Before I quit this division of my subject, I shall mention the annual celebration of games upon Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire, to which prodigious multitudes constantly resorted. Robert Dover, an attorney, of Barton on the Heath, in the county of Warwick, was forty years the chief director of these pastimes. They consisted of wrestling, cudgel-playing, leaping, pitching the bar, throwing the sledge, tossing the pike, with various other feats of strength and activity; many of the country gentlemen hunted or coursed the hare; and the women danced. A castle of boards was erected on this occasion, from which guns were frequently discharged. "Captain Dover received permission from James I. to hold these sports; and he appeared at their celebration in the very clothes which that monarch had formerly worn, but with much more dignity in his air and aspect." [43] I do not mean to say that the Cotswold games were invented, or even first established, by captain Dover; on the contrary, they seem to be of much higher origin, and are evidently alluded to in the following lines by John Heywood the epigrammatist: [44]
He fometh like a bore, the beaste should seeme bolde,
For he is as fierce as a lyon of Cotsolde.
Something of the same sort, I presume, was the Carnival, kept every year, about the middle of July, upon Halgaver-moor, near Bodmin in Cornwall; "resorted to by thousands of people," says Heath, in his description of Cornwall, published in 1750. "The sports and pastimes here held were so well liked by Charles II. when he touched here in his way to Sicily, that he became a brother of the jovial society. The custom of keeping this carnival is said to be as old as the Saxons."
XX.—SPLENDOUR OF THE ANCIENT KINGS AND NOBILITY.
Paul Hentzner, a foreign writer, who visited this country at the close of the sixteenth century, says of the English, in his Itinerary, written in 1598, that they are "serious like the Germans, lovers of show, liking to be followed wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their master's arms in silver." [45] This was no new propensity: the English nobility at all times affected great parade, seldom appearing abroad without large trains of servitors and retainers; and the lower classes of the people delighted in gaudy shows, pageants, and processions.
If we go back to the times of the Saxons, we shall find that, soon after their establishment in Britain, their monarchs assumed great state. Bede tells us that "Edwin, king of Northumberland, lived in much splendour, never travelling without a numerous retinue; and when he walked in the streets of his own capital, even in the times of peace, he had a standard borne before him. This standard was of the kind called by the Romans tufa, and by the English tuuf: it was made with feathers of various colours, in the form of a globe, and fastened upon a pole." [46] It is unnecessary to multiply citations; for which reason, I shall only add another. Canute the Dane, who is said to have been the richest and most magnificent prince of his time in Europe, rarely appeared in public without being followed by a train of three thousand horsemen, well mounted and completely armed. These attendants, who were called house carles, formed a corps of body guards, or household troops, and were appointed for the honour and safety of that prince's person. [47] The examples of royalty were followed by the nobility and persons of opulence.
In the middle ages, the love of show was carried to an extravagant length; and as a man of fashion was nothing less than a man of letters, those studies that were best calculated to improve the mind were held in little estimation.
XXI.—ROYAL AND NOBLE ENTERTAINMENTS.
The courts of princes and the castles of the great barons were daily crowded with numerous retainers, who were always welcome to their masters' tables. The noblemen had their privy counsellors, treasurers, marshals, constables, stewards, secretaries, chaplains, heralds, pursuivants, pages, henchmen or guards, trumpeters, and all the other officers of the royal court. [48] To these may be added whole companies of minstrels, mimics, jugglers, tumblers, rope-dancers, and players; and especially on days of public festivity, when, in every one of the apartments opened for the reception of the guests, were exhibited variety of entertainments, according to the taste of the times, but in which propriety had very little share; the whole forming a scene of pompous confusion, where feasting, drinking, music, dancing, tumbling, singing, and buffoonery, were jumbled together, and mirth excited too often at the expense of common decency. [49] If we turn to the third Book of Fame, a poem written by our own countryman Chaucer, we shall find a perfect picture of these tumultuous court entertainments, drawn, I doubt not, from reality, and perhaps without any exaggeration. It may be thus expressed in modern language: Minstrels of every kind were stationed in the receptacles for the guests; among them were jesters, that related tales of mirth and of sorrow; excellent players upon the harp, with others of inferior merit [50] seated on various seats below them, who mimicked their performances like apes to excite laughter; behind them, at a great distance, was a prodigious number of other minstrels, making a great sound with cornets, shaulms, flutes, horns, [51] pipes of various kinds, and some of them made with green corn, [52] such as are used by shepherds' boys; there were also Dutch pipers to assist those who chose to dance either "love-dances, springs, or rayes," [53] or any other new-devised measures. Apart from these were stationed the trumpeters and players on the clarion; and other seats were occupied by different musicians playing variety of mirthful tunes. There were also present large companies of jugglers, magicians, and tregetours, who exhibited surprising tricks by the assistance of natural magic.