Triumphal Entries and Festivals in Early Modern Scotland: Performing Spaces (European Festival Studies: 1450-1700) 9782503585413, 2503585418
This book offers unprecedented insights into the richness of Scottish culture in the early modern period, studying trium
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Triumphal Entries and Festivals in Early Modern Scotland
European Festival Studies: 1450–1700 Founding Editor J. R. Mulryne, University of Warwick, UK
Series Editors Margaret Shewring, University of Warwick, UK Margaret M. McGowan, CBE, FBA, University of Sussex, UK Marie-Claude Canova-Green, University of London (Goldsmiths), UK
Publications Advisory Board Maria Ines Aliverti, University of Pisa, Italy; Sydney Anglo, FBA, FSA, University of Wales, UK; Richard Cooper, University of Oxford, UK; Noel Fallows, FSA, University of Georgia, USA; Iain Fenlon, University of Cambridge, UK; Bernardo J. García García, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; Maartje van Geldaer, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Pieter Martens, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium; R. L. M. Morris, University of Cambridge, UK; Elaine Tierney, Research Institute, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK
This Series, in association with the Society for European Festivals Research, builds on the current surge in interest in the circumstances of European Festivals – their political, religious, social, economic, and cultural implications, as well as the detailed analysis of their performance (including ephemeral architecture, scenography, scripts, music and soundscape, dance, costumes, processions, and fireworks) in both indoor and outdoor locations. Festivals were interdisciplinary and, on occasion, international in scope. They drew on a rich classical heritage and developed a shared pan-European iconography as well as exploiting regional and site-specific features. They played an important part in local politics and the local economy, as well as international negotiations and the conscious presentation of power, sophistication, and national identity, and sometimes in a global context. The Series, including both essay collections and monog raphs, seeks to analyse the characteristics of individual festivals as well as to explore generic themes. It draws on a wealth of archival documentary evidence, alongside the resources of galleries and museums, to study the historical, literary, performance, and material culture of these extravagant occasions of state.
Triumphal Entries and Festivals in Early Modern Scotland Performing Spaces
by Giovanna Guidicini
F
Cover image: Bird’s eye view of Edinburgh seen from the south in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Edenburgum, Scotiae Metropolis, from c. 1582 (detail). Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
© 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-2-503-58541-3 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-58542-0 DOI: 10.1484/M.EFS-EB.5.117916 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper D/2020/0095/37
To all those who believed in this book, particularly my father Paolo, John, and Michael.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
9
Chapter I Introduction to Edinburgh as a Ceremonial City
17
Chapter II The Outdoors: Wilderness and Taming Nature Extramural Nature and Edinburgh’s Surroundings Triumphal Entries: Nature and the Outdoors Burgh’s Rights: The Otherness of Outside Space Addressing Local and International Views of Scottish Nature The Triumphal Route: The Role of Nature Wild Men and Highlanders in Scottish Ceremonies Extramural Sites and the Use of Chivalric Language
37 37 40 42 48 51 55 64
Chapter III The West Port: The Meeting of Royal and Civic Identities The West Port Triumphal Entries: Gateways and Urban Borders Burgh’s Rights: Defence and Identity The Triumphal Route: Approaching the West Port Absent Royal Residences: The Castle and Holyrood Palace Ceremonies of Negotiation and Gift-Giving Thresholds, Fabric, and Spaces of Portable Royalty
71 71 71 75 76 78 83 92
Chapter IV The Overbow: Discovering and Creating History The Overbow The Triumphal Route: A Tour through History Romanitas in Scottish Triumphal Entries Representing an Alternative Past The Legitimizing Power of Shared History
99 99 99 108 118 124
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ta b l e of con ten ts
Chapter V The Butter Tron: Representing a Mercantile Community The Butter Tron Triumphal Entries: Representing Local Economy Burgh’s Rights: Producing and Trading The Triumphal Route: Visiting a Productive Community The Burgh as Organizer and Host Inhabiting the Productive Space: Identity during Triumphal Entries Spectators: Inclusion and Exclusion
141 141 141 148 150 156 160 167
Chapter VI The Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and the Market Cross: Displaying and Defending Government and Authority The Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and the Market Cross Triumphal Entries: The Role of Core Buildings Burgh’s Rights: Secular and Religious Self-Determination Tolbooth and Representations of Virtuous Judgement St Giles Kirk and Religious Identities The Triumphal Route: Addressing Stability and Change Market Cross: Concord, Abundance, and Merriment
175 175 176 180 185 195 209 217
Chapter VII The Salt Tron: Some Iconographic Considerations The Salt Tron The Triumphal Route: Selecting Iconographies The European Dimension of Scottish Triumphal Language Triumphal Entries and Courtly Ceremonies Triumphal Language in the Context of Scotland’s Artistic Production
223 223 223 232 240 248
Chapter VIII The Netherbow: Expectations and Outcomes The Netherbow Farewells and Predictions at the Exit Gateway The Triumphal Route: Visiting Extramural Communities Non-Royal Processions and the Urban Spaces Welcoming Monarchs in Edinburgh after 1633
259 259 259 268 277 281
Bibliography 305 Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh General Index
337 341 343
List of Illustrations Colour Plates Plate I. Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Edenburgum, Scotiae Metropolis, Cologne: G. Braun & F. Hogenberg, c. 1582. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
128–29
Plate II. James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, annotated. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
130–31
Plate III. Grandes Chroniques de France, illuminated by Jean Fouquet c. 1455–1460. Tours Manuscrits, Français 6465, folio 441r, detail. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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Plate IV. The Walls of Edinburgh, Author. Sketch after Geoffrey W. Barrow, in Patricia E. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005), p. 1. By courtesy of Patricia E. Dennison.
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Plate V. Master of James IV of Scotland, Procession for Corpus Christi, Bruges/Ghent, about 1510–1520, MS Ludwig IX 18, fol. 48v. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
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Plate VI. Louis XII’s entry into Genoa in 1507. Jean Marot, Le Voyage de Gênes, illuminated by Jean Bourdichon: Tours, 1500–1520, folio 22v. Département des Manuscrits. Français 5091. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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Plate VII. The War of Troy, one of a set of 11 hangings known as The Trojan War tapestries. Unknown maker, 1475–1490, Tournai, Belgium. Museum no. 6-1887. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 134–35 Plate VIII. The Field of the Cloth of Gold, Oil on canvas painting, c. 1545. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018. 136–37 Plate IX. Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II, Caratacus, British Chieftain (34–54), 1684–1686. Oil on canvas, RCIN 403325. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018.
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Plate X. Master of James IV of Scotland, The Tree of Jesse, about 1510–1520, Bruges/Ghent, MS Ludwig IX 18, fol. 65. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
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Plate XI. George Jamiesone, The Campbell of Glenorchy Family Tree, 1635. Oil on Canvas, PG 2167. Reproduced by permission of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
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Plate XII. St Giles Cathedral (from east), detail, image by Romtom tom, taken on 23 July 2012. Flickr, attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
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Plate XIII. Simon Bouquet and Estienne Pasquier, Bref et sommaire recueil de ce qui a esté faict, [et] de l’ordre tenüe à la ioyeuse [et] triumphante entree de tres-puissant … prince Charles IX. de ce nom … en sa bonne ville [et] cité de Paris … Avec le couronnement de … princesse Madame Elizabet d’Austriche son espouse … Paris, 1572, page 66, detail. Shelfmark: C.33.m.1. © The British Library Board.
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Plate XIV. Niccolò da Bologna, Novella Super Quinque Libros Decretalium, MS B42 n. f., detail. Reproduced by permission of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano. Mondadori Portfolio/ Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
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Plate XV. Façade of Fyvie Castle, Image by Tom Parnell, ‘Fyvie Castle’ taken on 17 Oct. 2007. Flickr, attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode 291 Plate XVI. Salone dei Mesi, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. Reproduced by permission of the Comune di Ferrara.
292–93
Plate XVII. The Astral Ceiling and the Siege of Troy at Cullen House in John McGeoch’s reconstruction. Reproduced by permission of J. McGeoch.
294
Plate XVIII. Detail of painted ceiling in the Chamber of the Muses at Crathes Castle, photo from c. 1990. SC 562758, © RCAHMS.
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Plate XIX. Painted ceiling of the Long Gallery at Pinkie House, photo from c. 2000. SC 1143913, © Crown Copyright: HES.
296–97
Plate XX. Detail of painted ceiling of the gallery at Earlshall Castle, photo from c. 2001. SC 1389391 © Crown Copyright: HES.
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Plate XXI. Entrance to George Heriot’s School (begun 1628 as George Heriot’s Hospital). Author.
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Plate XXII. The Downsitting of the Scottish Parliament in c. 1680–1685. Detached printed plate from Chatelain’s ‘Atlas Historique’ of 1720. Courtesy of Lloyds Banking Group plc Archives.
300–01
Plate XXIII. William Turner, The Procession of King George IV Entering Princes Street, Edinburgh, August, 1822. Collection: City of Edinburgh Council. Photo credit: City of Edinburgh Council.
302–03
list of illustrations
Figures Figure 1. Edinburgh as represented by James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
18–19
Figure 2. Detail of the key listing ‘the chief places of the toune’, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
20
Figure 3. Simplified genealogy of the House of Stewart. Image by the author.
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Figure 4. Edinburgh’s surroundings, Author. Sketch after Geoffrey W. Barrow, in Patricia E. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005), p. 1. By courtesy of Patricia E. Dennison.
38
Figure 5. A coloured plan, or bird’s-eye view, of the town of Edinburgh probably by Sir Richard Lee; drawn in 1544. © The British Library Board, 072151 Cotton Augustus I. ii. 56.
38
Figure 6. Detail of the extramural space in the vicinities of Edinburgh, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
39
Figure 7. Detail of the gardens design in Canongate, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
44
Figure 8. Edinburgh in Sebastian Münster, Cosmographei, Basel: H. Petri, 1550. Ct 245.1., NNL01—03816674. The National Library of Israel, Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, Shapell Family Digitization Project and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Geography — Historic Cities Research Project.
49
Figure 9. Remy Du Puys and Gilles de Gourmont, La tryumphante et solemnelle entree faicte sur le nouuel et ioyeux aduenement de treshault trespuissant et tresexcellent prince monsieur Charles prince des Hespaignes archiduc daustrice duc de Bourgongne conte de Flandres. [etc] En sa ville de Bruges …, Paris, 1515, page 49, detail. Shelfmark: C.44.g.11. © The British Library Board.
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Figure 10. Troops of King Gustavus Adulphus in Einblattdruck 231, Stadt Ulm Stadtbibliothek, reproduced with permission.
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Figure 11. Detail of the West Port, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
72
Figure 12. The West Port, St Andrews. Hill and Adamson collection, HA0937. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.73 Figure 13. Detail of Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. Figure 14. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), Illustration for a Book: Surrender of the Keys of a City to an Emperor. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.
79
84–85
Figure 15. Detail of the Overbow, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
101
Figure 16. Vincenzo Borghini, Esterno del ‘Tempio di Marte’. Detail of Magl. XXV, 545: c. 134r. Permission granted by the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze. Copying of this image in any way or format is prohibited.
102
Figure 17. The Old Tolbooth, Lithograph (after a painting by Alexander Nasmyth), 1845. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, no. 2815. Capital Collections, City of Edinburgh Council, reproduced by permission. 106–07 Figure 18. St Giles’ Cathedral Spire Edinburgh, image by Tony Hisgett, taken on 14 April 2010. Flickr, attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
112
Figure 19. Remy Du Puys and Gilles de Gourmont, La tryumphante et solemnelle entree faicte sur le nouuel et ioyeux aduenement de treshault trespuissant et tresexcellent prince monsieur Charles prince des Hespaignes archiduc daustrice duc de Bourgongne conte de Flandres. [etc] En sa ville de Bruges …, Paris, 1515, page 38. Shelfmark: C.44.g.11. © The British Library Board.
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Figure 20. Detail of the Butter Tron, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
142
Figure 21. Facciata della chiesa d’Orsanmichele in Firenze, print by Balbiani inc., 1848. Studio Bibliografico Trippini, www.trippini.it.
143
list of illustrations
Figure 22. Engraving designed by Stephen Harrison, printed by William Kip (London, 1604) from a set of 8 entitled The Arch’s [sic] of Triumph. Prints & Drawings Study Room, level D, case EO, shelf 143. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
144
Figure 23. Cornelius Grapheus Scribonius and Julius Scalinger, Le triumphe d’Anuers, faict en la susception du Prince Philips, Prince d’Espaign[e]. Antwerp, 1550, page 53. Shelfmark: C.75.d. 15. © The British Library Board.
147
Figure 24. Edinburgh’s industries and trades, Author. Sketch after Geoffrey W. Barrow, in Patricia E. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate a Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005), p. 1. By courtesy of Patricia E. Dennison.
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Figure 25. The Hearth of Midlothian, a lithograph by engraver W. & A. K. Johnston, 1852. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, no. 8014. Capital Collections, City of Edinburgh Council, reproduced by permission.
154
Figure 26. Tailors’ Hall entrance, Cowgate, c. 1950. Collection B. C. Clayton, SC 1125100. © RCAHMS
161
Figure 27. Detail of the Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and Market Cross, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
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Figure 28. Market Cross. View from north (postcard). Insc: ‘Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, Royal Proclamation’. NMRS Survey of Private Collections. SC 1250994. © RCAHMS.
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Figure 29. Remy Du Puys and Gilles de Gourmont, La tryumphante et solemnelle entree faicte sur le nouuel et ioyeux aduenement de treshault trespuissant et tresexcellent prince monsieur Charles prince des Hespaignes archiduc daustrice duc de Bourgongne conte de Flandres. [etc] En sa ville de Bruges …, Paris, 1515, page 74, detail. Shelfmark: C.44.g.11. © The British Library Board.
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Figure 30. Albrecht Dürer, The Whore of Babylon woodcut from the series/portfolio The Apocalypse, 1498. Gift of Mrs Felix M. Warburg, 1940. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.
199
Figure 31. Photographic copy of engraving showing general view of courtyard in front of Parliament House Insc: ‘A Perspective View of the Parliament House & Exchequer. The Hon.ble J. Elphinstone Esq.r Engineers Delin. A. Bell, Scuplt.’ SC 426674, © RCAHMS.
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Figure 32. Detail of the Salt Tron, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
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Figure 33. Engraving by Stephen Harrison, printed by William Kip (London, 1604), in The Arch’s of Triumph Erected in honor of the High and mighty prince, James, the first of that name, King , of England, and sixth of Scotland, at his Maiesties Entrance and passage through his Honorable Citty & chamber of London. British Galleries, Room 56, The Djanogly Gallery, case 6. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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Figure 34. Hans Holbein, The Parnassus, preparatory drawing c. 1533. Ident. Nr. KdZ 3105, bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jörg P. Anders. Reproduced by permission.
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Figure 35. Albrecht Dürer, The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian, 1515 (1799 edition), 42 woodcuts and 2 etchings on laid paper assembled to form one image. Gift of David P. Tunick and Elizabeth S. Tunick, in honour of the appointment of Andrew Robison as Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator. National Gallery of Art, Open Access.
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Figure 36. Venus with Libra and Taurus, from the set of prints The Seven Planets by Hans Burgkmair. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.
250
Figure 37. Pax and Amor in costume, frontispiece of John Napier’s A Plaine Discouery of the whole Reuelation of Saint lohn, 1593. Reproduced by permission of the Senate House Library, University of London.
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Figure 38. Temperance, Edzell Castle Garden, c. 1604. Author.
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Figure 39. Detail of the Netherbow, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
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Figure 40. The Netherbow Port from the East, taken down 1764, as seen approaching from Canongate in an engraving by William Forrest, 1848. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, no. 3030. Capital Collections, City of Edinburgh Council, reproduced by permission.
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Figure 41. Jean Marot et al., L’entrée triomphante de leurs maiestez Louis XIV. roy de France et de Navarre, et Marie Therese d’Austriche son espouse, dans la ville de Paris … au retour de la signature de la paix generalle et de leur heureux mariage. Paris, 1660, page 73. Shelfmark: 604.i.22, © The British Library Board.
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list of illustrations
Figure 42. Albrecht Dürer, The Apocalyptic Woman woodcut from the series/portfolio The Apocalypse, 1498 (1511 Latin edition). Gift of Junius Spencer Morgan, 1919. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain. Figure 43. Edynburgum, [S.l.: s.n., c. 1649]. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
266 269–70
Figure 44. Detail of the Canongate Cross, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, Amsterdam?: s.n., 1647?, detail. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
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Figure 45. To the Right Honorable The Lord Provost and Magistrates, This Plan of the City of Edinburgh, with the Suburbs and improvements is most respectfully Dedicated by their most humble Servants The Publishers [Edinburgh: Abernethy & Walker, c. 1808 to 1809]. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
286–87
15
Chapter I
Introduction to Edinburgh as a Ceremonial City
The map of Edinburgh by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, published in Cologne around 1582 with which I have decided to open this book, is not perhaps an obvious choice to introduce the reader to early modern Edinburgh’s appearance [see Plate I]. The bird’s-eye view’s awkward perspective is admittedly unsophisticated and disproportioned, and the network of streets and public spaces is greatly oversimplified, as a short comparative walk around the well-preserved Edinburgh Old Town would confirm. Some of Edinburgh’s noteworthy structures — defensive and public buildings, religious institutions, extramural communities, and the nearby castle and palace of the Stewart dynasty — are drawn in what appears to be great detail, but the dependability of the representation and sizing is questionable, as many buildings are merely sketched in a diminutive or standardized form, arbitrarily coloured, misplaced, or even entirely missing. In the forefront of Braun and Hogenberg’s map, four well-dressed human figures — of unnaturally large size, even considering their placement on an imaginary natural terrace closer to the viewer — gesture to each other and point to the urban landscape in the background. Decidedly this cannot be described as the average reliable map. Rather, the most regular choice to illustrate the structure and appearance of Edinburgh in this period has been Gordon of Rothiemay’s map Edinodunensis Tabulam from around 1647 [see Figures 1 and 2], which will indeed be frequently used for visual reference throughout this book. This is a much more accurate and proportioned depiction of civic space — albeit also not free from poetic licence, such as representing the then-unfinished George Heriot’s Hospital (begun 1628) as a complete building. To the lower right, the accompanying numbered key in both Latin and English declares the name and purpose of each relevant edifice and area (noted in Latin as Loca Vrbis notatu digna, that is, the noteworthy places of the city) representing Edinburgh’s civic space as measureable, known, and well-understood. However geometrically inaccurate the illustration of Edinburgh in the Braun and Hogenberg map may be, and actually precisely because of that, it was one I felt also relevant to a book talking about the role of ‘performing spaces’ during triumphal celebrations, and better able to provide a visual illustration of what I meant by it. That is, civic spaces that were able to transcend their objective and measurable characteristics through the influence of human perceptions and undertakings, to acquire and express — indeed to ‘perform’ — more layered connotations. The early modern spaces which the Braun and Hogenberg map of Edinburgh illustrate and the civic spaces involved in contemporary triumphal entries, are both endowed with interpretive rather than descriptive characters.
18
c h a p t er i
Figure 1. Edinburgh as represented by James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647. The Castle of Edinburgh is to the left, and the North is to the top of the drawing.
They are filtered through the understanding and perceptions of those engaging with them; coloured by personal allegiances, political and religious views, and economic interests; and transformed by the chronological and cultural distance typical of second and third-hand narratives. In the words of twentieth-century philosopher and historian Michel de Certeau, rather than representing geometrically defined and ordained ‘places’, they are better defined as inhabited ‘spaces’ brought to life by human interaction.1 The Edinburgh spaces interpreted and represented in the Braun and Hogenberg map give visual form to the perceptions, experiences, and subjective interpretations of the viewers, civic authorities, courtiers, monarchs, chroniclers, artists, and scholars who saw their own
1 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1988), p. 117.
in troduction to edinburg h a s a ceremonia l city
worldviews represented on the urban space both inspiring and containing civic rituals. The exaggerated proportions of the human figures shown in the forefront of the map well represent the creative ability of human minds and human bodies to unveil, attribute, and communicate the urban space’s significance. Urban is here intended in the same way as Henri Lefebvre intended it, as ‘a social reality made up of relations which are to be conceived of, constructed or reconstructed by thought’.2 The urban ‘spaces’ triumphal entries engaged began as a succession of familiar, matter-of-fact places — streets, palaces, public buildings, squares, civic landmarks, and gateways and borders — defined, shaped, and enlivened by the daily human activities performed in and around them. When placed centre-stage during early modern triumphal entries, they became themselves triumphal spaces, contributing their accumulated, historicized significance to the construction and delivery of a politicized visual conversation between two
2 Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (eds), Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (Oxford and Cambridge MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 103.
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c h a p t er i
Figure 2. Detail of the key listing ‘the cheif places of the toune’, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
entities, the burgh as the host and the monarch as the guest. As such, they were not merely convenient locations for civic ritual but the physical components of the ritual itself, supporting and augmenting the symbolic potential of festive fiction.3 Art historian André Chastel rightly argued that ‘the festival does not have a particular place, its space is the everyday space of the city […] transformed by a decoration. Born of a provisional adaptation to the ambience, the place of the festival is entirely imaginary’.4 I would also add that whatever imaginary narrative was built through decoration for an exceptional event could not detach itself from the collective identity embedded — layer after layer — in the actual urban fabric through the constant iterations of tasks as menial as they were characterizing and indispensable. The civic spaces acted, in Strocchia’s words, as ‘theaters of everyday life’,5 endowed with multiple, embedded, and yet dynamic meanings based on experiential rituals, where the line between performers and spectators was intentionally blurred. Such performative spaces, shaped by dynamic practices, offered both revitalizing inspiration and constant expressive challenges, to effectively connect material and social structures.6 3 Sharon T. Strocchia, ‘Theaters of Everyday Life’, in Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence: A Social History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 55–80 (p. 60). 4 André Chastel, ‘Le Lieu de la Fête’, in Jean Jacquot (ed.), Les Fêtes de la Renaissance I, 2 vols (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1956), vol. 2, pp. 419–23 (p. 420). 5 Strocchia, ‘Theaters’, p. 55, see pp. 55–56. 6 Susan Bennett and Mary Polito, ‘Thinking Site: An Introduction’, in Susan Bennett and Mary Polito (eds), Performing Environments: Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 1–13 (pp. 2–3).
in troduction to edinburg h a s a ceremonia l city
The role of Edinburgh’s urban spaces as expressive components of early modern triumphal entries is the central topic of this book; Edinburgh civic locations gave a three-dimensional, experiential quality to the political dialogue, and allowed for an immersive experience that was both fictional and grounded in historicized reality: civic space actively ‘performed’ its own significance. Much has been written on triumphal entries as early modern interpretations of welcoming ceremonies of Roman origin, on their all’antica flavour, Petrarchan influences, and on both their commonalities with, but also significant differences from, medieval civic ceremonies and religious processions. This book is based on this established body of knowledge to contextualize and refer specifically to the relatively little-known Scottish case study, and while comparable studies will be referred to throughout the text, it is useful to offer here some initial background on what triumphal entries actually were, and on their relevance for scholarly investigations of early modern culture. I would sum-up triumphal entries as visually complex ceremonies welcoming a ruler — or other well-connected personage — into a city, usually to mark special dynastic occasions such as coronations and royal weddings. Their peripatetic character was based on the expressive potential of processional events to signal status and authority through the hierarchical placement of participants and objects in carefully selected, sequential, and choreographed locations.7 The ruler’s procession experienced civic space by moving along a predefined route punctuated by ‘stations’ — that is, locations or buildings where entertainments were set up by the organizing civic administration. These entertainments could be enjoyed passively by the monarch, being based on the observation of painted canvases and statuary decorations, of tableaux vivants, dances, or on the performance of musical pieces. Alternatively, they could require the monarch’s active participation — exchanging gifts with civic representatives, responding to speeches and greetings, or performing prearranged or impromptu acts of forgiveness and appreciation. The purpose of these staged experiences was often not merely to entertain and flatter, but to inform, educate, and even challenge the visitors, bringing up potentially controversial topics under the protection of a visually pleasing, symbolic language often inspired by classical mythology and local lore. While triumphal entries staged all over Europe during the late fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries had much in common regarding organization, intent, and means of expression — and mutual influences will be discussed in this book to contextualize specifically local Scottish characteristics — the format and message of any entry responded to the necessities of the civic community and of the local ruling dynasty in a particular moment in time. When seen collectively, a series of triumphal entries could represent a sequence of carefully organized snapshots, expressing the ever-changing balance of power between the hosting and the hosted in spatially and chronologically diverse scenarios. 7 Kathleen Ashley, ‘Introduction: The Moving Subjects of Processional Performance’, in Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken (eds), Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 7–34.
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The issue of the symbolic appropriation of space as expression of power is particularly relevant to an architectural and spatial analysis of triumphal entries. Through remodelling and repositioning royal landmarks, reconsidering the organization of natural landscapes and restyling places of worship, and the careful planning of urban settlements, monarchs would create settings for the expression and the practice of power in their bureaucratic, social, and ideological aspects, often outlasting an individual’s reign or mortal life.8 In particular, as triumphal entries gave physical form to existing disputes and power struggles between civic interests and royal expectations, monarchical engagement with the political narrative constructed in the civic space represented the hoped-for pathway to symbolic reconciliation. In his extensive study of French case studies, Bryant argues that the constant refashioning of the language of triumphal celebrations offered a response to the ever-changing political relationship between a monarchy challenged by frequent crises and semi-autonomous local authorities — at least until the dialogical element of these public events faded away around 1600.9 Both parties attempted to appropriate and adapt the civic space where ceremonies took place through temporary structures and permanent insertions, and through target demolitions and the retracing of roads, to represent through physical evidence their message of choice. Spyro Kostof argues that ruling agencies aspire to order and control civic space, which is recognized as an intrinsically unregulated expression of a community’s identity.10 Pierre Bourdieu’s studies establish that the subversion of established social orders through appropriation of space gives subservient groups ‘the material and symbolic means of rejecting the definition of the real that is imposed on them through logical structures reproducing the social structures’11 by the dominant parties. While the experiential enactment of a narrative of confrontation-agreement-resolution could help defuse the latent conflict between civic and ruling powers, crown-driven top-down alterations in the civic space would run powerful interferences with a community’s identity and sense of self. Talking about fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Flanders, Boone defines ‘urban space as the battlefield between urban particularism and princely absolutism’,12 with the rulers enacting targeted symbolic and physical interventions in the civic fabric to demonstrate their own dominance. After 1600, French kings took control of the ceremonial discourse, enforcing a glorification of dynastic absolutism that meant complete control upon the event as well as upon the spaces where such an event was staged, repressing urban dynamism and its richness of possible narratives which had indeed included demands 8 David W. Rollason, The Power of Place: Rulers and their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities and Holy Places (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 9 Lawrence M. Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony and the Changing Monarchy in France, 1350–1789 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–3. 10 Spyro Kostof, The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form through History (Boston: Little Brown, 1992), pp. 124–25. 11 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 169; also pp. 89–95, 159–67. 12 Marc Boone, ‘Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (4) (Spring 2002), 621–40 (633).
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and dissent.13 While philosopher Henri Lefebvre suggests that space — the architectural code we live by — is produced by historical events and human activities, he also proposes that the form taken by space can encourage people ‘to produce a discourse and a reality adequate to the code’.14 Michel Foucault’s theories have identified and paralleled control of space with exertion of power, by not merely manifesting existing hierarchies of religious, lay, or economic authority, but by influencing their establishment.15 Dillon analyses the creation of both metaphorical and material topographies through the acting out of different kinds of ceremonial events in early modern England. Performances — from the reception of ambassadors to royal progresses to executions — were moments in which space was created as social and political construct.16 Hence the battle for control of the physical outline of cities during triumphal celebrations — which will be frequently referred to in this book as a governing theme of the narrative of triumphal entries in Edinburgh — is of relevance as part of a larger shift in the perception of space and authority between the medieval and the early modern world, which eventually would allow the organization of the cities, which had been several times overturned, to become knowledge and power — to become, in other words, an institution. This development heralded the decline and fall of the autonomy of the towns and urban systems in their historical reality.17 The incorporation of smaller power entities — towns, baronies, minor royal or ducal states — driven by the competition between neighbouring powers led to the rearrangement of Europe’s political geography into larger, geographically settled units, with monarchical states taking over the administrative function previously overseen by towns.18 In Bryant’s words, ‘to speak in terms of ritual space, we find a transition in the entry from townsmen, even citizens, controlling ritual space to mirror “what is”, to a “utopian modeling of what might be” by courtiers’.19 The analysis of the development of triumphal entries offers an admittedly very focused, even partial exploration of the wider discourse on the relationship between centralized and localized power in early modern Europe. However, investigations such as that of Annette Finley-Croswhite on the relationship between King Henri IV’s royal authority and the urban autonomy of French towns have demonstrated that the study of triumphal entries can offer real insights on 13 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, pp. 4–7. 14 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. by D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 47. 15 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. and trans. by C. Gordon, et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 148–49. 16 Janette Dillon, The Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 6–12. 17 Lefebvre, Production of Space, p. 47. 18 Wim Blockmans, A History of Power in Europe, Peoples, Markets, States (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1997), pp. 198–201. 19 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, 245, citing Edward W. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 4–9.
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issues of clientage, royal interference, legitimacy, and financial dependency — in virtue of their very physicality, and of the measurability and comparability of their components.20 Overall, triumphal entries’ lasting popularity, their widespread adoption in virtually every city of repute throughout Europe, and the variety of forms of artistic and literary expression characterizing them, have made the study of triumphal entries popular with generations of early modernists. Possible approaches have included the comparison of synchronic and diachronic events, the analysis of geographically distant ceremonies but also of multiple localized ones, and in the light of changes in the relevant cultural, societal, and political contexts. The significance of triumphal apparata as expressions of the overall artistic and cultural production of a city, country, dynasty, or of an individual artist were also investigated, and interdisciplinary pieces of research appeared on related topics such as musical entertainments, literary production, and costumes and attires devised for these occasions. Thematically, investigations on triumphal entries have cast light on broad issues such as the representation of gender, national and local identity, dynastic authority, and religious self-expression. In addition, the study of the actual setting up of events often of exorbitant cost and requiring extensive preparation offered opportunities for investigating the workings of a civic administration, its fiscal policies, and economic situation in relation to the practicalities of purchasing goods, allocating tasks, and coordinating the event.21 The role of space as setting and component of ritual ceremonies has been informed by Albrecht Classen’s interdisciplinary work on perceptions, organization, and control of urban space in its transition between the medieval and the early modern period, as an expression of social conflicts and a catalyst for artistic productions and cultural innovations. The study of urban space as shaped by people and ideas offers, according to Classen, an interpretative lens through which the various aspects of medieval and early modern culture could be better understood.22 Mulryne, De Jonge, Martens, and Morris’s recent investigation on
20 Annette S. Finley-Croswhite, Henry IV and the Towns, The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589–1610 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 47–62. 21 A non-exhaustive list of landmark works include Bonner Mitchell, The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy, 1494–1600 (Florence: L. S. Olschki Editore, 1986); Barbara Wisch and Susan Scott Munshower (eds), ‘All the World’s a Stage’: Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque, 2 vols (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1990); Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); J. R. Mulryne with Maria Ines Aliverti and Anna Maria Testaverde (eds), Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe: The Iconography of Power (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013); Samuel Kline Cohn, Marcello Fantoni, Franco Franceschi and Fabrizio Ricciardelli (eds), Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); J. R. Mulryne, Helena Watanabe-O’Kelly and Margaret Shewring (eds), Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Neil Murphy, Ceremonial Entries, Municipal Liberties and the Negotiation of Power in Valois France, 1328–1589 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). On civic hosts, see Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson (eds), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); David Moore Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry, 1558–1642 (London: Edward Arnold, 1971). 22 Albrecht Classen, ‘Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: Historical, Mental, Cultural, and Social-Economic Investigations’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Urban Space in the Middle
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the spatial and architectural language of festivals, emphasizes the importance of temporary and permanent architectural interventions as crucial components in the construction of a successful narrative of symbol and allusion.23 ‘Making space for festival’24 indicates the adapting, inserting, and at times purging of existing architectural landscapes caused by the only apparently transient interaction with the trappings of festive ceremonials — and with their ritual and performative aspects implying movement and gestures in space. The narrative of early modern statecraft was based on ritual — of welcome, of gift-giving, of recognition, of exchange — ‘a ritual that made an existing consensum about the shared order symbolically manifest’,25 while also giving dissenters the means to ceremonially express their disagreement within a safe, agreed framework. As codified social activities both performing and constructing, both challenging and stabilizing the fabric of society, their comparative and contextualized study can help understand the views and agendas of those involved with it.26 The performance of established, evocative rituals of occupation within the spaces and architectures of triumphal ceremonial gave physical and recognizable form to abstract concepts of authority, granting control over the past that such space was meant to signify physically and stand witness to.27 In a British context, Barbara Hanawalt’s study of the spaces of London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as settings for rituals demonstrates the ability of the city’s physical landscape to support the expression of social hierarchies as the setting of performative actions, through which the London economic elite’s authority, its elected magistrates, and the crown could in turn be symbolically displayed.28 Two particularly relevant works on civic spaces’ roles as triumphal settings were the detailed spatial analysis of Parisian entries by Lawrence Bryant, and the collection of essays on ceremonial use of space in Florence edited by Marcello Fagiolo.29 Both works considered the evolution of the relationship between Florentine and Parisian civic authorities and the Medicis and the French crown respectively, in the light of detailed spatial considerations. Both Bryant and Fagiolo analysed the routes and specific triumphal stations adopted in Paris and Ages and the Early Modern Age (Berlin: De Gruyet, 2009), pp. 1–146. 23 J. R. Mulryne, Krista De Jonge, Pieter Martens and R. L. M. Morris (eds), Architectures of Festivals in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning and Re-fashioning Urban and Courtly Space (New York: Routledge, 2018). 24 J. R. Mulryne, ‘Introduction: Making Space for Festival’, in Mulryne, De Jonge, Martens and Morris (eds), Architectures of Festivals, pp. 1–10. 25 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, The Emperor’s Old Clothes: Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), p. 66. 26 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, pp. 1–9. 27 Ritualized occupation of space in Jennifer Mara DeSilva, ‘Taking Possession: Rituals, Space and Authority’, Royal Studies Journal, 3 (2) (2016), 1–17 (9–12). 28 Barbara A. Hanawalt, Ceremony and Civility: Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–12. 29 Lawrence M. Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual, and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 1986). Marcello Fagiolo (ed.), La Città Effimera e l’Universo Artificiale del Giardino, la Firenze dei Medici e l’Italia del ’500 (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1980).
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Florence through both textual and visual explorations, in the context of historical events and dynastic vicissitudes, and considering the evolution over time of each triumphal station regarding positioning and decorative treatment. While Bryant found a remarkably repetitive narrative where spatial change — when it happened — flagged major disturbances in an overall steady city–Crown relationship, Fagiolo’s summative analysis pointed at a more fluid understanding of civic space, where triumphal routes and their architectural focuses constantly adapted to the Medici’s ever-shifting approach to authority within the city. My analysis of triumphal entries in Scotland also considers Scottish ceremonies as expressions of the evolving relationship — of mutual legitimation, political conflict, religious disagreement, economic dependency — between the burgh and the Stewart dynasty as expressed by ritual welcomes in and through space. It is worth mentioning that I will refer to Scottish monarchs as Stewarts, but to Mary Queen of Scots, James VI/I, and Charles I using the Frenchified spelling Mary promoted — Stuart. Paris and Florence represent the main case studies for comparison, firstly because of their methodologically similar approach organized around specific civic spaces, and secondly because of their findings being located at the opposite ends of the spectrum regarding variability of the triumphal route. As such, they provide suitable benchmarks against which the Edinburgh route can be discussed. Thirdly, the strong cultural and dynastic ties between Scotland and France in the case of the former, and the role of the Italian states in setting influential standards for these Roman-inspired ceremonies for the latter, are also reason to propose frequent comparisons. In opposition to the conventional orthodoxy of ceremonies in the Italian peninsula, the imaginatively outspoken entries staged in the Low Countries will also be referenced, to address the potential of triumphal civic celebrations to express creatively local traditions, preoccupations, and interests. Here civic individuality maintained a mild but vocal opposition to absolutism, and citizens did not offer adulation or servility to an emperor, but loyalty and cooperation to a monarch represented as ready to recognize their ancient privileges: some outspoken ceremonies centred upon civic expectations will also be assessed in relation to the Edinburgh case study.30 Bussels’s analysis of how Antwerp’s identity as a trading metropolis — a role early modern Edinburgh could also lay a claim to — influenced the hosting of the 1549 entry of Prince Philip of Spain will also be of particular relevance.31 Finally, entries staged in London in the Tudor period will appear for comparison with their Scottish counterparts, introducing alternative and often competing narratives of ceremonial spatial occupation that are also geographically and culturally close. Considering London entries in a post-1603-Union scenario will allow for comparisons between parallel ceremonies staged for James VI of Scotland/ I of England — and later for Charles I — in their northern and southern capitals. The Union of the Crowns in 1603, which meant the Scottish 30 Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984), p. 48. 31 Stijn Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, The Triumphal Entry of Prince Philip of Spain into Antwerp (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012).
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court’s departure for London and the necessity for the northern country to address a novel, collaboratively competitive relationship with England, was not the only event of momentous political and cultural significance to take place in the period examined, and which the language of Scottish triumphal entries needed to acknowledge and gave experiential form to. The dynastic challenges of the early sixteenth century meant political uncertainty, royal absences, and long regencies: triumphal celebrations offered opportunities to address respectfully the issues of dynastic continuity, monarchical trustworthiness, and foreign influences. The return from France of Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in 1561 as a ruling queen challenged traditional perceptions of masculine kingship, and posed the question of finding an appropriate celebrative language for not only a female monarch, but a religiously controversial one. With the Scottish Reformation gaining support and visibility from the 1560s, religious differences between the Crown and the civic community became ground for unprecedented friction, which triumphal language needed to address and possibly contain. Finally, triumphal entries needed to visualize a new role for Scotland in an increasingly complex modern world, moving beyond the known boundaries of feudal and civic culture into the era of national states, of pan-European politics and extra-European conquests, and of participation in a bottom-heavy Union with the added issue of monarchical absence. Throughout this book, the themes of acknowledging, visually representing, and resolving the challenges and opportunities represented by these momentous events will be located and explored in the context of Edinburgh’s civic spaces. The intentional spatial repetitiveness in the organization of Scottish entries solidly anchored civic rituals faced with unsettling changes to a well-known and appreciated past. At the same time, its rigidly traditional setting became in the long run a problematic obstacle to the expression of necessary and inevitable innovation. Luckily for researchers and historians, numerous triumphal entries were organized in Scotland during this complex period, offering ample opportunities for analysing how these ceremonies expressed and responded to challenging circumstances. The great majority of them were staged in Edinburgh as the acknowledged capital of the Stewarts’ reign [see Figure 3], but in this instance relevant triumphal entries organized in the burghs of Aberdeen and St Andrews will also be discussed for comparison. The urban footprint of other peripatetic communal events taking place in Edinburgh, such as the Riding of the Parliament and the procession of St Giles will also be discussed. A full list of Scottish triumphal entries appearing in this book, to provide the unfamiliar reader with an initial overview, includes the welcomes to Margaret Tudor as King James IV’s queen in Edinburgh (1503) and in Aberdeen (1511); the entry for James V’s first wife Madeleine of Valois into Edinburgh (1537, described as planned in poetic form, but unrealized); the entry for Mary of Guise in St Andrews (1538) and in Edinburgh (1538) as James V’s second wife; the celebrations in absentia in Edinburgh for Mary Queen of Scots’ wedding to the French Dauphin in Paris (1558); the triumphal entry for Mary’s return to Scotland (1561); the one marking the beginning of King James VI’s adult rule (1579); that organized for the arrival
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Figure 3. A simplified genealogy of the House of Stewart during the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, including the main dynastical alliances.
of Anna of Denmark as James VI’s queen (1590); and the triumphal entries for James VI/I and for Charles I (1617 and 1633 respectively). Consideration of later comparable welcomes staged in Edinburgh in the nineteenth century — of King George IV in 1822 and of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1842 — will also be made in the later sections of the text. Courtly ceremonies and festivals organized by the Stewarts themselves in their own residences — such as baptisms or tournaments — will be mentioned when relevant. This will contextualize Edinburgh civic events in the light of competing and complementary royal narratives, to help unravel within a Scottish context what Jacoba Van Leeuwen in her study of symbolic communications has defined as ‘the entanglement of civic and princely symbolic actions’.32 32 Jacoba Van Leeuwen, ‘Introduction’, in Jacoba van Leeuwen (ed.), Symbolic Communication in Late Medieval Towns (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), pp. vii-xx (p. xvi). Also J. R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance (New York: Routledge, 2017, first published 2002).
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While the list of early modern civic triumphs in Scotland appears well populated, the written material available for analysis is not as abundant or detailed as in many non-Scottish case studies, and visual representations are remarkable for their absence. Specific information on relevant source material will be presented in the text itself, but an overall view of the typology and quality of the sources can be offered here. The entry in Edinburgh organized for Charles I in 1633 was the only one in Scotland described in a triumphal pamphlet, titled The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles … Into his auncient and royall City of Edinburgh, and printed in Edinburgh in 1633. These normally brief publications, relatively common elsewhere in Europe, were meant to record in an orderly fashion the sequence of events, the decorative apparatus, and some of the speeches, public ceremonies, and popular entertainments sponsored by or involving the court. As politicized documents, such accounts had elements of wishful thinking, targeted the expected audience’s expectations, and did not necessarily describe actual circumstances. While engaging with the multiform creative production of triumphal entries gave direct form to political identity, the entries’ commemorative formats such as pamphlets, illustrations, and works of art gave later observers the chance of new interpretative readings.33 Information regarding pre-1633 Scottish entries can be gathered from sources lacking such a structured approach — from private, partial accounts of not necessarily well-informed eyewitnesses, for example the so-called letter of John Crowe — a Scottish Postmaster — to Mr Alden, describing the writer’s impressions of James VI/I’s entry in 1617.34 Or they may be gathered from the politically tinted descriptions of foreign official chroniclers, for example the account of the English envoy John Younge describing for King Henry VII’s benefit Margaret Tudor’s journey north and reception at James IV’s court in 1503, not merely recording but bringing back to life spectacles as political events for the reader’s edifying entertainment.35 Alternatively they appeared in the
33 Triumphal booklets in Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘The Early Modern Festival Book: Function and Form’, in Mulryne, Watanabe-O’Kelly and Shewring (eds), Europa Triumphans, vol. 1, pp. 3–18; Benoît Bolduc, La Fête imprimée. Spectacles et cérémonies politiques (1549–1662) (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016). Margaret M. McGowan, ‘The French Royal Entry in the Renaissance: The Status of the Printed Text’, in Hélène Visentin and Nicolas Russell (eds), French Ceremonial Entries in the Sixteenth Century: Event, Image, Text (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 29–54. Artistic renditions of Charles V’s entry into Augsburg in Pia F. Cuneo, Art and Politics in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 139–77. See the booklet describing Charles I’s entertainment in William Drummond, ‘The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles King of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland, into his Auncient and Royall City of Edinbvrgh, the Fifteenth of Iune, 1633. Edinburgh: Iohn Wreittoun, 1633’, in Thomas Maitland (ed.), The Poems of William Drummond of Hawthornden (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1832), pp. 255–80. 34 W. J. Hardy (ed.), The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part IV (London: HMSO Byre and Spottiswood, 1894), pp. 19–23. Crowe’s account is discussed in William A. McNeill and Peter G. B. McNeill, ‘The Scottish Progress of James VI, 1617’, Scottish Historical Review, 75 (199) (April, 1996), 38–51 (50–51). 35 John Younge, ‘The Fyancells of Margaret, Eldeſt Daughter of King Henry VIIth to James King of Scotland’, in Joannis Lelandi (ed.), De Rebvs Britannicis Collectanea Editio Altera Vol. IV (London: Gvl. Et Jo. Richardson, 1770), pp. 258–300; Sarah Carpenter, ‘“To thexaltacyon of Noblesse”:
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biased narratives of supporters or more often opponents of the Crown, such as Protestant minister John Knox’s comments on Mary Queen of Scots’ welcome into Edinburgh in 1561.36 Besides the writers’ own agenda, faithfulness to dry evidence might not have been the main purpose when narrative texts dealt with theatricality, performance, and make-believe.37 More dispassionate information can be gathered from the records of financial and personal obligations in relation to a public event, which called for a degree of precision and accountability, being for internal use rather than for divulgation. Examples of this would be the records of the burgh of Edinburgh detailing the expenses sustained and allocating responsibility for various tasks; but also the collections of minutes of the burgh’s conciliar meetings in preparing for and to assessing the outcomes of an event; and the accounts of the Privy Council recording the Crown’s own inputs and contributions to the celebrations.38 The information relative to expenses and purchases, although candid and unfiltered, is also often fragmented and tantalizingly succinct, and one cannot learn how or where the carefully listed visual prompts, skilled craftsmen, or building materials were employed. Compared with many non-Scottish entries where the evaluation of complementary sources detailing the same event could help assess what might have reasonably taken place, reasonable assumptions are inevitably to be made in most critical investigations dealing with Scottish triumphal entries, the scantiness of the available sources demanding an interpretative effort by the scholarly writer. On the plus side, the purpose and the significance of the analysis proposed does not depend on bringing forward unpublished sources, or on proposing radically different interpretations of known ones to question the acknowledged, reasoned reconstruction of these events. Thanks to the efforts of associations and text publication societies — such as from the late nineteenth century onwards, of the Maitland Club, the Wodrow Society, and the Scottish Burgh Records Society, and of state bodies such as the General Register House — most of the material on which I base this spatially oriented investigation upon is both published and relatively well-known. Existing scholarship on Scottish triumphal entries interpreted these sources to offer reconstructions and critical — if at
A Herald’s Account of the Marriage of Margaret Tudor to James IV’, Medieval English Theatre, 29 (2007), 105–20 (111–17). 36 John Knox, The History of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. by David Laing, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1846–1848), vol. 2, pp. 287–89. 37 John J. McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 24–39. 38 For example, Robert Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records: The Burgh Accounts. Volume One. I. Bailies’ Accounts, 1544–1566; II. Town Treasurers’ Accounts, 1552–1567 (Edinburgh: Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council, 1899), pp. 269–72, details the expenses for the 1558 celebrations, while Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, ed. by James David Marwick (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1871), p. 90, presents the organization for the 1538 entry, and Peter Hume Brown (ed.), The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, Second Series A.D. 1633–1635 volume 5 (Edinburgh: HM General Register House, 1904), pp. 36–37, details the correspondence between the Privy Council and Edinburgh’s authorities discussing Charles I’s arrival.
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times diverging — interpretations, representing both the acknowledged bedrock on which this work is based, and the springboard for further investigation. It is here worth mentioning, as a non-exhaustive list demonstrating depth and variety, Sarah Carpenter’s work on the Parisian and Scottish celebrations for Mary Queen of Scots in 1558;39 Andrea Thomas’s contextualized study of Scottish ceremonial;40 Alasdair MacDonald’s investigations on the religious implications of Mary Queen of Scots’ 1561 entry;41 David Bergeron’s seminal work on Charles I’s visit in 1633;42 Ian Campbell’s architectural analysis considering temporary additions to Edinburgh’s spaces for the 1503 celebration;43 Anna Jean Mill’s work on Scottish medieval plays;44 and Lucinda Dean’s contribution on coronations and foreign consorts.45 Mill’s influential study of archival material related to Scottish spectacles, also charts some of the iconographic and thematic commonalities between different Edinburgh entries — representing an early example of the comparative approach I will apply in this work.46 Three considerations are to be made here regarding the input and role of my own research in relation to space, time, and themes. Firstly, the spatial significance of the burgh of Edinburgh during triumphal entries has received until now limited attention; this book will offer the point of view not only of the architectural historian of the early modern period, but of the trained architect well-versed in space theory. This approach has been trialled in previous publications, particularly those discussing the evolution in the usage and
39 Sarah Carpenter, ‘“Gely wyth tharmys of Scotland England”: Word, Image and Performance at the Marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor’, in Janet Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (eds), Fresche Fontanis: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), pp. 165–78, and Sarah Carpenter and Graham Runnalls, ‘The Entertainment at the Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the French Dauphin François, 1558: Paris and Edinburgh’, Medieval English Theatre, 22 (2000), 145–61. 40 Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005), pp. 182–217. 41 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘The Triumph of Protestantism: The Burgh Council of Edinburgh and the Entry of Mary Queen of Scots, 2 September 1561’, The Innes Review, 48 (1) (Spring 1997), 73–82, and Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry to Edinburgh: An Ambiguous Triumph’, The Innes Review, 42 (2) (Autumn 1991), 101–10. 42 David Moore Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant (1633)’, Renaissance Studies, 6 (2) ( June 1992), 173–84. 43 Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, in Deborah Mays (ed.), The Architecture of Scottish Cities: Essays in Honour of David Walker (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997), pp. 26–33. 44 Anna Jean Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969, first published Edinburgh, 1924). 45 Lucinda H. S. Dean, ‘Enter the Alien: Foreign Consorts and their Royal Entries into Scottish Cities, c. 1449–1590’, in Mulryne, Aliverti and Testaverde (eds), Ceremonial Entries, pp. 267–96; Lucinda H. S. Dean, ‘In the Absence of an Adult Monarch: Ceremonial Representation of Authority by Marie de Guise, 1543–1558’, in Kate Buchanan and Lucinda H. S. Dean (eds), with Michael Penman, Medieval and Early Modern Representations of Authority in Scotland and the British Isles (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 143–62; and Lucinda H. S. Dean, ‘Making the Best of What They Had, Adaptations of Indoor and Outdoor Space for Royal Ceremony in Scotland c. 1214–1603’, in Mulryne, De Jonge, Martens and Morris (eds), Architectures of Festival, pp. 99–118. 46 Unnumbered table: Mill, Mediaeval Plays, between pp. 80–81.
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role of the Edinburgh civic gates of the West Port and the Netherbow — both day-to-day and in relation to special ceremonies.47 Methodologically, the present investigation expands upon these earlier studies of isolated objects — to consider them as part of a sequence and of a complex spatial narrative developing through the burgh. As argued — amongst others — by Dillon, civic performances are by definition performances in motion, where the movement of performing bodies through space makes the event and influences the perceptions of actors and spectators, their roles now blurred.48 The structure of this book recreates the rulers’ progression through the burgh, with each chapter analysing triumphal stations/civic spaces as they were met by the early modern procession [see Plate II]. Chapter II discusses the outdoor space as experienced during staged prequels to the civic experience, and it also introduces and contextualizes the burgh’s structure and layout for those readers unfamiliar with Edinburgh’s topography. Chapter III follows the procession crossing the urban threshold of the West Port; Chapter IV moves with the ruler to the Overbow; Chapter V proceeds to discuss the ceremonial location of the Butter Tron, a commercial building; Chapter VI sees the ruler advance to the urban conglomerate formed by the Tolbooth, the Kirk of St Giles, and the Market Cross; Chapter VII follows the procession to the Salt Tron; and Chapter VIII bids farewell to the procession exiting the burgh at the Netherbow, which draws the book to a close. Chapter VI discusses three — rather than one — civic landmarks, grouped together for geographical proximity and overlapping in significance, which I have referred to as ‘core buildings’. The initial section of each chapter will include also some background information on the relevant building or landmark. Each chapter will also contain a section named ‘The Triumphal Route’, which will elaborate the theme of the chapter specifically in connection with the peripatetic character of the experience, and specifically as one element of a composite and sequential narrative. Some chapters will contain sections named ‘Burgh’s Rights’ and ‘Triumphal Entries’, the former discussing themes specific to that landmark as expression of the burgh’s defining political privileges, the latter providing a broader setting for appearance of comparable theme and landmarks in celebrations across Europe. When the significance and use of two or more locations were homologous — civic gateways in Chapter III, Chapter IV, and Chapter VIII, or commercial buildings in Chapter V and Chapter VII — the ‘Burgh’s Rights’ section and the ‘Triumphal Entries’ section will appear in the first instance only. As representative of known building typologies and spatial significances that do not need reiteration, Chapter IV, Chapter VII, and Chapter VIII become opportunities to discuss more comprehensively themes central to
47 Giovanna Guidicini, ‘Imagining and Staging an Urban Border: The Role of the Netherbow Gate in Early Modern Edinburgh’, in Carolyn Loeb and Andreas Luescher (eds), The Design of Frontier Space, Control and Ambiguity (Routledge: London, 2015), pp. 65–86; and Giovanna Guidicini, ‘Municipal Perspective, Royal Expectations, and the Use of Public Space: The Case of the West Port, Edinburgh 1503–1633’, Architectural Heritage, 22 (1) (2011), 37–52. 48 Dillon, Language of Space, pp. 28–29.
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the whole Scottish triumphal tradition, and relevant to the entire civic experience. In fact, as the book progresses, the relationship between location and theme becomes intentionally looser, to allow for a summative overview. To conclude these preliminary remarks, I boldly declare the lack of a chapter-by-chapter, abstract-like outline of the book’s content to be entirely intentional; this parallels the progressive unveiling of the civic message to the approaching monarch — here, to the reader — through the act of unpremeditated engagement with the interlinked ceremonial stations — here represented by the book chapters. Secondly, with consideration to time, a sequential approach considering the entries as a collection of interrelated events adds a sense of chronological development to existing scholarship’s detailed but somewhat circumscribed approach. Scottish triumphal entries have generally been studied in detail but individually or at most grouped together thematically, considering for example queenly entrances, or grouping together those with a clear courtly parallel. Pioneering attempts at overall investigations have been frustrated by the limited space offered by the format of an article, a book chapter or — in Mill’s case — a table. However if as Nicholas Howe suggests, ‘ceremonies are not isolated in their own performance, but instead concentrate past and future into a moment of enactment’,49 then considering triumphal entries from 1503 to 1633 as a sequence set within the same civic space would give the opportunity to identify and weave together recurring themes, discussing their development or lack thereof. In particular, the study of Scottish triumphal entries taking place before and after the crucial date of 1603 offers context and background to the more celebrated body of entertainments and performances of the post-Union Stuart period, which are often seen as an England-centred phenomena mostly indebted to the culture of the previous Elizabethan court. The more extensive chronological approach I propose has revealed that the skilfully realized, wellknown, and much appreciated celebration of 1633 in Edinburgh for Charles I did not happen in a cultural vacuum, or purely as a result of the exposure to the flourishing visual language of the London-based court. Rather, considering the 1633 entry in the context of its earlier counterparts reveals it to be profoundly indebted to the diverse, sensitive, ichnographically refined, and politically astute sixteenth-century Scottish experimentations in triumphal celebrations. In demonstrating the sophistication and cultural refinement of Scottish triumphal language, this book will hopefully contribute to accelerate the decline of the previously widespread perception of Scottish culture as trapped in its own backward ways, at best superficially imitative, only coming into its own after the Union as a consequence of English influences.50 For over a century, a succession of resolute Stewart monarchs had constantly renegotiated the
49 Nicholas Howe, ‘Introduction’, in Nicholas Howe (ed.), Ceremonial Culture in Pre-Modern Europe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2007), pp. 1–12 (p. 2). 50 Scottish Renaissance in Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, ‘Ficino in Aberdeen: The Continuing Problem of the Scottish Renaissance’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 1. [accessed 6 February 2018], [1–12].
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extent of their royal authority with equally determined civic authorities, under the eyes of their international peers. The former progressively increased their expectations of entries as occasions for glorification rather than admonition, and of Crown-promoted spatial, social, and political control; the latter consciously preferred a traditional ceremonial language set within an undisturbed urban space to portray — and so try to maintain — a balanced political status quo. Edinburgh was the battlefield in which this political battle was fought, for control of ritual through control of the civic space. Bryant argued that when faced with the necessity to adapt to changing circumstances, sixteenth-century French triumphal ceremonies were either constructed ‘to continue traditional practices from the past in shaping a new era or to transform the past in creating and renewing alternative practice’.51 For all its refinement in decorative language and spatial organization, the failure of the 1633 entry to present a convincing if just symbolic resolution of the burgh–ruler duality will be discussed as indicative of the progressive inability of Scottish triumphal language to pursue either of the strategies proposed by Bryant. This will be considered as being part of a decline in the applicability of triumphal languages as spatial vehicles of effective political communication in seventeenth-century Europe. The intentional — and previously, highly stabilizing — inelasticity of Edinburgh’s spatial organization combined with the comforting straightjacket of its associated political message, meant that the 1633 entry struggled to communicate with a monarch increasingly unwilling to perform — and mismatched to — the ceremonial role set for him. This points at two further and broader considerations. On the one hand, the political relevance of town and cities will steadily decrease in a post-Westphalian scenario, to the advantage of new ideas of absolutist rule within national state.52 The perception of Edinburgh’s civic identity as portrayed by and in its walled, densely inhabited, spatially immovable burgh became potentially outdated. The construction of the New Town to the north of the old burgh is just over a century away, and the New Town will indeed be the setting for the ‘modern’ nineteenth-century entries where new spaces can suitably convey a new civic identity — a further development to be explored in Chapter VIII. Secondly, King Charles’ disengagement with the 1633 ceremony, his blatant disregard for its spatial conventions and for the traditional language of negotiations, and his insistence on intervening both temporarily and permanently in the urban fabric defining Edinburgh’s identity, came in a moment when in England and Scotland the Crown’s imposition of religious innovations and infringements of rights were highly resented, and its opponents clamoured to restore the status
51 Lawrence M. Bryant, ‘From Communal Ritual to Royal Spectacle: Some Observations on the Staging of Royal Entries (1450–1600)’, in Hélène Visentin and Nicolas Russell (eds), French Ceremonial Entries in the Sixteenth Century: Event, Image, Text (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 207–45 (p. 211). 52 Christopher Harding and Nicola Harding, ‘Representations of Governance in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe: The Iconography and Dramatic Presentation of the Sovereign Ruler’, Law and Humanities, 7 (2), 170–92 (172–73).
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quo.53 While Charles’ attempts to modernize the civic fabric might have been well-meaning — or at least consistent with his own plans for civilizing his rowdy northern capital — the King’s approach was authoritarian and intransigent, both unaware of and uninterested in popular opposition. I argue then that the circumstances surrounding the 1633 entry and the character of the entry itself gave physical, experiential form to the increasing distance between the Crown and the people, and could be seen as symptoms of wider problems pointing to the upcoming 1640s revolution. Finally, considering each triumphal station as part of a composite event and each event as part of a sequence, will also allow for a more rounded thematic approach. The development of relevant themes will be followed not only in the civic space, but connected with comparable courtly festivals, with contemporary civic ceremonies held elsewhere in Europe, and with parallel artistic productions in Scotland — ceiling painting, stonework, architectural makeovers, book frontispieces, and literary works. The language of triumphal entries can and should be contextualized as one aspect of a multifaceted Scottish culture where no one discipline should be seen in isolation, as Michael Bath’s work on the interrelationship between the decorative material produced for civic and courtly ceremonies, the painted production of Scottish early modern artists, and the visual language of emblems as part of a pan-European discourse, has demonstrated.54 The current analysis of the visual aspects of Scottish triumphal entries has also disengaged each topic of investigation from a specific spatial location or event — from the constraints of space and time — allowing instead for a broader comparative discussion of its ramifications within Scottish culture at large, and in response to pan-European political, religious, and dynastic challenges. The parallels drawn between the themes, use of space, and artistic and architectural language employed during Scottish triumphal entries and those of non-Scottish case studies point to a common artistic sensibility and comparable political intent. Far from being the clumsily imitative attempt of a culturally disadvantaged country to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, the development of triumphal entries in Scotland illustrates the country’s original, insightful, discerning contribution to an international culture of festivals and celebrations; its ability to define, display, question, and reassess its own civic and national identity through ritual; and a remarkable awareness of the power of urban space to signify, challenge, and give physical and experiential form to monarchical authority.
53 Tim Harris, Rebellion: Britain’s First Stuart Kings, 1567–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 10. 54 Michael Bath, ‘Literature, Art and Architecture’, in Ian Brown, Thomas Clancy, Susan Manning and Murray Pittock (eds), The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, from Columba to the Union (until 1707) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 245–52; Michael Bath, Emblems in Scotland, Motifs and Meanings (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2018).
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Chapter II
The Outdoors Wilderness and Taming Nature Extramural Nature and Edinburgh’s Surroundings In the early modern period, the landscape edging the royal burgh of Edinburgh was markedly different from the narrow, built-up streets and tall buildings enclosed by the civic walls. The inside space was characterized not only by denser use of space and population, but by how the burgh’s inhabitants saw themselves, the world, and their own role in it. Edinburgh developed on a steep volcanic ridge sloping down from the inaccessible Din Eidyn rock to the west, where the castle now stands, and stretching down the High Street towards the plains to the east, where the Abbey of Holyrood — later Holyrood Palace — would be founded. These waterlogged eastern plains constrained the access to and the development of the abbey/palace and of its ancillary settlement of Canongate. The deep valley of Cowgate to the south side of the High Street also hindered communications, until the loch that partially occupied it was drained in the fifteenth century. A small stream — later dammed to become the Nor’ Loch — bounded the early settlement on the steep north side, on the site of present-day Waverley Gardens. The rocky, disseminated remains of the ancient volcanic mouth surrounded it on all sides, with Craggenemarf — now known as Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat — to the south, and Craigencalt — now Calton Hill — to the north. The ways into and out of Edinburgh and Canongate were few; a road to the north edged Calton Hill heading to Inverleith and Leith, and one to the east led to Restalrig. A road through the suburbs of Portsburgh and passing under the Castle Rock led to the west, and two more edging the extramural monasteries of Blackfriars and Franciscans headed to Dalkeith and the south.1 In times of danger, enemies would approach the burgh from the side of the less steep and relatively unguarded Canongate [see Figures 4 and 5]. The burghs of Edinburgh and Canongate were edged to the east by the gardens and orchards of the Holyrood Abbey and Palace, and by the extensive royal hunting park that had been attached to the abbey since the twelfth century. This wilderness was populated by wild fowl, and hunting was forbidden by Parliament to maintain and increase its number for the court’s leisure; large game was brought here at need from Fife to replenish the local stock. The orchards, flower garden, 1 Patricia E. Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: A Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005), pp. 1–2. Patricia E. Dennison and Michael Lynch, ‘Crown, Capital, and Metropolis: Edinburgh and Canongate: The Rise of a Capital and an Urban Court’, Journal of Urban History, 32 (1) (November 2005), 22–43 (26).
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Figure 4. Edinburgh’s surroundings: the structure of the burgh of Edinburgh in the early modern period, and the main roads approaching it.
Figure 5. The burgh of Edinburgh seen from the north, in a military sketch by Englishman Richard Lee from 1544.
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Figure 6. Detail of the extramural space in the vicinities of Edinburgh, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
kitchen garden, and pleasure grounds were in the cares of proficient gardeners, some of whom were brought over from France to prepare them for the sojourn of the two French queens of King James V (1512–1542) from 1536 onwards. Seeds, plants, and trees supplied from within and outside Scotland offered variety and richness. Scottish kings were fond of their menageries, which included a lion brought to the abbey from Leith in 1506, an ape mentioned in 1535–36, and a lion, tiger, and lynx in the late sixteenth century. The provisions for leisure in the Holyrood gardens included tennis courts, a billiard hall, and grounds for archery and combat. Handymen maintained water drainage and ornamental ponds, erected enclosure walls and ancillary buildings, and set up lists and seating tribunes — testifying to the complexity of use and variety of appearance of these outdoor spaces in the immediate vicinity of the burgh. The maintenance of the ever-changing border between the controlled wilderness of the court’s outdoor spaces and the built-up, regimented burgh required harmonious cooperation between court and town. Rulers would pay compensation for hardship caused by interferences between town and royal rights — for example for crops damaged by hunting groups — and took offenders’ poverty into consideration when judging on infractions of poaching or trespassing. A limited amount of grazing, wood gathering, and other moderate agricultural and pastoral activities were also permitted by the Crown, especially during the reign of King James IV (1473–1513).2 If in the early 1540s James V enlarged the royal park, he also temporarily 2 John M. Gilbert, Hunting and Hunting Reserves in Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1979), pp. 259–65; royal perception on pp. 39–48.
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granted the town council the right to erect the enclosing wall by using stones from Salisbury Crags.3 Less prosaically, the local legend of the miraculous apparition of the cross to King David I (1084–1153) in 1127 in the depth of the forest surrounding Arthur’s Seat — saving the King from a charging hart and leading to the foundation of the Abbey of Holyrood — suggests traditional beliefs in the mysterious and supernatural potential of an arboreal landscape just outside the safety of the civic precinct.4 From within the city, nature never felt far away, with the rugged cliffs of Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags, and Calton Hill revealing themselves as within reach from many intentional and accidental viewpoints [see Figure 6].5 Triumphal Entries: Nature and the Outdoors Nature was a source of both worry and fascination during the Middle Ages, as the presence of wilderness at the edges of urban communities both challenged and emphasized the order of the civic space. In literature, nature was populated by romantic characters and magical creatures such as outlaws, hermits, enchanted beasts, sorceresses, and fairies, offering wanderers the chance of mysterious encounters and dangerous adventures. The civic boundary represented the border of a quasi-consecrated urban space, separate from the chaos and the unknown of the surrounding ‘profane’ wilderness.6 The urban space possessed its own semi-mystical powers, promoting change in those who interacted with it beyond the obvious advantages of protection against attackers, access to religious and educational institutions, and opportunities for safe trade. The mere daily interaction with civic activities, with the city’s very air, was enough to elevate someone’s imperfect status; in Reggio Emilia (Italy) a serf who had lived in town for more than ten years became free.7 Many northern European mercantile cities saw themselves as the originators of ideological changes, new attitudes, and modernizations, their own market spaces endowed with a fertile and generative power that created a new identity for those involved with them.8 In an increasingly urbanized Europe leaving behind the norms of feudal society, cities took the place of courts as promoters of order and civility (from
3 Fiona Jamieson, ‘The Gardens of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, 1500–1603’, Garden History, 22 (1) (Summer 1994), 18–36 (29–31). 4 Charles Mackie, The History of the Abbey, Palace, and Chapel-Royal of Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh: Hay, Gall, and Co, 1821), pp. 9–10. 5 Charles McKean, Edinburgh, Portrait of a City (London: Century, 1991), pp. 5–6. 6 Douglas Gray, Later Medieval English Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 22–23. Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer, ‘Defining the Holy: The Delineation of Sacred Space’, in Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (eds), Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 1–26 (p. 3). 7 Vito Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear: Perceptions of Nature and the City in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 92. 8 Peter Arnade, Martha Howell and Walter Simons, ‘Fertile Spaces: The Productivity of Urban Space in Northern Europe’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (4) (Spring 2002), 515–48 (516).
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Latin civilitas, ‘relating to citizens’, as being a citizen came with expectations of orderly behaviour). Being expected to attend public events to participate in group activities related to their civic, educational, economic, and religious duties, newcomers would absorb the new norms of acceptable conduct and be corrected by their peers for any transgression.9 European civic legislations banned the unguarded and indecorous public behaviour often identified with country manners — ideologically if not practically distancing themselves from a rural hinterland, upon which nevertheless they still depended for their subsistence. This is exemplified by the engravings of peasants (Peasants Couple Dancing, 1514; The Peasant and his Wife at the Market, 1519) by German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) as rude, laughable figures, their moral debasement visible in their unkempt, clumsy, even deformed appearance.10 The access of natural and country elements into the built space was regulated: packed ground surfaces were covered in gravel and stone, animals and manure were removed from within the walls for reasons of hygiene and decorum, and rustic vegetation such as fruit trees was banned as pertaining to the countryside.11 As eminently civic ceremonies, triumphal entries were based in and dependent on the urban space. However, natural themes and extramural spaces were often incorporated into the ceremonies as rowdy but bewitching alternatives to civic order, to emphasize by contrast the significance of the hosting city, and to take advantage of the relative freedom of expression of less structured outdoor locations. During King Ferdinand of Aragon’s entry into Valladolid in 1509, peasants gathered outside the city walls entertained the monarch with a lively sword dance, impromptu country songs, and tambourine music — strictly extramural popular entertainments, as inside the walls the King was shown more restrained, formal, professionally organized triumphal entertainments.12 Being neither courtly spaces reminiscent of feudal systems, nor subject to binding civic regulations, politically neutral outdoor spaces were ideal locations to host preliminary negotiations between the monarch and the civic authorities. From the latter’s point of view, welcoming the monarch outside of the symbolic protection of the civic perimeter could be read as a declaration of confidence — for example in 1461 a variety of allegorical figures personifying Paris’s status welcomed approaching Louis XI, using courtly inspired language to argue boldly the city’s case as a fellow Lord would have done.13 On the other hand, meeting a royal visitor outside of the civic gate relinquishing the symbolic protection of the city, and subsequently turning around to join and enrich the royal party as docile secondary characters, could be an act of spatial submission by municipal and religious authorities. For example
9 Hanawalt, Ceremony and Civility, pp. 134–55. 10 Walter L. Strauss, The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer (New York: Dover, 1973) pp. 159–60, 190–91. 11 Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear, pp. 92–93. 12 Tess Knighton and Carmen Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry into Valladolid in 1513: The Triumph of a Christian King’, Early Music History, 18 (1999), 119–63 (154). 13 Bryant, King and the City, p. 127.
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in 1440 in Bruges, the visiting Duke Philip the Good requested a public ceremony of repentance to be staged outside the previously rebellious and now downcast city, involving over 1400 citizens in mourning clothes begging for forgiveness; the pardoned, joyful crowd then turned around to accompany the Duke’s party. Purpose-built, decorated temporary structures could be erected to provide suitable background, shelter, and seating to enhance these ceremonies’ symbolic message. The luxurious ‘triumphant theatre’ erected for enthroned Duke Charles the Bold on the outskirts of Mechelen in 1467 was a stage for civic authorities to discuss the renewal of the feudal contract between themselves and the ruler. Only after Charles had ceremonially granted anew Mechelen’s charter of rights and privileges, would he be hailed as rightful Lord and led to — and through — the city gate.14 Although not civic spaces themselves, extramural spaces worked with — and added value to — the civic narrative constructed during triumphal entries. Their unruly and potentially threatening character matched the conditions of political uncertainty, doubt, even fear accompanying the approach of a new, potentially hostile ruler. After accessing the urban space, the rulers were to be pacified and educated by the entertainments staged for them, in the same way as natural elements admitted within the civic space appeared transformed into agreeable components. The conceptual separation between urban and extramural spaces is of particular importance when dealing with Scottish burghs, whose identity was embedded into being ‘other’ than the natural world. Burgh’s Rights: The Otherness of Outside Space Edinburgh was one of the many royal burghs established between 1124 and 1153 by King David I in an attempt to revitalize the Scottish economy, optimizing the use of land and transforming a sparsely populated nation into a productive, urbanized, modern landscape modelled on continental examples.15 Scotland had not benefited from the urban development promoted by the Roman Empire’s network of forts and roads. By encouraging Norman, Flemish, and English immigrants to settle in Scotland, King David was entrusting a group of highly skilled foreign professionals with the creation of a network of productive, forward-thinking communities loyal and sympathetic to the Crown: the immigrants brought with them a standardized plan for fortified settlements based on Charlemagne’s model of street-villages.16 King James VI (1566–1625) in his Basilikon Doron, published 14 Overview in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 48–51, 177–81. 15 Burgh’s foundation and administration in Ian H. Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (London: Croom Helm, 1978). See also Patricia E. Dennison, The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns: Creation, Growth and Fragmentation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 7–46; Craig Mair, Mercat Cross and Tolbooth, Understanding Scotland’s Old Burghs (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1988); the Crown–burgh relationship in Michael Lynch, ‘The Crown and the Burghs, 1500–1625’, in Michael Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 55–80. 16 Ian D. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution: An Economic and Social History c. 1050–c. 1750 (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 1995), pp. 54–60. J. M. Houston, ‘The Scottish Burgh’, Town Planning Review, 25 (2) ( July 1954), 114–27 (114–15).
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in 1599, reiterated the association between urbanization, social development, and royal control. James related his own understanding of his reign and his subjects’ minds not only to travelling and direct observation, but to the establishment of colonies and urban settlements of trustworthy subjects in troublesome areas such as the Highlands, to model, establish, and if necessary enforce an appropriately civil behaviour.17 As the new burghs’ only feudal superior, the Crown would grant a list of rights and privileges, stated in front of witnesses and recorded on a charter or act, in exchange for loyalty, a supply of volunteers for military actions, and taxes from the burgesses.18 They often included the right to build a circle of walls, to self-administration through the election of a town council, to host fairs and markets, and to hold monopoly on the trading of some goods.19 The latter point was key to a burgh’s prosperity. By acquiring locally raw natural products such as wool, rough cloth, and hides, re-working them, and exporting them abroad, the burghs represented the joining element in the landscape between local and cosmopolitan level, bringing good quality goods to wealthy, discerning, even royal customers. Thanks to mercantile basis in main European ports and capitals — such as Veere, Rouen, Bordeaux, Danzig, London, and Paris — Edinburgh and other large burghs brought back material fineries such as French wine and English cloth, but also ideas and technological innovations, such as Flemish cloth-making techniques.20 These remarkable privileges and opportunities were unique to the burgh’s recognizable spatial footprint — in Edinburgh defined by the perimeter of the urban walls making the space visually and conceptually different from its surroundings. Only those granted rights onto burgh ground and who had built on it within a year could claim full burgess-ship, and while it was not unheard of for burgesses to live outside of the city perimeter, in time residency came to be regarded as essential. As late as 1746 it was still a mandatory — although not as strictly enforced — requisite, ensuring the burgh protractedly retained its compact appearance.21 Urban regulations encouraged a uniform and dignified
17 Charles W. J. Withers, Geography, Science and National Identity: Scotland Since 1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 51–52. 18 Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘The Evolution of the Medieval and Renaissance City’, in Brian Edwards and Paul Jenkins (eds), Edinburgh, the Making of a Capital City (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 19–40 (pp. 21–23). 19 Theodora Keith, ‘Trading Privileges of the Royal Burghs of Scotland’, English Historical Review, 28 (111) ( July 1913), 454–71; William Mackay Mackenzie, The Scottish Burghs (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1949), pp. 62–78. 20 Michael Lynch, ‘Continuity and Change in Urban Society 1500–1700’, in Robert Allen Houston and Ian D. Whyte (eds), Scottish Society 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, first published 1989), pp. 85–117 (pp. 95–96). Whyte, Industrial Revolution, pp. 72–78. Burghs’ surroundings in Keith, ‘Trading Privileges’, 456–57. Edinburgh’s customers in Amy L. Juhala, ‘An Advantageous Alliance: Edinburgh and the Court of James VI’, in Julian Goodare and Alasdair A. MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 337–63 (pp. 340–42). 21 Burgess-ship in James D. Marwick, Edinburgh Guilds and Crafts: A Sketch of the History of Burgessship, Guild Brotherhood, and Membership of Crafts in the City (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1909), pp. 3–39, particularly 6–10; David Robertson and Marguerite Wood, Castle and
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Figure 7. Detail of the gardens designs in Canongate, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
look both in the urban spaces and in its inhabitants, as an ordered cityscape both reflected and encouraged an ordered behaviour in society.22 During James IV’s reign, the authorities encouraged the construction of frontage extensions onto the High Street, promoting the adoption of a more uniform, functional, Dutchstyle commercial look.23 Tamed nature was allowed into the civic precinct to counterpoint — but not to threaten — architectural regularity; the manicured gardens and tidy back yards still visible in the Rothiemay map from c. 1647 on Town: Chapters in the History of the Royal Burgh of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1928), pp. 52–87. Civic rights in Aaron M. Allen, ‘Conquering the Suburbs: Politics and Work in Early Modern Edinburgh’, Journal of Urban History, 37 (3) (April 2011), 423–43 (427–29). Spatial considerations in Dorothy Bell, Edinburgh Old Town: The Forgotten Nature of an Urban Form (Edinburgh: Tholis Pub., 2008), pp. 5–9. 22 Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Scotland, Scottish Architecture from the Reformation to the Restoration, 1560–1660 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), p. 108. 23 McKean, Edinburgh, p. 15. Timber extensions in James Grant (ed.), Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, Its History, its People, and its Places, 6 vols (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1881–1883) vol. 2, p. 204. On the Dutch parallel, see Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, pp. 145–47.
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the Canongate side reflected Edinburgh’s own organization in earlier, less dense circumstances [see Figure 7]. In a similar fashion, burghs proposed to civilize their citizens’ way of life by moderating coarser aspects of their behaviour, for example by imposing a suitable dress code. For James VI/I’s unrealized visit in 1608, the King requested that female burgesses wore modern, proper (in fact, ‘decent’) clothes and headwear, particularly abandoning popular cloaks and plaids as this habit ‘is altogidder skuffed at by all strangeris’.24 Women were also expected not to partake of alcohol, and not to gain a reputation for impropriety and licentiousness, such inurbane behaviour being unacceptable in the urban space. The alterations in custom were proposed in the burghs first, but the legislator remarked that ‘thair being no doutt at all being onis begun in the city without ony expres directioun it wald sone anewche be followit in the cuntrey’,25 confiding in the civilizing power of urban space to spread outside of its borders. Edinburgh’s geography, and the social and legal history of its foundation, strongly defined it as ‘other’ than the surrounding countryside and natural landscape, hence the consideration of outward ‘spillages’ of its urban triumphal narrative could be of particular interest. The most significant prequel to a civic entry was the chivalric entertainment organized for Margaret Tudor (1489–1541) in 1503 on her arrival to marry King James IV, to be discussed below.26 Less elaborate examples of extramural prequels varied in nature and form. Having left Holyrood Palace on the morning of 2 September 1561, Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587), Raid be the lang gait on the north ſyid of the ſaid burgh, vnto the tyme ſcho come to the caſtell, quheir wes ane ᵹet maid to hir, at the quhilk ſcho, accumpanijt with the maiſt pairt of the nobilitie of Scotland except my lord duke and his ſone, come in and raid vp the caſtell bank to the caſtell, and dynit thairin.27 While it is possible that this gate — a man-made structure in the extramural landscape — might have been built by Edinburgh’s authorities, the lack of civic records and the choice of a location tucked away in the back of the Castle Rock — separated from the civic space and apparently unmanned — suggests otherwise. It seems more probable that Mary’s courtiers and nobles escorting the Queen through such gate could have devised this station as their own act of homage, to introduce a welcoming courtly narrative counterbalancing Mary’s confrontational upcoming civic entry. Deceptively harmless when considered in isolation, the construction of this arch could be part of an issue central to this book — the drawing, identifying, respecting, or overstepping 24 James D. Marwick (ed.), Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 1597–1614 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1870), p. 253, see Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, p. 13. 25 Marwick (ed.), Records, p. 253. 26 See pp. 64–68. 27 Thomas Thomson (ed.), A Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents That Have Passed Within the Country of Scotland Since the Death of King James the Fourth till the Year M.D.LXXV. (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1833), p. 67. The lang gait is modern-day Princes Street.
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of spatial boundaries as public political acts [see Plate III]. King James VI’s welcome in 1579 also included an extramural section: on 30 September 1579, while on his way from Stirling to Holyrood Palace where he would reside until the entry on 17 October, ‘the burgesses of Edinburgh stood in the Long Gate, in their armour, where the king lighted, and saw the cannons of the Castell shott’.28 This limited record suggests a balanced affair: the burgesses stepped out of the protection of their walls, but in a dazzling display of traditional — if not actual — military strength, competing with that of the retinue of nobles accompanying the King, counting about 2300 horses.29 The volleys shot from the castle were also a powerful sensory marker of the official significance of this extramural meeting, but James VI’s alighting from his mount at this point made him visually reach out to the civic committee by lowering himself to their own level. The extramural prequel to James VI’s actual entry on 17 October had an entirely different character, for reasons to be explored in Chapter VI, below. ‘At ſome diſtance from the Weſt Port’, James again alighted again from his horse, but then ‘a ſtately Canopy of Purple colour’d Velvet being held over his Head, he receiv’d the Magiſtrares of the City, who came bare headed all the way without the Gate’.30 The dress code of the civic envoys has dramatically changed from full armour to bareheaded humility: the meeting took place not in a neutral area, but under a canopy of precious coloured velvet held high over the King, creating a portable pocket of courtly space competing with the urban space that James VI was about to enter. In a comparable demonstration of meek eagerness, in 1511 in Aberdeen Margaret Tudor had been welcomed at some distance from the gate by a group of richly dressed burgesses. As described in the poem by scholar Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount (c. 1490–1555), four of them had held a canopy over her head, and accompanied the Queen and her party to meet the magistrates at the gate, through the deafening sound of artillery.31 The entry for James VI’s queen Anna of Denmark (1574–1619) also engaged with extramural spaces. On 6 May 1590, while on the way to Holyroodhouse from the port of Leith, the royal couple and the accompanying Scottish and Danish nobles passed streets lined with large numbers of citizens of Edinburgh, and possibly its neighbourhoods and other towns, in armour and with banners flying.32 This eclectic gathering of a large number of citizens in arms at some distance from the walled perimeter represented a display of self-confidence, 28 David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. by Thomas Thomson, 7 vols (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842–1845), vol. 3, pp. 457–58. 29 Ibid., p. 457. 30 David Crawfurd, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, Containing a Full and Impartial Account of the Revolution in that Kingdom begun in 1567 (London: Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1706), p. 356. 31 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in David Laing (ed.), The Poems of William Dunbar, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Laing and Forbes, 1834), vol. 1, p. 153. 32 Compare Peter Graves (trans.), ‘The Danish Account of the Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark’, in David Stevenson, Scotland’s Last Royal Wedding: The Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1997), pp. 79–122 (p. 101) and ‘The Receiving of King James VI and his Queen at Leith, May 1, 1590’, in Papers Relative to the Marriage of King
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strength, and military readiness in a potentially threatening non-civic space, as visual response to an as-yet-unknown approaching new royal ally and a large party of foreigners. From here, the royal party headed for Holyrood Palace through an extramural roundabout route along the Nor’ Loch, around the castle and reaching the West Port. Outside this gate, the royal party met with a welldressed delegation of Edinburgh councillors and citizens, and was welcomed with a speech by a doctor of laws representing the common estates of Scotland, before proceeding towards the palace.33 On entering into the burgh on 19 May 1590, Anna of Denmark and her entourage proceeded from Holyroodhouse to the official start of the ceremony at the city gate of West Port. During this prequel to her reception at the port, the Queen rode on ‘the ſouth ſide of the yardes of the Canogit, along the parke wall’,34 so on today’s Cowgate. This external space was bounded by the vast royal park on the south side, with Arthur’s Seat in full view, and by the enclosed back gardens of the properties to the right facing the Canongate. This location was made relevant to the entry by a display of coats of arms, banners, and standards on the outer wall by which the procession passed. The character of this prequel depended on whose banners were displayed; the chronicle tantalizingly describes how ‘being in ſight of the caſtle, they gave her thence a great volle of ſhotte, with their banners and auncients [standards and coats of arms] diſplayed uppon the walles’.35 The owners of the banners appear to be the same individuals in charge of the volley of shots fired — one assumes — from the castle itself, so probably members of the courtly entourage. If the banners displayed the nobility’s coats of arms rather than being (for example) guild banners, then again an external space — the civic wall backing Cowgate, with its background of the verdant spaces of Arthur’s Seat and the royal hunting park — had been borrowed to project a competing courtly narrative. Also in 1633, Charles I (1600–1649) made use of the Lang Gait area to gather his retinue in preparation for the entry; here ‘they sall be marishalled and ranked according to thair dignitie and place’, before accompanying the ruler during the entry to make it ‘more statelie and orderlie’.36 Although not a prequel per se, the courtly use of this open space gave the ruler the opportunity to choreograph his own participation in the civic entry for maximum effect, in tune with — and representative of — Charles’ king-centred way of seeing the world. Both the Crown and the burgh employed extramural spaces to expand upon, fine tune, or contextualize the civic message of the upcoming entry, superimposing
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James the Sixth of Scotland with the Princess Anna of Denmark, ed. by James Thomson Gibson Craig (Edinburgh: The Bannatyne Club, 1828), pp. 35–42 (p. 38). Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 101. ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 39. Ibid. ‘Orders of the Privy Council relative to the King’s Reception, 1628–1633, and of his Entry into Edinburgh, June 15, 1633’, in Documents Relative to the Reception at Edinburgh of the Kings and Queens of Scotland, A.D. M.D.LXI–A.D. M.DC.L., ed. by Patrick Walker (Edinburgh: Michael Anderson, 1822), pp. 86–114 (p. 113).
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their own language of choice to readdress the significance of natural landscapes. The dichotomy between a burgh with its narrative of civic dominance, and the surrounding natural environment is particularly striking when considering the way in which the Scottish landscape was perceived during the early modern period, influencing burgesses and visitors’ experiences and expectations. Addressing Local and International Views of Scottish Nature Delineating the world allows us to understand and order it, the constant repetition and reiteration of a set of agreed-upon traditions historically and geographically ‘making’ Scotland by creating a recognizable and shared image and identity. People’s beliefs were as important as factual data in building an awareness of what the country was like. Scotland’s geographical remoteness meant that many chroniclers relied on second-hand sources and earlier works — such as Hector Boece’s History of Scotland from 1527, itself far from accurate and based on earlier material — rather than engaging in direct observation.37 The untamed character of Scottish nature was repeatedly remarked upon and reiterated by visitors, scholars, and writers, who marvelled at the wild, almost mythical character of the country. In 1435 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini — later Pope Pius II — visited King James I’s court and was disappointed to hear that the legendary local trees which produced fruits in the form of geese which came alive when dropped into water only grew further north.38 Other natural wonders were attributed to Scotland — dogs able to detect thieves, magical islands floating with the tide, and a breed of aggressive Scots inhabiting the Highlands, the northern part of the country, who ate bark of trees and raw meat, and spoke an incomprehensible language.39 Many international visitors during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — possibly influenced by a personal agenda — noted the long dark winters, the humble houses, the underwhelming towns, and the country’s general poverty and lack of refinement.40 Still in 1745 — the year of the last Jacobite uprising — the London publication A collection of Voyages and Travels marked the Highlanders as alien ‘others’, illustrating them alongside other foreign and exotic characters such as Virginia and Florida Indians, Muscovites, Hungarians, and Moors.41 Larger burghs tended to be described in more positive terms: in the illustrated description of Edinburgh by Alexander Alane (1500–1565, 37 Withers, Geography, Science and National identity, pp. 30–31, 38–43. 38 Peter Hume Brown (ed.), Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1893), pp. 25–26. 39 Withers, Geography, Science and National Identity, pp. 47–52; James Brome, Travels over England, Scotland and Wales (London: Rob. Goſling, 1707), p. 188. 40 See for example the accounts of Piccolomini (1435), Peder Swave (1535), Estienne Perlin (1551–52), and Fyne Moryson (1598) in Peter Hume Brown (ed.), Early Travellers, pp. 24–29, 55–58, 71–79, and 80–89 respectively. 41 Colin G. Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 3–4; see also Lesley Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen”: Scots in Court Entertainments at Home and Abroad 1507–1616’, Renaissance Studies, 33 (2) (April 2019), 185–203 (192).
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Figure 8. Alesius’ view of Edinburgh from the sea, published in 1550 in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia.
known as Alesius ‘Scotus de Edinburgo’) which accompanied the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster in its 1550 edition, the burgh appeared as an enclave of taste and refinement, a city adorned with imposing buildings and great palaces in polished stone, ‘where is nothing mean or tasteless, but all is magnificent’.42 In Alesius’s illustration, Edinburgh’s tall buildings and articulated skyline forms a sharp contrast with its surroundings, a wasteland punctuated by infrequent small villages and isolated constructions. This might be an oversimplification by the author, but considering how other cities are shown as surrounded by a cultivated and well-developed countryside, probably the author was being at least partially site-specific in his depictions [see Figure 8]. The circulation of such descriptions inevitably influenced the expectations of royals arriving in Scotland in the sixteenth century, and it was these expectations that triumphal celebrations were to contradict, conjuring up a reassuring and even flattering version of the country’s advancements. The negotiations for King James V’s marriage were influenced by Scotland’s reputation for inhospitality, 42 Alesius’s Edinburgh in 1529 is in Peter Hume Brown (ed.), Scotland Before 1700 from Contemporary Documents (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1893), pp. 108, full description in 106–08. Also Patricia E. Dennison, Stuart Eydmann, Annie Lyell, Michael Lynch and Simon Stranach (eds), Painting the Town: Scottish Urban History in Art (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013), pp. 172–74.
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which dissuaded Emperor Charles V’s sister Mary of Hungary from accepting James’ hand in 1528. King François I of Valois (1494–1547) also tried to discourage his frail eldest daughter Madeleine from marrying James, worried by the effects of the country’s harsh climate, and proposing his more robust younger daughter Marguerite. Madeleine died at Holyrood on 7 July 1537 only a few weeks after landing at Leith on 19 May 1537.43 While Scotland’s reputation might have had a part in the initial refusal by Mary of Guise (1515–1560) to become James’ second wife, the manner of her welcome in St Andrews on 16 June 1538 did much to dispel what she tactfully referred to as prejudices. Granted the title of Bishop’s burgh by King David I in the 1140s and entrusted to a capable Fleming new provost, like Edinburgh, St Andrews had promoted trade and brought order to the surrounding countryside, also thanks to the foundation of a university in 1413.44 After an elaborate triumphal welcome which included a visit to the abbey kirk and all the colleges and churches, Queen Mary stated that ‘it was shawin to hir in France that Scotland was bot ane barbarous contrie destitut and woyde of all commoditieis that wssis to be in wther contrieis; bot now scho confessis scho saw the contrair’.45 The issue of bad reputation was addressed directly also during the 1590 celebrations, when one of the Muses at the Butter Tron station implored Queen Anna, that you must not believe this kingdom to be so lowly that it has neither possessions nor achievements. Behold here goddesses who curtsey to you! You shall not consider our people unintelligent even if our clothes make us appear so.46 The Muses were ‘most splendidly dressed and they had beautiful gilded books in their hands’,47 but these cultured, refined godly creatures were still speaking as if with a substantial chip on their shoulder. While writing admiringly about the 1633 celebration for Charles I, Venetian diplomat Vincenzo Gussoni remarked condescendingly that ‘more could not have been done, from the nature of the country’.48 Within the civic walls, the harshness of Scottish nature is acknowledged but also presented as safely subordinated to the civic space’s ordering forces.
43 James Balfour Paul, ‘The Matrimonial Adventures of James V’, Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society New Series, 5 (2) (1906) 90–104 (96, 101–02). 44 The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Vol. 1, A.D. M.C.XXIV. - A.D. M.CCCC.XXIII. (London: House of Commons of Great Britain, 1844), p. 47. 45 Robert Lindsay Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First To the Ane Thousande Fyve Hundreith Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir, ed. by Æ. J. G. Mackay, 3 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and sons, 1899–1911), vol. 1, p. 380. 46 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 111. 47 Ibid. 48 Noted as ‘Calendar of State Papers Venetian, XXIII, 122’, in David Moore Bergeron, ‘Venetian State Papers and English Civic Pageantry, 1558–1642’, Renaissance Quarterly, 23 (1) (Spring, 1970), 37–47 (42).
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The Triumphal Route: The Role of Nature The medieval walled city could be compared to Manfred Kusch’s walled garden as a ‘rationally controlled system surrounded by an often amorphous wilderness’.49 In triumphal entries, such wilderness was temporarily granted access to the politically defined, safe, and orderly civic space, in a disciplined form subordinate to the congruity and identity of the city.50 This transformative taming process often appeared as dependent upon the ruler’s physical presence. In 1559 in London, a pageant built for the coronation entry of Elizabeth (1533–1603) showed the Queen’s arrival as causing a withering tree and the sterile wasteland surrounding it to flourish and blossom, as a metaphor of London’s expectations of beneficial effects brought by her reign.51 Again in the account by English dramatist and writer Thomas Dekker (1572–1632) of the pageants set up for James VI/I’s arrival in London on 15 March 1604, an actor dressed as master gardener Vertumnus explained how the King’s arrival had overcome the withering effects of Autumn. While the Praetor, Consuls and Senators of the city could ‘pruine this garden, weeding out all hurtful and idle branches that hinder the growth of the good’ and were ‘faithfull laborers in this piece of ground’,52 it was beyond their control to change the course of seasons, something that the King — as God’s representative — could achieve effortlessly. The change brought by the King’s presence was sadly only temporary; Dekker regretted that after its elevation in 1604, following the monarch’s departure London would return to its commonplace self.53 Through their regulation of the forces of nature during civic entries, rulers publicly displayed the ability to understand and control the mysterious laws governing the world. Comparably, the creation of cabinets of curiosities, the interest for scientific experiments and for collections of specimens, and the establishment of botanical gardens also responded to the impulse to evoke a new reality on a conveniently manageable and symbolic scale.54 James IV was
49 A comparison made by Britt C. L. Rothauser, ‘The Use of Water in the Medieval Consideration of Urban Spaces’, in Classen (ed.), Urban Space, pp. 248–49. See also Manfred Kusch, ‘The River and the Garden: Basic Spatial Models in “Candide” and “La Nouvelle Héloïse”’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12 (1) (Autumn, 1978), 1–15 (1). 50 Peter Burke, ‘Frontier of the Monstrous: Perceiving National Characters in Early Modern Europe’, in Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes (eds), Monstrous Bodies, Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 25–39 (p. 28). 51 Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–1642 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 2. 52 Thomas Dekker, ‘The Magnificent Entertainment Given to King James, and Queene Anne his Wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince. London: Tho. Man the yonger, 1604’, in John Nichols (ed.), The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, his Royal Consort, Family, and Court, 4 vols (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1828), vol. 1, pp. 337–76 (p. 365). Interpreted in Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry, pp. 82–84. 53 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 374. 54 Adalgisa Lugli, Naturalia et Mirabilia, il Collezionismo Enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa (Milan: Nuove Edizioni, 1983), pp. 84–91; Alessandro Rinaldi, ‘La Costruzione di una Cittadella del Sapere: L’Orto Botanico di Firenze’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 194–95.
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interested in alchemy, supporting a team of court scientists who sought to discover the philosopher’s stone, and a scholar performing empirical studies on human flight.55 During his trip to Denmark to fetch Anna, James VI visited the famous scientist and astronomer Tycho Brahe at his castle Uraniborg in 1590, being keenly impressed by the scientist’s theoretical studies and the practical experiments, which would influence the work of Scotsman John Napier (1550–1617).56 The Stewarts’ own palatial ceremonies depicted an image of natural forces made controllable and understandable by royal intervention. On 17 December 1566, for the festivities for the baptism of Mary Queen of Scots’ son Prince James at Stirling Castle, Mary and her entourage saw — from the emblematic safety of a well-ordered garden built for the occasion — a symbolic representation of the defeat of the forces of chaos threatening established royal power, presented as the unsuccessful attack by a group of characters representing the menace of moral and cultural savagery to a mocked castle.57 During the following banquet, the poem Pompæ Deorum Rusticorum written by historian and humanist George Buchanan celebrated Mary and James as able to summon at court mermaids, satyrs, nymphs, and sylvan gods. Like needles whose direction is forced by a magnet, these free-spirited creatures abandon their wild pursuits, to swarm towards the ruler in good order like bees, the most cooperative and hierarchically organized of animals. At the same time, the charms of rural life and the opportunities for out-of-doors pursuits like hunting are presented as highly appropriate alternatives to city life for a young king.58 In Scottish urban triumphal entries, nature frequently appeared in the form of flourishing trees, vegetation, sylvan deities — and wild men.59 The use of natural elements, trees, and vegetation in Edinburgh on 3 July 1558 for the celebrations in absentia of Mary Queen of Scots’ wedding to the French Dauphin, probably signified ideas of fertility, bloom, and abundance as the expected outcomes of
55 Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 95. James IV as patron of sciences in Patrick Fraser Tytler, Lives of Scottish Worthies, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1831–1833) vol. 3, pp. 335–38, and John Read, ‘An Alchemical Airman’, New Scientist (8 May 1958), 30–31. 56 Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes and Aonghus MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), p. 59. Also, David Stevenson, Scotland’s Last Royal Wedding: The Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1997), pp. 50–51. 57 Michael Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph: The Baptismal Celebrations at Stirling in December 1566’, Scottish Historical Review, 69 (187) (April, 1990), 1–21 (6–9); Sarah Carpenter, ‘Performing Diplomacies: The 1560s Court Entertainments of Mary Queen of Scots’, Scottish Historical Review, 88 (2) (2003), 194–225 (202–03, 221). 58 The full poem in George Buchanan, Opera Omnia, 2 vols (Lugduni Batavorum: Johannem Arnoldum Langerak, 1725), vol. 2, pp. 404–05. Summed-up translation in Peter Davidson, ‘The Entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561, and Other Ambiguities’, Renaissance Studies, 9 (4) (December 1995), 416–29 (424), and in Bath, Emblems in Scotland, p. 82. See Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, 12, and Claude Nau, The History of Mary Stewart from the Murder of Riccio until her Flight into England, ed. by Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1883), pp. cxlix-cl. 59 Below, pp. 55–64.
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the marital and dynastic union.60 Key urban locations such as the Over Tron, Market Cross, Salt Tron, and the Netherbow were decorated with birch twigs and trees, to create blooming ‘symmer treis with birkis’61 transforming the urban spaces in a joyful and unthreatening natural landscape. The ‘Trone’ — probably the Salt Tron, as the Butter Tron was referred to as ‘ovir Trone’62 in this account — had a large tree decorated with yellow flowers held in place by clay and twigs.63 Also ‘Twa dosoun of cachepull balls cled with gold fuilze till hing upone the tre upone the Trone’ and ‘ane hundreth cheryis till hing upone the said tre’.64 The tree built for the celebrations at the Butter Tron was an almost heavenly object bearing supernatural fruits, and testifying to the temporary transformation of the urban space into a fruitful and captivating Garden of Eden. Significantly, there appears to be no need for a royal ‘first cause’ to set in motion such transformation with their presence. Some form of peripatetic ceremony through the town seems to be indicated by the inclusion of public buildings traditionally used as triumphal stations, and by records of expenses for the decoration of a cart and the involvement of a horse. However Mary Queen of Scots now Dauphine of France was herself absent, and Queen Regent Mary of Guise’s role in the celebration seems to have been limited to initiating — or ordering — the celebrations.65 Edinburgh in 1558 seemed able to turn itself into a heavenly garden independently from the presence of the sovereign, evoking the potential threat of nature in multiple key locations and turning it into representation of amenable, approachable nature to the benefit of its own urban community by virtue of the transformative power of its spatial authority. While Lyon in 1515 also presented itself as the hortus conclusus through a sequence of garden-themed pageants for François I’s arrival, the monarch’s active assistance was invoked as essential to preserving the flourishing prosperity of this frontier city. Similarly, the arrival of François I’s eldest son — also a François — in 1532 in a garden-like, blossoming Rouen was paralleled to the arrival of the Canticle’s bridegroom into the biblical garden where his spouse awaits him.66 Edinburgh could have resembled Lyon or Rouen in appearance, but did not need an approaching interlocutor to complete the narrative. The burgh’s autonomous taming of natural forces was not meant as a sign or disrespect; rather, the burgh was honouring the Crown’s wishes by performing the very civilizing of the Scottish landscape that the present monarch’s ancestors had entrusted upon it. However, in 1617 the speech by clerk deputy John Hay to
60 Mary Margaret Bartley, ‘A Preliminary Study of the Scottish Royal Entries of Mary Stuart, James VI, and Anne of Denmark, 1558–1603’ (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1981), p. 33. Also a comparison in Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 148 and 156. 61 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 270. 62 Ibid., p. 272. 63 Ibid., p. 270. 64 Ibid., p. 271. Cachepull balls were similar to tennis balls, cache being the Scottish word for a courtly game akin to tennis. 65 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 153–54. 66 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 281–84, 240–42.
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James VI/I was more in line with ruler-centred flattery, likening the King’s presence to the returning sun whose absence had plunged Scotland into darkness. The country’s nature was described ‘with pale lookes representing their miserie for the departure of their Royal King’, while its ‘verie hilles and groves’ were previously ‘refreshed with the dewe of your Majestie’s presence’.67 On 15 June 1633 the burgh of Edinburgh adopted an even more celebrative, sovereign-centred language to welcome King Charles I on his coronation visit. The first arch built for Charles at the West Port gate displayed a representation of Edinburgh as ‘a citie situated on a rock, which with pointed clifts, shrubs, trees, herbs, and verdure’.68 Under the arch was a mountain upon which stood an actor representing a nymph as Genius Loci, with a head-dress representing a turreted castle.69 The mountain visibly moved at Charles’ arrival, testifying to the King’s transformative power to bypass natural laws and animate the inanimate. The accompanying speech by the Nymph-Edinburgh unequivocally stated that the positive influence of the King’s presence, spreading on the city as rays of light, had infused life into both the rocks and the buildings, making them alive and move forward like devoted subjects. The ruler’s presence could also alter the course of time and bend natural laws, as ‘the old forget their age, and looke fresh and young at the sight of so gracious a Prince’.70 The comparison between the King’s arrival and the vivifying light of the sun was taken up also by Scottish author Walter Forbes in the Panegyricke he wrote for the occasion, where he addressed Charles as the Phoebus whose arrival would ‘change my nights in halcyonian dayes’,71 dissolving troubled thoughts and afflictions, and turning groans into hymns of rejoicing. These powerful healing rays extruding from Charles I recall the transformative rays emanating from James VI/I in Ben Jonson’s court entertainment The Masque of Blackness, performed at Whitehall Palace on 6 January 1605. There, the change of the dark complexion of blackened performers into fashionable and civilized paleness was a metaphor of the transformation from wild to civilized behaviour brought upon by the King’s presence.72 The image of Scotland presented in Forbes’ panegyric — a helpless country left in the darkness during the monarch’s absence, and destined to despair when he will leave her again — is remarkably different from the picture of Edinburgh’s self-reliant transformative powers demonstrated only two generations previously. Forbes’ panegyric stated that Charles’ arrival calmed winds, soothed mountains, and quietened wild beasts,
67 John Nichols (ed.), The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, his Royal Consort, Family, and Court, 4 vols (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1828), vol. 3, p. 319. 68 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 257. A similar representation of London in James VI/I’s 1604 entry in Bergeron, ‘Edinburgh Pageant’, 179. 69 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, pp. 258–60. 70 Ibid., p. 260. 71 Walter Forbes, ‘A Panegyricke to the Most High and Mighty Monarch Charles, King of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland, &c.’, in Thomas Maitland (ed.), The Poems of William Drummond of Hawthornden (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1832), pp. 281–86 (p. 282). 72 Peter Sillitoe, ‘“And Afterwards to His Pallace of Westminster, There to Solace Himself ”: Rediscovering the Progresses of Charles I’, Yearbook of English Studies, 44 (2014), 87–102 (95–96).
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while the demigods of the wilderness also ceased their unrestrained activities to join the celebrations.73 This description rather resembles the one presented to Mary during her 1566 entertainment — but while flattering eulogies were to be expected in a royal baptism set in the Queen’s own residence, the King’s powers in 1633 are demonstrated as applicable and relevant to a civic scenario. Charles I’s control of the country’s perceived roughness is portrayed as a significant achievement, as in the second arch Scotland was represented as a harsh and mountainous landscape, ‘a countrey wild, full of trees, bushes, bores, white kine, along the which appeared one great mountaine to extend it selfe, […] farther off in an iland appeared a flaming mountaine’.74 The landscape was populated by figures in chaotic disarray — Picts and Romans fleeing this inhospitable and dangerous country. A comparison was also drawn at this location between Scotland and Nova Scotia when a dark woman representing New Caledonia wearing an exotic feathered attire appeared, to celebrate Charles’ hoped-for role as supporter of colonization in the Americas.75 This drew a parallel between Scotland and Nova Scotia, suggesting that the two countries’ wild landscapes and uncultivated people could and should be brought in line by Charles’ ordering authority.76 The representation and symbolic taming of Scottish exoticism in triumphal entries was part of a revival of chorography (systematic mapping) at the Jacobean and Caroline courts, which promoted the effective exercise of royal power in isolated areas of the new Great Britain through systematic geographical investigation and visual representations.77 The taming ability of the Crown and — as cooperative or alternative ordering institution — of the city, was demonstrated by culturally remote wild figures — the standard wild man, the more ethnically defined Moor, or the site-specific Scottish Highlander — attending courtly and civic ceremonies. Wild Men and Highlanders in Scottish Ceremonies Wild men — and more rarely, wild women — were symbolic figures of late medieval and early modern European folklore, representing the potential threat of the unknown, the foreign, and the savage to the agreed-upon order of courtly and urban communities.78 Of an unrestrained and aggressive disposition but in possession of untapped human virtues, the wild man lived a simple life in remote locations, the untamed environment reflecting his own undomesticated nature. 73 Forbes, ‘Panegyricke’, pp. 284–85. 74 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 261. 75 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, pp. 261–62; Bergeron, ‘Edinburgh Pageant’, 182. 76 Withers, Geography, Science and National Identity, p. 65. 77 Charles W. J. Withers, ‘Geography, Royalty and Empire: Scotland and the Making of Great Britain, 1603–1661’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 113 (1) (1997), 22–32 (27–29). 78 Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 49–84. Wild men at the court of James VI/I in Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anne of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court 1590–1619 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 87–89 and 194–97.
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Figure 9. A pageant with wildmen and animals in a pleasure garden, organized for the entry of Charles V into Bruges in 1515.
In medieval lore, his exposure to courtly life would tame his animal instincts, encouraging his acceptance of civilization.79 These tales of domestication of wild men represented the progressive disappearance of beliefs in the mysterious and the supernatural, pushed aside by humanistic ideas of cultural advancement,
79 Timothy Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), pp. 2–3; and Bernheimer, Wild Men, pp. 9–11 and 16–18.
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and by the creation of well-organized urban communities distancing themselves from the surrounding natural world. The ‘selva’ in which the ‘savage’ lived was left standing only in the most inaccessible locations to make room for cultivations, and gained the reputation of being an alien and frightening place, inhabited by mysterious, dangerous creatures.80 Figures of wild men appeared as characters of triumphal entries, playing, fighting, and prancing on scaffolds, in artificial gardens, and near fountains in their role of mediators between well-regulated reality and the spiritual freedom of the supernatural world, and as guardians of liminal spaces.81 For example, in 1431 Paris, Henry VI of England saw a pageant with mermaids and a giant lily spurting milk and wine, while above it was, in Gray’s words, ‘a little wood were wild men frolicked about’.82 The threat these figures represented could refer to real-life social, economic, or political circumstances, to solve which the regulating intervention of the monarch was invoked. For Charles V’s entry into Bruges in 1515, a pageant showing a garden guarded by wild men and populated by exotic beasts represented the financial wilderness through which the King alone — personified as Orpheus playing the lyre to the fiends — could help83 [see Figure 9]. In Lille in 1549 Charles V saw an actor impersonating him successfully assaulting and conquering a fortress defended by Moors and Turks as embodiments of the forces of chaos the King had militarily vanquished.84 Similarly, in Rouen in 1550, Henri II of Valois saw an exotic-looking, warring Brazilian village: the intervention of the King as a Hercules whose tongue was chained to the Estates’ ears represented the monarch’s ability to pacify, through eloquence rather than force, both his warlike nobility and the French commercial strongholds overseas.85 The Scottish wild men in both urban and courtly ceremonies included hairy wild men, richly dressed Moors, but also geographically specific figures such as Highlanders. While the exotic characters of Caledonia and New Caledonia presented to Charles I in 1633 represented a request for the monarch’s civilizing intervention, personifications of wilderness and of social or political disarray were usually shown as cooperating already at the arrival of the sovereign, rather than in consequence of their appearance. This is shown for example by the behaviour of Moors in the triumphal entry organized for returning Mary Queen of Scots on 2 September 1561, and in that for Queen Anna of Denmark in 1590. 80 Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear, pp. 13–22, 67–69. 81 Michael Wintroub, A Savage Mirror: Power, Identity, and Knowledge in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 163. 82 Douglas Gray, ‘The Royal Entry in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in Sally Mapstone and Juliette Hood (eds), The Rose and the Thistle: Essays on the Culture of Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), pp. 10–37 (p. 13). 83 Ibid., p. 15. 84 Yona Pinson, ‘Imperial Ideology in the Triumphal Entry into Lille of Charles V and the Crown Prince (1549)’, Assaph, 6 (2001), 205–32 (207–09). 85 Wintroub, A Savage Mirror, pp. 16–18, 46–49, and Michael Wintroub, ‘Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: The Royal Entry Festival of Henri II (Rouen, 1550)’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, 29 (2) (Summer 1998), 465–94 (471–72); Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, pp. 24–26.
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In 1561, 50 young burgesses appeared ‘in maner of Moris’, painted black and dressed in yellow taffeta, ‘vpon thair heiddes blak hattis, and on thair faces blak viſouris’,86 and covered in lavish jewels received Mary at the first urban station, the Butter Tron. Similarly in 1590, at the Over Bow 60 young burgesses attired and blackened to resemble Moors, dressed in cloth of silver and with chains of precious stones ‘went before the chariot, betwixt the horſemen and it, everie one with a white ſtaffe in his hande, to keepe of the throng of people’.87 Being each assigned a dance-like move, ‘by means of such strange gaits they made enough room and space without recourse to blows and pushes’.88 Both groups of men performed roles of guardians of borders and liminal spaces, in 1561 by marking the procession’s entrance into the civic space at the beginning of the ceremony, and in 1590 by safeguarding the border between the urban space used by the community of spectators, and the canopied processional space for Anna and her entourage. These wild characters’ behaviour appears — somehow disappointingly — prearranged and cooperative, with none of the unrestrained frolicking in woods that Henry VI saw in Paris in 1431. Mary and Anna did not interact with romping savages in the setting of a staged wilderness, but rather with rightful participants to and even coordinators of the spectacle, helpful figures willingly, purposefully, and confidently occupying the civic space as representatives of order rather than of chaos. Their appearance was entertainingly striking and exotic, but their actions showed them to be well-adjusted members of the civic community; explicitly in 1590 in John Burel’s poetic account, ‘Into the ſeruice of our Queene, / Thay offert thair maiſt willing mynds’,89 without the need to be disciplined through the staged interaction with a monarch’s alter ego — the soothing Orpheus for Charles V, the persuasive Hercules for Henri II. The civilizing power of courtly atmosphere suggested by medieval lore also appeared in Scottish courtly ceremonies, but the wild participants seemed subdued into cooperation. On 30 August 1594, during the baptismal celebrations for James VI’s son Prince Henry (1594–1612) in Stirling Castle, one of the festival carts was pulled into the banqueting room by a richly dressed ‘Moore’ of apparently prodigious strength, as an appropriate replacement for the real lion originally planned.90 The savage potential of the Moor and the lion — symbolically interchangeable — was emphatically shown as subjugated through their exposure to courtly setting, but more as an enslavement exploiting their
Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 109. John Burel, ‘The Discription of the Qveenis Maiesties maist Honorable Entry into the Tovn of Edinbvrgh, vpon the 19 day of Maii 1590’, in Thomson Gibson Craig (ed.), Papers, p. v. 90 ‘A True Accompt of the Most Triumphant, and Royal Accomplishment of the Baptism of the Most Excellent, Right High, and Mighty Prince, Henry Frederick. Edinburgh: John Reid, 1687’, in Robert Buchanan (ed.), Scotia Rediviva: A Collection of Tracts Illustrative of the History and Antiquities of Scotland vol. 1 (Edinburgh: John Brewster, 1826), pp. 471–95 (p. 488). Replacement of the lion in Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson, British Drama 1533–1642, A Catalogue, 7 vols (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012–2016), vol. 3, pp. 246–47.
86 87 88 89
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Figure 10. The troops of King Gustavus Adulphus depicted as barbaric northerners.
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brute force than as a civilizing act encouraging conscious, willing participation.91 Instead, the town-centred narrative of triumphal entries showed ‘urbane’ wild men freely performing relatively complex tasks benefiting the community, the burgh’s spatial authority self-sufficiently exercising the civilizing power traditionally belonging to the feudal court. One record specifically mentions a local form of wild man, Highlanders, as dangerous, exotic-looking characters treacherously inhabiting the outskirts of the regulated civic and geographical spaces. In relation to the King’s visit in 1617, expenses dated 16 June and 23 June scantly list payments to actors impersonating ‘Hielandmen’, and to ‘youths at the moreis dance’,92 the latter indicating cooperative figures willing to perform entertaining tasks. ‘Real’ men of the Highlands — rather than performers — also appeared in 1633 with a similar purpose, when the presence of ‘the principalls and chiftans of the clans in the Yles’ was requested at Charles I’s entry, so that the King’s English entourage ‘may see that the most remote part of this kingdome and Yles thairof ar settled under ane perfyte obedience and peace’.93 This can be contextualized further by looking at descriptions of Highlanders in contemporary literature within and without Scotland, and at their role in courtly ceremonies. In both classical and biblical tradition, the dangerousness, aggression, and backwardness of populations from the north appeared as the inevitable result of living in desolate, barren lands with little sun. As late as 1597, James VI in his work Daemonologie on necromancy and divination characterized the northern islands of Scotland (together with Lapland and Finland) as wild places where the Devil exploited the inhabitants’ ignorance and ferocity.94 Scottish combatants appear, with their Livonian and Lapp counterparts, in a satirical CounterReformation cartoon belittling the military intervention of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) [see Figure 10]. The obtuse gaze of these northern troops was contemptuously matched by their sylvan appearance — the lack of shoes, the rustic clothes made of animal skins and foliage, and the primitive weaponry.95 True to their frightening reputation, actors as ‘hieland wyld mens’ were part of the group attacking the aforementioned mocked castle representing order and stability during the Stirling baptismal festivities in 1566, being in charge
91 Clare McManus, ‘Marriage and the Performance of the Romance Quest, Anne of Denmark and the Stirling Baptismal Celebrations for Prince Henry’, in L. A. J. R. Houwen, Alasdair A. MacDonald and Sally Mapstone (eds), A Palace in the Wild, Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 175–98 (pp. 188–91). 92 Accounts of the Masters of Works for Building and Repairing Royal Palaces and Castles, vol. 2, 1616–1649, ed. by John Imrie and John G. Dunbar (Edinburgh, HMSO, 1982), p. 92; also in Mill, Mediaeval Plays, pp. 344–45. Expenses in Philip Butterworth, Theatre of Fire: Special Effects in Early English and Scottish Theatre (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1998), pp. 192–97. 93 Hume Brown, Privy Council 1633–35 volume 5, pp. 36–37. 94 Arthur H. Williamson, ‘Scots, Indians and Empire: The Scottish Politics of Civilization 1519–1609’, Past & Present, 150 (1) (February, 1996), 46–83 (47–48). 95 As discussed in Williamson, ‘Scots, Indians and Empire’, 50–52, and 55.
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of the ‘executioun of the fyreworkis’.96 Joined by four German mercenaries or ‘lansknychtis’ infamously known for their sack of Rome, four mysterious Moors representing exoticism, four horsemen (probably deceitful centaurs from mythological narratives, or possibly the same highlanders when mounted), and three ‘contrefait devillis’,97 the attackers represented a complete range of otherness and threats to the established order — from physical to moral abnormality, from factual to spiritual dangers, from indigenous to foreign menace.98 The steadfast repelling of the assault could have signified the strength of Mary’s position as ruler, and her ability to control the opposing forces threatening her throne — her position now apparently much improved by the birth of an heir compared to that of childless Elizabeth Tudor.99 A second, even more specific kind of inhabitant of northern Scotland was mentioned in 1566, the ‘Oreads’100 — that is, Orcadians or inhabitants of the Orkney Islands — as part of the well-wishing, docile procession of demigods of the wilderness mentioned in the poetic address to the Queen during the banquet, showing Scotland’s own remote rusticity as willingly domesticated under Mary’s rule.101 More positive judgments on Highlanders acknowledged how aggressiveness and physical hardiness meant determination and bravery in battle, and how simplicity of manners could reflect moral strength and purity of mind. In Scottish humanist literature (Hector Boece’s Scotorum historiae, 1527;102 John Leslie bishop of Ross’s De origine, moribus et rebus gestis Scotorum, 1578;103 George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum historia, 1582104) Highlanders appear as fearless warriors more in touch with the original essence of Scottishness than the Anglicized, culturally diluted Lowlanders. Scottish humanists like Boece saw value in their (alleged) tranquil simplicity and closeness to nature, influenced by Tacitus’s praises of the barbarians at the edge of decaying Roman empires as noble in spirit and leading wholesome and unspoiled lives.105 After describing Scotland to Charles I in 1633 with
96 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 12 1566–1574, ed. by C. T. McInnes (Edinburgh: Scottish Record Office, 1970), p. 406; full expenses in pp. 403–09. Philip Butterworth, ‘“The Baptisme of Hir Hienes Darrest Sone in Stirviling”’, Medieval English Theatre, 10 (1) (1988), 26–55. 97 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 12 1566–1574, p. 406. 98 Symbolism of assault to castles in Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘The Allegorical Siege in the Art of the Middle Ages’, American Journal of Archaeology, 23 (3) ( July-September 1919), 255–69 (265–66). The fort in Butterworth, Theatre of Fire, pp. 99–104, and Butterworth, ‘“The Baptisme”’, 42–45. 99 Compare Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, 8–9 and Carpenter, ‘Performing Diplomacies’, 221. See also Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 468–69. 100 Joseph Robertson, Inventaires de la Royne Descosse Douairiere de France: Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses, Furniture, Books, and Paintings of Mary Queen of Scots, 1556–1569 (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1863), p. lxxxvii. 101 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 82–83. 102 Hector Boece, Scotorum Historiae a Prima Gentis Origine (Paris: Badius Ascensius 1527). 103 John Leslie, De Origine, Moribus ac Rebus Gestis Scotorum Libri Decem (Rome: In Aedibus Populi Romani, 1578). 104 George Buchanan, Rerum Scoticarum historia (Edinburgh: Alexander Arbuthnot, 1582). 105 Ulrike Moret, ‘Some Scottish Humanists’ Views of the Highlanders’, in Graham Caie, Roderick J. Lyall, Sally Mapstone and Kenneth Simpson (eds), The European Sun: Proceedings of the Seventh
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Townes swell not here with Babilonian walles, Nor Nero’s sky-resembling gold-seel’d halles, Nor Memphis’ spires nor Quinzaye’s arched frames106 the actor impersonating Caledonia presented the simplicity and lack of refinement of Scotland’s way of life as strong positives, inspiring religious piety and honourable behaviour in its inhabitants.107 The caption on the arch depicting Scotland’s barren landscape read ‘TIBI SERVIET VLTIMA THULE’ [remotest Thule is subject to you]. This is a (altered) passage from Virgil’s Georgic (Liber I, 30) referring to Caesar Augustus’s rule reaching the remotest edges of the world — that is, the Island of Thule, located vaguely in the North Atlantic.108 Thule was an inapproachable mythical land unsullied by commercial exploitation, offering decadent Rome the possibility of escaping the decline of Mediterranean civilization, and the chance of cultural renewal, further explorations, and future greatness — a parallel presenting Scotland’s remoteness in a most flattering light, and the Highlanders in the enviable position of the unspoiled bon sauvage.109 Highlanders’ culture was often recognized as worthwhile of attention and appreciation. As James V explained in 1529 to the shocked papal ambassador — who had just seen the Earl of Athol’s marvellous, temporary country pavilion being set fire to — it was the custom of ‘our highlanders’ to burn their lodgings on departure, demonstrating the monarch’s willing acceptance of — and even proud affection for — these geographically and culturally distant subjects.110 In France, to celebrate his connections with the Scottish royal house, a party of knights dressed à l’Escossaise sauvage accompanied Henri I Duke of Guise — Mary Queen of Scots’ first cousin — during a courtly pageant in 1566, if admittedly in the same reckless team as demons, Turks, and nymphs.111 Their lavish costumes of silk and cloth of gold with only a hint of tartan, their well-trimmed if abundant facial hair, outdated weaponry, and the greeting
International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001), pp. 323–32 (pp. 326–32). Boece and Tacitus in John MacQueen, ‘Aspects of Humanism in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Literature’, in John MacQueen (ed.), Humanism in Renaissance Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), pp. 10–31 (p. 20). Tacitus’ praises of Germania in C. B. Krebs, ‘A Dangerous Book: The Reception of the Germania’, in A. J. Woodman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 280–99 (pp. 282–88). 106 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 263. 107 Withers, Geography, Science and National Identity, p. 65. 108 Benjamin Apthorp Gould (ed.), The Works of Virgil: Translated into English Prose, 2 vols (London: Whittaker, 1826), vol. 1, p. 55. 109 James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 123, 157–59. 110 Sally Mapstone, ‘Introduction’, in Houwen, MacDonald and Mapstone (eds), Palace in the Wild, pp. vii-viii; Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen”’, 194–95. 111 Michael Bath, ‘“Rare Shewes and Singular Inventions”: The Stirling Baptism of Prince Henry’, Journal of Northern Renaissance, 4 (2012), [accessed 30 July 2015], [7–8]. Also Williamson, ‘Scots, Indians and Empire’, p. 49; Lynch, ‘Baptismal Celebrations’, p. 9; Victor E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson, The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine De’ Medici: Festivals and Entries, 1564–1566 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), p. 337.
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posture in which they appear in a drawing by Dutch artist Lucas de Heere mark them as culturally assimilated — more Scots than wild Highlanders.112 Even more emphatically, the complex entertainment organized on 17 June 1617 to entertain King James VI/I during his post-entry stay at Holyrood Palace included ‘four hieland men, dressed up so of purpos, that came out of the pallace of St Androis with their boues and arrowes of fyr, that did win the Castle of Envy’.113 Their victorious defence of the Palace of St Andrew — patron saint of Scotland — made them undisputedly positive characters. In James IV’s ‘turnament of the black kincht and the black lady’,114 performed in 1507 and again in 1508 at Holyrood Palace, the King himself appeared disguised in animal skins and leading a group of wild knights. Here ‘hert hornes and gayt skinnis for the wildmen cotis’115 were purchased for the wild knight’s companions, and ‘weyngis to the bestis’116 acting as mounts. Pitscottie’s description of James’ involvement associated the King’s physical prowess, exceptional strength, and masterful handling of weapons with the ‘wilderness’ of James’ impersonated character, proposing the perceived rudeness of the Scottish nation and its King to be at the very root of their success.117 Free-spirited wilderness could embody the dream of a spiritual and physical autonomy from a suffocating and overtly regulated pursuit of collective good, but also the threat of isolation and lunacy brought by absolute personal freedom.118 James IV’s wild knight was imbued of local character and personal experiences, as the King’s lifelong fascination with Gaelic Scotland represented his carefree, unrestrained youth far from court, now to be counterbalanced by the obligations of maturity, and by the political necessity to subjugate the insecure northern regions. The fact that during the event James ‘wald be called a knycht of King Arthuris brocht vp in the wodis’119 confirmed the King’s superior moral qualities and leadership skills under a forgivable veneer of rusticity due to an unorthodox upbringing. The public unmasking at the conclusion of the tournament revealed the trustworthy King replacing the mysterious savage: the untamed nature to be symbolically subjugated through the tournament’s unveiling was then both Scotland’s and the King’s own.120 In the eighteenth century, Scotland’s rough northern landscape and the violence of the Jacobite uprisings would be seen as demonstrations of natural and political deviance, to be forcefully tamed by bringing them back into the
112 Sources and full discussion in Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen”’, 193. 113 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 23; noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. 114 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 242. 115 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 3 1506–1507, ed. by James Balfour Paul (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1901), p. 386. 116 Ibid., p. 394. 117 Piscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 243. As argued by Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen”’, 188–92. 118 Husband, The Wild Man, pp. 12–16. 119 Johne Leslie, The Historie of Scotland, ed. by E. G. Cody and William Murison, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1888–1895), vol. 2, p. 128. 120 Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 237–43. Savages as positive role models in Wintroub, Savage Mirror, pp. 115–41. Bernheimer, Wild Men, pp. 17–19; 102–03.
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folds of the known and the understood.121 For now, Scottish triumphal entries and celebrations acknowledged Highlanders’ lifestyle as a legitimate, even characterizing aspect of Scottish identity, appealing to onlookers because of the uncorrupted simplicity implicit in its cultural isolation within a nature both proudly and shamefully unrestrained. Highlanders’ participation in triumphal entries and courtly celebrations hailed the burgh’s and the Crown’s ability to defuse the threat posed by these borderline figures and the natural world they represented. By emphasizing characteristics indigenous and unique to Scotland, rather than pursuing a mainstream interpretation of cultural refinement and respectability helped define Scotland as a geographically recognizable space, supporting the claim of the country’s political independence and separate status from England, and justifying the creation and defence of a physical national border based on those self-evident differences.122 Extramural Sites and the Use of Chivalric Language The narrative of Scottish triumphal entries portrayed a hosting burgh self-sufficient in summoning and controlling unregulated elements and inhabitants from the natural world, but rarely displaying its ‘civilizing’ power outside the burgh’s walls. Traditionally in Europe, the monarch’s measured but confident engagement with the wilderness — for example through the placing of a palace in a liminal position to a forest, and through group hunting expeditions — meant practical economic advantages, social recognition, and symbolic status.123 In Scottish entries the monarchs’ parties frequently redefined extramural spaces as courtly ones to create competing and complementary chivalrous narratives, but confined themselves to extramural locations, carefully avoiding — at least until the seventeenth century — spatial overlaps with intramural celebrations. This was not always necessarily the case elsewhere. At the court of Burgundy, for the marriage of Margaret of York and Charles the Bold in 1468 in Bruges, ducal jousts took place in the actual market square, a cultural appropriation of civic spaces and traditions by ducal authority, which took possession of the square — and brought disruption to it — with scaffolding and stage-like devices.124 Civic communities might have encouraged this: cities like Brussels in the 1400s had a strong tradition of hosting tournaments, relied on providing related services and trades, and had suitable existing infrastructures — but this
121 Charles W. J. Withers, ‘How Scotland Came to Know Itself: Geography, National Identity and the Making of a Nation, 1680–1790’, Journal of Historical Geography, 21 (4) (October 1995), 371–97 (392–93). 122 Ibid., 380–81. 123 David Rollason, ‘Forests, Parks, Palaces, and the Power of Place in Early Medieval Kingship’, Early Medieval Europe, 20 (4) (2012), 428–49. 124 Andrew Brown, ‘Ritual and State-Building: Ceremonies in Late Medieval Bruges’, in van Leeuwen (ed.), Symbolic Communication, p. 6. See also Strong, Art and Power, pp. 14–15.
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was not the case for Edinburgh.125 In Scotland, the most complex example of extramural chivalric prequel was that organized by James IV in 1503 as part of the welcome to Margaret Tudor. Riding ahead accompanied by his court, the King met the Queen and her entourage at some distance from the burgh: they proceeded to a meadow where a pavilion had been erected, and out of which emerged two knights, who angrily quarrelled over a lady and started a violent swordfight. The King intervened, inviting them to resolve their differences at court on a set day, and through a proper tournament. A hunt was also organized with the prearranged release of a deer, after which a mounted King James — with Margaret clinging to his back in the fashion of a damsel rescued by a valorous knight — led the procession towards the city.126 A group of citizens had gathered outside the civic gate, ‘many honeſt People of the Town, and of the Countre aboute, honneſtly arayd all on Horſebak’;127 this seems to have been a spontaneous, heterogeneous gathering of well-meaning busybodies coming from near and far, rather than a politically charged official committee.128 This crowd might have joined the fringes of the procession or, given the political hierarchy of the relative positioning — all participants entering ‘by Ordre’129 — they might have been left out altogether. The narrative and agenda of the prequel was eminently courtly, and part of Younge’s well-rounded attempt to portray James IV as the courteous royal lover and very much the performer, prone to noble if impulsive grand gestures.130 By promoting the physical removal of the enraged knights from nature’s wilderness to the royal court’s ordered spaces, the King substituted the turmoil of these novel wild men’s chaotic fight with the honourable, structured scenario of a genteel contest. During this procession, James IV’s sword ‘covered with a Scabard of Pourple Velvett, wich was written apon with Perles, God my Deffende’131 was carried before by an official to embody the martial element of the King’s rule. Warlike monarchs such as Ferdinand of Aragon (1452–1516) had exploited the warlike attributes of ceremonial swords, and an armour-clad Louis XII riding a war horse had brandished it as an offending weapon when approaching humbled Genoa in 1507, for an entry that paralleled a military conquest.132 In 1503, James’ sheathed sword represented controlled rather than unleashed strength. He used eloquence and diplomacy instead of strength or stern authority to bring the knights’ fight to an end, presenting the ruler as a morally dominant chivalric figure, endowed with the intellectual vigour 125 Mario Damen, ‘The Town as a Stage? Urban Space and Tournaments in Late Medieval Brussels’, Urban History, 43 (1) (February 2016), 47–71. 126 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, pp. 287–89. 127 Ibid., p. 289. 128 Dean, ‘Enter the Alien’, p. 280. 129 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 130 Carpenter, ‘“thexaltacyon”’, 117–22. 131 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 287. 132 King Ferdinand in Teófilo F. Ruiz, ‘The Symbolic Meaning of Sword and Palio in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual Entries: The Case of Seville’, Memoria y Civilización, 12 (2009), 13–48 (31–33). Louis XII in George L. Gorse, ‘Between Empire and Republic: Triumphal Entries into Genoa During the Sixteenth Century’, in Wisch and Scott Munshower (eds), Art and Pageantry, vol. 1, p. 192.
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necessary to restrain the threat of violence represented by his nobility.133 This idea appeared again in 1604 in London for James VI/I; an unrealized preliminary entertainment outside the Bishop Gate was to show two knights representing Saint George and Saint Andrew riding in full armour towards the King to hail him as peacemaker, and giving a speech about their newly found brotherhood.134 By maintaining an interest in chivalric language, Scottish monarchs were joining other European monarchs looking for effective ways to communicate across the religious divide, and to inspire admiration and rally supporters around otherwise possibly unimpressive leaders. The tilts and chivalric entertainments regularly offered by Elizabeth I in England and by Queen Regent Catherine of Medici (1519–1589) in France aimed at creating a religiously neutral, shared interest for their Catholic and Protestant subjects, offering an outlet for the pride of honour-seeking courtiers crushed by rising absolutism and by the submission to a female or young ruler.135 James IV was particularly adept at using chivalric language to promote royal authority; the prequel to the 1503 entry could be seen as part of a larger overall courtly event, which included the dubbing of 41 knights, and three days of tournament in the courtyard of Holyrood Palace, including ‘hunttin and halkin iustin singing dansin and playing and all vthir knichtlie game’.136 During the tournaments of 1507 and 1508, the use of traditional chivalric language and Arthurian themes represented an appropriate means of communicating what the Scottish King felt was his position of superiority in the Stewart–Tudor partnership as the established ruler of an ancient dynasty, and an unchallenged vision of the world centred on his role as a paragon of physical valour and moral strength.137 Invitations were sent out as much as one hundred days in advance ‘to the effectt that france ingland and denmark micht haue knawledge of the samyn and quha that pleisit to cum thairto as thay thocht guid’.138 This was a politically relevant international meeting not only between noblemen sharing chivalric views, but also between countries with common interests in commerce, marriage politics, defence, and foreign affairs.139 An earlier example of tournaments’ political usage was the combat staged at Stirling in February 133 Wintroub, ‘Civilizing the Savage’, 469–71, 477–80, and 490–91. 134 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, pp. 338–39; see Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 37–39, and Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 1–19. 135 Elizabethan chivalry in Frances A. Yates, Astraea, the Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 88–111, especially 108–11. Chivalry and female rulers in Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 9–27. Catherine of Medici and chivalry in Strong, Art and Power, pp. 99–100 and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Princely Culture and Catherine de Médicis’, in Martin Gosman, Alasdair A. MacDonald and Arjo Vanderjagt (eds), Princes and Princely Culture, 1450–1650, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 103–30 (pp. 118–24). 136 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 240. Katie Stevenson, ‘Chivalry, British Sovereignty and Dynastic Politics: Undercurrents of Antagonism in Tudor-Stewart Relations, c. 1490–c. 1513’, Historical Research, 86 (234) (November 2013), 601–18 (605). 137 Katie Stevenson, ‘Chivalry, British Sovereignty’, 606–07; Strong, Art and Power, pp. 11, 50–57, 93. 138 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 242. 139 Tytler, Scottish Worthies, vol. 3, pp. 332–33.
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1449 for King James II’s wedding to Mary of Guelders, with Scottish nobility and the Burgundian and Gueldrian guests facing each other under James’ overseeing authority.140 In that case, the tournament was a contained courtly event, lacking the partial spatial overlap with a civic welcome offered by the King’s occupation of Edinburgh’s extramural spaces in 1503. Nationally, identifying the knights’ fidelity to a mature James IV as the sole font of honour, harnessed and defused the potential for aggression of the Scottish aristocracy, and created an illusion of pacification after the uncertainties of James III’s rule and James IV’s youth.141 Internationally, chivalry had been a useful tool to celebrate Scotland’s past and present struggle to remain independent from invaders, forging a national identity based on opposition to the unjust and unchivalric cause of Edward I’s England.142 Trapped in his own game, James IV would provide ‘his knyghtlie support in hir necessatie’143 against the English to French queen Anne of Brittany, leading to the Scottish King’s demise at the battle of Flodden in 1513. Later on, James V also forged a successful chivalric character for himself by arriving in 1536, unannounced and masked, at the French court to claim his promised bride — an equally romantically determined if ailing Madeleine of Valois.144 Ffor as Leander swame out throche the fluid To his fair lady Hero mony nichtis So did this prince throch bulring stremis vood with erles, barronis, squyaris and with knichtis contrair Neptune and Eoll and thair michtis and left his realme in gret disperance To seik his luve the first dochter of france.145 The significant expenses for tournament paraphernalia and riding gear during his reign also suggest the regular staging of chivalric entertainments and pastimes in his own palaces.146 Mary Stuart’s use of chivalric language was more confined, 140 David Ditchburn, ‘Rituals, Space and the Marriage of James II and Mary of Guelders, 1449’, in Frances Andrews (ed.), Ritual and Space in the Middle Ages (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2011), pp. 179–96 (pp. 186–95). 141 Tournaments in Scotland in David Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe: The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts with Christendom, c. 1215–1545, vol. 1 Religion, Culture and Commerce (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), pp. 96–105. Early Tudor tournaments in Alan R. Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (London: George Philip & Son, 1987), pp. 22–27. 142 Roger A. Mason, ‘Chivalry and Citizenship: Aspects of National Identity in Early Renaissance Scotland’, in Roger A. Mason and Norman Macdougall (eds), People and Power in Scotland: Essays in Honour of T. C. Smout (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1992), pp. 50–73 (pp. 54–58). Carol Edington, ‘Paragons and Patriots: National Identity and the Chivalric Ideal in Late-Medieval Scotland’, in Dauvit Broun, Michael Lynch and Richard J. Finlay (eds), Image and Identity, the Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1998), pp. 69–81 (pp. 72–76). 143 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 256. 144 James in France in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, pp. 357–59. The entry ceremony and wedding procession for James V and Madeleine in Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 184–88. 145 Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 371. 146 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 199–202.
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possibly due to the limitations of her gender. During the Stirling baptismal celebrations, Mary played the role of the pacifying monarch presiding over a harmonious court by creating occasions for both her Protestant and Catholic courtiers to unite around herself and overcome religious differences: during the banquet Protestant guests were served by Catholic Scottish noblemen and vice-versa, creating a theatrical atmosphere of shared happiness and communal rejoicing.147 James VI’s attempts at creating a chivalric persona were generally unconvincing, and had mixed responses. James’ reckless plan in 1589 to go fetch his bride Anna of Denmark, delayed by bad weather and murmurs of witchcraft, was meant to counter publicly the gossips about the sovereign’s homosexuality, irresolution, and weakness.148 However, this aura of chivalric courage did not stick, and even when appearing as a knight himself, as in the staged tournament held for Prince Henry’s baptism in 1594 in an attempt to copy Tudor tournament language, he failed to impress many of the attending Scottish nobles.149 On her part, Anna of Denmark’s public refusal to conform to the role of grateful damsel in distress, snubbing the kiss of bold James VI on his disembarking on 19 November 1589, prefigured a life spent confronting the King on familiar, political, and religious issues.150 These less convincing chivalric narratives of the late sixteenth century are in line with an overall decline in the usefulness of this language, as humanist influences were stressing the classical values of citizenship over the medieval code of chivalry. In Scotland, the prospect of a union with England meant that Scotland’s identity as a chivalric nation-in-arms was substituted by an idea of commonweal defending the community welfare within a Greater Britain, while skilled and cooperative courtiers overcame in usefulness brave but individualistic knights.151 In Scottish triumphal entries, monarchs did not superimpose chivalric and courtly narratives onto civic spaces as acts of control and appropriation, but rather made use of politically neutral extramural spaces, or employed the rulers’
147 For example ‘the French ambaſſatour was ſervit be the erle of Mar, carvoure, the erle of Caſſilis, coppar, and the erle of Athole, ſewar’, in Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 104. 148 ‘Declarations of King James VI anent the Government of the Affairs of his Estate and Realme, during his Absence, with the Causes of his Departure to Denmark, Oct. 22, 1589’, in Thomson Gibson Craig (ed.), Papers, pp. 13–15; also Thomson Gibson Craig (ed.), Papers, p. xiv, and discussed by McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, pp. 193–97. 149 See Michael Lynch, ‘The Reassertion of Princely Power in Scotland’, in Gosman, MacDonald and Vanderjagt (eds), Princes and Princely Culture, vol. 1, pp. 225–26. 150 McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, pp. 65–66. Also see Maureen M. Meikle, ‘A Meddlesome Princess: Anna of Denmark and Scottish Court Politics, 1589–1603’, in Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch (eds), The Reign of James VI (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), pp. 126–40 (pp. 134–38). 151 Chivalric principles and Scottish identity in Roger A. Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), pp. 89–92 and 102–03; and in Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland 1424–1513 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 185–89. Evolving understanding of chivalry in Europe in Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1981), pp. 147–76, and in J. S. A. Adamson, ‘Chivalry and Political Culture in Caroline England’, in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (eds), Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 161–98 (pp. 161–77).
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own residences and ceremonial opportunities. Courtly entertainments could specifically make up for their disappointingly un-courtly counterparts organized by, for, and in the interest of the urban community. This is particularly true when considering poet Alexander Scott’s Ane New Yeir Gift to Quene Mary poem to Mary Queen of Scots, delivered to her as part of the entertainments during her stay at Seton Palace in January 1562. Through a language of exhortation, praise, and compromise close to the Queen’s own cultural agenda, the poem offered an alternative ‘textualized entry’ to the aggrieving civic welcome staged in Edinburgh in the previous September, in which the civic agenda of the Protestant organizers had openly challenged the returning Catholic Queen.152 The creation of these alternative spaces — palatial, extramural, or literary — integrated and moderated the uncompromisingly civic-centred character of Edinburgh’s entertainments. The change of focus of Dutch literature between 1400 and 1550 from chivalric and courtly principles to an urban language finding inspiration in ideas of hard work for financial gain, resourcefulness, and ingenuity in business and social exchanges — shows that something profound is changing. The focus was moving to, and was now addressing, an urban audience, representing the struggle between the old class structure longing for feudal values, and the new ideas of an emerging urban society, interested in ideas of common interest and profit.153 The next chapter will investigate how in Scotland also, the values of productivity, collective identity, and self-reliance came to represent urban communities, shaping the urban spaces in which they lived and inspiring the triumphal performances taking place in them.
152 Theo Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Advice to a Princess; The Literary Articulation of a Religious, Political and Cultural Programme for Mary Queen of Scots, 1562’, in Goodare and MacDonald (eds), SixteenthCentury Scotland, pp. 99–122. 153 Herman Pleij, ‘Restyling “Wisdom”, Remodeling the Nobility, and Caricaturing the Peasant: Urban Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (4) (Spring, 2002), 689–704 (691–94).
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Chapter III
The West Port The Meeting of Royal and Civic Identities The West Port The most frequent entry point for Edinburgh triumphal processions was the West Port, a city gate on the west side of the Grassmarket area just below Edinburgh Castle. A gateway of sorts existed here as early as 1437 and a more substantial port was built between 1477 and 1507. In the aftermath of the Battle of Flodden in 1513, the West Port became part of the reinforced wall of the same name, definitely supplanting an earlier civic gate — the Upper Bow or Over Bow (discussed in Chapter IV) — as the western entry point.1 Like other Scottish city gates, for example the much-altered West Port at St Andrews in Fife, the Edinburgh West Port would probably have been about 12 feet high, of one-cart width to allow entrance to bulky wagons and with smaller archways for pedestrians at either side [see Figures 11 and 12].2 Triumphal Entries: Gateways and Urban Borders Chapter II has acknowledged the different treatment between urban and non-urban space during triumphal entries, reflecting differences not only in appearance, but also in political role, social composition, and economic relevance. Walls and civic gateways acted as physical guardians separating and monitoring access to these two worlds, following the traditions of medieval literature and folklore centred on courtly settings within the broad landscape. In the late fourteenth-century tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a spent Sir Gawain seeks physical separation from the wilderness he had adventurously roamed by accessing the safety of a castle space, defended by a fortified border made of sizeable walls, a drawbridge, and lockable gates.3 The perceived rusticity of the Scottish landscape and of its inhabitants, made it easy to visualize civic gateways as guarding the safety and rights of the regulated walled community. 1 Stuart Harris, The Place Names of Edinburgh: Their Origins and History (Edinburgh: Gordon Wright, 1996), p. 633, and W. Douglas Cullen, The Walls of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: The Cockburn Association, 1988), p. 20. Grant (ed.), Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 4, p. 222. 2 Comparison in Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 33–35. On the West Port appearance, see also ‘Siege of Edinburgh Castle 1573 (Plate to Holinshed’s History of Scotland)’, from 1577, in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. 3 Robert Liddiard, Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066–1500 (Macclesfield: Windgather Press, 2012), pp. 122–23, 142–43. W. A. Neilson (trans.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, Ontario: In Parentheses Publications, 1999), p. 17.
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Figure 11. Detail of the West Port and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
They defended the burgh’s exceptional economic and political privileges from outsiders’ pretensions and possible threats, and from the competing worldviews represented by immobile, hierarchical feudal traditions. During civic ceremonies — particularly those held in towns with a strong royal presence through administrative ties or neighbouring residences — gateways represented the location where the narrative of the approaching court and that of the hosting urban community would either collide or intertwine. As both frontiers and crossings, these selectively porous membranes could be willingly and publicly opened as a sign of trust and loyalty, but also kept shut: here people representing two different sets of values and visions of social order — courtly and civic — ritually negotiated their respective roles through public ceremonies.4 4 See Jan Hirschbiegel and Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Urban Space Divided? The Encounter of Civic and Courtly Spheres in Late-Medieval Towns’, in Classen (ed.), Urban Space, pp. 487–501 on spatial overlaps during the Council of Constance, 1414–1418. The West Port as urban border in Guidicini, ‘Urban Border’.
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Figure 12. A historical view of the outer side of the West Port, in St Andrews.
A lockable gate, with its claim to military might, represented the city’s right to resist unjust rule by forcing a confrontation — making the rituals of admission and siege warfare an ideal theme for politicized spectacle.5 From a Christian point of view, the cheerful admittance of a ruler through a civic gate mimicked Christ’s biblical advent into Jerusalem, prompting improvements through targeted spatial alterations to represent heavenly perfection. This honoured the ruler by emphasizing his role as God-blessed representative, and worked in favour of the hosting city by raising its prestige to that of a new Zion.6 In Paris, by repeatedly showing on the Saint Denis Gate how the reign would achieve prosperity through the cooperation of the French kings and the local institutions, the capital’s official acknowledgement was presented as an advisable prerequisite — or even a legal necessity. French jurists maintained that the legitimacy of an accession depended on the consent of the three estates as representatives of the civic body of the realm, signified for example for Henry VI of England in 1431 by the opening of three great hearts at Saint Denis Gate, representing the three political estates’ political and loving acceptance of the King’s rule.7 Meaningfully, Joyeuse Entrée was the name for both the charter of rights signed at accession by the dukes
5 Simon Pepper, ‘Siege Law, Siege Ritual, and the Symbolism of City Walls in Renaissance Europe’, in James D. Tracy (ed.), City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 573–604. 6 Wintroub, Savage Mirror, p. 146. The city as Jerusalem in Neil Murphy, ‘Building a New Jerusalem in Renaissance France: Ceremonial Entries and the Transformation of the Urban Fabric, 1460–1600’, in Katrina Gulliver and Heléna Tóth (eds), Cityscapes in History, Creating the Urban Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 179–95. 7 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 125–40, 45–46, and 93–94.
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of Brabant, and for the Low Countries’ civic welcomes — underlying their interrelated legitimizing powers.8 The ceremony of passing through an entry gate related to the publicly discriminating experience of engaging with spatial thresholds in general — even the domestic door: it related to the rituality of religious practices and superstitions, to the establishment of social distinctions, and to the acknowledgement of personal authority.9 During the 1432 London celebrations, the mechanical giant guarding the Bridge Gate let young Henry VI of England through as longed-for legitimate ruler, but shook his sword forbiddingly to scatter away any approaching enemy of the King; London’s traditional identification with giants, and its placement at a known site of civic unrest added an element of defiance.10 While in 1536 the nominally independent republic of Pisa ceremoniously welcomed Emperor Charles V and his personal retinue within the civic walls, entrance to the accompanying imperial army was pointedly refused.11 On 15 March 1604 in London, entry organizers Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson found themselves in a conundrum regarding whether the procession for newcomer James of Scotland and England should enter through a gate as appropriate for a foreign monarch, or start from the Tower as traditional for English coronations.12 By being ignored, altered, or physically destroyed, the gateway could take symbolic responsibility for the city’s political mistakes: in 1443 Alphonso the Great entered Naples through a breach made in the walls rather than through the functioning civic gate, to emphasize his military conquest of the urban space.13 In 1440 in Bruges, an angered Duke Philip the Good demanded the demolition of the Bouveriepoort gate and its replacement with a chapel to atone for having previously defiantly closed it to the Duke’s troops — before allowing the community to reclaim its function in 1452 as reward for their support.14 The next sections will discuss the role of the entry gate and civic walls in the Edinburgh royal entries, as the location of symbolic arm-wrestling for power between civic and royal authorities.
8 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 39–40. 9 Daniel Jutte, The Strait Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 209–50. 10 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 146–47. Site-specificity in Joseph Rodriguez, ‘“With the Grace of God at Th’entryng of the Brigge”: Crown Versus Town and the Giant of London Bridge in Lydgate’s Triumphal Entry of Henry VI’, in Susan Bennett and Mary Polito (eds), Performing Environments: Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 201–21. 11 Strong, Art and Power, p. 84. 12 James D. Mardock, Our Scene is London: Ben Jonson’s City and the Space of the Author (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 24–26; the latter option was employed. Route alterations in Anne Lancashire, ‘Dekker’s Accession Pageant for James I’, Early Theatre, 12 (1) (2009), 39–50 (43–44). 13 Teofilo F. Ruiz, A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 127–28. 14 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 41–42, 48. A fuller description of the 1440 entry in pp. 103–14. Marc Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructing the City: The Inculcation and Arrogation of Princely Power in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands (14th–16th Centuries)’, in Martin Gosman, Arjo Vanderjagt and Jan Veenstra (eds), The Propagation of Power in the Medieval West (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), pp. 1–33 (pp. 19–22).
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Burgh’s Rights: Defence and Identity Most Scottish royal burghs enjoyed the right to build a defensive perimeter, that being a substantial stone and lime wall as in Edinburgh and Stirling, or simpler defences like palisades, ramparts, or ditches as in Inverness, Selkirk, and Perth.15 Edinburgh’s earlier defences were superseded between 1450 and 1472 by the King’s Wall, built on James II’s orders against the English threat. The wall cut through Gray’s Close and passed just south of the site of the old Parliament, meeting the High Street in the Netherbow area. The later 1514–1560 Flodden Wall acknowledged and encircled Edinburgh’s suburban growth: it included the Cowgate, the Grassmarket, and the lands of religious bodies like the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the church of St Mary in the Fields.16 The Flodden perimeter was enlarged in 1628–36 by the Telfer Wall, enclosing the charitable institution of George Heriot’s Hospital (founded 1628) [see Plate IV]. After this, the ‘Royalty’ — the physical area upon which the burgh exercised its authority and privileges — was not substantially enlarged until the construction of the New Town was considered, the request for extension of the Royalty being granted in 1767.17 Access to the burgh was controlled through urban gateways called the West Port, Greyfriars or Bristo Port, Potterrow Port, Cowgate Port, Netherbow Port, College Kirk Port in Leith Wynd, and the Port in Halkerston’s Wynd.18 Actually, Edinburgh’s walls offered limited military protection, being passed with relative ease by the English army in May 1544: their primary role was to demonstrate the burgh’s rights as inseparable from a physically distinct civic space. Edinburgh’s extremely tall, adjoining tenement buildings confirmed the significance attributed to living within the confines of the Royalty, rather than in the more spacious suburbs. Although financed, built, and maintained by the civic community, walled defences necessitated the consent of the king as the burgh’s feudal superior: they did not defend a competitive political enclave, but were rather the expression of the monarch’s favour.19 Demands and expectations were attached to royal patronage, also encouraged in Edinburgh by physical
15 Geoffrey P. Stell, ‘Urban Buildings’, in Michael Lynch, Michael Spearman and Geoffrey P. Stell (eds), The Scottish Medieval Town (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1988), pp. 60–80 (p. 62); Cullen, Walls of Edinburgh, pp. 1–4; Anna Turner Simpson, Sylvia Stevenson and Nicholas Holmes, Historic Edinburgh Canongate & Leith: The Archaeological Implications of Development (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1981), pp. 18–19. 16 Wall remains in RCAHMS, An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of the City of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1951), pp. 120–21. 17 Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, pp. 22–23, and Alexander J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh 1750–1840 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), pp. 297 and 301. Expansion of the Royalty in p. 157. Hugo Arnot, The History of Edinburgh from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time (Edinburgh: William Creech, 1788), pp. 313–16. 18 William Henry Oliphant Smeaton, The Story of Edinburgh (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1905), p. 77. See also Turner Simpson, Stevenson and Holmes, Historic Edinburgh, pp. 19–20. 19 Examples from central Europe in James D. Tracy, ‘To Wall or not to Wall: Evidence from Medieval Germany’, in Tracy (ed.), City Walls, pp. 76–78.
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proximity and frequent interactions, although actual royal pressure was often indirect and nominal, or efficaciously dodged by the burgh’s magistrates. In the sixteenth century, the peripatetic Scottish court took more stable residency in Edinburgh, and the Castle and the Palace of Holyrood became tangible signs of royal authority edging the civic perimeter. The burgh of Edinburgh was an influential member of the Convention of Royal Burghs and seat of the national Parliament: politically, the monarch benefited from close control over the administrative machines of central civil court and court of session, and over a trusted body of civil servants involved in executive government.20 Financially, Edinburgh’s closeness to the court meant the opportunity to tap steadily into a large clientele of affluent and sophisticated visitors, sustaining the local commerce and offering access to luxury imported goods. This complex relationship created exactly the sort of potentially conflicting situations that triumphal entries could defuse: staging a peaceful encounter between a willing civic host and a benevolent royal visitor prefigured the renovation of their hoped-for understanding. In real-life situations, allowing or refusing access to the walled perimeter during period of conflict had allowed the burgh to position itself politically. The Netherbow gate was (ineffectively) closed against the English army in 1544, in rejection of Henry VIII’s aggressively proffered alliance; in 1715, it was shut to William Mackintosh of Borlum and his army, taking a clear stance against the Jacobite cause, while in 1745 it was symbolically breached by the Jacobite Highlanders’ victorious parade.21 In comparison, the creation of elaborate welcoming rituals at the West Port served to underline the ruler’s entrance as an encounter between well-disposed equals, rather than an act of spatial appropriation obtained as personal right. The entries of Mary Queen of Scots (1561) and James VI (1579) and — on a totally different scale — Charles I in 1633 will represent intriguing exceptions. The Triumphal Route: Approaching the West Port In the majority of the royal entries considered, the choice of the West Port as entry gate was not seemingly determined by proximity or convenience of access — as seen from comparison with Plate IV. When in 1617 and 1633 the monarchs arrived from England — King James VI/I sailing to Leith and then via the Lang Gait,22 and King Charles I in 1633 by land via Dalkeith and the Lang Gait,23 respectively — the processions headed to the West Port circling
20 Alan R. MacDonald, The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550–1651 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 110–11. 21 Samuel Chandler, The Old Whig: Or, the Conſiſtent Proteſtant, 2 vols (London: Wilkins, Ward, Hett, Millar, and Gray, 1739), vol. 2, pp. 300–01; Grant (ed.), Cassells Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 2, pp. 325–26, and vol. 1, p. 43. 22 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 245. 23 Thomas Craufurd, History of the University of Edinburgh, from 1580 to 1646 (Edinburgh: A. Neill & Co., 1808), p. 120.
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all the way around the Castle Rock. Had the point merely been to enter the civic space promptly, the Netherbow would have been a geographically more obvious choice. The apparently intentional choice of the West Port is an early signifier of the fact that Edinburgh civic spaces carried special significances and were used in deliberate, meaningful ways during civic entrances — as important co-actors of the performance, their presence or absence held implications altering the significance of the ceremony. The same pattern emerges when considering monarchs who had rather spent a few days in the neighbourhood of the city, awaiting the day of the civic welcome. For example Mary Queen of Scots, who had returned from France on 19 August 1561, had spent the night before her entry at Holyrood Palace, and on the morning of 2 September took a similar circular route riding alongside the Lang Gait,24 around the Castle Rock, and towards the West Port, rather than entering from the nearby Netherbow gate. Also in 1579 James VI had spent more than two weeks at Holyrood Palace after his arrival from Stirling in late September;25 on the day of his entry ‘he come furthe of Dalkeithe quhair he had bein at banket four dayis of befoir’, 26 the inconveniently placed West Port being chosen again as entry gate.27 Similarly, in 1590 Anna of Denmark had spent two days in Holyrood before being officially welcomed into town, and had reached the West Port gate to begin her entry after an unobtrusive ride on the Cowgate.28 The volley of shots marking the official beginning of the triumphal entry was fired from the castle only when Queen Anna’s party was in sight of the West Port, and not when the procession inconspicuously left Holyrood Palace.29 The roundabout arrivals of Mary (1561), James (1579), and Anna (1590), comfortably residing nearby but politically invisible until they reached the burgh’s access, gave the impression of reaching safety after perilous journeys from afar. The counterfeit geographical distance stood for the conceptual distance between monarch and burgh, to be overcome symbolically through choreographed encounters at a symbolically meaningful location, the West Port. In 1538 Mary of Guise also ‘come in firſt at the West Port’,30 either from Holyrood Palace also, or straight from the royal palace at Linlithgow where she and the King had spent a few days.31 The consistency in the choice of the West Port might point towards its usage in 1503 also for Margaret Tudor’s arrival from England, although chronicler Younge does not specify the name of the entry gate. Campbell has suggested that Bristo Port might have been used, based on its convenient position for travellers coming from the south, and on 24 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 25 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 26 David Moysie, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, 1577–1603 (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1830), p. 25. 27 James might have gone along the Lang Gait, as Mary did in 1561, or through the Cowgate, as Anna of Denmark would do in 1590. 28 ‘Receiving of King Kames VI and his Queen’, pp. 38–39. 29 Ibid., p. 39. See also Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 107. 30 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 22. 31 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 381.
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the closeness of the port to the Franciscan convent of the Grey Friars (today Greyfriars Kirk, begun 1602), as ‘At the Entrynge of that ſame cam in Proceſſyon the Grey Freres’.32 However, for later entries physical proximity did not seem to be an essential requirement, and the Grey Friars were still the closest religious community to the West Port — hence the West Port is likely to have been used in 1503 also, in the interest of dignified stateliness and political convenience. It is worth mentioning a possible exception to this pattern, this being the celebrations held in 1558 for the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin of France in Paris. While all other traditional stations on the High Street (Over Tron, Market Cross, Salt Tron, Netherbow) are recorded as being decorated and prepared for the entertainment, the West Port triumphal station is notable for its absence from the records.33 While Queen Regent Mary of Guise had a role in promoting the ceremony — and considering her judicious involvement with public spectacles endorsing her profile as regent, she might have figured in it — no newly arrived sovereign was actually welcomed into the civic precinct, and no first encounter between civic and royal authorities was being staged.34 The West Port’s absence from this one event made political and spatial sense there as much as did its otherwise constant presence. The recurrent choice of the same gateway for civic entries was often governed by both practical and symbolic reasons. In Paris, the choice of Saint Denis as the entry gateway for royal processions until 1660 was justified by the strong traditional connections between the French monarchy and the Saint, and by the authoritative precedents of early uses of Saint Denis-related locations in and around Paris for royal entries and events.35 In Edinburgh also, the constant reappearance of the West Port as first entry station pointed at an acknowledged symbolic relevance of this civic space. One wonders if other stations of the triumphal route are also repeatedly used with symbolic purposes, the significance of each building and location enhanced by the decorations and the ceremonies realized and performed in situ. For now, the significant absence of two key Edinburgh locations, the Castle and Holyrood Palace, from this narrative is to be investigated. Absent Royal Residences: The Castle and Holyrood Palace The Stewarts’ presence was architecturally represented by their two royal residences; they enjoyed a spatially dominant position in relation to the burgh, one looming high above the burgh from the Castle Rock, the other expanding horizontally with its gardens and hunting grounds, with the High Street and the Canongate 32 Margaret’s arrival in Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 28. See also Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, p. 27; Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 33 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, pp. 269–72. See also Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, pp. 152–57. 34 Dean, ‘Absence of an Adult Monarch: Ceremonial Representation’, pp. 155–58. 35 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 105, 69, and 72.
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Figure 13. Detail of the Castle of Edinburgh (top) and of Holyrood Palace (bottom), in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
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connecting the two. The castle’s defences had been constantly maintained from at least the times of King Malcom III (1031–1093) and the royal accommodations improved over time, but when Holyrood Palace became the monarchs’ premier residence, James V downgraded it to a defensive rather than residential role. Holyrood Palace is on the lower end of the High Street–Canongate stretch, in a pleasant site very different from the cramped Castle Rock. A small royal guest-house had existed attached to the Augustinian Abbey of the Holy Rude almost since its foundation by David I in 1128. The royal palace built here by James IV (completed in 1505) was remodelled by James V, keen to impress his French connections with new royal apartments and other improvements, and it was kept in good repair even after the king’s court moved to London in 1604 [see Figure 13].36 This geographically influential and processionally convenient placing could lead to the assumption that the castle and/or the palace would play a relevant symbolic role in the event, as the likely beginning and ending of a royal procession developing from one royal residence to another. This is most emphatically not the case. While the presence of the court benefited Edinburgh on many levels, the burgh was not an offshoot of the royal seats but rather a neighbouring self-sufficient community led by socially active corporations and wealthy merchants. As non-civic buildings representing the monarch’s competing and at times interfering power, the Castle and the Palace would have been most emphatically not included in the entertainment. The entry did start from a location, the West Port, just underneath the castle itself — emphasizing the reception of the monarchs within a civic space of which they are not usually and otherwise part; afterwards the civic configuration with its densely stacked, tall buildings virtually hid it from view, favouring instead telescopic views of the distant countryside.37 The Palace of Holyrood was in appearance less isolated, as the destination towards which all monarchs headed at the end of their entry, but the Netherbow–Holyrood stretch seldom included staged performances, which concentrated instead on the West Port–Netherbow gate area, emphasizing the boundaries of the Royalty of Edinburgh. The royal guest was obviously free to continue their route downwards to reach their own residence, but the Palace was most definitely not the grand finale towards which the whole procession purposefully advanced. In 1538 Mary of Guise ‘maid her entres in Edinburgh with greit trivmphe’; the Queen ‘come in firſt at the Weſt Port, and raid doun the hie gait to the abbay of Halyrudhous’ with ‘greit ſportis’38 being set up for her entertainment within the urban perimeter. The burgh’s records mentioned the West Port, the Over Bow, the Tolbooth, the Cross, the Tron, and the Netherbow as triumphal stations, with no mention of any event being arranged for beyond this Edinburgh gate — at least, as Chapter VIII will show, not until 1579.39
36 Castle and palace in John G. Dunbar, The Architecture of the Royal Residences during the Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Periods (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 74–83 and 55–72 respectively. 37 McKean, Edinburgh, p. 5; Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, pp. 10–12. 38 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 22. 39 Extracts from the Records of the Burg of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, pp. 90–91.
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A comparison with the relationship between the Medici dynasty and the Florentine urban spaces — characterized by constant readjustments while the Medici consolidated their power upon the city — will help draw some conclusions on the role of lordly residences during triumphal entries. While the apartments of the astutely demure Cosimo il Vecchio (1389–1464) faced inward towards a defensible private garden, the urban villa at Poggio a Caiano built for Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449–1492), in princely style, proudly faced towards the outside. Later the majestic Palazzo Pitti of the established Cosimo I (1519–1574) signalled political self-sufficiency through its grandiose isolation within the self-contained Boboli garden.40 In parallel, while earlier Medici residences shunned celebrative limelight, the inclusion of the Palazzo Pitti in triumphal routes through Florence unapologetically celebrated their politically leading role. The grand Strada Ferdinanda planned for Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria’s entry in 1608 as Cosimo II’s bride would have connected the Palazzo with the Duomo via a selection of palaces belonging to Medici supporters, a three-dimensional act of spatial appropriation permanently inscribing a Medici-centred narrative in the fabric of the city.41 In this context, let us consider Mary Queen of Scots’ decision, for her 1561 Edinburgh entry, to exclude the West Port from the narrative and forcefully included her own castle in it. On the morning of 2 September the Queen and her nobles left her residence at Holyrood Palace, rode ‘be the lang gait on the north ſyid of the ſaid burgh’, and ‘come in and raid vp the caſtell bank to the caſtell, and dynit thairin’.42 How the West Port was dealt with by the procession heading for the castle is unclear. The Queen might have entered the fortress precinct from a pathway now lost on the site of present-day Lothian Road and Castle Terrace, or of King’s Stables Road; or the procession might have maintained the usual circular route through the West Port and Grassmarket but passed these urban spaces quickly and unceremoniously.43 As any mention of the gate is missing from the chronicle, as are any records of expenses regarding its setting up or decoration, the former option seems more likely. Skipping a civic landmark on a major, comfortable road and instead climbing up a much steeper gradient to reach the castle privately and unobserved appears a significant and intentional decision. Ceremonial improvisations of this kind often carried an element of defiance, for example on 2 December 1431 Henry VI insisted on receiving the
40 Comparison in Francis William Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), pp. 141–44. See also Edmund Boleslav Fryde, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici, High Finance and the Patronage of Art and Learning’, in Arthur Geoffrey Dickens (ed.), The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400–1800 (New York: McGrawHill, 1977), pp. 77–97. Boboli as the Lord’s private world in Pietro Marchi, ‘Il Giardino di Boboli ed il suo Anfiteatro’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 162–82 (p. 164). 41 As described by Anna Maria Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee: la Visita, le Nozze e il Trionfo’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 69–100 (p. 91). 42 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 43 The Lothian road vs West Port option is discussed in Smeaton, Story of Edinburgh, p. 75. Compare also Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 104, and Davidson, ‘Entry of Mary Stewart’, 421.
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representatives of the Parisian civic corporations outside of the walls in an indoor setting of his choice — the little La-Chapelle-Saint-Denis — before going ahead with the planned civic ceremony.44 In 1561, after having lunched at the castle, ‘hir hienes come furth of the ſaid caſtell towart the ſaid burgh, at quhilk depairting the artailᵹerie ſchot vehementlie’45 to mark the beginning of the celebrations. The royal procession approached the burgh’s space via the Butter Tron, a weighing station and commercial building, where it re-joined the High Street to proceed towards the Palace of Holyrood. While some ceremonies of welcome were performed for Mary at the Butter Tron on this occasion, enacting the admission into the civic space and the related ceremonies at a weighing facility rather than at the civic gate noticeably weakened the significance of this politicized first meeting. By side-lining the West Port and making the castle the point of origin of her processional route, Mary questioned the city’s authority by denying both the opportunity and the right to grant or refuse her entry. French-raised Mary might have been unaware of the specifics of Edinburgh’s spatial symbolism, but an experienced Dowager Queen of France would have been familiar with the implications of ritual and thresholds; Mary’s decision could have been a conscious attempt to establish royal authority over her new capital, inspired by a first-hand experience of the Valois monarchs’ strong grip on power. Herries’ Historical Memoirs does mention that ‘she entred at the Weſt-port’,46 making no mention of the involvement of the castle and describing it as a normal West-Port-to-the-Netherbow route, but then, Herries’ account does seem to contain some inaccuracies. He recorded the entry as taking place ‘upon the firſt day of September’,47 when it was actually postponed to the following day; he also mentioned a particularly provocatively anti-Catholic pageant as having taken place, while most other chroniclers mention it later as cancelled.48 If Herries sketched the event as originally devised and ignored later alterations, the Queen might indeed have been expected to enter from West Port, however it seems that she decided later to change her plans. The lack of records regarding expenses for the West Port suggest that some consultation had taken place, giving the organizers enough notice of the Queen’s intentions for the decorations for the gate to be avoided altogether, a replacement welcome being set up at the Butter Tron instead.49
44 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, pp. 47–48. 45 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 46 John Herries, Historical Memoirs of the Reign of Mary Queen of Scots and a Portion of the Reign of King James the Sixt, ed. by John Maxwell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Printing Company, 1836), p. 56. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., p. 57. See Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, p. 79. 49 Arrangements in Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, p. 74.
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Ceremonies of Negotiation and Gift-Giving Town gates were traditionally the location for ceremonials of mutual acknowledgement, made explicit through staged interactions with the approaching monarchical authority: the act of gift-giving — loaded with symbolic meanings which transcended the mere change of ownership of a given object — was central to such negotiations. Depending on the circumstances of the gesture, and on the relative political and economic situation of the parties involved, gift-giving could represent a demonstration of strength or of submission, a bribe, the fulfilling of a promise, an apology, the sealing of an agreement, an act of loyalty, or a display of charity.50 While not unrelated to feudal traditions of submission, gift-giving ceremonies such as those staged in the self-assured cities of the Burgundian Low Countries contained expectations of reciprocation, either on the spot by swearing an oath or renewing the hosting city’s rights, or by bonding the monarch to some form of future restitution.51 Rulers could be presented with gifts at any stage of the ceremony — even hours or days before or after the event, at the ruler’s own residence — but the keys of the city as the most symbolically loaded of gifts was usually delivered at the urban gateway, publicly granting the monarchs the right to access the urban space unchallenged [see Figure 14].52 The speech accompanying the presentation of the keys of the city of Ghent to Duke Philip the Good in 1458, underlined how the citizens were presenting their guest with ‘all that is ours, and all that is possible to us to offer’,53 a highly respectful message which however underlined the keys — and the city — as theirs to give or to refuse. More explicitly, in 1467 Charles the Bold found the gates of Mechelen closed shut at his arrival, but they opened up for him after the character of the Civic Maid descended from heaven to hand him seven golden keys, one for each of the seven civic gates.54 In Edinburgh, the ceremonial delivery of the keys happened on five occasions, most of them at the spatially appropriate location of West Port; the variations to this pattern are of interest in themselves. In 1503, Margaret Tudor met here ‘an Angell preſenting the Kees to the ſaid Qwene’55 descending from a painted timber arch built for the occasion. The keys of the city were theatrically delivered
50 Peter Arnade, ‘Carthage or Jerusalem? Princely Violence and the Spatial Transformation of the Medieval into the Early Modern City’, Journal of Urban History, 39 (4) ( January 2013), 726–48 (739–41). Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 3–21. 51 Mario Damen, ‘Princely Entries and Gift Exchange in the Burgundian Low Countries: A Crucial Link in Late Medieval Political Culture’, Journal of Medieval History, 33 (2007), 233–49 (236–37). 52 The tradition of delivering the keys in Robin Erica Wagner-Pacifici, Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 60–61. Related French case studies in Murphy, Ceremonial Entries, pp. 50–61. 53 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 118–19. 54 Ibid., pp. 244–45. 55 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289.
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to Anna of Denmark in 1590 using a globe-like device let down from the top of the West Port, which being come ſomewhat over her Maieſties heade, opened at the toppe into foure quarters, where the childe, appearing in the reſemblance of an angell, delivered her the keyes of the towne in ſilver.56 The West Port on this occasion ‘gleams on all sides most elegant with purple cloth, / and in its vault conceals the likeness of the starry sky’, as described in the celebrative poem by Flemish humanist and ambassador of the States-General of the Netherlands Adriaan Damman.57 The boy explained, ‘I am the angel of 56 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 57 Adrian Damman, Schediasmata Hadr.Dammanis a Bisterveld gandavensis (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1590), trans. by Jamie Reid-Baxter, [29–30]. Many thanks to Dr Reid-Baxter for making his unpublished translation into English available to me.
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Figure 14. The ceremony of surrender of the keys to an approaching monarch, as depicted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770).
the town you are entering. / I am sent by the one above’; by stating ‘Here is the key of the city, take care of it / so that you may keep guard of us’,58 he effectively transferred the role of guardian from the gate to Anna herself, as the elected keeper of the gate’s keys. The burgh’s loyalty would be her reward, he stated, as ‘the promise that we carry in our hearts’.59 The significance of this moment was conveyed spatially by a pause in the Queen’s progress, as Anna stopped while under the arch itself, in the liminal area between inside and outside.60 This 58 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 108. 59 Ibid. 60 ‘Thence ſhee came to the Weſt Port, under the which her Highneſſe ſtaied’. ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 39.
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ceremony resembles the delivery of ‘the keyis of hail Scotland in hir handis’61 to Mary of Guise on 17 June 1538 in St Andrews by an angel emerging from an artificial cloud, as part of a performance given near the New Abbey.62 Here the newly arrived Queen was symbolically granted access not merely to the burgh but to the whole country. Again, the keys were delivered to James VI in 1579 — not at the West Port but at the next station, the Overbow — by means of a globe-like device ‘that opnit artificiallie as the King came by’, from within which a boy emerged ‘presenting the keyis of the toun to his Majestie, that war all maid of fyne massie sylver’.63 Earlier, at the West Port the Magistrates of the town ‘presented unto the King, the sworde for the one hand, and the scepter for the uther’.64 The keys are missing, but one could argue that the King could not be expected to hold anything else dignifiedly in his hands; the delivery of two of the three most powerful symbols of monarchical authority — James himself, one assumes, would have provided the Crown — suggests a strongly honorific message was still associated with the West Port.65 The delivery of a sceptre — this time by his Tudor ancestor Henry VII — was also a feature of the 1604 entry of James VI/I into London, during which the King also saw an image of himself ‘in his imperial robes, a Crowne on his head, the sword and scepter in his hands’.66 In the Edinburgh case, the blade fitted with the Solomon-themed pageant staged at the West Port, showing the character of the biblical king being handed a sword by a servant to halve the contended child, in a parallel with James’ own role as Solomon-like bringer of justice.67 The sceptre as symbolic gift would appear again in James VI/I’s second entry into Edinburgh in 1617, when the King at the West Port gate received ‘the scepter off the citie, as also, in a silver basen, over gilt with gold, a thousand angells in a velvot bag’,68 the specification ‘of the city’ suggesting the symbolic gifting of the urban space to the entering monarch. Records mention that ‘twa keyis of siluer’69 were made for this occasion, suggesting that a gifting ceremony of the traditional kind also took place. The 1579 entry contained a humbling prequel, with the bareheaded civic authorities approaching the King outside of the civic walls, and the following section will discuss the use of a canopy on this occasion to represent royal prominence through spatial seclusion. It is possible then that by removing the delivery of the keys from the West Port station — hence not presenting the gate as something potentially lockable — the magistrates continued a narrative 61 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 379. 62 Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 63–64. 63 John Colville and Thomas Thomson (eds), The Historie and Life of King James the Sext: Being an Account of the Affairs of Scotland from the Year 1566, to the Year 1596; With a Short Continuation to the Year 1617 (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Co., 1825), p. 178. 64 Ibid. 65 Royal regalia during James V’s reign in Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 195–97. 66 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 349. Henry VII’s sceptre on p. 346. 67 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458; Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 2, pp. 242–44. 68 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19; noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. 69 Mill, Medieval Plays, p. 207 mentions ‘Treasurers’ Account 1612–23, 483’.
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of obsequiousness towards the young King, presenting him with the keys as a no-strings-attached gift in a later location, when admittance had already been granted. However, the delivery of the keys at the Overbow — ‘an ancient port’,70 a still recognizable superseded civic gateway — still partially maintained spatial echoes of traditional connotations of negotiation and admission. A similar apparent incongruity between political and urban location is noticeable in Mary’s entry in 1561 when the Queen’s party bypassed the West Port, to begin the entry from the castle after a leisurely lunch. Here also there was an attempt to recreate the conditions of a spatially appropriate welcome, as at the Butter Tron Mary encountered ‘ane port made of tymber, in maiſt honourable maner, cullorit with fyne cullouris, hungin with ſyndrie armes’.71 This fictional gateway was a fitting backdrop for the official commencement of Mary’s altered route, as ‘quhen the quenes hienes was cumand throw the ſaid port’ a boy-angel emerged from a hanging globe, to ‘deliuerit to hir hienes the keyis of the toun’.72 He also gave the Queen at the same time ‘a Bible tranſlated in Scots languadge, and a book of Pſalms turned likewayes in Scots verſe, which were ſignified by a ſpeech made by the boy to be emblems of her defending the Reformed Relligion’.73 The timing of the double present and the accompanying speech implied that the loyalty of the city (by this time governed by a Protestant council) was offered to Catholic Mary conditionally upon acceptance of the books and of what they represented. The speech declared how ‘your people with harts both ane and all’, offered Gode’s lawes his words and testament Trewlie translate with frutefull diligence, […] Together with the keyes of their porte.74 Gift-giving could then be a cunning attempt to test the ruler’s receptivity to what the gift represented, in the hope of creating a spontaneous-looking moment of positive interaction between the civic authorities and the monarch. Some rulers grabbed — literally — with both hands the opportunity to take control of the narrative through an emphatic public reaction to a gift. During her entry in 1559 in London, at the Little Conduit station in Cheapside Elizabeth Tudor received a monetary present, but also an English bible presented by Truth and Father Time. The Queen’s manner of accepting it — reaching for it with both hands, holding it up to kiss it, then embracing it warmly, thanking the city for a gift she promised to read assiduously — marked her as a champion of Protestantism, as well as extremely skilled at exploiting the potential of ceremonial language.
70 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 178. 71 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 72 Ibid. 73 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56; see also Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 74 Robert S. Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, 1542–1587: Extracts from the English, Spanish, and Venetian State Papers (London: Nutt, 1900), pp. 21–22.
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Confronted with similar circumstances, Catholic Mary Stuart was faced with the impossible task of pleasing her hosts and subjects without repudiating her well-known Catholic beliefs.75 Diplomatically, the Queen checked her displeasure — in partisan John Knox’s account, ‘sche began to frown: for schame sche could not refuise it. But she did no better’,76 as she passed the bible and psalm book straight away to a Catholic member of her own party. In 1590, the welcoming ceremonies and initial exchanges at West Port are well-recorded in Damman’s celebrative poem. ‘To meet her, the Senate goes forth with placid gravity, / And she with smiling face greets their coming’.77 It is the civic authorities who venture into the outer space to approach a well-disposed but static Queen Anna, but the welcoming speech ‘besought her, to deign to enter within the city’s walls’,78 balancing out the exchange by emphatically granting the Queen permission to approach and enter the civic perimeter. Anna’s response is a positive one, as ‘Hearing this, with smiling lips she declares herself willing; / her coach advancing a little, stands already on the threshold / of the central Port’.79 At this spatially significant stage, a double offering similar to that proffered to Mary in 1561, was made to Anna. The boy who emerged from a globe at the West Port to give the Queen the keys of the city, as previously discussed, also carried a bible and a psalm book, which he kissed and handed over to her.80 He declared that, acting as God’s messenger, he was delivering those books to bring her true understanding of religion, and as a token of His love towards her new country.81 The answer of the Queen, brought up a Lutheran and not even fully participating in the Protestant service for her own coronation, is not recorded in detail, but when the spectators applauded and cheered at this exchange, she ‘smiles gracefully’.82 Also, when the boy bowed to give her a piece of precious jewellery as a gift from the city, ‘in exchange, her majesty immediately gave him a gift’,83 — satisfactory public demonstration of her willingness to reciprocate the burgh’s goodwill. The ceremonies of gift-giving connected with the royal welcomes are worth more investigation. Less controversial monetary gifts (or propyne) were also regularly given to Scottish rulers, and represented opportunities to show appreciation. A gift of a cupboard worth 6000 merks was delivered by the town magistrates to James VI in 1579 three days after the entrance — on 20 October, at the first parliamentary meeting held in Edinburgh since 1573.84 The 75 Gift-giving of bibles to Elizabeth and Mary are compared in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 127–29, and in Gordon Kipling, ‘The Deconstruction of the Virgin in the Sixteenth-Century Royal Entry in Scotland’, European Medieval Drama, 9 (2005): 127–52 (129–34). 76 Knox, History of the Reformation, vol. 2, p. 288. 77 Damman, Schediasmata, [124–25], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 78 Ibid., [129]. 79 Ibid., [130]. 80 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 96. 81 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 108. 82 Damman, Schediasmata, [137], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 83 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 108. 84 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, pp. 459–60, and Moysie, Memoirs, p. 25, as discussed in Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 109.
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concurrence of a triumphal entrance and an anxiously awaited parliamentary session might explain the non-confrontational welcoming language at the West Port — but this topic will be expanded upon in Chapter VI. When in 1590, a town representative handed to Anna a valuable gold chain with precious stones and jewels at the Netherbow, the accompanying civic speech made clear how ‘Now we present you with a humble gift, / and in return you may remain gracious to us’.85 In 1617 at the West Port, James VI/I accepted ‘with ane myld and gracious countenance’ the precious coins in a decorated silver cup delivered to him as a ‘propyne’86 to accompany the aforementioned sceptre. The King showed more visible enthusiasm for the gift he received in the outer court of Holyrood Abbey by a delegation from Edinburgh College; after an oration so pleasing to the King that James called forth some members of his entourage to listen, the speaker presented a book of Latin verses ‘quilk he kissed and gave to his Majestie; the King very gladlie accepted of the same’.87 During her 1561 entry, Mary also received from a party of elegantly attired townsmen ‘ane cart with certane bairnes, togidder with ane coffer quhairin wes the copburd and propyne quhilk ſuld be propynit to hir hienes’.88 The well-loaded cart was not a neutral element of the ceremony. Exiting the Netherbow, the royal procession arrived at Holyrood, and thair the bairneis quhilk was in the cairt with the propyne maid ſome ſpeitche concernyng the putting away of the meſs, and thaireafter ſang ane pſalme; and this being done, the cart come to Edinburgh, and the ſaid honeſt men remaynit in hir vutter chalmer, and deſyred hir grace to reſſaue the ſaid copeburd.89 Mary ‘reſſauit the ſamyne, and thankit thame thairof. And ſua the honeſt men and convoy come to Edinburgh’.90 Delivering presents in the monarch’s own palatial space at the conclusion of the celebration was not infrequent, and not per se a confrontational move. In 1538, a group of guildsmen of the town arranged to visit Queen Mary of Guise to ‘delyuer the propyne within ane howre after the Quenis grace cuming to the Abbay of thairby’.91 During the event, the royal pair would be ‘honestlie and richlie propynit witht the provost and communitie of the toun baitht witht spyce and wyne gold and sillier’.92 Considering continental examples, costly plates and ornaments were presented to Queen Isabella of Bavaria by costumed citizens representing the city of Paris in the monarch’s own
85 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 119. 86 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 317, noted as from a volume of the Records of the High Court of Judiciary. 87 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 20. 88 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 89 Ibid., pp. 68–69. 90 Ibid., p. 69. 91 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 91. 92 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 381.
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bedchamber two days after Isabella’s Parisian entry in 1389.93 In comparison, the outer chamber in which the Edinburgh representatives delivered the presents to Mary in 1561 represented the outermost and most public room within her apartment.94 Still, when considered in the context of Mary’s entry at large, this ceremony of gift-giving could be interpreted as part of an articulate spatial reaction to the Queen’s own disregard for civic boundaries and snubbing of the West Port. The construction of a substitute gate at the Butter Tron as stage for the delivery of the keys reclaimed the magistrates’ right of granting or refusing access to the approaching royal party, and their pairing of the keys with Reformed texts made the welcome conditional on Mary’s acceptance of Protestantism, intentionally placing the Queen in an untenable position. By deciding to deliver the propyne in Mary’s own palace and once again to connect gift-giving with Protestant propaganda, the temporary appropriation by the burgh’s authorities of the Catholic Queen’s own rooms represented a robust response to her own previous disregard for civic boundaries and conventions. Discussing spiritual orthodoxy during triumphal entries could provide unifying experiences for rulers and subjects, and form a hoped-for common ground for the royal and the civic components of the ceremonies. In a pre-Reformation scenario, it was customary for approaching monarchs to perform acts of submission to religious authorities, as precondition of their acceptance into the civic space as God-given rulers. In 1515 Bruges, the future Charles V saw a pageant portraying himself kneeling at the gates of Jerusalem and receiving the keys of the city, with three angels promising him as a dutiful Christian king, full authority over the city of Bruges–Jerusalem.95 In 1529, when entering Bologna to meet the Pope for his coronation, Charles V publicly kissed the cross presented to him at the city gate.96 The public acts of submission to the cross and relics that Margaret Tudor and King James IV performed in 1503 confirmed the pair’s spiritual steadfastness. Initially it was a procession of Grey Friars ‘with the Croſſe and ſum Relicks, the wich was preſented by the Warden to the Kynge for to kyſſe, bot he wold not before the Qwene; and he had hys Hed barre during the Ceremonies’.97 Then it was a procession of Jacobins ‘with many Relicks; whereof ſome of thos kyſſe, in lyke wys; wherof the K. did as before’.98 Younge’s text placing the description of the Grey Friars’ and Jacobins’ processions next to minstrels playing on both sides of the civic wall suggests a liminal role for these groups, meeting the monarchs at the very edge of town — if not perhaps outside it.99 A little further
93 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 116. See Bryant, King and the City, pp. 31–40, for gift-giving in French royal entries. 94 Dunbar, Architecture of the Royal Residences, pp. 141–43. 95 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 117–18. 96 Strong, Art and Power, p. 79. 97 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid.
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came in Proceſſyon the College of the Peryſche of Seint Gilles, richly reveſted, with the Arme of that Seint; the wiche was preſented to the Kynge for to kyſſe; wherof he did as before, and began to ſynge Te Deum Laudamus.100 By presenting the keys at the same time as requesting the royal couple to perform public acts of worship that involved a degree of humbling, the monarchs’ admission into town was tied to their demonstration of Christian virtues, and to their willingness to act as — hopefully permanently — morally upright rulers. King James IV unaffectedly intoning a popular hymn exploited the emotionally loaded moment as a team-building exercise based on communal faith and shared excitement. For Charles I’s entry in 1633, a traditional ‘propyne to be givin and banquett to be maid’101 were discussed, but the self-confidence often demonstrated by the burgh in presenting its own welcome as conditional of earlier entries has largely disappeared. The keys of the city were presented at the first arch built at the West Port by a performer impersonating a nymph as symbolic representative of the city, who begged the monarch ‘to acknowledge her yours, and her indwellers your most humble and affectionate subjects’,102 a far cry from earlier quid-pro-quo messages. The 1633 speech pushed even further the significance of James VI’s key-less entrance from 1579, when the ruler’s passing through the West Port was marked by gestures of homage rather than negotiation, and the keys were presented to the ruler once admittance had already been granted. The 1633 speech stated presenting you, Sir, (who art the strong key of this litle world of Great Brittaine,) with these keyes, which cast up the gates of her affectioun, and designe you power to open all the springs of the hearts of these her most loyal citizens. Yet this almost not necessary, for as the rose at the farre appearing of the morning starre displayeth and spreadeth her purples, so at the very noyse of your happy returne to this your native country, their hearts, if they could have shined without their breasts, were with joy and faire hopes made spatious.103 Additionally, Charles I also received a book from an Apollo sitting on a recreation of Parnassus,104 and a costly propyne from the city — possibly the ‘bason of silver’105 in which the keys were delivered at the West Port. However the importance of a gift was not in its economic value per se, but in its representation of the people’s feelings of affection and loyalty towards the monarch.106 At the other end of the spectrum, the whole gift-giving ceremony for Mary was uniquely
100 Ibid. 101 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council relative to his Majesty’s Reception, 1628–1633’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 69–85) p. 78. 102 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 259. 103 Ibid., pp. 259–60. 104 Ibid., p. 267. 105 Ibid., p. 260; ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, pp. 78 and 84. 106 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 116–17.
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problematic. The delivering of the traditional propyne to Mary was debated by the civic authorities, with one party arguing that ‘with all diligence the triumphe and propyne to be maid rady at her hienes entrie within this toun’, and a tax to be raised for that purpose, while the opposition claiming that such an act of homage given the hostile atmosphere in town could ‘engender murmur, that rather the propyne be not given, and thairfor grantis nocht to the taxt’.107 In the end, gift-giving was employed as a thinly covered false homage: the symbolically loaded objects themselves, the circumstances and location of their delivery, and the accompanying speeches represented challenges to the Queen’s faith and through that, to her suitability to rule. In standard Edinburgh triumphal welcomes, the homage of keys and sceptres of the burgh being handed to the rulers symbolically recognized the monarchs’ right to enter (the city) and to rule (the country), but some guarantees could be requested in exchange. Performing this ceremony at the city gate — or trying to recreate city-gate conditions elsewhere — made skilful use of spatial significance to remind the royal guest that the welcome was freely given to a legitimate, well-disposed, and religiously compliant ruler. For the entries of James VI in 1579 and particularly of Charles I in 1633, the celebratory tone at the West Port appears to have taken over the negotiating character of this encounter. The move from James IV’s show of approachable spontaneity, to James VI’s restrained responses, and to what will appear as Charles I’s highhanded standoffishness is already partly indicated. As the next chapters will show, the increasing distance between the monarch and the civic spaces with which they were engaging was representative of the symbolic distance gradually developing between ruler and subjects during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the next section will discuss one of the ways in which such spatial separations were reinforced. Thresholds, Fabric, and Spaces of Portable Royalty Civic walls were not the only kind of symbolic enclosures giving three-dimensional form and visibility to different civic and royal identities. Through the use of fabric to create canopies, baldachins, tents, screens, and cushions, specific areas of otherwise homogeneous spaces — natural, religious, or civic — could be visually cordoned as different, reserved for and enhanced by the monarch’s use. Fabric was a flexible, highly effective material to work with to make visible the specific significance of the object or person they decorated. The parallel between presence of precious fabric and exalted status was for example signified by the appearance of cloth of honour suspended behind a saint in religious imagery, as a sign of veneration. Luxury textiles from the Far East represented wealth, connections, and refined taste — precious in themselves and because of their 107 ‘Notices from the Records of the Town-Council of Edinburgh, relative to the Queen’s Reception, 1561’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 1–8) p. 3, discussed in Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, pp. 74–77.
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symbolic associations. As backgrounds or curtains, precious fabric could help visually elevate the figure it accompanied, and it had religious undertones of creating an otherworldly setting where the divine could veil and reveal itself.108 In religious architecture canopies were used to mark the position of the high altar in churches — the baldacchino with twisted columns by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Saint Peter’s in Rome (1623–1634) is the most famous example of this, probably inspired by the apparato carried in procession during the jubilee of 1625.109 In religious celebrations, the use of baldachins and canopies would spatially signal the presence of a venerated statue, of a high Church dignitary, and in particular of the host during processions such as the Corpus Christi [see Plate V]. The quality and provenance of the canopy itself, the relative positioning of lay and sacred participants around it, and the role of guilds as organizing bodies lent political significance to these events.110 This language easily translated to triumphal entries; in some cases canopies marked the presence of holy characters — in 1453 in Reggio Emilia, an actor impersonating San Prospero floating under a baldacchino supported by angels handed down the keys of the city to a devout Duke Borso of Este.111 Later, the baldacchino was borrowed by monarchs eager to emphasize their status as God-blessed figures [see Plate VI]. In Rouen in 1550, the placing of Henri II beneath a canopy equated the King’s arrival to the Eucharist being paraded in procession across the city, in a visually comparable lay interpretation of the Advent of the Saviour.112 Similarly in Naples, when participating in cavalcades in the city, the viceroys’ status was marked by their position under a canopy, reminiscent of the position of the holy host in the Corpus Christi processions.113 This identification was intentional: Parisian medieval chroniclers explicitly mentioned that the use of canopies in triumphal entries honoured the king ‘all in the form and manner that was done for our Lord on Corpus Christi Day’.114 Consequently, during the entrances of foreign or lesser guests such as the Archduke of Austria (Paris, 1501) and the Duke of Bourbon (Lyon, 1515) the honour of the canopy was not granted.115 On the other hand, a visitor refusing 108 Donna Cottrell, ‘Unravelling the Mystery of Jan van Eyck’s Cloths of Honor: The Ghent Altarpiece’, in Désirée G. Koslin and Janet Snyder (eds), Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 173–94 (pp. 173–76). 109 Maarten Delbeke, ‘Framing History: The Jubilee of 1625, the Dedication of New Saint Peter’s and the Baldacchino’, in Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy (eds), Festival Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 129–54 (pp. 135–44). Holy spaces in architecture in Robert Ousterhout, ‘The Holy Space: Architecture and the Liturgy’, in Linda Safram (ed.), Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. 81–120 (pp. 82–97). 110 Canopies in Corpus Christi processions in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 251–58. 111 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 44–45. 112 Wintroub, Savage Mirror, p. 165. 113 Gabriel Guarino, ‘Public Rituals and Festivals in Naples, 1503–1799’, in Tommaso Astarita (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Naples (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 257–79 (pp. 263–64). Corpus Christi parallels also in Ruiz, ‘Sword and Palio’, 17–18. 114 Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, ed. Alexandre Tuetey (Paris, 1881), p. 274, in Kipling, Enter the King, p. 27. 115 Intentional avoidance of the canopy is discussed in Kipling, Enter the King , pp. 27–28. Its selective use in Murphy, Ceremonial Entries, pp. 187–95.
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the honour of a canopy was recasting himself as conqueror rather than friendly guest, and slighting the prominent citizens who had been assigned the coveted task of carrying it, as well as the institutions they represented.116 A comparable use of the canopies and spatial markers can be seen in Scottish ceremonies. During the extramural prequel to James VI’s 1579 entry into Edinburgh, the King’s meeting with the bareheaded magistrates took place with ‘a ſtately Canopy of Purple colour’d Velvet being held over his Head’.117 It was under its symbolic protection within a space marked as the King’s own that ‘he receiv’d the Magiſtrates of the City’,118 the canopy temporarily conferring to the monarch the authoritative role of the welcoming host, and giving a quasi-religious hue to the magistrates’ deferent submission towards the young King. The ‘vaill of fyne purpour veluet wnder the quhilk his grace raid to the abay’119 was placed over the King’s head while still outside the civic gate, and accompanied him throughout the event, creating a competing spatial reality that punctured and challenged the cohesive identity of the intramural space. As a ‘pompous pale of purple velvet’120 — a material rich in texture, sumptuousness, and colour — it attributed royal qualities to everyday space, marking it as a diminutive but powerful moving bubble of royalty. The frequent presence of canopies offering symbolic safeguard and spatial buffer, questions the depth of the monarch’s actual engagement with the civic experience; on the other hand, canopies might actually keep the civic space safely insulated by curtaining royal influences. In 1561, Mary Queen of Scots was welcomed at the Butter Tron by a canopy both luxurious and sizeable — as many as 16 young burgesses busied themselves around ‘the paill wnder the quhilk hir hienes raid; quhilk paill wes of fyne purpour veluet lynit with reid taffateis, freinᵹiet with gold and ſilk’.121 A few years previously, the poem by Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount describing the unrealized preparations for the welcome to ailing Queen Madeleine included the description of how ‘Vnder ane peill of gold scho sould haue past / Be burgesis borne clethit in silkis fine’.122 In 1538, for Mary of Guise’s entry, the burgh’s records on 18 July mention instructions for ‘swa mony as ar ordanit for the paill till haif thair veluos gownis, and the remanent to be in gowne of silk’,123 suggesting Mary also entered under a pall held high by well-dressed burgesses. In Aberdeen in 1511, Margaret Tudor was welcomed at some distance from the gate by four reputable and smart-looking young men ‘To beir the paill of velvet cramaſe / Abone Hir heid, as the cuſtome hes bein’,124 suggesting an already established
116 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, pp. 38, 40. 117 Crawfurd, Memoirs, p. 356. 118 Ibid. 119 Transcription of ‘Johnston’s MS. History of Scotland. Adv. Lib. Hist. MSS. 35.4.2’; in Mill, Mediaeval Plays, p. 193. Also Crawfurd, Memoirs, p. 356. 120 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 121 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67; also in Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56. 122 Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 375. 123 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 91; whole records pp. 87–92. 124 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 153.
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Scottish tradition of royal canopies as expected celebratory prompts. They were indeed powerful signs of established legitimacy: canopies created ‘peripatetic sites of memory’,125 with the space delimited by the palio bonding together the successive generations of the ruling dynasty. In 1590, Queen Anna of Denmark encountered as many as three canopies to define her royal space as separate from its civic surroundings. Firstly, at the West Port the Queen ‘had alſo a canapie of purple veluet, embrodered with gold, carried over her by ſixe ancient towneſmen’.126 Much information about this canopy can found in Damman’s poetical account, which described how the carriers held up high the pall of the splendid triumph, which the cuttlefish has dyed purple, suffusing its soft tissue, which in turn the needle of Babylon has threaded with thin gold: the border hangs quivering, in variegated threads of triple twilled cotton; on the inside, this flower of the blue sea has an effigy of the tranquil heavens in half light.127 Interestingly, both Mary’s and Anna’s admissions under their precious canopies happened at the same time as their meetings with the picturesquely attired Moors. The Moors’ role as liminal figures is reinforced by the presence of actual borders for them to preserve — defined by the moving coverage offered by the canopies both shielding and exalting Mary’s and Anna’s presence. In Anna’s case, the Moors defended the border by waving white sticks and moving in curious dance-like manners: ‘as they lumbered or staggered forward, the common people moved to the side’,128 keeping Anna’s processional royal space well-defined and unchallenged. Secondly, on arriving at the Kirk of St Giles, ‘four councillors then stepped forward and bore a canopy of red velvet on four long red poles over her majesty’ to account for the stretch between the carriage and the church; at the exit, ‘her majesty was led out to the carriage again by the aforementioned gentlemen, and the red velvet canopy was born over her grace to Holyrood’.129 Thirdly, Anna was described as being under a canopy when listening to the service in the Kirk of St Giles, where she ‘satt in the east end, in the loft, under a faire cannabie of velvet’.130 Fabric could be used to alter the characteristics of civic space in other ways, in the making of costumes and prescribed attires to disguise and clarify the performers’ and spectators’ identities. On a wider urban scale, hanging tapestries could transform an average-looking or functional space into a luxurious, entertaining, even instructive environment. In 1590, Damman remarked how
125 Ruiz, ‘Sword and Palio’, 16. 126 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 127 Damman, Schediasmata, [90–95], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 128 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 109. 129 Ibid., p. 114. 130 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 97.
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Everyone hangs his house with woven tapestries, and strives to make the streets spectacles of glowing beauty with the images displayed; the enthusiasm is irresistible: the splendour grows: and in varied splendour, magnificent shine the house fronts.131 By hanging from windows tapestries showing classical and moralizing stories, the urban space would become a three-dimensional narrative, with the mythological illustrations evoking fabled, epic cities of old, while the biblical stories reinforced the parallel with heavenly Jerusalem. Tapestries were frequently employed to decorate Edinburgh High Street; for example, for James’ entry in 1579 ‘Frome the West Port to the Neather Bow, all the staires on the Hight Street were covered with tapestrie, cards, and brods’.132 In fact there were proclamations made in the city before the entrance, ‘commanding all the inhabitantis therof to hing their stairis with tapestrie and ares warkis on Fryday nixt’.133 These tapestries were illustrated ones: ‘the forehowsis of the streits, be the whilks the King passit, war all hung with magnifik tapestrie, with payntit historeis, and with the effegeis of noble men and wemen’,134 and ‘All the Windows were hung with Pictures and Rich Tapeſtry, the Streets ſtrow’d with Flowers’.135 Again for Queen Anna in 1590, ‘the high gate [High Street] of Edinbrough, which was all decked with tapeſtry from the top to the bottom’136 was remarked upon. These tapestries and decorations illustrated themes from mythology and classical history, such as Aeneas’s escape from Troy and his tragic love for Dido, the story of Achilles, of Romulus, and of many others.137 Across Europe, rulers exchanged effective patterns and employed the same artisans, or competed for monopoly and artistic supremacy. Sturdier than other luxury textiles, and easy to transport and store, figurative and heraldic tapestries were used in courtly spaces to create a warm and diverting background, and livened up the frontages of many a capital during triumphal ceremonies.138 The Stewarts were very much part of this cultural dialogue; their collection of tapestries included, by 1503, one of the Story of the Trojan War series, produced in the Netherlands in the late fifteenth century and which were also owned by rulers including Henry VII Tudor, Charles the Bold Duke of Burgundy, Charles VIII of France, and Ludovico il Moro Duke of Milan.139 In 1490, Ludovico’s set was lent to Emperor Maximilian I to decorate
131 Damman, Schediasmata, [20–24], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 132 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459. 133 ‘Notices from the Records of the Town-Council preparatory to the King’s Reception, 1579’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, pp. 11–27 (pp. 22–23). 134 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 135 Crawfurd, Memoirs, p. 357. 136 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41. 137 Classical and mythological themes are detailed in full in Burel, ‘The Discription’, pp. i-vii. 138 Thomas P. Campbell, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibition 2002 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 13–23. Iain Buchanan, Habsburg Tapestries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 15–54. 139 Thomas P. Campbell, Tapestry in the Renaissance, pp. 55–64, particularly p. 55 and p. 64.
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Genoa for the latter’s triumphal entry. It is intriguing to consider whether the Scottish kings’ own Trojan-themed series was also employed during the triumphal entry of Queen Anna in 1590, possibly together with the tapestries illustrated with the stories of Dido and Aeneas — 13 pieces strong — which was acquired by James V on or before 1539 [see Plate VII].140 Finally, fabric could have been used to define and carve out courtly spaces within natural surroundings; in 1503, the presence of a pavilion was essential in giving a courtly, chivalric character to the prequel staged for Margaret Tudor outside of Edinburgh. While the pavilion is not described, it must have been a substantially spatious, easily accessible tent-like structure, as it contained the two duelling knights — fully armed, cumbersome figures on horseback, the lady-paramour of one of them, and probably an assortment of weapons, other tools and prompts for the scene, with the necessary attendants and helpers.141 Through the placement of the pavilion, the King temporarily appropriated an otherwise unremarkable meadow, visually designating a clearing in the wood as a ‘different’, charmed space inhabited by a courtly narrative. The power of temporary structures to transform a common field into a politicized space was demonstrated, only a few years later in 1520, by Henry VIII’s own temporary pavilion in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, built of painted cloth and canvas over timber frames as an awe-inspiring, three-dimensional expression of royal ambition [see Plate VIII]. During entries in Edinburgh, fabric helped create identities, sustain narratives, and visually define pockets of space pertaining to the monarchs. Flexible and lightweight, items made of fabric were eminently moveable, canopies transforming space from civic to royal and to civic again as their shadows advanced responding to the monarch’s processional movements. Royal space was then characterized not by intrinsically unique architectonic qualities, but by the transformative presence of the monarch redefining an otherwise unremarkable area as such; in this period, Elizabeth Tudor outsourced the creation and financial burden of lavish royal surroundings to the nobles taking turns at hosting her in their own residences, which she would then elevate with her presence.142 The use of fabric altered civic spaces with a softness of touch that left no permanent mark, but this might have changed with Charles I’s more authoritative approach in the 1633 entry. Like his predecessors, Charles was ‘received by the majestrates under a pale of state’143 at the West Port, but the King’s approach to spatial appropriation will be shown to be more decided, expecting reality to rearrange itself permanently — masque-like — according to the monarch’s influence and desires.144
140 141 142 143 144
Ibid., p. 359. James V’s tapestries in Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 79–80. Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 288. Sillitoe, ‘Progresses of Charles I’, 87–88. Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 260. Sillitoe, ‘Progresses of Charles I’, 95.
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Chapter IV
The Overbow Discovering and Creating History The Overbow The Overbow, also known as West Bow or Strait Bow, was an exceedingly steep carriageable route from the Grassmarket to the castle, lined with houses with over-hanging storeys. The construction of commodious Victoria Street in 1835–1840 obliterated the Overbow, altering the topography of the area by connecting the Grassmarket with the newly built George IV Bridge.1 In Scots bow means arched port or gateway, and the Overbow Gate was the historic tollgate to the burgh, probably dating back to its foundation; it was known as arcus superior in 1425 and formed a pair with the arcus inferior at the Netherbow. When after the battle of Flodden in 1513 the walled boundary of the burgh was extended, the West Port took up the function of urban border; by 1538 the name of Overbow was used to define both the lost port and the whole neighbourhood [see Figure 15].2 The Triumphal Route: A Tour through History After the approach to the civic walls and the greeting performed at the gateway, a standard triumphal entry would take the ruler on a pre-planned journey through the city, based on a meaningful selection of urban landmarks, civic spaces, and public and/or private buildings. The criteria for the selection could vary, depending on specific circumstances; in Edinburgh, the sequence of triumphal stations represented — with remarkable honesty, and little use of decorative camouflaging to make the narrative more palatable — the evolution of the burgh through time, and the history of its relationship with the Crown. As an earlier gateway absorbed within the growing inhabited areas, the Overbow represented three-dimensional proof of the burgh’s ongoing development, of both its established past and its potential for future evolution. Its role and significance were neither intentionally hidden nor unconsciously forgotten: in connection with the 1579 entry, the Overbow was described as ‘the old port of the Strait Bow’,3 and that within ‘the streat that ascendis to the castell, thair is an ancient 1 Turner Simpson, Stevenson and Holmes, Historic Edinburgh, p. 12. 2 Stuart Harris, Place Names of Edinburgh, p. 628. 3 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458; the ‘Strait Bow’ being the name of this stretch of old wall. Within ‘the Strait-bow, there was another Aperture therein, named the Upper-bow’, see William Maitland, The History of Edinburgh from its Foundation to the Present Time (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill, 1753), p. 138.
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port’.4 In 1633 again this location was described as being ‘where the streete ascendeth proudest, beginning to turne towards the gate of the old towne’.5 Participating in triumphal entries represented for new rulers the chance of associating local history to real, timeworn spatial signifiers. Representing physical traces of the ongoing fruitful collaboration between the burgh and the Crown, they would hopefully inspire serious, programmatic considerations in the royal mind, and ‘bound resident spectators to their familiar place […] through a sense of history coming together with the present moment in heightened intimacy and intensity’.6 Places of material change such as the Overbow, where the continuity and uniformity of the urban fabric were called into question, saw different objects coming to represent in turn a substantially unaltered set of values, and introduce the broader topic of history-based narratives — both ingeniously imagined and portraying genuine facts — as essential elements of early modern triumphal language. Here civic identity and its relationship with royal authority were shown as something both stable in context and evolving, at the same time inspiring reflections on the consequences of happily anticipated or dreaded changes from an existing status quo. For example, during Parisian entries at the natural boundary of Notre Dame Bridge where ever-flowing water brought continuous renovation, the expectations placed upon the arriving ruler were contextualized within the ever-flowing passing of time. Here the programmes for the entries of Henri II (1549) and Charles IX (1571) looked backward to past golden ages of political and religious pacification, and to future, hoped-for renovations.7 Similarly, if passing the city gate of Ghent had marked the start of Philip the Good’s entry in 1458, passing the internal gate of the Turrepoort — also a superseded civic gateway — marked the beginning of a second phase of the celebration, representing Philip’s hoped-for transformation from aggrieved avenger back to his previous role of forgiving benefactor.8 As historicized and supposedly truthful witnesses of a city’s prosperous development, these transitional locations — and the whole spatial background to triumphal entries — represented validating physical backup to the narrative of continuative collaboration between city and monarch. A quick overall recap of local history could then be extremely useful to jog the ruler’s memory in the most advantageous direction. In 1515 in Bruges, Charles V visualized the history of the city’s relationship with the Crown through a sequence of pageants — narrating the foundation, fortunes, and decline of the kingdom of Israel/Bruges, and culminating in the arrival of a new Messiah/ Charles.9 Lille’s history of faithfulness offered a reasoned common ground for the Joyous Entry of Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella Eugenia in 1600, both manifest in spatial and material evidence, and grounded in demonstrable facts.10 4 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie and Life, p. 178. 5 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 260. 6 Dillon, Language of Space, p. 20. 7 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 195–201, particularly pp. 195 and 198. 8 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 9; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ‘Venit Nobis Pacificus Dominus: Philip the Good’s Triumphal Entry into Ghent in 1458’, in Wisch and Scott Munshower (eds), Art and Pageantry, vol. 1, pp. 260–68. 9 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 33. 10 Ellen Wurtzel, ‘The Joyous Entry of Albert and Isabella in Lille: History, Conquest and the Making of Belgium’, Royal Studies Journal, 3 (2) (2016), 18–47 (18–21, 35–43).
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Figure 15. Detail of the Overbow and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
In sixteenth-century Poitiers, the (edited and abridged) local history of support for the French kings — exemplified for example by the Virgin herself defending the unwavering city from the English attackers — was central to defining and hopefully directing the relation between Crown and community.11 To deliver such complex messages, urban spectacles were based not on pageants as self-standing shows, but on the monarch and his close cohort experiencing them as an ordered sequence, with the final message being more than the mere 11 Hilary J. Bernestein, Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 164–85.
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Figure 16. The reconstruction of the Florentine Battistero as temple of Mars in a drawing by Vincenzo Borghini titled Esterno del ‘Tempio di Marte’.
sum of its parts.12 The tableaux vivants organized in Rouen for King Henri II’s entry in 1550 worked like the beads of a rosary, providing tools for localized, image-assisted meditation based on classical mythology, biblical stories, and iconographical associations.13 In travelling between stations, rulers performed a key connecting role by ‘activating’ the composite theatrical performance through their presence. By applying to the celebrative route the evocative power of symbol and ritual, and of verbal and performative interaction, rulers could achieve a symbolic appropriation of the city’s space and at the same time offer
12 For spectators’ experiences and perceptions of the event, see section in Chapter V below, ‘Spectators: Inclusion and Exclusion’, pp. 167–73. 13 Wintroub, Savage Mirror, p. 41.
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themselves up to public consumption.14 In papal Rome, the pointedly named ceremony of possesso (‘ownership’) at the beginning of each pontificate included a formal procession from the Vatican to St John in Lateran, with several triumphal arches along the route.15 Similarly, during Cosimo I’s funeral procession in 1574 in Florence, the journey in space touching the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, Piazza Santa Trinità, and Palazzo Strozzi represented a journey in time marking key moments of the Duke’s relationship with Florence, physically represented by these urban landmarks.16 Edinburgh’s triumphal entries were also organized around a selection of key buildings which worked together to create a coherent urban narrative — albeit not one of absolute possession and control. In guiding the rulers through the stages of its own development, the burgh created a three-dimensional time-machine-like experience, taking them on a historical tour of the spatial evolution of a demonstrably antique burgh continuously shaped by its relationship with the Crown. Historicized urban setting would not necessarily be dispassionate witnesses of the passing of time, and changes to the route and its landmarks — either temporarily through decorative apparati or through more permanent alterations — could significantly adjust the historical narrative, often in favour of the ruler. Control of the city’s physical space and over the events staged within it gave visible form to authority.17 On the urban scale, the innovative entry route of King Louis XIV, instigated by the monarch for his 1660 Parisian welcome, intentionally avoided the densely populated old quarters, where site-specific celebrations calling attention to the customary function and historical relevance of a place had traditionally prompted the discussion of themes of local interest. By passing through the new residential centres of the up-and-coming Parisian elite instead, the processional route addressed the King in a more standardized manner, reflecting his disinterest in maintaining a political dialogue with the Parisian community, and preference for a more distant, absolutist style of rule.18 On the scale of a single building, in mid-sixteenth-century Florence the Medici repeatedly appropriated the civic Battistero of San Giovanni for their own flamboyant baptismal celebrations. The building’s decorations were emphatically proclaimed as restoring the Battistero to its true form as centralized Roman temple, but in truth refashioned civic history to give historical backing to the Medici’s dominance, hiding the medieval simplicity of the buildings to erase the city’s Republican past from view and memory [see Figure 16].19
14 DeSilva, Taking Possession, 1–2, 5, 8. 15 Bonner Mitchell, ‘The Triumphal Entry as a Theatrical Genre in the Cinquecento’, Forum Italicum, 14 (1980), 409–25 (418); Lucia Nuti, ‘Re-moulding the City: The Roman Possessi in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century’, in Mulryne, Aliverti and Testaverde (eds), Ceremonial Entries, pp. 113–34. 16 Claudia Conforti, ‘Feste Medicee: Il Battesimo, le Esequie, l’A poteosi’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 108–18. 17 Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructing the City’, pp. 19–33. 18 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 208–12. 19 See Conforti, ‘Feste Medicee’, pp. 105–08 and 115–17, and Saverio Balli and Anna Maria Testaverde, ‘Il Battesimo del Principe Filippo (1577). Due Ipotesi di Ricostruzione degli Apparati’, in Marcello
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More permanently, the celebration of Cosimo de’Medici’s controversial father Giovanni dalle Bande Nere shown at Porta al Prato to Cosimo’s bride Eleanor of Toledo during her entry in 1539 inspired the frescoes in what became the Sala di Giovanni dalle Bande Nere in Palazzo Vecchio a few years later. Rehabilitating power-grabbing Giovanni as a valorous historical figure marked the Medici’s appropriation of this traditionally republican building, its amended history now inscribed in and testified by the city’s architectural evidence.20 Similarly in Lyon, the construction of a town hall on the site of a supposed, lost Roman temple, and the following classically inspired festivities created a parallel between Lyon and Rome, legitimizing the authority of the Catholic hierarchy through a changed physical scenario.21 In Burgundy, by redrawing the civic form — its boundaries, its usage, and its content — the dukes demonstrated their understanding of the relationship between local identity, urban rituals, and the historicized objects that memorialized them; by intervening on the civic landmarks that expressed civic identity, they aimed at intervening on the identity itself.22 For example, Duke Charles the Bold in 1467 punished Liège’s disobedience by moving its perron — one of the city’s historic landmarks central to the public ceremonies of government and dispensation of justice — to Bruges, altering the city’s sense of self and historical identity through a targeted intervention on its physicality that hampered its ability to perform civic rituals and ceremonies. Eyewitnesses’ reports of the event were sent as warnings to other defiant Flemish cities.23 The controversial alteration of the processional route by Mary Queen of Scots in 1561 appears now rather lightweight in comparison to some of the aforementioned, highhanded interventions. Also, the Stewarts’ chivalric-inspired celebrations provided thoughtful alternatives to the civic narrative, but were staged in extramural locations or in the monarchs’ own residences, not imposed upon the civic space. The exception to this scenario of minimal alterations is a cluster of events at the end of the period examined, these being the animated exchanges between James VI/I and the burgh’s authorities regarding spatial and religious conformity during the 1590 and 1617 visits, and Charles I’s more extensive attempts in and after 1633 to manipulate both the prescribed triumphal route and some of the related civic locations. This will be discussed further in Chapter VI, but suffice it to say here that Charles I proposed significant changes in the liturgical layout of the Kirk of St Giles, imposed a self-organized
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Fagiolo (ed.), La Città Effimera e l’Universo Artificiale del Giardino, la Firenze dei Medici e l’Italia del ’500 (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1980), pp. 215–17. Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee’, pp. 77–79; Strong, Art and Power, p. 87; Sarah Blake McHam, ‘Structuring Communal History through Repeated Metaphors of Rule’, in Crum and Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence, pp. 125–36. See also John M. Najemy, ‘Florentine Politics and Urban Spaces’, in Crum and Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence, pp. 39–54. Judi Loach, ‘The Consecration of the Civic Realm’, in Spicer and Hamilton (eds), Defining the Holy, pp. 277–300 (pp. 277–79). Boone, ‘Urban Space’, 640. Ibid., 633–38. Other examples in Andrew Brown, ‘Ritual and State-Building’, pp. 3–4 and 16–22. Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructing the City’, pp. 22–25.
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celebratory cavalcade onto the civic space, and initiated a substantial change to the architectural form and location of parliamentary power. The anomaly of the King’s approach is more evident when considering how earlier Scottish monarchs rarely attempted to intervene in the burgh’s physical appearance to construct a more ruler-centric version of the burgh’s, the Crown’s, and the nation’s past. Rather, for reasons that will be explored shortly, they appeared to be satisfied overall with the historical significance of what was shown to them. On their part, the civic authorities seem equally uninterested in making the sort of elaborate alterations to the urban fabric that represented part of the triumphal preparations elsewhere. For example in Florence, enhanced perspectives were created through the pulling-down or camouflaging of ill-situated or politically inconvenient buildings; the ad-hoc closing up of intersecting streets, with canvases directing the visitor’s gaze towards real or false viewpoints and landmarks, created circumscribed routes.24 In Rome, for the entrance of Charles V in 1536, numerous houses and churches were demolished, streets and squares widened, and eye-catching new structures like fountains inserted in the urban fabric, to modernize and Romanize the identity of a tired medieval city with new perspectives focusing on commanding antique monuments.25 The preparations made for triumphal entries in Edinburgh rather suggest a practical and matter-of-fact attitude, dealing more with routine maintenance, and less with make-believe. For the entry of Mary of Guise in 1538, it was ordered on 17 July that the civic cross was redecorated, and that all nychtboures haiffand foir tenements dicht the calsay fornent the samyn to the middis of the calsay, and remoue all filth and staynes thairfra the morne be none […] and that thai hald the said calsay fra thine furth clene quhill after the entrie of the Quenis Grace.26 For the entry of Anna of Denmark, on 15 April 1590 it was ordered that ‘all persouns purge and clenge the streits, calsayes, and gutteries, fornent thair awin housses to the mid channel, als weill in the hie gaitt as in vennelles’.27 Again on 24 December 1616 in preparation for the 1617 entry, it was ordered for the city to be improved through the washing and redecorating of public buildings like the Netherbow, and the cleaning, sanding and watering of the streets, taking particular care that ‘no filthe nor middingis be seen vpoun the same’.28 These improvements did not aim at creating an amended, choreographed version of
24 Marcello Fagiolo, ‘L’Effimero di Stato, Strutture e Archetipi di una Città d’Illusione’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 15–17. 25 Richard Cooper, ‘A New Sack of Rome? Making Space for Charles V in 1536’, in Mulryne, De Jonge, Martens and Morris (eds), Architectures of Festival, pp. 27–52. 26 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 90. 27 ‘Notices from the Records of the Town-Council, relative to the Reception of the King and Queen after their marriage’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 34–48) pp. 45–46. 28 ‘Notices from the Records of Privy Council, relative to the Reception of the King, 1617’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 53–63) p. 61; Reported by Mill, Mediaeval Plays, p. 207 as from ‘Treasurers’ Account 1612–23, 482–3’.
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Figure 17. The illustration of The Old Tolbooth demonstrates the narrowing of the High Street due to the placing of public buildings in commandeering advanced positions.
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the burgh’s past through targeted refashioning, demolitions, or extensive visual manipulations, but rather at proudly presenting its own in a clean, uncluttered, well-organized setting. Edinburgh’s simple axial organization was ideally structured for displaying the one existing historicized narrative. The High Street was unequivocally the city’s spinal cord, organized as a succession of spaces of equal importance created by blocking the line of sight with substantial communal buildings placed at regular intervals. While their architecture was not particularly striking, they still outranked for size, imposing dignity, and level of decoration the tall residential edifices lining the High Street, and their forward position restricted the passage of people, making them stand out not just visually, but experientially [see Figure 17]. This succession of civic spaces was to be discovered slowly; the turreted tops of their roofs stood out against the skyline attracting the visitor’s gaze and guiding them from one location to the next. Having a recognizable sequence of interconnected spaces defined by key buildings presented an ideal framework for the creation of the composite, rosary-like narrative described earlier. The lack of a focal point meant the High Street was experienced as a chain of comparable spaces, each with a clear identity and all equal visually, with public buildings acting as rhythmical intervals. The absence of controlled, hierarchical perspectives meant that civic facades framing these inward-looking spaces were not perceived as indistinguishable settings to central, aloof structures, but rather as important in themselves and as a group. This strongly defined spatial sequence represented architectonically the existing status quo created over centuries by the daily interactions of its inhabitants, representing physically the shared past, civic values, and daily concerns of this stable and substantially homogeneous mercantile community.29 By presenting and — with the exception of King Charles and the mature James VI/I — accepting a remarkably untouched route with substantially undisguised public buildings, the burgh and the Crown demonstrated a remarkable level of comfort with the unaffected history of their steady and fruitful association. Romanitas in Scottish Triumphal Entries Evoking Roman antiquity and incorporating all’antica features were essential parts of renaissance triumphal entries, differentiating them from earlier processional traditions connected with local folklore, religious events, and carnivals. In ancient Rome, triumphal entries had been granted by the Senate to honour consuls, praetors, or emperors, and included a combination of triumphal chariot, spoils in a cart, and captives in chains.30 As part of the renovated interest in Roman culture, entries were reinstated in the early modern period by rulers anxious to 29 Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, pp. 10–14. McKean, Edinburgh, pp. 11–13, 17–18. Civic space and communal values in Flanders, in Boone, ‘Urban Space’, 621–33. 30 Mitchell, ‘Triumphal Entry’, 410.
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exploit their celebrative potential. Local leader Castruccio Castracane entered Lucca as a victorious general on a chariot as early as 1326, and in literature by Francesco Petrarch’s Trionfi (written 1340–1374, published with woodcut illustrations in Venice in 1488) presented Amor, Pudicitia, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity in chariots surrounded by devotees, and being hailed as triumphators in turn. They became hugely inspirational to those tasked with decorating luxury objects including stained glass, birth trays, and tapestries.31 Rulers, including Federico da Montefeltro Duke of Urbino, Borso of Este Duke of Ferrara, and Emperor Maximilian I, had their portrait painted in Petrarchan-style triumphal iconography. This went in parallel with the renewed interest in Roman law, supporting ideas of absolute power — the Roman imperium — at the base of the upcoming ideas of sovereign states.32 Elements from royal entries of medieval origin were still maintained in northern Europe, particularly in France, where feudal ceremonies of mutual recognition bound the king and the Estates and corporations representing his subjects, and included entertainments such as tableaux vivants.33 These two traditions employed civic space differently. Processions during the Middle Ages were visually uninterested in the context of the hosting city, which was merely the location for the scaffolds on which tableaux vivants were performed. The tableaux themselves were not interactive performances, but following medieval traditions gave form to the contemplative narrations typical of altars and tombs, with the later addition of music and speeches.34 In ancient Rome, triumphal entries had a more pointed relationship with civic space, developing along an intentionally tortuous, symbolic route from the Campus Martius to the Capitolium. While tailored variations were possible, the account of Emperors Vespasian’s and Titus’s triumph in 71 ce probably represents a recurrent selection of locations, including the Portico of Octavia near the Campus Martius where the Senate awaited the arrival of the victorious general, the edges of the Capitoline, the Porta Triumphalis, the Forum Boarium, and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The regular inclusion of buildings of outstanding civic, symbolic, and practical importance demonstrated deference to Rome’s history, creating connections with previous events and with significant figures of the past: to reinforce its own meaning, each procession ‘fed off ’ the urban spaces and landscapes it encountered on the way. The kinetic element was of particular importance, based on intentional sequencing, successive positioning,
31 Esther Nyholm, ‘A Comparison of the Petrarchan Configuration of the Trionfi and their Interpretation in Renaissance Art’, in Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare Iannucci (eds), Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1990), pp. 235–55; Margaret Ann Zaho, Imago Triumphalis, the Function and Significance of Triumphal Imagery for Italian Renaissance Rulers (New York: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 36–45. Castracane in Strong, Art and Power, p. 44. 32 Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change & Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, first published 1992), pp. 122–23. 33 Mitchell, ‘Triumphal Entry’, 412. 34 Medieval tradition in George R. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, Form and Convention in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), pp. 58–70.
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and relative orientation, and allowing a full sensorial experience of the civic space, nuanced by the variation in speed during the event.35 The choice of how to balance medieval or all-antica renaissance traditions was influenced by local circumstances: in France, medieval traditions were favoured as expressing the needs of its influential civic communities, but from the 1530s onwards Roman-inspired influences appeared, with the inclusion of triumphal arches, Latin inscriptions, all’antica decorations and medallions, and classical language and mythology.36 In Scotland, the medieval traditions contributed the use of tableaux vivants as a prevalent means of communication, the encounter at the gate and the presentation of the keys as a prelude to political negotiations, and the emphasis on visual language to promote personal engagement between acting parties. On the other hand, royal welcomes in Edinburgh belonged to the renaissance triumphal tradition not merely because they skilfully employed the all-important all’antica arches, Latin mottoes, or adopted classical mythology, but because, from a spatial point of view, they were pointedly constructed to create a continuous, politicized dialogue with a historical urban landscape. The organization of the Edinburgh route around a selection of historicized civic landmarks resembled much more a Roman — and so renaissance — scenario than the more spatially unspecific language of medieval ceremonies and visual entertainments as discussed previously. Edinburgh entries and pageants were intensely site-specific, their messages both supportive of and reinforced by the historical, political, and symbolic significance of each chosen station. Circular routes were popular choices in Roman triumphal entries, reminiscent of ceremonies of boundary-tracing, strengthening, and purification.37 Renaissance rulers sought their own connection with a legitimizing past, symbolically leading a founding procession around the perimeter of the supposed original Roman colony, to perform a ceremonial retracing: many ceremonies celebrating the Medici dynasty fully or partially circled the Roman nucleum of Florence, evoking the myth of the foundation of its alter ego, Caesarea. Each modern symbolic founder could then present themselves as rightful Pater Patriae, bringing the urban space into existence, and assigning a brand-new identity to a city constantly being reborn thanks to each ruler’s direct agency and intervention.38 Ceremonial processions in Edinburgh did not trace the perimeter of a pre-existing Roman encampment, as in Scotland Roman occupation had been too temporary and patchy an affair to leave an imprint on its cities’ urban outline, but they did develop around a comparable first-hand experience of (non-Roman) civic history. Rulers moved through the historical phases of Edinburgh’s urban development, starting from
35 Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 92–106; Diane Favro, ‘The Festive Experience: Roman Processions in the Urban Context’, in Bonnemaison and Macy (eds), Festival Architecture, (pp. 10–42) pp. 23–28. 36 Italian influences in Mitchell, ‘Triumphal Entry’, and Richard Cooper, Roman Antiquities in Renaissance France 1515–65 (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 45–48. 37 Beard, Roman Triumph, p. 92. 38 Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee’, particularly pp. 69–72.
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the most recent outer parts — the West Port — crossing previous borders now incorporated in the urban fabric — the Overbow — and culminating in the most ancient central core, before proceeding again to outer, newer parts when moving towards the exit gate at the Netherbow. The interaction between the monarch and the civic spaces was presented as being as vivifying as those embodied by ceremonies of Roman foundation, renovating both the spaces it crossed and the institutions the ruler acknowledged, bringing new life to the long-standing bond — and semi-legal contract — between benefactor-king and protégé-burgh. While Edinburgh’s urban form or the historical remains could not support a direct parallel with Roman antiquity, it was still possible and advantageous to create the impression of a connection with the ancient past. Scottish scholars were actively interested in the rediscovery of Roman texts and sources. In 1513 Gavin Douglas translated Virgil’s Aeneid into Scots, not as a mere language exercise but interpreting scenes and passages in a way that suggests parallels with Scottish sceneries and circumstances he was familiar with.39 Similarly, John Bellender’s translation into Scots, published in 1533, of the first five books of Livy’s Roman History applied sensible modernization to the text to make events and concepts more familiar to a contemporary audience, finding parallels between Roman and Scottish conditions.40 Stewart monarchs consistently engaged with both literary and visual aspects of triumphal culture. An inventory from 1561 detailed how some of Mary Queen of Scots’ tapestries showed ‘histories’, of the Triumph of Truth, the Judgement of Paris, the history of the sailing of Aeneas, and the works of Hercules.41 Mary also owned a copy of Petrarch’s Trionfi in Italian, which was later in James VI’s possession, and the Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Time were part of the masque organized in Holyrood in February 1564. James VI supported William Fowler’s adaptation in Scots of the Trionfi, with the title Trivmphs of the Most Famous Poet Mr Frances Petrarke, dated 1587, which again reinterpreted the text to suit a Scottish audience.42 Later on, in 1629, Charles I bought Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar, originally painted for Marquis Francesco II Gonzaga in 1484–92.43 Edinburgh was described in grandiloquent Roman terms and attributed a bogus Roman past in the text by Alesius accompanying the illustration of Edinburgh in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia (1550).44 Alesius described the castle as Arx Puellarum, and was connected to the Palatium Regi (Holyrood Palace) and the basilica or Monasterium S. Crucis (Abbey of Holyrood) through the paved Regia Via (High Street). The Tolbooth was called central town-house 39 Douglas Gray, ‘“As quha the mater beheld tofor thare”: Douglas’s Treatment of Vergil’s Imagery’, in Houwen, MacDonald and Mapstone (eds), Palace in the Wild, p. 104. 40 MacQueen, ‘Aspects of Humanism’, pp. 10–12 and 20–25. 41 Martin Kemp and Clare Farrow, ‘Humanism in the Visual Arts’, in MacQueen (ed.), Humanism, p. 38. 42 Theo Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Coteries, Commendatory Verse and Jacobean Poetics: William Fowler’s Triumphs of Petrarke and its Castalian Circles’, in David J. Parkinson (ed.), James VI and I, Literature and Scotland: Tides of Change, 1567–1625 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 45–63 (pp. 45–46, 60–61). 43 Adamson, Chivalry, p. 170. 44 Noted by Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 30.
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Figure 18. The closed crown of the tower of the Kirk of St Giles, Edinburgh.
or capitolium, and it was remarked how ‘The city itself is not built of brick, but of natural stones squared, so that even the private houses may bear a comparison with great palaces’.45 The Cowgate, called Via Vaccarum, was a most beautiful street ‘where is nothing mean or tasteless, but all is magnificent’, and which recalled the Roman Forum, known during the Renaissance as Campo Vaccino (Cow Field): here would have lived ‘patricii and senatores Urbis’ [the nobility and the chief men of the city].46 The Canongate’s name Vicus Canonicorum acknowledged its religious affiliations, and Edinburgh’s many ecclesiastical buildings were appropriately renamed, including the Kirk of St Giles as Ecclesia S. Egidii and the Blackfriars as Predicatores.47 The image created by Alesius’s description was of an ideal city, fitting in many ways into a Roman tradition in the sense of both ancient Rome, and as the contemporary heart of Catholic Europe.48 Also, the 45 Alexander Alesius’ Edinburgh in 1529, in Hume Brown, Scotland Before 1700, p. 107. 46 Alesius’ Edinburgh in 1529, Ibid., p. 108, see Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 30. 47 As listed in the illustration by Sebastian Munster (Basel, 1550) accompanying Alesius’s Edinburgh in 1529, in Hume Brown, Scotland Before 1700. 48 Scotland and Rome in Helena M. Shire, ‘The King in His House, Three Architectural Artefacts Belonging to the Reign of James V’, in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style 1513–1542: Essays on
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Loca Vrbis notatu digna (the noteworthy places of the city) accompanying the key to Rothiemay’s map of Edinburgh paralleled the city with the capitalized Urbs itself — Rome. Presenting themselves through official imagery as rightful descendants of Roman emperors — for example wearing the characteristic imperial crown of the closed kind associated with Emperor Augustus — strengthened Scottish monarchs’ claims to independent rule, royalist Scottish traditions supported by humanist ideas agreeing that regnum equalled imperium.49 Both James III (from 1485) and James V (in 1539) were portrayed on coins wearing an imperial crown, and James V had his closed crown and his sceptre impressively refashioned, as well as his signets remade in 1540 to display a closed crown.50 An imperial crown appeared in the state portrait of James V and Mary of Guise, and he was the only sovereign honoured with an imperial crown, beside Emperor Charles V, in the heraldic ceiling in the Nave of St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, largely completed by 1521.51 Previously, the appearance of James IV’s image in Margaret Tudor’s Book of Hours (1503) wearing a closed crown, was probably meant to counteract the aggressive politic of his English in-laws.52 The symbolic imperial closed crown was also placed as a steeple on some of Scotland’s better-known buildings, such as on St Giles in Edinburgh in c. 1486 [see Figure 18], at King’s College in Aberdeen in c. 1500, and topping the courtyard fountain at the royal Palace of Linlithgow, as well as in the bell-tower of the neighbouring St Michael’s Church (c. 1538 and c. 1540 respectively).53 Visiting the city for Anna’s entry in 1590, ambassador Damman clearly identified the spire of St Giles for the political symbol it was meant to be, remarking ‘of cut stone is this spire, / reared on high in the effigy of a royal crown’.54 The all’antica language appearing during triumphal entries was then not an applied fashionable veneer, but part of a concerted effort to demonstrate credible
the Court of James V (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996), pp. 62–96 (pp. 65–67). 49 Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal, pp. 93–94, 104–09; Ian Campbell, ‘Crown Steeples and Crowns Imperial’, in Lauren Golden (ed.), Raising the Eyebrow: John Onians and World Art Studies (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2001), pp. 25–34 (pp. 27–28). Roger A. Mason, ‘Laicisation and the Law, the Reception of Humanism in Early Renaissance Scotland’, in Houwen, MacDonald and Mapstone (eds), Palace in the Wild, pp. 22–23. 50 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 178–81; Ian Halley Stewart, The Scottish Coinage (London: Spink and Son, 1967), pp. 65–67; Charles J. Burnett, ‘Outward Signs of Majesty, 1535–1540’, in Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style, pp. 293–95. 51 Roger A. Mason, ‘This Realm of Scotland is an Empire? Imperial Ideas and Iconography in Early Renaissance Scotland’, in Barbara E. Crawford (ed.), Church, Chronicle and Learning in Medieval and Early Renaissance Scotland (Edinburgh: Mercat Press Ltd., 1999), pp. 77–95, pp. 81–83. For the heraldic ceiling, see Shire, ‘The King in his House’, pp. 69–70. 52 Mason, ‘Realm of Scotland’, pp. 81–82. 53 Andrea Thomas, ‘Coronation Ritual and Regalia in the Reign of James V’, in Goodare and MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp. 43–68 (pp. 46–48, 55–63). Also Glendinning, MacInnes and Mackechnie, Scottish Architecture, p. 7. Comparable Tudor imagery of closed crown in Dale Hoak, ‘The Iconography of the Crown Imperial’, in Dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 54–103. 54 Damman, Schediasmata, [49–50], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter.
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Figure 19. Triumphal arch in the form of a castle, built for the entry of Charles V into Bruges in 1515.
connections with classical antiquity, benefiting the reputation of the burgh, the monarchs, and the country at large. The construction of temporary triumphal arches efficaciously and visually established such connections, allowing access to the prestige they granted. As explained in the booklet written for Prince Philip of Spain’s entry into Ghent in 1549, triumphal arches — reminiscent in concept of the porta triumphalis of Roman origin — emulated their ancient counterparts and followed the example of great cities to celebrate appropriately those worthy of great honours.55 In Scotland, triumphal arches were built for Margaret Tudor’s entrance in 1503, as described by Younge: At the Entryng of the ſaid Towne was maid a Yatt of Wood painted, with Two Towrells, and a Windowe in the Midds. In the wich Towrells was, at the Windowes, reveſted Angells ſyngyng joyouſly for the Comynge of ſo noble a 55 Strong, Art and Power, pp. 90–91. Porta triumphalis in Samuel Ball Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, completed and revised by Thomas Ashby (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), pp. 418–19.
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Lady; and at the ſayd middle Windowe was in lyk wys an Angell preſenting the Kees to the ſaid Qwene.56 It is interesting to note that the actual entry gate, in all probability the West Port, must have been found inadequate, as a purpose-built temporary structure with its two towers flanking a central gateway, presenting the typical structure of the Roman triumphal arch, was deemed necessary. A parallel has been suggested with James IV’s contemporary defensive Forework in Stirling Castle, which also has triumphal connotations, and the Yatt could also have had points in common with foreign triumphal arches. Good candidates could be those built for the entries of Charles V into Bruges, and of François I into Lyon (both in 1515), whose illustrations show them as presenting all’antica portrait ‘tondi’ akin to the so-called Stirling heads in Stirling Castle, suggesting that the Edinburgh arch might have had decorations in this all’antica style as well [see Figure 19].57 Younge reports how ‘More fourther was of new maid One other Yatt, apon the wiche was in Sieges the iiij Vertuz’,58 but unfortunately no further information is provided for this purpose-built second structure, constructed to add something to the urban spaces — the flavour of Roman antiquity — that was felt to be both necessary and lacking. In 1537, David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith described how Paris triumphantly welcomed Princess Madeleine’s suitor James V using specifically Roman parallels. The French capital did resawe our prince with laud and gloir Solempnitie throch arkis triumphal quhilk day beine dingne to put in memorie ffor as pompey eftir his wictorie Was into rome resawit with gret joy So thou resawit our richt redoutit roy.59 Lyndsay deemed the presence of triumphal arches in Paris essential in creating the illusion that the Scottish monarch, hailed as a new Pompey, was entering a new Rome, and Lyndsay’s experience of celebrative Roman references might have guided his involvement in the less documented entries of Mary of Guise in 1538 in both St Andrews and Edinburgh. In 1561, besides the aforementioned extramural, possibly courtly arch, a gate-like structure was also built at the Butter Tron, as ‘ane port made of tymber, in maiſt honourable maner, cullorit with fyne cullouris, hungin with ſyndrie armes; vpon the quhilk port wes ſingand certane barneis in the maiſt hevinlie wyis’.60 The Queen was described ‘cumand throw the ſaid port’,61 confirming this to be a full-size operational gateway, rather than a
56 57 58 59
Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, pp. 27–28. Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 372. 60 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 61 Ibid.
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two-dimensional or mock-up one. At the end of her entry, Mary ‘went under an other Arch at the Nether-bow, and ſo to Hallirood-hous’,62 but whether this was the Netherbow itself or an additional, remarkably under-described temporary structure it is hard to say. Triumphal carts, echoing the cart a Roman triumphator rode during his entry, appeared in Edinburgh for the first time in 1558 for the celebrations in absentia for Mary Queen of Scots’ wedding, when a Walter Binning received payment ‘for his painting and all his lawbouris takin be him in the tryumphe maid at our Souerane Ladyis mariage’,63 and in particular ‘for paynting of the vij planets on the kart with the rest of the convoy’.64 Calling the event a tryumphe marks it as a specifically all’antica event rather than a general communal festivity, and the presence of planetary gods and of a cupid in relation to the cart demonstrates awareness of the role of Petrarchan celebrations in welcoming renaissance monarchs. Again in 1561, Mary Queen of Scots’ procession included ‘ane cart with certane bairnes’,65 that is, children, probably again costumed performers on a decorated cart; Binning’s repeated involvement with the festivities makes this quite plausible.66 Thirdly, in 1590 Anna of Denmark rode into Edinburgh in a carriage drawn by eight horses poetically described as ‘hir goldin Coche ſo bricht’;67 this may be too little to identify it as a triumphal cart, and besides, it was not an essential component as ‘behind her coach rode the master of horse with a spare horse in case the queen desired to ride’.68 However, the celebrative speech in Latin given by John Russell contained various explicit references to the Roman tradition; Anna’s late father King Frederick (1534–1588) was referred to as a Danish ‘pater Patriæ’, Anna was welcomed ‘in noſtram Reipub. [Reipublicam]’ in the name of the ‘Senatus, populuſque Edinburgenſis’69 and she was attributed a flattering Romanized pedigree as ‘Palladis filia, virtutis, morū, viteque magiſtra’.70 John Burel’s poetic description of the event mentions an extensive use of tapestries with classical themes to embellish the city, referring to stories varying from Dido, Aeneas, and Anna — Dido’s prudent sister, a flattering allusion to the Queen’s namesake — to Paris and the war of Troy, to Janus, to Polyphemus, to Romulus, Medusa, Achilles, and Orpheus. All were described with the right amount of detail — ‘IANVS with the doubill face’,71
62 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 57. 63 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1557–1571, p. 26. 64 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 269. 65 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 66 ‘Notices, 1561’, p. 6; discussed in Sarah Carpenter, ‘Walter Binning: Theatrical and Decorative Painter (fl.1540–1594)’, Medieval English Theatre, 10 (1) (1988), 17–25 (20–21). 67 Burel, ‘The Discription’, p. iii. Also, Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 97. 68 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 107. 69 John Russell, ‘Verba Ioann. Rvsselli Ivreconsvlti Pro Senatv Popvloqve Edinbvrgensi Habita, ad Serenissimam Scotorum Reginam Annam, dum Edinburgum ingreditur 19.Maij. An. 1590’, in Thomson Gibson Craig (ed.), Papers, pp. 1r-4v (p. 2r). Scotland is referred to as a republic frequently throughout this reported speech, for example on p. 2v. 70 Ibid., p. 3v. 71 Burel, ‘The Discription’, p. i.
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and ‘with goldin threid, / MEDVSA, with the monſtrus heid’,72 demonstrating awareness of their iconography and attributes. Finally, the royal entry for Charles I in 1633 was the richest in references to a Roman past, although the associated triumphal booklet provides some written descriptions but no illustration of the event. On 19 July 1633, the burgh had ‘resolve and ordayne his Majestie to be resaivit within this burgh in the most magnificent and soleme maner could be devysit’;73 to achieve this, no fewer than five arches were built throughout the city. While the similarity in style and organization with those seen in London in 1604 for James VI/I is undeniable, the mature, accomplished arches and all’antica style of the 1633 entry were also the result of a tradition of local experimentations.74 The first arch was built just outside of the West Port, the booklet describing it ‘of height *** of breadth *** square with the battlements and inmost side of the towne-wall’.75 The triumphal character of the second arch is clear in the inscription ‘HILARITATI PVBLICÆ. S.P.Q.E.P.’76 on it, recalling Rome’s famous S.P.Q.R. as Senatus Populusque Edinburgensis rather than Romanus — with the addition of a P in all probability for Posuit (constructed). The third arch spelled out the connection between Edinburgh and ancient Rome, and between Charles and the emperors of old, even more clearly. It bore the inscription ‘CAROLO, MAG. BRIT. REG. JACOBI FILIO, PRINCI. OPTIMO, MAXIMO, LIBERT. VINDICI. RESTAURATORI LEGUM, FUNDATORI QUIETIS, CONSERVATORI ECCLESIÆ, REGNI VLTRA OCEANUM IN AMERICAM PROMOTORI. S.P.Q.E.P.’,77 in the best tradition of Roman arches detailing victorious generals’ achievements for posterity. The last temporary arch stood before the Netherbow, bearing amongst other decorations the words ‘TALES ROMA FUIT QUONDAM ADMIRATA TRIUMPHOS’,78 recalling Rome’s triumphs as an expression of her glory. The quondam — formerly, once upon a time — heavily suggested that another city, Edinburgh herself, would now take up that glorious inheritance. Finally, and conclusively, the ‘Epigramme’ contained in the triumphal booklet declared ‘To greet thy greatnesse with a welcome song’ nothing is more appropriate than singing ‘Ave Caesar’.79 The above examples will suffice to demonstrate how Scottish triumphal entries skilfully incorporated a variety of Roman references through speeches, written records, decorative programmes, costumed performers, means of transportation, large temporary structures, and evocative inscriptions. References to a Roman
72 Ibid., p. ii. 73 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, p. 84. Also previously discussed in 11 January of the same year, see p. 78. 74 Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 178–80; an overview in Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 5, pp. 79–90. 75 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 257. 76 Ibid., p. 266. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., p. 279. 79 Ibid., p. 280; in italics in the text.
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past did not just appear suddenly in Charles I’s elaborate entry; the latter was rather the culmination of experimentations of more than a century in creating a visionary Edinburgh/Rome to welcome an equally visionary Scottish Roman emperor. However, compared with its heavy-handed use in other contemporary entries, for example those granted to Emperor Charles V during his tour of Italy in 1535–1536, Scottish ceremonies used all’antica language regularly and consciously, but rather sparingly, associating it with parallel representations of Scotland’s own history and non-Roman past.80 Representing an Alternative Past Alongside the celebrative all’antica narrative, triumphal entries offered unique opportunities to investigate, re-imagine, and display a country’s individual past and its uniquely identifying characters. The French monarchs for example based their right to be celebrated as new Caesars upon their descent from the King of the Franks, Charlemagne, who took up the inheritance of the Western Roman Empire by proclaiming himself Emperor of the Romans in 800.81 The appearance of François I as a Gallic Hercules — dressed in a lion skin but carrying classical insignia — at Saint Denis Gate for the Parisian entry of Henri II in 1549, was in line with investigations into France’s specifically Celtic past as both alternative to and yet compatible with classical language.82 In Scotland, a smooth integration between local individuality and Roman characteristics was more difficult to achieve, as the Stewarts’ imperial claims largely rested on Scotland’s successful resistance against Roman conquest, which set the country and the monarchs apart from (and it was argued, above) the defeated or parvenu ruling houses of the rest of Europe.83 The speech by John Hay, deputy town clerk, given to James VI/I in Edinburgh in 1617, praised the King’s ancestors who mainteined and delivered their virgine scepters unconquered, from age to age, from the inundation of the most violent floods of conquering sworde, which overwhelmed the rest of the whole earth, and carried the Crowns of all other Kings of this terrestrial globe captives into thraldome.84 The advance upward of General Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40–93 ce) and the establishment of outposts in southern Scotland had culminated in the construc 80 Charles V’s tour of Italy in 1535–1536 in Mitchell, ‘Triumphal Entry’, 415–18. 81 Yates, Astraea, pp. 121–26; Josèphe Jacquiot, ‘De l’Entrée de César à Rome à l’Entrée des Rois de France Dans Leurs Bonnes Villes’, in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (eds), Italian Renaissance Festivals and their European Influence (Lampeter, Dyfed, Lewiston, NY and Queenston, Ontario: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), pp. 255–68. 82 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 130–33, 160–62. 83 Mason, ‘Realm of Scotland’, pp. 53–54, 95; Roger A. Mason, ‘Scotching the Brut: Politics, History, and National Myth in Sixteenth Century Britain’, in Roger A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), pp. 60–84 (pp. 60–66). 84 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 320.
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tion of the Antonine Wall (begun 142 ce) from Old Kilpartick on the Clyde to Bridgeness on the Forth, to defend Roman Britannia. This wall proved untenable and was evacuated in 162CE, in favour of the more established Hadrian Wall about 100 miles to the south. While Rome’s inability to complete the conquest of Britannia might have been more due to growing internal weaknesses than to the Caledonians’ military might, still the locals were neither assimilated nor subjugated, providing some foundation to the Stewarts’ claim of lasting independence.85 There was then a possible conundrum: while attributing Roman connections to the country, the city of Edinburgh, and the Scottish rulers could help establish an ancient pedigree in a fashionable, European-wide context, the country’s exalted status and the Stewarts’ right to rule could be equally justified through the absence and rejection of a Roman past. Different historical outlooks were considered contiguous rather than contradictory in Scottish intellectual and literary life between 1450 and 1650.86 For one, David Buchanan’s Latin text accompanying James Gordon of Rothiemay’s map of Edinburgh (c. 1647) explained in detail the Hebrew origin of the city’s name.87 In Hector Boece’s Historia Gentis Scotorum (History of the Scottish People, 1527) the author traced back the origins of Scottish monarchy not to a classical Roman past but to alternative, equally noble Egyptian origins, pointing for proof at the ‘hieroglyphics’ to be found in northern stones, actually products of Pictish art. A literary basis for this tradition was Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon, which in the early 1440s popularized the earlier work by John of Fordun, Chronica gentis Scotorum. According to these texts, the origins of the Scottish reign were Graeco-Egyptian and had begun with the elopement of Egyptian princess Scota with Greek prince Gaythelos, and the establishment of Fergus as first king of a Gaythelan community. By demonstrating the overall compatibility of native tradition, classical records, and what was considered archaeological evidence, Boece created a strong case for Scotland’s claim of a dignified role in the pre-Christian period, and of an illustrious — if rather eclectic — pedigree.88 Although later both questioned and curtailed by historian George Buchanan (1506–1582), these nominal beliefs in Scottish-Egyptian connections survived well into the late sixteenth century, together with an officially acknowledged line of pre-Roman Scottish kings such as King Fergus — whose election Buchanan places at 330 bce — and who had repelled the Roman invasion.89 Besides advertising the Stewarts’s unique position as rightful rulers unfazed by the
85 Archibald A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1975), pp. 17–40. 86 Mapstone, ‘Introduction’, pp. ix-x. 87 Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, p. 115. 88 MacQueen, ‘Aspects of Humanism’, pp. 22–25; John MacQueen, ‘The Renaissance in Scotland’, in Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (eds), The Celts and the Renaissance: Tradition and Innovation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1990), pp. 41–55. Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 204–05. 89 Michael Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 302–05.
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Roman conquest, this narrative reinforced Scotland’s claim of independence from England, and opposed the competing pro-English narrative by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which suggested a common Trojan origin and a successive splitting of the British reign between siblings, with English sovereigns claiming primogeniture and hence dominance over Scotland.90 A legitimizing narrative based on Scotland’s own traditions and beliefs was also essential to sanction the election of Robert the Bruce as King Robert I in 1306, and to justify the deposition of English-sympathizer King John Baliol with the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.91 Boece’s Scotorum Historiae — infused with the spirit of the Declaration — stressed that a ruler was bound to act on behalf of and for the good of the community; if power ‘is intolerably abused by an incorrigible tyrant or an alien usurper, it may be taken out of the hands to which it had been entrusted by those in whose interests the trusteeship had been established’.92 Later on, the confusing, even painful fracture between past and present represented by the Reformation created the conditions for a revived interest in an alternative, tangible history, going beyond, in Deborah Howard’s words speaking of Scottish post-1560 architecture, ‘the decorative embellishments of Roman classicism as a superficial veneer to town buildings — Scotland wanted its own history, not a history grafted from outside’.93 The appearance in triumphal entries of memories of events belonging to local histories was part of the country’s interest in its alternative non-Roman past, reinterpreted as both relevant to and representative of their present and future situation. In 1511 in Aberdeen, Margaret Tudor was shown an image of the Bruce, that evir was bold in ſtour, Thow gart as Roy cum rydand under croun, Richt awfull, ſtrang, and large of portratour, As nobill, dreidfull, michtie campioun.94 While it is unclear whether this was a painted figure, a statue, or a costumed performer, Robert the Bruce stood as an intimidating national hero rather than as a benevolent royal ancestor, reminding of the harsh past dealings with an England for which strong-willed Margaret herself — it was feared — would always advocate.95 In representing the country’s own history through a real character rather than a mythical one, the Aberdonians were addressing growing
90 Murray G. H. Pittock, Scottish Nationality (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 32–33. 91 Edward J. Cowan, ‘Identity, Freedom and the Declaration of Arbroath’, in Broun, Lynch and Finlay (eds), Image and Identity, pp. 61–62. Bruce’s legitimacy in Fiona Watson, ‘The Enigmatic Lion: Scotland, Kingship and National Identity in the Wars of Independence’, in Broun, Lynch and Finlay (eds), Image and Identity, pp. 20, 30–32. 92 James Henderson Burns, The True Law of Kingship, Concepts of Monarchy in Early-Modern Scotland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 91–92. 93 Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, p. 115. 94 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 154. 95 Louise Olga Fradenburg, ‘Troubled Times: Margaret Tudor and the Historians’, in Sally Mapstone and Juliette Hood (eds), The Rose and the Thistle, pp. 49–53.
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anti-English feelings, doubts over the (yet childless) Queen’s political personal allegiances, and King James IV’s disquieting trust in her advice.96 The Bruce made another appearance during the 1590 entry for Anna of Denmark, as an honoured, recognizable ancestor in a prominent position in a family tree of otherwise unnamed figures.97 Similarly the presence of a fighting St Andrew (the patron saint of Scotland) defeating and conquering the castle held by St George (the patron saint of England) during the courtly celebrations at Holyrood for James VI/I in 1617, made local traditions relevant in a contemporary political context. St Andrew’s victory was helped by the intervention of specifically Scottish characters played by young burgesses, that is four hieland men, dressed up so of purpos, that came out of the pallace of St Androis with their boues and arrowes of fyr, that did win the Castle of Envy, quilk castle had for their badge, St George. The castle was throuen down, the men taken prisoners, and the captain sould have bein, as it wer, hanged.98 The appearance of Scotland’s and England’s patron saints recalls — with a less positive emphasis reiterated by the grim destiny of the defeated keepers of the castle of St George — James VI/I’s planned meeting with well-disposed St Andrew and St George outside the city of London in 1604. It might also recall the appearance of what Pitscottie refers to as a ‘white rose’ knight during the 1507–1508 tournaments, possibly a provocative hint to the legitimacy of the Yorkist line, and to the English Crown’s fragmentary identity compared with the superior dynastic stability of wild Arthurian knight James IV.99 In 1617, showing such a dramatic clash to the now king of both Scotland and England could have aimed at reaffirming Scotland’s relevance in a partnership where she was often sidelined as a minority partner — a message that could have hardly been conveyed with equal clarity through more generically classical language. At the Salt Tron in 1633, Charles saw other specifically Scottish characters from the recent and the remote past. Here a pageant represented Mount Parnassus, where amongst other wonders — a hollowed-out mountain accompanied by musicians, a globe of glass atop a great pyramid, Apollo and the Muses100 — ‘ancient worthies of Scotland for learning was represented; such as Sedullius, Ionnes Duns, Bishop Elphistoun of Aberdeen, Hector Boes, Ioannes Major, Bishop Gawen Douglasse, Sir David Lindsay, Georgius Buchananus’.101 The presence in this group of the biblical commentator Sedullius (Sedulius Scotus, d. 828) and the theologian Ioannes Duns (Duns Scotus, c. 1265–1308) — figures from Scotland’s remote,
96 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 317. 97 Robert Chambers (ed.) Domestic Annals of Scotland: From the Reformation to the Revolution, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London: W. & R. Chambers, 1858–1859), vol. 1, p. 200. Noted as ‘Johnston’s Hist. Scot. MS’, Johnston’s History of Scotland MS, Advocates’ Library. 98 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 23; noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. On the simulated hanging, see Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 7, pp. 39–40. 99 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 242, as discussed in Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen’”, 188–89. 100 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 122. 101 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267.
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indigenous past — provided scholarly credibility and antiquity through shared ethnic roots with the later early modern tradition of Scottish humanists, writers and historians.102 This collection of Scottish intellectuals, both lay and religious, both ancient and contemporary, offered English-raised Charles a ‘crash-course’ in the antiquity and respectability of Scotland’s history and culture.103 The 1633 entry also contained explicitly anti-Roman elements from local past, often in baffling juxtaposition with the Roman details mentioned in the previous section. In 1633, King Fergus appeared as a speaker in a pageant showing ‘an hundred and seven Scottish kings’,104 an illustrated catalogue of Charles I’s ancestors which would have included warrior leader Caratacus — a brave British warlord mentioned in Tacitus’s Annals — and his Roman-fighting contemporaries. The series of portraits painted by Dutch artist Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II for Charles II in 1684–1686 and inspired by the 1633 series does include a Caratacus, holding a conquered Roman shield bearing the SPQR sign, and with battle scenes in the background against a dramatic landscape [see Plate IX].105 The warring identity defining Scotland’s past and isolating it from the Roman world to the south was also noted in the welcoming panegyric written by Walter Forbes to Charles, where he stated that The Gothes, the Danes, the Saxons here did feele, And Normanes fierce, the fury of my steele; Here Cæsar pitcht his tent, and proudly thought His trophees o’er our tombes to Rome haue brought, But all in vaine; his conquering hand was stayed, And by his troupes a wall-dividing layed At Caron’s bankes, whose ruines yet may tell How farre in worth I did his force excell.106 The mighty feat of stopping the Roman conquest had, in Forbes’ text, much more space and emphasis than the simpler tasks of stopping any other invader; the defeat of the Romans was also celebrated on the second of the 1633 arches. Here one side showed a picture of the flight of invading Picts, and the other ‘a number of men in armes flying and retiring with S.P.Q.R. on their ensignes, which shew them to bee Romanes […] under the Romanes, and under-written, FRACTI BELLO, FATISQUE REPULSI’.107 The speech at this station reiterated that ‘No
102 Duns Scotus was Irish, but Scotus was probably intended as broadly Gaelic speaking; Elizabeth McGrath, ‘Local Heroes: The Scottish Humanist Parnassus for Charles I’, in Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (eds), England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990), pp. 257–70 (pp. 260–61). Scottish humanism in Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, ‘Ficino in Aberdeen’, [40]. 103 Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 181–84. 104 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 105 Currently part of the royal collection in Holyrood Palace, this painting is inscribed ‘CARATACVS. ANNO 35’ [accessed 1 March 2020]; see below, pp. 126–27. 106 Forbes, ‘Panegyricke’, p. 283. 107 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 261.
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Roman, Saxon, Pict, by sad alarmes / Could this acquire and keepe’.108 Also in 1617, Hay’s speech at the West Port hailed King James VI/I as the descendant of ‘most noble progenitoures’, who maintained and delivered their virgine scepters unconquered, from age to age, from the inundation of the most violent floods of conquering sworde, which overwhelmed the rest of the whole earth, and carried the Crowns of all other Kings of this terrestrial globe captives unto thraldome.109 This however came with associated duties: Edinburgh ‘founded in the dayes of that worthie King Fergus’ and famously faithful to James’ progenitors, ‘was by them enriched with manie freedomes, priviledges and dignities, which all your Majestie hath not onlie confirmed, but also with accession of many more enlarged’.110 This feeling that Edinburgh ‘doeth in all humilitie record your Majestie’s Royall favours extended towards her at all tymes’111 may or may not have been true, but it also reminded the King himself of the expectations that such relationship will be maintained. The depiction of Scotland as a harsh landscape, and the frequent ceremonial appearance of wild Highlanders helped visualize the country’s position very much outside the civilizing influence of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, Highlanders showed qualities of physical bravery and unpolished goodness, and Scotland’s pristine landscape was full of untapped potential — all qualities the Roman Empire had lost in its decline. By emphasizing then its connections with brave figures from its own past and folklore — by placing themselves apparently outside of the Roman narrative — Scotland was actually claiming back a role within it, and a most flattering one, in full alignment with Tacitus’s praise of the unspoiled German populaces. The roughness and simplicity of Scottish habits made them closer to the original, austere spirit of Romanitas embodied by its earlier history and popularized amongst others by John Bellenden’s analysis of Livy’s work, rather than to the decadent mores of its extravagant later periods. The conflict then between acceptance and rejection of Roman identity in triumphal celebrations — with an SPQEP on one side of the second arch built for Charles in 1633, and a scene of absconding Romans on the other — was only apparent. While the decadent spirit of Imperial Rome was being defeated, the nostra Rei publica welcoming the monarchs embodied the upright morality of the Republican period. Romanitas could be more alive in the Scottish people bravely casting the Romans off — embodying the idealized democratic organization of early Rome — than in the fleeing Romans themselves as a corrupt empire led by a tyrant-emperor. Food for thought there for heavy-handed Charles.
108 109 110 111
Ibid., p. 263. Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 320. Ibid., p. 321. Ibid.
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The Legitimizing Power of Shared History In Scottish triumphal entries, the combination of Roman language and local themes created a believable communal narrative of antiquity and legitimacy, smoothing out any contradiction to construct a shared familiar identity that is both enhancing and stabilizing.112 Historical references offered even problematic sovereigns the opportunity to refashion themselves as trustworthy current incarnations of a well-known dynasty, framed within a genealogically safe, known political and civic space. Controversial upstarts who had gained power through military might and strategic marriage — dynastically insubstantial Henry VII Tudor and Francesco Sforza, grafting themselves onto the prestigious but dwindling houses of York and Visconti — found detailed historical probing a possible source of awkwardness and contestation, and had to tread carefully. The Stewarts’ right to rule was built on remarkably solid ground, with the dynasty’s forefather Walter, High Steward of Scotland (c. 1296–1327) being personally connected with the authority of Robert the Bruce as son-in-law and key ally in Scotland’s struggle to regain independence. During the Stewarts’ rule, the crown was handed down with very limited trouble, surviving royal minorities, female rulers, personal absences, changing political alliances, foreign tutelages, regencies, and even a forced deposition, as discussed in Chapter VI. The peculiarly Scottish concept of accountability to subjects later provided valid grounds for the elevation of James VI to the throne while his mother Mary Queen of Scots still lived. Safe, welcome topics of family history, legitimacy, and rightful inheritance made frequent appearances in Scottish triumphal entries, honouring the ruler and acknowledging their elevated status as both deserved and unquestionable. For James VI’s entry in 1579, at the Salt Tron ‘was payntit the genealogie of the Kings of Scotland, and nomber of trumpets sounding melodioslie, and crying with loud voyce, Wealfayre to the King’.113 For his second entry in 1617, the chronicle states that James passed through ‘the Netherbow Port, wher his pictur standes very reallie’,114 which seems consistent with the ‘disbursements for his Majesty’s “portraittour” at the Netherbow’115 mentioned by Mill. This might be the very statue of James VI/I installed as part of a lengthy refurbishment of the Netherbow completed for the 1617 entry;116 a repetition of the full legitimizing dynastic remarks was probably deemed unnecessary for such a well-known monarch. Scottish monarchs’ ancestry and genealogical trees were often illustrated through tangible tree-shaped devices. For example in Aberdeen in 1511, Margaret Tudor was shown
112 Communal language in Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 68–69. 113 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 114 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19. 115 Mill, Mediaeval Plays, p. 207, quoting ‘Treasurers’ Account 1612–1623, 517’. 116 Dennison, et al. (eds), Painting the Town, p. 192.
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The [nobill Stewarts] ſyne, of great renoun, Thow gart upſpring, with branches new and greine, Sa gloriouſlie, quhill glaided all the toun.117 A tree had the added advantage of presenting the royal family as a growing entity, a message particularly poignant in 1511 as childless Margaret was still to fulfil the promise here represented by the new green branches. The celebrations in absentia of Mary’s wedding in 1558 included a tree that, if not explicitly genealogical, clearly alluded with its references to fruitfulness and fecundity to the promises of bodily and political fruits expected of the Stewart–Valois marital alliance. By visualizing those fruits as factual, upcoming outcomes, any present awkwardness related to a female ruler and a foreign match was sidelined in the confident expectations of the benefits to come. Through motherhood, not-royal queen consorts could claim a place in the ruling family’s dynastic tree — for example the entry of pregnant Anne Boleyn into London in 1533 showed the city’s acceptance as implicitly conditional on the new Queen providing the King and the country with a Tudor prince.118 Delaying Mary of Guise’s coronation until 22 February 1540 when the Queen would have been visibly pregnant (of a short-lived son) acknowledged her newly acquired role within the dynasty.119 This strategy also placed the royal couple within a living political body, and as current representatives of a timeless dynastic design with far-reaching political implications. During Margaret’s entry into Edinburgh, the Queen was shown in a location between the Tolbooth and the Salt Tron a scaffold with ‘a Licorne and a Greyhound, that held a Difference of one Chardon floryſched, and a Red Roſe entrelaſſed’,120 typically Tudor/English and Stewart/Scottish dynastic signs promising the symbolic growth of new forms of hybrid life.121 Including genealogical trees in triumphal celebrations also emphasized the monarch’s messianic role by recalling the biblical Jesse tree; for example in 1432 in London, two trees represented the genealogy of young King Henry VI and that of Christ.122 For Anna of Denmark in 1590 in Edinburgh, two genealogical representations were inserted into her entry, one of which clearly referred to a biblical tree of Jesse [see Plate X]. In the square outside of St Giles ‘a palace had 117 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 154. Brackets in the original text. William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 154. The brackets appear in the original text, to indicate a lacuna, filled in by the commentator. Authoritative Dunbar scholar Priscilla Bawcutt agrees that ‘almost certainly it was a family tree of Scottish kings’; Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 90. 118 Demonstrated by Gordon Kipling, ‘“He That Saw It Would Not Believe It”: Anne Boleyn’s Royal Entry into London’, in Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken (eds), Civic Ritual and Drama (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 39–79 (pp. 69–70). 119 Rosalind Kay Marshall, Mary of Guise (London: Collins, 1977), pp. 34–35. Pregnancy and triumphal entries in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 322–23. 120 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 290. 121 The Tudor greyhound in Roy Strong, The Artist and the Garden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 272. 122 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 63–64.
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been erected on which there were the queen’s ancestry and the arms of Denmark together with the freedoms and arms of all the Scottish queens’.123 A little further, at the Salt Tron, she saw a ‘tree decorated with May leaves and green plants’,124 with the coat of arms and genealogy of the Scottish Crown hung on the left of it, and those of Denmark on the right, listing the monarchs on each side. Onto the tree, to the left and to the right as if on a ladder sat many young boys; each ‘had a crown on his head, a shield before his chest and a royal sceptre in his hand’125 to represent each family’s royal ancestors; another young man in armour — representing James and Anna’s common ancestor Christian I — lay at the base of the tree.126 As Anna was told here in a speech, ‘Denmark and Scotland are not two’, and she herself was not ‘the first shoot / that this friendship has born’, but rather James and Anna were ‘both arisen from one root’.127 The familiar symbol of the tree of Jesse brought Anna’s foreign identity back into the folds of normality by placing her within James’ own extended family through common ancestry, and the most recent incarnation of a familiar group of dependable Scottish consorts [see Plate XI]. This was a popular way of representing reassuringly common lineage; when allies Charles V and Henry VIII entered London in 1522, a tree populated by images of significant kings and queens showed the common ancestry of the monarchs as rooted in John of Gaunt rather than in the biblical Jesse. More simply, in 1486 in Tours, a French-themed giant fleur de lys displayed the ancestry of Charles VIII as rooted in St Louis, and with images of noteworthy descendants.128 In 1561, a controversial Mary was probably welcomed through representations of her impeccable lineage, the one thing the Queen certainly had in her favour, with many heraldic devices hanging from the beautifully coloured arch at the Butter Tron.129 In 1617, James VI was repeatedly reminded of his dynasty’s legitimacy, stretching back to ‘the first foundation of this Kingdome, and therein consider your Majestie’s most noble progenitoures’,130 linking the present Stuart monarch with nation-building, defining times — a true Pater Patriae. Charles I was shown visual evidences of a dynasty that stretched back to Roman times, seeing at the Tolbooth ‘an hundred and seven Scottish kings, which hee [Mercury] had brought from the Elisian fields’131 and with antique King Fergus I acting as speaker. The imaginary appearances of Charles’ painted ancestors can be gauged by Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II’s 110 portraits of Kings of Scotland (1684–1686) and based on 26 surviving paintings from the 1633 set commissioned of George Jamesone by the city authorities. The 96 portraits remaining from the original 110 — with the monarchs’ names inscribed on them
123 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 114. 124 Ibid., p. 115. 125 Ibid. 126 Ancestors in Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 3, p. 28. 127 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, pp. 116–17. 128 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 64–67. 129 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 130 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 320. 131 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267.
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matching George Buchanan’s list of Scottish monarchs — can now be seen at the Great Gallery in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, evoking what Charles I himself could have seen during his entry.132 Genealogical remarks included the king’s more immediate relations, to contextualize his inheritance of the throne: at the Salt Tron the Muses in the pageant held mottoes and symbols recalling Charles’ family members: ‘Melpomene had the simbole of King Iames, […] Thalia had that of Queene Anna, […] Euterpe had the word of Prince Henry’, and Clio had ‘the king’s simbole when hee was prince’.133 Considering them as legitimizing ancestors, the omission of Charles’ sister Elizabeth of Bohemia is understandable, as at the time Elizabeth was in exile after her husband Frederick V, Count Palatine had lost the throne of Bohemia in 1620, and her ability to support or validate Charles’ position would have been minimal.134 The exchange of letters between the king and the burgh’s authorities in preparation for the upcoming — but later delayed — entry demonstrates both parties’ confident willingness to dwell on historicized, legitimizing precedents. On 14 July 1628 Charles declared himself ‘confident of your hairtie acceptance of oure persone, and princelie intentiones, as you and your predecessors had wont to doe unto oure Royall progenitors’.135 To which the magistrates promptly ‘finding it ane mater of importance, they ordane to seik out the registers against Wednisday next, anent the entrie of his Majesties father and grandmother’, to base current planning on these established precedents ‘as is most fit for the honor of the guid town and his Majesties service’.136 Flattering remarks on the current sovereign inheriting unquestionable right to rule from his ancestors would also remind him of how the same ancestors had granted the city its current privileges. As James VI/I was told in Hay’s welcoming speech, And who can better witnesse your Majestie’s Royal favour and beneficence then this your good Towne of Edinburgh, which being founded in the dayes of that worthie King Fergus the First builder of the Kingdome, and famous for her unspotted fidelitie to your Majestie’s most noble progenitours, was by them enriched with manie freedomes, priviledges, and dignities, which all your Majestie hath not onlie confirmed, but also with accession of many more enlarged.137 By celebrating the rulers’ legitimacy and the antiquity of their lineage — especially through the use of precedents and reliance on existing traditions — the burgh was indirectly celebrating the duration and the strength of its relationship with the Crown; in a sense, it was celebrating itself, publicly displaying its royal connections, solid tradition of self-government, cultural achievements, and material prosperity.
132 Duncan Thomson, The Life and Art of George Jamesone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 64–68, 99–100. 133 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 268. 134 Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 180–81. 135 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, p. 70. 136 Ibid., p. 71. 137 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 321.
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PlatE I. Bird’s eye view of Edinburgh seen from the south in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Edenburgum, Scotiae Metropolis, from c. 1582: Edinburgh Castle is to the left of the image.
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Plate II. The position of the buildings and locations acting as stations during triumphal entries, and the direction of travel of the procession, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, from c. 1647. A) Extramural locations in the vicinities of the West Port; B) The West Port; C) The Overbow; D) The Butter Tron; E) The group of the Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and Market Cross; F) The Salt Tron; G) The Netherbow.
Plate III (opposite). Emperor Charles IV, accompanied by the messengers who came to welcome the royal party a few leagues from the city, meets the bishop and the burgesses of Cambrai outside the civic walls on 22 December 1378.
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Plate IV (left). The Walls of Edinburgh — Wall of Ward (1335) in red, King’s Wall in yellow, Flodden Wall in green, and Telfer Wall in blue — and the gates into the burgh; also showing possible circuitous routes to the West Port via the Lang Gait and the Cowgate.
Plate V. Religious use of a canopy as shown during a Corpus Christi procession set in Bruges/ Ghent, from c. 1510–20.
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Plate VI. A canopied triumphal entry, organized for Louis XII’s arrival into Genoa in 1507.
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Plate VII. The War of Troy, illustrated in one of a set of 11 hangings known as The Trojan War tapestries, from c. 1475–1490.
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Plate VIII. Detail of The Field of the Cloth of Gold from c. 1545, the location in Balinghem hosting the political summit between Henry VIII of England and François I of France, which took place 7–24 June 1520. The tents and pavilions used for tournaments, lodgings, and recreation are in the background; in the forefront, the main temporary palace and two fountains offering wine and beer.
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Plate IX. An anti-Roman Scottish king proudly represented by Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II’s Caratacus, British Chieftain (34–54), 1684–1686.
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Plate X. Master of James IV of Scotland’s The Tree of Jesse, c. 1510–1520 populated by living human ancestors.
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Plate XI. A Scottish family tree in its arboreal representation, with the familiar figure of the reclining ancestor, in George Jamiesone’s The Campbell of Glenorchy Family Tree, from 1635.
Chapter V
The Butter Tron Representing a Mercantile Community The Butter Tron The Butter Tron or Over Tron was an authorized weight beam which had stood on top of the Overbow in the Lawnmarket area since at least 1477, on a sizeable plot suggesting a rather substantial edifice; it was used by merchants — particularly of dairy products — and by traders of wool.1 The Butter Tron as shown in Gordon of Rothiemay’s map was rebuilt in 1612–1614, and its balconied steeple above an archway and symmetrical double outside stair recalled the weigh-houses of Edinburgh’s trading partners in the Netherlands [see Figure 20].2 Demolished by Oliver Cromwell’s troops in 1650, then rebuilt in 1660, it was finally demolished in 1822 to ease traffic in preparation for King George IV’s visit in the same year.3 Triumphal Entries: Representing Local Economy Many northern European mercantile cities saw their thriving commercial spaces, multicultural communities, and constant exchanges of goods and knowledge as the generative power conveying innovations, ideas, and information: ex-change was the moving force behind change, and promoted cultural advancement.4 The construction, alteration, or removal of buildings and spaces of production and commerce shaped the physical development and civic identity of cities like Paris, Antwerp, Genoa, Lübeck, Venice — and Edinburgh. Here trading needs influenced the topography, accessibility, and appearance of the road network, and promoted the erection of sizeable civic buildings, public institutions, and religious foundations.5 The grand architectural style adopted for economically meaningful locations acknowledged their symbolic importance — the grain market of Orsanmichele in Florence (begun 1336) was planned as a most
1 Stuart Harris, Place Names of Edinburgh, p. 138. 2 Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, pp. 25–26. Turner Simpson, Stevenson and Holmes, Historic Edinburgh, pp. 17–18. 3 Grant, Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 1, p. 95; Gordon Wright, A Guide to the Royal Mile, Edinburgh’s Historic Highway (Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing, 1986), p. 39; RCAHMS, Inventory, p. 127. 4 Arnade, Howell and Simons, ‘Fertile Spaces’, 532. Derek Keene, ‘Cities and Cultural Exchange’, in Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen (eds), Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 3–27 (pp. 3–15). 5 Donatella Calabi, The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architecture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3–9.
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Figure 20. Detail of the Butter Tron and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
imposing, towering stone building vaulted over two floors above an impressive pillared loggia [see Figure 21]. In Edinburgh, lasting architectural references to the building style of Dutch partner cities represented ‘a burghal affirmation of commercial prestige’.6 The vicinities of such buildings became popular meeting places, bursting with business and social activities, and attracting an endless procession of pedestrian, mounted, and wheeled traffic.7 In commercial communities such as those in the Low Countries, market spaces made ideological, political, and cultural affiliations explicit through a choice of iconography, style, and positioning, and as locations of urban ritual they represented ‘the main carriers for the symbols of urbanity’.8 6 Colin McWilliam, Scottish Townscape (London: Collins, 1975), p. 73. 7 Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence. An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 6–7. 8 Peter Stabel, ‘The Market Place and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Flanders’, in Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (eds), Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe (Leuven and Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), pp. 43–64 (p. 44; overall pp. 43–46).
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Figure 21. The impressive grain market of Orsanmichele in its nineteenth-century re-use as a church.
In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Ghent, Friday Markets became occasions for social gatherings, for political protests and rallies, for speeches, and for acts of public penance or of rebellion, with mass participation in full livery and displaying of banners demonstrating corporatism and political responsibility.9 Justice could be administered in market places by both ecclesiastical and civic courts through proclamations of guilt, shaming, and whippings: making amends for one’s transgressions against the community rightly took place in the community’s most representative space.10 In Edinburgh, following the murder of Mary’s husband Lord Darnley on 10 February 1567, defamatory placards denouncing the Queen’s involvement were pinned not only at the Tolbooth 9 Peter Arnade, ‘Crowds, Banners and the Marketplace: Symbols of Defiance and Defeat during the Ghent War of 1452–1453’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 24 (3) (Fall, 1994), 471–97 (479–87). 10 Dave Postles, ‘The Market Place as Space in Early Modern England’, Social History, 29 (1) (2004), 41–58 (44–54).
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Figure 22. An engraving of the arch of the Dutchmen built for James VI/I entry into London in 1604, designed by Stephen Harrison.
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and at the Kirk of St Giles, but on the post of the Tron, demonstrating the comparable role of this commercial location as a place of public identification and judicial punishment.11 The visitors’ experience of the civic space would develop along the criss-cross of routes connecting the city’s commercial buildings. In Florence, the arrival of foreign merchants, their formal meetings with guild representatives, and their supervised visits to local tradesmen, were well-organized events mimicking the movement of goods within the town. They involved the city’s controlled access points, the production and trading areas, commercially sought-after crossings such as the Ponte Vecchio, warehouses, courts and trading offices, and the influential Wool Guild’s own guildhouse.12 The visitors’ spatial experience centred on spaces displaying the city’s economic capability through the architectural outcomes of such prosperity. As experiential, ritual explorations of the civic space, many triumphal entries would also take the rulers on routes centred on commercial buildings, inhabited by mercantile communities, and specializing in specific wares, to demonstrate spatially the hosting city’s financial capability, and the local community’s skills in making and procuring both home-grown and exotic produce. In London in 1604 for James VI/I, the Dutch community built a (self-) celebrative arch displaying in painting ‘the Dutch countrey-people toyling at their husbandrie; women carding of their hemp, the men beating it’.13 The Dutch Exchange was also represented, with ‘the countenaunces of the Marchants there being so lively, that bargaines seeme to come from their lippes’; one could also see ‘the men weawing, the women spinning, the children at their hand-loomes, &c.’ and ‘the praise of whose industrie (being worthy of it) stands publisht in gold’14 [see Figure 22]. The variety of pageant topics could be turned to advantage: in London in 1392 for Richard II, the Skinners’ guild supply of pelts for the wild beasts accompanying the pageant of St John the Baptist offered an excellent opportunity for displaying the merchandise.15 Similarly, the choice of the myth of the Golden Fleece as thematically appropriate to celebrate the Drapers’ Company during Lord Mayor’s Shows acknowledged the civic prestige of the trade.16 For Anna of Denmark’s entrance into Wells in 1613, the blacksmiths’ pageant showed Vulcan at his forge, the tanners’ play included women wearing skins and hides, 11 Michael Bath and Michael Jones, ‘“Placardes and Billis and Ticquettis of Defamatioun”: Queen Mary, the Mermaid and the Hare’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 78 (2015), 223–46 (233–34). 12 Adrianne Atwell, ‘Ritual Trading at the Florentine Wool-Cloth Botteghe’, in Crum and Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence, pp. 185–211; Calabi, Market and the City, pp. 29–36. 13 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 352. 14 Ibid. 15 Gordon Kipling, ‘Richard II’s “Sumptuous Pageants” and the Idea of the Civic Triumph’, in David M. Bergeron (ed.), Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1985), pp. 83–103 (p. 87). 16 Sara Trevisan, ‘The Golden Fleece of the London Drapers’ Company: Politics and Iconography in the Early Modern Lord Mayor’s Shows’, in Mulryne, Aliverti and Testaverde (eds), Ceremonial Entries, pp. 245–66.
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while the tailors’ precious fabrics adorned a Salome-themed performance.17 A connection existed between wares on display and the physical location they were displayed. For example, Cheapside in London was a prosperous retail area specializing in luxury goods, artfully displayed during triumphal entries passing through this area. For Edward VI’s coronation procession in 1547, the shopkeepers from the Mercers’ company hung the street frontages with coloured cloths, banners, and expensive fabrics.18 Severing the relationship between guilds’ involvement, relevant civic spaces, and appropriate tableaux vivants, could then have an impact on the overall significance. In Paris, Henri II’s ban on guilds’ direct involvement with pageant productions in 1549, and his avoidance of the city’s old commercial headquarters, marked a transformation from guild-driven mysteries to royal-driven, standardized classical spectacles that sidelined direct references to the city’s businesses and interests.19 Buildings and spaces of production gave physical shape to political participation, citizenship, and identity, as belonging to a guild or trading association was usually necessary to participate in public life. During civic events, commercial spaces were populated by guild members, traders, and merchants grouped together in recognizable livery around the insignia of their trade, their role within and separation from the rest of the community made visible through their corporate participation.20 By bringing to the ruler’s attention economic-related themes and concerns within the spaces shaped by commercial activities and amongst the people in charge of them, the message was visually reinforced by the appropriate settings. During Louis XI’s entry in 1465, the frontier, multicultural city of Lyon cleverly emphasized the importance of its trading role to finance military security and social order.21 The relatively prosaic theme of commerce could be presented impressively: during his 1515 entry into Bruges, Charles V saw an actor impersonating him working with a personification of Merchandise to get the city of Bruges onto Fortune’s wheel. Later, by paralleling Charles’ intervention to Artaxerxes’ promise to restore Jerusalem to its previous glory, the city’s request of economic support acquired a dignifying semi-religious character.22 For the entry of Philip of Spain in 1549, commercial and banking powerhouse Antwerp included in its displays the figures of the local river Scheldt, of Negotiation, and of Mercury god of commerce surrounded by Abundance, Money, Concord, Policy, and appropriate merchandise. Merchants representing Antwerp’s main trading partners whose communities resided in the cities also appeared, to
17 Carl B. Estabrook, ‘Ritual, Space, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English Cathedral Cities’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (4) (Spring 2002), 593–620 (607–08). 18 Vanessa Harding, ‘Cheapside: Commerce and Commemoration’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71 (1) (March 2008), 77–96 (83–96). 19 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 169–75. 20 London in Kipling, ‘Richard II’s “Sumptuous Pageants”’, p. 87. Benjamin R. McRee, ‘Unity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities’, in Hanawalt and Reyerson (eds), City and Spectacle, pp. 189–92. 21 Murphy, Ceremonial Entries, pp. 114–15. 22 Strong, Art and Power, p. 10.
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Figure 23. The river Scheldt and other commerce-related allegorical figures, in an arch built for the entry of Philip of Spain into Antwerp in 1549.
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signify the interdependence between commercial prosperity and civic harmony, and commissioned arches exploring nation-specific aspects of commercial entrepreneurship [see Figure 23].23 In 1635, then-declining Antwerp appealed to the entering Cardinal Archduke Ferdinand by showing the slumbering figures of a sailor and of the river Scheldt next to an imploring Lady Antwerp, and a fleeing god of commerce Mercury, the following pageant pleading for a share in the trades with silver-rich South American colonies.24 During triumphal entries, classical language and moralizing exhortations intertwined to promote unapologetically economic interests — their message reinforced by the significance of commercial settings. The next sections will discuss to what extent the strong mercantile identity of the burgh of Edinburgh was also portrayed during triumphal entries, in relation to its best clients and patrons, the Stewart monarchs. Burgh’s Rights: Producing and Trading The Edinburgh Butter Tron was an active commercial location, with butter, cheese, but also imported and luxury goods such as iron, raisins, dyes, and spices being weighed and traded here.25 Edinburgh’s high population density guaranteed a constant demand for cloth, pottery, metalwork, blacksmithing, and food and drink for local consumption; its compactness favoured competition and promoted efficiency through re-use of by-products and waste materials.26 Internationally, Scotland exported wool, fells, hides, skins, salt, cloth, and fish to the northern and Baltic markets, importing in turn grain and wheat, iron, and timber.27 To Flanders, France, and England, Scotland exported wool, hides and pelts, and fish, and imported wheat, wine, leatherworks, and luxury goods such as fine clothes, books, paints and dyes, gold and silver ware.28 Scottish merchants’ foreign relationships were geographically varied, with resident factors in Veere, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Danzig, and regular trades with Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Ostend, Dunkirk, King’s Lynn, Newcastle, St Malo, La Rochelle, Cadiz, Bilbao, Hamburg, Lübeck, Stockholm, Gothenborg, and other Norwegian ports.29 Edinburgh’s role as economic propeller was vital for the country’s prosperity,
23 Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, pp. 96–99, 116, 51–53; Strong, Art and Power, pp. 89–90. 24 Strong, Art and Power, pp. 49–50. 25 Edinburgh City Archives, MS Account of Goods in Edinburgh Weighhouse, 1613–17, as discussed in Walter Makey, ‘Edinburgh in Mid-Seventeenth Century’, in Lynch (ed.), Early Modern Town in Scotland, p. 194. 26 Michael Spearman, ‘Workshops, Materials and Debris — Evidence of Early Industries’, in Lynch, Spearman and Stell (eds), Scottish Medieval Town, pp. 134–47. 27 David Ditchburn, ‘Trade with Northern Europe 1297–1540’, in Lynch, Spearman and Stell (eds), Scottish Medieval Town, pp. 161–70. 28 Alexander Stevenson, ‘Trade with the South, 1070–1513’, in Lynch, Spearman and Stell (eds), Scottish Medieval Town, pp. 180–206. 29 James J. Brown, ‘Merchant Princes and Mercantile Investments in Early Seventeenth-Century Scotland’, in Lynch (ed.), Early Modern Town in Scotland, p. 135. Makey, ‘Edinburgh’, pp. 193–94.
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with Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Dundee generating 80 per cent of the customs revenue collected by the Exchequer between 1460 and 1600.30 As long as the burgh prospered, the Edinburgh-based Crown was guaranteed financial backing, access to an active international network, and an endless supply of both fineries and skilled immigrants essential to support the European-inspired atmosphere of modern sovereignty.31 The Crown maintained a supervising eye on the mercantile communities’ activities and revenues, for example by favouring and overseeing trading privileges, imposing taxation upon foreign merchants, or by interceding with foreign powers to support Scottish merchants’ interests abroad.32 This was however done with a comparatively light touch; in admittedly different circumstances, the Habsburgs had an interfering attitude towards the mercantile communities of the Low Countries, with local economic and administrative privileges being frequently reorganized to favour centralization.33 Edinburgh’s mercantile community was wealthy and well-connected, but at the same time comparatively small and consolidated, bound by financial and familial ties, partnerships, and political alliances, sharing risks and profits, exchanging information, and collaborating in the pooling of capital, contacts, labour, and services.34 Edinburgh merchants’ ability to exploit mechanisms of financial collaboration — and their willingness to re-invest in both existing industries and new enterprises such as the mining of coal — increased their significance as determining political and economic force, acknowledged in 1637 by the proposed creation of a merchant company modelled on the Merchant Adventurers of London.35 While there is evidence of discontent by the lesser crafts for their lack of a political voice, both merchants’ guilds and craftsmen’s incorporated trades — with such a traditional subdivision still remaining in use as late as the 1650s — saw themselves as bound together by the burgh’s traditions and regulations. This bond overcame even the increasing religious differences creating suspicion and divisions in urban communities in central Europe.36 While a largely Protestant council was in charge from the 1560s, the burgh retained a significant presence of Catholics, and even during the times of conflict during Mary Queen of Scots’ reign local issues were discussed with pragmatism, and commercial interests remained a stimulus for social cohesion even during the
30 James J. Brown, ‘Merchant Princes’, p. 126. 31 Relationship between crown and burgh in Juhala, ‘Advantageous Alliance’, pp. 337–38, 342–48. McKean, Edinburgh, pp. 13–14; Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 110–13; Smeaton, Story of Edinburgh, p. 54. 32 Ditchburn, ‘Trade with Northern Europe’, pp. 174–75; Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution, pp. 75–76. 33 Jan Luiten Van Zanden and Maarten Prak, ‘Towards an Economic Interpretation of Citizenship: The Dutch Republic Between Medieval Communes and Modern Nation-States’, European Review of Economic History, 10 (2) (August 2006), 111–45 (113–17). 34 James J. Brown, ‘Merchant Princes’, pp. 126–30. 35 Ibid., pp. 139–41. 36 Michael Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1981), p. 14. Aaron M. Allen, Building Early Modern Edinburgh: A Social History of Craftwork and Incorporation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 3–10.
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political unrest of the 1660s.37 Edinburgh’s trading identity — instrumental in its foundation, shaping its urban spaces and the interests and affiliations of the civic community living in it — would be presented to the monarchs through a route introducing them to a succession of productive working spaces. The Triumphal Route: Visiting a Productive Community The route taking the monarchs across Edinburgh presented a city designed, organized, and experienced as a productive and commercial powerhouse. Far from hiding or camouflaging the utilitarian spaces in which day-to-day exchanges of skills, money, goods, and information took place, buildings such as the Butter Tron became acknowledged triumphal stations, their everyday use represented by their unconcealed facades and by the chroniclers’ descriptors. When in 1561 ‘at the quhilk butter trone thair was ane port made of tymber, in maiſt honourable maner, cullorit with fyne cullouris, hungin with ſyndrie armes’,38 the utilitarian, even humble role of this weighing location for foodstuffs appeared eminently compatible with the grandeur of a brightly decorated triumphal arch covered in heraldic devices. Foreign visitors also acknowledged the area’s commercial use, the Danish chronicler detailing Anna’s entry in 1590 referring to it literally as Butter Square.39 Flemish humanist Adrian Damman unapologetically referred to this location as where the public ‘weighbeam for merchandise hangs’.40 Descriptions of trading use and role were also employed: for example a chronicler describing James VI’s 1579 entry mentioned how ‘A litill beneth [the Cross] is a mercat place of salt’, and acknowledged the nearby cross’s role by calling it ‘mercat croce’.41 In 1633 the location of the Butter Tron arch was described in the triumphal booklet as built ‘upon the old foundations, inhabited by the goldsmiths and glovers’,42 — a helpful way to contextualize the festivities within a commercial geography. This matter-of-fact understanding of civic spaces can be compared with the lyric descriptions of the city of London in 1604, transfigured by James VI/I’s presence well beyond its usual industrious identity. There ‘the Tower serv[ed] that morning but for his Withdrawing-chamber, wherein he made him ready, and from thence stept presently into his Citie of London, which for the time might worthily borrow the name of his Court Royall’.43 The Battlement was presented as the ‘CAMERA REGIA’44 on an arch inscription, mercantile Cheapside was compared in gentility and comeliness to ‘the Presence-chamber’,45 and so forth. 37 Ibid., p. 50; Nancy H. Miller, The Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh 1681–1981 (Edinburgh: The Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 10–11 and 21–32. 38 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 39 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, pp. 110 and 145. 40 Damman, Schediasmata, [34], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 41 ‘Reception of the King at Edinburgh, 1579’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 30–31) p. 31. 42 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 266. 43 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 343. 44 Ibid., p. 344. 45 Ibid., p. 354.
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In contrast, Walter Forbes’ panegyric for the 1633 entry referred to the city’s role as a market place with both pride and affection, appealing to Charles that ‘On my emporium Edinbvrgh, direct / No oblique rayes’,46 and in the pragmatic tone appropriate to a place of business, asking the sovereign rather boldly ‘To doe thee service, all her cost compense’.47 Even the admonishing and controversial speech for Mary Queen of Scots in 1561 was tinged with mercantile pride, reassuring the Queen that they and all that they possess Bodie and good shall ever reddie be To serve you.48 In 1590, in gifting a precious jewel to Anna, the speaker remarked how For your sake we will forego our houses and goods, even our lives. […] everything we have belongs to you.49 On the same occasion, Damman’s celebrative poem presented Edinburgh as ancient and impressively built, but also remarked pragmatically on the money-making potential of its ‘friendly sea / laden with merchandise’.50 In a commercial community, the making available of hard-earned material possessions to the monarch represented an unequivocal sign of earnest fidelity. If elsewhere real or fabricated Roman antiquities were to evoke the upright feelings of pride, honour, and loyalty which had animated their hypothetical ‘forefathers’, in Edinburgh such principles were represented by real buildings representing the burgh’s mercantile past — and its present. These entries translated the basic ideas of a Roman triumph — collegiality, civic pride, loyalty — into a differently organized society, portraying and inspiring appropriate but also familiar values of local pride, hard work, and trading enterprise into the viewers. Commercial and civic landmarks were not the only testimony to the mercantile identity of the burgh, as the burgesses’ own multi-storey houses represented the great majority of the town’s buildings, as elongated structures towering up to 14 or 15 storeys, with narrow frontages maximized access to the commercial High Street. The size of the twelfth-century plots was generally maintained, with elongated perpendicular plots with proportions of between 1:3 and 1:12, and the cultivable land to the back was replaced in time by auxiliary structures. Merchant dwellings such as Gladstone’s Land — still standing on the north side of the High Street near the castle — were constrained by each other on the sides and to the back, and expanded forward into the public realm through 46 Forbes, ‘Panegyricke’, p. 284. 47 Ibid. 48 Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, p. 22. 49 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 119. 50 ‘amicum mercibus aequor / Prospiciens’; Damman, Schediasmata, [3–4], as translated by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter.
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Figure 24. Edinburgh’s industries and trades: the locations of the main productive activities and marketplaces in Edinburgh.
timber balconies, underground cellars, overhangs, projecting staircases, and arcaded areas.51 These stone arcaded spaces — called Scottish Piazzas — were used to shelter and display the goods traded in the shops behind them, and the multipurpose rooms above were used to live, work, and sell products.52 In this uniform urban scenario pinpointed by sizeable, well-positioned public buildings, noble palaces were remarkably absent, as the gentry preferred to reside in open country seats.53 Some houses of distinction were tucked away in the nearby burgh of Canongate, whose spacious geography and closeness to the royal Palace of Holyrood turned it after the 1550s into an elegant residential suburb.54 The built environment passed through by the royal procession demonstrated a uniform mercantile identity, with urban forms shaped by constant usage by a strongly craft-oriented and commercially minded civic community. The processional route in fact mimicked the itinerary of the goods arriving daily into the civic space, being checked, weighed, and taxed before they proceeded to their allocated trading area. The ruler passed through the High Street, the multi-
51 Edinburgh in Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, pp. 21–22; Makey, ‘Edinburgh’, pp. 202–04. Scottish burghs overall in Houston, ‘Scottish Burgh’, 115–18. 52 McWilliam, Scottish Townscape, p. 57; John Gifford, Colin McWilliam, David Walker and Christopher Wilson, The Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh (Edinburgh: The Penguin Group, 1991), p. 81. 53 Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 69–72. 54 Dennison and Lynch, ‘Crown, Capital, and Metropolis’, 31–37.
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functional main marketplace with two weighing locations at the two ends — the Butter Tron and the Salt Tron. Here services were on offer alongside goods, and opportunities of employment, education, and entertainment, housing facilities, as well as religious, medical, and legal services were sought and bartered for.55 Because of the High Street’s elongated character, commercial and productive activities took place along most of this major spinal cord, in plain sight of the whole community, making the experience of Edinburgh as a thriving market place omnipresent, sensorial, and inescapable [see Figure 24]. Just to mention some of the production areas the procession would have encountered, there were saddlers at the eastern end of the Grassmarket, and haberdashery was sold at the top of the Overbow, opposite the selling place of wool, butter, and cheese. Continuing down, one would pass the Lawnmarket, a most spacious area where rolls of cloth were sold in stalls and canvas booths.56 In this area stood the Luckenbooths, seven timber-fronted tenements four to six storeys high, with shops at ground floor mainly selling food, and merchants’ flats above. These buildings — built around 1460 and demolished between 1802 and 1818 — were closed (lucken) shops in comparison to the open ones which ran either side of High Street, and their presence reduced the width of the street to 15 feet, a narrower passage which the triumphal procession would have had to squeeze through.57 Other shop-less retailers selling hardware, leather goods, and toys occupied since the 1550s the narrow pedestrian route called the Krames, running between St Giles and the south wall of the Luckenbooths [see Figure 25].58 Down the High Street the procession encountered the area for trading grain and corn; next to the Salt Tron were the trading places of hat-makers and furriers, while continuing towards the Netherbow were the flesh market and the fish market, with the smiths and cutlers next to the port itself. This commercial-themed route was not necessarily a calculated choice picked among a range of other possibilities — the burgh’s geography offered only so many options — but rather the matter-of-fact consequence of having a civic space modelled by commercial interests and undertakings. By following a route visiting the city’s districts and areas specialized in particular trades or manufacturing, the ruler took a tour of Edinburgh as a captain of industry inspecting the efficiency of a working factory, becoming directly aware of the importance of royal support to ensure Edinburgh’s prosperity and financial wellbeing. Some of the foreign entries discussed previously suggested an intentional relationship between a pageant, its location, and the guild organizing it. In
55 Civic form and commerce in Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, pp. 5–8; Spearman, ‘Workshops, Materials and Debris’; Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 11–13 and 19–26; and Michael Lynch, ‘Social and Economic Structure of the Larger Towns, 1450–1600’, in Lynch, Spearman and Stell (eds), Scottish Medieval Town, pp. 272–79. 56 Adams, Urban Scotland, figure 2.4; see also Grant, Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 1, pp. 94–95. 57 Ibid., p. 124. 58 Wright, Guide to the Royal Mile, pp. 36–37.
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Figure 25. The Luckenbooths and other commercial activities occupying the High Street, with the Kirk of St Giles visible in the background.
Paris, the cloth-sellers chose to display the visitation of the Mages in their pertaining neighbourhood to showcase their colourful wares; in London, the textile merchants employed fabrics as decoration when the king passed through their own trading area. Also in Paris, the change in the canopy carriers to match the guilds most active in any given area gave the monarch a clear sense of the economic role of each district.59 In Edinburgh there is little information to demonstrate a relationship between spectacles staged and commercial uses of the spaces. The one entry for which a clear pairing of people-to-location existed was the welcome for Mary of Guise in 1538, where a section of the records labelled Furnishings and order contains a list of men answerable for the setting up of named locations. This appears as Item, it is devysit that thir persouns following, viz., James Bassenden Alexander Spens, for the Nether Bow; Robert Graham, William Tod, for the Trone to
59 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, p. 40.
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ansuer; Patrik Lindsay, Jhone Purves, George Leche, for the Croce to ansuer; Robert Hector, Robert Watsoun for the Tolbuith to ansuer; Maister Dauid Ireland, William Symsoun, and Jhone Symsoun, for the Over Bow to ansuer; the Archidene of Sanctandrois, William Loch and James Hill, for the West Port to ansuer.60 These men might have been assigned a particular location based on their familiarity with that particular part of town, resulting from daily business interactions. For example, with reference to ‘James Bassenden Alexander Spens, for the Nether Bow’, the right of a James Bassendain to use the north vault at the Netherbow as his booth was discussed by the council on 3 March 1537,61 and again on 26 March 1539.62 Printer Thomas Bassaden, son of a James Bassintyne who died in the early 1560s, also lived and traded near the Netherbow, demonstrating lasting familiarity with the location.63 An Alexander Spens Masters of work on 23 March 1536, was frequently mentioned participating in council meetings with reference to the flesh market — this being located in the Netherbow area — or with the Netherbow itself;64 for example on 20 December 1539, he was involved as a bailie in the settling of some complaints raised by the guild of the fleshers.65 This line of investigation could be extended to other individuals named in the chronicle, but these results are not surprising: it would have made sense to have prominent members of the administrative and commercial elite responsible for the areas of the town with which they were familiar. The lack of further information for the 1538 entry means that the themes of shows or decorations at each station, and their possible connections with trades taking place in those neighbourhoods, have gone unrecorded. Other entries can provide some clues: for example, the appearance of richly dressed Moors between the Butter Tron (Mary, 1561) and the Overbow (Anna, 1590) could have given the nearby sellers of cloth and haberdashery good opportunities to display their wares. The distribution of foodstuffs in the vicinities of the Market Cross — and particularly the appearance of a Ceres with corn props (Anna, 1590; Charles, 1633) — could be significant, as it took place opposite the burgh’s grain and corn market. However, this is not enough evidence to make the possible connection between the topics shown and commercial spaces anything more than a fascinating — if reasonably grounded — speculation.
Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 90. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., pp. 93–94. Theo Van Heijnsbergen, ‘The Interaction between Literature and History in Queen Mary’s Edinburgh: The Bannatyne Manuscript and its Prosopographical Context’, in Alasdair A. MacDonald, Michael Lynch and Ian Borthwick Cowan (eds), The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History, and Culture Offered to John Durkan (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 183–225 (pp. 189–90). 64 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, pp. 75–76; see also 17 March 1536, p. 74, p. 95. 65 Ibid., pp. 97–98. 60 61 62 63
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The Burgh as Organizer and Host While the 1538 list matching named individuals to triumphal locations stands out as unique among Scottish case studies, the burgh’s records discussing the entry often mentioned people with reference to the services they provided, and annotated due payments. Many of those involved in organizing triumphal entries were involved in the burgh’s government and were prominent members of the mercantile community. The aforementioned Alexander Spens is a good example, being recorded on 23 March 1536 — with a fellow burgess — as ‘maisters of wark to thair calsay and commoun werk of the towne’,66 and as bailie on 29 January 1539;67 From the same list, Jhone Purves was the dean of a guild on 28 May 1535 and again on 17 March 1536, and appeared as a council member on 29 January 1539;68 Robert Watsoun was listed as treasurer on 3 March 1537, and as treasurer and also council member on 22 May 1538.69 It was common for the most influential merchants and the representatives of the major crafts to monopolize prominent positions as town officials — so much so that in 1403 the election of the guilds’ office bearers was also taken as the election of the Edinburgh town council.70 Acting as bailies or burgh magistrates (collecting the king’s taxes, acting as town officers, law magistrates, and judges), treasurers, deans of guilds (controlling trading regulation and standards), masters of works (in charge of repairs to public buildings), burgh clerks (keeping the city records), fiscals (in charge of legal prosecution and security) and lyners (taking care of disputes about boundaries, properties’ ownership, and maintenance), the economic elite exercised complete control upon the burgh and its development — and over the organization of civic events and entries.71 The ceremonial message devised by such an elite was not always fully shared by the whole community, and underrepresented groups looked for chances in which to express themselves. For example, in 1560 and early 1561, the Edinburgh craftsmen — generally Catholic and less influential and prosperous than Protestant traders and merchants — had been involved in riots and besieged the provost house.72 By heading out of the burgh on 19 August 1561 to offer Mary Queen of Scots on her way from Leith to Holyrood Palace an impromptu welcome, the craftsmen were looking for neutral, extramural spaces in which to express their political and religious disagreement with the confrontational welcome of the Protestant officials.73 However, the lack of self-organized communities of foreign merchants in Edinburgh — who 66 Ibid., p. 74. 67 Ibid., p. 93. 68 Ibid., pp. 69, 74, and 93 respectively. 69 Ibid., pp. 84 and 87 respectively. 70 Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 77–78; Patricia E. Dennison, ‘Power to the People? The Myth of the Medieval Burgh Community’, in Sally M. Foster, Allan I. Macinnes and Ranald MacInnes (eds), Scottish Power Centres, from the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1998), pp. 100–31 (pp. 103–04 and 113–22). 71 Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 82–94. 72 Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation, pp. 90–97; Knox, History of the Reformation, vol. 2, pp. 157–60. 73 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 103.
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could have wished to convey separate messages through independently set up stations, as it happened for example in larger, multi-ethnic metropolises like Antwerp, Lisbon, and London — usually helped the Scottish community present a uniform, coherent voice.74 The organizing committee appearing in the records of the town council for 26 August 1579 presented a characteristic selection of individuals involved, from ‘the Dekyns of the barbouris, skynneris, furrouris, cordineris, masonis, baxteris, tailzeouris, wobstaris, fleschouris, goldsmythis, hammermen’75 — testifying to the overlap in the organizing of the burgh’s trades and the triumphs — to a representative group of the town magistrates, listed by name and public office held.76 The discussion regarding the organization of the entry amongst the officials ranged from the suitability to have a triumph at all, to agreeing on 27 August that money was ‘to be raisit of all the nychtbouris of this brugh, alsweill craftismen as merchandis’;77 from assigning the task of making of the ‘propyne’ to local goldsmiths, to the selection of burgesses to act as pall bearers, and to the finding of materials and workmanship for the scaffolds.78 Raising a large amount of money for a single event was often problematic: for Mary’s entry in 1561 various strategies were proposed, from paying from the burgh’s coffers or by leasing burgh properties, to levying a tax on ‘all nychtbouris occupiaris within this burgh, merchants, craftis, and utheris’,79 from paying workers in advance for their services, to seeing ‘the relief of the creditors furnissaris of the necessaris of the said Banquet, Triumphe, and Propyne’.80 While significant expenditures for triumphs could create lasting economic problems, being in control of the celebrations allowed the magistrates of Edinburgh to deliver a political narrative of their choice — in 1561, challenging Protestant topics.81 In 1558, Regent Mary of Guise probably endorsed the Edinburgh celebration for Mary’s wedding in Paris, but the paying civic authorities organized it with the entertainment of the people of Edinburgh in mind.82 The other voice to be heard during triumphal entries was that of the guests — the monarch and their court. In Scotland, the ruler’s expectations and preferences were willingly considered at the organizational stage, with frequent communications between the parties. In 1561, the absence of decorations at the West Port for Mary’s entrance suggests that the Queen had communicated well in advance her intention to sidestep that station. The rushed preparations for
74 Foreign examples in Tamar Cholcman, ‘The Merchant Voice: International Interests and Strategies in Local Joyeuses Entrées. The Case of Portuguese, English, and Flemish Merchants in Antwerp (1599) and Lisbon (1619)’, Dutch Crossing, Journal of Low Countries Studies, 35 (1) (2011), 39–62 (49–52). 75 ‘Notices, 1579’, p. 11. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., p. 12. 78 Ibid., pp. 11–27. 79 ‘Notices, 1561’, p. 5; Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, 74–76. 80 ‘Notices, 1561’, p. 8. 81 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, 78–82. 82 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 149.
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the event — after Mary’s return to Scotland and a week before the planned entry date — were possibly driven by the desire of the city to finalize with the Queen herself earlier agreements made with her local representatives.83 Also in 1561, the fact that ‘Thei were mynded to have had a priest burned at the altar, at the elevation. The Erle of Huntly stayed that pagient’,84 demonstrated how the intervention of influential courtiers during the devising of the event could result in last-minute alterations. On 23 April 1617, the burgh authorities discussed the instructions coming directly from James VI/I, who hes declarit that it is his will and plesour that ane harrang and speache be maid to him at his entrie within this burgh; thairfor the Counsall nominatis and electis Mr Johne Hay thair clerk deput, to make the said harrang, and ordainis him to provyde himselfe to that effect.85 On 24 December 1616 the Privy Council sent ‘Direction to the Burgh of Edinburgh anent Preparatiounis for His Majesties heircoming’,86 and mentioned that the Lordis of Secreitt Counsall […] commandis and ordanis the provest and baillies of Edinburgh, […] Cannogait, […] the Potterrow and West Porte, […] to foirsee and prouide that thair be goode ludgeingis within the saidis boundis for fyve thowsand men and stablis for fyve thowsand horse.87 Hosting James VI/I’s entourage during the entry was considered an honour, but it also put a financial strain on selected citizens, and implied how the King considered the burgh to be matter-of-factly at his disposal, and how far the local authorities would go to please the ruler.88 However, the Crown–burgh relationship during entries was not a one-way affair, and burgesses could participate in and have access to the courtly aspects of such entertainments. For example on 19 June 1617, James VI’s tournament at Holyrood Palace ‘was acted and played by the yong men of Edenborrow’,89 and ‘above four score young men of Edenborrow, all in gold chaines’90 served at the table in the banquet offered by the city to the King’s entourage on 26 June. Also, the burgh’s authorities could be discriminate, agreeing to reasonable requests — such as Charles I’s wish to receive a welcome comparable to that granted to ‘oure Royall progenitors’91 — while opposing some of the King’s less acceptable demands — such as critical temporary and permanent alterations to the civic fabric.
83 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, 74. 84 Thomas Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, a Series of Original Letters, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), vol. 1, p. 74; noted as Thomas Randolph to Cecil, 7 September 1561. 85 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, relative to the Reception 1617’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, (pp. 64–68) p. 66. 86 ‘Notices, 1617’, p. 53. 87 Ibid., p. 59. 88 Juhala, ‘Advantageous Alliance’, pp. 352–58. 89 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 22: noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. 90 Ibid., p. 23. 91 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, p. 70.
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Another way to ensure that the entertainments were fashionable, intelligible, and flattering, was to involve intellectuals and scholars from a courtly environment, to devise adequate topics of common interest. For example, one of the men chosen by Rouen’s council to superintend Henri II’s entry in 1550 was Claude Chappuys, a poet, courtier, chamberlain, and royal librarian, frequently involved in court ceremonies such as François I’s funeral, the crowning of Henri II, and Henri II’s entry into Paris in 1549.92 Mary of Guise’s entry in 1538 was ‘to be done with avyse of the said Dauid Lindsay anent all ordour and furnesing’,93 and the words of the speech in French to the Queen ‘sall be devysit with avyse of Maister Adame Otterburne, Maister James Fowlis and Dauid Lyndsay’.94 David Lyndsay was a prominent humanist and courtier with extensive experience of triumphal entertainments, having been present at Charles V’s tournament in Brussels in 1531, and having witnessed the French ceremonies for James V’s wedding in Notre Dame in 1536–1537 as a member of the King’s entourage.95 Lyndsay was also the author of Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith, providing insights in poetic form on the cancelled ceremony; for Mary of Guise in St Andrews in 1538 ‘thair was maid to hir ane trieumphant frais be Schir Dawid Lyndsay of the Mont, lyoun harrot’, which included ‘certane wriesouns and exortatiouns maid be the said Schir Dawid Lyndsay into the quens grace instructioun’.96 Similarly, the poet William Lauder paid in July 1558 for ‘the making of the play and wrytting thairof ’97 for the celebrations that same year, had established courtly connections and good experience of writing pageants, and was probably employed again to write welcoming verses for the Queen’s arrival in 1561.98 In 1633, Charles I’s entry was also in expert hands, being devised by John Adamson, Principal of Edinburgh College, with speeches and poems by William Drummond of Hawthornden, and Thomas Craufurd, Master of the High School, who provided an account of the ceremony, ‘joyned to an Committee of the gravest and most understanding citizens and clerks’.99 These remarkable individuals were singled out for recognition because of their special contribution, against a relatively homogeneous audience on the background. Not unlike the houses they inhabited, citizens’ personal identity was sacrificed in favour of group recognisability, to facilitate the legibility of the burgh’s social structure.
92 93 94 95
Wintroub, ‘Civilizing the Savage’, p. 483. Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, pp. 90–91. Ibid., p. 91. George Chalmers (ed.), Poetical Works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, 3 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1806), vol. 1, pp. 14–15, and 18–19. George Buchanan also had composed the poem welcoming Charles V on his entry into Bordeaux in 1540; Ian D. McFarlane, Buchanan (London: Duckworth, 1981), p. 111. 96 Pitscottie. Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 379. 97 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 269. 98 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 105–06. 99 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 123.
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Inhabiting the Productive Space: Identity during Triumphal Entries The dwellings of the Edinburgh merchants were practical and comfortable, even at times internally elegant — but looked rather uniform from the outside. The two apartments in the aforementioned Gladstone’s Land were comparatively spacious, with fine furniture and decorated ceilings, but externally inconspicuous; a third decidedly luxurious apartment in the same complex faced demurely the side of the close.100 The reorganization of the facades on Edinburgh High Street — first with the advancement of new timber frontages, then with stone arcades and uniform ashlar facades — aimed at a regularization and improvement of the general appearance of the city rather than offering opportunities to seek distinctiveness.101 Those merchants hazarding too ostentatious claims onto the communal space by throwing street fronts loosely forward, or by replacing temporary stools with permanent booth structures, were restrained and rebuffed.102 This regularity was the result of the local social structure: with rank and prospective occupation largely decided at birth, the citizens’ respective positions did not need to be demonstrated through architectural prominence and outward display of wealth. This resulting overall uniformity of the tightly built living situation reflected the social cohesion caused by mutual economic dependency, competitive but supportive comradeship, and views of individual success as both beneficial to and dependent upon communal wellbeing.103 To the opposite, in comparable French towns, strong class identity based on financial security and on shared knowledge was frequently undermined by individuals’ constant aspirations to rise socially, diminishing opportunities to become politically influential as a class.104 Scottish triumphal routes reflected this even-minded understanding of community and space — and of community in space. A correspondence seems to have existed between the uniformly egalitarian organization of the civic space — punctuated by outstanding commercial and administrative public hubs — and the blending-in of individuals as a homogeneous mass of spectators led by distinctively dressed and positioned civic authorities. The fact that private buildings were not meant to compete with each other for attention and influence the triumphal route is not necessarily a given. In Genoa, in the spatial vacuum created by the death of Andrea Doria and the consequent political side-lining of his own residence, the facades of aristocratic palaces and religious communities competed for attention in the newly built triumphal routes of the 100 Gifford, McWilliam, Walker and Wilson, Buildings of Scotland, pp. 195–96. Peter Robinson, ‘Tenements: A Pre-Industrial Urban Tradition’, Review of Scottish Culture, 1 (1984), 52–63 (58–59). 101 Geoffrey P. Stell and Robin Tait, ‘Framework and Form: Burgage Plots, Street Lines and Domestic Architecture in Early Urban Scotland’, Urban History, 43 (1) (February 2016): 2–27 (10, 12–15). 102 Adams, Urban Scotland, p. 35. 103 Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, pp. 118–19, 15–19. 104 Robert Mandrou, Introduction to Modern France 1500–1640, an Essay in Historical Psychology, trans. by F. E. Hallmark (London: Edward Arnold, 1975, first published 1961), pp. 112–14.
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Figure 26. The entrance to the Tailors’ Hall in Cowgate, with its appropriately decorated panel.
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Strada Nuova (begun in the 1550s) and of via Balbi (from the early 1600s).105 In sixteenth-century Florence, the inclusion or exclusion of an institutional headquarters or a family’s palace from the ever-varying triumphal route were as reliable a sign of their position in the Florentine political chessboard as the participation or marginalization of pre-eminent individuals during triumphal ceremonies.106 Individuals were certainly named in burgh records dealing with the preparations, for pragmatic reasons ranging from personal accountability to organizing refunds.107 In contrast, very few actual participants were acknowledged by name in the accounts, at most being identifiable as holders of civic roles and responsibilities through their prescribed attires, and their position as part of an organized group. Similarly in their daily life, rather than seeking individual gain and personal visibility, burgesses found an identity through the corporatism of guild membership, where they would have their interests protected, fair pricing and standards ensured, and apprenticeship regulated, and receive support in times of need and strong political representation.108 The incorporated trades of Edinburgh, dating from 1578 but legitimizing a long-standing status quo, represented a cross-section of the city’s interests and activities, including the particularly influential Skinners, Hammermen, Tailors, and Cordiners, but also Bonnet Makers, Furriers, Fleshers, Wrights, Masons, Bakers, Goldsmiths, and Weavers. Particularly influential was the Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh, with the right to trade both nationally and internationally under the protection of the king’s peace; King James IV himself became a member of the Guild in 1505.109 With all their prestigious connections and importance in the civic economy, the guildhalls in Edinburgh were comparatively modest and unassuming in appearance. The former Skinners’ Hall is an L-shaped building with a simple polygonal staircase, and the most eye-catching element of the Tailors’ Hall, built in 1620 and tucked away near the Cowgate, is its coat of arms with a huge pair of scissors dating from 1644 [see Figure 26].110 Edinburgh guilds often rented rooms within the Tolbooth for their meetings, rather than having fancy-looking guild houses competing architecturally with the burgh’s public buildings, as was the case for English guildhalls — often imposing buildings in prominent positions, representing through their size and level of decoration the economic and social standing of the associated group.111 Also in
105 George L. Gorse, ‘A Classical Stage for the Old Nobility: The Strada Nuova and Sixteenth-Century Genoa’, The Art Bulletin, 79 (2) (1997), 301–26 (301–03, 324–26). 106 Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee’, pp. 79–84. 107 See examples from the 1558 celebration in Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1557–1571, James David Marwick (ed.), (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1875), p. 26. 108 Adams, Urban Scotland, pp. 42–43. 109 John Kennedy Melling, Discovering London’s Guilds and Liveries (Risborough: Shire Publications, 1995), p. 9. 110 This is now in the courtyard of Huntly House. Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, p. 141. 111 Mark Girouard, The English Town: A History of Urban Life (London: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 21–22, 27–28.
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Florence, the Palazzo dell’Arte della Lana with its imposing corner position and large loggia proudly expressed the importance of the wool trade, the merchants’ activities spilling over from here to take possession of the nearby Piazza di Orsanmichele.112 In Edinburgh, as guild membership and participation in civic life overlapped, guild members felt themselves represented by and entitled to use the decorated spaciousness of the Tolbooth’s best meeting rooms, finding their own voice and space within, rather than in opposition to, the communal civic building.113 During triumphal entries then, guilds and guild members found themselves represented through and at the Tolbooth — for example in 1579 James VI saw there ‘the crafts’ standards and pinsells sett’114 on display, while individual guildhalls were not singled out for attention. Also in 1590, the Tolbooth demonstrated a collective mercantile identity, with its every side ‘decorated with the several banners of divers colours / of craftsmen of all kinds’.115 Similarly, ambitious citizens had a chance to distinguish themselves within Edinburgh’s framework as representatives of, rather than as an alternative to, the established government system. Their role and status as contributors to the economy was expressed through a prescribed dress code, giving visible form to burgesses’ membership of regulated bodies, placing individuals within well-defined groups, and the groups safely within the larger structure of the community, rather than acknowledging personal individualities.116 By encouraging and even coercing people in the same occupation or civic role to dress in a specific way — usually elegant but not showy — the collective human structure of the burgh was made as legible for the visiting monarch as its physical structure was. The poetic description of the unrealized 1537 entry described the Ilk trenchman with bent bow in his hand full galzartlie in schort cleithing of grane The honest burges cled zow sould haue seine sum in scarlat and sum in claith of grane […] Prowestis baillies and lordis of the toun The senatouris in ordour consequent Cled into silk, of purpur blak and browne; Syne the gret lordis of the parliament With mony knichtlie barroun most potent in silk and gold in cullouris comfortabill.117
112 Atwell, ‘Ritual Trading’, pp. 186–93. 113 Bob Harris and Charles McKean, The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), p. 157. 114 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459. Pinsells is noted as ‘Penoncelles’ in the original text. 115 Damman, Schediasmata, [61–62], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 116 Ashley, ‘Moving Subjects’, p. 19. 117 Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, pp. 373–74.
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Such distinctions were undoubtedly helpful to a royal guest playing who-is-who in a crowded city. The different roles within an individual guild could also be expressed through differences in their attire. For Mary of Guise’s arrival in 1538, the records from 17 July specified, under the heading ‘Craftis araying’, how each guild was to be ‘cled in Fransche clayth to thair gownis, with dowbletts of veloutt, satyne, dammes, or silk, honest hois, and vtheris abulyements of thair persoun efferand thairto, and that the remanent of the craftis be in thair honest aray’118 — helping define a visual hierarchy between guild members. The commoners and townspeople were not forgotten, as all vther inhabitants [of ] this towne bayth men and wemen be in thair best clething in tyme of the said entry, and haif thame honestlie as efferis, and be o the stairis or vpoun the hiegaitt, and latt na vyle persouns be in thair company.119 The records for 11 September in preparation for the 1579 entry specified how the merchants of the burgh were to dress in specific combinations of fabrics judged appropriate to their wealth. Merchants worth ‘ten lib. or above’ would wear ‘fyne blak chamlott of silk of cierge, barrit with velvous efferand to his substance’, while those worth ‘aboue saxtene lib.’ were prescribed gowns ‘of the lyke stuff, the breistis thairof lynit with velvous and begaireit thairwith with coitis of velvous dames or satene’.120 Time was of the essence: gowns were to be ‘in readynes within tuelf dayes nixt heirefter, under the payne of wairding’.121 On 7 October 1579, the council deliberated that the pall carriers were to prepare gowns ‘of fyne blak, barrit with weluouis, lynit in the breistis with weluouis or govnis of fyne chamlott of silk or growgrane of silk or cierge barrit with veluous, veluet coitis, or doubletis of satene, veluett or dames, tafetie hatis’.122 These attires were to be ‘rady within aucht dayes, and the baillies to tak visitatioun thairof, ilk person vnder the payne of fourty li. vnforgevin, and the baillies to tak diligent laubouris to se the samyn be nocht omitted’;123 non-compliant individuals would be fined by the bailies. Also in 1579, at the West Port the King was received by ‘a grit number off citicens, being all arrayed in guidlie apparrell and in thair velvot gounes’,124 their attire marking their belonging to economically active social groups. Choice of wardrobe provided essential information on relative social positioning, helping to construct social identities in that it visibly advertised the values upheld by the wearer. Sumptuary Laws were commonly used across Europe to monitor, clarify, and limit the misuse of clothing as social signifier, representing public and gender-specific roles, and the extent and limitations Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, pp. 89–90. Ibid., p. 90; ‘[of ]’ appears in the original text. ‘Notices, 1579’, p. 15. Ibid. Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1573–1589, ed. by James David Marwick (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1882), p. 122. 123 Ibid. 124 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19.
118 119 120 121 122
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of a group’s influence: for example in Venice, sumptuary laws from the 1470s prescribed that city councillors had to wear costly, recognizable scarlet robes.125 Comparably in artistic productions, the clothing — fabrics, attires, and draperies — conventionally attributed to allegorical, symbolic, and institutional figures contributed to their instant recognizability, as did its strategic absence to reveal partial nudity.126 For the Edinburgh guild members, clothing signified professional proficiency, political engagement and, through their simplicity and sobriety, moral rectitude. The Scottish Act of Apparel from 1457 stated that no burgh merchant might wear clothes of silk and other fineries, unless they be ‘person constitute in dignitie, as alderman, baillie, or uther gude worthy men that ar of the councel of the towne’.127 The prevalence of dark, sober fabrics in the mid-to-late sixteenth century was likely the expression of the ideas of the Reformation, which saw loud colours and decorations as morally questionable. Ostentatious extravagance alarmed cautious potential business partners, and was criticized by Calvinist teachings and punished by sumptuary laws, while simplicity of dress, frugality, and sobriety were appreciated qualities.128 This visual sobriety transferred easily into a restrained palette of colours and materials for triumphal entries. In 1561 the 16 most honourable men of the town welcoming the Queen and holding the pall for her were ‘cled in veluot gownis and veluot bonettis’,129 and on 9 April 1617, the town council instructed that ane number of the gravest most antient burgesses, and of best rank within this burgh, sall be warnit to attend his Majesties entrie within the samine, the 16th day of May nixt, all apperellit in blak velvot, the ane half in gownis faiced with blak velvot, and the uther half in partisanis.130 The different roles of the authorities and citizens involved were also underlined by their relative positioning in space, and their moving together as a group. In 1579, the provost, bailies, treasurer, and the dean of guild were easily recognizable because they ‘rode with foote mantles; the rest of the counsell, and other honest men of the toun, about three hundreth, clothed in velvet, satine, and silkes, and twentie-four officers, clothed in blacke, were there also at his entrie’.131 In 1617, the occupation and status of the delegation of young men ‘in gounes off the Colledge off Edenborroughe’132 who met James VI/I at Holyrood Palace were 125 Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 84–107. On Venice see Margaret Schaus (ed.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006), pp. 784–85. On Scotland, J. Chisholm, ‘The Sumptuary Laws of Scotland’, Journal of Jurisprudence, 414 (35) (1891), 290–97 (292–95). 126 Una Roman D’Elia, ‘What Allegories Wear in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Tristan Weddigen (ed.), Unfolding the Textile Medium in Early Modern Art and Literature (Berlin: Imorde, 2011), pp. 65–80. 127 Chisholm, ‘Sumptuary Laws’, 292. 128 Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, p. 93. 129 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67. 130 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1617’, p. 65. 131 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 132 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 20.
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once again visualized through identifiable, identical gowns and synchronous movements, as they kneeled as one at the King’s arrival. In 1503, the assemblies of Grey Friars, of Jacobins, and of members of the College of the Parish of St Giles meeting James IV and Margaret were easily identifiable not only through their common attires — the latter ‘rychly reveſted’,133 the former wearing distinctively coloured religious garb — but also through their collectively choreographed occupation of space. In 1633 the magistrates’ dress, their elevated seating, and their coordinated movements made them distinguishable. Alexander Clerk provost of Edinburgh and the bailies wearing red robes and furs, and a number of elders and counsellors in more modest gowns of black velvet, ‘were ſitting all upon ſeats of dealls for the purpoſe, bigged of three degrees, frae the whilk they all raiſe in great humilitie and reverence to his majeſtie’.134 Although Clerk was named and his speaking role singled him out, he welcomed the King ‘in name of the reſt, and toun of Edinburgh’,135 representing the community rather than performing a distinct role as individual. Key individuals’ separate positioning mimicked the recognisability of an isolated public building within the civic space: in 1617, the Lord Provost, the bailies, and city council were recognizable through their exclusive, raised situation, standing on a high scaffold ‘maid of tries and dailles’136 near the inward side of the West Port. A warning against abusing the power of spatial positioning to elevate one’s status misleadingly was given in the burgh’s records for 17 July 1538, declaring that na maner of persoun of quhat estaitt or degre he be of be sene in cumpany with the prouest baillies and counsale at the entre of the Quenis Grace, except sa mony as beis gevin in bill and chairget speciallie, other personallie or at thair dwelling place, vnder the payne of banesing the towne for yeir and day,137 no mean punishment for any unauthorized person joining the select group of municipal authorities in their symbolic spatial seclusion. In the entries in 1561 and 1590 a group of prominent young burgesses appeared, as previously mentioned, clothed and painted as Moors, and performed a choreographed dance; wearing costumes and executing synchronized movements hid the young men’s identity and turned them into entertainers. In a sense, their attires and behaviour were no more theatrical than wearing the prescribed uniform of ‘important burgess’, or ‘head of guild’, or ‘generically well-dressed but unspecified and marginal participant’. All attire worn during the entry was in fact a ‘uniform’, granting their wearers a ‘uniform’ group identity which made their stage ‘persona’ — and their role both in the community and in the ceremony — self-evident. This was markedly different from what courtier David
133 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 134 John Spalding, The History of the Troubles and Memorable Transactions in Scotland and in England, from M.DC.XXIV. to M.DC.XLV., 2 vols (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Co., 1828–1829), vol. 1, p. 15. 135 Ibid. 136 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19. 137 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 90.
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Lyndsay described as the nobility’s attitude in his Deploratioun for the aborted triumph to Queen Madeleine, as ‘ilk nobill set his hole intent / To be excellent in abuilzement’138 and in excelling to outshine their companions, and stand out from the background. The wearers of uniforms during civic entries — the Moors, the religious participants, the guild members — did not just look the same, they also placed themselves in space and moved on cue as one, as members of a large choreographed event, often acting the part of themselves. The visibility granted to civic authorities was not related to personal ambitions of fame or prominence, but to representatives of their offices performing a service to the community. The civic institutions these often nameless individuals symbolized renovated themselves with each new generation, representing the permanence and stability offered by ‘the burgh’ as a collective organization, overcoming the personal limitations and individual interests of its temporary representatives. Spectators: Inclusion and Exclusion A multitude of faceless but nevertheless essential characters was present at triumphal entries: the spectators, for whom the show was indeed put on.139 Just as coronations transformed an individual into a monarch through participation in appropriate ecclesiastical rituals, similarly triumphal entries established the ruler’s new role as authoritative champion of the nation at large. The witnessing of the formation of the monarch’s royal persona by their subjects during the entry was an essential part of the ceremonial, and the spectators’ acclamation officially endorsed the ruler’s new role.140 As ‘both the gazed upon and the gazers participate in the creation of a ritual’,141 a triumphal procession created an unending mesh of looks in an uninterrupted game of mutual acknowledgements and visual responses. This followed the Roman traditions of political public life, devised with the spectators’ visual participation and the reciprocity of seeing-and-being seen in mind, and taking into consideration observers’ viewpoints, their status and role in the celebration, and the inevitable engagement of the spectatorship with a limited section of the event.142 In Scotland, literary sources suggest a rich, nuanced understanding of the powers and responsibilities of the act of spectating — or intentionally avoiding to see — and of the difference between witnessing reality and enhancing through one’s imagination.143 Orchestrating the presence and the collaboration of these live performers was essential to turn the celebration into a truly evocative event. The presence
138 Lyndsay’s ‘Deploratioun’, in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 373. 139 See McGavin, Theatricality and Narrative, pp. 3–5. 140 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 74. 141 Edward W. Muir, ‘Gaze and Touch: Ritual in the Renaissance and Reformation’, Ideas from the National Humanities Center, 2 (1993), 4–14 (6). 142 Favro, ‘Festive Experience’, pp. 12–23. 143 John J. McGavin, ‘Spectatorship in Scotland’, in Hadley Williams and McClure (eds), Fresche Fontanis, pp. 287–306, summed up in pp. 304–05.
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of city authorities was of course expected and necessary: for James VI/I’s entry in 1617 ‘ane number of the gravest most antient burgesses, and of best rank within this burgh, sall be warnit to attend his Majesties entrie’.144 Penalties were in place for no-shows, as ‘nane quhais names sal be inrollit, refuis to attend in maner prescryvit to him, or absent himself the said day, under the payne of ane hundreth pundis’.145 In 1633, the lords and nobles of the islands received invitations to Edinburgh and to be ready to meet the King, performing a political role by impersonating the pacified north, so that the English visitors ‘may see ane perfyte and full obedience and ane loyall and dewtifull affectioun in all the subjects of this kingdome to his Majesteis service, and that no part nor corner of this kingdome is disobedient’.146 The participation of the common people was also essential to make a good impression on the visitors: in 1503 the English chronicler Younge remarked that the Towne of Edenbourgh was in many Places haunged with Tappiſſery, the Howſes and Wyndowes war full of Lordes, Ladyes, Gentylwomen, and Gentylmen, and in the Streytts war ſoe grett Multitude of People without Nombre, that it was a fayr Thynge to ſe.147 For Mary of Guise’s arrival in 1538, the ‘all vther inhabitants’ wearing their best clothes were asked to ‘be on the stairis or vpoun the hiegaitt and latt na vyle persouns be in thair company’,148 using the articulations of the timber facades of the High Street as theatrical boxes from which to see, and to be seen while seeing. The presence of well-dressed, cheerful onlookers was a much appreciated part of the ceremony in St Andrews in 1538: after being received into the town, the Queen ‘confessit to him scho never saw in France nor na wther cuntrie sa mony goode faceis in sa lyttill rowm as scho saw that day in Scottland’, and that ‘scho saw never so mony fair personagis of men and wemen and also zoung babes and childerin as scho saw that day in those boundis’.149 While the presence of common spectators was essential to give legitimacy to the ceremonial entry, their access to and understanding of most ceremonies would be somehow limited. The static spectators’ viewpoint was spatially localized to their immediate surroundings; while the fusion of sensory stimuli and the presence of the monarch in the flesh would have roused profound emotional responses, their understanding of the overall meaning of the performance would be severely hampered by their fixity.150 The ceremony was staged not for them as individuals, but for them as representatives of the burgh’s community, whose collective memories, if put together, would compose a true(r) rendition of this multifaceted event. The only character with access to overall understanding
144 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1617’, p. 65. 145 Ibid. 146 Hume Brown, Privy Council 1633–35 volume 5, pp. 36. 147 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 291. 148 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 90. 149 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 380. 150 Ashley, ‘Moving Subjects’, pp. 12–13.
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was the monarch, who activated and constructed the narrative by moving from episode to episode, and whose movement in space determined the scheduling of each performance.151 The entries understandably focused on and engaged with the ruler; in 1579, young James VI was met by the allegorical figures representing Peace, Plenty, Justice, and Religion, who addressed him not only in Scots but in Latin, Greek, and Jewish152 — three languages intelligible to very few of the other onlookers. In 1590, Anna of Denmark and her accompanying nobles probably understood — as the chronicler did — the address in Latin made by the personification of Ceres near the Market Cross ‘that there ſhould be plentie thereof in her time’,153 and similarly Charles I was addressed in Latin by King Fergus I in one of the 1633 pageants.154 While the laicization of Scottish culture from the 1460 onwards meant a spreading of education among the lay elite and, after the Reformation, even to a wider base, not all political, religious, and dynastic inferences expressed through classical metaphors, in poetical form, or in learned languages would have been accessible to the audience — and as mentioned, a largely static one.155 Preoccupations with the ability of viewers to understand the event was common, for example in the entry of Ferdinand of Aragon into Valladolid in 1513, when the main classical, historical, and religious characters had their names written across their chests, and shouted their assigned speeches in pointedly loud and intelligible voices.156 The use of text and learned quotations during entries refers to the origin of emblems as speaking pictures communicating meaning through both visual and textual language. In trying to bring to the viewer’s mind more complex concepts than simply visual references, it paralleled the use of footnotes in the academic world, connecting triumphal entries with a shared body of scholarly knowledge.157 Considering this broader context, it is then significant that the 1633 entry had explanatory scutcheons — that is, shields or emblematic tablets accompanying each figure, with useful inscriptions helping the viewer identify and contextualize the character. For example, the Muses appearing in Charles’ entry ‘were distinguished by the scutcheons they bare, and more properly than by their flats. Every one had a word’,158 and some had coats of arms as well. Some of the hints contained in these prompts remain immediately comprehensible to a modern mind — such as the well-known ‘ballances and a sword drawn’159 depicted on Justice’s escutcheon at the first triumphal arch — while others, for example the words ‘PARENDO IMPERAT’160
151 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 142. 152 Crawfurd, Memoirs, pp. 356–57. 153 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41. 154 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 155 Mason, ‘Laicisation and the Law’, p. 3. 156 Knighton and Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry’, 141. 157 Tamar Cholcman, ‘The Reading of Triumphal Entries’ Emblems: Emblems as Footnotes’, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry Volume, 31 (3) (2015), 350–61 (350–51). 158 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 268. 159 Ibid., p. 259. 160 Ibid., p. 268.
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appearing on the escutcheon carried by muse Erato, are less familiar and not particularly enlightening for the modern commentator. Interpreting iconography could be problematic even for some of their learned intended receivers. While trying to provide objective descriptions, the Danish and the Scottish accounts of the entry of Anna of Denmark in 1590 often differed substantially. For example at the Overbow, the Scottish chroniclers saw ‘a table, whereupon ſtoode a Globe of the whole Worlde, with a Boy fitting thereby, who repreſented the perſon of a King, and made an oration’,161 while the Danish report suggested the boy to have been ‘dressed in the garb of an astronomer. Pretending to be a mathematician, he stood by a brass sphere and had various mathematical instruments with him’.162 This was not a specific problem of Scottish events. For the state visit of Anna’s brother King Christian IV in 1606 London, the Danish envoys did not seem to have understood in full the significance of the pageants, symbolic imagery, and speeches (often in English) devised for them.163 In 1617 James VI/I was addressed in Latin by a member of a delegation of the ‘Colledge off Edenborroughe’ and ‘In the mean tyme off the orationn, the King was so glade of it that he made Pembrughe, Southhampton, Montgomerie, and the Bischopes, draw nyer to heir quhat was spok’.164 This gesture demonstrates James’s conviction that others would be able to understand a speech in Latin — but also that most of the King’s party were initially outside hearing distance. A few days after the entry, on 19 June, the learned James on his way to the abbey was again presented with an oration in Greek.165 The ruler was not only the one spectator for whom the whole event came together and made sense, but also the main actor, his or her position easy to identify as the tall colourful canopy moved through the city space, keenly looked at to spy signs of pleasure, recognition, or dismay; the rulers themselves performed a moving tableau of royalty.166 The 1617 entry appeared particularly rich in details emphasizing the King’s reactions; this might be possibly due to the kind of record being examined, a personal chronicle or letter, focusing on details in which the observer found meaning, or to seasoned James VI/I’s understanding of the power of spectacle. Before entering at West Port, James acknowledged the start of the ceremony by mounting his horse, so that ‘he might the better be seene by the people; wheras before, he rode in the coache all the way’.167 On seeing the large number of citizens both in their best gowns and in arms assembled on the streets, the King ‘cryed to his nobilles and maid thame stay’ — publicly showing trust in the protection and goodwill of his 161 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 162 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 110. 163 H. Neville Davies, ‘The Limitations of Festival: Christian IV’s State Visit to England in 1606’, in Mulryne and Shewring (eds), Renaissance Festivals, pp. 319–24. 164 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 20. 165 Ibid., p. 22. 166 See-and-be-seen ceremonials in Diane Yvonne Ghirardo, ‘Festival Bridal Entries in Renaissance Ferrara’, in Bonnemaison and Macy (eds), Festival Architecture, pp. 48–49. 167 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 245.
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armed fellow countrymen as he ‘refuised his owne guard and took him to the guard off the citie’.168 After receiving the sceptre of the city and the gift, ‘the King cryed: Leap on, my Lord Provest, upon your hors. So he lap on and rode betwix two Earles, at the King’s command, carying the scepter off the citie on his schoulder’,169 again a piece of showmanship which honoured the Provost and at the same time included him visually as an extra in the procession. At the Netherbow the King knighted the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in full sight of the gathered people, claiming for himself not the role of the passive receiver of a set message, but that of an active character autonomously intervening in the event. The aforementioned gesturing to a group of nobles to come forward to enjoy the speech being delivered at Holyrood Palace also fitted the pattern of benign royal responsiveness — visible actions which were accessible and comprehensible to the most uneducated of audiences. Although common people were not necessarily the intended audience for triumphal ceremonies, they were asked to collaborate practically in making the city urban community look tidy and respectable. On 13 May 1590 the council asked for the collaboration of all, so that ‘all persons dwelland within this burgh be in reddynes, to do to the guid toun sic honour and service as thai sall be commandet be the Provest and Baillies at this tyme of the Queynis Majesties entrie’.170 On 5 April 1633 citizens were warned that ‘none presume nor tak upon hand to gather the said filth or middings in anie place, within this burgh, under the paye of Fyve pundis, and farder punishment of their persounes at the discretioun of their magistrattis’.171 Directions could be rather specific. On 14 October 1579, the magistrates commanded ‘all the inhabitantis thairof to hing thair stairis with tapestrie, and ares warkis on Fryday nixt, and that nouther be nycht nor day ony fyre ballis, fyre arowis or vther ingynes of fyre be castin’ as an early form of health and safety, and the removal ‘of red, tymmer, swyne, and beggeris of the tovne, vunder the payne of pvnesment’.172 Scottish triumphal entries gave physical form in space to abstract ideas of citizenship and belonging, acknowledging the right of members of the civic community to occupy a prescribed space, both in society and within the burgh. They also denied the spatial footprint of its most vulnerable and controversial members like the poor, beggars, and malefactors, ordering their removal as the human equivalent of unwanted objects, unsightly garbage, and waste. On 15 April 1590 for Anna’s arrival, the city authorities decided that ‘all beggares be removet and haldin furth of the way’, in the same breath ordering that ‘all myddings and staynes be removet, and the streets and vennels kepit clene’,173 with social and urban cleansing going hand in hand. Similarly, in preparation
168 169 170 171 172 173
Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19. Ibid. ‘Notices, King and Queen’, p. 46. ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, p. 81. Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1573–1589, p. 124. ‘Notices, King and Queen’, p. 45.
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for the 1617 welcome, the Privy Council on 24 December 1616 ‘gif directioun for keeping of their strettis cleene, and that no filthe nor middingis be seen vpoun the same, and that no beggaris be seene within thair boundis’.174 As the city was architectonically freshened-up for the event, hiding the blemishes caused by carelessness and disrepair as telling signs of the burgh’s inevitable shortcomings, so the social community was tidied and revived, eliminating those social groups whose presence would demonstrate poverty, inequality, or disobedient tendencies. In 1633, the bailies of Edinburgh and its neighbourhoods were directed ‘to compear personallie before the saids Lords’175 of the Privy Council to discuss how social order should be maintained during the King’s visit, given the perceived unbecoming dangerousness of the streets. The severed heads and corrupted bodies of executed criminals displayed at the West Port and at the east end — probably at the Netherbow — were to be removed, as unsightly reminders of the need for such punishments in what was meant to be portrayed as an ideal community.176 Physical punishments were threatened to those who resisted relocation: in 1590 it was ordered that all sort of beggaris, within 48 hours heirafter, depesche and remove thameselffis, swa that thai be nocht fund beggand within this burgh, or betwix this and Leyth, or within Leyth or ony uther part within the liberty and jurisdictioun of this burgh.177 Those still found in the prohibited area ‘sall be tayne and imprysonit, skurgeit, and utherwayes punist in their bodies, at the will of the Magistrats’.178 The permanent disfigurements threatened in 1538 — when on 17 July it was ordered that ‘quhatsumeuir beggare beis fund heirafter within this burch of ony pairt thairof sall be taikin scurgeit and brynt on the cheik’,179 — testified to the gravity of illegitimately occupying the urban space. The burgh’s ‘Act against beggaris’ from 24 December 1616 addressed the presence of ‘strong, sturdy, and idill beggaris and vagaboundis’180 questioning the burgh’s ability to guarantee prosperity and effectively administer the community, with the 1617 triumphal entry in mind. In addition it was noted that ‘thay pas the tyme in all kynd of ryott, and filthie and beistlie litcherie and hooredome, and to the offens and displeasor of God’,181 challenging the burgh’s ethical standing and implying moral lassitude in a section of the population physically capable of but unwilling to work. The language and spaces of triumphal ceremonies adroitly presented Edinburgh as an established and prosperous ideal mercantile burgh, inhabited
174 ‘Notices, 1617’, p. 61. 175 Hume Brown, Privy Council, 1633–1635 volume 5, p. 48. 176 West Port, Ibid., p. 49, Netherbow p. 114. See also Guidicini, ‘Imagining and Staging an Urban Border’, pp. 77–78. 177 ‘Notices, King and Queen’, p. 45. 178 Ibid. 179 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, p. 90. 180 ‘Notices, 1617’, p. 61. Full Act on pp. 61–63. 181 Ibid., p. 62.
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by a productive, unthreatening, and harmonious community. The next chapter will discuss how the burgh’s interlocutor in this politicized visual and spatial dialogue — a Scottish Crown faced with many dynastic challenges — also engaged with triumphal entries to project successfully an image of resilience, trustworthiness, and competence — or how, as I argue, in James VI/I’s later years and Charles I’s reign, it significantly failed to do.
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Chapter VI
The Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and the Market Cross Displaying and Defending Government and Authority The Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and the Market Cross The Edinburgh Tolbooth (from the Latin tolloneum, meaning a building where tolls were levied and which often doubled up as a pretorium, a court house) was built in 1386, and acted as civic headquarters, tax house, courts, prison, and meeting place of the Parliament. Being considered small for its many functions, in 1560 three bays in the south-west corner of the nearby St Giles Kirk were adapted to public use and municipal purposes. In 1562, the Tolbooth was enlarged by adding rooms for meetings of the court, the council, and various civic bodies; what was left of the medieval tollbooth was later adapted for use as a prison and shops [see Figure 17].1 The Old Tolbooth of Edinburgh was so significant in representing local identity that writer Sir Walter Scott, regretting its demolition in 1817, immortalized it in his novel The Heart of Midlothian.2 The twelfth-century core of the Kirk of St Giles had been added upon gradually and organically, through widening of the nave to a dimension of six aisles across, and through the construction of chapels; the crown steeple on the central tower was built in c. 1486 [see Figure 18].3 With the Reformation in the 1560s, the building’s interiors were simplified and the space partitioned in a utilitarian manner to host different congregations and offices.4 The building survives today, significantly altered by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century restorations and additions.5 Market crosses were important landmarks standing at the centre of royal burghs since their foundation: they represented the burgh’s privileged commercial status, and guaranteed the legality of bargains struck in the nearby markets. Edinburgh’s cross, established in 1175, stood on a cross house on the High Street a few yards north of its present location, this earlier position still marked clearly on the pavement. In 1617, the cross, its soft sandstone probably deteriorated beyond repair, was removed and a new one rebuilt nearly on the same site.6 1 RCAHMS, Inventory, p. 127. Also, Stell, ‘Urban Buildings’, pp. 63–64 and Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 46–50. 2 RCAHMS, Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833 (Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1996), pp. 1–2, 82–87. 3 Glendinning, MacInnes, Mackechnie, Scottish Architecture, p. 7. 4 George Hay, ‘The Late Medieval Development of the High Kirk of St Giles, Edinburgh’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 107 (1975–1976), 242–60 (243–44). 5 Richard Fawcett, Scottish Architecture: From the Accession of the Stewarts to the Reformation, 1371–1560 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press in Association with Historic Scotland, 1994), p. 186. 6 Grant, Cassells Old and New Edinburgh, vol. 1, p. 150. Crosses in Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 51–53, 56–58.
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Figure 27. Detail of the group composed of the Tolbooth, St Giles Kirk, and Market Cross, and its surroundings in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
The new cross, on an octagonal structure, had Grecian and Gothic details, a column decorated by thistles and by a Corinthian capital with a unicorn on top, modern arches on the side, and medallion-shaped decorations. The cross visible nowadays is a remodelling of the pre-1617 structure erected in 1885 [see Plate XII and Figure 27].7 Triumphal Entries: The Role of Core Buildings In every administratively semi-independent city, town halls, churches, guildhalls, public fountains, and other key secular and religious buildings represented different kinds of human interactions, urban functions, and communal institutions. Through their conspicuous architectural form, their size or positioning, and the use of art to embellish them, they became monuments to a city’s beliefs 7 See Turner Simpson, Stevenson and Holmes, Historic Edinburgh, p. 17; and RCAHMS, Inventory, pp. 120–21.
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and ideologies.8 As political buildings, they were ideal sites of civic ritual, and appropriating them — either by enforcing physical alterations or through more subtle interferences with their spatial symbolism — gave the controlling party the opportunity to interfere in otherwise intangible civic businesses.9 European rulers’ special interest in intervening in a city’s spatial organization demonstrated attempts to rein in local influences and civic power, in favour of centralized forms of government, but monarchs were to intervene subtly, being keen to present themselves as legitimate representatives of laws and rights, defenders of traditions and sympathetic towards the subjects’ views.10 Royal interventions in civic contexts expressed the constant renegotiation of the power struggle between these competing but also interdependent ideas. The rising absolutist states and the civic communities were an evolution of the weakened feudal model, both based on the right to self-government and self-defence, on profit, and on private property. However the two models were in competition with each other: the absolutist state represented a political modernization of the traditional aristocratic class power, ‘the new political carapace of threatened nobility’.11 Spatial interventions could demonstrate authority clearly — such as the reorganization of defiant Liège by Duke Charles the Bold, who moved the focus from the city-hall and from the perron which he had himself ordered to be removed, to the Duke-sponsored cathedral and fortified citadel, two alternative centres of power challenging the weakened secular authorities.12 Authority could be portrayed symbolically through manipulation of a celebrative route: the route for the entry of Duke Philip the Good in 1458 into Ghent centred on the Duke’s law court for Flanders — the old castle, the symbolic ducal seat of power — and included the residences of the main ducal officers. In many of the Italian states, the emergence of powerful families meant a change of focus from the traditional market square central to civic and religious life, to the lords’ own palaces and places of interest.13 In Florence, the treatment of the Palazzo Vecchio — a multipurpose fortress-like public building from the early period of the Florentine Republic — became an indicator of the direction taken by a succession of regimes. The Palazzo’s decorative schemes were repeatedly updated to exalt the faction in power, finally settling on celebrating the Medici’s dynasty, who also moved their court into it in 1540, underlining the transformation of Florence from republic to oligarchy.14 The Palazzo’s role in civic ceremonies also depended on the prevailing views regarding its ostensible value as a republican and democratic landmark. For Eleanor of Toledo’s entry in 1539, the bridal 8 Wolfgang Braunfels, Urban Design in Western Europe. Regime and Architecture, 900–1900 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 1–10. 9 Andrew Brown, ‘Ritual and State-Building’, pp. 3–4, 16–22. 10 Henshall, Myth of Absolutism, pp. 120–46. 11 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 2013, first published 1974), pp. 18, 15–42. 12 Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructing the City’, pp. 29–31. 13 Marc Boone and Heleni Porfyriou, ‘Markets, Squares, Streets: Urban Space, A Tool for Cultural Exchange’, in Calabi and Turk Christensen (eds), Cultural Exchange, vol. 2, pp. 232–44. 14 McHam, ‘Structuring Communal History’, pp. 125–36.
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triumphal route played down the Medici’s political involvement by ostentatiously avoiding the Palazzo, focusing instead on the Medici’s own urban interventions. In 1565 for Johanna of Austria’s arrival, and later for Cosimo I’s funeral in 1574, the intentional inclusion of the Palazzo Vecchio and other main economic, religious, and political spaces such as the Duomo and the Bargello — the city’s prisons — publicly acknowledged their submission to the Medici’s authority. In 1608, the marginalization of the traditional institutions they represented was signified by their exclusion from the unrealized triumphal route of the Strada Ferdinanda, which instead was to join the Duomo — now part of the Medici’s narrative — to their new centre of government, Palazzo Pitti.15 In Paris, the triumphal station at the Châtelet — the castle-looking building used by the royal officials in charge of royal administration — was regularly included in the civic route, and very appropriately presented Justice as one of the virtues necessary for the good government of the country. Justice could be an allegorical figure (1514), embodied by an appropriate political leader of the past (1413), exemplified by characters exercising justice such as King Solomon (1491), or through representations of legitimate inheritance and genealogical displays (1517). These earlier entrances celebrated the reciprocity in the roles of king and city as cooperating juridical authorities, and especially in times of crisis would help define the Crown’s duties and legal obligations. From the mid-sixteenth century however — in 1549 for Henri II and particularly in 1571 for Charles IX and Elizabeth of Austria — Justice’s role changed from an aspirational virtue French monarchs were to strive for, to a quality inherently possessed as by dynastic right [see Plate XIII].16 The personifications of the kings during Parisian entries lost their traditional judicial robes — now representing unwelcome restraints to royal power — but instead were shown as winning leaders in armour, or as richly, fashionably dressed monarchs.17 The last spectacle of the triumphal ceremony was staged outside the Palais de Justice — the seat of the Parisian Parlement, whose main role was to dispense justice in the king’s name, at the same time opposing with all the strength of legal backing any attempt of royal arbitrariness.18 Significantly, in these later occasions, justice appeared as a state-related concept exercised by the monarch through ruling rather than as a universal virtue.19 Religious buildings represented the authoritative intervention of devout bodies to promote social structures and maintain order through the provision of morally acceptable frameworks of behaviour. Triumphal entries relied much on this narrative, with rulers showing themselves as Christ-like, pious figures both respectful of and acknowledged by the established religious authorities. Early Parisian triumphal entries underlined the necessity of the monarch to
15 Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee’, pp. 77–80, 89–91. 16 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 178–94. 17 Bryant, Ritual, Ceremony, pp. 33–34, 54–56. 18 J. H. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), pp. 3–5, 188–221. 19 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 202–05.
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obtain legitimacy from religious authorities. In 1350, the clergy in procession met with entering King John II outside the cathedral to obtain his promise of renewing ‘their canonical privileges, their legal rights, and their security in justice’,20 after which the King bowed to the cross and kissed the scriptures. The Church could achieve cosmic order via regulating time, space, and human life itself — religious beliefs defining sacred from secular, ordering the time of the day and of the year through five canonical hours, setting Lent and Easter, and determining one’s trajectory in life through the administration of sacraments.21 By associating themselves with the regulatory buildings and places of Christianity, and by exercising a deferential guardianship of sorts over the Church institution, Catholic rulers for centuries had claimed a God-sanctioned role for themselves. From the mid-sixteenth century onwards however — the cuius regio, eius religio principle attributing to the monarch the right to determine the confession of their realm was part of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg — royal power started to claim more and more authority on religious matters. The language of the spiritual and the divine became a tool in the ruler’s hands to frame his own supremacy, religious piety merging with state policy to rally subjects around the monarch’s cause.22 This changed attitude had consequences for the role of religious buildings and themes in civic entrances. In Paris, the importance of the procession to the cathedral and legitimizing promise decreased until, for Henri II in 1549, the visit becoming a minor event of a broader ceremony, a celebration of kingly piety rather than an almost legally binding ceremony.23 The Reformation also had a spatial impact, questioning the existing urban landscape of the sacred, taking away implications of spatial sanctity of the supernatural power of rituality; in Max Weber’s words, it provoked a ‘disenchantment of the world’.24 Even just a redesigning of space according to a new concept of sacred and an adaptation of the old ritualistic patterns had profound implications on how religious undertones were implied in and applied to urban spaces.25 Urban topography became the battleground for confessional conflict, and the rules of social order and social experience had to be renegotiated. How religious changes would be addressed during triumphal entries through the different roles of the sacred spaces is of particular interest in a Scottish context, given the overlaps between Catholic,
20 Arch. Nat., K 47, n. 6, ‘Serment de Jean II’, reprinted in Bernard Guenée et Françoise Lehoux, Les entrées royales françaises de 1328 à 1515 (Paris, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1968), p. 48 as discussed in Bryant, King and the City, pp. 70–71. 21 Hamilton and Spicer, ‘Defining the Holy’, p. 9. 22 John Adamson, ‘The Making of the Ancien-Régime Court 1500–1700’, in John Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe, Ritual, Politics, and Culture Under the Ancient Regime 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), pp. 7–41 (pp. 8–9, 24–25). 23 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 69–73. 24 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (trans. and ed.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, first published 1945), pp. 155, 350. 25 Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, ‘Introduction: The Dimension of Sacred Space in Reformation Europe’, in Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (eds), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1–16 (pp. 4–10). Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, pp. 185–86.
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Presbyterian, and Episcopalian beliefs in this period. In addition, rulers doubling up as heads of the Church of England had to find a new role for themselves in an emerging pan-British configuration. Burgh’s Rights: Secular and Religious Self-Determination At the heart of Edinburgh’s civic space, the triptych St Giles-Tolbooth-Market Cross embodied the burgh’s royally appointed status, and the community’s shared administrative, spiritual, and economic concerns. Tolbooths were sites of joyful celebrations representing communal renovation, such as elections and the voting of new burgesses, but also locations where social control was enforced through public reprimand and fines, and where judgment was dispensed through the imprisonment and executions of those who threatened the royally determined and civically imposed order. As schoolrooms and keepers of official records and of the burgh’s linear measures, tolbooths acted as a civic memory perpetuating local history and traditions — orally, physically, and in writing.26 The Edinburgh Tolbooth — ‘being the supreme hous of justice within this land’27 — was of particular significance, as here local, county, and at times royal meetings were hosted, as well as nation-wide courts; the Law Courts were made stationary in the capital by James V in 1532.28 The Tolbooth was also the seat of the Convention of Royal Burghs — a forum protecting the interests and privileges of the burghs of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Perth29 — and of the Parliament, having been offered to the Stewarts as a neutral, open civic location after the traumatic murder of King James I in his residence at Perth in 1437: this had made the traditional ecclesiastical setting of Parliamentarian meetings at Perth Greyfriars unsafely politicized.30 Tolbooths could communicate cultural connections and attitudes, evoking the architectural style of influential trading partners like the Low Countries in towers and gables, and representing Scottishness through the retention of forestairs. Indeed, the continued centrality of tolbooths in civic life — their role not overtaken by prominent, English-style guildhalls — demonstrate the attachment to and suitability of these buildings.31 The Kirk of St Giles’ commanding position adjoining the Tolbooth represented the intertwining of religious and secular powers overseeing the burgh’s running,
26 Adams, Urban Scotland, pp. 20–22; RCAHMS, Tolbooths, pp. 2–6, 11–12; Stell, ‘Urban Buildings’, p. 64. 27 So called in the Parliamentary Act of 21 July 1593. Records of the Parliaments, 1593/4/59. The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, K. M. Brown et al. (eds), (St Andrews, 2007–2018), 1593/4/59 [accessed 31 July 2018]. 28 Centralization of Stewart government in Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 20–34. 29 The Convention in Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution, p. 68; Lynch, ‘Crown and the Burghs’, pp. 61–62. 30 Less frequently, the Tolbooths at Stirling and Perth were also used; Richard Oram, ‘Community of the Realm: The Middle Ages’, in Miles Glendinning (ed.), The Architecture of Scottish Government: From Kingship to Parliamentary Democracy (Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2004), pp. 15–81 (pp. 54–59). Also Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 132–36. 31 RCAHMS, Tolbooths, p. 11.
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with spacious St Giles hosting some administrative roles overspilling from its civic neighbour.32 The central position of the adjacent churchyard, now obliterated, placed deceased members of the congregation still within the reassuring communal space, and provided an opportunity for collective remembrance.33 The Kirk was extensively altered over time to adapt to different religious (and secular) uses and needs: its fabric maintained traces of previous configurations, and of some key events of the burgh’s history, such as the signs of burning caused during Richard II’s sack of the burgh in 1385 still visible at the end of the nineteenth century. The additions of chapels, furnishings, emblems, and decorations financed by wealthy burgesses, corporations, and guild-specific confraternities meant that building represented the history and identity of the community at large.34 The Kirk also bore the signs of royal patronage, with the presence of heraldic references from around the 1450s belonging to King James II and Queen Mary of Guelders, and the crown steeple constructed by James III.35 This added-on, uncoordinated approach gave the building an organic, asymmetric appearance, mostly hidden on the outside by the buildings encroaching on the vicinities.36 The administrative authority represented by the Tolbooth-St Giles pair could be challenged by monarchs’ designs to involve themselves more closely with civic business, especially in times of conflict and change.37 Catholic Queen Regent Mary of Guise imposed bailies of her choice on the town in 1559, which the Protestant Lords of the Congregation countered by replacing the entire town council; the Queen Regent’s interference in civic matters was amongst the reasons brought up to depose her.38 During Mary Queen of Scots’ reign, court-approved provosts were appointed in the 25 years after 1553, and a few weeks after the Queen’s entry in 1561, elected provost of Edinburgh Archibald Douglas and all the bailies were ‘diſchargit’ from their role for taking action against the Catholic faith ‘without the quenis awyiſe’.39 Douglas’s superintending role in the confrontational entry organized for Mary might have been a cause of the Queen’s aversion.40 At the same time, a monarch would politically need the support provided by their capital’s governmental role — and tend to the buildings where such support was to be obtained. In 1562, Mary’s impatience to have the reconstruction and refurbishing of the Tolbooth terminated was caused by her need to hold a sympathetic parliamentary session promptly. On 15 July 1562, the burgh’s authorities met to discuss the interruption of the works, afraid that
32 Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 59–61. 33 Hay, ‘Kirk of St Giles’, 245–46. 34 Stell, ‘Urban Buildings’, p. 65; Hay, ‘Kirk of St Giles’, 254–58. 35 Ian Campbell, Crown Steeples, p. 25. 36 Fawcett, Scottish Architecture, pp. 186–87. 37 Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, pp. 21–23; Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 111. 38 Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation, p. 6; Lynch, ‘Crown and the Burghs’, p. 62. 39 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 69. 40 Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Advice to a Princess’, p. 104.
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the Quenys Maiestie wald be offendit, becaus hir hienes had commandit the samyn to be endit with all diligence; and siclike gyf the said tolbuth war nocht rady be Mertymes nixt the sait of the sessioun wald be movit to sum vther toun, quhilk sould be na litill harme to the commoun weill of this burgh.41 In turn, the confirmation of burghs’ privileges was often expected of new monarchs or regents, to seek political reassurance in time of change. Such confirmation was requested in 1555, 1563, December 1567, August 1571, July 1578 and October 1579, and more formally in the Parliament of 1621 when concerned burghs asked for specific ratification of their charters and privileges. In 1590, the entertaining procession of dancing Moors welcoming Queen Anna at the West Port also, in Damman’s words, ‘in alternating colours the City’s different banners / fly, displaying the privileges granted by the king of old’,42 thus immediately introducing into the celebrations a reminder of the city’s political status. The monarchs themselves could be the worst offenders: James VI’s lengthy reign gave time for court scholars to study and override even some of the most ancient customs, and by 1600, the King could curtail a number of urban rights, while burghs such as Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen tried to transcribe and compile early records to strengthen their legal position.43 After negotiations resulting in numerous concessions on Edinburgh’s part, in a speech at the Tolbooth on 23 March 1597 James referred to the council members as his loving goshawks — bite-less birds he used when hunting — to underline their dependency and political powerlessness.44 Finally a ‘Golden Charter’ was granted to Edinburgh in 1603 by James VI/I in recognition of the burgh’s financial and organizational support towards the removal of the royal court to London, confirming the city’s ancient freedoms and privileges.45 James VI/I’s charter was however undermined by Charles I’s strong hand when dealing with Edinburgh’s judicial and administrative matters, repeatedly attempting to force his independently minded northern capital into submission.46 As will be shown, Charles’ interventionism matched the King’s inclination to meddle with the spatial organization of the Tolbooth-St Giles node in conjunction with and after his entry. In the 1560s the council moved out of the Tolbooth to a new hall at the west end of St Giles: in the 1630s the Parliament left for its newly constructed Hall before removing to London in 1707; courts took over the empty building, but by 1747 the only use left to it to perform was to be a prison.47 The role of the Tolbooth in entries, and the references to the burgh’s administrative authority, will be shown to decline also over time.
41 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1557–1571, p. 140. Interpreted in Howard, Architectural History of Scotland, p. 117. 42 Damman, Schediasmata, [115–16], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 43 Juhala, ‘Advantageous Alliance’, pp. 359–60; Lynch, ‘Crown and the Burghs’, pp. 67–69. 44 Dennison, et al. (eds), Painting the Town, pp. 192–93. 45 Juhala, ‘Advantageous Alliance’, p. 347. 46 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics and the British Civil Wars: Edinburgh, 1617–1653 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 151–54. 47 Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, p. 13.
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In Edinburgh of the 1560s, and 1610s–1630s, monarchs and citizens holding incompatible religious beliefs clashed for control of the burgh’s spatial map of sacredness, with profound consequences regarding the appearance of religious theme and use of religious spaces during triumphal entries. In post-Reformation Scotland, the role of the Kirk of St Giles as spiritual home of the community, and physical representation of a shared world view, was also called into question, as Presbyterian beliefs advocated the absence of inherent sacredness in a church building, proposing the usage of any appropriate spaces for liturgy and preaching.48 While specific ceremonials and spatial rituals had been necessary to construct the Catholic experience of ‘more sacred space’, Protestant attitudes towards human activities sanctifying the built environment justified differently interpreted religious themes to extend across and outside of traditional locations.49 Seeking an alternative geography of worship, Catholic burgesses temporarily removed themselves from their Kirk’s jurisdiction and relocated on the other side of the Netherbow Gate.50 After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and in his new role as supreme head of the Church of England, James promoted the publication of a revised Book of Common Prayer in 1604. To uphold conformity and royal supremacy, the King forced the approval of the unpopular Five Articles of Perth at the General Assembly of the Scottish Church held in 1618, to be ratified by Parliament in 1621.51 The Articles promoted the Episcopalian Church of England in Scotland and claimed again a role for formal festive services and sacramental rites, including the kneeling to receive the Eucharist and the reintroduction of chancels. These quasi-Papist alterations were strongly opposed in Presbyterian Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh; it was the Presbyterians’ turn now to look for spatial alternatives, holding informal services privately and leaving the town en masse via the ports, in this case to reach nearby kirks offering services held in the traditional Scottish manner, in spaces beyond the Crown’s interference. The five articles were officially rejected by the Assembly in 1638.52 Still, Charles I’s uncompromising enforcement of English rites had significant spatial implication for civic celebrations in 1633, when the spatial suitability of the Kirk of St Giles as civic setting for royal ceremonies went under scrutiny, and with it Charles’ authoritative pursuit of an overlapping secular and religious authority in space.
48 Andrew Spicer, ‘“What Kinde of House a Kirk is”: Conventicles, Consecrations and the Concept of Sacred Space in Post Reformation Scotland’, in Coster and Spicer (eds), Sacred Space, pp. 81–83, 87–90. 49 Hamilton and Spicer, ‘Defining the Holy’, pp. 7–8. 50 Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation, p. 43. 51 Laura A. M. Stewart, ‘The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I’s Religious Policies in Scotland’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 38 (4) (Winter, 2007), 1013–36 (1015–16). 52 Spicer, ‘“What Kinde of House a Kirk is”’, pp. 95–96. See also Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, p. 193. W. B. Patterson, King James VI and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 235–36. Also Walter Roland Foster, The Church Before the Covenants 1596–1638 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972), pp. 183–90. The exodus from the city looking for nonconformist services in Laura A. M. Stewart, ‘Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth’, 1024–25.
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Figure 28. The Market Cross was an enduring place of gathering, here shown in c. 1890 during a royal proclamation.
The Market Cross’s central position next to the Tolbooth not only signalled the burgh’s right to hold a market, but it held a role in its civic life. From behind the parapet of its raised area, bellmen and heralds made royal proclamations, denunciations of law, and read acts of parliament to the gathered crowd.53 The cross represented a spatial landmark during markets, when instructions were given to the convened sellers regarding the reciprocal position of their stands and merchandise in relation to it. It was also the favourite location for the public shaming and punishment of criminals in front of the witnessing community — through flogging, branding, or the use of the stocks for lesser offences, up to the execution of more serious offenders, such as thieves, Catholic priests, and high traitors.54 Even after the construction of the Exchange (opened 1760) as a more genteel meeting place, the habit of gathering at the cross socially and for business could not be extirpated, and ‘Public proclamations continue to be made there. There alſo company daily reſort, from one to three o’clock, for news, buſineſs, or meeting their acquaintances, nobody frequenting the exchange’55 [see Figure 28]. 53 Arnot, History of Edinburgh, p. 303. 54 Mair, Mercat Cross, pp. 53–56, and Bath and Jones, ‘“Placardes and Billis”’, 233–37. 55 Arnot, History of Edinburgh, p. 304.
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The alteration of and interference with politically significant urban spaces could be akin to — and as politically effective and traumatic as — an act of conquest.56 The next sections will discuss the inclusion and role of these meaningful locations in a triumphal route, as part of a narrative of negotiation that will be superseded by the acts of appropriation and narratives of authoritarian rule of James VI/I and especially Charles I — a clear symptom of change in the relationship between civic and state power. Tolbooth and Representations of Virtuous Judgement During Edinburgh’s triumphal entries, the figures of the Virtues (particularly of Justice) and their unreliable counterpart, Fortune, were frequently presented to the ruler — an appropriate choice for a burgh playing an essential role in the smooth running of government, as implicit leader of the Convention of Royal Burghs and seat of the national Parliament.57 Virtues were routinely displayed to monarchs to illustrate the various aspects of their role: for Philip II in Seville in 1570 one of the gates displayed nine virtues ‘of a good king, of a good captain, of a good father’.58 The virtues appeared in 1503 for Margaret Tudor’s entry into Edinburgh, placed on a triumphal arch and recognizable via their attributes, trampling over personifications of the opposite vice: Juſtice, holdynge in hyr right Haunde a Swerde all naked, and in the t’other a Pair of Ballaunces, and ſhe had under hyr Feet the Kyng Nero: Force, armed, holdyng in hyr Haund a Shafte, and under hyr Feete was Holofernes, all armed: Temperance, holdyng in hyr Haund a Bitt of an Horſe, and under hyr Feete was Epicurus: Prudence, holdynge in hyr Haunde a Syerge, and under hyr Sardenapalus.59 The trampling of vices underfoot echoed the illustrations of Petrarchan Triumphs showing the victorious trampling on captive enemies, and was not uncommon: during the entry into London in 1559 for Elizabeth Tudor, a tableau showed politically relevant virtues such as Love of Subjects and Wisdom winning over Adulation and Bribery, and over Folly and Vainglory respectively.60 However in Margaret’s case the vices were personified; an early example of this — with exactly the same identifications and pairings — is in Bartolomeo De’ Bartoli’s
56 Arnade, ‘Carthage or Jerusalem?’, 728–31. 57 Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 108–16. 58 Sara Gonzalez Castrejon, The Musical Iconography of Power in Seventeenth-Century Spain and Her Territories (New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 134. 59 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 290. 60 Heather Campbell, ‘“And in their midst a sun”: Petrarch’s Triumphs and the Elizabethan Icon’, in Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins (eds), Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 83–100 (p. 88). See also Parry, Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 1–2.
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Canzone delle Virtù e delle Scienze, composed in 1349, where each stanza presented the attributes and appearance of a virtue or science triumphant over the corresponding personified moral flaw. This is reproduced both in drawings from the Chantilly Codex, and in a coloured miniature in the Ambrosiana Library by artist Niccolò da Bologna (1325–1403) [see Plate XIV].61 These illustrations were used for decorative purposes also, for the tomb of Cardinal Erard de la Marck (c. 1538) — but with Temperance’s counterpart being Tarquinium rather than Epicurus62 — and in the frescoes in the Cappella dei Cortellieri in the Chiesa degli Ermitani in Padua (1370s, destroyed 1610) — where Epicurus was reinstated but Diomedes rather than Nero was now under Justice’s feet.63 It is intriguing to speculate that the Canzone could provide some indications of the appearance of the Scottish characters, to integrate Younge’s scant notes. For example, Dorez’s transcription describes Temperance wearing a green dress with red edges and a red mantle, holding in her right hand a key to lock up passions in a tower also depicted nearby, and with a bit hanging from her left, matching in this latter detail her Scottish counterpart.64 At very least, the parallels with the Canzone and other decorative incarnations of these themes, place this Scottish representation within a respectable and established European-wide tradition. In 1633, victorious Justice appeared over the arch built at the West Port, alone rather than part of a group of Virtues. She was represented as richly dressed, wearing a golden crown, and carrying an escutcheon with balances and drawn sword on it, and the words ‘FIDA REGNORUM U CUSTOS’65 [trusted guardian of the kingdoms]. Oppression bore the words ‘TENENTE CAROLO TERRAS’, and had under her feet ‘a person of a fierce aspect, in armes, but broken all and scattered’.66 While it goes beyond the scope of this investigation to interpret each motto and inscription in Charles I’s entry, some of the most evocative are worth mentioning. Oppression’s caption is probably a rewording of Horace’s Tenente Caesare Terras [while Caesar is master of the world: Horace, Lib III, ode 14]. As during Caesar’s reign, Horace did not fear any harm and peace reigned, so with Charles in charge Justice would prevail once more. Interestingly, the security to which Horace referred in his text was specifically from domestic conflict and internal unrest, and it was achieved by wisely protecting citizens’ freedoms: it is only by returning to his origins that Augustus will be able to provide protection.67 The parallel to the return
61 Leone Dorez (ed.), La Canzone delle Virtù e delle Scienze di Bartolomeo di Bartoli da Bologna (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche Editore, 1904), pp. 52 and 81. 62 Hadrien Kockerols, ‘The Lost Tomb Monument of Cardinal de la Marck (d. 1538) at Liège Cathedral Revisited’, Journal of the Church Monuments Society, 21 (2006), 112–29 (119). 63 Dorez (ed.), Canzone, pp. 76–77. For an extensive tabled comparison, see Ibid., p. 82. 64 Temperance, Ibid., 28–29. 65 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 259. 66 Ibid., p. 259. 67 Richard Tarrant, ‘Custode rerum Caesare: Horatian Civic Engagement and the Senecan Tragic Chorus’, in Martin Claus Stöckinger, Kathrin Winter and Andreas T. Zanker (eds), Horace and
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of Scottish-born Charles in a time of upcoming internal unrest, suggests a politically motivated choice for this caption, not as a mere veneer of classical knowledge. Justice’s previously mentioned caption was also a quotation of sorts; it appeared during the entry of Henri III into Mantua in 1574, also accompanying a figure of Justice with sword and balances shown on an arch together with other Virtues.68 As Henri III’s ceremonial progress in northern Italy centred upon its triumphal climax in Venice, it makes sense to see the theme of Justice in Mantua in its Venetian context. There a Justice with sword and balances was also shown to Henri III on the very first structure at San Nicolò al Lido, with Venice and Henri depicted as cooperating forces maintaining justice across the lands.69 The political message shown to Charles I could then relate to Edinburgh’s hopes in a monarch with a collaborative attitude, rather than an authoritarian one, towards the dispensation of justice. Besides, the monarch celebrated in Mantua was the Henri III who, having left his native France to reign in monarch-less Poland, was now recalled to his home country to put an end to its religious and political turmoil — a situation with significant parallels to Charles’ own. The theme of Virtues also appeared at the West Port in 1617, when they figured in the speech of clerk deputy John Hay. In welcoming the sovereign to ‘your Highness’s good Towne of Edinburgh’,70 Hay hailed ‘the infinite blessinges plenteoslie flowing to them from the paradise of your Majestie’s unspotted goodness and vertue’.71 In 1561, 1579, and 1590 in Edinburgh, the Virtues also appeared, this time in the vicinities of or at the Tolbooth, reinforcing the parallel between the burgh and the Crown as guarantors of Justice, working together in their respective roles to perform virtuous acts of government. Rather than triumphing over Vices, now the Virtues were metaphorically triumphing over the unpredictability of chance. James VI in 1579, at the evocatively called ‘hous of Justice’,72 saw foure faire young maides representing the foure cardinall vertues, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence, or, as others report, Peace, Justice, Plentie, and Policie. Everie one of them had an oration to the king, The wheele of Fortune was burnt with powder.73
Seneca: Interactions, Intertexts, Interpretations (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 93–111 (pp. 101–03). Micah Young Myers, ‘The Frontiers of the Empire and the Edges of the World in the Augustan Poetic Imaginary’ (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2008), pp. 155–57. 68 Thomaso Porcacchi, Le Attioni d’Arrigo Terzo Re di Francia, et Quarto di Polonia, Descritte in Dialogo (Venice: Giorgio Angelieri, 1624), p. 45v. On this entry see also Juliette Lemerle (transcr.), La Somptueuse et Magnifique Entrée du Très Chrétien Roi Henri III. De ce Nom, Roi de France et de Pologne, Grand Duc de Lituanie (Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1686) [accessed 8 December 2017]. 69 Iain Fenlon, ‘Rex Christianissimus Francorum: Themes and Contexts of Henry III’s Entry to Venice, 1574’, in Margaret Shewring (ed.), Waterborne Pageants and Festivities in the Renaissance (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013; reprinted Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2016), pp. 99–118 (pp. 103–06). 70 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, pp. 319–20. 71 Ibid., p. 320. 72 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 73 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459.
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Figure 29. The spinning of the Wheel of Fortune, to the right of the open gallery built for the entry of Charles V into Bruges in 1515.
In 1561 Mary Queen of Scots saw a two-level scaffold at the Tolbooth, with three elegantly dressed Virtues — Justice, Policie, and a third unnamed figure on a platform — and the figure of Fortune. The exact position of Fortune is hard to ascertain as the chronicler places both scaffolds in a ‘lower’ position; Fortune’s lower position is hypothesized based on the 1579 records: the quenis grace come doun to the tolbuith, at the quhilk was vpoun twa ſkaffattis, ane abone and ane vnder that; vpone the vnder was ſituat ane fair
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wirgin, callit Fortoune, vnder the quhilk was thrie fair virgynnis, all cled in maiſt precious attyrement, callit Juſtice and Policie.74 Soon afterwards at Market Cross ‘thair was ſtandard four fair virgynnis, cled in the maiſt hevenlie clothing’.75 It has been speculated that they could be the four cardinal virtues of Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice — or Charity, if a second Justice was deemed repetitive.76 Another possibility would be to have figures such as Prosperity or Liberality, connected with the wine freely running from the nearby fountain.77 Fortune often appeared in conjunction with the Virtues: in Valladolid in 1513, King Ferdinand of Aragon saw the triumph of Fortune with her wheel fixed in favour of Ferdinand, but also a triumph of the Virtues, of Fame, and of Time as moralizing counterbalance.78 Guided by virtue(s), the monarch could rein in the unpredictability of chance, and act with equanimity in the town’s favour: in 1515 in Bruges, Charles V saw an actor impersonating him about to change Bruges’ destiny by turning a wheel of Fortune to raise either the characters of Mars or Trade79 [see Figure 29]. In a post-1604 context, the pairing of Fortuna with Virtue — the latter in the guise of Tiphys, the Argonauts’ legendary pilot now shown steering Fortuna’s boat — also appeared in one of the emblems in the Scottish painted ceiling at Pinkie House. Here it worked as a visual device wishing James VI/I success in constructing a pan-British empire, curbing chance through virtuous reflection.80 Similarly, in 1604 in London James VI/I saw ‘Arete (Vertue) inthronde, her garments white, her head crowned; and under Fortuna; her foote treading on the globe that movde beneath her; intimating that his Majestie’s fortune was above the world, but his vertues above his fortune’.81 In 1590 at the Tolbooth, Queen Anna of Denmark saw the personifications of Virtue and her four daughters Justice, Temperance, Prudence, and Fortitude, although the description of the iconography of the figures — and to some extent, their identification — is conflicting.82 Damman’s interpretation in verse of the Tolbooth entertainment focused on the presence of
Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. Gaps appear in the original text. Ibid. Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 106. Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, 80. Knighton and Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry’, 131. A. M. Karimi, ‘Tableaux Vivants: Their Structure, Themes, and Rhetorical Function’, Southern Speech Communication Journal, 42 (2) (1977), 99–113 (108). 80 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 155–66. 81 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, pp. 369–70. 82 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, pp. 112–13, while in ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41, Prudence was ‘holding in her hand a Serpent and a Dove, declaring, that men ought to bee as wiſe as the ſerpent, to prevent daunger, but as ſimple as the dove eyther in wrath or malice’. Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 97 presents at the Tolbooth ‘five youths, clothed in gentelwomen’s apparell, one having a sword, another a ballance, the thrid a booke, the fourth a target, and other two with their signes, all representing Peace, Plentie, Policie, Justice, Liberallitie, and Temperance’. 74 75 76 77 78 79
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Royal Majesty holding the insignia of supreme Law, in a lovely image, show that all are adorned and shine with Virtues four that ever handled well rule’s sceptred honours83 displaying once again the ambassador’s shrewd interpretation of the politicized meaning of the association between civic location and the expectations of righteousness placed upon the ruler. Considering Anna’s entry, some of the speeches delivered by the five virtuous figures presented them in a subordinate position to the Queen, acting and speaking to her as servants to their mistress. Virtue, the Virtues’ mother, took off her own crown and offered it to Anna;84 Prudence talked to the Queen of the happy results ‘If you take me into your service’,85 and Temperance asked Anna to ‘take me as your serving-woman’.86 However, the relationship was sometimes reversed, as Anna could achieve the perfection of qualities she did not yet possess by following their lead. Temperance’s words, ‘I can teach you to do what is right / […] / If you will obey and follow me’,87 and Prudence’s haughty statement ‘I teach my servants what is right’,88 located Anna squarely in the subordinate position. The pursuit of virtue is also explicitly presented as Anna’s only chance to control the unpredictability of fate. Speaking to the Queen, Fortitude stated explicitly that ‘The wheel of fortune turns quickly / if only you keep a steadfast mind’,89 Virtue exhorted Anna ‘if you take them to you, / you will achieve great fortune’,90 and Justice claimed that ‘but little good fortune’91 can be achieved by those not following her. The issue of virtuous behaviour is often treated conflictingly when celebrating female monarchs. In Paris in 1517, the worryingly powerful Duchess Claude of Brittany was pointedly shown submissive, dutiful biblical characters and personifications of private, contemplative virtues rather than public, active ones.92 On the other hand, powerful women such as Marguerite de Navarre or Catherine de Medici were celebrated through masculine metaphors and language in iconographical image and literature, to underline their political influence and connections.93 The problem of representing queenly virtues could be sidestepped by addressing the kingly virtues of an absent king the queen represented, as was the case for Margaret of Anjou’s entry into Coventry in 1456
83 Damman, Schediasmata, [55–58], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 84 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 111. 85 Ibid., p. 112. 86 Ibid., p. 113. 87 Ibid., pp. 113–14. 88 Ibid., p. 112. 89 Ibid., p. 113. 90 Ibid., pp. 111–12. 91 Ibid., p. 113. 92 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 297–304. 93 Matian Rothstein, The Androgyne in Early Modern France, Contextualizing the Power of Gender (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 109–60.
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as regent for the infant Prince Edward. Queens may have brought the promise of dynastic continuity, but they also brought the threat of foreign regencies and alien interferences: through the presentation of appropriate positive and negative role models, warnings, and suggestions, they were to be transformed into loving and trustworthy queens.94 Like their foreign counterparts, Scottish queens were instructed in virtuously feminine conduct through appropriate, case-specific examples. The choice of Paris, the Visitation of Gabriel to the Virgin, and the Marriage of Mary and Joseph shown to Margaret Tudor in 1503 underlined women’s role as objects of male — or fatherly divine — choice rather than dynamic self-sufficient agents.95 Again Margaret’s entry into Aberdeen in 1511 saw the salutation of the Virgin, the homage of the three kings, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise — themes portraying Margaret’s expected passivity in her role of bride and (hopefully) mother, the necessity for foreign powers to recognize a higher authority, and the punishment of enterprising women.96 However, in Edinburgh the actual Virtues shown to Scottish queens were remarkably masculine. The traditional Justice, Temperance, Strength, and Prudence shown to Margaret appeared in the act of physically striking down male personifications of vices as powerful kings of the past, so not modified to suit a submissive feminine iconography. In their speeches to Anna in 1590, the Queen’s expected virtuous conduct was presented as the opposite of retired domesticity, but described authority and power. Virtue spoke of the ‘sufficiency of personal and public benefits’ of a virtuous conduct, and Justice forcefully stated her own dominance onto every ‘city, castle or fortress’,97 and again how ‘Great and strong castles are built on me / and no one can easily demolish them’,98 while Temperance remarked that as Anna followed her ‘the kingdom will become mighty’.99 The Virtues were however addressing Anna as part of a royal couple. Prudence stated ‘I will / never bring any harm to the two of you’,100 Justice explained how ‘for without me both of you will lose so much’,101 and later on the Muses at the Butter Tron explained ‘We promise you all the support / the king may need upon this earth’.102 The Virtues chosen for Anna’s welcome might well have expressed a masculine attitude to government, but the Queen was addressed as the vessel of virtuous advice and help directed to the King, rather than as an interlocutor expected to act autonomously.103 The virtues and positive qualities presented to Mary in 1561 as ruler in her own 94 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 315–18. 95 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289, as interpreted in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 263–64; see also Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 110–18. 96 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 154. Kipling, Enter the King, p. 120. 97 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 112. 98 Ibid., p. 113. 99 Ibid., p. 114. 100 Ibid., p. 112. 101 Ibid., p. 113. 102 Ibid., p. 111. 103 See also McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, pp. 72–73.
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right do not appear an inherently feminized selection either, but were indeed remarkable in their number, with a group of three shown overcoming Fortune at the Tolbooth, plus four more at the Market Cross. As a female monarch of a problematic faith, French-raised Mary might have been perceived as especially in need of moralizing advice — particularly regarding the administration of justice, if indeed Justice did appear twice in the pageant as suggested. Young James VI — only 13 years old when his 1579 coming-of-age entry took place — could have also been perceived as inexperienced, but the allegorical, advisory component of his entry was much more restrained. Rather, the entry staged a celebration of authority and martial prowess that disregarded the youngster’s inexperience. The homage of a sword to the King at West Port — one assumes, to be carried by one of the attendants during the rest of the ceremony — recalls the processional carrying of the sword for James IV in 1503 when the King joined Margaret Tudor’s entry.104 The presence of a sword for Charles I’s entry was also discussed on 12 June 1633, when the Lords of the Secret Council saw it that ‘a sword be carried before his Majestie at his entrie within the toun’,105 and described it specifically as ‘shethed’.106 This was not the sword of state, as arrangements regarding the carrying of the ‘honouris’107 of Scotland during the King’s visit were listed separately. In 1561, it was the Earl of Huntly who carried the sword in the procession for Mary Queen of Scots.108 While the scantier records for James VI/I’s entry in 1617 do not mention the carrying of a sword, the King did knight the Edinburgh provost at the Netherbow so an appropriate stately sword would have been near at hand.109 In 1503, 1561, 1579, very probably 1617, and 1633, Scotland’s monarchs — all males but one — expressed the potentially martial aspect of dispensation of justice through the processional carrying of swords. They did not brandish it in actual aggression but had it carried around by a trusted companion (1561), covered in precious cloth (1503), and enclosed in a sheath (1633), or used it to reinforce the existing order (the 1617 knighting of a civic official, and in 1579 in association with the iconography of the judgement of Solomon). The martial but also merciful rule expected of James VI as defender of the Protestant faith was also celebrated on the obverse of a gold £20 Scots coin (minted in 1575–1576), and on the frontispiece of Théodore Beza’s book of engravings titled Icones (Antwerp, 1580) — both showing young James in full armour, holding a sword and an olive branch.110 In 1579, these somehow overstated martial echoes were combined with an extramural meeting under a royal canopy with bareheaded Edinburgh magistrates, and with an unnecessarily delayed delivery of the keys that self-limited the burgh’s bargaining power. There Sword in 1579, in Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. Sword in 1503, in Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 287. ‘Orders of the Privy Council, 1628–1633’, p. 110. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 111. Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. 1, p. 74; noted as Thomas Randolph to Cecil, 7 September 1561. 109 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1617’, p. 68. 110 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 70–78.
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is a background story of political unease here. Ten days before the 1579 entry, on 7 October, after the King had imposed a provost upon the Edinburgh Council, the council sought reassurance from James that accepting the appointment ‘sould not hurt their priviledges’.111 The frequency with which the ratification of the burgh’s privileges had been requested during James’ minority — in December 1567, in August 1571, and again in July 1578 — showed the level of preoccupation of the civic authorities on the matter. A long-awaited parliamentary session — the first one since 1573 — was to take place on 20 October, three days after the King’s entry.112 In this context of instability and expectation, the magistrates used spatial, allegorical, and ritual language to decidedly put their best political foot forward, employing all the symbols of legitimate authority, military strength, and virtuous conduct to define James as a competent, trustworthy judge, wise beyond his years. Similar uncertainty characterized the preparations for and entry of Emperor Charles V into Augsburg in 1530 before the critical Imperial Diet, both sides striving to express both goodwill and mistrusting alertness.113 In the majority of cases shown, the appearance of Justice and the other Virtues necessary for government near the Tolbooth created a spatial connection between the monarch and the burgh as cooperating dispensers of justice. However, this was not always the case, and the evolution over time of the positioning of the virtues-themed show is of extreme significance. In 1503 the location of the display of the Virtues is not explicitly stated, but it can be gauged by looking at the spatial sequence as described by the chronicler Younge, who places them ‘More fourther’114 than the Market Cross, and as the last show mentioned before the departure from the town — that is, in the Netherbow-area. At their next known appearance in 1561, they have moved backward to the central locations of the Tolbooth and Market Cross area, and in 1579 and 1590 the Virtues also appear at the Tolbooth. In 1617 with Hay’s speech, and in 1633 with the appearance of Justice and Religion, references to the monarch’s virtues were moved backward again to the entry gate of the West Port. This spatial alteration is part of a pan-European evolution in the role of triumphal entries and civic celebrations to match increasingly centralized and absolutist views of monarchy. Earlier triumphal entries had followed the literary tradition of the speculum principis, the mirror of the prince; an entry was a political rite of passage with an eminently didactic narrative, not only identifying, investigating, and depicting the qualities most necessary to rule, but constructing the ruler’s new identity through a progressively transformative experience.115 This was a characteristic common to most processional performances, during which participants advanced either — or both — in space and at an emotional and cognitive level, their physical progression mimicking a personal progression
111 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 112 Lynch, ‘Crown and the Burghs’, p. 69. 113 Cuneo, Art and Politics, pp. 139–59. 114 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 115 Wintroub, ‘Civilizing the Savage’, 470–71; Strong, Art and Power, p. 8.
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through the experience.116 During her coronation entry into London, Queen Elizabeth’s passage through a sequence of symbolically enhanced civic spaces and landmarks was devised as a transformative experience, where the Queen was spatially absorbed within the spaces she crossed to become herself part of the civic narrative.117 Katharine of Aragon’s symbolic ascent to the ‘Palace of Honour’ in her London entry in 1501 was marked by acquiring through interaction with each pageant the qualities necessary to progress to the next stage of the narrative, actually triggering the next shows or event.118 As late as 1582 in independently minded Antwerp, the entry of Francis of Anjou emphasized the transformative power of the civic experience, shaping the young Duke into a cooperative political partner rather than hailing him as a God-given messiah.119 However, generally speaking, the parallel between progress in space and moral advancement began to loosen up from the second half of the sixteenth century. In the Parisian examples previously mentioned, Justice turned from an abstract virtue for the monarch to strive towards and be inspired by, to an innate quality that monarchical authority itself generated. The character of Parisian entries — and of the triumphal station of Saint Denis in particular — changed from a negotiating dialogue, aiming at the laying down of preconditions for a final agreement, to a straightforward exaltation of royal power per se.120 In Edinburgh, the significance of where virtues-based entertainments were presented demonstrates a similar evolution in the conditions and expectations set upon monarchical rule. Virtues appearing later in the route — near the Netherbow, as in 1503 — represented the culmination of an educational narrative achieved through a participative, instructing urban performance, and Margaret’s encounter with the Virtues marked her transformation from heterogeneous unknown quantity to homogeneous, morally aligned agent.121 Moving the Virtues to locations met progressively earlier in the route — in the middle of the burgh in the Tolbooth area in 1561, 1579, and 1590, and more emphatically at its entrance at the West Port and vicinities in 1617 and 1633 — celebrated pre-existing qualities not dependent upon the completion of the ceremonial experience, and, in the latter cases, with which the monarchs were already equipped on arrival. In 1617, Hay’s welcome speech for James VI/I explicitly acknowledged that ‘all perfections in your Royall person; the Heavens and Earth witnessing your heroicall frame, none influence whatsoever being able to bring the same to any higher degree’.122 At this early stage of the pageant, the 116 Ashley, ‘Moving Subjects’, pp. 12–14. 117 H. Lees-Jeffries, ‘Veritas Temporis Filia: Location as Metaphor in Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation Entry (1559)’, in Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight (eds), The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 69–73 (pp. 83–84). 118 Gordon Kipling, ‘Triumphal Drama: Form in English Civic Pageantry’, Renaissance Drama, 8 (1977), 37–56 (45–46, 56). 119 Gordon Kipling, ‘The King’s Advent Transformed: The Consecration of the City in the Sixteenth Century Civic Triumph’, in Howe (ed.), Ceremonial Culture, pp. 109–20. 120 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 125–39. 121 Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 118–21. 122 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 320.
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King’s ‘prudencie, wisedome, and constancie in uniting the disjoynted members of this Commonwealth’123 were already manifestly at work. Similarly, in 1633 by presenting Justice and Religion at the start of the entry, the civic entertainment was celebrating Charles’ intrinsic rather than acquired attributes. The perfection of the King’s innate qualities was repeatedly addressed in the speeches made throughout the entry, and no moral progress appeared possible in this celebration of masque-like courtly flattery. Forbes’ panegyric told Charles, thou’rt more old in vertues than in dayes: Bred in the bed of honour, thou art blest With rare perfections, farre above the rest Of mortall kind.124 Caledonia also saluted Charles as A Prince all gracious, affable, divine, Meeke, wise, just, valiant, whose radiant shine Of vertues, like the starres about the pole Guilding the night, enlightneth every soule […] To make peace prosper, iustice to reflowre.125 Later on, Jupiter proclaimed that ‘Iustice kept low by grants, and wrongs, and jarres, / Thou shalt relieve, and crowne with glistering starres’.126 Charles was shown as Justice’s rescuer rather than as her follower already at the second arch, and representing the compass of moral behaviour himself rather than being offered one by the town. The King was still to receive a different reward for completing the entry; at the Netherbow he met the personifications of Honour and Fame alongside a depiction of James VI/I, as celebrative rather than morally inspiring entertainment. However, in presenting Charles’ illustrious father as a model of everlasting notoriety to whom to aspire, the pageant was implicitly denying the current king the acme of fame and honour, skilfully bringing back some of the exhortative potential of earlier triumphal entries.127 St Giles Kirk and Religious Identities Religious themes appeared frequently in Edinburgh’s triumphal entries; their treatment and spatial footprint — not necessarily confined to the Kirk of St Giles — changed over time, to acknowledge, confront, and attempt to bring resolution to the Catholic/Protestant and Presbyterian/Episcopalian dichotomies.
123 124 125 126 127
Ibid., pp. 320–21. Forbes, ‘Panegyricke’, p. 281. Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 264. Ibid., p. 273. Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 178.
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Religious topics permeated the entry devised in 1503 for Margaret Tudor, with two of the three pageants being biblical — ‘the Salutacion of Gabriell to the Virgyne, in ſayinge Ave gratia, and ſens after, the Sollempnizacion of the varey Maryage betwixt the ſaid Vierge and Joſeph’,128 pointedly casting the Queen in the meek Marian role of spouse and mother. Religious themes were not confined to the pageants’ locations, ‘spilling over’ to occupy all areas of the burgh through the processional routes of the Grey Friars, the Jacobins, and the College of St Giles carrying relics and sacred objects, and possibly stepping out of the civic precinct at the West Port welcome.129 In doing so, the 1503 entry looked back to the medieval blurred distinction between consecrated and secular spaces, inside and outside, sacred and profane, where sacred spaces could be used for — and lend legitimacy to — secular activities, and vice-versa.130 The religious corporations did not await the ruler within their own metropolitan locations, or organize fixed entertainments at their doorsteps, but they moved processionally throughout the city in a sanctifying act of pilgrimage: this extended the borders of the holy to the edges of the known walled space, and transformed the city into a quasi-sacred earthly Jerusalem.131 After meeting the royal couple, they probably joined the procession while carrying their insignia and sacred objects, adding to the prestige of James’ and Margaret’s party by acknowledging and blessing the monarchs’ personas. In a sense, religious themes extended from religious sites not only spatially but thematically, denying the existence of boundaries between personal piety and public role. Margaret’s entries in 1503 to Edinburgh and 1511 to Aberdeen addressed and offered moralizing advice on all aspects of the Queen’s life and role, reflecting the inescapably central place of Catholic religion at this period. Similarly, the exhortation made by Sir David Lyndsay to Queen Mary of Guise in St Andrews in 1538 contained ‘instructioun quhilk teichit hir to serue her god, obey hir husband, and keep hir body clene according to godis will and commandement’132 — leaving the new Queen very little room for unsupervised personal initiative. In 1558, with no monarch to admonish and advise, the religious themes appeared tuned down, with only a reference to a ‘Processioun of the Sacrament quhen the Quenis Grace wes maryit’133 suggesting some celebrative religious appropriation of the civic space.134 On the other hand, the treasurer’s account listing the burgh’s expenses mentioned the purchase of ‘twa ledderone skynnis tiill be ane pair of breiks to the gray freir’,135 and of other fabric for the purpose of making their clothes. This suggests an entertaining role
Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289, interpreted in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 263–64. Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. See also Chapter III. Hamilton and Spicer, ‘Defining the Holy’, pp. 10–11. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (Orlando: Harcourt Inc., 1959), pp. 47–50. Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 176–79. 132 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 379. 133 Robert Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records: The Burgh Accounts. Volume Two. Dean of Guild’s Accounts, 1552–1567 (Edinburgh: Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council, 1899), p. 89. 134 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 153. 135 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 270; see also p. 269. 128 129 130 131
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for pretence friars, identified as a Franciscan, a Carmelite, and a Dominican — the latter having a speaking role. Perhaps they were characters in the play written for the event, and payment for which appeared alongside those for the friars’ clothing.136 The unconventional attire of leather breeches suggests an element of mockery towards an established religious order often seen by then as greedy and contemptible.137 This seems compatible with the general atmosphere of moral questioning: in the 1530s, drama and public spectacles such as the mystery play by a Friar Kyllour and some of the satirical production by George Buchanan (in 1539 respectively burned for heresy and exiled) had both derided and despised the religious status quo.138 During the 1550s, the traditional Catholic views of space and its sanctifying public rituals were being challenged. In September 1558, a Protestant demonstration broke up the annual St Giles’ Day procession through Edinburgh, seized the saint’s statue, and symbolically drowned it in the nearby Nor’ Loch.139 Edinburgh urban space remained relatively safe even during the Reformation period, with no public assaults similar to Paris’s urban butchery in 1572, and limited episodes of sacking and iconoclastic destructions did take place in Perth, St Andrews, and Restalrig.140 Religious themes could now be both potentially fractious but also unifying topics for civic ceremonies: in Lille in 1549, Philip of Spain saw a selection of gory tableaux vivants inspired by the upcoming Counter Reformation, inviting this militarily minded Habsburg monarch to apply his anti-Turkish might to the vanquishing of heretics, shown as accursed, scandalous figures.141 Mary’s entry was profoundly inspired by religion, but not at all in the sense of a sanctifying pilgrimage of a Christ-like monarch through a New Jerusalem, nor could Catholic Mary take on the role of defender of the faith.142 At the first station at the Butter Tron, she was given ‘a Bible tranſlated in Scots languadge, and a book of Pſalms turned likewayes in Scots verſe, which were ſignified by a ſpeech made by the boy to be emblems of her defending the Reformed Relligion’143 at the same time that she received the keys of the city. As mentioned in Chapter III, obedience was being exchanged for religious conformity. At the Salt Tron there was a ſpeech made tending to aboliſhig of the maſs, and in token that it was alreddie baniſhed the kingdome, there was the ſhape of a prieſt in his
136 Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, p. 323. Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 269. 137 Discussed in Gray, ‘Royal Entry’, p. 25. 138 Sarah Carpenter, ‘Drama and Politics: Scotland in the 1530s’, Medieval English Theatre, 10 (2) (1988), 81–90 (81–85). 139 Lynch (ed.), Oxford Companion to Scottish History, p. 501. 140 Lynch, ‘Reassertion of Princely Power’, pp. 200–01, 204; and Keith M. Brown, ‘Burghs, Lords and Feuds in Jacobean Scotland’, in Lynch (ed.), Early Modern Town in Scotland, pp. 102–03. 141 Strong, Art and Power, pp. 88–89; Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, pp. 136–38. 142 A conclusion shared by Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, passim, and by Davidson, ‘Entry of Mary Stewart’, passim. 143 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56.
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ornaments reddie to ſay maſs, made of wode, which was brought forth, in ſight of all, and preſentlie throwen in a fyre made upon the ſcaffold and burnt.144 The Catholic Earl of Huntly advocated its cancellation, and a less openly outrageous one took its place, showing ‘the terrible sygnifications of the vengeance of God upon idolatrie, ther war burnt Coron, Dathan, and Abiram, in the tyme of thair sacrifice’,145 and involving ‘ſum ſpekaris’ and ‘ane litell speitche’.146 Herries’ Memoirs — referring to the event as initially planned rather than to how it actually took place — includes the onlookers’ (presumed) reactions to the (unrealized) burning of the priest’s effigy, showing how this topic was thought capable of generating reactions that were both earnest and politically significant. a pageant that ſeemed to many ridiculous, but to the French it ſeemed contemptible. […] This was diverſlie constructed, according to men’s humours, either to derision, contemp, or presumpion; and every man thought it needles. The Queen herſelfe was not well pleaſed, and this made the reſt les acceptable.147 Further down at the Netherbow ‘their wes ane vther ſkaffet maid, havand ane dragoun in the ſamyn, with ſome ſpeitche; and efter that the dragoun was brynt, and the quenis grace hard ane pſalme ſong’.148 The scary beast has been identified as the dragon from the Book of Revelation who ravages the earth before the Last Judgment accompanied by the Whore of Babylon (Apoc. 18:8) — Mary being cunningly cast in that role by proximity as she approached [see Figure 30]: a second, intriguing possible interpretation will be discussed in Chapter VIII.149 Finally, a delegation from the city followed the Queen to Holyrood, where they ‘maid ſome ſpeitche concerning the putting away of the meſs, and thairefter ſang ane pſalme’.150 In 1561, the Reformed faith’s footprint was substantial, saturating the civic and royal spaces, and also determining the date of the event, as the entry was postponed by one day to avoid a pro-Catholic reading of the original choice of the 5 September, the day of the burgh’s patron Saint Giles.151 This could be compared for example with the choice of organizing the Edinburgh celebrations for Mary’s wedding in 1558 on 3 July, that is during the octave of the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin — and Mary’s namesake — in a significant pro-Catholic statement by the Queen Regent which provoked Protestant discontent.152 In 1561,
144 Ibid., p. 57. 145 Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. 1, p. 74; noted as Thomas Randolph to Cecil, 7 September 1561. 146 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. Events also summed up in Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 366–68. 147 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 57. 148 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 149 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 107. 150 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 151 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56; discussed in Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Triumph of Protestantism’, 79. 152 Dean, ‘Absence of an Adult Monarch: Ceremonial Representation’, p. 157.
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Figure 30. Albrecht Dürer’s The Whore of Babylon riding the seven-headed beast (1498).
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the complexity of portraying Mary as an apostate and just ruler is revealed by comparing two sections of the event. The centrality of religious beliefs to guide the virtuous monarch was declared in the speech accompanying the delivery of the bible and psalm book at the Butter Tron, which declared how through studying these Reformed texts ‘Judgement and wysdome therein shall ye see’.153 Here the Queen could ‘reade to uunderstand’ — implying her current ignorance on the matter — not only ‘The perfett waye unto the hevennes hie’, but ‘how to Rule your subiects and your land, / And how your kingdom stabilished shalbe’.154 The Tolbooth/Market Cross — a location preoccupied with the virtues of royal and civic good government — was the only entertainment location not explicitly described as having a religious theme, with only an unspecified ‘ane litell ſpeitche’155 delivered there: Mary’s position as legitimately appointed ruler was probably not per se affected by her Catholicism. The use of fire to destroy the symbols of sinful religious affiliations in 1561 — the elevating priest, the Old Testament idolaters, the hellish dragon of Revelation — stood for the symbolic purification of the city. The (cancelled) pageant, in which the image of a priest in the act of elevating the host was to be burned, aggressively rejected the role of clergy, the formality of ceremonial, and the Catholic concept of transubstantiation. This reflected the radical character of the very early period of the Reformation — a period when monasteries and religious buildings were being burned across Reformed Europe in an attempt to erase the traditional topography of sacred spaces, purging cities of unholy beliefs through destruction of their architectural evidence.156 While St Giles was not destroyed, during the 1561 entry it was not used as a triumphal location, its remarkable disappearance from public notice being a sign of the denial of its embedded metaphysical Catholic spirituality, and its new role as neutral location for Calvinist-inspired gatherings being too fresh and contentious to be publicly acknowledged. The rejection of ritual as a binding communal experience, of churches as places of intrinsic holiness, and of the traditional understanding of hierarchies also ‘abolished the traditional props of community identity’, 157 leaving a remarkable hole in society’s understanding of the world. A fractured Church had proven unable to maintain her traditional peacekeeping role within communities, this coinciding with the profound cultural shift and the period of economic and social uncertainty caused by the commercial crisis suffered by the Mediterranean countries to the advantages of the Asian and American colonies, and causing a perceived loss of cultural centrality. Reformed believers were denied the fascination of powerful religious images, and of a vocabulary of
153 Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, p. 21. 154 Ibid. 155 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 156 Coster and Spicer, ‘Introduction: Dimension of Sacred Space’, pp. 3–5. The example of Lyon in Loach, ‘Consecration of the Civic Realm’, passim. 157 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p. 186.
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ritualized gestures and interactions, eliciting powerful emotional responses and carrying the alluring promise of succour from a supernatural being.158 Absolute, semi-divine, authoritative monarchs could step in to fill that gap and absorb the material and organizational resources of the Church, and most importantly its language of sacred ritual to establish their own supremacy, offering reassurance and protection and employing familiar ritualistic performances to portray an idealized status of concord that encompassed religious differences.159 The new centrality of royal power was shown for example by the evolving iconography of peacekeeping represented at the Painters’ Gate in Paris. In the 1430s, the sovereign had been reminded by saints and holy men of his religious obligations as a devoted Christian, but in the 1570s at the height of the French Wars of Religion, peace in the realm was represented as dependent on the past and future achievements of the Valois family.160 Even Mary’s divisive authority was portrayed — in private courtly settings — as having the power to bring reconciliation after significant civil and religious disturbances, and to impose Crown-promoted harmony and political stability through the power of spatial rituals.161 This was explicitly represented when, at the banquet for the baptism of her son James in 1566, the French, English, and Savoy ambassadors and other noble diners were served by gentlemen whose beliefs were opposite to those of the diners they attended to.162 More publicly, the 1617 speech by John Hay to James VI/I contained religiously inspired sentences such as ‘upon the verie knees of mine hart beseeching your sacred Majestie that mine obedience to my Superior’s command may bee a sacrifice acceptable to expiate my presumption’,163 and rejoicing over ‘the settled temper of your Majestie’s government’.164 The stability offered even by a king with worrying Episcopalian sympathies compared auspiciously with past disturbances: Hay recalled in horror ‘the tumultuous days of your Majestie’s more tender yeeres’,165 but also with relief how ‘the fire of civile discorde, which as a flame had devoured us, was thereby quenched’ thanks to Your Majestie’s great vigilancie and godlie zeale in propagating the Gospell, defacing the monuments of idolatrie, banishing that Romane and Antichristian
158 Ibid., pp. 191–95. 159 Roy Strong, Splendour at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion (London: Weidenfeld, Nicholson, 1973), pp. 81–83, 19; Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, pp. 229–32; Kevin Sharpe, ‘Sacralization and Demystification: The Publicization of Monarchy in Early Modern England’, in Jeroen Deploige and Gita Deneckere (eds), Mystifying the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power, and History (Amster dam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), pp. 99–116 (p. 101); Blockmans, History of Power, p. 309. 160 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 153–68. 161 Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Advice to a Princess’, pp. 102–03, 106–07. See also optimistic poetic predictions in Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Scottish Poetry of the Reign of Mary Stewart’, in Caie, Lyall, Mapstone and Simpson (eds), European Sun, pp. 44–46. 162 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 104. Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, 10–11. 163 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 319. 164 Ibid., p. 320. 165 Ibid.
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hierarchie, and establishing of our Church, repairing the ruines thereof, protecting us from foraine invasion.166 Compared with these later entries, the spatial footprint and rendition of religious themes in 1579 indicated a balance of exhortative and celebratory language. St Giles was reinstated as triumphal location, its regular usage since 1561 having made it a less controversial setting. There, young James VI met the character of Dame Religion, an actor rather than a member of the clergy and hence related to entertainment and show rather than to piety and submission. James’ approach to the church is described as an animated, gay occurrence: Religion’s speech was ‘in the Hebrew Tongue, upon which he was pleas’d to enter the Church’;167 or ‘Dame Religion desired his presence; so he lighted at the ladeis steppes, and went in to the Great Kirk’.168 Here preacher James Lawsone ‘exhorted the king and the subjects to doe their duetie, to enter in league and covenant with God, and concluded with thanksgiving’.169 Also the preacher ‘maid a notable exhortation unto him, for the embracing of Religion and all hir cardinall vertewis, and of all uther morall vertewins’.170 Religious orthodoxy and moral worthiness could become again a bonding element between the Reformed monarch and his subjects, as both parties were encouraged to perform their respective — different, but complementary — duties. The connection between royal authority, the exercise of virtue, and the moral guidance offered by religious practices was also the theme of the West Port welcome, where the King was invited to reflect on the judgement of Solomon before being offered himself — a new Solomon — a sword echoing the one held by the biblical king in the performance. A speech on the abolition of the Mass was also delivered to the King at the Canongate Cross, outside of the civic precinct — an occurrence discussed in more detail in Chapter VIII, below. Overall, entertainments including religious themes punctuated the civic space in 1579, showing James the behaviour expected of him as just (West Port), virtuous (St Giles), and soundly anti-Catholic (St Giles and Canongate) — but with a new congratulatory levity. With the appearance of an actor impersonating a welcoming Dame Religion, the road was open to see the Kirk, and religion in general, as a theatre where the ceremony of royalty was performed. The arrival and entry into St Giles of Anna in 1590 was particularly dramatic, as the Queen ‘came forth of her chariot, and was carried into S. Giles’ Church’171 under a precious canopy.172 St Giles had been extensively improved and decorated for the occasion with flowers and coats of arms; Anna heard a sermon while she ‘satt in the east end, in the loft, under a faire cannabie of velvet’,173 where ‘she sits enthroned in the highest
166 Ibid., p. 321. 167 Crawfurd, Memoirs, p. 357. 168 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459. 169 Ibid. 170 Colville and Thomson, Historie, p. 179. 171 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41. 172 Canopy in Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 114. 173 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 97.
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shrine’,174 both spatial reinforcements of her exalted status. What Anna actually heard appears to have been a mixture of admonishments and expressions of rejoicing, including satisfying ‘praiers for her Highneſſe’, a ‘ſermon preached by Mr Robert Bruce’175 based on the 107th Psalm — a psalm of thanksgiving to a merciful God —, and the singing of the 23rd Psalm — celebrating God’s promise of protection and abundance.176 The dialogue between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon staged at the Netherbow is quite revelatory of the new celebratory attitude. It encouraged Anna/Sheba to look up to James/Solomon as the perfect example of divine wisdom, stating Your temple and divine service are so great that there cannot be any greater on the earth […] your equal is not to be found anywhere. […] You have taught me many things which I formerly did not know.177 The source of Anna’s virtuous inspiration was not as a religious pageant or biblical character per se, but rather the King himself as possessor of God-given, perfect wisdom that had no equals on earth. In 1590 then, James was celebrated as direct dispenser of moral righteousness and the country’s spiritual compass, rather than in need of support to develop his relationship with God. In 1617, James VI/I’s interaction with St Giles also spoke of the celebration of majesty, as the King dismounted there from his horse ‘with gret triumphe’178 and went into the church where ‘the Bishop of St Androes had a flattering sermone upon the 21st Psalme, and thanked God for his prosperous journey’.179 The choice of Psalm 21 was an apt one, as this psalm of thanksgiving celebrates earthly kings as God’s worthy appointees, whose moral standing represents and guides the spiritual welfare of his subjects. The two explicit references to religion made in 1633 were both celebratory but also exhortative in manner. The first was the previously mentioned image of Religion shown overcoming Superstition; Religion was ‘all in white taffeta, with a blew mantle seeded with starres, a crowne of starres on her head, to shew from whence she is’.180 Her escutcheon bore a cross and an inscription, and ‘beneath her feete lay Superstition trampled, a woman blind, in old and worne garments’.181 The visual pairing of Justice and Religion presented
174 Damman, Schediasmata, [181], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 175 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41. 176 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 114. See also Dean, ‘Enter the Alien’, p. 274. 177 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 118. 178 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19; noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. 179 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 246. 180 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 258. 181 Ibid. Religion’s inscription was ‘COELO DESCENDET AB ALTO’, a slight alteration of Virgil, Aeneid, Lib.8, 423, ([fiery power] descended from the lofty sky): Benjamin Apthorp Gould, The Works of Virgil, Translated into English Prose, 2 vols (London: Geo. B. Whittaker et al., 1826), vol. 2, p. 250.
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once more the complex relationship between being a just ruler (following English Episcopalianism) and supporting the locally preferred (Scottish Presbyterian) beliefs. The second mention was a section of the speech by Caledonia at the second arch, supporting austere Presbyterianism by stating that Faith, milke-white faith, of old belov’d so well, Yet in this corner of the world doth dwell With her pure sisters, truth, simplicitie; Heere banish’d honour beares the company.182 In this context, Superstition’s escutcheon displaying Vltra Sauromatas [Beyond the Sauromatæ (I could wish to fly)] could refer to the perceived moral uprightness of isolated, uncorrupted populations — such as Juvenal’s Sauromatæ, standing for the Scots themselves.183 William Drummond — the main deviser of the pageant — was proud of the primitive independence of the Scottish Church from Rome, and illustrated thus his own — and Scotland’s — preference for simplicity over the Laudian-papistical, antiquated ceremonies the King supported.184 This conflict was particularly embodied by a spatial issue arising in connection to the 1617, the 1633, and to some extent even the 1590 entry — how to manage the royal expectation that Presbyterian religious spaces within the burgh’s orbit would be adapted to become settings for Episcopalian royal ceremonies. With the monarchs now semi-divine figures central to the identification of religious orthodoxy, their expectations of control over civic space and the community’s identity took the particularly sensitive direction of controlling the spaces where such beliefs were expressed. In coincidence with his Scottish visit in 1617, James VI/I attempted to have the royal chapel of Holyrood refurbished to his liking: the place which was prepared for the organs, and the quiristours to sing, there was also carved the statues of the twelve Apostles and the foure Evangelists, curiouslie wrought in timber, which were to be gilded and sett up to decore the chappell. But the people murmured, fearing great alterations in religion, wherupon the bishops dissuadit the king from setting them up in the chappell.185 The letter sent by the Bishop of Galloway to Patrick Simpson on 26 May 1617, ten days after the entry, spoke of disappointed James’ ‘sharpe rebuke, and checke of ignorance’ for Galloway’s refusal to adopt ‘Romish toyes, of capes, surplices, altars, etc.’186 The highly sacramental and ceremonial form of worship the King preferred relied heavily on spatial hierarchies, and needed physical barriers 182 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 263. 183 A section of Juvenal, Satira 2,1. Martin Madan, A New and Literal Translation of Juvenal and Persius, 2 vols (London: T. Tegg, 1829), vol. 1, pp. 38–39. 184 John Kerrigan, On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature: Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 167–68. 185 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 244. 186 Ibid., p. 245. See Smeaton, Story of Edinburgh, p. 99.
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to represent the withdrawal of a professional clergy from the community. If a rood screen — easily identifiable with popish belief — was included in the refurbishment, it would explain much of the people’s opposition187 Already in 1590 James VI had put his royal mark on the coronation of his queen Anna of Denmark — liturgically if not, as yet, spatially. The King had insisted on controlling various sensitive aspects of the ceremony, from it taking place on a Sunday (17 May), to the ceremony being held at St Giles as part of the official entry into Edinburgh, to the inclusion of the conceivably idolatrous traditional anointment with holy oil.188 This traditional anointing would politically have reasserted the monarch’s almost sacred role, representing monarchical pretensions to absolute power.189 A compromise was found; reluctant officiating minister Robert Bruce performed the begrudged anointment ceremony, but accompanying declarations underscored its symbolic, non-sanctifying purpose.190 More importantly, the coronation and entry were moved in both time and location to some other daie in the weke. Upon this motion, and also because all things were not ready, the King and Council took new order to solemnize the coronation tomorrow in the abbey church at Holyrood House, and the entry in Edinburgh on Tuesday next.191 The initial request by the monarch and his representatives and noted by the burgh’s council on 5 September 1589 had run understanding that it is fund guid be the Kings Majestie and secreit counsall, that the Queynis Majesties mareage sal be maid within this burgh, in the hie kirk thereof, and swa it behoveth hir Graces entrie to be the samin day.192 Joining the coronation and the entry would have wedged a royal celebration into what was still — nominally at least — a negotiating ceremony presenting a civic narrative to a visiting monarch. The ruler’s attempts to stage the ceremony in the very centre of the burgh’s civic space — imposing his own religious views upon an unwilling community by way of spatial appropriation — was resolved by the
187 Compare the controversial furbishing of Dairsie church; David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century, 5 vols (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1887–1892), vol. 5, pp. 155–56. 188 John Spottiswoode, History of the Church of Scotland, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1851), vol. 2, p. 408. 189 An interpretation in McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, pp. 70–71. Also discussed in Maureen M. Meikle, ‘Anna of Denmark’s Coronation and Entry into Edinburgh, 1590: Cultural, Religious, and Diplomatic Perspectives’, in Goodare and MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp. 280–82; and Michael Lynch, ‘Court Ceremony and Ritual During the Personal Reign of James VI’, in Goodare and Lynch (eds), Reign of James VI, pp. 83–84. 190 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 95. 191 William K. Boyd and Henry W. Meikle (eds), Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots 1547–1603, vol. 10, 1589–1593 (Edinburgh: His Majesty’s General Register House, 1936), p. 295, listed as ‘401: Robert Bowes to Burghley, May 16’. The location of the coronation is also mentioned in Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 104. 192 ‘Notices, King and Queen’, p. 36.
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ceremony being pushed out of the civic boundary.193 The removal to Holyrood might have been a sensible compromise to reduce the Scottish ministers’ scruples regarding the more popish-looking aspects of the celebration by having it in a much less controversial location.194 The protestations of the provost and burgesses, ‘greatlie disapointed and greved with this sodaine change’195 would have then been largely for show; or rather, the ministers would have welcomed a coronation in St Giles supportive of the city’s Presbyterian beliefs, and compatible with the narrative of the triumphal entry itself.196 The arm-wrestling in choosing between St Giles or Holyrood as locations of the coronation repeated itself in 1633, with once again the burgesses placing enough hurdles on the monarch’s path as to make St Giles — Charles’ initial choice — unappealing. Considering a royal visit imminent, in 1626 the ministers and kirk session presented a petition for the rebuilding of Holyrood Church for the coronation, but the Privy Council expressed Charles I’s preference for St Giles as ‘the most conspicuous place for that solemnity’.197 In 1628 the Master of Works was instructed to inspect the Kirk and determine if an inconvenient partition disrupting the east alignment necessary for English practices could be taken down.198 This the provost and bailies deemed impossible, well aware of the attempted imposition of English rites onto the space; they had already resisted doing so in 1599 when solicited by James VI, the King arguing then that ‘it was the most spatious kirk, and comeliest, in tyme of conventiouns and solemnities’.199 Erected in 1561, this partition broke down the main space into separate, smaller preaching halls much more suitable to Reformed preaching.200 In 1630, a group formed by the Master of Ceremonies, the Lion Herald, and the Master of Works exercised some pressure, stating that Holyrood would not have been ready in time, and St Giles was ‘the most convenient, eminent, and perspicuous place for his Majesteis coronatioun’,201 suitable even without the removal of the contentious wall. The decision seemed final, and the Privy Council ordered the Master of Work to assist the city council and proceed with ‘the preparatiouns requisite to be made and perfytted within thair kirk towards his Majesteis coronatioun’.202 The local authorities still expressed their dissent through a petition explicitly titled ‘reasons why your most sacred Matie
193 Traditional locations of Scottish coronations in Thomas, ‘Coronation Ritual’, pp. 49–66. Scottish coronation rituals in James Cooper, Four Scottish Coronations (Aberdeen: Printed for the Two Societies, 1902), passim. 194 Douglas Shaw, ‘St Giles’ Church and Charles I’s Coronation Visit to Scotland’, Historical Research, 77 (198) (November 2004), 481–502 (482–83). 195 Boyd and Meikle (eds), State Papers vol. 10 1589–1593, p. 295. 196 Controversies over courtiers’ attending sermons at St Giles, in Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 483. 197 ‘Extracts from the Records of the Town Council, 1628–1633’, p. 70. 198 Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 485–87. 199 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 739. 200 Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 485. 201 Peter Hume Brown (ed.), The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, Second Series 1629–1630 volume 3 (Edinburgh, Her Majesty’s General Register House, 1901), p. 497. 202 Ibid., p. 498.
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should rather be crowned at your Matie owne Church of Halyroodhouse then in Edenborrough’ that ‘it was never heard that any Christian king was crowned in a private parrish-Church, but in a Cathedrall or Abbey church’.203 Spatial objections were presented at a civic level; while Holyrood was described as ‘your owne Church whereof your Matie is patron’, St Giles would only be a ‘borrowed Church’.204 By 1633, the King had accepted his coronation would be set in Holyrood, as testified by financing of urgent rebuilding works.205 In Holyrood Charles did take control of the space, bringing with him an altar from London to be used during the ceremony, with lit candles displayed on it, and rich tapestries showing the Crucifixion hung behind it; the officiating bishops wore rich garments decorated in gold.206 While not crowned there, Charles did temporarily appropriate St Giles by attending an English service there during his stay, the astonished congregation resenting that ‘without any warrand or pretext, either of law or reassone, or occasion offered to them to alter the settled ordour of this Reformed Kirk’.207 Charles’ spatial impositions continued after his visit, as part of a campaign of forced British uniformity aiming at returning Scottish churches — and Cathedrals in particular — to their pre-Reformation spatial organization. On the King’s orders, in St Giles the internal partitions were removed and the east end was restored, returning the church to a unified, hierarchically organized space to function as a cathedral. The fact that St Giles had been ‘indirectlie parcelled and disjoynit by wallis and partitiounes’ was criticized as having been done ‘without any warrand frome any oure Royal predicessoure’.208 In 1639 the partitions were re-erected following the Scottish Covenants, showing the ideological implications of spatial organization, and its effectiveness in defining religious beliefs but also political affiliations.209 Charles’ enforcement of the Anglican service were highly resented as ‘impolitickly done, without the Privity of the Secret Council, or general Approbation of the Clergy; they were regarded as foreign Impoſitions […] forced upon the Nation by the ſole authority of the King’.210 This progressive detachment after
203 National Archive of Scotland, GD40/2/XIX/I.37, as described in Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 493. 204 Ibid. Discussed overall in 493–96. Authorship in Christian Mary Hesketh, ‘The Political Opposition to the Government of Charles I in Scotland’ (PhD dissertation, King’s College London, 1999), p. 225. See also Christian Mary Hesketh, ‘Charles I’s Coronation Visit to Scotland in 1633’, Papers of the Royal Stuart Society, 52 (1998), 1–13 (5). 205 Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 488–89. Also discussed in Aonghus MacKechnie, ‘Scots Court Architecture of the early 17th Century’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 252–54. 206 In detail in Spalding, History of the Troubles, vol. 1, p. 17. Ruler-centred innovations to the coronation in John Bute, Scottish Coronations (London: Alexander Gardner, 1902), pp. 63–140, particularly 69–70 and 73–76. 207 John Row, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, from the Year 1558 to August 1637 (Edinburgh: The Wodrow Society, 1842), p. 363. 208 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1626–1641, James David Marwick and Marguerite Wood (eds), (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1936), p. 134. 209 Significance of post-coronation spatial alterations in Andrew Spicer, ‘Laudianism in Scotland? St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, 1633–39 — A Reappraisal’, Architectural History, 46 (2003), 95–108; Shaw, ‘St Giles Church’, 498–99. 210 Maitland, History of Edinburgh, p. 71.
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1604 of rulers of England and Scotland from the ‘Scottish side’ of their role has been extensively discussed — the geographical removal being matched by a progressive Anglicization of what had initially been hailed as a pan-British court, with the Scottish public experiencing feelings of marginalization and resentment.211 Charles’ desire to dictate his subjects’ personal beliefs, and the ceremonies and buildings expressing them showed a monarch determined to intervene in both the mental and physical spaces his subjects inhabited: his attitude of appropriation towards St Giles was representative of what he took as his God-given right to shape the world according to his views. However, these changes were perceived as interfering and authoritarian, and the physical separation that Episcopalian Charles advocated between the clergy and the assembly mirrored the new separation between this ruler and his subjects, symbolically and practically inhabiting different spaces. Charles’ unconcern for popular engagement needs to be seen in context. In a reaction to the inquisitions surrounding her own father’s private life, Queen Elizabeth had sacralized monarchical authority by presenting herself as unassailable Gloriana, Deborah, and Judith — state-promoted icons that she fed to the adoring masses. The Queen’s frequent progresses and making the most of public occasions allowed Elizabeth to make herself visible, creating a political dialogue with her subjects, and unity around her royal persona.212 James VI/I had promoted a policy of divinely ordained kingship and partaking in God’s divinity.213 He did not engage enthusiastically in public progresses, preferring to perform the cult of majesty in private ceremonies, and in doing so, he ‘undermined in practice the sacrality he so ardently advocated, because he failed to display his sacred body to his waiting subjects’.214 By simplifying the symbolism around the actual Eucharist and Mass but maintaining and promoting the language of semi-divine ritual surrounding the king’s political body, the Reformation had emphasized the idea of monarchical sacredness — but with it came complications. Court life adopted religious symbolism to exalt this semi-divine monarch, through a language focused on personal veneration and by enforcing spatial separations. The use of canopies, genuflexion, blessings, hand-washing — for example in relation to the ceremony of royal dining in state at Charles I’s court — and other strictly prescribed ritual practices expressed familiar, reassuring values. However, as the Mass from which it took its moves, the message of the borrowed religious language — now language of state — was so embedded in the medium as to make variations impossible, constraining the sacralized ruler within the confines of a prescribed ceremonial. This new 211 Keith M. Brown, ‘The Vanishing Emperor: British Kingship and its Decline 1603–1707’, in Roger A. Mason (ed.), Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 58–90. 212 Sharpe, ‘Sacralization and Demystification’, pp. 103–06; Mary Hill Cole, ‘Monarchy in Motion: An Overview of Elizabethan Progresses’, in Archer, Goldring and Knight (eds), Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments, pp. 27–45 (pp. 41–43). 213 Parry, Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 22–23. 214 Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p. 246.
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Europe-wide ritual of power was then the antithesis of theatricality by being an end in itself, not requiring an audience beyond the courtiers’ own circle, and actually snubbing the idea of courting popular approval or seeking occasions for public engagement.215 It has been argued when discussing the reasons for Charles I’s downfall, that ‘it was the mystification of sovereignty that led […] to political iconoclasm’.216 The next section will explore this concept in the context of Charles’ wish both to intervene authoritatively in Edinburgh’s civic space, and to withdraw haughtily from the civic stage — preferences already partially signalled by James VI/I. It will also discuss the possible consequences of both kings’ disinclination to engage with public rituals of welcome, preferring the seclusion of court ritual and the artificial magnificence of masques. The Triumphal Route: Addressing Stability and Change If a strong monarchy was characterized by offering safety and guidance in the face of religious upheaval and political changes, Scottish monarchs were on paper a hardly suitable, problematically diverse bunch, an unsettling sequence of youngsters, women, religious dissidents, foreigners, and often a combination of the above. The Roman-inspired imagery of triumphal entries itself relied heavily on the presence of a militarily successful, charismatic, athletic male à la Charles V.217 The recurrent unsuitability of the monarch’s figure in Scotland stimulated creative applications of suitable elements of triumphal culture — all’antica triumphal arches, Roman-inspired iconographies, classical language and myth, and Petrarchan processions. The impasse between the wished-for monarch and the actual one was addressed through a decorative language that reframed problematic visitors through a language of dynastic belonging, with each (flawed) monarch being the current representative of the higher, perfect concept of ‘Monarchy’. The repetitiveness of themes and objects employed and the frequent appearance of genealogical displays reflects the creation of a unified language, chronologically anchoring the current monarch to their ancestors, shown as martial figures in armour. Spatially, the constancy of the route was instrumental in grounding even the more problematic ruler to their role and public persona. Repeatedly displaying a community secure in its spatial and architectural setting and in its representative bodies, reasserted the burgh’s role in the historical narrative shared with the sovereigns, and its dependable relationship with a solid monarchical institution, still triumphantly renovating itself through dynastic and political moves, if not through military aggressiveness.
215 John Adamson, ‘Making of the Ancien-Régime Court’, pp. 25–35. On Charles I’s reign see John Adamson, ‘The Kingdom of England and Great Britain, The Tudor and Stuart Courts 1509–1714’, in Adamson (ed.), Princely Courts, pp. 95–117 (pp. 104–05). See also Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, pp. 91–96, 170–71. 216 Sharpe, ‘Sacralization and Demystification’, p. 112. 217 For example Charles V’s welcome into Genoa, in Mitchell, Majesty of the State, 135–37, 151–57.
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A variety of political considerations were in play. The routes of the Medici’s brides Eleonora of Toledo (1539), Johanna of Austria (1565), Christine of Lorraine (1589), and Mary Magdalene of Austria (1608) showed an ever-changing relationship with the Florentine cityscape, creating spatially different representations of the Medici’s power.218 The Valois entries into Paris were instead organized around an approximately straight line from the Saint Denis Gate, the Ponceau Fountain, the Hospital of the Trinity, then to the Painters’ Gate, the Fountain of the Holy Innocents, passing the Grand Butchery, the Châtelet, Moneychangers’ Bridge, finally to Notre Dame Cathedral and the Palais de Justice.219 Small alterations started to appear in the late sixteenth century in the route, the imagery, and the level of involvement of the guilds, leading up to its extensive reorganization by Louis XIV, which marginalized the input of local confraternities. In Ferrara, the routes for the Este brides between 1473 (Eleonora d’Aragona) and 1579 (Margarita Gonzaga), and that of visiting Queen Margaret of Austria in 1598 were planned as individual experiences based on contingencies and practical needs, such as expected benefits and obligations arising from the connection, the direction of arrival of the procession, and military considerations. Some entries ended up being significantly shorter than others were, but all converged towards the cathedral square and Este Castle via the very central Via del Saraceno, which offered the only straight, stately approach.220 In comparison, the reassuring traditionalism behind Edinburgh’s triumphal route spoke of a steady relationship between the institution of monarchy and the urban government, which promised stability to a monarchy and a city through a constant spatial dialogue of mutual recognition. Any proposed innovation by the Crown to the route, to the urban fabric, or to the secular and religious rituals performed within the civic spaces, were actually giving physical form to an increasing royal influence. Already Mary’s choices to bypass the West Port and insert the castle in the triumphal route had — intentionally or unwittingly — intervened in an established balance of spatial power. James VI/I’s attempted refurbishing of the royal chapel in 1617, and the attempts by James VI and Charles I in 1590 and 1633 to stage royal coronations in the civic church meddled with significant spatial signifiers of burgh’s identity, imposing royal usage, celebratory language, and religious beliefs through ceremonial and spatial alterations. Their forced retreats to Holyrood suggest a partially successful parry by the local authorities. However, Charles established his symbolic control over the city on the very morning of the coronation. Rather than following the tradition of a short, semi-religious procession on foot from the ruler’s lodgings to the coronation place, on the night before the ceremony Charles rode to the castle to have supper there, and progressed from the Castle to Holyrood Abbey on
218 Florentine triumphal entries in Testaverde, ‘Feste Medicee’, which includes maps of these events, plates 1, 23, 93, 105, 110, 114, and 130. 219 Patterns of Parisian routes in Bryant, King and the City, pp. 59–66, and summed up on p. 239, fig. 1; Hospital of Trinity example in pp. 150–52. 220 Ghirardo, ‘Festival Bridal Entries’, pp. 62–69.
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horseback on the following day with great pomp along the High Street and Canongate.221 The procession was splendid, with the Honours of Scotland being carried in the procession and the nobility ‘all richly cled in ſcarlet furred robes, rode upon their horſes, furniſhed with rich ſaddles and foot mantles, ilk ane in their own roumes, with the king, down throw the ſtreits to the Abbay’.222 Nineteenth-century antiquarian John, Third Marquess of Bute, describes the procession as tacky and whimsical, as Of a sense of the ridiculous he was clearly destitute, or the notion of the triumphal procession of an itinerant circus must have struck him at once. It was clearly to indulge this singular fancy that he had made the cumbrous and otherwise senseless journey to the Castle the night before.223 No mention was made of any kind of civic participation in the event, as if the King organized his own passage through the city on his own conditions and without bothering to liaise with the city authority. Charles was effectively appropriating the civic space whose use had been denied to him as coronation location, reducing it to a politically voiceless promenade onto which to project the grandiose spectacle of majesty, in front of a background of uninvolved onlookers whose presence was neither necessary nor expected. In fairness, James VI/I had also performed a ride from the Castle to Holyrood during his 1617 visit, as part of the courtly entertainments for the monarch’s birthday on 19 June. After having dined at the castle about 9 or 10 o’clocke at nicht, the King cam doun from the Castle to the Abbay, and all the way, both in the one syd and of the uther, thair was grit fyres set furth, and at the entres of the utter court in the Abbay their was a boy of nyne yeires ould that maid ane oratioun in Greike to the King.224 The celebrations continued inside the palace with a spectacle ‘acted and played by the yong men of Edenborrow’.225 In this case however, the lighting of bonfires as a sign of popular delight and the setting up of a small entertainment showed popular participation in James’ celebration; Edinburgh burgesses’ involvement in the main courtly spectacle demonstrated spatial reciprocity — the burgh’s representatives being invited within the King’s palace. Also, the event taking place late at night would not interfere with the burgh’s daily activities, making it a less forceful and confrontational instance of public appropriation than Charles’ cavalcade. Other elements of spatial appropriation also appeared as part of James VI/I’s entry in 1617 but with a temporary, ad-hoc character, such as the civic authorities’ decision ‘to build ane Banquating Hous in the
221 Bute, Scottish Coronations, pp. 88–91. 222 Spalding, History of the Troubles, vol. 1, p. 17. 223 Bute, Scottish Coronations, p. 88. 224 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 22. 225 Ibid.
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Figure 31. An eighteenth-century view of the courtyard in front of the Parliament in Edinburgh.
Counsall Hous Yaird, for intertening his Majestie and his Nobles’.226 The Privy Council’s expectations as stated on 24 December 1616 that the burgh and its surroundings would ‘foirsee and provide that their be good ludgeingis within the saidis boundis for five thousand men and stablis for five thousand horse’227 show an understanding of Edinburgh civic space and resources as naturally available to the Crown. Available buildings and accommodations were to be surveyed — mapping of space an unequivocal sign of spatial appropriation — in ‘a perfyte and cleir rolle’ specifying location and state, ownership, ‘the number of chalmers and beddis within every house’,228 and the perspective number of allocated guests.229 In comparison, Charles’ interventions into the urban fabric of the St GilesTolbooth-Market Cross were not temporary or utilitarian, but rather aimed at a permanent reorganization of the identifying activities of the burgh — of its very sense of self. Firstly, the aforementioned internal refurbishing of the Kirk included external interventions, as the King ordered in August 1634 to take
226 227 228 229
Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 317. Ibid., p. 311. Ibid., p. 312. The organization for James VI/I’s arrival in McNeill and McNeill, ‘Scottish Progress of James VI’, passim.
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down the shops abutting the external walls of the church, in a decision imitating the King’s policy regarding the restructuring of English cathedrals. Secondly, the transformation of the Kirk into a single space displaced numerous small congregations, causing change and uneasiness in the local geography of religious worship. Finally, the King’s insistence on the construction of a purpose-built Parliament for the administration of civic and national matters represented the enforcement of English-inspired conformity.230 The construction of a Parliament House and Parliament square just behind the newly instituted bishopric of St Giles, significantly changed the national geography of power, these large-scale civic improvements prescribing Edinburgh’s new role in a British context.231 The original plan included two buildings, one for the Privy Council on the High Street, near the Tolbooth — which was never realized, but which would have further altered the urban geography of this crucial node — and the Parliament itself, in its present position behind St Giles ‘in that plaice quhair now the goldsmith and skynners schoppes at presentlie’.232 The choice of the site aimed at reforming the existing administrative and legislative significance of the area. While the Parliament’s positioning acknowledged the presence of the nearby buildings of Scottish power, its appearance — particularly its roofline — was decidedly Italianate, and reminiscent of the work of Inigo Jones and of English country houses, stylistically very far from the traditional turreted architecture of tolbooths233 [see Figure 31]. The Edinburgh city council willingly undertook this large and expensive project bringing prestige to the civic community, and significantly enhanced its role as capital: in March 1632 the council had discussed constructing both a parliament and session house to the south of St Giles, a tolbooth for the Privy Council, and an exchequer on the High Street.234 However, these plans were probably an anxious response to Charles’ threat to make Edinburgh-based courts peripatetic for lack of adequate facilities. In a political and spatial quidpro-quo, Charles agreed to settle the courts permanently in Edinburgh in the same letter in which he discussed the establishment of a bishopric in St Giles, expecting compliance after his own gesture of goodwill.235 James VI/I’s and Charles I’s preference for crown-driven urban intervention is clear on a larger scale in London, where the monarchs made extensive and sustained efforts to transform the city into a glorious national capital that physically expressed Jacobean and Caroline government. James VI/I had an ambitious project to improve the celebrative London route joining Whitehall Palace to St Paul’s 230 English dimension of Charles I’s interventions in Spicer, ‘Laudianism in Scotland?’ 100–02. 231 Aonghus MacKechnie, ‘The Crisis of Kingship: 1603–1707’, in Glendinning (ed.), Scottish Government, pp. 96–97. 232 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1626–1641, p. 109; discussed in MacKechnie, ‘Crisis of Kingship’, p. 98. 233 Considerations on the style in MacKechnie, ‘Crisis of Kingship’, pp. 102–11, 115–16. Building phases and completion in pp. 124–34. 234 Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 144–49. 235 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, pp. 203–06.
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Cathedral through demolitions and the construction of ad-hoc perspectives, new facades and controlled vistas, and planned connecting roads and squares. This Stuart-friendly royal route superimposed the rulers’ views of history to traditional, established medieval institutions, transforming the fabric of the city of London into the set of a colossal courtly masque organized around the viewpoint of the prince moving through it.236 Charles’ interventions in St Paul’s in London aimed at an ‘impressive visual representation of the integrated nature of civic, spiritual, and royal authority’,237 similar in principle to the smaller-scale interventions and modernizing approach he demonstrated to the St Giles area. While James’ approach was somehow inclusive of Londoners’ own perceptions of their urban spaces, Charles tended to disregard any opposition to his monarch-driven urban ideal, and the symbolic and physical distance between the Crown and the alienated Londoners created a rift that soon turned to hostility.238 James’ Trew Law of Free Monarchies published in London in 1603, embraced New Humanism culture’s reasoning that voluntary submission to the king’s supreme authority and law was the hallmark of a civilized and modern society.239 However, with regard to Scotland, James had been satisfied to leave the application of his policies to the Privy Council, acknowledging the need for adjustments in a traditionally autonomous country. Instead, Charles expected his orders to be obeyed as proof of Scotland’s unquestioning loyalty to a God-given sovereign, heavily resenting what he perceived as interferences by local, duplicitous magistrates. When seen in the broader context of Charles I’s spatial inflexibility and tone-deafness towards the subtleties of popular favour, the intervention in and appropriation of Edinburgh’s key spaces appear intentional attempts to impose a more British (not to say English) spatial outlook. Spatial reorganization meant bringing back in line what he perceived as a chaotically uncontrollable, suspiciously unorthodox system of worship and administration, very distant from his own English experience, and unworthy of the monarchy’s dignity and reverence.240 James VI/I’s London court had managed to remain receptive of celebrative works speaking of realistic issues and experiences — particularly thanks to court poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, whose productions acted as intermediary between the court and the city, also incorporating elements of realism through satire and critique in his flattering pageants. In its later years the language of Jacobean masques turned inwards, displaying in a sheltered environment the perfection of the King’s authority.241 Rather than engaging with urban spaces
236 The city’s dependent relationship to the ruler in Vaughan Hart, Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 158–73, particularly 166 and 169. 237 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, p. 208. Comparison between St Paul’s and St Giles pp. 207–08. 238 James Robertson, ‘Stuart London and the Idea of a Royal Capital City’, Renaissance Studies, 15 (1) (March 2001), 37–58 (38–40, 52). 239 Mason, ‘Laicisation and the Law’, pp. 22–24. 240 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, pp. 151–66, Parry, Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 263–64. 241 Graham Parry, ‘The Politics of the Jacobean Masque’, in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (eds), Theatre and Government Under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 87–117 (pp. 113–15).
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directly, architecture’s stylistic canons and rules of proportions and perspective were explored in their perfected form as recreated on a courtly stage, inhabited by dancers and masque performers, centred optically and choreographically onto the ruler’s gaze: stagecraft and statecraft aligned.242 Didactical attitudes became old-fashioned, and popular drama grounded in real concerns was disregarded as vulgar; this gagged any dialogic expression of opposition and dissent in masques, and jarred with the directness of earlier Protestant culture.243 The language of the Caroline masque became even more self-referential and court-centric, interested in gay splendour and artificial exaggerations: its rarefied atmosphere was culturally impermeable to outside criticisms, focusing on the collecting and patronage of foreign artists, and fully detached from real-life interests and challenges experienced in the realm.244 The late Jacobean and even more the Caroline courts were spatially removed, not engaged directly with subjects by travelling the realm to make themselves seen and accessible through civic ceremonies. On the contrary, monarchs like Charles longing for increased formality and stately isolation, progressively put in place spatial alterations such as multiple-room apartments, which restricted access to and interaction with the monarch to a set of fixed rituals.245 The Stuarts’ public spectacles were organized ‘grudgingly, infrequently, and on the smallest acceptable scale’,246 ignoring the chance to feed on popular enthusiasm, and to create a programme of artistic propaganda appealing to the urban masses. This can be compared for example with Queen Regent Mary of Guise’s skewed recasting of the themes of Mary’s Parisian wedding in 1558 — a courtly banquet, entertainment, and dance — into a civic celebration, publicly linking France and Scotland in the populace’s memory in times of political uncertainty.247 In 1633, the organization and language of Forbes’ Panegyricke borrowed heavily from that of courtly masques, and Charles’ understanding and interpretation of urban space was inevitably influenced by his experiences of entertainments at Whitehall. By celebrating the erection of ‘obeliskes’ and of ‘high phanes and temples’, and the organization of ‘Religious rites and games for thee erected’248 to obtain immortal fame and a place amongst the gods, Forbes was speaking the language of the Caroline masque, focused on the consolidation of absolutist power through
242 Caroline Van Eck, ‘Statecraft or Stagecraft? English Paper Architecture in the Seventeenth Century’, in Bonnemaison and Macy (eds), Festival Architecture, pp. 113–28. Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 77–96. 243 P. W. Thomas, ‘Two Cultures? Court and Country Under Charles I’, in Conrad Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 168–93 (pp. 173–78). Lesley Mickel, Ben Jonson’s Antimasques: A History of Growth and Decline (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 173–81. 244 Parry, Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 184–203. 245 In relation to French monarchs in Monique Chatenet, ‘Etiquette and Architecture at the Court of the Last Valois’, in Mulryne and Goldring (eds), Court Festivals, pp. 76–100 (pp. 89–94). 246 Malcolm Smuts, ‘The Political Failure of Stuart Cultural Patronage’, in Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (eds), Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 165–90 (p. 173). 247 Carpenter and Runnals, ‘Entertainment’, 152–54, 156–57. 248 Forbes, ‘Panegyricke’, p. 286.
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framing royal magnificence in terms of absolutes and permanence. The King’s visit to Edinburgh was intended more as a gesture of colonization than as an attempt to be part of a dialogue, leaving markers in the civic spaces as signs of appropriation rather than embracing the fluid, temporary, itinerant character of the celebration.249 Not all markers were the size of the new Parliament, with the dissemination of objects and imagery supporting the Crown’s religious policies: at least three of Edinburgh’s churches acquired and used decorated objects such as bread plates and communion cups in the early 1630s.250 Charles’ willingness to manipulate Edinburgh civic space to his own advantage reflects the increasing confidence of the Jacobean and Caroline eras in the illusory power of the theatrical-like devices of court masques to transform reality effortlessly.251 This confidence was both misplaced and misleading, as the ideology of absolute and self-sufficient authority was not backed-up by the support of the bourgeois class, by Parliament, or by the state of the country’s economy.252 Also, an essential condition of the successful absorption of local and regional systems of powers into the monarchical state was the central government’s ability to provide them with a degree of dialogical representation and emotional investment in the centralized and otherwise remote machine of government.253 For example, Henri IV’s relationship with French towns was authoritative but emphatically inclusive, maintaining traditional aspects of mutual acknowledgement through the reissuing of privileges, and a sound politic of clientage. Henri IV used triumphal entries to dialogue with the riotous cities of the Catholic League in the 1590s, actively participating in staged ceremonies of reconciliations to promote feelings of loyalty to the Crown.254 In comparison, James VI/I displayed a marked lack of performative skills in the 1604 London entry, where he ‘forfeited the opportunity symbolically to receive the space of London when it was proffered to him’,255 by not showing appreciation or interacting with speeches and scenes designed by Dekker and Jonson to promote monarchical response or action.256 The exceptional flattery of the post-Elizabethan court — so different from Scottish relaxed directness — and its expectations of martial rule were arguably mismatched to James VI/I’s reserved disposition, and an initially unassuming, affable monarch became arbitrarily authoritative, disillusioned, and remote.257 During his travels at the beginning of his reign, he had participated willingly in rituals of gift-giving with the authorities of the hosting cities, and
249 Sillitoe, ‘“And Afterwards to His Palace of Westminster”’, 95–97. 250 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, pp. 208–12. 251 Theatrical devices in Hart, Art and Magic, pp. 84–91. 252 Mickel, Ben Jonson’s Antimasques, pp. 182–83. 253 Blockmans, History of Power, pp. 303–13, particularly 309–13. 254 Finley-Croswhite, Henry IV and the Towns, pp. 47–62; 182–86. 255 Mardock, Our Scene is London, p. 41. 256 Ibid., pp. 30–44, Parry, Golden Age Restor’d, p. 21. 257 Jenny Wormald, ‘O Brave New World? Union in 1603’, in T. C. Smout (ed.), Anglo-Scottish Relations from 1603 to 1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 13–36 (pp. 26–31). Also Tim Harris, Rebellion, pp. 47–48.
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indeed during his 1617 entry he is recorded as being reasonably pleased by and responsive to the ceremonies staged for him, possibly responding to a familiar, less stifling social and cultural context.258 In turn, Charles’ direct interference in Edinburgh’s financial and administrative matters combined with the perceived distance between a misunderstood public opinion and a demanding monarch keen to redesign and curtail Edinburgh’s role, and without the buffer of a now powerless Privy Council. Faced with the monarch’s intransigence and no chance of dialogue, the fracture of the Covenants represented an attempt not to innovate and seek change but rather to restore cooperation.259 A thin continuous line exists between the misappropriation of spatial rituals and conventions exposed during Charles’ 1633 Edinburgh entry, and the rancour and disillusionment that brought over the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Early Stuart monarchs had progressively lost the ability and interest to communicate with their subjects through art and literature, and through civic spectacles, having renounced in popular opinion their role as upholders of national values and moral virtues as much in their cultural preferences as in their political undertakings.260 Their artistic form of choice, the masque, emphasized rather than bridged the gap between the court’s perception of reality and the nation’s experience of it, as ‘one indication of the larger, structural dysfunctions on which the Stuart consensus was eventually to founder’.261 Charles’ failure to relate to the triumphal ceremonies in Edinburgh was not a sudden mishap, but the final act of a century-old narrative, reflecting the growing misalignment between monarchical visions of civic space as orderly expression of authority, and what the language of triumphal entries as devised by the civic community in Edinburgh’s specific urban setting was geared to offer. It is also legitimate to wonder to what extent and for how long Edinburgh’s fixed spatial message could contain the burgh–monarch relationship in its seventeenth-century incarnation. The next chapters will ask whether and to what extent elements of novelty and innovations could be included in some of the later ceremonies: for now, the third element of the core space of Edinburgh, the Market Cross and the associated distributions of edibles, will offer a more lighthearted theme for investigation. Market Cross: Concord, Abundance, and Merriment The third key structure in the central core of Edinburgh public space was the Market Cross: representing the burgh’s right to free trade, during triumphal entries this location was often associated with a fountain from which wine poured freely.
258 Heal, Power of Gifts, pp. 122–23. 259 Laura A. M. Stewart, Urban Politics, pp. 170–71. 260 P. W. Thomas, ‘Two Cultures?’, pp. 182 and 193. 261 Martin Butler, ‘Ben Jonson and the Limits of Courtly Panegyric’, in Sharpe and Lake (eds), Culture and Politics, pp. 67–115 (pp. 114–15).
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Gifting food was highly symbolic in medieval tradition; it suggested commensality and the forging of a personal bond, with nuanced prescriptions regarding the quality, quantity, timing, and manner of delivery and reception. As a facilitator of human relationships it helped to reach agreements, to cultivate the relationship, between giver and receiver, and it implied reciprocity and the expectations of favours in return.262 Similar to other expensive goods like spices and sweets, the gift of wine could hint at the economic activities and trading connections of the community, and as an expensive beverage that the lower classes had few opportunities to consume, it had connotations of exceptionality and festivity.263 The amounts of wine offered for consumption were often proportioned to the importance of the visitors — so an apparently free outpour such as that of the fountain in the illustration of the Field of the Cloth of Gold entertainments (see Plate VIII) suggested personal honour and boundless wealth.264 Toasting with wine — particularly in medieval Germany — also signalled the ritual binding together of the parties involved in marriage contracts, commercial deals, or in debt mediation, performed in public taverns and in the presence of witnesses.265 As civic locations essential to a community’s health and prosperity, public fountains such as the Conduit at Cheapside also offered practical, spacious, and central stages for public entertainments. Here in 1559 through the pageant of Veritas Temporis Filia, the image of renewal introduced in the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn in 1533 through Hans Holbein’s Parnassus-like fountain came to completion, with the flourishing reign of Anne’s daughter demonstrating the truth of that distant promise.266 Also at Cheapside in 1431 for Henry VI’s entry, a fountain surrounded by artificial trees loaded with fruits again ran with wine at the monarch’s appearance, a representation of abundance representing the fruits of perfect kingship, and paralleling Henry’s arrival to that of Christ at Cana.267 In Paris, the celebrations at the Ponceau Fountain were also related to abundance, but the offerings evolved from the beginning of the sixteenth century from real provisions like claret and spiced wine to the symbolic ‘nourishments’ of flattering remarks and advice for the monarchs’ minds and souls.268 The temporary goodwill resulting from offering wine during the 1565 entry of Johanna of Austria in Florence was maintained through the equally celebratory enterprise of bringing much-needed public water to the city, with the Medici-sponsored construction of the Neptune
262 C. M. Woolgar, ‘Gifts of Food in Late Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 37 (1) (2011), 6–18. 263 Murphy, Ceremonial Entries, pp. 95–99. 264 Mario Damen, ‘Giving by Pouring, The Function of Gifts of Wine in the City of Leiden (14th–16th Centuries)’, in van Leeuwen (ed.), Symbolic Communication, pp. 83–100 (pp. 83–86, 95). 265 B. Ann Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany (London: University of Virginia Press, 2001), pp. 92–93, 103, 107–09, 112–13. 266 Lees-Jeffries, ‘Veritas Temporis Filia: Location as Metaphor’, pp. 67–73. Pro-Protestant use of Veritas Filia Temporis, and as a Scottish decorative theme in Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 59–63. See also Kipling, ‘Deconstruction of the Virgin’, 130. 267 Strong, Art and Power, p. 9. Kipling, Enter the King, p. 32. 268 Parisian examples in Bryant, King and the City, pp. 141–50.
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Fountain in Piazza della Signoria (built 1560–1574). The increasing presence of water-related gods in the Medici’s ceremonies reflected their increasing interest in regimenting water as a way to promote actual or symbolic abundance in their cities, villas, and across their reign.269 In Edinburgh, the first reference to fountains running with wine is in 1503, when Younge reported that ‘in the Mydds of the Towne was a Croſſe, new painted, and ny to that ſame a Fontayne, caſtynge forth of Wyn, and ychon drank that wold’.270 The flowing of wine freely available to all spectators was a common characteristic of Edinburgh entries, underlining the burgh’s financial prosperity and the communal character of the celebration. The aborted 1537 celebrations for Queen Madeleine would have probably included a similar station, as Lyndsay’s poem mentions ‘fontanes following watter cleir and wyne’.271 In 1538 for Mary of Guise’s entry, the Queen was ‘honestlie and richlie propynit witht the provost and communitie of the toun baitht witht spyce and wyne gold and sillier’,272 placing the distribution of wine alongside gold, silver, and the entertainments themselves as the chosen means to honour the town’s guests. Again in 1558, the burgh purchased wine in abundance to ‘run upone the Croce’,273 and paid a worker and his labourers ‘for making of pypis to the out passage of the wyne and awaiting upone the samin’,274 showing how work was needed to make the ‘miracle’ actually happen. For Mary’s return in 1561 the cross ‘run wyne of all ſorts’,275 and ‘the wyne ran out at the ſpouttis in greit abundance; thair wes the noyſs of pepill caſting the glaſſis with wyne’.276 In the later entries, appropriate classical gods of abundance appeared at the cross. In 1579, wine was still distributed to the populace at the cross, but this time by a Bacchus sitting ‘on a puncheon, with his painted garment, and a flowre garland. He welcomed the king to his owne toun, and dranke manie glasses, and cast them among the people. There were there runne three puncheons of wine’.277 The distribution of wine to the crowds by Bacchus ‘in large Bumpers’ was mentioned alongside ‘the People crying God save the King’278 suggesting the wisdom of investing in people-pleasing refreshments alongside more highbrow classical figures. In 1590, Anna of Denmark also saw a Bacchus at the cross distributing wine, but the scene had grown in complexity.
269 Felicia M. Else, ‘Fountains of Wine and Water and the Refashioning of Urban Space in the 1565 Entrata to Florence’, in Mulryne, De Jonge, Martens and Morris (eds), Architectures of Festival, pp. 73–98. More broadly in Felicia M. Else, The Politics of Water in the Art and Festivals of Medici Florence (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 53–112, particularly pp. 76–85. 270 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 271 Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie. Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 373. Also noted in Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 42–43. 272 Pitscottie. Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 381. 273 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 270. 274 Ibid., p. 271. 275 Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 57. 276 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 277 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459. 278 Crawfurd, Memoirs, p. 357.
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Upon the top of the Croſſe a table covered, whereupon ſtood cups of gold and ſilver full of wine, with the Goddeſſe of Corne and Wine ſitting thereat, and the corne in heaps by her, who, in Latin, cried that there ſhould be plentie thereof in her time; and on the ſide of the croſſe ſate the god Bacchus vpon a punchion of wine, winking, and caſting it by cups full vpon the people, beſides other of the townſmen, that caſt apples and nuts among them; and the Croſſe itſelf ranne claret wine upon the caulſway, for the loyaltie of that day.279 Not only was Bacchus now joined by a recognizably apparelled Ceres, but the Danish chronicler observed how the homage of wine to the citizens had here multiplied to include other delicacies, as ‘In front of them they had nuts, corn, straw, silver plates with sugar and silver dishes with grapes’.280 The fountain’s structure must have been both a remarkable engineering feat and a sight most elegant, with awnings, and purple subtly interwoven with glittering gold, with hidden pipes and bubbling springs, whence the wine will pour forth from the sole mouths of savage lions.281 In 1590 at the station on the Overbow there was also a distribution of food when one of the performers, a mathematician and astronomer, prophesied the Queen’s happy future and positive influence upon Scotland. As a proof of his trustworthiness he forecasted that ‘Nature will now send you rain and hail, white, hard and sweet behold, here it is in your lap’. At this, finely ground sugar and various sweets were thrown from the windows on all sides.282 The built environment was again part of the spectacle, with the very streets of Edinburgh becoming the source of apparently inexhaustible abundance, freely showered onto the parade. In the last two entries, no wine was explicitly mentioned, suggesting a change of focus similar to that displayed in the Parisian entries from mass-oriented offerings of edibles to more elite, symbolic representations of nourishment. In 1617 there was no mention of the kind of celebrations happening at the cross; the account of this part of the event is not very detailed, and only mentions that the King ‘cam to the cros, and thair he, with his nobilles, lichtet doun with gret triumphe, and went into the Hie Kirk’.283 In 1633, celebrations at the Market Cross appeared again, but there was in fact no wine or mouth-watering food in sight, here or elsewhere. Charles does meet upon the cross
279 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 41. 280 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 115. 281 Damman, Schediasmata, [63–66], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 282 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 110. 283 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19.
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a shew of panisques: Bacchus crowned with ivie, and naked from the shoulders up, bestroad a hogshead; by him stood Silenus, Silvanus, Pomona, Venus. Ceres, in a straw coloured mantle, embrodered with eares of corne, and a dressing of the same on her head.284 These allegorical figures expressed symbolically the unrestrained merriment and lavishness that the free distribution of wine and sweets would have caused; the King might have been pleased at these learned references, but the populace would have probably preferred the real thing. From 1579, when Bacchus had accompanied the traditional wine distribution, classical language started taking over more and more significance and space at the Market Cross station — until the actual distribution of food was entirely marginalized; the increasing popularity of classical language will be explored further in Chapter VII. However it is also worth considering that the positioning of the cross — and hence, of the wine distribution — in the vicinities of St Giles could have added some religious undertones to the event, and consider the introduction of parallel classical themes as a post-Reformation reaction to a spiritually loaded spatial context. In the Netherlands, newly elected burgomasters were bestowed with wine, and the magistrates’ close position to the body and blood of Christ during processions represented their higher status.285 Also in Germany, alcohol was symbolically equalled with Christ’s own blood as the fluid of life, providing an accessible bridging experience between sacred and secular realms.286 In Scotland, the liturgical and legitimizing connotations of a wine fountain placed just outside St Giles would have been a most inappropriate topic for a post-Reformation burgh, particularly given James VI/I’s and Charles I’s attempts to reintroduce more elaborate ceremonials and symbolism. The introduction of additional crowd-pleasing elements to the simple running of the wine — the appearance of classical figures, the distribution of sweets and foodstuff — would have diminished possible references to wine’s holiness, and reduce it to one of many delicious delicatessens on offer as theatrical prompts. The doing away with the wine entirely in 1633 and the presence of dishevelled, unruly demigods of excess suggested a visual Carnival in opposition to possible earlier liturgical undertones, also conveying through classical language a message much more rarefied than an actual messy distribution of edibles. Any flavour of binding ceremony between partners — sealed by a publicly shared drink or meal with an expectation of reciprocity — would have been left behind.
284 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 285 Damen, ‘Giving by Pouring’, pp. 83–86 and 95. 286 Tlusty, Bacchus, pp. 104, 113–14.
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Chapter VII
The Salt Tron Some Iconographic Considerations The Salt Tron The Tron name derived from an Old French word meaning weighing beam, and the associated building was also used for other trade-related functions. The Tron Kirk now standing was built in 1637 by order of King Charles I, to house a dislodged congregation previously worshipping at St Giles1 [see Figure 32]. The Triumphal Route: Selecting Iconographies In Charles I’s entry in 1633, as exemplified by the disappearance of communal drinking at the Market Cross station in favour of deities of abundance, more sophisticated themes replaced popular shows; classical iconography took over the civic space. At the West Port, the nymph of the city was accompanied by a personification of the river Lithus (Leith), and by the very recognizable Roman sea-god ‘Neptune bestriding his Hippocampus, the Nereides about him, his trident in his hand’.2 Next, Caledonia’s speech hailed Charles as a new Phoebus, bringer of the Golden Age, who would make ‘Scotland’s name to flie / On halcyon’s wings’,3 and defining the valorous Scottish people as ‘A Mars-adorning brood’,4 defending their country more bravely than Neptune would defend a favourite island. The third arch showed Mars and Minerva, the former ‘amidst flourishes of armes, as helmes, lances, corslets, pikes, muskets, bowes, cannons’, and the latter ‘amongst flourishes of instruments of peace, as harpes, lutes, organs, cisseres, hauboises’.5 Here Mercury also appeared, ‘with his feathered hat, and his caduceus’.6 After the aforementioned Market Cross meeting, the King at the Salt Tron saw ‘a mountaine dressed for Parnassus, where Apollo and the Muses appeared’.7 Apollo ‘crowned with laurell, with locks long and like gold’8 sat appropriately between the Muses, and presented the King with a book, the whole party being ‘habited conveniently’.9 The mythical mountain itself was a 1 Stuart Harris, Place Names of Edinburgh, p. 610; Wright, Guide to the Royal Mile, p. 31. 2 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 258. 3 Ibid., pp. 264–65. 4 Ibid., p. 263. 5 Ibid., p. 266. 6 Ibid., p. 267. See also Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 121. 7 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 8 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 269. 9 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 122.
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Figure 32. Detail of the Salt Tron and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
wondrous sight, covered in ‘all the varieties of rocks and vegetables, which are to be seen on mountains’, and including ‘an pyramide of great height, with an globe of glass on the top thereof; out of the cavity hereof did spring out a source of clear water, representing Hippocrene’.10 Musicians and choristers sat in the belly of the said mountain, playing and singing at the King’s appearance. At the station near the Netherbow, the Titans appeared ‘prostrate, with mountaines over them, as when they attempted to bandy against the gods’.11 The arch also showed the three Parcae, identified by the accompanying motto ‘THY LIFE WAS KEPT TILL THESE THREE SISTERS SPUNNE / THEIR THREADS OF GOLD, AND THEN THY LIFE BEGUNNE’.12 The arch also included the seven planets as gods enthroned and wearing characteristic attires rich in iconographical references.13
10 11 12 13
Ibid. Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 269. Ibid. Ibid.
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For example, Mars ‘his haire and beard red, a sword at his side, had his robe of deepe crimison taffeta, embroidered with wolves and horses. His head bare a helmet’.14 Shepherd Endymion, who acted as speaker, was appropriately dressed in a rustic knee-length coat, with a wreath of flowers over his unruly and curly long hair; ‘in his hand he bare a sheep-hooke, on his legs were buskins of gilt leather’.15 Also, the three Graces were ‘drawen upon’ the arch; they were ‘naked, and in others hands: they were crowned with eares of corne, flowers, and grapes, to signifie fecunditie […] By them was Argus full of eyes’.16 The next station at the Netherbow itself, showed Honour and Fame, with specific iconographic attributes; the former ‘a person of a reverend countenance, in a blew mantle of the colour of silver, his haire broydered with silver, shaddowing in waves his shoulders’, the latter ‘in a coat all full of eyes and tongues, with a trumpet in her hand, as if shee would sound […] the wings of the bat at her feete, a wreath of gold on her head’.17 This overview shows the extended footprint of classical themes and their accurate iconography, but they were also skilfully complementing specific themes of the narrative. The pageant of Mount Parnassus, written by members of the local scholarly elite, supervised by Apollo, and populated by Muses and by a selection of Scottish learned men, most appropriately promoted a recently established university and Scotland’s cultural vivacity.18 The unusual choice of goddess Selene’s mortal lover Endymion as a speaker was a shrewd one, as the shepherd’s sheltered existence recalled Scotland’s perceived rusticity, and smoothly justified his lavish admiration at the spectacle of Charles’ majesty: Such state and glory did e’re shepheard see? My wits my sense mistrust, and stay amaz’d, No eye on fairer objects ever gaz’d: Sure this is heaven’.19 Scottish experimentation with classical themes in civic festivals started in 1503, with the earliest known example of classical theme in an urban pageant in the British isles — the pageant of the Choice of Paris staged for Margaret Tudor.20 Here ‘was a Scarfawſt maid, wher was repreſented Paris and the Thre Deeſſys, with Mercure, that gaffe him th Apyll of Gold, for to gyffe to the moſt fayre of the Thre, wiche he gave to Venus’.21 This classical theme worked well with the accompanying, aforementioned religious pageants, all focusing on worthy ladies being elevated by male choice. As Paris’s choice of Venus brought rewards but also originated the war of Troy, the King is invited here to consider the long-term consequences 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Ibid., p. 270. Ibid., p. 271. Ibid., pp. 278–79. Ibid., p. 279. The University’s involvement is discussed in Chapter VIII. Ibid., p. 271. Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 28. Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289.
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of his choice of an English bride. However, Aeneas’s resulting flight from Troy did lead to the foundation of Rome — and in James IV and Margaret’s case, their union would cause the Stuart line to inherit the English crown.22 This pageant was here a politically complex entertainment expressing hopes, worries, and admonishments, while its later incarnations south of the border used fashionable classical language to deliver bland flattery. For Queen Anne Boleyn’s entry into London in 1533 an overwhelmed Paris gave the prize to the approaching Anne herself, and in 1566 during the wedding of the Earl of Essex, Paris stated that the attending Queen Elizabeth deserved the apple more than the bride herself.23 In 1558 and 1561, the presence of the seven planets — painted or personified by costumed actors — accentuated the triumphal character of the processional carts. Purchases made in 1558 to create the planets and cupids’ outfits suggest elaborate costumes including coats and stockings, and significant amounts of taffeta — particularly green.24 Also ‘vij reid skynnis tilbe thair schort brotykynnis’ and ‘four golden skynnis bocht fra ane skynnare tilbe ane crown to ane of the planets’ were purchased.25 In 1579 — besides Bacchus appearing at the Market Cross — a planetary-themed entertainment displaying ‘the conjunctioun of the planets in thair degreis and places the tyme of his Majesteis happie nativitie’26 was organized for King James VI at the Netherbow. In 1590, at the Butter Tron ‘were placed nine maidens, brauely arraied in cloth of ſilver and gold, repreſenting the nine Muſes, who ſung very ſweete muſicke, where a brave youth played upon the organs, which accorded excellentlie with the ſinging of their pſalmes’,27 juxtaposing devotional compositions and classical themes. Classical themes were displayed also through tapestries richly illustrated with mythological scenes, decorating the civic space during this — and other — entries. The pointed use of myth in the entry for Anna of Denmark could be an attempt to distance post-Reformation ceremonial language from that of their medieval counterparts, purging medieval religious imagery of alleged superstitious traditional elements.28 The role of musical performances in Scottish triumphal entries should be remarked upon here as relevant — albeit not limited — to the Muses’ activities, and inseparable from other artistic aspects of ceremonial productions, from dance to literature, from painting to acting.29 The Low Countries’ case study exemplifies musical performers’ different spatial roles: singers and musicians were members of the procession; appeared on scaffolds and arches along the 22 Interpreted in Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 263–64, Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 91–122, and Gray, ‘Royal Entry’, p. 19. 23 Anne in Kipling, ‘“He That Saw It Would Not Believe It”: Anne Boleyn’s Royal Entry’, pp. 39–44. Elizabeth in John D. Reeves, ‘The Judgment of Paris as a Device of Tudor Flattery’, Notes and Queries, 199 (1954), 7–11. 24 Adam, (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, pp. 269–70. 25 Ibid., p. 270. See also Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 1, pp. 323–24. 26 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 27 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 28 Kipling, ‘Deconstruction of the Virgin’, 140–52. 29 French case studies in Margaret M. McGowan, ‘The Arts Conjoined: A Context for the Study of Music’, Early Music History, 13 (1994), 171–98.
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route, with both sacred and mythological connotations; performed in churches during religious ceremonies; and were part of associated indoor, courtly events.30 Scottish entries employed music in an equally wide-ranging manner; as an ever-unfolding medium, musical performances perfectly matched the progressing character of celebratory spatial events, both based on the listeners’ continued, dynamic engagement.31 Performers could be both moving and static, for example a loud group of musicians ‘passand throwch the toun’ creating a ‘din of instrumentis / of tabrowne trumpet Schalmes and clairioun’32 were part of Madeleine’s planned entry in 1537. Fixed musical entertainments were often integrated with the temporary structures at the station: in 1503, a triumphal arch was built for Margaret Tudor, ‘In the wich Towrells was, at the Windowes, reveſted Angells ſyngyng joyouſly for the Comynge of ſo noble a Lady’.33 Again in 1561, ‘vpon’ the ‘port’ built at the Butter Tron for Mary ‘wes ſingand certane barneis in the maiſt hevinlie wyis’,34 and for the planned 1537 entry, Lyndsay expected ‘“Viue la royne” cryand for thair lyweis / With ane harmonioius sound angelicall / In evirilk corner mirthis musicall’,35 angelic music demonstrating Heaven’s approval of the three queens’ arrivals. In 1503 at the burgh’s entrance, ‘The Mynſtrells, Johannes, and hys Company, and the Trompetts, war as well of the one Syd as of the other’36 of — one assumes, the walled divide, showing the spatial footprint of the musical performance as encompassing physical barriers: naming the performers also acknowledged their role and importance. Later on, tambourines ‘playd merrily’37 at the Virtues and Vices’ tableau at the Tolbooth, as a more relaxed exhibition: similar loud popular approval was manifested in 1579 at the Salt Tron, where ‘a nomber of trumpets sounding melodioslie, and crying with loud voice, Wealfayre to the King’.38 Participating in the acoustic element through shouts and unprompted performances, allowed groups of spectators to intervene in the political dialogue in a relatively spontaneous manner, literally making themselves heard.39 Musical performances were no add-ons, but key parts of the event: Lyndsay’s account of Margaret’s 1511 entry dedicates a whole stanza of the total nine to the description of the musical entertainment offered by 24 female performers ‘Playand on timberallis, and ſyngand rycht ſweitlie’.40 Musical performances
30 Thiemo Wind, ‘Musical Participation in Sixteenth-Century Triumphal Entries in the Low Countries’, Tijdschrift Van De Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 37 (1987), 111–69 (116–20). 31 Anthony M. Cummings, The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals, 1512–1537 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 122. 32 Sir David Lyndsay’s Of the deploratioun of quein Magdalenis deith (1537), in Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 374. 33 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 34 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 35 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 375. 36 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 37 Ibid., 290. 38 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 39 Cummings, Politicized Muse, pp. 164–65. 40 William Dunbar’s The Queinis Reception at Aberdein, in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1, p. 154.
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were often associated with appropriate allegorical figures: in 1579, while King James VI was receiving the keys at the Over Bow, ‘Dame Music and hir scollars exercesit hir art with great melodie’,41 performed with ‘violeris and sangsteris’.42 In 1590, the aforementioned nine Muses ‘ſung very ſweete muſicke, where a brave youth played upon the organs, which accorded excellentlie with the ſinging of their pſalmes’,43 possibly holding instruments similar to those associated with the Muses in the decorations of Crathes Castle, to be discussed shortly. For this entry, Damman also mentioned a boy actor as Apollo singing sweetly, and ‘behind, sweetly playíng upon the lute strands / Music, who plays to the harmonious singing of his tuneful voice’.44 Also at the Netherbow he recalls pleasing instruments in skilfull hands make music: the sweet-voiced Graces rise up, and utter melodies without number, and their well plucked lyres with soothing murmurs fill the ear and all the moving air.45 John Burel’s poetic account described an array of musical instruments played for Anna’s entry: Muſiciners thair pairts expond, And als for Joy the bells wer rung, The inſtruments did corroſpond Vnto the muſick quhilk wes ſung: All ſorts of inſtruments wer thair, As ſindry can the ſame declair. Organs and Regals thair did carpe, With thair gay goldin glittering ſtrings, Thair wes the Hautbois and the Harpe, Playing maiſt ſweit and pleaſant ſprings: And ſum on lutis did play and ſing, Of Instruments the onely King.46 To follow, ‘Viols and Virginals […] Girthorns […] Trumpets and Timbrels […] Seiſtar and the Sumphion, / With Clarche Pipe and Clarion’47 also played, ‘Sumphion’ being a Scottish rendition of ‘symphonia’, which might have included drums, bagpipes, and string keyboards.48 Burel’s account also contains significant information regarding the musical formats performed on 41 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, pp. 178–79. 42 ‘Notices, 1579’, p. 25. 43 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 44 Damman, Schediasmata, [44–44], in the English translation by Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter. 45 Ibid., [204–07]. 46 Burel, ‘The Discription’, p. iii. 47 Ibid. 48 Gordon Munro, ‘“Sang Schwylls” and “Music Schools”: Music Education in Scotland, 1560–1650’ in Susan Forscher Weiss, Russell E. Murray, Jr. and Cynthia J. Cyrus (eds), Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Publications of the Early Music Institute (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 65–83 (p. 72).
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this occasion, suggesting that harmonies based on the interval of an octave had been selected, and that ‘imitation counterpoint improvised on chant mensural music’49 was performed by tenor singers. The richness of this musical panorama demonstrates that while the Reformation had done away with performances of ornate music, choral and instrumental music of the God-fearing kind was not only allowed but encouraged.50 Music associated with religious messages was not only delivered within churches — Mary of Guise’s welcome in St Andrews included ‘great solemnitie in the abbay kirk witht mese songis and playing on the organis’,51 and the celebrations for Anna’s arrival within St Giles included singing the 23rd Psalm,52 — but legitimized the presence of classical themes. By performing Psalms for Anna’s arrival in 1590, the Muses could be retained as an acceptable vehicle for the delivery of appropriately reformed messages. In 1633, the Muses were not the performers; rather, ‘a considerable number of quiristers of choise singing voices, an organist also, with some other musicians’ were positioned within the mountain upon which the goddesses stood, and they ‘in a sweet harmony, emodulated an pleasant air, composed for the purpose, called Caledonia’.53 The presence of musical instruments, albeit not played, could convey ideas of learned and civilized pastimes: in 1633, Minerva was accompanied by ‘flourishes of instruments of peace, as harpes, lutes, organs, cissers, hauboises’,54 and equally symbolically, the trumpet held by Fame at the Netherbow was not there to be played, but to represent visually the wide reach of James’ notoriety.55 On the broader civic space, musical performances could help celebrate or question monarchical conformity — from James IV’s engaging singing of the Te Deum in 1503,56 to the psalm-singing in 1561 for Catholic Mary during the burning of the dragon at the Netherbow, supporting its identification as the biblical beast,57 and to the general uneasiness over James VI/I’s orders in preparation for his visit in 1617 to have the Holyrood Chapel ‘prepared for the organs, and the quiristours to sing’.58 Courtly events included musical performances of comparable complexity: Madeleine’s planned celebrations in the ‘chappell royall, with sic instrumentis / and craiftie musick singing frome the splene / In this cuntrie was nevir hard nor seine’.59 The 1566 banquet saw ‘musicians clothed like maids, singing and playing upon all sorts of instruments’,60 while during the 1594 banquet, the entrance of a triumphal 49 Munro, ‘“Sang Schwylls” and “Music Schools”: Music Education’, p. 71. 50 Extensively discussed in ibid., particularly pp. 66–67. 51 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 379. 52 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 114. 53 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 122. 54 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 266. 55 Ibid., p. 279. 56 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 289. 57 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 58 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 244. 59 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 375. 60 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 2, p. 327.
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chariot was signalled by ‘the melodious noise of trumpets and howboyes’.61 In short, during Scottish triumphal celebrations music had a significant role in expressing the event’s chosen messages, with the Reformation representing a turning point in the kind of performances preferred, and its role within the city. It not only supported tableaux vivants but directly engaged with both spaces and spectators in mindful and discerning manner.62 Similarly, a varied use of classical imagery — from the seven planets to the Muses — suggested the ability to match iconographies to specific requirements and changing circumstances. After the Reformation, the use of classical Italianate language and faithful all’antica designs became controversial manifestations of religious leanings, questioning the appropriateness of its use.63 In England, temporary arches displaying faithful classical language and transforming London in a new Rome appeared in Mary Tudor’s coronation entry in 1553, but Elizabeth’s entry in 1559 showed no sign of an all’antica style now seen as popish — before Romanitas became fashionable again after the Armada episode to express England’s imperial aspirations and Elizabeth’s role as new Constantine.64 During the Italian Counter Reformation, triumphal arches might have retained classical forms, but they were populated with edifying, pious biblical characters instead of secular and classical figures.65 Seen in this light, the remarkably limited use of classical imagery in Mary’s entry in 1561 could then be an intentional refusal to employ potentially popish classical language during religiously tumultuous times. The ‘port made of tymber’66 at the Butter Tron appears pointedly devoid of all’antica elements, and the associated ceremonial delivery of a bible and a book of Psalms alongside a pro-Reformation speech eliminated any possible Roman flavour.67 The extramural ‘ᵹet maid to hir’68 under the castle might — if staged by Mary’s courtiers, as I have proposed — have used a decorative language familiar to a French-raised queen, but this was both spatially and culturally distant from the civic experience. The name used could be evocative, as it recalls the triumphal arches built for Margaret Tudor in 1503 — also ‘yatts’ — in comparison to the ‘port’ Mary will meet
61 ‘True Accompt’, p. 488. 62 While no music associated with these performances is known to have survived, the work of Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter has cast much light on the overall role of music in Scottish performances and culture in this period. See for example Jamie Reid-Baxter, ‘Thomas Wode, Christopher Goodman and the Curious Death of Scottish Music’, Scotlands, 4/2 (1997), 1–20. Jamie Reid-Baxter, ‘Music, Ecclesiastical’, in Michael Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 431–33, and Jamie Reid-Baxter, Michael Lynch and E. Patricia Dennison, Jhone Angus: Monk of Dunfermline and Scottish Reformation Music (Dunfermline Burgh Survey: Community Project, 2011). 63 Christian faith and Roman antiquity in Fagiolo, ‘L’Effimero di Stato’, p. 19 and Maria Luisa Madonna, ‘L’Ingresso di Carlo V a Roma’, in Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, pp. 63–68. 64 Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 349–50; Howard Colvin, ‘Britain in Pompous Entries and English Architecture’, in Howard Colvin (ed.), Essays in English Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 67–93 (pp. 70, 72–75); Yates, Astraea, pp. 38–43. 65 Examples in Ghirardo, ‘Festival Bridal Entries’, especially pp. 67–68. 66 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 67 Circumstances in Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56. 68 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 67.
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later on at the Butter Tron.69 Also, interestingly, for Mary in 1561 no speeches were recorded as delivered in foreign or learned languages, as were for example in 1579 for James VI, when he was addressed not only in Scots, but in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, or in 1590, when Anna heard a speech in Latin.70 This might again have been influenced by the Protestant uneasiness with the elitist use of Latin by the Catholic clergy, to be contrasted in the urban celebrations with total clarity and accountability. Considering a courtly parallel, the choice of tournament-inspired ideas typical of English and Protestant occasions over French and Catholic ceremonial models for the 1594 Stirling baptism showed the centrality of religious considerations to celebratory language.71 The evolving, skilful use of classical messages between 1503 and 1633 discount ideas of imitative, indiscriminate borrowing, pointing rather to reasoned selections and continuing in-house experimentations, where myths’ meanings and forms are maturely assessed, expanded, and adapted to respond to present events and needs.72 The taking over of the civic space by classical language and imagery in 1633 implied the decline of didactical moments of constructive exchange, expressing cooperation between monarch and burgh: now the universal language of myth helped establish the monarch as the redeeming link between the glories of the classical world and the uncertainties of the present day.73 Charles’ monarchical authority was now expressed self-referentially, detached by local circumstances in its depiction and pursuit of rarefied and universal worlds. The exceedingly humble language in Hay’s speech for James VI/I in 1617 at West Port was a symptom of this changed relationship, stating: wee your Majestie’s humble subjectes, prostrate at your Majestie’s sacred feete, lay downe our lives, goods, liberties, and whatsoever else is most deare unto us […] and ever to bee readie to sacrifice our selves for mainteinance of your Royall person and estate.74 This was in sharp contrast with traditional Scottish ideas about monarchs’ accountability to the community expressed for example by Buchanan, and about the legitimacy of the subjects’ refusal to acknowledge an unworthy king’s authority. In 1561, the welcoming speech for Mary Queen of Scots stating: In signe that they and all that they possess Bodie and good shall ever reddie be To serve you as their souveraine hie mistress75 69 Yatts appearing in Younge, ‘Fyancells’, pp. 289–90, and interpreted in Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, passim. 70 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 71 Rick Bowers, ‘James VI, Prince Henry, and A True Reportarie of Baptism at Stirling 1594’, Renaissance and Reformation /Renaissance et Réforme, 29 (4) (2005), 3–22 (4). 72 Compare with Margaret M. McGowan, ‘The Renaissance Triumph and its Classical Heritage’, in Mulryne and Goldring (eds), Court Festivals, pp. 42–43. 73 Knighton and Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry’, 147. 74 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 323. 75 Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, p. 22.
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depended on the Queen’s concurrent acceptance of the proffered translated bible and psalm book. In 1633 then, the heavy-handed adoption of a standard yet versatile complimentary classical language was part of the wider process of creating (legal and physical) distance between monarch and populace, connecting the monarch instead with the unassailable authority of mythological beings, and with a broader, European-wide stage.76 The European Dimension of Scottish Triumphal Language The rediscovered interest in classical texts and Petrarchan culture linked Scottish culture to its European counterparts, and reinterpreted echoes of foreign contemporary ceremonies demonstrated the remarkable cultural awareness of entries into Edinburgh. Triumphal entries and state ceremonies offered to travelling Scottish monarchs — James V and Mary sojourning at the French court, James VI travelling to Denmark, and Charles I visiting the Spanish court — or even to influential Scottish courtiers, created familiarity with the visual vocabulary of festivities and celebrations. Given the diplomatic proximity between the two countries, Scottish ambassadors in London are likely to have witnessed many Tudor dynastic celebrations, from Katharine of Aragon’s entry in 1501 to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1559, James VI/I’s coronation in 1604, the wedding of James’ daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V Count Palatine in 1613, and other festivities.77 The marked similarities between the entries of James VI/I in London in 1604, and of Charles I in Edinburgh in 1633, express a desire to replicate the success of James’ entry, connecting Charles’ rule to that of his well-regarded father. The triumphal booklet — a Scottish first — published for Charles’ entry was modelled in structure on that of the 1604 entry, albeit lacking its precisely measured illustrations. The number of stations erected in London with arches to match — seven — was also replicated in Edinburgh, and particularly the first arch showed clear similarities.78 In London, the first gate was inscribed with ‘LONDINIUM’, and had a model of the city on the top ‘adorned with houses, towers, and steeples, set off in perspective’79 [see Figure 33]. It included allegorical figures such as Divine Wisdom crowned in stars, dressed in white with a blue starred mantle, a Genius of the City as ‘a person attired rich, reverend, and antique; his hair long and white,
76 Compare with Tudor court in Sarah Carpenter, ‘“Jupiter…Appointed His Majesty as Judge”: Classical Gods and the Performance of Monarchy’, Theta, 13 (2018), 67–83 (69–72). 77 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 101. 78 Compare Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 269; and Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 345. Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 178–79. 79 Ben Jonson, ‘King James’s Royal and Magnificent Entertainment Through his Honourable City of London’, in Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 1, p. 377.
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Figure 33. The first arch built for James VI/I’s entry into London in 1604, in an engraving by Stephen Harrison.
crowned with a wreath of plane tree’,80 and a personification of the River Thames ‘as running along the side of the City’,81 with a sea-green, sail-like mantle, and a crown of sedges and reeds over long hair. He ‘leans his arm upon an earthen pot, out of which water with live fishes are seen to run forth, and play about him’.82 For comparison, on Charles’ first arch, inscribed with ‘M. Edenbourgh’, was the model of ‘a citie situated on a rock, which with pointed clifts, shrubs, trees, 80 Ibid., p. 379. 81 Ibid., p. 380. 82 Ibid.
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herbs, and verdure, did appeare in perspectiue upon the battlements’.83 Next to it was a Genius of the City as a nymph, attired in sea-green and blue, ‘the dressing of her head represented a castle with turrets’; a representation of the Leith river ‘in a mantle of sea-greene or water-colour, a crowne of sedges and reeds on his head, with long locks: his arme leaned upon an earthen pot, out of which water and fishes seemed to runne forth’, and a personification of Religion dressed ‘all in white taffeta, with a blew mantle seeded with starres, a crowne of starres on her head’.84 With Scottish poet William Drummond very probably a key member of the ‘Committee of the gravest and most understanding citizens and clerks’ in charge of ‘all these pageants, with the speeches’85 in 1633, his friendship with Jonson could have facilitated the borrowing of ideas and details.86 Another well-connected Scottish poet who was involved in Scottish and foreign triumphal celebrations was David Lyndsay, who had been present at Charles V’s tournament in Brussels in 1531, from where he writes about ‘the triumph and justynis, the terribile turnements the feychtyen on fut in barras the namis of lords and knychts that war hurt the day of the gret towrnament’.87 The Brussels entertainment represented a traditional kind of welcome, with pageants based on religion, local topics, and regional history, and a staunchly old-fashioned tournament at the marketplace.88 David Lyndsay was also part of James V’s entourage in France for the King’s wedding to Madeleine of Valois in Notre Dame in January 1537.89 The celebrations included ‘iusting and tournamentis baitht on horse and on fute’ but also the pairtieis bankcating, deliecat and costlie trieumph and playis and feistis witht pleasand sound of instrumentis of all kynd and also cuning carweris haueand the art of igramansie to cause thingis to appeir quhilk was as flieand dragounss in the air schot fyre at ether heids, great reveris of watteris rynand throw the toun and schipis fyghtand thairwpon as it had bene the bullring stremes of the [sie] witht schutting of gouns lyk crakis of thunder.90 For his part, influential scholar George Buchanan had actually composed the poem Sylvae, 1: Ad Carolum V imperatorem, burdegale hospitio publico susceptum nomine scholae burdegalensis anno M.D.XXXIX,91 welcoming Charles V on his entry into Bordeaux in 1540, and rich in flattering reference to classical myths,
83 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 257. Italic appears in the original. 84 Ibid., p. 258. 85 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 123, where it names three participants to the committee as ‘Mr John Adamson, Primar, Mr William Drummond of Hauthorndean, and the Maister of the High School’. 86 This is proposed by Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 179–80. 87 Chalmers, Sir David Lyndsay, vol. 1, pp. 14–15. 88 Peter Arnade, ‘The Emperor and the City: The Cultural Politics of the Joyous Entry in Early SixteenthCentury Ghent and Flanders’, HMGOG, 54 (2000), 65–92 (83–84). 89 Chalmers, Sir David Lyndsay, vol. 1, pp. 18–19. 90 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, pp. 365–66. Brackets in the original text. 91 Buchanan, Opera Omnia, vol. 2, pp. 324–26.
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heroics and wise gods and goddesses.92 The visit of Henry Thomson, Lord Lyon at the Scottish court in 1503, to Rome in spring 1502 might provide the source for the already mentioned 1503 pageant showing the choice of Paris. While at the court of Pope Alexander VI, Thomson would have probably heard of the wedding celebrations of the Pope’s illegitimate daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, to Duke Alfonso of Este celebrated in Ferrara in December 1501 and January 1502, which figured just such an entertainment.93 As one of the late medieval interpretations of the Judgment of Paris referred to an enchanted hart leading the prince/shepherd in the forest, it is then tempting to associate this pageant with the hunt of the hart staged in 1503 just outside Edinburgh.94 The triumphal cart recorded in 1558 and carrying ‘the vij men quha wes the vij planets’95 and a cupid, could have also been related to Este weddings. Celestial deities appeared at the wedding of Alfonso of Este and Anna Sforza in 1491 in Ferrara; the planetary gods Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars were part of the decorations, and the decorative apparatus of the four arches erected for Anna Sforza’s entry included carriages carrying performers, and a chariot with Cupid holding an arrow.96 In an earlier entry in 1473 for the wedding of Ercole of Este and Eleanor of Naples, there were seven carri triumphali with representations of the planets, described as beautifully decorated, carrying children performers elegantly dressed, singing and playing in merriment.97 The Sforza–Este marriage joined two of the most politically relevant dynasties in Italy, with the combination of planetary motifs and the god of love expressing the nuptials’ global significance — observations also applicable to a Valois-Stuart marriage strengthening the anti-English alliance.98 A direct Franco-Scottish relationship is also possible and perhaps more likely: the Edinburgh celebrations were explicitly meant to ‘conterfute’99 — that is, closely imitate or feign — their Parisian counterpart, where personifications of the seven planets were part of the indoor royal entertainments staged after Mary’s wedding to the Dauphin.100 Transposition, reinterpretation, and appropriation of elements from foreign entrances implied an in-depth understanding of the themes shown, and participation in a shared culture based on recognizable iconographic features. During the Renaissance, classical deities and allegorical figures had recovered
92 Lyndsay’s and Buchanan’s involvement in foreign events is discussed in Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 101. See also John Gordon of Galloway at the French court, in Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 108–10. 93 Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 30. 94 Gray, ‘Royal Entry’, p. 19. 95 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records Volume One, p. 241. 96 Ghirardo, ‘Festival Bridal Entries’, pp. 58–59. 97 Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole D’Este (1471–1505) and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 267. 98 Aby Warburg’s theory, as discussed in Ghirardo, ‘Festival Bridal Entries’, p. 58. 99 Expenses for ‘the solemnization of the mariage of out Soverane Ladie to be conterfute in Edinburgh’, Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 10 1551–1559, ed. by James Balfour Paul (Edinburgh: Morrison & Gibb, 1913), p. 360. 100 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, pp. 150–57.
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their original attributes, after having been blurred during the Middle Ages into symbolic, culturally localized, and religiously characterized figures unintelligible to geographically distant audiences.101 Endowed with a fixed set of visual characteristics and matching moral attributes, these figures were emblematic in all but name. Through a ready-to-use, shared vocabulary of images and texts, triumphal entries in Scotland and abroad conveyed layered messages to a varied, multicultural, and multilingual audience. They helped craft an immediately recognizable monarchical image for popular consumption and — through prints and booklets — lasting glorification.102 The entry of 1633 can be set more broadly in a European context of shared triumphal imagery. For example, the positioning and appearance of the personification of the Leith belongs to an established tradition of personifying rivers important to a city’s economy and identity, often next to the city’s protector or founder. King Philip II was welcomed in Seville in 1570 by the city’s mythological founder Hercules and the Guadalquivir river, and in 1524 Naples Charles V saw the Sebeto river as an old man with a vase overflowing with water, next to Naples’ Sirena Partenope.103 Considering again some of the mottoes on the arches for Charles I’s 1633 entry offers the opportunity to remark upon the learning and international reach of Scottish triumphal language. The ‘SPONDEO DIGNA TUIS INGENTIBUS OMNIA CŒPTIS’ (I promise all that is due to your glorious undertakings)104 accompanying planet Saturn at the Netherbow is from Virgil’s Aeneid [Lib IX, 296], and a slightly reworked version of the same sentence had appeared in Henri II’s entry into Lyon in 1548.105 Jupiter’s caption read ‘SAT MIHI SIT CŒLUM, POST HÆC TUA FULMINA SUNTO’ (Let heaven be enough for me, after this the lightning bolts will be yours) flattering Charles by implying that Jupiter would gladly renounce some of his godly privileges when faced with such a worthy competitor.106 This was also shown as the caption to a Jupiter
101 Gods during the Middle Ages in Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, ‘Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art’, Metropolitan Museum Studies, 4 (2) (Mar. 1933), 228–80 (263–65), and Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton: Bollingen, 1972), pp. 149–83. An example in Knighton and Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry’, 146. 102 Cholcman, ‘The Reading of Triumphal Entries’ Emblems’, 350–51; Alison Saunders, The SeventeenthCentury French Emblem: A Study in Diversity (Geneva: Droz, 2000), pp. 247–304, particularly pp. 247–48, 273. 103 Gonzalez Castrejon, Musical Iconography of Power, pp. 134–35; Giovanni Antonio Summonte, Dell’Historia della Citta e Regno di Napoli, Tomo Qvarto, Ove si Descrivono le Vite, et i Fatti, del Rè Cattolico, e dell’Imperador Carlo V (Naples: Antonio Bvlifon, 1675), p. 97. 104 Gould, Virgil, vol. 2, p. 286. 105 ‘Omnia coeptis spondeo digna tuis’, under a seated figure of Prudence; Richard Cooper, ‘Legate’s Luxury: The Entries of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to Avignon and Carpentras, 1553’, in Visentin and Russell (eds), French Ceremonial Entries, p. 149. Virgil’s text in the Lyon entry, in Richard Cooper (ed.), Maurice Scève, The Entry of Henri II into Lyon, September 1548, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe, 1997), pp. 62–78. 106 With many thanks to Dr Steven Reid for his help.
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appearing in Charles V’s triumphal entry into Naples in 1524.107 It is difficult to establish whether organizers in different countries selected similar sentences independently, or whether they intentionally re-used mottoes of established popularity. Printed material, engravings, woodcuts, and small paper objects such as Books of Hours were also likely sources of inspiration and cross-contaminations.108 The motto accompanying the Moon in the 1633 entry was ‘CONSEQUITUR QUODCUNQUE PETIT’ (she reaches whatever she wants), closely resembling the motto accompanying Diana — the Moon goddess — in Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Nucleus Emblematum from 1611. The iconography of the two figures is — as to be expected — also similar, both with a crescent moon in the goddess’s loose hair; Rollenhagen explicitly associated Diana’s accuracy of aim with decidedness and conviction in one’s faith, a rather meaningful allusion in relation to Charles’ entry.109 The motto accompanying the goddess Venus, ‘NULLAS RECIPIT TUA GLORIA METAS’ (your glory has no limits), appeared in Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïques in 1551, accompanying an image showing a crocodile wrapping itself around a tree.110 Why the sentence and the goddess would be paired in the Scottish ceremony is unclear; Paradin’s device and text appeared together in Charles V’s entry in Naples in 1535 on the arch built at Porta Capuana square,111 and the text, if not the image, for the Scottish entry could have been inspired by it. The personification of Fame at the Netherbow as previously described also followed both literary and celebratory precedents; the winged Fame appearing for Charles V’s entry in Naples was also full of eyes, mouths, and tongues, and carried a horn.112 For James in 1604 Fame was also ‘a woman in a watchet roabe, thickly set with open eyes and tongues, a payre of large golden winges at her backe, a trumpet in her hand, a mantle of sundry cullours traversing her body’.113 These representations were all akin to Fame as it appeared in Cesare Ripa’s influential Iconologia (first published 1598): a woman with two large wings covered in feathers, a trumpet in her right hand, her whole person covered with eyes, mouths and ears.114
107 Marco Guazzo, Historie di Tvtte le Cose degne di Memoria Qval del Anno M.D.XX.III. (Venice: Segno della Croce, 1545), p. 226v. 108 Jane Stevenson, ‘Harley 6919, Word and Image in Renaissance Scotland’, European Journal of English Studies, 18 (1) (2014), 42–59 (42–45). 109 Jane Stevenson, ‘The Emblem Book of Margareta van Godewijck (1627–1677)’, in Alison Saunders and Peter Davidson (eds), Visual Words and Verbal Pictures: Essays in Honour of Michael Bath (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2005), pp. 161–201 (p. 176); De Passe’s depiction of Diana included additional features. Religious undertones in Dietmar Peil, ‘Emblem Types in Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Nucleus Emblematum’, in Emblematica, 6 (2) (Winter, 1992), 255–82 (202–03). 110 With the caption, ‘Your glory has no limits’; Claude Paradin, Devises Heroïques (Lyon: Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau, 1551), p. 124. 111 Guazzo, Historie, p. 229r. 112 Bernardo De Dominici, Vite dei Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani, 4 vols (Naples: Tipografia Trani, 1840–1846) vol. 2, p. 53. 113 Dekker, ‘Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 355. ‘Watchet’ is explained in the original text as light blue. 114 Cesare Ripa, Della piv che Novissima Iconologia di Cesare Ripa Pervgino, Parte Prima, Ampliata dal sig. Cav. Gio. Zaratino Castellini Romano (Padua: Donato Paſquardi, 1630), p. 233.
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Figure 34. The Parnassus showing Apollo surrounded by the Muses in this preparatory drawing by Hans Holbein for some of the festive apparatus for Anne Boleyn’s coronation entry into London in May 1533.
Comparable uses of similar lines of text or mottoes can help contextualize some of the choices made for the 1633 entry. As mentioned in Chapter VI, the parallel use of figures of Justice and their accompanying mottoes for Charles and for Henri III in 1574 Mantua could be justified by their commonalities as homecoming monarchs faced with religious dissent. The Scottish reference to Ultima Thule in one of the arches could be seen in the context of the entries
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of Charles V and the future Philip II in Genoa in 1548 and in Antwerp in 1549, which denied the existence of an extreme border for the Holy Roman Empire, as the Habsburg rule stretched unrestrained across the world.115 In the 1625 version of his essay Of Prophecies, Sir Francis Bacon also expressed hopes of imperial expansion for James VI/I’s reign through the parallel between Ultima Thule and America.116 The message to Charles I was more critical, as the King whose reign was described as endless was faced with the country’s disappointed ambitions for the creation of Scottish colonies in North America.117 In 1633, Ceres appeared accompanied by the motto ‘SUSTULIT EXUTIS VINCLIS AD SYDERA PALMAS’ with the explanatory note in the booklet ‘meaning, by the king shee was free of the great abuse of the tithes in this country’.118 This was a close rendition of a verse from Virgil’s Aeneid [Liber II, 153] (lifted up to heaven his hands now loosed from the bonds),119 also used on an arch in the entry of Henri IV’s bride Marie of Medici in Avignon in 1600, which hailed Henri as the Gallic Hercules who released the bonds tying Prometheus down. This was interpreted as drawing a parallel between the freed Prometheus raising his hands to the sky and the King having broken free of the ties of superstition after his recent conversion to Catholicism.120 Given the frequent re-use of emblematic language to endorse Protestant principles in Scotland in this period, it is very possible that the Episcopalians in Edinburgh also wished for Charles to shake the bonds of superstition — that is, of Presbyterianism, although leaving the roles unnamed made a diplomatic open interpretation possible.121 The imagery of 1633 of Apollo and the Muses on the Parnassus was also a well-known theme, employed across Europe with different levels of complexity. The Apollo and the Muses sitting on Parnassus that appeared in the entry in London for Anne Boleyn in 1533 were flattering but scarcely creative, suggesting the return of the Golden Age thanks to Anne’s coronation and through her visible pregnancy122 [see Figure 34]. More articulately, in 1550 in Rouen Henri II was identified with the Hercules defeating the menacing hydra, allowing Orpheus and the Muses to safely perform under a protective rainbow, the device of Henri’s mother Catherine of Medici.123 115 Monique Mund-Dopchie, Ultima Thulé: Histoire d’un Lieu et Genèse d’un Mythe (Geneva: Droz, 2009), pp. 277–79. 116 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, p. 165. 117 Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 182–83. 118 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 119 Gould, Virgil, vol. 1, p. 248. 120 André Valladier, Labyrinthe Royal de L’Hercule Gaulois Triomphant, Typhaine Cartry (trans.) (Avignon: Jaques Bramereau, 1600). Online at http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Textes/ INHA-4R814.pdf. Accessed 15 August 2018], p. 185. 121 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 56–78. 122 Kipling, ‘“He That Saw It Would Not Believe It”: Anne Boleyn’s Royal Entry’, pp. 70–71; Anne’s entry in Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 247–61. 123 Luisa Capodieci, ‘Sic Itur ad Astra. Narration, Figures Célestes et Platonisme dans les Entrées d’Henri II (Reims 1547, Lyon 1548, Paris 1549, Rouen 1550)’, in Visentin and Russell (eds), French Ceremonial Entries, pp. 89–90.
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In Edinburgh, the addition of specifically Scottish learned scholars grounded the performance to the local experience. This also occurred in Spain, where Fernando II of Aragon’s entry into Valladolid in 1509 displayed a selection of famous men conjured up by the personification of Fame, including Spaniards Alfonso I, Count Fernan Gonzalez, and El Cid. During the entry in 1649 of Philip IV’s queen Mariana of Austria into Madrid, Apollo was accompanied by a group of Spanish poets such as Martial, Juan de Mena and Lope de Vega, each paired with a Muse who sang the poet’s verses.124 Arguing for such complex interpretative language based on images and mottoes to appear in Scottish triumphal events is not far-fetched. Bath’s investigations of the politicized use of Henri III’s motto Manet Ultima Coelo (the last [crown] awaits us in heaven) during Mary Queen of Scots’ reign and captivity, and the significance of the emblematic embroideries on the Queen’s bed of state demonstrates awareness of the power of using — and reusing — emblematic language.125 Triumphal Entries and Courtly Ceremonies Scottish courtly celebrations had much in common in their iconography and visual organization with events set in other European courts, and were privileged vehicles for bringing foreign flavours — particularly French ones — into the country, then to appear in civic performances. Elements of the Valois celebrations held in Bayonne in 1565 resurfaced in the baptismal celebrations for Prince James in December 1566, as Mary Queen of Scots employed her knowledge of French celebrations to display her queenly power in her home country.126 Powerful wild and exotic figures frequently appeared in courtly entertainments such as the Danish tournaments held for the well-known coronation of Queen Anna’s brother Christian IV in 1596.127 Also, the ceremonies for Mary’s wedding in Paris in 1558 included a seaborne entertainment during a royal banquet, and might have been influential in the choice of a sea-themed entertainment including a miraculously moving ship for Prince Henry’s baptismal banquet in 1594, also with references to James’ own maritime adventure to fetch Anna in 1590.128 The idea of a king-Ulysses steering the ship of state through religious sectarianism was central to the Parisian celebrations for King Henri of Navarre and Marguerite of Valois in 1573.129 The somehow sudden appearance of water 124 Knighton and Morte García, ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’s Entry’, 131. Gonzalez Castrejon, Musical Iconography of Power, p. 135. 125 Michael Bath, ‘Ben Jonson, William Fowler and the Pinkie Ceiling’, Architectural History, 18 (1) (2008), 73–86; Michael Bath, ‘Embroidered Emblems: Mary Stuart’s Bed of State’, Emblematica, 15 (2007), 5–32. 126 Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, 5–10. 127 Olav Lausund, ‘Splendour at the Danish Court: The Coronation of Christian IV’, in Mulryne and Shewring (eds), Renaissance Festivals, pp. 291–304. 128 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 150. 129 Bath, ‘“Rare Shewes and Singular Inventions”’, [6].
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gods and maritime themes in late civic and courtly Scottish ceremonies — Neptune and Leith in 1633 for Charles — offers an interesting parallel with the appearance and increased use of similar themes in Medici’s civic and courtly spectacles in the sixteenth century. For the dukes, it represented the celebration of their control over internal waterways, and (nominal) claim of military mastery on the Tyrrhenian sea while being progressively threatened by larger national states and better armed neighbours.130 With Scotland’s political and military relevance under scrutiny around the time of the Union, the Stuarts might also have been adding sea gods to their celebrative palette to strengthen symbolically their role as seaborne power. Scottish courtly and civic triumphal entries, then, could and should be discussed as complementary, parallel and overlapping expressions of the same cultural scenario. Civic and courtly spaces worked in comparable ways; as spaces of miracle and wonder; as transformative and taming locations; as hierarchically organized spaces supporting the performances of royalty; and as defining spaces attributing to the monarchs their identity. Firstly, during ceremonies of welcome and merriment, both courtly and civic spaces were transformed into supernatural locations and imaginary realities, where wondrous events took place thanks to remarkably similar devices, objects, and machineries. The tree built as part of the celebrations in absentia for Mary Queen of Scots in 1558 at the Salt Tron — with its miraculous produce of gold balls, cherries, and yellow flowers — was extremely similar to that built for the tournament held by James IV at Holyrood Palace in 1507, when there were payments for ‘xxxvij peris to the tree of esperance’, for two hundred ‘platis to be leifis to the tree’, plus ‘xviij dosan of leifis to the tre of esperance, and sex dosan flouris to the samyn’,131 with nails and wire to hang the lot. For the second tournament in 1508, payments were made for ‘xij dosan of leifis for the tree of esperance’, for ‘five dosan of flouris to the said tree’,132 and ‘to Symon Glasfurd, buklar makar, for making of xlix peris for the said tree of esperance […] and for leffis to hyng thaim’.133 The decorative ‘peris’ could be pears — as in miraculous fruits, to parallel the golden balls hanging from the 1558 tree — but as a maker of bucklers (small round shields) was asked to provide them they possibly were small decorative plaques, maybe carrying insignia. Both the civic 1558 tree and the 1507 and 1508 courtly ones were substantial, richly ornamented objects, pointing at both spaces as magically fertile.134 Similar machineries were also employed to stage a disappearing act through the miraculous descent of an object from above, to reveal or conceal a heaven-sent performer. For the baptism of Prince James in Stirling in 1566, as part of the banquet entertainment there was ‘a child coming out of a globe let down from the top of the hall to light upon the stage’.135 130 Else, Politics of Water, pp. 1–2, 13–51, 134–37. 131 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 3 1506–1507, pp. 394–95. 132 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 4 1507–1513, ed. by James Balfour Paul (Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1902), p. 120. 133 Ibid., p. 121. 134 Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, p. 227. 135 Nau, History of Mary Stewart, p. cl. See Lynch, ‘Queen Mary’s Triumph’, p. 12.
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A comparable device had appeared in St Andrews in 1538 as ‘ane great clude come out of the heavins […] and hoppin in two halffis’,136 and also in 1579 with ‘a curious globe, that opnit artificiallie as the King came by’; in both instances a boy actor emerged ‘craftelie’.137 This is well described at the Butter Tron in 1561, where ‘wes ane cloud opynnand with four levis, in the quhilk was put ane bony barne […] the ſaid cloude opynnit, and the barne diſcendit doun as it had bene ane angell’.138 For in 1590 at the West Port, a globe-like container hanging from the port descended and opened in front of the Queen; out sprang a child delivering presents to her, ‘which done, the quarters cloſed, and the globe was taken uppe agayne, ſo as the childe was no more ſeene there’.139 Self-propelling machines during courtly banquets made the most of the indoor location to create a sense of wonder. A cart appeared at the 1594 baptismal banquet, ‘her motion was so artificially deuised within here self, that none could perceiue what brought her in’, representing a large ship inhabited by maritime gods and decorated with shells and pearls: the movement of another ‘was so artificial within it selfe, that it appeared to be drawne in onely by the strength of a Moore’.140 Also for the 1566 baptismal banquet, the meat course ‘was brought through the great hall upon a machine or engine, marching, as it appeared, alone’.141 Speaking of food, the wondrous abundance of courtly banquets was replicated by the miraculous appearance of free-flowing wine and extravagant edibles during entries, both spaces offering not only quantity, but quality, and a spectacular delivery to those assembled. Civic and royal spaces would be inhabited by supernatural creatures — planetary gods and allegorical figures — clarifying the portentous character of both kinds of event, and of both locations.142 Wondrous beasts appeared in both sets of events; an unrealized part of the 1594 entertainment would have included brauery and strange apparell of the persons themselves, and by the diuers shapes of the beasts that should have bene born and brought there in sight […] as lyon, elephant, hart, vnicorne, and the griphon, together with the camel, hydre, crocadile, and dragon, (carrying their riders).143 These beasts would be brought under control by their courtly riders, while the large, mythical ‘dragoun’144 appearing in Mary Queen of Scots’ entry in 1561 was symbolically conquered by being burned as part of the performance.
136 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 379. 137 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 178. 138 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 139 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40. 140 ‘True Accompt’, pp. 490, 488. Fully described in Wiggins and Richardson, British Drama, vol. 3, pp. 245–46. 141 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 2, p. 327. 142 Carpenter, ‘“Jupiter… Appointed His Majesty as Judge”: Classical Gods’, 69. 143 ‘True Accompt’, p. 479. 144 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68.
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Secondly, as places of wonder, both courtly and civic spaces were endowed with taming qualities — subjugating the aforementioned mythical creatures, turning potentially dangerous Moors and wild men into cooperative performers, and finally even addressing the inner wilderness of the (female) monarchs. The satyrs appearing during the 1594 banquet entertainment ‘with long tails, and whips in their hands’ and running in front of the cart with the meat course ‘to make way, or room’145 for the convoy, played an ushering role quite similar to that of the Moors during the civic entries of 1561 and 1590. When they ‘put their hands behind them to their tails, which they wagged with their hands’,146 they caused offence to English ambassadors made touchier by political instability.147 It is also possible that this referred to a widespread tongue-in-cheek pun about Anglici Caudati, an anti-English joke based on a legend narrating how God gave the inhabitants of Kent tails as punishment for their disrespectful behaviour.148 In a courtly parallel to the Moors, a mysterious, richly dressed black lady — or a performer dressed as one, given the buying of ‘ane pair of blak sleffis and gluffis to hir of blak seymys leder’149 — appeared in the 1507–1508 tournaments. Fradenburg argues that female blackness stood here for Queen Margaret’s perceived untrustworthiness, paralleling the potential threat represented by James IV’s inner wildness as a wild knight.150 As the King discarded his disguise at the end of the tournament, so the Queen/black lady renounced her own darker side to be recast as trustworthy spouse and mother, when thair come ane clwdd out of the rwffe of the hall as appeirit to men and opnit and cleikkit vp the blak lady in presence of thame all that scho was no moir seine bot this was done be the art of Igramancie for the kingis pleasour.151 Blackness as a theatrical device symbolizing threats to the established order was also expressed by four ‘Morres’152 appearing in the group of assailants to the mock castle built for the 1566 Stirling baptismal celebrations, together with other figures of chaos and wildness. A group of Moors was also to perform — but possibly did not — in the 1594 celebrations for the baptism of Prince Henry, the event to be divided ‘in field pastimes, with mariall and heroicall exploits, and in household, with rare shewes and singular inuentions’.153 The tournament would have seen the participation ‘of three Turkes, three Christian knights of Malta, three Amazones, and three Moores’,154 all appropriately attired, with King James
145 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 2, p. 327. 146 Ibid. 147 Davidson, ‘Entry of Mary Stewart’, 424. Carpenter, ‘Performing Diplomacies’, 220. 148 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 85–89. 149 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 3 1506–1507, p. 259. An alternative theory mentioning a captured African girl is in Laing (ed.), Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 2, pp. 306–07; William Dunbar’s poem Of Ane Blak-Moir could refer to this very occasion; Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 123–24. 150 Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, pp. 251–64. 151 Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, vol. 1, p. 244. 152 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 12 1566–1574, p. 406. 153 ‘True Accompt’, p. 476. 154 Ibid.
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one of the Christian knights in all probability winning the day. A performing Moor appeared during the banquet, single-handedly drawing in a carriage in an apparently miraculous display of strength.155 Its presence applied the theme of menacing blackness to the threat posed by queenly femininity, difference, and dangerous foreignness; these themes will remain relevant over time, being explored by Ben Jonson’s masques Blackness (1605) and Beauty (1608).156 In 1594 this was reinforced, in relation to the cart with maritime themes, through the chronicler’s reference to James’ decision ‘to saile to Norway, and, like a new Iason, to bring his queene, our gracious lady, to this kingdome’157 casting Anna as both the golden fleece and the lovely but deceitful Medea.158 Both courtly and civic performances represented attempts to defuse Scottish queens’ treacherous foreignness and inner wildness through educational displays of defeated, vanished, and cooperative blackness. Seen in the light of parallel language of courtly entertainments, the tamed wildness demonstrated by the performing Moors encountered by Mary (1561) and Anna (1590) would have been the queens’ own. Thirdly, the organization of civic and courtly locations as sites of performance was significantly similar, with comparable devices and strategies creating hierarchies, defining roles, and supporting spatial narratives. The use of temporary fabric structures, canopies, and baldachins in both urban triumphal entries and courtly entertainment demonstrates a remarkably similar understanding of their potential to alter spectators’ perceptions of reality. In 1507–1508, ‘pailᵹons’ in the fields were built at Holyrood Palace, and decorated with ‘baneris, standartis, and cote armouris for heraldis, menestreles’,159 enhancing the atmosphere of an Arthurian court of old, and recalling the smaller courtly pavilion ennobling the extramural meadow in the 1503 entry.160 Also regarding fabric, during the 1594 baptismal celebrations, the spreading of precious cloth marked space three-dimensionally for royal use — as it had for Anna and James’ dismounting from their ship in Leith in 1590. In 1594 ‘theh degrees being couered with tapestrie all wrought with golde, and a large cloth of lawne, couering both the bed and the degrees, which reached forth a great space over the flore’,161 marked the location where, on a platform, infant Prince Henry was placed. A ‘fair high pale made fouresquare, of crimison veluote attending which was laid on with rich pasments, and fringed with gold’162 covered the English ambassadors carrying the baby — a moveable royal space similar in concept to the canopy sheltering royal guests
155 Ibid., p. 488. 156 McManus, ‘Marriage and the Performance of the Romance Quest’, pp. 184, 191–92. See also Bath, ‘“Rare Shewes and Singular Inventions”’, [7]. 157 ‘True Accompt’, 492. 158 McManus, Anne of Denmark, pp. 87–89, and McManus, ‘Marriage and the Performance of the Romance Quest’, 194–97. 159 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 3 1506–1507, p. 393. 160 Arthurian references in Leslie, Historie of Scotland, vol. 2, p. 128. 161 ‘True Accompt’, p. 481. 162 Ibid.
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during their civic entries, paralleling the glorification of Corpus Christi to that of Corpus Regi. On a smaller scale, the French-crafted bed of state of James V’s short-lived first son James (May 1540–April 1541) was covered by a canopy making its occupant’s status explicit.163 A similar transformative, ennobling effect could be achieved by placing precious cloth on the floor. After the 1503 royal entry, Margaret and James were welcomed into the church of Holyrood, where they proceeded ‘to the grett Awter, wher was a Place ordonned for them to knele apon two Cuſchyons of Cloth of Gold’.164 The rich collection of tapestries and precious hangings in the monarchs’ collections — for example those in the royal inventories from 1539 and 1543 — possessed the power to transform the rough internal finishing of the Stewarts’ residences into arrestingly luxurious spaces. They displayed classical myths ( Jason and the golden fleece, Aeneas and the war of Troy, Perseus), biblical imagery (Solomon and Tobit), the stories of apes and other beasts with nature-inspired decorations, and chivalric folklore, such as Cietie of Dammys based on Christine de Pisan’s Book of the City of Ladies (1405).165 By employing tapestries — possibly borrowing the very ones from the royal collections — to decorate the civic spaces, the city paralleled the court in challenging the limitations of time and space, evoking alternative worlds. One of the possible narratives in such tapestries showed a city built by and for female authority, in a set that James V bought to honour the arrival of a queen for whom he might have envisaged an active, enterprising role.166 Performers populated these spaces — their characters and roles made clear through comparable combinations of learned visual and textual message to convey the meaning. The performers at the tournament accompanying the baptismal celebrations in Stirling in 1594 wore coats of arms and ‘their maisters imprese or deuice’; the King’s coat of arms was ‘a lyons head with open eyes, which signifieth, after a mistique and hierogliphique sence, fortitude and vigilancie: the words were, Timeat et primus et ultimus orbis’,167 devices not dissimilar from those appearing in the 1633 decorative apparatus. The characters seated during the indoor part of the 1594 celebration — Ceres, Fecundity, Concordia, Liberality, and Perseverance appearing on ‘a triumphall chariot’, with their attributes and with headpieces ‘in Antica forma’168 — were potentially indistinguishable from those performing in a civic entertainment. For example, Ceres stood with a sickle in her right hand, and a handfull of corne in the other, and upon the outmost part of her thigh was written this sentence: Fundent uberes omnia campi, which is to say, the plenteous fields shall affoord all things.169
163 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 198–99. 164 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 290. 165 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 79–80; on the Cietie of Dammys see Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 43–51. 166 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, p. 51. 167 ‘True Accompt’, p. 477. Italic in the original text. 168 Ibid., p. 488. 169 Ibid., pp. 488–89.
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The role of the monarchs as main actors during triumphal entries, expected to be visible, recognizable, and dazzlingly majestic, was matched by a similar awareness of their responsibilities as political performers within their courtly spaces, their suits of clothes often paralleling theatrical costumes.170 James IV’s insistence on matching wedding gowns for himself and Margaret Tudor in 1503 underlined the King’s awareness of the symbolic power of costumes, to signal their joined role as monarch, and their separate, superior status to more simply dressed spectators.171 James V also exploited the potential of clothing, with multi-coloured jousting costumes embroidered with crowns, thistles, fleur de lys, and mottoes jointly expressing prowess and political affiliations.172 Mary Queen of Scots’ choice to wear Highland dress and Highland mantles frequently for Scottish courtly events sent an important message about cultural inclusiveness, and the Crown’s engagement with geographically peripheral aspects of Scottishness.173 In both civic and courtly events and with the help of appropriate visual prompts, Scottish monarchs performed characters responding to political necessities. Finally, events staged in both civic and courtly spaces helped delineate and, through repetition, give permanent and convenient form to the monarch’s chosen characters, with dissemination in mind. As a ‘document of political theatre’,174 A True Reportarie of the 1594 baptism written by courtier William Fowler for James VI matched the political and propaganda purpose of printed triumphal booklet The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles … Into his auncient and royall City of Edinburgh, printed in Edinburgh in 1633 by (allegedly) John Wreittoun. The use of comparable themes to frame monarchical celebration in both courtly and civic contexts is particularly evident in James VI/I’s repeated identification with Solomon.175 Already in 1579, the show at the West Port ‘presented to him the wisdome of Salomon deciding the plea between the two weomen who contended for the young childe, and the servant that presented the sword to the king, with the childe’.176 At the Netherbow in 1590 James was referred to as Solomon welcoming Anna/Sheba — underlining the King’s virtues through Sheba’s admired praises.177 James’ role as Solomon was again implicitly mentioned in 1617 when, after having praised the King for bringing order to a destabilized country, Hay rhetorically wondered ‘who will not with the Queene of Sheba confesse hee hath seene more wisedome in your Royall person, than report hath brought to forraine eares’, praising James ‘in hart upright as David, wise as Solomon, and godlie as Josias’.178 The theme of
170 Royal wardrobes in Dean, ‘Enter the Alien’, pp. 281–83. 171 Carpenter, ‘thexaltacyon’, pp. 115–18. 172 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 200–01. 173 Mickel, ‘“Our Hielandmen”’, 202. 174 True Reportarie in Bowers, ‘James VI, Prince Henry, and a A True Reportarie of Baptism’, 18; also 5–8; 14. Entertainment in Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 176–77. 175 Civic parallels noted in Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, pp. 107–08. 176 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 177 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, pp. 117–19. 178 Nichols, Progresses, vol. 3, p. 321.
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James VI/I as just biblical judge was also popular in erudite courtly contexts, through Robert Wakeman’s Salomon’s Exhaltation (1605) and John Williams’s funerary sermon Great Britains Salomon (1625), but also through Henry Farley’s sermon (1616) declaring that James shall be called a second Solomon, and Bacon addressing James as wise Solomon in his The Advancement of Learning (1605).179 The construction of the chapel in Stirling Castle by James VI according to the principles of Solomon’s temple — to act as stage for the 1594 baptism — suggested an intentional use of this iconography on James’ part, and the applicability of Solomon’s theme beyond the spatial settings of a civic entry.180 A judgment of Solomon also appears in the decorative apparatus of Sir George Bruce’s Culross Palace, commissioned in anticipation of James VI/I’s royal visit of 1617, and based on Scotland’s ‘Egyptian’ tradition of northern ‘hieroglyphs’ as visual tools for learning and memorizing — discussed more amply in the next section.181 James’ multifaceted use of Solomon’s iconography, culminating in its architectural expression in a palatial setting, is similar in principle to its use by Philip II of Spain — a religiously authoritative, emphatically virtuous king set within a Temple of his own making, the Escorial.182 On a more limited scale, the presence of a cupid during the 1558 ceremonies in absentia — the only explicitly mentioned god of love in so many entries celebrating royal marriages and dynastic renovation — could also have a parallel courtly dimension. The presence of cupids on some well-known state jewels connected with Mary — the medals she brought back from France, and the one she gave to the Dauphin as a betrothal gift, for example — was part of her royal role as object of desire and valuable marriage prospect. By keeping that iconography on her return to Scotland — now her own mistress and removed from male authority — Mary needed to master and regulate her own erotic appeal. An inventory of Mary’s possessions from 1561 listed a medal of a woman — possibly Diana goddess of Chastity — hunting/shooting at Cupid, and Mary’s frequent identification with Diana during her early Scottish reign represented a woman in control over her erotic power. The masque Cupid, Chastity and Time performed at a royal banquet at Holyrood House in February 1564, with Latin verses by George Buchanan, showed as main characters a blindfolded cupid followed by a maid (Diana/Mary) and by the personification of Time, dramatizing the marriageable Queen’s ability to keep passions in check. By this stage, her existing
179 James VI/ Solomon in Tristan Marshall, Theatre and Empire: Great Britain on the London Stages Under James VI and I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 50–51 and 188–90; also Carolyn Ives and David J. Parkinson, ‘“The Fountain and Very Being of Truth”: James VI, Poetic Invention, and National Identity’, in Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (eds), Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), pp. 104–23 (pp. 104–05). 180 Ian Campbell and Aonghus MacKechnie, ‘The “Great Temple of Solomon” at Stirling Castle’, Architectural History, 54 (2011), 91–118. 181 Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 204–21. 182 Sylvène Édouard, L’Empire imaginaire de Philippe II (Paris: Champion, 2005), pp. 243–324.
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cupid-themed jewels were possibly worn pinned to the bodices with arrows pointing away from the wearer’s heart, as symbols of invulnerability to love.183 Considering Scottish triumphal entries in the context of both foreign ceremonies and courtly events can do justice to the complexity and level of refinement of Scottish celebratory culture. Furthermore, with virtually no illustrations available to describe the appearance of triumphal apparels, a reasoned comparison with contemporary graphic and pictorial Scottish materials can help make well-grounded hypotheses. Triumphal Language in the Context of Scotland’s Artistic Production Echoing aspects of the celebrations in permanent media resulted in permanent reminders of a ceremony, eternalizing the monarch’s glory. Francesco Laurana’s Aragonese Arch built at Castelnuovo fortalice in Naples (begun 1447) memorialized in its very form and decoration the all’antica gateway for King Alfonso I’s triumphal entry in 1443, and its bas-reliefs illustrated phases of the actual event.184 The depiction of a triumphal procession and triumphal arch for Maximilian I, produced by engravers Hans Burgkmair and Albrecht Dürer in the mid-1510s, showed an idealized arch and processional ceremony rather than real ones. The former more than 50 metres long, the latter printed on 36 sheets of paper for a composed size of about three by three-and-a-half metres, they were meant as large-scale permanent mementos of Maximilian’s glory185 [see Figure 35]. In Scotland, some of the arches built in an all’antica fashion at royal and noble residences could provide insights on the possible appearance of their temporary, civic counterparts. The aforementioned stone Forework at Stirling Castle closely reminded the onlooker of a streamlined all’antica triumphal arch, with its Roman-style ashlar finishing and symmetrical openings.186 Arches might have had all’antica roundel decorations like those employed at Holyrood Palace, where wreathed tondi were painted in 1512 by Thomas Peblis.187 Decorative badges and stone arms might have accompanied the terracotta roundels, as is the case in the Holbein Gateway in Whitehall Palace in London (early 1530s).188 Alexander Seton’s giant triumphal structure in Fyvie Castle (c. 1603) [see Plate XV] was
183 Jane Kingsley-Smith, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 98–102. 184 George L. Hersey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples, 1443–1475 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 1–5, 13–16; Zaho, Imago Triumphalis, pp. 46–64. 185 Stanley Appelbaum (ed.), The Triumph of Maximilian I: 137 Woodcuts by Hans Burghkmair and Others (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), pp. 16–17, and Larry Silver, ‘Paper Pageants: The Triumphs of Emperor Maximilian I’, in Wisch and Scott Munshower (eds), Art and Pageantry, vol. 1, pp. 292–331. 186 Glendinning, MacInnes and MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture, pp. 15–16; Aonghus MacKechnie, ‘Stirling Triumphal Arch’, Welcome (Historic Scotland News-sheet, September 1991). 187 Ian Campbell, ‘James IV and Edinburgh’s First Triumphal Arches’, p. 29. 188 Simon Thurley, Whitehall Palace: An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240–1698 (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Historic Royal Palaces, 1999), pp. 43–45.
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Figure 35. Albrecht Dürer’s The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian, created in 1515 for Emperor Maximilian I.
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Figure 36. Venus with Libra and Taurus, from the set of prints The Seven Planets by Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531).
comparable in size and grandeur to Alfonso I’s arch in Castelnuovo, and to the triumphal façade of Leon Battista Alberti’s Church of S. Andrea in Mantua, completed in 1488 to celebrate the Gonzaga family’s power. Equally interesting examples were the towering arch-like façades of Craigston Castle, built by John Urquhart in 1604–1607, and the now ruinous but still impressive arch at Salcoats Castle from 1592.189 Triumphal-style entrances on a more domestic scale were 189 Glendinning, MacInnes and MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture, pp. 43 and 49; also in Aonghus MacKechnie, ‘James VI’s Architects and their Architecture’, in Goodare and Lynch (eds), Reign of James VI, p. 162.
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also not uncommon in England, for example at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire (1572), and at Stonyhurst, Lancashire (c. 1595).190 The stone façade of James V’s royal apartments in Stirling Castle might also record the ephemeral experience of an — actual or idealized — triumphal procession, the succession of planetary gods, allegorical figures, symbolic images, and influential courtiers depicted in stone on the façade offering hints of the appearance of a triumphal entry’s merry procession.191 The combination of arch and façades at Stirling could be performing — like Emperor Maximilian’s own contemporary paper representations — an ideal version of the fleeting triumphal culture of the sovereigns’ reigns. Interestingly, works from Maximilian’s artists of choice, Burgkmair and Dürer, were probably the source for some of the statuary at Stirling Castle192 [see Figure 36]. Cosmic deities using their astral powers to guard and inspire the court is a concept familiar to triumphal entries, where classical and planetary beings were symbolically summoned to hail the ruler’s reign.193 A similar concept is depicted in Borso of Este’s Salone dei Mesi in Palazzo Schifanoia (Ferrara, early 1470s), where planetary personifications mounted on Petrarchan chariots and benign classical figures were shown populating the spaces of Borso’s thriving Ferrarese court [see Plate XVI].194 The artistic sensibility demonstrated in printed imagery and ceiling decorations could provide valuable hints of the appearance of comparable figures in triumphal ceremonies, although it is difficult to ascertain exactly who influenced whom. Edinburgh-printed book frontispieces could for example provide suggestions for the costumes worn by the four Virtues, for example in Mary Stuart’s 1561 entry, and for Anna in 1590.195 Feminine personifications of Pax and Amor appear in the frontispiece of John Napier’s A Plaine discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John, printed in 1593 by Robert Waldergrave [see Figure 37], while Veritas and Castitas figure in Proposition and Principles of Divinitie, by Theodore de Beze, printed in 1591.
190 See Colvin, ‘Britain in Pompous Entries’, pp. 85–90. 191 Giovanna Guidicini, ‘Ordering the World: The Game of Trionfi and the Architectural Iconography of Stirling Castle, Scotland’, in Robin O’Bryan (ed.), Games and Game Playing in European Art and Literature (16th-17th Centuries) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), pp. 221–49 (pp. 228–44). 192 Ibid., pp. 237–40. RCAHMS, Stirlingshire: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments (Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963), pp. 221–22; Gordon Ewart, Dave Murray and Sarah Hogg, Stirling Castle Palace, Archaeological and Historical Research 2004–2008, Interior and Exterior Elevations. Historic Scotland, n.d. [accessed 1 March 2020], pp. 248–62, particularly 249 and 258. 193 Shire, ‘The King in his House’, pp. 81–84. 194 Zaho, Imago Triumphalis, pp. 100–19; Aby Warburg, ‘Arte Italiana e Astrologia Internazionale nel Palazzo Schifanoja di Ferrara’, in Gertrud Bing (ed.), La Rinascita del Paganesimo Antico. Contributi alla Storia della Cultura Raccolti da Gertrud Bing (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1966), pp. 247–72. Marco Bertozzi, La Tirannia degli Astri: Gli Affreschi Astrologici di Palazzo Schifanoia (Livorno: Sillabe, 1999), pp. 44–47. 195 Proposed by Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, pp. 38, 70, 112.
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They all have floating tunics and mantles, elaborate headpieces, crowns, or veils, and hold appropriate objects, such as a branch of olive for Pax and a large heart for Amor. Veritas, Pacis, and Castitas tramp over reclining figures illustrating opposite vices — such as the dishevelled man lying under Castitas’s feet — recalling the edifying scenes set up for Margaret Tudor in 1503, and for Charles I in 1633. Amor, her crowned head in a halo, seems to be walking over trappings of religious ceremonial, such as a rosary, a chalice, and an elaborate candlestick. Considering painted ceilings, the common iconography could be based on a similarity of taste and artistic interests, and on comparable humanist ideas showing distinctive internationalism.196 The Astral Ceiling of Cullen House, Banfshire, built in 1600 for Sir Walter Ogilvie and destroyed by fire in 1987, displayed suggestively costumed planetary and non-planetary deities, with labels indicating Mercurius, Neptunus, Flora, and Luna, plus a fragment of a label indicating a Pluto, with added clouds, putti, and stars.197 The tradition of planetary representations was of Petrarchan origin, and immensely popularized by portable sixteenth-century objects like almanacs and prints, such as Georg Pencz’s Planetary Gods and Virgil Solis’s Planets Cycle.198 Mercury — appearing in 1633 as sporting ‘his feathered hat, and his Caduceus’199 could obtain extra detail by considering Mercury at Cullen, a bearded figure, with a red, ermine-lined cape, green garments underneath, a pointed, winged green hat, short winged red boots, and a caduceus. The 1633 Moon, of whose appearance there is no record, could be imagined to be akin to her Cullen counterpart — wearing a white top and a brown skirt, holding a bow and arrow, and carrying a quiver.200 Similarities in composition and iconography between the Siege of Troy shown on the ceiling at Cullen, and that appearing on the decorations hanging on the streets for Anna’s entry in 1590, could be considered.201 The Cullen scene is impressively layered and articulate, showing the Greek army brandishing weapons entering a city on fire, an unheeded Cassandra in the forefront to the left, with menacing Greek ships approaching to the right [see Plate XVII].202 Another suggestive, now largely lost planetary ceiling was at Mary Somerville’s House in Burntisland, probably built between 1600 and 1630 for merchant ship-owner Captain Andrew Watson. Here was a bearded Jupiter — labelled ‘IVPEITAR’ — sitting on an eagle, with a thunderbolt in his raised right hand, 196 Discussed fully in Bath, ‘“Rare Shewes and Singular Inventions”’, passim. 197 Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, pp. 38–42. Also described in Elizabeth Bracegirdle, ‘Ornamented Dwellings: Studies in Scottish Painted Decoration 1570–1640’, Inferno, St Andrews Journal of Art History, 4 (1997), 37–52 (46–49). 198 Michael Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland Pub., 2003), pp. 200–01; 220–21. 199 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 267. 200 Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, p. 42. 201 Ceiling in Bracegirdle, ‘Ornamented Dwellings’, 44–47. Entry in Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, p. 152; characters from the siege of Troy in Burel, ‘The Discription’, pp. i-vii. 202 Anne Douglas (ed.), Contemporary Art, Built Heritage and Patronage: Celestial Ceiling (Aberdeen: The Robert Gordon University, 2004), p. 46; Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting, pp. 210–11.
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Figure 37. Allegorical personifications of Pax and Amor in costume, from the frontis piece of John Napier’s A Plaine Discouery of the whole Reuelation of Saint Iohn, 1593.
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and a sceptre in his left; Apollo as a younger man with light brown hair playing the lyre; Saturn holding a scythe; and Venus with the symbol of a burning heart.203 The elaborate attire worn by the Muses and the Virtues on the ceiling decoration at Crathes Castle — built for the Burnett family between 1553 and 1596, the decorative scheme probably belonging to the later period — could also have points in common with costumes worn by Muses and Virtues as triumphal characters. Here in the Muses Room are depicted Wisdom, Justice, Faith, Hope, and Charity — in colourful garments and identifiable through accompanying tools — for example Hope holding an anchor and a spade, and Charity holding an infant near her naked breasts. The nine Muses appeared alongside the Virtues, wearing elegant dresses and associated with a variety of stringed instruments and woodwind [see Plate XVIII]. Both Muses and Virtues were accompanied by explanatory inscriptions on the sides of the beams.204 Also at Crathes, historical, biblical, and mythological characters appeared as the well-known European theme of the nine worthies, and exemplified the attire of triumphal figures like Fergus, Paris, or Solomon. Julius Caesar appeared as a fair, bearded man with a richly decorated blue armour, King David in rich furs holding a sword and a book, and bearded Hector of Troy was in armour with a feathered helmet.205 Parallels between painted indoor decorations and artistic productions for triumphal entries are likely considering how painters in charge of royal entries, like Walter Binning and James Workman, were probably often engaged to paint ceilings as well, suggesting similarities in techniques, composition, and styles employed.206 Between 1554 and 1562, Walter Binning (fl. 1540–1594) in particular is recorded on a number of occasions working for Edinburgh town council. For example on 12 October 1554, he was paid for the crafting of various items ‘for the making of the play graith and paynting of the handsenye and the playaris facis’.207 While Binning’s work in private houses left no traces in the records, he worked repeatedly for the burgh to decorate the town arms and standards, for painting work in St Giles Kirk, and for decorating the north gallery of Holyroodhouse.208 Relevant examples of allegorical figures, deities, and personifications also appeared on panels on the perimeter wall in Edzell Garden, built around 1604 for Sir David Lindsay, Lord Edzell. These sculptured panels represented the seven planetary deities, the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven liberal arts, 203 Michael Ross Apted, ‘Two Painted Ceilings from Mary Sommerville’s House, Burntisland’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 91 (1957–1958), 144–76 (147–48) and illustrated 152–58; ownership in 168–69. 204 Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting, pp. 199–200. See also Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, p. 174. 205 Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting, pp. 185–90. 206 Michael Ross Apted, Painting in Scotland from the 14th to the 17th Centuries with Particular Reference to Painted Domestic Decoration 1550–1650, 3 vols (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 76–79; Bartley, ‘Scottish Royal Entries’, pp. 38, 49. 207 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1528–1557, pp. 198–99, As discussed in Michael Ross Apted and Susan Hannabuss, Painters in Scotland 1301–1700: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 1978), pp. 28–30. 208 Carpenter, ‘Walter Binning’, pp. 22–24.
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Figure 38. Temperance as one of the seven virtues represented on the walls of Edzell Garden, c. 1604.
dressed in all’antica manner, holding appropriate tools, and attended by suitable animal companions [see Figure 38]. The set of the planetary deities derived from the work of the German artist George Pencz, possibly via illustrated books (Stammbücher and Alba Amicorum) brought into the country by some of Lord
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Edzell’s German miners.209 Engravings by Johannes Sadeler (1550–1600) and Crispijn de Passe (1565–1637) respectively inspired the sets of the Liberal Arts and of the Virtues.210 The visual language of civic ceremonies and court performances probably expressed a similar level of cultural refinement, and an awareness of symbolic and emblematic imagery comparable to that expressed in Alexander Seton’s Long Gallery at Pinkie House, Musselburgh. Like triumphal entries, the Long Gallery was constructed as a moralizing, didactical experience — inspired by Stoic principles [see Plate XIX].211 It contained 21 panels of emblems and accompanying mottoes based on Otto Van Veen’s Emblemata Horatiana (Antwerp, 1607), on J. H. Boissard and Denis Lebey de Batilly’s Emblemata (Frankfurt 1596), and on Blaise de Vigenère’s translation in French of the Imagines of Philostratus (1614).212 The organizer of the 1633 entry, William Drummond of Hawthornden, was very familiar with emblematic language, corresponding with Ben Jonson regarding its use at Pinkie, and in the emblems on Mary Queen of Scots’ bed of state.213 The inclusion of sets of deities, Virtues, or Muses in triumphal ceremonies and in painted galleries or garden enclosures was likely to fulfil similar purposes. For centuries, scholars all around Europe tried to mimic God’s creational act by recreating the perfection and symbolic self-sufficiency of the biblical Garden of Eden.214 Planets represented the world’s natural forces, lined up by human minds in an attempt to classify, understand, and control the components of creation as a divine machine.215 Monarchs tried to appropriate, order, and recreate divine perfection in courtly spaces; the organization of the Italian park of Viboccone for the Savoy family, begun in 1568 by Ascanio Vitozzi, centred on the harmonization of senses, liberal arts, theology, major studies, and mathematical disciplines.216 In masterminding a secluded microcosm inhabited in orderly fashion by Virtues, planetary deities, and liberal arts, Lord Edzell was providing nourishment for the mind, stimulating reflection, and replicating the Lord’s creative powers. Collections made the invisible forces of the natural world, past events, and
209 William Douglas Simpson, ‘Edzell Castle’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 65 (8 December 1930), 115–78 (151–64). 210 William Douglas Simpson and Chris Tabraham, Edzell Castle and Garden (Edinburgh: Historic Scotland, 2007), pp. 18–19. 211 Michael Bath, ‘Alexander Seton’s Painted Gallery’, in Lucy Gent (ed.), Albion’s Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660 (New Haven: The Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art by Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 79–108 (pp. 81–100). 212 Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures, English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture (London and New York: Longmans, 1994), pp. 13–14; Michael Bath, ‘Applied Emblematics in Scotland: Painted Ceilings, 1550–1650’, Emblematica, 7 (2) (Winter 1993), 259–305 (262–88). 213 Bath, ‘Ben Jonson’, 73–76. Michael Bath, ‘Philostratus Comes to Scotland: A New Source for the Pictures at Pinkie’, Journal of Northern Renaissance, 4 (2012). [accessed 30 July 2015], [13]. 214 Strong, The Artist and the Garden, pp. 107–11. Boccaccio’s symbolic garden in Franco Cardini and Massimo Miglio, Nostalgia del Paradiso, Il Giardino Medievale (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2002), pp. 117–25. 215 Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 122–47. 216 Fagiolo (ed.), Città Effimera, fig. 136.
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supernatural beliefs accessible, and wonder cabinets, scientific gardens, and galleries became theatres of the world, where the universe’s components were classified and displayed. Like triumphal entries, they satisfied the observers’ gaze and fed their mind, encompassing geographical and practical limitations to construct reasoned narratives, establish social identity, and bring stories to life.217 The sketchy quality of the design of many a Scottish ceiling, gallery, and garden decorations could be explained by these spaces working as ‘places of memory’, where the images’ capacity to quickly rekindle ideas and connections in the mind of the observer superseded artistic accuracy.218 The Gallery at Earlshall Castle, built by the Bruce family in the mid-sixteenth century and decorated in the 1620s, worked as a memory scheme within a memory theatre — that is, a space where images were created to facilitate human understanding and recollection. It has simple, black-and-white designs organized in regular frames, ranging from animals, to mythological figures, to coats of arms of Scottish and European families, and of imaginary characters [see Plate XX].219 The sketched, minimalist design of these and other images — for example, of the paintings at the ceiling of Culross Palace — was not then artistic naivety, representing instead an intentional choice to privilege ease of memorization and sophistication of the overall scheme over skin-deep visual realism.220 Ars Memorativa had close links with the Renaissance emblem tradition, both based on the association of ideas and images within a provided fixed framework.221 Ars Memorativa’s memory theatres were imaginary buildings created by the minds of those willing to memorize a concept, to be furnished with images and to be ‘walked through’ conceptually when remembering was necessary, so that the connections between ideas could be inferred through re-experiencing the spatial connection between the pictures.222 Memory theatres could become real-size spaces: in the 1530s, Giulio Camillo Delminio was working in Venice on an actual, full-size, wooden memory theatre for the king of France — which unfortunately he never completed.223 Also, English writer Obadiah Walker in his Of Education (1673) suggested using the street names of London as memory devices while going through it during a journey, the city itself becoming a sequence of memory places for the promenading, observing visitor.224 Ars Memorativa was
217 Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 20–25, 34–39; Wintroub, Savage Mirror, pp. 171–73. 218 Bath, Speaking Pictures, pp. 49–51. 219 Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting, pp. 159–67, particularly 160–61. 220 Ibid., pp. 56–77; Bath, ‘Applied Emblematics’, 288–96; Bath, Speaking Pictures, p. 13. Esoteric connections in Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 222–27. 221 Michael Bath, Review of ‘William E. Engel, Rory Loughnane and Grant Williams, “The Memory Arts in Renaissance England: A Critical Anthology” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 377 pp., 24 illustrations’, in Emblematica: Essays in Word and Image, 2 (2018), 413–19. 222 David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century 1590–1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 87–89. 223 Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 129–59, particularly 129–36. 224 Bath, Review, 414–15.
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well-known in Scotland, being mentioned by William Schaw, a mason familiar with Giordano Bruno’s theories and quite influential at James VI’s court, as an essential quality to be mastered.225 Schaw was master of the king’s buildings from 1583 to his death in 1602, being responsible, for example, for the intricate biblical symbolism rich in propagandistic allusions adopted at Stirling Royal Chapel. Schaw wrote in 1598 the first Statutes of Scottish masonry for the local Masonic lodges, underlying the importance of the art of memory for its symbolic, occult, and hermetic meanings; the idea of symbolic, imaginary buildings facilitating memorization must have appealed to him, as someone who dealt daily with real buildings.226 There might be more than a visual resemblance between the imagery employed in triumphal entries and the personifications, emblematic figures, and myths appearing in Scottish galleries: triumphal ceremonies could also use a prearranged experiential walk amongst standardized, memorable allegorical and emblematic images and captions, to mimic the experience of a memory theatre. The relative straightforward directness of triumphal iconography also transformed cities into sequences of walk-in spaces, thematic rooms in a memory theatre where identifiable visual samples of natural and supernatural worlds were collected, organizing the overwhelming complexity of the world into an ordered reality to which the viewer could relate. Like gallery decorations, the imagery of pageants and shows were meant for effect from a distance rather than for close inspection, to be easily identifiable, memorized, and recalled later in life for further meditation. The 1549 entry of Prince Philip of Spain and Emperor Charles V into Antwerp exemplifies how the combination of spectacles and specific civic locations could constitute a memory theatre: the decorated civic loci chosen for the entry acted as memory pointers, creating conceptual associations between selected images, their related allegorical content, and real — rather than mental — spaces.227 Similarly, in Edinburgh, the demonstrated spatial symbiosis between messages and locations worked efficiently in reinforcing the concepts presented through the entry, making them memorable. The perambulatory character of both triumphal entries and the perusal of decorations in galleries and gardens also made the experiences alike. Both sets of images were meant not for static study, but for interpretation while moving from one set to another, gathering information flexibly and individually within the confines of the structure and narrative chosen by the triumph’s organizers, or the gallery’s patron. Both tried to make sense of a complex, overwhelming world through systematic classification, by selecting and representing memorable — literally, to be remembered — aspects of reality to inform and inspire the viewer’s future behaviour.
225 MacKechnie, ‘James VI’s Architects’, pp. 161–65. 226 David Stevenson, ‘Origins of Freemasonry’, pp. 26–51, 87–96. 227 Bussels, Spectacle, Rhetoric and Power, pp. 200–08.
Chapter VIII
The Netherbow Expectations and Outcomes The Netherbow The Netherbow was the gate at the eastern, lower end of Edinburgh High Street, and recorded as arcus inferior in 1369; it controlled access to the neighbouring burgh of the Canongate and the road to the port of Leith.1 The gate built in 1503 was damaged by the English invasion of 1544, then rebuilt in 1573, probably as an arched gateway with tower and spire resembling the Portcullis Gate at Edinburgh Castle, then again rebuilt 1606–1617 in a castellated style, with inward-looking battlements and gun loops. The Netherbow was demolished in 1764 to facilitate road traffic, its previous position currently signalled by brass markers inserted on the pavement2 [see Figures 39 and 40]. Farewells and Predictions at the Exit Gateway As final stations of the triumphal entry, exit gates were the last opportunity to present memorable parting messages, offering final resolution and the interpretative key to the composite narrative. For example, the triumphal entry for Margaret of Austria entering Geneva in 1501 had shown her how to follow the paths of Honour and Virtue through a series of pointers contained in each pageant, but the conclusive pageant displayed Death himself, warning of the fragility of passing worldly glories.3 Katharine of Aragon’s entry into London in 1501 concluded with a heavenly throne and a crown, demonstrating the final reward for the successful reconfiguration from proud Infanta to subdued Tudor wife that the spectacle had narrated stage after stage.4 The educational and moralizing narrative of many earlier entries in fact relied on the symbolic delivery of a heavenly or earthly reward for the sympathetic, engaged ruler, or warned of the consequences of ignoring the entry’s messages. As previously mentioned, the final stages of later triumphs were part of a less instructive, more celebratory narrative, often based on the happy inescapability of the monarch’s future successes. At the Strand, at the end of James VI/I’s 1604 entry, astrological 1 Stuart Harris, Place Names of Edinburgh, p. 455. 2 Wright, Guide to the Royal Mile, p. 9; Dennison and Lynch, ‘Crown, Capital, and Metropolis’, 30. Arnot, History of Edinburgh, p. 238. RCAHMS, Inventory, p. 123. Dennison, et al. (eds), Painting the Town, pp. 190–92. 3 Kipling, Enter the King, p. 183. 4 Ibid., pp. 211–12, 297; Gordon Kipling, The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 12–38.
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Figure 39. Detail of the Netherbow and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
bodies and signs of good omen written in the stars prophesied James’ upcoming role as new Augustus.5 In 1660, the last arch built in the Place Dauphine for Louis XIV’s entry in Paris — modelled around an obelisk dedicated to royal authority — showed eternal glory sitting on a celestial globe, a celebration of absolute power unrestrained by civic expectations or moralizing considerations6 [see Figure 41]. Earlier narratives focusing on the entry as an opportunity for the ruler to acquire or perfect necessary virtues implicitly celebrated the civic authorities’ own role in devising a pathway to moral self-improvement. On the contrary, in later entries the appearance of heavenly and celestial — but not religious or moralizing — figures, and particularly of planetary and astrological themes expressed the rulers’ qualities as inherently theirs from birth and by right, due 5 Jonson, ‘King James’s Royal and Magnificent Entertainment’, p. 396; Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d, pp. 18–19. 6 Bryant, King and the City, pp. 221–22.
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Figure 40. The eastern approach to the Netherbow Gate from the Canongate in The Netherbow Port from the East, taken down 1764.
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Figure 41. The grand arch built in Place Dauphine in 1660, for the entry of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain into Paris.
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to a favourable, preordained stellar alignment. For example, Charles V’s entry in 1524 into Naples included painted representations of the ‘celestial goat’ — the constellation of Capricornus, called ‘la Celeſte Capra tutta ſtellata’ — made of stars and of the boat of Argos, or ‘Nave d’Argo’,7 also made of stars, possibly alluding to the Emperor’s naval victories. In Paris in 1549, Henri II saw on an arch a representation of himself as the Argonauts’ pilot Typhis, flanked by personifications of the stars Castor and Pollux guiding and overseeing his progresses.8 The happy astrological situation of these rulers’ reigns expressed inescapable dynastic supremacy, foreseen and blessed from above. Dante’s work had demonstrated that the study of stars and planets as divine creations allowed a glimpse of God’s mysterious rules, governing the earthly world and defining one’s own character and destiny.9 The astrological ceiling realized by Pontormo in the loggia of the Medici villa at Castello celebrated the fortunate cosmic inevitability of Cosimo of Medici’s rise.10 At the Scottish court, astrology was a most highly regarded activity; William Schevez (d. 1497) who studied astrology, medicine, and theology served as James III’s physician in 1471–1480.11 Later, Thomas Seget of Seton (1569–1627) popularized the theories of Galileo, and James VI’s physician John Craig had a copy of the 1566 edition of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (first published in 1542), proposing a heliocentric solar system. Craig was influenced by Tycho Brahe’s astronomic theories, and in 1589 James VI himself met Brahe at his study at Uraniborg.12 James VI’s physicians Gilbert Skeyne and George Eglisham used astrology to predict the outbreak of major illnesses, and designed birth charts determining planetary influences on a patient’s future health. In a civic context, in 1505–1506 practising as a surgeon or barber in Edinburgh was limited to those who had demonstrated — amongst other skills — enough knowledge of astrology to determine the best planetary alignments in which to operate.13 The appearance of astrological studies, planetary-related predictions, and birth charts in later triumphal entries in Edinburgh shifted the focus of the civic ceremonies from advisory to confidently celebratory, using a culturally widespread, approachable language. The personifications or representations of the planets appearing in earlier ceremonies were generally well-wishing figures, not spatially suggestive or referring to an individual monarch’s predestined 7 De Dominici, Vite, vol. 2, p. 16. 8 Ian D. McFarlane (ed.), The Entry of Henri II into Paris, 16 June 1549, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (New York: Binghamton, 1982), pp. 31–32. Scottish connection in Bath, Emblems in Scotland, pp. 109, 111, and 159. 9 Richard Kay, Dante’s Christian Astrology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 9–12. 10 R. Burr Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, 1530–1630 (New York: ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008), [48]. 11 Hilary M. Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at The English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), pp. 160–61. Jane Ridder-Patrick, ‘Astrology in Early Modern Scotland ca. 1560–1726’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2012), pp. 27–28. 12 Alexander Keller, ‘The Physical Nature of Man: Science, Medicine, Mathematics’, in MacQueen (ed.), Humanism, pp. 109–13. 13 Ridder-Patrick, ‘Astrology’, pp. 173–76.
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role; the role of the planets in later entries was decidedly more explicit. In 1579 for James VI, at the Netherbow ‘was erectit the conjunctioun of the planets, as thay war in thair degreis and places the tyme of his Majesteis happie nativitie, and the same vivelie representit be the assistance of King Ptolomé’.14 Ptolemy’s speech described the King’s ‘beautie and fortunes bestowed upon him by the influence of the stares’,15 fixing in the departing young King’s mind the perfection of his innate virtues, and the inescapable brilliance of his upcoming destiny. In 1633, the final station at the Netherbow offered Charles Fame and Honour as an appropriate, well-wishing send-off; the station nearby the Netherbow, expressed an explicit farewell pageant, representing ‘so much of the heavenly constellations and planetary influences as could conveniently be applied to the purpose’,16 and particularly a heaven, into the which appeared his Majestie’s ascendant Virgo. Shee was beautified with sixe and twenty starres, after that order that they are in their constellatioune, one of them being of the first magnitude, the rest of the third and fourth.17 Each of the planets delivered a well-wishing speech related to each god or goddess’s traditional area of expertise, not to propose necessary advancements but to ratify the success of Charles’ reign as happily prearranged — ending, one after another, with slight variations of Saturn’s acclamation ‘Thus Heavens decree, so have ordain’d the Fates’.18 The King’s excellent qualities having been fixed at birth, Charles’ destiny would merely unravel as it had been already written, and the planets were summoned ‘Heaven’s volume to unclaspe, wast pages spread, / Mysterious golden cyphers cleere to reade’.19 Charles was to Heare then the augur of the future dayes, […] For what is firme decreed in heaven above, In vaine on earth strive mortalls to improve.20 In 1590, Anna of Denmark also saw a pageant centred on an astrological topic at the Overbow, describing the Queen’s fortune as already written in the stars. This included a boy actor ‘dressed in the garb of an astronomer. Pretending to be a mathematician, he stood by a brass sphere and had various mathematical instruments with him’,21 and wished
14 Colville and Thomson (eds), Historie, p. 179. 15 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 459. 16 Craufurd, History of the University, pp. 122–23. 17 Drummond, ‘Entertainment’, p. 269. 18 Ibid., p. 273. 19 Ibid., p. 272. 20 Ibid. 21 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 110. Scottish chronicler’s interpretation in ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 40.
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may the good fortune that is in your soul befall you, […] and may what your stars foretell come to pass’.22 The Queen’s royal destiny — past, through her royal ancestry; present, in her marriage to James; and future in her bringing prosperity to Scotland — was already set in what her ‘planet / signifies’,23 and only awaiting to take place. The tone is less adamant than for Charles’ prophecies, suggesting heartfelt desire and strong probability, but also the necessity for Anna’s cooperation; the sort of commitment expected of the Queen was made clear in the following stations. At the Butter Tron, the Muses offered the Queen ‘all the support / the king may need upon this earth’ — a king whose ‘wisdom encompasses both spiritual and temporal matters’ — and exemplified the wifely submission expected of her by stating ‘we are his servants and he rules over us, / therefore we follow in his footsteps’.24 Further ahead at the Tolbooth, Anna saw the Virtues with the aforementioned mix of praise and exhortations towards personal improvement. Seen in this context, the last pageant at the Netherbow presenting the visit of the Queen of Sheba/Anna in awed admiration to a sage and benevolent Solomon/ James VI, contained a transparent final piece of advice. To achieve the bright future forecast for her, Anna must recognize her subordinate position to a king of superior qualities, and use what powers she possessed to support his rule.25 The Scottish chronicler misses the biblical character of the scene, describing it as ‘a marriage of a King and his Queene, with all their nobilitie about them’, but by remarking how the accompanying speech ‘applied the ſame to the marriage of the King and herſelfe’26 clarifies the prophetic quality of the show as referring to Anna’s future married life. The mention of a large group of actors on the scene surrounding the main characters might help understand Calderwood’s perplexing notation that ‘at the port of the Nether Bow were represented the seven planets’.27 Calderwood might have focused his attention of some identifiable characters amongst the crowd of performers — the planets themselves, as part of the courtly setting or involved in a side pageant. The mention elsewhere that at the Netherbow ‘the seven planets were, and gave the weird [fortune] in Latin’ supports this interpretation.28 The planetary deities would then appear at the Netherbow to witness the marital happiness they themselves had foreseen through the astrologer at the Overbow, and which Anna’s (assumed) cooperative response to exhortations of virtuous behaviour described in the intermediate
22 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 110. In Kipling, ‘Deconstruction of the Virgin’, 144–45, prophesying of Anna’s destiny. 23 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 110. 24 Ibid., pp. 110–11. 25 For the dialogue between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, see Ibid., pp. 118–19. 26 ‘Receiving of King James VI and his Queen’, p. 42. 27 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 97. 28 Chambers (ed.) Domestic Annals, vol. 1, p. 200. Noted as ‘Johnston’s Hist. Scot. MS’, Johnston’s History of Scotland. MS. Advocates’ Library.
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Figure 42. The Apocalyptic Woman defeating the seven-headed beast, in a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer from the series/portfolio The Apocalypse, 1498 (1511 Latin edition).
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stations had materialized. This entry could effectively join (earlier) edifying and (later) flattering celebrations, with a skilful use of space to signal personal progress and virtuous ascent in the context of a preordained destiny of dynastic grandeur. In Mary Queen of Scots’ earlier entry, the future was shown not predetermined but open-ended, depending on the ruler following or disregarding the warnings she had received. Mary’s exit pageant at the Netherbow was pointedly lacking an explanatory commentary, only stating how as ‘thair wes ane vther ſkaffet maid, havand ane dragoun in the ſamyn, with ſome ſpeiches; and efter that the dragoun was brynt, and the quenis grace hard ane pſalme ſong’.29 As mentioned in Chapter VI, the dragon might be the beast from the Book of Revelation, symbolizing the blasphemous Antichrist who devastates the earth before the Last Judgement, with Mary representing the Whore of Babylon who accompanies it. However, Mary could also be identified with the holy woman crowned with stars whom the beast menaces, and who would give birth to a God-blessed saviour before escaping into the wilderness [see Figure 42]. This is a surprisingly accurate description of Mary’s future destiny as King James VI/I’s mother, and a suitable representation of female rulers’ limited role as providers of the next generation.30 If the lack of interpretative tools for Mary’s final pageant was intentional, rather than merely gone unrecorded, the open-ended finale of the cautionary narrative envisaged Mary’s future as in her own hands. She might be damned if she continued to follow popish superstitions, but would rise to protector of the true religion if she listened to the triumphal entry’s admonitions and reformed her ways. As described in the speech accompanying the delivery of the psalm and the bible, the Queen would find ‘The perfett waye unto the hevennes hie’, but ‘who the contrarie does wilfullie / How them he threatens with his scurge and wand’.31 Going further back to the conclusion to Margaret Tudor’s entry, the last station presented the Queen with the Virtues she had acquired through sympathetic engagement with the ceremony, but also predicted dynastic rewards — ‘a Licorne and a Greyhound, that held a Difference of one Chardon floryſched, and a Red Roſe entrelaſſed’,32 representing the flourishing union of the houses of Stewart and Tudor. The spatial positioning of both groups was highly symbolic; ‘apon the wiche [arch] was in Sieges the iiij Vertuz’33 to be perceived and meditated upon from afar, while the rewarding depiction of interlacing dynasties was under the arch, becoming visible only when engaging physically with the exit gateway itself.34
29 Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. 30 Alasdair A. MacDonald, ‘Mary Stewart’s Entry’, 107. 31 Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, 21. 32 Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 290. 33 Ibid., p. 289. ‘Arch’ is added here for clarity. 34 ‘Whill the noble Company paſt thorough. Under was a Licorne and a Greyhound’, Ibid., p. 290.
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The Netherbow represented the climax of the transformation set in motion by the triumphal entry, releasing into the outside world a captivated monarch who — having fully engaged with their capital’s concerns in 1503, or having fulfilled the promised glorious destiny by adhering to the advised pathway in 1561 and in 1590 — was now willing to protect their interests. For James VI/I and Charles I, placing virtuous figures at the beginning of the entry, and astrological predictions of greatness as farewell messages, meant depriving the burgh of a chance to contribute to, redefine, and construct an innately perfect monarchical power. The Triumphal Route: Visiting Extramural Communities The Netherbow was the official exit station and the end of the entry ‘proper’; from here, the procession continued to move eastward through the adjoining burgh of Canongate, by far the most prosperous of Edinburgh’s neighbours. Many small communities had developed on the outer sides of Edinburgh’s walls — settlements of craftsmen to the south of Cowgate and outside Westport, and the suburb of Bristo outside Potterrow Port and Society Port. Not partaking of Edinburgh’s privileges or subject to its legal obligations, they were largely unaffected by and uninvolved in triumphal entries; in time, they were absorbed by the larger burgh through purchase or bequests. The nearby port of Leith owed its prosperity to its role as minor partner collaborating in Edinburgh’s economy, providing docks, seamen, and access to international routes; South Leith was absorbed by its larger neighbour during Mary’s reign, while North Leith came with a bequest35 [see Figure 43]. As the main point of landing for rulers arriving by sea, Leith played a key role in Edinburgh’s triumphal entries. The size and style of welcome in Leith to the disembarking ruler seems to have varied: Mary’s arrival in Leith on 19 August 1561 from France was a relatively small and spontaneous affair, with a multitude of citizens and many noblemen coming to the town to see her on her landing.36 On the way from Leith to Holyrood, she met a group of ‘seditious craftsmen, who had latelie violated the authoritie of the magistrats, mett her betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, and craved her pardoun’37 — probably fellow Catholics, as Reformed Calderwood remarked ‘what was done was done in contempt of religioun’38 — who had defied the Edinburgh authorities to come cheer the Queen in person. A section of the community who did not feel themselves adequately represented within the burgh’s codified spaces and celebratory language was searching for an alternative location for self-expression. The physical confines and ideological constraints of the burgh’s traditional celebratory and spatial organization might be straining
35 Makey, ‘Edinburgh’, pp. 195–96. 36 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 2, pp. 142–43; Herries, Historical Memoirs, p. 56. 37 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 2, p. 143. 38 Ibid.
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under the pressure to accommodate not only the monarch’s expectations of a less dialogic centralized celebration, but the presence of new voices. On 30 September 1579, King James VI arrived at Holyrood Palace from Linlithgow via nearby Corstorphine. Leith was not here geographically involved, but nevertheless ‘the toun of Leith mett him at the Quarrell Holes and made a volie of shotts with the artillerie of the ships, and so the king came to the Abbey’.39 The location chosen, ‘the Quarrel-Holes, betwixt Leith and Edinburgh’40 is still known as the Quarry Holes, on the north-east of the Palace of Holyrood, near the east side of modern-day Calton Hill and London Road. This was a spatially diplomatic choice — in fact, this peripheral, unregulated location was ‘the scene of numerous duels and private rencontres’41 — and one that was not intruding onto the territory of Edinburgh ‘proper’, nevertheless placing the Leith authorities on the path of the monarch to gain visibility and recognition. Leith’s welcome to Anna of Denmark and James VI on their arrival on 1 May 1590 was more elaborate — and their stay extended to 6 May, because of delays in the preparatory works at Holyrood. The Danish and Scottish fleet were welcomed by many ships at the harbour, and a welcoming volley of cannons was shot; the receiving party was made of a group of Scottish noblemen, and ‘the toun of Edinburgh, Leith, and the Cannogate, were in armour’.42 This does not seem to be an occasion for Leith to present herself to the monarch, taking charge of the royal party while on their own ground: rather, Leith’s spaces were occupied by or at least shared with the Scottish nobility and civic authorities of nearby dominant burghs.43 Leith used precious fabrics to characterize the monarchical space in the same way Edinburgh did, and ‘The street, all the way from the quay to the house where their majesties were to sleep, was strewn with cloth’.44 The royal couple passed through a walkway ‘covered with tapestrie and cloath of gold, that her feete tuich not the earth’,45 giving visual form to the symbolically distant space the King and Queen inhabited. On 6 May, the royal procession moved uphill to Edinburgh followed by Scottish and Danish nobility; ‘the toun of Edinburgh, Cannogate, and Leith, were in their armes’,46 and occupied once again Leith’s space, and the intermediate space between Leith and Edinburgh — but without arches, set spectacles, or decorations. In 1617 King James passed through Leith without stopping, on the way from Seton to the West Port. His official, staged arrival notably began not at Leith but at the Nor’ Loch; the King had been ‘alwayes in his cotche untill the tyme he had
39 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 458. 40 Robert Keith, History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Spottiswoode Society, 1844–1850), vol. 1, p. 224. 41 Ibid., footnote 2. 42 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 94. 43 See also Meikle, ‘Anna of Denmark’s Coronation and Entry’, pp. 278–79. 44 Graves (trans.), ‘Danish Account’, p. 100. 45 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, p. 94. 46 Ibid., pp. 94–95.
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Figure 43. View of Edinburgh titled Edynburgum from c. 1649, showing the port of Leith in the distance.
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Figure 44. Detail of the Canongate Cross and its surroundings, in James Gordon of Rothiemay, Edinodunensis Tabulam, c. 1647.
allmost cum to the middell of that way called the Long Gate, and then he lap on upon ane hors’,47 so that ‘he might the better be seene by the people’.48 Canongate’s welcome was much more articulate than Leith’s minimal contribution. King David I had established the burgh in 1128 as a service community for the Abbey of Holyrood.49 Canongate was a detached political entity independent from its larger, more economically minded neighbour; producing and catering for the royal court, it was too well-connected to be ignored, with its burgesses even enjoying the right to attend the market of Edinburgh.50 Such a prosperous, if small community, would have wanted to have a role in the welcoming celebrations for the transiting monarch: the records offer minimal
47 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19; noted as John Crowe, the younger, to Mr Alden. 48 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 245. 49 Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, pp. 5–12 and 28–31. 50 Dennison and Lynch, ‘Crown, Capital, and Metropolis’, 27–28, 35–36. Allen, ‘Conquering the Suburbs’, 429–35.
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detail on the entertainments offered in Canongate, but as most accounts focused on Edinburgh’s primary role, Canongate’s actual contribution could have been minimized — deliberately or absentmindedly. In earlier examples, the description of the triumphal ceremony stopped abruptly at the Netherbow to resume with the procession’s arrival at Holyrood — the Canongate being treated as a spatially blank section of the event. In 1503, for example, the otherwise detailed description of the event dismisses this section of the entertainment with a mere ‘then the noble Company paſſed out of the ſaid Towne, and to the Church of the Holy Croſſe’.51 Once outside the Church of Holyrood, the language of piety displayed in Edinburgh through the kissing of relics is replicated by the performance of a similar gesture of religious homage to a new set of relics; James ‘dyd as hee had doon before’52 by giving Margaret precedence. This symbolic parallel between the actions performed in Edinburgh and Holyrood underlined in-between Canongate’s spatial emptiness. During Mary’s entry in 1561, some of the performers — ‘the bairneis quhilk was in the cairt with the propyne’53 — made a speech in Holyrood regarding the abolition of the Mass and sang a psalm, and a group of Edinburgh ‘honeſt men remaynit in hir vtter chalmer’ to deliver the Queen a present, after which ‘the honeſt men and convoy come to Edinburgh’.54 Once again the Canongate was bypassed and absent from action, with a dialogue of religious confrontation linking Edinburgh and Holyroodhouse directly through the themes of performance and speeches, and the instances of spatial occupation discussed in Chapter III. In 1579, the Canongate space was directly involved in the celebrations, as ‘at the cannon croce ane breiff fabill for abbolisching of the paip & of the maſs with the authoritie and asisteris thairof for evir’,55 probably delivered by the Canongate’s own magistrates. The centrally located cross of the Canongate represented the small burgh’s own set of rights — a suitable location for a piece of locally organized celebration fully compatible with the pro-Reformation messages delivered in the triumphal entry ‘proper’ [see Figure 44]. In 1590, the Canongate space is mentioned in John Burel’s poetic description as merely traversed by Edinburgh’s civic authorities, ‘Sum ſpecial men that wer imployd / Into hir palace hir convoyd’.56 A sense of neighbourly collaboration resurfaced in 1617, when James VI/I’s procession ‘cam throu the Netherbow Port, wher his picture standes very reallie, and at the end off the libertie off the citie, in the Cannongait, thair the King made the Lord Provest leap off his hors and knichtet him with the sword of honor’.57 After this
51 52 53 54 55
Younge, ‘Fyancells’, p. 290. Ibid. Thomson (ed.), Diurnal, p. 68. Ibid., pp. 68–69. Transcription of ‘Johnston’s MS. History of Scotland. Adv. Lib. Hist. MSS. 35.4.2’; in Mill, Mediaeval Plays, p. 194. 56 Burel, ‘The Discription’, p. vii. 57 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 19.
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Sir William, the Lord Provest, with the Baillies, Councell, and citicens, retired bak againe, having done their obeysance, and then the Baillies off the Cannongait (being a suburbe to the citie), with their company, received him and was his guard untill he came to his aune pallace, the Abbay.58 The knighting of the provost appears to have been an apparently impromptu gesture of the King’s in response to the city’s welcome, showing a degree of engagement and approachability. The coordination between the authorities of Edinburgh and Canongate in swapping roles — the former receding into their own civic space, the latter taking on the escorting duties — prove this to have been a choreographed, prearranged event, suggesting a sense of harmony and cooperation. This could be due to the smaller burgh being acquired shortly afterwards — in 1636 — by larger Edinburgh: had this taking over already been discussed, it could have promoted in the larger burgh feelings of confidence and reconciliation rather than competition.59 Newly formed relevant groups not represented in the traditional intramural space — such as the University — could look for recognition and expression in these less codified and structured locations. The 1617 entry saw the most elaborate form of entertainment outside of the Netherbow, staged at the gate of the Inner court of Holyrood House. Here ‘about sum 30 yong men, in gounes off the Colledge off Edenborroughe’ kneeled at the King’s arrival; a speaker recited a celebratory oration, and presented ‘a buik to him off verses in Latin, all in his [the king’s] prais’60 — a ceremony of gift-giving already discussed in Chapter III. Entries often celebrated royal backings of educational institutions: during Henri II’s entry into Rouen in 1550, the King and his predecessor François I were praised as men of letters who had supported the University of Paris and the Collège de France. Henri was given by the personification of the goddess of Good Memory a book, commemorating his father’s support of the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and written in these same languages.61 Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were also the languages used to address James VI during his entry in 1579 in Edinburgh, praising him as quite the young scholar. Founded in 1583, with the town council’s financial support and the King’s patronage, Edinburgh College was still establishing itself amongst more respectable educational institutions.62 In 1617 the performers were not impersonators, but the very ‘professours and students of the Colledge of Edinburgh’, trying to captivate the King’s benevolence as ‘it was bruted, that all colledges were to be layde wast, except St Androes and Glasco, that they might floorish the better, which
58 Ibid., pp. 19–20. 59 Dennison and Lynch, ‘Crown, Capital, and Metropolis’, 39–40; Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, pp. 49–50; Allen, Building Early Modern Edinburgh, 160–63. 60 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 20. ‘the king’s’ is added here for clarity. 61 Wintroub, ‘Savage Mirror’, p. 44. 62 Andrew Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh from its Foundation, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1862), vol. 2, pp. 1–8.
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moved them to present their poems’.63 The works for the establishment of the new College were planned to begin, ‘but the Archbishop of St Andrews and the Bishop of Aberdeen had still sufficient influence to suspend the undertaking, as injurious to the Universities already established in the kingdom’.64 This rumour might have prompted the creation of Taton Mouson Eisodia: The Muses Welcome, a volume of heterogeneous Latin poems printed in 1618, capturing for posterity the potential for scholarship of the Scottish cultural elite, expressed through a collection of salutations addressing James’ journey through Scotland.65 The poems in the book presented to James at Holyroode — titled Nostodia, meaning Songs Celebrating a Return — would be included in the later publication, acting in 1617 as a preview of sorts.66 Under a veneer of standardized flattery, this learned collection included elements of local originality, and admonitions to an absentee king not to forget to patronize the institutions of his neglected home country — busy reasserting Scottish literary culture in his absence.67 The monarch was greatly interested in the College’s activities — during his stay he even summoned some of the Professors at Stirling Castle for a philosophical disputation68 — and the College’s decision to occupy the courtyard of Holyrood with a self-organized spectacle promoted the talent of the Academia Edinburgensis. The significance of this choice of location by the College can be discussed in comparison with the 1575 opening pageant of the University of Leiden, a celebration of civic learning that might have inspired the Scottish organizers in 1617 and 1633.69 In Leiden various characters walked together in one procession heading for the spaces of the new Academy. They were the personifications of the disciplines taught such as Theology, Law, and Medicine; the men of Antiquity who had distinguished themselves in them; the Muses and Apollo the institution’s patrons; but also the real professors and officials of the University. Physical vicinity in the procession associated the local teachers with the greatest scholars of the past, and the presence of mythological figures endowed the teaching spaces visited by the procession with antique dignity and almost mystical qualities.70 While real and allegorical spaces overlapped in Leiden, in Edinburgh finding space at all for the celebration of the University presented challenges. Mentioning the
63 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 7, p. 246. 64 Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh, vol. 2, pp. 3–4. 65 John Adamson’s Taton Mouson Eisodia: The Muses Welcome to the High and Mightie Prince James, Edinburgh: 1618, is discussed by Roger P. H. Green, ‘The King Returns: The Muses’ Welcome (1618)’, in Steven J. Reid and David McOmish (eds), Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 126–62 (pp. 126–28). 66 Ibid., pp. 135–37. 67 Jane Stevenson, ‘Adulation and Admonition in The Muses’ Welcome’, in David J. Parkinson (ed.), James VI and I, pp. 267–81. 68 Dalzel, History of the University of Edinburgh, vol. 2, p. 64. 69 Compared in Peter Davidson, ‘Continental Shadows in Renaissance Scotland: The Opening Pageant of the University (Leiden, 1575) and the Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles (Edinburgh, 1633)’, in Bart Westerweel (ed.), Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 213–26. 70 Ibid., pp. 214–16.
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University amongst the great advantages the King had bestowed upon his city, not only renovating old privileges but ‘beautifying her also with a new erected Colledge, famous for profession of all liberall sciences’71 was an easy homage to pay. However, the position of the eclectic collection of buildings hosting Edinburgh College — on the site currently occupied by the Old College (begun 1789) on the South Bridge — was well outside the traditional triumphal route. The College’s authorities were then spatially challenged in trying to find a dedicated space in which to make themselves visible to the King, working with a route referring back to a College-less time and identity. The claiming of a space in the courtyard of Holyrood Palace as site for the scholars’ performance spatially places the Edinburgh College under the King’s protection, without disrupting the settled organization of the civic entry. The presence of a non-traditional body as a relevant player in the entertainment can be interpreted as a sign of modernization and changed outlook, specifically related to new ideas about meritocracy, humanistic education challenging class immobility and traditional views of society.72 The newly influential role of learning is celebrated by the elaborate triumphal arch built at the entrance of George Heriot’s Hospital — an educational institution begun in 1628 just south of the Edinburgh Castle [see Plate XXI]. Together with two simpler arches marking the access route from the Grassmarket, it created a symbolic triumphal pathway leading to the building’s entrance — a pathway of personal improvement comparable to the character-building experience of triumphal entries. For the young pupils attending the institution — sons of impoverished citizens or orphaned — access to this celebration of personal achievements was within reach of any studious and dedicated pupil.73 In 1633, ‘All these pageants, with the speeches’ were entrusted to scholars and educators: ‘Mr John Adamson, Primar, Mr William Drummond of Haouthorndean, and the Maister of the High School, joyned to an Committee of the gravest and most understanding citizens and clerks’.74 The presentation of a book of 1617 by the College was repeated in 1633, as Apollo offered the King ‘a book of panegyricks, and other poems, composed by the University’.75 The University did not occupy a self-contained spot as in 1617, the whole event oozing scholarly knowledge, and being organized as a ‘crash-course’ in Scottish history and traditions for the absentee King — from the outline of Edinburgh on the first arch (geography), to its relationship with the North American colonies (politics), to the genealogy of Charles’ royal ancestors (history), to the Scottish scholars on the Parnassus (literature). This learning-centred entry celebrated Edinburgh’s
71 Nichols (ed.), Progresses, vol. 3, p. 321. 72 Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1994), pp. 80–83. 73 Giovanna Guidicini, ‘A Scottish Triumphal Path of Learning at George Heriot Hospital, Edinburgh’, International Review of Scottish Studies, 35 (2010), 65–96. 74 Craufurd, University of Edinburgh, p. 123. 75 Ibid., p. 122.
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increasingly important role as a national centre of culture, which during the Enlightenment will overcome the burgh’s traditional mercantile identity.76 By presenting itself as a forward-thinking centre of erudition under the protection of a — hopefully — learned monarch, the city offered the modern men of letters and sciences the chance to cultivate not the land, but their minds. As a new kind of hortus conclusus, the celebration of the burgh’s taming of the natural world’s incomprehensible forces culminated in the symbolic offering of the fruits of learning, demonstrating the successful hunting of cultural pursuits rather than of beasts, with a humanistic rather than Edenic undertone.77 As the final triumphal station of the Edinburgh processional route, at the Netherbow forecasts and wishes for the happy continuation of the monarch’s rule expressed how victory was within reach — either resulting from reflective engagement with the civic dialogue, or acknowledged as birth-right. However, spatial overspills recast the Netherbow as an in-between object, questioning the adequacy of Edinburgh’s civic space to contain and control all aspects of the ceremonies as a watertight experience.78 The inward-looking battlements and gun loops built in the 1606 refurbishment of this gate to face an internal menace, testified to mutual mistrust and political uncertainty.79 The increasing intervention of external figures — the College, the Canongate, the Privy Council, and vocal English-based monarchs — sought to carve out spatial representation for new concerns and ideas, fitting them somehow awkwardly in a space designed more for consistency than for adaptability. The next section will explore alternative, parallel usages of the Edinburgh civic space during comparable spatial ceremonies, before concentrating on post-1633 answers to the increasing misalignment between spatial and mental space within the burgh’s narrative, and to the concerns of new stakeholders. Non-Royal Processions and the Urban Spaces Religious processions were common and appreciated events in pre-Reformation Edinburgh, before objections arose regarding elaborate, ritualized visual displays of popular devotion. Scottish towns celebrated Candlemas, Easter, and Corpus Christi with dramatized performances often taking place beyond the church building and stretching throughout the civic space as elaborate public events. John Knox later lamented how sacred objects were ‘gazed upoun, kneeled unto, borne in processioun, and finally wirschipped and honoured’.80 The route taken, for example, by the customary pre-Reformation procession of St Giles held in 76 Bergeron, ‘Charles I’s Edinburgh Pageant’, 173–77, and McGrath, ‘Local Heroes’, pp. 257–62 and 269–70. 77 Cardini and Miglio, Nostalgia del Paradiso, pp. 149–70. 78 Evolution of the Netherbow’s role in Guidicini, ‘Imagining and Staging an Urban Border’, passim. 79 Dennison, et al. (eds), Painting the Town, p. 190. 80 Knox, History of the Reformation, vol. 2, p. 253; see Sarah Carpenter, ‘Scottish Drama until 1650’, in Ian Brown (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 6–21 (p. 7).
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Edinburgh on 1 September, was probably centred around the related church, with the crafts carrying around relics, paintings, and other visual representations of the saint.81 These were occasions for the displaying and celebrating of urban identities, and for publicly reinforcing lay power through the appropriation of religious symbolism. In fourteenth-century Bruges, guild-related banners and symbols of the lay corporatism appeared prominently in the civic Holy Blood procession. While from the 1380s the threatened Counts of Flanders sought political confirmation by incorporating the relic of the Holy Blood in their own processions, Charles the Bold’s inaugural procession in 1467 in Ghent clashed with the processional translation of the relics of St Lievin, the two events competing for the appropriation of civic space.82 The Edinburgh guilds were well aware of the importance of holding a prominent place in the organization and actual enactment of religious ceremonies and processions; the guild of the Hammermen paid handsomely for the paraphernalia necessary for the yearly procession of Corpus Christi, and also provided biblical characters for the play.83 In 1475 some discontented craftsmen of the Wrights and Masons requested that they ‘haue thair placis and rowmes in all generale processiouns lyk as thai haf in the towne of Bruges or siclyk gud townes’.84 As demonstrated also by James IV’s claims to piety in the 1503 entry, the Scottish rulers were also aware of the importance of welcoming religious symbolism into royal celebrations, tapping into established popular enthusiasm.85 The celebrations in Edinburgh for Mary’s Parisian wedding in 1558 — lacking a monarch as centre of attention — included however a religious procession. The event is tantalizingly described by Dean of Guild James Carmichael as ‘the Processioun of the Sacrament quhen the Quenis Grace wes maryit’,86 and probably had its focal point in the cathedral’s richly decorated Eucharist vessel listed in the accounts.87 Religious processions were not dissimilar from triumphal entries; both can be described as a group of hierarchically organized people parading an object — or person — of interest in front of a participating audience, alongside a meaningful urban route. However, they revolved around their own set of symbolic landmarks and signers, and while some locations of secular importance could also carry a spiritual significance, others were bypassed or ignored. The presence of the urban border was signally disregarded in Edinburgh, as a different religious geography was drawn upon and superimposed to civic spaces. The appearance and route of the St Giles procession in 1558 is described by Knox as (probably) starting at the Greyfriars — from where a substitute holy image was borrowed as the statue of St Giles had been thrown into the Nor’ Loch by an anti-Catholic 81 Mill, Mediaeval Plays, pp. 73–74. 82 Boone, ‘Urban Space’, 631–32. 83 Carpenter, ‘Scottish Drama’, 8. 84 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1403–1528, ed. by James David Marwick (Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Record Society, 1869), p. 31. 85 Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Advice to a Princess’, pp. 102–04. 86 Adam (ed.), Edinburgh Records, Volume One, p. 89. 87 Carpenter and Runnalls, ‘Entertainment’, 153.
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mob — and ‘thare assembled Preastis, Frearis, Channonis, and rottin Papistes, with tabornes and trumpettis, banneris and bage-pypes, and who was thare to led the ring, but the Quein Regent hir self, with all hir schaivelingis, for honour of that feast’.88 Leaving aside Knox’s own transparent opinions, the excited crowds, colourful banners and decorations, and heartfelt music closely recalls a triumphal entry. The route, however, was centred on religiously significant spaces, as ‘West about goes it, and cumis doun the Hie Streat, and doun to the Canno cross’, described as ‘the Girth Cross, as the foot of the Canongate, near Holyrood’.89 The destination of the procession — heading ‘down’, the text remarks — is unclear. The Market Crosses of Edinburgh and Canongate would be incongruous destinations, representing lay rather than religious landmarks; a more likely turning point of the procession could be the Girth Cross of Holyrood Abbey, signalling the extent of sanctuary offered to repentant criminals and debtors trying to avoid secular justice.90 The significance of the Netherbow as civic border was not acknowledged, being irrelevant as a religious mapping of space; the lay space it defined and defended was superseded by a sacred geography that looks for orientation to a different set of landmarks. While the experiential route of a triumphal entry was strictly one-directional, religious processions taking the image of a saint on a parade of the streets were circular affairs, meant to return St Giles’ icon to the private dimness of the Kirk. But in these religiously troubled times, defiant non-conformity could be expressed through spatial confrontations rejecting traditional equilibrium. In 1558 ‘when the idole returned back agane’ — that is, when the procession had turned back towards St Giles — and once the Queen Regent left the procession to go to a dinner appointment ‘betuixt the Bowes’ — that is, within Edinburgh — an emboldened group of disgruntled anti-Catholics disrupted the event by force, dispersing the clergy and breaking the statue and sacred objects.91 Considering also the welcome offered to returning minister John Durie in 1582 — when he entered through the Netherbow and paraded up the High Street heading for St Giles amongst joyous singing of psalms by the crowds — the reversing of the traditional downward triumphal route could denote a challenge to and a parody of the established authority who had exiled him.92 A second source of comparison is the Riding of the Parliament, the processional event marking Edinburgh’s unique role as the Scottish political capital. This procession — mentioned in a simpler form already in 1529 and as a riding in 1587 — marked the official opening and closing of the Scottish Parliament sessions until 1707 [see Plate XXII]. For the occasion, the Honours of Scotland 88 Knox, History of the Reformation, vol. 1, p. 259. 89 Ibid. An initial movement westward would be necessary to get around the Tolbooth. 90 Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, pp. 40–43. Marshall, Mary of Guise, pp. 217–18 supports this theory, arguing that the procession crossed from Edinburgh into Canongate. 91 Knox, History of the Reformation, vol. 1, pp. 259–60. 92 On the challenging potential of subverting celebratory routes, see Lynch, ‘Reassertion of Princely Power’, p. 204; also in Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c. 1547–1640 (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 204–05.
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(the Crown, Sceptre, and Sword of State) were brought down in state from the castle to the palace, outside which the representatives of the Estates and of the monarch had gathered. The riding group proceeded then upward escorting the Honours along the Canongate, past the Netherbow and through the High Street, to the Parliament meeting room or, after 1639, the Parliament house itself.93 The parliamentary session organized on 17 June 1617 during the visit of King James exemplifies one such occasion: (the citie being in their armour and having the way cleir for them). They lap all on at the Abbay and cam ryding all along up unto the Parliament hous. […] two and two, according to every man’s place and degree they rode.94 The relative position of the participants was a strong indicator of status, with frequent squabbles regarding their respective placing between the representatives of the most important burghs, between old and new nobility, and between the nobility and the clergy.95 As seen in triumphal entries, status and role were visually displayed through specifically coloured costumes and robes, with fines for those who did not comply or overstepped their mark.96 As a supra-local ceremony during which Edinburgh acted as national capital, the monarchy and the country at large came together in the fluid space joining Holyrood Palace — the seat of monarchy — and the Parliament located in the centre of the burgh. Representing a local rather than national spatial marker, the Netherbow was not relevant to the procession itself, which passed through the gate without signs of acknowledging it. Nevertheless, the burgesses themselves used the Netherbow to determine the spatial extent of their involvement with the performance, and the boundaries of their role as hosts. During the Riding of the Parliament in 1633, ‘At the Nether Bow, where he entered the bounds of the city, the king was saluted by the provost, who attended him closely the rest of the way’.97 In 1594, the citizens refused to make way for the King’s own guard of horsemen, claiming ‘their priviledge to guarde the king’s person in tyme of parliament, till he depart the toun’;98 a special legislation to increase security by forbidding the shooting of firearms while the King was attending the parliament was applied specifically to the area ‘within the ports’.99 Even with the limitations of Edinburgh’s challenging geography, the different meaning given to — and usage of — the burgh’s spaces during different kinds
93 Alasdair Mann, ‘House Rules: Parliamentary Procedure’, in Keith M. Brown and Alan R. MacDonald (eds), The History of the Scottish Parliament, Volume 3: Parliament in Context 1235–1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 122–56 (pp. 132–33). Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 157. 94 Hardy (ed.), Lord Kenyon, p. 22. 95 Alan R. MacDonald, ‘The Third Estate: Parliament and the Burgh’, in Brown and MacDonald (eds), Scottish Parliament, p. 112. 96 Alan R. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 166–68. 97 Chambers (ed.), Domestic Annals, vol. 2, p. 66. 98 Calderwood, Kirk of Scotland, vol. 5, pp. 329–30. 99 Ibid., p. 330.
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of civic processions demonstrates a conscious use of civic space, with buildings linked together in a sequence with purpose and intentionality. Far from being a bland container offering limited spatial options and unresponsive to the narrative, the burgh’s space had offered for an exceedingly long time a variety of options to express nuanced political messages — at least it did so until confronted by the need for more dramatic change. Welcoming Monarchs in Edinburgh after 1633 During the seventeenth century, Edinburgh civic spaces and the triumphal entry modelled around them became increasingly inadequate means of political communication, struggling to incorporate and give physical form to the concerns and requirements of new or more demanding stakeholders. In a wider, supra-European world concerned with commercial enterprises, political allegiances, and military threats determined at a national and international level, a welcoming ceremony spatially confined to a civic precinct and expressing a traditional form of dialogue between monarch and burgh was less and less relevant and applicable. Generally, processional ceremonies were more suitable to displaying a static, hierarchical structure, and struggled to represent a changing society.100 In Edinburgh, the practice of triumphal entries died out after 1633: the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the following political turmoil, the uncertainties of the Restoration, and the frequent Jacobite uprisings hardly created the necessary stability, political mind frame, and economic conditions to celebrate monarchs in state with traditional festivities. Two royal visits were recorded in Edinburgh after 1633; on 14 August 1641, Charles I visited Edinburgh to try to pacify his parliamentary opponents, the Covenanters, and the language of triumphal welcomes was adjusted to celebrate the arrival of a troubled monarch in a country in arms.101 The speech given to the monarch appeared at times a straightforward political communication, candidly referring to the populace being ‘much ill ſpoken of, becauſe that we are now in armes’,102 and condemning infamous rumours ‘that we came into fields with banners diſplayed […] becauſe we would enrich our ſelves by the Engliſh, our owne conſsciences are cleare’.103 There were direct political exhortations to the King, the speaker wondering ‘when you ſhal pleaſe to grace us in our Parliament’104 and observing bluntly ‘but now as for the maintenance of this army, I hold it very unfit’,105 with follow-up warnings about the dangers of
100 The retention of processional celebrations in multicultural societies like Antwerp in Bussels, Spectacle, Rethoric and Power, pp. 178–81. 101 John J. Scally, ‘Constitutional Revolution, Party and Faction in the Scottish Parliaments of Charles I’, Parliamentary History, 15 (1) (February 1996), 54–73. 102 A Relation of the Kings Entertainment into Scotland, on Saturday the 14 of August, 1641 (London: [n. pub.] 1641), p. 4. 103 Ibid., p. 5. 104 Ibid., p. 4. 105 Ibid., p. 5.
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famine. Grimly, the wooden effigy of a discredited, absconding Lord was ‘brought upon the Scaffold with as much diſgrace as if the party offending were there in his owne perſon’, and ‘they cut of its Wooden head’.106 The speech maintained a patina of flattering and classical language, if hurriedly delivered, with the city being described as willingly following the King’s orders ‘as ever Pleiadis did anything for his friend Orestes’.107 Through the familiar hyperbolic language of triumphal welcomes, the speaker claimed to fear that ‘the clouds of direſpects overſhade your ſerene countenance from us; for your frown is able to kill us, and your ſmile able to call us backe againe to life’.108 The King’s Scottish subjects ‘wandred in darkneſſe, like thoſe people which are forſaken by the Sun’.109 While the crowd welcomed Charles with ‘Bonfires’, ‘ecchoing ſhouts’ and by joyously ‘throwing up their Bonnets’,110 the heavy presence of the army created a fickle, vocally self-interested audience. While unwelcomed sections of the speech were received with ‘a kind of confuſed noiſe, heard among the ſouldiers’,111 after assurances of better provisions ‘each man threw away their weapons, and threw their blew Bonnets into the ayre; with great acclamations of joy’.112 An unsettled Charles’ positive response to a warning, instructive narrative is a throwback of a much earlier period; ‘After all theſe things were performed, onr King gave them all moſt hearthy thanks, promiſing them to thinke of all their curteſies hereafter’.113 The King was ‘well-received by the magistrates, and sumptuously entertained at the cost of £12,000 Scotch’,114 so the celebrations must have been substantial. Unfortunately, besides the observation that the King progressed to Holyrood after the entertainment and speech in Edinburgh — hence assuming a traditional exit from the Netherbow — there is no further evidence of the event’s spatial organization. King Charles II (1630–1685) also visited the Edinburgh area — and particularly the burgh — in the summer of 1650, while the Scottish army defended it against Oliver Cromwell’s attack.115 The council had deliberated that ‘no dewtie, honor, nor testimonie of respect, loyaltie, or affectioun, may be wanting to his Majestie, quhich wes done to any of his predecessors’,116 demonstrating an attempt to reference earlier ceremonies. A dinner was organized for the occasion and
Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. The Topographical, Statistical, and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland, 2 vols (Glasgow: Fullarton & Co., 1842), vol. 1, p. 475. 115 Maurice Lee, ‘Annus Horribilis: Charles II in Scotland, 1650–1651’, in Maurice Lee (ed.), The ‘Inevitable’ Union: And Other Essays on Early Modern Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003), pp. 205–22 (pp. 210–13). 116 ‘Notices from the Records of the Town-Council, relative to his Majesty’s Welcome and Reception, 1650’, in Walker (ed.), Documents, pp. 119–24 (p. 121).
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the soume of twentie thousand merkis to be given be the Provest to his Majestie at the Port, as a testimonie of their humble respects and loyall affectioun to jis Majestie, and of the reddines to offer up their lyfis and fortounes for his Majesties service, in the preservatioun of religioun, king, and kingdome.117 The presence of a gift, the sentiments expressed, and the relevant location at a civic port were consistent with traditional entries — although it is unclear whether this was the West Port or the Netherbow. Modern historian Keay argues that after landing in Leith on 31 July, the King rode up the Canongate and the High Street towards the castle on 2 August.118 The reversal of the West-Port-toNetherbow triumphal route could have given spatial form to unprecedented circumstances — being virtually a prisoner, ostensibly for his own protection — making the most of the Netherbow’s martial appearance while distancing itself from the traditional language of welcome. Two other triumphal entries taking place in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century will be mentioned here, to demonstrate the substantial changes in the spatial organization of ceremonies expressing the social and political climate of the Hanoverian period.119 Edinburgh, as seen by King George IV (1762–1830), and Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Prince Albert, in 1822 and 1842 respectively, had expanded beyond its early modern boundaries. To compete in status with London and as an Enlightened capital of northern Britain and an Athens of the north,120 a New Town had been designed and progressively built from the 1760s on the north side of the drained Nor’ Loch, facing an Old Town now considered inadequate and old-fashioned. The ordered appearance of the grid-like New Town, with its commodious straight streets lined with standardized townhouses and tenement buildings, and with its elegant public buildings, competed with London and Bath in offering a modern living experience.121 Most of the commercial and administrative functions remained — at least initially — in the Old Town, but the New Town offered spaces for genteel entertainment and education, such as academies and theatres, an observatory, classical tombs of famous Scotsmen, a prestigious high school, various governmental institutions, and an art gallery.122 Rather than as a
117 Ibid., p. 124. 118 Anna Keay, The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (London and New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 54–55. 119 In full, in Giovanna Guidicini, ‘Royal Welcomes in Edinburgh New Town: Portraying Civic Identity in 1822 and 1842’, in Clarisse Godard Desmarest (ed.), The New Town of Edinburgh: An Architectural Celebration (Edinburgh: Birlinn/John Donald Publishers Ltd., 2019), pp. 99–113. 120 Youngson, Classical Edinburgh, pp. 4–12. 121 John Lowrey, ‘From Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the Question of Scottish Identity in the Unionist State’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 60 (2) (2001), 136–57 (147–49). 122 Charles McKean, ‘Twinning Cities: Modernisation Versus Improvement in the Two Towns of Edinburgh’, in Edwards and Jenkins (eds), Edinburgh, p. 59. Ian Campbell and Margaret Stewart, ‘Evolution’, p. 35.
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commercial community strong in its traditional privileges and physical boundaries, early-nineteenth-century Edinburgh saw itself as a forward-thinking, modern metropolis, attaining national and international recognition for its cultural achievement, and its contribution to an open market.123 George IV and Victoria themselves were very different figures from the Stewarts — and the Stuarts — of old, as descendants of German Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, called to rule Great Britain as the closest Protestant relation of childless Queen Anne in 1714. The dynasty became more solidly established after the defeat at Culloden of the Jacobites — the supporters of Catholic pretender Charles Edward Stewart, who opposed the Hanoverians’ claim — in 1746. At the times of their respective entries, George IV was a middle-aged, physically and mentally lacklustre sovereign frequently ridiculed for his marital scandals, 124 and Victoria was an admired young Queen accompanied by her handsome husband Prince Albert, but was virtually unknown in Scotland and had strong German ties. The resulting welcoming routes — the meeting between a self-consciously forward-thinking city and two very un-Scottish monarchs — were both different from and closely related to the spatial sensibility of early modern entries, demonstrating the resilience and applicability of triumphal language. For royal welcomes set both in the early modern period and in the nineteenth century, the hosting city’s identity was presented through a choreographed visit to its most significant buildings. While both sets of events used potent spatial experiences to convey equally potent political messages, the actual routes, the locations of the stops, and the landmarks selected for royal attention during the nineteenth-century events had significantly changed. After arriving by boat — George IV at Leith, Queen Victoria at Granton Harbour further to the west — both processions moved upward via different routes until reaching the New Town, through which they progressed on the way to Princes Street and to the foot of Calton Hill. Here they again diverged, King George descending to Holyrood Palace for a short visit before proceeding to his lodgings in Dalkeith, and Victoria and Albert heading for Portobello and then also to Dalkeith.125 While sixteenth-century rulers’ attention would have been focused on the Trons, the ports, and other buildings expressing the burgh’s traditional identity, nineteenth-century spatial experience was centred on the modern urban design of the New Town, the classical monuments, and the buildings in the Greek revival and baronial revival style, representing Edinburgh’s new and fashionable — if rather heterogeneous — identity. In 1842, an impressed, observant Victoria made positive remarks and asked questions on St Andrew’s Church, on the statue of George IV commemorating the King’s visit in 1822, and 123 Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, pp. 91–95. 124 John Prebble, The King’s Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, 1822 (London: Collins, 1988), pp. 44–46. Thomas W. Laqueur, ‘“The Queen Caroline Affair”: Politics as Art in the Reign of George IV’, Journal of Modern History, 54 (1982), 417–66 (418–28, 449–50). 125 George’s route in Robert Mudie, A Historical Account of His Majesty’s Visit to Scotland (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1822), pp. 101–17. Victoria’s route in Thomas Dick Lauder, Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1843), pp. 93–106.
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the yet unfinished monument to Sir Walter Scott. She also inquired after the Royal Institution, and the procession passed the Royal Hotel, Adam’s General Register House, the Theatre Royal, and the High School of Edinburgh, all built in grand Grecian style.126 In her own later account, Victoria noted down an eclectic list of the ‘magnificent buildings’127 she remembered seeing on Calton Hill; the National Monument, Nelson Monument, Burns Monument, the Jail, and the National School. Unlike their predecessors, neither Victoria’s nor George IV’s routes were confined by the Old Town’s physical borders, embodying the protectionist attitude to commerce and rights that had defined the Stewart–Old Town relationship. Rather, they experienced the New Town’s comfortably stretched-out, unbound form, physically expressing a more open market and the intellectual confidence of the era, which left the Incorporations’ defensive corporatism and spatial protectionism symbolically and geographically behind.128 Still, the erection of two temporary gates, to stage the delivery of the keys to the monarch — for George IV, near the junction between modern-day London Road and Leith Walk, and for Victoria in Brandon Street, south of the bridge on the Water of Leith — speaks of an interest in connecting with historical precedents via theatrical spectacle.129 These references were spatially inconsistent, with temporary gates built in spaces per se devoid of significance, but seeking connections with tradition offered security to an urban community still struggling with new challenges, such as social mobility and commercial individualism.130 Also, particularly in George IV’s times, the Hanoverian dynasty was in need of real or imagined historical links to reiterate their legitimate lineage and Stewart connections. The participation of Scottish historical novelist Sir Walter Scott in the organization of the 1822 entry was instrumental in this, creating the image of quaintly old-fashioned Scottishness that still drives much of the country’s tourism today. Scott’s partially invented version of Scottish history was a Celtic extravaganza based on made-up Highland traditions, both depicting and defusing the idea of untamed, northern wilderness evoked during early modern triumphal entries, and with it the threat of further Jacobite, anti-Hanoverian uprisings, in a forced assimilation of northern landscape and culture into a culturally Anglo-oriented Britain.131 The urban environment played a part in transforming a potentially rough, colourful populace into trustworthy and well-behaved subjects; not just the visiting Highlanders, but the Scottish people in general appeared every bit as restrained, orderly and civilized as the
126 Ibid., pp. 97–100. 127 Queen Victoria, Leaves from the Journal of our Lives in the Highlands, 1848–61, ed. by A. Helps (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1868), p. 7. 128 Allen, Building Early Modern Edinburgh, pp. 201–08. 129 George IV in Mudie, Historical Account, p. 105. Victoria in Lauder, Memorial, pp. 121–22. 130 Andrew Lincoln, Walter Scott and Modernity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 82–86. 131 Steven Parissien, George IV, The Great Entertainment (London: John Murray, 2001), pp. 321–23. Kenneth McNeil, Scotland, Britain, Empire: Writing the Highlands, 1760–1860 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007), pp. 51–52.
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Figure 45. The sharp contrast between the Old Town (to the bottom of the drawing) and the New Town (to the top) is visible in This Plan of the City of Edinburgh, with the Suburbs and improvements, c. 1808–1809.
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New Town itself, worthy inhabitants of that genteel urban landscape.132 In fact, ‘there was not one whose behaviour would have been offensive in a private drawing-room; and but few, comparatively, whose appearance might not have entitled them to admission into one’.133 In 1822, ‘the smoky piles of the Old Town, towering in irregular majesty’134 were marginal to the spatial significance of the main event, a picturesque background screen which the monarch would enjoy in comfort and safety while proceeding through the straight avenues of the New Town [see Figure 45]. King George’s procession in the New Town as memorialized in a painting by William Turner celebrated the New Town as a regularized framework of the ceremony as much as the ceremony itself [see Plate XXIII]. Similarly, Alexander Nasmyth’s depiction of Edinburgh in the 1820s underlined the different character of the New and the Old Town, artistically amplifying the neat, regularized urbanity of the former set against the picturesque, secluded irregularity of the latter.135 Both in 1822 and 1842, the Old Town was visited separately, the monarchs looking around with interest while moving swiftly upwards on the way to state engagements at the castle. The High Street was by then devoid of many of its traditional urban landmarks demolished in the name of modernity, ease of access, and decency, with the Netherbow disappearing in 1764, the Tolbooth in 1817, and the Butter Tron just before the 1822 entry.136 On the one hand, the locations of the Old Town had lost their role as performing spaces, giving way to the new essential settings of modern civic life located in the New Town. On the other hand, communicating political messages through spatial ritual had clearly not lost its effectiveness, merely being adapted to a nineteenth-century context. The needs and expectations of both civic and royal parties also had not changed that much over time, in both cases demonstrating Edinburgh’s worthiness as a major player on the national and international chessboard, inviting monarchs to look beyond its reputation of troublesome country, and exchanging messages of mutual — if conditional — support. Consistently, entries were constructed spatially to promote a dialogue between mistrusting or ambiguous political entities, constructing the illusion of cooperation between monarchical and civic identities, in the hope that real, reciprocal acceptance would follow. To adapt to profound political and cultural changes at the end of the early modern period, the route, buildings, and spaces around which such political spectacle was organized had to change reluctantly — the sharp alteration from Old Town to New Town in the nineteenth century the most obvious but not the only instance. What had not changed was the role of civic space in participating actively in the performance of political rituals.
132 See Bob Harris and Charles McKean, Scottish Town, p. 80. 133 Mudie, Historical Account, p. 109. 134 Ibid., p. 107. 135 Dennison, et al. (eds), Painting the Town, pp. 194–97. 136 McKean, ‘Twinning Cities’, p. 57. Bob Harris and Charles McKean, Scottish Town, pp. 102–20.
PLATES
Plate XII. The Market Cross on the east side of the St Giles Kirk, detail of a view of St Giles Cathedral (from east).
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Plate XIII. The perspective at the Port de Paris, showing Majesty enthroned surrounded by Justice and the other Virtues, for Charles IX and Elizabeth of Austria entry into Paris, 1571.
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Plate XIV. The Virtues stepping over biblical and historical personifications of Vices, as a detail of an illustration from Niccolò da Bologna’s Novella Super Quinque Libros Decretalium.
Plate XV. The impressive façade of Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire.
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Plate XVI. The decoration of the Salone dei Mesi in Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara, showing mounted deities (top level), astrological symbols (middle), and idealized scenes of the Este court (bottom).
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Plate XVIII. Detail of painted ceiling in the Chamber of the Muses at Crathes Castle.
Plate XVII (opposite). The Astral Ceiling and the Siege of Troy at Cullen House in John McGeoch’s reconstruction.
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Plate XIX. Painted ceiling of the Long Gallery at Pinkie House.
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Plate XX. Detail of painted ceiling of the gallery at Earlshall Castle.
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Plate XXI. Stone triumphal arch at the entrance of George Heriot’s School (begun 1628 as George Heriot’s Hospital).
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PlatE XXII. The Downsitting of the Scottish Parliament showing the ceremonial procession in the period c. 1680–1685.
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PlatE XXIII. The impressive appearance of the New Town in The Procession of King George IV Entering Princes Street, Edinburgh, August, 1822, by William Turner (1789–1862).
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Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries
1503, Edinburgh, Margaret Tudor: 27 approaching journey: 29, 77–78 arches: 114–15, 227, 230–31 chivalry: 65–67, 97, 244 extramural prequel: 45, 65, 97, 235, 244 keys, delivery: 83 Lyndsay, David: 46 music: 227 piety: 90–91, 166, 196, 229, 245, 273, 278 popular response: 168 route: 268, 273 sword, carrying: 65–66, 192 tableaux vivants classical: 225–26, 231 Henry Thomson, Lord Lyon: 235 emblematic: 125, 267 religious: 191, 196 Virtues: 185–86, 191, 193–94, 252, 267 wine: 219 1511, Aberdeen, Margaret Tudor: 27, 121 extramural welcome: 46, 94 genealogy: 124–25 Bruce: 120–21 music: 227 tableaux vivants, religious: 191, 196 1537 (planned), Edinburgh, Madeleine of Valois: 27 music: 227, 229 preparations, burgh: 94, 163 response to: 166–67 wine: 219
1538, Edinburgh, Mary of Guise: 27 gift-giving: 89, 219 Lyndsay, David: 115, 159 preparations, burgh: 80, 94, 105, 154–57, 164, 166, 168, 172, 219 route: 77, 80 themes, classical: 115 1538, St Andrews, Mary of Guise: 27, 50 keys, delivery: 86 globe: 242 Lyndsay, David: 115, 159, 196 piety: 229 reaction: 50, 168 themes, classical: 115 1558 (in absentia), Edinburgh, for Mary Queen of Scots’ wedding: 27 cart: 116, 235 planets: 226, 235 cupid: 226, 235, 247 fertility: 52–53, 125, 241 Mary of Guise: 53, 78, 157, 215 play: 159 preparations, burgh: 162 n. 107, 219, 226 religion: 196–97, 278 controversies: 198 route: 53, 78, 278 tree: 53, 125, 241 wine: 219
338
i n dex of stewart tr iump hal en tries
1561, Edinburgh, Mary Queen of Scots: 27 canopy: 94, 165 cart: 89, 116, 226, 273 controversies: 27, 181 religious: 27, 87–88, 90, 158, 200, 229, 267 Knox, John: 29–30 spatial: 45–46, 76, 104, 156, 210, 273 castle: 81–82, 87 Holyrood palace: 89–92 controversies, answer to: 69, 200–01, 267 gift-giving: 87–92, 151, 197, 231–32 Leith: 268–69 Moors: 57–58, 95, 155, 166, 243–44 music: 227, 229 preparations, burgh: 157–58 route: 45–46, 77, 87, 115–16, 150, 202 sword-carrying: 192 tableaux vivants: 268 classical: 226, 230–31 emblematic: 126, 242 religious: 158, 197–98, 200, 229–30, 267 dragon: 198, 200, 242 Virtues: 187–88, 191–94, 251 wine: 219 1579, Edinburgh, James VI: 27, 92, 193 entertainments: 163, 192 gift-giving: 88 globe: 242 keys, delivery: 86, 91, 192 music: 227–28 preparations, burgh: 96, 157, 164–65, 171, 193 route: 46, 76–77, 86, 94, 99–100, 150, 269, 273 speeches: 231, 274 sword carrying: 192
tableaux vivants allegorical: 169 classical: 219, 221, 226, 264 genealogy: 124 religious: 192, 202, 246 Virtues: 187, 193–94, 268 wine: 219 1590, Edinburgh, Anna of Denmark: 27–28 canopy: 58, 95 commercial themes: 150, 163 edibles: 220 gift-giving: 88–89, 151 globe: 83–84, 242 keys, delivery: 83–85 Moors: 57–58, 95, 155, 166, 182, 243–44 music: 228–29 religious themes: 88, 202–03 controversies, religious: 204–05, 210, 229 preparations, burgh: 105, 171–72 route: 46–47, 77, 116, 150, 155, 194, 273 Leith: 244, 269 royal crown: 113 tableaux vivants: 170 classical: 116–17, 155, 169, 219, 226, 231, 252, 264–65 Muses: 50, 226, 228–29, 265 genealogy: 125–26 Bruce: 121 religious: 202–03, 246, 265 Virtues: 187, 189–91, 193–94, 251, 265, 268 tapestries: 95–97, 252 1604, London, James VI/I: 26, 121, 232–33 arches: 117, 144, 145, 233 pageants: 51, 66, 86, 121, 189, 259–60 response to: 216 route: 74, 150, 232
in dex of stewa rt triumpha l entries
1608 (planned), Edinburgh, James VI/I: 45 1613, Wells, Anna of Denmark: 145–45 1617, Edinburgh, James VI/I: 28 College: 165–66, 89, 170, 274–76 courtly celebrations: 63, 211–12 tournament: 121, 158 entertainments: 63, 124, 126, Highlanders: 60, 63, 121 gift-giving: 86, 89, 276 knighting, provost: 171, 192, 273–74 preparations, burgh: 60, 105, 158, 165–66, 168, 171–72, 211–12 religion: 104, 203, 221, Holyrood chapel: 204–05, 210, 229 response to: 170–71, 216–17 route: 76, 170, 194, 269, 220, 269–70, 272–74 speeches: 127, 170 flattery: 53–54, 194–95, 231 history: 118, 123, 126 Virtues: 187, 193 religion: 201–02, 246 1633, Edinburgh, Charles I: 28, 33 arches: 54–55, 91, 122–23, 150 architectural improvements: 35, 104–05, 214–15, 223 Parliament: 213, 216 St Giles: 182–83, 206–10, 212–13 disengagement: 34–35, 92, 97, 173, 217, 208 gift-giving: 91, 276 Highlanders: 57, 60–63 key, delivery: 91–92 masque language: 215–16 pamphlet: 29, 232, 246 preparations, burgh: 127, 158–59, 166, 168, 171–72, 234, 276 route: 47, 76, 100, 104–05, 108, 185 cavalcade: 210–11
speeches: 54, 91, 151, 169, 223, 276 sword: 192 tableaux vivants classical: 61–62, 54, 155, 220–21, 223–25, 231–32, 236–39, 241, 252, 276 Muses: 121, 229, 169, 239 historical: 55, 117–18, 121–23, 126–27, 232 portraits: 126–27 Virtues: 186–87, 193–95, 252, 268 religious: 193, 195, 203–04, 238–39 allegorical: 236, 245, 252, 256, 264 views of: 50 1641, Edinburgh, Charles I: 281–82 1650, Edinburgh, Charles II: 282–83
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Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh
Butter Tron: 53 Moors: 58, 155 Muses: 50, 191, 226, 265 route: 32, 82, 130–31, 150, 153, 197 tree: 53 welcome: 82, 87, 90, 94, 115–16, 242 arch: 115, 126, 150, 227, 230–31 Bible: 87–88, 197, 200, 230–32, 267 Market Cross: 150 edibles and wine: 155, 217, 219–21, 223 preparations, burgh: 105 route: 32, 78, 80, 130–31, 193, 212, 220, 223 tableaux vivants classical: 155, 169, 219–20, 223, 226 Virtues: 189, 192–93, 200 tree: 53 Netherbow arch: 116–17, 124 gift-giving: 89 knighting, provost: 171, 192, 273 music: 228–29 preparations, burgh: 105, 124, 155 route: 32, 77–78, 80, 82, 89, 111, 130–31, 268–69, 273–74, 277, 282–83 tableaux vivants allegorical: 195, 225, 237, 264 classical: 226, 236, 264–65 religious: 205, 229, 265 dragon: 198, 267 Virtues: 193–94 tree: 53
Overbow: 32 keys, delivery: 86–87 Moors: 155 old gate: 99–100, 101 tableaux vivants: 170, 220, 264–65 Salt Tron emblems: 125 music: 227 religion: 197–98 route: 32, 78, 130–31 tableaux vivants Muses: 121, 127, 223 tree: 53, 126, 241 genealogy: 124 St Giles Kirk canopy: 95, 202 layout, changes: 104–05, 182–83, 205–08, 212–14 procession St Giles College: 166, 197 route: 32, 130–31, 200, 202–03, 229 tableaux vivants ancestors: 125–26 religious: 195, 202, 221 Tolbooth layout, changes: 212–13 music: 227 route: 32, 80, 130–31, 182, 279 n. 89 tableaux vivants emblematic: 125 historical: 126 Virtues: 185, 187–94, 200, 227, 265
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West Port arch: 115, 117, 223 avoidance of: 78, 81–82, 87, 90, 210 canopy: 46, 95, 97 keys,delivery: 83–87, 91 Moors: 182 preparations, burgh: 155, 157–58 route: 32, 47, 76–78, 80, 95, 110–11, 130–31, 170, 202, 269, 283 speech: 84–85, 123, 231 tableaux vivants Solomon: 246, 202 Virtues: 186–87, 193–94, 202 welcome: 46, 54,76, 80, 86, 88–89, 92, 164, 166, 192, 196, 242
General Index
Aberdeen, burgh: 148-49, 180, 182 cathedral: 113 College: 113, 274–75 triumphal entry: 27, 46, 94–95, 120–21, 124–25, 191, 196 see also Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Antwerp, city: 192, 256, 281 n. 100 trade: 27, 141, 156–57 triumphal entries: 27, 146, 147, 148, 194, 238–39, 258 Anna of Denmark, queen consort of Scotland (1574–1619): 28 Denmark, departure: 68, 240, 244 triumphal entry into Edinburgh (1590): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries triumphal entry into Wells (1613): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Binning, Walter, painter (fl. 1540–1594): 117, 254 Bruges, city: 104, 278 triumphal entries: 42–43, 56, 57, 64, 74, 90, 100, 114, 115, 132, 146, 188, 189 Buchanan, George, scholar (1506–1582): 52, 61, 119, 121, 126–27, 159 n. 95, 197, 231, 234–35, 247 Burgkmair, Hans, artist (1473–1531): 248, 249, 250 Butter Tron, Edinburgh: 32, 288 commerce: 141, 142, 148, 150, 153 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh
Caratacus, British chieftain (34–54): 122, 138 Charles I, king of Scotland and England (1600–1649): 26, 28, 232 triumphal entry into Edinburgh (1633): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries triumphal entry into Edinburgh (1641): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Charles II, King of Scotland and England (1630–1685) Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II: 122 triumphal entry into Edinburgh (1650): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy (1433–1477): 96, 104, 177 triumphal entries Bruges (1468): 64 Ghent (1467): 278 Mechelen (1467): 42, 83 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558): 113, 209 triumphal entries: 58, 100, 118 Antwerp (1549): 239 Augsburg (1530): 193 Bologna (1529): 90 Bordeaux (1540): 159 n. 95, 234–35 Bruges (1515): 56, 57, 90, 114, 115, 146, 188, 189 Genoa (1548): 238–39, 209 n. 217 Lille (1549): 57 London (1522): 126 Naples (1524): 236–37 Naples (1535): 237 Pisa (1536): 74
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Rome (1536): 105 tournament, Brussels (1531): 159, 234 Christian IV, king of Denmark (1577–1648): 170, 240 Crathes Castle: 228, 254, 295 Cullen House: 252, 294 David I, king of Scotland (1084–1153) burghs, establishment: 42, 50, 272 Holyrood Abbey: 40, 80, 272 Dürer, Albrecht, artist (1471–1528): 41, 199, 251, 266 triumphal arch: 248, 249 Edinburgh, burgh (city) Blackfriars, Dominicans: 37, 75, 112 Butter Tron: see Butter Tron College, Edinburgh: 274–75 triumphal entries, 89, 159, 274–77 Cowgate commerce: 161, 162, 268 Tailors’ Hall: 161, 162 topography: 37, 75, 132 triumphal entries: 47, 77, 77 n. 27 Via Vaccarum: 112 George Heriot Hospital: 17, 75, 276, 299 Gladstone’s Land: 151–52, 160 Grassmarket: 71, 75, 81, 99, 153, 276 Greyfriars, Franciscans: 37, 75, 77–78, 90, 166, 196, 278–79 High Street commerce: 44, 151–53, 154, 160, 175 processions, other: 279–80 Regia Via: 111 topography: 37, 38, 75, 78, 80, 106–07, 108, 213, 259 triumphal entries: 78, 82, 96, 152–53, 168, 210–11, 283, 288 Lawnmarket: 141, 152, 153 Luckenbooths: 153, 154 Market Cross: see Market Cross Parliament building: 75, 182, 212, 213, 216, 280
institution: 37, 76, 105, 180, 182–84, 216 Riding of the Parliament: 27, 279–80, 300–01 Tolbooth: 175, 181 triumphal entries: 88–89, 163, 185, 193, 281 ports, city gates: 75, 132 Bristo Port, also Greyfriars Port: 77–78 Netherbow: see Netherbow Overbow: see Overbow Potterrow Port: 268 West Port: see West Port Salt Tron: see Salt Tron St Giles Kirk: see St Giles Kirk St Mary in the Fields: 75 Tolbooth: see Tolbooth walls: 37, 50 civic rights: 43, 74–75 Flodden Wall: 71, 75, 99, 132; see also West Port King’s wall: 75, 99 n. 3, 132 military: 75–76 triumphal entries: 46–47, 64, 86, 88, 90, 99, 117, 227 Telfer wall: 75, 132 Edinburgh, surroundings Arthur’s Seat: 37, 40, 47 Calton Hill: 37, 40, 269, 284–85 Canongate burgh, topography: 37, 44, 44–45, 47, 78, 80, 152, 152, 259, 261, 272 processions, other: 279–80 triumphal entries: 202, 210–11, 268, 272–74, 277, 283 Castle of Edinburgh Arx Puellarum: 111 Honours of Scotland: 279–80 topography: 17, 18–19, 37, 71, 78, 79, 99, 128–29, 151, 259, 276 royal residence: 76, 80 triumphal entries: 45–46, 47, 77–78, 81–82, 87, 210–11, 230, 283 absence from: 78, 80, 82, 288
g enera l index
Holyrood Palace Abbey: 37, 40, 272 basilica or Monasterium S. Crucis: 111 royal residence: 50, 76, 80, 248–49 Palatium Regi: 111 spectacles: 66, 111, 121, 158, 210–11, 241, 244, 247 topography: 37, 39, 79, 152, 269 triumphal entries: 45–47, 63, 77, 80–82, 89, 89, 122 n. 105, 127, 156, 165, 171, 198, 245, 268–69, 273–76, 282, 284 absence from: 78, 80 religious controversies: 204–07, 210, 229, 273 other processions: 279–80 Lang gait: 45–47, 76–77, 77 n. 17, 81, 132, 272 Leith: see Leith New Town appearance: 283–85, 286–87, 288, 302–03 construction: 75, 283 triumphal entries: 284, 288, 302–03 Nor’ Loch: 37, 47, 197, 269, 278–79, 283 Princes Street: 45 n. 17, 284, 302–03 Elizabeth, queen of England (1533–1603): 28, 61 triumphal entry, into London, 1559: 51, 87. 88 n. 75, 185, 194, 230, 232 court culture: 33, 66, 97, 216, 226, 230 Anne Boleyn: 218 symbolism: 208 Ferdinand II, king of Aragon (1452–1516): 65 triumphal entries: 41, 169, 189 Fergus I, king (fl. c. 330 BCE): 119 triumphal entries: 122–23, 126–27, 169, 254 Ferrara, city Borso of Este, Duke (1413–1471): 93, 109 celebrations: 93, 170 n. 166, 210, 235 Palazzo Schifanoia: 251, 292–93
Florence, city ceremonies, Medici: 102, 103 triumphal entries: 25–26, 210 Neptune Fountain: 218–19 Palazzo Pitti: 81 Palazzo Vecchio: 177–78 route: 81, 105, 110, 162 Strada Ferdinanda: 81 commerce: 141–42, 143, 145, 162–63 fountains structure: 105, 113, 176–77 triumphal entries: 210, 57, 218 wine: 189, 217–21, 136–37 François I, king of France (1494–1547): 28 Field of the Cloth of Gold: 136–37 funeral: 159 in Henry II’s entry, Paris (1549): 118 in Henry II’s entry, Rouen (1550): 174 James V, king of Scotland: 50 triumphal entry, Lyon (1515): 53, 115 Gaythelos, legendary prince: 119 George IV, king of the United Kingdom (1762-1830): 28, 141, 283–86, 302–03 Henri II, king of France (1519–1559) triumphal entries Lyon (1548): 236 Paris (1549): 100, 118, 146, 159, 178–79, 263 Rouen (1550): 57–58, 93, 102, 159, 239, 274 Henri III, king of France (1551–1589): 240 triumphal entries: 187, 238 Henri IV, king of France and king of Navarre (1553–1610) triumphal entries: 23–24, 216, 239–40 Henry VII, king of England (1457–1509): 28, 96, 124 in James VI/I’s entry, London (1604): 86 Margaret Tudor’s entry, Edinburgh (1503): 29
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Henry VIII, king of England (1491–1447): 28 attack to Edinburgh: 76 Field of the Cloth of Gold: 97, 136–37 triumphal entry, London (1522): 126 Highlanders: 59, 62–63, 76 Highlands: 43, 48 festive celebrations, role: 55, 57, 60–64, 123, 285, 287 traditions: 62, 246, 285 hunting: 52, 64, 182 Holyrood Park: 37, 39, 47, 78 metaphorical: 247, 277 triumphal entries: 65–66, 235 James III, king of Scotland (c. 1451–1488): 67, 263 imperial crown: 113, 181 James IV, king of Scotland (1473–1513): 28, 39, 162 alchemy: 51–52 architecture Edinburgh: 44 Holyrood Palace: 80 Stirling Castle: 115 imperial crown: 113 clothing, wedding: 246 tournaments: 63, 121, 241, 243 triumphal entries, role in Edinburgh, Margaret Tudor (1503): 27, 29, 45, 92 chivalry: 67 prequel: 65, 67 tournament: 66 piety: 90–91, 166, 229, 245, 278 sword, carrying: 65, 192 Aberdeen, Margaret Tudor (1511): 121 James V, king of Scotland (1512–1542): 28, 180 architecture Holyrood Palace: 39–40, 80 Stirling Castle: 251 clothing: 246
Highlanders, culture, 62 imperial crown, 113 marriages negotiations: 49–50 trip to France (1536-37): 67, 232 Madeleine of Valois: 115, 159, 234 Mary of Guise: 113, 245 son, James: 245 regalia: 86 n. 65 tapestries: 97, 245 triumphal entries, role in Edinburgh Madeleine of Valois (1537, planned): 27 Mary of Guise (1538): 27 St Andrews Mary of Guise (1538): 27 James VI/I, king of Scotland and England (1566–1625): 26, 28, 124 baptism of son Henry, Stirling: 1594 beasts: 242 booklet: 246 cart: 58, 60, 240, 242, 244 ceremony: 244–45 Chapel, Stirling Castle: 247 Moor: 59–60 music: 229–30 satyrs: 243 tournament: 68, 231, 243, 245 Stirling, 1566 advice: 52 entertainments: 240, 242 pacification: 60–61, 243 clothing: 45 court masque: 54, 214–15 Denmark, travel to: 52, 68, 232 iconography: 192, 195 London, improvements: 213–14 Petrarch: 111 politics, burgh: 170, 206 religion, beliefs: 206, 208–09 triumphal entries, role in Edinburgh (Anna of Denmark, 1590): 27–28
g enera l index
controversies, religious: 104, 108, 205–06, 210 route: 46–47, 269 wisdom, James: 246, 265 triumphal entry into Edinburgh (1579), (1604), (1608, planned), (1617): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries wild men: 55 n. 78 written culture: 43, 60, 214, 239, 247, 257–58, 263, 274–75 keys, delivery: 83, 84–85, 85–93, 110, 192, 197, 228, 285 Knox, John, religious reformer (c. 1514–1572): 30, 88, 277–79 Leith, burgh relationship with Edinburgh: 268 topography: 37, 39, 259, 270–71 triumphal entries: 268–69, 285 arrivals: 46, 50, 76, 156, 244, 283–84 personification, river: 223, 234, 236, 241 London, city: 48, 182 architecture: 213–14, 248, 257, 283 commerce: 43, 149, 153–54 Lord Mayor’s Show: 145 royal court: 27, 33, 80, 214 triumphal entries: 26, 156–57, 232 Anne Boleyn (1533): 125, 226, 238, 239 Charles V and Henry VIII (1522): 127 Christian IV (1606): 170 Edward VI (1547): 146 Elizabeth (1559): 51, 87, 185, 194, 230 Henry VI (1432): 74, 125 James VI/I (1604): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Katharine of Aragon (1501): 194, 259 Mary Tudor (1553), 230 Richard II (1392): 145
Lyndsay of the Mount, David, poet (c. 1490–c. 1555) triumphal entries in Scotland: 46, 94, 115, 159, 227 abroad: 159, 234 Madeleine of Valois, queen consort of Scotland (1520–1537): 28 travel to Scotland: 50 triumphal entry, Edinburgh (1537, planned): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries wedding, Paris: 67, 115, 234 Margaret Tudor, queen consort of Scotland (1489–1541): 28, 113 Book of Hours: 113 tournaments (1507–1508): 243 triumphal entries into Aberdeen (1511): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries into Edinburgh (1503): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Market Cross, Edinburgh: 32, 175–76, 176, 180, 289 commerce: 150, 184, 217 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh Mary, queen of Scots (1542–1587): 26–27, 28, 124 baptism of son James (Stirling Castle, 1566): 52, 55, 229, 240–41; see also James VI/I, king peace-maker: 60–61, 67–68, 201, 240, 243 emblems and visual language: 111, 240, 246–48, 256 French connections: 62, 232, 240 politics, burgh: 143, 145, 149–50, 181 triumphal entries into Edinburgh (1558, in absentia): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries see also Mary of Guise
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into Edinburgh (1561): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries wedding to the Dauphin (Paris, 1558): 27, 215, 235, 240 Mary of Guise, queen consort of Scotland (1515–1560): 28, 113, 181 coronation, 125 role in 1558 ceremony in Edinburgh: 53, 78, 157, 215 triumphal entries into Edinburgh (1538): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries into St Andrews (1538): see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries Münster, Sebastian, cartographer (1488–1552): 49, 49, 111, 112 n. 47 Muses triumphal entries: 50, 127, 169, 191, 223, 225–26, 228, 229–30, 238, 239, 256 ceiling decorations: 228, 254, 256, 265, 295 literary: 275 Leiden: 275 music: 109, 279 triumphal entries: 21, 24, 41, 227–30, 121, 224 psalms: 203, 229, 273 Netherbow, Edinburgh: 32, 259, 260, 288 civic boundary: 75, 99, 172, 183, 261 military: 76 commerce: 153, 155 processions: 279–80 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh Overbow, Edinburgh: 99, 101, 141, 152 as Strait bow: 99–100, 99 n. 3 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh
Paris, city commerce: 43, 141, 146, 154 triumphal entries: 93, 159 edibles: 218, 220 route: 25–26, 82, 103, 146, 178–79, 210 Saint Denis Gate: 73, 78, 118, 194 Châtelet: 178 Notre Dame Bridge: 100 Painters’ Gate: 201 Palais de Justice: 178 Place Dauphine: 260, 262 Ponceau Fountain: 218 tableaux vivants: 57–58, 88–89, 154, 190, 194, 240, 263, 290 James V, visit (1536-37): 115, 159, 234 Mary Queen of Scots, wedding (1558): 27, 78, 215, 235, 240 Philip II, king of Spain (1527–1598) Escorial: 247 triumphal entries Antwerp (1549): 27, 146, 147, 258 Genoa (1548): 239 Ghent (1549): 115 Lille (1549): 197 Seville (1570): 185, 236 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (1396–1467) triumphal entries Bruges (1440): 42, 74 Ghent (1458): 83, 100, 177 Pinkie House: 189, 256, 296–97 Riding of the Parliament see Parliament under Edinburgh Royalty, Edinburgh: 75, 80 Salt Tron, Edinburgh: 32, 223, 224 commerce: 153 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh Schaw, William, master mason (c. 1550–1602): 258 Stirling, burgh: 75, 181 n. 30
g enera l index
Stirling Castle courtly celebrations: 52, 58, 60–61, 66–68, 231, 241, 243, 245, 247 royal residence: 46, 77, 275 decorations: 115, 251, 258 Foreworks: 115, 248 St Andrews, burgh: 50, 197, 274–75 triumphal entries: 27, 50, 85–86, 115, 159, 168, 196, 229, 242 see also: Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries West Port: 71, 73 St Giles Kirk: 32, 175, 176, 289 administration, burgh: 143, 145, 175, 180–82 commerce: 153, 154 Ecclesia S. Egidii: 112 procession of St Giles: 27, 197, 277–79 tower, crown: 112, 113 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh St Giles, saint (c. 650– c. 710): 198, 279 see also St Giles Kirk Tolbooth, Edinburgh: 32, 106–07, 176, 176, 288 administration: 143–44, 162–63, 176, 180–82 capitolium: 112–13, triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh tournaments: 28 Europe Brussels: 64, 159, 234 Denmark: 240 Field of the Cloth of Gold: 136–37
Scotland: 67 James II, Stirling Castle (1449): 66–67 James IV, Holyrood Palace (1507–1508): 63, 66, 121, 241, 243 James VI/I Stirling Castle (1594): 68, 231, 243–45 Holyrood Palace (1617): 158 triumphal entries Margaret Tudor, Edinburgh (1503): 65–67 Triumphal entries in Edinburgh: see Index of Stewart Triumphal Entries. Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom (1819–1901): 28, 283–85 Virtues, allegorical figures: 185–94, 227, 251, 254–56, 259, 255, 265, 267, 290 Justice, 169, 178, 185–95, 203–204, 238, 254, 290 West Port, Edinburgh: 31–32, 71, 72 civic boundary: 75, 99, 132, 172 triumphal entries, station: see Index of Triumphal Stations in Edinburgh West Port, St Andrews: 71, 73 de Wet II, Jacob Jacobsz, painter (1641–1697): 122, 126, 138 wine trade: 43, 148 triumphal entries concord: 218 fountains: 57, 136–37, 189, 217–21, 242
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