THE PROGRES ÷ cs PROCESSIONS, AND MAGNIFICENT FESTIVITIES OF KING JAMES THE FIRST HIS ROYAL CONSORT, FAMILY AND COURT COLLECTED FROM Driginal Manuscripts, Scarce Pamphlets, Corporation Records, Parochial Registers, ec. Ec. COMPRISING FORTY MASQUES AND ENTERTAINMENTS; TEN CIVIC PAGEANTS NUMEROUS ORIGINAL LETTERS AND ANNOTATED LISTS OF THE PEERS, BARONETS, AND KNIGHTS, WHO RECEIVED THOSE Mustrated with Motes, Historical, Topographical, Biographical, and Bibliographical VOLUME 1 Burt Franklin: Research and Source Works Series # 118 PREFACE. MORE than forty years have elapsed since, at the suggestion, and by the assistance, of my kind friend and relation Bishop Percy, I began to collect the various Pamphlets and Manuscripts which detail the Progresses, &c. of the illustrious Queen Elizabeth. Two volumes of that work were submitted to the Publick in 1788, and were so favourably received, that in 1804 I ventured to produce a Third Volume, which, by a calamitous accident, became scarce not long after its first appearance. The materials which were contained in those volumes having been printed, at various times, as the several articles were acquired, and most of them being separately paged, it was scarcely possible to form any thing like a regular Index to them; but in 1823, when I undertook a new edition, the whole Work was chronologically arranged, and, with various additions and the necessary Indexes, (some Latin complimentary Poems only being omitted,) it formed three uniform and handsome volumes. During the long period in which the Elizabethan Progresses were passing through my hands, many valuable materials relative to the succeeding reign were gradually assembled. With the view of permanently preserving these collections, I commenced printing the present Work,-unaware, I must own, of the length to which it has extended. In the quantity of its contents it much exceeds the former publication; and I entertain no apprehension that those contents will be considered less valuable. The numerous Tracts re-printed in these Volumes may mostly be classed as either poetical panegyrics; descriptions of various solemnities and festivities; or dramatic performances. "Sorrowes Joy," and four others written on the King's Accession or Coronation, are of the first description. But it was soon found necessary to desist from inserting those multitudinous productions, a bare enume |