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I. Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Marie Axton
Marie Axton
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge
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Extract

In the winter of 1561/2 Henry Machyn, citizen of London, noted two special events in his diary: the extraordinary Christmas revels at the Inner Temple and the performance on 18 January, before Queen Elizabeth, of a play and a masque by these same gentlemen. These events are inextricably connected and in terms of political propaganda must be viewed in conjunction. The play was Gorboduc, written by two Inner Templars, the Queen's cousin Thomas Sackville and the Protestant Parliamentarian Thomas Norton. The revels at the Inner Temple celebrated the accession and reign of Robert Dudley as the lawyers' Christmas Prince. He had been chosen by the governors and Parliament of the Inner Temple in gratitude for his intervention in a dispute with the Middle Temple over Lyons Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery historically under the jurisdiction of the Inner Temple. Dudley had intervened with the Queen, opposing his influence against that of Sir Robert Catlin, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Sir James Dyer, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who had championed the cause of their old Inn, the Middle Temple. Elizabeth was moved by her favourite to speak to Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, asking him to confirm the right of the Inner Temple. The grateful Parliament and governors of the Inner Temple pledged themselves and their successors to Dudley, offering their legal skills in his service and promising never to give counsel in a cause against Lord Robert. The value of this pledge to Elizabeth's chief suitor from men as eminent as Richard Onslow, Anthony Stapleton, Robert Kelway, William Pole, Roger Manwood and Richard Sackville is clear. The elevation of the favourite to the dignity of Prince Pallaphilos was in terms of propaganda a very splendid return for Dudley's intervention on the Templars' behalf. Nor was this pledge of loyalty ephemeral; the bond was mutually advantageous and it was one the Templars continued to honour. In 1576 the Parliament of the Inner Temple still referred to Leicester as ‘chief governor of this House’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 1970 , pp. 365 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols, J. G. (London, 1848), pp. 273–5.Google Scholar

2 The exact date of the royal performance of Gorboduc is given on the title page of the 1565 and the 1570/1 quartos ‘the xviij day of Ianuarie 1561’; the date is, of course, Old Calendar.

3 A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, ed. Inderwick, F.A. (London, 1896), I, 215–20.Google Scholar

4 Ibid. p. 286. After Leicester's death the Templars continued to honour a promise made in 1576 that his heirs should nominate occupants for Leicester's chambers at the Inn. In January 1594/5 *ne Queen's Attorney General, Edward Coke, one of the Readers of the Inn who occupied these chambers, had to make room for a nominee of the Countess of Leicester. (Ibid. p. 402.

5 Watt, H.A.made an early and full study of Gorboduc and its relation to the succession question (Madison, 1910).Google ScholarEnglish scholars have long been indebted to his work. Neale, Sir John referred to the play's succession implications (Queen Elizabeth, London, 1934).Google Scholar More recently Mortimer Levine devotes a chapter in his very useful Early Elizabethan Succession Question (Stanford, 1966)Google Scholar to consideration of Gorboduc as a succession play.

6 Early English Classical Tragedies, ed. Cunliffe, John W., (Oxford, 1919).Google Scholar Cunliffe prints the 1570/1 text.

7 The other eminent lawyers who served in Dudley's revels court were: Stapleton, Lord Treasurer; Kelway, Lord Privy Seal; Pole, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer. (See Dugdale, William, Origines Juridiciales, London, 1666, p. 150.)Google Scholar

8 Read, Conyers, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London, 1955), P. 207.Google Scholar

9 The Herald and Genealogist, I (1862), 42–68, 97–118.Google Scholar These supposedly classical shields contain the arms of Sir Robert Catlin, Sir James Dyer, Sir Edward Saunders, Sir Anthony Browne (Just.), Sir William Cordell, Sir Gilbert Gerard and Sir Richard Sackville.

10 Bacon, Francis, Works, ed. Spedding, James (London, 1858), vI, 424.Google Scholar

11 The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Campbell, Lily B., 2nd ed. (New York, 1960), p. 312.Google Scholar

12 Strong, Roy, ‘Elizabethan Pageantry as Propaganda’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1962, p. 23.Google Scholar

13 J. G. Nichols in his detailed study of Accedens refers to the story of Desire as Legh's ‘allegorical tale’ (H.G. I, 104). Desmond Bland in the introduction to his edition of the Gesta Grayorum goes further; he remarks that Legh ‘ describes the festivities as seen through the eyes of a man newly arrived in London, and as though the circumstances were real and not simply a dramatic entertainment. By reading between the lines, however, it is possible to reconstruct a sequence of events, which are very like those of the Gesta Grayorum’ (p. xx). In a recent article in Notes and Queries Mr Bland mentions what he calls the ‘ masque of Desire and Beauty’. What he does not mention here, or anywhere else, is our longstanding and mutually beneficial private correspondence, in which I have been sharing with him all my unpublished work. In 1963 I wrote my first tentative study of Legh, suggesting that he describes dramatic or semi-dramatic entertainments offered to Dudley and Elizabeth in 1561/2; this was read in 1963 by Mr H. S. Bennett and Prof. M. C. Bradbrook in connexion with a Girton Bye- Fellowship application. Shortly thereafter Mr Bland kindly sent me his very useful trial bibliography, ‘Drama at the Inns of Court’. In this, however, he dated Accedens 1576 and stated that the revels took place in 1575. I referred him to the first edition and he accordingly altered this entry for his Selden Society Bibliography (London, 1965).Google Scholar In 1966, at his request, I sent him my Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation on politics and drama at the Inns of Court in which I had reconstructed the 1561/2 revels and suggested the dramatic nature of the allegory of Desire. Mr Bland's edition of the Gesta was printed in 1968, the article in N.Q. quoted above in 1969 (p. 454).

14 Pegasus is the device of the Inner Temple to this day; it has not been traced with any certainty to a time earlier than these revels though F. A. Inderwick suggests a derivation from the horse of the Knights Templar (Cal. I.T. pp. lxvi–lxvii). George Buc in his Third University (printed in 1615 as an appendix to Stow's Annales) reports that the Inner Temple adopted Pegasus ‘in the Raigne of the late Queene of immortall memory’. In a prefatory poem to Bossewell's, JohnWorkes of Armorie (Tottel, 1572),Google Scholar Nicholas Roscarroke alludes to Legh's account of the origin of the device,‘ The auncient Pegasus, which earst Minerua dame diuine / To Inner Temples martyall gaue’. Certainly Pegasus was invested with a special significance during and after the revels of 1561/2 and to this both Buc and Roscarroke allude. In 1969 D. S. Bland reopened this question; using Buc as his authority he concluded for origin in 1561/2 (N.Q. 1969, pp. 16–18).

15 Hall's Chronicle (London, 1809), p. 631.Google Scholar

16 Cal. S.P. Span. 1558–67, pp. 404–5.

17 The Gesta Grayorum, M.S.R. (Oxford, 1914).Google Scholar

18 Benjamin Rudyerd, Noctes Templariae, B.M. Harley 1576, fos. 556–562 v. A more complete, but anonymous, version of this tract is printed in Le Prince d'Amour, 1660.

19 Machyn, ed. Nichols, p. 275. Whitehall is distinguished as ‘the quen's hall at Westminster’, to avoid confusion with what Machyn refers to as Westminster-hall. He makes the distinction quite explicit on p. 61: ‘Her Grace's Palace at Westminster, called the White Hall’.

20 The quarto of 1570/I was printed with the consent of the authors and bears the following information: ‘this Tragedie was for furniture of part of the grand Christmasse in the Inner Temple first written about nine yeares agoe by the right honourable Thomas now Lorde Buckherst, and by T. Norton, and after shewed before her Maiestie’.

21 Wentworth, Peter, A Pithie Exhortation to Her Maiestie for the establishing of her successor to the Crowne. Whereunto is added a Discourse containing the Authors opinion of the true and lawful successor to her Maiestie ([Edinburgh], 1598), pt. 1, p. 30.Google Scholar The two sections are separately paginated.

22 Ibid. pt. 11, pp. 86–7.

23 Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584–1601 (London, 1957), pp. 251–66.Google Scholar