ABSTRACT
The periodic movement of the monarch and the royal household is key to understanding and explaining political relationships in the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts. The royal itineraries and the interaction of people and places presented perennial problems of finance and logistics. This chapter provides an overview of the period 1485–1703 to demonstrate the main themes. There was a balance of necessity between the monarch’s use of their own residences and the time spent with courtiers or in ecclesiastical accommodation. Architecture was a significant marker of status, and there is evidence of a conscious imitation by courtiers of the sequences of rooms and spaces familiar in royal palaces in the designs adopted in the houses that the monarch visited. The complementary and overlapping journeys of the royal family were as significant as the monarch’s but are frequently neglected. Royal itineraries also had an influence not only on the economy of towns but also on the aristocratic geography of England, delineating where they bought town houses and built their country houses. The sovereign’s itinerant presence in the regions therefore had a long-lasting effect on both the English landscape and the urban growth.
