THEATRICAL PATRONAGE AND THE URBAN COMMUNITY DURING THE REIGN OF MARY*
(Forthcoming in Theatrical Patronage and the Court in Early Modern England. Eds. Susanne Westfall and Paul Whitfield White. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.)

Mary A. Blackstone

In the early days of the Reformation as his patron Thomas Cromwell strove to popularize Henry VIII's position against Rome, Richard Morison, wrote a discourse for the King focusing on the law as "the piller that . . . holdeth up euery commen welthe" and arguing that other rulers who had committed their laws to writing and codification had caused their "power to waxe great myghty and strong." In attempting to persuade Henry to do the same he linked a monarch's power with his subject's knowledge of the law and spoke of "the euyll that cometh of ignoraunce, and of the goode that cometh of knowlage." He observed that in order to establish and maintain its power, the rituals and beliefs of the Catholic church were "inculked & dryuen into the peoples heddes, tought in scoles to children, plaied in plaies before the ignoraunt people, songe in mynstrelles songes, and bokes in englisshe purposely to be deuysed to declare the same at large." Rather than simple suppression and prohibition to counteract these methods, Morison argued that "a sick commen wealthe wolde be ordred euen as men ordre ther bodye whan it is diseased. He that hathe an ache in his arme myndyng to put it awaie dothe not cut of tharme, but labourith to expell the ache preseruyng the arme for many good and necessary vses." He advocated the adoption of similar strategies including triumphs, processions, bonfires and the noise of "all kyndes of instrumentes" to honour the successes of the King and his predecessors. With reference to the plays of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, he argued, "Howmoche better is it that those plaies shulde be forboddenn and deleted and others deuysed to setforth and declare lyuely before the peoples eies, the abhomynation and wickednes of the bisshop of Rome, . . . and to declare and open to them thobedience that your subiectes by goddes and mans lawes owe vnto your maiestie. Into the commen people thynges sooner enter by the eies, then by the eares: remembryng moche better that they see, then that they heare."

Morison clearly entertained no doubts that the response of the "ignoraunt people" would correspond with the intentions behind the propaganda, and numerous scholarly studies have argued that Henry, subsequent Tudor and Stuart monarchs, and members of their court did employ the mechanisms of spectacle and theatrical patronage as advocated by Morison--not only to promote the political and religious beliefs associated with the Reformation but also to establish a public image and demonstrate their power and authority. The work of Paul Whitfield White, for instance, reveals the extent to which theatre was employed as Protestant and political propaganda under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Yet despite the demonstrable contribution of such propaganda to the new hegemony of the Reformation, circumstances leading up to July of 1553 conspired to usher in correction and reversal in what historians have identified as "the only successful sixteenth-century rebellion," a high point of tension in a century generally characterized by crises on a number of fronts.

No other Tudor monarch had greater need for a strategy of theatrical propaganda than Mary. Suddenly, with her accession and the initiation of the Counter Reformation, individuals who had been resisting the Reformation found themselves in positions of authority and some who had spent years in exile or imprisoned outside the circle of power assumed positions at the centre of court and Privy Council activities. Characterizing the turn of events as nothing short of miraculous, Reginald Pole upon his return from exile declared that despite policies and "armed power prepared to destroye her," Mary "being a virgin, helples, naked, and unarmed, prevailed" due to divine intervention. Yet in order to secure her own power and achieve her principal agenda of restoring Catholicism, Mary recognized that such intervention would not be enough. She needed the immediate political experience and influence of government administrators and important local magnates under Edward and Henry. Consequently, the face of Mary's court and Council presented a fractured reflection of some of the complex perspectives and loyalties within the country at large. Regardless of the success of Mary's Counter Reformation, the full effects of the previous 20 years would not be reversed with simple assertions of royal authority. The Reformation had initiated more than a change in religious allegiance. It had significantly affected the wealth of a range of individuals and institutions, profoundly changed an individual's access to knowledge and relative position within the micro and macro structures of authority, and fueled evolving personal and national concepts of identity and allegiance. It had, for instance, raised a number of commoners to positions of wealth and influence as key government bureaucrats, or scholars and propagandists like Morison (who, not surprisingly, moved to Strasbourg where a print campaign was launched against the Counter Reformation). Some of these individuals seized on concepts such as "commen welthe" and developed them into agendas for social and political reform which were impossible and unacceptable in the sixteenth century but which eventually percolated through contemporary discourse to prominence in the seventeenth century.

With the benefit of hindsight, historians such as David Loades have argued that the case for a mid-Tudor crisis has been overstated. Although there were crises as in other reigns, there was no serious threat to state or society because central and local governments continued to work effectively. In their study of monarchs and the court, David Starkey and Kevin Sharpe have also asserted a continuity across the Tudor and Stuart periods in which "all power rested in the king, 'who alone could fulfil or frustrate ambition'." G. R. Elton as well as Starkey has argued that Henry VII achieved a monopoly of power from which the Tudor and Stuart court was born. Thus monarch and court became the centre of power and except during sessions of parliament, the history of these periods "'may be more properly called the history of the court than that of the nation'."

No doubt Lady Jane Grey as well as Mary would have found these assertions by turns reassuring and frustratingly demoralizing. Each would have had occasion to anticipate Shakespeare's Richard II by asking, 'Am I not Queen?' Which comes first, the power or the position? How do you maintain the one if the other is uncertain? Although Mary was not unlike her predecessors or successors in facing serious challenges from within her court as well as members of her Parliament, disaffected local magnates and the common people, her accession was certainly more of a matter for 'negotiation' than that of her father or brother. Situated within the historical moment as Wyatt marched on London and some of his followers assailed the very gates of her own court, Mary may have understandably been somewhat less certain than twentieth century historians as to government control and the actual locus of power.

Michel Foucault's theoretical arguments might appear to be closer to the mark when he cautions against

locating power in the State apparatus, making this into the major, privileged, capital and almost unique instrument of the power of one class over another. In reality, power in its exercise goes much further, passes through much finer channels, and is much more ambiguous, since each individual has at his disposal a certain power, and for that very reason can also act as the vehicle for transmitting a wider power. . . . Power must by [be, sic] analysed as something which circulates, or rather as something which only functions in the form of a chain. It is never localised here or there, never in anybody's hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece of wealth. Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organisation. And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation. In other words, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application. . . . The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle

concerned with power at its extremities, in its ultimate destinations, with those points where it becomes capillary, that is, in its more regional and local forms and institutions. . . . In other words, rather than ask ourselves how the sovereign appears to us in his lofty isolation, we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts etc.

Local Government
In a country without a standing army or a locally distributed Crown bureaucracy, local government and civic authorities formed a critical link between the Crown and the common people in cities and towns. Maintaining order, enforcing the Queen's laws and punishing offenders were important responsibilities for local officials. The tone of a royal proclamation issued just 15 days after Mary was acclaimed Queen in London suggested that she needed these officials as much as, if not more than, her Tudor counterparts:

it is well known that sedition and false rumors have been nourished and maintained in this realm by the subtlety and malice of some evil-disposed persons which take upon them without sufficient authority to preach and to interpret the word of God after their own brain in churches and other places both public and private; and also by playing of interludes and printing of false fond books, ballads, rhymes, and other lewd treatises in the English tongue concerning doctrine in matters now in question and controversy touching the high points and mysteries of Christian religion.

commandeth all and every her said subjects, of whatsoever state, condition, or degree they be, that none of them presume from henceforth to preach, or by way of reading in churches or other public or private places (except in the schools of the universities) to interpret or teach any Scriptures or any manner points of doctrine concerning religion; neither also to print any books, matter, ballad, rhyme, interlude, process, or treatise, nor to play any interlude except they have her grace's special license in writing to the same.

Local government, therefore, had a critical role to play in publishing and enforcing this and other royal proclamations. Several communities conscientiously fulfilled their responsibility and diligently educated the Queen's subjects through the apprehension and public punishment or imprisonment of performers. For instance, in May of 1554, after close questioning of one of Lord Russell's servants who was implicated in the matter, two minstrels at Norwich were set in the pillory and one had his ear nailed to the pillory "for devysing of vnfitting songes" against the "Masse and the godly procedinges of the Catholike faythe of the churche, and touching therein the homnor and dignytie of the Quenes highnes." It is not surprising that in the heart of the Queen's East Anglian power base--and that of the Duke of Norfolk, an important member of her court--Norwich authorities were quick to suppress, interrogate and publicly punish the perpetrators as a sign of their efficient and loyal service. Similarly, diligent enforcement was demonstrated by officials in Coventry in November of 1553 when four men engaged in "lewde and sediciouse behaviour " were sent to the Privy Council, questioned and imprisoned.

Clearly touring performers, like the Queen and her government, were dependent on local authorities to be the conduit through which they could reach the average individual. To augment the influence of a performers' patron, the good will of a local magnate like the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports or a regional authority like a Justice of the Peace might be sought, but ultimately in cities and towns it was the mayor and aldermen who determined the nature of the performers' reception and the context--both literal and figurative--in which they would be seen. Upon a request for permission to perform, town authorities might not only sanction their performance but also provide a space and a reward over and above any money collected from the general audience. Marian records attest to the use of town facilities such as town halls and churches, obvious symbols of civic responsibilities and laden with local associations connected with Reformation and Counter-Reformation policy. Marian records also cite instances of "the Mayor's play," an initial performance hosted by the mayor and aldermen as a sign of respect to the patron. On such occasions this became a local, everyman's equivalent of a performance at a household or the court with the officials' formal seating and attire contributing to the overall performance in which the assembled "commonality" participated. Under such circumstances, local playgoers would have seen touring performers as closely associated with the space and representatives of local authority, but this would have been a mutually reflexive relationship with local authority reinforcing the power and influence of the patron which in turn enhanced the authority of local officials.

Like players, local governments depended on patrons for protection and support, and they clearly recognized that their position in the patronage chain was vital to the well-being of their community. Local records regularly itemize payments for entertainment of and gifts to local magnates as well as expenses for individuals making suits for a patron's support on specific matters relating to the welfare of the community. In 1555, for instance, New Romney paid for a man to ride to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports "to have his good wyll touchyng or playe," a Whitsunday play potentially affected by Mary's 1555 prohibition of May games in Kent. Consequently, the rewards and entertainment offered to performers often reflected the importance of the patron locally, regionally and/or nationally. For instance, in 1556 Norwich's mayor, Augustine Steward, gave the Queen's players 20s, the Duke of Norfolk's players 20s and the Earl of Oxford's players 12s4d, but in the first year of Elizabeth's reign the tables turned and Lord Robert Dudley's players received 20s while the Duke of Norfolk's players received only 13s4d--quite possibly an indication that the Howards' influence was not what it had been under Mary.

A surprising number of local authorities, however, quietly took the politic long view in their treatment of travelling performers, at times sanctioning the appearance of strange bedfellows and/or providing comparative rewards which suggested sympathy with patrons who had openly opposed Mary's policies and authority. During the accounting year 1557-1558, for instance, the city of Exeter rewarded not only the Queen's players (20s) and the Earl of Bath's minstrels (3s4d), but also the Earl of Bedford's servants (7s6d), Lord Audley's waits (5s) and Sir Peter Carew's minstrels (3s4d). To be certain, the Queen's players received the highest reward and are the only performers recorded as having performed before the mayor at the guild hall, but the records also suggest that due respect was paid to two patrons of local importance who had set themselves apart from Mary's court. Not only was the mayor present at a performance of the Earl of Bedford's servants (most likely his minstrels, who are known to have performed elsewhere in this period), but also he topped up an initial reward of 5s, possibly because of an inadequate collection. Given the Earl's staunch Protestant agenda to the point of exile abroad and his minstrels' flirtation with inflammatory material earlier in the reign in Norwich, the mayor's hospitality at the very least highlights the delicate maneuvering necessary when negotiating between opposing patrons. During the turbulence of 1555 Exeter demonstrated no enthusiasm for the attempts of the local land owner, Sir Peter Carew, to muster an insurrection and Carew fled to the Continent. Yet in 1558 Carew's performers received the same reward as those of the Earl of Bath, a noble patron whose family had been one of Mary's earliest supporters. Both Bedford and Carew had since somewhat redeemed themselves by participation in the English campaign against the French, but the treatment of their performers in Exeter demonstrates that at least at the West Country fringes of Mary's commonwealth, power and influence were not seen as the exclusive prerogative of Crown and court.

In fact, some towns consciously asserted their own power and authority in opposition to the wishes of the Crown. Not long after Wyatt's rebellion, Rye's staunch Protestantism manifested itself in open defiance of royal policy. In 1554 the reintroduction of the mass in the local church sparked a disturbance and summonses of residents to appear before the Privy Council. Throughout the remaining years of the reign Protestants were in constant negotiation with authorities for power and control over the town. In 1556 a Catholic mayor was imposed on the town, and this culminated in 1557 with imprisonment in the Fleet of a Protestant mayor elected in defiance of Privy Council instructions to re-elect the Catholic. Coincidentally, the Queen's players chose that particular time for their only visit to the town during the reign, although her jester had visited in 1555. In other periods it was customary for the mayor of Rye to host a performance by travelling players, but obviously this kind of hospitality and ceremony was neither possible nor desirable in 1557. Ironically, the players received a reward of 10s despite the fact that the mayor had refused to comply with the Queen's request for aid in preparations for the war with France. Obviously, viewed within this context any propaganda efforts on the part of the Queen's players to educate what Morison termed "the ignoraunt people" must have been qualified. The people were clearly capable of attaching their own meaning to current events in opposition to the attempts of a central authority to reconstitute their position on key issues. Both the citizens and the mayor of Rye were, in fact, prepared to assert the role of subjects in "constituting " the power of a sovereign.

Rye's overt resistance to policies of the Crown was exceptional, but the underlying sense of its own importance and the desire to determine its own identity were not. Local officials generally saw the preservation of social order as their first priority with a closely related second being the enhancement of the city's image, prestige and economic status--none of which were likely to be promoted by open confrontation with the Queen. Beyond the enforcement of proclamations, urban centres derived a degree of power from Mary's dependence on them in matters such as parliamentary subsidies and loans, mustering soldiers for the war with France and overseeing the public burnings of Protestants . They also derived their importance and identity from their position as centres of trade and/or provincial market towns, from the resulting wealth of their citizens and institutions and in some cases from the increased wealth and responsibility they had assumed as a result of the dissolution. The mid sixteenth century saw a marked increase in the interest of town officials in petitioning the sovereign for borough incorporation and the attendant administrative control, autonomy and integrity it implied. The government responded with what Robert Tittler has identified as "a national urban policy": "After only 13 borough incorporations in the first 55 years of the Tudor dynasty, we find eight in the last seven years of Henry VIII, 12 in the nearly seven years of Edward VI, and a striking 24 in the slightly shorter reign of Mary."

At the same time civic officials made a complementary move to create a community identity and allegiance through the use of spectacle--including theatrical entertainment and the patronage of their own performers. The sponsorship of cycle and saints plays as well as other types of religious or folk drama had long been a focus of resources and a source of both revenue and communal pride in many towns. On a much smaller scale even villages had established an early tradition of church ales, folk drama or dancing which could include touring to neighbouring towns or households. During Mary's reign we see the revival of such entertainments in some towns which had discontinued them in response to the Reformation. For the most part, these revivals were short-lived, however, even within Mary's reign. In some cases such as that of New Romney's revival of its Whitsun drama, larger events and resulting prohibitions to avoid the assembly of crowds may have mitigated against these efforts, but in other cases these entertainments seem to have been superseded by secular entertainment specifically designed to produce a community identity and enhance respect for civic authorities. The trend has been identified, in particular, with the Lord Mayor's shows for London in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had its beginnings, however, with civic spectacles in the 1530s and 1540s and the climate of reform, which at least with respect to the matter of urban policy seems, in fact, to have proceeded at an accelerated pace under Mary. Her reign, for instance, saw the initiation in 1555-6 of a civic pageant in celebration of Banbury's new charter and pageants for the Lord Mayor of Norwich performed in part by the city waits.

The text of the latter entertainment provides insights into a city's use of theatrical spectacle for constructing an urban image and presenting the way in which local authorities, the public and local performers might see themselves, their relationship to each other and their relationship with the Queen and her court. The first of three pageants focused on a speaker representing Time, who drew comparisons with Rome and proceeded to elevated praise of the Mayor, Augustine Steward,

Suche one whome nature so did frame
To seeke the peoples heallthe
goodwill and wisdoomme tawhte ye same
To Awgmennt the commonn wealthe.

The next two pageants built on and qualified the image of the first by constructing a majestic pastiche of the city's most venerable and imposing elements, "a greate Castell with a greate gate thervnder like a Cytte gate & ouer the gate a greate Castell with towers made for Armes of the Cyttye & ye lyonn being cowched vnder the gate." In keeping with Morison's admonition, the appeal was first to the eyes with a symbol of the city's power founded partly on royal authority and party on the accomplishments of the city and its people. To underscore its effect an orator, "Richelie apparreilled," embodied "this wealle pieblicke" in outlining the qualities of good government necessary for it to flourish. Authorities should provide good example, "fere god and serue hym," provide for the poor, promote order and concord, administer wise justice, act impartially and "Cause yoothe to be trayned and seasoned in Tyme/In vertew and Labour from synne vice and Cryme." To assist the Mayor, the third pageant introduced the four virtues, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance and Justice, as guides who "yf yow keepe them no kinde of power/cann dommaige at annye owre." Thus the pageants emphasized his wisdom and virtue while communicating the role of citizens "of high and Lowe degree" in constituting his authority through election and holding him accountable for meeting their expectations. Unlike the Queen, the Mayor, was distinguished only temporarily from ordinary citizens by election, and emphasis on his exceptional virtue helped to establish his right to authority. Yet in both form and content, Respublica and the pageants shared similar concerns about the nature of good government in "Comon weales" and the role of the "Ignoram people" (l. 648, a specific character in both entertainments) in providing advice on the virtues and expectations of good governors.

Another parallel between popular and court entertainments is the involvement of performers in praising and counseling their own patron. Through their involvement in pageants which provided a kind of code by which their mayor could be judged, the waits were linked with a tradition of court artist/counsellors including not only the Chapel Royal in Respublica but also jesters, fools, players and playwrights. The Norwich waits, whose musical and theatrical talents drew considerable fame to the city, were a source of civic pride. Like the Queen, members of the nobility and landed gentry, many urban communities had become patrons in their own right by supporting a group of liveried waits. Some towns and related organizations such as schools and guilds continued to hire local minstrels, but by the mid sixteenth century, waits with their evolving musical sophistication were the preferred civic entertainers. Even a smaller town such as Rye could significantly enhance its image and sphere of influence through its patronage of waits. In 1556-7, for instance, the waits of Rye were specifically sought out by a representative from New Romney to perform in their revived religious play. Eventually waits would also tour like the performers of other patrons. Even in some communities too small to support a group of liveried waits, groups of amateur performers could extend the town's sphere of influence by taking the town play on tour to neighbouring communities.

Thus urban communities participated at a number of levels in a complex network of patron/client relationships. Although the power and authority of local officials derived in part from the patronage of the Queen, members of her court and local magnates, it also derived from the town's sense of its own integrity and identity. Much like a patron's performers, town authorities were engaged in constituting not only subjects, out of a responsibility to the Crown and to those who elected them, but also the sovereignty of the Queen with its attendant responsibilities and rights. This complex interdependence would have been publicly displayed each time local authorities held "court" at "the Mayor's play" whether it involved performers associated with the Queen and her court or a patron outside her court. It was also displayed by a city's own performers who were used to create and enhance a distinct identity and extend the community's sphere of influence or power base. However, before assuming a correspondence between official intention and the actual response of spectators engaged in assimilating the theatrical information carried by locally sponsored entertainments or touring performers, it will be necessary to look more closely at what Morison called "the commen people."

Subjects and "the Commen People"
Within the performance patronage network of power relationships, all participants except the Queen could function as subjects. Patrons, their performers and local authorities as well as other members of the community were all in a position to be constituted as subjects through theatrical propaganda emanating from the Crown. The focus here, however, is on the latter group of spectators, including "the commen people," a term with a wide range of connotations depending on its contemporary application. Morison characterized them as "ignoraunt people" for whom theatrical propaganda was especially important because they remembered "more better that they see then that they heere." Many of these individuals might have justified the simple, malleable response he apparently assumed, but judging from what we know about some of them in the 1550s, such reactions are unlikely to have been universal.

Contemporary accounts of the universal affection displayed towards Mary at the beginning of her reign, "such and so extraordinary that never was greater shown in that kingdom towards any sovereign," are borne out in Respublica, by the character People, a hickish but loyal subject in whose southeastern dialect Respublica is affectionately referred to as "Rice puddingcake"(l. 636). People offers wise counsel to Respublica on the governance of the country, underscoring in particular the importance of maintaining direct contact with the people, and he enthusiastically welcomes Nemesis, a figure specifically identified with Mary as the "goddes of redresse and correction"(p. 1).

Mary's early proclamation prohibiting unlicensed plays, however, betrayed a fear that in "public assemblies" her "loving subjects" could be stirred "to disorder or disquiet" by other subjects attempting to interpret "the word of God" or "the laws of this realm after their brains and fancies." The full implications of the Reformation had released the specter of the common people appropriating these two reserves of knowledge and the mechanisms of printing, preaching and playing which were critical to the sovereign's control of the power/knowledge dynamic. Such fears were, in fact, justified on a smaller scale by events like the disturbance at the reintroduction of the mass in Rye and on a larger scale by Wyatt's rebellion. Even people in the Queen's own Duchy of Lancaster exhibited these tendencies. In 1557 the Queen's bailiff and a tenant who had been allowed to build a new house on crown lands in Widnes watched a mob of more than 100 people tear it apart and use one of the main timbers to erect a maypole. The tenant reported these actions as "verey heynius riotus and after a Rebellius manner comytted againste the peace crowne and dignitities of our said soueraigne Lorde and Ladie the King and Quenes maiesties." It would appear that the riot developed because the Crown's tenant had built on land which had been in common use, but this incident dramatically demonstrates that even where royal patrons were concerned individuals at the social and geographical extremities of the patronage chain were not only constituted as subjects but also invested with the power to resist and respond. An incident such as Wyatt's rebellion might be seen as demonstrating the extent to which such resistance when orchestrated by local magnates could escalate from the extremities to confront and challenge the ultimate authority of the sovereign at society's perceived centre. The Widnes incident, however, if it was concerned with the local issue of real control of a piece of crown land for the common good, provides insights into the focus of the less orchestrated negotiations engaged in by individuals at the regional level. Not unlike Wyatt whose espoused motive was to stop Mary's union with a Spanish prince and ultimately the feared domination of England by Spain, the Widnes mob also rioted to assert their right to locally identified and determined common space even in the face of royal prerogative. Although it may be less certain in Wyatt's case, the motivation in both cases could have been less a challenge to Mary's position of authority than an insistence that she had the responsibility to govern a commonwealth with regard to input from her subjects.

The use of the maypole as a quasi-dramatic, carnival symbol expressing resistance to the will of the Crown may have been intentional in that fears of attendant public assemblies had prompted several suppressions of May games, but it also underscored more broadly the fact that control of the theatrical medium was not simply the purview of touring performers associated with the Queen and court. Whether attending a Mayor's play or the real life drama of public burnings such a crowd of "ignoraunt people" could impose its own meaning and significance on the event and entertain a complex set of allegiances. Any efforts at theatrical propaganda by Queen and court would have to take into account audience members and subjects such as the weaver John Careless, one of the four men apprehended in Coventry in 1553 for "lewde and sediciouse behaviour." After two years imprisonment in the King's Bench, Careless died in July of 1556, but he was first imprisoned in Coventry jail, where he was "in such credit with his keeper, that upon his word he was let out to play in the pageant about the city with his companions. And that done, keeping touch with his keeper, he returned again into prison at his hour appointed." During his imprisonment, Careless was part of a close knit Protestant community, and he wrote and received several letters which were printed by John Foxe along with the transcript of his examination. From all of this evidence there emerges a complex individual. He displayed sufficient knowledge of the law to advise other Protestants on how to respond when examined, but his compliance with his jailer in Coventry was mirrored in a remarkable degree of compliance with the authorities that interrogated him. He could perform as a good citizen in civic religious drama rooted in Catholicism while consumed with a "merry" longing to sing and dance "before the ark of the Lord" as a Protestant martyr. As well, he could in one breath confidently defend his reading of the word of God against examiners who would re-educate him and in the next breath staunchly assert his loyalty to the Queen and his willingness "to do her grace the best service that I can, with body, goods and life, so long as it doth last" (and so long as his religious beliefs were not compromised). Careless asserted his loyalty, but he would not grant the Crown a monopoly over the power of the law, the word of God or performance.

Careless' background as a performer and his flare for self dramatization and articulation of his beliefs may explain why he languished in prison rather than rising to the martyrdom to which he aspired, but in the last moments of their lives, several of the Protestant martyrs engaged in overtly performative resistance. They seized the mechanism of punishment and transformed it into dramatic Protestant propaganda. The resulting impact on "ignoraunt people" is a matter of debate, but at least with individuals like Careless it would surely have been a powerful common denominator in determining the relative success of theatrical propaganda presented by the performers of royal or courtly patrons. Careless may have been an uncommon commoner in the extent to which he felt empowered to read, write and think independently and in his theatrical flare, but in his negotiations with civic and royal authorities engaged in controlling, educating and punishing a subject, he may not have been uncommon in assimilating apparently divergent loyalties to community, church and Crown and, in particular, distinguishing between the Queen and her policies. In asserting his own position of power in the process and demonstrating a capacity to integrate and reconcile complex allegiances he was not unlike some of Mary's more prominent subjects--including members of the court and Privy Council.

Patrons and Touring Performers
So far an examination of the performance patronage network has revealed that subjects and their local governments were active rather than passive participants in the circulation of power, knowledge and meaning. They could use the power inherent in the theatrical medium for their own purposes-sometimes divergent, sometimes complementary. Regardless of the extent to which they constituted a cohesive power base, however, a community's welfare still depended on its ability to function effectively within the larger commonwealth. For this it was partly dependent on patrons whose influence in turn depended on their power base in town and country as well as their relative position at court.

Local historian Charles Phythian-Adams has argued for the critical importance of integrating local history with national history in order to trace the "symbiosis between . . . provincial micro-structures and between them and the social and cultural macro-structure of the English nation." He suggests that for an understanding of matters such as national allegiance and identity and "the manner in which 'national' power is informally distributed and supra-regional influence is fitered down," we need to determine "spatially defined" 'neighbourhoods,' "the situation and distribution of noble and gentry estates within and amongst them" and "the ways in which the tentacles of patronage and clientage at different periods reached down to local dynastic grass-roots." In an effort to identify mechanisms through which towns and their subjects were involved with the wider circulation of power in Marian England, this concept of neighbourhoods can be applied to the spatially defined patterns traced by touring performers to examine them as signs of a patron's sphere of influence. Although the focus here is on the position of cities and towns within these cultural neighbourhoods, they would also have encompassed more rural communities as well as the 'communities' of household and court. The combination of aural and visual dramatic material, a patron's influence, and the mobility open to performers traveling under the patronage of a member of the nobility or gentry gave performers the potential to draw together geographically distant communities within their touring pattern. The frequency with which they revisited and reinforced this neighbourhood as well as their local personal or patronage connections would obviously affect community response and the cohesiveness of the neighbourhood, but by passing news and information from one town or household to another and by performing work which provided a shared set of signs and a common language, performers could circulate knowledge in such a way as to contribute to the patron's sphere of influence and local concepts of allegiance and identity.

In order to understand the significance of neighbourhoods produced by Marian performers, it is necessary to begin by comparison with Edward's reign. The virtue of Richard Morison's advocacy must have been clearly understood by Edward's Privy Council to the extent that his theory was translated into personal as well as public policy. Three of his Privy Councillors patronized performers who established substantial cultural neighbourhoods, and five others had performers who travelled within more limited neighbourhoods. By lending their names to touring performers, his most important and influential Privy Councillors created first of all, mobile symbols of their own authority and power to protect or control clients. Collectively, they also extended the court to the provinces thereby creating a shared knowledge base and an immediate yet informal channel for locally reinforcing Council policies and authority. With Mary's accession, however, changes in the power structure resulted in the disruption of most of the neighbourhoods established by performers in the previous reign. Whereas seven Edwardian patronage families had used travelling performers to establish spheres of influence under Henry, only three such Marian families had any record at all of touring performers under Edward, and all three were continuing a tradition actually begun under Henry.

Thomas Cheyney, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose adaptable political skills kept him in that office under three successive Tudors until his death in December of 1558, established a formidable tradition of performance patronage which resulted in a regularity and concentration of appearances by his touring performers clearly underscoring a strong sphere of influence within parts of Kent and the Cinque Ports. At Mary's accession there was no discernible interruption in the intensity or consistency of his performers' travels, and it must be observed that the Cinque Ports contributed no participants to Wyatt's rebellion. Canterbury and Faversham did contribute participants, however, and it is interesting to note that after the rebellion Cheyney's minstrels began regularly visiting Faversham following a thirteen year hiatus. His minstrels had been visiting Canterbury every other year or so but after the onset of Protestant executions there they never returned. This may possibly be due to the minstrels' fear that public executions would be "a hard act to follow" or a mutual patron/performer decision not to encourage public gatherings, but it is consistent with the usual categorization of Cheyney as a "conservative politique" ("one who welcomed the return of the mass but was cool towards the papacy"). Although comparatively limited in geographical scope, Cheyney's was the most tightly drawn neighbourhood under Mary and one with numerous other administrative, ceremonial and performance links. Most likely because it was a major corridor of access to the Continent, Cheyney's cultural neighbourhood also intersected with that of other patrons. However, in contrast with other periods, recorded incidents of a town's extension of hospitality to performers in honour of influential patrons--beyond the usual reward--were more isolated under Mary (eg. New Romney paid "for a drynkyng then at pellams" when the Lord Warden's minstrels visited and Dover rewarded the Earl of Sussex' players after a performance "at the wch were a greyt mayny of the comons with the meye & Iurates." ).

Marian records of performance patronage have surfaced for only two other Privy Councillors, and these are only isolated appearances for the Earl of Bath's minstrels in Barnstaple in 1553-4 and the Earl of Bedford's minstrels in Rye in 1554. Both patrons had seats in Devonshire where their performers toured during the 1540s, but performers associated with the Earl of Bath kept a low profile during Edward's reign. Throughout most of his career John Russell maintained strong patronage and clientage connections within Devonshire, but his minstrels who had been touring there since he became Lord Admiral never appeared again in Devon after the summer of 1549 when he put down the Western Rebellion. By 1551-2 they ceased to appear on tour altogether except for the one visit to Rye. At roughly the same time performers associated with his son, the outspokenly Protestant Francis, Lord Russell, began to appear in a somewhat different neighbourhood including Devon from 1552-3. After his minstrels' involvement with seditious material in Norwich in 1554, his performers appeared on tour only twice (his minstrels in Barnstaple in 1555-6 and his players in Exeter in 1557, when Francis had returned from exile and succeeded his father as Earl of Bedford). Given their brush with the authorities and what we know of Francis' sympathies with Wyatt, an earlier appearance in Canterbury some time between September of 1553 and September of 1554 leads to speculation that the sort of influence and allegiance cultivated by these performers was not what Mary--or his father--might have wished.

A sustained and wide ranging neighbourhood of influence involving primarily East Anglia and Kent had been established by the Duke of Norfolk's theatrical performers prior to his imprisonment in the tower towards the end of Henry's reign. He was released at the beginning of Mary's reign and appointed Privy Councillor, but from before his imprisonment until after his death, no touring performers were associated with him or his family. After his grandson's succession to the title in 1554, his appointment as Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Philip and his first marriage in 1555 to Mary FitzAlan, daughter and heir of the Earl of Arundel, the patronage of touring performers was revived with a similar East Anglian orientation and a gradually widening scope until in 1557-8 it included Exeter and Lewes (near the Arundel seat) as well as Ipswich and Maldon. What is interesting about Norfolk's cultural neighbourhood, however, is the degree to which the players' travels intersected with a different type of entertainment--the persecution of Protestants. Ipswich and Lewes saw executions in three of the four years in which they occurred so that when Norfolk's players visited those towns (the last two years of executions in Ipswich and the last year in Lewes, when 10 people were burned) their audiences would have been especially aware of the current religious policy and its implications. They would have faced similar though less intense awareness in Norwich, which they visited in the last of two years of executions, and in Exeter and Cambridge, both of which they visited for the only time after the one execution to be staged in those communities. While the intersection of players and martyrs may have been coincidental, it underscores the neighbourhood context for player-public interaction. In 1557 and 1558, in particular, currently edited records for their travels include only one town (Maldon) which had not recently hosted an execution. Like the sermons which accompanied the burnings, the players could have been useful in contextualizing or presenting a more positive performance alternative, but the very immediate dilemma faced in the performance context by both players and sensitized spectators highlights a similar dilemma faced by the more pragmatic members of Mary's court and council who were anxious to support the authority of the sovereign but increasingly doubtful about the virtues of persecution and other aspects of Crown policy. In this context, the cultural neighbourhood created by the performers of a family closely associated with Mary and Catholicism could well have been a vehicle for diminishing credibility and the family's local influence.

The performers of one other Marian patron traced a somewhat wider ranging neighbourhood. Although his father had been a patron of performers under Henry, the players of John Vere, Earl of Oxford, appeared only twice during Edward's reign. Between 1556 and 1558, however, they produced a neighbourhood encompassing Norwich, Dover and Bristol with the Earl's Essex seat at Hedingham Castle in the middle. Outside of Bristol and Dover, however, no location was visited more than once, and in this case there is an even more striking coincidence of player appearances and executions. Their two visits to Bristol coincided with the only two years in which executions took place there. Their visits to Oxford and Norwich came in the second of two years of executions. Since Canterbury witnessed an annual blood-bath and Ipswich enjoyed only one year without such entertainment, it is less significant that Vere's players visited there and more significant that their only visits which did not coincide with public executions in the same year were the two trips to Dover and the stop at Bridgwater. Although he was Lord Great Chamberlain and included on her New Year's gift list in 1557, Mary viewed Vere's enthusiasm for Catholicism with suspicion. His name topped the list of noblemen suspected of complicity in the 1556 anti-Catholic conspiracy. Keeping in mind as well his Protestant father's patronage of John Bale, the potential effect of his performers' cultural neighbourhood, like the patron himself, remains ambiguous as a mechanism for fostering allegiance to the Queen and her policies.

More detailed analysis of factors such as cross-community relations, patron-client exchanges and ties of kinship would be required to determine the way in which each of the above neighbourhoods actually functioned in the circulation of power among patron, performer and specific communities. However, the evidence derived from simply identifying the neighbourhoods suggests a striking difference between the interaction of court and country at the level of performance neighbourhoods in the reigns of Edward and Mary. Whereas some of the most prominent Edwardian Privy Councillors utilized the patronage of performers in extending their own image and that of the court into the provinces, only one of Mary's Councillors, Thomas Cheyney, had performers who maintained what
could be called a neighbourhood of influence.
Having been established in the previous two reigns, it was intensive but limited in scope, and the fact that the minstrels avoided hot spots like Canterbury while Cheyney attended less than 20% of Council meetings leaves doubts as to the extent to which they might have been engaged in drawing communities in Kent closer to the court and its policies. Surprisingly, none of the Councillors categorized as "conservative catholic" ("one who welcomed the persecution and the return to Rome") patronized touring theatrical performers. Single appearances for the performers of other Privy Councillors suggest that they may have patronized performers but that touring performers did not regularly underscore their influence or promote public policy outside of their household. With the 'politique' Councillors (conformists " who had no enthusiasm for official religious policy" ) Lords Clinton and Wentworth (whose father Thomas was one of Bale's patrons) this is more understandable than with "conservative politiques" such as the Earl of Sussex, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Bath and the Duke of Norfolk, all of whom had a previous tradition of touring performers. Successors to the latter three titles during the reign did develop neighbourhoods of influence, but not all used them to foster allegiance to the court. Francis, Lord Russell and later Earl of Bedford was clearly not associated with the court and on at least one occasion his performers may have used their influence to promote opposition to the Queen and her policies.

Given the persistent concerns regarding control of theatrical propaganda as expressed in prohibitions and other official communications, it is hard to understand why only one Privy Councillor supported performers who developed a sustained touring pattern. There were clearly other more formal mechanisms for making the presence of the Council felt in the towns and collecting feedback on support for government policies at the extremities, but as Morison observed, none more effective than the indirect, visual medium of theatre in fostering a shared set of signs and knowledge. This must have been especially clear to the seasoned core of Mary's Council, most of whom had served under Edward, but the very pragmatism that made it possible for them to make the transition from the one Privy Council to the other may also have inspired as moderate a course as possible in personally promoting her policies. As her government, they were bound to implement her programs and enforce her authority, but their ultimate concern may have been more with their own position and/or the stability of the country than with the Queen's specific agenda. A strategy of counter-propaganda may have been behind the intersection of Protestant executions and touring players associated with the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford (although the motivations of the latter may be in question), but a strategy of public and personal association with the Queen's controversial policies through theatre may not have been particularly attractive to individual Privy Councillors. As both patrons and subjects, some members of Mary's court may have been less eager than John Careless to demonstrate their readiness "to do her grace the best service that I can, with body, goods and life, so long as it doth last."

The cultural neighbourhood fostered by one other patron serves to highlight the implications of the limited scope and coverage of touring performers associated with the Marian court. In April of 1556, the Council found it necessary to write to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the Council in the North, informing him that they understood

certain lewd persons, to the number of six or seven in a company, naming themselves to be servants unto Sir Francis, and wearing his livery, and badge on their sleeves, have wandered about those North parts, and represented certain plays and interludes, containing very naughty and seditious matter touching the King and Queen's Majesties, and the state of the realm, and to the slander of Christ's true and Catholic religion, contrary to all good order, and to the manifest contempt of Almighty God, and dangerous example of others.

The Queen and Her Performers
From the Queen's perspective, there may have been good reasons for not encouraging her Privy Councillors and some other members of her court to involve themselves in a strategy of theatrical patronage. The distant and unenthusiastic relationship between the Queen and her Council suggested by the foregoing analysis extended well beyond the matter of performance patronage. In a letter of 1554 Cardinal Pole reported that she had "become very suspicious of the greater part of her Privy Council," and in May of 1557 the Venetian ambassador reported:

Respecting the government and public business she is compelled . . .according to the custom of other sovereigns, to refer many matters to her councillors and ministers. The truth is that, knowing the divisions which exist amongst them . . .her Majesty, in order not to be deceived, and for the prevention of scandal, willed . . . that Cardinal Pole should hear and have everything referred to him, it being evident that, whilst showing the utmost confidence in him, she distrusts almost all the others; and she says freely that in government affairs, most especially in cases of conscience and of offence against God . . ., she refers herself to the Cardinal, protesting that should errors be committed they will be attributed to him. . . . Besides, she is also greatly grieved by the insurrections, conspiracies, and plots formed against her daily, both at home and abroad, and although hitherto, . . .they have not caused any damage . . . yet nevertheless, it being necessary . . .to proceed to capital punishment or confiscation . . . she knows that by these means the hatred and indignation she inspires are increased . . . .
The consequence is that as until now the plots have been set-on-foot . . . by the commonalty and persons of mean extraction . . . so from the fickleness of that nation . . .were they excited . . . by some personage . . .or nobleman of importance, there is no doubt they would create a great revolution throughout the realm . . .the country . . . showing a greater inclination and readiness for change than ever, provided it had a leader.

Once again, the cultural neighbourhoods produced by Marian performers may be best understood by comparison with those for Edward and Elizabeth. First of all, on the basis of currently available records, players patronized by Edward and Elizabeth were circulating in the countryside within seven months of their accession. Of course unlike Edward, who as Prince had had players touring extensively right up to the point of his father's death, Mary had not been in a position to patronize touring performers since the 1530s. This, however, does not explain the fact that it took at least two years and three months before her players began to extend their court activities with a sustained neighbourhood in the country. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth had never patronized travelling performers, and yet the Queen's players were on the road much more quickly after her accession. Her players appear as early as May 12, 1559. Records relating to responsibilities and activities at court, including the royal marriage, provide no evidence that Mary's performers were exceptionally busy at court with either performance or other unrelated duties. Certainly the string of prohibitions of performance activity stretching from the early days of her reign through 1557 suggests that Mary and her Council saw public performance as a dangerous and divisive catalyst for dissent to be discouraged rather than encouraged, but such prohibitions did not inhibit her performers from touring later in the reign, nor did similar prohibitions have a restraining effect on royal performers under Edward or Elizabeth. Concern about the hospitality her players might receive and the unsettled atmosphere in certain parts of the country do not appear to have been factors because her performers initiated a sustained touring pattern only after unpopular policies had extinguished the enthusiasm which had reportedly marked her accession.

Perhaps the strongest cause for hesitation may have been concerns regarding the effectiveness and/or loyalty of her performers, whom she had largely inherited from Edward. These concerns were to some degree justified in 1556 when William Hunnis, gentleman of the Chapel Royal was implicated in plots against the Queen and imprisoned. Under examination Hunnis implicated John Benbow, also of the Chapel Royal, although his role does not appear to have been treated as very serious. Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels and his assistant Sir Thomas Benger were also implicated in plots . They were both staunch Protestants, and Cawarden had been under continuous suspicion of plotting against the Queen since Wyatt's rebellion. As a result of the 1556 plot he was placed under house arrest and eventually imprisoned in the Fleet. The Queen was apparently so alarmed by threats from within her court that she refused to appear in public and would not let Cardinal Pole leave her side--even for his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury in March of that year.

Despite the connection of these individuals with court entertainments, however, they were not directly involved in groups of royal performers who toured under Mary or other Tudors. Although it is clear that a strong Protestant agenda must have dominated royal performers under Edward, neither her jester nor any of her minstrels or players were connected with plots against Mary. Furthermore, at least two Protestant playwrights apparently adapted, sought and received preferment at her court. William Baldwin's play Love and Lyve was probably prepared for the court at Christmas 1555-6. The previous Christmas, Nicholas Udall was paid for plays he provided (possibly Respublica)and given a royal warrant for necessary materials from the Master of the Revels. Later in 1555 he was appointed Master of Westminster Grammar School.

Either because of anxiety about their commitment to the Crown's agenda or because of a failure to recognize the importance of a royal antidote to seditious touring performers, royal dramatic performers were exceptionally slow to develop sustained touring neighbourhoods. The King and Queen's minstrels visited Hereford (the heart of her performers' earlier touring circuit when she was Princess) sometime between October 1553 and October 1554. Mary's minstrels appeared only twice more, in 1555-6 and 1556-1557 and those of the King three more times between 1554 and 1557. The King's and Queen's jesters appeared in Canterbury during the 1554-55 accounting year. The Queen's jester (twice identified as Lockwoode) appeared alone during the same year in Rye, Lydd and Gloucester, and twice more the next year, both in the southeast. After that, though, there are no more recorded travels by her jester. The earliest her players could have begun touring was apparently September of 1555, although from that point until less than a week before Mary's death they produced a sustained and wide-ranging neighbourhood.
The coverage afforded by her players was heaviest in East Anglia and the southeast, but it encompassed the southwest and points as far north as Beverley as well. The extent of their travels reflects little concern for economies of time or touring expenses to be derived from focusing on only one or two contiguous regions in any given year. Each year they traced a neighbourhood encompassing the east and west as well as the midlands and/or the north. The frequency of visits to particular locations is not especially intense in that no town was visited more than twice, but considering that the neighbourhood was produced over only three years at most, the distribution of the four towns which they did visit twice is interesting. Ipswich, Leicester, Beverley and Exeter may or may not have been seen as strategic centres in their regions, but the timing of the players' appearances at these and other locations encourages speculation that their visits were not entirely uninformed by power negotiations involving their patron and communities within their neighbourhood. The initiation of touring by Mary's players sometime between Michelmas (September 29) 1555 and Michelmas 1556 came at the height of the propaganda war being waged in print and followed upon a number of events which would have benefited locally from "contextualizing ": in particular, her unpopular marriage to Philip, Pole's return and the reunion of the English and Roman Catholic churches, a number of conspiracies and a call for a subsidy at the same time the country was experiencing poor harvests-as well as the trials and initial executions of Protestant matyrs,. Not surprisingly, then, the players visited Leicester and Exeter for the first time in the years in which they hosted their only burnings. In Gloucester, Bristol and Norwich, the players' only visits came in the first of only two years of burnings. The royal minstrels as well as the players appeared in Canterbury in the first year of executions and in Ipswich during the first two years of executions. In Oxford, the first of only two years of executions saw a visit by the King's minstrels (their only visit to the town) and the second saw visits by both the Queen's minstrels and her players (also their only visits to the town). From another perspective, the players visited Rye in 1557 the day after their mayor was committed to the Fleet, and the first of two consecutive years of visits to Beverley began in the year when Sir Francis Leek's players were suppressed. On happier occasions, royal performers visited Barnstaple and Banbury in the same years in which the Queen granted charters of incorporation to the boroughs. Finally, just after Pole's visitation of Lincolnshire and 20 years after the Pilgrimage of Grace began there, the Queen's performers appeared in Louth (1556-7) in their only visit to that shire during the reign.

In some cases the records suggest that the Queen's players were warmly welcomed by local officials. Occasionally they note a specific place of performance associated with local authorities--the town hall in Canterbury, the guild hall in Exeter on Corpus Christi day, the church in Louth. Some records report that the Mayor hosted a performance, although this sign of respect was not reserved exclusively for the Queen's performers. In Bristol, for instance, in 1556 the Mayor hosted the Earl of Oxford's players and Lord Berkley's players as well as the King and Queen's players. Although rewards were gradated according to the patron's social status, all three received the courtesy of a mayor's play. Thus the royal performers would have been seen by the local audience within the larger performance context created by the performers of two members of the nobility--as well as by the visiting preachers paid by the city at the same time and Protestant executions in the same year. As in other cities, the players would also have been greeted by local authorities regularly engaged in official business with the Privy Council and/or Crown on matters of importance to the town, so that any response to performance propaganda would ultimately have involved a complex intersection of three cultural neighbourhoods with a range of interests and concerns in the local community and individual concepts of identity and allegiance. A brief survey of the cultural neighbourhoods traced by performers associated with the Queen and other patrons suggests a possible strategy of theatrical propaganda to counteract resistance to official policies by some local officials, patrons of 'seditious' performers and individual subjects. But what was the actual effect of propaganda emanating from the court and to what extent would it have enabled the Crown to control the negotiations of power and meaning at the local level? The answer to this question would have depended on the way in which elements of the performance context intersected with the images and ideas through which players constructed their cultural neighbourhoods.

Community, Court and "Commen Welthe"
Comparatively few plays survive from Mary's reign, but one play, The Interlude of Wealth and Health, is thought to have been performed by the Queen's players at court during Christmas festivities in 1554-5, and unlike Respublica, its performance requirements are such that it could have been in the Queen's players' repertoire when they first began touring the next spring. If it is a potential common denominator linking local communities and the community of the court, however, it casts doubt on the Crown's ultimate power to control performance patronage as a mechanism for drawing micro-structures of power and knowledge into the desired hegemonic macro-structures of allegiance and meaning.

Like Respublica, the two characters in the title roles of Wealth and Health, along with a third character, Liberty, are misguided and abused by three vices or false counselors before being rescued in a final scene which concludes with praise of the ruling sovereign. Respublica is rescued by four ladies (Mercy, Truth, Justice and Peace) and Mary's alter ego, Nemesis, but Wealth, Health and Liberty are rescued by "a noble man" of "greet actortty" (l. 450) called Remedy, who is also feared because he is "willing to fulfil his soueraines commaundement" and "not fraide to do right punishment"(ll 454-5). T. W. Craik has drawn attention to Remedy's red cap (l. 834) and elegant gown (l. 625) and the fact that he dwelled "not heare" (l. 621) as an intended connection with Cardinal Pole (who had recently returned from long exile). Unlike Nemesis who appears only at the point of judgment at the end of the play, Remedy appears early on and acts as a kind of paternal figure who knows in advance what the scenario will be and hovers to make sure things do not go too far. Whether intended as a courtly compliment to him or an explicit promotion of his image further afield, Remedy's function in the play clearly announces Pole's role as what the Venetian ambassador termed "the chief instrument in the realm" while at the same time making him a symbol of the renewed role of the Catholic church in ministering to the needs of the country: As Remedy himself says,

That none of you shall diminishe, nor amisse be tane
I good remedy therfore may & will speake without blame
For the comen welth, & helth both of the soule & body
yt is mi office & power, & therfore I haue my actoritie. (ll. 585-591)

As a complex piece of political propaganda, the play bears considerable analysis, but focusing on its approach to simply one issue of critical importance in late 1554 and 1555 will serve to crystalize its potential impact on power relations. After reunification of the church with Rome, Pole's next agenda item was the return of church lands, but already by December of 1554 he was meeting staunch opposition, as anticipated, from "the temporal nobility." Even the Queen's Privy Council showed little enthusiasm, not surprisingly since they had for the most part benefitted substantially by the acquisition of church lands themselves. Wealth and Health may be seen as an appeal to "the people" whom Pole thought could "be reasonably expected to give it [his agenda] all favour and assistance," their "having suffered very great detriment, as since the abolition of the obedience of the Church, they have been more and more oppressed daily." The matter of social class was a non-issue in Respublica, but in Wealth and Health the three main characters are specifically identified as noblemen and members of a court, at least initially, at odds with each other. Thus their characterization as proud and hauty reflects on both the nobility and the court. Wealth, for example, is "mutable"(l. 52), "cruell"(l. 54), "wauerynge"(l. 55), "fykle"(l. 150) and the cause of "much sorowe and care"(l. 142). He openly declares that "by liberty now I doo not set"(l. 173). Using a proverb also cited by Miles Huggarde, Shrewd Wit mocks the noblemen's breach of the tradition of hospitality: "A man may breke his neck as lyghtly/As his fast in your kechin, or selier truly"(l. 688-9). Against this, Good Remedy plays the role of the rescuer by saving them from their woeful inability to choose counselors wisely, and the resulting general decay, "dupedom," "revell and rout"(l. 678). In his sermon-like introductory speech to the three noblemen, Remedy echoes the tone and content of Pole's remarks in a meeting on church lands with the Queen and the Council in December of 1554. After noting that "the chiefe parte of all welth lyeth in great estates/Theyr substance and landes"(ll 569-70), he reminds the noblemen that England's great wealth is derived from "ye grace of god which is our chief forderance"(l. 584).

The implication, made explicit in Pole's meeting, is that noblemen, therefore, should not begrudge returning church lands. In the end, Remedy offers forgiveness and shifts some blame to counsellors. He feels "halfe ashamed, that long it hath be sayd/That noble men by such wretches hath ben deceiued"(ll. 896-7). However, the patronizing and unflattering portrait of Pole's opponents painted by Wealth and Health could not have been met enthusiastically by many members of the court--nor is it likely to have set many aristocratic households ringing with applause when it went on tour. Moreover, with this type of fractured official portrait on tour, it might explain why an analysis of cultural neighbourhoods revealed so little use of theatrical patronage by members of the court to promote Crown policies. The traditional chain of patronage through which the sovereign distributes power to the nobility who in turn distribute favours further down the chain is in fact discredited as a result of the characterization of the nobility. Analysis of performance neighbouhoods may lend credibility to Mary's distrust of her Councillors, but it may also reveal the potential weakness derived from a sovereign's ineffective use of patronage. The Venetian ambassador reported that "the country is much exhausted, above all the nobility and the commonalty . . . who chiefly contribute to the subsidies, this penury being caused not so much by the scarcity . . . as by the cessation of all sorts of supplies . . . and salaries . . . which the Court used to give, thus relieving many persons." Concern for eliminating her debt may have inspired parsimony, but even when she did confer favours, David Loades has concluded that Mary seldom dispensed patronage "in accordance with her own future interests" or used "her patronage as an instrument of policy."

It must be noted as well that Pole, along with the playwright, may have mistakenly collectivized the response of "the people" on several issues, including church lands. Often thanks to the intervention of a noble patron, many towns-including towns visited by the Queen's players--had benefited substantially from the dissolution. By the 1550s towns were enjoying regular income from former church property and had absorbed it into an evolving collective identity. More importantly, however, both Pole and the playwright failed to appreciate the full ramifications of a more fundamental issue. Pole's Council opposition to the return of church lands had argued that "no outsider should have any say in the disposal of goods or lands in England without authority of Parliament . . . [because] England was a societas perfecta, a complete civil society, having its parts, spirituality, Lords and Commons, duly knit together and a sovereign for head, just like any living human body." This assertion of England's integrity in the face of potential foreign intervention expressed a sentiment shared not only by the nobility but also in modified form by local governments promoting a distinct civic image and the integrity of their own authority, and even by subjects like John Careless defending the personal integrity of their religious choice while affirming loyalty to city and Queen.

Ironically, the play also encourages this perspective to some degree by introducing a Dutch mercenary, Hance Beerpot, who is expelled with vitriolic comments on aliens by Remedy, the defender of "the comen welth, & helth both of the soule & body"(l. 590). England was notoriously chauvinistic, and both as a theatrical vehicle and a propaganda tactic Hance was guaranteed to elicit a powerful response. Controlling that response would have been another matter, however. Although there may have been times and places in England where Hance would have produced the desired hegemonic resonance, at this particular time public feeling both inside and outside the court was running so high against the Spanish king, his entourage (some of whom were Flemish), and even the Italians in Pole's household, that the potential for decidedly divergent responses must have been enormous. By 1557, in fact, Thomas Stafford's rebellious proclamation issued from Scarborough Castle may have voiced the increasingly common apprehension that the Queen, "being naturallye borne haulfe Spanyshe and haulfe Englyshe" had shown "herselfe a whole Spanyarde, and no Englyshe woman."

More generally, as a mechanism for constituting subjects at either the court or the extremities, the play betrays little sensitivity to "the people" and the potential complexity of their perspectives. All moral interludes share a kinship with sermons, but this play's lengthy introductory debate, by "way of communicacion" (l. 39), and Remedy's preachy dialogue place particular dramaturgical emphasis on an appeal to the ears over the eyes--without the advantages of the sermon's closed format. David Loades has noted the mistaken emphasis which Mary and Pole placed on assertions of authority over passionate persuasion, and Remedy's strong association with authority bears this out. Wealth and Health has no room for a counterpart to the character, People, in Respublica. Instead, Remedy complains about the difficulty of maintaining Wealth, Health and Liberty because "the people be so variable/ And many be so wilfull, they will not be reformable" (ll. 539-40). Later he warns that "Craft wyll out and disceite wyll haue a fall" (l. 937) and "god wyl punish the people when they be detelt"(l. 798). That Remedy is anticipated with fear and associated with punishment and suspicion would only have served to highlight rather than counteract the more inflammatory and competitive performance propaganda connected with subjects like John Careless.

The absence of a role for the Queen in the play parallels her strategy, as noted by the Venetian ambassador, of governing through Pole, and it highlights the observation made by a number of scholars that there was no sustained effort to construct a particular public image for Mary like that suggested by Morison. Taken in the context of the urban community and the dynamics of power relationships within the network of theatrical patronage, Pole's severe image was not an especially fortunate choice for the Crown's public face. His efforts to establish authority as a character as well as the principal agent of the Crown are reflected in attempts to dominate the politics of knowledge through suppression, censorship and sometimes competing propaganda. However, viewed from the perspective of "the commen people" in the urban community, at least, the gap between intended response and actual negotiated meaning could have been substantial. Local government had a vested interest in demonstrating loyalty to the Crown and maintaining public order, but when faced with Crown policies which they saw as contrary to the "common welthe," they were prepared, with varying degrees of political tact, to assert a strengthening sense of power to constitute their own civic identity and integrity-and, implicitly, the role of the sovereign within the "common welthe." For the urban community, as well as for members of the nobility and gentry, inside and outside the court, patronage of performers and sponsorship of theatre and/or spectacle was one mechanism for asserting power. Performative resistance was another. The maypole erected by the Widnes mob and the merry martyrdom contemplated by John Careless--and more grimly dramatized by others across the country were assertions of power by "the commen people." For subjects in positions of authority, there was non-participation in ceremonial or official functions such as cathedral services, to which the Bristol mayor and alderman had to be swinged by Dean and Chapter; protestant burnings, for which the Privy Council had to order the sanctioning participation of local magnates; and possibly even the patronage of touring players, which all but one of Mary's Privy Councillors, even those with a prior tradition of patronage, avoided. The unusually limited nature of cultural neighbourhoods produced by performers associated with court patrons meant that such informal influence depended all the more on the Queen's players. This along with the apparent modesty of court spectacle and the potentially complex impact on tour of at least one court play suggests that Marian performance history, at least, cannot be told simply from the perspective of the court. Despite the Crown's attempts to control and censor the mechanisms of communication, a play associated with the Queen's own players opened the door to negotiated meanings which suggest that as in the case of printed propaganda, the Crown's counter campaign was neither closely controlled and orchestrated nor especially sensitive to its audience. There may have been a strategy behind their travels, but the content of Wealth and Health suggests that for the players, the theatrical potential of a character like Hance Beerpot outweighed any possibility of divergent political responses. The patron/client relationship demonstrated by Respublica's performer/counselor approach contrasts with any later intended role for the players as one-way communicators between Crown and people. Yet, if Mary and Pole had been more sensitive to the full performance text of play and contextual response they might have understood what Privy Councillors, local government and individual subjects were trying to communicate. The impact of the Reformation in England had less to do with religion than with social and political reform. Thus, a lack of enthusiasm for Mary's religion by individuals at court or among "the commen people" did not necessarily indicate a lack of concern for the "commen welthe" or allegiance to the Queen. The network of cultural neighbourhoods traced by her interluders and those of other patrons was one of many mechanisms which Foucault would recognize as vehicles for the circulation of power and knowledge. The Queen's players gave the Crown a presence and influence within this forum at the local level, but it is doubtful that they dominated the resulting negotiations of meaning which constituted subject, sovereign and "commen welthe." An agenda of conservative religious reaction married to major foreign alliances ran contrary to the spirit of reform reflected in her government's urban policy and evolving concepts of nationalism associated with "commen welthe" by even her own players. A claim by one of her subjects that the Queen "loves another realm better than this" represented a much more fundamental threat to her power and the allegiance of "the commen people" than the religious independence asserted by John Careless. Elizabeth would recognize this and mobilize all the resources of her court, including spectacle and theatrical patronage, to marry her royal image with the English "commen welthe." Through her openness to public appearances outside the court and the concept of Gloriana as an embodiment of the English nation, she found channels for both her subjects' participation in constituting the role and identity of their sovereign, and the Crown's greater control over evolving concepts of "commen welthe" and the allegiance of "the commen people."

Endnotes

i.  I cite here from a fair copy of the manuscript most likely prepared for the King (BL Royal MSS, 18.A.L., fols. 4a, 5b, 19a, 14b-15a, 15b, 17b, 18b-19a). A rough draft with substantial revisions (partially transcribed by Sydney Anglo in "An Early Tudor Programme for Plays and Other Demonstrations against the Pope," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 20 (1957), 176-9) presumably reveals the process whereby Morison developed his argument (BL Cotton MSS, Faustina.C.ii, fols. 5-22). The work merits further study in its entirety as a tract advising Henry VIII on the connection between a subject's access to knowledge and a king's power over a commonwealth, on the value of theatre and spectacle as propaganda and on the merits of Latin over English as the language of law. Morison was familiar with the work of Italian political theorists of the period, including Machiavelli, and had recently returned from Padua where he had been a student protégé in Reginald Pole's household.
i  Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Patronage, Protestantism, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For examples of other book-length works which address theatre or spectacle as projections of a patron's political agenda and/or image see also Sidney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969); David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); Alistair Fox, Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); John N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester: Patron of Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry ([London]: Thames and Hudson, 1987); Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (New York: Methuen, 1986); Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Suzanne Westfall, Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); and Alan Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (London: George Philip, 1987). Cautionary notes regarding some of the approaches represented here have also been raised. See, for example, Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London: Seaby, 1992); M. D. Jardine, "New Historicism for Old: New Conservatism for Old?: The Politics of Patronage in the Renaissance," Politics, Patronage and Literature in England 1558-1658, The Yearbook of English Studies, 21(1991) 286-304; and David Norbrook, "Life and Death of Renaissance Man," Raritan, 8.4 (1989), 89-110.
i  David Starkey, "Introduction: Rivals in Power, the Tudors and the Nobility" in Rivals in Power: Lives and Letters of the Great Tudor Dynasties, ed. David Starkey (London: Macmillan, 1990), 21.
i  John Elder, letter to Robert Stuart, January 1, 1556 as edited in The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary, and Especially of the Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat. Written by a Resident in the Tower of London, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society Publications 48 (1850) 157. Mary seized on the emblematic rendering of the motto (Veritas filia Temporis, Truth the daughter of Time) alluded to by Pole for her crest, coins and devices. As will be seen, the motto was also alluded to within spectacle and drama during her reign. The complex gender-based implications of this image as applied to and appropriated by Mary, and later Elizabeth, merit more comparative analysis in political and cultural contexts than they have so far received, but see King, pp 189-95 and Fritz Saxl, "Veritas Filia Temporis" in Philosophy & History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. Raymond Klibansky and H. J. Paton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936), 197-222.
i  In the spirit of arguments put forward by historians such as G. R. Elton ["Tudor Government: The Points of Contact, III. The Court," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 26 (1976)] and David Starkey ["Introduction: Court History in Perspective" in The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London: Longman, 1992)], I have taken an inclusive approach to defining the Marian court by including not only members of the royal households and Privy Chambers but also members of her Council and members of the nobility and gentry whose access to the Queen's court and favour is reflected in documents such as the new year gift list of 1557 [Starkey, Rivals in Power, p. 190; David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 270-1, 358-69].
i  S. T. Bindoff, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1509-1558, 3 vols (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982), II, 634. Reginald Pole certainly saw Morison as one the instigators of the propaganda campaign emanating from Germany. For reference to a printed ballad against Philip and Mary circulating in England in June of 1554 and thought to have been written by Morison see Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Vienna, Simancas, Besancon and Brussels, ed. Royall Tyler, et al, 13 vols (London: HMSO, 1862-1954), XII, 267.
i  Although now generally regarded as a group of individuals acting more or less independently rather than as a "party," what has come to be called "the commonwealth-men" and the social and political reforms they proposed achieved political prominence under Edward before falling from grace after the uprisings of 1549. The phrases, images and elements of the ideals associated with these men, however, can be traced in contemporary political discourse from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, and during Mary's reign they were appropriated by both Protestant and Catholic factions. See G. R. Elton, "Reform and the 'Commonwealth-Men' of Edward VI's Reign" in The English Commonwealth, 1547-1640: Essays in Politics and Society Presented to Joel Hurstfield, ed. Peter Clark, Alan G.R. Smith, and Nicholas Tyacke (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), pp. 23-38. In those instances where I have included "commen welthe" and "commen people" in quotation marks, I am emphasizing the distinction between twentieth century usage of these terms and their fluid and ambiguous contemporary connotations.
i  David Loades, The Mid-Tudor Crisis, 1545-1565 (London: Macmillan, 1992).
i  Starkey, The English Court, p. 13; Kevin Sharpe, "The Image of Virtue: The Court and Household of Charles I, 1625-1642," in The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London: Longman, 1992), p. 249; G. R. Elton, "The Court,"pp. 212, 214. The latter phrase is taken from David Hume's The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 [9 vols. (London, 1811), VI, 293] where it is applied to the reign of James I, but it is cited as applied by Starkey (p. 24) to the entire period between the Wars of the Roses and 1642.
i Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980), pp. 72, 98.
i Foucault, pp. 97, 99.
i  There was no doubt a distinct "politics of performance" associated with individual types of performance in early England. Clearly bearwards, musicians and players accessed their audience and presented their patrons through quite different performance media, but unfortunately contemporary record keepers upon whom we depend for our sources of information were unaware of our future interests, if not insensitive to the importance of such distinctions or simply uncertain as to what term should be applied to a performer they may not even have seen personally. Consequently, the terminology applied to performers in contemporary records is frequently imprecise and contradictory (even the term "players" may be applied to musicians as well as actors). As well, during the sixteenth century the nature of performance undertaken by performers such as minstrels was undergoing transformation from a more diversified combination of skills to specialization and perceived sophistication by performers such as players and waits [See, for example, Timothy J. McGee, "The Fall of the Noble Minstrel: The Sixteenth-Century Minstrel in a Musical Context," Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 7 (1995), 98-120; John Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 142-55; and Walter L. Woodfill, Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 74-108.]. The focus of this paper is on theatrical discourse as polemic and propaganda, but given the above qualifications imposed by the context and our sources, the net has been cast widely to include performers who could have appropriated the elements of "playing" associated with theatrical discourse for the purposes of polemic or propaganda, including the Chapel Royal, minstrels, jesters, and waits as well as interluders and players .
i Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), II, 5-7. The proclamation also clearly places the responsibility for enforcement on "all mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, bailiffs, constables, and all other public officers and ministers" (p. 7). These responsibilities are clearly stated in charters of incorporation for the period, in other proclamations and statutes and in materials generated from within the towns such as the Norwich Mayor's pageant of 1556. Through his analysis of the town hall, Robert Tittler has demonstrated how the Crown's need for an agency of control and enforcement coalesced in the vested interests of ruling oligarchies in social order and enhanced prestige during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was reflected in the built environment through the town court and a place of imprisonment, frequently both within the town hall, and through devices for public punishment, usually in the market near the town hall. Thus residents came to associate the town hall with court proceedings, punishment and imprisonment as well as ceremonial and theatrical functions. See, for example, Martin Weinbaum, British Borough Charters, 1307-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943); H. A. Merewether and A. J. Stephens, The History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom from the Earliest to the Present Time, 3 vols. (1835; Brighton Sussex: Harvester, 1972) II, 1177-1218; Norwich 1540-1642, ed. David Galloway (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp. 40, 42; Robert Tittler, Architecture and Power: The Town Hall and the English Urban Community c.1500-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), esp. pp. 35-40, 122-8.
i  For parallel discussions of print propaganda and preaching during the period see Edward J. Baskerville, A Chronological Bibliography of Propaganda and Polemic (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979); Blench, J. W., Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: A Study of English Sermons 1450-c.1600 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964); John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univerisity Press, 1982); two articles by Jennifer Loach, "Pamphlets and Politics, 1553-8," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 48 (1975), 31-44 and "The Marian Establishment and the Printing Press," English Historical Review 101 (1986), 135-48; David Loades, "The Press under the Early Tudors: A Study in Censorship and Sedition," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964-1968), 29-50; Millar Maclure, Register of Sermons Preached at Paul's Cross 1534-1642, University of Toronto, Department of English Studies and Texts, No. 6 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958) and rev. Jackson Campbell Boswell and Peter Pauls (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989). During the reign these mechanisms were subjected to further refinements of censorship and licensing. With plays, for instance, licensing for performance was delegated to church authorities [The Acts of the Privy Council, ed. John Roche Dasent, 32 vols. (London: HMSO, 1892-1907),1556-1558, VI, 102] and in print plays came under the newly formed Stationers' Company, as well as increasingly severe statutes and proclamations (Loades, "The Press," pp. 43-4 ).
i  Unlike statutes, proclamations did not become law until they were proclaimed. For a discussion of the circumstances and ceremony surrounding their proclamation in towns see R. W. Heinze, Proclamations of the Tudor Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 27-8.
i  Norwich, p. 34. It should be noted that Russell was himself connected with seditious ballad writers in 1553. The account of Edward Underhill, who was detained in August 1553 for writing an anti-Papist ballad, credits Russell with providing him 20s/week while in prison. See An English Garner: Tudor Tracts 1532-1588, ed. [Edward Arber] (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1964), 177-8.
i APC,1552-1554, IV, 368; for further discussion of this incident and the involvement of John Careless, a local actor, see below. For further examples later in the reign see records for 1557 relating to Canterbury and London in Acts, 1556-1558, VI, 102, 110, 148-9, 168-9.
i For example, records relating to performers associated with specific patrons note performances in the town hall in Canterbury [Records of Plays and Players in Kent 1450-1642, ed. Giles Dawson, Malone Society Collections, 7 (1965), 12]; in the guild hall in Bristol [City Chamberlain's Accounts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. D. M. Livock, Bristol Record Society 24 (1965) 38-hereafter referred to as Bristol];Exeter [Devon, ed. John M. Wasson (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1986), pp. 147-8] and Oxford [Selections from the Records of the City of Oxford, with Extracts from Othe Documents Illustrating the Municipal History: Henry VIII to Elizabeth, ed. William H. Turner (Oxford, 1880), p. 267]; in the church in Harwich [Leonard T. Weaver, The Harwich Story (Dovercourt, Essex: L. T. Weaver, 1975), p. 1557], Louth [Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire 1300-1585, ed. Stanley J. Kahrl, Malone Society Collections, 8 (1974), 84] and Lyme Regis [Cyril Wanklyn, Lyme Leaflets (n.p.: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne, 1944), p. 39]; and the mayor's house in Barnstaple [Devon, p. 41]. Several of these spaces would have been ladden with local associations connected with Reformation and Counter Reformation policy. After the demise of its Corpus Christi pageants during the Reformation, Exeter hosted a performance by the Queen's interluders on the feast of Corpus Christi in the guildhall, whose first floor housed the Chapel of St. George, a focus for pre-Reformation religious rituals (Tittler, Architecture and Power, p. 41). In Louth, the performance by the Queen's players in the parish church came 20 years after a sermon in the church sparked the Pilgrimage of Grace through the suggestion that the Crown would close the church and seize its plate. The church with its newly completed steeple was such an important focus of local pride that an armed guard was set up to protect it [Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, 3 vols. in one (London: Burns & Oates, 1963), I, 300].
i  For example, in Dover (Kent, p. 42), Exeter (Devon, p. 148) and Bristol [Chamberlain's Accounts, pp. 38-9). For a description of such a performance at Gloucester, apparently in the reign of Elizabeth, see R. W[illis], Mount Tabor, or Private Exercises of a Penitent Sinner, (London, 1639), pp. 110-4. The relevant passage is fully cited in Cumberland, Westmorland, Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 362-4. As Willis was 75 at the time of writing his recollections of seeing the performance as a young child, his detailed account is also a testimony to Morison's assertions regarding the potential impact of theatre on the "commen people." Willis himself observes, "This sight tooke such impression in me, that when I came towards mans estate, it was as fresh in my memory, as if I had seen it newly acted. From whence I observe . . .what great care should bee had in the education of children, to keepe them from seeing of spectacles of ill examples . . . " (Cumberland, p. 363).
i For an important study of the appearance of players in town halls see Tittler, Architecture and Power, pp. 139-50. It should be noted, however, that many of the developments noted by Tittler took place in varying degrees and different time periods across the country. For many towns the Marian period was a transitional stage in the development of customs and assumptions which became more commonplace in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
i Kent, 137. In Oxford, for example, throughout Mary's reign Lord Williams, the city's High Steward, and his wife regularly received substantial gifts and entertainment as well as his fee. When the political tide turned with Elizabeth's accession, the city elected Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford and now a Privy Councillor, to succeed him. For this and other examples see Oxford, pp. 220, 225, 226, 257-9, 266-8, 272; Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Mary Bateson, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), III, 84-5. For further examples of suits being made to patrons as well as the entertainment of both a patron and his performers see Records of the Borough of Nottingham Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, ed. W[illiam] S[tevenson], et al, 7 vols. (Nottingham: Thomas Forman, 1882-1947), IV, 116-7.
i  Norwich, pp. 37, 45. The factors affecting the size of the reward received by touring performers requires further study. Some towns developed specific policies for rewarding performers according to their patron's status, but elsewhere, factors such as the type of performer, the frequency of their visits and the size of the performing group also may have affected the nature of the reward.
i Devon, pp. 147-8.
i  APC, 1552-1554, IV, 387, 391, 395; APC, 1554-1556, V, 147, 155, 159.
i Rye Chamberlains' Accounts, East Sussex Record Office: Rye 60/7, fol. 166b; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547-1580, ed. Robert Lemon (London, 1856), p. 93; APC, 1556-1558, VI, 112, 166, 182, 185, 214, 238-9, 291-2; Graham Mayhew, Tudor Rye, Centre for Continuing Education Occasional Paper, No. 27 (Falmer: University of Sussex, 1987), pp. 72-5. For instances dating from before Mary's reign when the Mayor entertained touring performers see "The Manuscripts of the Corporation of Rye," ed. Henry Thomas Riley, The Fifth Report of the Manuscripts Commission (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1876), Appendix, pt 1, pp. 495, col. a-496, col. a; and Rye 60/3, fols. 7b, 8b, 28b. I am indebted to Prof. Cameron Louis for the use of records relating to Rye throughout this chapter.
i The events in Rye should be seen within the general context of increasing reluctance, even defiance of many officials in the Southeast during Mary's reign. This was particularly clear on the matter of Protestant executions. See D. M. Loades, "The Enforcement of Reaction, 1553-1558," Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 16 (1965), 24-66. Resistance on the part of local authorities was not confined to the Southeast, however. As has already been noted, Coventry was a hotbed of Protestant resistance in 1553, and despite the detainment of individuals like the player John Careless, problems with players there were reported again the next year. At this point, however, the problem spread to officials such as the sheriff, who was imprisoned in the Fleet in 1554-5, and the mayor, who was replaced at the Queen's insistence by a Catholic in 1556. The Queen's "request" was punctuated by the burning of Lawrence Saunders in Coventry one month later ["State Papers Relating to the Custody of the Princess Elizabeth at Woodstock, in 1554: Being Letters between Queen Mary and Her Privy Council, and Sir Henry Bedingfield, Knt., of Oxburgh, Norfolk," ed. C. R. Manning, Norfolk Archaeology, 4 (1855), 201-2, 205-6; J. C. Cox, "Ecclesiastical History" in The Victoria History of the County of Warwick, ed. William Page, vol. 2 (London: Archibald Constable, 1908), pp. 33-4]. In 1557 the Privy Council found it necessary to write to the Mayor and aldermen of Bristol admonishing them to "conforme themselfes" by attending sermons and ceremonies at the Cathedral "and not to absent themselfes as they have doone of late, nor loke fromhensfourthe that the Deane and Chapitre shulde wayte uppon them or fetche them out of the cittie with their crosse and procession, being the same very unsemely and farre out of ordre"(APC, 1556-1558, VI, 158). Even in Norwich which had formerly been so supportive of Mary's policies, a series of disturbances culminated in 1557 in the executions of martyrs and the election of a staunchly Protestant mayor during whose term the civic seal was secularized by replacing the representation of the Trinity with the city's arms [M. E. Simkins, "Ecclessiastical History (from A.D. 1279)," in The Victoria History of the County of Norfolk, ed. William Page, vol. 2 (London: James Street, 1906), p. 261; Basil Cozens-Hardy and Ernest A. Kent, The Mayors of Norwich 1403 to1835 Being Biographical Notes on the Mayors of the Old Corporation (Norwich: Jarrold and Sons, 1938), p. 56].
In this latter case, it would appear that, increasingly, officials may have found the persecution of Protestants to jeopardize rather than contribute to the maintenance of order and consequently to jeopardize rather than enhance their power and interests within the local community. Records relating to Essex and London both suggest fears that executions could incite riots. See Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Rawdon Brown and Horatio Brown, 9 vols. (London, 1864-97), VI, 45 and APC, 1556-1558, n.s. V, 224. However, Maidstone provides an example of what could happen if a town did not maintain control and enforce loyalty to the Queen's policies. After Wyatt's rebellion its corporate charter was revoked [Robert Tittler, "The Incorporation of Boroughs, 1540-1558," History, 62 (1977), 32].
i "The Emergence of Urban Policy, 1536-58," in The Mid Tudor Polity c. 1540-1560, ed. Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 74-5; "Incorporation," pp. 24, 40 and Architecture and Power, pp. 75-6.
i For the significance of such theatre and associated rituals in defining the nature of the community and the resident's role within the community see Susan Brigden, "Religion and Social Obligation in Early Sixteenth-Century London," Past and Present, No. 103 (May 1984), 67-112; Mervyn James, "Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town, Past and Present, No. 98 (February 1983), 3-29; and Charles Phythian-Adams, "Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450-1550," in Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 57-85.
i In 1556 the Privy Council wrote to Lord Rich for the suppression of a Shrovetide play to be performed in Hatfield Broadoak in Essex. But after the requested examination of "who shulde be the plaiers" and "what theffecte of the playe is," Lord Rich wrote back saying that he found "the players to be honest householders and quiet personnes," and he was directed "to set them agayne at libertie, and to have an eye and speciall care to stoppe the like occasions of assembling the people together hereafter." The next year the Council again wrote to Rich as well as the Justices of the Peace reprimanding them for not having been sufficiently diligent in suppressing plays and reminding them "to suffer no players to play any enterlude within that county, but to see them punysshed that shall attempte the same." Presumably this did not apply to the Duke of Norfolk's players who were rewarded in Harwich that year, or to the Queen's players who appeared the next year in Maldon, but it no doubt applied to the Shrovetide play the citizens of Hatfield Broadoak had wanted to mount (APC, 1554-1556, V, 234, 237-8; 1556-1558, VI, 118-9).
i For example, see David M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry 1558-1642 (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1971).
i Banbury Corporation Records: Tudor and Stuart, ed. J. S. W. Gibson and E. R. C. Brinkworth, Banbury Hisotrical Society, 15 (1977), 17; Norwich, pp 38-43.
i This was Steward's third term as mayor, and it was he who personally rewarded the players of the Queen, the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford when they visited during his term. His biography is illustrative of the individuals behind evolving civic oligarchies, their connection with the Crown and the court, and their rising personal and civic aspirations . He had been sheriff and member of parliament for the city as well as deputy mayor during Kett's rebellion when he entertained the Marquis of Northampton who had come with mercenaries to suppress the rebellion. He was consistently a strong supporter of the central government and turned it to his own and the city's advantage. He owned manors as well as a town house, had his own coat of arms and was remembered with a portrait hanging in the Council Chamber. He had been instrumental in rebuilding the Council Chamber and obtaining the grant to the city of Blackfriars Convent. He was also the donor of the city's mace and the book in which the pageant descriptions were recorded (Cozens-Hardy, pp. 48-9; Bindoff, III, 383-5).
i  It would appear that Mary's claim to the throne was in part financed by church plate and money which had been stored in Steward's house, and the city provided bakers, harness, bowes, bow strings and arrows (APC, 1552-1554, IV, 294-5, 298-99). Norwich had been the first city to proclaim Mary as Queen, but in 1555 support for Mary by civic officials proved to be at least a temporary embarrassment when the Mayor responded to current rumours by rejoicing somewhat prematurely at the supposed birth of an heir to the throne. See John Strype, Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God Thomas Cranmer, Sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1840), I, 526-7; II, 969.
i Carole A. Janssen, "The Waytes of Norwich and an Early Lord Mayor's Show," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 22 (1979), 61-2. The pageants may also have been influenced by the 1554 London celebrations for the royal marriage. Published descriptions were made available in 1554 and 1555, and individuals from Norwich could have attended those festivities.
i This pageant illustrates what Henri Lefebvre has identified as the sixteenth-century trend for towns to conceptualize urban space, "to found a history" and perceive themselves "as a harmonious whole" [The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 268-71]. The impetus for producing a civic image and identity manifested itself in negotiations between local government and residents in a number of urban communities. In Oxford, for instance, where the town and gown relationship made this a particularly sensitive issue, the mayor and aldermen engaged in a somewhat indecorous fracas over a dead body. With the Queen's arms and their mace preceding them, they asserted the jurisdiction of their coroner to preside in what they claimed as a liberty of the city and met with staunch resistance from residents. When the mace became a weapon to assert authority, it and mayoral pride were damaged. The next year the city paid 5s "to delie for makyng the mappe of the hole franches" (Oxford, pp. 247-55, 267).
i It should be noted that local government in Norwich like that of other major cities in England came to be controled by an elite, and mayors were not directly elected by the people. However, the fact that the whole purpose of the pageants was clearly to elevate and distinguish the mayor from other residents of the city suggests that at this point in the sixteenth century at least, even such a well known local figure as Augustine Steward was still sufficiently connected with "the people" to benefit from this kind of treatment. For further discussion of the evolving connection between civic oligarchy, theatrical spectacle and the built environment see Tittler, Architecture and Power, pp. 98-128, 139-50.
i The pageants' application of the concept of "common wealthe" within civic government anticipates a similar application by Thomas Wilson in The State of England Anno Dom.1600, ed. F. J. Fisher, in Camden Miscellany, 16, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 52 (1936), 20.
i  Kent, p. 137. For instance, in 1557-8 the waits of both Manchester and Derby visited the city of Nottingham where they received as much if not more than minstrels associated with local gentry and even the Earl of Shrewsbury. See Records of the Borough of Nottingham Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, ed. W[illiam] H. S[tevenson], et al, 7vols. (Nottingham: Thomas Forman, 1882-1947), IV, 116-7. Perhaps the widest ranging waits were those of Norwich who travelled on an ill-fated voyage to Portugal at the special request of Sir Francis Drake (Norwich, pp. 92-3).
i For example, during Mary's reign the Corpus Christi players of Sherborne, Dorset apparently toured to Lyme Regis where they appeared in the church. Joseph Fowler, Mediaeval Sherborne (Dorchester: Longmans, 1951), p. 323; Wanklyn, p. 39.
i The focus of this section, however, is informed by Michael Bristol's argument that in practice there would have been little contemporary confusion as to which individuals were included in this group: those individuals who were not "gentle" and who were not in positions of authority [Carnival and Theatre: Plebian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 42-4].
i  CSPV, VI, 1057. See also The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society 53 (1852) 82; The Accession of Queen Mary: Being the Contemporary Narrative of Antonio de Guaras, A Spanish Merchant Resident in London, ed. and trans. Richard Garnett (London, 1802), pp. 48-9, 96-7 and facsimile of contemporary ballad "A Ninuectyue agaynst Treason" between pp. 144-45; "The Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield of Brantham," ed. and trans. Diarmaid Macculloch, in Camden Miscellany, 28, Camden Society, 4th ser., 29 (1984) 222-3, 271; and Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 204-5.
i  Nicholas Udall (attrib.), Respublica: An Interlude for Christmas 1553, ed. W. W. Greg, Early English Text Society, os. No. 226 (1952). All references to this play are to the text of this edition.
i Lancashire, ed. David George (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1979), pp. 101-2.
i Although outside an officially sanctioned theatrical context for carnival-like resistance, the Widnes incident can be seen as an assertion of ideas associated with "commen welthe," or "the expectation that society will sustain each of its members." The use of the maypole, in particular, connects this incident with Michael Bristol's argument that plebeian culture embraces theatre because it provides a mechanism through which the "ethos of collective life may be sustained and experimentally renewed" (p. 213).
i "Dramatic Records of the City of London: The Repertories, Journals, and Letter Books," ed. Anna J. Mill and E. K. Chambers, in Malone Society Collections, 2, pt. 3 (1931), 295-6; APC, 1554-1556, V, 151.
i John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Stephen Reed Cattley, 8 vols. (London, 1837-41), VIII, 170.
Foxe, VIII, 169-70, 172.
i See, for example, the account of the execution of Thomas Cranmer, who was displayed on a stage before his execution and who announced his performative intention that the hand which had written his false recantation would be the first to burn before thrusting it into the flames. As well, Hugh Latimer encouraged fellow martyr Nicholas Ridley by telling him to "play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out" (Foxe, VIII, 90; VII, 550). The extent to which audiences responded favourably to these performative gestures and the reasons for such response have been a matter for debate. Simon Renard was quick to report a sympathetic response to the martyrs and predict disastrous consequences [Calendar of Letters, Dispatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Vienna, Simancas, Besancon, Brussels, Madrid and Lille, Vol. 13, ed. Royall Tyler (London: HMSO, 1954), Nos. 148, 149, 161], but historians have attached varying degrees of credit to such assessments [see, for example, Haigh, English Reformations, pp. 232-4; Philip Hughes, II, 281-3; and D. M. Loades, "The Enforcement of Reaction, 1553-1558," Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 16 (1965), 54-66]. On at least one occasion in Essex, however, burnings appear to have sparked a minor insurrection (CSPV, VI, 45), and procedures established for the execution of Protestants in London, and elsewhere, suggest that there was apprehension about such responses (APC, 1554-1556, V, 224).
i The Protestant community housed in prisons was actively involved in the circulation of printed propaganda. Careless' connection with this network-and therefore his potential familiarity with the ideas circulating in print--is suggested in a letter sent to him by Thomas Whittle who requests a copy of "mayster Philpottes ix examynacyons." [BL Add MS 19400, no. 24 as cited by Jennifer Loach, "Pamphlets and Politics, 1553-8, " Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 48 (1975), 35; full but slightly modified letter printed in Foxe, VII, 724.]
i Careless' expressed loyalty to the Queen despite his religious beliefs is not an isolated instance even amongst persecuted Protestants. Perhaps even clearer evidence that treason did not follow automatically upon heresy comes from Edward Underhill, a gentleman pensioner who could sing and play the lute and who composed a ballad against Papists which circulated in print just after Mary's accession. Despite his determined Protestantism when questioned and his nearly fatal imprisonment, he was a staunch defender of Mary's person when her court was attacked during Wyatt's rebellion. See Tudor Tracts 1532-1588, pp. 170-98.
i Charles Phythian-Adams, Re-thinking English Local History, Department of English Local History, Occasional Papers, ser. 4, no. 1 (Leicester: Leicester University, 1991), pp. 18, 45-6.
i All neighbourhoods referred to in this chapter are derived from a database of records relating to traveling performers drawn primarily from the publications of Records of Early English Drama and the Malone Society published through 1996 as well as Ian Lancashire's Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558, (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1984). The three major Privy Council patrons of touring theatrical performers under Edward were Thomas Cheyney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (16 records, all from the Cinque Ports region); Edward Seymour, Lord Protector (16 records ranging from Dover to Lyme Regis to Bristol to Leicester to Cambridge); and William Parr, Marquess of Northampton (7 records primarily in the southeast but also including Cambridge and Leicester). It is possible that the latter group of players had been associated with Catherine Parr whose players had travelled a similar circuit up to her death in 1548 (3 Edwardian records, Maldon, Bristol, Dover). Performers associated with another court patron, Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, also toured with some frequency (8 records in the southeast and East Anglia). Privy Council patrons whose performers appear to have toured less frequently during Edward's reign are Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset (6 records in Norwich, Poole and Exeter), John Russell, Earl of Bedford (5 records, ports in Kent and Devon); Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral (5 records, southern coastal towns and Cambridge); and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (5 records, the west and midlands). As with all neighbourhoods referred to in this study, these will no doubt be altered as the process of discovering and editing records continues. It should also be remembered that the degree to which extant records accurately reflect the extent of Tudor touring patterns is inevitably qualified by the survival of records for particular locations and periods as well as the accuracy and assiduousness of contemporary clerks. In some cases such as that of Sir Francis Leek's players, town officials may not have seen it in their best interests to keep a detailed written record of their hospitality or they may not have provided official hospitality but simply turned a blind eye to performances.
i These included Thomas Cheyney, Edward Seymour, Henry Grey, John Russell, the Brandons and the Parrs, Performers associated with John Bourchier, Earl of Bath travelled intensively, primarily in Devon, under Henry VIII, but appeared only three times in Edward's reign.
i With respect to Parliamentary affairs Cheyney exerted considerable influence and control in some cases overturning the nomination of Protestants to Parliament. This was particularly true in 1555 when Cheyney may have been reasserting his authority-and loyalty--after his decidedly ineffective role during Wyatt's rebellion. See Mayhew, pp. 73, 294 n. 55; CSPD, p. 58-9; Bindoff, I, 634-8.
i Anthony Fletcher, Tudor Rebellions, Seminar Studies in History (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1983), pp. 78-9.
i David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England 1553-58 (London: Longman, 1991), pp. 404-5.
i Kent, pp. 42, 136.
i  Devon, p. 41; Rye 60/7, fol. 78b.
i  Devon, pp. 41, 147.
i Kent, p. 12. Evidence of Russell's continuing influence, over parts of Norfolk at least, in 1555 is provided by a contemporary account crediting him with encouraging the people of Woburn and Wickham Market to remain 'very protestauntes'. See "State Papers, Bedingfield, p. 150.
i Data regarding protestant burnings is derived primarily from John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Relating Chiefly to Religion, and the Reformation of It, and the Emergencies of the Church of England, under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Mary I, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1872), III.ii, 554-6.
i On February 3, 1558 Thomas Cheyney, one of the most senior Privy Councillors-and the only Councillor/performance patron--wrote to the Queen expressing his concern that Kent was now weaker in "manred" than ever and begging to be allowed to resign his office of Lieutenant of the shire. A number of factors may have influenced his decision--the recent loss of Calais and perceived danger of French invasion in Kent, excessive subsidies and forced loans, even current marital problems and old age. The climate of persecution may also have been a factor, though. On January 26 he had received an order from the Queen to proceed against two individuals in Canterbury, and attached to his letter of resignation is a report noting that one had been executed (and "died blasphemously"), the other had been put in the pillory and the people of Canterbury had been cautioned "as to what they say of the King and Queen." The Queen does not appear to have accepted his resignation (CSPD, pp. 98-9).
i CSPD, p. 76. From the records Oxford remains an ambiguous figure in his support for Mary and her policies. He reportedly declared his support for Mary in 1553 only under pressure from servants in his household, but he later involved himself in the persecution apparently to the extent of actually reporting individuals within his household. Extant records provide little supporting evidence for his suspected complicity in the 1556 plot, but other evidence from 1556 suggests that he along with the Justices of the Peace for Essex may have been perceived as less than diligent in pursuing individuals suspected of sedition. See James E. Oxley, The Reformation in Essex to the Death of Mary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965), pp. 210-37; APC, 1554-1556, v, 104,141, 148, 310-12.
i  White, Theatre and Reformation, pp 17, 195 n.19.
i The results of such analysis will be presented in a book-length study of mid-Tudor patronage of travelling performers.
i Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor, pp. 404-11.
i Similar conclusions have been drawn by Edward Baskerville with respect to print propaganda. See Bibliography, p. 9.
i This lack of commitment to the Queen and her policies was remarked upon by contemporaries such as the Venetian ambassador, who noted that Privy Councillors were "openly divided into two or three factions, so that were a change . . .by misfortune, to take place in the kingdom, with the exception of one or two, all the rest would be of doubtful faith, and adapt themselves to circumstances." [CSPV, VI, 1071]. The orientation of Protestant propaganda also suggests a perceived soft spot with the nobility and the Council by oscillating between a plea to "the ryghte honorable the nobilitie and ientlemen of Englande," to use their power to return a sick commonwealth to her former health and condemnation of members of the Council as "meane men" of questionable nobility and motivated by ambition rather than a genuine "loue to a commonwealth." [W[illiam] Keth, [W. Keth His Seeing Glasse.] Unto the Ryghte Honorable the Nobilitie and Ientlemen of Englande (n.p., [1555]), STC 14944; [Laurence Saunders?], A Trewe Mirrour of the Wofull State of Englande, The English Experience No. 761 (1556; Norwood, N.J.: Walter J. Johnson, 1975), STC 21777, B1b.] See also John Bradforth, The Copye of a Letter, Sent by John Bradforth to the Right Honorable Lordes the Erles of Arundel, Darbie, Shrewsburye, and Penbroke, Declaring the Nature of Spaniardes, and Discovering the Most Detestable Treasons, Which Thei Have Pretended Most Falselye agaynste Our Moste Noble Kingdome of Englande (n.p., [1556?]), STC 3504.5. Twentieth century historians have recognized similar tendencies within the Council but given them a more positive, pragmatic interpretation. For instance, speaking of the first Earl of Bedford, Diane Willen concludes, "As his whole career demonstrated, Russell was neither a committed Catholic nor a dedicated Protestant. He was in fact not at all motivated by ideological considerations, in this respect very much resembling colleagues like Richard Rich, William Paget or St John. . . . Russell and his colleagues, assured of general Christian principles, placed priority upon political stability and unity. Such men, at least during the Henrician period, distributed favours and made friends within all ideological camps." It would appear that Bedford and other Councillors may have further refined this approach under Mary. [John Russell, First Earl of Bedford: One of the King's Men, Royal Historical Society Studies in History Series, No. 23 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981), p. 43.]
i Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, and James I, 2nd edn. (London, 1838), I, 260-2.
i  York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1979), I, 322.
i He had appeared before the Exchequer in 1554 to answer to charges that he kept a number of liveried retainers who accompanied him to sessions of the peace and assizes (Bindoff, III, 518-20).
i The problem of less than enthusiastic local officials and the gap between the law and its enforcement has also been noted in connection with the suppression of printed propaganda and the persecution. See D. M. Loades, "The Press under the Early Tudors," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964-1968), 50; APC, 1554-1556, V, 316; 1556-1558, VI, 135; letter from E. Bonner to Pole, July 1558, Petyt Ms No. 538, vol. 47, fol. 3 cited in Second Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts(London, 1874), App., p. 152.
i It could perhaps be argued that the south and east were more open to Protestantism, and therefore performance propaganda needed to be concentrated there rather than spread out into the north and west. Such assumptions about the distribution of religious loyalties have been disputed, however. See D. M. Palliser, "Popular Reactions to the Reformation during the Years of Uncertainty 1530-70," Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I, ed. Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day (London: MacMillan, 1977), esp. pp 45-6. It is clear, however, that Protestant executions were concentrated in the south and east (Philip Hughes, II, 261-4).
i CSPV, V, 461.
i  CSPV, VI, 1056-7.
i Rye 60/7, fol. 203. Edward's players were in Dover on or before August 20, 1547 (Kent, p. 40). These are the earliest specifically dated records so far edited. Because civic accounting practices do not always provide specific dates and accounting years span parts of first and last regnal years, both i Edward's and Elizabeth's players could have toured earlier.
Edward's accession was marked by the introduction of five new faces to the group (possibly drawn from the Prince's players). However, of the 6 interluders listed in the first Chamber accounts delivered under Mary (George Birche, Richarde Cooke, Richard Skinner, John Birche, Thomas Sowthey and John Browne) all were listed in the last surviving accounts for interluders under Edward (1551-1552). Two players listed in the Edwardian accounts had left or died (Robert Hynstock and Henry Harryot) by 1553, and Cooke, Sowthey and John Birch disappeared from the records after 1556. These last three players, along with Skinner and Browne, had been appointed by Edward. George Birch had been appointed under Henry. Although the fee lists running from Edward's reign into the 1590s list 8 interlude players, the item appears to have been copied pro forma long after the interluders' demise. The Cotton MS Chamber Accounts (Vespasian, C.xiv, fol. 67-73b) noted by J. Payne Collier as listing four interluders during the reign of Mary, and cited as such by Chambers, would appear to date from Elizabeth's reign because of the inclusion of George Birch as receiving an annuity, which he was not granted until 1560. [The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare: Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. 3 vols. (London, 1879), I, 161-3.] For records relating to the royal interluders, as well as the chapel royal and minstrels, see Records of English Court Music, ed. Andrew Ashbee, 7 vols. (Aldershot, Hants.: Scolar, 1986-93), VII (1485-1558), esp. 119, 313, 315, 317, 319-20. For a detailed discussion of the actors connected with the royal interluders under Henry VIII and his three children see E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), II, 79-83.
i  Under examination, co-conspirators revealed that Hunnis had been recommended to the group because of his previous connections with unfulfilled plots. The conspirator, John Dethick "bore witness that there was no need to doubt this man, for before at the Juego de Canas or Barrieres, he had been appointed, with Allday, Cornwall, and others to the number of twelve, to kill the king and after him the Queen." PRO SP11/7, No. 38, 39, 42- 47, 49; C. C. Stopes, William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1910), p. 58, 64; and English Court Music, VII, 422-3.
i W. R. Streitberger, Court Revels, 1485-1559. Studies in Early English Drama: 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994), pp. 208-10.
i Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1914), pp. 159-60; Streitberger, pp. 212, 215; William L. Edgerton, Nicholas Udall (New York: Twayne, 1965), pp. 65-7.
i Herefordshire/Worcestershire, ed. David Klausner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 121; Devon, pp. 41, 147; Oxford , pp. 225, 267; Banbury, p. 16..
i Kent, pp. 12, 106, 137; Cumberland, p. 297; "Players at Ipswich," ed. E. K. C[hambers] in Malone Society Collections, 2, pt. 3 ( 1931), 260-1; Rye 60/7, fol. 101b.
i So far, their earliest touring records are from the 1555-1556 accounting years in Canterbury, Gloucester and Leicester. See Kent, p. 12; Cumberland, p. 297; Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Mary Bateson, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), III, 85.
i In Leicester, the timing of burnings and the player's visits may both have been influenced by the indictment of 28 St. Martin's parishioners for "displaying scorn towards the sacrament of the altar" (Leicester, III, 85, 92; A. G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York 1509-1558 [London: Hambledon, 1982], p. 305). It should be noted, however, that because the visits of players as well as burnings can not always be precisely dated the relative timing of these two events still requires further analysis in the light of overall touring circuits. In Exeter, for instance, where dates can be precisely determined, the players' visit on June 17, 1557 preceded the execution of Agnes Priest by nearly two months. Clearly the specific timing will have a considerable bearing on ultimate assumptions regarding strategy and reception of performance propaganda.
i Cumberland, p. 297; Bristol, p. 38; "Ipswich," pp. 260-1; Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Mary Bateson, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), III, 85, 92; Kent, p. 12; Oxford, p. 267; Devon, p. 147.
i Rye 60/7, fol. 166b.
i The first visit to Beverley in 1556 also coincided with another type of burning-the burning of seditious books. See Report on the Manuscripts of the Corporation of Beverley, ed. A. F. Leach, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 54 (1900), 178, 180.
i Devon, p. 42; Banbury, p. 16.
i The record notes a payment to "ye quenes maties seruantes whenas they plaidd in ye churche," so they could be either her minstrels or her players. As her players appeared in Beverley in 1557 it is more likely that these are her players. Pole delegated the visitation to Bishop John White. He did not attend himself. Lincolnshire, p. 84; Philip Hughes, II, 239.
i Bristol, p. 39; APC, 1556-1558, VI, 198-9, 208, 288, 303.
i T. W. Craik, "The Political Interpretation of Two Tudor Interludes: Temperance and Humility and Wealth and Health," Review of English Studies, n.s. 4 (1953), 98-108. Although apparently adapted superficially for publication in Elizabeth's reign (Catholic oaths given to the vices and a concluding blessing on Elizabeth-delivered by a character modeled on Cardinal Pole!), the play was first entered in the Stationers' Register in 1557. W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, 4 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1970), I, 1.
i The Interlude of Wealth and Health , ed. W. W. Greg (Chiswick: Malone Society, 1907); all further references to this play will be to the text of this edition.
i  Craik, pp. 105-6.
i CSPV, VI, 1068.
i Pole was certainly familiar with the use of spectacle and theatre for political ends as he participated in and attended such events in Italy (CSPV, III, 408, 450, 579-82). His library contained the works of Seneca and Aristophanes [A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 733]. Craik has drawn comparisons with Thomas Starkey's A Dialogue between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset, and many more could be made, even to the point of suggesting that the play was, in fact, inspired by the outline and thesis of the Dialogue. In his earlier days of acquaintance with Starkey, Pole appears to have subscribed to a number of ideas relating to social, political and even religious reform. Many of the ideas later associated with advocates of the Reformation, such as the so-called Commonwealth-men, could be traced back to similar origins. Pole's reputation as an advocate for reform within the Catholic church, in fact, provided the Pope with an excuse for revoking Pole's legatine commission in 1557, but the Dialogue is very much a work by Starkey and not Pole, so that correspondences between the play and ideas expressed by Pole at the time of his return to England and assumption of new responsibilities are probably more significant. In addition to items cited below see, for example, "Cardinal Pole's Speech to the Citizens of London, in Behalf of Religious Houses," in John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, III.ii, 482-510 and John Elder, The Copie of a Letter Sent into Scotlande (London, 1555).
i From a letter sent to Mary by Pole, October 2, 1553, CSPV, V, 421.
i Because Pole was of noble birth, and Remedy is also introduced as a "noble man" his blanket condemnation of noblemen may have been more palatable. The effect, however, is to set up a sharp contrast between the wise spiritual nobility and the foolish temporal nobility. The matter of 'true nobility' had become a hotly debated topic during Henry VIII's reign after the meteoric rise of commoners in his government. Protestant propaganda contemporary with this play was speaking to both sides of the issue with direct appeals to the nobility as having the power and responsibility to rebel, and warnings that virtue and actions, not birth, determine nobility. For example, see Richard Morison, A Remedy for Sedition, Wherein Are Conteyned Many Thynges, Concernyng the True and Loyall Obeysance, That Commens Owe vnto Their Prince and Soueraygne Lorde the Kynge (London, 1536), B1b-B2b; John Bradforth, The Copye of a Letter, Sent by John Bradforth to the Right Honorable Lordes the Erles of Arundel, Darbie, Shrewsburye, and Pembroke, Declaring the Nature of Spaniardes, and Discouering the Most Detestable Treasons, Which Thei Haue Pretended Moste Falselye agaynste Our Moste Noble Kingdome of Englande (n.p., 1556); John Ponet, A Short Treatise of Politic Power (1556; Menston, Yorks.: Scolar Press, 1970), D6b-D7a, G7a.-G7b; Certayne Questions Demaunded and Asked by the Noble Realme of Englande, of Her True Naturall Chyldren and Subiectes of the Same (t.p. says London but probably Wesel, [1555]), A6a.
i First cited by Craik, p. 106. There are many parallels between the play and contemporary printed propaganda, with the same strands of thought and phrases being appropriated and transformed by both sides. For instance, Huggarde identifies the seizure of church lands as causing "the decaye of our common wealth,"and he associates the evils of the reformed church with foreigners, the drunken "Hance and Yacob." See The Displaying of the Protestantes, and Sondry Their Practises, with a Description of Divers Their Abuses of Late Frequented within Their Malignaunte Churche (London, 1556), fols. 85b, 110a, 116b. In the Protestant dialogue, A Trewe Mirrour of the Wofull State of Englande, one of the participants is admonished to dedicate his actions "to the honour & glory of God, & to the profit of this commen wealth" (B3b) while another Protestant tract links "old ydolatry" with the "causes off the ouerthrowe of kingdomes and comon weales." He complains of "strange worshyppyng and seruyng of strange gods" and laments "that England must be fayne to bestowe all ther treasure and ryches to bring in a stranger to raine ouer them who with the bisshoppes aduise and helpe will bring this noble realme in to beggery and vyle slauerie" See A Supplicacyon to the Quenes Maiestie, (t.p. London but probably Strasbourg, 1555), fols. 2a, 3a, 22b.
i An eyewitness, Italian account of Pole's meeting is given by his secretary, Alvise Priuli, in a letter sent to Rome (BL Add MS 41577, fols. 161-66a). A summary is given by J. H. Crehan, "The Return to Obedience: New Judgment on Cardinal Pole," The Month, n.s. 14 (1955), 221-9.
i CSPV, VI, 1068.
i Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 328-9. For a contemporary Englishman's perspective see Edward Underhill's complaint that despite "great thanks and large promises how good she would be unto us" after his defense of Mary during Wyatt's rebellion, "few or none of us got anything, although she was very liberal to many others, that were enemies unto GOD's Word." Tudor Tracts 1532-1588, p. 191.
i For example, Norwich acquired the Dominican Friary and the heavily endowed St. Giles hospital [T. W. Swales, "The Redistribution of the Monastic Lands in Norfolk at the Dissolution," Norfolk Archaeology 34 (1969), 14-44]. Both the city and the chief citizens of Exeter acquired church lands. The largest single purchaser was Maurice Levermore, who was mayor in 1555. See Joyce A. Youings, "The City of Exeter and the Property of the Dissolved Monasteries," Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, 84 (1952), 135-7, 139. For other examples see City Chamberlains' Accounts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, D. M. Livock, Bristol Record Society 24 (1965). xiii, xvii-xviii; Martha C. Skeeters, Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation c.1530-c.1570 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 79-80; A. Crossley, "Early Modern Oxford," in The City of Oxford, A History of the County of Oxford ,vol. 4, ed. Alan Crossley (Oxford: Institute of Historical Research, 1979), pp. 110-12; Leicester, III, 46-7; Tittler, Architecture and Power, pp. 77-8.
i Some towns also found themselves competing with members of the nobility for rights and jurisdiction. For instance, in the face of challenges from Lord William Howard, who had purchased the local priory, Barnstaple, sought incorporation (granted 1557) in order to secure jurisdiction and revenues it had assumed after the dissolution. See Tittler, "Incorporation," p. 29. Thanks to Protestant propaganda, the issue of church lands continued to be a general cause for concern even after Pole's apparent compromise on the matter late in 1554. See, for example, news of related disturbances in September 1555 in CSP in Venice, VI,189.
i Crehan, p. 224.
i See, for example, a foreigner's perspective, CSP in Venice, VI, 1066, 1085.
i The intention might have been to construct a negative image of foreigners associated with the Protestant faith that would counteract the image of the foreign Pope. The character may be an attempt to draw attention to two generally popular Crown initiatives-the banishment of seditious aliens and the 1555 prohibition of Hanseatic merchants from virtually all trade in England. As well, the 1549 uprisings in Norfolk and Devon had been put down with the aid of foreign mercenaries, including Germans, so that Hance may have inspired a negative reminder of Edward's reign if he appeared in Norwich, Barnstaple and Exeter [Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547-1603 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 55, 121; Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Edward VI, 1547-1553, ed. William B. Turnbull (London, 1861), pp. 30-4]. In a town such as Maldon, which had a substantial Germanic population, Hance could have had a polarizing effect, but his characterization attached such negative connotations to the idea of war that the piece would probably have been unplayable by 1557 and well before the Queen's players visited Maldon in 1558 [W. J. Petchey, A Prospect of Maldon: 1500-1689 (: Essex Record Office, 1991), pp. 54-7; Ian Lancashire, p. 397].
i For contemporary responses to the Spanish in England see The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Mary, p. 81; CSP Spanish, XIII, 56, 60, 72, 216; The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Society, 1850), pp. 74, 79, 86, 96; and The Accession Coronation and Marriage of Mary Tudor as Related in Four Manuscripts of the Escorial, ed. and trans. C. V. Malfatti (Barcelona, 1956), 92-5. Contact with the Spanish was not limited to the Court and London either. In 1553-1554 Oxford, for instance, entertained three "strayngers of Spayne." See Oxford, p. 220.
i Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, III.ii, 516.
i The Oxford Martyrs (London: B. T. Batsford, 1970), pp. 258-9.
i This conclusion has been reached by a number of scholars examining a variety of evidence: Anglo, Images, p. 108-9; Loades, Mary Tudor, p. 209-10, 332-7; Young, p. 30. John N. King has offered an alternative perspective in Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 182-221. As King has noted, any attempts to construct an image for Mary were eclipsed by Elizabeth's appropriation and redefinition of some of these images. But fundamentally, Elizabeth demonstrated a much keener awareness of Clifford Geertz' observation "that majesty is made, not born." By comparison, Elizabeth participated much more openly in presenting herself as an image to be mutually constructed by sovereign and subject through her behaviour during public appearances such as her coronation entry and royal progresses [Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (London: Fontana, 1993), pp. 124-9]. Although very few of any Tudor monarch's subjects might realistically expect to ever see their sovereign, with Mary the likelihood was even more remote because she travelled and appeared in public so little. If the report of the Venetian ambassador can be trusted, the enthusiastic reception she received from Londoners when she rode through the city with Philip and Pole in August of 1555 reveals the impact of her mere presence on her people (CSP in Venice, VI, 173), and it may be that any images constructed for her by Court or Protestant propagandists need to be more closely examined in the light of actual responses and attitudes toward her during the reign.
i David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England 1553-58 (London: Longman, 1991), p. 285.
i See, for instance, Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) and Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I, ed. Felicity Heal and Rosemary O'Day (London: Macmillan, 1977).
i Stated by William Harris in a Deptford Tavern, April 20, 1556, Acts, V, 265.
i Mary appears not to have made much of the opportunity presented by royal entries for publicly constructing an image, English or otherwise. Elizabeth on the other hand consciously created images and appealed to the eyes as well as the ears. In her coronation entry, for instance, a pageant reminiscent of the Norwich show of 1556 featured two mountains representing "a decayed commonweal" and "a flourishing commonweal," from which emerged Father Time and his daughter Truth. When they presented the Queen with an English Bible, she kissed the book, raised it above her head and then pressed it to her chest thereby publicly linking herself with an English, Christian "commonweal" (Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, p. 350).