Courtiers in Early Modern England Courtiers in Early Modern England Author Hannah Lewis Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Hannah Lewis, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Courtiers Fashion Literature and the Arts Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529) Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. added public domain to figDesc. swapped the desc and figDescs to be correct. Fixed capitalization in source titles and added a gloss tag in the first paragraph. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Hannah Lewis Hannah Lewis

Hannah Lewis was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Courtier Standing by a Column by Adolphe-René Lefevre c. 1860. Graphite on laid paper. 8 ½ in. by 6 ¼ in. The Walters Museum. Public Domain.
Courtiers

The term courtier refers to the members in the monarch’s court; it is a loose term encompassing both the aristocracy and nobility, the very rich and famous, and those court officials, administrators, and even some upper servants. These attendees made their way into the court in a number of ways, such as inheriting a spot from a predecessor, paying for it with gold or labors on behalf of the monarch, or being gifted the spot by someone of a higher status.

But with a place in the monarch’s court came duty, strict rules, and the chance for significant rises and falls in fortune; some noble courtiers would work in the stables as Master of the Horse while other nobles worked in monarch’s private chambers helping with clothes or even toileting. Naturally, hundreds of servants worked the halls, kitchens, and gardens, along with other tasks around the court, although they were not considered courtiers.

At Hampton Court Palace during the reign of Henry VIII, upwards of 1,000 courtiers plus their many servants stuffed the palace rooms. Courtyards, hallways, gardens, and audience chambers were filled with people, all seeking advancement, pleasure, connection, influence, and wealth.

Access to Power

Courtiers both male and female primarily sought proximity to the monarch or the monarch’s inner circle. This level of connection is what conveyed importance and influence at the court. The higher a person’s status, the closer they got to the monarch and their private chambers in the palace. Some middle or lower ranking courtiers might only ever glimpse the monarch moving from private rooms or a chapel into larger, more public audience chambers.

To retain access to this power, courtiers had to please the monarch and the monarch’s inner circle of favorite nobles and advisors. Courtiers remained at court until the monarch gave them permission to depart. They were also expected to follow the court as it moved from palace to palace and even sometimes when visiting great houses throughout the nation. Courtiers followed the royals, and they had to bring their own servants. There was a practical reason why the court had to shift from place to place—the palaces needed cleaning (including the emptying of latrines) and food and livestock had to be replenished after the enormous meals required by the court.

Fashion

Courtiers were expected to maintain a certain level of etiquette at court. Their clothes and overall fashion had to conform with current style and trends, or else they were at risk of losing their rank in the court. Their appearance was as important as their personality and deeds. As it is stated in Thomas Hoby’s 1588 The Book of the Courtier, a translation of the 1528 Il Libro del Cortegiano by Count Baldassare Castiglione, Outward beauty is a true sign of inner goodness. Not only was it extremely important to know the current styles, but they changed often, and so it was difficult and very expensive for courtiers to keep up. Records indicate that a man’s suit of black doublet, hose, and sleeves for court could cost as much as a year’s rent on a modest home in London.

Etiquette

On top of a courtier’s rank, esteem, and influence being reliant on style and fashion, their body language and manners also required much conformity. When joining the court, they were given a set of rules that included specific terms and conditions such as how to sit correctly, what foot should be in front of the other when sitting, what women can and can’t do with men (including linking arms or hands), and even what they should enjoy doing in the court, such as forcing them to enjoy particular sports.

Even the dances they were to perform were expected to be perfect, a difficult task due to the dance steps being altered as often as fashionable garments. In short, courtiers led a highly regulated, expensive, and restrictive life. They had to be very aware of every action they performed, everything they wore, and everything they said when attending the court, or they may lose their good standing with the monarch. But the rewards were immense in terms of gaining wealth and influence.

Key Print Sources Castiglione, Baldassarre, and Thomas Hoby. The Book of the Courtier. Dent, 1974. Stump, Donald, and Susan M. Felch. Elizabeth I and Her Age: A Norton Critical Edition. W.W. Norton, 2009. Whitelock, Anna. The Queen’s Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court. Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. The Ideal Courtier. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/court%20life/courtier.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2018. Life at the Tudor Court. Historic Royal Palaces. https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/the-royal-court-in-the-tudor-period/. Accessed 23 Feb. 2023.
Image Source Lefevre, Adolphe-René. Courtier Standing by a Column. c. 1860. Graphite on laid paper. The Walters Museum. Creative Commons License. https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.1630/.