The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

Political discourse is rooted in speech, and students of modern parliamentary politics have a wealth of material to draw on – Hansard, TV broadcasts of debates, newspaper reports, even WhatsApp messages. The picture for the House of Lords in the reign of Elizabeth I is very different. The principal source, the Lords’ Journal, was conceived by the Tudor clerks quite narrowly as a record of business transacted and decisions reached, but with a veil drawn over the accompanying discussions, which were, after all, meant to be confidential.

A typical page in the manuscript Journal has the date of the current sitting at the top, the date of the next sitting at the bottom, and three columns down the rest of the page; of these, two are used for recording which bishops and lay peers attended that day, while the third column, on the right-hand side, is reserved for any actual proceedings. (Not until 1597 was it thought necessary to allocate more than one page per sitting, to allow for a more detailed account of events.)

The final column might list bills read, and the verdicts agreed on them, reports of conferences with the Commons or audiences with the queen, or such mundane matters as apologies for absence. Or it might not – for some sittings no business is listed at all, creating the impression that the peers were twiddling their thumbs or perhaps nodding off to sleep.

By comparison, the Commons’ Journal, augmented in the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign by several private diaries, is full of summarised speeches, disputes and other incidents which give a good sense of the moods, initiatives and objectives of the lower House. Unsurprisingly, historians have tended to rely on these sources to reconstruct the political narrative of the Elizabethan parliaments, in the process exaggerating the importance of the Commons at the expense of the poorly reported Lords.

In recent decades some effort has been made to correct this imbalance, utilising a variety of different approaches. During the 1980s and 1990s the Lords’ management of legislation was examined in great detail by Sir Geoffrey Elton and David Dean. In conjunction with their research, T. E. Hartley published three volumes of material supplementing the Lords’ and Commons’ Journals, including a few actual speeches made by bishops or lay peers. Around the same time, a ground-breaking study of the 1559 Parliament by Norman Jones demonstrated how manoeuvrings in the Lords could be illuminated through reports from outside Parliament, close reading of the chronology of events at Westminster, and careful examination of the wider political context.

What was missing from these endeavours was a detailed understanding of the individuals who sat in the upper House, a gap in our knowledge which is now close to being filled by the History of Parliament’s project on the Elizabethan Lords. Since 2020 nearly 250 new biographies have been researched and written, reconstructing the lives of the bishops and lay peers who participated in Elizabeth’s 13 parliamentary sessions, identifying their political networks and personal objectives at Westminster, and pondering the place that Parliament occupied in their wider careers.

In following these men’s careers in the Lords over several decades, it has become possible to develop a sense of what ‘normal’ business may have involved and the routine patterns by which things got done. That in turn allows us to observe anomalies in those patterns, and to consider the political forces which operated in those grey areas for which we have only patchy documentation.

However, it is still enormously helpful to pursue these questions in a scenario where we have enough contextual data to speculate with some confidence on how individual peers may have behaved. Accordingly, the focus of this seminar is the Parliament of 1584-5, and specifically the struggles over religion that gave this session much of its flavour.

A quarter of a century after the Elizabethan church settlement of 1559, English Protestantism had reached another crossroads. The first generation of Elizabethan bishops, many notable for their evangelical fervour, were mostly dead, their hopes of continuing reformation disappointed. Their successors, headed by the recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, were mostly content to defend what was now the ecclesiastical status quo, despite the poor quality of many clergy, and numerous abuses in appointments and funding.

Indeed, upon becoming archbishop, Whitgift had attempted to clamp down on Protestant clergy who refused to conform to those aspects of the Elizabethan settlement that seemed to hark back to Catholicism. In the process, Whitgift incurred the wrath of Elizabeth’s two most powerful advisers, Lord Burghley and the earl of Leicester, who believed that the primate’s tactics would weaken the Protestant cause at a time when English Catholic numbers were rising again and the threat of war with Catholic Spain was also increasing. Despite enjoying the continuing support of the queen, Whitgift was forced to scrap his plans. Even so, when Parliament met in November 1584, the archbishop came under attack again, this time from the fervently Protestant House of Commons, which petitioned for major reform of the Church, and introduced numerous bills to the same end.

But what of the Lords? When this Parliament opened, only 11 out of a possible 25 other bishops were present to offer the primate their support. On the face of things Whitgift was isolated and on the back foot. He continued to face hostility from Burghley and Leicester, and three of the Commons’ provocative bills were passed by the peers, before being vetoed by Elizabeth.

The bare facts look bad – but they are not the full picture. By exploring the group dynamics of the bishops in 1584-5, and drawing on contextual documentation both from the Commons and from outside Parliament, this paper will argue that Whitgift stood his ground, gathering his closest allies around him, and in the process consolidating the Church hierarchy’s revised priorities. Moreover, although Burghley and Leicester were broadly sympathetic to the demands of the Commons, they also knew that they could not afford to oppose the queen’s own views on the Church too strongly, and were therefore obliged to moderate their attacks on the archbishop. That sense of royal protection for the bishops in turn sheds light on their status within the Lords during Elizabeth’s reign.

The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

PMH

Further reading:

G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England 1559-1581 (1986)

David Dean, Law-making and Society in Late Elizabethan England (1996)

T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (3 volumes, 1981-95)

Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute (1982)

In March 1559, Elizabeth I’s government had a serious problem on its hands. The first Parliament of the reign had been meeting for two months, but the crown’s flagship legislation to bring back Protestantism had run into trouble. With some difficulty, a bill had been passed to restore the royal supremacy over the Church, but the powers granted fell short of what Elizabeth wanted, while plans for reviving Protestant worship had stalled. The House of Commons was broadly in favour of these changes, but in the Lords, where committed Protestants were in the minority, the Catholic bishops were very effectively obstructing the government programme. As the Protestant observer John Jewel reported on 20 March:

the bishops are a great hindrance to us; for being … among the nobility and leading men in the upper House, and having none there on our side to expose their artifices … they reign as sole monarchs in the midst of ignorant and weak men, and easily overreach our little party, either by their numbers or their reputation for learning. (Zurich Letters ed. H. Robinson (Parker Society, 1842), 10-11)

By this point, the situation was so bad that Elizabeth was seriously contemplating an early dissolution of Parliament, so that she could use her new powers to deprive the existing bishops and appoint new Protestant ones, before pressing on with the reform programme. In the event, the queen decided against this course, but action was clearly needed to weaken the bishops’ hold over the lay peers.

The government’s solution was to arrange a public conference or disputation between two panels of Catholic clergy and Protestant divines. According to a subsequent official account of this exercise, the objective was to thrash out differences of opinion about religion, and reach agreement on the best way forward for the Church. In reality, the government’s objective was to discredit the bishops, and sway public opinion in favour of Protestantism. From the outset, everything possible was done to place the Catholic participants at a disadvantage. Their leader in the Lords, the widely respected Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York, was appointed to help preside over the disputation in his capacity as a privy councillor, a move which would effectively sideline him during the debates. Similarly, the three propositions which the Privy Council selected for discussion were all designed to win support for the government’s reform programme: that church services should be conducted in the vernacular tongue rather than in the traditional Latin, which most congregations didn’t understand; that national Churches had the power to alter the format and content of services; and that the Catholic doctrine of the sacrificial mass was not based on the teachings of the bible.

There’s some confusion over exactly how many people took part in the disputation, though there seem to have been eight or nine men on each side. The Catholic camp comprised a mix of bishops and other senior clergy, while the Protestant delegation was made up almost exclusively of clerics who had spent Mary I’s reign in exile on the continent. In effect, they represented the existing and prospective hierarchies of the English Church. The Catholics wanted to debate in Latin, which would have made it harder for the audience to follow the arguments, but the government insisted on proceedings being conducted in English, and selected the spacious Westminster Abbey as the venue, to allow as many people as possible to attend. As expected, a substantial number of lay peers turned up, precisely the individuals whom the government most wanted to influence.

Perceiving that the odds were stacked heavily against them, the Catholic camp looked for ways to sabotage the debates. The Privy Council had ruled that each side should prepare a written statement on each proposition, which would be circulated in advance to the opposing group, and read out on the day. The Protestants seem to have stuck to this format, but the Catholics chose not to cooperate. Invited to open debate on the first day of the conference, 31 March, they claimed that they’d misunderstood the rules, and therefore didn’t have a written statement to present. Instead, Henry Cole, dean of St Paul’s cathedral, launched into a violent and colourful diatribe against Protestantism in general, before finally sketching out the Catholic position on the correct language for worship, essentially defending the use of Latin by appealing to tradition. Once Cole had finished, his opponent Robert Horne read out a learned argument in favour of the local vernacular, with copious references to the bible and early Christian writings. Horne prefaced his remarks with a lengthy prayer appealing to God to reveal the true way forward. As this prayer was introduced, all the privy councillors present except Archbishop Heath fell to their knees, further demonstrating which side the government favoured. Once Horne had finished presenting the Protestant case, the Catholic disputants asked to respond, but were told to wait until the next debate, three days later.

When the conference resumed on 3 April, the Catholic camp tried to pick up where they’d left off, but were informed that they must first set out their arguments on the second proposition, concerning the power of national churches to modify their liturgies. However, the bishops began to complain that they were being treated unfairly, and the conference rapidly descended into a row over the format of the disputation. Recognising that if the Protestants always spoke second, their arguments were likely to carry more weight with the audience, the Catholics called for the order of debate be switched around. When this demand was rejected, the bishops again tried to change the topic, asserting that they represented the true Church, and attacking their opponents as schismatics. At length, once it became clear that the Catholics had no intention of addressing the second proposition, the disputation was brought to a premature close.

Predictably, Catholic commentators on the conference, such as the Spanish ambassador, the Count de Feria, maintained that the bishops had trounced the Protestant divines. John Jewel, who had been present as one of the Protestant disputants, took a rather different view: ‘It is altogether incredible, how much this conduct has lessened the opinion that the people entertained of the bishops; for they all begin to suspect that they refused to say anything only because they had not anything to say.’ (Zurich Letters, 16)

Whether or not Jewel himself was exaggerating, the conference had a decisive impact on developments in Parliament. The five bishops who participated in the debates were all charged with contempt of the crown for failing to follow the agreed format. Two of them, the bishops of Winchester and Lincoln, were imprisoned in the Tower of London until after the end of the session. This unsurprisingly served to dampen opposition in the Lords to the government’s programme. Several staunchly Catholic lay peers suddenly decided to absent themselves, while others dropped their objections to the Protestant legislation. The bill for the royal supremacy was duly revised, though the measure to reintroduce the Book of Common Prayer still only scraped through the upper House by three votes.  Without the Westminster conference, it might not have passed at all. The disputation strategy was clumsy and underhand, but it weakened the Catholic cause, broke the parliamentary deadlock, and helped pave the way for the Elizabethan religious settlement.

PMH

Further reading:

N.L. Jones, Faith by Statute (1982)

G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England ed. N. Pocock (1865), vol. 5

The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe ed. S.R. Cattley (1839), vol. 8

Biographies of all the clerics mentioned above will appear in due course in our volumes on the House of Lords 1558-1603.

In 21st-century Britain, clothes are seen as a means of expressing our individuality. Distinctions between smart and casual dress have become blurred, and anyone can buy designer outfits, provided they have enough money. That was not the case four or five centuries ago. Back then, clothing was seen as a key marker of social status, and it was government policy to preserve clear visual distinctions. Poor people were expected to dress cheaply, in linen and coarse woollen cloth, while the most commonly available dyes were drab browns and greys, or pale blues and pinks.

More vibrant colours, such as bright red, deep blue, or purple, were harder to produce, and therefore the preserve of the rich and powerful. Similarly, the finest cloth was made of silk thread, which had to be imported, and was very expensive. Silk might be woven into satin, velvet, brocade, damask or taffeta. For the ultimate in luxury, silk was blended with gold or silver thread, which in Tudor times was also manufactured abroad. Cloth of gold or silver might have a smooth metallic sheen – as seen in Holbein’s portrait of Sir Henry Guildford – or be woven with some sections in relief to create patterns (called tissue). Another approach was to interweave coloured silk with gold or silver threads to produce a sparkly fabric known as tinsel.

These top-quality fabrics were beyond the reach of most of the population, but provided scope for competition within its higher echelons. Wealthier members of the lower classes might also try to dress above their accustomed status as a means of social climbing. To regulate the former, and guard against the latter, Acts of Parliament were brought in from the mid-14th century. Known as sumptuary laws, these statutes dictated which fabrics and adornments were permissible for men of different ranks and income levels. Ostensibly, they were intended to encourage the use of home-produced cloth, and to discourage poorer people from spending beyond their means. But in reality their primary concern was to ensure that only the most privileged classes had access to the most exclusive materials.

The Acts were very precise in their stipulations. Henry VIII’s first such legislation, promulgated in 1510, specified that only the royal family might wear cloth of gold made with purple silk, and that no man below the rank of baron could dress in tinsel. Imported furs were banned for anyone below the status of gentleman (except university graduates, and landowners worth at least £10 p.a.). Another Act of 1515 ruled that only peers, and the sons of dukes and earls, were allowed clothes embroidered with gold, silver or silk thread, while men below the rank of knight were barred from wearing gold chains or bracelets. A subsequent Act of 1555, during Mary I’s reign, denied silk nightcaps to anyone with a landed income of less than £20 p.a. These rules were underpinned by quite stiff penalties: forfeiture of non-compliant garments, and fines of 3s. 4d. a day for the duration of the offence.

It speaks volumes about the essentially patriarchal nature of Tudor society that no regulation of women’s dress was attempted until the mid-1570s, the female population being exempted from statutory oversight prior to this. It’s tempting to speculate that Elizabeth I was worried about competition from her subjects. At this juncture the use of cloth of gold, cloth of gold of tissue, and sable fur was prohibited for anyone below the rank of countess. To wear sleeves trimmed with gold or silver ornamentation, one needed to be at least the wife of a knight. Only women who were at least knights’ daughters were permitted taffeta petticoats.

The sumptuary laws were not totally inflexible. Further exceptions were made for the robes of office customarily worn by judges and mayors, and for clerical vestments. Other special categories included heralds, minstrels and actors, all of whom were allowed to dress above their station during public appearances. Nor did the government generally attempt to regulate fashion trends, though the wide, padded breeches and elaborate ruffs characteristic of Elizabethan male dress intermittently came in for criticism. The primary objective was to preserve an ordered society, where everyone could tell at a glance who they were dealing with, and where people knew their place.

While it’s clear that the laws were largely ignored, in broad terms they conformed to popular expectations. It was taken for granted that peers of the realm would put on a show. In the later 16th century Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby, routinely sported a gold chain and two diamonds, and was also famous for his golden breeches. Conversely, one of his contemporaries, Henry Howard, 2nd Viscount Howard of Bindon, scandalized polite society by periodically appearing in public dressed like a peasant. Accordingly, the sumptuary laws, by prescribing the dress appropriate to specific ranks, helped to define the terms of competition at the highest levels.

We can get a good sense of the sartorial tastes of England’s elite from their portraits, in which the costumes are generally depicted with care and precision. Such paintings are also likely to show their subjects in their most expensive outfits, such as they might have worn at court. There the benchmark was of course set by the monarch. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in particular were famous for their magnificent clothes. The so-called ‘Ermine portrait’ of Elizabeth (ermine was both a mark of status and a symbol of virginity) clearly demonstrates the aesthetic encouraged by the sumptuary laws. Here the queen is a vision of costly silks, gold and silver embroidery, and lavish and abundant jewellery.

However, there was more than one way to create an impact within the legislative guidelines. In 1590 the 2nd earl of Essex, the queen’s favourite, was in temporary disgrace following his marriage to Frances Sidney. In a public show of penitence, he appeared at that year’s Accession Day tilt at court ‘in sable sad’, sporting black armour. Nevertheless, that was topped by a spectacular black surcoat richly embroidered with silver thread, pearls and gemstones. Having demonstrated that he was literally an ornament to the court, Essex was soon back in favour.

By the closing years of the 16th century the sumptuary laws had in fact run their course. Although Elizabethan parliaments saw more than half-a-dozen government attempts to update the legislation, only one measure was passed, a short-lived Act in 1563 banning the purchase of expensive foreign clothing on credit. While the House of Lords was happy to entrench peers’ existing privileges, Members of the Commons proved increasingly resistant to further restrictions on their own sartorial choices. The queen was instead obliged to issue a string of proclamations enforcing or modifying the sumptuary statutes. Her successor, James I, all but abandoned this struggle, and instead tried to profit from the manufacture of gold and silver thread, which had by now reached England. (Famously, his attempt to introduce silkworms to the country failed when the wrong kind of mulberry tree was employed.)

Even so, the cultural impact of the sumptuary laws lingered into the 17th century. When Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset needed an outfit for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine in 1613, he opted for this extraordinary ensemble, which featured a doublet of cloth of silver embroidered in gold and black silk, a black velvet cloak embellished with gold and silver, and silk stockings similarly decorated with gold, silver, and black silk thread. In the light of such unashamed excess, it is no surprise that the last sumptuary bills debated by Parliament, during the 1620s, were promoted by puritans intent on banning the elitist luxury which the old legislation had encouraged.

PMH

Further reading:

Eleri Lynn, Tudor Fashion (2017)

Roy Strong, The Elizabethan Image (2019)

Anna Reynolds, In Fine Style: the Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion (2013)

Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (2005)

A biography of the 3rd earl of Dorset features in The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021). Biographies of the 2nd earl of Essex, 4th earl of Derby and 2nd Viscount Howard are in preparation as part of our project on the House of Lords 1558-1603.

Hampshire in the 1560s was a divided community. Despite the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559, there was still a sizeable Catholic population in the county, which enjoyed the patronage of the leading local magnate, William Paulet, 1st marquess of Winchester. One of the great survivors of Tudor politics, Paulet had been lord treasurer of England since 1550, adapting his own religious opinions to the radically different demands of Edward VI, Mary I and now Elizabeth I, while remaining an indispensable and influential figure at the heart of government. However, many of his own family were openly Catholic, and with the discreet backing of the marquess, they provided the backbone of Hampshire’s recusant community. Set against them was a rival gentry faction, staunchly Protestant, who looked for leadership to the county’s ecclesiastical head, Robert Horne, bishop of Winchester. Horne, who had lived in exile on the continent during Mary’s reign, was a strong-minded character, determined to eradicate Catholicism in his diocese. By the mid-1560s he had already successfully secured the sacking of a number of Hampshire magistrates on religious grounds.

The next major flashpoint came in the autumn of 1566, when a new session of Elizabeth’s second Parliament was summoned. Hampshire’s senior knight of the shire, Sir John Mason, a religious conservative, had died in April that year, necessitating a by-election. Horne was anxious for the new Member to be a convinced Protestant, but there was one very significant obstacle to his plans. The current sheriff of Hampshire, Richard Pexall, was the marquess’s son-in-law, and a leading member of his faction. And as sheriff, Pexall had overall responsibility for managing the election. Writs for the holding of elections were issued by Chancery to sheriffs, who then, in the case of county seats, summoned voters to assemble at the next ‘county day’, a fixed date each month when people routinely gathered to conduct business. In Hampshire, the normal meeting place was the cathedral city of Winchester. On the day of the election itself, the sheriff served as returning officer, assessing the eligibility of both the candidates and the electors, the latter being required to own at least 40 shillings-worth of freehold land in the relevant county. The sheriff also had complete control over the management and duration of the election, and was the sole arbiter of the outcome. In addition, he was responsible for notifying the result to Westminster. Consequently, sheriffs enjoyed considerable scope for manipulating the entire process.

Faced with this situation, Horne responded by trying to wrong-foot Pexall. Already in London for the opening of the new parliamentary session, the bishop used his own contacts, conceivably secretary of state Sir William Cecil or the lord keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, to obtain the election writ from Chancery at the end of September. Instead of passing it straight to the sheriff, as he should have done, Horne sent it to one of his own Hampshire allies, Richard Norton, who hung onto it for several days. Meanwhile, with the next county day looming on 7 October, another of the bishop’s supporters, William Uvedale, the remaining Hampshire knight of the shire, began mobilising Horne’s tenants to turn up at Winchester in force. Pexall finally received the writ just two days before the election was due to be held, which gave him barely any time to rally the Paulet faction.

Horne’s strategy was becoming clear. By law, the election had to be held on the next county day, regardless of how little warning was received, so on 7 October the votes would be heavily weighted in favour of the bishop’s preferred candidate. On the face of things this man was a compromise choice, Sir William Paulet, a Protestant grandson of the marquess. However, there was a catch: Paulet was a Dorset resident, which rendered him ineligible to serve as a Hampshire knight of the shire. Consequently, if he was elected, and Pexall agreed to return him, the sheriff would be liable to a hefty fine and even imprisonment for breaking election law. Pexall subsequently alleged, with some justification, that the Horne camp promoted Sir William as a ploy; assuming that the sheriff stuck to the letter of the law, and disqualified him, that would clear the way for an alternative candidate from the bishop’s faction, the hardline Protestant Henry Wallop. Faced with this unpalatable choice, Pexall himself cheated. On 7 October, around 300 of Horne’s allies assembled at Winchester in anticipation of an election, but the sheriff simply failed to turn up, and instead returned the writ to Chancery unexecuted, complaining that he’d been given too little time to summon the freeholders. Having himself now broken the law in another way, Pexall should by rights have been penalised, but the marquess presumably intervened to protect him, and in the short term nothing happened.

The sheriff’s evasive action restored the initiative to the Paulet camp. After the abortive October election, nothing could happen until the next county day on 4 November, which gave the marquess’s supporters plenty of time to mobilise. A fresh election writ was issued, and this time it was collected from Chancery by Pexall’s under-sheriff. Thus, when the rival factions assembled again at Winchester, the numbers were much more evenly matched. Moreover, the Paulets had now identified their own candidate, Sir John Berkeley, another of the marquess’s grandsons, but crucially also a Hampshire Protestant whose eligibility couldn’t be questioned. Horne’s allies again initially nominated Sir William Paulet, but Pexall debarred him as a non-resident, whereupon Henry Wallop was put forward as a substitute.

The election now settled into a more regular pattern, which again worked in the sheriff’s favour. In the days before secret ballots, votes were conducted in up to three stages, and in this case all three were needed. First, the freemen gathered in the hall of Winchester Castle, where the election writ was read out, and Berkeley and Wallop were formally nominated. There followed a ‘cry’, during which the rival supporters literally shouted the names of their preferred candidate, ‘A Berkeley’, or ‘A Wallop’. After half an hour of raucous bellowing, Pexall ruled that it was not possible to determine which man had the most support, and ordered the voters to re-assemble on the castle green. There, the sheriff took a ‘view’ of the two camps, the second stage available to him. According to Horne’s allies, Wallop’s supporters clearly outnumbered Berkeley’s, but Pexall questioned whether all of the crowd owned enough land to qualify as voters, and again concluded that neither side had a definite majority.

That decision opened the way to the third and final stage of the election, a poll of individual voters, which was again presided over by the sheriff. Unsurprisingly, Pexall opted to record the names of Berkeley’s supporters first, before pausing the whole process around 11 o’clock for a three-hour lunch break. Evidently he hoped that, with winter drawing in, a reasonable number of Wallop’s backers would lose patience and go home before their votes were recorded. When the polling resumed in the afternoon, Pexall began with some more Berkeley voters who had arrived late, then finally turned his attention to the Wallop contingent, who were still present in large numbers. According to subsequent testimony, the sheriff attempted to intimidate some of them into changing sides, threatening to report those that he recognized to the marquess. Eventually, at around eight or nine o’clock in the evening, Pexall declared the poll closed, even though some Wallop supporters who had turned up late insisted that they’d been excluded.

Predictably, the sheriff declared Berkeley the winner, by 216 votes to 209. However, Horne’s faction maintained that they’d been cheated, and that Wallop’s tally should have been as high as 258. Berkeley duly took his seat in the House of Commons, but Pexall was sued in the court of Star Chamber, accused of electoral malpractice. The outcome of that case is unknown, but it had no impact on Berkeley himself. In the event, this contest was the Paulet faction’s last major success. The old marquess died in 1572, and his family declined in importance from then on, leaving Hampshire’s Protestants in control of subsequent elections.

PMH

Further reading:

R.H. Fritze, ‘The role of family and religion in the local politics of early Elizabethan England: the case of Hampshire in the 1560s’, Historical Journal, xxv (1982), pp. 267-87

The House of Commons 1604-1629 ed. Andrew Thrush (2010), i. (especially chapter 4)

‘Although he doth many times go apparelled like a nobleman, yet other times he useth such apparel as the poorest man in London can go no worse…; he lately came to the Guildhall in an old whitish gown girded unto him halting right down, with a staff in his hand, and upon his head a linen cloth very mean, with a coif [cap] upon the same; at the which every light person jested, and the graver sort were very sorry to see a nobleman so disguised.’

At first glance, Henry Howard’s eccentric dress-sense seems merely quirky and amusing. However, in Elizabethan England costume was a key marker of social status, rigidly enforced by Parliament through the so-called sumptuary laws, and the viscount’s refusal to conform to established norms was therefore detrimental to good order. But this was one of the more innocent facets of his character.

Born around 1537, Howard was a grandson of the 3rd duke of Norfolk, and nephew of the recently disgraced Queen Anne Boleyn. His father, Thomas, was created Viscount Howard of Bindon in 1559, following the accession of their cousin, Elizabeth I. As a member of one of England’s leading families, and indeed one with royal connections, Howard was to a considerable degree insulated from the consequences of his own bad behaviour. This was a lesson that he learnt comparatively early; in 1556, while probably still a teenager, he was pardoned for the manslaughter of a servant whom he shot dead while fooling about with a gun indoors. Far from being chastened by that experience, he proved so irresponsible that by 1581 the Privy Council had banned him from keeping arms. Nevertheless, he ignored this command, and, according to one of his Dorset neighbours, continued to go shooting daily, ‘to the no great safety of the country thereabouts’.

Howard’s attitude to money was another source of concern, particularly for his own family. The 1st Viscount possessed a comparatively modest estate, but his heir was an habitual spendthrift who lived only for the present. During the 1563 parliamentary session, Howard’s parents secured an Act to prevent him from simply selling his patrimony in due course to clear his debts. The astonishingly blunt preamble to this legislation stated that such safeguards were necessary purely because of their feckless son, ‘of whose good government … in ordering and disposing of the premises … there is some despair conceived’. However, once again there is no evidence that Howard mended his ways. In 1575 the Privy Council intervened in a bid to secure payment for his numerous creditors, whose complaints he was ignoring. This move was evidently unsuccessful, since the government followed up with a more comprehensive debt-clearing process two years later, after Howard’s father had reluctantly agreed to sell land in order to generate funds.

These money troubles helped to poison Howard’s relationship with his father. In 1572 the viscount accused his ‘most unnatural son’ of recruiting ‘manifest and notorious thieves’ to attack and even murder him. This allegation was all the more credible because Howard himself was on very friendly terms with Dorset’s pirate fraternity, habitually socialising with them, and almost certainly colluding in their criminal activities. Although the government never managed to prove his direct involvement in piracy, Howard made no attempt to hide these connections, and in 1587 even disrupted a trial at the Admiralty Court in London, assuring the jurors that the pirates in the dock ‘were as honest men as themselves’. This intervention was ‘so far out of order’ that two of the judges present walked out in protest, but as usual no action was taken against Howard himself.

Indeed, it generally took a clear-cut breach of law and order before the government was prepared to discipline Howard. In 1580 he violently assaulted the sheriff of Dorset, whom he had apparently mistaken for a covert Catholic. As the sheriff had been on official business at the time, this incident could not be ignored, and Howard was jailed by the Council for seven weeks, until he reluctantly acknowledged his fault. However, the government’s preferred strategy was one of containment, such was the prestige which still attached to the peerage. Accordingly, when Howard succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount in 1582, he was not appointed to any local offices except that of justice of the peace, which for a man of his rank counted as a major snub.

Howard apparently responded by spending more time in London, where he continued to attract adverse comment. His casual disregard for the law did not prevent him from attending the House of Lords occasionally, though his only recorded activity, in 1584, was a failed attempt to secure the release from gaol of one of his servants, using parliamentary privilege. In 1587 he took a shine to the current lord mayor, whose house he began to frequent. There, according to one government informant, ‘he useth very idle speeches, … as in terming her majesty by the name of Bess; and as for meaner men he useth many words against them that are not decent for a nobleman to use’. However, as usual his status and powerful connections protected him, and such reports were filed away, rather than provoking one of the exemplary punishments reserved for commoners who spoke disrespectfully of the queen.

Even so, Elizabeth had her own red lines, and eventually Howard crossed them. In 1566 he had married one of the monarch’s ladies-in-waiting, Frances Meautys. The couple had one child, a daughter, but after barely a decade the marriage was in serious trouble, and in 1580 the Privy Council was obliged to investigate reports that Frances was being maltreated. Unabashed, Howard came up to London accompanied by his current mistress, whose husband he was bribing to countenance this illicit relationship. The government’s attempts to achieve a reconciliation failed, and four years later Elizabeth herself intervened, taking Frances and her daughter into protective custody. Howard responded contemptuously to this development, ‘lifting up his leg and letting fly behind’. When the queen’s messengers protested at his lack of respect, Howard asserted that he would have ignored anything less than a royal command, ‘for he was a nobleman, and as good as the best of the lords of the Council’. As Frances departed, Howard fired off one final insult at Elizabeth herself: ‘if her Majesty were a prince, … I should think she sent for my wife to abuse [i.e. seduce] her’.

At length, in 1587, Howard and his wife formally separated, but he then withheld the agreed maintenance payments. Frances took him to court, and he was again imprisoned in London pending a formal hearing. Even now Elizabeth took a lenient view of her troublesome kinsman, instructing the Council to find a resolution, out of the ‘especial regard she hath of those of his quality and birth’. Howard was duly freed, but failed to stick to the revised settlement with Frances.  In late October 1590, he was peremptorily summoned before the queen, but the outcome of that interview is not known. Two months later, the dispute abruptly ended when Howard’s death brought his tumultuous career to a premature close.

PMH

Further reading:

Rachel Lloyd, Dorset Elizabethans: at home and abroad (1967)

A biography of Viscount Howard has been prepared for our Lords 1558-1602 project.

For another badly-behaved Elizabethan peer, the 2nd earl of Lincoln, click here!

Medieval English dioceses varied considerably in size, some being much bigger than others and consequently more difficult to administer. The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII provided an opportunity to redraw the map, and between 1540 and 1542 six new bishoprics were added to the existing seventeen, utilizing former abbeys. For example, in 1541 the substantial see of Worcester was subdivided, the southern half becoming the diocese of Gloucester, stretching from Tewkesbury in the north down to the bustling port of Bristol. Then, a year later, clearly as an afterthought, Bristol itself became the seat of another new bishopric.

This development, for which Bristol’s civic leaders seem to have lobbied, was problematic. To be viable, every diocese needed a basic number of parishes for the bishop to oversee, and an adequate endowment of property to generate episcopal income. However, the city of Bristol sat on the border between two medium-sized dioceses, Gloucester to the north, and Bath and Wells to the south, and there was no real geographical justification for carving out a new see in this location. Accordingly, although a handful of parishes in Bristol’s hinterland were requisitioned from each of the two neighbouring bishoprics, it was felt necessary to look further afield for additional territory. And thus, rather improbably, the government decided to separate off the archdeaconry of Dorset from the large diocese of Salisbury, and hand it to Bristol.

From the outset, this solution was controversial. The bulk of the new bishopric abutted the English Channel, but its cathedral was located 40 miles to the north, on the far side of the diocese of Bath and Wells. There was no precedent for this arrangement, and in administrative terms it quickly proved inconvenient. The first two bishops, the Protestant Paul Bush and the Catholic John Holyman, rarely even visited Bristol, and made little impression at all on the rest of the bishopric. From 1551 the most significant figure in the day-to-day management of the diocese was the archdeacon of Dorset, John Cotterell, who held that post for more than two decades.

Although Mary I opted to continue with the new bishoprics (except for Westminster, which had been scrapped in 1550), her successor Elizabeth I was less convinced of their usefulness, not least because it proved difficult at the start of her reign to recruit enough Protestant bishops to fill the twenty-two vacant English dioceses. No appointment was made to either Gloucester or Bristol until 1562, by which time Bristol’s corporation suspected that a merger of the two sees was being considered. In the event, in April that year Richard Cheyney became bishop of Gloucester, and as a boost to his income he was also handed the revenues of Bristol diocese.  However, spiritual authority over Bristol was retained by the archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, who merely appointed Cheyney his deputy, or vicar-general. The latter in turn commissioned Archdeacon Cotterell as his own deputy, so in practical terms little changed.

This ad hoc arrangement satisfied no one, except perhaps Cotterell. Bishop Cheyney resented the fact that Bristol had absorbed ten parishes from Gloucester diocese, and nursed ambitions to recover them. Meanwhile, the energetic young bishop of Salisbury, John Jewel, was unhappy that his own diocese had lost around one third of its territory. This situation was rendered more absurd by the fact that the dean and chapter of Salisbury cathedral still enjoyed jurisdiction over several pockets of land in Dorset, while Jewel’s own principal country residence, Sherborne Castle, was located in the county. Matters came to a head during the 1563 session of Parliament, when the theologically conservative Cheyney found himself in disgrace for failing to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of religion. By way of punishment, Archbishop Parker decided to terminate Cheyney’s role as vicar-general of Bristol. This created a brief window of opportunity for change, and a few weeks later, a bill was introduced in the Lords to return Dorset archdeaconry to the diocese of Salisbury. Although no other details of this legislation have survived, it must surely have been promoted by Bishop Jewel, who stood to gain the most from it. Cheyney himself probably didn’t object, since the loss of Dorset would have greatly strengthened the case for dissolving Bristol diocese, in which event the see of Gloucester stood to recover the parishes of Bristol deanery. However, the bill clearly didn’t enjoy the government’s backing, and received just one reading before disappearing from the records. In the following month, Parker effectively endorsed the status quo by promoting Archdeacon Cotterell to keeper of spiritualities at Bristol.

There matters rested until April 1571, when Cheyney again got into trouble, this time for absenting himself from Convocation without permission. As before, he was trying to avoid subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and a furious Parker promptly excommunicated him. Shortly afterwards, Bishop Jewel was appointed commissary general for Bristol diocese, thereby securing at least temporary control over Dorset. However, he had little time to enjoy his new powers, since he fell sick and died in the following September. For once, Cotterell was himself too ill to step into the breach, and accordingly Parker settled on Jewel’s successor at Salisbury, Edmund Guest, as Bristol’s latest keeper of spiritualities.

At this juncture, a fresh complication arose. Cotterell died in February 1572, whereupon Bishop Guest appointed James Proctor, a canon of Salisbury Cathedral, as the new archdeacon of Dorset. Almost immediately, a rival candidate, Henry Tynchener, emerged. Decades earlier, Bishop Best of Bristol had granted to one of Tynchenor’s kinsmen the right to nominate Cotterell’s successor, and finally the opportunity to exercise this privilege had arrived. Archbishop Parker now had to choose between the two clerics, and hesitantly backed Tynchenor, who had the paperwork to back up his claim. However, presumably under pressure from Guest, the primate then suspended Tynchenor from exercising his office.

In May 1572 Parliament met again, and a further bill was brought in ‘for the annexing of the jurisdiction of Dorset’ to Salisbury diocese. Since Tynchenor’s claim depended on the archdeaconry being in the gift of the bishops of Bristol, this legislation was most likely an attempt by Guest to break that link in Proctor’s favour. As only the bill’s title has survived, it’s impossible to say whether its objective was once again to dismantle Bristol diocese, or merely to perpetuate the authority of the bishops of Salisbury over Dorset.  Either way, after its first reading on 17 May the bill was assigned to a committee which included Parker, and no more was heard of it.

The dispute between the two would-be archdeacons rumbled on for nearly three more years. Tynchenor’s suspension was lifted, then re-imposed. Proctor became acting archdeacon, but was eventually sacked in early 1575 for corruption and negligence, after which Tynchenor was finally allowed to enjoy the archdeaconry in peace. As for Dorset itself, it remained part of Bristol diocese until 1836, when it was at last restored to the bishopric of Salisbury.

PMH

Further reading:

M.C. Skeeters, Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation (1993)

Little went right for Charles I in the opening months of his reign. Following his accession in March 1625, a major outbreak of the plague in London forced him to delay his coronation. His war against Spain, which had initially boosted his popularity, was fast becoming a liability, prohibitively expensive to maintain, and with no prospect of a decisive victory. His marriage to the Catholic princess Henrietta Maria was intended to seal a military alliance with France, but almost from the start this union was prone to tensions and misunderstandings, at both the personal and diplomatic levels. The marriage was also unpopular with Charles’s Protestant subjects, while anxiety about the king’s commitment to reformed religion only deepened when he publicly endorsed anti-Calvinist clerics such as William Laud, bishop of St Davids. Charles’s first Parliament, in the summer of 1625, failed to grant enough taxes to fund the war effort adequately, and ended in an acrimonious attack on the king’s overmighty favourite, the duke of Buckingham. A disastrous English assault on the Spanish port of Cadiz that autumn piled further pressure on the government.

By mid-December, it was clear that a further Parliament was needed to raise fresh funds for the war. It was summoned to meet on 6 February 1626, and Charles decided that his coronation would also take place four days beforehand. The timing was surely deliberate. For a king who took very seriously the idea that he derived his power directly from God, there was great symbolism to be drawn from a coronation on 2 February, the feast of Candlemas, which commemorates the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem. Indeed, the order of service as revised by Laud included a long-disused medieval prayer which presented the king as a mediator between God and the people of England.

If one of the coronation’s intended themes was the divine right of kings, the other was the power and splendour of the monarchy. The initial planning documents envisaged the full ceremonial trappings decreed by tradition: a grand procession (or ‘entry’) through the city of London; the crowning of both Charles and Henrietta Maria before the assembled peers and bishops of the realm; and a lavish concluding banquet. The king was also determined that his most favoured servants would receive prominent roles in proceedings. Buckingham was appointed high constable of England for the day, meaning that he would serve as one of Charles’s principal escorts, and also supervise the homage of the peers. Similarly, Laud was made acting dean of Westminster Abbey, with oversight of the whole coronation ceremony. The actual dean, John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, who had recently incurred the king’s displeasure and been dismissed as lord keeper of the great seal, was abruptly instructed to stand aside, and banned from attending the coronation at all. In effect, Charles was seizing the opportunity to affirm his commitment to his inner circle of advisors, in the knowledge that they were likely to face fresh attacks in the new Parliament.

This assertive strategy unravelled with remarkable speed. Quite apart from the lingering presence of the plague in London, which made large gatherings inadvisable, it quickly became apparent that the king simply couldn’t afford a spectacle on this scale. With the royal finances so overstretched by the war that the crown jewels were being offered as collateral in loan negotiations, on 17 January the grand ‘entry’ was formally postponed for five months. The coronation banquet was scrapped entirely a day or two later. These economy measures reportedly saved Charles £60,000, but in the words of one contemporary commentator the coronation was now ‘private without any show or feast’ [Letters of John Chamberlain ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 627]. Next, a key element of the coronation service itself was axed, after Henrietta Maria insisted that only a Catholic bishop could crown her, a condition unacceptable to the Anglican establishment. A rapid burst of cross-Channel diplomacy failed to generate a compromise solution, and by 27 January it was clear that the queen would not even be present in Westminster Abbey to witness her husband’s crowning. However, she was by no means the only absentee. Letters of summons for the nobility were not issued until 19 January, barely a fortnight before the coronation. With the winter roads in poor condition, these messages took a week or more to reach the peers in farther-flung counties, leaving them too little time to make the journey to London. While a handful stayed away because they were Catholic or currently in disgrace, a substantial number more were prevented from attending simply by these logistical difficulties. In total some 47 noblemen, nearly half of the English and Welsh peerage, missed the ceremony.

When the coronation day finally dawned, Charles went by boat from Whitehall Palace to Westminster, accompanied by Buckingham and a handful of other favoured courtiers. The earl marshal, the earl of Arundel, had arranged for the royal party to disembark at a private water-gate near the House of Commons, belonging to Sir Robert Cotton. However, both Arundel and Cotton were viewed at court as Buckingham’s enemies, and, in what was seen as a deliberate snub to them, the royal barge sailed straight past the assembled welcoming party and on to Parliament Stairs, the landing stage closest to the House of Lords. Unfortunately, as it approached land, the barge became stuck in the Thames mud some distance short of the jetty, and the king was obliged to clamber across several other small boats in order to come ashore.

After robing up in the Lords, and proceeding with rather more decorum to Westminster Hall, Charles was formally presented with the regalia. He then continued on foot in a somewhat smaller-than-planned procession to the abbey. Here further mishaps ensued. In the first set-piece of the coronation itself, the king was introduced to the assembled throng by the archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot. Following a short speech by the primate, the congregation was supposed to acclaim Charles as its rightful monarch. However, ‘whether some expected he should have spoken more, [or] others hearing not well what he said hindered those by questioning which might have heard, … or that those which were nearest doubted what to do, … not one word followed, till my lord of Arundel told them they should cry out “God save King Charles”’ [Original Letters illustrative of English History ed. H. Ellis, series 1, iii. 217]. The sermon, a further affirmation that the king derived his authority direct from God, was inaudible to most of those present; the preacher, Richard Senhouse, bishop of Carlisle, was terminally ill, and reportedly looked like his days were numbered. During the communion service, the choir missed the musical cue for the Gloria, which was consequently said rather than sung. Fortunately the rest of the ceremony went broadly according to plan, a complacent Laud noting in his diary that ‘amidst an incredible concourse of people, nothing was lost, or broke, or disordered’ [Works of William Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 181].

Four days later Parliament met again, and within weeks it was clear that the coronation had failed completely to improve the political climate. No new taxes were granted, several of Laud’s fellow anti-Calvinists once again came under attack, and Charles eventually dissolved the session to save Buckingham from impeachment. Relations between the king and queen continued to deteriorate, and by the end of the year England and France were on the brink of war. Charles even contrived to offend the city of London, on whose financiers he depended heavily, by cancelling the postponed ‘entry’ in May 1626 after significant sums had already been spent by the citizens on preparations. Nevertheless, the coronation’s shortcomings pale into insignificance against the dramas of the next 23 years, and no one who witnessed it can have known that the medieval regalia were being used for the last time – prior to their destruction in 1649 after the king’s execution.

PMH

Further reading:

Roy Strong, Coronation: a History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (2005)

The Manner of the Coronation of King Charles the First ed. C. Wordsworth (1892)

Biographies of Charles I as prince of Wales, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel, William Laud, bishop of St Davids (later archbishop of Canterbury), John Williams, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York), and Richard Senhouse, bishop of Carlisle feature in our volumes on The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

The picture shown below is the oldest near-contemporary image of an English Parliament that we know of. As such it has almost iconic status, and has been reproduced in numerous publications on Parliament and the Palace of Westminster.  The latter point is somewhat ironic, since the picture shows the opening stages of the 1523 Parliament, which initially met not at Westminster but in the priory of Blackfriars, on the western edge of the city of London.

What we have here isn’t a naturalistic depiction of events, of the kind that we expect today. The rules of perspective, though understood by this date, have not been applied. Indeed, in keeping with medieval tradition, the size of the individual figures varies according to their importance, with the king, a young Henry VIII, shown two or three times larger than the other people present. And despite the eye-catching green and white floor tiles, there’s no attempt to recreate the architectural setting in which this gathering took place.

However, this apparent absence of realism doesn’t mean that the image is entirely inaccurate. To understand what we’re looking at, we need to consider why the picture was produced. The source is a manuscript called the Wriothesley Garter Book, created in or shortly after 1523 for Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who at that time was Garter King of Arms, the most senior royal herald. This is important. The heralds were responsible for overseeing parliamentary ceremonial, including the seating plan in the House of Lords, and that is what this picture shows. In effect, it’s a visual guide to how a state opening should be organized at this date. And comparison with other documents of the period, such as an account of the Blackfriars state opening in Edward Hall’s Chronicle (1548), and a 1539 Act of Parliament governing seating in the Lords, indicates that the details in Wriothesley’s picture are broadly correct.

What then does this image show us? At the top, presiding over the whole event, is the king on his throne. Seated on Henry’s right are the archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, and the cardinal archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, their identities confirmed by the coats of arms above their heads. A third prelate standing behind them is almost certainly Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, who delivered the keynote speech at this state opening. The remaining bishops, all in red robes and mitres, sit on the long bench which stretches down the room in front of Archbishop Warham.  And on the bench behind them, dressed in black, we see the so-called ‘mitred abbots’, those monastic heads entitled to attend the Lords, a visual reminder that this is a pre-Reformation seating plan.

Facing the bishops, along another long bench on the king’s left, are the senior lay peers, their precise rank indicated by the number of white fur bars on their red robes – four for a duke, three for an earl. (The dukes also wear coronets rather than caps.) The minor lay peers, the barons, who have just two bars, are seated on a cross-bench at the lower end of the room, facing the throne, and also on a bench behind the dukes and earls. The one anomalous figure in this group is the man in black at the right-hand end of the cross-bench; this is William Weston, prior of the military Order of St John of Jerusalem, who was classed as a lay peer despite presiding over a monastery, and took precedence over the barons.

In the centre of the room, seated on four padded ‘woolsacks’, are senior judges and other lawyers, there to advise the Lords on legal matters. At the lower end of the woolsacks, two clerks kneel on the floor, recording proceedings. Between the woolsacks and the throne stand three more earls, who had earlier that day helped to escort the king to Parliament. Two, whose identities we don’t know, are holding symbols of royal power, the sword of state (borne aloft on Henry’s left) and the cap of maintenance (carried on a short stick on the monarch’s right). The third man, who holds a long white staff, is most likely the lord great chamberlain, the 14th earl of Oxford; the same badge of office pertained to a more junior official, the lord chamberlain, but he seems to have been less prominent at state openings around this time. By tradition these three peers should have been joined by a fourth, the earl marshal. However, the current holder of this office, the 2nd duke of Norfolk, was quite elderly by 1523, and is instead shown seated at the top end of the dukes’ and earls’ bench, holding his baton. A short distance from Norfolk we find Sir Thomas Wriothesley himself, resplendent in the Garter King’s heraldic tabard, and behind him is an anonymous group of onlookers, perhaps the eldest sons of peers, or visiting foreign dignitaries.

Finally, at the very bottom of the picture, almost erased by wear and tear, we see a row of MPs, completing the parliamentary trinity of king, Lords and Commons. In the centre of this line, one man stands taller than the rest. He is generally thought to be the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas More, the future lord chancellor and Catholic martyr. However, it should be noted that while King Henry opened this Parliament on 15 April, the formal presentation of the Speaker took place three days later, in which case we’re looking at a composite image which records two separate events.

It seems clear, then, that this image is both a general guide to the disposition of the various people involved in the state opening of Parliament, and a record of some specific details peculiar to the 1523 session, as witnessed by Wriothesley. We can also be certain that this picture was not intended for general consumption.  No copies are known, and the manuscript long remained the property of the College of Arms, before finally entering the Royal Collection.

However, Wriothesley’s picture-diagram did have an afterlife of sorts. In 1608 Thomas Milles published a Latin treatise on the monarchies and noble families of the British Isles, entitled Nobilitas Politica Vel Civilis.  This work was based on materials prepared by Milles’ late uncle, Robert Glover, one of the more junior Elizabethan heralds, and Milles himself consulted the College of Arms prior to publication. And this comes across very clearly in his illustration of Elizabeth I opening the 1584-5 Parliament. This engraving, attributed to the artist Renold Elstrack, does have perspective, more believable human figures, and a realistic (if inaccurate) architectural setting. Various details have also been updated to take account of post-Reformation changes, such as the disappearance from the Lords of the mitred abbots. Nevertheless, Elstrack’s view is essentially an updated and improved version of Wriothesley’s visual template, which in this revised form became the standard image of the House of Lords throughout the 17th century.

PMH

Further reading:

Hall’s Chronicle (1809 edn.)

The Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture ed. C. Riding and J. Riding (2000)

The picture sounds all too familiar: rapidly rising fuel prices; people on low incomes struggling to heat their homes; concerns about long-term supplies; and suspicions of profiteering by those in a position to manipulate the market. But these aren’t the woes of 2023. We’re talking about the reign of Elizabeth I – and the fuel in question was wood.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of wood for the Elizabethan economy. It was used for all kinds of construction, from houses to ships (a vital consideration in the era of the Spanish Armada). Converted into charcoal, it was the principal fuel employed in industry to produce everything from iron and glass to salt. Domestic heating still depended on it. However, wood was not immune to prevailing inflationary pressures, and during these decades market prices saw at least a threefold increase. As the London MP Sir Rowland Hayward explained to the House of Commons in 1572, lengths of firewood known as billets, which had cost 4s. 8d. per thousand thirty years earlier, were now being sold for anything between 10s. and 25s.  Moreover, increases on this scale were helping to drive up inflation generally. As Hayward’s colleague Thomas Norton warned the House, ‘the raising of the price thereof will make all other things rise for company’ (Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I ed. T.E. Hartley, i. 370).

It was widely agreed that the root cause of these price rises was a shortage of timber. However, there were numerous theories about how this problem had developed. The antiquary William Harrison, in his 1587 Description of England, suggested a range of different factors. These included poor management of woodlands, the clearing of trees when land was enclosed for pasture, excessive sales of timber by landlords seeking to offset falling income from other sources, more extravagant architectural fashions, and above all wasteful consumption by the iron, glass and brick industries. Convinced that fuel supplies were running out, Harrison lamented that ‘if woods go so fast to decay in the next hundred years … as they have done and are like to do in this, … it is to be feared that … straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also … coal will be good merchandise even in the city of London’ (W. Harrison, Description of England ed. G. Edelen, 281). And these shortages spawned further problems. As the stocks of timber near England’s towns and cities grew scarce, supplies had to be sourced further afield, and the additional transport costs helped to push up prices. There was also concern that purveyors, officials empowered to buy up supplies for the royal court at reduced prices, were exacerbating the general dearth of timber, and making it more expensive for everyone else. It didn’t help that purveyors were widely believed to be corrupt, demanding artificially low prices in the monarch’s name, but then selling on the timber at a profit to line their own pockets.

Parliament began to address these concerns in the final years of Henry VIII’s reign. An Act of 1544, noting ‘the great decay of timber and woods universally within this … realm of England’, imposed limitations on the size of trees that could be felled, restricted the conversion of woodland into pasture, and offered some protections to poor people who relied on common land for their fuel supplies. In 1553 a further Act updated regulations for the sale of firewood in London, in a bid to stop customers being overcharged, while two years later an almost complete ban on exports of timber was introduced.

These measures failed to allay concerns, and during Elizabeth I’s reign more than 30 bills were introduced in Parliament to address the fuel crisis. Roughly a third of these proposed general reforms to conserve existing woods and forests, effectively continuing the approach adopted in 1544. Another five bills advocated updates to the 1553 retail Act. This tactic finally bore fruit in 1601, when a new ‘Act concerning the assize of fuel’ provided further safeguards for purchasers of firewood, and ruled that wood which failed to conform to the new standards should be confiscated and distributed to the poor. Following on from the 1555 Act, one bill in 1563 proposed restrictions on coal exports, while another in 1593 called for imports of certain types of planking, both measures aiming to ease the pressure on stocks of English timber.

However, in a clear sign of rising tensions over fuel shortages, 15 of these bills addressed specific local supply problems. In 1571 legislation was presented to the Commons to ban the excessive felling of young trees within 20 miles of London. This sparked a debate on the abuses of purveyors, as a result of which the bill was scrapped and a replacement drafted to tackle both problems nationally. Unfortunately, that new measure then ran out of time in the Lords. The next year the London MPs tried again, this time seeking to prevent timber in the capital’s environs from being used to supply iron foundries with charcoal – but that bill also failed in the Lords. Finally, in 1581 an Act was passed to safeguard London’s firewood supplies by banning the iron industry from cutting timber for charcoal within 22 miles of the city, and up the Thames valley into Oxfordshire. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, iron and glass manufacture, both of which required huge amounts of charcoal, came to be seen in Parliament as a serious threat to timber reserves, and they were targeted accordingly. At this time both industries operated primarily in south-east England, especially in Sussex, Kent and Surrey, and a string of bills sought to preserve woodlands in these counties, and to prohibit the construction of new furnaces. And over time attitudes hardened. A 1559 Act restricted charcoal manufacture around the country generally, but exempted Sussex and surrounding districts. A subsequent Act in 1585 aimed to conserve stocks of timber specifically in that region, and placed the blame for local shortages firmly on the iron industry.

So was all this legislative activity effective in tackling the decline of England’s woodlands? William Harrison had his doubts: ‘a man would think that our laws were able enough to make sufficient provision for the redress of this error and [the] enormity likely to ensue. But such is the nature of our countrymen that, as many laws are made, so they will keep none’ (Harrison, 281). That issue aside, we now know that the proposed solutions were based on flawed analysis. As at least a few contemporaries recognised, it was south-east England which experienced timber shortages most acutely; in many other parts of the country supplies were actually quite healthy, and the real problem was the logistical challenge of exploiting the more remote forests. Furthermore, Parliament took no account of underlying factors such as a rapidly increasing population; the burgeoning demand for timber in London was surely linked to the city’s growth during these years from around 120,000 residents to roughly 200,000. Consequently, those four bills which were ultimately enacted failed to deliver the desired outcome. By the early seventeenth century the price of wood was rising faster than ever, and Harrison’s prediction proved to be correct. Ultimately the early modern fuel crisis was resolved only when timber was replaced by coal – and a new set of problems.

PMH

Further reading:

William Harrison, Description of England ed. Georges Edelen (1968/1994)

The Agrarian History of England and Wales 1500-1640 ed. Joan Thirsk (1967)

Read more from our First Elizabethan Age blog series here.

William Turner’s New Herbal, published in instalments between 1551 and 1568, is one of the great landmarks in the history of British gardening, and earned its author the epithet ‘the father of British botany’. Prior to the appearance of Turner’s assorted books, the study of plants in Britain was a very imprecise science. Interest in this field was driven primarily by medicine, which relied very heavily on herbal remedies. However, knowledge of plants and their uses was communicated in two radically different ways. On the one hand, there were academic treatises, mostly in Latin, which drew heavily on the botanical traditions and theories of ancient Greece and Rome. On the other hand, there was an extensive body of folklore and practical knowledge transmitted largely by word of mouth among the humble herbalists who served the bulk of the population. Most of these local practitioners couldn’t read Latin, so the old treatises were literally a closed book to them. But many of the more academic physicians were dismissive of the insights acquired by people they regarded as mere quacks. Turner, who began his medical career firmly in the academic camp as a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, realised that he could learn from both worlds, and made it his life’s work to bridge the divide.

In particular, Turner recognized that there was scope for confusion between the plants described in the treatises, many of which were Mediterranean in origin, and their presumed English equivalents. This led him to undertake field work, travelling around the country to collect specimens and discuss their properties with local people who used them. His first book, Libellus de re herbaria novus (1538) was a pioneering foray into botanical classification, accurately listing 144 plant names with both their English and Greek names. This process was important for avoiding medical accidents where the wrong plant was prescribed, but it also helped to generate a record of existing British flora at a time when many new specimens were starting to arrive from abroad. The Libellus was so well-received that a decade later Turner produced an expanded version in English, The names of herbs in Greek, Latin, English, Dutch and French.  That book in turn provided the foundation for his New Herbal.

By this time Turner had also gained first-hand experience of plants on the continent – due to his religious views. While at Cambridge, he came under the influence of the radical Protestant Hugh Latimer (later bishop of Worcester). Ordained deacon in 1536, Turner quickly developed a reputation as an outspoken preacher, and during the conservative backlash of Henry VIII’s final years he felt obliged to live abroad. In addition to renewing his medical studies at Bologna and Ferrara, he also met many of the leading European botanists of the day while travelling in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries. This encouraged him to begin work on the New Herbal. Not the earliest book of this kind to appear in English, but the first really accurate study based on first-hand research, it listed and described 238 native British plants.

In 1547, following Henry VIII’s death, Turner was summoned home by Protector Somerset, who appointed him his physician, and arranged his election as MP for Ludgershall in Edward VI’s first Parliament. Somerset also put him in charge of his gardens at Syon House, Middlesex, which were renowned for rare plants such as pomegranates, figs and apricots, grown against south-facing walls for extra warmth. Under Turner’s management Syon developed into one of England’s earliest botanical gardens. Unsurprisingly, the first part of the New Herbal was dedicated to Somerset.

Even so, botany remained only one of Turner’s interests. In 1552, following the completion of his parliamentary service, he was ordained priest, and he ended Edward’s reign as dean of Wells cathedral. He also continued to publish books on religious topics, mainly attacks on Catholicism. Consequently, when Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Turner found it advisable to return to the continent, this time taking refuge in Germany. This second exile may well have helped introduce him to a wider range of flora from around the world. When the final portion of the New Herbal appeared, it included plants not mentioned in the old classical treatises, such as rhubarb from China, and other exotic specimens from Sri Lanka, south-east Asia, and the West Indies.

In 1559, following the accession of Elizabeth I, Turner again returned home, and in the following year he was restored to the deanery of Wells. However, prolonged exposure to continental Protestantism had reinforced his early radicalism, and before long his advocacy of presbyterian church government and opposition to traditional clerical vestments got him into serious trouble. In 1564 he was suspended from his deanery for nonconformity, though he was permitted to retain the title and his stipend. Turner died four years later, still refusing to submit to the will of the church hierarchy. His Calvinist leanings were inherited by his son Peter, who caused outrage as MP for Bridport in the 1584-5 Parliament by promoting presbyterianism.

The final two parts of the New Herbal were published in Cologne, and although well-received on the continent they didn’t circulate widely in England. By the end of the century Turner’s reputation as a botanist was fading, and the best-known Elizabethan publication on plants today is John Gerard’s Herball or generall historie of plantes (1597), a better illustrated but less original work than Turner’s own books. Nevertheless, with the revival of interest in garden history in recent decades, Turner has attracted renewed attention for his pioneering approach. He is now commemorated by a Tudor-style garden at Morpeth, his Northumberland birthplace.

PMH

Further reading:

Margaret Willes, The Making of the English Gardener (2011)

Christopher Thacker, The Genius of Gardening (1994)

Find more blogs from our Lords 1558-1603 project at the First Elizabethan Age blog page.