The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England / Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants, and Pompous Spectacles from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

by Joseph Strutt

VII.—JOHN RYKELL, A CELEBRATED TREGETOUR.

In the fourteenth century, the tregetours seem to have been in the zenith of their glory; from that period they gradually declined in the popular esteem; their performances were more confined, and of course became less consequential. Lidgate, in one of his poems, [666] introduces Death speaking to a famous tregetour belonging to the court of king Henry V. in this manner:

Maister John Rykell, sometime tregitour

Of noble Henry kinge of Englonde,

And of France the mighty conqueror;

For all the sleightes, and turnyng of thyne bonde,

Thou must come nere this dance, I understonde;

Nought may avail all thy conclusions,

For Dethe shortly, nother on see nor land,

Is not desceyved by no illusions. [667]