[1473] Kempe, 23. One of Ferrers’ letters to Cawarden is endorsed ‘Ferryrs, the Lorde Myserable, by the Cunsell’s aucketorryte.’ Ferrers solemnly heads his communications ‘Qui est et fuit,’ and alludes to the king as ‘our Founder.’
[1474] Kempe, 85.
[1475] Ibid. 28.
[1476] Machyn, 13.
[1477] Kempe, 32; Collier, i. 148; W. F. Trench, op. cit. 21; D. N. B. s. v. William Baldwin; G[ulielmus] B[aldwin] Beware the Cat (1570, reprinted by Halliwell, 1864). In this pamphlet Baldwin tells a story heard by him at court ‘the last Christmas,’ where he was with ‘Maister Ferrers, then maister of the King’s Majesties pastimes.’ The date seems fixed to 1552 by a mention of ‘Maister Willott and Maister Stremer, the one his [Ferrers’] Astronomer, the other his Divine’ (cf. Kempe, 34). The pamphlet was probably printed in 1553 and suppressed.
[1478] Machyn, 28; Stowe, Annals, 608. Abraham Fleming in Holinshed (ed. 1587), copying Stowe, transfers the events of this Christmas by mistake to 1551-2.
[1479] Kempe, 53; cf. p. 369.
[1480] Ibid. 47.
[1481] The letter from Ferrers dated in Kempe, 37 ‘Saynt John’s Daye, ano 1553,’ clearly belongs to the Christmas of 1552. The additional garments asked for therein are in the accounts for that year (Kempe, 52).
[1482] A. Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), iii. 480 ‘The custom was not only observed in that [St. John’s] college, but in several other houses, particularly in Merton College, where, from the first foundation, the fellows annually elected, about St. Edmund’s day, in November, a Christmas lord, or lord of misrule, styled in their registers Rex Fabarum and Rex Regni Fabarum; which custom continued until the reformation of religion, and then, that producing puritanism, and puritanism presbytery, the profession of it looked upon such laudable and ingenious customs as popish, diabolical and antichristian’; Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, ii. 136, ‘s. a. 1557’ mentions an oration ‘de ligno et foeno’ made by David de la Hyde, in praise of ‘Mr. Jasper Heywood, about this time King, or Christmas Lord, of the said Coll. [Merton] being it seems the last that bore that commendable office. That custom hath been as ancient for ought that I know as the College itself, and the election of them after this manner. On the 19th of November, being the vigil of S. Edmund, king and martyr, letters under seal were pretended to have been brought from some place beyond sea, for the election of a king of Christmas, or Misrule, sometimes called with us of the aforesaid college, Rex Fabarum. The said letters being put into the hands of the Bachelaur Fellows, they brought them into the Hall that night, and standing, sometimes walking, round the fire, there reading the contents of them, would choose the senior Fellow that had not yet borne that office, whether he was a Doctor of Divinity, Law, or Physic, and being so elected, had power put into his hands of punishing all misdemeanours done in the time of Christmas, either by imposing exercises on the juniors, or putting into the stocks at the end of the Hall any of the servants, with other punishments that were sometimes very ridiculous. He had always a chair provided for him, and would sit in great state when any speeches were spoken, or justice to be executed, and so this his authority would continue till Candlemas, or much about the time that the Ignis Regentium was celebrated in that college’; Life and Times (O. H. S.), i. 423 ‘Fresh nights, carolling in public halls, Christmas sports, vanished, 1661.’