upon the tournament.In 1348 Edward III. kept a grand Christmas at Guildford. "Orders were given to manufacture for the Christmas sports eighty tunics of buckram of different colours, and a large number of masks--some with faces of women, some with beards, some like angel heads of silver. There were to be mantles embroidered with heads of dragons, tunics wrought with heads and wings of peacocks, and embroidered in many other fantastic ways. The celebration of Christmas lasted from All Hallow's Eve, the 31st of October, till the day after the Purification, the 3rd of February. At the court a lord of074 misrule was appointed, who reigned during the whole
of this period, and was called 'the master of merry disports.' He ruled over and organised all the games and sports, and during the period of his rule there was nothing but a succession of masques, disguisings, and dances of all kinds. All the nobles, even the Mayor of London, had an officer of this kind chosen in their households. Dancing was a very favourite amusement. It was practised by the nobility of both sexes. The damsels of London spent their evenings in dancing before their masters' doors, and the country lasses danced upon the village green."[24]
the lord of misrule.
A Royal Christmas was kept at Westminster, with great splendour, in 1358, when King Edward had two crowned guests at his feast;
but these were present from no choice of their own: they were the victims to the fortune of war at Poictiers and Neville's Cross.
And in 1362, King David of Scotland and the King of Cyprus met at King Edward's grand entertainments. The later years of his life were spent by this great warrior-king in partial retirement from public affairs, and under the influence of his mistress, Alice Perrers, while John of Gaunt took a leading part in the government of the state. In 1376 Edward the Black Prince died, and the same year King Edward III. kept his last Christmas at Westminster, the festival being made memorable by all the nobles of the realm attending to swear fealty to the son of the Black Prince, who, by the King's desire, took precedence of his uncles at the banquet as befitted the heir apparent to the crown. The King died on the 21st of June, 1377, having reigned for just over half a century.
The old chronicler, Stowe, refers to a
Terrible Christmas Tempest,
which he says occurred in 1362: "The King held his Christmas 075at Windsore, and the XV. day following a sore and vehement south-west winde brake forth, so hideous that it overthrew high houses, towers, steeples, and trees, and so bowed them, that the
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residue which fell not, but remained standing, were the weaker." King Edward the Third's wardrobe accounts witness to the
Costly Christmas Robes
that were worn at this period. And these accounts also show that Alice Perrers was associated with the King's daughter and granddaughter in the Christmas entertainments. There are items in 1376 stating that the King's daughter Isabella (styled Countess of Bedford), and her daughter (afterwards wife of Vere, Earl of Oxford), were provided with rich garments trimmed with ermine, in
the fashion of the robes of the Garter, and with others of shaggy velvet, trimmed with the same fur, for the Christmas festival; while articles of apparel equally costly are registered as sent by the King to his chamber at Shene, to be given to Alice Perrers. And at a festival at Windsor the King caused twelve ladies (including his daughters and Alice Perrers) to be clothed in handsome hunting suits, with ornamented bows and arrows, to shoot at the King's deer; and a very attractive band of foresters they made. We have also seen that eighty costly tunics were provided for the Christmas sports and disguisings at Guildford.
We now come to a
Comically Cruel Christmas Incident,
recorded by Sir John Froissart, and which he says gave "great joye" to the hilarious "knightes and squyers" who kept the festival with
"the Erle of Foiz":--
"So it was on a Christmas day the Erle of Foiz helde a great feest, and a plentifull of knightes and squyers, as it is his usage; and it was a colde day, and the erle dyned in the hall, and with him great company of lordes; and after dyner he departed out of the hall, and went up into a galarye of xxiiii stayres of heyght, in which galarye ther was a great chymney, wherin they made fyre whan therle was ther; and at that tyme there was but a small fyre, for the erle loved no great fyre; howbeit, he hadde woode ynoughe there about, and in Bierne is wode ynoughe. The same daye it was a great frost and very colde: and when the erle was in the galarye, and saw the fyre so lytell, he sayde to the knightes and squiers about hym, Sirs, this is but a small fyre, and the day so colde: than Ernalton of Spayne went downe the stayres, and beneth in the courte he sawe a great meny of asses, laden with woode to serve the house: than
he went and toke one of the grettest asses, with all the woode, and layde hym on his backe, and went up all the stayres into the galary, and dyde cast downe the asse with all the woode into the chymney, and the asses fete076 upward; wherof the erle of Foiz had great joye, and so hadde all they that were there, and had marveyle of his strength howe he alone came up all the stayres with the asse and the woode in his necke."
Passing on to
The Reign of Richard the Second,
the son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent, who came to the throne (in tutelage) on the death of his grandfather, Edward III. (1377), we find that costly banquetings, disguisings, pageants, and plays continued to be the diversions of Christmastide at court. From the rolls of the royal wardrobe, it appears that at the Christmas festival in 1391, the sages of the law were made subjects
for disguisements, this entry being made: "Pro XXI coifs de tela linea pro hominibus de lege contrafactis pro Ludo regis tempore natalis Domini anno XII." That is, for twenty-one linen coifs for counterfeiting men of the law in the King's play at Christmas. And Strutt[25] says that in the same year (1391) the parish clerks of London put forth a play at Skinners' Wells, near Smithfield, which continued three days: the king, queen, and many of the nobility, being present at the performance.
moneta nova adriani stvltorv pape.
[On one side is the legend, moneta nova adriani stvltorv pape, the last e being in the field of the piece, on which is represented the Pope, with his double cross and tiara, with a fool in full costume approaching his bauble to the pontifical cross, and two persons behind, who form part of his escort. On the reverse is a "mother fool," with her bauble, attended by a grotesque person with a cardinal's hat, with the oft-recurring legend, STVLTORV INFINITVS EST NVMERVS.]
077But the miracle plays and mysteries performed by the Churchmen differed greatly from the secular plays and interludes which
at this period "were acted by strolling companies of minstrels, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, bourdours, or jesters, and other perform-
ers properly qualified for the different parts of the entertainment, which admitted of a variety of exhibitions. These pastimes are of higher antiquity than the ecclesiastical plays; and they were much relished not only by the vulgar part of the people, but also by the nobility. The courts of the kings of England, and the castles of the great earls and barons, were crowded with the performers of the secular plays, where they were well received and handsomely rewarded; vast sums of money were lavishly bestowed upon
these secular itinerants, which induced the monks and other ecclesiastics to turn actors themselves, in order to obtain a share of the public bounty. But to give the better colouring to their undertaking, they took the subjects of their dialogues from the holy writ, and
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performed them in the
