"Firste," says Master Stubs, "all the wilde heades of the parishe conventynge together, chuse them a grand Capitaine (of mischeef) whom they innoble with the title of my Lorde of Misserule, and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, three score, or a hundred lustie guttes like to hymself, to waite uppon his lordely majestie, and to guarde his noble persone. Then every one of these his menne he investeth with his liveries of greene, yellowe or some other light wanton colour. And as though that were not (baudie) gaudy enough I should saie, they bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribons, and laces, hanged all over with golde rynges, precious stones, and other jewelles: this doen, they tye about either legge twentie or fourtie belles with rich handkercheefes in their handes, and sometymes laied acrosse over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed for the moste parte of their pretie Mopsies and loovyng Bessies, for bussyng them in the darcke. Thus thinges sette in order, they have their hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques, together with their baudie pipers, and thunderyng drommers, to strike up the Deville's Daunce withall" (meaning the Morris Dance), "then marche these heathen companie towardes the church and churche yarde, their pipers pipyng, drommers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng, their belles iynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about their heades like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skyrmishyng amongst the throng: and in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or preaçhyng) dauncyng and swingyng their handkercheefes over their heades, in the churche, like devilles incarnate, with suche a confused noise that no man can heare his owne voice. Then the foolishe people, they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort."
At the Christmas celebration held at Gray's Inn in 1594, to which we have already alluded, the person selected to fill the office of Christmas Prince was a Norfolk gentleman of the name of Helmes, whose leg, like that of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, appears "to have been formed under the star of a galliard." He is described as being "accomplished with all good parts, fit for so great a dignity, and also a very proper man in personage, and very active in dancing and revelling." The revels over which this mock monarch presided were, as our readers will remember, exhibited before Queen Elizabeth; and it was the exquisite performance of this gentleman and his court which her Majesty described as bearing the same relation for excellence to those of her own courtiers which a banquet does to bread and cheese. We must refer such of our readers as are desirous of informing themselves as to the nature and taste of the devices which could make her Majesty so eloquent, to the "Gesta Grayorum;" contenting ourselves with giving them such notion thereof, as well as of the high dignities which appertained to a Lord of Misrule, as may be conveyed by a perusal of the magnificent style and titles assumed by Mr. Henry Helmes on his accession. They were enough to have made her Majesty jealous, if she had not been so good-natured a queen; for looking at the philosophy of the thing, she was about as much a mock monarch as himself, and could not dance so well. To be sure, she was acknowledged by this potentate as Lady Paramount; and to a woman like Elizabeth, it was something to receive personal homage from—
"The High and Mighty Prince Henry, Prince of Purpoole, Archduke of Stapulia and Bernardia; Duke of High and Nether Holborn; Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham; Count Palatine of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell; Great Lord of the Cantons of Islington, Kentish Town, Paddington, and Knightsbridge; Knight of the most Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the same"!
It is admitted that no man can be a great actor who has not the faculty of divesting himself of his personal identity, and persuading himself that he really is, for the time, that which he represents himself to be; his doing which will go far to persuade others into the same belief. Now as her Majesty has pronounced upon the excellence of Mr. Henry Helmes's acting, and if we are therefore to suppose that that gentleman had contrived to mystify both himself and her, she would naturally be not a little vain of so splendid a vassal. But seriously, it is not a little amusing to notice the good faith with which these gentlemen appear to have put on and worn their burlesque dignities, and the real homage which they not only expected, but actually received. If the tricks which they played during their "brief authority," were not of that mischievous kind which "make the angels weep," they were certainly fantastic enough to make those who are "a little lower than the angels" smile. A Lord Mayor in his gilt coach seems to be a trifle compared with a Lord of Misrule entering the city of London in former days; and the following passage from Warton's "History of English Poetry," exhibits amusingly enough the sovereign functions seriously exercised by this important personage, and the homage, both ludicrous and substantial, which he sometimes received:—
"At a Christmas celebrated in the hall of the Middle Temple, in the year 1635, the jurisdiction privileges and parade of this mock monarch are thus circumstantially described. He was attended by his Lord Keeper, Lord Treasurer with eight white staves, a Captain of his Band of Pensioners and of his guard, and with two Chaplains who were so seriously impressed with an idea of his regal dignity that, when they preached before him on the preceding Sunday in the Temple Church, on ascending the pulpit they saluted him with three low bows. He dined both in the Hall and in his Privy Chamber under a cloth of Estate. The pole-axes for his Gentlemen Pensioners were borrowed of Lord Salisbury. Lord Holland, his temporary justice in Eyre, supplies him with venison on demand; and the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London with wine. On Twelfth-day, at going to Church, he received many petitions which he gave to his Master of Requests; and like other kings he had a favourite, whom—with others, gentlemen of high quality—he knighted at returning from Church."
The Christmas Prince on this occasion was Mr. Francis Vivian, who expended from his own private purse the large sum of £2,000 in support of his dignities. Really, it must have tried the philosophy of these gentlemen to descend from their temporary elevation, into the ranks of ordinary life. A deposed prince like that high and mighty prince, Henry, Prince of Purpoole, must have felt, on getting up on the morrow of Candlemas-day, some portion of the sensations of Abou Hassan on the morning which succeeded his Caliphate of a day, when the disagreeable conviction was forced upon him that he was no longer Commander of the Faithful, and had no further claim to the services of Cluster-of-Pearls, Morning-Star, Coral-Lips or Fair-Face. In the case, however, of Mr. Francis Vivian, it is stated that after his deposition he was knighted by the king,—by way, we suppose, of breaking his fall.
In Wood's "Athenæ Oxonienses," mention is made of a very splendid Christmas ceremonial observed at St. John's College, Oxford, in the reign of our first James, which was presided over by a Mr. Thomas Tooker, whom we elsewhere find called "Tucker." From a manuscript account of this exhibition, Wood quotes the titles assumed by this gentleman in his character of Christmas Prince; and we will repeat them here, for the purpose of showing that the legal cloisters were not the only ones in which mirth was considered as no impeachment of professional gravity, and that humor (such as it is) was an occasional guest of the wisdom which is proverbially said to reside in wigs—of all denominations. From a comparison of these titles with those by which Mr. Henry Helmes illustrated his own magnificence at Gray's Inn, our readers may decide for themselves upon the relative degrees of the wit which flourished beneath the shelter of the respective gowns. Though ourselves a Cantab, we have no skill in the measurement of the relations of small quantities. Of the hearty mirth in each case there is little doubt; and humor of the finest quality could have done no more than produce that effect, and might probably have failed to do so much. The appetite is the main point. "The heart's all," as Davy says. A small matter made our ancestors laugh, because they brought stomachs to the feast of Momus. And, Heaven save the mark! through how many national troubles has that same joyous temperament (which is the farthest thing possible from levity,—one of the phases of deep feeling,—) helped to bring the national mind! The "merry days" of England were succeeded by what may be called her "age of tears,"—the era of the sentimentalists, when young gentlemen ceased to wear cravats, and leaned against pillars in drawing-rooms in fits of moody abstraction or under the influence of evident inspiration, and young ladies made lachrymatories of their boudoirs, and met together to weep, and in fact went through the world weeping. Amid all its absurdity, there was some real feeling at the bottom of this too; and therefore it, too, had its pleasure. But there is to be an end of this also. Truly are we falling upon the "evil days" of which we may say we "have no pleasure in them." Men are neither to laugh nor smile, now, without distinctly knowing why. We are in the age of the philosophers.—All this time, however, Mr. Thomas Tucker is waiting to have his style and titles proclaimed; and thus do we find them duly set forth:—
"The most magnificent and renowned Thomas, by the favor of Fortune, Prince of Alba Fortunata, Lord of St. John's, High Regent of the Hall, Duke of St. Giles's, Marquis of Magdalen's, Landgrave of the Grove, Count Palatine of the Cloysters, Chief Bailiff of Beaumont, High Ruler of Rome, Master of the Manor of Walton, Governor of Gloucester Green, sole Commander of all Titles, Tournaments, and Triumphs, Superintendent in all Solemnities whatever."
From these titles,—as well as from those which we have already mentioned as being assumed by the courtiers of the illustrious Prince of Sophie, our readers will perceive that alliteration was an esteemed figure in the rhetoric of the revels.
In order to give our readers a more lively idea of this potentate, we have, as the frontispiece to our second part, introduced a Lord of Misrule to preside over the Christmas sports therein described. Although the titles with which we have there invested him are taken from the "Gesta Grayorum," the dress in which the artist has bestowed him is not copied from any one of the particular descriptions furnished by the different records. He is intended to represent the ideal of a Christmas prince, and not the portrait of any particular one of whom we have accounts. The artist's instructions were therefore confined to investing him with a due magnificence (referring to the records only so far as to keep the costume appropriate) and with a complacent sense of his own finery and state, and we think that Mr. Seymour has succeeded very happily in catching and embodying the mock heroic of the character. The Prince of Purpoole, or His Highness of Sophie, must have looked just such a personage as he has represented.