Episode 202 of the Renaissance English History Podcast was on the Great Northern Progress.
This episode of the Renaissance English History Podcast explores the grand 1541 “Great Progress” of Henry VIII and his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, a monumental journey that combined royal display, diplomacy, and political theater. Heather discusses the context of the progress, set against a backdrop of religious upheaval, political tensions, and Henry’s efforts to assert his power and authority in the north of England following the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion.
Key highlights include the journey’s careful planning, logistical challenges, and its significant stops, such as York, Lincoln, and Grimsthorpe Castle. Alongside tales of lavish feasts and intricate court rituals, Heather delves into the personal and political drama that unfolded, including Catherine Howard’s ill-fated secret meetings, the diplomatic failure of James V’s absence, and the ultimate collapse of Henry and Catherine’s marriage.
The episode also examines the broader cultural and historical impacts of royal progresses, from their role in reinforcing monarchical authority to their influence on art, literature, and public perception of the Tudor court.
A very rough transcript on Episode 202: The Great Northern Progress
 Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I am your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
So it is summer when people tend to want to get away on vacation, maybe a holiday at the beach. Or a road trip to a national park. Henry VIII, same. He wanted to get out of London and get away from it all, often because, you know, there was plague in the city, but sometimes he just wanted to go around and see his country and tour his country and have his people see him.
So in 1541, he took his lovely bride, Catherine Howard, and got far away, farther than any progress in the previous 50 years, in fact. And he went to York. Before we get started, though, your reminder about TutorCon. It’s getting closer. So, I’m going to cut off ticket sales for in person tickets on August 8th, which is a month before him.
So, if you want to come in person, you don’t have that much longer, a couple weeks. And, um, Then, of course, streaming tickets will be available. There’s no limit on that. So you can get your streaming ticket whenever. So, TutorCon, in case you’ve been under a rock and missed it, three days, September 8th through 10th, of learning from leading tutor experts, feasting new friendships in beautiful Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, next to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair.
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com slash TudorCon online for the streaming ticket. All right, let us talk about the great progress of 1541. This was a monumental journey that showcased the power, wealth, and influence of the Tudor dynasty. Let’s get into it. To understand the great progress, we need to travel back to the early 16th century.
A time when Henry VIII was at the height of his power. It’s 1541, three decades into Henry’s reign. The infamous break with Rome has already occurred. Church of England has been established with Henry at its head. England is in the throes of religious upheaval and the political landscape is charged with tension.
Henry is married to his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. She’s much younger than him. She was bringing back some youthfulness and vigor to the aging monarch. It was, you know, kind of his trying to return to his youth, but of course the shadows of past relationships, particularly his marriage to Anne Boleyn, which only ended five years before, still hang heavy in the air.
Internationally, England is in a complex dance with other major powers of Europe. Relations with France are fragile, Holy Roman Empire is always a potential threat and tensions are mounting with Scotland. It’s a delicate balance of power that Henry has to maintain. Amid all of this, Henry decides to embark on a grand tour of his kingdom known as the Great Progress.
The primary goal? To display his wealth, his power, his religious authority to his subjects in the north and his potential allies to reaffirm his status as a monarch of significant stature. Both at home and abroad, this isn’t just a royal road trip, it’s a carefully crafted piece of political theatre.
Another crucial motivation for this particular progress is Henry’s planned meeting with James V of Scotland in York. The intention was to strengthen ties and reduce the simmering tensions with the Scottish Kingdom. This face to face meeting with his nephew was significant, a rare opportunity for diplomacy in a personal, hands on manner that was the trademark of Henry’s reign.
The Great Progress was designed to serve as a potent symbol of Henry’s sovereignty, grandeur, and the might of the Tudor dynasty. It was a strategic move coming just a few years after the Pilgrimage of Grace, a master stroke of public relations, diplomacy, and power projection. Keep in mind, of course, Henry wasn’t traveling alone.
His entourage was a veritable moving city consisting of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of individuals. Nobles, clerks, cooks, servants, soldiers, and horsemen. Each had a role to play in ensuring the progress functioned smoothly. Preparations for such an expedition would have begun months in advance.
Supplies needed to be amassed to sustain the royal party on their journey. This included food, which would have been elaborate, of course. An array of meats, fish, bread, fruits, spices, along with copious amounts of ale and wine. Apparently his servants were running around London buying all of the flour and all of the supplies they could in the weeks leading up to the great progress itself, leading actually to a little bit of shortages as well because they were trying to get everything ramped up.
The logistics of transporting and preserving these provisions for the several month journey as well was going to be a challenge. Accommodations needed to be planned and prepared at each stop along the route. Henry and his court were often hosted by nobles in their manor houses. Of course, the visits weren’t just an honor for the hosts.
They were also a significant financial and logistical burden. Nobles were expected to entertain the king and his entourage, often draining their resources. When the monarch would come visit, often nobles had to borrow things from each other. Um, things like plate and bedding and all of that kind of thing.
So you would see sometimes before a noble was coming to visit, the moving plate going around from one noble household to another. people lending each other what they had to accommodate the monarch. Also, it was sleeping arrangements, not just for Henry, but for the whole progress. So while Henry got a nice, comfortable bed in the manor house, the progress itself, the rest of the people, the lowly peons had to just make do wherever they could, you know, on the ground, finding grass and things like that.
But you had to go to a place that had enough land to be able to have all of those people as well. Security was another key aspect of the preparations. Given the size of the royal party, potential threats along the route, and the importance of the king, arrangements for protection were paramount. Soldiers, guards, local law enforcement would have been coordinated to secure each leg of the journey.
The soldiers accompanying this progress were actually three times larger than what would accompany any previous normal progress in the past. Last but not least, the progress needed to maintain a semblance of normal court life. This meant transporting not just people and supplies, but also the accoutrements of the royal court, including furniture, tapestries, silverware, even the king’s personal library.
The aim was to create a traveling mirror of the court to ensure that royal business and pleasure could continue unabated. In essence, preparing for the great progress was a monumental task that involved the effort of countless individuals. This grand journey was carefully choreographed to display royal power and prestige.
And it was a significant undertaking that spoke volumes about the nature of Tudor monarchy. So on June 30th, 1541, Henry embarked on what would be the most significant progress of his reign. The journey was not only a display of royal magnificence, but also a show of power following the Pilgrimage of Grace, the widespread rebellion from 1536 to 1537 that had threatened his rule.
Accompanied by his Queen Catherine and his daughter Mary, most of his counsellors, and numerous courtiers, the journey began. The progress largely followed the modern routes of the M1 and the Great North Road, old Roman roads leading to Lincoln and York. On July 7th, the party was in Dunstable, the same place where, just eight years earlier, Henry’s marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been annulled.
From Dunstable, the progress moved towards Grafton in Northamptonshire. Grafton was the childhood home of Henry’s grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, and it had since become royal property. And Henry had built a house there. The royal party indulged in some hunting, and then they moved to Colley Weston in the Welland Valley, a palace built by Henry’s other grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort.
It was here that Henry’s sister Margaret had bid farewell to her father, Henry VII, before embarking on her journey to become the Queen of Scots so many years earlier. What, close to 40 years earlier. The palace was later occupied by Henry’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, and eventually it was assigned to his daughter, Elizabeth, after his death.
Then the progress moved on to Grimsthorpe Castle, which was then the residence of Charles Brandon, Henry’s BFF. Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Catherine Willoughby. After three days in Grimsthorpe, the procession moved north to Lincoln, which was a center of the Pilgrimage of Grace Rebellion. Here, Henry stayed at the Bishop’s Palace, which was part of the cathedral complex of Lincoln.
The cathedral itself, was begun in 1072, and it had seen a fire and an earthquake. It had gone through a lot during its then almost 500 year history. Despite these challenges, the building continued to expand and evolved over the previous 200 years. The Bishop’s Palace, which was where Catherine was staying, had been modernized in the 1430s.
That sounds funny to think about something being modernized in the 1430s, but you know, it was updated a little bit. And Lincoln itself was a place of pilgrimage, with shrines dedicated to Bishop St. Hugh and Little Hugh of Lincoln. However, the journey wasn’t solely filled with royal duties and ceremonial stops.
It was while in Lincoln that Catherine’s lady in waiting, Lady Rochford, managed to arrange secret meetings between Catherine, And a young man from the king’s privy chamber. This courtly intrigue would unfold against the backdrop of the city recovering from rebellion and a court on the journey through the realm.
After Lincoln, the royal couple found themselves at Gainsborough Hall, which was the property of Sir Thomas Burr. A reformer and once member of Queen Anne Boleyn’s household, he is in high favor with the king. But, of course, he does not know that within two years, his former daughter in law, Catherine Parr, will replace Catherine, the current Catherine, Queen Catherine Howard, at Henry’s side as a new Queen Catherine.
Then, the royal party crossed the Humber into Yorkshire, indulging in a large scale hunt at Hatfield Chase. Before reaching Pontifract Castle on the 23rd of August. The immense fortress with a history soaked in treachery and rebellion was once a stronghold that fell to rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Pontifract Castle was where Catherine Howard found herself entertaining a secret guest after the king had retired. Her former flame, Francis Derham, reappears. into her life, a blast from the past coercing her into taking him into her household. This, of course, would have been an ominous foreshadowing of turbulent times to come.
Then the royal progress reached its final destination, York. The city, once thriving, the major city in the north, had been suffering a slow economic decline. The king and queen’s arrival was marked by a spectacle with local notables. Forced to grovel in front of Henry to appease his resentment over their part in the pilgrimage.
They also apparently ordered people to throw ashes and sawdust on the ground to make Henry’s trip easier and a lot of people actually were not happy about it and didn’t participate. There was still a lot of resentment. The royal party settled into the King’s Manor, previously the Abbot’s Lodging, in the recently dissolved St.
Mary’s Abbey. Now it became the seat of the Council of the North, which remained so until the council’s disbanding just before the Civil War. Despite all of the careful planning, the best laid plans of kings often go awry, and James V, maybe fearing a trap or seeking to assert his own power, did not show up for the meeting with his uncle.
This snub was a significant diplomatic insult and did not sit well with Henry one can imagine. Imagine Henry’s reaction waiting as a guest in his city of York. waiting in the palace, all prepared for this splendid and crucial rendezvous, only to be stood up. Such a flagrant slight would have been deeply embarrassing, even infuriating, and it was a sign of the strained and very complex relationship between England and Scotland.
Which is something that honestly continued, and still continues today, actually. In the first week of October, so they’ve been gone for about three months, the journey south began, retracing their route north. They arrived back at Windsor Castle, and then they moved on to Hampton Court. And Hampton Court, We’ll soon become the fatal setting for Catherine as the shocking allegations against her arise.
On November 1st, so they’re, they’ve just barely been back, Thomas Cranmer left a letter in the King’s pew in the Chapel Royal holding shocking allegations about Catherine’s past, marking the beginning of the end for her reign as Queen. And, of course, then what happened to Catherine is another story. The royal progress of Henry VIII and Catherine Howard left a profound cultural footprint on England.
It was a meticulously orchestrated journey. It was designed not just for governance, but also as a grand spectacle of the monarchy’s power and prestige and prosperity. The progress influenced various facets of art, literature, and popular culture. You know, the thing about these progresses that I always find so interesting is most people didn’t really know what their king, what their monarch looked like.
You know, like we all kind of know what Joe Biden looks like, right? We all kind of know what all of these different world leaders look like. We’re so used to seeing them, but people wouldn’t necessarily have been able to recognize Henry, their king, if they bumped into him. In fact, there are plenty of stories where Henry.
He would go walking around London in disguise, um, especially when he was younger, and people wouldn’t even be able to tell. So these progresses were important, not just to show the power of the court and, you know, kind of awe people. People would hear stories about the court, but it wasn’t until you saw it in person.
And there’s a scene in the final season, I think, of the Tudors showing the great progress, uh, where Henry is writing and, you know, it, it shows. These people coming from the fields to stand and watch and, and Henry, you know, kind of looks at them and waves a little bit and he said something like, you see the people, people love their king.
And, um, it’s, it’s just such a, a kind of moving thing to think that these were opportunities for people to see their king in real life, for people to see what their king looked like, for people to see the court. Because they couldn’t see videos, they couldn’t see, um, pictures and photos. So this would have been the time for them to see it, and this would have been the time for Henry to show off his court and to show off just how he wanted people to see him, you know?
Also, of course, the progress would inspire the creation of paintings, tapestries, sculptures, depicting the king and queen in various sites visited. They showcase the affluence and dominance of the monarchy. The royal progress also serves as a rich source for materials for historical narratives, plays, and poetry.
The drama, intrigue, and romance woven into the progress. spurred many works that detailed the king’s journey and the life of Catherine Howard. It highlighted the intricacies of courtly life, which later became a mainstay in English literature. Also, the progress shaped an image of an accessible monarchy, creating a more relatable royal persona.
The royal progress had an impact on how the monarchy was perceived and its relationship with local communities. For many subjects, like I said, this was their first and perhaps only ever direct encounter with the king, providing a personal connection that enhanced loyalty and strengthened the monarchy’s image.
The progress also impacted local economies and infrastructures of the regions visited. Local lords were compelled to renovate estates and accommodate the royal party, often resulting in improved local facilities, but it also cost a lot, so it would be financially a strain on them. The one thing, though, of course, diplomatically, it didn’t work the way Henry wanted because he didn’t get to see James V, and that was a very embarrassing snub to him.
Of course, it’s also remembered as being the trip during which Catherine arranged her secret meetings. So, You know, it’s, it’s kind of a double edged sword. It was, it was a powerful show of majesty and grandeur, and the court, uh, it’s also probably Henry would remember it as being a pretty miserable occasion.
It would also, Henry might remember it as being a failure because his marriage fell apart and he didn’t achieve the main thing he wanted to achieve, and, you know, there would eventually be war with Scotland and going on the rough wooing, which I think we’ve talked about before, and if not, we will talk about in the future.
So there we have it, a little chat about Henry VIII’s great progress and his own summer holiday. For now, we’re going to stop it here. You can hop into the Tutor Learning Circle at TutorLearningCircle. com to discuss this and all things tutor. Remember to check out the Tudor Con streaming tickets@englandcast.com slash tudor Con online or uh, england cast.com/tutor con for the regular in-person tickets.
And one other note, we talked about York patrons this past week got a mini cast on Tudor York, a tour oft York, and this coming week they’re going to get a mini cast on the Mary Rose. So if you would like extra episodes, extra goodies, extra stuff. And want to support this podcast and join the dozens of other people who are already supporting it.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
