The Reign of Richard the Second,
the son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent, who came to the throne (in tutelage) on the death of his grandfather, Edward III. (1377), we find that costly banquetings, disguisings, pageants, and plays continued to be the diversions of Christmastide at court. From the rolls of the royal wardrobe, it appears that at the Christmas festival in 1391, the sages of the law were made subjects for disguisements, this entry being made: "Pro XXI coifs de tela linea pro hominibus de lege contrafactis pro Ludo regis tempore natalis Domini anno XII." That is, for twenty-one linen coifs for counterfeiting men of the law in the King's play at Christmas. And Strutt[25] says that in the same year (1391) the parish clerks of London put forth a play at Skinners' Wells, near Smithfield, which continued three days: the king, queen, and many of the nobility, being present at the performance.
moneta nova adriani stvltorv pape.
| [On one side is the legend, moneta nova adriani stvltorv pape, the last e being in the field of the piece, on which is represented the Pope, with his double cross and tiara, with a fool in full costume approaching his bauble to the pontifical cross, and two persons behind, who form part of his escort. On the reverse is a "mother fool," with her bauble, attended by a grotesque person with a cardinal's hat, with the oft-recurring legend, STVLTORV INFINITVS EST NVMERVS.] |
But the miracle plays and mysteries performed by the Churchmen differed greatly from the secular plays and interludes which at this period "were acted by strolling companies of minstrels, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, bourdours, or jesters, and other performers properly qualified for the different parts of the entertainment, which admitted of a variety of exhibitions. These pastimes are of higher antiquity than the ecclesiastical plays; and they were much relished not only by the vulgar part of the people, but also by the nobility. The courts of the kings of England, and the castles of the great earls and barons, were crowded with the performers of the secular plays, where they were well received and handsomely rewarded; vast sums of money were lavishly bestowed upon these secular itinerants, which induced the monks and other ecclesiastics to turn actors themselves, in order to obtain a share of the public bounty. But to give the better colouring to their undertaking, they took the subjects of their dialogues from the holy writ, and performed them in the churches. The secular showmen, however, retained their popularity notwithstanding the exertions of their clerical rivals, who diligently endeavoured to bring them into disgrace, by bitterly inveighing against the filthiness and immorality of their exhibitions. On the other hand, the itinerant players sometimes invaded the province of the churchmen, and performed their mysteries, or others similar to them, as we find from a petition presented to Richard II. by the scholars of St. Paul's School, wherein complaint is made against the secular actors, because they took upon themselves to act plays composed from the Scripture history, to the great prejudice of the clergy, who had been at much expense to prepare such performances for public exhibition at the festival of Christmas."
a court fool.
In his Christmas feasts Richard the Second outdid his predecessors in prodigal hospitality. He delighted in the neighbourhood of Eltham, and spent much of his time in feasting with his favourites at the royal palace there. In 1386 (notwithstanding the still prevalent distress, which had continued from the time of the peasant revolt) Richard kept the Christmas festivities at Eltham with great extravagance, at the same time entertaining Leon, King of Armenia, in a manner utterly unjustified by the state of the royal exchequer, which had been replenished by illegal methods. And, on the completion of his enlargements and embellishments of Westminster Hall, Richard reopened it with "a most royal Christmas feast" of twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep, and game and fowls without number, feeding ten thousand guests for many days. Yet but a few years afterwards (such is the fickleness of fortune and the instability of human affairs) this same king, who had seen the "Merciless Parliament," who had robbed Hereford of his estates, who had been robed in cloth of gold and precious stones, and who had alienated his subjects by his own extravagance, was himself deposed and sentenced to lifelong banishment, his doom being pronounced in the very hall which he had reared to such magnificence for his own glory. Thus ingloriously Richard disappears from history, for nothing certain is known of the time, manner, or place of his death, though it is conjectured that he was speedily murdered. How history repeats itself! Richard's ignominious end recalls to mind the verse in which an English poet depicts the end of an Eastern king who was too fond of revelling:—
"That night they slew him on his father's throne, The deed unnoticed and the hand unknown: Crownless and sceptreless Belshazzar lay, A robe of purple round a form of clay!"