style="font-size:15px;"> great splendour. There was much of the chivalric in his character, and he shared to the full his people's love of hard fighting. He wasinvested with the honour of knighthood and went to foreign courts to display his prowess. Matthew of Westminster states that while Edward was travelling in France, he heard that a lord of Burgundy was continually committing outrages on the persons and property of his neighbours. In the true spirit of chivalry Edward attacked the castle of the uncourteous baron. His prowess asserted the cause of justice, and he bestowed the domains which he had won upon a nobler lord. For the sake of acquiring military fame he exposed himself to great dangers in the Holy Land, and, during his journey homeward, saved his life by sheer fighting in a tournament at Challon. At his "Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords and ladies "clad all in silk" renewed the faded glories of Arthur's Court, and kept Christmas with great magnificence. In 1277, Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, bidden from his mountain fastnesses "with
a kiss of peace," sat a guest at the Christmas feast of Edward, but he was soon to fall the last defender of his weeping country's independence in unequal battle with the English King. In 1281-2, Edward kept his feast of Christmas at Worcester, and there was "such a frost and snow as no man living could remember the like." Rivers were frozen over, even including the Thames and Severn; fish in ponds, and birds in woods died for want of food; and on the breaking up of the ice five of the arches of old London bridge were carried away by the stream, and the like happened to many other bridges.068 In 1286 Edward kept his Christmas at Oxford,
but the honour was accompanied by an unpleasant episode in the hanging of the Mayor by the King's command. In 1290, 1292, and
1303, Edward the First kept Royal Christmases in the great hall at Westminster. On his way to Scotland, in the year 1299, the King witnessed the Christmas ceremonial of the Boy Bishop. He permitted one of the boy bishops to say vespers before him in his chapel at Heton, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and made a present to the performers of forty shillings, no inconsiderable sum in those days. During his Scotch wars, in 1301, Edward, on the approach of winter, took up his quarters in Linlithgow, where he built a castle and kept his Christmas; and during his reign he celebrated the festival at other places not usually so honoured--namely, Bury, Ipswich, Bristol, Berwick, Carlisle, and Lincoln.
Edward the Second
succeeded his father in 1307, being the fourth son of Edward I. and Eleanor of Castile. He took great delight in the Christmas revels and expended large sums of money in the entertainment of his court favourites. In 1311 he kept his Christmas at York, rejoicing
in the presence of Piers Gaveston, whom he had recalled from banishment in utter disregard of advice given to him by his father
(Edward I.) on his deathbed. Edward II. kept his Christmas in the great hall at Westminster in 1317, when, however, few nobles
were present, "because of discord betwixt them and the King;" but in 1320 the Royal Christmas was kept at Westminster "with great honour and glorie." In 1324-5 the King's Christmas was sumptuously observed at Nottingham, but the following year found Edward a prisoner at Kenilworth, while his wife, who had successfully intrigued with Roger Mortimer, leader of the Barons, observed the
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Christmas festivities with her son at Wallingford, glad at the downfall of her husband. Edward was an irresolute and weak-minded king. He displayed singular incapacity for government, wasting almost all his time in frivolous amusements. The chief characteristics of his reign were defeat and disgrace abroad, and misrule ending in misery at home. Instead of following the example of his noble father, Edward I., who has been deservedly styled "the greatest of the Plantagenets," he proved himself the weakest of that line
of kings, spending his time in such trifling diversions as "cross and pile," a game of chance with coins. He was so utterly devoid of
self-respect that he even borrowed money of his barber to carry on this frivolous pastime, such items as the following being found in his wardrobe rolls:--"Item, paid to Henry, the king's barber, for money which he lent the king to play at cross and pile, five shillings. Item, paid to Pires Barnard, usher of the king's chamber, money which he lent the king, and which he lost at cross and pile; to Monsieur Robert Wattewille eightpence." At length the barons,069 tired of Edward's misgovernment, revolted, and made the king a prisoner. During the Christmas festival of 1326, Edward was imprisoned in Kenilworth Castle. While there he was informed that in a Parliament held at Westminster, during Christmas 1326-7, he was deposed, and his son Edward, then only fourteen years of age, elected in his stead. On the 21st of September in the same year Edward II. ended his miserable career in Berkeley Castle, being, it is supposed, cruelly murdered by his keepers.
Edward The Third's Coronation
festivities were a sumptuous enlargement of the Christmas celebration, which usually extended over Twelfth Night. It is said that the banqueting cost the equivalent of forty thousand pounds of our money; and before the young king there appeared quite a multitude of minstrels, mimics, and gleemen. Professor Henry Morley[21] gives a specimen of the metrical romances which were translated from the French for recitation at the royal and noble banquets of this period. They were "busy with action, and told with a lively freedom;" and, in the one quoted, "The Fabliau of Sir Cleges," we catch some interesting references to the celebration of Christmas:--
"Every year Sir Cleges would At Christmas a great feast hold In worship of that day,
As royal in alle thing
As he hadde been a king
For sooth as I you say.
Rich and poor in the country about Should be there withouten doubt; There would no man say nay. Minstrels would not be behind,
For there they might most mirthes find
There would they be aye.
"Minstrels when the feast was done Withouten giftes should not gon, And that both rich and good: Horse, robes and riche ring,
Gold, silver, and other thing, To mend with their mood. Ten yeare such feast be held, In the worship of Mary mild
And for Him that died on the rood. By that his good began to slake
For the great feasts that he did make. The knight gentil of blood."
"Kepe Open Court" At Christmas.
Froissart, in Cap. XIIII. of his "Chronicles,"[22] gives the 070following account of the Christmas Celebration at which Edward the
Third was crowned:--
"After that the most part of the company of Heynaulte were departed, and syr John Heynaulte lorde of Beamonde taryed, the Quene gave leve to her people to departe, savynge a certayne noble knightis the whiche she kept styl about her and her sone, to counsell them, and commaunded all them that departed, to be at London the next Christmas, for as than she was determyned to kepe open court, and all they promysed her so to do. And whan Christmas was come, she helde a great court. And thyther came dukes, erles, barons, knightis, and all the nobles of the realme, with prelates, and burgesses of good townes, and at this assemble it was advised that the realme coud nat long endure without a head and a chief lord. Than they put in wrytynge all the dedis of the kyng who was in prison, and all that he had done by evyll counsell, and all his usages, and evyll behavyngis, and how evyll he had
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governed his realme, the which was redde openly in playn audience, to thentent that the noble sagis of the realme might take therof good advyce, and to fall at acorde how the realme shuld be governed from thensforth; and whan all the cases
