Free A Brief History of the Tudor Age by Jasper Ridley

travelling in post regularly covered the distance, by Basingstoke, Andover, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Honiton, Exeter and Ashburton, in thirty-six hours. In 1595 a
letter from a local official to the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, at Windsor, left Plymouth at 9.30 a.m. on 23 September, was at Exeter by 4.30 p.m., at Sherborne by midnight, at Andover by
6.30 a.m., and was received at Staines at 5 p.m. on 24 September.
    Cardinal Wolsey made a famous rapid journey along the Dover Road when he was a rising junior official in Henry VII’s service. The King, who was at his palace at Richmond, ordered Wolsey to
go on a diplomatic mission to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, which was probably at or near Gravelines in the Netherlands; and Henry impressed on Wolsey the urgency of the
business. Wolsey left Richmond at noon, and rode to London, where he took a barge to Gravesend. He arrived at Gravesend after a three-hour journey, and rode through the night in post to Dover. He
reached Dover early in the morning, and, as the wind was favourable, he crossed to Calais in three hours and rode to Gravelines, reaching the Emperor’s court thereon the
evening of the second day. Next morning he had an audience with the Emperor, and left by noon with Maximilian’s reply to Henry’s message. He was in Calais by nightfall, and, crossing
the Channel on the morning of the fourth day, was in Dover by 10 a.m. and at court at Richmond that night. When the King saw Wolsey next morning, ninety-six hours after he had ordered him to go on
his journey, he reprimanded him for not having left already; but he was amazed, and very favourably impressed, when Wolsey explained that he had already been and returned.
    But if ambitious young men travelled quickly, established dignitaries travelled slowly. Today it is considered smart to travel fast, but in the Tudor Age the smart thing was to travel slowly. In
1518, when Henry VIII sent the Earl of Worcester on a diplomatic mission to Paris, Worcester took ten days to travel from Boulogne to St Denis, and waited for two days at Senlis, because, as he
explained to Henry, a nobleman could not fittingly travel on ‘Our Lady’s Day’ (8 December) though a gentleman of lower rank might have done so. When Wolsey, thirteen years after
his quick journey to Flanders, went from Calais to Bruges on a diplomatic mission to the Emperor Charles V, he insisted on travelling at a pace which was consistent with his rank as Archbishop of
York, Lord Chancellor of England, and a Papal Legate; and though the Emperor was waiting impatiently for him, and urging him to hurry, he took three days over the sixty-mile journey.
    When kings and queens travelled, they went even more slowly. Apart from the question of dignity, they were slowed down by the numerous bodyguards, servants and carts which accompanied them, and
by the official receptions, with speeches and toasts in wine, at the county and parish boundaries. When Henry VIII and Elizabeth I went on a ‘progress’ through their realm, they did not
usually travel more than ten miles a day.
    On four occasions during his reign, Henry VIII visited ‘his town of Calais’ – on two occasions when he was at war with France, and twice to meet the French King at a friendlyinterview. On the first two occasions, in 1513 and 1520, he went from Greenwich to Gravesend by water, and then overland to Dover, taking five days over the journey, and staying
overnight at Rochester, Sittingbourne, Faversham and Canterbury. On his last two visits, in 1532 and 1544, he went from Gravesend to Faversham by sea to avoid the plague which was raging at
Rochester, and called on the way at the house of the Lord Warden of the Five Ports, Sir Thomas Cheyney, in the Isle of Sheppey.
    During the Middle Ages, the Kings of England often travelled all over their kingdom, showing themselves to their people. Henry VII continued this tradition, going to Newcastle and