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1593.]

THE SABBATH PROFANED BY SPORTS.

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We should do the puritanic writers and preachers injustice if we did not see and point out that many of their objections to the recreations of the people were originally directed against their use on the Sunday. The Christians' first day of the week being regarded by the Romanists as a holiday, on which, after the hours of devotion, all amusements lawful in themselves were not unlawful, the more rigid Protestants determined, in their implicit reverence for the Old Testament, to adopt the strictest Judaical observance of the Sabbath, as one of the most distinguishing attributes of the Reformation. This view was injurious to the desire for conciliation which influenced the majority of the conforming clergy; who were either opposed upon principle to the application of this supposed test of a holy life, or saw the impolicy of depriving the people of the recreations which their forefathers deemed not only innocent but salutary. After the evening service, to shoot at the butts, to play at football, even to see an interlude, were not accounted unchristian occupations. Round the old manor-house, the lads and lasses of the village would have their Sunday evening games of barley-break and hand

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ball, while the squire and even the parson would look on approvingly. The Puritans conscientiously believed such license to be incompatible with religious principle, and set about opposing these pursuits with an earnestness commensurate with the difficulty of their task. Cartwright, the most influential of their number, speaking of the way in which a clergyman performed the service, says-" He posteth it over as fast as he can gallop; for either he hath two places to serve, or else there are some games to be played in the afternoon." When there were daily prayers in the parish-churches, and especially at holiday-seasons, the old traditional sports and mummeries of the people were also offensive to some, though tolerated by many. Thus Puritanism came to do battle, not only against those amusements on Sundays, and at other especial times when the Church claimed serious thoughts, but

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against the amusements themselves, whenever practised. In 1585, a bishop of Lincoln, in his "Visitation Articles of Inquiry," asks, "Whether your Minister and Churchwardens have suffered any Lords of Misrule, or Summer Lords and Ladies, or any disguised person in Christmas, or at May-games, or Morris-dancers, or at any other time, to come unreverently into the churchyard, and there to dance or play any unseemly part, with scoffs, jests, wanton gestures, or ribald talk, namely in the time of common prayer.' The popular license on these holiday occasions, amongst a people in whom the love of fun was inbred, no doubt often went beyond the bounds of decorum ; and thus the stricter Protestants endeavoured to sweep away the merriments altogether. They were in due time successful "the hobby-horse was forgot," and the "sealed quarts" at the alehouse-door remained the only attraction.

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The Lord of Misrule was a great personage in town and country. He was the "master of merry disports in royal palaces and civic halls. Learned doctors of the universities, and great benchers of the inns of court, recognised his authority. He held his ground through all the troublesome times of the Reformation up to the Civil Wars, when his mock pageantry was swept away with the realities of power that then perished. The Christmas sports and their lord would have perished, even though Prynne, with other learned Puritans, had not called upon "all pious Christians eternally to abominate them," because they were "derived from the Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian festivals." But in Elizabeth's days, though most of the so-called superstitious ceremonies of the ancient Church had been swept away, the people, high or low, would not readily surrender those festive observances which, although common in the times of Popery, were not necessarily connected with its spirit or its practice. Thus, in every borough, and more especially in every village, the Lord of Misrule, chosen by universal suffrage at Christmas or at Whitsuntide, headed his company of lusty mummers, in their gaudy liveries, their scarfs and laces, their legs hung with little bells; and "then march this heathen company towards the church and churchyard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundering, their stumps dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchiefs swinging about their heads like madmen, their hobby-horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the throng." We laugh at these follies which the Puritans execrated; but in this license the national character may be recognised. The riot of the multitude was placed by themselves under control. The Lord of Misrule was as

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Tho Alehouse Door.

* Quoted in "The Martin Marprelate Controversy," by the Rev. W. Maskell.
Stubbes, p. 169.

1593.]

MAY-GAMES-WAKES-CHURCH-ALES.

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absolute as the Parish Constable. The empire of Law was recognised by "the wild heads of the parish" in choosing their captain; and "the foolish people"

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submitted themselves for their guidance to his authority, upon the principle of order by which their more serious liberties were upheld. Amongst such a people it was useless declaiming against May-games; against Plough-Monday dances, with their "tipsy jollity; " against Church-ales, and Wakes. The old hearty spirit of hospitality might be denounced as gluttony, and the free intercourse of joyous hearts reprobated as licentiousness. If the feasts and the merry-makings had been simply vicious they could not have so long prevailed amongst a nation essentially moral. Even in the popular gatherings, which have been so emphatically described as occasions for sin, there were objects of piety and charity connected with the harmless merriment and wild excitement. Such were the Wakes and the Church-ales. The Wake was the annual feast to commemorate the dedication of the parish church. Stubbes has described the festival with less than his usual acrimony: "Every town, parish, and village, some at one time of the year, some at another, but so that every one keep his proper day assigned, and appropriate to itself, which they call their wake-day,-useth to make great preparation for good cheer; to the which all their friends and kinsfolks, far and near, are invited." He speaks the language which the Puritans applied to every relaxation, when he asks, "wherefore should the whole town, parish, village, and country, keep one and the same day, and make such gluttonous feasts as they do?" Such

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COUNTRY FESTIVALS-CHRISTMAS.

[1593.

declaimers have ever confounded abuse with use. The use of Wakes was recognised at a later period, as promoting "neighbourhood and freedom, with manlike and lawful exercises." * "Neighbourhood" was that old "hearty spirit of social intercourse, constituting a practical equality between man and man, which enabled all ranks to mingle without offence and without suspicion in these public ceremonials."+ The object of the Church-ale was thoroughly

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practical; and in complete accordance with one great national characteristicthat of voluntary contributions for public objects. At the season of Whitsuntide, when the spring was calling up "a spirit of life in every thing," there was a parish feast, which the churchwardens had prepared for by an ale-brewing; and the profit that was made by filling the black-jacks of the jovial countrymen was applied to the repairs of the church. Fancy-fairs have superseded Whitsun-ales. We are a more decorous people than these our ancestors, with their exuberant merry-makings for every season-their sheepshearing feasts, with cheese-cakes and warden-pies, their Hock-cart at Harvest-home, their Christmas, with the Boar's-head and the Yule-log in the great hall, the tenants sitting at their landlord's table, and the labourers and their wives and children crowding in unreproved. All these indications of a kindly spirit, not chilled by distinctions of rank, are gone. Let us strive to revive the spirit in all forms fitting our own age.

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Roger Ascham maintained that " to ride comely; to run fair at the tilt or ring; to play at all weapons; to shoot fair in bow or surely in gun; to vault lustily; to run; to leap; to wrestle; to swim; to dance comely; to sing, +"William Shakspere, a Biography."

* Proclamation of Charles I., 1633.

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1593.]

ATHLETIC EXERCISES AND SPORTS.

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and play of instruments cunningly; to hawk; to hunt; to play at tennis; and all pastimes generally which be joined with labour, used in open place, and in the daylight, containing either some fit exercise for war or some pleasant pastime for peace, be not only comely and decent, but also very necessary for a courtly gentleman to use." The training of the courtly gentlemen of England has, for three centuries, been according to the maxim of the wise old "Schoolmaster;" and a better training could never have been devised to

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produce the leaders of a manly people. But the pastimes joined with labour —the vaulting, running, leaping, wrestling, swimming-were as necessary for the yeomen, the artisans, and the peasants, as for the gentlemen of England. Such training, "fit exercise for war," has won our country's battles, from Agincourt to Alma. Such training, "pleasant pastime for peace," has still done something for brotherly kindness amongst degrees of men whom fortune had too much isolated. It was this frank and rough fellowship in their field sports-their hunting, hawking, birding, fishing, otter-hunting; it was this bold rivalry in their hurling and their foot-ball, their wrestling and their single-stick, their archery, their land and water quintain, which knitted the squire and the yeoman and the ploughman-the merchant, the artificer, and the sturdy apprentice,-in a companionship which made them strong enough to defy the world in Elizabeth's heroic time. The Puritans, who, when it came to the issue whether they should be slaves or fight, fought as well as the most reckless, made the mistake of trying to put down the rude games of the people because they might lead to brawling and contention, and withdraw

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