[16] The alteration must have occurred very soon after this, for the “Banes,” quoted later, which gives Whitsuntide as the time of the plays, cannot, I think, be much later than 1470.
The authorship of the plays is generally attributed to Ralf Higden, the author of Polychronicon, and a monk of Chester, where he is said to have died at a great age in 1353. But there is no evidence to justify such a definite statement as this. All we know of the origin of the plays is found in the following:—
1. A “Banes,” XV. Cent., giving Sir John Arneway as the “deviser.” He was Mayor 1268–1276;
2. A Proclamation, c. 1520, giving Arneway as the “deviser,” and Francis, a monk, as the writer.
3. A “Banes,” c. 1570, giving Arneway as “deviser,” and a “Dom Randall” as the writer.
4. An account of the plays, by Archdeacon Rogers, c. 1575; one version gives “Randall Higden” as the writer, and places the time in the mayoralty of Arneway, 1328; the other version gives “one Randoll a monke,” Arneway as Mayor, and the date 1339.
5. An endorsement or a Proclamation in the Harleian MSS., supposed to be written by one of the Holmes, c. 1628, stating “Hignet” was the writer.
6. A similar endorsement on a copy of the plays of about the same date.
If the religious tendency of the Chester Plays was owing to a guiding hand from the monastery, that hand was, according to our earliest tradition, one Henry Francis, whose name occurs in deeds dated 1377–82. Higden was never mentioned until late in the sixteenth century.
It is quite possible that Henry Francis and Ralph Higden may have translated and revised some of the plays, and rendered literary help in reducing the cycle to unity, and that is all we can say with safety.[17] And this theory is supported by the fact that the closer the plays are studied, the more certain appears the fact that they are not by one hand.