Tombstone of a Glover, S. John's Church, Chester
One of the privileges of the Shoemakers' Guild was that of providing the ball for the annual game of football played on the Roodee on Easter Monday. The mayor and all the city guilds came to watch the game, which unfortunately did not always end happily, for we read that 'great strife did arise', and many of the players were haled away to be dealt with by the Mayor at the Pentice court. The saddlers provided a silver bell as a prize for the winner of a horse-race on the Roodee.
But the greatest event of the year in mediaeval Chester was the performance of scenes from the Scriptures—mystery plays, as they were called—at the Festival of Whitsuntide. The city guilds bore the whole of the expense and chose the players to perform them, each guild being responsible for one scene. Thus the painters and glaziers performed the Shepherds' Watch and the Angels' Hymn; the vintners acted the part of the Wise Men of the East; the butchers the Story of the Temptation; the glovers the Raising of Lazarus. Scenes from the Old Testament were included, the linen drapers performing the story of Balaam and the Ass, and the watermen of the Dee, appropriately enough, the story of the Flood.
The plays were put into English verse by Randal Hignet, a monk of S. Werburgh's, and no doubt were originally performed by the monks as a means of instructing the people in the outlines of the Christian faith. As the abbey church was found to be unsuitable they were performed publicly in the streets, in order 'to exhort', as a clerk of the Pentice said, 'the minds of the common people to good devotion as well as for the common weal and prosperity of the city.'
Twenty-five scenes in all were played, and the performance lasted for three days. On the first day the people saw scenes representing the Creation of the World, the Banishment from the Garden of Eden, the Birth of Christ and the Vision of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Wise Men; on the second day the Passion and Resurrection of Christ; and on the third day stories illustrating the founding of the Christian Church, the Lives of the Saints, and the final Advent of Christ and the Day of Judgement.
The plays were performed on movable stages fitted with wheels. The stages consisted of two stories, the upper one being left open for the plays, the lower one covered with curtains that it might serve as a dressing-room. The first performance took place at the Abbey Gate. The stages then passed one by one to the Water Gate, where a second performance was given. The plays were acted for the third and last time in Bridge Street.
People crowded into Chester from all the country round on these occasions, for the pope granted one thousand days of pardon to all who witnessed the plays. The abbey also grew in wealth, for every one was expected to visit the Abbey Church and lay some offering at S. Werburgh's shrine. To provide a passage for the crowds of pilgrims, side aisles were built round the choirs of famous churches, and behind the high altar a vacant space left where the shrines of saints were placed.
The Cheshire towns which grew in importance during the thirteenth century as a result of the great increase in trade were situated on or near the great roads of Cheshire, which were still, in the main, the old roads laid by the Romans. Their position was generally one of great strength, having been chosen in early times in order that men might be able to beat off the attacks of enemies. Chester was, as you have already seen, guarded on two sides by a bend of the river Dee, and was the meeting-place of Roman roads. Northwich on the Watling Street, Middlewich on Kind Street, and Stockport were all built at a point where two rivers meet. Runcorn, Lymm, and Altrincham are on sandstone heights protected on the north by the Mersey; Macclesfield is astride the main road in East Cheshire, and Nantwich on the highway into Wales. It was only by means of the roads that commerce between the towns could be kept open. The 'Welsh Row' of Nantwich recalls the days when the principal trade of the town was with the wool-weavers of Wales, a trade that was too often interrupted by the fierce outbreaks on the border.
CHAPTER XV
EDWARD THE FIRST AND CHESHIRE
Simon of Whitchurch received the Abbey of S. Werburgh from the hands of another and a greater Simon, the powerful Earl of Leicester, who was engaged in a grim struggle with the king on account of the king's extravagance and misgovernment, and the rule of foreign favourites. Both Henry and his son Edward were, in fact, at this very time prisoners of the earl, for the battle of Lewes, which ended so disastrously for the king, had just been fought. In the same year Earl Simon summoned the famous Parliament in which knights from the shires, and citizens from the boroughs, sat side by side with the nobles and bishops.