We return now to kings and other secular rulers, rejoining the story of royal entries in 1559, half a century after Julius II's triumphal papal entry into Rome. In the meantime, royal entries had extended their range of referents beyond Christ's entry into Jerusalem to other advents that were less susceptible to “unfortunate suggestions” of imminent betrayal and execution and more permissive of untrammelled splendour and exaltation. Christ's ascension to a heavenly throne and his second coming in undisputed glory were more in keeping with the mimetic aspirations of royalty. Moreover, with the spreading vogue for classical referents occasioned by the Italian Renaissance and the acceptance of ancient philosophical texts by humanist scholars, organizers of royal entries developed a marked preference for classical and allegorical models. These might be given a Christian interpretation but were only occasionally grounded in the New Testament narrative. Julius II's triumphal entry recalled Christ's entry only because Julius chose to schedule the event on Palm Sunday and Grassi insisted on a liturgical balance to the classical allegory and triumphal pomp. For my purpose, which is to explore the dissonances between enacted representations of Christ's entry and the shared story to which they claimed allegiance, I can safely bypass most of these later royal entries. Other scholars, with different interests, have already studied them well and in considerable detail.

One set of civic entries, however, still warrants my attention, not so much because of its occasional evocations of Christ's entry, but because it provides a necessary context for my later discussion of James Nayler's entry into Bristol in October 1656. Before I argue, in Chapter 9, that Nayler engaged in a dishevelled parody of royal entries, I will do well to describe in this chapter the English (and Scottish) entry traditions with which Nayler may have been familiar, either personally or by report. After brief summaries of royal entries and progresses during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, I look in more detail at the triumphal entries of Oliver Cromwell, in whose army Nayler had fought and with whom, after Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653, Nayler grew increasingly disillusioned.

Moving directly from Julius II in papal Rome to Elizabeth I and her successors in Protestant England means, of course, that I pass both chronologically and geographically through the heart of the Reformation.