Henry on Tour: Landscapes, Communities, and Performance

Henry on Tour: Landscapes, Communities, and Performance

Henry VIII on Tour is a major three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which began in November 2022 and runs until October 2025. The project brings together a cross-disciplinary team to reconceptualise Henry VIII's progresses through studying archival sources, architecture, music, and material culture. By mapping all known progress venues and identifying changes throughout Henry’s reign, the project will establish the first full itinerary for Henry VIII, significantly enhancing historians' understanding of royal progresses and their impact on 16th century political and religious culture. Part of this project also involves reassessing the role and agency of Henry’s queens on royal journeys and recreating their own itineraries wherever possible. Overall, the project explores the hidden histories of understudied groups and communities and demonstrates how progresses themselves fostered the circulation of ideas, news, skills, architectural styles, and music across England.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    New Perspectives on Henry VIII's Progresses
    (2026-06-17)
    Musson, Anthony
    The Introduction to this Special Issue highlights how Henry VIII's progresses deserve renewed attention. It reveals the specific topics and themes that the interdisciplinary group of scholars connected with the Henry VIII on Tour: Landscapes, Communities and Performance project (2022-6) will be discussing in the course of their articles and shows how new perspectives on the nature and significance of the king's journeys around his kingdom have been garnered.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    Kingless Progresses: Locating Authority in the Regencies of Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr
    (2026-06-17)
    Wright, Kirsty
    During Henry VIII’s French campaigns in 1513 and 1544 he appointed his wife, first Katherine of Aragon and later Katherine Parr, regent in his absence. Both queens were empowered to rule in the king’s stead, and both queens made use of their temporary powers. They issued orders, travelled between royal properties, and met with their councils. Yet, there has been little sustained comparison of the two regencies and where they have been compared, historians have sometimes anachronistically pitted the two queens against each other. This article uses the concept of “kingless progresses” to explore how both queens exercised monarchical authority through travel, governance, and performance in the king’s absence. Drawing together letters, state papers, financial accounts, and literary material, the article situates their regencies within the broader institutional framework of Tudor government and the gendered expectations of queenship. It argues that progress remained a tool of personal monarchy even in the king’s absence. By reconstructing their itineraries, the article reveals how each queen adapted the tools of queenship to distinct circumstances, and it reframes regency as an active extension of royal power.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    Henry VIII on Tour: Keeping the Show on the Road
    (2026-06-17)
    Musson, Anthony
    Henry VIII’s royal progresses were not all about the whims and pursuits of the royal couple and their courtiers. It is also worth studying the people who made them possible. Progresses were extremely complex enterprises, usually involving hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, affecting the lives of numerous hidden heroes and heroines: the household servants, musicians, carpenters, tailors, stable hands, and carters, among many others. Equally important were the harbingers, purveyors, and messengers who prepared the way. Fleeting glimpses of these vital cogs in the smooth running of the progress come from the royal warrants for payment and surviving expense accounts. Through the analysis of key elements in the logistics of progresses, such as the locations visited, provisioning, repair and preparation of lodgings, transportation, and dress, their vital contribution is evaluated using examples from throughout Henry’s reign. Ensuring the success of royal journeys was an enormous challenge, one that these unsung actors generally rose to. Yet, Henry’s progresses were never entirely straight forward and for all the organisation and intricate preparations, his officials and servants often experienced a high level of unpredictability and uncertainty when on the road. This arose not just by chance or accident, but also by design when the king decided to depart from existing plans. An ability to pivot and provide alternative arrangements at short notice, making even hasty changes of plan work smoothly is testament to the professionalism and dedication of Henry’s household officials.
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    Item type:Book,
    Royal Journeys in Early Modern Europe
    (2022-11-22)
    Musson, Anthony
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    Cooper, J. P. D.
    Authored by a unique combination of university academics and heritage professionals, this book offers new perspectives on journeys made by Henry VIII and other monarchs, their political and social impact and the logistics required in undertaking such trips. It explores the performance of kingship and queenship by iterant monarchs, investigating how, by a variety of means, they engaged and interacted wth their subjects, and the practical and symbolic functions associated with these activities. Moving beyond the purely English experience, it provides a European dimension by comparing progresses in England and France. Royal marriage and the royal progress share common features which are considered through an analysis of the trans-European journeys made by future spouses, notably Anne of Cleves. Also, the book reveals the significance of the art and architecture of houses and palaces, and how the celebrated meeting of English and French kings at hte Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 was part of a wider diplomatic performance full of symbolism including the exchange of gifts and socialising between the two royal courts.
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