Free A Brief History of the Tudor Age by Jasper Ridley Page A

Exeter, and on
several occasions to York and Lincoln; but Henry VIII hardly ever left south-east England. Apart from his four visits to Calais, he went twice in his life north of the Trent, once to Nottingham and
once to Lincoln and York; but for thirty years he never went north of Grafton Regis in Northamptonshire or west of Bristol, though his contemporary sovereigns, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and
Francis I of France, travelled almost continuously throughout their dominions. Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, only once left the neighbourhood of London during his short life; and Henry’s
daughter Mary, after she became Queen, never travelled further from London than Winchester. Elizabeth I often travelled throughout south-east England, but never went north of Worcester or west of
Bristol.
    This reluctance of the Tudor sovereigns to leave south-east England was only partly due to the bad state of the roads. A more important factor was probably their fear of what would happen if
they went too far from London. In 1553, during the nine-day reign of Jane Grey, the Duke of Northumberland marched from London to Cambridge at the head of an army to suppress the rising in favour
of Mary. His colleagues on the Privy Council carried out a
coup d’état
as soon as he had left London which put Mary on the throne and led to the execution of Jane Grey and
Northumberland.
    In 1541 Henry VIII at last decided to make his long-promisedvisit to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, where a serious revolt, the Pilgrimage of Grace, had broken out five years
before. In view of the possible danger to his life among his formerly rebellious subjects, he was escorted by 7,000 soldiers, who slept in tents while Henry and his councillors and courtiers stayed
in the King’s hunting lodges and in the houses of the noblemen and gentlemen in the counties who had been ordered to receive and entertain him.
    Henry left Whitehall on 30 June, and planned to take three weeks over the journey to Lincoln. He spent the first night at Enfield, the second at St Albans, the third at Dunstable, and the fourth
at Ampthill. So far he was up to schedule, but at Ampthill he heard that a hundred miles to the north the roads had been flooded by the heavy rains of a very wet summer. He decided to wait at
Ampthill until the floods had subsided, and stayed there for three weeks. He then moved north to Langley, to Grafton Regis and Pipewell in Northamptonshire, to Liddington in Rutlandshire, to
Collyweston, to the Duke of Suffolk’s house at Grimsthorp near Bourne, and to Sleaford, and entered Lincoln in state on 9 August. He then went on to Gainsborough, to Scrooby in
Nottinghamshire, and, after entering Yorkshire, to Hatfield Close, Cawood, Wressel in ‘Howdenshire’, and to Leconfield and Hull in the East Riding, before entering York on 18 September,
having taken eighty-one days to travel there from Whitehall. After staying in York for nine days, he travelled home more quickly, taking only thirty-two days to go from York, by Hull, to Thornton
Abbey across the Humber in Lincolnshire, to Ingoldsby, Sleaford, Collyweston, Fotheringhay, Higham Ferrers, Ampthill and Windsor to Hampton Court, where he arrived on 29 October.
    Kings and queens stayed in the houses of the nobility and gentry, who had the delicate task of impressing the king by the lavishness of their hospitality without arousing his anger and
resentment by being too lavish and thus showing that they were presumptuous enough to seek to live above their social station. Ordinary travellers had to stay in inns along the road. Therewere many inns offering reasonably comfortable accommodation and hospitality, where the traveller would find plenty of food and ale. Shakespeare, and many people in his audiences, knew
what the First Murderer in
Macbeth
was talking about when he said:
    The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day.
    Now spurs the lated traveller apace
    To gain the timely inn.
    Travel was dangerous