[571] Flores Historiarum (R. S.), iii. 130 ‘aestimo quod rex aestivalis sis; forsitan hyemalis non eris.’
[572] Cf. Appendix E.
[573] ‘King-play’ at Reading (Reading St. Giles Accounts in Brand-Hazlitt, i. 157; Kerry, Hist. of St. Lawrence, Reading, 226).
[574] ‘King’s revel’ at Croscombe, Somerset (Churchwardens’ Accounts in Hobhouse, 3).
[575] ‘King’s game’ at Leicester (Kelly, 68) and ‘King-game’ at Kingston (Lysons, Environs of London, i. 225). On the other hand the King-game in church at Hascombe in 1578 (Representations, s. v. Hascombe), was probably a miracle-play of the Magi or Three Kings of Cologne. This belongs to Twelfth night (cf. ch. xix), but curiously the accounts of St. Lawrence, Reading, contain a payment for the ‘Kyngs of Colen’ on May day, 1498 (Kerry, loc. cit.).
[576] Cf. ch. xvii. Local ‘lords of misrule’ in the summer occur at Montacute in 1447-8 (Hobhouse, 183 ‘in expensis Regis de Montagu apud Tyntenhull existentis tempore aestivali’), at Meriden in 1565 (Sharpe, 209), at Melton Mowbray in 1558 (Kelly, 65), at Tombland, near Norwich (Norfolk Archaeology, iii. 7; xi. 345), at Broseley, near Much Wenlock, as late as 1652 (Burne-Jackson, 480). See the attack on them in Stubbes, i. 146. The term ‘lord of misrule’ seems to have been borrowed from Christmas (ch. xvii). It does not appear whether the lords of misrule of Old Romney in 1525 (Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii. 216) and Braintree in 1531 (Pearson, ii. 413) were in winter or summer.
[577] Owen and Blakeway, i. 331; Jackson and Burne, 480 (cf. Appendix E). Miss Burne suggests several possible derivations of the name; from mar ‘make mischief,’ from Mardoll or Marwell (St. Mary’s Well), streets in Shrewsbury, or from Muryvale or Meryvalle, a local hamlet. But the form ‘Mayvoll’ seems to point to ‘Maypole.’
[578] Representations, s. v. Aberdeen. Here the lord of the summer feast seems to have acted also as presenter of the Corpus Christi plays.
[579] Cf. ch. xvii.
[580] Batman, Golden Books of the Leaden Gods (1577), f. 30. The Pope is said to be carried on the backs of four deacons, ‘after the maner of carying whytepot queenes in Western May games.’ A ‘whitepot’ is a kind of custard.