The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

[650] The cappers paid 9d. for canvas to make a new skirt for the giant, and "for mendyng of hys head and arme, xvid." (ib., 201). The dyers also furnished a pageant wherein a hart and a herdsman blowing a horn figured. Perhaps this was a cause why they had been so long allowed to escape from providing a pageant on Corpus Christi day. See above, p. 220.

[651] Sharp, 193. Drapers' Accounts, 1555, "payd to xviij gonnarys lxiis. iiijd.; payd for xij^li of gonepother, xijs. vjd."

[652] Sharp, Mysteries, 184.

[653] "To gabriell for beryng the lilly iiijd." (ib., 162).

[654] The frequent mistakes in chronology made by all writers who depend on Sharp or the printed versions of the Annals for dates of these visits make it important to insist on them.

[655] The Shrewsbury mercers' guild imposed a fine on such of its members who missed the local procession through absence at Coventry fair. Chambers, Mediæval Stage, ii. 110.

[656] C. Mery Talys, lvi. (quoted Chambers, ii. 358).

[657] Chambers, op. cit., ii. 362. Bateson, Leicester, III. 111, 120, 127, 137.

[658] For this and the singing of the Quem quæritis, "whom seek ye?" we have a "stage direction" in the Regularis Concordia of S. Ethelwold as early as Edgar's reign (959-79). See Chambers, ii. App. O.

[659] Ib., ii. 41.