“For Christmas day and that week, the Lord of Misrule himself had a robe of white bawdekyn, containing nine yards at 16s. a yard, garded with a great embroidered gard of cloth of gold, wrought in knots, fourteen yards, at 13s. 4d. a yard, having a fur of red feathers, with a cape of chamblet thrum. A coat of flat silver fine with works, five yards at 50 shillings, with an embroidered gard of leaves of gold and silk coloured, containing fifteen yards at 20 shillings. A cap of maintenance of red feathers and chamblett thrum, very rich, with a plume of feathers. A pair of hosen, the breeches made of a garde of cloth of gold imbroidered in paynes, nine yards of gardind at 13s. 4d. lined with silver sarsnet, one ell at 8 shillings. A pair of buskins of white bawdekyn, one yard, at 16 shillings. A pair of pantacles of brydges [? Bruges] sattin, 3s. 4d. A girdle of yellow sarsnet, 16d. The cost £51: 17: 4.” (Archæeologia, vol. xviii.)
But there are other details not yet mentioned. The year’s sports very properly began with the New Year’s gifts.
“These giftes the husband gives his wife and father eke the child,
And master on his men bestows the like with favour mild;
And good beginning of the year they wish and wish again,
According to the ancient guise of heathen people vain.
Then eight days no man doth require his debts of any man,
Their tables do they furnish forth with all the meat they can.”
On the day before Ascension there was the annual beating of the bounds, a custom still observed, but without the old ceremony of beating each other for the better preservation of the memory of the ancient boundaries. At Whitsuntide there was feasting with Whitsun ale. Stow has told us how May-day was kept. But he writes as an old man, coldly; the full meaning of May-day he has forgotten. Remember what it meant for the young Londoner. It fell on what is now the 12th of May, a time when, except at very rare springs, the biting east wind is over, and spring has really begun. The leaves and blossoms are out at last, after struggling against the cold winds since the middle of March; the days have lengthened; it is now light till nine o’clock, and twilight all the night through. There is no more huddling around the fire, perhaps without candles, going off to bed as soon as is possible, rising before the break of day, sitting all day long in a workshop darkened by the lowering of the shutters as well as by the dreary grey skies of winter, working with frozen fingers, living on salt meat for six months except for the fast days and the forty days of Lent, when for a change there was salted fish. Spring had come at last, and in this northern clime the City, like the gardens and the fields, sprang into new life and returned to the joy of living.
Then all went out into the fields on May-day Eve. They passed over the marshy and muddy plain of Moorfields till they came to the little village of Iseldon or Iselden, where the great forest began. There grew the whitethorn and the blackthorn, the broom and the gorse blossomed, there the wild crab was covered with a garment of pink and white, and the wild rose was all glorious to behold; the people came home bearing boughs of those sweet blossoms, singing and dancing as they went; with them marched the lusty fellow with pipe and tabor, with them ran barking and fighting, for pure joy, all the dogs of the parish. Then they set up their Maypole adorned with ribbons and garlands, and they danced around it, singing, hand in hand, right hand with left hand, and left hand with right, covered with chaplets of wild rose and wild apple blossom. As at Christmas they celebrated the close of the old year and the beginning of the new, so now they celebrated the end of the winter and the birth of the spring. They had Tom Fools, mummers, hobby horses, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Little John; they had bonfires; and they had feasting and drinking. ’Twas the most joyous festival of all the year.