Randal Holme the Third was also a distinguished Freemason, and probably one of the earliest connected with Chester. He alludes to the fact that he was a “Member of the Society called Free-Masons” in his Academy of Armory, and one of his manuscript volumes is entitled Constitutions of Masonry, giving certain particulars as to the names of persons made Freemasons, and to the initiation fees paid by them. Evidently there was a lodge of Freemasons at Chester in the seventeenth century, of which Randle Holme (III.) was a member. It has been supposed by some that his father also may have been a Mason, as there are some masonic emblems on the monument put up to his memory in St. Mary’s Church. The Freemasons of the county showed their respect for his memory, and commemorated his connection with the church by rebuilding the north porch in 1892, whilst Mr. Henry Taylor, F.S.A., placed stained-glass windows of a heraldic nature in the same, with a full account of him. The laying of the foundation-stone of this porch by the then Provincial Grand Master, Earl Egerton of Tatton, with full masonic rites, was an interesting ceremony, and was attended by some two hundred Masons in their regalia.
It has been already noted that Randle Holme III. lived in Bridge Street. This house he apparently built about 1670, and did this without consulting the Corporation, and he was ordered to pull it down, and fined for persisting in building it. The house, however, was not demolished until early in the nineteenth century, when the Grosvenor Bridge was built over the Dee, and it was subsequently converted into a tavern called “The Lamb.”
Randle Holme III. died on March 12, 1699–1700, in the seventy-third year of his age. He was thrice married, and had issue eight sons and six daughters. Of the former only three survived him—Randle, by his first wife, born in 1659, and George and John by his second. Randle was taken into partnership by his father when he was thirty-one years of age—that is, in 1690. In 1691 he became a member of the Stationers’ Company, of which he was elected an alderman in 1705, the same year in which he was one of the two sheriffs of the city. Like his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, he also served the office of churchwarden of St. Mary’s, and like them, too, he was deputy to Norroy King-of-Arms. He continued the work of his ancestors, and the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Mary’s contain various entries of payments to him for work done. He died August 30, 1707, aged 48, all his five children having predeceased him. In his will, referred to above, he bequeaths all his books and collections of heraldry to his half-brothers George and John, to be equally divided between them. These books and collections no doubt represented the work and labours of all four Randle Holmes, as well as what the first of that name obtained by his marriage with the widow of Thomas Chaloner. They represented the researches of over a hundred years, and contained abstracts of many documents which no longer exist, and accounts of visits paid to many churches, with accurate descriptions of the monumental inscriptions, and the old heraldic stained glass in the windows. Early in the eighteenth century they were purchased by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, having been, it is said, first offered to the Corporation of Chester, who declined to buy them. They now form a portion of that magnificent collection of manuscripts in the British Museum known as “the Harleian MSS.,” and run to about 270 volumes. Naturally their contents are extremely diversified, and they vary considerably in value; but there can be no doubt that to any one inquiring into the history of Chester, Cheshire, Lancashire, and North Wales they contain a mine of information, and are simply invaluable. Unfortunately there is no complete and sufficient index of their contents, so that laborious perusal of them is necessary, for the acquisition of the information which they can convey. Allowance, too, will have to be made for the fact that none of the four were good mediæval Latin scholars, for none of them had the advantage of a university education. Consequently in their transcription of old Latin records many mistakes will be found, and though these may be irritating to the modern student, they can easily be corrected. The opinion passed on the first Randle Holme by the late Mr. W. H. Black, F.S.A., Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, may virtually be applied to them all: “In short, he was an industrious and faithful copyist or collector of historical antiquities, but his philological learning was too scanty for him to use extreme accuracy on the one hand, or to invent any of the documents which he professed to transcribe, extract, or abridge on the other. Therefore his copies may be always relied on as faithfully transcribed in substance.” Though the man of learned leisure has not yet appeared who can wade through these volumes and make us acquainted with the treasures they contain, yet it is true to say that no historian of Chester or of Cheshire can fulfil his purpose who does not either first-hand or second-hand (the former course being the better) derive a great deal of information from these industrious antiquarians of the seventeenth century. They have set an example which has been stimulating and fruitful, and it is only right that in a volume of this character generous and adequate expression should be given to the debt which we owe to them for the preservation of details and information which otherwise would have been irrevocably lost. They have left also in many of the churches in Chester and its neighbourhood many examples of their heraldic knowledge and skill in the memorials of deceased persons. Painted as these were on wood, many have disappeared; those that are still left are full of interest. May we not class these four Randle Holmes as amongst Chester’s most notable worthies?
THE CHESTER MYSTERY PLAYS
By Joseph C. Bridge, M.A., Mus. Doc. Oxon. et Dunelm., F.S.A.
Introduction.
THERE is no more interesting study in our early literature than the Mystery Plays which were once so popular throughout the length and breadth of England. It may be well to premise that their proper title is “Miracle” Plays, and no early writer ever alludes to them under any other name; nor was there in this country any difference between “Miracle” and “Mystery,” as stated by some authorities. But custom has now definitely coupled the latter title with those early dramatic efforts of our forefathers, and it will be used in these pages.
Excluding odd ones, four great series of plays have come down to us, viz. those of York, Wakefield, Chester, and Coventry, and each place probably served as a centre of dramatic influence. While York acted as a stimulus to Wakefield itself and Newcastle, so Chester supported the dramatic efforts from Kendal in the north to Shrewsbury in the south and Dublin in the west.
Each series of plays possesses distinct characteristics, and, happily, Chester can claim that her plays have in them “less to offend and a more reverential tone” than many others, for it is useless to disguise the fact that many readers object to these plays as seeming to treat religious subjects with levity. But with a little reflection we shall see that these plays do not deserve such condemnation if judged from the right standpoint, and that standpoint is assuredly not the twentieth century. We must throw ourselves back five centuries at least if we are to obtain a right focus. From the time of St. Paul, God’s Word has been preached in divers ways and by divers methods, and we must not be surprised if the mediæval preacher was shrewd enough to use the dramatic instincts of the people as distributing media of religious knowledge.[6]