Introduction: Court Culture in the 1640s and 1650s

Jerome de Groot (University of Manchester) and
Peter Sillitoe (University of Sheffield)
Jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk
P.sillitoe@sheffield.ac.uk

Jerome de Groot and Peter Sillitoe. "Introduction: Court Culture in the 1640s and 1650s". Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 15 (August, 2007) 1.1-18<URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-15/intro.htm>.

  1. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe the court was the most politically powerful and culturally significant institution in the country. The court was centre of government, diplomacy, patronage, political power, visual art and elite literary production throughout both centuries. Traditionally, then, studies of the court as an institution emphasised spectacle and hierarchy (Strong). Since the translation of Norbert Elias’ The Court Society in 1983 the court has become the focus for discussions of ritual, elite life, patronage, social and political organisation, power relations and state formation. The significance of the court to our understanding and analysis of Early Modern society has been reiterated over the last decades through a number of important books and articles; furthermore the cultural, social and political dynamics of the court have informed the research agenda in History, History of Art, Music and Literary Studies.[1] The court as an entity has been debated and researched in great depth.

  2. Yet research into the court in England tends to skip the Civil War period, moving from Charles I’s abandoning Whitehall in 1642 directly to Charles II’s triumphant return in 1660. There has been very little work published considering the court between 1642 and 1660. A few articles and chapters have considered the changes to the royal court during this period, its cultural and social make up and the variety of its manifestations; the protectoral court has similarly been under researched.[2] This is despite the fact that court life continued – Charles I had a vibrant court in Oxford during the 1640s, Queen Henrietta Maria had courtly households in the continent and Prince Charles created courts around himself in various parts of Europe. The court remained significant in English social and cultural life; courts in Scotland and Ireland also started to shift and change in response to the new circumstances. The court was also, in part, a contributing element to the war itself, or at least was part of the conflicting religious and political nexus, yet once war breaks out it disappears from scholarly accounts.[3] Writers and artists produced works, wherever the courts might have been. Patronage, diplomacy and spy networks revolved around the court. It was still seat of some government and so therefore had economic, political and military significance. Indeed it is fascinating to see the structures of the court – social, political and cultural – shifting and changing in the new circumstances of war and exile during the 1640s and 1650s. The European experience significantly influenced Charles II’s methods of government and his court in the 1660s.

  3. Scholars have begun recently to fill in our picture of what happened during this time. This collection of essays begins to sketch out new directions and paradigms for our understanding of the period 1642-1660 by considering the ‘English’ court in its various manifestations during this period. The articles in this edition consider the new circumstances of the court, the political consequences of court movement, and the changing way that the court was represented after 1642. The movement and ultimate fragmentation of the centralised court led to profound disruptions in the cultural, legal, economic and political life of the nation. It transformed patronage, political systems and governmental institutions. As Malcolm Smuts has argued, the court was immensely important to the evolution of the Royalist party, such as it was, during the 1630s and into the 1640s: ‘court culture helped shape and articulate religious and political values in ways that affected government polities in the 1630s and contributed to the emergence of a partisan royalism after the personal rule collapsed’ (Smuts, Court Culture 218).[4] Similarly the cultures of the courts in exile and the Protectoral court influenced models of governance, policy and the constitution of partisan identities throughout the 1640s and 1650s, as Hughes and Sanders demonstrate in this collection. The movement of the royal court from being the centre of political life to peripatetic, nomadic, reliant on foreign goodwill, impoverished and constricted reconfigured Royalist structures and strategies of social, cultural and political identity, as Karen Britland shows. There was a concomitant shift back in England, where an institution which had in many ways been the focus of political life now became subsumed into the broader network of national government.

    The Stuart Court and life beyond Whitehall

  4. As has been well documented by scholars such as Jonathan Goldberg and Linda Levy Peck, the arrival of the Stuart court in England in 1603 meant that multiple contrasts between the old and the new court culture were apparent to contemporaries, yet a number of continuities were in place also (Goldberg, Peck). Goldberg’s New Historicist approach allowed the Jacobean court to be analysed in much the same way as the elite world of Elizabeth I, with both courts viewed as performative spaces for monarchical power. The historical work of Peck highlighted the increased public perception of scandal and intrigue at James’s court, an approach that has recently been continued in Alastair Bellany’s study of the Overbury scandal. Of course, it is rather unsurprising that 1603 ushered in a new court culture, as England now possessed a new monarch, a queen consort in the guise of Anna of Denmark, as well as two heirs to the throne in Prince Henry and Prince Charles.

  5. It has been usual for researchers to stress the growth of the Whitehall entertainment under James, whereas Elizabeth often progressed to aristocratic estates for entertainment.[5] However, recent work has unsettled this supposed orthodoxy, and it is clear that James’s court continued to progress as Elizabeth’s had done, just as it is now apparent that Jacobean masques were often staged away from the confines of Whitehall Palace.[6] Thus, what might be termed a ‘Jacobean progress text’, such as John Adamson’s documentation of James’s progress to Scotland in 1617, can be read alongside a Whitehall masque by Ben Jonson together with entertainments for Queen Anna at other royal locations.[7] Nevertheless, it is true to say that the new court culture prioritised Whitehall Palace to a far greater extent than had been the case under Elizabeth, though scholars such as Knowles and McManus have correctly highlighted the polycentrism of the new culture, as political and cultural life diversified through the separate royal households and, later, through the emergence of powerful aristocratic figures such as the eventual Duke of Buckingham. Indeed, Jacobean court culture appears to have featured a complex, even curious, dualism, as multiple locations for the court and the accompanying polycentrism competed with the growing importance attached to James’s Whitehall in the city of Westminster, a situation that would continue after 1625 (Sillitoe chs. 2-5). Indeed, it is generally agreed that Charles I scaled-down the royal progresses and prioritised Whitehall more than his father (see Corns). Accordingly, scholars such as Kevin Sharpe have focussed upon the Caroline court masques at Whitehall, and only recently has attention been paid to the entertainments and progresses away from the palace, as Charles’s neglect of progressing was not, in fact, total. Indeed, a wealth of material has survived that documents Charles’s progress to Scotland in 1633.[8] Similarly, the anonymous ‘Entertainment at Richmond’ is one of several texts testifying to the existence of a courtly entertainment culture beyond the palace.[9] Still, Charles’s plans for a rebuilt Whitehall Palace have been well documented, and it is important to remember that, once Charles had left his primary residence for Oxford in 1642, several printed accounts lament the enforced absence of monarchical presence from the palace.[10]

    Courts in England: Oxford

  6. In order to understand the physical consequences of the move from Whitehall in 1642 it is useful to briefly consider the court’s subsequent arrangements at Oxford and in exile, as well as considering the Protectorate court. The movement of the Court after 1642 reconfigured Royalist culture (Starkey ‘Introduction’; Sharpe ‘The image’). The relocation of the central focus of Royalist production led to a profound reconsidering of tropes and modes, of the role of the writer and of the importance of print. This dislocation forces us to reread the role of the court in cultural work and production, to trace how patronage systems and courtly modes shifted and changed, and how this affected cultural production. Yet it is not simply those who outright supported the King who were affected by the shifts in dynamic, whether cultural, economic, or governmental (Hardacre; Kelsey). The movement of the court meant in the short term the bifurcating of the institutions of government between London and Oxford, which meant that anything from proving a will or paying taxes became a much more complex operation (de Groot Royalist). The court, as Jason Peacey shows in this collection, was not simply the locus for the emergence and debate of Royalism but also the focus for parliamentary propagandist constructions.

  7. After Edgehill Charles took his army toward Oxford, arriving on 29 October. The nomadic courts at York and Nottingham had been unsettling and were not practical for the running of a sustained military campaign. The King settled his garrison, court and executive in Oxford. Charles continued to issue Proclamations from travelling courts but they were centrally published at Oxford and the city became the institutional and executive centre of the country for those who challenged the Parliamentary officers in London (Sessions; Hanson). When the Parliament came to Oxford the Commons occupied the Great Convocation House and the Lords the Upper Schools. The Queen stayed at Merton, and the King took apartments in Christ Church. Sir Edward Nicholas stayed at Pembroke and the rest of the colleges provided accommodation for the court and the men.  The parish of St. Aldate’s had 405 strangers plus the normal inhabitants; a 1643 Census recorded 3320 males between the ages of 16 and 60 and the wartime population of the city has been estimated at around 10,000 or more.[11]

  8.  Charles’ orders for his apartments in Christ Church strove to mimic the arrangements of the Whitehall court. British Library, Harleian MS 6851 fol. 117 r–v is an account of the court, in the hand of Sir Edward Walker. The account allows for ‘two gromes of ye Guard stand Constantly at the foote of the Stayres leading to ye presence and privy Chamber and not to permit any unknowen or meane person to pass upp the Stayres toward that Rome’, and requires Gentlemen Ushers, Pages of the Bedchamber and Guards to stand duty outside and inside the presence, privy and withdrawing chambers.[12] Mobility within the physical court space itself was therefore as constrained and strictly controlled as before.

  9. The make-up of the wider household similarly attempted to impose normality upon the situation. Several members of the Royal household relocated to Oxford, including Apothecaries, Vintners, and Officers of the Wardrobe (HMC House of Lords MS 61, 76, 77, 116). A list of officers petitioning for payment shows Pages of the Bedchamber, Gentlemen Ushers and Grooms of the Chamber (Bod. Rawlinson MS B. 121. fol. 2r-v; de Groot ‘Space’ 1225-7). However, in comparison to the extensive households listed in PRO LC/3/1 (Charles, 1641), BL Harleian MS 7623 (the Royal children, 1638), National Library of Wales Wynnstay MS 167 (Henrietta Maria, 1641) and Folger Shakespeare Library MS X.d 78 (general expenses, 1641), it is clear that the courts at Oxford were far smaller than previously. The inventory of the Queen’s Merton lodgings demonstrates the cramped conditions:
    More belonging to ye Lodging
    The little Chamber at ye South end of the Gallery hanged wth Coarse Arras
    One Bed & bolster bedsteld with greene silke Curtaines & Vallance two blanketts & one silke greene quilte
    All wch at ye Queens coming were disposd of by Mr Greaves except ye hangings
    In ye Dineing Roome where ye Queene lay
    A drawing Table wth a Turky worke Carpett
    a Court Cupboard A side table all with suteable Turky worke Chaire 12 Turky-worke backt Chaires 2 paire of brasse Andirons
    In ye great hall
    A long Table a long forme A still
    (Merton College, Oxford MCA 1.3 (College Register 1567–1731) 360–1).
    Royal dining continued to be opulent; a surviving cellar-book records meals consisting multiple courses.[13] The King hunted to hounds, and Isaac Thorpe petitioned to become the royal children’s dance teacher (Madan ii: 274; CSPD 1641–43 422). The King and his family were still spending a great deal on dress: the House of Lords’ manuscipts record ‘Application from George Kirke, gentleman of His Majesty’s robes, for a pass for John Daintre, a groom in the office, to go to Oxford with four dozen of gloves, which are much wanted by His Majesty, and four yards of ‘taby’, two ells and a quarter of ‘taffety’, to be a tennis suit, and two pairs of garters and roses, with silk buttons and other necessaries for making up the suit’ (HMC House of Lords MS 113). The same entry includes ‘Similar application for a pass for John Reeve to go to Oxford with 27 pairs of silk hose, 3 silk  waistcoats and 6 pair of laced boot-hose for the use of the King and Queen’s Majesty’ (HMC House of Lords MS 113).[14] In December of the same year George Kirke, Gentleman of the Robes, successfully petitioned Parliament for 1000l for ‘provision of His Majesty’s apparel’ and in the following March the household expenses of the King’s children at St. James’ were paid, a sum of 794l (HMC House of Lords MS 59, 75). In the winter of 1644 the King’s Serjeant-at-Arms' petition for a salary increase was denied; a month later Charles signed a warrant for new robes for the Prince of Wales (CSPD 1644-45 505, 106, 506, 21). John Astington’s article in this collection suggests the complexity of experience for those cultural servants of the king during the war period, and the very real financial difficulties faced due to the regime’s need to prioritise and economise.

  10. The problem for the King during the 1642-46 was maintaining the façade of an important European court whilst running an increasingly costly war; the financial tensions inherent in undertaking this are seen in the example of the Queen’s house. Sir Richard Wynn’s papers include his accounts for the running and maintenance of Henrietta Maria’s house in Wimbledon during the war years. The accounts indicate that the house was kept, at least cosmetically, as the garden was particularly cared for.[15] Other palaces also kept a staff, as is demonstrated by the complaints about non payment of wages at PRO, LS 8/1 and LS 8/2. Charles’ household alone cost £22,000 a year during the war, and the costs of running the war ran into the millions; at the same time the royal exchequer gained nearly 90% less than it was used to expect (Engberg 87). There was a need to, for instance, pay multiple officers of the court for their services (as is demonstrated by Bodleian MS Rawlinson B 121 in which ‘40t & 6s’ was distributed to the King’s servants). Other sources of revenue were tried: the King created 67 Baronets between 1642-45, all of whom paid him £1095 apiece (BL Egerton MS 2978. fols. 133r-134v; de Groot ‘Space’). This expansion of the court helped financially but it further diminished its standing in the public eye, with parliamentary newsbooks accusing peers of buying privilege.  Indeed the court, as Peacey points out, was often the target of Parliamentarian propaganda and certainly those caricatures associated with courtliness – hedonism, foreign religion, wrongful counsel – were subsumed into anti-Royalist writings throughout the war years and beyond.
    Courts in England: Rump and Protectorate

  11. After the fall of Oxford in 1646 and the flight of Charles the court became even more atomised, and the various nomadic courts in exile were constrained, much more ad hoc entities. Courts in exile maintained some form of pre-war finery, whilst at the same time having to adapt to constrained circumstances. The institutions of court government in England were mainly taken by Parliament, but the trappings – the architecture of Hampton court for instance, music, and decoration – were taken up firstly by the Rump and then by Cromwell in his Protectoral court. During the early 1640s and Interregnum the royal palaces were gradually taken over and reused for public offices as well as their chapels largely defaced (Thurley 249). Simon Thurley points out that this iconoclasm was officially directed after the setting up under Robert Harley of a commission investigating monuments of suspicion and idolatry in April 1643. Whilst the expenses of the royal family’s household were paid for a brief time the palaces were quickly requisitioned. What is key is that the notion of a court was somehow conceived as important to the government of the nation; as Sean Kelsey argues, the Rump regime returned to ‘traditional patterns of authority tarnished by revolution’ (Kelsey 26). The Rump restored the gardens of Whitehall, repaired the chapel, instituted ceremony and entertained. Whitehall became a focal point for government, a republican court of meritocracy and committee which was focussed upon the incorporated ‘person’ of the Parliament rather than the monarchical cult of individual.

  12. After the appointment of Cromwell to the Protectorship in 1653 the royal residences were offered to him and he took Whitehall and Hampton Court (where he withdrew most weekends). Cromwell’s usurpation of the monarchical role was lauded for its cleansing of the Augean stables of court:
    13. What though our Court be not so well studded with Peers, nor our Prince crowded and hedg’d in with such a number of old modified Courtiers; shall we rail at Aurora, and revile the Sun at his rising, because we lose in the bright glory of his beams, those twincklers, those small spangles, the Stars? There is no lustre wanting at Court; both home and abroad we have eyes enough on our Prince, and blessed be God, we enjoy day and good daies by his presence. What Palace was ever lesse adulterate than his? Nay in that very places where Pimps and Panders were us’d to traffique and sport it in the base Revellings of lust, there is now sitting a Religious Covent of our best and most Orthodox Divines; and whereas formerly it was very difficult to live at Court without a prejudice to Religion, it is now impossible to be a Courtier without it; whosoever looks now to get preferment at Court, Religion must be brought with him instead of money for a Place; here are none of those usual throngs of vicious and debaucht Swashbucklers, none of those servile and tayl-shaking spaniels, none of those moe-hair, linsiewoolsy, Nits and lice Gentlemen, No such changeable Camelions; He is no such swarthy Prince, of no such sullied Complexion, that some wicked Courtiers must needs be standing by at his elbow as black patches to Vertue (Unparalleld Monarch 69-71).

    This figuring of the religious court has elements of propaganda charges directed at the changeable, debauched courts in Oxford and in exile, explicitly comparing the austere court of the new nation with the presumed hedonism and irreligiousness of the royal family. Accounts of Cromwell’s court suggest that ‘there was at least some attempt at the dignity of a court: otherwise all was puritanical gloom and severity […] everywhere observable a special respect for decency and decorum’ (Jesse iii: 73). The revenue for the court was fixed by Parliament and not exceeded; the Lord Protector, despite the mimicking of royalty’s rituals, was seemingly a public servant first and foremost undertaking the duties of state rather than indulging personal desires for finery. Critics suggested that Elizabeth Cromwell’s domestic economy, thrift and pious lack of imagination was to blame for this dourness.[16] The comparison of the austere Cromwell with his presumed merry other Charles II is part of the standard propagandist and historiographical binary dynamic (de Groot, Royalist; Roebuck). However more recently Roy Sherwood has persuasively suggested that Cromwell’s court was that of a head of state, no more, and relatively frugal (Sherwood 149-56).

  13. That said Cromwell took some interest in the organisation and decoration of the houses, and recent studies have argued that ‘the lord protector not only relished his new environment, but actively sought to enhance it’ (Hunneyball 81).[17] After the proclamation of the new regime in 1653 both Whitehall and Hampton Court were richly decorated with furniture, paintings and hangings kept over (and some repurchased) from the King’s collection (Hunneyball 66-7). John Embree and Clement Kinnersley were responsible for the redecoration; c.£35000 of art and furniture were taken from the sale of the King’s goods and housed in the protectoral palaces (Brotton 278). However, Cromwell also decorated with his own belongings, as the inventory of possessions in Hampton Court at his death demonstrates (Law ii: 180-1). Cromwell evidently patronised musicians, hunted, gave public entertainments for visiting diplomats and undertook private consultation at court (Roberts) 320-1). Andrew Marvell wrote an entertainment for the marriage ceremony of Cromwell’s daughter Mary in 1657 at Hampton court and her sister Frances was married at Whitehall after a lavish feast which included dancing and music (Sherwood 144, 143). Indeed a kind of bastardized republican ‘courtliness’ of some description was the basis of various attacks on the Protectorate (Gillespie).

  14. Certainly the character of the Protectoral court seems businesslike and more directly interested in the governance of the state than any extracurricular activities. Cromwell’s system of court government was markedly different to his forebears, as has been demonstrated by Peter Gaunt and Blair Worden. Gaunt suggests that Cromwell’s influence over the Protectoral Council was less dictatorial than generally assumed, and that indeed he was more in thrall to his advisory colleagues than his Stuart predecessors to their privy councils. This levelling impetus has also been applied to the image of the leader, and it has been argued that Cromwell’s regime established a republican aesthetic of government, allowing representation in popular print where before the court had controlled the ruler’s image (Knoppers 2-4). The Protectorate court established an important model of consultative government.
    Courts in exile

  15. Henrietta Maria, Charles II, Princess Mary and Elizabeth of Bohemia all kept courts in Europe which attracted Royalist émigrés and Parliamentary spies, and had varying levels of influence. There has been some work on the politics of the government in exile; additionally the lives of exiled Royalists have begun to be excavated in some depth.[18] However, the structures of the exiled courts have still to be fully explored and the articles in this collection contribute much to our nascent understanding of this topic. The courts of Elizabeth and Mary at The Hague were the most established, and the article in this collection by Ann Hughes and Julie Sanders develops our understanding of these dynamic entities. Hughes and Sanders suggest that The Hague courts were complex spaces where the exile experience was constantly renegotiated. Their essay insists that we ‘need to account for many different forms, manifestations, and practices of royalist exile’ and nearly all of the work in this collection contributes to our understanding of the complexity of émigré courts in ‘adaptation, embedding, and interaction’.

  16. During the 1640s the figure of the Queen was still key in the construction of the court as a place of beauty and order, albeit now with a martial inflection (de Groot, ‘Mothers’). As an inspiration she still attracted the language of preciosité and was a focal point for Royalist conceptualisation of society. When she fled to France in 1644 she was given rooms in the Louvre and a pension (Britland 201). She kept a small court which, whilst indebted, functioned. It seems that despite a hiatus between 1648 and 1653 she was involved in mounting plays, ballets and entertainments within her own household as well as being involved in the ceremonies of the French court (Britland 200-214). As Edith Snook’s article illustrates, the Queen participated in an extremely complex set of activities during the 1650s and it is through the consideration of such hitherto unconsidered sources as recipe books that we can begin to reconstruct the dynamic culture created by and reflective of the court during that decade. Britland’s article deepens our understanding of the nuances of court culture abroad as well as developing our sense of Henrietta Maria’s self-dramatisation in exile.

  17. Charles II’s court was extremely reduced – as Geoffrey Smith’s article in this collection demonstrates, it was both fluid in make-up and stretched financially. Smith’s essay explores the character of Charles II’s court and in particular its search for focus and purpose. Charles did not establish a settled court until after the battle of Worcester, when he returned to Paris and set up what was effectively a government in exile. The presence of the Queen in the Louvre made the court more complex (Smith 69). After the Protectorate’s alliance with France in 1654 Charles left Paris for Cologne and Bruges. Charles’ courts were plagued by financial problems, accusations of licentiousness, and further suffered from internal division. The courts lacked authority and focus, despite the Royalists in exile having a raffish, crumpled, defeated charm:
    Thomaso: Yet in these old Cloaths I am a Gentleman and a Souldier; and though my habit be ill, my heart any my sword are good, and I think my Reputation, as any Souldier needs; for though I have lost my Fortune, yet I have preserv’d mine Honour still.[19]
    The courts in exile might sometimes have been hotbeds of intellectual activity, as Charles Kay Smith and Paul Hardacre have argued, but they were also places of privation, worry, poverty and illness, as Astington demonstrates here (Kay Smith; Hardacre). The courts in exile were also sites of negotiation where, particularly after the regicide, Royalist policy was debated and formulated (Peacey; Greenspan; Smith 115-32). As cultural spaces, too, the exiled courts maintained their importance, as Karen Britland demonstrates, although their significance and influence was complex and various (Raylor; Potter; Smyth; D’Addario 57-86). Banishment from home culture was not simply physical; Christopher D’Addario points out that marginalisation from London’s print culture was in itself one of the problems of exile, and that most English texts printed within France were generally Catholic (68-9). Even Eikon Basilike was tinkered with when printed by Sieur de Marsys (68).
     
  18. The essays in this collection, then, augment our understanding of court culture during the 1640 and 1650s. They testify to the complexity of the court as an entity during the two decades. They elaborate, develop and nuance our awareness of the dynamics of court, the organisation and infrastructure of life, the representation of the court in wider society, the cultural impact and activity of the institution. Consideration of the entity of the court gives us new insights into the experience of exile as well as the ways that recognisably older structures were used to govern during the Interregnum. We can start to conceive of just how different the courts of Charles II were from those of his father, and why; yet we can also trace the lineage of Restoration courtliness in the experiences of exile. As we shall see, new cultural modes are discovered and deployed, and older paradigms evolve.

[1] Key texts might be David Starkey English Courts, Sharpe, The Personal Rule and Criticism Levy Peck, Smuts, Court Culture, Orgel, Parry, Howarth.

[2] Despite the appearance of Sherwood in 1977.

[3] See, for instance, Bellany and Hughes.

[4] See also his ‘The Court’.

[5] For extensive new work on the Elizabethan progresses, see Archer, Goldring and Knight. Excellent examples of the wealth of scholarship on the Jacobean masque include  Butler and Knowles Politics. On the masques in light of the role of the consort, see McManus Women and Women and Culture, particularly, the chapter by Knowles ‘To Enlight’. 

[6] On Jacobean progresses, see Knowles ‘To Enlight’, Harrison and Brayshay. OnMasquing culture away from the principal royal palace, see McManus Women, Knowles, ‘The “Running Masque” Recovered’. For the more ‘orthodox’ approach to Jacobean court culture as neglecting progress entertainments see Bergeron.

[7] See Ta ton Mouson eisodia: THE MVSES WELCOME TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTIE PRINCE IAMES BY THE GRACE OF GOD KING OF GREAT BRITAINE FRANCE AND IRELAND. Edinburgh, 1618.

[8] A Proclamation for the well ordering of His Maiesties Court and Traine, as well in His present Iourney intended towards His Kingdome of Scotland, and returne from thence, as in all other His Maiesties Iouirneys and Progresses hereafter. London, May 1633.

[9] THE KING AND QVEENES Entertainement at RICHMOND. AFTER THEIR DEPARTVRE from OXFORD: In a Masque, presented by the most Illustrious PRINCE, PRINCE CHARLES. Oxford, Sep. 1636.

[10] A DEEP SIGH BREATH’D Through the Lodgings at WHITE-HALL, Deploring the absence ofthe COVRT, And the Miseries of the PALLACE (London, 1642); Henry Glapthorne, White-Hall. A Poem. Written 1642. WITH ELEGIES ON The Right Honourable FRANCIS Earl of BEDFORD. And HENRY Earle of Manchester, Lord Privy Seale: both deceased during this present Session of Parliament.  WITH An Anniversarie on the timeless death of Mrs. Anne Kirk, wife to the truly Noble Geo. Kirk, Gentleman of the Robes of his Majesties Bed Chamber, drowned unfortunately passing London Bridge, Iuly 6. 1641. London, 1643. On these texts see Sillitoe 232-63.

[11] Toynbee and Young; for the list of strangers in the parish of St. Aldate’s, see Bod. Add. MS D.114; Census taken on 7 June, 1643 Bod. MS 28189. fol. 17r–v and another copy at Bod. Add. MS D.114. fol. 19r; population calculated by Young and Emberton 49.

[12] See also Walker’s notes for the Council of War, 26 January 1642[3], BL. Add. MS 15750. fol. 16v.

[13] ‘Table and Cellar Book of Charles I., at Oxford, A. D. 1643–1644’, HMC Ormond NS II 406–10. This volume contains accounts for 1 February to 31 May 1644, listing details of supper and dinner during that time. It also contains a weekly audit of the cellars and pantry from 1 October 1643, continuous for six months.

[14] Gloves were again delivered on March 9 1643, HMC House of Lords MS 76.

[15] Accounts for the house at Wimbledon are in the National Library of Wales, Wynnstay MSS 167 (1642–3), 170 (1643–4), 171 (1645–7), 172 (1648–9, the year of Wynn’s death), and 168 (list of wages and pensions for 1642). MS 168 suggests that payments of pensions and stipends virtually ceased in 1642, but the household accounts show that there was evidently still a standing ‘household’ of servants (there is a list in MS 167. fol. 107v, in reverse), although the house was obviously run in a very low key way. The wages and ordinary expenses for the household ran to £202-14-00 in 1643 (MS 167. fol. 97v, in reverse); gardeners were much cheaper, but still ate into an impoverished budget.

[16] See The Court and Kitchin of Elizabeth.

[17] He ordered, for instance, the movement of the fountain of Diana from Somerset House to the grounds of Hampton Court, Fisher and Newman 530.

[18] Van Beneden and De Poorter, Roy, Smith, Howe, Brennan, Keblusek, ‘The Exile Experience’ and ‘Wine for comfort’.

[19] Thomaso, or, The Wanderer II. iv in Killigrew 338.

Works Cited

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© 2007-, Matthew Steggle (Editor, EMLS).