Providing for a Queen: The Stables under Elizabeth I

Abstract

Like most of the other departments of the Elizabethan court, only fragments of the archives of the Stables survive. Like the other departments too, its institutional structure was an inheritance from Henry VIII. Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, was Elizabeth I’s Master of the Horse for nearly thirty years and as such shaped her Stables. This article demonstrates that, while he made limited institutional changes, he nevertheless expanded the personnel and made serious efforts to introduce and publicise the latest Italian methods of equitation.