Chapter V (2)

"The mayor and council had organised a play to be acted on Christmas Day, 1445, before the Lord Scales at Middleton, representing scenes from the Nativity of our Lord. Large sums were paid by order of the mayor for the requisite dresses, ornaments, and scenery, some of which were supplied by the 'Nathan' of Lynn, and others prepared and bought expressly. 'John Clerk' performed the angel Gabriel, and a lady of the name of Gilbert the Virgin Mary. Their parts were to be sung. Four other performers were also paid for their services, and the whole party, headed by the mayor, set off with their paraphernalia in a cart, harnessed to four or more horses, for Middleton on Christmas morning. The breakfast of the carters was paid for at the inn by the town, but the magnates from Lynn and the actors were entertained at the castle.[30]

"It was in the courtyard that this quaint representation took place; the musical dialogues, the songs and hymns, the profusion of ornaments, personal and otherwise, recorded as pressed on to the stage, the grotesque angel and virgin, must have furnished a lively hour under the castle walls on that long-ago Christmas Day."

THE WARS OF THE ROSES.

During the destructive wars of York and Lancaster the festivities of Christmas were frequently interrupted by hostilities, for some of the most bloody encounters (as, for example, the terrible battle of Wakefield) occurred at Christmastide. The wars of the contending factions continued throughout the reign of Henry VI., whose personal weakness left the House of Lancaster at the mercy of the Parliament, in which the voice of the Barons was paramount. That the country was in a state of shameful misgovernment was shown by the attitude of the commercial class and the insurrection under John Cade; yet Henry could find time for amusement. "Under pretence of change of air the court removed to Coventry that the king might enjoy the sports of the field."[31]

The Christmases of Henry were not kept with the splendour which characterised those of his rival and successor, Edward IV. Henry's habits were religious, and his house expenses parsimonious--sometimes necessarily so, for he was short of money. From the introduction to the "Paston Letters" (edited by Mr. James Gairdner) it appears that the king was in such impecunious circumstances in 1451 that he had to borrow his expenses for Christmas: "The government was getting paralysed alike by debt and by indecision. 'As for tidings here,' writes John Bocking, 'I certify you all that is nought, or will be nought. The king borroweth his expenses.'" Henry anticipated what Ben Jonson discovered in a later age, that--

"Christmas is near;
And neither good cheer,
Mirth, fooling, nor wit,
Nor any least fit
Of gambol or sport
Will come at the Court,
If there be no money."

And so rather than leave Christmas unobserved the poor king "borrowed his expenses." Subsequently Henry's health failed, and then later comes the record: "At Christmas [1454], to the great joy of the nation, the king began to recover from his painful illness. He woke up, as it were, from a long sleep. So decidedly had he regained his faculties that on St. John's Day (27th December) he commanded his almoner to ride to Canterbury with an offering, and his secretary to present another at the shrine of St. Edward."[32]

The terrible battle of Wakefield at Christmastide, 1460, was one of the most important victories won by the Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses. The king, Henry VI., had secretly encouraged Richard, Duke of York, that the nation would soon be ready to assent to the restoration of the legitimate branch of the royal family. Richard was the son of Anne Mortimer, who was descended from Philippa, the only daughter of the Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III.; and consequently he stood in the order of succession before the king actually on the throne, who was descended from John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III. The Duke of York at length openly advanced his title as the true heir to the crown, and urged Parliament to confer it upon him. As, however, the Lancastrian branch of the royal family had enjoyed the crown for three generations it was resolved that Henry VI. should continue to reign during his life and that Richard should succeed him. This compromise greatly displeased the queen, Margaret, who was indignant at the injury it inflicted on her son. She therefore urged the nobles who had hitherto supported her husband to take up arms on behalf of his son. Accordingly the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Dacre, Clifford, and Nevil, assembled an army at York, and were soon joined by the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Devon. "Parliament being prorogued in December, the Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury hastened from London with a large armed force towards York, but coming unexpectedly upon the troops of the Duke of Somerset at Worksop, their vanguard was destroyed. On the 21st of December, however, they reached Sandal Castle with six thousand men, and kept their Christmas there, notwithstanding that the enemy under the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Northumberland were close by at Pontefract" (_William Wyrcester_). On the 30th of December the opposing forces met at Wakefield, and in the terrible battle which ensued Richard, Duke of York was slain, his son, Lord Rutland, was murdered by Lord Clifford while escaping from the battlefield, and the Earl of Salisbury and others were taken as prisoners to Pontefract, where they were beheaded.

Edward, son of Richard Duke of York, was afterwards joined by his cousin, Richard, Earl of Warwick, the famous "kingmaker." They hastened northwards and met the Lancastrians at Towton, where a decisive battle was fought, and won by the Yorkists. Edward was then recognised by Parliament and proclaimed king as Edward IV., and Henry VI. was attainted of high treason.

IN 1461 EDWARD THE FOURTH

called his first Parliament at Westminster, and concluded the session by the unusual but popular measure of a speech from the throne to the Commons delivered by himself. It was during this session that the statute was passed prohibiting the great and rich from giving or wearing any liveries or signs of companionship, except while serving under the king; from receiving or maintaining plunderers, robbers, malefactors, or unlawful hunters; and from allowing dice and cards in their houses beyond the twelve days of Christmas (Parl. Rolls, 488).

The Christmas festival was kept by Edward IV. with great magnificence, the king's natural inclinations leading him to adopt whatever was splendid and costly. "At the Christmas festivities he appeared in a variety of most costly dresses, of a form never seen before, which he thought displayed his person to considerable advantage" (_Croyland Chronicler_). Sir Frederick Madden's narrative of the visit of the Lord of Granthuse, Governor of Holland, to Edward, in 1472, paints in glowing colours the luxury of the English Court. On his arrival at Windsor he was received by Lord Hastings, who conducted him to the chambers of the King and Queen. These apartments were richly hung with cloth of gold arras. When he had spoken with the King, who presented him to the Queen's Grace, the Lord Chamberlain, Hastings, was ordered to conduct him to his chamber, where supper was ready for him. "After he had supped the King had him brought immediately to the Queen's own chamber, where she and her ladies were playing at the marteaux [a game played with small balls of different colours]; and some of her ladies were playing at closheys [ninepins] of ivory, and dancing, and some at divers other games: the which sight was full pleasant to them. Also the King danced with my Lady Elizabeth, his eldest daughter. In the morning when Matins was done, the King heard, in his own chapel, Our Lady-Mass, which was most melodiously chaunted, the Lord Granthuse being present. When the Mass was done, the King gave the said Lord Granthuse a cup of gold, garnished with pearl. In the midst of the cup was a great piece of unicorn's horn, to my estimation seven inches in compass; and on the cover of the cup a great sapphire." After breakfast the King came into the Quadrangle. "My Lord Prince, also, borne by his Chamberlain, called Master Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet in her own chamber, at which King Edward, her eldest daughter the Lady Elisabeth, the Duchess of Exeter, the Lady Rivers, and the Lord of Granthuse, all sat with her at one mess; and, at the same table, sat the Duke of Buckingham, my Lady, his wife, with divers other ladies, my Lord Hastings, Chamberlain to the King, my Lord Berners, Chamberlain to the Queen, the son of Lord Granthuse, and Master George Barthe, Secretary to the Duke of Burgundy, Louis Stacy, Usher to the Duke of Burgundy, George Martigny, and also certain nobles of the King's own court. There was a side table, at which sat a great view (_show_) of ladies, all on the one side. Also, in the outer chamber, sat the Queen's gentlewomen, all on one side. And on the other side of the table, over against them, as many of the Lord Granthuse's servants, as touching to the abundant welfare, like as it is according to such a banquet. And when they had supped my Lady Elizabeth, the King's eldest daughter, danced with the Duke of Buckingham and divers other ladies also. Then about nine of the clock, the King and the Queen, with her ladies and gentlewomen, brought the said Lord of Granthuse to three chambers of plesance, all hanged with white silk and linen cloth, and all the floors covered with carpets. There was ordained a bed for himself of as good down as could be gotten. The sheets of Rennes cloth and also fine fustians; the counterpane, cloth of gold, furred with ermines. The tester and ceiler also shining cloth of gold; the curtains of white sarcenet; as for his head-suit and pillows, they were of the Queen's own ordonnance. In the second chamber was likewise another state-bed, all white. Also, in the same chamber, was made a couch with feather beds, and hanged with a tent, knit like a net, and there was a cupboard. In the third chamber was ordained a bayne (_bath_) or two, which were covered with tents of white cloth. And, when the King and the Queen with all her ladies and gentlemen had showed him these chambers, they turned again to their own chambers, and left the said Lord Granthuse there, accompanied with the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), who undressed him, and they both went together to the bath.--And when they had been in their baths as long as was their pleasure, they had green ginger, divers syrups, comfits, and ipocras, and then they went to bed. And in the morning he took his cup with the King and Queen, and returned to Westminster again."

In 1465 Edward the Fourth and his Queen kept Christmas in the Abbey at Coventry, and for six days (says _William Wyrcester_) "the Duke of Clarence dissembled there."

In 1478 the King celebrated the Christmas festival at Westminster with great pomp, wearing his crown, feasting his nobles, and making presents to his household; and in 1482-3 he kept a splendid Christmas at Eltham, more than two thousand people being fed at his expense every day. Edward almost entirely rebuilt Eltham Palace, of which the hall was the noblest part. In that hall he kept the Christmas festival, "with bountiful hospitality for high and low, and abundance of mirth and sport."

One of the continental visitors who participated in the royal festivities of this period was Leo von Rozmital, brother of George, King of Bohemia. His retinue included Tetzel, who, in describing the Court of Edward the Fourth, after remarking upon Edward's own handsome person, says, "The king has the finest set of courtiers that a man may find in Christendom. He invited my Lord Leo and all his noble companions, and gave them a very costly feast, and also he gave to each of them the medal of his order, to every knight a golden one, and to every one who was not a knight a silver one; and he himself hung them upon their necks. Another day the king called us to court. In the morning the queen (Elizabeth Woodville) went from child-bed to church with a splendid procession of many priests, bearing relics, and many scholars, all singing, and carrying burning candles. Besides there was a great company of women and maidens from the country and from London, who were bidden to attend. There were also a great number of trumpeters, pipers, and other players, with forty-two of the king's singing men, who sang very sweetly. Also, there were four and twenty heralds and pursuivants, and sixty lords and knights. Then came the queen, led by two dukes, and with a canopy borne over her. Behind her followed her mother and above sixty ladies and maidens. Having heard the service sung, and kneeled down in the church, she returned with the same procession to her palace. Here all who had taken part in the procession were invited to a feast, and all sat down, the men and the women, the clergy and the laity, each in his rank, filling four large rooms. Also, the king invited my lord and all his noble attendants to the table where he usually dined with his courtiers. And one of the king's greatest lords must sit at the king's table upon the king's stool, in the place of the king; and my lord sat at the same table only two steps below him. Then all the honours which were due to the king had to be paid to the lord who sat in his place, and also to my lord; and it is incredible what ceremonies we observed there. While we were eating, the king was making presents to all the trumpeters, pipers, players, and heralds; to the last alone he gave four hundred nobles, and every one, when he received his pay, came to the tables and told aloud what the king had given him. When my lord had done eating, he was conducted into a costly ornamented room, where the queen was to dine, and there he was seated in a corner that he might see all the expensive provisions. The queen sat down on a golden stool alone at her table, and her mother and the queen's sister stood far below her. And when the queen spoke to her mother or to the king's sister, they kneeled down every time before her, and remained kneeling until the queen drank water. And all her ladies and maids, and those who waited upon her, even great lords, had to kneel while she was eating, which continued three hours(!). After dinner there was dancing, but the queen remained sitting upon her stool, and her mother kneeled before her. The king's sister danced with two dukes, and the beautiful dances and reverences performed before the queen--the like I have never seen, nor such beautiful maidens. Among them were eight duchesses, and above thirty countesses and others, all daughters of great people. After the dance the king's singing men came in and sang. When the king heard mass sung in his private chapel my lord was admitted: then the king had his relics shown to us, and many sacred things in London. Among them we saw a stone from the Mount of Olives, upon which there is the footprint of Jesus Christ, our Lady's girdle, and many other relics."

CARDS AND OTHER CHRISTMAS DIVERSIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

The amusements of the people in the fifteenth century are referred to by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., who says: "In England, in the third year of the reign of Edward IV. (1463), the importation of playing-cards, probably from Germany, was forbidden, among other things, by Act of Parliament; and as that Act is understood to have been called for by the English manufacturers, who suffered by the foreign trade, it can hardly be doubted that cards were then manufactured in England on a rather extensive scale. Cards had then, indeed, evidently become very popular in England; and only twenty years afterwards they are spoken of as the common Christmas game, for Margery Paston wrote as follows to her husband, John Paston, on the 24th of December in 1483:--'Please it you to weet (_know_) that I sent your eldest son John to my Lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in the Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports, but playing at the tables, and the chess, and _cards_--such disports she gave her folks leave to play, and none other.... I sent your younger son to the lady Stapleton, and she said according to my lady Morley's saying in that, and as she had seen used in places of worship (_gentlemen's houses_) there as she had been.' ... After the middle of the fifteenth century, cards came into very general use; and at the beginning of the following century, there was such a rage for card-playing, that an attempt was made early in the reign of Henry VIII. to restrict their use by law to the period of Christmas. When, however, people sat down to dinner at noon, and had no other occupation for the rest of the day, they needed amusement of some sort to pass the time; and a poet of the fifteenth century observes truly--

'A man may dryfe forthe the day that long tyme dwellis
With harpyng and pipyng, and other mery spellis,
With gle, and wyth game.'"

Another book well known to bibliomaniacs ("Dives and Pauper," ed. W. de Worde; 1496) says: "For to represente in playnge at Crystmasse herodes and the thre kynges and other processes of the gospelles both then and at Ester and other tymes also it is lefull and c[=o]mendable."

EDWARD THE FIFTH

succeeded his father, Edward IV., in the dangerous days of 1483. He was at Ludlow when his father died, being under the guardianship of his uncle, Earl Rivers, and attended by other members of the Woodville family. Almost immediately he set out for London, but when he reached Stony Stratford, on April 29th, he was met by his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had arrested Lord Rivers and Lord Richard Grey. The young king (a boy of thirteen) renewed his journey under Gloucester's charge, and on reaching London was lodged in the Tower. His mother, on hearing of the arrest of Rivers and Grey, had taken sanctuary at Westminster. Lord Hastings, a supporter of the king, was arrested and executed because he would not sanction Gloucester's nefarious schemes for obtaining the throne. About the same time Rivers and Grey were beheaded at Pontefract, whither they had been taken by Gloucester's orders. Soon afterwards the Queen was compelled to deliver up the young Duke of York to Richard, who sent him to join his brother in the Tower. On June 22nd, at the request of Richard, Dr. Shaw, brother of the Lord Mayor of London, delivered a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, in which he insisted on the illegitimacy of Edward V. and his brother. On June 25th a deputation of nobles and citizens of London offered the crown to Richard. He accepted it, and began to reign as Richard III. And, according to a confession afterwards made by Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard's officers, the two young princes remained in the Tower, being put to death by their Uncle Richard's orders. Thus, atrociously, began the reign of the murderous usurper,

RICHARD THE THIRD.

The King kept his first Christmas at Kenilworth Castle, having previously visited the city of Coventry, at the festival of _Corpus Christi_, to see the plays. The accounts of Kenilworth Castle show that in 1484 John Beaufitz was paid £20 "for divers reparacions made in the Castell of Kyllingworth" by order of Richard III. At this time, says Philip de Comines, "he was reigning in greater splendour and authority than any king of England for the last hundred years." The following year Richard kept Christmas in the great hall at Westminster, celebrating the festival with great pomp and splendour, encouraging the recreations usual at the season, and so attentively observing the ancient customs that a warrant is entered for the payment of "200 marks for certain new year's gifts bought against the feast of Christmas." The festivities continued without interruption until the day of the Epiphany, when they terminated with an entertainment of extraordinary magnificence given by the monarch to his nobles in Westminster Hall--"the King himself wearing his crown," are the words of the Croyland historian, "and holding a splendid feast in the great hall, similar to that of his coronation." "Little did Richard imagine that this would be the last feast at which he would preside--the last time he would display his crown in peace before his assembled peers."[33] An allusion to this Christmas festival, and to the King's wicked nature, is contained in a note to Bacon's "Life of King Henry VII.," which says: "Richard's wife was Anne, the younger daughter of Warwick the King-maker. She died 16th March, 1485. It was rumoured that her death was by poison, and that Richard wished to marry his niece Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. It is said that in the festivities of the previous Christmas the Princess Elizabeth had been dressed in robes of the same fashion and colour as those of the Queen. Ratcliffe and Catesby, the King's confidants, are credited with having represented to Richard that this marriage of so near a kinswoman would be an object of horror to the people, and bring on him the condemnation of the clergy."

At a Christmas festival at Rhedon, in Brittany, Henry of Richmond met English exiles to the number of 500, and swore to marry Elizabeth of York as soon as he should subdue the usurper; and thereupon the exiles unanimously agreed to support him as their sovereign. On the 1st of August, 1485, Henry set sail from Harfleur with an army of 3,000 men, and a few days afterwards landed at Milford Haven. He was received with manifest delight, and as he advanced through Wales his forces were increased to upwards of 6,000 men. Before the close of the month he had encountered the royal army and slain the King at Bosworth Field, and by this memorable victory had terminated the terrible Wars of the Roses and introduced into England a new dynasty.

[19] Browning.

[20] "Every-day Book," vol. ii. p. 1635.

[21] "Shorter Poems."

[22] Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of England, France,
Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Brittany, Flanders, and the
adjoining countries; translated from the original French,
at the command of King Henry the Eighth, by John
Bourchier, Lord Berners. London edition, 1812.

[23] Cassell's "History of England."

[24] Creighton's "Life of Edward the Black Prince."

[25] "Sports and Pastimes."

[26] Cassell's "History of England."

[27] Shakespeare.

[28] "History of Chivalry."

[29] "Sandringham Past and Present, 1888."

[30] King's Lynn Chamberlains' Accounts Rolls, 23rd of
Henry VI.

[31] "Chronicles of the White Rose of York."

[32] "Paston Letters."

[33] Halstead's "Life of Richard III."