Hugh Sanford (died 1607) was an English scholar who served as tutor and secretary to the family of the Earl of Pembroke. He was involved in theatre at the Stuart court. Sanford served as a MP for Ludlow (1597) and Wilton (1601) and (1604)."Sanford, Hugh (d.1607), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558–1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Career
Sanford's background is unknown. He was a tutor of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke before 1593 when his pupil went to New College, Oxford. The family's country residence was Wilton House. The writer Samuel Daniel is also thought to have been a tutor at Wilton.Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: Lucy, Countess of Bedford (London, 2007), p. 57.Michael Brennan, Literary Patronage in the English Renaissance: The Pembroke Family (Routledge, 1988), p. 109. The name of a character "Forsandrus", a tutor in Mary Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, is an anagram of Hugh Sanford.Mary Ellen Lamb, "Prose Romance, Masque, and Lyric", Andrew Hadfield, Oxford Handbook of English Prose (Oxford, 2013), p. 241.Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 611–612.
After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the new Stuart royal family came on progress to the south of England because there was plague in London.Clare Jackson, The Mirror of Great Britain: A Life of James VI & I (Allen Lane, 2025), p. 176. Anne of Denmark and King James visited Wilton, where they may have met Sanford.John Pitcher, 'Samuel Daniel's Masque "The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses": Texts and Payments', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 26 (2013), p. 35. Anne of Denmark, whose travelling household included her musician and dancing master Thomas Cardell, stayed in Winchester in October, and put on an masque entertainment for her son Prince Henry.John Pitcher, 'Samuel Daniel's Masque "The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses": Texts and Payments', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 26 (2013), pp. 29, 35–36.Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 77.
The French ambassador, Christophe de Harlay, Count of Beaumont, criticised the Winchester masque and reported that Anne of Denmark was planning superior entertainments for Christmas and New Year 1604.Pierre Laffleur de Kermaingant, L'ambassade de France en Angleterre sous Henri IV: Mission de Christophe de Harlay, comte de Beaumont (Paris, 1886), p. 131. Her masque was The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, written by Samuel Daniel.Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 63. Daniel wrote that Anne of Denmark had chosen him at the suggestion of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford.John Pitcher, 'Samuel Daniel's Masque "The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses": Texts and Payments', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 26 (2013), pp. 18–19.Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 89.
Thomas Edmondes wrote that Anne of Denmark's preparations for the new masque required the "use of invention" and the services of Sanford, who was to "direct the order and course for the Ladies [masque]".Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), p. 224.Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 3 (London: Chidley, 1838), p. 84.Herbert Arthur Evans, English Masques (London: Blackie, 1897), p. 1.Barbara D. Palmer, "Court and Country: The Masque as Sociopolitical Subtext", Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 7 (1995), p. 346. This may mean that Sanford directed the whole production, or perhaps the movement and choreography of the masquers. No payments to Sanford for this role have been found in the surviving records.John Pitcher, 'Samuel Daniel's Masque "The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses": Texts and Payments', Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 26 (2013), p. 36.
Sanford was at Whitehall at the end of October 1604, when Rowland Whyte reported he was travelling north to see Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield Manor Lodge.Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 555. According to Whyte, Sanford's travel plan was leisurely "at an ambling pace, Justice of the Peace like".Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 3 (London: Chidley, 1838), p. 103. In January 1605, Sanford wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury from Baynard's Castle in London.Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 3 (London: Chidley, 1838), pp. 165–166.. He was in Wiltshire in April 1605.Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 562.
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