Jul 23

Rye Royal (and a sleepy Corporation?)


Two reports on:

“Rye Royal”
The Visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
August 11, 1573

 from Samuel Jeakes, Charters of the Cinque Ports  “wrote in 1678″

Queen Elizabeth, in 1573, who, from the noble entertainment she had, accompanied with the Testimonies of Love and Loyalty, Duty and Reverence she received from the People was pleased to call it “Rye Royal.”

from William Holloway, Rambles Through Rye  (1863)                                                                                        

. . . . . as we are close by let us turn our steps to that quiet sequestered hollow in which now lies the well known as Queen Elizabeth’s, overshadowed with those old oaks, the probable descendents of the primeval Forest of Anderida, a well, the existence of which has been recognised from A.D. 1247 to A.D. 1863, more than 600 years.

That Queen Elizabeth halted by this well* I will not dispute; but that she drank I do very much doubt as Her Majesty’s favourite morning beverage was the best ale she could procure.  Here probably she halted to receive the Mayor and Corporation, who came out to welcome Her Majesty. all clad in scarlet robes, from whence they conducted her to the town through the Postern Gate, then standing at the foot of Conduit Hill, on which occasion our good Queen Bess was so highly gratified with their loyal conduct, and their most royal appearance that she dubbed the old town “Rye Royal”.

The inscription on a stone at the head of the well is as follows:

1588
E.R.
M.Gaymer’Maior

But this is a mere ignis fatuus only calculated to lead the benighted traveller astray: for the Queen’s visit was on August 11, 1573, when John Donnyng was Mayor and the discrepancy we can onlybe  accounted  for by supposing that the Corporation conscience (if a Corporation has a conscience, which is doubtful, if it be true, as some affirm, that a Corporation has no body to be kicked, and no soul to be damned) after a slumber of 15 years, awoke to a sense of its error, when they thought they might as well kill two birds with one stone, and at one and same time, and so recorded the Queen’s visit to the well and the destruction of the Spanish Armada, A.D. 1588.