The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625-1642

The first study to explore the progresses of Charles I offering a full account of the king's travels. Throwing new light on Charles' accessibility to his subjects, Keenan argues that he was not as distanced as has often been argued, but was well aware of the importance of public ceremony and more widely travelled than his ancestors.

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The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625-1642 is the first study to focus on the history, and the political and cultural significance, of the travels and public profile of Charles I. As well as offering a much fuller account of the king's progresses and Caroline progress entertainments than currently exists, this volumes throws fresh light on the question of Charles I's accessibility to his subjects and their concerns, and the part that this may, or may not, have played in the political conflicts which culminated in the English civil wars and Charles's overthrow.

Drawing on extensive archival research, the history opens with an introduction to the early modern culture of royal progresses and public ceremonial as inherited and practiced by Charles I. Part I explores the question of the king's accessibility further through case studies of Charles's three 'great' progresses in 1633, 1634, and 1636. Part II turns attention to royal public ceremonial culture in Caroline London, focusing on Charles's spectacular royal entry to the city on 25 November 1641. More widely travelled than his ancestors, Progresses reveals a monarch who was only too well aware of the value of public ceremonial and who did not eschew it, even if he was not always willing to engage in ceremonial dialogue with his subjects or able to deploy the propaganda power of public display as successfully as his Tudor and Stuart predecessors.