Tudor Royal Progresses

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Tudor Royal Progresses were, at their foundation, acts of governance. In September 1486, Henry VII moved his court to Winchester. The city was believed to be the site of King Arthur's Camelot. The heir born there on the 20th of September was christened four days later as Prince Arthur. A dynasty not yet a year old was already folding legend into its geography.

  Between Henry VII's first departure from London in March 1486 and Elizabeth I's death in March 1603, the Tudors used the roads of England as instruments of authority. The practice spanned five reigns and more than a century. Some monarchs barely left their palaces. Others treated the annual circuit as a condition of their reign. What drove this habit of movement? And what could a monarch accomplish on horseback that a throne room could not provide?

  12624

• 2. Henry VII and the Politics of Presence

  ›

  Henry VII secured the crown at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485. The Wars of the Roses had left England's loyalties fragile, and a new king needed to be seen rather than merely proclaimed. His first progress carried him north through Lincoln, Nottingham, and York, directly into the heartland of Yorkist sympathy. There he dispersed an abortive rising led by Lord Lovell.

  After spending Whitsun in Worcester, Henry moved through Bristol and returned to London by barge. The Lord Mayor of London met the royal party at Putney and escorted them by river to Whitehall. A king who could move freely through his kingdom was demonstrating something no formal proclamation could substitute.

  The 1487 progress went further and demanded more. After visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, Henry moved to the Midlands. There he defeated the pretender Lambert Simnel at the Battle of Stoke Field. The victory celebration carried him through Lincoln, Pontefract, York, and Durham to Newcastle, where he opened negotiations with James IV of Scotland. He was back in London for his second parliament in November.

  In 1495, Henry traveled to Exeter to accept the city's formal submission. Perkin Warbeck, the pretender who had attempted to take the city the previous month, had already been captured. Henry returned to London on the 27th of November. In 1500 he traveled to Calais to meet Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy. The two men met on the 9th of June outside the city walls at St Peter Church.

  Henry's travels grew less frequent as he aged. After Queen Elizabeth died in 1503, the king rarely left Windsor Castle or Richmond Palace, which he had rebuilt in 1497. His final notable journey came that year. He escorted his daughter Margaret Tudor north from Richmond Palace to Collyweston Palace in Northamptonshire, the home of his mother Margaret Beaufort. From there Margaret continued to Scotland to marry James IV.

  26714

• 3. Henry VIII: Court on the March

  ›

  Henry VIII crossed to Calais in June 1513 as part of the War of the League of Cambrai. He besieged Thérouanne through the summer. A French attempt to relieve the town ended at the Battle of the Spurs on the 16th of August. Thérouanne fell on the 22nd of August. Henry moved on to Tournai via Lille, where he was hosted by Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy. Tournai fell on the 23rd of September. Henry attended mass in Tournai Cathedral on the 2nd of October and returned to England on the 21st.

  The Treaty of London of 1518, also known as the treaty of perpetual peace, established the diplomatic framework for the next great meeting. In 1520, Henry was asked to mediate between Charles V and Francis I. He met Charles at Dover on the 27th of May, then crossed to Calais with Katherine of Aragon. In a valley between English and French territory, Henry and Francis held the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The meeting ran from the 7th of June to the 24th of June. Both courts joined discussions, jousts, and dancing.

  After parting from Francis, Henry and Katherine met Charles V and his aunt Margaret of Austria at Gravelines on the 10th of July. A separate treaty of friendship was concluded four days later. Both monarchs agreed not to make any new arrangements with France for two years. The Field of the Cloth of Gold promised perpetual peace; Gravelines was already hedging that promise.

  Charles V visited England in 1522, landing at Dover on the 26th of May. Henry met him on the 28th. Their courts moved together through Canterbury, Sittingbourne, Rochester, and Greenwich to London. They remained in London until the 9th of June, then moved south to Windsor. There they signed the Treaty of Windsor, staying at the castle from the 12th to the 20th of June. Charles sailed from Southampton on the 6th of July. Henry would make his final crossing to France in 1544, commanding the Siege of Boulogne personally. The city fell on the 14th of September. Henry entered Boulogne on the 18th.

  89101112

• 4. The Great Northern Progress

  ›

  No English king had visited Yorkshire since Henry VII's progress in 1487. Henry VIII had promised as early as 1537 to "go and see his country of the North," but preparations were repeatedly postponed. Civil unrest connected to the Pilgrimage of Grace and the dissolution of the monasteries had rattled the region in the late 1530s. By 1541, a fresh purpose had emerged: Henry planned to meet his nephew James V of Scotland in York to negotiate between the two kingdoms.

  The court left London and traveled via Lincoln, arriving in York on the 16th of September. The route passed through Grimsthorpe Castle and Pontefract Castle. More than fifty years had passed since a reigning monarch had ridden through the streets of the north.

  James V did not arrive, and the planned summit came to nothing. The royal party moved from York to Leconfield to evaluate the fortifications at the port of Hull. The road south from Hull, taken on the 6th of October, was the last northern journey Henry VIII would make.

  212223165

• 5. The Shorter Reigns

  ›

  Between Henry VIII's death in 1547 and Elizabeth I's accession in 1558, two monarchs reigned. Neither made the royal progress a consistent feature of their rule.

  Edward VI embarked on a short progress to Guildford in 1552, but it was quickly abandoned. His reign lasted from 1547 to 1553, and the royal progress played almost no part in it.

  Mary I had accompanied her father Henry VIII on progresses in 1525 and 1526 as a princess. She visited Thornbury Castle, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Tickenhill, Worcester, and Hartlebury Castle on those journeys. As queen, her circumstances were less favorable. The unpopularity of her husband Philip II of Spain and her own ill health kept her close to London. Her one notable progress as queen followed her marriage to Philip II in Winchester in 1554. The couple traveled to London via Basing House, Windsor Castle, and Richmond Palace. The progress was an occasion, not a practice.

  Mary had also visited Coventry in 1526. As queen, she never traveled that far from London again.

  1718192720

• 6. Elizabeth I: The Road as Authority

  ›

  Elizabeth I's first progress as queen came in November 1558: a short circuit to Monken Hadley and the London Charterhouse. By the following summer she had extended her reach through Dartford Priory, Cobham Hall, Gillingham, Otford Palace, Eltham Palace, Croydon Palace, and Nonsuch Palace.

  Cambridge welcomed her in 1564 and Oxford in 1566. By 1572 she had reached Warwick. Bristol followed in 1574. The summer of 1575 brought her to Woodstock, Kenilworth, Worcester, Shrewsbury, and Lichfield. Every year of her reign, Elizabeth required her court to accompany her on a spring and summer progress. The royal circuit became a fixed feature of the English political calendar.

  In July and August 1578, Elizabeth moved through East Anglia, stopping at Bury St Edmunds, Euston Hall, and Norwich. In 1591 her circuit swept through Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire. She visited Cowdray House in August of that year. In 1592 her progress covered Bisham, Sudeley Castle, Ryecote, and Elvetham.

  Harefield in August 1602 was Elizabeth's last progress destination. She died in March 1603, seven months after that final journey. The Suffolk circuit of 1561, more than forty years before, had been among the first signs of how far her annual rounds would reach.

  2529313528