following collation. There are two also at the British Museum, Harl. 6388, and an octavo manuscript, presented by Mr. Joseph Gibbs, 11346 Plut. CXLII. A., which is of no great value as regards the pageants. Harl. 6388 was written by Humfrey Wanley, and bears the date Dec. 17th, 1690. He says: "This book was taken out of manuscripts, the one written by Mr. Cristofer Owen Mayor of this citty which contains the charter of Walter de Coventre concerning the commons etc. to Godfrey Leg Mayor 1637, the other beginning at the 36 mayor of this citty and continued by several hands and lately by Edmund Palmer late of this citty, Counsellor, till Mr. Yardly late Mayor (1689, and another written by Mr. Bed

1690,

ford and collected out of divers others and continued to Mr. Septimius Bott. And two other collected by Tho. Potter and continued to Mr. Robert Blake, and another written by Mr. Francis Barnett, to the first year of Mr. Jelliffs Majoralty, and another written by Mr. Abraham Astley, and continued to Mr. Sept. Bott, and another written by Mr. Abraham Boune to Humfrey Wrightwick, 1607." Wanley dates his list one year too late. In Dugdale's Warwickshire (1656) there is also a list of Mayors of Coventry; in the second edition, revised by William Thomas (1730), pp. 147-54, it appears with the following heading, the parts in square brackets being by Thomas : "I will here subjoin a catalogue (Ex Catal. Majorum penes praefat. Joh. Hales) of the Mayors thereof [which I have carefully compared with another Manuscript Catalogue of them which is wrought in a brown leather cover, penes, and with that lately published by Mr. Hearne at the End of his Edition of Fordun's Scotichronicon which was printed from a Manuscript communicated to him by Mr. Tho. Jesson, A. M. et Aed. Christi apud Oxon. Cap]." Sharp quotes MS. Annals and Codex Hales, and there was at least one copy of annals in the Birmingham Free Reference Library at the time of the fire, so that Sharp may represent an original. In Poole's Coventry (London, 1870) there is a list of mayors without annals. Many of the annals are contradictory in date; in the following list the dates are from Dugdale, who seems to be fairly correct :—

S. p. 8: MS. Ann., Anno 1416 4. Hen. V. The Pageants and Hox. tuesday invented, wherein the King and Nobles took great delight.

Harl. 6388 Sir Robert Onley, merchant, Mayor, 1485[4]. At Whitsontide King Richard the 3d came to Kenilworth and at Corpus Christi came to Coventre to see the plaies.

Cov. Corp. MS., A. 26: Thos. Bailey, Mayor, 1486. The King [Henry VII.] came to Coventry to see our plays, and lodged at Rob. Onely's house in Smithford Street before the conduit.1

Corp. MS., A. 26: John Wigston, Mayor, 1490. This year was the play of St. Katharine in the Little Park.

Corp. MS., A. 26: Thomas Churchman, bucklemaker, Mayor, 1492.2 This year the King and Queen came to Kenilworth; from thence they came to Coventry to see our plays at Corpus Christitide and gave them great commendation.3 Harl. 6388: The King and Queen came to see the playes at the greyfriers and much commended them. Dugdale: In his Mayoralty K. H. 7. came to see the plays acted by the Grey Friers, and much commended them.1

Corp. MS., A. 26: John Dadsbury, Mayor, 1504. In his year was the play of St. Christian 5 played in the Little Park.

Harl. 6388: Richard Smith, merchant, Mayor, 1508[7]. He made the bakers pay to the smiths 13s. 4d. towards prest and pageants.

Corp. MS., A. 26: John Strong, mercer, Mayor, 1510[1]. In this year King Henry [VIII.] and the Queen came to Coventry. . . . Then were 3 pageants set forth, one at Jordan Well with 9 orders of Angells, another at Broad gate with divers beautifull damsells, another at the Cross Cheeping with a goodly stage play."

S. p. 11: MS. Ann., 1519. New Plays at Corpus xpityde which were greatly commended. S. p. 11: id. Codex Hales, 1519– 20. In that year was new playes at Corpus Christityd which playes were greatly commended.7

Corp. MS., A. 26: Henry Wall, weaver, Mayor, 1526.8 The Princess Mary came to Coventry and was presented with an 100 marks and a kercher, and see the mercers pageant play being finely drest in the Cross Cheeping and lay at the Priory.9

S. p. 11: MS. Annals, 1561. This year was Hox tuesday put down.

Corp. MS., A. 26: Edmund Brownell, Mayor, 1567. The Queen came to this city. The tanners pageant stood at St. Johns Church,

1 In Harl. 6388 and A. 43.

3 So A. 43.

2 Qy. 1493.

4 So 11364 Plut. CXLII. A.

5 S. St. Crytyan. Both evidently mistakes for St. Katharine.

6 All sources have this entry.

7 S. says that he found nothing in the accounts to corroborate this. The entries probably refer to the same year.

9 11364, Plut. CXLII. A. agrees with this. (majors) Pageant was gallantly trimmed, etc.

8

Dugdale, 1525.

Harl. 6388 has, the Mercers S. agrees with Harl. 6388.

the Drapers pageant at the cross, the smiths pageant at Little Park Street end, and the Weavers pageant at Much Park Street.1

Harl. 6388 Henry Kerwin, mercer, Mayor, 1568[7]. The Pageants and Hox Tewsday played.

S. p. 12: MS. Annals, 1575. This year the Pageants or Hox tuesday that had been laid down 8 years were played again.

Harl. 6388 Thomas Saunders, butcher, Mayor, 1580[79]. The pageants laid down.2

The item for the year 1492 gave rise to the impression in Sharp's mind, and in Dugdale's too in all probability, that there were plays in Coventry acted by the grey friars. The idea of plays acted by a religious brotherhood at so late a time, if ever, would probably have to be given up upon other grounds; but in this case it is easy to see that we have to do with a misunderstanding. "By the grey-friers' need not mean agency; but may mean at the Grey-friars' Church," the grey-friers being the common way of indicating the church. At any rate Wanley says, in Harl. 6388, "to see the playes at the greyfriers," which, seeing the list of manuscripts from which he compiled, is more apt to be an ancient reading than the other which Sharp speaks of as a "solitary mention in one MS. (not older than the beginning of Cha. I.'s reign)." Dugdale probably had this entry to start him wrong, and the manuscript of Ludus Coventriae to confirm the error, the information gathered from "old people" being too vague to be definite as to who the actors were. Dugdale, writing of the Gray Friers of Coventry, says: 3 "Before the suppression of the Monasteries, this City was very famous for the Pageants that were played therein, upon Corpus Christi day; which occasioning very great confluence of people thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which Pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the Friers of this House, had Theaters for the severall Scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the City, for the better advantage of Spectators: And contain'd the story of the [Old and] 4 New Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an antient MS. (In Bibl.

1 So A. 43; quoted also in S. and in Fordun's Scotichronicon. S. mentions a charge in the books of the Smiths' Company for painting and gilding many pageant vehicles on the occasion of the Queen's visit.

2 So 11364 Plut. CXLII. A. S. has, again laid down.

3 Antiq. of Warwickshire, by Sir William Dugdale, 2nd Ed. rev. etc. by William Thomas, D.D. London: 1730, vol. i. p. 183.

4 Not bracketed in first edition (1656). The passages do not differ otherwise in 1st and 2nd eds.

Cotton. sub effigie Vesp. D. 9 (8).) intituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Coventriae.

"I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye witnesses of these Pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that show was extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this City."

There would certainly have been a station where the pageants were acted at the Grey Friars Church, and there King Henry VII. and his Queen saw the pageants, just as Queen Margaret had seen them at a station in Earl Street. Reference has already been made to the performance of "the Mercers pageant play" in honour of Princess Mary, and the only other important entry is the one about the reception of Queen Elizabeth in 1567. It seems possible that the pageants put forth then had their own plays, or something connected with them, since no mention is made of any special pageant.

THE NATIVITY, THE THREE KINGS OF COLOGNE, AND THE

PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE.

The Shearmen and Taylors' pageant is made up of two very well developed plays. The subject of the first is the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Shepherds; it ends with line 331. Then comes a dialogue between three Prophets which belongs rather to the succeeding play than to the one before, if one may judge by the very similar dialogue prefixed to the Weavers' pageant; since there the dialogue rehearses the events of the Visit of the Kings which immediately precedes it in the cycle just as this reviews the Shepherds' play which it follows here. The second play, which begins at line 475, treats of the Visit of the Kings, the Flight into Egypt, and the Slaughter of the Innocents. The second is longer and more elaborately developed than the first, a thing no doubt resulting from the evident popularity of its subject at Coventry. Two crafts have apparently been united and their pageants acted one after another. There is no direct evidence for such a union in any of the records; but at the very first there may be a trace of it. The Shearmen and Taylors' Guild, the Guild of the Nativity, called also St. George's Guild, was established by licence in the reign of Richard II. In 1392 there is a mention of the "tailour pageant howse", and before the formation of the Shearmen and Taylors' Guild, the tailors and the shearmen, whose occupation was not at that time separate from

that of the fullers, may each have had a pageant of their own. More than this, there is reason to connect the shearmen (and fullers), but not the tailors, in particular with the visit of the Kings; for when fulling had become a separate occupation from cloth-shearing, and the fullers had formed a company of their own, the fullers were granted in 1439 the privilege of using a common seal with the shearmen.1 This seal before referred to may perhaps be taken to be the original property of the shearmen.2 It represented the Virgin Mary seated and crowned with the infant Christ in her lap, receiving gifts from the Magi. The inscription in capital letters round the margin, according to Fretton, is, sigillu' co'e scissor fullonii frat'nitat gilde natiutat d'ni de Coventre.

3

The Shearmen and Taylors' pageant was probably very old at Coventry, and in its earlier stages was of course very much shorter and simpler than it is now. Its variety of metres and its mixed character generally are due to many additions and revisions, made during the two hundred years or more preceding the final "correction" by Robert Croo in 1534. It is possible to see in it a very much earlier stage in the development of pageants than at first sight it would seem to represent. The substance of the pageant (most of what is essential to the story and, presumably, oldest) is contained in the octosyllabic quatrains scattered throughout the play; these quatrains, it will also be noticed, contain a great many archaic words. Some of the quatrains are doubtless late, and some of the parts of the original story are now told in other metres, but in general this is not the case. The Presentation in the Temple (Weavers' Pageant (WCo), ll. 1–721), which is also probably an original Coventry play, shows also the bare outline of a story in quatrains, a fact which bears further testimony to the existence of an early cycle, or part of a cycle, in this form.

The Nativity (Shearmen and Taylors' Pageant (STCo), 11. 2331) has the following passages in quatrains: 11. 47-54, 55-8 (?), 68-99, 168-203, 278-81, 293-6, 303-6, 321-4.

1 W. G. Fretton, Memorials of Fullers' Guild, Coventry, Birm. and Midl. Inst. Transactions, 1877.

2 The arms of the Shearmen and Taylors' Company, which would be appropriate, though they may or may not be the original tailors' arms, are, as given by Reader: Argent tent royal, between two parliament robes gules, lined ermine, on a chief azure a lion of England. Crest a holy lamb in glory proper holding a flag. Supporters, two camels or. Motto: Concordia parvae rcs crescunt.

3 Loc. cit. p. 44.

4 Scissor seems to have meant shearman, cp. Du Cange, Glos. Med. et Inf. Lat. sub scissor.