The Lewkenor Circle · Diplomacy and court ceremony
Sir John Finet: Successor and Witness
Lewkenor’s colleague, rival and successor—and a witness to the ceremonial life of the Stuart court.
circa 1610–1611, during Finet’s stay in Venice.
Portrait and attribution.
The man who recorded the office
Sir John Finet (1571–1641) worked alongside Sir Lewes Lewkenor in the reception of foreign ambassadors before succeeding him as Master of the Ceremonies in 1627. His observations preserve the daily workings of an office in which a seat, a title, an invitation or the delivery of a royal gift could become a matter of international consequence.
Published after his death in 1656, Finetti Philoxenis announces its subjects on the title page:
“The reception, and precedence, the treatment and audience, the puntillios and contests of forren ambassadors in England.”
John Finet, Finetti Philoxenis (1656), title page.
Finet supplies something especially valuable for Lewkenor’s biography: an account written by a colleague who watched him at work, disputed his decisions and understood the privileges attached to his position.
Twelfth Night, 1616
Finet’s account of the Twelfth Night revival of Ben Jonson’s The Golden Age Restored, on 6 January 1616, places Lewkenor within the arrangements for a court performance.
The King wanted the French, Venetian and Savoyard ambassadors to attend. A disagreement involving the French ambassador delayed their invitation from New Year’s night until the masque was performed again on Twelfth Night. Finet records their arrival:
“They were received at eight of the Clock, the houre assigned (no Supper being prepared for them, as at other times to avoid the trouble incident) and were conducted to the privy Gallery by the Lord Chamberlaine, and the Lord Danvers appointed … to accompany them, the Master of the Ceremonies being also present.”
Finet, Finetti Philoxenis, pp. 31–32; excerpt with an omission marked.
The Master of the Ceremonies was Lewkenor. His attendance forms part of the sequence of reception, escort and placement that brought the ambassadors into the performance.
Finet then specifies their positions beside the royal family:
“They were all there placed at the Maske on the Kings right hand … first and next to the King the French, next him the Venetian, and next him the Savoyard. At his Majesties left hand sate the Queene, and next her the Prince. The Maske being ended, they followed his Majesty to a Banquet in the Presence, and returned by the way they entered.”
Finet, Finetti Philoxenis, pp. 31–32; excerpt with an omission marked.
The order of the audience was itself political. Proximity to James expressed precedence between the representatives of foreign rulers. Finet’s attention to entrances, seating and departure shows how closely diplomatic ceremony surrounded the performance.
Colleagues and rivals
Finet’s relationship with Lewkenor could be difficult. He recorded a disagreement when he was addressed as Master of the Ceremonies while Lewkenor still held the office. Lewkenor objected to the use of his title; Finet answered that the King himself had used it of him.
The dispute concerned the same distinctions of rank and entitlement that the two men were employed to uphold for others. Finet’s expectation of succeeding to the office made those distinctions personally consequential.
Yet rivalry did not prevent cooperation. When the privileges of the office were challenged, Lewkenor and Finet could defend them together.
The right to present the royal jewel
Finet describes a dispute with Sir Henry Mildmay, Master of the Jewel House, over who should carry a royal jewel to a departing ambassador. The delivery mattered because it could bring a substantial gratuity to the officer who performed it.
Lewkenor asked Finet to accompany him to his cousin William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain, to defend the ceremonial office’s claim. Finet records Pembroke’s forceful support and the eventual decision in Lewkenor’s favour.
After Lewkenor presented the jewel, Finet heard the King confirm the right:
“I then standing at the door, heard his Majesty say (when Sir Lewes thanked him for his most gracious favour in committing it to his carriage) that it was the Master of the Ceremonies right, and none other to carry, and present Jewels to ambassadors.”
Finet, Finetti Philoxenis, account of the dispute over presenting the ambassador’s jewel; spelling modernised.
Finet places himself at the door as an earwitness. The episode brings together Lewkenor, his assistant, his Herbert cousin and the King in a dispute over the duties and rewards of royal service.
The succession
In March 1627, Finet received news that joined an ambassador’s arrival with the impending death of the man he would replace:
“While I was at Canterbury for some domestic occasions of my own, I received a letter the 8th March signifying the arrival of a deputy from the States, and of the dangerous sickness of Lewes Lewkenor, Master of the Ceremonies, of whose office I was reversioner.”
Finet, Finetti Philoxenis, account of March 1627; spelling modernised.
A reversioner held the right to succeed when the office became vacant. Lewkenor died that month, and Finet took over the position whose work he had already observed and shared.
The court as a place of performance
Finet’s testimony makes the ceremonial setting of court entertainment unusually tangible. Ambassadors had to be invited, received, escorted and seated; a masque could be delayed by an argument over diplomatic treatment, and its audience arranged according to political rank.
His record of the 1616 masque belongs beside the earlier Whitehall directions naming Lewkenor among the gentlemen assigned to accompany Virginio Orsini on Twelfth Day 1601, and the journal recording Louis Frederick of Württemberg’s reception by Lewkenor and subsequent visit to Othello at the Globe in 1610.
Together these documents show the practical connections between Lewkenor’s office, foreign visitors and theatrical entertainment.
Documentary sources
John Finet, Finetti Philoxenis: Som Choice Observations of Sr. John Finett Knight (London, 1656), particularly pp. 31–32 for the Twelfth Night masque of 1616, and the later accounts of Lewkenor’s ceremonial privileges and final illness.
Read Finetti Philoxenis in the EEBO–TCP edition →
Albert J. Loomie, editor, Ceremonies of Charles I: The Note Books of John Finet, 1628–1641 (Fordham University Press, 1987), for Finet’s subsequent service.
People in this circle
William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke ·
Ben Jonson ·
Virginio Orsini