The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony.

Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony Ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture.) Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. x + 277 pp. n.p. ISBN: 1-55849-214-3.

This book is the most comprehensive analysis of the progresses of Elizabeth I that has yet been written. It concentrates on the 23 trips, which lasted some 48-52 days, that she made away from London during the summer months of July through September when plague threatened. Over 400 individual and civic hosts welcomed her for visits that lasted approximately two days. In her analysis, Cole discovered patterns and explored topics that might not have emerged in a study of the course of one progress. To some extent, she points out, the degree of the progresses' success reflected the changing vitality of Elizabeth's reign. When she restricted the visits in her last years, Elizabeth faced increasing difficulty in winning popular support and in building a consensus. Declining hospitality echoed this fading popularity, for some intended hosts, such as Henry, Earl of Lincoln, even rudely refused to welcome her into their homes.

Elizabeth visited only the safest parts of her realm, straying only about 40 miles from London. Her appearances authenticated monarchical power and social stability in districts where they were already evident. Unlike her father in 1540, for example, she did not use the progresses to bring order to troubled northern areas. She preferred to reside in private homes; her favorites were the mansions of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who even built Theobalds to furnish her with special accommodations.

As her ministers blamed the progresses for distracting her from business, she was virtually alone in desiring their continuation. In fact, she took advantage of the confusion and chaos of travel to draw attention to her authority and to maintain independence of action, even occasionally deliberately avoiding meetings with her officials. Another on-going problem was the added expense, for a detailed analysis of household accounts provided Cole with evidence to disprove the claim of previous historians that Elizabeth took advantage of her subjects' hospitality to save money. During the progresses she continued to bear the costs of supporting her household, the expenses of which increased greatly. Burghley left records of his futile attempts to cut costs; almost all the household departments spent more on supplies and transportation during the progresses than when they were resident in her palaces.

In insisting upon the progresses, Elizabeth indicated how important she believed they were to the success of her reign and to the maintenance of her popularity. She refused to end them although they made her personally vulnerable since security was more difficult to maintain in the private homes than in her palaces. Cole's chapter on the royal agenda explains how the queen used the progresses to her advantage in governance. By remaining in Protestant areas, she facilitated the acceptance of her religious settlement, and, by visiting fortified places, she emphasized England's military might. She held audiences with ambassadors and tried, but failed, to meet with Mary, Queen of Scots. Even recalcitrant nobility could be chastised, as was Henry, Lord Berkeley, a brother-in-law of the deceased traitor, Thomas, duke of Norfolk, whose deer she slaughtered in 1574.

Her presence offered patronage opportunities to her hosts, who petitioned her for rewards, for redress of wrongs, and for arbitration of disputes. The places that she and her court visited even gained a temporary economic boost. These advantages helped to offset her hosts' costs in preparing for her arrival and in entertaining her with gifts and festivities, although her subjects never stopped complaining about the abuses of the purveyance system that supplied her household. She finally permitted changes in purchasing arrangements, and by 1603, her officials were obtaining most of their supplies through composition rather than by purveyance.

With substantial archival research and the use of anthropological insights, this clearly written book offers abundant evidence of the queen's reigning style and political strategies and presents the reasons for her determination to go on progresses in the face of reluctant ministers, increased expenses, and even hostile hosts. The structure of the book sometimes resulted in some repetition of material, but this is a minor point. Cole appended to her important study extremely useful Lists of Household Departments and Gifts, and Tables of the places where the queen visited and the hosts who welcomed her.