No. 271. A Puppet Show.
Among the pastimes most popular at this time with the lower and middle classes were archery, the practice of which was enforced by authority, and shooting with the crossbow, as well as most of the ordinary rough games known at a later period, such as football and the like. The English archers were celebrated throughout Europe. The poet Barclay, who wrote at the close of the century, makes the shepherd in one of his eclogues not only boast of his skill in archery, but he adds—
I can dance the ray; I can both pipe and sing,
If I were mery; I can both hurle and sling;
I runne, I wrestle, I can welle throwe the barre,
No shepherd throweth the axeltree so farre;
If I were mery, I could well leape and spring;
I were a man mete to serve a prince or king.
No. 272. A Party Hawking.
No. 273. A Royal Carriage and Escort.
Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and such like sports, were also pursued with avidity; and even gentlemen and young noblemen took part in them. Any game, in fact, which produced violent exercise and violent excitement was in favour with all ranks. Among the higher classes, hunting and hawking were pursued with more eagerness than ever, and they become now the subjects of numerous written treatises, setting forth their laws and regulations. When gentlemen were riding out for pleasure, they were usually accompanied with hawks and hounds. In the annexed cut ([No. 272]), taken from an illuminated manuscript of the French Boccaccio at Paris (Imperial Library, MS. No. 6887), a party thus attended meets another party on horseback, and they are in the act of saluting each other. Horses were still almost the only conveyance from place to place, though we now more often meet with pictures of carriages; but, though evidently intended to be very gorgeous, they are of clumsy construction, and seem only to have been used by princes or great nobles. I give two examples from a superbly illuminated manuscript of the French translation of “Valerius Maximus,” in the great national library in Paris (No. 6984), executed in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The first (cut [No. 273]) is a royal car, in which a throne has been placed for the king, who sits in it in state. His guards lead the horses. The form of the carriage is very simple; it is a mere cart on wheels, without any springs, and has a covering supported on two large hoops, which are strengthened by cross-bars resembling the spokes of a wheel. In the second example (cut [No. 274]), the carriage bears some resemblance to a modern omnibus. It is intended to represent the incident in Roman history, where the unfilial Tullia caused her charioteer to drive over the body of her father, Servius Tullus, who had been slain by her husband Tarquin the Proud. The ladies appear to sit on benches inside the carriage, while the driver is mounted on the horse nearest to it. These carriages still retained the name of carts, although they appear to have been used chiefly on state occasions. Riding in them must have been very uneasy, and they were exposed to accidents. When Richard II. made his grand entry into London, a ceremony described by Richard de Maidstone in Latin verse, the ladies of the court rode in two cars, or carts, one of which fell over, and exposed its fair occupants in a not very decorous manner to the jeers of the multitude.
