XVII-MODERN PASTIMES OF THE LONDONERS. A general view of the pastimes practised by the Londoners soon after the commencement of the last century occurs in Strype's edition of Stow's Survey of London, published in 1720.1 "The modern sports of the citizens," says the editor, "besides drinking, are cock-fighting, bowling upon greens, playing at tables, or backgammon, cards, dice, and billiards; also musical entertainments, dancing, masks, balls, stage-plays, and clubmeetings, in the evening; they sometimes ride out on horseback, and hunt with the lord-mayor's pack of dogs when the common hunt goes out. The lower classes divert themselves at football, wrestling, cudgels, ninepins, shovel board, cricket, stowball, ringing of bells, quoits, pitching the bar, bull and bear baitings, throwing at cocks," and, what is worst of all, lying at alehouses." To these are added, by an author of later date, Maitland, in his History of London, published in 1739, “Sailing, rowing, swimming and fishing, in the river Thames, horse and foot races, leaping, archery, bowling in allies, and skittles, tennice, chess, and draughts; and in the winter scating, sliding, and shooting." Duck-hunting was also a favourite amusement, but generally practised in the summer. The pastimes here enumerated were by no means confined to the city of London, or its environs: the larger part of them were in general practice throughout the kingdom. XIX.-COTSWOLD AND CORNISH GAMES. Before I quit this division of my subject, I shall mention the annual celebration of games upon Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire, to which prodigious multitudes constantly resorted. Robert Dover, an attorney, of Barton on the Heath, in the county of Warwick, was forty years the chief director of these pastimes. They consisted of wrestling, cudgel-playing, leaping, pitching the bar, throwing the sledge, tossing the pike, with various other feats of strength and activity; many of the country gentlemen hunted or coursed the hare; and the women danced A castle of boards was erected on this occasion, from which guns were frequently discharged. Captain Dover received 1 Vol. i. p. 257. 66 permission from James I. to hold these sports; and he appeared at their celebration in the very clothes which that monarch had formerly worn, but with much more dignity in his air and aspect.' I do not mean to say that the Cotswold games were invented, or even first established, by captain Dover; on the contrary, they seem to be of much higher origin, and are evidently alluded to in the following lines by John Heywood the epigrammatist: 2 He fometh like a bore, the beaste should seeme bolde, Something of the same sort, I presume, was the Carnival, kept every year, about the middle of July, upon Halgaver-moor, near Bodmin in Cornwall; "resorted to by thousands of people," says Heath, in his description of Cornwall, published in 1750. "The sports and pastimes here held were so well liked by Charles II. when he touched here in his way to Sicily, that he became a brother of the jovial society. The custom of keeping this carnival is said to be as old as the Saxons." XX. SPLENDOUR OF THE ANCIENT KINGS AND NOBILITY. Paul Hentzner, a foreign writer, who visited this country at the close of the sixteenth century, says of the English, in his Itinerary, written in 1598, that they are "serious like the Germans, lovers of show, liking to be followed wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their master's arms in silver." This was no new propensity: the English nobility at all times affected great parade, seldom appearing abroad without large trains of servitors and retainers; and the lower classes of the people delighted in gaudy shows, pageants, and processions. If we go back to the times of the Saxons, we shall find that, soon after their establishment in Britain, their monarchs assumed great state. Bede tells us that Edwin, king of Northumberland, lived in much splendour, never travelling without a numerous retinue; and when he walked in the streets of his own capital, even in the times of peace, he had a standard borne before him. This standard was of the kind called by the Romans tufa, Athen. Oxon. ii. col. 812; and see Granger's Biographical History, vol. ii. p. 398 In his Proverbs, part 1. chap. 11 3 Scuta ex rgento facta. 8ro, and by the English tuuf: it was made with feathers of various colours, in the form of a globe, and fastened upon a pole.” It is unnecessary to multiply citations; for which reason, I shall only add another. Canute the Dane, who is said to have been the richest and most magnificent prince of his time in Europe, rarely appeared in public without being followed by a train of three thousand horsemen, well mounted and completely armed. These attendants, who were called house carles, formed a corps of body guards, or household troops, and were appointed for the honour and safety of that prince's person.2 The examples of royalty were followed by the nobility and persons of opulence. In the middle ages, the love of show was carried to an extravagant length; and as a man of fashion was nothing less than a man of letters, those studies that were best calculated to improve the mind were held in little estimation. XXI.-ROYAL AND NOBLE ENTERTAINMENTS. The courts of princes and the castles of the great barons were daily crowded with numerous retainers, who were always welcome to their masters' tables. The noblemen had their privy counsellors, treasurers, marshals, constables, stewards, secretaries, chaplains, heralds, pursuivants, pages, henchmen or guards, trumpeters, and all the other officers of the royal court. To these may be added whole companies of minstrels, mimics, jugglers, tumblers, rope-dancers, and players; and especially on days of public festivity, when, in every one of the apartments opened for the reception of the guests, were exhibited variety of entertainments, according to the taste of the times, but in which propriety had very little share; the whole forming a scene of pompous confusion, where feasting, drinking, music, dancing, tumbling, singing, and buffoonery, were jumbled together, and mirth excited too often at the expense of common decency. If we turn to the third Book of Fame, a poem written by our own countryman Chaucer, we shall find a perfect picture of these tumultuous court entertamments, drawn, I doubt not, from reality, and perhaps without 1 Bede, Eccl. Hist. lib. ii. cap. 16. 'Dr. Henry's Hist. vol. ii. lib. v. cap. 7. any exaggeration. It may be thus expressed in modern lauguage: Minstrels of every kind were stationed in the receptacles for the guests; among them were jesters, that related tales of mirth and of sorrow; excellent players upon the harp, with others of inferior merit seated on various seats below them, who mimicked their performances like apes to excite laughter; behind them, at a great distance, was a prodigious number of other minstrels, making a great sound with cornets, shaulms, flutes, horns,2 pipes of various kinds, and some of them made with green corn, such as are used by shepherds' boys; there were also Dutch pipers to assist those who chose to dance either "love-dances, springs, or rayes," or any other new-devised measures. Apart from these were stationed the trumpeters and players on the clarion; and other seats were occupied by dif ferent musicians playing variety of mirthful tunes. There were also present large companies of jugglers, magicians, and tregetors, who exhibited surprising tricks by the assistance of natural magic. Vast sums of money were expended in support of these absurd and childish spectacles, by which the estates of the nobility were consumed, and the public treasuries often exhausted. But we shall have occasion to speak more fully on this subject hereaftor.5 XXII.-CIVIC SHOWS. The pageantry and shows exhibited in great towns and cities. on occasions of joy and solemnity were equally deficient in taste and genius. At London, where they were most frequently required, that is to say, at the reception of foreign monarchs, at the processions of our own through the city of London to Westminster previous to their coronation, or at their return from abroad, and on various other occasions; besides such as occurred at stated times, as the lord-mayor's show, the setting of the midsummer watch, and the like, a considerable number of 1 Smale harpers with ther glees. ⚫ Cornmuse and Shalmes-many a floyte and lytlyngehorne. Pypes made of grene corne are also mentioned in the Romance of the Rose. 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 Amusemen's, p. 150. different artificers were kept, at the city's expense, to furnish the machinery for the pageants, and to decorate them. Stow tells us that, in his memory, great part of Leaden Hall was appropriated to the purpose of painting and depositing the pageants for the use of the city. The want of elegance and propriety, so glaringly evident in these temporary exhibitions, was supplied, or attempted to be supplied, by a tawdry resemblance of splendour. The fronts of the houses in the streets through which the processions passed were covered with rich adornments of tapestry, arras, and cloth of gold; the chief magistrates and most opulent citizens usually appeared on horseback in sumptuous habits and joined the cavalcade; while the ringing of bells, the sound of music from various quarters, and the shouts of the populace, nearly stunned the ears of the spectators. At certain distances, in places appointed for the purpose, the pageants were erected, which were temporary buildings representing castles, palaces, gardens, rocks, or forests, as the occasion required, where nymphs, fawns, satyrs, gods, goddesses, angels, and devils, appeared in company with giants, savages, dragons, saints, knights, buffoons, and dwarfs, surrounded by minstrels and choristers; the heathen mythology, the legends of chivalry, and Christian divinity, were ridiculously jumbled together, without meaning; and the exhibition usually concluded with dull pedantic harangues, exceedingly tedious, and replete with the grossest adulation. The giants especially were favourite performers in the pageants; they also figured away with great applause in the pages of romance; and, together with dragons and necromancers, were created by the authors for the sole purpose of displaying the prowess of their heroes, whose business it was to destroy them. Some faint traces of the processional parts of these exhibitions were retained at London in the lord mayor's show about twenty or thirty years ago; but the pageants and orations have been long discontinued, and the show itself is so much contracted, that it is in reality altogether unworthy of such an appellation. [Before 1801.] |