Religion and Politics in Early Modern Royal Travels: Queen Elizabeth's Progress to Kent in 1573

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the summer travels of the English royal court of early Modern times. This practice, originating from the traveling courts of the Middle Ages, flourished in England in the second half of the XVI century. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, summer progresses became an integral part of the court ceremonial, an important means of representing the monarch and a mechanism for implementing royal policy. The article focuses on one of these trips, namely, a summer trip to Kent in 1573, whose central episode was a reception hosted for the Queen by Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker. The author examines the preparation and course of this reception, analyzes the motives and expectations of all participants in the events and fits the royal visit into the context of church history and religious policy of England in the second half of the XVI century. The scientific novelty of the work lies in a detailed, based on a wide range of sources, consideration of the royal visit of 1573, which had not previously attracted special attention of researchers. The main conclusion of the study is the observation about the peculiar nature of the reception in Canterbury, due to the increased attention of all participants to the religious and political content of this event. For Elizabeth, this reception was an occasion to emphasize her image of a pious monarch and defender of the true faith. On the other hand, such a visit in the first half of the 1570s, during a harsh period for the Church of England, was on its part a gesture of support for the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom the latter sorely needed. Parker, in turn, made considerable efforts to extract the maximum benefits for himself from this reception. Thus, the conducted research shows how the royal progress could be used for the purposes of religious policy and complements our understanding of the methods and mechanisms of its implementation in early Modern England.