The mechanics of a medieval royal progress

I found this about the cost of her visit to Bristol:

http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Maritime/Sources/2009sfpwardell.pdf

I also found this:

http://www.renfaire.com/History/elizabeths-household.html

It has a section on the Progress near the bottom.

I also found this book on Google which is the history of one particular Progress:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

You're welcome.

If you are using Elizabeth I as your example, she's several hundred years off of medieval. Renaissance structures were more complex. This has some basic information about Hatfield house where Elizabeth grew up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_House

The house has been changed over the years but the original that Elizabeth lived in as a child had 4 wings.

Tents similar to those used on a military campaign.

Not medieval period, but the C.J. Sansom novel Sovereign gives a very detailed account of a royal progress (Henry VIII's in that case).

Generally, everyone was evicted from the stately homes to take in the royal court. Her own cooks and servants would accompany her and do everything.

The Lord and Lady (unless they had special chambers for visiting royals which some did) would be bumped down the chain to make way.

This is a good useful basic documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmhak-RI67o

And this:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtspbo_if-walls-could-talk-the-history-of-the-home-1-4_shortfilms

I'm more familiar with medieval usages than Renaissance, but when the court went on progress prior to 1500, the house's holder would yield the best room/bed to the royal couple. What other rooms there were would be assigned to court members of rank, down the hierarchy. Retainers or "household" would be slept in the great hall, on pallets on the floor, the house's own retainers finding floor space where they could. Lower members of both the household's and the retinue's staff would be quartered on peasants (after the Anglo-Saxon period) or in the outbuildings, particularly the stables.

HTH

You may want to define the time & place you're modeling from more closely - the types of arrangements & requirements for a royal progress in, say, 10c Germany, are quite different from those of 13c France or 16c England (which are, also, very different from each other).

In the earlier medieval context, hosting a royal party for a certain time was typically regarded as payment-in-kind of a tax or seigneurial obligation to the king -- in some times/places this was a formal arrangement, only later converted to payment in coin. Markets and transport were generally not well enough developed until late medieval times to enable a noble host to easily supplement by purchase what couldn't be supplied locally.

There would generally be an advance party to ensure all the necessary food supplies etc. were on hand and available. And that nothing that might be needed was instead being hidden away.

Because, from the local perspective, the visitation of a royal household was functionally equivalent to a plague of locusts -- they would, in a handful of days, consume everything that was consumable for several days' ride in all directions, and then move on leaving a wasteland behind them. It might take a noble many months of preparation or more to accumulate the supplies for a five-day occupation. A sudden change in a royal itinerary could be disastrous. A prolonged visit from the king was an understood way to punish someone who needed punishing. Even in the 16c hosting a royal progress could bankrupt the host and empty out every granary for miles around.

As for sleeping arrangements - In earlier times, there would be few private rooms and very little furniture in a noble house: people sat on benches and mostly slept on the floor or very nearly so. By the Renaissance a noble house would often have a larger number of private rooms, but even those were generally multi-functional -- any room might have a bed in it and become a bedroom at night, while being used by diverse people for diverse other purposes during the day. And any bedroom might be used for any number of people, on the floor as well as in the bed. Upper level staff would generally have accommodation of some sort, rather more crowded than the lord & lady of the house. Servants rarely had designated bedrooms with beds of their own till the 18c: till then, it was expected they would sleep either in their master/mistress's bedroom (on the floor) or on the floor of whatever room they worked in: kitchen staff in the kitchens, stablemen in the stables, footmen & others wherever they could.

If a royal party arrived, they would take possession of whatever rooms & beds existed, and everyone else was bumped a few levels down in the arrangements.

The invention of "privacy" was a revolutionary change in culture, social standards and architecture in the later 17c. Until then, seeking to be alone was a highly suspicious activity, and very difficult to achieve.