[1493] Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, ii. 32; Stat. Acad. Cantab. 161.
[1494] Fuller, Good Thoughts in Worse Times (1646), 193 ‘Some sixty years since, in the University of Cambridge it was solemnly debated betwixt the Heads to debarre young schollers of that liberty allowed them in Christmas, as inconsistent with the Discipline of Students. But some grave Governors mentioned the good use thereof, because thereby, in twelve days, they more discover the dispositions of Scholars than in twelve moneths before’; Hist. of Cambridge (ed. M. Prickett and J. Wright), 301 (s. a. 1610-11), describing a University Sermon by Wm. Ames, Fellow of Christ’s, who ‘had (to use his own expression) the place of a watchman for an hour in the tower of the University; and took occasion to inveigh against the liberty taken at that time, especially in such colleges who had lords of misrule, a pagan relic which (he said) as Polidore Vergil showeth, remaineth only in England.’ W. Ames had, in consequence, to ‘forsake his college.’ Polydore Vergil, de Inventoribus Rerum, v. 2 (transl. Langley, f. 102v), speaks of ‘the Christemass Lordes’ of England.
[1495] Cooper, op. cit. ii. 112; Baker, St. John’s, ii. 573. Lords in 1545 and 1556.
[1496] Ibid. ii. 111. A lord in 1566. Peile, Christ’s College, 54, quotes payments of the time of Edward VI ‘for sedge when the Christenmasse lords came at Candlemas to the Colledge with shewes’; ‘for the lordes of S. Andrewes and his company resorting to the Colledge.’ These were perhaps from the city; cf. p. 419.
[1497] Dee, Compendious Rehearsal (Chronicle of John of Glastonbury, ed. T. Hearne, 502), ‘in that College also (by my advice and by my endeavors, divers ways used with all the other colleges) was their Christmas Magistrate first named and confirmed an Emperor. The first was one Mr. Thomas Dun, a very goodly man of person, stature and complexion, and well learned also.’ Warton, iii. 302, describes a draught of the college statutes in Rawl. MS. 233, in which cap. xxiv is headed ‘de Praefecto Ludorum qui Imperator dicitur,’ and provides for the superintendence by the Imperator of the Spectacula at Christmas and Candlemas. But the references to the Imperator have been struck out with a pen, and the title altered to ‘de Comoediis Ludisque in natali Christi exhibendis.’ This is the title of cap. xxiv as actually issued in 1560 (Mullinger, University of Cambridge, 579). The earlier statutes of 1552 have no such chapter.
[1498] H. King, Funeral Sermon of Bishop Duppa (1662), 34 ‘Here he had the greatest dignity which the School could afford put upon him, to be the Paedonomus at Christmas, Lord of his fellow scholars: which title was a pledge and presage that, from a Lord in jeast, he should, in his riper age, become one in earnest’; cf. J. Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster School, 64.
[1499] Records of Lincoln’s Inn: Black Books, i. 1.
[1500] Paston Letters, i. 186. The names of two gentlemen chosen stewards this year at the Middle and Inner Temples are mentioned.
[1501] Fortescue, de Laudibus, cap. xlix.
[1502] N. E. D. s. v. Cockney, supposes the word to be here used in the sense of ‘cockered child,’ ‘mother’s darling.’