The text of the entertainment staged on 24 July 1606 survives in two versions, the MS copy (JnB 580; transcribed in the Textual Archive) and the print version, F1. The MS only provides the opening speech in English (5-12), while the print version includes the Latin translation (14-25) and the Latin inscriptions and epigrams posted ‘on the walls’ (26) or ‘hung up’ (29) when they arrived 30-48 and at the departure (51-9).

The MS, in Jonson’s autograph, provides evidence of the close interaction between poet and patron in the creation of this event, and is one of the few examples of Jonson’s handwritten texts not designed for formal presentation. Indeed, the text is altered in several places in a hand H&S identify as that of Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, but which Peter Beal argues belongs to Thomas Kirkham, one of Cecil’s secretariat. The key changes are ‘Princes’ from ‘Guests’ (5), ‘object’ from ‘spectacle’ (8), and the insertion of ‘thousand’ before ‘welcomes’ (11). There is no way of telling if these are suggestions to the poet or record his later changes. Such close oversight of the composition is consonant, however, with Cecil’s practice in his other entertainments, and may also confirm Sir John Harington’s attribution of the ‘device’ – perhaps the overall conception of the occasion – to Cecil himself (although this might refer more specifically to the notorious masque of Solomon and Sheba: see Masque Archive, Two Kings, 3).

A second MS copy (JnB 581) survives in BL Egerton MS 2877, fol. 162v, the commonplace book of Gilbert Freville of Bishop Middleton in County Durham and titled ‘The speeche by Ewnonie by Dice, & Irene / the .3. hours which do represent Time’. The lines are also described as ‘Made in a showe at / the entertainment of our / King Iames, & ye King of Denmark / at Thebaulds, by ye Earle / of Salisburie./.’ (fol. 162v, left margin), and more simply as a ‘speech’ in the contents page for this section of the volume (fol. 188).

The Freville copy offers an inaccurate version of the English verses only (5-12), and compresses 7-10 into three irregular, unrhymed lines. It has the following divergences from the 1616 text:

5 longed-for] lord

5 these] those

7 never] ne’re

7-8 knew / Minute] knew minute . . . this (as one line)

8 or] nor

8-9 you / Two] you two . . . honour (as one line)

9 honours] honour

9-10 whose access / Shows] whose access . . . lesse (as one line)

10 neither] neither

12 were] spoke

This last variant offers a plausible reading, but Jonson’s autograph clearly reads ‘were’.

The owner, Gilbert Freville – a brother of the MP Sir George Freville (1536-1619) – appears to have been staunchly Protestant despite his sibling’s Catholic marital kin. He is usually simply listed as ‘gent.’ of Bishop Middleham, a village on the edge of Durham (Surtees, 1816-40, 3.36), but his commonplace book suggests close connections to London preachers, especially in the Blackfriars, including perhaps copies of verbatim notes (such as those ‘taken at a sermon’ by Robert Stocks in 1607, fol. 88v). The volume contains many sermon extracts, reports, and prayers, along with texts on the plight of the ‘silenced’ ministers punished for failure to conform to royal rules on religious ceremonial 1604-5 (fol. 166), as well as a considerable collection of occasional verse and some dramatic texts (fol. 182). It is divided into three separately paginated collections, and once was obviously a handsome volume, with a vellum cover and its two main collections each provided with a pen and ink allegorical title-page (fols. 2 and 188v). With the exception of some tipped-in items (fols. 1, 2-5, 187, 189), the volume used one paper (crowned pillars with fleur-de-lis), and was clearly for neat copies of separates. JnB 581 is found at the rear of the volume in the largest collection (fols. 106v-188). This collection is in reverse order, having been written upside down at the rear of the volume (so fol. 188v is the first page, and 186v starts the pagination). This collection, prefaced by an allegorical drawing of animals and Cupid, contains material largely from the early Jacobean period, mainly 1604-7 (the latest item is 1620, but the majority are before 1613), although the volume may well have been started as early as 1591 (the date on the cover) and not concluded until the 1630s (fols. 105-6, a series of poems on Freville family members, are among the latest items).

JnB 581 follows on a group of material on religious affairs and the Gunpowder Plot, and is followed by the challenge at tilt issued by the ‘Four Knights Errant of the Fortunate Isles’ (1606). All the evidence points to this as a copy circulated as part of news exchange, probably within London. As such, JnB 581 offers one unique piece of evidence in its intriguing final line: ‘Then fell down presently, a shower of leaues, & ye word (welcome) written on each of them in letters of gold’. This diverges from the suggestion in other accounts that ‘Before these Royall persons came (neere the house of Theobals) there was strewed in the high ways aboundance of leaues, coloured grene, cut like Oaken leaues, on euery side of which was written in large Romaine Letters of golde, (Welcome, Welcome)’ (H. Roberts, The Most Royal and Honorable Entertainment, 1606, C2).

The verses were reprinted in F2, and edited in Nichols, Progresses of James I (1828) 2.70-1, along with much of the paratextual material and other descriptions of the occasion. Thomas Wilson’s songs for the oak tree with silk leaves inscribed in gold (see Introduction) are only extracted in Nichols, Progresses, 4.1072, from The King of Denmark’s Welcome (1606) [STC 5194], and are reprinted in H&S, 10.400-2. Other elements, such as the dialogue between the house and traveler by the Dean of Salisbury, John Gordon (1544-1619), in Cecil Papers, 110, fols. 105-6, have never been printed.