Yorkshire.
The play of Corpus Christi was acted in the City of York till the twenty-sixth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, 1584.
It consisted of a solemn procession, in remembrance of the Sacrament of the Body of Christ; the symbolic representation being borne in a shrine. Every trade in the city was obliged to furnish a pageant at its own expense, and join the procession, and each individual had to personify some particular passage in the Old or New Testament, and to repeat some poetry on the occasion. The whole was preceded by a great number of lighted torches, and a multitude of priests in their proper habits; after which followed the mayor and citizens, surrounded by an immense concourse of spectators. Commencing at the great gate of the priory of the Holy Trinity, they proceeded to the Cathedral Church and thence to St. Leonard’s Hospital, where they left the sacrament. There are several public orders yet remaining in the old register of the city relative to the regulation of this ceremony; and indulgences were granted from the Pope to those who contributed to the relief of the fraternity, or who observed the annual ceremony in the most devout manner, particularly if they personally attended from the country.—Drake’s Eboracum, 1736; Hargrove, History of York, 1818, vol. ii. p. 494.