Elizabeth I, Huntress of England: Private Politics, Diplomacy, and Courtly Relations Cultivated through Hunting

Abstract

Hunting at the court of Elizabeth I of England was not a peripheral activity, nor was it a solely male pursuit. Hunting was an important social and cultural practice that was pivotal for communication, gathering information, social intercourse and politics. At the same time, hunting was an informal and ephemeral activity that was secluded and offered degrees of privacy. Yet the study of hunting as a contextually and culturally driven phenomenon that straddled the public/private divide, as an activity where elite women were active agents and skilled huntresses, and how these dimensions impacted early modern sociability, court culture, politics, and diplomacy remains underexplored. To begin addressing this gap, this article demonstrates how Elizabeth I not only regularly engaged in hunting, but also maintained a dedicated hunting staff and utilised hunting as a tool to facilitate private politics and shape courtly behaviour.

Notes

1 Most of the research presented in this article stems from the third chapter of my 2018 doctoral thesis, while also incorporating recent research related to political privacy. Upon the recommendation of my examiners, the original research is published here for the first time. I want to express my profound gratitude to Dr John Cooper and Dr Mark Jenner for their valuable guidance and support in the development of this research. I am also indebted to Dr Janet Dickinson for her vital feedback and Martin Stiles for his editorial expertise. See Dustin M. Neighbors, ‘“With my ruling”: Agency, Queenship and Political Culture through Royal Progresses in the Reign of Elizabeth I’, (unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2018). Simon Adams, ‘“The Queenes Majestie … is now become a great huntress”: Elizabeth I and the Chase’, The Court Historian, 18:2 (2013), p. 164.

2 Along with building on Adams' work, this article also builds on Roger B. Manning’s work on the legal and social aspects of hunting; expands on Richard Almond’s work on medieval representations of female hunting; and contributes a nuanced study to Thomas Allsen’s overview of royal hunting. Roger B. Manning, Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Richard Almond, Daughters of Artemis: The Huntress in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Cambridge: DS Bewer, 2009). Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

3 Luc Duerloo, ‘The Hunt in the Performance of Archducal Rule: Endurance and Revival in Habsburg Netherlands in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Renaissance Quarterly, 69 (2016), p. 117.

4 Kurt Lindner, Jagdtraktate des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 1959). David Dalby, Lexicon of the Medieval German Hunt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965), p. v. J.R. Christianson, ‘The Hunt of King Frederik II of Denmark: Structures and Rituals’, The Court Historian, 18:2 (2013), pp. 165-187. Josephine Baark, ‘Fair Game: The Cross-Cultural Chase in Eighteenth-Century Denmark’, Art History, (2020). Ulf Nyrén, ‘Rätt till jakt: En studie av den Svenska jakträtten ca 1600-1789’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Göteborgs Universitet, 2012), p. 215. The quote can be found in Dalby, Lexicon, p. v.

5 Clifford Geertz, ‘Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power’, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 124.

6 For discussions about riots and disorder over the rights to hunt in premodern Europe, see Nyrén, ‘Rätt till jakt’, p. 215; Manning, Hunters and Poachers, p. 64-66; Roger B. Manning, ‘Unlawful Hunting in England, 1500-1640’, Forest and Conservation History, 38:1 (1994), p. 22; Daniel C. Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 3; Dan Beavers, ‘The Great Deer Massacre: Animals, Honour, and Communication’, Journal of British Studies, 38:2 (1999), pp. 187-216.

7 Adams, ‘“The Queenes Majestie”’, p. 144. Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting (Stroud: The History Press, 2011), p. vii. Allsen, Royal Hunt, p. 1.

8 For an overview of medieval hunting see Dustin M. Neighbors, ‘The Study of Medieval Hunting’, Routledge Medieval Encyclopaedia Online (forthcoming Spring 2023). Werner Rösener, Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1997). John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988). William Marvin, Hunting Law and Ritual in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006). Eric J. Goldberg, In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). Goldberg’s work is the most recent and exemplary study of hunting in the Middle Ages.

9 Almond, Medieval Hunting. Dan Beavers, Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Donna Landry, The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking, and Ecology in English Literature, 1671-1831 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).

10 Along with Adams, there are other works to consider. First, although the focus is on the medieval period, there are a few notes about Tudor hunting, see Amanda Richardson, ‘“Riding like Alexander, Hunting like Diana”: Gendered Aspects of the Medieval Hunt and its Landscape Settings in England and France’, Gender and History, 24:2 (2012). James Jonathan Williams, ‘Hunting in Early Modern England: An Examination with Special Reference to the Reign of Henry VIII’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1998). Glenn Richardson, ‘Hunting at the Courts of Francis I and Henry VIII’, The Court Historian, 18:2 (2013). There is also a chapter by Emma Griffin that touches on the Elizabeth’s royal hunts, however, it’s a broad overview of hunting during the Queen’s reign and primarily focuses on animals connected to the hunt. See Emma Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 79-87.

11 21 July 1532, ‘John Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne to Montmorency’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 5, 1531-1532, ed. James Gardiner (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1880), pp. 520-521.

12 Rory McTurk, A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 131. Jenny Jochens, Old Norse Images of Women (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 62.

13 Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Beauty or Beast?: The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination from the Renaissance to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 112-144.

14 Almond, Medieval Hunting, p. 146.

15 Almond, Daughters of Artemis. Katharina Fietze, Im Gefolge Diana: Frauen und höfische Jag dim Mittelalter, 1200-1500 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, 2005). Jette Baagøe, Diana’s Døtre—kvindelige jægere dengang og nu (Dansk Jagt- og Skovbrugsmuseum, 2011). For Elizabeth’s hunting, see Adams and Richardson. It should be noted that while there several studies on early modern court cultures, particularly in France, Italy and Germany, highlighted women who hunted, they briefly mention and do not further analyse women’s contributions and impact to the culture of hunting or engage with female hunting practices in a social, political, or cultural context. One exception is Valerio Zanetti’s article on female riding culture through the activity of hunting. See Valerio Zanetti, ‘From the King’s Hunt to the Ladies’ Cavalcade: Female Equestrian Culture at the Court of Louis XIV’, The Court Historian, 24:3 (2019), pp. 250-268.

16 Neighbors, ‘“With my rulinge”’, pp. 69-70 and 163-164.

17 Natalie Mears, ‘The Personal Rule of Elizabeth I: Marriage, Succession, and Catholic Conspiracy, c. 1572-c. 1582’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2002), p. 22. See also Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 47.

18 Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999).

19 Neighbors, ‘“With my rulinge”’, pp. 37-38. See also Dustin M. Neighbors, ‘The Performativity of Female Power and Public Participation through Elizabethan Royal Progresses,’ Liminalities, 18:1 (2022), pp. 118-175.

20 The collection of John Nichols, an antiquarian, contain primary sources collected, catalogued, and published in 5 volumes. In 2017, the collection was finally published as an updated and edited collection. The edited John Nichols collection is hereafter referenced with the volume number and page number together (i.e., 1:001). My doctoral research is the first known study to utilise the newly edited collection. John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of Early Modern Sources, Volumes 1-5, eds. Elizabeth Goldring, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke, and Jayne Elisabeth Archer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For key studies on Elizabethan political culture and diplomacy, see Anne McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558-1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Mears, ‘Courts, Courtiers, and Culture in Tudor England’, Historical Journal, 46:3 (2003), pp. 703-722.

21 Richardson, ‘Hunting at the Courts’, p. 129.

22 Richardson, ‘Hunting at the Courts’, p. 137.

23 Dries Raeymaekers and Sebastian Derks (eds.), Keys to Power?: The Culture of Access in Princely Courts, 1400-1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 6-7. The negotiation of power included influence, which Adamson confirms that ‘Access and intimacy did not equate with political power’, see John Adamson, ‘The Tudor and Stuart Courts, 1509-1714’, in The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500-1750, ed. John Adamson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1999), p. 109.

24 Neighbors, ‘Performativity of Female Power’, p. 12.

25 Dustin M. Neighbors, ‘Privacy and the Private within European Court Culture’, The Court Historian, 27:3 (2023).

26 Neighbors, ‘Privacy and the Private’.

27 Allsen, Royal Hunt, p. 34.

28 Allsen, Royal Hunt, p. 34.

29 Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

30 J.P.D. Cooper, Propaganda and The Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 210. See also John Cooper, ‘Centre and the Localities’, in The Elizabethan World, eds. Susan Doran and Norman Jones (Abdington: Routledge, 2014), pp. 130-146.

31 Manning, Hunters and Poachers, p. 29. Neighbors, ‘“With my rulinge”’, p. 239. For apprenticeship processes for the royal stables, see Simon Adams, ‘Providing for the Queen: The Stables Under Elizabeth I’, The Court Historian, 26:3 (2021), p. 216. See also David Cressy, ‘Kinship and Kin interaction in Early Modern England’, Past and Present 113:1 (1986), pp. 38-69. Patrick Wallis, ‘Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England’, The Journal of Economic History 68:3 (2008), pp. 832-861. Paul S. Seaver, ‘Work, Discipline, and the Apprentice in Early Modern London’, in Wellsprings of Achievement: Cultural and Economic Dynamics in Early Modern England and Japan, ed. Penelope Gouk (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 159–79. Alexandra Shepard, Accounting for Oneself: Worth, Status and the Social Order in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 210.

32 Janet Dickinson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex, 1589-1601 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), pp. 5-23. Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (London: Pimlico, 1999). Marco Nievergelt, ‘The Chivalric Imagination in Elizabethan England’, Literature Compass, 8:5 (2011), pp. 266-279.

33 To note a few: Elena Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics, and Partnership, 1274-1512 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher, Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Katrin Keller, Kurfürstin Anna von Sachsen (1532-1585) (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2010). Gemma Allen, ‘The Rise of the Ambassadress: English Ambassadorial Wives and Early Modern Diplomatic Culture’, The Historical Journal, 62:3 (2019), pp. 617-638.

34 Discussions regarding the outdated or traditional understanding of the public sphere, see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Dena Goodman, ‘Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime’, History and Theory 31:1 (1992), pp. 1-20.

35 Tom Rose provides an interesting analysis of hunting and sociability, including women’s involvement or not, as a means of exclusion. However, Rose dismisses elite women’s involvement as they ‘did not participate in the hunt’ (p. 169), using gendered tropes minimising women’s roles. He uses literary and artistic representations of female hunting, which often were not an accurate portrayal of the reality. More importantly, Rose focuses on how women were only spectators who were used to foster ‘friendships that contributed to a family’s political and social standing.’ (p. 172) Yet this research does contribute good insights into the connection between hunting and sociability. See Tom Rose, ‘Hunting, Sociability, and the Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, in Negotiating Exclusion in Early Modern England, 1550-1800, eds. Naomi Pull and Kathryn Woods (Abdington: Routledge, 2021), pp. 161-178.

36 Anna’s active participation is intimately bound to her husband, August’s activities, but are detailed extensively in records at the Dresden archives as highlighted by Karl von Weber, Anna Churfürstin zu Sachsen geboren aus Königlichen Stamm zu Dänemark (Leipzig: Berlag von Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1865), p. 245. Catherine de Medici’s proactive engagement with the hunt is recorded by a courtier, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, and illustrated by the survival of Catherine’s crossbow. Both of these references are highlighted in Susan Broomhall, ‘The Game of Politics: Catherine de Medici and Chess’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12:1 (2017), pp. 106 and 108. For Christina’s ‘hunting parties […] signalized her skill’, see Jacques Lacombe, The history of Christina, Queen of Sweden. From the French of M. Lacombe (Printed for George Kearsly, in Ludgate-Street, MDCCLXVI [1766]), in Eighteenth Century Collections Online, p. 175.

37 Kent History and Library Centre, De L’Isle Manuscripts, U1475/E93, f. 6-8. Also known as the Kenilworth Game Books, the women listed in the manuscript are explicitly named as having hunted with the Queen during the Kenilworth visit in 1575, according to the Kenilworth gamekeeper.

38 William A. Sessions, Henry Howard, The Poet of Surrey: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 205. See also Retha Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 102.

39 John Smyth of Nibley, The Berkeley Manuscripts: The Lives of the Berkeleys, Lords of the Honour, Castle, and Manor of Berkeley, in the Country of Gloucester, from 1066 to 1618, Volume 2, ed. John Maclean (Gloucester: John Bellows, 1883), 285 and 363. See also Landry, Countryside, pp. 145-146.

40 Richardson, ‘“Riding Like Alexander, Hunting Like Diana”’, p. 253.

41 Ben Jonson, ‘Cynthia’s Revels’ (1601), in The Poems of Ben Jonson, eds. Tom Cain and Ruth Connally (London: Routledge, 2021), p. 19.

42 Edward Berry, Shakespeare and the Hunt: A Cultural and Social Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 36.

43 Almond, Medieval Hunting, p. 285.

44 British Library (BL), Cotton MS, Titus B XIII, f. 17r. See also Adams, ‘“The Queenes Majestie”’, p. 143.

45 Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game, pp. 35-37.

46 Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game, pp. 38-40.

47 Cole, The Portable Queen, pp. 180-202.

48 The Queen Elizabeth I hunting lodge. See https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/epping-forest/where-to-go-in-epping-forest/queen-elizabeths-hunting-lodge

49 Buchanan Sharp, ‘Rural Discontent and the English Revolution’, in Town and Countryside in the English Revolution, ed. R.C. Richardson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 267.

50 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Queen Elizabeth I Hunting Lodge, CLA/07704/31, No. 11 and 12.

51 The incident is based on Nichols’ narrative from the Berkeley MSS. Nichols, Progresses, 2:196.

52 Hatfield House Archives (HHA), MS Cecil Papers—Misc., 2:153. I want to express my gratitude to The Most Hon Marquess of Salisbury PC KVCO DL Hatfield House, Lord Salisbury and archivist Vicki Perry for allowing me access to the Cecil Papers and for sharing the information and insights pertaining to the records. See also Ian Dunlap, The Palaces and Progresses of Elizabeth I (London: The Trinity Press, 1962), p. 176.

53 HHA, Cecil Papers 58/83.

54 Manning, Hunters and Poachers, pp. 34-35.

55 Arthur F. Kinney and Jane A. Lawson, Titled Elizabethans: A Directory of Elizabethan Court, State, and Church Officers, 1558-1603 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 13. David Loades, The Tudor Court (London: Headstart History, 1992), pp. 38-42. Adams, ‘Providing for the Queen’, pp. 210-211. See also A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household, made in Divers Reigns from King Edward III to King William and Queen Mary, Society of Antiquaries (London: John Nichols, 1790).

56 TNA, AO 3

57 Adams, ‘Providing for the Queen’, p. 212.

58 Retha Warnicke, ‘The court’, in A Companion to Tudor Britain, eds. Robert Tittler and Norman Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 63. Kinney and Lawson, Titled Elizabethans, p. 13.

59 Adams, ‘“The Queenes Majestie”’, p. 147.

60 Through reviewing the printed (as distinct from electronic) catalogues of the various collections at TNA, I discovered a collection of unexploited manuscript. The AO records, labelled as Auditors and the Imprest and Successor Accounts, are listed as being ‘particulars of accounts, vouchers and other documents subsidiary to the declared accounts to the Auditors of the Imprest and Commissioners of Audit and the Exchequer and Audit Department and frequently contain considerably more detailed information.’ It is my conclusion that the Chamber records were produced first by the Treasurer of the Chamber, John Mason, of which most were destroyed by a fire at the Public Record Office in 1661. The accounts were copied and served as the auditor’s account. A third copy formed the Exchequer records. This method of copying would explain why more details existed in the auditor’s accounts. I want to sincerely thank Adrian Ailes at the TNA for the information and his insights into this record class.

61 The two TNA collections (AO3/127 and AO 3/128) contain eleven bound folios and each are written in sixteenth-century handwriting. AO 3/127 has six folios dating from 1560 to 1570. AO 3/128 has five folios dating from 1570-1598. However, only the years 1560, 1561, 1562, 1563, 1564, 1576, 1586, 1588, 1590, and 1595 are accounted for. Each folio details the financial expenditure of the various household positions, from the wardrobe to the musicians.

62 TNA, Exchequer (E) 351/541.

63 TNA, AO 3/127, f. 23; E 101/417/5.

64 These records are in the process of being developed for publication. While I have transcribed a significant portion of the folios in the collection, I need to complete the rest of the transcriptions. They will be published along with an article in due course.

65 Nichols, Progresses. HHA, MS Cecil Papers 58/83. HHA, MS Cecil Papers—Misc., 2:153. Translations of French letters from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF) were completed with the assistance of Estelle Paranque. BnF, MS. Fr. 17932, f. 10r°. BnF, Cinq Cents Colbert, n° 24, f. 98r°.

66 For the best information relating to the London palaces see the works of Simon Thurley, particularly, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and Court Life, 1460-1547 (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Carnegie Mellon Centre, 1993). See also Susan Doran and Robert J. Blythe, Royal River: Power, Pageantry, and the Thames (Greenwich: Scala Publishers LTD., 2012).

67 Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’, p. 147. Adams identifies that each palace had a stable, or royal mews, housing the hunting animals, under the control of the Master of the Horse.

68 Cole, Portable Queen, p. 64.

69 Cole alludes to the assembling of ‘people, equipment and animals’ as part of the planning for progresses. She makes the case that the Wardrobe department would have supplemented staff where required. See Cole, Portable Queen, Cole, Portable Queen, pp. 41 and 72-73.

70 The accounts related to the Queen’s progresses do not list payments for expenses, like meals. As they were both members of the court on progress, they would have been included in the numbers for meals that were provided for the court indicated in the household ordinances. Cole refers to the Bouche of Court and Book of Diet that laid out the rules and regulations for which members of court would dine with the Queen and the costings. Cole, Portable Queen, p. 43.

71 BL, Cotton MS, Titus B XIII, f. 17r.

72 TNA, SP Domestic 12/141, f. 94.

73 Editor’s annotations note the gamekeeper’s records at Kenilworth provided information that these individuals hunted with the Queen during her visit in 1575. Nichols, Progresses, 2:298.

74 BL, Cotton MS Titus B XIII, f. 17.

75 Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’, p. 146. The best known and surviving deer stand is known as the Queen’s Hunting Lodge at Enfield (Figure 1). LMA, CLA/07704/31.

76 Cole, Portable Queen, p. 19.

77 George Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venery (London: Imprinted by Henry Bynneman, 1575), p. 36.

78 TNA, AO 3/127-128.

79 TNA, AO 3/127.

80 TNA, AO 3/127; TNA, AO 3/128.

81 18 July 1575, ‘Antonio de Guaras to Zayas’, in Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), Volume 2, 1565-1579, ed. Martin A S Hume (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1894), pp. 495-500. Hereafter CSP—Simancas.

82 TNA, AO 3/127; TNA, AO 3/128.

83 Griffin, Blood Sport, pp. 81-82.

84 TNA, AO 3/127 and 128.

85 Joan Thirsk, Rural Economy (London: Hambledon Press, 1984), p. 377. Thirsk references two sources for this figure, the first is the ordinances of the royal household and the other is a letter in the State Papers. For a more up-to-date discussion of the stable department, see Adams, ‘Providing for the Queen’, pp. 210-228. Although Adams provides an important analysis of the organisation and purpose of the stables and the horses, he does not discuss the connection, or lack thereof, between the hunting department and the stables, especially since he has previously published a study of Elizabeth’s hunting (see Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’). There is only a single mention of hunting related to Mary, Queen of Scots (p. 226) in the article on the stable. Given how close these two departments worked, this surprising and certainly should be explored further.

86 Catherine Bates, The Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 24-25.

87 Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt, pp. 24-25.

88 The evidence for this gift is located in two collections. Nichols, Progresses, 1:251. The surviving New Year’s Gift rolls have been catalogued, transcribed, and annotated by Jane A. Lawson. The notation of the crossbow given to the Queen was listed in the 1562 gift rolls. Jane A. Lawson, The Elizabeth New Year’s Gift Exchanges, 1559-1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 63.

89 David S. Bachrach, ‘Crossbows for Kings: The Crossbow during the reigns of John and Henry III of England’, Technology and Culture, 45:1 (2004), p. 102.

90 Beavers, ‘The Great Deer Massacre’, p. 191.

91 Richardson, ‘“Riding Like Alexander, Hunting Like Diana”’, p. 258.

92 The idea of Elizabeth being a competitive hunter is illustrated in the example of her hunting excursion at Berkeley where she killed 27 stags. Nichols, Progresses, 2:196.

93 Beaver, ‘The Great Deer Massacre’, p. 192.

94 Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’, p. 156.

95 TNA, AO 3/127, f. 2.

96 David Starkey, ‘Innovation and Intimacy: The Rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485-1547’, in The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, eds. David Starkey, D.A.L. Morgan, John Murphy, Pam Wright, Neil Cuddy, and Kevin Sharpe (London: Longman, 1987), p.100.

97 TNA, AO 3/127, f. 2.

98 Helen Macdonald, Falcon (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 87.

99 Macdonald, Falcon, pp. 69 and 75.

100 Richard Grassby, ‘The Decline of Falconry in Early Modern England,’ Past and Present, 157 (1997), p. 42.

101 TNA, AO 3/128, f. 2.

102 Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, BL, 10-21. The figures within this particular source by Francis Peck, an eighteenth-century antiquarian, were a compilation of various antiquarian sources.

103 TNA, AO 3/128, f. 2.

104 This figure is based on the annual figure paid falconers £352 and 17s (Table 3) in 1560, divided among the 19 falconers that were known to be employed (Table 2); indicating that that were paid £18 for the year. Despite not working every day of the year, if we then divided the £18 by 365, the falconers earned 5d per day, which was higher than the average wage earner.

105 TNA, AO 3/128, f. 2.

106 The explanation for the ‘toyles’, or toils, high finances expenditure was compared with Cole’s tables, which revealed the progresses in the autumn months and the use of Enfield and Waltham Forest. Cole, Portable Queen, pp. 194-195.

107 TNA, E 101/429/5.

108 The position of the leash consists of two ways of managing the hunting dogs. One way consisted of individuals who handled a group of hounds intended to be used during the hunt or collected them after the hunt. The other way was through a specific hunting practice whereby hunting hounds, usually greyhounds, ‘were set in leashes of two or, preferably, three’ to ‘wait in a position to which game was driven’, at which point the groom would ‘release the grayhounds as [the game] went past.’ See Cummins, Hawk and Hound, p. 13-16. The position of the leash is described in Gaston Phoebus’ Livre de Chasse, but is interpreted by Cummins. David Dalby also identifies the leash practices in his comparison of English and German hunting terminology and language. See Dalby, Lexicon. One example of Dalby’s distinction of the leash is found on p. 87.

109 The occasion where the Queen was described as hunting with the Earl of Leicester is detailed in The Black Book of Warwick. Copy text, ed. Gabriel Heaton in Nichols, Progresses, 2:38. The original manuscript of The Black Book of Warwick is located at Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 1618/WA19/6.

110 Political privacy aims to build on Starkey’s idea of ‘politics of intimacy’, see Starkey, ‘Innovation’, p. 100.

111 There were 11 progresses to or through Hertfordshire. Yet there were 13 occasions where the Queen visited Burghley’s estate, with 10 between 1572 and 1597. See Stephen Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 209.

112 TNA, SP Domestic 12/253, f. 129.

113 Kinney and Lawson describe the Principal Secretary’s role. See Kinney and Lawson, Titled Elizabethans, p. 5. Wallace T. MacCaffrey, ‘Cecil, William, first Baron Burghley (1520/21-1598)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

114 Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse, pp. 47-54. Angela Andreani, The Elizabethan Secretariat and the Signet Office: The Production of State of State Papers, 1590-1596 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 24-26.

115 Cole, The Portable Queen, p. 1.

116 This description comes from the narrative provided by Nichols. However, he explicitly notes that the incident is recorded in the Berkeley MSS. Nichols, Progresses, 2:196. Cole suggests that this disloyalty and ‘displeasure’ stemmed from the legal battle with Robert Dudley, the Queen’s favourite. Cole, Portable Queen, p. 149.

117 Nichols, Progresses, 2:297, see footnote 477, where the editor confirms that the Privy Council met regularly through the Records of the Privy Council.

118 De L’Isle Manuscripts, U1475/E93, f. 6-8.

119 Nichols, Progresses, 2:297, again see footnote 477. Elizabeth Goldring, the section editor of the Kenilworth entertainments in the Nichols collection, has provided a sparse, though valuable, list of courtiers that were present during the Kenilworth visit. More specifically, she includes a separate, yet succinct list of courtiers who went hunting with Elizabeth. Goldring compiled both lists using a variety of manuscript material. The small number of hunting personnel that were used for the Queen’s hunt is evident in the hunting tables and hunting treatises from the period. For further discussion of the number of hunting personnel that went with Elizabeth, see Griffin, Blood Sport, p. 82.

120 Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 142-143.

121 In an oration given by the character of the Savage man, he engaged with Eccho and the dialogue between these two characters emphasised the topic of ‘true love’. When the Savage man enquires as to Eccho’s true love, she identifies ‘Dudley’. This explicit reference was most likely Dudley’s declaration to the Queen regarding the true nature of his feelings. Nichols, Progresses, 2:297-304.

122 George Gascoigne, ‘Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle’, in The Complete Works, volume 2, ed. John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), p. 125.

123 This same allusion was frequently espoused throughout the final pageants. It was widely known that Dudley had opposing views to, and difficulties with, certain members of her Privy Council, and was often outnumbered when it came to specific topics and discussions regarding the Queen and her realm.

124 Gillian Austen, George Gascoigne (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), p. 117.

125 Mary Hill Cole, ‘Ceremonial Dialogue between Elizabeth I and Her Civic Hosts,’ in Ceremony and Texts in the Renaissance, ed. Douglas Routledge (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), pp. 84-85.

126 Developed at PRIVACY, the heuristic zones model is an analytical tool to examine and identify historical privacy. Mette Birkedal Bruun, ‘Towards an Approach to Early Modern Privacy: The Retirement of the Great Condé’, in Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches eds. Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Brunn (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 22-23.

127 TNA, SP Foreign 78/21, f. 322.

128 TNA, SP Foreign 78/21, f. 298.

129 TNA, SP Foreign 78/21, f. 304.

130 TNA, SP Foreign 70/72, f. 81.

131 The original letter gives the spelling of ‘Gonnorre’; however, it has also been spelled as ‘Gonnor’ and ‘Gonnord’ in other secondary literature. See C. Edward McGee, ‘The English Entertainment for the French Ambassadors in 1564’, Early Theatre, 14:1 (2011), pp. 79-100. For the marriage negotiations, see Estelle Paranque, Elizabeth I of England Through Valois Eyes: Power, Representation and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558-1588 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 36.

132 Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 1558-1603 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 21.

133 Catherine of Medici to Monsieur de Gonnor, 27 April 1563. BnF, Cinq cents colbert, n° 24, f. 98r°. The original text in French is: ‘Monsieur de Gonnor, pour ce que je ne voy pas grande apparence que nous puissions recouvrer le Havre-de-Grace des mains des Anglois par autre moyen que celluy de la force.’

134 Catherine of Medici to Paul de Foix, Ambassador at the English court, 17 May 1563, BnF, MS. Fr. 17932, f. 10r°. The original text in French is: ‘en luy rendant ledict Calais, elle nous restituera ledict Havre-de-Grace, chose à quoy nous ne sommes pas pour entendre.’

135 TNA, SP Foreign 70/72, f. 81. See footnote 57 for information on Mason’s various positions. Alternatively, Nicholas Wotton was a Privy Councillor and one of the Queen’s chaplains. He was utilised in foreign relations to handle legal issues, like the trade disputes in the Netherlands. Michael Zell, ‘Wotton, Nicholas (c. 1497-1567)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2018). See also Kinney and Lawson, Titled Elizabethans for further details of these various roles these men had.

136 TNA, SP Foreign 70/72, f. 82.

137 TNA, SP Foreign 70/72, f. 81.

138 Dustin M. Neighbors and Natacha Klein Käfer, ‘Zones of Privacy between Women of Power: Elizabeth I of England and Anna of Saxony’, Royal Studies Journal 9:1 (2022), pp. 60-89. See also Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, and Mette Birkedal Bruun, eds., Privacy in Early Modern Correspondences (Brepols, forthcoming in 2023).

139 28 August 1572, ‘De la Mothe-Fénlon to Charles IX, 271^st Report’, in Correspondence diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon, ambassadeur de France en Angleterre, de 1568 à 1575, Tome V, Années 1572 et 1573 (Paris et Londres: Archives du Royaume, 1840), p. 99. Translated from the French: ‘monstant à cheval […] elle s’en retournoit en chassant’.

140 Paranque, Through Valois Eyes, p. 83.

141 Nate Probasco, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s reaction to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre’, in The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I, ed. Charles Beem (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 77.

142 TNA, SP Foreign 81/3, f. 133.

143 TNA, SP Foreign 78/28, f. 294.

144 TNA, SP Domestic 12/278, f. 37.

145 Susan Doran and Jonathan Woolfson, ‘Wilson, Thomas (1523/4-1581)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).

146 TNA, SP Foreign 81/3, f. 140.

147 TNA, SP Foreign 81/3, f. 140.

148 13 February 1579, ‘Gilbert and Mary Talbot to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury’, in Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, and James I, volume 2 (London: John Chidley, 1838), pp. 140-142. See the Calendar of the Shrewsbury and Talbot Papers in Lambeth Palace Library and the College of Arms, volume 2, ed. Catherine Jamison (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1966), p. 104. See also Marion Colthorpe, ‘The Elizabethan Court Day by Day’, Folgerpedia (Folger Shakespeare Library, 2017), accessed 22 December 2022, https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/The_Elizabethan_Court_Day_by_Day.

149 Linda Shenk, Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth in Politics and Poetry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 60-62.

150 TNA, SP Foreign 81/3, f. 140.

151 Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’, p. 158.

152 TNA, SP Foreign 75/1, f. 116.

153 Paul Lockhart, Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559-1596 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 146-177. Walther Kirchner, ‘England and Denmark, 1558-1588’, Journal of Modern History, 17:1 (1945), p. 12.

154 Neighbors and Käfer, ‘Zones of Privacy’, pp. 73 and 81.

155 The original letter does not exist. There are two printed versions of the letter: 1) 27 February 1560, ‘Throckmorton to Elizabeth’, in Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 2, 1559-1560, (ed.) Joseph Stevenson (London, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1865), pp. 394-403, hereafter CSP—Foreign Elizabeth; 2) Patrick Forbes, A Full View of the Public Transactions in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Volume 1 (London, 1740), p. 341. See also Adams, ‘“The Queens Majestie”’, p. 156.

156 22 August 1560, ‘Throckmorton to the Queen’, CSP—Foreign Elizabeth, 3:246-260.

157 For information on changing the locks on Elizabethan progresses, see Neighbors, ‘Performativity of Female Power’, p. 129.

158 1 October 1581, ‘Bernardino de Mendoza to the King’, CSP—Simancas, 3:175-185.

159 Mette Birkedal Bruun, Sven Rune Havsteen, Kristian Mejrup, Eelco Nagelsmit and Lars Nørgaard, ‘Withdrawal and Engagement in the Long Seventeenth Century: Four Case Studies’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 1:2 (2014), pp. 281-284.

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Notes on contributors

Dustin M. Neighbors

Dustin M. Neighbors

Dustin M. Neighbors is a postdoctoral researcher for the Fashion History Lab at Aalto University and a visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki. He completed his PhD at the University of York in 2018, under the supervision of Dr. John Cooper. A historian of early modern English and northern European history, Dustin specialises in the history of monarchy and court culture, with an emphasis on the performativity of gender, political culture, elite practices and activities (i.e., hunting) and utilising digital methods of analysis. He is lead co-editor on a forthcoming edited collection with Amsterdam University Press entitled Notions of Privacy at Early Modern European Courts: Reassessing the Public / Private Divide, 1400-1800.