| In twenty manners could he skip and dance, (After the School of Oxenfordë, though,) And with his leggës casten to and fro.[265] |
To quote here again from Dr. Rashdall, “William of Wykeham found it necessary for the protection of the sculpture in the Chapel reredos to make a Statute against dancing or jumping in the Chapel or adjoining Hall. His language is suggestive of that untranslatable amusement now known as ‘ragging,’ which has no doubt formed a large part of the relaxation of students—at least of English students—in all ages. At the same College there is a comprehensive prohibition of all ‘struggling, chorus-singing, dancing, leaping, singing, shouting, tumult and inordinate noise, pouring forth of water, beer, and all other liquids and tumultuous games’ in the Hall, on the ground that they were likely to disturb the occupants of the Chaplain’s chamber below. A moderate indulgence in some of the more harmless of these pastimes in other places seems to be permitted.”[266]
In this, the good bishop was only following the very necessary precedent of many prelates before him. As early as 1223, when the reform of the friars had stimulated a great effort to put down old abuses throughout the Church, Bishop Poore of Salisbury and his diocesan council decreed “we forbid the holding of dances, or base and unhonest games which provoke to lasciviousness, in the churchyard.... We forbid the proclaiming of scot-ales in church by layfolk, or by priests or clerks either in or without the church.” Similar prohibitions are repeated by later councils with an emphasis which only shows their inefficiency. The University of Oxford complained to Henry V. in 1414 that fairs and markets were held “more frequently than ever” on consecrated ground; and the Visitation of 1519 among churches appropriated to York Cathedral elicited the fact that football and similar games were carried on in two of the churchyards. These holy places sometimes witnessed rougher sports still; especially cathedral cemeteries during the great processions of the ecclesiastical year. “Moreover,” writes Bishop Grosseteste in a circular letter to all his archdeacons, “cause it to be proclaimed strictly in every church that, when the parishes come in procession for the yearly visitation and homage to the Cathedral church, no parish shall struggle to press before another parish with its banners; since from this source not only quarrels are wont to spring, but cruel bloodshed.” Bishop Giffard of Worcester was compelled for the same reason to proclaim in every church of his diocese “that no one shall join in the Pentecostal processions with a sword or other kind of arms”; and a similar prohibition in the diocese of Ely (1364) is based on the complaint that “both fights and deaths are wont to result therefrom.” Even more were the minds of the best clergy exercised by the corpse-wakes in churches, which “turned the house of mourning and prayer into a house of laughter and excess”; and again by “the execrable custom of keeping the ‘Feast of Fools,’ which obtains in some churches,” and which “profanes the sacred anniversary of the Lord’s Circumcision with the filth of lustful pleasures”; yet here again the tenacity of popular custom baffled even the most vigorous prelates.[267]
We must not pass away from popular amusements without one glance at these above-mentioned scot-ales, which were probably relics of the Anglo-Saxon semi-religious drinking-bouts. In the later Middle Ages they appear as forerunners of the modern bazaar or religious tea; a highly successful device for raising money contributions by an appeal to the convivial instincts of a whole parish or district. In the early 13th century we find them denounced among the methods employed by sheriffs for illegal extortion; and about the same time they were very frequently condemned from the religious point of view. The clergy were not only forbidden to be present at such functions, but also directed to warn their parishioners diligently against them, “for the health of their souls and bodies,” since all who took part at such feasts were excommunicated. But the custom died hard; or rather, it was probably rebaptized, like so many other relics of paganism; and the change seems to have taken place during Chaucer’s lifetime. In 1364 Bishop Langham of Ely was still fulminating against scot-ales; in 1419, if not before, we find an authorized system of “church-ales” in aid of the fabric. These were held sometimes in the sacred edifice itself; more often in the Church Houses, the rapid multiplication of which during the 15th century is probably due to the equally rapid growth of church-ales. The puritanism of the 13th century was by this time somewhat out of fashion; parish finances had come far more under the parishioners’ own control; and it was obviously convenient to make the best of these time-honoured compotations, as of the equally rough-and-ready hock-day customs, in order to meet expenses for which the parish was legally responsible. Earnest Churchmen had, all through this century, more important abuses to combat than these quasi-religious convivialities; and we find no voice raised against church-ales until the new puritanism of the Reformation. The Canons of 1603 forbade, among other abuses, “church ale drinkings ... in the church, chapel, or churchyard.” While Bishop Piers of Bath and Wells testified that he saw no harm in them, the puritan Stubbes accused the participants of becoming “as drunk as rats, and as blockish as brute beasts.” No doubt the truth lies between these extremes; but church-ales must not be altogether forgotten when we read the numerous medieval testimonies to the intimate connection between holy days and crime.[268]
Perhaps the most widespread and most natural of all country sports was that of poaching. As Dr. Rashdall has pointed out, it was especially popular at the two Universities, where the paucity of authorized amusements drove the students into wilder extremes. We have also abundant records of clerical poachers; and in 1389 Richard II. enacted at the petition of the Commons “that no priest or clerk with less than ten pounds of yearly income should keep greyhounds, ‘leetes’ or other hunting dogs, nor ferrets, nets, or snares.” The same petition complained that “artificers and labourers—that is to say, butchers, cobblers, tailors, and other working-folk, keep greyhounds and other dogs; and at the time when good Christians are at church on holy-days, hearing their divine services, these go hunting in the parks, coney-covers, and warrens pertaining to lords and other folk, and destroy them utterly.” It was therefore enacted that no man with an income of less than forty shillings should presume to keep hunting dogs or implements.
But in spite of squires and church synods, the working-man did all he could to escape, in his own untutored fashion, from the dullness of his working days. Every turn of life, from the cradle to the grave, was seized upon as an excuse for rough-and-ready sports. When a witness wishes to give a reason for remembering a christening on a certain day, he testifies to having broken his leg in the baptismal football match. Bishops struggled against the practice of celebrating marriages in taverns, lest the intending bride and bridegroom should plight their troth in liquor; and weddings in general were so uproarious as to be sometimes ruled out as too improper not only for a monk’s attendance but even for that of serious and pious layfolk. Similar survivals of barbaric sports clung to the funeral ceremonies—the wakë-pleyes of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale; and Archbishop Thoresby’s constitutions of 1367 seem to speak of wrestling matches held even in the church by the side of the dead man’s bier. Such things could scarcely have happened without some clerical connivance; and in fact, the sporting parson was as common in Chaucer’s as in Fielding’s day. The hunting Monk of his “Prologue” is abundantly vouched for by the despairing complaints of ecclesiastical disciplinarians; and the parish parson, so often a peasant by birth, constantly set at naught the prohibitions of his superiors, to join with tenfold zest in the least decorous pastimes of his village flock. While archbishops in council legislated repeatedly and vainly against the hunting and tavern-haunting priest, swaggering about with a sword at his side or the least decent of lay doublets and hosen on his limbs, the homely Lollard satirist vented his scorn on this Parson Trulliber, who contrasted so startlingly with Chaucer’s Parson Adams—
| For the tithing of a duck | |
| Or of an apple, or of an ey | [egg |
| They make man swear upon a book; | |
| Thus they foulen Christës fay. | [faith |
| Such bearen evilly heaven’s key; | |
| They may assoil, and they may shrive, | |
| With mennës wivës strongly play, | |
| With truë tillers sturt and strive | [struggle |
At the wrestling, and at the wake, | |
| And chiefë chanters at the ale; | |
| Market-beaters, and meddling-make, | |
| Hopping and hooting with heave and hale. | |
| At fairë fresh, and at wine stale; | |
| Dine, and drink, and make debate; | |
| The seven sacraments set a-sale; | |
| How keep such the keys of heaven gate? | |
| (“Political Poems” (R.S.), i., 330). |