Accession Day tilt

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George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland attired as the Knight of Pendragon Castle for the Tilt of 1590, by Nicholas Hilliard. His pageant shield leans against the tree. The Queen's "favour", a glove, is attached to his hat.

The Accession Day tilts were a series of elaborate festivities held annually at the court of

Accession Day, 17 November, also known as Queen's Day.[1] The tilts combined theatrical elements with jousting, in which Elizabeth's courtiers competed to outdo each other in allegorical armour and costume, poetry, and pageantry to exalt the queen and her realm of England.[2]

The last Elizabethan Accession Day tilt was held in November 1602; the queen died the following spring. Tilts continued as part of festivities marking the Accession Day of

James I, 24 March, until 1624, the year before his death.[3]

Origins

Sir Henry Lee
, in the Jacob Album

Sir

Master of Horse and to the queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex, although Lee remained as a sort of Master of Ceremonies at the request of the queen.[7]

The pageants were held at the tiltyard at the Palace of Whitehall,[8] where the royal party viewed the festivities from the Tiltyard Gallery. The Office of Works constructed a platform with staircases below the gallery to facilitate presentations to the queen.[9]

Participants

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex in "sable sad" armour, probably for the Tilt of 1590,[10] by William Segar

Knights

Tilt lists for the Accession Day pageants have survived; these establish that the majority of the participating jousters came from the ranks of the Queen's

Sir James Scudamore, a knight who tilted in the 1595 tournament, was immortalised as "Sir Scudamour" in Book Four of The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
.

Sir James Scudamore, 1590s. Jousting was crucial to Scudamore's reputation at court.[14]

Knights participating in the spectacle entered in pageant cars or on horseback, disguised as some heroic, romantic, or

device or impresa to the Queen and explained the significance of his disguise in prose or poetry.[11]
Entrants went to considerable expense to devise themes, order armour and costumes for their followers, and in some cases to hire poets or dramatists and even professional actors to carry out their programmes.

Classical, pastoral, and Arthurian settings were typically combined with story lines flattering to the queen, but serious subtexts were common, especially among those who used these occasions to express public contrition or desolation for having aroused the queen's displeasure, or to plead for royal favour.[15] In the painting on the left, Essex wears black (sable) armour, which he wore as part of his 1590 entrance to the tilts. At this particular tilt, Essex entered as the head of a funeral procession, carried on a bier by his attendants. This was meant to atone for his failure to subdue Ireland, but Elizabeth was not impressed and did not forgive him readily.

Poets

Poets associated with court circles who wrote allegorical verses to accompany the knights' presentations include

Sir James Scudamore, who would go on to be one of the primary competitors in the Accession Day tilt in 1595, carried the pennant of Sidney's arms at the age of eighteen.[19] Edmund Spenser wrote of The Faerie Queene, which turns upon the Accession Day festivities as its fundamental structural device: "I devise that the Faery Queen kept her Annuall feast xii. days, upon which xii. severall days, the occasions of the xii. severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed";[20]

A visitor's account

Greenwich armour of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605), 1586. This has a different design to that in the miniature by Nicholas Hilliard (at top).

The fullest straightforward account of a Tilt is by Lupold von Wedel, a German traveller who saw the 1584 celebrations:

Now approached the day, when on November 17 the tournament was to be held... About twelve o'clock the queen and her ladies placed themselves at the windows in a long room at Weithol [Whitehall] palace, near Westminster, opposite the barrier where the tournament was to be held. From this room a broad staircase led downwards, and round the barrier stands were arranged by boards above the ground, so that everybody by paying 12d. would get a stand and see the play... Many thousand spectators, men, women and girls, got places, not to speak of those who were within the barrier and paid nothing.

During the whole time of the tournament all those who wished to fight entered the list by pairs, the trumpets being blown at the time and other musical instruments. The combatants had their servants clad in different colours, they, however, did not enter the barrier, but arranged themselves on both sides. Some of the servants were disguised like savages, or like Irishmen, with the hair hanging down to the girdle like women, others had horses equipped like elephants, some carriages were drawn by men, others appeared to move by themselves; altogether the carriages were very odd in appearance. Some gentlemen had their horses with them and mounted in full armour directly from the carriage. There were some who showed very good horsemanship and were also in fine attire. The manner of the combat each had settled before entering the lists. The costs amounted to several thousand pounds each.

When a gentleman with his servants approached the barrier, on horseback or in a carriage, he stopped at the foot of the staircase leading to the queen's room, while one of his servants in pompous attire of a special pattern mounted the steps and addressed the queen in well-composed verses or with a ludicrous speech, making her and her ladies laugh. When the speech was ended he in the name of his lord offered to the queen a costly present... Now always two by two rode against each other, breaking lances across the beam... The fête lasted until five o'clock in the afternoon...[21]

See also

Notes

  1. lyon and a dragon
    , supporters Strong (1984):19 and Hutton 1994:146-151
  2. ^ a b Strong 1977, p. 129-133
  3. ^ Strong (1987):137-138; Young, p. 208
  4. ^ Festivities surrounding installations of the Order of the Garter were less frequent, less elaborate and less public.
  5. ^ Strong 1977, p. 133, & 1984:51
  6. ^ The ceremonial transfer is described in detail in Yates, p. 102-103
  7. ^ Yates, p. 104
  8. ^ except in 1593, when they were relocated to the grounds of Windsor Castle due to an outbreak of plague in London; see Young, p. 122, 169.
  9. ^ Young, p. 119-122
  10. ^ Young p. 136
  11. ^ a b Strong 1977, p. 135
  12. ^ Hutton 1994, p. 146-151
  13. ^ Strong (1984):51
  14. ^ The armet shown was made by restorer Daniel Tachaux in 1915 to replace the missing original, and faithfully reproduces the style's distinctive high visor.
  15. ^ Young, p. 167-77
  16. ISBN 0-19-284080-0
  17. ^ 'A Conference of Pleasure' (speeches composed for the Earl of Essex for the Queen’s Accession Day Tilt, 1594): 'In Praise of Knowledge', 'In Praise of Fortitude', 'In Praise of Love', 'In Praise of Truth'; 'The Device of the Indian Prince' (Speeches composed for the Earl of Essex for the Queen’s Accession Day Tilt, 1594): 'Squire', 'Hermit', 'Soldier', 'Statesman'. Dates of Francis Bacon's works, retrieved 29 November 2007 Archived October 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine; and see Strong (1987), p. 137
  18. ^ Yates, p.100
  19. ^ Atherton, Ian. Ambition and Failure in Stuart England: The Career of John, First Viscount Scudamore, Manchester University Press, 1999. p.34
  20. Sir Walter Raleigh
    quoted in Roy C. Strong 1958:86.
  21. ^ SHAFE Archived December 3, 2008, at the Wayback Machine Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series IX (1895)pp. 258-9, quoted Strong, 1984, Yates Astrea etc

References

External links
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