Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex

Culture and Conflict

Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317178385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex is an interdisciplinary study of a county at the forefront of religious, political and artistic developments in early-modern England. Ranging from the schism of Reformation to the outbreak of Civil War, the volume brings together scholars from the fields of art history, religious and intellectual history and English literature to offer new perspectives on early-modern Sussex. Essays discuss a wide variety of topics: the coherence of a county divided between East and West and Catholic and Protestant; the art and literary collections of Chichester cathedral; communities of Catholic gentry; Protestant martyrdom; aristocratic education; writing, preaching and exile; local funerary monuments; and the progresses of Elizabeth I. Contributors include Michael Questier; Nigel Llewellyn; Caroline Adams; Karen Coke; and Andrew Foster. The collection concludes with an Afterword by Duncan Salkeld (University of Chichester). This volume extends work done in the 1960s and 70s on early-modern Sussex, drawing on new work on county and religious identities, and setting it into a broad national context. The result is a book that not only tells us much about Sussex, but which also has a great deal to offer all scholars working in the field of local and regional history, and religious change in England as a whole.

Chapter 1 Elizabeth I's Progresses into Sussex

Caroline Adams

DOI: 10.4324/9781315567983-2

The year 2012 saw the building of a new Record Office for East Sussex at Falmer, whereas the one for West Sussex has experienced the effects of local government financial constraints.¹ It makes us reflect again how, from a government point of view, Sussex has always been divided into two. Although Sussex was considered a single county and there was one lord lieutenant, one sheriff and one clerk of the peace for the whole of Sussex, the Quarter Sessions were divided into western and eastern divisions, time out of mind. Elizabeth I treated the two halves of the county separately on her visits: west Sussex was involved in the grand progress of 1591, whereas eighteen years earlier, in 1573, some of the east Sussex gentry were visited out of the Kent progress. However, the gentry involved may not have been as focused on county boundaries and communities as we are led to believe from the surviving records,² and the people and events on the progresses point to a society which was cross-border in nature. Thus royal progresses shed light on the development of local politics and cultural identity, and also deepen our understanding of the important role of hospitality and the impact of such visits on rural gentry society. For example, Anthony Browne was the owner of Cowdray and host of a week of celebrations on the progress in 1591, so was he typical of the hosts and their connections? How much preparation did the hosts have to make, and what was the practical side of making such a visit work? What of the social hierarchy – who was missed off the invitation list, and why? How much did the progress interrupt a normal summer of such a landowner, and did it really bankrupt a would-be host? This chapter considers these questions in the light of the two Sussex progresses by Elizabeth.

¹ This chapter has arisen out of my PhD thesis ‘Queen and County: The Significance of Elizabeth I's Progress in Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire in 1591’, University of Southampton, 2012. Sussex is now divided into two counties, but in the sixteenth century, there were two formal administrative ‘divisions’ in place – I have kept the epithets ‘west’ and ‘east’ as indicators of these. ² Local government records tend to be kept administratively under counties, whereas there was much more cross-border cooperation that they suggest.

Figure 1.1 Map of Elizabeth I's 1591 Royal Progress in West Sussex and Hampshire. © Author.

Nearly every summer, the queen and her court left the comparative comfort of her London palaces, and embarked on a tour of her subjects’ houses, usually for five or six weeks.³ She took the opportunity of the summer season, and the need to leave London for health reasons, to travel around the southern part of the kingdom, visiting loyal nobility and gentry, and sometimes being entertained magnificently. She usually stayed with her hosts, using the system of purveyance to subsidise their expenses, and the visits were accompanied by feasting and entertainment. Thearea she knew best was what we now term the ‘home counties’, including the area slightly north of them, but not the far south-east, and she did not venture north of the Wash, or west of Bristol. It is surprising that Elizabeth visited the relatively accessible west Sussex only once in a long reign of 45 years; she also visited east Sussex only once, in 1573. This account considers the more important progress of the two – that of 1591 first (see Figure 1.1) – and then considers the similarities and differences in 1573, and the modus operandi for both.

³ Her itineraries have been printed in E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1923) and M.H. Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the politics of ceremony (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999). Many original sources were collected by the antiquarian, John Nichols, and published in three volumes: The Progresses and Public Processions of Elizabeth I (London, 1788–1823).

The Route of the Progress of 1591 in West Sussex and Hampshire

We take a look first at a brief outline of the progress of 1591 and whom the queen visited. The 1591 progress into west Sussex and Hampshire was one of the longest and most important of her reign. The royal party left Nonsuch Palace on 2 August, and made their way along the top side of the North Downs through Surrey to Leatherhead and East Horsley, and then on to Loseley, and Farnham Castle. At Loseley and Farnham, the host was William More, a gentleman of some standing with the Privy Council, who had been involved in the planning of the progress. On 14 August, they stayed the night with Edmund Mervyn at Bramshott Place, near Liphook, and then on Sunday, 15 August, the royal party crossed the border into West Sussex.⁴ The queen reached Cowdray, seat of Sir Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague, about 8 o’clock that evening. A pamphlet published later the same year gives an account of this fascinating visit.⁵

⁴ Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 4, pp. 105–6. ⁵ Thomason tract: The honourable entertainment given to the Queenes Maiestie in progresse, at Cowdrey in Sussex, by the Right Honorable the Lord Montecute, 1591 (London, printed by Thomas Scarlet, to be sold by William Wright, 1591), (British Library, C.142.dd.23), reprinted in Nichols, The Progresses.

From the moment she approached the house she was greeted by poetry and music, and symbolism emphasizing the queen's grace and eternal power, and the whole visit was themed towards these Renaissance ideas. Various mythological figures, such as the Pilgrim, the Wild Man and the Angler appeared to make speeches throughout the visit. More practically, there were three hundred for breakfast the morning after her arrival. The queen's visit was filled with hunting for which ‘delicate bowers’ or standings (their definition in the records depended on the author of the pamphlet, or the clerk writing the accounts) had been specially set up in the park, and deer were driven towards her. There was also a banquet at the priory at Easebourne, and on the eve of her departure, mealswere served outside at tables 24 and 48 yards long, after which there was a grand dance.⁶ The cultural impact of such a visit with plays and speeches full of classica references and symbolic meanings must have been overwhelming for the people present. Like the present day, London culture and provincial society were very different, and such entertainment and the effects of the progress generally may well have made these families hanker after a social life in the capital. By the 1590s, many of the gentry in these counties were already beginning to find more permanent residencies in London, where there was greater contact with the court, and the emergence of new investment opportunities.

⁶ Ibid.

From Cowdray, the queen was escorted to an unspecified dining place, probably Downley in West Dean, with the Lewkenors as hosts. The harbingers, who went ahead of the royal party, made ‘readye Mr Richarde Lewkenours house for her ma'tie to dyne at betwixte Cowdrey and Chichester’.⁷ The queen then proceeded to Chichester, and was settled there by 22 August. The eighteenth-century antiquarian John Nichols says ‘and of her Majesty's entertainment in that City there was a full account in one of the Corporation Books; but unfortunately the Book is lost.’⁸ The historian T.G. Willis, writing in 1928, embellished the visit, describing the streets of the city as ‘gay with flags’, and a flourish of trumpets announcing the arrival of the queen.⁹ He adds that the queen was welcomed by the Earl of Scarborough,¹⁰ and taken to the audience chamber. Both agree that John Lumley prepared a house for her in East Street near the Cross in the heart of the city, with a spacious banqueting room in which she gave audience to the mayor and citizens. This is believed to be the ‘Roya Arms’, or ‘Old Punch House’(see Figure 1.2).¹¹

⁷ The best source for ascertaining the route and preparations for a progress is the royal household accounts, in particular those of the Treasurers of the Chamber: TNA, PRO: E 351/541. ⁸ Nichols, The Progresses, III, p. 97. ⁹ T.G. Willis, Records of Chichester: some glimpses of its past (Chichester: T.G. Willis, 1928), p. 147. ¹⁰ However, the earldom was only created in 1650. ¹¹ See Figure 1.2. It still exists, as do some of the sixteenth-century ceilings.

There is a possibility that the internal decoration was put up specially for the visit.¹² The queen does not appear to have stayed with the Bishop of Chichester, Thomas Bickley, but only at the town house. Despite assertions by Willis, it is more likely that the queen actually gave her audiences in the cathedral, which would have provided a far larger space than Lumley's town house, and which the queen's soldiers could keep secure. The harbingers’ accounts give the preparation time as six days for preparing ‘the Churche at Chichester’ as well as an unspecified entry which just says ‘at Chichester’ (eight days).¹³ It is likely that she would have occupied the bishop's chair at the top of the nave with the dean and bishop either side of her, or she could have occupied the Consistory Court in the south transept, which would have accommodated less people.¹⁴ Judging from accounts of other civic visits, she would have been welcomed by the mayor and citizens, and speeches would have been made by both parties. She would have heard petitions and accepted gifts. It was an important time for the city, whose last royal visit was that of Edward VI in 1552.¹⁵

¹² M.J. Cutten, Some Inns and Alehouses of Chichester (Chichester Papers, no. 46, 1964). ¹³ TNA, PRO E351/452, f. 152v. ¹⁴ I am indebted to Dr Andrew Foster for these ideas in a discussion in February 2011. ¹⁵ J. North (ed.), England's Boy King: the diary of Edward VI 1547–1553 (London: Ravenhall Books, 2005).

Figure 1.2 The Punch House, Chichester, 2013. There is some possibility that the house Elizabeth occupied included the building on the right of the photograph. © Author.

The queen stayed in Chichester for three nights, and then moved to Stansted five miles west of Chichester and just inside the county border.¹⁶ Stansted was held at the time by Lord Lumley, so he would probably have accompanied the queen along the route, which must have been familiar to him. It has been thought that Lumley had ceased to be at court or known to Elizabeth by this time, yet he was host to her for four days.¹⁷ At the time of the progress, he was delicately negotiating with the government over a debt owed by his late father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, and the year after the progress he agreed to sell Nonsuch to the crown and lease it back.¹⁸ As a scholar and owner of much property around Chichester, he would have been able to keep the queen in good company.

¹⁶ Cole, Portable Queen, p. 196. ¹⁷ K. Barron, ‘Lumley, John, first Baron Lumley (c.1533–1609)’, ODNB, 2004; online edn, January 2007 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view. ¹⁸ Ibid.

From there, she went to Portsmouth, where she inspected the troops.¹⁹ For the second part of the progress, which took place in Hampshire, the queen was on more familiar territory. She knew the route to Portsmouth and Southampton from several previous visits,²⁰ and perhaps this was ‘comforting’ in its own way, for she had now been away from London for over three weeks. At this stage, she must have felt the progress was going well. She was on new territory from Bramshott onwards, but the choice of visiting there had worked, and presumably local gentry were pleased that one of their number had been able to play host. T...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Contesting Early Modern Sussex
• 1 Elizabeth I’s Progresses into Sussex
• 2 Two Sussex Authors: Thomas Drant and Anthony Copley
• 3 Lambert Barnard, Bishop Shirborn’s ‘Paynter’
• 4 Intellectual Networks Associated with Chichester Cathedral, c. 1558–1700
• 5 ‘This strange conglomerate of books’, or ‘Hobbs’ Leviathan’: Bishop Henry King’s Library at Chichester Cathedral
• 6 ‘Your daughter, most devoted’: The Sententious Writings of Mary Arundel, Duchess of Norfolk, Given to the Twelfth Earl of Arundel
• 7 ‘The Government of this Church by Catholic Bishops hath always been a Strength and Defence unto the Kingdom’: Episcopacy and the Catholic Community in Early Seventeenth-century Sussex and Beyond
• 8 Richard Woodman, Sussex Protestantism and the Construction of Martyrdom
• 9 ‘The Happy Preserver of his Brother’s Posterity’: From Monumental Text to Sculptural Figure in Early Modern Sussex
• Afterword: Not the Last Word: Scraps of History
• Index