Prince Henry's Welcome at Winchester was a masque produced by Anne of Denmark and performed in 1603 at Winchester on a day between 11 and 17 October. [1]
Prince Henry's Welcome at Winchester was a masque produced by Anne of Denmark and performed in 1603 at Winchester on a day between 11 and 17 October. [1]
Prince Henry (1594–1612) was the son of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, James became king in England, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. Prince Henry and his sister, Princess Elizabeth came to stay in England. Elizabeth was at first at Oatlands, then plague came to London in June. After a wardrobe servant died in August, she joined Henry at Nonsuch. [2] Two members of the queen's household died of plague in September. [3] Henry and Elizabeth were moved from Nonsuch to Winchester, thought to be a more healthful place. [4]
Anne of Denmark travelled to Winchester on 17 September 1603. [5] King James and Anne had an audience with the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Villamediana at Winchester on 24 September. [6] On 17 October, when Anne was moving to Wilton House, Thomas Edmondes wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury that she had done her son, the Prince "the kindness at his coming hither to entertain him with a gallant mask". [7] Prince Henry arrived in Winchester on 11 October and this may have been the day the masque was performed. [8]
An account of expenses kept by Princess Elizabeth or Anne Livingstone, one of her Scottish companions, covers this period and mentions some details of their journey. [9]
Few details are known about the masque which took place in October 1603, but it was mentioned in several newsletters. The title given to the event is not contemporary. [10] The composer and musician John Dowland may have been involved; he mentioned meeting the queen at Winchester in the dedication of his Lachrimae . [11] [12] [13] At the time, the lutenist and dancing master Thomas Cardell attended the queen and Princess Elizabeth. [14] The queen's secretary, the poet William Fowler, who had written the baptism entertainments for Prince Henry in 1594, was also at Winchester. Fowler wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury on 11 October from Winchester. [15]
Arbella Stuart was present and mentioned the masque in her own letter as "an enterlude, (as ridiculous as it was) but not so ridiculous as my letter". She described the queen's household playing children's games in their Winchester lodging. [16]
Lady Anne Clifford had visited Prince Henry at Nonsuch Palace in the first week of October and Clifford's cousin Frances Bourchier joined Princess Elizabeth's household. [17] Some time after Michaelmas (11 October), Anne heard of the performance at Winchester, and she recalled that it had damaged the reputation of Anne of Denmark and the women of her court: [18]
Now there was much talk of a masque which the Queen had at Winchester and how all the ladies about the Court had gotten such ill-names that it was grown a scandalous place, and the Queen herself much fallen from her former greatness and reputation she had in the world. [19]
Perhaps the personal participation of the queen and her ladies in the masque or dance caused the scandal. [20] The adverse comment could reveal gender concerns, making "masques seem less like peaceful celebrations of royal power and virtue than sites of female misrule". [21]
The queen's household at Winchester may have included; Anna Livingstone, Margaret Stewart, Anna Campbell, Jean Drummond and Margaret Hartsyde. [22] Margaret Stewart danced at Basing House in September 1603 and played the part of Concordia in The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. [23]
On 30 October, King James and Anne of Denmark made their Royal Entry to Southampton. [24] Before the court returned to London, according to Arbella Stuart, the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Villamediana, organised a dinner for Beaumont's wife, Anne de Rabot, asking her to invite some English ladies. She brought the Countess of Bedford, Lady Penelope Rich, Lady Susan de Vere, and "Lady Dorothy", probably Dorothy Hastings. [25]
The masque at Winchester was mentioned in connections with plans for future court festivities. The French ambassador, Christophe de Harlay, Count of Beaumont, commented that Winchester show was "rustic" in the sense of unsophisticated (rather than in the pastoral genre) and served to raise the queen's spirits, and Anne of Denmark was planning a superior and more costly entertainments, realised as The Masque of Indian and China Knights and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses . [26] The Winchester masque seems to have been for her son, rather than for the entertainment of a diplomatic elite. [27] John Leeds Barroll suggests it was a "domestic event". [28] Dudley Carleton mentioned plans for Christmas at Windsor Castle, that "many plays and shows are bespoken, to give entertainment to our ambassadors". [29] Thomas Edmondes wrote that the queen's preparations required the "use of invention" and the services of Hugh Sanford. [30] Sanford was a tutor of the Earl of Pembroke. [31]
Pleasing the ambassadors had become a priority: another French ambassador Louis de l'Hôpital, Sieur de Vitry, had already expressed dissatisfaction with a gift he received from the king. [32] Lord Cecil wrote letters filled with anxiety that the Spanish and French ambassadors, the Count of Villamediana and the Marquis of Rosny, would find their hospitality less than that given the other, or their predecessors. [33]
Anne of Denmark was the wife of King James VI and I. She was Queen of Scotland from their marriage on 20 August 1589 and Queen of England and Ireland from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until her death in 1619.
Lady Arbella Stuart was an English noblewoman who was considered a possible successor to Queen Elizabeth I of England. During the reign of King James VI and I, she married William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, another claimant to the English throne, in secret. King James imprisoned William Seymour and placed her under house arrest. When she and her husband tried to escape England, she was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where she died at age 39.
Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and 1st Duke of Richmond, Lord of the Manor of Cobham, Kent, was a Scottish nobleman who through their paternal lines was a second cousin of King James VI of Scotland and I of England. He was involved in the Plantation of Ulster in Ireland and the colonization of Maine in New England. Richmond's Island and Cape Richmond as well as Richmond, Maine, are named after him. His magnificent monument with effigies survives in Westminster Abbey.
Margaret Stuart, Scottish aristocrat and courtier in England. She served as lady-in-waiting to the queen consort of England, Anne of Denmark. She was the daughter of James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray, and Elizabeth Stuart, 2nd Countess of Moray. The sailor and patron of Ben Jonson, Sir Frances Stuart was her brother.
William Fowler was a Scottish poet or makar, writer, courtier and translator.
The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses was an early Jacobean-era masque, written by Samuel Daniel and performed in the Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace on the evening of Sunday, 8 January 1604. One of the earliest of the Stuart Court masques, staged when the new dynasty had been in power less than a year and was closely engaged in peace negotiations with Spain, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses stood as a precedent and a pattern for the many masques that followed during the next four decades.
Jean Ker, Countess of Roxburghe, néeDrummond (c.1585–1643) was a Scottish courtier, serving Anne of Denmark in Scotland and England.
Elizabeth Trevannion, Countess of Monmouth, was an English aristocrat and keeper of Prince Charles.
Juan de Tassis y Acuña, 1st Count of Villamediana, was a Spanish diplomat and official, awarded his title by king Philip III of Spain in 1603, and the General Head of Spanish Post Offices.
Susan Herbert, Countess of Montgomery, was an English court office holder. She served as lady-in-waiting to the queen consort of England and Scotland, Anne of Denmark. She was the youngest daughter of Elizabethan courtier, and poet Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
Lady Audrey Walsingham was an English courtier. She served as Lady of the Bedchamber to queen Elizabeth I of England, and then as Mistress of the Robes to Anne of Denmark from 1603 until 1619.
Frances Howard, Countess of Kildare, was a courtier and governess of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, and a member of the House of Howard.
The 1603 London plague epidemic was the first of the 17th century and marked the transition from the Tudor to the Stuart period.
Tethys' Festival was a masque produced on 5 June 1610 to celebrate the investiture of Prince Henry (1594–1612) as Prince of Wales.
Dorothy Hastings was a courtier to Elizabeth I of England and Anne of Denmark
Anna Hay, Countess of Winton (1592-1628) was a Scottish courtier.
Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli (1550-1608) was a Venetian diplomat based in London at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I and the beginning of the reign of James VI and I.
The Masque of Indian and China Knights was performed at Hampton Court in Richmond, England on 1 January 1604. The masque was not published, and no text survives. It was described in a letter written by Dudley Carleton. The historian Leeds Barroll prefers the title, Masque of the Orient Knights.
Thomas Cardell or Cardall was a musician and dancing master specialising in playing the lute who served Elizabeth I and Anne of Denmark.
Christophe de Harlay, Count of Beaumont (1570–1615) was a French politician and diplomat who served as ambassador to England.