Britain was once a difficult country to cross.
Roads were few and paths obscure.
And yet our ancestors travelled.
For work and for pleasure.
For faith and for fortune.
But the routes that they followed are lost.
I'm going to rediscover them and the people who took them.
What they saw and why they travelled.
Who they met and where they went.
I'm following the forgotten routes that made this country great.
And today, I'm going to follow in the tracks of Queen Elizabeth I
on a great Royal progress that began here at Windsor.
So I'm off to the West Country,
retracing one of Good Queen Bess's huge annual processions.
She came here, made absolute mayhem.
I'll be visiting the palaces and towns of the Cotswolds.
You feel as if you've got vertigo.
I'll be finding out what remains of her world.
You can make light ale, and we will give you a licence to do that.
I'll be looking at the fun she had and havoc she wreaked as she went on her way.
Whoa!
That's it! Good.
Gah!
If you'd been privileged enough to be here in Windsor Castle
at the end of the second week in July 1574,
you'd have witnessed a sort of subdued chaos going on
as the entire court packed up to join Elizabeth I
on her grand Royal progress.
It was...it was part summer holiday,
part huge procession
and part rock-and-roll tour to rival the Rolling Stones.
This 1574 progress was the furthest west she was ever to go.
It was a big disruption.
Not everybody was overjoyed to be going.
There was a letter from the Earl of Arundel to Robert Dudley,
saying that everybody from the highest to the lowest
was to swear they were having a soft time,
even if they were staying in very hard lodgings.
In other words, nobody was allowed to complain.
Although nearly everybody did.
In truth, her closest advisors often did everything they could
to dissuade her from setting off again,
but Elizabeth was determined to make these arduous trips
and would not be stopped. Of course, if I'd been back here then,
one of the more bizarre reasons why she wanted to go fairly urgently
would have become obvious to me.
I'd have smelt it, because the moats were effectively open cesspits.
All the toilets emptied into them.
And by mid-July, there was a bit of a hum,
and they associated that smell with the plague.
The Black Death was the excuse to get going and, importantly,
the Queen intended to sign a treaty with the Spanish in Bristol.
But that doesn't explain why she loved the whole circus.
Can we find out?
I've arranged a rather glamorous way of doing so.
There's a crowd gathered here,
but it's not for me, it's actually for my car,
which is exactly the effect Elizabeth I would have liked.
Stuart, morning. Good morning, Griff.
How are you today? I'm very good, thanks.
May I take your bag? Thank you.
All the better for seeing this magnificent vehicle. What is it?
This is a 1964 Rolls-Royce Phantom V.
And the Rolls can stand in as my own royal carriage.
It's still the vehicle of choice for our current Royal Family.
You do notice that people pay attention to you
if you arrive in this thing.
It's a head-turner, without a doubt.
Elizabeth I was an early adopter of coaches in England.
Hers were possibly the first ever seen in the country.
They were vehicles for display and possibly for escape.
She could literally stay
one step ahead of everybody who wanted to influence her.
All the ambassadors and the clerics
and the bishops and the factions
who wanted her to do things
had to try and find her when she was on tour,
until she decided to make it obvious where she was.
But if some of her political luggage was abandoned,
she certainly took everything else she might require
in one giant baggage train.
Apparently, it was a phenomenon.
How big? I'd quite like to find out.
Good morning. Thank you so much for coming to help us here.
We're trying to reproduce Queen Elizabeth I's baggage train.
I'm going to nominate, very unfairly,
four people to be the court officers...
'In order to stay true to court protocol,
'I'm handing out different-coloured caps to represent
'the various ranks of people in Elizabeth's court.'
Now I need to find six ladies-in-waiting...
'Most important are the black and dark blue.
'They're the gentlemen of the privy chamber and privy councillors.
'They'll be walking close behind me at the head of the procession.'
We haven't got to the dregs yet. You're just...
'Then all the other ranks are spread out right down the line.'
Servants!
Nobody is volunteering to be a servant.
I'm a servant! I'm a servant! I'm a maid! Here we ago.
Let's repair to our cars.
Can I have the privy councillors up the front here, please?
You, as members of the court,
are under strict instructions never to complain.
LAUGHTER And it's time to go!
It's said that around 350 people from the court joined Elizabeth,
with hundreds of carts, wagons and horses in tow.
They brought everything the Queen needed. Her entire kitchen,
all the court documents and library,
often wrapped up in waterproof bearskins.
This is well done, my people.
Well done, my subjects!
At over a mile long, it must have been an astonishing sight,
snaking through Elizabethan countryside
at any average speed of three miles an hour.
It's astonishing.
Until we did this, I didn't realise what an extraordinary impact
the Queen's progress must have had on the countryside.
It must have been one of the reasons she wanted to go,
so people knew she was coming
and they knew that she was the Queen.
Thank you very, very much, everyone, for helping.
Well, I think we're going to leave the baggage train,
all one-and-a-half miles of it, behind us now, and go on.
There's nothing unusual about that. That's exactly what the Queen did.
She'd ride on ahead and let everybody else catch up with her.
And ahead of her went people called the harbingers.
They would ride on to prepare the way
for this gigantic crowd of people to arrive.
20 miles south of Oxford on what is now the A369,
I'm heading for a roadside bikers' cafe
which I'm told is right on the Queen's route.
And the man who's worked this out for us
is historical geographer Mark Brasher.
Nice to see you. Here we are, we're going off on this tour.
What can we use to find out what route she took?
Well, you can start by looking at the court calendar,
which will give you the itinerary of places
and the dates that she was at those places.
So this is our very year, our very time.
That's pretty impressive.
Because you've got the actual date, like July 11th to 13th,
July 15th to September 25th, progress in Berkshire.
But the question remains,
what route did they take between these places?
It's interesting to note that in the 1570s,
a Yorkshire surveyor, Christopher Saxton, had got the commission
to produce a series of county maps of the whole realm. Right.
'And there we have it. The Saxton maps don't have any roads,
'but they do show bridging points of the various rivers en route.
'This has allowed Mark to join the dots, so to speak,
'and he's drawn the route on a series of modern maps
'which are going to take me from the starting point at Windsor Castle
'all the way to my journey's end in Bristol.'
Thank you. Thank you. OK. We're on the road!
Using Mark's map, my journey from Windsor into Oxfordshire
leaves our major roads and winds through small villages and towns.
It's already giving me a sense of the England that Elizabeth would have experienced.
For Elizabeth, crossing the country
was like threading your way through a maze.
Paul Hindle is an expert on the ancient ways of Britain.
We've met up on one of the early sections of the route near Oxford.
He's going to guide me through this part of the journey.
They would set off to go somewhere,
but there would be no signposts, there were very few main roads.
They would have local people who knew, but there were no maps.
The first maps, county maps of Saxton,
don't come till the 1570s and they didn't have roads on.
The first road maps don't come till the 1690s.
And so it's every difficult to get around.
We just take maps for granted.
And in the Elizabethan period, 1,000 years after they were made,
Roman roads were still the best paved roads that they had?
They were the only paved roads running through the countryside.
Between the Romans
and the coming of the turnpikes in the 18th century
and then the paving of roads in the 19th,
there was no road-building whatsoever for 1,500 years.
Now, let's see. For us, the sort of choice
that I would've thought the Royal progress
would have come to pretty often on its way. Which way do they go?
Let's have a look at Mark's map.
So, here we are, we're now at the junction
and we need to turn off the tarmac track
and keep going in a straight line on the old London Road, this way.
OK. The old London Road has now completely disappeared as a road
and become what I think we might find is closer to a field.
Yes. I think this is more like an Elizabethan road,
except there would have been no hedges on either side,
no walls buried in these hedges, either.
It would have been wide open
and people would simply have gone across the open countryside.
We have passed through the loveliest countryside.
I'm now heading for Woodstock.
This was a sort of Royal staging post
where they gathered strength for the tour proper -
Queen Elizabeth's Royal progress of 1574.
It's a few miles north of Oxford
and around 50 miles into her journey from Windsor.
Thank you very much, Stuart. That's very kind.
I'll be back in just a little...
'The court calendar tells me they stayed here,
'in Woodstock Manor for just over a week.'
Well, I'm afraid this is all that remains of Woodstock.
It's a little bit disappointing, isn't it?
But apparently, it was all cleared away, knocked down
and completely destroyed because they built a new palace.
Blenheim was built for the 1st Duke of Marlborough
in the early 1700s.
Elizabeth's Woodstock Manor was still standing
when Blenheim was completed,
but when the new duchess looked out of her window,
she though the old medieval house was a bit of an eyesore,
so she had it knocked down.
This is the best record of what it looked like.
Actually quite small by the standard of Elizabethan rambling piles.
Quite apart from the notorious damp,
I'm not sure Queen Elizabeth would have relished staying at Woodstock
because 20 years earlier,
she'd been held prisoner here by Queen Mary.
Mary had seen Elizabeth as a dangerous rival
and tried to hide her from public view as much as possible.
But several times during tense moments,
Elizabeth had outfaced her half-sister
by directly courting the support of the people.
Though Woodstock was one of the Queen's own palaces,
there was no guarantee of room for the entire court to stay there.
So courtiers known as harbingers were tasked
with finding accommodation for people like me and my groom in nearby towns.
Oh! There's a rival, there's a Bentley over there.
They haven't got anything for us. We'll have to move on.
The majority of the entourage bedded down in inns or even tents.
They found whatever lodgings they could.
Everybody from the Queen's court looking for somewhere to stay.
I think there's a place up here on the left.
No. No room.
Many of the junior functionaries
would have resorted to the most basic accommodation -
sleeping with the job, as it were.
Well, as a lowly servant of the court,
I would have obviously
had to have made by bed where I could.
And when I say make my bed, I mean literally make my bed.
This is what people did every night.
They made themselves... a straw pallet.
Effectively...
..this is what everybody slept on, unless you were the Queen herself.
HE CHUCKLES
Ah! Good!
Not bad at all.
Stuart?
Sir. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but in Elizabethan times,
it was nearly always two to a bed,
as long as a gentleman slept with a gentleman,
and a yeoman slept with a yeoman.
And I think we're two yeomen, so...
this will do for us, don't you think?
Well, I'm not going to spend the night in there.
There's only one thing for it.
Another big demand on any town when the Elizabethan court arrived
was refreshment.
For the Elizabethans, that meant beer. In huge quantities.
Keith Thomas is an historic ale expect,
and he's brought an imitation Elizabethan beer for us to taste.
So, Keith, people drank beer, or ale, in huge quantities, didn't they?
Yes. Yes. They had quarts, didn't they?
So it would be, really, your liquid of the day. Right.
So, the idea was that you didn't drink the water,
because the water would infect you,
but beer had effectively, sort of, pasteurised your water.
Normal bacteria would have died,
so it would have been quite clean and wholesome. Yep.
And people would have drunk it is a refreshment.
'They didn't know the science, they thought it aided digestion.
'But herbs were prominent in Elizabethan ale.'
Tell me what you think, Charlie. It's a very distinctive flavour, isn't it? I mean, is this caraway?
Yes, it is. So, you've got a fresh herb,
you've got a spicy aroma on the noses,
but you haven't got the hoppiness.
This is very suitable for women.
Now, Queen Elizabeth I, she certainly liked what was known as a light ale,
and it was because she liked it, the whole court
drunk nothing but light ale, which was quite a rarity, apparently,
and when they arrived in a town like Woodstock,
and there wasn't enough light ale to go around,
they would issue specific licences.
The purveyors would go around the town and say to various households,
"You can make beer just for the period that the court is here,
"and you can make light ale, and we will give you a licence to do that."
More connections to our own era.
Clearly, controlling the making of alcohol goes back a long way,
at least since the time of Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry VII,
with these special provisions popping up
as a result of the progress.
Our convoluted route
now seems to be taking us deeper into the Oxfordshire countryside,
heading for the Cotswolds and the town of Burford.
It is lovely in the back here, Stuart, really gorgeous.
Driving Miss Griff.
As we roll back the miles in our Phantom, I wonder what other forms of transport
would have been on offer to members of the Elizabethan court,
so we've come to Sturt Farm Stables,
just a few miles outside Burford.
We know the Queen was a great lover of horses,
and an accomplished rider, just like our own Royal Family...
and unlike me. To me, a horse is a challenge with four legs.
But I wonder if, in order to get closer to the Royal progress experience,
I need to take one for a spin.
Left foot in the stirrup. Put your weight into your right hand
as you put your right leg over the back and sit on the horse.
Gah! Whoa, whoa, whoa. GRIFF LAUGHS
"And don't shout, Griff. For heaven's sake." Try not to shout.
I actually... I feel a little safer in the Roller.
I think it's been calculated that the actual number of horses
that Queen Elizabeth had runs into the thousands.
The baggage train itself,
it was reckoned that there must have been about 1,200 horses
pulling all those carts.
But the infernal posh like to travel in a sort of box,
often strung between two horses, called a litter.
This was the form of carriage preferred by most people,
for rather obvious reasons -
because you didn't have to walk,
and you could effectively get through even the narrowest
and most muddy of carriageways,
whereas if you took your coach,
then you didn't have a chance of getting along most of the roads, cos they were too narrow.
Not all litters were pulled, as it were, or hung between horses.
Some were... Some were carried by people.
And I've got four energetic gentleman grooms.
And now I'm going to ride on...
..in what I assume
was the only proper way to travel in the baggage train.
Contemporary records don't tell us
how much of her trip Queen Elizabeth spent in a litter.
It would appear, though, that between the major stops,
she'd have been on horseback,
very often riding separate from the main baggage train.
And then she'd have entered the various towns on the route,
like Burford, for instance, carried along in state.
There's a tantalising glimpse of Queen Elizabeth's personal taste
in one bill that she paid, where she spent more money
on her old-style litter than she did on her newfangled coach.
She had it decorated with black leather,
silver studs and a lot of red satin cushions.
Good. OK, good.
Thank you very much. Well lifted. Good.
I'll tell you one thing, though. She was right about the cushions.
The town of Burford sits
on the border between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
It's often referred to as the "gateway to the Cotswolds".
The fortunes of this handsome town in the Elizabethan era
were founded almost entirely on sheep.
The wool trade was hugely important throughout the Cotswolds.
It was the basis of England's wealth.
A popular medieval saying was that in Europe, the best wool is English,
and in England, the best wool is Cotswold.
I think this must be the bridge across the Windrush,
where the entire corporation of Burford came out
in order to welcome Elizabeth I.
They were led by somebody called Simon Wisdom,
and she...she liked to visit towns.
And they liked to see her.
Burford was an ancient free town.
No local bigwig ruled here.
Towns like this looked to the Queen to protect them,
and in return, she got their support and their money.
On the Royal progress, the entourage often got hopelessly lost,
and as Stuart and I pick our way through the Cotswolds
and try to stay true to Mark's route,
we, too, are facing the odd challenge.
Is it right?
Or is it left?
But there are benefits to getting lost every now and again.
I think we should go up that way.
We're seeing more and more of this superb landscape.
Is this the same England, though,
that a contemporary German tourist in the 1500s wrote about
with an appreciative eye,
praising the short, tender grass of the uplands
and the huge numbers of sheep, and calling it the "true golden fleece"?
To give me an idea, I'm meeting landscape historian,
Dr Amanda Richardson.
Now, it's quite probable, isn't it, Mandy, that Elizabeth
and her retinue, is it were,
would have travelled along the top of hills as they went on their tour?
Oh, yes, definitely, because once you come off the tops of the hills
and you go down into the valleys,
then you're more likely to encounter impassable roads, flooding.
So they would continuously get, one assumes, on their journey,
these incredible vistas of the Kingdom of England?
Certainly by the Elizabethan period, you would get something
approximating to the landscape that we're looking out on here.
But we've got to remember that the landscape has been constantly changing through history.
And also, today, there's quite a lot of woodland out there.
But actually, it's probably quite recent, quite a lot of that.
Yeah, at the turn of the 16th and 17th century,
it's estimated that only about 6 or 7% of England was wooded.
So this whole idea we've got about all of England,
a squirrel going from one end of England to the other in trees
is just a false one.
But the biggest impact on the landscape from the Elizabethan time
was caused by sheep farming.
Now, we can see some tops out there
which have been used probably for summer pasture and all that,
but when they came down into the valley,
what makes this different is that they needed to make fields,
and they did that with hedges.
So they did.
And you've got a pattern here of quite irregular fields,
so these fields are probably quite early,
possibly dating from the Elizabethan period.
So that's another thing that we associate with the English landscape.
Visitors to the country felt that the English landscape was one of the finest they'd ever seen.
A Venetian visitor in 1596 declared that the country
was the most lovely you can imagine in all the world.
It's still pretty magnificent.
Moving on from the Burford area, our progress is taking us
even further west on the modern A40,
shifting from Oxfordshire into Gloucestershire.
We then follow the route to the town of Winchcombe.
Now, although having the Queen of England,
several hundred members of her court
and an enormous baggage train turning up at your front door
may have seemed rather daunting,
most of the important lords and ladies of the realm
really wanted the Queen to pay them a visit.
This was an ideal place for the Royal progress to halt.
It's Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, in the heart of the Cotswolds.
Elizabeth had partly gone on her progress
to keep an eye on her nobles.
England was still a country divided on religious grounds,
and many of the old aristocracy had Catholic leanings,
potentially rebels.
So she went where she was welcome,
to acknowledge friends whom she could support
and to enhance their status in the locality.
And her host at Sudeley was Lady Chandos. She would have to entertain lavishly.
Sometimes whole houses were built and special lakes were constructed.
Most of all, they ate massive feasts.
Joining me on my visit is Alison Sim,
who's going to teach me and some interested locals
about Tudor table manners.
Ladies and gentlemen, could you stand up? The Queen hasn't arrived.
Goodness me, no manners at all.
Er, madam. Madam. I so apologise that you have been placed here.
I am sorry, I am sorry. Now, I know you're only a merchant,
I don't know what you told the steward,
but could you move down, please? Really.
Yes, I think that's more fitting.
The nearer you are to the Queen, the more important you are.
The further away, the less important you are.
Having establish my own position
well down the table,
I can address myself to the huge number of different dishes that might be on offer.
Alison, a lot of my idea of how they ate comes from watching movies
of one kind or another, and Charles Laughton in The Private Life Of Henry VIII,
he would sort of chew on his chicken bone,
slinging them over his... Was that right? Absolutely not.
When you think of the amount of money you've paid for your clothes, you're actually very, very delicate.
But we actually ate with our hands?
That's right. So the meat actually comes to your plate cut up,
and then you can just pick it up.
And you might have little bowls on the table, called saucers,
and you just dip your meat in.
And don't want to see any sauce above that knuckle there.
And then you just pop that in your mouth
and wipe your hand on your napkin, which is over your shoulder here.
Saucers? Saucers, yes.
So a saucer is for having a sauce in? Absolutely.
OK. Of course.
What other manners should I be applying here when I'm eating?
Well, most of the rules are pretty much the way they are today,
in that you mustn't talk with your mouth full.
But there are a few that are different.
You're not allowed to scratch at the table,
and that must have been pretty tempting.
I was just about to scratch as well! The days when you had fleas, it must've been difficult.
Could you scratch yourself or other people?
It doesn't say about other people, but you certainly shouldn't scratch yourself!
For Elizabeth, a host would commonly have to provide lavish gifts.
Jewelled dresses were a popular choice.
She might even take a fancy to some ornament in the house
and expect to be given it.
And alongside musicians,
dancing and elaborately staged entertainments,
there would have to be opportunities for her to indulge
in her favourite sports, one of which was hawking.
Today, we'd refer to it as falconry.
In Elizabethan times, birds of prey
were used exclusively for hunting.
Here to introduce me to his birds
at the castle is falconer Tony Bryant.
BELL RINGS
The hood just pops her in the dark.
The action of putting the hood on hoodwinks her
into thinking it's night-time. Hoodwinks her? Hoodwink.
That's where we get the phrase hoodwink from? Yeah.
A phrase from falconry. To hoodwink.
Would you like to hold her? Yes, I would.
She doesn't mind me holding her?
No problem at all, especially with the hood on. All right. A glove.
OK. Well, that's obvious because it's a left-hand glove! Absolutely. GRIFF LAUGHS
If you were a left-handed falconer, you would have a right-hand glove.
You need your free hand, the good hand, for doing the fiddly bits.
The jesses, the leather straps, go under your thumb,
so you've got control of the bird. Having somebody under your thumb. Ah.
Once Tony had dealt with some of the preliminaries,
he brought out another bird.
This is a Harris hawk,
and it's my turn to try to bond with a bird of prey.
Oh...
Turn to face me, Griff. How incred... I will in just a second,
I'm just getting over the fact that a bird has landed on my...
Too late.
It's coming, quick. Quick. Whoa!
All right. Here he comes. Whoa.
He took me by surprise. Now go on, back you go.
See, that's two things I have to get now.
A Harris hawk and the Phantom V.
Spectacular.
In 1574, Queen Elizabeth was 40 years old.
She'd been on the throne for 15 years,
and had managed to deftly sidestep
the tricky question of whom she would marry.
But it was the way that she'd handled the religious divisions in the country
where she really excelled.
She'd successfully steered a middle ground between Protestant zealots
and rebellious Catholics.
She had asserted the right of the monarch as head of the Church in England.
Her progresses of the 1570s were generally considered a huge success.
And here at Sudeley Castle, in the private apartments,
there's a striking memorial to her visits.
This is a stained-glass window of the time,
and it shows her in all her glory, in one of those great stately galleons of a dress
with the orb and the sceptre.
And it represents peace propaganda, because it shows her
as a virgin queen, and she was at great pains to emphasise
that her chastity brought peace and prosperity to the realm as a result.
This was the sort of image that these progresses
were about promoting.
Sudeley Castle entertained Elizabeth royally.
But not everyone could afford to do the same.
Some people did write to special advisers to the Queen asking,
begging to be left off the list, because they knew that
the arrival of the court would completely ruin them.
It was actually more expensive for an individual to play host to Elizabeth than it was for a town.
In towns, the court paid some of their expenses themselves.
But even for the citizens of Gloucester, where we're going next,
hot on her trail, the Queen was an expensive guest.
She arrived here on August 10 1574, and in the local archives,
there's a revealing record of her visit.
And it begins with the gift given to the Queen's Majesty,
and that came to £67.
That would have been somewhere in the region of £100,000,
just as a sort of welcoming gift.
The rest of it here is a list of the other expenditure that they made.
They paid to the musicians who... for playing about the city
every morning, as long as the Queen's Grace was here.
You get some idea of the incredible amount of money
they had to just give to the court to keep them happy.
But the rest of this document
is about the preparations that they also made to the town.
They spruced up the place. They put gravel out on all the roads.
They got sand to clear things up,
and they painted quite a lot of houses to make it look smart.
And that's not particularly different
from what any town would do if the Queen were due to visit.
'During her time in places such as Gloucester,
'Elizabeth was always stopping to say hello to the local people,
'and she encouraged passers-by to speak to her.
'She effectively invented the Royal walkabout.
'The Spanish ambassador commented that she always went where the crowd was thickest.
'I've been told to seek out a pub called the Dick Whittington,
'where Elizabeth is rumoured to have stayed.
'It's known locally as St Nicholas House.'
You go down there, and it's supposed to have a ghost.
Right down the bottom. How far down is it?
Just down the road. Is it?
I'm stopping to think now whether it's beyond the church. No, it wouldn't be.
St Nicolas House is down on the left there.
It's before you get to that, on the right.
Which way am I going to get to the Whittington? Cheers! Down here?
Whittington pub? Down here?
Well, despite the apparent confusion,
I did eventually track down St Nicholas House.
To be honest, it's not very likely that she stayed here,
and not just because this is a pub, but because this just happens
to be one of the oldest houses in Gloucester,
and associated with the Dick Whittington family,
so people have put two and two together.
It's much, much more likely that she stayed near the cathedral
in the dean's house, because she needed a lot of space.
But it is a measure of how important to her it was
that she stayed in Gloucester.
She was here for three days. No hunting, just duties.
As well as that Dick Whittington pub,
there's actually a fair amount of Elizabeth and mediaeval Gloucester
that still survives, and that Elizabeth would have seen.
But perhaps the most astonishing relic of her time is also one of the town's best-kept secrets.
I have been given a set of keys to allow us to have a look
at something that apparently most of the residents of Gloucester never get to see.
How incredible.
It makes you feel as if you've got vertigo. It's huge!
It's reckoned to be the largest timber-framed building in Britain.
And it was built in 1560.
So it would have been brand-new when she arrived.
It's spectacular.
Originally a magnificent merchant's house,
modern Gloucester has grown up and closed it in,
to leave it forgotten and unnoticed by the crowds in the high street.
One of the great joys for Good Queen Bess on her Royal progress
seems to have been the freedom to be capricious.
Although detailed plans were drawn up in advance,
it wasn't uncommon for her to change her mind en route.
Wherever she went was subject to her whim.
She could be a Queen and decide whatever she wanted to do,
and I think, when she was at London,
she was a lot more under other people's control.
And a month into her trip,
she made one of these unscheduled stops in the town of Berkeley,
17 miles southwest of Gloucester on the banks of the River Severn.
She came to the magnificent Berkeley Castle, owned by Lord Henry Berkeley.
And there are significant undercurrents to this visit.
This is another side to the protocol of house-calling -
because this powerful aristocrat and local landowner was not there.
What's extraordinary about this castle is that it is still owned by the very same family
that occupied it when Queen Elizabeth came here.
This is Berkeley Castle. This is, yes.
You've got the keep here, the oldest, impressive...
These early walls, 12th century.
Curtain wall. The great hall in the middle here.
And this wonderful 1920s addition, the porch entrance.
And then you've got my parents' section along here.
Shall I show you around? Yes, please do, please do.
Greeting me is one of the current Berkeleys, Charles.
Continuously occupied by the same family since the 12th century,
it's the oldest building in the country
still inhabited by the family who built it.
In 1574, when Elizabeth arrived, despite the absence,
or perhaps because of the absence of the then owner,
a figure not wholly in favour,
the Queen and her entourage made themselves completely at home.
Once the Queen had settled in, had her dinner, she was off to bed.
But the bedroom was something that each host had to provide,
and was a huge problem, because she demanded a presence room which was 40 foot long,
a little privy chamber, a wardrobe and also a private bedroom.
Hello, Charles. Hello.
Charles Kightly is an expert on Elizabethan interiors, and he's here
to show me what needed to be done to prepare for the Queen's bedtime.
She brings with her the actual bed? Oh, yes, sometimes.
Certainly the hangings.
Everything she needs, because she likes to have her things round her.
There would be a bit of urgency here, wouldn't there?
Well, they would be, because we've got to have everything ready.
'Soft upholstery was a relatively new addition to 16th-century interiors,
'and it's no surprise that the Queen would have had the ultimate comfort available at the time.
'For her mattress, the down was pushed through a very narrow sieve
'until it was as fine as the driven snow.
'Her hangings, meanwhile, though lavish, had a practical purpose.'
So if you pull him through there...
Was the function of that merely insulatory, or was it also private?
Well, the idea of having a room all to yourself, which we think is just great,
in those days I think would have been the very opposite.
"We don't want privacy. What happens if I need something in the night?
"I need a servant there."
If I get up...
You need someone to hold the other end, I think.
Whoa! It's all right.
We've got it. OK.
You need to take up the slack. That's it, good. There's one.
You're very good at this. OK.
There we are. Now, that seems like a bed fit for a queen.
And the Queen wouldn't have just had one mattress. No?
She'd have had about four. Right.
So, like the princess, literally the princess and the pea,
she was sort of lying on quite a supply?
What were the mattresses made of?
Will, the bottom mattress for the Queen would probably be either full of wool or flocks,
which is a kind of wool which is combed and then washed.
And then on top of that, feathers, feathers with their quills on. On top of that, down.
She'd get into her bed, and she'd be privy, meaning "private",
and toasty, meaning "warm".
She had an eventful morning ahead, and I'm meeting with David Smith,
the keeper of the family records, to find out about it.
And David, these are the Berkeley Castle archives, are they?
Yes, they are.
But we tend to call them the Berkeley Castle muniments,
which is really just something you keep in a very strong place.
The archives record Queen Elizabeth's unscheduled visit
to Berkeley in August 1574, and the deeply political motives behind it.
So, this is the story of Queen Elizabeth coming here? Yes. In 1574.
"What time this Lord Henry
"had a stately game of red deer in the park adjoining,
"during which time of her being there, much slaughter was made.
"As seven and twenty stags were slain in the toils in one day."
So what was going on here? A-ha!
Well, what happened was that the Queen was, as we know,
on her southern progress,
and she was originally intended to come to Berkeley,
but the Earl of Leicester persuaded her to change her itinerary.
The Earl of Leicester was her favourite, and some people said her boyfriend,
and he was generally an influence at court.
And he had had his eye on the Berkeley estates for several years,
so he deliberately persuaded the Queen to come,
knowing that Henry, Lord Berkeley, was away.
He was at his other castle, near Coventry.
So she came here, and of course made absolute mayhem.
27 red deer were killed in one go,
and many, many other deer also slaughtered.
And Henry was absolutely livid.
Leicester, I think, had engineered the whole business to make sure that Henry, Lord Berkeley, was upset.
Henry dismantles the deer park, and this gets back to the Queen,
who will not accept any form of insult.
From Henry's point of view, it's a seriously dangerous thing to do,
and friends at court tell him that he is in serious trouble about this,
and he wants to watch out, because his brother-in-law's already been executed,
and he might be on the list.
So this story is sort of also showing that
the business of being a good host
and allowing the Queen to come to stay was an important...could be an important part of your future?
Yes. Because either she would go as a sign of favour, or she might,
on occasion, go to someone she didn't really like that much
and attempt to bankrupt him by saying,
"I'll only stay a couple of weeks," and then saying, "Oh, I like it here.
"I will stay another couple of weeks," and of course the poor chap
was already borrowing money to pay for all the entertainment,
so that would put him in serious financial difficulty for years to come.
Deer hunting was high on the agenda for this progress.
Most of the private palaces she visited had deer parks.
In fact, later she went to places that had parks but no houses,
which would seem to indicate that Elizabeth wanted to hunt as much as she could.
But how hard is it to hit a deer with a bow and arrow?
Janet Hudson has been an archer in Gloucestershire for nearly 40 years.
If anyone can teach me, she can.
Janet, hello. Hello.
Diana in the wood, the huntress.
That's extraordinary.
If you were Queen Elizabeth,
that's exactly how I would have greeted you. She used to go hunting,
and people would pop out dressed as wild men with green hair, and recite poems to her.
I have never had that when I've been shooting, I must say.
So, now, let me look at my bow.
Here you are.
Now, we use these fingers, and traditionally the notion is that
it was the two fingers at Agincourt - to the French
they showed that they still had their two fingers.
That is a tradition, yes. It is said that
when archers were captured they did have their fingers removed,
to prevent them operating in war
and also as a punishment for poaching.
We'll try aiming at an unfortunate small deer over there.
Yes, as far as you can, and just let it go when you're ready.
Well done, you nearly hit it.
'For Elizabeth, though, it might not have been as difficult as all that,
'because the stags were effectively herded together for her,
'virtually guaranteeing a kill every time.'
This time try and bring it closer to your chest.
Closer to my chest? Yes, closer in to your chin. There?
Yes, as far back as you can, and point at the ground.
Yes!
Good gracious me!
That's absolutely astonishing.
Can I say, that's the best instruction I've ever had.
Not only did it quiver as it went in - djdjrrring! -
and into the side of that plastic deer over there,
I was quivering, and so was my quiver.
That's extraordinary.
Nice to see you've come back with your fingers intact after the hawks.
Well, you know I hit it.
From Berkeley, the next leg of the progress takes us
back on the A38 to the tiny village of Iron Acton.
And, again, we're entering a detective story.
Some of the places that Royalty grace get lost in time,
and sometimes a chance encounter reveals their Royal connections.
Amazingly, this significant Tudor building
was completely derelict by the 1970s and was being used as a cattle shed.
Had it not been for local historian Dorothy Brown,
it might have been lost altogether.
So, Dorothy, you were the person who discovered this building.
In 1976, I found that there was this amazing building
that I didn't know about, and I went to see
if there was an owner or something, and there was none.
There was nobody actually there,
and so I wandered in and took some photos.
I was quite amazed, and I went
and scratched one of the walls, which was that one up there,
and underneath I found the most amazing quality decoration,
and typical of 16th-century palace work.
But you could see it was super quality, so I thought I'd better stop...
But it must have been the most exciting moment. It was fantastic.
Dorothy had discovered an important Tudor building,
and further research revealed that parts of it had been built
for a special purpose.
The Tudor owner, Sir Nicholas Poyntz,
erected this wing in a staggering nine months.
But though it was a rush job, it was done with care, for a reason.
The building itself hold the clues.
High up in the rafters,
there's another little architectural surprise.
Oh, look at that.
We're looking at a roof which tells a story,
because the trusses that hold up this roof are queen posts,
and it's much more common to find this form of support
in the east of England, rather than the west.
And it happens to tell us this building
is based on ideas which were imported.
The latest architectural style had been brought over to the west from London.
The grand wing was put up in a hurry
because Sir Nicholas Poyntz - a courtier - wanted to impress
Elizabeth's father, Henry VII, who was planning a visit in 1535.
And here we are in a magnificent room,
not a Gloucestershire room, at all, but a London, fashionable room,
and this was the presence chamber.
I just want to try something here.
OK, let's see if this works.
One, two,
three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight,
nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen -
near enough 13 yards there, or 39 feet.
It's a 40-foot presence chamber, and we come through here,
and what's here but, of course, the privy chamber -
the chamber where the King had just his cronies
and a few special people around here.
And when he wanted to go away from them,
he went through here and came through
into what is known locally
as King Henry VIII's bedroom.
And what we have here is exactly what the ushers
were ordered to find for Queen Elizabeth on her tour.
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
did use these rooms, but where Sir Nicholas succeeded,
his son failed.
Queen Elizabeth - on her own progress, nearly 40 years later - passed by,
though the privy council met here.
It was an elaborate dance with those who wanted power.
She could snub as well as reward, accept or decline,
even abuse hospitality, as a political act.
Today, the presence chamber is being used by a group
of young students who are learning La Volta.
Teaching them this popular Elizabethan dance is tutor Anne Day.
What we're watching here is not really sort of display dancing
to be watched like we watch the ballet,
but something people were expected to join in.
Yes, very much social dancing, but also to be watched,
because you would do this with the court around,
and you're also dancing in the presence of the Queen.
And the Queen herself liked to dance this particular dance.
Yes, there's a famous painting that is reputed to be her
dancing the La Volta with the Earl of Leicester.
Right, and the dancing was quite a useful way
of getting to know the opposite sex, was it?
Oh, yes, the only proper way you could meet another young person.
Because courtly manners kept you separate from the girls otherwise,
and then somehow you would get intimate on the dancefloor,
and the Elizabethan age was quite a sexy age, wasn't it?
Yes, one of the dancing masters of the day has pointed out
that once you are dancing with a young woman, you can work out
whether she has foul breath or a deformity,
what her conversation's like -
in other words, her level of intelligence...
Her marriageability. And her marriageability,
whether she'd be a good wife, good manager of your household.
Elizabethans learned to dance at a very young age.
The higher your rank, the earlier your tuition would start.
And Royal status meant lessons from the age of six.
I guess I've arrived in court at quite a late stage in my life,
but can you teach the a few steps? Oh, certainly, yes.
Hop, step and jump. Hop, step and jump.
Hop, step and pivot, that's it.
So, if your knee makes contact,
your left knee makes contact with her...her rear,
and it pushes her on.
Whup! Binky-bonky-bing. Whup! Binky-bonky-bing.
OK. One more. Oh, and one more!
Binky-bonky-bing, whoa!
I tell you, actually, what I know, Leah, is I'm looking into your eyes
and that's delightful, but I know that my legs
are not going the same way as your legs at the moment.
THEY LAUGH
Strictly Come Volta doesn't seem to be beckoning,
so, as they continue their preparations,
it's time for me to leave Acton Court
and get back on the road.
I'm entering the final leg of my journey.
I now have to cover the last 10 miles southwest
and onto the culmination of the Royal progress.
This seaport was one of the major defensive outposts of the Queen's realm.
and it was the furthest west she would ever travel.
We're on our way to Bristol,
the most important stop of her summer holiday,
and there she had political business to attend to
and let the Spanish ambassador catch up with her.
Queen Elizabeth I finally arrived here on August 14 1574.
It had taken her and her baggage train a month
to travel the 156 miles from Windsor.
So, Her Majesty the Queen, Gloriana, is making her way
through the streets of Bristow, as it's known then.
She's accompanied the mayor, bare-headed,
carrying the sword of state, all the aldermen,
and 300 local soldiers
who, now and again, fire their guns into the air in celebration.
And everywhere she goes she's surprised by figures
who pop out and deliver poetic orations.
O, blessed be the hour, our Queen is coming to the town
with princely train and power...
These boys are from Bristol Grammar School,
founded on this site by her father, and visited in turn by Elizabeth.
All hail, O plant of grace and special sprout of fame...
The flattering verses are the actual words
written for her visit by Thomas Churchyard.
..England's hope is come to place these things in breast,
we dare not stay her longer here whose travel crave with rest...
With these ceremonies, and others like them,
the people of Bristol demonstrated to the Queen
that they were disciplined and worthy of her attention.
But her priority in this city was to carry out serious business
with the Spanish ambassador.
He had been brought here deliberately to witness
a three-day mock sea battle.
She wanted to show him the power of her Navy,
and the strength of Bristol in particular,
before signing that treaty
that would - temporarily - halt years of bad feeling
caused by English pirates raiding Spanish treasure ships.
It brought stability to the nation for a further 14 years,
until the famous defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Later, the celebrations continued.
In the evening, they all came back here to the great house.
Well, not here, in fact, because the great house was over here,
and this is the lodge, which is all that remained.
It belonged to John Young, and they had music and feasting
and dancing, and the Queen actually loved music.
A visitor came and said she kept the cadence,
not just with her hand and her foot, but her head, as well,
and she rebuked any maids who danced badly.
John Young gave her a big jewel, and she gave him a knighthood,
something we probably recognise from our own day -
cash for honours.
Queen Elizabeth I was a monarch who won the hearts of her people.
She did that by reaching out to them
and travelling her kingdom to meet her subjects face to face.
The Royal progress allowed her to enjoy herself,
but at the heart of the trips was a strong political purpose.
She was rallying support from her favoured courtiers
and, crucially, keeping an eye on potential troublemakers.
Our current Queen Elizabeth II will often make a grand tour
of her kingdom, especially in her Jubilee year,
and in doing so, she reflects a tradition that her namesake
popularised and refined 450 years ago.
But for Elizabeth I, there was an awful lot more at stake.
BAND PLAYS "Rule Britannia"
In 1574, all the pageantry
and the ceremony of a Royal progress
were designed to impress upon the Elizabethan people
that they had never had it so good,
that the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, was their salvation.
They even resurrected an ancient Roman goddess called Britannia
and invented the idea of Great Britain to support their cause.
For the first Queen Elizabeth,
a Royal tour was a lot more than tradition, colour and noise.
It was literally a matter of life and death.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd