of felt padding. The middle (of 3) long down felt padding is 4 layers, either side of this, it’s 1 layer. The 2 leaves on top/next to the down felt is also 4 layers. The top triangles are 3 layers. The upside down “crown” at the top has 3 layers of tiny circles and the 1 layer of upside down crown.

 

Day 2 – Urgh. I can’t believe how much fluff is on my lovely black silk!

 

 

 

Day 3 – Soft string padding. This is about 15 strands of thick soft string, heavily waxed with bees wax and then twisted together and tightly sewn down. It was a pain to do!

 

 

 

 

Day 3 – The beginnings of the 2nd section of waxed soft string

 

 

 

Day 3 – By the end of this day, a lot of my beautiful paintwork had started to brush off. Under the 2nd section of soft string, it had disappeared totally so the yellow lines you can see are from the tacking lines I’ve had to sew in to get back the outline

 

Day 3 – Lots and lots of tissue paper surround my work so it doesn’t get dirty! I get marks deducted if it is dirty or has wax marks on it. My little pin keep I made myself – it’s so handy.

 

 

Day 4 – On this day, I got to couch down some Japanese gold thread

 

 

 

 

Day 4 – All those little “tails” of gold thread had to be taken through the black silk and secured to the back of the picture. Taking the threads through the background fabric is called “plunging”

 

 

Day 4 – 2 sides of the stem are now done

 

 

 

 

 

Day 4 – The camera doesn’t really show the couching stiches. They are done in a “brick” stitch pattern

 

 

 

Day 5 – Middle section all couched down. Loads of tails that all need plunging

 

 

 

 

 

Day 5

 

 

 

 

Day 5

 

 

 

Day 5 – middle wavy section is three different threads – rocco, Japanese and twist

 

 

 

Day 5 – Bottom of stem have been plunged. Gold threads have been taken through to the back of the fabric by using a lasso of strong button-hole-cotton. The gold thread is threaded through the lasso and then the lasso is pulled tight from the other side of the fabric and with any luck the gold thread will pop through to the other side.

 

 

Day 5

 

 

 

Day 5- The back of the work with lots and lots of gold threads

 

 

 

 

Day 5

 

 

 

 

Day 5 – Every thread has been plunged (this took about 4 hours to do them all)

 

 

 

 

Day 5 – The back of the fabric. Now all these threads had to be securely sewn down in little bundles and the ends snipped off.

 

 

Day 6 – back of the fabric – top section of threads have been sewn down. Bottom section awaiting to be done

 

 

 

Day 6 – the only way to sew these little bundles of gold thread down is by using a curved needle. Using a straight normal needle is nearly impossible as the fabric is so taught and the gold threads so thick

 

 

Day 6 – Last few bundles to be done

 

 

 

 

 

Day 6 – All done

 

 

 

Day 6 – Sewing down the bundles took about 4 hours. Great care has to be taken where each bundle is sewn down to – its got to be on areas that doesn’t have to be sewn over later on. If I got it wrong, I’d be pushing a needle through fabric and the thick bundles of gold thread (ouch!)

 

Day 6 – Back to the top of the fabric. I’ve now outlined the left side leaves in pearl purl (or is it purl pearl?) Each leave is indiviually done and I had to work out which line belonged to which leaf

 

 

Day 6 – Close up of the pearl purl. My camera shows all the tiny piece of beeswax and fluff from the felt. The felt “leaks” fluff all the time. The pearl purl is sewn down with heavily bees-waxed cottom to make it stronger. It leaves tiny traces of bees-wax behind on the fabric. The next day’s job was to remove all the fluff and bees-wax from my work.

 

Day 6 – I did the gold swirlie bit on the right of the picture last minutes on day 5. But then I realised I hadn’t done it properly because I tried to loop around in curves at the top of swirlie bit but it just looked awful. So I had to unpick this entire section.

 

Day 7 – the re-sewn embroidery so that the swirls follow round and round in a spiral. It still wasn’t perfect – too much space between each swirl – but had to do.

 

 

 

 

Day 7 – both sides are now done in swirlie loops using gold passing thread.

 

 

Day 7 – from this close up you can see the swirls are by no means perfect. After I took this photo, the tutor had a good prod and poke arouond and evened up my swirls. The long gold thread hanging off to the left of the picture is pearl purl – used to outline things. Hard work couching it down as you have to pull the waxed thread through the little tiny gaps (pearls). The stitches end up being about 1mm in length

 

Day 7 – all the pearl is done. And 2 arches of rocco gold thread added to the black part at the top

 

 

 

 

Day 7 – so the 2 sides aren’t symmetrical! But it’s a flower and not supposed to be symmetrical.

 

Day 7

Day 7

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 – This thread is called bright check. It’s cut into tiny tiny little beads that are then sewn down over the felt

 

 

 

Day 7 – this was to be cut into tiny tiny beads and then sewn down over the remaining yellow felt

 

 

Day 7 – half way down the thread is a bead cut from the bright check. The bead is about 2mm in length. That whole tiny area has to be full of hundreds beads with no spaces of yellow left

 

 

Day 7 – by the end of each day, my eyes were so tired that I just couldn’t see my goldwork anymore! The tiny gold mark towards the right (by the tissue paper) is where the bright check has very slightly frayed as it’s being cut leaving behind a tiny trace of gold wire and it has bounced onto my work (it brushed off)

 

Day 7 – as the bright check is cut into beads, it shatters and jumps all over the place. This is the lid of a jam pot so that when the beads jump, it’ll stay within the lid and not disappear.   I should have put the lid on tissue paper, instead of straight onto my black silk – everything has to be protected so that no dirty marks are left behind.

Read part 2 of my time at the Royal School of Needlework
and my completed goldwork piece.

 

 
© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

My post on Elizabeth I’s visit to Great Dunmow discussed Elizabeth’s summer progress through the town on 25^th August 1561.  Today’s post is about the route she took and the houses she visited that summer.

Title page from the Bishops Bible (London, 1569),
shelfmark G.12188, © British Library Board

Mary Hill Cole ‘s book The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999) lists the hosts and their houses visited.  Looking at that list today, the venues now read as a who’s-who of 21^st Century wedding venues and independent/private schools!  I myself married at Layer Marney Towers (nr Colchester).  It’s interesting to note that many of those hosts were descendants of Richard Rich, 1^st Baron Rich, that arch-villain of Tudor history.

– London (Robert Dudley), 24 June 1561.
– Charterhouse, London  (Lord North), 10-14 July 1561
– Strand, London (William Cecil), 13 July 1561.
– Wanstead, Essex (Lord Rich), 14 July 1561.
– Havering, Essex, 14-19 July 1561.
– Pyrgo, Essex (Lord John Grey), 16 July 1561.
– Loughton Hall, Essex (Lord Darcy), 17 July 1561.
– Ingatestone Hall, Essex (Sir William Petre), 19-21 July 1561.
– New Hall, Essex (Earl of Sussex), 21-26 July 1561.
– Felix Hall (Henry Long), 26 July 1561.
– Colchester (Sir Thomas Lucas), 26-30 July 1561.
– Layer Marney (George Tuke),around 26-30 July
– St Osyth (Lord Darcy), 30 July to 2 August.
– Harwich, Essex,  2-5 August.
– Ipswich, Suffolk,  5-11 August.
– Shelley Hall, Suffolk (Philip Tilney), 11 August.
– Smallbridge, Suffolk (William Waldegrave), 11-14 August.
– Castle Hedingham (Earl of Oxford) 14-19 August.
– Gosfield Hall (Sir John Wentworth), 19-21 August.
– Leez Priory (Lord Rich), 21-25 August.
– Great Hallingbury (Lord Morley),  25-27 August 1561.
– Standon, Hert (Sir Ralph Sadler), 27-30 August 1561
– Hertford Castle, Herts, 30 August – 16 September.
– Hatfield, Hert (16 September?).
– Enfield, Middsex (16-22 September).

Below is a map of Elizabeth’s route.
 © Essex Record Office, Map Showing the Royal Progress of 1561 (2008)

The cost of the Queen’s progress
The cost to both the Queen and her hosts was extensive.  The cost to Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall was £136, the Earl of Oxford spent £273 and to Lord Rich at Leighs (Leez) Priory was £389.

At its heart, then, challenge of travel for the royal household was a financial one, because the Queen spent more on food, supplies, and accommodation when on progress than when she remained in the London area….. For the 1561 progress into Essex and Suffolk, Thomas Weldon, cofferer of the household, kept a tally of the Queen’s expenses at each of the places she stayed during the seventy-six day trip.  The court’s expenses varied from £83 to £146 per day, with a total cost of £8,540.

J. E. Archer, E. Goldring, and S. Knight (ed.),
The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I

Below are 20th century images of the homes of some of Elizabeth’s hosts.

 

Layer Marney

 

 

 

 

 

Layer Marney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leez Priory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leez Priory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castle Hedingham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Osyth Priory

 

 

 

Further Reading
J. E. Archer, E. Goldring, and S. Knight (ed.), The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 2007).
Mary Hill Cole , The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999)
F.G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (London, 1961)
John Nichols, The Progresses & Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (3 volumes),  (London, 1788-1823).
University of Warwick – Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, The John Nichols Project, (2012)

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

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If you want to read more from my blog, please do subscribe either by using the Subscribe via Email button top right of my blog, or the button at the very bottom.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, then please do Like it with the Facebook button and/or leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this post.

You may also be interested in the following:
– Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 1
– Index to each folio in Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Elizabeth I

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

Today is the much heralded and awaited day of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames.  Ahead of the Royal Barge, Gloriana, and the boat carrying the Queen and her party, The Spirit of Chartwell, will be a belfry barge (the Ursula Catherine) carrying eight church bells specially cast for the Diamond Jubilee Pageant by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in East London.  Bells in many of churches along the route of the River Thames’s Jubilee Pageant will be ringing to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.  Many of these churches have been part of London’s rich heritage for hundreds of years.

Each bell on Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee bell belfry barge is named after a senior member of the British Royal Family.

Bell, Name of bell (Donated by) – Musical Note
– Tenor, Elizabeth (Worshipful Company of Vintners) – G#;
– 7^th, Philip (Worshipful Company of Dyers) – A#;
– 6^th, Charles (Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers) – B#;
– 5^th, Anne (Church of St James Garlickhythe) – C#;
– 4^th, Andrew (The Bettinson family) – D#;
– 3^rd, Edward (Joanna Warrand) – E#;
– 2^nd, William (Stockwell family & Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers) – F##; and
– Treble, Henry (Harry)  (Nicole Marie Kassimiotis & Worshipful Co. of Musicians) – G#.
(Information from The Royal Jubilee Bells.)

Watch the BBC’s programme Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant Highlights to see the bells on the belfry barge.  There’s a good clear shot of the barge and the bells starting at 29:41.

Canaletto’s River Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day 1746, © The Lobkowicz Collections

Church bells ringing to celebrate a British monarch is not a modern-day event but has its roots deep in our history. The image below is from the early fourteenth century and shows Henry III (born 1207, died 1272) on his throne beside Westminster Abbey and the Abbey’s bells.

Henry III, by Westminster Abbey and its bells – below is a
genealogical table of  his descendants, (England, c1307-c1327),
shelfmark Royal 20 A II f.9, © British Library Board.

Church bells were not just used to celebrate coronations and jubilees. My post, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow, detailed how the church bells of Great Dunmow rung out as Queen Elizabeth I took her royal progress through Essex and Suffolk in the summer 1561.  Of course, the primary purpose of church bells in late medieval England was to call a parish’s Catholic community to prayer and so were significant religious objects.   Surviving English churchwardens’ accounts from this period often detail the recasting and mending of their church’s bells, bell clappers and even the ropes.  Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts are no exception and the accounts have many entries relating to the mending of bells at St Mary the Virgin.  Along with mending their bells, the pre-Reformation parish of Great Dunmow also commissioned the casting a new Great Bell in the 1520s from an unnamed bell foundry in London.

The churchwarden accounts detail that between the years of 1527 and 1529, the parishioners of Great Dunmow collected £7 0s 7d for their new Great Bell to be installed in the parish church. This was a highly organised collection instigated by the parish’s pre-Reformation vicar, William Walton, and the local elite. This was the second in a series of seven collections organised by Walton to raise funds for church and religious artefacts.  The first was for the church steeple.  For the Great Bell collection, the 153 names of house-of-households, their location within Great Dunmow, and the amount each contributed were carefully and meticulously recorded for posterity within the churchwarden’s accounts.  Cross referencing the lists of names for each collection with the returns from the 1520s Lay Subsidy Rolls (a tax enforced by Henry VIII) proves that contributions for the new Great Bell were made by nearly every household within the parish – including the parish’s clergy and paupers. Paupers, who were exempt from Henry VIII’s Lay Subsidy tax, paid the unofficial church levy for the parish’s new bell. Many parishioners contributed the equivalent of a day’s pay (4d).  The casting of a new church bell was a significant event in the life of this Tudor parish, as can be gleaned from the events surrounding the collection.

After the entries for the parish collection, the churchwardens’ accounts record a great flurry of activity. The churchwardens and local elite went back and forth to the bell-foundry in London to inspect the casting of their new bell. This incurred some expense as the men claimed their expenses for food & lodgings for their numerous trips from the church’s accounts. Finally the bell was ready to be taken back to the parish church. Whilst the accounts’ purpose was only to list the expenditure and receipts received/made by the parish church, they manage to convey the sense of triumph the entire parish must have felt when the elite were finally able to go to London to ‘fett home the bells’.   They paid a staggering £10 to the bellfounder. A further £6 13s 4d was paid out by the parish church ‘for makynge a new flower [floor] in the stepell & a new belframe & new wheles & stoke all owre bells redy to go’. The accounts are silent as to whether or not there was a grand opening ceremony for the new bell – but I rather suspect that there was. The serious shortfall between the amount collected for the bell and the amount eventually paid out was not commented upon in the accounts!

‘Man ringing a church bell with another kneeling behind him; to their right, a priest is at an altar’ from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, Last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century),
shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f.257, © British Library Board.

The churchwardens’ accounts do not specify the name of the London bell foundry – just that the Great Bell was cast in London.  The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the makers of the Diamond Jubilee Bells, was founded in 1570 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. However, in recent years a historian has established a link from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to one Master Founder, Robert Chamberlain, who was active in the first quarter of the fifteenth century.  Thus, this Bell Foundry is thought to have been active as early  as the 1400s during the medieval period.  During the reign of Henry VIII, there can’t have been too many bell foundries in the London and it is likely that all the bell foundries would have been in the east outside the City walls.  The noise, smell and risk of fire would have kept the foundries outside populated area and downwind from the prevailing winds coming from the west.  There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the pre-Reformation church bells of Great Dunmow were cast in the same bell foundry that cast the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Bells, The Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

London and Westminster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, anno dom. 1563,
© British Library Board.

It was these same church-bells which rang out the joy of Queen Elizabeth’s summer progress through the parish over thirty years later on Monday 25th August 1561.   Griff Rhys Jones, in the BBC’s new series on the Britain’s Lost Routes, charted Elizabeth’s 1570s progresses from Windsor Castle to Bristol.  In his programme, he doesn’t comment on the church bells that must have rung out heralding the Queen’s progress.  This is probably more because of the scarce survival of primary source evidence, rather than the pealing of the bells didn’t happen.  Great Dunmow is lucky to have any surviving evidence – and this was only because the churchwardens meticulously recorded the expense of 8d paid out to the Good Wife Barker  for her ale (Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts – folio 45v.)

There are no surviving church records of the churches in village surrounding Great Dunmow. However, it can be assumed that each village’s church rang out to celebrate the Queen’s progress: Felsted, Little Dunmow, Stebbing, Barnston, Great Dunmow, Little Canfield, Great Canfield, Takeley, and the villages of Hertfordshire surrounding Great Hallingbury. The ringing of the church bells would have been heard by all Elizabeth’s subjects during her progress through the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Transcripts of Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ account
– Diamond Jubilee
– Queen Elizabeth I’s Progresses through Elizabethan England

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Text in square [brackets] are The Narrator’s transcriptions. Line numbers are merely to assist the reader find their place on the digital image.

The original churchwarden accounts (1526-1621) are in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced.

Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

On the 2nd June 1953, our Queen, Elizabeth II, was crowned with great solemnity and ceremony in Westminster Abbey whilst seated in the ancient Coronation Chair (King Edward’s Chair). Today’s post celebrates and marks her reign by publishing images connected to the coronations of Elizabeth II’s Tudor predecessors.

 

 

Coronation Chair, with and without the Stone of Scone (The Stone of Destiny)

 

 

 

 

Henry VII (born 28 January 1457, died 21 April 1509)

Postcard of the Burial chapel of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey. Henry was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485.

Henry VIII (born 28 June 1491, died 28 January 1547)

Coronation Oath of Henry VIII with his own annotations (crowned 24 June 1509), shelfmark Cotton Ms. Tiberius D viii, f.89, © British Library Board. (For more information on his changes, see the British Library’s explanation.  Was Henry anticipating his break with Rome?)

Edward VI (born 12 October 1537, died 6 July 1553)

Coronation procession of Edward VI along Cheapside, London. Edward’s coronation was on 20 February 1547.

Mary I (born 18 February 1516, died 17 November 1558)

Crowned 1 October 1553.

Elizabeth I (born 7 September 1533, died 24 March 1603)

 Coronation procession of Elizabeth. Her coronation took place on 15 January 1559.

Finally…
Not a coronation image but an image of the Queen at Epsom Races in 1974.  This weekend’s Jubilee Celebrations begin in Epsom as she watches the Derby.

Picture  © British Library Board.  This image is personal to me as I was born in Epsom and spent my first 12 years living in the town. The Queen visiting the races was very much a part of my childhood. Not least, because in those days the Derby was run mid-week, so we were always sent home from school early. I have many childhood memories of waiting by the Spread Eagle Pub in Epsom town centre and waving as the royal cars swept through the town.

This weekend Britain celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of our Queen, Elizabeth II. It therefore seems appropriate that my posts this weekend are about the visit of her Tudor namesake and ancestor, Queen Elizabeth I, who progressed through the town of Great Dunmow in the Summer of 1561.  This was mere 20 months after she became Queen on the 17th November 1558 – her East Anglian progress was of vital importance to convey her image of royalty to her subjects.

There is only one very brief reference relating to Queen Elizabeth I’s 1561 visit to Great Dunmow within the Tudor churchwardens’ accounts.

[Itm payd to the the good wyfe barker for ale for those yet dyd rynge when ye Quenes grace cam thorow ye parysshe 8d] Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts – folio 45v.

Previous records from the churchwarden’s accounts show that the going rate in the 1520s for a day’s labour for a man was about 4d to 6d. So the bell-ringers of the church of St Mary the Virgin, Great Dunmow, consumed the equivalent of nearly 2 days wages in ale! This must have been some celebration…

Unfortunately, no other record survives of Queen Elizabeth’s progress through the town – the church records have no other details.  Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, had granted Great Dunmow borough status in 1555.  Therefore, any expenses that the town incurred during Elizabeth’s visit would have been entered into the borough records – which have not survived.

However, by examining the primary and secondary sources on Elizabeth’s Summer Progress of 1561, it can be stated with considerable certainty that she progressed through the town sometime during the day of Monday 25^th August 1561.  Elizabeth had been a guest at the home of Lord Rich at nearby Leez Priory 21-25 August; and then stayed at Lord Moreley’s estate in the Hertfordshire village of Great Hallingbury on the night of the 25^th.  Therefore, she must have come through Great Dunmow sometime during the day of the 25^th.

Her route would have been along the Roman Stane Street (now known most romantically as the ‘Old A120’) from Leez Priory to Great Dunmow and then through the town’s High Street.  My map of Tudor Great Dunmow illustrates her likely route through the parish.  The postcards below show Great Dunmow in the early 20^th Century – the Edwardian High Street of Great Dunmow looks very much as it does now. (Tudor town hall on left of 1st two postcards and on right of next 2.)

Many of today’s shops in Great Dunmow originate from medieval and Tudor houses. Therefore, the town of Great Dunmow probably looked very similar 400 years previously in the Elizabethan era. The Town/Guild Hall was built during the 16th century so was probably there in 1561 when Elizabeth progressed through the town. The pale (white) double-roofed building 2nd from the left in the two postcards below is thought to have been a pre-Reformation Catholic priest house which served the town’s small pre-Reformation Chapel. This Chapel was probably closed and destroyed as part of Edward VI’s reforms but it’s priest-house remains and is now a clothes shop.

The town must have extensively and jubilantly celebrated their Queen’s progress.  Was there the  equivalent of today’s bunting and streamers be-decking the streets of Tudor Great Dunmow?  How did the ordinary towns-folk of Great Dunmow celebrate the exciting event of their monarch’s presence in their town?

‘Every spring and summer of her 44 years as queen, Elizabeth I insisted that her court go with her on ‘progress’, a series of royal visits to town and aristocratic homes in sourthern England.  Between 1558 and 1603 her visits to over 400 individual and civic hosts provided the only direct contact most people had with a monarch who made popularity a cornerstone of her reign.  These visits gave the queen a public stage on which to present herself as the people’s sovereign and to interact with her subjects in a calculated attempt to keep their support.’

Mary Hill Cole, The portable queen : Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Massachusetts, 1999), p1.

Griff Rhys Jones, in the BBC’s new series on the Britain’s Lost Routes, has charted Elizabeth’s 1570s progresses from Windsor Castle to Bristol.  Rhys Jones re-enacted the queen’s progress with modern-day people and their cars.  He states that accompanying the queen were

– Court Officers
– Ladies in Waiting
– The Privy Chamber and the Privy Councillors
– Servants
– Other ranks

All told, according Rhys Jones, there were 350 people in hundreds of wagons, carts and on horseback.  The whole procession was about one mile in length and included all that a fully mobile queen required – from her kitchen to her court documents.  This procession travelled at approximately 3 miles per hour as it wound its way through the Elizabethan countryside.   The queen often rode ahead of this procession in the type of litter shown in the first picture above.  But before her went her ‘Habingers’ who rode ahead to prepare her subjects (and her hosts!) for her presence.

The distance from Leez Priory to Great Dunmow is approximately 6 miles – so it would have taken Elizabeth’s procession two hours just to get to the town.  After that was her  slow and steady progress through the town.  It must have been a day of great celebration for the townsfolk of Great Dunmow!  Do watch Griff Rhys Jones’ Britain’s Lost Routes about the west country progress of Elizabeth to understand how she might have progressed through Essex and Suffolk in 1561.

Images
– All postcards on this page are in the personal collection of The Narrator and may not be reproduced without permission.
–  Procession portrait of Elizabeth I of England (Robert Peake the Elder, 1551–1619).
– ‘A hermit sitting outside a tavern drinking ale; the alewife approaches him with a flagon’ from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals‘), (France, last quarter 13^th century or 1^st quarter 14^th century), shelfmark Royal 10 EIV f.114v, (c) British Library Board.
– John Nichols, The Progresses & Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, (London, 1788-1823).

Notes about Great Dunmow’s churchwarden accounts
Great Dunmow’s original churchwardens’ accounts (1526-1621) are kept in Essex Record Office (E.R.O.), Chelmsford, Essex, D/P 11/5/1.  All digital images of the accounts within this blog appear by courtesy of Essex Record Office and may not be reproduced. Examining these records from this Essex parish gives the modern reader a remarkable view  into the lives and times of some of Henry VIII’s subjects and provides an interpretation into the local history of Tudor Great Dunmow.

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You may also be interested in the following:
– Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Great Dunmow: Part 2
– Great Dunmow’s Churchwardens’ accounts: transcripts 1526-1621
– Tudor local history
– Elizabeth I

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

 

The Tudor Narrator has been doing some 21^st Century house-keeping…

Below are the WordPress stats for the number of views each of my blog posts have received since I started this blog back in January.  The Home Page has been configured to show approximately 5 posts on one page, so the stats for this pages hides the fact that my readers could be reading several posts on the same page.

It’s interesting to see that my posts on ‘Interpreting primary sources’ and ‘Unwitting Testimony’ are up there at the top.  I know from several emails that many readers are using these posts as resources for teaching historical research to students.  Thank you to the Open University for teaching the techniques to me.

Please do leave comments on any of my posts.  At the moment it feels rather a one-way conversation with my readers and I would love to read your opinions on my blog and the topics I am covering.

Title  (Views)
Home page  (1,761)
Tuesday’s Tip – Interpreting primary sources – the 6 ‘w’s  (307)
The clergy in pre-Reformation England  (135)
Tuesday’s Tip: Primary sources – ‘Unwitting Testimony’  (126)
Shopping Saturday – Tudor tradesmen of Great Dunmow  (100)
Blacksheep Sunday: Witches, witchcraft and bewitchment – Part 2  (92)
Images of medieval cats  (81)
Blacksheep Sunday: Witchcraft and witches – Part 1  (79)
Transcript fo. 4r: Catholic Ritual Year – Plough-feast, May Day, Corpus Christi  (74)
Mappy Monday: Tudor maps of sixteenth century Essex  (71)
Wordless Wednesday: Medieval funerals  (51)
Index  (51)
Tuesday’s Tip: Primary sources and Old handwriting (palaeography)  (46)
My top 7 websites for medieval & early-modern maps of London & Great Britain  (41)
Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 2 – Henry in Love  (39)
Follow Friday: My Top 10 websites for Essex Ancestors  (39)
Great Dunmow’s local history: The dialect of Tudor Essex  (38)
Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 1  (36)
Images of the Devil in the Medieval/early-modern period  (35)
Tuesday’s tip – Palaeography and reading between the lines  (35)
Great Dunmow’s local history: Henry VIII’s 1523-4 Lay Subsidy Tax  (33)
Transcript fo. 5r: Great Dunmow’s Tudor dialect  (32)
Transcript fo.2r: Great Dunmow’s collection for the church steeple (part 1)  (32)
Sturton family of Tudor Great Dunmow and Great Easton  (31)
Transcript fo.1v: Great Dunmow’s local history – medieval manors  (27)
Transcript fo.2v: Great Dunmow’s collection for the church steeple (part 2)  (25)
Tuesday’s tip – When one person’s theory turns into a ‘true’ fact – Part 1  (25)
Great Dunmow’s local history: Tudor vicar William Walton  (24)
Transcript fo.3r: Great Dunmow’s collection for the church steeple (part 3)  (22)
Transcript fo. 6r: Easter celebrations in late medieval parish  (22)
England’s patron saint: Saint George  (22)
Great Dunmow’s local history: Tudor parish’s administration  (19)
Transcript fo. 5v: Building a late medieval church steeple  (19)
Thankful Thursday: Great Dunmow’s Through all the changing seasons  (18)
Images of Tudor people  (16)
Transcript fo.4r: Great Dunmow’s collection for the church steeple (part 5)  (15)
Wordless Wednesday – Parsonage Downs, Great Dunmow  (15)
Transcript fo.3v: Great Dunmow’s collection for the church steeple (part 4)  (15)
Images of Medieval and early Tudor trades – Part 1  (14)
Kentwell Hall, Suffolk – Easter Monday during Queen Mary’s reign  (14)
Henry VIII – Images of a King: Part 3  (13)
Wordless Wednesday – Second World War Pill Boxes  (12)
Wild animals and early-modern England  (12)
Thankful Thursday – Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince & the Pauper’  (11)
Transcript fo. 4v: Great Dunmow’s Morris Dancing  (9)

 

Images on this post (© British Library Board)
1)  From Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (‘The Taymouth Hours‘), (London, England, 2nd quarter of 14th century), shelfmark Yates Thompson 13 f.8v.
2)  From Book of Hours, (‘Sforza Hours‘), (Italy, c1490), shelfmark add 34294, f.48.

Apothecaries
 ‘Full-page miniatures of an apothecary shop, on the left, and medical consultations, on the right’ from Circa instans (France, 1st quarter 14th century),
shelfmark Sloane 1977 ff. 49v-50, © British Library Board.

Armourers
(I couldn’t find a British Library image of armourer making a suit of armour, so this beautiful image represents the armourers of Medieval & Tudor England)
 ‘Combatant mounted knights in armour and tabard’ from Military Roll of Arms (manuscript also known as Sir Thomas Holme’s Book of Arms), (England, S. E., probably London, before 1448, c. 1446), Harley 4205 ff. 15v-16, , © British Library Board.

Bakers
 ‘Baker putting loaves in oven’ from Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria (the ‘Smithfield Decretals’) (France, last quarter of the 13th century or 1st quarter of the 14th century), shelfmark Royal 10 E IV f. 145v, © British Library Board.

Barbers (including surgeons & dentists)
 ‘Dentist extracting teeth’ from Omne Bonum (Circumcisio-Dona Spiritui Sancti) (London, England, c1360-c1375), shelfmark Royal 6 E VI f. 503v, © British Library Board.

Basket-makers
(I couldn’t find an image of someone making a basket, so this beautiful image of The Feeding of the Five Thousand represents the basket-makers of Medieval times)
 ‘Five large baskets of bread and an apostle placing bread in a man’s cloak’ from Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (‘The Taymouth Hours’) (London, England, 2nd quarter of the 14th century), shelfmark Yates Thompson 13 f. 102, © British Library Board.

Blacksmith
 ‘Blacksmith at work’ from Book of Hours (London, c1320-c1330),
shelfmark Harley 6563 f.68v, © British Library Board.

All digital images on this blog are from the British Library’s Online Images archive and appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced (© British Library Board).

‘Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’,
Shakespeare, Henry V.

 

Today is St George’s Day.  St George is the patron saint of England.  Below are some images of the medieval St George and his dragon.

 

‘St George and the dragon’ from Prayers to Saints (England, S. E. (London) and Netherlands, S. (Bruges), after 1401, before 1415),
shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII ff. 5v-6, © British Library Board.

 ‘George, patron saint of England’ from Speculum humanae salvationis (England, S. E. (London), between 1485 and 1509),
shelfmark Harley 2838 f.44v, © British Library Board.

 ‘Calendar page for April with tinted drawings of saints Tiburtius and Valerianus, George, Wilfrid, and Mark.’ from Almanac with an astrological miscellany (England, 1st quarter of the 14th century (before 1412)), shelfmark Harley 2332 f. 5v, © British Library Board.

 ‘Adoration of the Shepherds and George and the dragon’ from Lovell Lectionary (England, S. (probably Glastonbury), between c. 1400 and c. 1410),
shelfmark Harley 7026 f. 6, © British Library Board.

‘Miniature of William Bruges kneeling before George’ from Pictorial book of arms of the Order of the Garter (‘William Bruges’s Garter Book’), (England, S. E. (probably London),
c.1430-c.1440 (before 1450)), shelfmark Stowe 594 f. 5v , © British Library Board.

William Shakespeare (bapt 26 Apri 1564, died 23 April 1616
Today is also the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.  Below are the words of the great man on England:

‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as does a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot!
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry, “God for Harry! England and Saint George!”‘

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III, Scene 1.

 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war, 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
Against the envy of less happier lands,– 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Scene 1.

 

Further information
– Saint George.
– Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the dragon, (about 1470).
– Jacopo Tintoretto, Saint George and the Dragon, (about 1555).
– Patron Saints, National Gallery, London.
– Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Once more unto the breach’ from Shakespeare’s Henry V.
– TV programmes on the bard The king and the playwright: A Jacobean history, first episode to be shown on BBC4 on 23 April 2012.

All digital images pn this blog are from the British Library’s Online Images archive and appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced (© British Library Board).

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Medieval and early modern images from the British Library

 

 ‘Cat playing a rebec’ from Book of Hours (S.E. England, c1320-c1330),
shelfmark Harley 6563 f. 40, © British Library Board.

 

 ‘Cat in a tower, throwing stones down at attacking mice’ from Book of Hours
(S.E. England, c1320-c1330), shelfmark Harley 6563 f. 72, © British Library Board.

 

 ‘Marginal grotesques, arms, and marginal paintings of a cat playing an instrument, and a rabbit beating a drum’ from Book of Hours (S.E. England, c1320-c1330),
shelfmark Harley 6563 ff. 43v-44, © British Library Board.

 

 ‘A cat with a mouse’ from Book of Hours (the ‘Harley Hours’) (England, Last quarter of the 13th century), shelfmark Harley 928 f. 44v, © British Library Board.

 

 ‘A cat and a mouse’ from Theological miscellany, including the Summa de vitiis, (England, 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 13th century, after c. 1236),
shelfmark Harley 3244 f. 49v, © British Library Board.

 

 ‘Cats and mouse’ from Bestiary, with extracts from Giraldus Cambrensis on Irish birds, (South England, 2nd quarter of 13th Century), shelfmark Harley 4751 f.30v, © British Library Board.

 

All digital images from the British Library’s Online Images archive appear by courtesy of the British Library Board and may not be reproduced (© British Library Board).

Further reading
Katherine Meikle Walker, Medieval Cats, (London, 2011).
Katherine Meikle Walker, Medieval Pets, (London, 2012).

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This blog
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You may also be interested in the following
– Early-modern images
– Medieval Manuscripts
– Images of Medieval animals
– Images of Medieval music
– Images of Tudors
– Images of Medieval devils
– Images of Medieval funerals

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

The B184 is the busy main road north out of Great Dunmow which leads onto the pretty town of Thaxted.  Clearly visible from this road, in the fields surrounding the River Chelmer, is a series of Second World War Pill Boxes.

All photos below were taken on Good Friday 2012 by The Narrator. © Essex Voices Past.

Further reading
– Second World War – GHQ Line
– Great Dunmow in the Second World War
– Military Pill boxes
– Pill Box Study Group