(It is best to read Part One first.)
To decode A Midsummer Night’s Dream we must first decode Love’s Labour’s Lost.
And to decode Love’s Labour’s Lost we must first decode the Progresses of Queen Elizabeth….
The specialist subject of Trixie the Cat….
The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth
A Trixie Lecture
Every summer, unless there was a Plague, Queen Elizabeth would hit the road…
Taking her entire Court with her…
That is, between two or three hundred people…
They would stay as ‘guests’ in the homes and grounds of her wealthy subjects…
Who would have no say in the matter whatsoever…
Her motives for doing so were as varied and complex as she was…
They were….
1. To escape bad smells….
Elizabeth’s witty godson, John ‘Ajax’ Harington…
………had invented the water-closet, but it was not in general use…
So, every summer the latrines in the royal Palaces had to be cleared….
This produced a stink of terrifying proportions….
Elizabeth, who couldn’t even stand the smell of cooking, sought the refuge of the open air…
2. To see the countryside…..
Elizabeth loved travelling through the English counties, even through what Lord Burghley called…
the dangerous rocks and valleys….in the wilds of Kent and Sussex….
She would travel, masked, on horseback….
Unless the varicose ulcer on her leg was playing up, in which case she was carried in a litter.
If she liked a place she would stay much longer than she intended…
A great, if expensive, honour for that region…
3. To show her love for her subjects….
A Progress gave Elizabeth the chance to ‘play’ the crowd….
She had no standing army, simply two hundred ‘Pensioners’….
NOT Chelsea Pensioners!!!
These were young, tall and aristocratic, clad in tight white velvet and chosen solely for their good looks…
(Elizabeth was NOTORIOUS for picking up dishy men…)
But with no proper ‘army’ as such, she needed to stay popular if she were to remain Queen….
If a poor person in the streets gave her a bunch of wild flowers, she would clasp it to her bosom as though it were the greatest treasure on earth…
If children wanted to sing for her, she would stand listening for hours in the pouring rain…
And when people threw their hats in the air in her honour, she would throw her hat in the air as well…
In Norfolk, in 1578, the Master of the Grammar School was so overcome with nerves he could hardly deliver his speech of welcome to the Queen…
She called him over and told him…
Not to be afeared….
Afterward she said that his speech was….
….the best that ever I heard…..
And took off her glove so he could kiss her hand…
(However, she couldn’t bear to see ugly or disabled people. Her Pensioners always pushed them to the back of the crowd…)
3. To have fun…..
Elizabeth’s subjects would put on lavish feasts, dances and entertainments for her, often in the open air to show off the grounds of their estates….
(Mind you, she was nobody’s fool….she always took her own cook with her.)
4. To show her subjects she was in good health…
Rumours of Elizabeth’s ill health – death, even – persisted throughout her reign.
So, by travelling through the countryside, she proved to everyone she was still alive…
She might drive the point home by dancing a spirited galliard or two…
And indulging in a spot of deer carnage….
She loved to shoot deer with a crossbow (from a specially constructed ‘standing’) as they were run past her….
At point-blank range….
4. To destroy her enemies….
If you had crossed Elizabeth, you were expected to be particularly generous when you were her host.
Poor Lord Hertford, described as….
…of very small stature and of timid and feeble character…
….had angered Elizabeth by marrying Lady Jane Grey’s sister….
She produced a son, Lord Beauchamp, who technically at least, had a stronger claim on the throne than Elizabeth…
Elizabeth threw Hertford and his wife into the Tower…
Not wanting to be incarcerated again, Hertford spent a fortune when Elizabeth came to visit him at Elvetham….
He dug a ‘great pond’ (more like a lake) in his grounds in the shape of a crescent moon….
…..this was to flatter ‘The Moon Queen’.
Aquatic ballets and battles were staged, at the climax of which a ‘sea-nymph’ presented Elizabeth with a ‘costly sea-jewel’…
So costly it bankrupted Hertford….
And the entertainment didn’t do him any good…
Five years later he was back in the Tower again…
5. To check on the faith of her subjects….
Elizabeth had vowed to eradicate Roman Catholicism from England….
She had kept the stoles, vestments, candles and church bells of the Catholic faith….
But they were only to be used to celebrate HER!!!
Church bells were to be rung as she passed by on her Progresses and the priests and their choirboys were to greet her in all their finery….
Families had to vacate their homes during a Progress, ostensibly so that the Privy Council could meet there….
In reality, Elizabeth’s soldiers would smash up the panelling in their houses to search for signs of ‘massing’…
Or ‘priest-holes’….
On the Norfolk Progress, Elizabeth’s soldiers found a wooden Madonna, hidden in one of her host’s hay-lofts….
They burnt it in the fire-place of the Great Hall…..
…to the unspeakable joy of everyone…
Except the host…
He was sent to Norfolk jail where he died, still incarcerated, twenty years later…
6. To save money….
For ten weeks of the year, some-one else had to pay for all of Elizabeth’s hangers-on….
●
But the Progress that will be of most interest to Brothers and Sisters of The Code is one that occured in 1591….
When the Queen visited Cowdray and Titchfield….
Cowdray was owned by Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague….
…..the father of Mary Browne, second Countess of Southampton…
…..who was the mother of Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton….
Lord Montague, one of the leading Catholics in the land, had been a close friend of Philip II when he had been King of England….
He had been Philip’s Master of Horse and his Ambassador at Rome….
Montague had plotted with his son-in-law, the Second Earl of Southampton, and the Northern Lords, to free Mary Queen of Scots from jail…
…..and overthrow Queen Elizabeth….
Montague and Southampton were lucky to escape with their heads. She despised Southampton, but realised that Montague had a genuine faith and was a good man….
So she appointed him Lord Lieutenant of the Shire….
Montague reponded with completely loyalty, except in matters of faith….
He held secret Masses and harboured two Catholic priests….
They wore livery ‘with chains of gold about their necks’ and posed as members of his household staff….
They probably tended on Elizabeth when she came to visit….
●
We have a complete pamphlet account of Elizabeth’s six day stay at Cowdray…..
She arrived at 8 p.m. on Saturday 15th August, on horseback, accompanied by ‘a great train’. As soon as she was spotted, a band struck up which suddenly stopped when she arrived at Cowdray Bridge…
A Porter dressed in armour then informed her that, like Thebes, the Castle would only stand as long as music was playing…..
UNLESS….
the wisest and fairest and most fortunate of all creatures should by her first step make the foundation staid and by the glance of her eyes make the turret steady….
The porter then presented the Queen with a large wooden key, the key to Lord Montague’s heart…
Assuming her role as the saviour of Cowdray, Elizabeth took the key, saying…
…..she would swear for him there were none more faithful….
Then, alighting from her horse, Elizabeth embraced Lady Montague, who, in a well-scripted response…
..weeping, as it were, in her bosom….
….exclaimed…
Oh happy time! O joyful day…
On Sunday: Montague’s cooks roasted ‘three oxen and and a hundred and forty geese…’
On Monday: The Queen was given a cross-bow by a singing nymph….
Then shot deer from a standing, accompanied by the music of the dark-skinned Bassano family, sheltered in ‘a delicate bower’.
Lord Montague’s sister shot one deer to the Queen’s four, so she was not invited to dine that evening on Her Majesty’s table.
The Queen left her cross-bow at Cowdray as a memento of her visit….
On Tuesday: Viewing ‘my Lord’s walks, ‘ the Queen stumbled across a Pilgrim, who told her of a wonderful oak, guarded by ‘a rough-hewed ruffian’ armed with a stave…
The Pilgrim led her to the oak, which fond hung with her own arms and those of the Nobles and Gentlemen of thet Shire’.
In her presence, the ruffian became less rough, and told the Queen that though her courage has made her feared abroad, it is her clemency that has made her loved at home…
Thus he thanks her for sparing Lord Montague’s head…
That night the Privy Council met again in Montague’s house…
On Wednesday: Montague dined his Queen al fresco at a table twenty-four yards long…
She encountered yet another allegorical figure, this time an Angler fishing in ‘a goodly fish pond’. He moralised on the state of this ‘nibbling’ world’ and blamed his fishless state on the presence of the Queen….
She shone so brightly, like the sun, that the fish could see his hooks through the bait….
However, with much play on ‘carp’ and ‘carping’, a fishermen then appeared, dragging fish in a net which he deposited at the foot of the Queen…
…an unworthy present for a Prince to accept…
On Thursday: The Queen dined with all the Lords and Ladies of the Shire at a table that had grown to forty-eight yards in length…
That evening the country folk presented themselves to the Queen…
..in a pleasant dance with tabor and pipe: and the Lord Montague and his Lady among them, to the great pleasure of all the beholders, and gentle applause of Her Majesty…
Then, at the beginning of September, progressed on to Titchfield, where she had ordered two standings to be built….
In October she returned to her Richmond Palace. She appointed Commissioners for every Shire in England…
…..to enquire of all personsas to their attendance at Church, their receiving of seminarists and priests and Jesuits, their devotion to the Pope or King of Spain, and to give information as to suspicious changes of residence….
●
William Shakespeare, who was certainly present at the Cowdray and Titchfield Progresses, sends all this up in Love’s Labour’s Lost…
But not before he had written The Comedy of Errors….
(It’s best to read Part Three now.)
The Shakespeare Code 
Leave a Reply