But the abuses of purveyance, which included the impressment of vehicles by the royal cart-takers, cannot have borne very heavily upon districts rarely visited, although the home counties, which were more often traversed and contained standing houses, had no doubt their grievances.[398]
The Hicks correspondence suggests that, even in 1597, the household was still prepared to provision itself, at any rate in the smaller private houses. But there is a good deal of evidence to show that, where persons of wealth were concerned, a different practice grew up. A visit to Gorhambury in 1577 cost Sir Nicolas Bacon £577.[399] Parker's son recorded that his father's entertainment of the Queen at Canterbury and other houses, with his gifts to her and the lords and ladies, cost him above £2,000, and that in addition he spent £170 at Canterbury in rewards to the officers of the household.[400] Burghley's domestic biographer tells us that the twelve visits to Theobalds cost him 'two or three thousand pounds every tyme', which sufficiently explains why his adherents were not particularly anxious for a visit in 1597.[401] Parker had to find many nights' lodging, as the Queen passed up and down stream, and at Canterbury Elizabeth is known to have occupied a house of her own. But Burghley's heavy expenditure must surely have covered more than the mere gifts and the spectacular side of his entertainments. A visit to the Marquis of Winchester in 1601 was 'with more charge than the constitution of Basing may well bear'.[402] For that to Harefield in 1602 the bills are preserved, and amount to £2,013 18_s._ 4_d._, of which £1,255 12_s._ 0_d._ was apparently for provisions, £199 9_s._ 11_d._ for temporary buildings, and the balance presumably for gifts, spectacles, and the like. There is no indication of any repayments by the royal Cofferer, although Sir Thomas Egerton's friends came nobly to his assistance, and sent in innumerable presents, including no less than eighty-six stags and bucks, eleven oxen, sixty-five sheep, and forty-one sugar-loaves, as well as birds, fish, oysters, Selsea cockles, cheese-cakes, sweetmeats, wine, wheat, and salt.[403] Finally we have the definite statement of the French ambassador La Mothe Fénelon in 1575, that at Kenilworth Leicester 'a deffrayé toute la court a cent soixante platz d'assiette, l'espace de douze jours'.[404] And we have that of the Venetian ambassador Foscarini in 1612, that 'his Majesty's charges are borne by the owners of the houses where he lodges'. Foscarini had accompanied the progress to Belvoir, and was much struck with the large numbers, more than a thousand, who were housed there, and with the costly style in which things were done, 'far exceeding that of the court when in London or a neighbouring palace'. He found personally, as others have found since his day, that visiting was much more expensive than staying at home, on account of the largesse expected.[405] I am inclined to think that we have come here upon a point of honour, and that, while it was not in theory incumbent upon a poor man to feed as well as lodge his mistress, it gradually became customary for rich men to give a special proof of their devotion by omitting to claim the recoupment to which they were strictly entitled. And if this was so, of course in the long run the poor men had to follow suit. Sir William Clarke in 1602 was counted a churl, for he 'neither gives meat nor money to any of the progressors. The house Her Majesty has at commandment, and his grass the guard's horses eat, and this is all.'[406] The right to occupy the house of a subject was indeed a matter of feudal tradition. All manors were ultimately held of the Crown. We find Elizabeth dating from 'our manor of Cheneys' in 1570, although Chenies had long been in the hands of the Russells; and it was an _obiter dictum_ of Lord Northampton in a Star Chamber case of 1606 that 'the kinge by his prerogative may take vp any howse in his progres'.[407]