KINGSLAND,
an extensive piece of ground, the property of the Corporation. It is supposed to have originally belonged to the Crown—hence its name—and to have been granted by the Crown to the Corporation. In 1529 it was let for pasture at £3 per year—a price which must make modern tenants wish that history might repeat itself. In 1586 it was ordered to be, and was, enclosed. It is a healthy and almost arcadian spot, “beautiful for situation.” There is no locality in the town so well adapted for villa residences.
Once a year, we are reminded, there was something else—Shrewsbury Show, a pageant which showed the degeneracy of the past. With the exception of the Coventry festival and the Preston guild it was the only one of its kind in the kingdom. What was the Show? It was the remnant of a feast religiously observed by the Romish Church, and styled Corpus Christi the feast of the body of Christ. It consisted of a solemn procession, in which the several incorporated companies of the town, preceded by the masters and wardens, attended by the bailiffs, aldermen, and commonalty, and accompanied by priests, who carried the Holy Sacrament under a gorgeous canopy, marched to old St. Chad’s Church, where mass was said amidst the richest and costliest treasures of the church. The religious part of the ceremony was abolished at the Reformation; but the members of the companies, though prohibited from attending mass, resolved to retain as much of the imposing custom as they could. They therefore continued the procession, which they determined upon having on the second Monday after Trinity Sunday. They possessed on Kingsland small parcels of land which the Corporation had allotted to and enclosed for them, and on which they had erected arbours as places of resort, of feasting, and of pastime. They therefore selected Kingsland as the destiny of the procession, and, arrived there, they entertained each other in almost princely style, and indulged in the recreations of the time. The anniversary until very recently was observed, but it was a sorry picture of the old festivities. The procession, which was made up of bands of music, flags, banners, ancient horses ridden by individuals dressed out as kings, queens, and other notabilities, followed by a number of artisans, was perhaps about the most ludicrous sight which the ingenuity of a buffoon could invent. It was a ridiculous travesty of the ancient spectacle; and its concomitants, its influence, and its results are best described in the (slightly altered) words of Hamlet:
The people wake to-day and take their rouse,
Keep wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as they drain their draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of their pledge.
Is it a custom?
Ay, marry, is’t;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax’d of other people:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition.
Leaving the scene of so much that is gay and festive, and that unites the present with the past, we re-cross the Severn, re-walk a portion of the Quarry, and ascend the magnificent centre avenue. The church before us is