The Peterborough Show

10/07/1901

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The annual Peterborough Show was at its height when the Northampton Mercury reported on this year's three-day exhibition on its usual site. The weather was very suitable and the attendance a good one, whilst the exhibition was one of which the Peterborough Committee had every reason to be proud. This great show of the Midlands is noted for the grand collection of hunters and shires it yearly attracts, and on no previous occasion had a better lot of animals been drawn together. Judges were loud in their praise of the animals placed before them whilst those at the ringside - and these included many well versed in horse breeding - declared they had never seen a better show. The Royal 'was a mere county exhibition from a quality point of view compared with this,' exclaimed one well-known Yorkshire breeder who, presumably, knew what he was talking about. 'The Peterborough Show deserves all the success it obtains, for there is no better managed exhibition in the country. The committee, with their excellent secretary, Mr J.E. Little, are experienced and capable, and do their best to make everyone comfortable and everything pass off without a hitch. They offered about £1,400 in prizes, and the satisfaction of obtaining a good entry.

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

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Burial of Mary, Queen of Scots

30/07/1587

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On 8 February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle. There her body stayed, embalmed and sealed in a lead coffin, until this day when it was moved, in the dead of night, to Peterborough. On the instructions of Queen Elizabeth I, the burial was a formal affair fit for a queen. The coffin, followed by the royal standard of Scotland, was moved in procession from the Bishop's Palace to the cathedral. As well as the nobility, the Bishop and Dean of Peterborough and the Bishop of Lincoln, 100 poor widows dressed in black walked in procession following the coffin. Following a sermon preached by the Bishop of Lincoln, the dean oversaw Mary's interment. A magnificent funeral banquet, paid for by Queen Elizabeth, followed in the Bishop's Palace. The cost of the whole burial is said to be over £300 - a vast sum. In 1612 Mary's body was exhumed when her son, King James I of England, ordered she be re-interred in Westminster Abbey, in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth I. (Carnell, Geoffrey, The Bishops of Peterborough, RJL Smith & Associates, 1993; Gunton, Symon, The History of the Church of Peterborough, ed. Symon Patrick, 1990; People of Peterborough, Peterborough Museum Publications, 2009)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.