Earl de la Warr at Knole Park, Kent . For a comprehensive chart of information about the King's Men, see Murray i, opp . 172 ; see also Chambers, n, 219. 15 Murray, 1, 155. 16 Malone Society, Collections vii (1965), 18. 17 R.A. Foakes and R .T. Rickert (eds), Henslowe's Diary (Cambridge, 1961), 194 . 18 Marjorie Cox, A History ofSirJohn Deane's Grammar School, Northwich (Manchester, 1975), 59. 19 Chester, 306 . 20 Chester, 398 . 21 Chester, 418 . 22 Murray, n, 87. 23 For an account of this book and the Duttons' household entertainments, see David Mills' article in REEDN, Vol 11, No 1 (1986), 1-7 . 24 Herbert Hughes, Cheshire and Its Welsh Border (London, 1966), 72. 25 Sally-Beth MacLean, `Players on Tour : New Evidence from Records of Early English Drama' in The Elizabethan Theatre, x (Port Credit, Ontario, 1983), 66. W. G . COOKE Queen Elizabeth never slept here : Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos, as an authority for royal progresses Cassandra Brydges (1670-1735), Duchess of Chandos, was the daughter of Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, Notts, and Middleton, Warws, and sister of Thomas Willoughby, first Baron Middleton .1 She compiled (in John Coldewey's words) a'lively and personal' manuscript history of her father's family (Nottingham University Library : MSS Ml LM 26 & 27), based on an extensive collection of family papers, not all of which have survived . This has provided some useful references for Professor John Coldewey's REED collection for Nottinghamshire, now in progress . It also appears, at a first reading, to be a valuable source for reconstructing the movements of Elizabeth i and James i on progress ; but research done as part of the checking process for Professor Coldewey's collection has shown that in these matters Cassandra's history must be used with caution . In the reigns of Elizabeth and James, as in Cassandra's own time, the Willoughbys owned two main houses : Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire and Middleton Hall in Warwickshire. The head of the family in Elizabeth's time was Sir Francis, who is famous today chiefly as one of the early entrepreneurs of coal-mining and as the builder of Wollaton Hall, one of the grandest Elizabethan country houses extant . There, according to Cassandra, he entertained Elizabeth in 1575; and as evidence she cites a letter from Sir Francis Knollys, vice-chamberlain of the Queen's household : I shall here Copy a Letter from Sir Francis Knolls to Sir Francis Willughby to give him Notice of the Queens coming to Wollaton/ Letter Her Majesty is determined to Tary two days at your House that is to say tomorrow Night & Thursday all day, whereof I thought good to advertise you betimes/ wherefore I think it best for you not to defray her Majesty, but 18 rather y` you should give her some good present of Beefs & Muttons, & to keep I a good Table your self in some place, if you have any convenient Room for it, two Messe of Meat/ but do herein as you shall think best, but you had need to consider how yourProvision of drink &c may hold out/ this Tuesday y` 20th of Iuly 1575/ Your Loving Friend Francis Knolls/2 There are two reasons for suspecting this letter . First, 20 July 1575 was a Wednesday, not a Tuesday. Second, a visit to Wollaton does not match Elizabeth's movements during that week, which are known in detail : this was the time of Leicester's famous entertainment at Kenilworth, of which Robert Laneham, `a freend officer attendant in the Court', wrote the eyewitness account, printed the same year, that Scott used as his main source for his novel .' This account establishes that Elizabeth arrived at Kenilworth on Saturday 9 July and stayed there nineteen days, ie, until Wednesday the 27th . She had indeed meant to make an excursion on Wednesday the 20th, but only to her own manor of 'Wedgenall' (ie, Wedgnock Park), a mere three miles away, for supper ; and even this outing was in fact prevented by bad weather .' There is clearly no room in this itinerary for a journey to Wollaton Hall, fifty miles away . Is the letter then a forgery? Forged letters do survive from the eighteenth or nineteenth century endowing aristocratic families with royal connections that cannot be borne out ;` but the spelling of this document appears authentic, and the phrasing seems too characteristically Elizabethan to have been fabricated by Cassandra . The most obvious as well as the most charitable explanation is that she copied a genuine letter but got the date wrong. Did she mistranscribe `1573' as `1575'? That would have been an easy mistake for someone of her generation reading an Elizabethan hand ; but in 1573, 20 July was a Monday, and Elizabeth was then in the southeast, not the northeast Midlands . aWhat is quite plausible, however, is that `20` h' is Cassandra's misreading for'26` h' in Knollys's original letter ; for 26 July 1575 was indeed a Tuesday, and as we have seen, Elizabeth did leave Kenilworth the next morning. Even when thus emended, though, Knollys's letter cannot attest to a visit by Elizabeth to Wollaton Hall . For on Saturday the 30th she arrived in Lichfield, some thirty miles north-northwest of Kenilworth .' The notion that she chose to go fifty miles out of her way to Wollaton in Notts, and back again, will not commend itself to anyone who knows what travelling in England must have been like in 1575. Besides, although Willoughby did then possess former monastic lands and buildings at Wollaton, the present Hall, fit to entertain a queen, did not then exist there ; it was not begun until 1580, nor completed until 1588 . s What is very easy to credit, however, is that Elizabeth spent Wednesday and Thursday, July 27 and 28, at Sir Francis Willoughby's other house, which in 1575 must still have been his chief seat, namely Middleton Hall . Standing just off the main road about two thirds of the way along the queen's route, that was an eminently sensible place to break the journey . Cassandra, then, has preserved a genuine letter by Knollys, but has mistranscribed its date ; and her assumption that `your House' refers to Wollaton Hall was a mistake . When she came to the reign of James i, she seems to have made the opposite mistake, and also confounded two distinct occasions . According to her, `There is an Account of Sir Percivall Willoughby's Entertaining King James y`first at Middleton Hall, & y` he was there knighted by y` King Anno Domini 1603/'.9 But James never went near Middleton Hall in 1603 . Sir Robert Carey reached Edinburgh with the news of Elizabeth's death on 26 March . James set out for London on 5 April and arrived on 7 May, going by way of York, Doncaster, Newark-upon-Trent, Burghley House in Northamptonshire, and Theobalds. His only other journey that year was to the Thames valley and the southwest ." According to The True Narration, a semi-official and 19 authoritative account, `Sir Percival Willoughby, of Lincolnshire' was indeed among the many knights James made during his great progress ; but James knighted him after breakfast at Worksop on the morning of 21 April, along with eighteen others ." James could conceivably have gone to Wollaton to dine that day or the next, although both times it would have been rather out of his way ; but it seems more likely that he was never under Sir Percival's roof at all. James's wife and children followed him to England that summer ; and Nichols, following one `Dr Drake', states that during their journey they were entertained at Wollaton Hall on 21 June .12 Cassandra most likely misunderstood her source again, confounding this occasion with Sir Percival's knighting and once again assigning it to the wrong house . Cassandra emerges vindicated from this scrutiny in the sense that there is no reason to believe she invented incidents out of thin air merely to enhance her family's past . It is clear, though, that she cannot always have copied her source documents accurately and that she was prone to read more into them than they actually conveyed . As evidence of primary sources now lost her work is valuable, but her datings and placings of events should not be accepted uncritically . NOTES 1 Cokayne, Complete Peerage in, 130 and vin, 697-8. 2 NUL : MS Mi LM 26, ff 76-7 . 3 A Letter: Whearin, part of the Entertainment, vntoo the Queenz Maiesty, at Killingworth Castl .. iz signified ... STC : 15190.5. 4 Ibid. 5 For an example see `Inquiry into the Genuineness of a Letter Dated February 3rd, 1613, and signed "Mary Magdaline Davers"', Camden Society 87 (Miscellany 5), (1864), No 6. If genuine, the letter in question would be a valuable source for the Christmas revels at court of 1613-14; but the investigations of the Camden Society's adjudicating committee established that the supposed transcript of c 1795 in which it survives is a fabrication . 6 Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth t, 331-4. 7 Alrewas parish register, cited by Nichols, 1, 529, n 3 . 8 Neil Burton, English Historic Houses Handbook (London and New York, 1981), p 372 . 9 NUL : MS Mi LM 27, p 33. 10 Nichols, Progresses ofJames i, i, 250-304 . 11 The True Narration of the Entertainment of his Royal Maiestie . .. sTC:17153 ; cited in Nichols, Progresses of James i, 1, 88 . 12 Ibid, 170. 20.