Woman Should Appreciate Chivalry

Queen Elizabeth I and Chivalry

Kipling, Gordon. The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance.

Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1977.

Kipling sets out to “modify Huizinga’s concept”  of the fifteenth century Burgundy culture, which, according to Huizinga was in a state of decline and to “explore the impact of Burgundian culture on Tudor England (2). The English adoption of the Burgundian model signified a dawning rather than a decline. Kipling uses Richmond Palace, which began its construction in 1497, under Henry VII. Kipling argues that the Burgundian influence is dominate in the construction of Richmond from its windows to the Royal Library. Beginning with Edward IV’s interest in Burgundian literature, Kipling demonstrates the increasing romanticization of chivalry in Tudor England, culminating in Henry VII’s quest to identify and establish the Tudor dynasty as the finest in Europe, or at least ranking among the best. Kipling closes with Elizabeth I’s romatic jousts celebrating her as Queen and the literature reflecting Burgundian influence like Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queen. Kipling achieves his purpose, illustrating the death of a martial form of chivalry and the birth of a romantic chivalry that was one confined only to romances, as represented by Henry VII’s Burgundian romantic jousts and pageants and Elizabeth’s Ascension Day Tilts.

Chivalry’s shifting identity during Henry VII’s reign found solid, even if uneasy, footing in Elizabeth’s reign. It acted as a means of maintain a balance between nobles and the monarch with Elizabeth as the ultimate deciding authority. Kipling’s analysis of a modifying English chivalry influenced by Burgundian chivalric displays, allows the increasing romance of chivalry to take center stage in Elizabeth’s court. However, this also highlights the expiration of the chivalry developed in the Middle Ages where the knight was loyal to chivalry. Now the knight is supposed to be loyal to their monarch, but the growing desire to display individual glory, like the Earl of Essex, increased throughout Elizabeth’s reign.

McCoy, R.C. “‘A dangerous image’: the Earl of Essex and Elizabethan Chivalry,”

Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13 (1983): 313–29. 

This article examines the role of chivalry in the Elizabethan Court of the 1590s, focusing exclusively on Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex. Essex was Elizabeth’s “most troublesome favorite” as McCoy states, and his quest for power and to display that power caused a great degree of friction between him and the Queen (313). McCoy argues that through his actions, Essex and his followers “disrupted the court’s factional balance” because they were not satisfied with simply having power or just chivalric display, rather they sought to display their power through chivalric display without as much homage paid to Elizabeth. McCoy examines Essex’s martial career and his rise to favor in the court, while emphasizing Essex’s need to show off his skills and achievements. By examining this, McCoy also shows the dual purpose of chivalric ceremony at the Elizabethan Court. Chivalric ceremony, especially the Accession Day Tilts, allowed nobles to “flaunt” their power before an audience showing the audience the influence they carried and at the same time demonstrating their loyalty to the queen (320). However, by the 1590s, participating in the Accession Day Tilts was less about the Queen and more about the personal glory that can be achieved in a martial contest. McCoy uses Francis Bacon’s Accession Day Tilt from 1595 to support this argument and show how the dual purpose of chivalric ceremony tried and by the 1590s failed, to keep the nobles and the Queen content. McCoy concludes that Essex’s action against Elizabeth in his attempted coup of 1601, deeply damaged the “complex court system of political and ceremonial equilibrium” that Elizabeth and her supports had so carefully constructed, but Essex’s need to hold power and to display his power disrupted the court’s usually smooth sailing (329). Essex’s attempted coup also “forc[ed] Elizabeth to fall back on…Robert Cecil”  thereby establishing a must distained aspect of the Stuart court, “a single chief minister” like Cecil or later Buckingham and Strafford”  for the Stuarts (327).

McCoy supports his argument with letters and memoirs from people who either witnessed or participated in the tilts, Bacon’s work, and many secondary sources like Roy Strong’s works. In the fifth footnote, McCoy states his “indebtedness” to Strong’s work on chivalry in the Elizabethan court, but McCoy follows this by stating he is “trying to correct an overemphasis on chivalry’s value to the monarch” as seen in Strong’s earlier works (314). McCoy argues that “the persistence of feudal aggression” and the significance of honor and martial displays to the nobility, particularly Essex, proved “dangerously subversive” to Elizabeth’s carefully balanced court structure (314).

Essex is a wonderful example of the new generation that began taking power in Elizabeth’s court in the 1580s and 90s. Keeping balance and the Queen as the superior authority did not mean as much to the younger nobility, rather it was testing, proving, and displaying their martial prowess and politically influence that meant more to their personal agenda’s than flattering an old Queen. Walter Ralegn can be placed in much the same category as Essex. He wanted personal honor and glory for discovering and conquering new lands, but needed the patronage of the Crown to achieve his ends. However, paying homage to the Queen, false or otherwise, did not stop Ralegh from crossing her, like his under the radar marriage to one of Elizabeth’s ladies. Moreover, the showmanship of chivalric exercises worked its magic since they forced Ralegh and others in the 1580s to kneel before the Queen and show their achievements as gifts for the Queen.

Yates, Frances A. “Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the Accession Day Tilts,” Journal of

the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20, No. 1/2 (1957), pp. 4-25.

Yates begins the article by retelling the story of knights from Iberia as described by Sir Philip Sidney in his work Arcadia. Yates states that information about the Accession Day Tilts is limited, but through many eyewitness accounts, Sidney’s and Spencer’s works, and many secondary sources regarding Sidney and Spencer’s works and Elizabeth’s pageantry, she shows that the tilts “enact[ing the] romance of chivalry exercised a very potent influence on the Elizabethan imagery” (4). The costumes some knights appeared in for the tilts were not only meant to represent them as good and brave knights, but to also show their support of the Queen, since the tilts were in honor of her ascent to the throne. Yates examines the 1581 and 1584 tilts and their imagery, Sir Henry Lee’s Woodstock entertainment of 1575, his retirement tilt in 1590, and Lee’s Ditchley Entertainment of 1592 when the Queen came on a visit. Yates uses these entertainments and tilts to show how chivalric imagery was deeply rooted in Elizabeth’s own imagery. The Ascension Day Tilts “glorified the Queen as a romantic heroine,” which Yates states was an extension of the Order of the Garter’s own glorification of Elizabeth (23). To support the argument, Yates utilized many contemporary Elizabethan literary texts, such as Sidney’s Arcadia and the Fairae Queen, along records from Elias Ashmole and other accounts from those who witnessed the grandeur of these tilts, and many secondary sources including works by Roy Strong.

By explaining how imagery in the tilts helped influence Elizabethan imagery, Yate’s work helps to show that it is no small coincidence that exploration took on the same chivalric imagery promoted in the tilts. The knights in the tilts fought not only for the honor or their Queen, but also to show themselves as great and powerful men in England. Explorers, like Sir Walter Ralegh, treated their quests not as mere voyages seeking new land, but as hazardous, testing journeys of discovery and conquest that promoted themselves and by extension the Queen.