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 description from the pen of the contemporary traveller, Paul Hentzner, must suffice to illustrate the formality that accompanied the daily life of the great Queen:

"We arrived next at the royal palace of Greenwich, reported to have been originally built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and to have received very magnificent additions from Henry VII. It was here Elizabeth, the present Queen, was born, and here she generally resides, particularly in summer for the delightfulness of its situation. We were admitted by an order Mr. Rogers had procured from the Lord Chamberlain into the presence chamber hung with rich tapestry, and the floor, after the English fashion, strewed with hay [rushes], through which the Queen commonly passes on her way to chapel. At the door stood a gentleman dressed in velvet, with a gold chain, whose office was to introduce to the Queen any person of distinction that came to wait on her; it was Sunday when there was usually the greatest attendance of nobility. In the same hall were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great number of Councillors of State, officers of the Crown, and gentlemen, who waited on the Queen's coming out; which she did from her own apartment when it was time to go to prayers, attended in the following manner:—