Ursula and her small daughter, Meg, are at their Sussex manor house, Withysham, when Ursula is summoned to court. The queen will soon set out on a Royal Progress to Cambridge, the university town known for its Protestant sympathies. Accompanied by a huge entourage and two hundred wagonloads of goods, Her Majesty will spend five nights at King's College, where she will be kept in comfort and entertained in style. Nothing must go wrong. But Sir William Cecil, the secretary of state, is worried. Some students plan to welcome the queen to Cambridge with a farcical playlet involving kidnapping and swords. Cecil would prohibit all violence and swords near the queen's person, but she insists on letting the students have their fun. Or is it the queen who is having fun playing with her courtiers' concerns? With the spirited, thirty-year-old queen, it's always hard to tell. Or, a more serious possibility, is the playlet being used?