Prince Henry's Welcome at Winchester

Prince Henry's Welcome at Winchester was a masque produced by Anne of Denmark and performed in 1603.

Prince Henry, by Robert Peake
The Great Hall of Winchester Castle

Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (1594-1612) was the son of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, James became king in England, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. Prince Henry and his sister, Princess Elizabeth came to stay in England, first at Oatlands, then at Nonsuch.[1] Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth were moved from Nonsuch to Winchester, thought to be a more healthful place when plague came to London in August 1603.[2]

Few details are known about the masque which took place in October 1603, but it was mentioned in several newsletters. The title given to the event is not contemporary.[3] The composer and musician John Dowland may have been involved, he mentioned meeting the queen at Winchester in the dedication of his Lachrimae.[4][5] The queen's secretary, the poet William Fowler, who had written the baptism entertainments for Prince Henry in 1594, was also at Winchester.[6]

Anne of Denmark had moved to Winchester on 17 September 1603.[7] On the 17 October she was moving to Wilton House, and Thomas Edmondes wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury, that she had done the Prince "the kindness at his coming hither to entertain him with a gallant mask".[8]

Arbella Stuart was present and mentioned the masque as "an enterlude, (as ridiculous as it was) but not so ridiculous as my letter". She described the queen's household playing children's games in their Winchester lodging.[9]

The French ambassador, Christophe de Harlay, comte de Beaumont, commented that it was "rustic" in the sense of unsophisticated (rather than in the pastoral genre) and served to raise the queen's spirits, and Anne of Denmark was planning a superior and more costly event, realised as The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses.[10] The Winchester masque seems to have been for her son, rather than for the entertainment of a diplomatic elite.[11] John Leeds Barroll suggests it was a "domestic event".[12] Another possibility was that there was no antimasque, or time for the dancers to change and wind down before the banquet.

Yet pleasing the ambassadors had become a priority, another French ambassador Louis de l'Hôpital, Sieur de Vitry had already expressed dissatisfaction with a gift he received from the king.[13] Lord Cecil wrote letters filled with anxiety that the Spanish and French ambassadors would find their hospitality less than that given the other, or their predecessors.[14]

Lady Anne Clifford heard of the performance, and recalled that it had damaged the reputation of Anne of Denmark and the women of her court.[15] Perhaps the personal participation of the queen and her ladies in the masque or dance caused the scandal.[16]

The queen's household at Winchester included; Anna Livingstone, Margaret Stewart, Anna Campbell, Jean Drummond, and Margaret Hartsyde.[17] Margaret Stewart danced at Basing House in September 1603 and played the part of Concordia in The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses.[18] Anna Livingstone was a school child in the household of Princess Elizabeth, who gave her dancing master a ruby ring at Christmas.[19]

References
  1. Thomas Birch, Life of Prince Henry (Dublin, 1760), p. 37.
  2. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 20-1, 36, 38, 140.
  3. Martin Wiggins & Catherine Teresa Richardson, British Drama, 1533-1642: 1603-1608, vol. 5 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 51-2.
  4. John Leeds Barroll, 'Inventing the Stuart Masque', David Bevington & Peter Holbrook, Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (Cambridge, 1998), p. 123.
  5. Mara Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark (Wiesbaden, 1996), p. 49.
  6. John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 279.
  7. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), p. 36.
  8. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), p. 58.
  9. Sara Jayne Steen, Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (Oxford, 1994), p. 193.
  10. Pierre Laffleur de Kermaingant, L'ambassade de France en Angleterre sous Henri IV: Mission de Christophe de Harlay, comte de Beaumont (Paris, 1886), p. 131: Letter to M de Villeroy from M de Beaumont, British Library Add MS 30639, f.283v: Another copy, BnF Français 3503, f.116v
  11. Martin Wiggins, Drama and the Transfer of Power in Renaissance England (Oxford, 2012), pp. 50-52.
  12. John Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Pennsylvania, 2001), p. 77.
  13. John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 262.
  14. M. S. Giuseppi, HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 15 (London, 1930), p. 243.
  15. Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), p. 25.
  16. Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 128.
  17. Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), pp. 123, 146 fn. 21.
  18. Berta Cano Echevarría & Mark Hutchings, 'The Spanish Ambassador and Samuel Daniel's Vision of the Twelve Goddesses: A New Document', in, English Literary Renaissance, 42.2 (2012), pp. 223-57, at pp. 250, 256.
  19. William Fraser, Memorials of the Montgomeries, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 248
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