The lucky find in the East Riding Archives at Beverley of an account of the Nevile family wedding feast, highlighted by East Riding editor Diana Wyatt in a recent article, provided a timely reminder to look at the material we have for the kind of performance activity which is recorded at weddings of all sorts of people associated with the West Riding. Some of them are very well known. We start at the very top, with Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, whose wedding celebrations on Valentine's Day, or Shrove Sunday, 1613, were recorded by the Yorkshire antiquary, John Hopkinson, from papers of the Talbots, earls of Shrewsbury, and others. Hopkinson, of Lofthouse, near Leeds (1610–1680), was an antiquary who in the 1660s was employed, with Yorkshire historian Nathaniel Johnston, in arranging the Talbot papers at Sheffield Castle. The royal festivities were also mentioned in a letter by Francis Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, to Sir William Wentworth, father of Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Strafford. Cumberland's son, Henry Clifford, was one of the “viij Noble men, and viij Ladies, of which Number my Sonne is first of the 4 barons. …” appointed to take part in a masque at the marriage.

Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662) eldest and only surviving daughter of James I, married Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire (1596–1632) on February 14, 1613. It may be that the marriage to this Protestant prince was part of James I's plan to provide a balance against potential Catholic marriages for his sons Henry and Charles, but Elizabeth's elder brother, Henry, Prince of Wales, had other ideas and had probably commissioned a masque for her wedding called The Masque of Truth (author uncertain), which symbolised the final triumph of light against the evil darkness of popery. Unfortunately Henry died on November 6, 1612, and this masque was not performed. Instead, The Lords’ Masque, by Thomas Campion (1567–1620), was put on, at a cost of £400, to celebrate the marriage.