Chapter II: Part 2

Then, what a festival they created! The land rang with their joyous voices, and the frosty air steamed with the incense of the good things provided for their entertainment. Everybody kept holiday but the cooks; and all sounds known to the human ear seemed mingled in the merry pæan, save the gobble of the turkeys. _There were no turkeys_,--at least they had lost their "most sweet voices." The turnspits had a hard time of it, too. That quaint little book which bears the warm and promising title of "Round about our Coal Fire" tells us that "by the time dinner was over they would look as black and as greasy as a Welsh porridge-pot." Indeed, the accounts of that time dwell with great and savory emphasis upon the prominent share which eating and drinking had in the festivities of the season. There must have been sad havoc made amongst the live-stock. That there are turkeys at all in our days is only to be accounted for upon the supposition of England having been occasionally replenished with that article from the East; and our present possession of geese must be explained by the well-known impossibility of extinguishing the race of the goose. It is difficult to imagine a consumption equal to the recorded provision. Men's gastronomic capacities appear to have been enlarged for the occasion, as the energies expand to meet great emergencies. "The tables," says the same racy authority above quoted, "were all spread from the first to the last; the sirloyns of beef, the minc'd-pies, the plumb-porridge, the capons, turkeys, geese, and plumb-puddings were all brought upon the board; and all those who had sharp stomachs and sharp knives eat heartily and were welcome, which gave rise to the proverb,--

"'Merry in the hall, when beards wag all!'"

Now, _all_ men in those days appear to have had good stomachs, and, we presume, took care to provide themselves with sharp knives. The only recorded instance in which we find a failure of the latter is that portentous one which occurred, many a long day since, in the court of King Arthur, when the Christmas mirth was so strangely disturbed by the mischievous interference of the Boy with the Mantle. Under the test introduced by that imp of discord and which appears to have "taken the shine out of" the monarch's own good sword Excalibur itself, there was found but one knight, of all the hungry knights who sat at that Round Table, whose weapon was sharp enough to carve the boar's head or hand steady enough to carry the cup to his lip without spilling the lamb's wool; and even he had a very narrow escape from the same incapacities. But then, as we have said, this was at court, and under the influence of a spell (with whose nature we take it for granted that our readers are acquainted,--and, if not, we refer them to the Percy Ballads); and it is probable that, in those early as in later days, tests of such extreme delicacy were of far more dangerous introduction in the courts of kings than amongst assemblies of more mirth and less pretension. We could by no means feel sure that the intrusion, in our own times, of a similar test into a similar scene might not spoil the revels.

But to return. The old ballads which relate to this period of the year are redolent of good things, and not to be read by a hungry man with any degree of equanimity. Of course they are _ex post facto_ ballads, and could only have been written under the inspiration of memory, at a time when men were at leisure to devote their hands to some other occupation than that of cooking or carving. But it is very difficult to understand how they ever found--as it appears they did--their mouths in a condition to sing them at the season itself. There is one amongst those ballads, of a comparatively modern date, printed in Evans's collection, which we advise no man to read fasting. It is directed to be sung to the tune of "The Delights of the Bottle," and contains in every verse a vision of good things, summed up by the perpetually recurring burthen of

"Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef."

Our readers had better take a biscuit and a glass of sherry before they venture upon the glimpses into those regions of banqueting which we are tempted to lay before them. The ballad opens like the ringing of a dinner-bell, and, we conceive, should be sung to some such accompaniment:--

"All you that to feasting and mirth are inclin'd,
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,--
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
_He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse_:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef."

"Diet _the chief_!"--by which we are to understand that this promising muster-roll merely includes the names of some of the principal viands,--the high-commissioned dishes of the feast,--leaving the subalterns, and the entire rank and file which complete the goodly array, unmentioned. It must have been a very ingenious or a very strong-minded mouse which could contrive to be starved under such circumstances. The ballad is long, and we can only afford to give our readers "tastings" of its good things. It is everywhere full of most gracious promise:--

"The cooks shall be busied, by day and by night,
In roasting and boiling, for taste and delight,
Their senses in liquor that's nappy they'll steep,
Though they be afforded to have little sleep;
They still are employed for to dress us, in brief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef.

"Although the cold weather doth hunger provoke,
'T is a comfort to see how the chimneys do smoke;
Provision is making for beer, ale, and wine,
For _all that are willing or ready to dine_:
Then haste to the kitchen for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef.

"All travellers, as they do pass on their way,
At gentlemen's halls are invited to stay,
Themselves to refresh and their horses to rest,
Since that he must be old Christmas's guest;
Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef."

And so on, through a variety of joyous and substantial anticipations, from which the writer draws an inference, which we think is most satisfactorily made out:--

"Then _well may we welcome_ old Christmas to town,
Who brings us good cheer, and good liquor so brown;
To pass the cold winter away with delight,
We feast it all day, and we frolick all night."

In Ellis's edition of Brand's "Popular Antiquities" an old Christmas song is quoted from "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1695, which gives a similar enumeration of Christmas dainties, but throws them into a form calculated for more rapid enunciation, as if with a due regard to the value of those moments at which it was probably usual to sing it. The measure is not such a mouthful as that of the former one which we have quoted. It comes trippingly off the tongue; and it is not impossible that, in those days of skilful gastronomy, it might have been sung eating. We will quote a couple of the verses, though they include the same commissariat truths as that from which we have already extracted; and our readers will observe, from the ill-omened wish which concludes the second of these stanzas, in what horror the mere idea of _fasting_ had come to be held, since it is the heaviest curse which suggested itself to be launched against those who refused to do homage to the spirit of the times:--

"Now thrice welcome Christmas,
Which brings us good cheer,
Minc'd pies and plumb-porridge,
Good ale and strong beer;
With pig, goose, and capon,
The best that may be,
So well doth the weather
And our stomachs agree.

"Observe how the chimneys
Do smoak all about,
The cooks are providing
For dinner no doubt;
But those on whose tables
No victuals appear,
_O may they keep Lent
All the rest of the year_!"

The same author quotes, from a manuscript in the British Museum, an Anglo-Norman carol of the early date of the thirteenth century, and appends to it a translation by the late Mr. Douce, the following verse of which translation informs us (what, at any rate, might well be supposed, namely) that so much good eating on the part of the ancient gentleman, Christmas, would naturally suggest the propriety of good drinking, too:--

"Lordings, Christmas loves good drinking,
Wines of Gascoigne, France, Anjou,
English ale, that drives out thinking,
Prince of liquors old or new.
Every neighbor shares the bowl,
Drinks of the spicy liquor deep,
Drinks his fill without controul,
Till he drowns his care in sleep."

In a "Christmas Carroll," printed at the end of Wither's "Juvenilia," a graphic account is given of some of the humors of Christmas, among which the labors of the kitchen are introduced in the _first_ verse, with a due regard to their right of precedency, and in words which, if few, are full of suggestion:--

"Lo, now is come our joyful'st feast!
Let every man be jolly.
Each roome with yvie leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
Now, all our neighbour's chimneys smoke,
And Christmas Blocks are burning;
Their ovens they with bak't-meats choke,
And all their spits are turning."

We must present our readers with another quotation from an old ballad, entitled "Time's Alteration; or, The Old Man's Rehearsal, what brave dayes he knew a great while agone, when his old cap was new," which appears to have been written after the times of the Commonwealth. And this extract we are induced to add to those which have gone before, because, though it deals with precisely the same subjects, it speaks of them as of things gone by, and is written in a tone of lamentation, in which it is one of the purposes of this chapter to call upon our readers to join. We are sorry we cannot give them directions as to the tune to which it should be sung,--further than that it is obviously unsuited to that of the "Delights of the Bottle," prescribed for the joyous ballad from which we first quoted on this subject; and that, whatever may be the _tune_, we are clear that the direction as to _time_ should be the same as that which Mr. Hood prefixes to his song of the Guildhall Giants; namely, "Dinner-time and mournful":--

"A man might then behold,
At Christmas in each hall,
Good fires to curb the cold,
And meat for great and small;
The neighbours were friendly bidden,
And all had welcome true,
The poor from the gates were not chidden,
When this old cap was new.

"Black-jacks to every man
Were fill'd with wine and beer;
No pewter pot nor can
In those days did appear;
Good cheer in a nobleman's house
Was counted a seemly shew;
We wanted no brawn nor souse,
When this old cap was new."

Can our readers bear, after this sad ditty, to listen to the enumeration of good things described by Whistlecraft to have been served up at King Arthur's table on Christmas day? If the list be authentic, there is the less reason to wonder at the feats of courage and strength performed by the Knights of the Round Table.

"They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars,
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.

"Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,
Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacocks, swan, and bustard,
Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and, in fine,
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies, and custard.
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cider of our own;
For porter, punch, and negus were not known."

But we cannot pursue this matter further. It is not to be treated with any degree of calmness before dinner, and we have not dined. We must proceed to less trying parts of our subject.

Of the earnest manner in which our ancestors set about the celebration of this festival, the mock ceremonial with which they illustrated it, the quaint humors which they let loose under its inspiration, and the spirit of fellowship which brought all classes of men within the range of its beneficent provisions, we have a large body of scattered evidence, to be gleaned out of almost every species of existing record, from the early days of the Norman dynasty down to the times of the Commonwealth. The tales of chroniclers, the olden ballads, the rolls of courts, and the statute-book of the land, all contribute to furnish the materials from which a revival of the old pageantry must be derived, if men should ever again find time to be as merry as their fathers were.

The numberless _local_ customs of which the still remaining tradition is almost the sole record, and which added each its small contingent to the aggregate of commemoration, would certainly render it a somewhat difficult matter to restore the festival in its integrity; and, to be very candid with our readers, we believe we may as well confess, at the onset, what will be very apparent to them before we have done, that many of the Christmas observances (whether general or local) are to be recommended to their notice rather as curious pictures of ancient manners than as being at all worthy of imitation by us who "are wiser in our generation." Sooth to say, we dare not let our zeal for our subject lead us into an unqualified approbation of all the doings which it will be our business to record in these pages, though they seem to have made all ranks of people very happy in other days;--and that is no mean test of the value of any institution. Really earnest as we are in the wish that the _sentiment_ of the season could be restored in its amplitude, we fear that many of the fooleries by which it exhibited itself could not be gravely proposed as worthy amusements for a nation of philosophers.

Still these very absurdities furnish the strongest evidences of the right good-will with which men--ay, grave and learned men--surrendered themselves to the merry spirit of the time, of that entire abandonment which forgot to make a reservation of their outward dignities and gave them courage to "play the fool." Our readers need scarcely be told that it must be a man of a very strong mind, or a man who could not help it, who should dare to make a jack-pudding of himself in these days, when all his fellows are walking about the world with telescopes in their hands and quadrants in their pockets. No doubt it would have a somewhat ridiculous effect to-day to see the members of the bar dancing a galliard or a coranto, in full costume, before the Benchers, notwithstanding that certain ancient forms are still retained in their halls which have all the absurdity of the exploded ones without any of their fun; and unquestionably we should think it rather strange to see a respectable gentleman capering through the streets on a pasteboard hobby-horse,--in lieu of the figurative hobby-horses on which most men still exhibit,--although even that, we think, would offer an object less ungracious than a child with an anxious brow and "spectacles on nose." The great wisdom of the world is, we presume, one of the natural consequences of its advancing age; and though we are quite conscious that some of its former pranks would be very unbecoming, now that it is getting into years, and "knows so much as it does," yet we are by no means sure that we should not have been well content to have our lot cast in the days when it was somewhat younger. They must have been very pleasant times! Certain it is that the laugh of the humbler classes, and of the younger classes, would be all the heartier, that it was echoed by the powerful and the aged; the mirth of the ignorant more free and genial, that the learned thought no scorn of it. For all that appears, too, the dignities of those days suffered no detriment by their surrender to the spirit of the times, but seem to have resumed all their functions and privileges, when it had exhausted itself, with unimpaired effect. Philosophers had due reverence, without erecting themselves always on stilts for the purpose of attracting it; and names have come down to us which are esteemed the names of grave and learned and wise men,--even in this grave and learned and wise age,--who, nevertheless, appear in their own to have conducted themselves at times very like children.

From the royal Household-Books which exist, and from the Household-Books of noble families (some of which have been printed for better preservation), as also from the other sources to which we have alluded, Mr. Sandys, in the very valuable introduction to his collection of Christmas carols, already mentioned, has brought together a body of valuable information,--both as to the stately ceremonies and popular observances by which the season continued to be illustrated, from an early period up to the time of its decline, amid the austerities of the civil war. To this careful compilation we shall be occasionally indebted for some curious particulars which had escaped ourselves, amid the multiplied and unconnected sources from which our notes for this volume had to be made. To those who would go deeper into the antiquarian part of the subject than suits the purpose of a popular volume, we can recommend that work, as containing the most copious and elaborate synopsis of the existing information connected therewith which we have found in the course of our own researches. It would be impossible, however, in a paper of that length--or, indeed, in a volume of any moderate size--to give an account of all the numerous superstitions and observances of which traces are found, in an extended inquiry, to exist,--throwing light upon each other and contributing to the complete history of the festival. We have therefore gleaned from all quarters those which appear to be the most picturesque and whose relation is the most obvious, with a view, as much as possible, of generalizing the subject and presenting its parts in relation to an intelligible whole.

As we shall have occasion, in our second part, to speak of those _peculiar_ feelings and customs by which each of the several days of the Christmas festival is specially illustrated, we shall not at present pause to go into any of the details of the subject, although continually tempted to do so by their connection with the observations which we are called upon to make. The purpose of the present chapter is rather to insist generally, and by some of its more striking features, upon the high and lengthened festivity with which this portion of the year was so long and so universally welcomed, and to seek some explanation of the causes to which the diminution of that spirit, and the almost total neglect of its ancient forms, are to be ascribed.

As early as the twelfth century we have accounts of the spectacles and pageants by which Christmas was welcomed at the court of the then monarch Henry II.; and from this period the wardrobe rolls and other Household-Books of the English kings furnish continual evidences of the costly preparations made for the festival. Many extracts from these books have been made by Mr. Sandys and others, from which it appears that the mirth of the celebration, and the lavish profusion expended upon it, were on the increase from year to year, excepting during that distracted period of England's history when these, like all other gracious arrangements and social relations, were disturbed by the unholy contests between the houses of the rival roses. There is, however, a beautiful example of the sacred influence of this high festival mentioned by Turner in his History of England, showing that its hallowed presence had power, even in those warlike days, to silence even the voice of war,--of all war save that most impious of (what are almost always impious) wars, civil war. During the siege of Orleans, in 1428, he says: "The solemnities and festivities of Christmas gave a short interval of repose. The English lords requested of the French commanders that they might have a night of minstrelsy, with trumpets and clarions. This was granted; and the horrors of war were suspended by melodies, that were felt to be delightful."

In the peaceful reign of Henry VII., the nation, on emerging from that long and unnatural struggle, appears to have occupied itself, as did the wise monarch, in restoring as far as was possible, and by all means, its disrupted ties, and rebaptizing its apostate feelings; and during this period the festival of Christmas was restored with revived splendor and observed with renewed zeal. The Household-Book of that sovereign, preserved in the chapter-house at Westminster, contains numerous items for disbursements connected with the Christmas diversions, in proof of this fact.

The reign of Henry VIII. was a reign of jousts and pageants till it became a reign of blood; and accordingly the Christmas pageantries prepared for the entertainment of that execrable monarch were distinguished by increased pomp and furnished at a more profuse expenditure. The festivities of Eltham and Greenwich figure in the pages of the old chroniclers; and the account books at the chapter-house abound in payments made in this reign, for purposes connected with the revels of the season.

We shall by and by have occasion to present our readers with some curious particulars, illustrative of the cost and pains bestowed upon this court celebration during the short reign of the young monarch Edward VI.

Not all the gloom and terror of the sanguinary Mary's reign were able entirely to extinguish the spirit of Christmas rejoicing throughout the land, though the court itself was too much occupied with its auto-da-fé spectacles to have much time for pageants of less interest.

Our readers, we think, need scarcely be told that the successor of this stern and miserable queen (and, thank God! the last of that bad family) was sure to seize upon the old pageantries, as she did upon every other vehicle which could in any way be made to minister to her intolerable vanity, or by which a public exhibition might be made, before the slaves whom she governed, of her own vulgar and brutal mind. Under all the forms of ancient festival observance, some offering was presented to this insatiable and disgusting appetite,--and that, too, by men entitled to stand erect, by their genius or their virtues, yet whose knees were rough with kneeling before as worthless an idol as any wooden god that the most senseless superstition ever set up for worship. From all the altars which the court had reared to old Father Christmas of yore, a cloud of incense was poured into the royal closet, enough to choke anything but a woman,--that woman a queen, and that queen a Tudor. The festival was preserved, and even embellished; but the saint, as far as the court was concerned, was changed. However, the example of the festivity to the people was the same; and the land was a merry land, and the Christmas time a merry time, throughout its length and breadth, in the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Nay, out of this very anxiety to minister to the craving vanity of a weak and worthless woman--the devices to which it gave rise and the laborers whom it called into action--have arisen results which are not amongst the least happy or important of those by its connection with which the Christmas festival stands recommended. Under these impulses, the old dramatic entertainments--of which we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter--took a higher character and assumed a more consistent form. The first regular English tragedy, called "Ferrex and Porrex," and the entertainment of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," were both productions of the early period of this queen's reign; and amid the crowd of her worshippers (alas that it is so!) rose up--with the star upon his forehead which is to burn for all time--the very first of all created beings, William Shakespeare. These are amongst the strange anomalies which the world, as it is constituted, so often presents, and _must_ present at times, constitute it how we will. Shakespeare doing homage to Queen Elizabeth! The loftiest genius and the noblest heart that have yet walked this earth, in a character merely human, bowing down before this woman with the soul of a milliner and no heart at all! The "bright particular star" humbling itself before the temporal crown! The swayer of hearts, the ruler of all men's minds, in virtue of his own transcendent nature, recognizing the supremacy of this overgrown child, because she presided over the temporalities of a half emancipated nation, by rights derived to her from others and sanctioned by no qualities of her own!

And yet if to the low passions of this vulgar queen, and the patronage which they led her to extend to all who could best minister to their gratification, we owe any part of that development by which this consummate genius expanded itself, then do we stand in some degree indebted to her for one of the greatest boons which has been bestowed upon the human race; and as between her and mankind in general (for the accounts between her and individuals, and still more that between her and God, stand uninfluenced by this item) there is a large amount of good to be placed to her credit. Against her follies of a day there would have to be set her promotion of a wisdom whose lessons are for all time; against the tears which she caused to flow, the human anguish which she inflicted, and the weary, pining hours of the captives whom she made, would stand the tears of thousands dried away, many and many an aching heart beguiled of its sorrow, and many a captive taught to feel that

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;"

all the chords of human feeling touched with a hand that soothes as did the harp of David, all the pages of human suffering stored with consolations!

To any one who will amuse himself by looking over the Miracle Plays and Masques, which were replaced by the more regular forms of dramatic entertainment, and will then regale himself by the perusal of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" or "Ferrex and Porrex," which came forward with higher pretensions in the beginning of this reign, there will appear reason to be sufficiently astonished at the rapid strides by which dramatic excellence was attained before its close and during the next, even without taking Shakespeare into the account at all. Put when we turn to the marvels of this great magician, and find that in his hands not only were the forms of the drama perfected, but that, without impeding the action or impairing the interest invested in those forms, and besides his excursions into the regions of imagination and his creations _out of_ the natural world he has touched every branch of human knowledge and struck into every train of human thought; that without learning, in the popular sense, he has arrived at all the results and embodied all the wisdom which learning is only useful if it teaches; that we can be placed in no imaginable circumstances and under the influence of no possible feelings of which we do not find exponents,--and _such_ exponents!--"in sweetest music," on his page; and above all, when we find that all the final morals to be drawn from all his writings are hopeful ones, that all the lessons which all his agents--joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure--are made alike to teach are lessons of goodness--it is impossible to attribute all this to aught but a revelation, or ascribe to him any character but that of a prophet. Shakespeare knew more than any other mere man ever knew; and none can tell how that knowledge came to him. "All men's business and bosoms" lay open to him. We should not like to have him quoted against us on _any_ subject. Nothing escaped him, and he never made a mistake (we are not speaking of technical ones). He was the universal interpreter into language of the human mind, and he knew all the myriad voices by which nature speaks. He reminds us of the vizier in the Eastern story, who is said to have understood the languages of all animals. The utterings of the elements, the voices of beasts and of birds, Shakespeare could translate into the language of men; and the thoughts and sentiments of men he rendered into words as sweet as the singing of birds. If the reign of Elizabeth had been illustrated only by the advent of this great spirit, it might itself have accounted for some portion of that prejudice which (illustrated, as in fact it was, by much that was great and noble) blinds men still--or induces them to shut their eyes--to the true personal claims and character of that queen.

But we are digressing, again, as who does not when the image of Shakespeare comes across him? To return:--

The court celebrations of Christmas were observed throughout the reign of the first James; and the Prince Charles himself was an occasional performer in the pageantries prepared for the occasion, at great cost. But at no period do they appear to have been more zealously sought after, or performed with more splendor, than during that which immediately preceded the persecution, from whose effects they have never since recovered into anything like their former lustihood. In the early years of Charles the First's reign, the court pageants of this season were got up with extraordinary brilliancy,--the king with the lords of his court, and the queen with her ladies, frequently taking parts therein. This was the case in 1630-31; and at the Christmas of 1632-33 the queen, says Sandys, "got up a pastoral in Somerset House, in which it would seem she herself took a part. There were masques at the same time, independently of this performance, the cost of which considerably exceeded £2,000, besides that portion of the charge which was borne by the office of the revels and charged to the accounts of that department." In the same year, we learn that a grant of £450 was made to George Kirke, Esq., gentleman of the robes, for the _masking attire_ of the king and his party. In 1637 there is a warrant, under the privy seal, to the same George Kirke for £150, to provide the masking dress of the king; and, in the same year, another to Edmund Taverner for £1,400 towards the expenses of a masque to be presented at Whitehall on the ensuing Twelfth Night. We have selected these from similar examples furnished by Sandys, in order to give our readers some idea of the sums expended in these entertainments, which sums will appear very considerable when estimated by the difference between the value of money in our days and that of two hundred years ago. Several of the masques presented at court during this reign, and the preceding ones, were written by Ben Jonson.

During the whole of this time, the forms of court ceremonial appear to have been aped, and the royal establishments imitated as far as possible, by the more powerful nobles; and the masques and pageantries exhibited for the royal amusement were accordingly reproduced or rivalled by them at their princely mansions in the country. Corporate and other public bodies caught the infection all over the land; and each landed proprietor and country squire endeavored to enact such state in the eyes of his own retainers, as his means would allow. The sports and festivities of the season were everywhere taken under the protection of the lord of the soil; and all classes of his dependants had a customary claim upon the hospitalities which he prepared for the occasion. The masques of the court and of the nobles were imitated in the mummings of the people,--of which we give a representation here, and which we shall have occasion particularly to describe hereafter,--they having survived the costly pageants of which they were the humble representatives. The festival was thus rendered a universal one, and its amusements brought within the reach of the indigent and the remote. The peasant, and even the pauper, were made, as it were, once a year sharers in the mirth of their immediate lord, and even of the monarch himself. The laboring classes had enlarged privileges during this season, not only by custom, but by positive enactment; and restrictive acts of Parliament, by which they were prohibited from certain games at other periods, contained exceptions in favor of the Christmas-tide. Nay, folly was, as it were, crowned, and disorder had a license! Sandys quotes from Leland the form of a proclamation given in his "Itinerary" as having been made by the sheriff of York, wherein it is declared that all "thieves, dice-players, carders" (with some other characters by name that are usually repudiated by the guardians of order) "_and all other unthrifty folke_, be welcome to the towne, whether they come late or early, att the reverence of the high feast of Youle, till the twelve dayes be passed." The terms of this proclamation were, no doubt, not intended to be construed in a grave and literal sense, but were probably meant to convey something like a satire upon the unbounded license of the season which they thus announce.

There are very pleasant evidences of the care which was formerly taken, in high quarters, that the poor should not be robbed of their share in this festival. The yearly increasing splendor of the royal celebrations appears at one time to have threatened that result, by attracting the country gentlemen from their own seats, and thereby withdrawing them from the presidency of those sports which were likely to languish in their absence. Accordingly, we find an order, in 1589, issued to the gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk, commanding them "to depart from London before Christmas, and to repair to their countries, there to keep hospitality amongst their neighbors." And similar orders appear to have been from time to time necessary, and from time to time repeated.

Amongst those bodies who were distinguished for the zeal of their Christmas observances, honorable mention may be made of the two English universities; and we shall have occasion hereafter to show that traces of the old ceremonials linger still in those their ancient haunts. But the reader who is unacquainted with this subject would scarcely be prepared to look for the most conspicuous celebration of these revels, with all their antics and mummeries, in the grave and dusty retreats of the law. Such, however, was the case. The lawyers beat the doctors hollow. Their ancient halls have rung with the sounds of a somewhat barbarous revelry; and the walls thereof, had they voices, could tell many an old tale, which the present occupants might not consider as throwing any desirable light upon the historical dignities of the body to which they belong. Our readers, no doubt, remember a certain scene in "Guy Mannering," wherein the farmer Dinmont and Colonel Mannering are somewhat inconsiderately intruded upon the carousals of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell at his tavern in the city of Edinburgh and find that worthy lawyer in what are called his "altitudes," being deeply engaged in the ancient and not very solemn pastime of "High Jinks." Their memory may probably present the counsellor "enthroned as a monarch in an elbow-chair placed on the dining-table, his scratch-wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine," and recall, assisted by the jingle, some of the high discourse of his surrounding court:--

"Where is Gerunto now? and what's become of him?"
"Gerunto's drowned, because he could not swim," etc.

Now, if our readers shall be of opinion--as Colonel Mannering and the farmer were--that the attitude and the occupation were scarcely consistent with the dignity of a gentleman whom they had come to consult on very grave matters, we may be as much to blame as was the tavern-waiter on that occasion, in introducing them to the revels of the Inns of Court. We will do what we can to soften such censure by stating that there certainly appears at times to have arisen a suspicion, in the minds of a portion of the profession, that the wig and gown were not figuring to the best possible advantage on these occasions. For, in the reign of the first James, we find an order issued by the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, whereby the "under barristers were, by decimation, put out of commons because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas Day preceding, according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were present;" and this order is accompanied by a threat "that, if the fault were repeated, they should be fined or disbarred."

There seems to have been a contest between the four Inns of Court as to which should get up these pageantries with the greatest splendor, and occasionally a struggle between the desire of victory and the disinclination, or perhaps inability, to furnish the heavy cost at which that victory was to be secured. Most curious particulars on these subjects are furnished by the accompt-books of the houses: by the "Gesta Grayorum" (which was published for the purpose of describing a celebrated Christmas kept at Gray's Inn in 1594, and had its title imitated from the then popular work called the "Gesta Romanorum"); by Dugdale, in his "Origines Juridiciales,"; and by Nichols, in his "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth." For some time Lincoln's Inn appears to have carried it all its own way, having been first on the ground. The Christmas celebrations seem to have been kept by this society from as early a period as the reign of Henry VI.; although it was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that they began to grow into celebrity, or at least that we have any account of their arrangements. When, however, the societies of the two Temples, and that of Gray's Inn, began, with a laudable jealousy, to contest the palm of splendor, the necessary expenditure appears occasionally to have "given them pause." Accordingly, they held anxious meetings, at the approach of the season, to decide the important question whether Christmas should be kept that year or not; and one of the registers of the society of Lincoln's Inn, bearing date the 27th of November, in the twenty-second year of the reign of Henry VIII. contains the following order: "Yt is agreed that if the two Temples do kepe Chrystemas, then Chrystemas to be kept here; and to know this, the Steward of the House ys commanded to get knowledge, and to advertise my master by the next day at night."

There is a curious story told in Baker's Chronicle of an awkward predicament into which the society of Gray's Inn brought themselves by a play which they enacted amongst their Christmas revels of 1527. The subject of this play was to the effect that "Lord Governance was ruled by Dissipation and Negligence; by whose evil order Lady Public-Weal was put from Governance." Now, if these gentlemen did not intend, by this somewhat delicate moral, any insinuation against the existing state of things (which, being lawyers, and therefore courtiers, there is good motive to believe they did not), it is, at all events, certain that, as lawyers, they ought to have known better how to steer clear of all offence to weak consciences. That respectable minister, Cardinal Wolsey, felt himself (as we think he had good right to do) greatly scandalized at what, if not designed, was, by accident, a palpable hit; and, in order to teach the gentlemen of Gray's Inn that they were responsible for wounds given, if they happened to shoot arrows in the dark, he divested the ingenious author, Sergeant Roe, of his coif, and committed him to the Fleet, together with one of the actors, of the name of Moyle,--in order to afford them leisure for furnishing him with a satisfactory explanation of the matter.

In Dugdale's "Origines Juridiciales," we have an account of a magnificent Christmas which was kept at the Inner Temple, in the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign; at which the Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, presided, under the mock-title of Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie, High Constable Marshal of the Knights Templars, and Patron of the honorable order of Pegasus. A potentate with such a title would have looked very foolish without a "tail;" and accordingly he had for his master of the game no less a lawyer than Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, with four masters of the revels, a variety of other officers, and fourscore persons forming a guard. Gerard Leigh, who was so fortunate as to obtain the dignity of a knight of Pegasus, describes, as an eye-witness, in his "Accidence of Armorie," the solemn fooleries which were enacted on the occasion by these worthies of the sword and of the gown.

Of course, it was not to be expected that such shrewd courtiers as lawyers commonly are, if they had ever kept Christmas at all, should fail to do so during the reign of this virgin queen, when its celebration offered them such admirable opportunities for the administration of that flattery which was so agreeable to her Majesty, and might possibly be so profitable to themselves. We have great pleasure in recording a speech made by her Majesty on one of these occasions, nearly so much as two centuries and a half ago, but which for its great excellence has come down to our days. The gentlemen of Gray's Inn (their wits, probably, a little sharpened by the mistake which they had made in her father's time) had ventured upon a dramatic performance again; and, in the course of a masque which they represented before the queen's Majesty, had administered to her copious draughts of that nectar on which her Majesty's vanity was known to thrive so marvellously. They appear, however, with a very nice tact, to have given her no more of it on this occasion than was sufficient to put her Majesty into spirits, without intoxicating her, for by this period of her life it took a great deal of that sort of thing to intoxicate the queen's Majesty; and the effect was of the pleasantest kind, and could not fail to be most satisfactory to the gentlemen of Gray's Inn. For after the masque was finished (in which we presume there had been a little dancing by the lawyers who, would, as in duty bound, have stood on their wigs to please her Majesty), and on the courtiers attempting, in _their_ turn, to execute a dance, her Majesty was most graciously pleased to exclaim, "What! shall we have bread and cheese after a banquet?"--meaning thereby, we presume, to imply that the courtiers could not hope to leap as high or, in any respect, to cut such capers as the lawyers had done. Now, this speech of the virgin queen we have reported here less for the sake of any intrinsic greatness in the thought or elegance in the form than because, out of a variety of speeches by her Majesty, which have been carefully preserved, we think this is about as good as any other, and has the additional recommendation (which so few of the others have) of exhibiting the virgin queen in a good humor. And, further, because having recorded the disgrace into which the gentlemen of Gray's Inn danced themselves, in the lifetime of her illustrious father, it is but right that we should likewise record the ample indemnification which they must have considered themselves to have received, at the lips of his virgin daughter.

The celebrations at the Inns of Court were from time to time continued, down to the period of the civil troubles which darkened the reign of Charles I.; and so lately as the year 1641, when they had already commenced, we find it recorded by Evelyn, in his Memoirs, that he was elected one of the comptrollers of the Middle Temple revellers, "as the fashion of the young students and gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this yeare with greate solemnity." During this reign, we discover the several societies lessening their expenses by a very wise compromise of their disputes for supremacy; for in the eighth year thereof the four Inns of Court provided a Christmas masque in conjunction, for the entertainment of the court, which cost the startling sum of £24,000 of the money of that day, and in return King Charles invited one hundred and twenty gentlemen of the four Inns to a masque at Whitehall on the Shrove-Tuesday following.

That our readers may form some idea of the kind of sports which furnished entertainment to men of no less pretension than Hatton and Coke and Crewe, we will extract for them a few more particulars of the ceremonies usually observed at the grand Christmases of the Inner Temple, before quitting this part of the subject.

In the first place, it appears that on Christmas Eve there was a banquet in the hall, at which three masters of the revels were present, the oldest of whom, after dinner and supper, was to sing a carol, and to command other gentlemen to sing with him; and in all this we see nothing which is not perfectly worthy of all imitation now. Then, on each of the twelve nights, before and after supper were revels and dancing; and if any of these revels and dancing were performed in company with the fair sex (which, on the face of the evidence, doth not appear), then we have none of the objections to urge against them which we have ventured to insinuate against the solemn buffooneries, to which the bar was fined for refusing to surrender itself, in the time of James I. Neither do we find anything repugnant to our modern tastes in the announcement that the breakfasts of the following mornings were very substantial ones, consisting of brawn, mustard, and malmsey, which the exhaustion of the previous night's dancing might render necessary; nor that all the courses were served with music, which we intend that some of our own shall be this coming Christmas. But against most of that which follows we enter our decided protest, as not only very absurd in itself, but eminently calculated to spoil a good dinner.

On St. Stephen's Day, we learn that, after the first course was served in, the constable marshal was wont to enter the hall (and we think he had much better have come in, and said all he had to say beforehand) bravely arrayed with "a fair rich compleat harneys, white and bright and gilt, with a nest of fethers, of all colours, upon his crest or helm, and a gilt pole ax in his hand," and, no doubt, thinking himself a prodigiously fine fellow. He was accompanied by the lieutenant of the Tower, "armed with a fair white armour," also wearing "fethers," and "with a like pole ax in his hand," and of course also thinking himself a very fine fellow. With them came sixteen trumpeters, preceded by four drums and fifes, and attended by four men clad in white "harneys," from the middle upwards, having halberds in their hands, and bearing on their shoulders a model of the Tower, and each and every one of these latter personages, in his degree, having a consciousness that he, too, was a fine fellow. Then all these fine fellows, with the drums and music, and with all their "fethers" and finery, went three times round the fire, whereas, considering that the boar's head was cooling all the time, we think once might have sufficed. Then the constable marshal, after three courtesies, knelt down before the Lord Chancellor, with the lieutenant doing the same behind him, and then and there deliberately proceeded to deliver himself of an "oration of a quarter of an hour's length," the purport of which was to tender his services to the Lord Chancellor, which, we think, at such a time he might have contrived to do in fewer words. To this the Chancellor was unwise enough to reply that he would "take farther advice therein," when it would have been much better for him to settle the matter at once, and proceed to eat his dinner. However, this part of the ceremony ended at last by the constable marshal and the lieutenant obtaining seats at the Chancellor's table, upon the former giving up his sword: and then enter, for a similar purpose, the master of the game, apparelled in green velvet, and the ranger of the forest, in a green suit of "satten," bearing in his hand a green bow, and "divers" arrows, "with either of them a hunting-horn about their necks, blowing together three blasts of venery." These worthies, also, thought it necessary to parade their finery three times around the fire; and having then made similar obeisances, and offered up a similar petition in a similar posture, they were finally inducted into a similar privilege.

But though seated at the Chancellor's table, and no doubt sufficiently roused by the steam of its good things, they were far enough as yet from getting anything to eat, as a consequence; and the next ceremony is one which strikingly marks the rudeness of the times. "A huntsman cometh into the hall, with a fox, and a purse-net with a cat, both bound at the end of a staff, and with them nine or ten couple of hounds, with the blowing of hunting-horns. And the fox and the cat are set upon by the hounds, and killed beneath the fire." "What this 'merry disport' signified (if practised) before the Reformation," says a writer in Mr. Hone's Year Book, "I know not. In 'Ane compendious boke of godly and spiritual songs, Edinburgh, 1621, printed from an old copy,' are the following lines, seemingly referring to some such pageant:--

'The hunter is Christ that hunts in haist,
The hunds are Peter and Pawle,
The paip is the fox, Rome is the Rox
That rubbis us on the gall.'"

After these ceremonies, the welcome permission to betake themselves to the far more interesting one of an attack upon the good things of the feast appears to have been at length given; but at the close of the second course the subject of receiving the officers who had tendered their Christmas service was renewed. Whether the gentlemen of the law were burlesquing their own profession intentionally or whether it was only an awkward _hit_, like that which befell their brethren of Gray's Inn, does not appear. However, the common serjeant made what is called "a plausible speech," insisting on the necessity of these officers "for the better reputation of the Commonwealth;" and he was followed, to the same effect, by the king's serjeant-at-law till the Lord Chancellor silenced them by desiring a respite of further advice, which it is greatly to be marvelled he had not done sooner. And thereupon he called upon the "ancientest of the masters of the revels" for a song,--a proceeding to which we give our unqualified approbation.

So much for the dinner. After supper, the constable marshal again presented himself, if possible finer than before, preceded by drums,--as so fine a man ought to be,--and mounted on a scaffold borne by four men. After again going thrice round the hearth, he dismounted from his elevation, and having set a good example by first playing the figurant himself for the edification of the court, called upon the nobles, by their respective Christmas names, to do the same. Of the styles and titles which it was considered humorous to assume on such occasions, and by which he called up his courtiers to dance, our readers may take the following for specimens:--

"Sir Francis Flatterer, of Fowlehurst, in the county of Buckingham."

"Sir Randle Rackabite, of Rascall Hall, in the county of Rabchell."

"Sir Morgan Mumchance, of Much Monkery, in the county of Mad Popery."

And so on, with much more of the same kind, which we are sure our readers will spare us, or rather thank us for sparing them. The ceremonies of St. John's Day were, if possible, more absurd than those by which St. Stephen was honored; but, that we may take leave of the lawyers on good terms, and with a word of commendation, we will simply add that the concluding one is stated to be that on the Thursday following "the Chancellor and company partook of dinner of roast beef and venison pasties, and at supper of mutton and hens roasted," which we take to have been not only the most sensible proceeding of the whole series, but about as sensible a thing as they or anybody else could well do.