[In the essay below, Palmer analyzes Yorkshire historical documents to argue that the link between court and country masque performances were greater than expected, with landed gentry using performances as a means of social advancement.]

On 3 January 1588/89 James Ryther of Harewood in the West Riding, Yorkshire, described his northern neighbors' conception of entertainment to Lord Burghley in London: “By affynytie with the Skottes and borderers thes people deliver in a rude & wilde kinde of musick, to which ar sewtable rymes and songes entewnyd and songe eyther of wanton or warlyke actions[;] by our Invention in this easyly is dysernyd our distance from the Soon [Sun/King].”¹

Ryther's account is hardly disinterested—he is quite piqued that he must actually live on his Yorkshire estate in order to claim it—and certainly not fair in marking the northern New Year and Hogmanay as typical behavior, but his elitist, southern bias has prevailed in later conceptions. Northern entertainment is provincial, isolated, and rude, along the lines of clog dancing to a bagpipe; London entertainment is courtly, sophisticated, and refined, Ben Jonson masques to Inigo Jones sets. What has survived of the West Riding pre-1642 entertainment records, however, suggests masque participation which is neither naive nor isolated from events at court and capital.²

As with any other county collection of documents, the West Riding manuscripts are problematic. Their survival is serendipitous, they are scattered among thirty archives, they contain gaping lacunae, and the meaning of the evidence they present frequently is opaque. Caveats duly noted, and present readers allowing for some chronological darting about in what follows, the West Riding documents are relatively abundant, providing an additional dimension to prior studies of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masque. The earliest surviving documentation of a West Riding masque is by Sir John Nevill of Chevit at “The Marriage of [his] Son-in-Law, Roger Rockley, and [his] Daughter, Elizabeth Nevill, the 14th day of January, in the 17th year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry the VIIIth, 1526.”³ The celebration gives new meaning to father-of-the-bride obligations as Nevill records apparel costs, wedding dinner charges, and other food expenses for the week of guests.

Elizabeth married on a Sunday, and her father records the wedding night entertainment as “First, A Play, and streight after the Play a Mask, and when the Mask was done, then the Bankett which was 110 Dishes and all of Meat, and then all the Gentlemen and Ladies danced, and this continued from Sunday to the Saturday after.” The banquet menu is expansive, lavish, and not inferior to surviving court or London great household offerings. Abundant are brawn, peacock, swan, salmon, pike, roe, venison, lamb, and a variety of other “Flesh and Fish.” Less easy of explication is Nevill's list of apparel expenses for the couple, which seems to include far too much fabric for the wedding costumes alone with 74.5 yards of fine fabrics and two rolls of buckram, not enough garments for the entire week cited above or for a wedding trip if the couple were not present, and yet cannot confidently be assigned to masquing outfits. Thus although Nevill's account confirms the performance of a masque as part of an elegant and expensive celebration, it remains frustratingly silent on that masque's content or visualization.

The next surviving West Riding document with reference to masques, a 1568 probate inventory of Thomas, Lord Wharton of Healaugh, is more vocal. Among “Apparell for the Revells” are as follows:

ffirst ix(0) long gownes of Darinx
Item one gowne of buckrame layd vpone with layce of Strawe
Item thre fooles Cootes
Item Six hattes of paper
Item two busshops myters and twoe freers Cappes
Item a Coote of bukrame garded with
strawe
Item twoe freer hoodes
Item Six Swordes of woode with girdles
Item Six beardes
Item viij(0) vysures
Item two fooles Daggers ij(0) tipstaves and
a mayce
Item twoe Dromes and one pare of stuckers
Item Sevyn pare of Skarffes of redde and yellowe
Sarsenet for masking
                                        Summa

iij li vj s viij d⁴

The same inventory also records an unspecified “Instrument” in the lobby, a set of recorders, a pair of virginals, and the organs in the chapel to the additional sum of £13.6s.8d. The inventory's juxtaposition of revels equipment to musical instruments may imply some performance relationship, and although the content of revels or masques is not indicated, from the costume appointments the activities would seem to have taken a comedic, satiric, or folk direction most likely not performed at a Wharton wedding.

These Nevill and Wharton records confirm the presence of northern household masquing, as do other surviving documents. In a 1582 “Breife Inventory” of Lord Shrewsbury's Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor Lodge is noted “Item masken Coates of Darnipe iiii^r.”⁵ Although Mary, Queen of Scots was then under Shrewsbury's care at Sheffield and masques may have been provided for her entertainment, she hardly can be credited for originating or sustaining the Shrewsburys' long-standing pleasure in masques, music, and plays, which is well documented from their household papers and discussed below. The Cliffords were equally avid entertainment lovers. Payments to players, waits, minstrels, and other performers appear regularly in the surviving documents. Among these events, isolated Skipton Castle saw a late spring 1637 production of Milton's Comus, which had been preceded by the performance of another masque of unspecified content in February.⁶

Evidence for this first 1637 Skipton Castle masque rests on a 6 February entry in the Ingram accounts, which notes that Sir Arthur's Temple Newsam steward John Matteson “paid at Mr Calbertes for a hatt for little Arthur at his goeing to Skipton to the maske and a paire of black stockens all 0. 9. 8.”⁷ The entry is unique documentation of the Skipton masque, but it is equally important in highlighting gentry sociopolitical interaction. Maintaining or, preferably, advancing one's position—social, financial, political—rested on numerous factors, one of which was measured by masquing activities in both northern and southern venues. West Riding gentry, some perhaps the upstart crows of Ingram's feather, seem to have considered masque training and expenses as a sort of futures investment which might be realized in their children's marriages or a family's preferment at court.

When “little Arthur”—Sir Arthur Ingram, Jr.—attended the 1637 Clifford masque, he was some forty-one years old and had been married to Eleanor Slingsby for fifteen years. Rather than his being a child on an indulgent outing of amusement, which the steward's phrasing suggests, he thus would seem to be representing the Ingram family in his forty-mile winter trek over the moors to Skipton Castle. Earlier on, in 1613, Ingram's sister, Elizabeth, had incurred charges of ls 6d “for the maske she derkik” in London, an entry which apparently has lost something in the translation of Matteson's filthy hand.⁸ She married Sir Simon Bennet of Beckhampton, maintaining a suburban London residence which served her West Riding father as a hospitable alternative to his other dwellings in York, Sheriff Hutton, Temple Newsam, and London proper.

“Little Arthur” Ingram and Eleanor Slingsby were married at Red House on 6 January 1621/22, an event recorded in the Slingsby accounts: “A masking sewte[:] To Richard Atcheson for 6: sewtes of buckeram for an antike at Sir Arthur Ingrams wedding cat the 12: nighte 1 s.”⁹ The bride was not unprepared for the masque. In 1613 her father paid “mr Hearne for: 4^or: mounthes teaching of mistress Ellen Slingesbie to dance at Yorke xxvj s viij d”; six months of singing lessons cost him ten shillings, and she also was taught to play the lute.¹⁰ Her brother Henry received intensive viol lessons, sometimes daily, from at least three masters and additionally was taught to sing to the viol. He and his brother, Thomas, had a private dancing master and also were enrolled in a dancing school some two years prior to Thomas's performance in “the Showe maid by the Scollers” at Cambridge. Although the content of the show is not specified, it would seem to have required dancing: Thomas's expenses include “Spanishe leather showes 5: paire & a paire of pompes—xij s viij d: for mendinge shooes xx d: ffor borroweinge of a waistcote & other necessaries xiiij s: …”¹¹

“Necessaries” would seem to be the operative word for many of these Yorkshire entertainment expenses: they were intended to advance the family's fortunes both at home in the marriage market and also in London, where almost all Yorkshire gentry of significance owned or rented dwellings. Jacobean political maneuvering was complex: where the king list to hunt or the queen to masque influenced behavior, schedules, and expenditures, sometimes to no little consternation. Francis Clifford, fourth earl of Cumberland, committed himself to supply a 1617 masque for James I at Brougham Castle but fretted to his son that “albeit I will not dislyke your device, I fynde plainly, upon better consideration, the charge for that entertaynment will grow very great, besyde the musick; and that, instead of lessening, my charge in generall encreaseth, and newe paiments come on, which, without better providence hereafter, cannot be performed.”¹²

Clifford's concern about masque costs does not reflect just the legendary Yorkshire stitched pocket but a more considered carefulness that he get value for money. Northerners were hardly unaware of the price of court—or court-worthy—masques:

There are two Masques in hand, The first of the Innes of Court, which is presented on Candlemas day, The Other the King presents the Queene with on Shroue tuesday at night. High expences, They speake of 20000 li that it will cost the men of Lawe. Oh that they wold once giue ouer these thinges or lay them aside for a time; And bend all theyre Endeauours to make the King riche, ffor it giues me no satisfaction, who am but a looker on, to see a rich Commonwelth, a rich People, and the Croune poore; God direct them to remedy this quickly.¹³

The fiscal matter had been brought to James's attention rather earlier on, namely in 1603 when he found a note under his feet at the Cockpit which declares that “the Queene gives all, the Ladies of honor beggs all, the Courtiers spend all, and the poore subiects paye for all.”¹⁴

The “poore subiects,” insofar as Yorkshire gentry fit that category, usually decided to pay, as did Clifford on the occasion of the Brougham masque orchestrated by his son. Part of their return was measured by their children's participation in masques at court, and Clifford already had initiated this reciprocal investment in 1612/13, when he wrote to Sir William Wentworth, whose son Thomas had married Clifford's daughter Margaret in 1611:

We doe all nowe desyre lykewyse to see your Sonne and myne, safely retourned [from the Continent, where they had done a tour abroad]; I shall hope he may be at London at the Mariage, which wilbe on Shrove Sondaie. … [T]here is alsoe a maske apoynted to be at the Mariage; viij Noble men, and viij Ladies, of which Number my Sonne is first of the 4 Barons.¹⁵

In addition to the Clifford son, two Shrewsbury sons-in-law, Savile offspring, an Ingram daughter, and Lady Anne Clifford, among others, apply their northern-trained skills to court or London masques. Raised primarily in Yorkshire, Lady Anne clearly saw the connection between masques and status: “Queen Anne was euer inclyneinge to our part, and very gratious and fauorable to us. For in my youth I was much in the Courte with her. And in Maskes attended her, though I neuer serued her.”¹⁶

This political subtext to entertainment did not escape the notice of others, which is heavily reflected in the surviving Yorkshire correspondence to and from the south, a correspondence which overturns naive notions of cultural isolation or provinciality. In the letters from correspondents near the seat of power to their northern friends, one needs to be a specialized historian on both royal entertainment and also royal progresses (which this present writer is not) to identify even the content, let alone the personnel and their political relationships. Seldom do letters to the north mention what was performed or in what manner, focusing instead on the participants, the jockeying for preference, and the royal reaction. On 5 March 1578/79 Gilbert Talbot writes from court to his father, the earl of Shrewsbury, then in Sheffield, reporting on the Shrovetide “shews as was shewed before her maiestie.” Although Gilbert politely protests that “yt is but vayne to troble your Lordship with suche shewes,” he quickly goes on to note that

the chefest was a devyse presented by the persons of therle of oxford, therle of surrye, the Lordes Thomas Haworthe & Wynsoure, the [def] devyse prettyer than it had happe to be performed, but the best of it, & I thynke the beste lyked, was, twoe ryche lewells which was presented to her maiestie by the ij earles.¹⁷

What Gilbert has highlighted for his father, somewhat occupied in his role as Keeper of the Queen of Scots, is who presently is favored or attempting to gain favor, the falling short of their enterprises, and Elizabeth's appreciation for the reality of jewels over the illusion of “shewes.”

Likewise, Sir George Savile writes from Newington to Shrewsbury on 14 August 1602, recounting the Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Edgerton's entertainment for Queen Elizabeth at Harefield House:

My humble Dewty remembered vnto your Lordship & my lady I haue cmade the longer stay to signifie the same In hope of some nouelty of worth to advertise withall which tho hard for me to doe, for your Lordship, so many Frendes of better Intelligence, yet to show my desire to do your Lordship some service Behold inclosed the manner of her Maiestys late Intertaynment at my Lord kepers howse, whervnto I must add the daynty playing of Barly Breaks, Dansinge of Contrye dances by the Boys of the Chapple, And excellent vawtinge of Tumblers. The feast so great, as sixe Dishes vpon head stood so furnished throughe the whole service which by report is greatly spoken of in London. Your lordship hath hard of her Maiestys Returne to Otlands wher yet ther is a Speeche of goinge foreward & to my lord of Harfords. In this Inclosed your lordship maye see the manner of presentinge the giftes which weare many and great. The Iewell my lord keper presented was held Richly worth 1000 li. as I was credibly told. Another Iewell said worth vj C. li. And the Gowne of Raynbows very Riche Embradred.¹⁸

Much remains to be explored in the sociopolitical relations between the Inns of Court and the northern nobility. Although Sullivan and Butler, among others, accurately have scraped the surface through court or London documentation,¹⁹ they by and large worked without the benefit of northern gentry correspondence, which strengthens their suspicions that Inns of Court entertainments contained more than met the eye. Shortly before Christmas 1597, the Middle Temple writes to Shrewsbury in Sheffield:

Right honorable Lord we send you humble and hearty greetinge, forasmuch as the ordinarie expence of our publique hospitalitie is Such and Soe great at all times in the knowledge and view of all men of right understandinge and consideracion and that by new vnexpected accidentes of forraine chardge and enterteinmentes the Same is at this present soe greatlye augmented and encreased, that without beneuolent Largess and contribution of the members and wellwishers of this howse the same cannot well be defraied and dischardged, These are therefore to request your honor as you tender the loues of vs your fellowes and allyes and the grace and reputation of this fellowship whereof we repute and hold you a worthy and principall member and fauourer, to Lend us such a Some of moneye as to your honor Shall Seem conuenient in fauour of our pretended extraordinarye designes, which wee promise to repaye vnto you the xxx^th day of februarie next at our Threasurye, from whence we bid you heartylye farewell

Your very louinge friendes Middle Temple

Although 30 February would not seem to be a propitious date for Middle Temple's repayment of the requested “loan,” Gilbert Shrewsbury quickly replied in the festive vein: “In respect of the Prince d'Amores kepinge his revells in the Inn of Courte I send him by the handes of Mr Davyes of cthat house—30 li.” Middle Temple's Prince d'Amour returns his thanks to Shrewsbury on Christmas Day:

To the Right honorable and worthy Lord the Earle of Shrewsberrye our louing Cossin and trustye counseller health and happy gretting[.] It is the dutye of a good Prince to be carefull[ye] allwayes of the publique good for which he is so elected and to shew himselfe thankfull to those by whome this publique is soe aduanced which moues vs to giue your Lordship especially thankes by whose honorable and Bountyfull contribution our publique treasurye hath bene soe much enritched, for which we giue your Lordship the testimonye of a most loiall Subject to loue with whome yow shalbe assured to be all wayes fauored and soe we byd you heartyly farewell from our roiall Pallace the xxv^th December.²⁰

The content of the event itself seems almost to have escaped notice: this writer's admittedly uncompulsive search has turned up only a single, unpublished account, which records “Noctes Templariae; or, a briefe Chronicle of the Darke Reigne of the bright Prince of Burning Love,” with an unrealized imprimatur granted to Sir Benjamin Rudyerd's subscription.²¹ However, it does not require a Machiavellian to discern the Shrewsbury letters' political subtext: the Prince d'Amour has been elected by the powerful Middle Temple as an appropriate spokesman, albeit within the apparently innocuous frame of holiday revels, for issues perhaps not confrontable in a more direct fashion; public and court attention is focused on the parodic event; and the lawyers' entertainment lights are promised to shine favorably on their patrons, namely Shrewsbury in this instance. As Butler notes of later Carolinian entertainments, “The lawyers may have used courtly forms, but were by no means slaves to courtly attitudes.”²²

The extent and detail of the Middle Temple's parody of state also is recorded in hitherto unnoted correspondence to northern gentry, letters which amplify Butler's observation. The Carolinian correspondent in this case is the Reverend George Garrard, writing on 8 January 1635/36 to Sir Thomas Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse, West Riding, and by that date the earl of Strafford, lord deputy of Ireland. After recounting to Wentworth various entertainments for the Prince Elector, Garrard writes,

The Midle temple house haue sett vp a Prince, who carryes himselfe in greate State, One Mr Viuian a Cornish gentleman, whose father Sir ffrances Viuian was fined in the Starchamber about a Castle he held in Cornwall, about 3 yeares Since. He hath all his Greate officers attending him, Lord Keeper, Lord Treasorer, eight whytestaues at the Court, Captayne of his Pencioners, Captain of his Guard, two Chaplaines who Sunday last preached before him, and in the Pulpitt made there lowe Leggs to his Excellency, before they began, which is muche laught at, My Lord Chamberlayne lent him two fayre Clothes of State, One hung vp in the Hall, vnder which he dines, the Other in his Privy chamber, Seru'd on the Knee, and all that come to see him, kisse his hand on theyre knee. My Lord of Salisbury hath lent him Poleaxes for his Pentioners, He sent to my Lord of Holland his Iustice in Eyre for venison, which he willingly sends him, To the Lord Maior and Sheriffs of London he sends for wine, All Obey; Twelue day was a greate day, Goeing to the Chappell, Many Petitions deliuerd him, which he gaue to his Masters of the Requests, He hath a ffauorite, whom with some others Gentlemen of greate qualitye he knighted at his retorne from church; And dined in greate State, Att the Goeing of the Chambers in the Garden, when he drancke the Kings health; The Glasse being at his mouth he lett it fall; which much defaced his Purple Satten Sute, for soe he was clothd that day, having a Cloke of the same, downe to hys foote, for he mournes for his father, who lately dyed.

It costs this Prince 2000 li out his owne Purse; I heare of no other Designs, but that All this is done, to make them fitt to giue the Prince Elector a Royall Entortaynement, with Masques, Dancings, and some Other exercises of witt, in Orations, or Arraignments, that day, that they invite him.²³

Another correspondent, James Howells, also considers the event significant enough to report to Wentworth on 19 February, as he writes from Westminster that “for home passages Prince Rupertus, the Palsgraues second brother, is lately come ouer, & as j heare is allready sworne of the bed chamber, & is thought will stay here. Our famous Prince d'amour inuites them both, to a feast & mask vpon Twesday next.”²⁴ On 15 March Garrard supplies Wentworth with postevent details, heretofore unpublished:

On Shrouetuesday at night the Lady Hatton feasted the King Queene and Princes at her house in Holborne; but the moneday before the Prince of the Temple invited the Prince Elector, and his brother to a Masque at the Temple, which was very compleately fitted for the Vanetye of the Sceanes, and excellently well performed. Thither came the Queene with 3 of her Ladyes disguized, all clad in the Attire of Citizens, Mrs Basset the greate Lace woman of Cheapside, went formost, and lead the Queene by the hand; My lord of Holland and Goring, with Henry Percy and mr H: Iermyn [Henry Jermyn], wayted on them; somewhat disguized also; This done the Prince was depos'd, but Since the King knighted him at Whytehall.²⁵

These Inns of Court entertainments cannot be dismissed as mere holiday merrymaking or the high jinks of jejune undergraduates, any more than, for example, the preceding centuries' Boy Bishops can be reduced to childish reveling. Likewise, the popular picture of litigious, isolated northern lords interminably suing each other over lands and wardships, although regularly true, but points to a far more complex legal vista which must include quite sophisticated communications between the Inns of Court, their northern patrons, and their mutual message to the Crown through entertainments.

Festivities at the first Christmas season of James's reign were laden with political implications, and no one awaited reports as impatiently as Shrewsbury. On 23 December 1603 Thomas Edmonds writes to him from Hampton Court:

Both the Kings and Queens ma(jesties) haue an humor to haue some maskes this Christmas tyme And therefore for that (pur)pose both the younge lordes & Chief g(entle)men, of one parte, and the Queene and h(er) ladyes of the other parte, doe seuerallie v(nder)take the accomplishing & furnishing th(erof) And because there is vse of Invention there(in) specially choice is made of mr Sanford (to) dyrect the order & Course for [mr Sanf] the laydes which is an occasion to staie him here till that busynes be donne and that perfourmed it is intended he shall shortlie after be sent awaie to yor Lordship.²⁶

Also on 23 December Cecil, Lord Burghley writes brusquely to Shrewsbury that “Other stuff I can send yow none from this Place [Hampton Court], where now we are to feast 7 Embassadors Spain France Poland Florence and Savoy besydes Masks and much more.”²⁷

Shrewsbury's postevent reports proved inadequate, as the earl of Worcester's 2 February 1603/1604 letter from Whitehall is in obvious answer to Shrewsbury's chiding.

Whear as your Lordship saythe youe wear never particulerly advertised of the maske I haue been at 6 d charge with chore to send youe the booke which wyll enform youe better then I Can having Coted the names of the ladyes applyed to eche goddes, and for the other I would lykewyse haue sent youe the ballet yf I Could haue got yt for money but theus bookes as I heare are all Cawled in, and in truthe I wyllnot take vppon mee to set that down which wyser then my self doe not vnderstand. This day the King dined abrode with the florentine imbasador who taketh now his leave very shortly, he was with the King at the play at nyght and sopped with my lady ritche in her Chamber. …²⁸

The political convulsions of that 1603/1604 Christmastide are beyond the scope of this paper to explicate and in fact take Sullivan some ten pages to outline,²⁹ but these letters should be of no little interest to historians. Three masques were scheduled: on New Year's Day the duke of Holst's Masque of the Knights of India and China; on 6 January a masque of Scots, substituted for political reasons to appease the French ambassador; and on 8 January the queen's masque, Samuel Daniel's Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, which originally had been intended for Twelfth Night. “Mr Sanford” was the spectacle designer for the queen's masque, although his agency has gone unnoted.³⁰ Whether Worcester meant the Knights of India and China masque or the masque of Scots is not clear, but for political reasons the text of one or the other was suppressed. His report on the favor James showed the Florentine ambassador on 2 February also is of political significance. “In the case of the Queen's masque, the most important minor quarrel concerned the respective rights of the ambassadors of Florence and Savoy. To avoid displeasing either by settling the ‘contention for precedence’ between them it was thought best to invite neither, though their trains were admitted as spectators.”³¹ The Savoyan ambassador departed England prematurely, and the Florentine ambassador received the reward of outwaiting him.

The preceding letters are exemplary and representative of the dozens of court or London entertainment accounts which have quietly rested unnoticed in northern archival collections and which almost to a letter amplify or modify previously published assessments. In some instances, actual performance dates are corrected from what was intended but then modified by political difficulties. In other instances, masquing personnel are identified or shifts in personnel are clarified. In further instances, audience reception is recorded, to somewhat startling effect. For example, on 7 January 1637/38, William Davenant's Britannia Triumphans was performed as King Charles's masque at Whitehall: Nicoll and others describe the text and appointments,³² but surviving northern letters supply the subtext. On 9 November Garrard alerts Wentworth in Ireland that the king purposes a masque at Christmas and the queen another masque at Shrovetide,³³ going on to note,

A Greate roome is now in building only for this vse betwixt the Guard Chamber and the banquetting house; of firre only weatherboarded, and slightly couered; At the mariadge of the Queene of Bohemia I saw one sett vp there, but not of that vastnes that this Is; which will cost too much money to be Pulld downe, and yett downe it must when these Masques are Over.³⁴

Garrard writes again to Wentworth on 16 December and repeats his concerns:

Here are two Masques intended this winter. The King is now in Practicing his, which shalbe presented at tweluetide; Most of the young lords about the towne who are Good Dancers attend his Maiestye in this busines, The Other the Queene makes at Shrouetide; A new house being Erected in the first Court at Whytehall, which costs the King 2500 li, Only of Deale boards [fir or pine], because the King will not haue his Pictures in the banquetting house hurt with light.³⁵

Garrard's postevent account to Wentworth of the masque's reception is unique; its significance also is amplified because he himself did not attend and thus is reporting what he widely has heard.

The french and spanish Embassadors were both at the Kings Masque, but not receaued as Embassadors, The French satt amongst the Ladyes, the spanish in a boxe; It was performed on a Sunday Night the day after 12^th night [Sunday, 7 January], in very Cold weather; soe that the house was not filld according to Expectation; The Act of Councell, to driue all men into the Country, the Coldnes of the Weather, the day Sunday, and the Illnes of the Inuention of the Sceanes, were Giuen for Causes, why so small a Company came to see yt. My lord Treasorer, was there by Command.³⁶

Similar modifications of published entertainment materials recur throughout the surviving West Riding records, and although the present pages are not the appropriate vehicle to describe them, one can suggest that the 1603 masque at Winchester for Prince Henry; James's coronation entertainment; the Juno and Hymenaeus masque for the 27 December 1604 wedding of Sir Philip Herbert and Lady Susan Vere; Jonson's The Masque of Darkness, performed on Twelfth Night 1604/1605; Jonson's The Hue and Cry after Cupid masque for the 17 February 1607/1608 marriage of John Ramsey, Vicount Hadington and Lady Elizabeth Ratclife; Jonson's Masque of Beauty, performed 10 January 1607/1608 in the New Banqueting House at Whitehall; Jonson's Masque of Queens on 2 February 1608/1609; Campion's Lords' Masque, Chapman's Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, and Beaumont's Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, all performed between 11 and 15 February 1612/13 for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Frederick; Jonson's Irish Masque, Campion's Masque of Squires, and the anonymous Masque of Flowers, performed for the December 1613 wedding of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset and Lady Frances Howard; Jonson's Love's Triumph through Callipolis, performed 9 January 1603/31 at Whitehall; the Inns of Court masque, probably Shirley's Triumph of Peace, performed on 3 February 1633/34 and the king's masque, Carew's Coelum Britannicum, performed on 5 March;³⁷ and Davenant's The Temple of Love, performed in February 1634/35—among innumerable other pageantic and entertainment references—receive some attention in these letters from court to country.

That attention is likely to prove disappointing to literary scholars, for although the occasional glance is given to the quality of performance, the letters' thrust is almost exclusively political reportage. What interested northern gentry was who had been selected as masquers, their order in masque processions, who took out whom in the dancing, how foreign representatives were received, and what expenses were incurred. Nevertheless, West Riding gentry were at some pains to acquire the most recent entertainment materials. Having successfully performed a London-acquired tragedy on 23 April 1581 at Sheffield Castle, Shrewsbury's players request on 25 April

some short play (librum) new, pleasant, agreeable, elegant, gay, droll, knavish, full of brawls, and packed with all sorts of murders, robberies, and bawdry. In this matter they say that one Wilson, a servant of the Earl of Leicester … is willing and able to do much, especially if you ask him in the name of our Morgan.³⁸

The Leicester connection is in part explicated by a 1559 letter from Robert Dudley at Westminster to Shrewsbury in Sheffield, requesting that he give Leicester's players his authority while they play in Yorkshire.³⁹ Their players obviously continued to communicate with each other.

London entertainment texts also came north. Shrewsbury clearly solicited masque texts—and impatiently awaited their arrival. Noted above is the earl of Worcester's 1604 attempt to procure these texts for Shrewsbury, but by 11 February 1607/1608 Worcester has become a bit testy on the subject of masques. He writes in answer to Shrewsbury's demands that

The very same night that the queens maske was performed [10 January] I was scantly able to goe but yet held owt vntyll all was performed. since which tyme vntyll this great wedding [of Viscount Hadington and Lady Elizabeth Ratclife on 17 February] I went not vpp the stayers but that night [of the Queen's masque] I forced my leges to Carry mee to see that maske[. T]o geue youe account of bothe was my determination but my indisposition for the first was sutche that tyme passing would now make that stale for I assure my self youe haue receyved it already. For the second I knowe your 2 sons[-in-law] being both actors wyll not omitt the relations. Vppon which assurances I wyll omit both.⁴⁰

Other of Shrewsbury's correspondents are more helpful. Of the queen's masque Viscount Lisle writes that he will

begin with what yovr clordship desires about the Maske. Truly it was as well performed as euer any was and for the Verses of it with all the speeches and verses I had sent it to your Lordship ere this if I could have gotten it from Ben Iohnson, but no sooner had hee made an end of this, but that hee vndertook a new charge for the maske that is to be at the Vicount Hadingtons marriage on Shrouve Tuesday at night so at (…) the best I cannot have the first but then for the interest and principal cost I will send your Lordship both.⁴¹

Shrewsbury, however, had not exhausted his resources for obtaining the text. The earl of Arundel, his son-in-law, writes from Arundel House to Sheffield on 1 February that his “wife defers her writinge till she may sende your Lordship the booke of the Queenes masque; which will be shortly: and I am so troubled with an other masque [Hadington's], as, I want leisure to write any more to your Lordship at this time.”⁴²

One can only speculate about Shrewsbury's motives in trying to acquire masque texts quickly. On whether his perseverance stemmed from an intention to perform the newest masques, a need to interpret the court political climate, a satisfaction of personal preference, or a combination thereof, the records are silent. They are less so in the surviving and voluminous correspondence of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford. The political subtext, regardless of the correspondent, is predominant: masquing tittle-tattle as a barometer of fortune and men's eyes. As partially noted above, London letters to Wentworth in Yorkshire or, later, in Ireland from Henry Slingsby, Philip Mainwaring, Edward Conway, Gervais Clifton, James Howell, and, particularly, from George Garrard consistently record the masque as political gossip. Garrard regularly reports masquing activities to Strafford, and his narratives are singularly focused: the costs, the participants, the reason for their selection or exclusion, the masque's reception by its audience, and the sociopolitical dynamics of the occasion. In none of the letters does Garrard cite the content of the masques—no titles, no texts, no costumes, no sets—and Strafford seems never to have inquired about matters aesthetic, probably a forgivable oversight given his political circumstances.⁴³

In her Court Masques of James I, Sullivan notes that “in a monarchy so personal as that of England under James, everything done by the monarch or by any of his family had a diplomatic as well as a social bearing, and in the case of the masque the diplomatic, under cover of the social, seems to have been of greatest significance.” With commendable objectivity, she goes on to note that “many of the documents, of the reign of James I, are lost or have not yet been recovered from unknown places of deposit. It is difficult therefore to state, with any positiveness, the exact cost of these productions.”⁴⁴ The wisdom of time and the recovery rate of the REED project have done much to remedy Sullivan's latter lament but little to alter her initial perception, that the masque was in essence a political beast—not just to the king but to the gentry throughout the country. It may well have been art, it certainly was artifice, and it was infinitely plastic in measuring the aspirations of the aristocracy well before and well after the time of James I.

Northern data, partially collected as they are at this present stage, suggest that the entertainment communication between provinces and home counties has been severely undervalued. Likewise, the aesthetic level of northern entertainment in its own right has been underappreciated. Northern gentry were educated, trained, and attuned to what was nationally perceived as a sophisticated medium of advancement: the masque. One of many strings on a very complex instrument, the masque functioned as a prefiguration of any number of later versions of who is seen where attending what about town or manor with whom. When thirty years into Elizabeth's reign James Ryther complained to Burghley that West Riding entertainment consisted of a cacophonous emission by Scots and Yorkshiremen, he little thought that four years into James's reign “the great mariage of vicount Hadington” would consist of

a singular braue maske of Englishe & scottes att which [Sir Henry Savile, of Thornhill Hall, West Riding, Yorkshire] stayed with [his] wyfe & her mother & [his] sister there till three a clocke in the morninge. The kinge drunke a health to the Bridegrome & his Bryde in a Cuppe of gould & when he hade donne sent yyt by my lord of Fenton & therin a pension out of the Exchequer of six hundred pound a yeare to him & to her & to the longer lyuer of them.⁴⁵

Notes

1. British Library (BL) Lansdowne MS. 119, f. 116^v.

2. The West Riding, Yorkshire, records have been collected for the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project by the present author and John M. Wasson under the auspices of a National Endowment for the Humanities' Texts and Editions grant. Gratitude also is due to the archivists and staffs of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; West Yorkshire Archives, Bradford; Chatsworth House and the Duke and Duchess of Devon; Lambeth Palace Library; West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds; Nottinghamshire Archives Office; Sheffield City Libraries and Olive, Countess Fitzwilliam's Wentworth Settlement Trustees; York Minister Library; and the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds, for their unfailing generosity, courtesy, and perseverance.

3. J. Croft, Excerpta Antiqua; or, A Collection of Original Manuscripts (York: William Blanchard, 1797), 78-81. The original Nevill accounts have since disappeared.

4. Yorkshire Archaeological Society (YAS), Leeds, MS. 707, mb. 4.

5. Sheffield City Libraries, Leader MS. 121, f. 28. Originally made at Doorneck in Flanders, darnipe is a cloth resembling damask.

6. Chatsworth House, Chatsworth MS. BAM 175, ff. 181-181^v. Thanks are due to John M. Wasson for sharing the Clifford records which he has collected for a REED great households' volume, among which are expenses for these two Skipton Castle masques.

7. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds, Ingram MS. TN/EA/13/23, f. 14^v.

8. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds, Ingram MS. TN/EA/13/7, f. 4.

9. YAS MS. DD56/J/3/4, f. 172^v. One can only note the peculiarity of the Slingsby steward's reference to expenses for “Sir Arthur Ingram's wedding,” when his mistress, Miss Ellen Slingsby, is the bride.

10. YAS MS. DD56/J/3/3, ff. 63^v, 71, 83^v.

11. YAS MS. DD56/J/3/3, ff. 165, 171, 173^v, 174, 174^v, 169, 171^v, 57.

12. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield, eds., Records of Early English Drama: Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 216-17, 240-41. See also 230 and 174 for note of a 1593 civic masque at Kendal, perhaps on the occasion of completing New Hall.

13. Sheffield City Libraries, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments WWM STR P 13, Letter 159, f. 5: George Garrard in London to Thomas Wentworth, Lord Strafford in Ireland, 9 January 1633/34. Five surviving letters to Wentworth report on the 1633/34 Christmas activities, and their accounts are somewhat confusing. On 6 December Garrard writes of a proposed Inns of Court masque for the court at Twelfth Night, but this letter of 9 January reports that Twelfth Night produced only one play (John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, performed by the King's Men) and that two masques (one by the Inns of Court on Candlemas, 2 February; and the other by the king to the honor of the queen on Shrove Tuesday, 5 March) are proposed. Arundel on 22 February reports on both masques, the Inns of Court performed on 3 February and the king's on Shrove Tuesday. The dates apparently are confused in R. F. Hill, ed., Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Office of Works 1560-1640, Malone Society Collections, 10 (1977 for 1975), 45, which reports the king's masque on 18 February, as does C. E. McGee's unpublished “Masques (but not at court): A Preliminary Survey of the Field” in following the Malone Society dating. The Inns of Court masque seems to be Shirley's Triumph of Peace; the king's masque is thought to be Carew's Coelum Britannicum (see Enid Welsford, The Court Masque [New York: Russell and Russell, 1962], 228-29, which describes it as displaying “almost all of the worst vices of the masque at this period”).

14. West Yorkshire Archives, Bradford, Hopkinson MS. 32D86/27, f. 59^v, in John Hopkinson's transcription of a Sheffield Castle manuscript, now lost; the news from London was sent to Shrewsbury in Yorkshire.

15. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 20, Letter 194, single sheet; Francis, earl of Cumberland from Londesborough to Sir William Wentworth at Wentworth Woodhouse, 13 January 1612/13. The marriage would seem to be that of Lord Howard de Walden and Lady Elizabeth Home.

16. York Minster Library, Hailstone Box 7.1, Lady Anne Clifford's Memorials, f. 6.

17. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3197, Letter 295, f. 1; this may be the 1578 tilt described in C. E. McGee and John Meagher, “Preliminary Checklist of Tudor and Stuart Entertainments: 1558-1603,” Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 24 (1981): 97, and noted by Sydney Anglo, “Archives of the English Tournament: Score Cheques and Lists,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 2 (1962): 161. Hill, Dramatic Records, 8-9, notes that “there were Shrovetide plays at Whitehall by Warwick's and Sussex's men, and by the Children of the Chapel. A tilt and barriers in honour of John Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine, were held at Whitehall on 1-2 Feb. (Chambers, iv. 95-6)” and records the Whitehall expenses “for Reparacions and worcke done in dyvers places of the said House againste the comminge of Cassymerne, Also for makinge of particions Skaffoldes and other neccesaries for playes, Tragidies and Bearebaytinge at Shrovetyde” [author's expansions of abbreviations].

18. Nottinghamshire Archives Office, D.D.SR.1/D/1426, f. 1. Sir George Savile was the son of Sir George Savile, 1st Bart., and his first wife, Mary Talbot. This letter is directed to his uncle, the earl of Shrewsbury, at Sheffield Castle, where it was when it was copied by Nathaniel Johnson in the late seventeenth century (West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds, Bacon Frank Collection MS. BF/13, p. 304) but somehow found its way back into the Savile archives now deposited at Nottingham. Working with Johnson at the castle, John Hopkinson seems to have copied the now-missing enclosure (Bradford Record Office, Hopkinson MS. 32D86/21, ff. 22^v-24^v). Although indexed at Bradford as “Lady Lumley to the Countess of Shrewsbury” on unknown authority, it contains the “Speech delivered to her Majesty at her departure from Hatfield [sic], the Lord Keeper's house. The place attired in black. A masque performed to the Queen there. The speech followeth; then some poetry, then spake the voice of heaven to this sad knight.” See McGee and Meagher, “Preliminary Checklist,” 147-51, for additional records of the entertainment at Harefield House. This Savile letter would seem to be what they note as “Cartwright MS., untraced … J. J. Cartwright, ed., HMC, 11th Report, App. 7 (London, 1888), p 128” (p. 150).

19. Mary Sullivan, Court Masques of James I (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913); and Martin Butler, “Private and Occasional Drama,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 127-60.

20. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3199, Letter 249, f. 1; Shrewsbury's directive on same, f. 2^v; 25 December reply Talbot MS. 3201, Letter 77, f. 1.

21. McGee and Meagher, “Preliminary Checklist,” 141, which notes the event as 31 December, 7 and 21 January 1597/98, Middle Temple Christmas Revels, in the unpublished BL MS. Harleian 1576, ff. 556-62 and further noted in STC R2189 as Le Prince d'Amour, also unpublished.

22. Butler, “Private and Occasional Drama,” 155.

23. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 15, Letter 315, ff. 2-3. Garrard, an erstwhile regent master and fellow of Merton College whose later career is difficult to trace, became Strafford's most diligent and loyal correspondent on London socio-political matters.

24. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 15, Letter 349, f. 2.

25. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 15, Letter 364, f. 4. There is some confusion about the date of performance. Howells's “Twesday next” would have been 22 February, Shrove Tuesday was 1 March, and Garrard's “moneday before” would have been 21 February. C. E. McGee, in “Masques (but not at court): A Preliminary Survey of the Field,” notes “23/24 February … W. Davenant's The Triumphs of the Prince d'Amour, for the Queen and Sir Henry Herbert”: his source would seem to be Henry Herbert's diary (The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917], 56). Allardyce Nicoll, Stuart Masques and the Renaissance Stage (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1938), 113-14, describes the masque, a description which hardly clarifies the queen's appearance with Mrs. Basset.

26. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3201, Letter 177, f. 1; approximately 20 mm. of the right margin are torn with the missing readings supplied here in diamond brackets. John Hopkinson's copy of this letter (West Yorkshire Archives, Bradford, Hopkinson MS. 32D86/33, ff. 140^v-141) agrees with the original in all particulars except Hopkinson's expansions of abbreviations.

27. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3201, Letter 168, f. 2.

28. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3201, Letter 182, f. 1^v.

29. Sullivan, Court Masques, 10-20.

30. See Nicoll, Stuart Masques, 56-57 and passim. The present writer has not been able to identify “Mr. Sanford” but finds it notable that he apparently was available to travel to Shrewsbury at Sheffield as soon as his court obligations were concluded.

31. Sullivan, Court Masques, 20.

32. Nicoll, Stuart Masques, 114-16.

33. William Davenant's Luminalia, described in Nicoll, Stuart Masques, 116-17.

34. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 17, Letter 222, f. 3^v.

35. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 17, Letter 260, f. 1^v.

36. Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 17, Letter 284, f. 1^v.

37. Hill, Dramatic Records, 45, reports the date as 18 February but Arundel's letter to Wentworth (Sheffield City Libraries, WWM STR P 13, Letter 201, ff. 1-2) is quite precise.

38. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3198, Letter 74, f. 1; trans. S.O. Addy, “Stage Plays in Sheffield in 1581,” Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 3.3 (1927): 243. The letter is written to an unidentified person in London by Thomas Bayly, one of Shrewsbury's players. “Wilson” is Robert Wilson, noted with Richard Tarlton as “rare men” for their “extemporal wit” among what shortly would be constituted as the Queen's Players (R. A. Foakes, “Playhouses and Players,” The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, 39).

39. West Yorkshire Archives, Bradford, Hopkinson MS. 32D86/15, f. 8^v. Hopkinson transcribed the letter in 1676 from the abandoned Sheffield Castle muniments; the original letter now is at Lambeth Palace Library. Leicester vouches for his players as “being honest men & such as shall playe noe other matters I trust but tollerable & Conveinent, …”

40. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3203, Letter 38, f. 1. The text of Jonson's The Haddington Masque, renamed The Hue and Cry after Cupid, “Celebrating the happy Marriage of Iohn, Lord Ramsey, Vicount Hadington, with the Lady Elizabeth Ratclife, Daughter to the right Honor: Robert, Earle of Sussex. At Court On the Shroue-Tuesday at night. 1608 [17 February],” is in C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 243-63; the set and action are described in Nicoll, Stuart Masques, 69. Rowland Whyte, writing to Shrewsbury on 26 January (Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3202, Letter 131, f. 1^v) reports that the masque will cost the five English and seven Scots noblemen “about 300 li a man.” The queen's masque is Jonson's The Masque of Beauty, performed 10 January 1607/8 at Whitehall in the New Banqueting House. The text is in Herford and Simpsons, 181-94, and a description in Nicoll, 67.

41. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3203, Letter 134, ff. 1-1^v; the word in diamond brackets is illegible.

42. Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS. 3202, Letter 173, f. 1.

43. The over six thousand surviving Wentworth letters are at the Sheffield City Libraries as Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments Strafford (WWM STR); they are, at best, roughly indexed but contain a wealth of unpublished material.

44. Sullivan, Court Masques, 3, 138.

45. Bodleian Library, Add. MS. C. 259, Letter 15, f. 1: Sir Henry Savile of Thornhill, West Riding, then in London, to Sir Richard Beaumont of Whitley, West Riding, on Ash Wednesday (18 February) 1607/1608. Joseph Hunter's 1819 copy of this extract is BL Add. MS. 24475; it agrees with the original in all significant particulars.