The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England

Chapter IV

I.—Popular manly Pastimes imitated by Children.— II. Horses.—III. Racing and Chacing.—IV. Wrestling and other Gymnastic Sports.—V. Marbles, and Span-counter.—VI. Tops, &c.;—The Devil among the Taylors.—VII. Even or Odd—Chuck-halfpenny;—Duck and Drake.—VIII. Baste the Bear;—Hunt the Slipper, &c.—IX. Sporting with Insects;—Kites;—Windmills.—X. Bob-cherry.—XI. Hoodman-blind;—Hot-cockles.—XII. Cock-fighting.—XIII. Anonymous Pastimes;—Mock Honours at Boarding-schools.—XIV. Houses of Cards;—Questions and Commands;—Handy-dandy;—Snap-dragon;—Push-pin;—Crambo;—Lotteries.—XV. Obsolete Pastimes.—XVI. Creag;—Queke-board;—Hand in and Hand out;—White and Black, and Making and Marring;—Figgum;—Mosel the Peg;—Hole about the Church-yard;—Penny-prick;—Pick-point, &c.;—Mottoes, Similes, and Cross-purposes;—The Parson has lost his Cloak.

I — Popular Manly Pastimes Imitated by Children

Most of the popular pastimes mentioned in the preceding pages were imitated by the younger part of the community, and in some degree, at least, became the sports of children. Archery, and the use of missive weapons of all kinds, were formerly considered as an essential part of a young man’s education; for which reason the bow, the sling, the spear, and other military instruments, were put into his hands at a very early period of his life; he was also encouraged in the pursuit of such sports as promoted muscular strength, or tended to make him acquainted with the duties of a soldier. When the bow and the sling were laid aside in favour of the gun, prudence naturally forbad the putting an instrument of so dangerous a nature into the hands of children; they however provided themselves a substitute for the gun, and used a long hollow tube called a trunk, in which they thrust a small pointed arrow, contrived to fit the cavity with great exactness, and then blowing into the trunk with all their might, the arrow was driven through it and discharged at the other end by the expansion of the compressed air. Sometimes pellets of clay were used instead of the arrows. Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary, under the article trunk, has this quotation from Ray: “In a shooting trunk, the longer it is to a certain limit, the swifter and more forcibly the air drives the pellet.” The trunks were succeeded by pot-guns made with hollow pieces of elder, or of quills, the pellets being thrust into them by the means of a ramrod. These were also called pop-guns; and perhaps more properly, from the popping noise they make in discharging the pellets. Big bouncing words are compared to pot-gun reports in a comedy called The Knave in Graine, printed in 1640. 1094

II — Horses

Most boys are exceedingly delighted with riding, either on horses or in carriages, and also upon men’s shoulders, which we find to be a very ancient sport; 1095 and I trust there are but few of my readers who have not seen them with a bough or a wand substituted for a horse, and highly pleased in imitating the gallopping and prancing of that noble animal. 1096 This is an amusement of great antiquity, well known in Greece; and if report speaks truth, some of the greatest men have joined in it, either to relax the vigour of their own minds for a time, or to delight their children. The Persian ambassadors found Agesilaus, the Lacedemonian monarch, employed in this manner. 1097 Socrates also did the same, for which it seems his pupil Alcibiades used to laugh at him. 1098 If we turn to the engraving No. 45, [1099] we shall see two boys, each of them having two wands, the one serves for a horse, and the other for a spear, and thus equipped they are justing together. The engraving No. 30, [1100] represents a boy mounted upon a wooden horse, drawn by two of his companions, and tilting at the quintain; and here we may remark that the bohourts, the tournaments, and most of the other superior pastimes have been subjected to youthful imitation; and that toys were made on purpose to train up the young nobility in the knowledge and pursuit of military pastimes, as may be seen by the engravings Nos. 43 and 44. 1101 Nay, some writers, and not without the support of ancient documents, derive the origin of all these splendid spectacles from the sportive exercises of the Trojan boys. 1102

III — Racing and Chacing

Contending with each other for superiority in racing on foot is natural to children; 1103 and this emulation has been productive of many different amusements, among which the following seem to be the most prominent.

Base, or Prisoners’ Bars, is described in a preceding part of this work. 1104

Hunt the Fox.—In this game one of the boys is permitted to run out, and having law given to him, that is, being permitted to go to a certain distance from his comrades before they pursue him, their object is to take him if possible before he can return home. We have the following speech from an idle boy in The longer thou livest the more Fool thou art, an old comedy, written towards the close of the sixteenth century: 1105

And also when we play and hunt the fox,
  outrun all the boys in the schoole.

Hunt the Hare is the same pastime under a different denomination.

Harry-racket, or Hide and Seek, called also Hoop and Hide; where one party of the boys remain at a station called their home, while the others go out and hide themselves; when they are hid one of them cries hoop, as a signal for those at home to seek after them. If they who are hidden can escape the vigilance of the seekers and get home uncaught, they go out to hide again; but so many of them as are caught, on the contrary, become seekers, and those who caught them have the privilege of hiding themselves.

Thread the Taylor’s Needle.—In this sport the youth of both sexes frequently join. As many as choose to play lay hold of hands, and the last in the row runs to the top, where passing under the arms of the two first, the rest follow: the first then becoming the last, repeats the operation, and so on alternately as long as the game continues.

Cat after Mouse; performed indiscriminately by the boys and the girls. All the players but one holding each other’s hands form a large circle; he that is exempted passes round, and striking one of them, immediately runs under the arms of the rest; the person so struck is obliged to pursue him until he be caught, but at the same time he must be careful to pass under the arms of the same players as he did who touched him, or he forfeits his chance and stands out, while he that was pursued claims a place in the circle. When this game is played by an equal number of boys and girls, a boy must touch a girl, and a girl a boy, and when either of them be caught they go into the middle of the ring and salute each other; hence is derived the name of kiss in the ring.

Barley-brake.—The excellency of this sport seems to have consisted in running well; but I know not its properties. Johnson quotes these lines from Sidney:

By neighbours prais’d, she went abroad thereby,
At barley-brake her sweet swift feet to try. 1106

Puss in the Corner.—A certain number of boys or girls stand singly at different distances; suppose we say for instance one at each of the four corners of a room, a fifth is then placed in the middle; the business of those who occupy the corners is to keep changing their positions in a regular succession, and of the out-player, to gain one of the corners vacated by the change before the successor can reach it: if done he retains it, and the loser takes his place in the middle.

Leap Frog.—One boy stoops down with his hands upon his knees and others leap over him, every one of them running forward and stooping in his turn. The game consists in a continued succession of stooping and leaping. It is mentioned by Shakspeare in King Henry the Fifth; “If I could win a lady at leap-frog, I should quickly leap into a wife:” by Jonson in the comedy of Bartholomew Fair, “A leap-frogge chance now;” and by several other more modern writers.

IV — Wrestling and Other Gymnastic Sports

To the foregoing pastimes we may add Wrestling, which was particularly practised by the boys in the counties of Cornwall and Devon. 1107 In the engraving No. 18, we find two lads contending for mastery at this diversion.

Hopping and Sliding upon one Leg are both of them childish sports, but at the same time very ancient, for they were practised by the Grecian youth; one they called akinetinda, Ακινητινδα, 1108 which was a struggle between the competitors who should stand motionless the longest upon the sole of his foot; the other denominated ascoliasmos, Ασκωλιασμος, 1109 was dancing or hopping upon one foot, 1110 the conqueror being he who could hop the most frequently, and continue the performance longer than any of his comrades; and this pastime is alluded to by the author of the old comedy, The longer thou livest the more Fool thou art, wherein a boy boasting of his proficiency in various school games, adds,

And I hop a good way upon my one legge.

Among the school-boys in my memory there was a pastime called Hop-Scotch, which was played in this manner: a parallelogram about four or five feet wide, and ten or twelve feet in length, was made upon the ground and divided laterally into eighteen or twenty different compartments, which were called beds; some of them being larger than others. The players were each of them provided with a piece of a tile, or any other flat material of the like kind, which they cast by the hand into the different beds in a regular succession, and every time the tile was cast, the player’s business was to hop upon one leg after it, and drive it out of the boundaries at the end where he stood to throw it; for, if it passed out at the sides, or rested upon any one of the marks, it was necessary for the cast to be repeated. The boy who performed the whole of this operation by the fewest casts of the tile was the conqueror.

Skipping.—This amusement is probably very ancient. It is performed by a rope held by both ends, that is, one end in each hand, and thrown forwards or backwards over the head and under the feet alternately. Boys often contend for superiority of skill in this game, and he who passes the rope about most times without interruption is the conqueror. In the hop season, a hop-stem stripped of its leaves is used instead of a rope, and in my opinion it is preferable.

Trundling the hoop is a pastime of uncertain origin, but much in practice at present, and especially in London, where the boys appear with their hoops in the public streets, and are sometimes very troublesome to those who are passing through them.

Swimming, sliding, 1111 and of late years skating, may be reckoned among the boys’ amusements; also walking upon stilts, 1112 swinging, and the pastime of the meritot and see-saw, or tetter-totter, which have been mentioned already, 1113 together with most of the games played with the ball, 1114 as well as nine-pins and skittles. 1115

V — Marbles and Span-Counter

Marbles seem to have been used by the boys as substitutes for bowls, and with them they amuse themselves in many different manners. I believe originally nuts, round stones, or any other small things that could be easily bowled along, were used as marbles. Those now played with seem to be of more modern invention. It is said of Augustus when young, that by way of amusement he spent many hours in playing with little Moorish boys cum nucibus, with nuts. 1116 The author of one of the Tatlers calls it “a game of marbles not unlike our common taw.” 1117

Taw, wherein a number of boys put each of them one or two marbles in a ring and shoot at them alternately with other marbles, and he who obtains the most of them by beating them out of the ring is the conqueror.

Nine holes; which consists in bowling of marbles at a wooden bridge with nine arches. There is also another game of marbles where four, five, or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a distance from each other; and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble by a regular succession into all the holes, which he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains the victory.

Boss out, or boss and span, also called hit or span, wherein one bowls a marble to any distance that he pleases, which serves as a mark for his antagonist to bowl at, whose business it is to hit the marble first bowled, or lay his own near enough to it for him to span the space between them and touch both the marbles; in either case he wins, if not, his marble remains where it lay and becomes a mark for the first player, and so alternately until the game be won.

Span-counter is a pastime similar to the former, but played with counters instead of marbles. I have frequently seen the boys for want of both perform it with stones. This sport is called in French tapper, a word signifying to strike or hit, because if one counter is struck by the other, the game is won.

VI — Tops, &c — The Devil Among the Tailors

The top was used in remote times by the Grecian boys. It is mentioned by Suidas, and called in Greek τροχος, and in Latin turbo. It was well known at Rome in the days of Virgil, 1118 and with us as early at least as the fourteenth century, when its form was the same as it is now, and the manner of using it can admit of but little if any difference. Boys whipping of tops occur in the marginal paintings of the MSS. written at this period. It was probably in use long before.

In a manuscript at the Museum I met with the following anecdote of prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., and the author assures us it is perfectly genuine; 1119 his words are these: “The first tyme that he the prince went to the towne of Sterling to meete the king, seeing a little without the gate of the towne a stack of corne in proportion not unlike to a topp wherewith he used to play; he said to some that were with him, ‘loe there is a goodly topp;’ whereupon one of them saying, ‘why doe you not play with it then?’ he answered, ‘set you it up for me and I will play with it.’”

We have hitherto been speaking of the whip-top; for the peg-top, I believe, must be ranked among the modern inventions, and probably originated from the te-totums and whirligigs, which seem all of them to have some reference to the tops, saving only that the usage of the te-totum may be considered as a kind of petty gambling, it being marked with a certain number of letters: and part of the stake is taken up, or an additional part put down, according as those letters lie uppermost. The author of Martin. Scriblerus mentions this toy in a whimsical manner: “He found that marbles taught him percussion, and whirligigs the axis in peretrochio.” When I was a boy the te-totum had only four sides, each of them marked with a letter; a T for take all; an H for half, that is of the stake; an N for nothing; and a P for put down, that is, a stake equal to that you put down at first. Toys of this kind are now made with many sides and letters.

There is a childish pastime which may well be inserted here, generally known by the ridiculous appellation of the Devil among the Tailors; it consists of nine small pins placed like skittles in the midst of a circular board, surrounded by a ledge with a small recess on one side, in which a peg-top is set up by means of a string drawn through a crevice in the recess; the top when loosed spins about among the pins and beats some, or all of them, down before its motion ceases; the players at this game spin the top alternately, and he who first beats down the pins to the number of one-and-thirty is the conqueror. This silly game, I am told, is frequently to be seen at low public houses, where many idle people resort and play at it for beer and trifling stakes of money.

VII — Even or Odd — Chuck-Halfpenny — Duck and Drake

Even or Odd is another childish game of chance well known to the ancients, and called in Greek artiazein, Αρτιαζειν, and in Latin par vel impar. Hence the following line in Horace:

Ludere par, impar; equitare in arundine longâ.

To play at even or odd—to ride upon a long reed or cane. 1120

The play consists in one person concealing in his hand a number of any small pieces, and another calling even or odd at his pleasure; the pieces are then exposed, and the victory is decided by counting them; if they correspond with the call, the hider loses; if the contrary, of course he wins. The Grecian boys used beans, nuts, almonds, and money; in fact any thing that can be easily concealed in the hand will answer the purpose.

Cross and Pile is mentioned some pages back. 1121 Here we may add Chuck-farthing, played by the boys at the commencement of the last century; it probably bore some analogy to pitch and hustle. 1122 There is a letter in the Spectator supposed to be from the father of a romp, who, among other complaints of her conduct, says, “I catched her once at eleven years old at chuck-farthing among the boys.” 1123 I have seen a game thus denominated played with halfpence, every one of the competitors having a like number, either two or four, and a hole being made in the ground with a mark at a given distance for the players to stand, they pitch their halfpence singly in succession towards the hole, and he whose halfpenny lies the nearest to it has the privilege of coming first to a second mark much nearer than the former, and all the halfpence are given to him; these he pitches in a mass towards the hole, and as many of them as remain therein are his due; if any fall short or jump out of it, the second player, that is, he whose halfpenny in pitching lay nearest to the first goer’s, takes them and performs in like manner; he is followed by the others so long as any of the halfpence remain.

Duck and Drake, is a very silly pastime, though inferior to few in point of antiquity. It is called in Greek epostrakismos, Εποστρακισμος, 1124 and was anciently played with flat shells, testulam marinam, which the boys threw into the water, and he whose shell rebounded most frequently from the surface before it finally sunk, was the conqueror. With us a part of a tile, a potsherd, or a flat stone, are often substituted for the shells.

To play at ducks and drakes is a proverbial expression for spending one’s substance extravagantly. In the comedy called Green’s Tu Quoque, one of the characters, speaking of a spendthrift, says, “he has thrown away as much in ducks and drakes as would have bought some five thousand capons.”

VIII — Baste the Bear — Hunt the Slipper, &c.

Baste, or buffet the bear with hammer and block, are rather appendages to other games than games by themselves, being punishments for failures, that ought to have been avoided; the first is nothing more than a boy couching down, who is laden with the clothes of his comrades and then buffeted by them; the latter takes place when two boys have offended, one of which kneeling down bends his body towards the ground, and he is called the block; the other is named the hammer, and taken up by four of his comrades, one at each arm and one at each leg, and struck against the block as many times as the play requires.

Hunt the Slipper.—In this pastime a number of boys and girls indiscriminately sit down upon the ground in a ring, with one of their companions standing on the outside; a slipper is then produced by those seated in the ring, and passed about from one to the other underneath their clothes as briskly as possible, so as to prevent the player without from knowing where it is; when he can find it, and detain it, the person in whose possession it was, at that time, must change place with him, and the play recommences.

Shuttle-cock has been spoken of in a former chapter, the engraving, No. 98, [1125] affords an ancient representation of the game.

IX — Sporting With Insects — Kites — Windmills

Spinning of chafers and of butterflies.—I do not know a greater fault in the nurture of children than the conniving at the wanton acts of barbarity which they practise at an early age upon innocent insects; the judgment of that parent must be exceedingly defective, or strangely perverted, who can proportion the degree of cruelty to the smallness of the creature that unfortunately becomes the sufferer. It is but a fly, perhaps he may say, when he sees his child pluck off its wings or its legs by way of amusement; it is but a fly, and cannot feel much pain; besides the infant would cry if I was to take it from him, and that might endanger his health, which surely is of more consequence than many flies: but I fear worse consequences are to be dreaded by permitting it to indulge so vicious an inclination, for as it grows up, the same cruelty will in all likelihood be extended to larger animals, and its heart by degrees made callous to every claim of tenderness and humanity.

I have seen school-boys shooting of flies with a headless pin impelled through part of a tobacco-pipe, by the means of a bent cane, and this instrument is commonly called a fly-gun; from this they have proceeded to the truncating of frogs, and afterwards to tormenting of cats, with every other kind of animal they dare to attack; but I have neither time to recollect, nor inclination to relate, the various wanton acts of barbarism that have been practised, arising from the want of checking this pernicious inclination as soon as it begins to manifest in the minds of children.

The chafers, or May-flies, a kind of beetles found upon the bloom of hemlock in the months of May and June, are generally made the victims of youthful cruelty. These inoffensive insects are frequently caught in great quantities, crammed into small boxes without food, and carried in the pockets of school-boys to be taken out and tormented at their leisure, which is done in this manner; a crooked pin having two or three yards of thread attached to it, is thrust through the tail of the chafer, and on its being thrown into the air it naturally endeavours to fly away, but is readily drawn back by the boy, which occasions it to redouble its efforts to escape; these struggles are called spinning, and the more it makes of them, and the quicker the vibrations are, the more its young tormentor is delighted with his prize.

I am convinced that this cruelty, as well as many others above mentioned, arise from the perpetrators not being well aware of the consequences, nor conscious that the practice of them is exceedingly wicked. I hope the reader will excuse my introducing a story relating to myself; but as it may serve to elucidate the argument, I shall venture to give it. When a child, I was caught by my mother, who greatly abhorred every species of cruelty, in the act of spinning a chafer; I was so much delighted with the performance that I did not observe her coming into the room, but when she saw what I was about, without saying any thing previously to me, she caught me by the ear and pinched it so severely that I cried for mercy; to the punishment she added this just reproof: “That insect has its feelings as you have! do you not see that the swift vibrations of its wings are occasioned by the torment it sustains? you have pierced its body without remorse, I have only pinched your ear, and yet you have cried out as if I had killed you.” I felt the admonition in its full effect, liberated the poor May-fly, and never impaled another afterwards.

The preceding representation is from a drawing on a manuscript in the Royal Library. 1126

This barbarous sport is exceedingly ancient. We find it mentioned by Aristophanes in his comedy of The Clouds. 1127 It is called in the Greek melolonthe, Μηλολονθη, rendered in the Latin scarabæus, which seems to have been the name of the insect. But the Grecian boys were less cruel in the operation than those of modern times, for they bound the thread about the legs of the beetle, instead of thrusting a pin through its tail. We are also told that the former frequently amused themselves in the same manner with little birds, substituted for the beetles. 1128

The Kite is a paper machine well known in the present day, which the boys fly into the air and retain by means of a long string. It probably received its denomination from having originally been made in the shape of the bird called a kite; in a short French and English Dictionary published by Miege, A.D. 1690, the words cerf volant, are said among other significations to denote a paper kite, and this is the first time I have found it mentioned. Now, the paper kites are not restricted to any particular form; they appear in a great diversity of figures, and not unfrequently in the similitude of men and boys. I have been told, that in China the flying of paper kites is a very ancient pastime, and practised much more generally by the children there than it is in England. From that country perhaps it was brought to us, but the time of its introduction is unknown to me; however, I do not find any reason to conclude that it existed here much more than a century, back.

This is from a painting nearly five hundred years old; though differs very little in its form from those used by the children at present.

X — Bob-Cherry

This is “a play among children,” says Johnson, “in which the cherry is hung so as to bob against the mouth,” or rather so high as to oblige them to jump in order to catch it in their mouth, for which reason the candidate is often unsuccessful. Hence the point in the passage which Johnson quotes from Arbuthnot. “Bob-cherry teaches at once two noble virtues, patience and constancy; the first in adhering to the pursuit of one end, the latter in bearing a disappointment.”

In this engraving, taken from a MS. of the fourteenth century, in the Royal Library, 1129 we see a sport of this kind where four persons are playing, but the object they are aiming at is much larger than a cherry, and was probably intended to represent an apple or an orange. “It was customary,” we are told by Mr. Brand, “on the eve of All-Hallows, for the young people in the north to dive for apples, or catch at them when stuck at one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths, only having their hands tied behind their back.” 1130

A pastime something resembling that of diving for the apples, I take it, is represented by the foregoing engraving from a MS. in the Bodleian Library, 1131 and the business of the boy upon the form, with his head over the vessel of water, is to catch some object contained therein, or to avoid being ducked when the other end of the form is elevated by his companion.

XI — Hoodman Blind — Hot Cockles

Hoodman Blind, more commonly called Blind Man’s Buff, is where a player is blinded and buffeted by his comrades until he can catch one of them, which done, the person caught is blinded in his stead. This pastime was known to the Grecian youth, and called by them myia chalki, Μυια χαλκι. 1132 It is called Hoodman’s Blind because the players formerly were blinded with their hoods. In the Two angry Women of Abington, a comedy, this pastime is called the Christmas-sport of Hobman-Blind.

The manner in which Hoodman Blind was anciently performed with us appears from these three different representations, all of them from the Bodleian MS. before mentioned.

The players who are blinded have their hoods reversed upon their heads for that purpose, and the hoods of their companions are separately bound in a knot to buffet them.

Hot Cockles, from the French hautes-coquilles, is a play in which one kneels, and covering his eyes lays his head in another’s lap and guesses who struck him. Gay describes this pastime in the following lines:

As at Hot Cockles once I laid me down,
And felt the weighty hand of many a clown,
Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I
Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye.

“The Chytrinda, Χυτρινδα, of the Grecians,” says Arbuthnot, “is certainly not our hot cockles, for that was by pinching, not by striking;” but the description of the chytrinda, as it is given by an ancient writer, bears little or no resemblance to the game of hot cockles, but is similar to another equally well known with us, and called frog in the middle. The chytrinda took place in this manner:—A single player, called χοτρα, kotra, and with us the frog, being seated upon the ground, was surrounded by his comrades who pulled or buffeted him until he could catch one of them; which done, the person caught took his place, and was buffeted in like manner. 1133 I scarcely need to add, that the frog in the middle, as it is played in the present day, does not admit of any material variation. There was another method of playing this game, according to the same author; but it bears no reference to either of those above described. The following engravings represent both the pastimes above mentioned, taken from the Bodleian manuscript of 1344 last referred to.

XII — Cock-Fighting

I have already spoken at large upon cock-fighting, and throwing at cocks. I shall only observe that the latter, especially, was a very common pastime among the boys of this country till within these few years; and in the following engraving we have the copy of a curious delineation, which I take to represent a boyish triumph.

The hero supposed to have won the cock, or whose cock escaped unhurt from the danger to which he had been exposed, is carried upon a long pole by two of his companions; he holds the bird in his hands, and is followed by a third comrade, who bears a flag emblazoned with a cudgel, the dreadful instrument used upon these occasions. The original painting occurs in the manuscript mentioned in the preceding article.

XIII — Anonymous Pastimes — Mock Honours at Boarding Schools

The two next engravings are representations of a pastime, the name of which is unknown to me; but the purpose of it is readily discovered.

In this, which is from the just cited Bodleian MS., we see a young man seated upon a round pole which may readily turn either way, and immediately beneath him is a vessel nearly filled with water; he holds a taper in each hand, and one of them is lighted, and his business, I presume, is to bring them both together and light the other, being careful at the same time not to lose his balance, for that done, he must inevitably fall into the water.

In the following, from a beautiful book of prayers in the possession of Francis Douce, esq., the task assigned to the youth is still more difficult, as well from the manner in which he is seated, as from the nature of the performance, which here he has completed: that is, to reach forward and light the taper held in his hands from that which is affixed to the end of the pole, and at a distance from him.

The originals of both these engravings were made in the fourteenth century.

The subjoined engraving, also from a drawing in Mr. Douce’s book of prayers, represents two boys seated upon a form by the side of a water-tub; both of them with their hands fixed below their knees, and one bending backwards in the same position, intending, I presume, to touch the water without immerging his head, or falling into it, and afterwards to recover his position.

This trick being done by the one was probably imitated by the other; I speak however from conjecture only. If it be necessary for him who stoops to take any thing out of the water, the pastime will bear some analogy to the diving for apples represented by the engraving No. 119, on a preceding page. [1134]

In some great Boarding Schools for the fair sex, it is customary, upon the introduction of a novice, for the scholars to receive her with much pretended solemnity, and decorate a throne in which she is to be installed, in order to hear a set speech, addressed to her by one of the young ladies in the name of the rest. The throne is wide enough for three persons to sit conveniently, and is made with two stools, having a tub nearly filled with water between them, and the whole is covered by a counterpane or blanket, ornamented with ribands and other trifling fineries, and drawn very tightly over the two stools, upon each of which a lady is seated to keep the blanket from giving way when the new scholar takes her place; and these are called her maids of honour. The speech consists of high-flown compliments calculated to flatter the vanity of the stranger; and as soon as it is concluded, the maids of honour rising suddenly together, the counterpane of course gives way, and poor miss is unexpectedly immerged in the water.

XIV — Houses of Cards — Questions and Commands — Handy-Dandy — Snap-Dragon — Push-Pin — Crambo — Lotteries

Building of houses with cards, and such like materials, is a very common amusement with children, as well as drawing little waggons, carts, and coaches; and sometimes boys will harness dogs and other animals, and put them to their waggons in imitation of horses. Something of this kind is alluded to by Horace, who writes thus in one of his satires: 1135

Ædificare cassus, plostello adjungere mures.

To build little houses, and join mice to the diminutive waggons.

Questions and Commands, a childish pastime, which though somewhat different in the modern modification, most probably derived its origin from the basilinda, Βασιλινδα, 1136 of the Greeks, in which we are told a king, elected by lot, commanded his comrades what they should perform.

Handy-dandy, “a play,” says Johnson, “in which children change hands and places;” this seems clear enough according to the following quotation from Shakspeare: “See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief! hark in thine ear; change places; and handy-dandy which is the justice and which is the thief;” to which is added another from Arbuthnot, “neither cross and pile, nor ducks and drakes, are quite so ancient as handy-dandy.”

Snap-dragon. This sport is seldom exhibited but in winter, and chiefly at Christmas-time; it is simply heating of brandy or some other ardent spirit in a dish with raisins; when the brandy being set on fire, the young folks of both sexes standing round it pluck out the raisins, and eat them as hastily as they can, but rarely without burning their hands, or scalding their mouths.

Push-pin is a very silly sport, being nothing more than simply pushing one pin across another.

Crambo is a diversion wherein one gives a word, to which another finds a rhyme; this, with other trifling amusements, is mentioned in a paper belonging to the Spectator. 1137 “A little superior to these,” that is, to persons engaged in cross-purposes, questions, and commands, “are those who can play at crambo, or cap-verses.” In this we trace some vestige of a more ancient pastime, much in vogue in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, called the A B C of Aristotle; which is strongly recommended by the author, one “Mayster Bennet,” not only to children, but also to persons of man’s estate, if ignorant of letters. The proem to this curious alliterative alphabet is to the following effect:

“Whoever will be wise and command respect let him learn his letters, and look upon the A B C of Aristotle, against which no argument will hold good: It is proper to be known by clerks and knights, and may serve to amend a mean man, for often the learning of letters may save his life. No good man will take offence at the amendment of evil, therefore let every one read this arrangement and govern himself thereby.

Hearkyn and heare every man and child how that I begynne.

A to amerous, to adventurous; ne anger the too much.
B to bold, to busy, and board thou not too brode.
C to curtes, to cruel, and care not too sore.
D to dull, to dreadfull, and drynk thou not too oft.
E to ellynge, to excellent; ne to ernestfull neyther.
F to fierce, ne too familier but frendely of chere.
G to glad, to gloryous, and gealosy thou shalt hate.
H to hasty, to hardy, ne too hevy yn thyne herte.
I to jettyng, to jangling, and jape not too oft.
K to keeping, to kynd, and ware knaves taches among.
L to lothe, to lovyng, to lyberall of goods.
M to medlurs, to merry but as manner asketh.
N to noyous, to nyce, ne nought to newe fangle.
O to orpyd, to oveyrthwarte, and othes do thee hate.
P to preysyng, to prevy, ne peerless with prynces.
Q to queynt, to querelous, but quyene wele thee may.
R to ryetous, to revelyng, ne rage not too moche.
S to strange, ne to stervyng, nor stare not too brode.
T to taylours, ne tayle wyse, for temperance yt hatyth.
V to venemous, to violent, and waste not too mych.
W to wyld, ne wrathful, and ne too wyse deeme thee.

For fear of a fall.

A measurable meane way is best for us all.

Explicit.”

There are two copies of this alphabet among the Harleian manuscripts, one marked 1706, written in the fourteenth century, and another marked 541; whence the above is chiefly taken. At the end of the former we read “XY wyth ESED AND per se—Amen.”

Lotteries, in which toys and other trifling prizes were included to be drawn for by children, were in fashion formerly, but by degrees, and especially since the establishment of the State Lottery, they have been magnified into a dangerous species of gambling, and are very properly suppressed by the legislature. They were in imitation of the State Lotteries, with prizes of money proportionable to the value of the tickets, and drawn in like manner. These lotteries are called little goes.

XV — Obsolete Pastimes

I have here attempted to give some account of the principal sports practised by the children of this country. I am fully sensible that the list will admit of very many additions, and also that the pastimes which are included in it have been subject to numberless variations. I have, however, set down all that I can recollect, and described them according to the manner in which I have seen the larger part of them performed. It only remains for me to enumerate a few more, which indeed are not well known to me, but may be elucidated hereafter by some more able writer.

This engraving represents a kind of a mock procession, where one of the company, equipped in a royal habit with a crown upon his head, is walking with his mantle displayed by two attendants, and preceded by a zany beating a tambourin with knotted thong. I presume it to be the installation of the King of the Bean, who has already been introduced to the reader.

Below it are two figures, one of them blinded with his hood, having a club upon his shoulder, and approaching towards an iron cauldron, in order no doubt to strike it with his club.

This may probably refer to the amusement at wakes and fairs, where various tasks for pastime sake are frequently assigned to blindfolded persons, as the Wheelbarrow Race, described on a preceding page. [1138] The drawings from whence the two last engravings are derived, are in the Bodleian MS. of 1344 already mentioned.

The sport in the next representation is quite unknown to me, unless it may be thought to bear some resemblance to the Greek game called apodidraskinda, Αποδιδρασκινδα, 1139 where one being seated in the midst of his comrades, closed his eyes, or was blinded by the hand of another, while the rest concealed themselves, and he who was found by him after he was permitted to rise, took his place; this was evidently a species of the pastime called hide and seek. The original of this engraving is in a MS. of the thirteenth century, in the Royal Library. 1140

I am equally at a loss respecting the two next representations.

Those that are standing, and those that are seated below them, are evidently engaged in a similar kind of pastime. The only game within the compass of my knowledge that bears any resemblance to it, I have seen played by two persons one of them alternately holds up the fingers of his right hand, varying the number at his pleasure, and the other is obliged to answer promptly by exposing a like number of his fingers, which is called by both, and the least variation on either side loses. In these delineations there are three players, and he in the middle seems to be alternately answering to the other two. They are in the Bodleian MS. of 1344.

Mr. Douce’s Book of Prayers of the fourteenth century contains the following representation.

Here we see a rope apparently made fast at both ends, and a man laying hold of it with his teeth, by which he seems to support himself. If this be the meaning of the delineator, the trick may properly be classed with those that were exhibited by the minstrels and the joculators.

136.

With respect to the two preceding drawings from the frequently mentioned MS. of 1344, in the Bodleian Library, I can hardly venture a conjecture; unless we may suppose them to represent two of the ridiculous ceremonies belonging to the Festival of Fools. I suspect the monks with the nuns in No. 135, are lay people who have assumed the religious habits, for the former have not the tonsure, but their hair is powdered with blue.

XVI — Creag — Queke-Board — Hand in and Hand Out — White and Black, and Making and Marring — Figgum — Mosel the Peg — Hole About the Churchyard — Penny-Prick, Pick-Point, &c — Mottoes, Similes, and Cross-Purposes — The Parson Has Lost His Cloak

Creag is a game mentioned in a computus dated the twenty-eighth of Edward I., A. D. 1300, and said to have been played by his son prince Edward.

Queke Borde, with Hand yn and Hand oute, are spoken of as new games, and forbidden by a statute made in the seventeenth year of Edward IV.

White and Black, and also Making and Marring are prohibited by a public act established in the second and third years of Philip and Mary.

Figgum is said to be a juggler’s game in the comedy of Bartholomew Fayre by Ben Jonson, acted in 1614; to which is added, “the devil is the author of wicked Figgum.” In the same play mention is made of crambe (probably crambo), said to be “another of the devil’s games.”

Mosel the Pegge, and playing for the hole about the church yard, are spoken of as boys’ games, in a comedy called The longer thou livest the more Fool thou art, written in the reign of queen Elizabeth.

Penny-pricke appears to have been a common game in the fifteenth century, and is reproved by a religious writer of that period. 1141

Pick-point, Venter-point, Blow-point, 1142 and Gregory, occur in a description of the children’s games in the sixteenth century. Blow-point was probably blowing an arrow through a trunk at certain numbers by way of lottery. To these may be added another pastime, called Drawing Dun out of the Mire. Chaucer probably alludes to this pastime in the Manciple’s Prologue, where the host seeing the cook asleep, exclaims, “Syr, what dunne is in the mire.”

Mottoes, Similes, and Cross Purposes, are placed among the childrens’ games in a paper belonging to the Spectator. 1143 And the Parson has lost his cloak, in another, where a supposed correspondent writes thus: “I desire to know if the merry game of the parson has lost his cloak is not much in vogue amongst the ladies this Christmas, because I see they wear hoods of all colours, which I suppose is for that purpose.” 1144

---

See also sir John Hawkins’s History of Music, vol ii. 44.

Notes

1 Pontoppidan’s History of Norway, p. 248.

2 On p. 173.

3 The famous Dunstan was also an excellent blacksmith.

4 Oläi. Worm. Lit. Run. p. 129; Bartholin. p. 420.

5 Asser. in Vit. Ælfredi.

6 De Moribus Germ.

7 Hist. Ramsien. apud Gale, vol. i. an. 85.

8 A. D. 960, can. 64, Johnson’s Canons.

9 See p. 6 in the body of the work.

10 No. 2253, fol. 108.

11 In the original it is purry poume, that is rotten apple.

12 The cross-bow.

13 That is, to practise with lances, two persons running one against the other.

14 Armour.

15 See p. 126 of this work.

16 Hunting.

17 In the first chapter, p. 17, the reader will find the animals to be hunted divided into three classes; namely, beasts of venery, beasts of chase, and raskals, or vermin. The horn was sounded in a different manner according to the class of the beasts pursued.

18 Morte Arthur, translated from the French by sir Thomas Mallory, knight, and first printed by Caxton, A.D. 1481. “The English,” says a writer of our own country, “are so naturally inclined to pleasure, that there is no countrie wherein gentlemen and lords have so many and so large parkes, only reserved for the purpose of hunting.” And again, “Our progenitors were so delighted with hunting, that the parkes are nowe growne infinite in number, and are thought to containe more fallow deere than all the Christian world besides.” Itinerary of Fynes Moryson, published in 1617, part iii. book iii. cap. 3.

19 To learn.

20 Written also paume; that is, hand-tennice.

21 Romance of Three Kings’ Sons and the King of Sicily, Harl. MS. 326.

22 Mem. Anc. Cheval. tom. i. p. 16.

23 Harl. MS. 2252.

24 Ibid.

25 Printed by Copeland; black letter, without date; Garrick’s Collection, K. vol. ix.

26 That is, all of the lords and other nobility who were seated in the hall.

27 For vierge escu, a virgin shield, or a white shield, without any devices, such as was borne by the tyros in chivalry who had not performed any memorable action.

28 A sword without edge or point, as it is explained in the following articles.

29 That is, with heads without points, or blunted so that, they could do no hurt.

30 Foyne, or foin, signifies to push or thrust with the sword, instead of striking.

31 Harl. MS. 69.

32 Hall, in Life of Henry VIII.

33 Arte of Rhetorike by Tho. Wilson, fol. 67.

34 Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, published A. D. 1617.

35 Coursing, I presume, he means.

36 I here omit a long train of royal reasoning in confutation of the assertions of the learned men his majesty alludes to in this passage.

37 Biograph. Brit. p. 1236.

38 No. 17, D. iii.

39 Crowd is an ancient name for the violin.

40 See the first and second chapters in the body of the work.

41 The words of Fitz Stephen are, “Puellarum cithara ducit choros, et pede libero pulsatur tellus, usque imminente lunâ.” The word cithara, Stow renders, but I think not justly, timbrels.

42 Vol. i. p. 257.

43 Athen. Oxon. ii. col. 812; and see Granger’s Biographical History, vol. ii. p. 398 8vo.

44 In his Proverbs, part I, chap. 11

45 Scuta ex argento facta.

46 Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. ii. cap. 16.

47 Dr. Henry’s Hist. vol. ii. lib. v. cap. 7.

48 See the Northumberland Family-Book.

49 Johan. Sarisburiensis, lib. i. c. 8. p. 34.

50 Smale harpers with ther glees.

51 Cornmuse and Shalmes—many a floyte and lytlyngehorne.

52 Pypes made of grene corne are also mentioned in the Romance of the Rose.

53 These are the author’s own words.

54 In the chapters on Minstrels, Jugglers, &c. pp. 170, 197. The plays and pageants exhibited at court are described in the chapter treating on Theatrical Amusements, p. 150.

55 [Before 1801.]

56 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays, H. vol. iii.

57 No. 2220, fol. 7

58 Or waits, the band of city minstrels.

59 See further on, p. xlvi.

60 These passages do not prove that the historian was disgusted with the pageantry, abstractedly considered, but rather with the occasion of its exhibition; for, he speaks of the same kind of spectacles, with commendation, both anterior and subsequent to the present show, which do not appear to have had the least claim for superiority in point of reason or consistency.

61 Armour.

62 “The Word of God;” meaning the Bible published in English by his authority, which was prohibited in the sanguinary reign of his fanatic daughter.

63 Holinshed, vol. iii. pp. 1091, 1120, &c.

64 Called below a flower-de-luce, an animal I am not in the least acquainted with.

65 No. 1968.

66 Harl. MS. 2125.

67 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays.

68 Cotton MS. Titus, B. i.

69 See the account of the court ludi in the chapter on Theatrical Exhibitions.

70 The reader may find accounts of most of these excursions in a work entitled The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, in two volumes 4to. published by Mr. Nichols.

71 This account is chiefly taken from a small pamphlet called Princely Pleasure at Kenelworth Castle. Progresses, vol. i.

72 Harl. MS. 6395, entitled Merry Passages and Jests, art. 221.

73 Tempest, act ii, scene iv.

74 There actually was such a monkey exhibited at that time near Charing-Cross, but in the bills which were given to the public he is called a Wild Hairy Man, and they tell us he performed all that the Spectator relates concerning him; but this subject is treated more fully in the body of the work.

75 Spectator, vol. i. No. 14.

76 Spectator, vol. i. No 31, dated Thursday, April 5, 1711.

77 A man famous at that time for imitating a variety of musical instruments with his voice, and, among others, the bells. See his bill of performance, at p. 255.

78 All these pastimes the reader will find particularised, under their proper heads, in the body of the work.

79 “To pass over griefe,” says an author of our own, “the Italians sleepe, the English go to playes, the Spaniards lament, and the Irish bowl,” &c. Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, in 1617, part iii. book i. cap. 3.

80 The reader will find this subject particularly treated on, in the chapter that relates to minstrels and music, in the body of the work.

81 Hentzner’s Itinerary, published by lord Orford, at Strawberry-hill, pp. 88, 89.

82 Hist. Angl. lib. xiii.

83 De Rerum Invent, lib. v. cap. 2.

84 Tatler, No. 134, dated Thursday, Feb. 16, 1709.

85 See a pamphlet written by John Northbrooke. published in the reign of queen Elizabeth, without date.

86 School of Abuse, published 1579.

87 Gosson, I hope, was acquainted with the vulgar part of the audience only, or, which is more probable, spoke from report, and that exaggerated.

88 Admonition to Parliament, by Tho. Cartwright, published A. D. 1572.

89 Still, for stay. The Pope’s Kingdom, book iv. translated from the Latin of Tho. Neogeorgus, by Barnabe Googe, and dedicated to queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1570.

90 John Field, in his Declaration of God’s Judgment at Paris Garden, published A. D. 1503, fol. 9.

91 Field, ut supra. See also D. Beard’s Theatre of God’s Judgments.

92 Entitled, A Treatise concerning the Sabbath, published A. D. 1636.

93 Page 25.

94 The Pope’s Kingdom, from Neogeorgus by Googe.

95 Thomas Hall, B. D. Pastor of King’s Norton, in his pamphlet entitled Funebria Floræ; or, the Down-fall of May-Games; published 1660.

96 See p. xx.

97 Benedict. Abbas, Vit. Ric. I. edit, à Hearne, tom. ii. p. 610.

98 The words in the original, as quoted by Du Cange, are these: “Nec ludant ad aleas vel taxillos, nec sustineant ludos fieri de rege et regina,” &c. The game of king and queen he conceives to have been some game with the cards; but most authors who have written upon the subject of playing cards, think that they were not known at that period, at least in this country: it is certain, however, that in the time of Elizabeth, the game of king and queen was understood to mean the playing with cards. “John Heywood, the great epigrammatist,” according to Camden, “used to say he did not love to play at kinge and queene, but at Christmasse, according to the old order of Englande; that few men plaiyed at cardes but at Christmasse; and then almost all, men and boyes.” Camden’s Remains, p. 378. I have ventured to substitute chess for cards, in which game the two principal pieces are the king and the queen, and are so denominated in a MS. nearly coeval with the edict. See the account of this game in the body of the work.

99 An. 11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.

100 No householder might permit the games prohibited by the statute to be practised in their houses, excepting on the holidays, as before specified, under the penalty of six shillings and eightpence for every offence.

101 Survey of London, p. 79.

102 Pilam manualem, pedinam, et bacculoream, et ad cambucam, &c.

103 Rot. Claus. 39 Ed. III. m. 23.

104 The magistrates are commanded to seize upon the said tables, dice, cards, boules, closhes, tennice-balls, &c. and to burn them.

105 An. 17 Edw. II. cap. 3.

106 Nul enfaunt ne autres jeur a barres, ne a autres jues nient convenebles come a oustre chaperon des gentz, ne a mettre en eux, &c. Rot. Pari. an. 6 Edw. III. Harl. MS. 7058.

107 [Before 1801.]

108 Survey of London, p. 85.

109 It was afterwards converted into small cottages, which were let, at large rents, to strangers and others, Ibid. p. 158.

110 Stephen Gosson, in The School of Abuse, 1579.

111 That is, cards and dice; an old anonymous poem “of Covetice,” cited by Warton, History of Poetry, vol. ii. p. 316.

112 In the Manners and Customs of the English; the Chronicle of England; and more particularly in the View of the Dresses of the English; vol. i. p. 73. vol. ii. p. 140, &c.

113 See p. xxxv.

114 Harl. MS. 2252.

115 Confessio Amantis.

116 Warton’s History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 311.

117 Part ii. sect 2. cap. 4.

118 No. 57, A. D. 1711.

119 Vespasian, B. xii. There are also three copies of this MS. but more modern, in the Royal Library. [See sec. xiii. of the present chapter.]

120 Dio Nicæus ex Xiphilin.

121 Lib. iv.

122 Cæsar Bel. Gal. lib. vi.

123 Cæsar Bel. Gal. lib. vi.

124 Asser. in Vit. Ælfredi.

125 Will. Malmsbury. Hist. Reg. Anglorum, lib. ii. cap. 6.

126 Ibid. cap. 8.

127 Ibid. ut sup. cap. 13.

128 Ibid.

129 Montfaucon Monarch. Fran. and Ducarel’s Anglo-Norman Antiquities.

¹³⁰ Tiberius, B. v.

131 No. 2, B. vii.

132 Will. Malmsbury, lib. iv.

133 Johan. Sarisburiensis de Nugis Curialium, lib. i. cap. 4.

134 Blount’s Ancient Tenures, p. 135.

135 “Fort chiens et chiens de levries,” Froissart. Chron. vol. i. cap. 210.

136 Froissart, vol. iv.

137 Wellwood’s Memoirs, p. 35.

138 Harl. MS. No. 6395, anonymous, entitled “Merry Passages and Jeasts.”

139 Sir Thomas More’s Poems. See also Warton’s History of English Poetry, 4to vol. iii. p. 101.

140 Constitut. Cnut. Reg. de Forest, apud Spelm. Gloss, et Wilkins, Leg. Sax. p. 146.

141 Leges Cnuti, apud Lambard, cap. 77.

142 Ibid. cap. 15.

143 Carta de Foresta, cap. 11.

144 Faciat cornare, ibid. cap. 17.

145 Spelman’s Answer to the Apology for Archbishop Abbot.

146 Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. Numerous quotations might be made from other writers in addition to those above; but they are sufficient for my purpose.

147 Stat. 13 Rich. II.

148 An. 21 Hen. II. A. D. 1157. See Spelman’s Answer to the Apology for Archbishop Abbot.

149 P. Blensens. epist. lvi. p. 81

150 Knyghton, apud Decem Script, p. 263.

151 Stephanid. vit. S. Thom.

152 Vide Spelman ut supra.

153 Claudius. A. 2.

154 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays, K. vol. ix.

155 The following extracts prove king John to have been exceedingly partial to this kind of dogs. Rot. Pip. iv. Reg. Johan. A. D. 1203. Rog. constab. Cestriæ debet D marcas et X palfridos et X laissas Leporariorum, &c. that is, five hundred marks, ten horses, and ten leashes of greyhounds.—An. xi. Johan. 1210. Rog. de Mallvell redd. comp, de 1 palfrido velociter currente et 2 laissiüs Leporariorum, one swift running horse, and six greyhounds.

156 Garrick’s Collec. K. vol. x.

157 2. B. vii. [In the original drawing, and on Mr. Strutt’s plate, the figures pursuing and pursued are in a line together: but for the purpose of including all the figures within the preceding page, the lady on horseback is placed above, instead of behind the female archer.]

158 MS. Harl. 6395. Merry Passages and Jeasts, art. 345.

159 Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, dated September 12, A.D. 1600.

160 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. ii.

161 No. 4431.

162 Maitland’s Hist. London, book i. chap. 6.

163 Stephanides Descript. London.

164 Stow’s Survey of London, vol. i. p. 157.

165 “Pills to Purge Melancholy,” 1719, vol. iv. p. 42.

166 Blount’s Ancient Tenures.

167 Or “vautrarius,” which Blount derives from the French vaultre, a mongrel hound, and supposes the name to signify an inferior huntsman; and this opinion I have adopted.

168 E c. An. 34 Edward I. No. 37. Richard Rockesley held the same land by the same tenure, in the second year of Edward II. Blount ut supra.

169 Entitled “Art de Venerie le quel Maistre Guillame Twici venour le Roy dangleterre fist en son temps por aprandre Autres; or the Art of Hunting, which Mr. Wm. Twici, huntsman to the king of England, made for the instruction of others.” See Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221.

170 Cotton MS. Vespasian, B. xii.

171 MS. Harl. This book is entitled “The Maister of the Game.”

172 The Book of St. Albans, I fancy, by mistake, places the wild roe for the wild boar.

173 The Book of St. Albans adds, that all other kinds of beasts subject to hunting are to be called “Raskall,” derived, I suppose, from the Saxon word papcal, which signifies a lean beast, or one of no worth.

174 The word in the original MS. is written fute and fuite, which I conceive to be French, and then the interpretation I have given of flight will be proper. The meaning is, that the latter leave a scent behind them when they are chased.

175 Hist. Reg. Angl. lib. ii. cap.8.

176 Testa Nevelli.

177 Memb. 13.

178 Ibid. See more in Blount’s Ancient Tenures.

179 “Booke of hauking and hunting,” without date, reprinted with the title of “A Jewell for Gentrie.” Lond. 1614.

180 See Blount’s Antient Tenures, art. Sutton, &c.

181 Page 17, sec. xiii.

182 They are called “trists” or “trestes” in the MS. and might possibly be temporary stages.

183 The passage runs thus in the MS. “the fewtrerers ought to make fayre logges of grene boughes at their trestes,” &c.

184 Chastised greyhoundes, MS.

185 See Blount’s Ancient Tenures.

186 See the Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Hunting.

187 See p. 4. sec. v.

188 See p. 11. sec. x.

189 Memoirs des Inscrip. tom. ix. p. 542.

190 See the Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England.

191 And printed by Pynson A. D. 1508.

192 Lib. v. cap. 8.

193 Pliny Nat. Hist. lib. x. cap. 8.

194 Peacham’s Complete Gentleman, p. 183.

195 Epist. Winifred. See Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poet. vol. ii. p. 221.

196 See p. 3. sec. iii.

197 This charter was granted A. D. 821. Dugdale’s Monasticon, vol. i. p. 100.

198 See the whole of the curious will in Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, p. 540.

199 See p. 4. sec. v.

200 Lidgate presented this poem to king Henry VI. when that monarch held his court at Bury. The presentation MS. is yet extant in the Harleian Library, No. 2278.

201 Walton’s Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 221.

202 Aira Accipitris.

203 Trente fauconniers à cheval, chargez d’oiseaux. Froissart’s Chron. vol. i. cap. 210.

204 Ou en riviere. Ibid.

205 Tous jours en riviere. Ibid. cap. 140.

206 Garrick’s Collect. of old Plays, K. vol. x.

207 Canterbury Tales.

208 Bury St. Edmund’s, in Suffolk.

209 That is, to the windward; I use the author’s own words.

210 MS. Harl. 6395. Merry Passages and Jeasts, art. 223.

211 Tiberius, C. vi.

212 Julius. A. vi.

213 Marked 2 B. vii.

214 [The fowls before the falconer in the original drawing are placed below in the present engraving, to accommodate it to the page.]

215 Johan. Sarisburiensis, lib. i. cap. 4.

216 See p. 4. sec. v.

217 Hall in the life of Henry VIII. sub an. xvi.

218 These observations are taken from “The Boke of Saint Albans;” a subsequent edition says, “at least a note under.”

219 “A Woman killed with Kindness,” third edition, 1617. Garrick’s Coll. E. vol. iv.

220 MS. Harl. 1419.

221 “Ke en escrit trove, si cum io lis, el livere al bon Rei Edward.” MS. Harl. 978.

222 MS. Harl. 2340.

223 See sec. v. p. 4.

224 In nomine Domini volatilia cœli erunt sub pedibus tuis—Vicit Leo de tribu Juda radix David Alleluya—Quem iniquus homo ligavit, Dominus per adventum suum solvet.

225 Carta de Forresta, cap. xi.

226 Rot. Parl. 34 Ed. III.

227 Ibid. 37 Ed. 111.

228 A. D. 1337. Regist. Adami Orleton. Epis. Wint. fol. 56.

229 A hawk was called a nyesse, or an eyesse, from her having watery eyes.

230 Stat. xi. Hen. VII.

231 Stat. xi. Hen. VII.

232 Expen. Hosp. Reg. Ed. III. MS. Cott. Nero, C. viii. p. 275

233 Between this and the next line the author makes the following observation: “These ben hawkes of toure, and ben bothe illured to be called and reclaymed.” Jewel for Gentrie. Lond. 1614.

234 Stow’s Survey of London.

235 The sheldrake is a species of wild fowl.

236 Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, book v. chap. 8. edit Lond. 1660.

237 Harleian, MS. 2284.

238 Jewel for Gentrie. Lond. 1614.

239 Testament of Love, book ii.

240 Knight of the Swan, Garrick’s Collect. K. vol. x.

241 Equos cursores. Malmsb. de Gest. Reg. Angl. lib. ii. cap. 6.

242 I have followed the translation published by Mr. White, of Fleet-street, A. D. 1772. See Stow’s Survey of London, and republished with additions by Strype. [The translation of Fitzstephen published by Mr. White, was made by the late Dr. Samuel Pegge.]

243 “Syr Bevys of Hampton,” black letter, without date, printed by Wm. Copland. Garrick’s Collect. K. vol. ix.

244 Bourne Antiq. Vulgares, chap. xxiv.

245 Probably the elder Randel Holme of Chester, one of the city heralds. MS. Harl. 2150 fol. 235.

246 The thirty-first of Henry VIII.

247 That is Shrove Tuesday.

248 Probably the younger Randel Holme.

249 MS. Harl. 2125.

250 A. D. 1665. and 5 Charles II.

251 In his Survey of the Town of Stamford, first printed A. D. 1646. chap. 10.

252 See p. 7. sec. vii.

253 Bernado de Nictum pro uno cursorio hardo empto de eodem, xxv. marc. Compot. Garderoba. An. xi. Ed. III. MS. Cot. Nero, C. viii. fol. 219.

254 Michali de la Were Scut. Regis Navarr. present domino Regi duos equos cursores ex parte dono Domini sui, de dono Regis. C. sol. Ibid.

255 MS. Harl. 4690, written early in the fourteenth century.

256 Peer or equal.

257 A French word, signifying a large powerful horse.

258 Steed, rabbit, nor camel.

259 Lib. iv. fat. 3. Edit. 1599.

260 Poem of Covetice, quoted by Warton. Hist. English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 316.

261 John Northbrooke.

262 Anatomy of Melancholy, part. ii. sec. 2, chap. 4, edit. 1660.

263 Pills to purge Melancholy, fourth edit. 1719, vol. ii. p. 53.

264 Ency. Brit, under Race.

265 Ibid.

266 Probably Matthew Thomas Baskervile, whose name appears at the end; it was written about the year 1690. MS. Harl. 4716.

267 Dated Sept. 11, A.D. 1711. Spectator, vol. iii. No. 173.

268 Olaii Worm. Lit. Run. p. 129. Barthol. p. 420. Pontoppidan’s Hist. Norway, p. 248.

269 Claudius, B. iv.

270 Tiberius, C. vi.

271 Canterbury Tales.

272 Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, p. 187. edit. 1622.

273 Engraving 4, p. 13.

274 Engraving 5, p. 15.

275 See book i. ch. i. sec. xvii. p. 21.

276 Leland’s Collect. vol. iv. p. 278.

277 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. ii.

278 Arcübalista in Latin, and also frequently steel bow in English, because the horns were usually made with steel.

279 Camden’s Remains.

280 Nichol. Trivet. Annal.

281 See Manners and Customs of the English, vol. i.

282 Serres, and also most of our own historians. Froissart praises the skill of the Genoese cross-bowmen upon another occasion, saying, “They shot so surely, that lightly they myst not of their level.” Vol. iv. chap. 38. fol. 47. English translation, [by Lord Berners,] and in several other places.

283 Ascham’s Toxophilus.

284 2 B. vii.

285 19 C. viii. dated 1496.

286 Stat. 29 Hen. VII. A. D. 1508.

287 Stat. 6 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.

288 Stat. 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 17.

289 History of London, book ii. p. 482.

290 Stat. temp. Ed. II. apud Winton.

291 Heywood’s Epigrams and Proverbs, 1566. ch. 13.

292 Stow’s Survey of London, by Strype, vol. ii. p. 257. Stow died A. D. 1605.

293 Ann. 8 Jacobi prim. Ibid.

294 Stow’s Survey, by Strype, vol. i. p. 250.

295 Gesta Grayorum, fol. 18, printed 1594. Garrick’s Collect. C. vol. 14.

296 Maitland’s London, book v. chap. i.

297 “Archerye revived,” by Robert Shotterel and Thomas D’Urfey, 1676; p. 53.

298 Alluding, I presume, to tennice, or the balloon ball.

299 Archæologia, vol. vii. p.58.

300 In his “Toxophilus, or the schole of shooting,” written in 1544, first published in 1571, republished by Mr. James Bennet in 1761.

301 “Geste of Robyn Hode.” Garrick’s Collect. K. vol. x.

302 Prologue to Canterbury Tales.

303 Lib. Compotis Garderobæ sub an. 4 Ed. II. page 53, is this entry, Pro duodecim flecchiis cum pennis de pavonæ emptis pro rege, de 12 den.; that is, For twelve arrows plumed with peacocks’ feathers, bought for the king, twelve pence. MS. Cott. Lib. Nero, C. viii.

304 Country Contentments, 1615, chap. viii. p. 107.

305 Ibid.

306 Ascham, p. 129, et infra.

307 Country Contentments.

308 Survey of Cornwall, by Richard Carew, Esq. 1602. B. i. p. 73.

309 See sec. x. p.57.

310 2 B. vii.

311 See most of our historians.

312 An. 7 Hen. VIII. fol. 56

313 Archæologia, vol. vii. p. 58.

314 Black letter, without date. Imprinted at London upon the Three Crane Wharfe, by Willyam Copland. Garrick’s Collect. Old Plays, K. vol. x. Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore, says, “There is a more ancient copy printed by Wynkin de Worde, preserved in the archives of the public library at Cambridge.” Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i.

315 King Edward IV., I presume, is meant by the poet, for in one of the lines we read “Edward our comely kynge”. Anachronisms of this kind were common enough in the old ballads.

316 That is, he shall lose it, or rather, it shall be forfeited.

317 Black letter, without date, and printed also by Copland in Lothbury. Its title is, The Names of the Three Archers; the whole ballad, with some small variations, is in the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. p. 154, &c. This copy is bound up in the same volume of the Garrick Collection of Old Plays with the Geste of Robyn Hode.

318 Twenty score paces, says the song.

319 I rather think the poet meant an arrow shot “compass,” for the pricke or wand was a “mark of compass,” that is, the arrow in its flight formed the segment of a circle. See sec. xiv. p. 62.

320 “Six score paces.” Song.

321 God forbid.

322 Archæologia, vol. i. p. 58.

323 [Mr Strutt wrote this in 1800.]

324 See sec. xvi. p. 65.

325 Survey of Cornwall, 1602.

326 In vita Hen. VIII. fol. 8.

327 Stow’s Survey, by Strype, vol. i. p. 250.

328 Strype’s London, vol. i. p. 250.

329 Archæologia, vol. vii.

330 MS. Harl. 365, fol. 96.

331 An. 7 et 9 Hen. VII. MS. in the Remembrancer’s Office. See also Appendix to Dr. Henry’s Hist. Brit. vol. vi.

332 Archæologia, vol. vii.

333 In Life of Hen. VIII. 1511, fol. 8.

334 Archæologia, vol. vii.

335 Ency. Brit.

336 Judges, chap. xx. ver. 16.

337 1 Chron. chap. xii. ver. 2.

338 1 Samuel, chap. xvii. and xviii.

339 Claudius, B. iv.

340 14. B. v.

341 C. v. 16.

342 Manners and Customs of the English, vol. i.

343 Titus A. xxiii. part 1, fol. 8.

344 Iliad, book xxiii.

345 In his Dictionary, under quoit.

346 Fitzstephen’s Description of London.

347 Rot. claus. Memb. 23.

348 Froissart, Lord Berners’ translation, vol. iv. chap. 149, fol. 184.

349 Σκιομαχια.

350 Vol. ii. No. 115.

351 Orbis sensualium Pictus.

352 Compleat Gentleman, 1622.

353 Titus A. xxiii. part i. page 6. See p. 73. sec. iii.

354 Johnson’s Dictionary, word Base.

355 “Nul enfaunt ne autres ne jue—à barres.” Rot. Parl. MS. Harl. 7057.

356 Cymbeline.

357 Worthies of England in Cornwall, p. 197.

358 Survey of Cornwall, 1602, p. 75.

359 Matthew Paris. Hist. Ang. sub an. 1222.

360 Survey of London, p. 78, 85.

361 The margin says, “at Skinner’s Well.”

362 There are now, says the author, no such men, meaning “the porters of the king’s beam,” that is, at the commencement of the seventeenth century.

363 Survey of London, p. 85.

364 I presume he means the mace.

365 Hentzner’s Itinerary first published A. D. 1598. Lord Orford’s translation, Strawberry Hill edition, p. 36.

366 Canterbury Tales.

367 Prologues to the Canterbury Tales.

368 2 B. viii.

369 Second fit, or part, Garrick’s Collect. Old Plays, K. vol. x.

370 Vol. ii. No. 161, published 1711.

371 Survey of Cornwall, 1602, p. 75.

372 Ιππας.

373 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

374 2 B. vii.

375 2464, Bod. 264.

376 Pontoppidan’s Hist. of Norway, p. 148.

377 MS. Cott. Titus, A. xxiii.

378 Wood, or wode, signifies wild or mad; and here, that the rain makes the rivers swell and overpass their bounds.

379 Edit. 1550, p. 13.

380 The river Thames.

381 Sikerer, surer, safer; that is, neither the one nor the other should have any extraneous assistance, but each should depend entirely upon his own exertions to escape from the water.

382 History of all the schools and colleges in and about London, printed A. D. 1615.

383 In D’Urfey’s Collection of Songs, 1719, vol. iii. p. 4.

384 Oläi. Worm. Lit. Run. p. 129.

385 Ency. Brit. art. Skating.

386 Cæsar Bell. Gall. lib. v. cap. 12.

387 Bartholin, p. 420.

388 Will. Malms. Mat. West. in the reign of Edgar.

389 Fitzstephen’s Description of London. Stow’s Survey.

390 See book iii. chap. i. sec. v.

391 Lib. i.

392 Ælian, lib. ii. Volaterranus, lib. xxix.

393 Odyssey, by Pope, b. v.

394 No. lvii.

395 “Sive enim saltu, sive cursu, sive luctatu,” &c. Vita Sancti Cudbereti, cap. i.

396 “Lusum pilæ celebrem.” Stephanides de ludis.

397 “The scholars of each school have their ball or bastion in their hands.” Survey of London.

398 Lord Lyttelton, History of Henry the Second, vol. iii. p. 275; and [Dr. Pegge] the translator of Fitzstephen, in 1772.

399 By the word celebrem Fitzstephen might advert to the antiquity of the pastime.

400 Jeu de paume, and in Latin pila palmaria.

401 Essais historiques sur Paris, vol. i. p. 160

402 Laboureur. Sub an. 1368.

403 Published by Hoole, 1658.

404 John Heywoode’s works, London, 1566.

405 In the life of Henry V11I. the second year of his reign, fol. 11.

406 Ibid. fol. 98.

407 Survey of London, p. 496.

408 Basilicon Doron, b. iii.

409 MSS. Harl. 2248 and 6271.

410 St. Foix Essais Historiques sur Paris, vol. i. p. 160.

411 Antiquities of the Common People, chap. xxiv.

412 Table Talk, art. Christmas.

413 Mr. Brand, in his additions to Bourne.

414 Fuller’s Worthies, published 1662, p. 168.

415 Progresses of Q. Eliz. by Mr. Nichols, vol. ii. p. 19.

416 Martial, lib. iv. Epig. 45.

417 Orbis Sensualium Pictus, cap. 133.

418 20. D. iv.

419 No. 6563.

420 In his Dictionary; word stool.

421 See also his Pills to purge Melancholy, vol. i. p. 91.

422 Survey of Cornwall, 1602, book i. p. 73.

423 “Philogamus,” black letter, without date.

424 See sec. ix. p. 55.

425 Ship of Fools, 1508.

426 Basilicon Doron, book iii.

427 Barclay ut supra.

428 I rather think the elder Randel Holmes, one of the city heralds, MS. Harl. 2150, fol. 235.

429 An open place near the city. See p. 42

430 Acted A.D. 1659.

431 Cambuta vel cambuca. Baculus incurvatus, a crooked club or staff: the word cambuca was also used for the virga episcoparum, or episcopal crosier, because it was curved at the top. Du Cange, Glossary, in voce cambuta.

432 An anonymous author, Harl. MS. 6391.

433 Orbis Sensualium Pictus, cap. cxxxvi.

434 No. 264.

435 14. B. v.

436 Pills to purge Melancholy, fourth edition, 1719, vol. ii. p. 172.

437 See p. 102.

438 In the Introduction.

439 Vegetius de re militari, lib. i. cap. xi. et xiv.

440 “Terræ infixis sudibus scuta apponuntur—Quintanæ ludus scilicet equestris exerceretur—in equis lusitari solitum appeusis sudes in terram impactas scutis.” Robertus Monach. Hist Hierosol. lib. v.

441 Menestrier, Traité des Tournois, Joustes, &c. p. 264.

442 Menestrier ut supra; Du Cange Gloss, in voce quintana; Pluvinel sur l’exercise de monter à cheval, part iii. p. 177.

443 Menestrier, p. 112, et Pluvinel ut supra.

444 20. B. xi

445 Knyghthode and Batayle, MS. Cott. Titus A. xxiii. fol. 6 and 7. This curious poem, written early in the fifteenth century, appears to be a translation of the former treatise, or rather a paraphrase upon it.

446 Set up.

447 Of man’s height.

448 A mace or club of wood.

449 Hath not.

450 Close.

451 Prompt, swift, ready.

452 From the French, empêcher, to hinder or withstand, here used for attack.

453 Throat.

454 Power, strength.

455 Than is required, that is in time of real action.

456 It is the same.

457 A quincto auctore nomen habebat, vide Joan Meursi, de Ludis Græcorum, in tit Κονταξ Κυντανος.

458 Vegetius de re militari. lib. i. cap. xi. et xiv.

459 Κυντανον χονταξ χωρις της πυρπις, quintanum contacem sine fibula. Cod. de aleatoribus, lib. iii. tit. 43.

460 Stephanides Descrip. Lond.

461 2 B. vii.

462 Matthew Paris. Hist. Angl. sub an 1253.

463 Strype’s Stow, &c.

464 Bod. 264.

465 Survey of London, p.

[466] First published in 1677.

467 Laneham in Queen Elizabeth’s Progresses, by Mr. Nichols, vol. i. p. 249.

468 Traité de Tournois, 1669, p. 347.

469 Le Roman de Giron le courtois. Du Cange, Gloss. in voce quintana.

470 Lib. iv. Sat. 3.

471 Referred to in p. 118.

472 Gloss. in voce quintana.

473 Orbis Sensualium Pictus, by Hoole, 1658.

474 Art de monter à cheval, part iii. p. 156.

475 Menestrier, Traité de Tournoi, p. 112.

476 Du Cange, Gloss. in voce justa.

477 Tacitus Annal. lib. xi. Et Suetonius in vit. Claud.

478 Du Cange, Gloss. in voce bohordicum. The word, somewhat differently spelt, occurs in Mandat. Reg. Angl. cited by Du Cange, and in Rymer Fœd. tom. v. p. 223 et alia.

479 Roman D’Aubrey, MS. apud Du Cange ut supra.

480 Annal. pars posterior sub an. 1191.

481 Cotgrave.

482 Origines des Chevaliers, &c. p. 9.

483 No. 2252. fol. 64.

484 A small space of time.

485 Heralds, whose office it was to superintend the ceremonious parts of the tournaments.

486 Reward.

487 Hist. Angl. fol. 3, A.D. 1274.

488 Ludum militarum (qui vulgo torneamentum dicitur). Ibid.

489 Tracte de Tournois.

490 No. 326.

491 Complete Gentleman, p. 178.

492 See more upon this subject in the Encyclopédie François, art. Tournoi.

493 Chronique de Tours.

494 Perambulation of Kent, p. 492.

495 Hist. Angl. A.D. 1179.

496 Harl. MS. 69.

497 Origines des Chevaliers, &c.

498 No. 69.

499 Or ooyez, for Ouïr, more literally Hear now; and the words are repeated.

500 Marche, part of the lists I presume, or portion of ground appropriated to the tournament.

501 Feront clouer leurs armes, literally nail them; the clouage or nail money, as we shall see afterwards, was the perquisite of the heralds.

502 “Mettra sa banier, au commencement dedits bastons et clouera la blason de ses armes, a lautre vout.” The passage is by no means clear; I have therefore given the words of the original.

503 A l’aschevier, chevaliers, &c.

504 Hors chevaliers, &c.

505 No. 14. E. iii.

506 The minstrels of the barons are behind them in Mr. Strutt’s quarto plate, as in the MS. illumination; on the present page, the minstrels are placed below the combatants, in order to accommodate the figures to the space presented by the octavo size.

507 Harl. MS. 69.

508 Coutel, literally a knife.

509 Cotton MS. Nero D. vi. and Harl. MS. 69, ut supra

510 “Avec une grele de coups.” Encyclop. Fran. in voce tournoi.

511 Harl. MS. 69.

512 Glossary, in voce justa.

513 “Pugnæ facere quod justam vocant.” Hist. Novellæ, fol. 106, sub an. 1142.

514 Matthew Paris properly distinguishes it from the tournament. “Non hastiludio, quod torneamentum dicitur, sed—ludo militari, qui mensa rotunda dicitur.” Hist. Angl. sub an. 1252.

515 Glossary, in voce mensa rotunda.

516 Rogerus de Mortuo Mari. Tho. Walsingham. Hist. Angl. sub an. 1280, fol. 3.

517 Tho. Walsingham. Hist. Angl. sub an. 1344, fol. 154. Vol. iii. chap. lix.

518 Froissart, vol. iii. chap. cxxxiii. fol. 148, lord Berners’ translation.

519 No. 14, E. iii.

520 [In the original engraving the knights are opposed to each other on the same line: in the present they are separated, and one placed below, in order to represent them within the octavo page of the size is the quarto.]

521 Essais Hist. sur Paris, vol. iii. p. 263.

522 Ibid. vol. i. p. 327.

523 As the ladies, say some modern authors, were l’ame, the soul of the justs, it was proper that they should be therein distinguished by some peculiar homage; and, accordingly at the termination of a just with lances, the last course was made in honour of the sex, and called the lance of the ladies. The same deference was paid to them in single combats with the sword, the axe, and the dagger. Encyclop. Fran. article joute.

524 See sect. vii. p. 118.

525 See book ii. chap. ii. sec. xviii. p. 87.

526 No. 1, B vii.

527 See what has been said respecting the quintain upon the water, sect. v. p. 116.

528 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. i. p. 56.

529 No. 69.

530 Son to king Edward IV., who lost his life with his brother Edward in the Tower.

531 Titus, A. xxiii, part i. fol. 7.

532 Fitzstephen’s Description of London.

533 Quendam ludum de sancta Katerina (quam miracula vulgariter appellamus) fecit. Vitæ Abbat. p. 35

534 Essay on the Origin of the English Stage, vol. 1.

535 Stow’s Survey of London, p. 76.

536 Vespasian, D. viii.

537 Warwickshire, p. 116.

538 Digby, 113.

539 See the Manners and Customs of the English, where this subject is treated upon more largely.

540 See more upon this subject in the following chapter.

[541] By writing and preaching against them. A monkish author of the twelfth century says of them, “Etiam illi quo obscænio partibus corporis oculis omnium eam ingerunt turpitudinem, quam erubescat videre vel cynicus, &c.” Joh. Sarisburensis de Nugis Curialium, lib. i. cap. viii. p. 34.

542 Dugdale’s Monast. vol. ii. p. 568.

543 Vitæ Abbatum, p. 6.

544 Or rather we should say, the French king was meant by the horse, &c.

545 Prologue to the Monk’s Tale, which consists of seventeen short stories or tragedies, of which, he tells us, he had an hundred in his cell.

546 Survey of Cornwall, Lond. 1602, p. 71.

547 [It is proper to observe, that the Harleian manuscript of the “Guary-Miracle,” referred to by Mr. Strutt, entitled “The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood, written in Cornish by William Jordan, with an English translation by John Keigwin,” has been carefully edited by Davies Gilbert Esq. M.P. F.R.S. F.S.A. &c. and printed by Mr. J. B. Nichols in one volume 8vo. 1827. Mr. Davies Gilbert, who, subsequent to that work was elected president of the Royal Society, had previously edited and given to the public a remarkable Cornish poem called “Mount Calvary,” also translated by John Keigwin, with a memoir of Keigwin, and some particulars of his family, by Nicholas Harris Nicolas, esq. F.S.A. These two volumes, and another on “Ancient Christmas Carols, with the tunes to which they were formerly sung in the West of England,” also by Mr. Gilbert, are highly valuable additions to our metrical and dramatic archæologia. The airs of the carols are especially curious; and the preface to them contains accounts of a versified play exhibiting the prowess of St. George over a Mahometan adversary, and of a rustic farce which usually followed it.]

548 A treatise against dicing, dancing, vain plays, or interludes, &c. by John Northbrooke.

549 Wardrobe roll of Edward III.

550 Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poet. vol. i. p. 238.

551 Warton, vol. iii. p. 156. See also Dr. Henry, Hist. Brit. vol. vi. book vi. chap. 7.

552 No. 264. This MS. was completed in the year 1343.

553 Vita Hen. VIII. fol. 59.

554 Broom.

555 Beacon.

556 Hall’s Union. Vita Hen. VIII. fol. 9.

557 Harl. MS. 69, p. 31.

558 October the eighth.

559 Pine apple.

560 A rose tree.

561 Head dress.

562 Pleasaunce was a fine thin species of gauze, which was striped with gold.

563 Hall, ut sup fol. 59.

564 Laneham’s account of the sports at Kenelworth Castle, in Nichols’s Progresses of queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 22.

565 Owing to the discontinuance of the play they might have been lost, and probably the time did not permit them to be written anew. Reliq. Anc. Poet. vol. i. p. 142.

566 Laneham ut supra, p. 24.

567 See sect. vi. p. 153.

568 [In 1801.]

569 See the Introduction.

570 No. xiv. vol. i. first published in 1711.

571 No. 5931.

572 Biogr. Hist. vol. iv. p. 350.

573 [Before 1801.]

574 Ammianus Marcell. lib. xv. cap. 9.

575 Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. cap. 31.

576 Bartholin de causis contemp. a Danis Mortis, lib. i. cap. 2, et Wormii Lit. Run. ad finim.

577 Spel. Concil. tom. i. p. 455.

578 Vespasian, A. i.

579 Tiberius, C. vi.

580 Pontoppidan. Hist. Norway, p. 148.

581 Wace, Hist. de tut les Reys de Brittaigne, continued by Geoffrai Gaimer, MS. in the Royal Library, marked 13 A. xxi.

582 No. 603.

583 Bede’s Eccles. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 24.

584 Fauchet, Origine de la Langue et Poësie Françoise, 1581, liv. i. chap. viii. fol. 72.

585 Le Grand, Fables, ou Contes des 12. 13. Siècles, tom. v.

586 Dr. Henry, Hist. Brit. vol. viii. sect. 3. chap. 5. p. 502.

587 Fauchet des anciens Poets François, liv. ii. chap. vii. p. 92; and see Walpole Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 6.

588 Confessio Amantis, lib. vii.

589 The thirde boke of Fame.

590 Edition of 1550.

591 The ale here evidently implies the place where ale was sold. Ibid. pass. 1.

592 A reward. Ibid. pass. xi.

593 P. Ploughman, pass. primus.

594 Fabiliaux et Contes, edit. Par. tom. ii. p. 161.

595 Malmsb. lib. ii. cap. 4.

596 Hist. p. 869.

597 Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 6.

598 App. to Leland’s Collect. vol. vi. p. 36.

599 At this time there was also a sergeant of the minstrels. See Essay on Ancient Minstrels, Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i.

600 Book ii. chap. 9.

601 Lib. iv. sat. i.

602 Stow’s Survey of Lond. p. 84 and 85

603 Pass. xi.

604 See p. 184.

605 Benedict. Abbas, sub an. 1190. Hoveden writes thus: “Cantores et joculatores de illo canerent in plateis; ut jam dicebatur ubique quod non erat talis in orbe;” declaring every where that his equal was not in the world. Hist. p. 103.

606 Orderic. Vitalis, Eccles. Hist. pp. 880, 881.

607 The author uses these words: “Intravit quædam mulier ornata histrionali habitu, equum bonum insidens histrionaliter phaleratum, quæ mensas more histrionem circuivit,” &c. Tho. Walsingham, Hist. Anglæ sub an. 1317, p. 85.

608 Non esse moris domus regiæ histriones ab ingressu quemlibet prohibere.

609 Essay upon Ancient Minstrels, in Reliques of Ancient Poetry.

610 The first in the Pardoner’s Tale, and the last in the Romance of the Rose. See the article on tumbling and dancing in a succeeding section.

611 Harl. MS. 1764.

612 Sir John Hawkin’s History of Music, vol. ii. p. 298.

613 See p. 184.

614 MS. Nero, C viii.

615 Harl. MS. 541.

616 The word noise signifies a company. The reader will find the application of many such terms to different trades and professions in p. 24.

617 Hist. and Antiq. Oxon. lib. i. p. 67, sub an. 1224.

618 “Regi Roberto ministrallo, scut. ad arma commoranti ad vadia regis, capientur per diem 12 en.” &c. MS. Cott. Vespasianus, C. xvi.

619 “Regi Roberto, et aliis ministrallis diversis, facientibus ministralsias suas coram rege et aliis magnatibus, de dono ipsius regis, per manus dicti regis Roberti, recipientis denarios ad participandum inter eosdem, apud Eboracum, 20 die Feb. 40 marc.” MS. Cott. Nero, C. viii.

620 Dugd. Monast. vol. i. fol. 355.

621 Collection of Old Ballads, London, 1723.

622 Chaucer, in the Romance of the Rose, where the title Roy des Ribaulx occurs in the original, translates it “king of harlotes.”

623 Origines des Dignitez et Magistrats de France, fol. 43.

624 Will. Malmsb. p. 93, col. 1.

625 Johan. Sarisburiensis de Nugis Curial. lib. i. cap. 8; lib. iii. cap. 7. Matt. Paris, in Vit. Hen. III. sub an. 1251, &c.

626 “Infinitum histrionum et joculatorum multitudinem, sine cibo et muneribus, va cuam et mœrentum abire permisit.” Chron. Virtziburg.

627 Origine de la Langue et Poësie Françoise, lib. i. cap. 4.

628 Harl. MS. 2252.

629 All idleness I hate.

630 A confectioner.

631 That is, if he could tell falsehoods to make men laugh.

632 Lack, or want.

633 Because.

634 Dance, nor jump. Pass. xiv.

635 Duty in their several stations.

636 Lord Berners’ Froissart, vol. iv. cap. 41.

637 Anstis, Ord. Gart. vol. ii. p. 303.

638 Liber de Computis Garderobæ, MS. Cott. Lib. Nero, C. viii. fol.82.

639 Cheveretter, or bagpiper; from chevre, a bagpipe, and tregettor, or juggler, a slight of hand player; Ibid. See more on this subject in the next chapter relating to the joculator.

640 Garcionis; from the French garçon, a boy, or lad. In this instance it probably means an apprentice, or servant. Ibid. p. 83.

641 Another entry specifies twenty shillings paid to Robert le Foll to buy himself boclarium, a buckler, to play, ad ludendum, before the king. ibid. p. 85.

642 “Scolas ministrallis in partibus trans mare.” Liber de Computis Garderobæ, MS. Cott. Lib. Nero, C. viii. p. 276.

643 Ibid.

644 “Facienti ministralsiam suam coram imagine Beatæ Mariæ in Veltam, rege presente, 5 sol.” Ibid. p. 277.

645 Ibid. p. 290.

646 Ibid.

647 MS. in the Remembrancer’s Office. See the extract in Dr. Henry’s British History, vol. vi. Appendix, No. V.

648 From another MS. in the same office. Ibid.

649 See the next chapter, under the account of the joculators.

650 Leland’s Collectanea, pp. 61. 99.

651 See p. 189.

652 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays.

653 “Un tabourin d’argent semé de plaques aussi d’argent.” Origine de la Langue et Poësie Françoise, lib. i. cap. viii. fol. 72

654 Supplement to Du Cange.

655 Chaucer, House of Fame, book iii.

656 No. 1315.

657 Frankeleyn’s Tale.

658 House of Fame, book iii.

659 The original runs thus: “And they runnen togidre a great randoum; and they frunchen togidre full fiercely, and they breken thare speres so rudely, that the tronchouns flen in sprotes and peces alle about the halle.” Mandevile’s Travels, p. 285. I have modernized the English in many places, for sometimes it is hardly intelligible.

660 Ibid.

661 That is, they were frighted, expecting to be drowned by the rising of the water.

662 Froissart’s Chronicle by lord Berners, vol. iii. chap. 392, fol. 272.

663 Dæmonologie.

664 See “The Conjuror Unveiled,” a small pamphlet translated from the French; which gives a full account of these curious pieces of mechanism, and of several others equally surprising.

665 Mr. Tyrwhitt, in his excellent edition of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” vol. iii. p. 299.

666 “The Daunce of Macabre,” translated, or rather paraphrased, from the French. In this Daunce, Death is represented addressing himself to persons of all ranks and ages. John Lydgate was a monk of St. Edmondsbury Abbey. MS. Harl. No. 116.

667 The meaning is, that Death will come shortly, and not be deceived by any false appearances.

668 Schevid, for achieved, that is to say, performed.

669 Or any astrological judgment derived from the stars or their influence; for the jugglers usually pretended to be astrologers and soothsayers. See the Essay on Ancient Minstrels, prefixed to the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, by the bishop of Dromore.

670 Legerdemain; a corrupted word, derived from the French, signifying properly slights of hand, such as are usually performed by the modern jugglers.

671 More cunning tricks.

672 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays, K. vol. ii.

673 “Janino le tregettor, facienti ministralsiam suam coram rege,” &c.; that is, to Janino the tregetour, for performing his minstrelsy before the king, in his chamber near the priory of Swineshead, twenty shillings. Lib. Comput. Garderobæ, an. 4 Edw. II. fol. 86. MS. Cott. Nero, C. viii.

674 The same as the modern hurdy-gurdy.

675 Their performances are thus described by a French poet who wrote in the year 1230:
C’il juggleurs in pies esturent,
  S’ont vielles et harpes prisses
  Chansons, sons, vers, et reprises,
Et gestes chante nos ont.
Du Cange, in voce Joculator.

676 Essais Hist. sur Paris, vol. ii. p. 39.

677 “Orbis Sensualium Pictus,” by Hoole, 1658; chap. 131.

678 “Glowecesterscire. Berdic, joculator regis, habet iij villas, et ibi v car.; nil redd.” Extract from Domesday.

679 Essay on Ancient Minstrels, prefixed to bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. p. xciii.

680 A Treatise against Dicing, Dauncing, vaine Playes, or Enterludes, &c. by John Northbrooke, printed at London in the time of Elizabeth.

681 Egloge the third, at the end of Brant’s “Ship of Fools,” by Barclay, printed A.D. 1508.

682 “Mirrour of Good Manners,” translated from the Latin by Barclay, who was a priest and monk of Ely.

683 Or hokos-pokos, as by Ben Jonson, in “The Staple for Newes.” See p. 153. This is the earliest mention I have found of this term. It occurs again in the Seven Champions, by John Kirk, acted in 1663; “My mother could juggle as well as any hocus-pocus in the world.”

684 “Playes confuted,” by Stephen Gosson; no date, but written about 1580.

685 St. Mark, chap. vi. ver. 22.

686 Nero, D. iv.

687 No. 1, A. xiv.

688 No. 2253. fol. 45.

689 No. 2, B. vii.

690 No. 1527

691 Odyssey, lib. iv. lin. 18. The original word is κυβις ητηρε, saltatores qui se in capita dejiciunt.

692 “De queux le roi rya grantement.” Roll of Expenses in the reign of king Edward II. in the possession of Thomas Astle, esq.

693 From a MS. in the Remembrancer’s Office, an. 13 Hen. VIII.

694 Eccles. Mem. vol. iii. p. 312, cap. 39.

695 Laneham’s Letter, in Mr. Nichols’s Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, pp. 15, 17.

696 No. 115, dated Jan. 3, 1709.

⁶⁹⁷ Domitian, A. 2.

698 No. 335.

699 No. 264.

700 On p. 173.

701 Cleopatra, C. viii.

702 On p. 176.

703 No. 2, B. viii.

704 Tacit. de Morib. Germ. cap. 24.

705 The reader may find a more particular account of the various motions and figures formed by the dancers, from Olaüs Magnus, in Mr. Brand’s notes upon the 14th chapter of Bourne’s Vulgar Antiquities, p. 175.

706 Cleopatra. C. viii.

707 See p. 166.

708 No 5931.

709 [Before 1800.]

710 I have followed the old English translation by lord Berners. The French is “maistre engigneur,” which may be rendered “master juggler.” Vol. iv. chap. 38, fol. 47.

711 Burning or lighted candles, in the French chierges ardans.

712 Singing.

713 Essais sur Paris, vol. ii. p. 42.

714 It should be St. Gregory’s church, which stood on the south side of St. Paul’s nearly opposite to the Dean’s Gateway.

715 Archæologia, vol. vii.

716 Holinshed, Chron. vol. iii. p. 1121.

717 [Before 1800.]

718 Mr. John Carrington, of Bacon’s, in the parish of Bramfield, near Hertford.

719 Holinshed, Chron. vol iii. p. 1091.

720 Granger, Biog. Hist. vol. iv. p. 349.

721 Granger, vol. iv. pp. 352, 353.

722 [In 1801.]

723 Orbis Sensualium Pictus, A. D. 1658.

724 Richer dances with great facility without any balance, and walks down the rope into the pit, and ascends again. He also adds a variety of other performances.

725 An account of this festival may be found in the account of Christmas Games, book iv. chap. iii. sect. 9.

726 No. 964.

727 [In the drawing the musicians face the dancers: they are placed below them in the above engraving to suit the present page.]

728 [Mr. Douce is of opinion, that the dance set forth above by Mr. Strutt, from the Bodleian MS., did not form a part of the festival of fools.]

729 History of Music, vol. iv. p. 388.

730 Archæologia, vol. i. p. 15. See also the Witch of Edmonton, a tragi-comedy by William Rowley, printed in 1658.

731 See Johnson’s Dictionary, word Morris-dance.

732 Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays, 1 vol. 18mo.

733 See p. 176.

734 [Reckoning from 1801.]

735 [In 1801.]

736 Harl. Lib. 5931.

737 Vol. i. No. 42.

738 14, B. v

739 On p. 176.

740 On p. 214.

741 Rot. Comput. temp. Edw. II. penès T. Astle, esq.

742 [Before 1801.]

743 14. E. iii.

744 Retrospection of Eighteen Hundred Years, vol. ii. p. 224.

745 [In 1801.]

746 In a volume of Miscellaneous Papers, Bibl. Harl. 5931.

747 In the original French it is said,
“———et timberesses,
Qui moult savoient bien juer,
Qui ne finoient de ruer
Le timbre en haut, si recueilloient
Sus un doi conques enfailloient.”

748 No. 264.

749 No. 102, July 8, 1713.

750 Biog. Hist. vol. iv. See also Philos. Trans. No. 242, for July, 1698.

751 Miscell. Collect. Harl. Lib. No. 5931.

752 Biog. Hist. vol. iv. p. 350.

753 Vol. viii. No. 572; see also vol. vi. No. 444.

754 See p. 135.

755 Or mastiff dog.

756 On p. 176.

757 On p. 214.

758 No. 264.

759 No. 6563.

760 Essais Hist. sur Paris, vol. ii. p. 178.

761 No. 264.

762 From a Miscellaneous Collection of Papers, Harl. Lib. 5931.

763 Granger, Biog. Hist. vol. iv. p. 353.

764 Ainsworth’s Latin Dictionary, word Sybaris.

765 Mem sur Anc. Cheval. tom. i. p. 247.

766 No. 2, B. vii.

767 No. 264.

768 Menestrier, Trait. de Tournois, p. 218.

769 [In 1800.]

770 No. 5938.

771 [A.D. 1800.]

772 [1800.]

773 His meaning, I suppose, is that the performance of this dog was not to be equalled.

774 No. 6563.

775 In Cockspur-street, opposite the Haymarket.

776 [Before 1800.]

777 Du Cange, Gloss. in vocibus Cervula et Kalendæ.

778 See also Bourne’s Vulgar Errors, edited by Brand, p. 175.

779 Chap. ii. sect. xiii. p. 159.

780 History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 237.

781 Mem. Anc. Cheval. tom. ii. p. 68.

782 See a description of two of them, p. 161.

783 Translated by Alexander Barclay, and printed by Pynson in 1508.

784 Stow’s Survey, fol. 680.

785 Northbrooke’s Treatise, p. 105.

786 Chap. xvi.

787 Chron. tom. i. iv. chap. 157, lord Berners’ translation.

788 See Nichols’s Progresses, vol. i.

789 No. 26.

790 Page 223.

791 The author, whose name does not appear, declares himself to have been witness to the facts he records. MS. Harl. 6391.

792 Miscell. Collect. Harl. Lib. No. 115.

793 Vol. viii. No. 570.

794 See p. 249.

795 Literally, nightingale.

796 [Before 1800.]

797 Description of London. See also Stow’s Survey, p. 78.

798 On p. 243.

799 Survey of London, ubi supra.

800 Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, published A.D. 1570, p. 248.

801 Survey of London, ubi supra. See also the Introduction to this work.

802 Erasmi Adagia, p. 361.

803 Life of Sir Thomas Pope, sect. iii. p. 85.

804 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. i. p. 40.

805 Chronicle of Eng. vol. iii. fol. 1552.

806 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. ii. p. 228.

807 Itinerary, printed in Latin, A. D. 1598. See lord Orford’s translation, Strawberry Hill, p. 42.

808 Nichols’s Progresses, vol. i. fol. 249.

809 In a Miscellaneous Collection of Bills and Title-pages, Harl. Lib. No. 15.

810 No. 14, E. iii.

811 See p. 215.

812 No. 20, D. vi.

813 Johan. Sarisburiensis de Nugis Curialium, lib. i. cap. viii. p. 34.

814 Worthies of England, A. D. 1662.

815 Maitland’s History of London, book i. chap. xi.

816 Survey of London, chap. ii.

817 I apprehend he means the quarter-staff.

818 Dated 1344. No. 264.

819 Vol. vi. No. 436.

820 No. 449.

821 In a Miscellaneous Collection of Title-pages, Bills, &c. in the Harleian Library, marked 115.

822 Dictionary, word Quarter-staff.

823 Nov. 15, 1625.

824 Fuller’s Worthies in Somersetshire.

825 Vol. iv. chap. 23, fol. 24, lord Berners’ translation.

826 No. 20, E. iv.

827 Page 41.

828 No. 1026.

829 Encyclopædia Britannica, in voce.

830 Stow’s Survey, p. 496.

831 Ibid. pp. 85, 158.

832 “Country Contentments,” published in 1615.

833 No. 2, B. vii.

834 An. 17 Edw. IV. cap. 3; again 18 and 20 Hen. VIII. &c.; in both which acts this game is prohibited.

835 Garrick’s Collection, vol. i. 18.

836 An. 17 Edw. IV. cap. 8; the prohibition extends also to closh and kayles.

837 Dictionary, word kayle.

838 See p. 243.

839 One of the city laws however prohibits the baiting a bull, a bear, or a horse in the open streets of London, under the penalty of 20 shillings. Stow’s Survey, p. 666.

840 Probably the first Randal Holmes, a native of that city. MS. Harl. 2125.

841 First published A.D. 1646. This transcript is from the edit. of 1717, cap. x. pp. 76, 77.

842 This passage he has Latinized in these words: “Senatores majorum gentium et matronæ de eodem gradu.”

843 See p. 191.

844 Histriones—habebunt unum Taurum de Priore de Tutebury, Inspex. temp. Hen. VI. Dugdale’s Monast. vol. ii. p. 355.

845 Dr. Plott.—In his natural history of this county the reader will find a full account of the services, &c. performed by the minstrels upon this day, pp. 437, 438, 439.

846 A title conferred upon the chief minstrel. See p. 191.

847 “Jeu de Taureau.”

848 Whence he derives this sport; to which however it bears but little analogy. See Mr. Pegge’s dissertation upon bull-baiting. Archæologia, vol. ii.

849 Collect. of Old Ballads, pub. London, 1723.

850 Philos. Transact. vol. xix. p. 591.

851 For a full explanation of the manner of cock-fighting among the ancient Greeks and Romans, see a memoir upon that subject by the late Rev. Mr. Pegge, Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 132.

852 Description of London; temp. Hen. II.

853 Survey of London, p. 76.

854 Bourne’s Antiq. Vulgares by Brand, p. 233.

855 Stow’s Survey of London, p. 496.

856 Mons. de la Boderie’s Letters, vol. i. p. 56.

857 MS. Harl. 6395, written in the reign of James I., and bearing this title: “Merry Passages and Jeasts.”

858 Rev. Mr. Pegge, in his memoir on cock-fighting, Archæol. vol. iii. p. 132.

859 Anatomy of Melancholy, published A. D. 1660.

860 Canterbury Tales.

861 Published at London, 1750.

862 Hall, in the life of that monarch.

863 A. D. 1604, in the second year of the reign of James I. Treatise on College and Schools in and about London, printed 1615.

864 Some time ago the spinnet was a favourite instrument among the ladies; afterwards the guitar; and now the harpsichord, or forte-piano.

865 See p. 186.

866 At Braintree fair in Essex. Hist. Eng. Poet. vol. iii. p. 292. This was a century and a half back, when twenty shillings was a considerable sum. The ancient ballade have frequently this colophon: “Printed by A. B. and are to be sold at the stalls of the ballad-singers.” But an ordinance published by Oliver Cromwell against the strolling fiddlers, silenced the ballad-singers, and obliged the sellers to shut up shop. Hawkins, Hist. Music, vol. iv. p. 113.

867 Edward Ward, author of the London Spy, part xi. p. 255.

868 The barbers formerly were often musicians, and usually kept a lute, a viol, or some other musical instrument, in their shops, to amuse their customers while waiting; at present, the newspaper is substituted for the instrument of music.

869 Vol. i. p. 12.

870 Hist. Music, vol. v. p. 352.

871 Vol. v. No. 383.

872 Or entertainment of music in the open air.

873 Hist. of Music, vol. v. pp. 352, 353.

874 It is said to be written by T. G. doctor in physic, and was published A. D. 1684.

875 A. D. 1683.

876 Hawkins, ut supra.

877 [About 1770.]

878 See the Introduction.

879 Hawkins’s Hist. of Music, vol. iv. p. 211.

880 A city of Campania—about the year 400.

881 Hist. Abat. Croyland. Ingulphus died 1109.

882 See Chauncy’s Hist. of Hertfordshire, p. 383.

883 [In 1800.]

884 No. 20. B. xi.

885 Vol. v. No. 570.

886 Ibid.

887 Garrick’s Col. old plays, G. vol. ii.

888 Book iii. chap. v. p. 207.

889 See the Introduction.

890 Caligula, A 2. fol. 53.

891 Polite, courteous.

892 Rym. Fœd. tom. vii. p. 160. col. 2.

893 Hist. Music, vol. iii. p. 383.

894 Hist. Angl.

895 Itinerary.

896 Garrick’s Col. I, vol. iii.

897 That is, learning they esteem not.

898 First printed by Pynson, A. D. 1508.

899 Stow died A. D. 1605, aged 80. Survey of London, by Strype, vol. i. p. 251.

900 A Woman Killed with Kindness. Trag. by Thomas Heywood, 3d edit. A. D. 1617, Garrick’s Collect. E. vol. iv.

901 See the Introduction.

902 No. 264.

903 House of Fame, book iii.

904 See note 1, above.

905 Vol. i. No. 76.

906 See the Introduction.

907 MS. Harl. 6391.

908 See p. 270, and the representation of the ground billiards by the engraving No. 93.

909 By stat. 30 Geo. II.

910 The first occurs in Chaucer; the second in the vocabulary called Orbis Sensualium Pictus, as translated by Hoole, chap. cxxxvi. In Latin it is called Oscillum, and thus described by an old author; Oscillum est genus ludi, &c. In English to this effect; Oscillum is a sort of game played with a rope depending from a beam, in which a boy or a girl being seated, is driven backwards and forwards. Speght’s Glossary to Chaucer.

911 Vol. viii. No. 496; and again No. 492 in the same volume.

912 Eustatius ad Iliad. G.

913 Harl. MS. 6391.

914 Palamed. de Alea. lib. i. cap. 18.

915 Isidorus Originum, lib. xviii. cap. 60.

916 Lib. i.

917 See the Introduction.

918 De Nug. Curialium, lib. i. cap. 5.

919 Orderic. Vital, p. 550.

920 Orbis Sensualium Pictus, translated by Hoole, p. 658.

921 In Latin, Pyrgus, Turricula, et Frittillus.

922 “Nec ludant ad aleas vel taxillos.” Decret. Concil. Vigorn. A. D. 1240, directed to the clergy.

923 No. 6395, Art. 69.

924 “As false as dicers’ oaths,” is a proverbial expression, and used by Shakspeare in Hamlet, act iii. scene 4.

925 An. 5 Ed. VI. A. D. 1551, Holinshed, vol. iii. p. 1062.

926 Palamed. de Aleatoribus, cap. 18.

927 Lepistre Othea, MS. “Ulixes fu un baron de Grece de grant soubtillete, et en temps du siege de Troye il trouva le gieu des esches,” &c. Ulysses was a baron of Greece, exceedingly wise, and during the siege of Troy invented the game of chess. Harl. Lib. 4431.

928 Ency. Brit. word Chess.

929 No. 1275.

930 Dream of Love.

931 Encyclop. Françoise, in voce Echecs.

932 See the Introduction.

933 See Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.

934 Collect. vol. i. p. 264.

935 Ibid.

936 Ency. Brit. word Chess.

937 No. 4431.

938 In Chaucer’s Dream this piece is called fers and feers.

939 13 A. xviii.

940 And revived by Claud. Bruxer and others, A. D. 1514. Burton’s Descrip. of Leicestershire, under Loughborough, p. 182.

941 No. 451.

942 [The white pieces above, No. 104, should be to the left, and be opposed by the blacks, No. 105, on the right; that is to say, were the engravings on the present page divided by the scissars, and placed as represented in Mr. Strutt’s print, the round whites would be opposite to the round blacks.]

943 The printed edition of Claud. Bruxer, who revived this play, in which no doubt it is fully explained, I have not seen. It is said to have been published by Hen. Stephanus, A. D. 1514.

944 Part ii. sect. 2. mem. 4.

945 Du Cange, Gloss. in voce Tabula.

946 See the Introduction.

947 No. 1527.

948 No. 13, A. xviii.

949 The whole passage runs thus: “Donne a Jacqemin Gringonneur, peintre, pour trois jeux de cartes, à or et à diverse couleurs de plusieurs devises, pour porter vers le dit Seigneur Roy pour son abatement, cinquante-six sol Parisis.” St. Foix, Essais sur Paris, tom. i. p. 341.

950 Chronic. de Petit Jean de Saintre, cap. 15.

951 Bullet, p. 18. See also Mr. Gough on Card-playing, Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 152 et seq.

952 See the hon. Daines Barrington on Card-playing, Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 135 et seq.

953 Heineken, Idée générale d’une Collection des Estampes, pp. 237, 249.

954 “Waltero Sturton, ad opus Regis, ad ludendum ad quatuor reges,” viii s. v d Anstis, History of the Garter.

955 Warton says it seems probable that the Arabians were the inventors of cards, which they communicated to the Constantinopolitan Greeks. Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. ii. p. 316. Indeed it is very likely they were brought into the western parts of Europe during the crusades.

956 Henry’s Hist. Brit. vol. v. book v. cap. vii.

957 And hence originated the noble and beneficial art of printing. These printing blocks are traced back to the year 1423, and probably were produced at a much earlier period. Idée générale d’une Collect. des Estampes, ut sup.

958 An old Scotch poem, cited by Warton, speaks of cards and dice as fashionable amusements, but of evil tendency. Hist. Poet. vol. ii. p. 316.

959 Extract from a MS. in the Remembrancer’s Office, dated December 26, an. 9 Hen. VII.

960 Addit. to Leland’s Collect. vol. iii. p. 285.

961 Sir Will. Forrest. See Warton’s Hist. Poet. vol. iii. sect. 36, p. 311.

962 The same statute forbade any householder to permit card-playing in his house under the penalty of six shillings and eight pence for every offence. Stat. an. 11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.

963 Stow’s Survey. By points he means narrow ribbons with which one part of the dress was attached to the other.

964 Especially Stephen Gosson, in his School of Abuse, printed A. D 1579; and John Northbrooke, in a Treatise against Diceing, Card-playing, Dancing, &c. without date, but apparently published soon after the former.

965 Cap. ix.

966 Cap. xix.

967 No. 17, D. iij.

968 Black letter, without date, printed by Wynkyn de Worde. Garrick’s Collection of Old Plays.

969 [In 1800.]

970 Vol. vii. p. 152 et seq.

971 Garrick’s Collect. vol. i. 18.

972 Hon. Daines Barrington on Card-playing, Archæologia, vol. viii.

973 This play is said to have been first acted A. D. 1561; the edition I quote from is dated 1575.

974 Written by Jonson, Chapman, and Marlow, and printed A. D. 1605.

975 Called also post and pair.

976 Called Saint Lodam by Mr. Barrington, I know not upon what authority, Archæologia, ut supra.

977 Perhaps the same with bankafalet mentioned in the Complete Gamester.

978 See also Mr. Barrington, ut supra.

979 Bullet, Recherches Hist. sur Cartes à jouer, p. 152.

980 Perhaps this may be the same as the game called Ace of Hearts, prohibited with all lotteries by cards and dice, an. 12 Geo. II. cap. 38, sect. 2.

981 Vol. v. No. 323.

982 See Des Lust und Spiel Hauses, published at Bude 1680.

983 Antiq. Repert. vol. ii. p. 58.

984 See Introduction.

985 Polydore Vergil de Rerum Invent. lib. v. cap. 2.

986 An. 4 Hen. VII. A. D. 1489.

987 Collect. vol. iii. Append. p. 256.

988 See Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. i. p. 381.

989 Chron. of Brit. vol. iii. fol 1317.

990 Survey of London, p. 79.

991 Anatomie of Abuses, printed A. D. 1595.

992 Childish, trifling.

993 Dugdale’s Origines Juridiciales, fol. 247.

994 By Blomfield, vol. ii. p. 3.

995 Before.

996 Each.

997 Bourne’s Antiq. Vulg. chap. xvii.

998 Cited by Mr. Brand, notes to Bourne, p. 205.

999 Reges Fabis creantur.

1000 In nomine Regis de Fabâ. MS. Cott. Nero, C. viii.

1001 Table Talk, London, 1689, title Christmas.

1002 Circular Letter addressed to the Clergy of France, by P. de Blois, published in 1444.

1003 Register de Eglise de S. Stephen de Dijon, 1494.

1004 P. de Blois, ut supra.

1005 Encyclopédie Françoise, article Fête des Fous.

1006 Theoph. Raynaud.

1007 Dugdale’s Monast. vol. iii. Appendix vii.

1008 A. D. 1512. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. i. p. 248; and vol. iii. p. 390.

1009 Of St. Paul’s cathedral.

1010 Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 362.

1011 Hist. Poet. ut supra.

1012 Boys.

1013 MS. Cott. Tiberius B. i.

1014 Strype’s Eccl. Mem. vol. iii. chap. 39. p. 310.

1015 Ibid. chap. 35. p. 202.

1016 Ibid. chap. 39. p. 310.

1017 Invent. York Cathedral. See also Dugdale’s Hist of St. Paul’s, p. 205.

1018 Additions to Bourne’s Antiq. Vulg. chap. 14. p. 175.

1019 Ibid.

1020 See Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poet. vol. iii. p. 307.

1021 Heath’s Islands of Scilly, 1750, p. 125.

1022 Survey of Lond. p. 79.

1023 M. Paris Hist. Aug. sub anno 1152.

1024 Or Ross, the Warwickshire historian. Edita Hearne, p. 105.

1025 Gloss, under the title Hock-day.

1026 Hist. Hampshire.

1027 See a Memoir by the Rev. Mr. Jenne, Archæologia, vol. vii. p. 224

1028 A. D. 1002. But the time of the year does not agree. St. Brice’s-day is the 13th of November.

1029 Memoir, ut supra.

1030 Page 223, and Introduction.

1031 Antiq. Vulgares, chap. 25.

1032 Survey of London, p. 80.

1033 In his Anatomie of Abuses, printed in 1595.

1034 The May-pole is treated with little less ceremony by the Rev. Thomas Hall, another Reformist, cited in the Introduction.

1035 Archæologia, vol. i. cap. 4, p. 11.

1036 Strype’s Eccles. Mem. vol. iii. cap. 49, p. 377.

1037 Hall, in Vit. Hen. VIII. fol. vi

1038 Hinder or prevent

1039 Latimer’s Sermons, printed 1589

1040 K. vol. x.

1041 Harl. Lib. 69.

1042 I suppose the author means tilting armour, for the purpose of justing, here called running of courses.

1043 See p. 143.

1044 Hall, in Vit. Hen. VIII. an. 2, p. vi.

1045 See an account of this book in the Introduction.

1046 Vol. v. No. 365, first published A. D. 1712.

1047 See Granger’s Biog. Hist. vol. iv. p. 354.

1048 Blount’s Ancient Tenures, p. 49.

1049 Bourne’s Antiq. vol. ix. chap. 27

1050 MSS. Harl. 2354 and 2391.

1051 The midsummer pageants at Chester are fully described in the Introduction.

1052 Survey of London, pp. 84, 85.

1053 Perhaps it should be image, and resembled those commonly used in other pageants.

1054 Nat. Hist Oxford, p.343, and Blount’s Ancient Tenures, p. 154.

1055 Eccl. Memoirs, vol. iii. chap. 39, p. 51.

1056 Ibid. p. 309.

1057 Eccl. Memoirs, vol. iii. chap. 49, p. 377

1058 Table Talk, 1689, article Pope.

1059 Heath’s Description of Cornwall, p. 445

1060 Præcedente tibicine aut tympano. Moresin. Deprav. Reliq. Orig. in verbo vacina.

1061 Brand’s Observations on Bourne’s Vulg. Antiq. chap. xxxi. p. 303.

1062 Ibid.

1063 Vulg. Antiq. ut supra.

1064 Ibid.

1065 Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. i. cap. 30.

1066 Ibid.

1067 Homily for the Vigil of St. John Baptist. MS. Harl.

1068 Antiq. Vulg. chap. 30.

1069 Dodsworth’s MSS. Bid. Bob. vol. 148. fol. 97.

1070 That is, the time the contract was made.

1071 Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, 1602, book i. p. 68.

1072 The Anatomie of Abuses, 1595.

1073 I rather think it should be church-yard.

1074 Burton, Anat. Melancholy, part ii. sect. 2. cap. 4.

1075 Vol. ii. No. 161, first printed 1711.

1076 Vol. iii. No.

[1077] See the Introduction.

1078 Reckoning from 1800.

1079 Survey of London.

1080 See p. 373. It does not appear that these lamps were made with glass of various colours, according to the present fashion. I rather think this improvement is perfectly modern.

1081 A galley, or small vessel.

1082 Act iv. scene 2.

1083 Nichols’s Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. i.

1084 I suppose he means the discharge of a cannon or two.

1085 Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle, p. 62.

1086 Small kind of cannons.

1087 Nichols’s Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 19.

1088 History of all the Colleges in and about London, printed A. D. 1615.

1089 [Before 1800.]

1090 [Reckoning from 1800.]

1091 [In 1800.]

1092 See p. 375.

1093 See p. 375; and the Introduction; whence it appears these green men attended the pageants, and preceded the principal persons in the procession to clear the way.

1094 Garrick’s Collection, G. vol. ii.

1095 See p. 84.

1096 See p. 254.

1097 Plut. in Apophthegm. Laced. et Ælian. Var. Hist. lib. xii. cap. 15.

1098 Val. Max. lib. viii. cap. 8.

1099 See p. 147.

1100 See p. 118.

1101 See pp. 144-146.

1102 See p. 125.

1103 See p. 77.

1104 See p. 78.

1105 Garrick’s Collect. I. vol. xviii.

1106 Dictionary, word barley-brake.

1107 See p. 80.

1108 Joan. Meursi, de Lud. Græc.

1109 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7

1110 See p. 225.

1111 See pp. 85, 86.

1112 Taken from tricks of the jugglers. See p. 226.

1113 See pp. 302, 303.

1114 See chap. iii. p. 91, et infra.

1115 See p. 270.

1116 Sueton, in Vita Aug. cap. 83.

1117 No. 112.

1118 The poet has drawn a simile from this pastime. Æneidos, lib. vii. lin. 378, et infra.

1119 Harl. Lib. No. 6391.

1120 Lib. ii. sat. 3. line 48.

1121 See p. 337.

1122 See p. 276.

1123 Vol. vi. No. 466.

1124 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

1125 See p. 303.

1126 No. 2. b. vii.

1127 Act ii. scene the last.

1128 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

1129 No. 2, B. vii.

1130 Addition to Bourne’s Vulg. Antiq.

1131 No. 264.

1132 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

1133 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

1134 Page 391.

1135 Lib. ii. sat. 3. line 47.

1136 Pollux, lib. ix. cap. 7.

1137 Vol. vii. No. 504.

1138 Page 571.

1139 Pollux. lib. ix. cap. 7.

1140 No. 20. D. iv.

1141 Harl. MS. 2391.

1142 Harl. MS. 2125.

1143 Vol. iii. No. 246.

1144 Vol. iv. No. 278.