[770] Jackson and Burne, 489: ‘Miss L. Toulmin Smith ... considers that the diction and composition of the [Shropshire] piece, as we now have it, date mainly from the seventeenth century.’
[771] Dyer, 193; Anstis, Register of the Garter (1724), ii. 38; E. Ashmole, Hist. of the Garter (ed. 1672), 188, 467; (ed. 1715), 130, 410.
[772] F. Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk (1805), iv. 6, 347; Mackerell, MS. Hist. of Norfolk (1737), quoted in Norfolk Archaeology, iii. 315; Notices Illustrative of Municipal Pageants and Processions (with plates, publ. C. Muskett, Norwich, 1850); Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (E. E. T. S.), 17, 443; Kelly, 48. Hudson and Tingey, Cal. of Records of Norwich (1898), calendar many documents of the guild.
[773] Hartland, iii. 58, citing Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda Aurea, xciii, gives the story of St. Margaret, and the appearance of the devil to her in the shape of a dragon. She was in his mouth, but made the sign of the cross, and he burst asunder.
[774] Cf. p. 177.
[775] Kelly, 37. The ‘dressyng of the dragon’ appears in the town accounts for 1536. The guild had dropped the riding, even before the Reformation.
[776] Harris, 97, 190, 277; Kelly, 41. The guild was formed by journeymen in 1424. Probably there was a riding. In any case, at the visit of Prince Edward in 1474, there was a pageant or mystère mimé ‘upon the Conddite in the Crosse Chepyng’ of ‘seint George armed and Kynges doughtr knelyng afore hym wt a lambe and the fader and the moder beyng in a toure a boven beholdyng seint George savyng their doughtr from the dragon.’ There was a similar pageant at the visit of Prince Arthur in 1498.
[777] Kelly, 42.
[778] Morris, 139, 168; Fenwick, Hist. of Chester, 372; Dyer, 195. The Fraternity of St. George was founded for the encouragement of shooting in 1537. They had a chapel with a George in the choir of St. Peter’s. St. George’s was the great day for races on the Rooddee. In 1610 was a famous show, wherein St. George was attended by Fame, Mercury, and various allegorical figures.
[779] Cf. Representations, s. v. York, Dublin.