It is possible to distinguish a simpler and a more elaborate type of masked entertainment, side by side, throughout the splendid festivities of the court of Henry VIII. For the more or less impromptu ‘mumming,’ the light-hearted and riotous king had a great liking. In the first year of his reign we find him invading the queen’s chamber at Westminster ‘for a gladness to the queen’s grace’ in the guise of Robin Hood, with his men ‘in green coats and hose of Kentish Kendal’ and a Maid Marian[1449]. The queen subsequently got left out, but there were many similar disports throughout the reign. One of these, in which the king and a party disguised as shepherds broke in upon a banquet of Wolsey’s, has been immortalized by Shakespeare[1450]. Such mummings were comparatively simple, and the Wardrobe was as a rule only called upon to provide costumes and masks, although on one occasion a lady in a ‘tryke’ or ‘spell’ wagon was drawn in[1451]. But the more formal ‘disguisings’ of the previous reign were also continued and set forth with great splendour. In 1527 a ‘House of Revel’ called the ‘Long House’ was built for their performance and decorated by Holbein[1452], and there was constant expenditure on the provision of pageants. ‘The Golldyn Arber in the Arche-yerd of Plesyer,’ ‘the Dangerus Fortrees,’ ‘the Ryche Mount,’ ‘the Pavyllon un the Plas Parlos,’ ‘the Gardyn de Esperans,’ ‘the Schatew Vert’[1453] are some of the names given to them, and these well suggest the kind of allegorical spectacular entertainment, diversified with dance and song, which the chroniclers describe.
The ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising,’ then, as it took shape at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a form of court revel, in which, behind the accretions of literature and pageantry, can be clearly discerned a nucleus of folk-custom in the entry of the band of worshippers, with their sacrificial exuviae, to bring the house good luck. The mummers are masked and disguised folk who come into the hall uninvited and call upon the company gathered there to dice and dance. It is not necessary to lay stress upon the distinction between the two terms, which are used with some indifference. When they first make their appearance together in the London proclamation of 1418 the masked visit is a ‘mumming,’ and is included with the ‘enterlude’ under the generic term of ‘disguising.’ In the Henry VII documents ‘mumming’ does not occur, and in those of Henry VIII ‘mumming’ and ‘disguising’ are practically identical, ‘disguising,’ if anything, being used of the more elaborate shows, while both are properly distinct from ‘interlude.’ But I do not think that ‘disguising’ ever quite lost its earlier and widest sense[1454]. It must now be added that early in Henry VIII’s reign a new term was introduced which ultimately supplanted both the others. The chronicler Hall relates how in 1513 ‘On the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the kyng with a xi other were disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande, thei were appareled in garmentes long and brode, wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes of gold & after the banket doen, these Maskers came in, with sixe gentlemen disguised in silke bearyng staffe torches, and desired the ladies to daunce, some were content, and some that knewe the fashion of it refused, because it was not a thyng commonly seen. And after thei daunced and commoned together, as the fashion of the Maske is, thei tooke their leaue and departed, and so did the Quene, and all the ladies[1455].’
The good Hall is not particularly lucid in his descriptions, and historians of the mask have doubted what, beyond the name, was the exact modification introduced ‘after the maner of Italie’ in 1512. A recent writer on the subject, Dr. H. A. Evans, thinks that it lay in the fact that the maskers danced with the spectators, as well as amongst themselves[1456]. But the mummers of 1377 already did this, although of course the custom may have grown obsolete before 1513. I am rather inclined to regard it as a matter of costume. The original Revels Account for this year—and Hall’s reports of court revels are so full that he must surely have had access to some such source—mentions provision for ‘12 nobyll personages, inparylled with blew damaske and yelow damaske long gowns and hoods with hats after the maner of maskelyng in Etaly[1457].’ Does not this description suggest that the ‘thing not sene afore in England’ was of the nature of a domino? In any case from 1513 onwards ‘masks,’ ‘maskelers’ or ‘maskelings’ recur frequently in the notices of the revels[1458]. The early masks resembled the simpler type of ‘mumming’ rather than the more elaborate and spectacular ‘disguising,’ but by the end of the reign both of the older terms had become obsolete, and all Elizabethan court performances in which the visor and the dance played the leading parts were indifferently known as masks[1459]. Outside the court, indeed, the nomenclature was more conservative, and to this day the village performers who claim the right to enter your house at Christmas call themselves ‘mummers,’ ‘guisers’ or ‘geese-dancers.’ Sometimes they merely dance, sing and feast with you, but in most places, as a former chapter has shown, they have adopted from another season of the year its characteristic rite, which in course of time has grown from folk-dance into folk-drama[1460].
I now pass from the mask to another point of contact between the Feast of Fools and the Tudor revels. This was the dominus festi. A special officer, told off to superintend the revels, pastimes and disports of the Christmas season, is found both in the English and the Scottish court at the end of the fifteenth century. In Scotland he bore the title of Abbot of Unreason[1461]; in England he was occasionally the Abbot, but more usually the Lord of Misrule. Away from court, other local designations present themselves: but Lord of Misrule or Christmas Lord are the generic titles known to contemporary literature[1462]. The household accounts of Henry VII make mention of a Lord or Abbot of Misrule for nearly every Christmas in the reign[1463]. Under Henry VIII a Lord was annually appointed, with one exception, until 1520[1464]. From that date, the records are not available, but an isolated notice in 1534 gives proof of the continuance of the custom[1465]. In 1521 a Lord of Misrule held sway in the separate household of the Princess Mary[1466], and there is extant a letter from the Princess’s council to Wolsey asking whether it were the royal pleasure that a similar appointment should be made in 1525[1467]. Little information can be gleaned as to the functions of the Lord of Misrule during the first two Tudor reigns. It is clear that he was quite distinct from the officer known as the ‘Master of the Revels,’ in whose hands lay the preparation and oversight of disguisings or masks and similar entertainments. The Master of the Revels also makes his first appearance under Henry VII. Originally he seems to have been appointed only pro hac vice, from among the officials, such as the comptroller of the household, already in attendance at court[1468]. This practice lasted well into the reign of Henry VIII, who was served in this capacity by such distinguished courtiers, amongst others, as Sir Henry Guildford and Sir Anthony Browne[1469]. Under them the preparation of the revels and the custody of the properties were in the hands of a permanent minor official. At first such work was done in the royal Wardrobe, but under Henry VIII it fell to a distinct ‘serjeant’ who was sometimes, but not always, also ‘serjeant’ to the king’s tents. In 1545, however, a permanent Master of the Revels was appointed in the person of Sir Thomas Cawarden, one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber[1470]. Cawarden formed the Revels into a regular office with a clerk comptroller, yeoman, and clerk, and a head quarters, at first in Warwick Inn, and afterwards in the precinct of the dissolved Blackfriars, of which he obtained a grant from the king. This organization of the Revels endured in substance until after the Restoration[1471]. Not unnaturally there were some jealousies and conflicts of authority between the permanent Master of the Revels and the annual Lord of Misrule, and this comes out amusingly enough from some of Cawarden’s correspondence for 1551-3, preserved in the muniment room at Loseley. For the two Christmases during this period the Lordship of Misrule was held by George Ferrers, one of the authors of the Mirrour for Magistrates[1472]; and Cawarden seems to have put every possible difficulty in the way of the discharge of his duties. Ferrers appealed to the lords of the council, and it took half a dozen official letters, signed by the great master of the household, Mr. Secretary Cecil, and a number of other dignitaries, to induce the Master of the Revels to provide the hobby horses and fool’s coat and what not, that were required[1473]. Incidentally this correspondence and the account books kept by Cawarden give some notion of the sort of amusement which the Lord of Misrule was expected to organize. In 1551 he made his entry into court ‘out of the mone.’ He had his fool ‘John Smith’ in a ‘vice’s coote’ and a ‘dissard’s hoode,’ a part apparently played by the famous court fool, Will Somers. He had a ‘brigandyne’; he had his ‘holds, prisons, and places of execuc’on, his cannypie, throne, seate, pillory, gibbet, hedding block, stocks, little ease, and other necessary incydents to his person’; he had his ‘armury’ and his stables with ‘13 hobby horses, whereof one with 3 heads for his person, bought of the carver for his justs and challenge at Greenwich.’ The masks this year were of apes and bagpipes, of cats, of Greek worthies, and of ‘medyoxes’ (‘double visaged, th’ one syde lyke a man, th’ other lyke death’)[1474]. The chief difficulty with Cawarden arose out of a visit to be paid by the Lord to London on January 4. The apparel provided for his ‘viij counsellors’ on that occasion was so ‘insufficient’ that he returned it, and told Cawarden that he had ‘mistaken ye persons that sholde weere them, as Sr Robt Stafford and Thoms Wyndesor, wh other gentlemen that stande also upon their reputac̃on, and wold not be seen in London, so torche-berer lyke disgysed, for as moche as they are worthe or hope to be worthe[1475].’ After all it took a letter from the council to get the fresh apparel ready in time. It was ready, for Machyn’s Diary records the advent of the Lord and his ‘consell’ to Tower Wharf, with a ‘mores danse,’ and the ‘proclamasyon’ made of him at the Cross in Cheap, and his visit to the mayor and the lord treasurer, ‘and so to Bysshopgate, and so to Towre warff, and toke barge to Grenwyche[1476].’ Before the following Christmas of 1552 Ferrers was careful to send note of his schemes to Cawarden in good time[1477]. This year he would come in in ‘blewe’ out of ‘vastum vacuum, the great waste.’ The ‘serpente with sevin heddes called hidra’ was to be his arms, his crest a ‘wholme bush’ and his ‘worde’ semper ferians. Mr. Windham was to be his admiral, Sir George Howard his master of the horse, and he required six councillors, ‘a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a phisician, a potecarie, a mr of requests, a sivilian, a disard, John Smyth, two gentleman ushers, besides jugglers, tomblers, fooles, friers, and suche other.’ Again there was a challenge with hobby horses, and again the Lord of Misrule visited London on January 6, and was met by Sergeant Vauce, Lord of Misrule to ‘master Maynard the Shreyff’ whom he knighted. He then proceeded to dinner with the Lord Mayor[1478]. As he rode his cofferer cast gold and silver abroad, and Cawarden’s accounts show that ‘coynes’ were made for him by a ‘wyer-drawer,’ after the familiar fashion of the Boy Bishops in France[1479]. These accounts also give elaborate details of his dress and that of his retinue, and of a ‘Triumph of Venus and Mars[1480].’ In the following year Edward was dead, and neither Mary nor Elizabeth seems to have revived the appointment of a Lord of Misrule at court[1481].
But the reign of the Lord of Misrule extended far beyond the verge of the royal palace. He was especially in vogue at those homes of learning, the Universities and the Inns of Court, where Christmas, though a season of feasting and ludi, had not yet become an occasion for general ‘going down.’ Anthony à Wood records him in several Oxford colleges, especially in Merton and St. John’s, and ascribes his downfall, justly, no doubt, in part, to the Puritans[1482]. At Merton he bore the title of Rex fabarum or Rex regni fabarum[1483]. He was a fellow of the college, was elected on November 19, and held office until Candlemas, when the winter festivities closed with the Ignis Regentium in the hall. The names of various Reges fabarum between 1487 and 1557 are preserved in the college registers, and the last holder of the office elected in the latter year was Joseph Heywood, the uncle of John Donne, in his day a famous recusant[1484]. At St. John’s College a ‘Christmas Lord, or Prince of the Revells,’ was chosen up to 1577. Thirty years later, in 1607, the practice was for one year revived, and a detailed account of this experiment was committed to manuscript by one Griffin Higgs[1485]. The Prince, who was chosen on All Saints’ day, was Thomas Tucker. He was installed on November 5, and immediately made a levy upon past and present members of the college to meet the necessary expenses. Amongst the subscribers was ‘Mr. Laude.’ On St. Andrew’s day, the Prince was publicly installed with a dramatic ‘deuise’ or ‘showe’ called Ara Fortunae. The hall was a great deal too full, a canopy fell down, and the ‘fool’ broke his staff. On St. Thomas’s day, proclamation was made of the style and title of the Prince and of the officers who formed his household[1486]. He also ratified the ‘Decrees and Statutes’ promulgated in 1577 by his predecessor and added some rather pretty satire on the behaviour of spectators at college and other revels. On Christmas day the Prince was attended to prayers, and took the vice-president’s chair in hall, where a boar’s head was brought in, and a carol sung. After supper was an interlude, called Saturnalia. On St. John’s day ‘some of the Prince’s honest neighbours of St. Giles’s presented him with a maske or morris’; and the ‘twelve daies’ were brought in with appropriate speeches. On December 29 was a Latin tragedy of Philomela, and the Prince, who played Tereus, accidentally fell. On New Year’s day were the Prince’s triumphs, introduced by a ‘shew’ called Time’s Complaint; and the honest chronicler records that this performance ‘in the sight of the whole University’ was ‘a messe of absurdityes,’ and that ‘two or three cold plaudites’ much discouraged the revellers. However, they went on with their undertaking. On January 10 were two shews, one called Somnium Fundatoris, and the other The Seven Days of the Weeke. The dearth in the city caused by a six weeks’ frost made the President inclined to stop the revels, as in a time of ‘generall wo and calamity’; but happily a thaw came, and on January 15 the college retrieved its reputation by a most successful public performance of a comedy Philomathes. The Seven Days of the Weeke, too, though acted in private, had been so good that the vice-chancellor was invited to see a repetition of it, and thus Sunday, January 17, was ‘spent in great mirth.’ On the Thursday following there was a little contretemps. The canons of Christ Church invited the Prince to a comedy called Yuletide, and in this ‘many things were either ill ment by them, or ill taken by vs.’ The play in fact was full of satire of ‘Christmas Lords,’ and it is not surprising that an apology from the dean, who was vice-chancellor that year, was required to soothe the Prince’s offended feelings. Term had now begun, but the revels were renewed about Candlemas. On that day was a Vigilate or all-night sitting, with cards, dice, dancing, and a mask. At supper a quarrel arose. A man stabbed his fellow, and the Prince’s stocks were requisitioned in deadly earnest. After supper the Prince was entertained in the president’s lodging with ‘a wassall called the five bells of Magdalen church.’ On February 6, ‘beeing egge Satterday,’ some gentlemen scholars of the town brought a mask of Penelope’s Wooers to the Prince, which, however, fell through; and finally, on Shrove Tuesday, after a shew called Ira seu Tumulus Fortunae, the Prince was conducted to his private chamber in a mourning procession, and his reign ended. Even yet the store of entertainment provided was not exhausted. On the following Saturday, though it was Lent, an English tragedy of Periander was given, the press of spectators being so great that ‘4 or 500’ who could not get in caused a tumult. And still there remained ‘many other thinges entended,’ but unperformed. There was the mask of Penelope’s Wooers, with the State of Telemachus and a Controversy of Irus and his Ragged Company. There were an Embassage from Lubberland, a Creation of White Knights of the Order of Aristotle’s Well, a Triumph of all the Founders of Colleges in Oxford, not to speak of a lottery ‘for matters of mirth and witt’ and a court leet and baron to be held by the Prince. So much energy and invention in one small college is astonishing, and it was hard that Mr. Griffin Higgs should have to complain of the treatment meted out to its entertainers by the University at large. ‘Wee found ourselves,’ he says, ‘(wee will say justly) taxed for any the least errour (though ingenious spirits would have pardoned many things, where all things were entended for their owne pleasure) but most vnjustly censured, and envied for that which was done (wee daresay) indifferently well.’
Amongst other colleges in which the Lord of Misrule was regularly or occasionally chosen, Anthony à Wood names, with somewhat vague references, New College and Magdalen[1487]. To these may certainly be added Trinity, where the Princeps Natalicius is mentioned in an audit-book of 1559[1488]. But the most singular of all the Oxford documents bearing on the subject cannot be identified with any particular college. It consists of a series of three Latin letters[1489]. The first is addressed by Gloria in excelsis to all mortals sub Natalicia ditione degentibus. They are bidden keep peace during the festal season and wished pleasant headaches in the mornings. The vicegerent of Gloria in excelsis upon earth is an annually constituted praelatia, that so a longer term of office may not beget tyranny. The letter goes on to confirm the election to the kingly dignity of Robertus Grosteste[1490], and enjoins obedience to him secundum Natalicias leges. It is datum in aere luminoso supra Bethlemeticam regionem ubi nostra magnificentia fuit pastoribus promulgata. The second letter is addressed to R[obert] Regi Natalicio and his proceres by Discretio virtutum omnium parens pariter ac regina. It is a long discourse on the value of moderation, and concludes with a declaration that a moderate laetitia shall rule until Candlemas, and then give way to a moderate clerimonia. The third is more topical and less didactic in its tone. It parodies a papal letter to a royal sovereign. Transaetherius, pater patrum ac totius ecclesiasticae monarchiae pontifex et minister complains, R. Regi Natalicio, of certain abuses of his rule. His stolidus senescallus, madidus marescallus and parliamenti grandiloquus sed nugatorius prolocutor have ut plura possent inferre stipendia assaulted and imprisoned on the very night of the Nativity, Iohannem Curtibiensem episcopum. In defence of these proceedings the Rex has pleaded quasdam antiquas regni tui, non dico consuetudines, sed potius corruptelas. Transaetherius gives the peccant officials three hours in which to make submission. If they fail, they shall be excommunicated, and Iohannes de Norwico, the warden of Jericho, will have orders to debar them from that place and confine them to their rooms. The letter is datum in vertice Montis Cancari, pontificatus nostri anni non fluxibili sed aeterno. I think it is clear that these letters are not a mere political skit, but refer to some actual Christmas revels. The waylaying of Iohannes Curtibiensis episcopus to make him ‘pay his footing’ is exactly the sort of thing that happened at the Feast of Fools, and the non consuetudines, sed potius corruptelas is the very language of the decretal of 1207[1491]. But surely they are not twelfth-or early thirteenth-century revels, as they must be if ‘Robertus Grosteste’ is taken literally as the famous bishop of Lincoln[1492]. There was no parliamenti prolocutor, for instance, in his day. They are fourteenth-, fifteenth-, or even sixteenth-century fooling, in connexion with some Rex Natalicius who adopted, to season his jest, the name of the great mediaeval legislator against all such ludi.
At Cambridge an order of the Visitors of Edward VI in 1549 forbade the appointment of a dominus ludorum in any college[1493]. But the prohibition did not endure, and more than one unsuccessful Puritan endeavour to put down Lords of Misrule is recorded by Fuller[1494]. Little, however, is known of the Cambridge Lords; their bare existence at St. John’s[1495] and Christ’s Colleges[1496]; and at Trinity the fact that they were called imperatores, a name on the invention of which one of the original fellows of the college, the astronomer John Dee, plumes himself[1497]. At schools such as Winchester and Eton, the functions of Lord of Misrule were naturally supplied by the Boy Bishop. At Westminster there was a paedonomus, and Bryan Duppa held the office early in the seventeenth century[1498].
The revels of the Inns of Court come into notice in 1422, when the Black Book of Lincoln’s Inn opens with the announcement Ceux sont les nouns de ceux qe fuerunt assignes de continuer yci le nowel[1499]. They are mentioned in the Paston Letters in 1451[1500], and in Sir Fortescue’s De laudibus Legum Angliae about 1463[1501]. Space compels me to be very brief in summarizing the further records for each Inn.
Lincoln’s Inn had in 1430 its four revels on All Hallows’ day, St. Erkenwold’s (April 30), Candlemas and Midsummer day, under a ‘Master of the Revels.’ In 1455 appears a ‘marshal,’ who was a Bencher charged to keep order and prevent waste from the last week of Michaelmas to the first of Hilary term. Under him were the Master of the Revels, a butler and steward for Christmas, a constable-marshal, server, and cup-bearer. In the sixteenth century the ‘grand Christmassings’ were additional to the four revels, and those of Candlemas were called the ‘post revels.’ Christmas had its ‘king.’ In 1519 it was ordered that the ‘king’ should sit on Christmas day, that on Innocents’ day the ‘King of Cokneys’[1502] should ‘sytt and haue due seruice,’ and that the marshal should himself sit as king on New Year’s day. In 1517 some doors had been broken by reason of ‘Jake Stray,’ apparently a popular anti-king or pretender, and the order concludes, ‘Item, that Jack Strawe and all his adherentes be from hensforth uttrely banyshed and no more to be used in Lincolles Inne.’ In 1520 the Bench determine ‘that the order of Christmas shall be broken up’; and from that date a ‘solemn Christmas’ was only occasionally kept, by agreement with the Temples. Both Lincoln’s Inn and the Middle Temple had a ‘Prince,’ for instance, in 1599. In 1616 the choice of a ‘Lieutenant’ at Christmas was forbidden by the Bench as ‘not accordinge to the auncyant Orders and usages of the House.’ In 1624 the Christmas vacation ceased to be kept. There were still ‘revels’ under ‘Masters of the Revels’ in Michaelmas and Hilary terms, and there are notices of disorder at Christmas in 1660 and 1662. But the last ‘Prince’ of Lincoln’s Inn, was probably the Prince de la Grange of 1661, who had the honour of entertaining Charles II[1503].
The Inner Temple held ‘grand Christmasses’ as well as ‘revels’ on All Saints’, Candlemas, and Ascension days. The details of the Christmas ceremonies have been put together from old account books by Dugdale. They began on St. Thomas’s day and ended on Twelfth night. On Christmas day came in the boar’s head. On St. Stephen’s day a cat and a fox were hunted with nine or ten couple of hounds round the hall[1504]. In the first few days of January a banquet with a play and mask was given to the other Inns of Court and Chancery. The Christmas officers included a steward, marshal, butler, constable-marshal, master of the game, lieutenant of the tower, and one or more masters of the revels. The constable-marshal was the Lord of Misrule. He held a fantastic court on St. Stephen’s day[1505], and came into hall ‘on his mule’ to devise sport on the banquetting night. In 1523 the Bench agreed not to keep Christmas, but to allow minstrels to those who chose to stay. Soon after 1554 the Masters of Revels cease to be elected[1506]. Nevertheless there was a notable revel in 1561 at which Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards earl of Leicester, was constable-marshal. He took the title of ‘Palaphilos, prince of Sophie,’ and instituted an order of knights of Pegasus in the name of his mistress Pallas[1507]. In 1594 the Inner Temple had an emperor, who sent an ambassador to the revels of Gray’s Inn[1508]. In 1627 the appointment of a Lord of Misrule led to a disturbance between the ‘Temple Sparks’ and the city authorities. The ‘lieutenant’ claimed to levy a ‘droit’ upon dwellers in Ram Alley and Fleet Street. The lord mayor intervened, an action which led to blows and the committal of the lieutenant to the counter, whence he escaped only by obtaining the mediation of the attorney-general, and making submission[1509]. A set of orders for Christmas issued by the Bench in 1632 forbade ‘any going abroad out of the Circuit of this House, or without any of the Gates, by any Lord or other Gentleman, to break open any House, or Chamber; or to take anything in the name of Rent, or a distress[1510].’