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ssss1 Additional MSS. 15,391, fol. 1.

On 5 May, 1633, a proclamation was issued that King Charles was about to make a progress to Scotland. Rushworth (Hist. Collections, Part ii. p. 178) states that he left London on the 13th, that after visiting “Giddon near Stilton in Northamptonshire, which by the vulgar sort of people was called a Protestant nunnery,” he went to Welbeck, among other places, and that he “was treated there at a sumptuous feast, by the Earl (since Duke of Newcastle), estimated to stand the Earl in some thousands of pounds”.

Probably a very small part of this money was given to Ben Jonson for the Masque, “Love’s Welcome at Welbeck,” which Jonson’s friend, Newcastle, employed him in writing for the occasion.

Of this entertainment Clarendon says (Hist., Book i. pp. 78-9): “Both King and Court were received and entertained by the Earl of Newcastle, and at his own proper expense, in such a wonderful manner, and in such an excess of feasting, as had scarce ever been known in England, and would still be thought very prodigious, if the same noble person had not, within a year or two afterwards, made the King and Queen a more stupendous entertainment, which (God be thanked) though possibly it might too much whet the appetites of others to excess, no man ever in those days imitated”.