The Lewkenor Circle · Biography
Anthony Browne, Viscount Montagu
Sussex patronage, Cowdray and the royal progress
Hans Eworth, 1569.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Image and source.
The lord of Cowdray
Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montagu, was a leading Sussex nobleman whose Catholic faith coexisted with his allegiance to Elizabeth I. Cowdray House, near Midhurst, was a centre of regional power, aristocratic hospitality and political negotiation.
His household brought together family obligations, estate business, religious observance and public service. Its entertainments formed part of the culture through which a great family declared its identity and welcomed the monarch.
Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1781.
Image and source.
How he connects to Lewkenor
The Lewkenors belonged to the Sussex political and legal network surrounding Cowdray. Lewes’s father, Thomas Lewkenor, represented Midhurst in 1586; Lewes himself represented the borough in 1597.
His uncle Richard Lewkenor undertook legal work for the Brownes. The master manuscript records his involvement in Montagu’s accounts and his service as an executor of Montagu’s will.
Family relationships reinforced those professional ties. Lady Elizabeth Lewkenor’s will left a ring to Magdalen Browne, Viscountess Montagu.
The connection between the households therefore appears through parliamentary service, legal business, testamentary responsibilities and personal gifts.
Catholic faith and loyalty to the Queen
Montagu’s public loyalty became particularly important during the Armada emergency. The account quoted in the manuscript describes his appearance before Elizabeth with his family and horsemen:
The first that showed his bands to the Queen, was that noble, virtuous, honorable man, the Viscount Montague, … who now came, though he was very sickly, and in age, with a full resolution to live and die in defense of the Queen.
The display joined three generations:
…a matter much noted of many, to see a grandfather, father, and son, at one time on horseback, afore a Queen for her services.
Account of Montagu’s service during the Armada emergency, quoted in the master manuscript; spelling as transcribed there.
His religion nevertheless remained a source of suspicion. Recalling warnings against Elizabeth’s visit, Montagu complained:
…it hath been told her Majesty that it was dangerous coming to my house, and she was advised at her peril to take heed how she came to my house at Cowdray this summer past, and that I kept six score recusants that never came to church, a marvelous untruth.
Montagu’s account, quoted in The Master of the Ceremonies.
The royal visit gave hospitality a political purpose. The Queen’s reception made visible the relationship between the Crown and a prominent Catholic household.
Elizabeth at Cowdray, August 1591
Elizabeth’s arrival was staged through an encounter at the entrance to the estate. The porter offered the keys and declared:
…the owner’s tongue is the key to his heart, and his heart the lock of his soul! Therefore what he speaks you may constantly believe!
The Queen answered:
I will answer for him.
Account of Elizabeth’s entertainment at Cowdray, August 1591; quoted in the master manuscript.
The ceremonial language made the house an expression of its owner’s loyalty. Keys, speech and royal acceptance turned arrival into a public exchange of trust.
Magdalen Browne and her daughter welcomed Elizabeth at the house. Hunting, music, speeches and woodland entertainments followed during the visit.
The Cowdray material is developed further in the investigation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the manuscript considers nymphs, hunting imagery, woodland encounters and the performance of homage to a queen.
Richard Lewkenor’s house on the progress
The progress continued from Cowdray towards Chichester, with a meal at Richard Lewkenor’s house at West Dean.
A payment to Simon Bowyer and the officers preparing the venue records the household arrangements:
To Symon Bowyer for one of thordenarye gen’ ushers of her ma’tie Chamber for thallowaunce of himself, one yeomen usher, three yeomen and two grooms of the chamber, two grooms of the warderobe & one groomporter for making ready Mr Richard Lewkenour’s house for her ma’tie to dine at betwixt Cowdrey and Chichester by the space of two days mense Augustii 1591 as appereth by bill signed by the lord Chambleyne … 39s 4d.
Royal household expenditure for August 1591; transcription reproduced in the master manuscript.
The entry places Richard Lewkenor’s house within the practical itinerary of the royal visit. It names the officers, their work, the destination and the payment.
In this 1591 record he is “Mr Richard Lewkenour”. The preparations connect the Lewkenor household directly with the same progress that brought Elizabeth to Cowdray.
The Montagues and theatrical identity
The family’s theatrical history reaches back to the double wedding entertainment devised by George Gascoigne in 1572.
In A Devise of a Maske, printed in A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres in 1573, Venetian-clad visitors were presented as Italian kinsmen of the English Montagues.
The Italian family story had thus entered the Brownes’ own performance of kinship and honour before Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The manuscript reads Gascoigne’s entertainment alongside the tragedy’s Montague family, masked arrival at the Capulet feast and conflicts between hospitality and inherited hostility.
Gascoigne also connects this Sussex circle with other aristocratic entertainments, including those associated with Leicester at Kenilworth.
Southampton and the literary network
Montagu’s daughter Mary Browne was the mother of Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton.
Southampton’s receipt of the dedications to Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594 connects Shakespeare’s named patron with the Cowdray family.
The family relationship joins the Brownes’ Sussex household, its theatrical traditions and the aristocratic patronage of Shakespeare’s poetry.
The Cowdray–Titchfield investigation follows that connection through the Montagus, the Southampton household and the literary and ceremonial worlds around them.
Related Shakespeare investigations
Romeo and Juliet — Gascoigne, the Montagues and the Cowdray family →
A Midsummer Night’s Dream — the royal progress and woodland entertainment →
Documentary source trail
The account of Elizabeth I’s entertainment at Cowdray, August 1591, and the royal household expenditure for preparing Richard Lewkenor’s house between Cowdray and Chichester.
George Gascoigne, A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573), “A Devise of a Maske”, concerning the Montague family wedding entertainment of 1572.
The Montagu and Lewkenor family relationships, legal business and wills discussed in the master manuscript.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and the dedications to Southampton in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
The Master of the Ceremonies, master manuscript, 18 October 2026: “Cowdray and Titchfield”, the Lewkenor family’s Sussex connections and the royal progress.
Portrait: Hans Eworth, Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montagu, 1569, National Portrait Gallery, London. Cowdray view: Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1781. Image records are linked in the captions.