Records Ofear[V~ English Drama

1977 :2

A newsletter published by University of Toronto Press in association with Erindale College. JoAnna Dutka, editor

Records ofEar[v~ English Drama

This fourth issue of the Newsletter contains a facsimile of 'Parte of a play', repro- duced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D .C., together with a transcription of the fragment and a commentary on it by L .A . Cummings (School of Architecture, University of Waterloo) . Ian Lancashire, R E ED's biblio- grapher, contributes an account of the dramatic records that await research in Nottinghamshire, and R .W. Ingram (University of British Columbia) describes, for our Research in Progress section, his work on the records of Coventry .

From the Executive Editor

Work has been going forward in many areas over the past few months . The York Records is now one-third set in photo-ready copy . We hope for publication in early summer, 1978 . The Chester Records will be set as soon as York is finished. The Coventry Records is well in hand, and work is at varying stages of completion in several other locations. Areas to be researched still, however, remain . Professor Lancashire's report on Nottinghamshire points up the kind of work that can be undertaken . Although research into the records of the major towns known to have had plays has, in the main, begun, other potentially interesting possibilities exist . I would be happy to hear from anyone wishing to undertake such research . Please write to : Professor Alexandra F . Johnston, Executive Editor, Records of Early English Drama, 85 Charles Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1K5 . L . A . CUMMINGS

`Parte of a play' : a possible dramatic fragment (c 1550) from the office of the Master of the Revels

Over the last few years, while I was investigating the Loseley Collection of papers in the Folger Shakespeare Library, my attention was called more than once to a four-page, single-sheet, sixteenth-century manuscript which purported to be a portion of a play. The manuscript (shelf mark L.B .554) contains 118 lines of bad verse dealing prosaically with a theological disagreement in an unclear, clumsy language, but it has a contemporary note in the hand of Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels to the Tudors, calling it 'Parte of a play' . This report will describe the manuscript, provide a transcription of the accompanying photographs with the permission of the Library, and discuss the dramatic significance of the text. The handwriting of the heading 'Parte of a play' is identified by Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger, in the Catalogue of Manuscripts to the Folger Shakespeare Library (II, 686), as that of Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels under Henry VIII, Mary, Edward, and Elizabeth . This attribution is quite possible . The verses themselves are written in a different but not entirely dissimilar hand using ordinary secretary forms, for the most part in a rapid, even elliptical style that sometimes runs letters together, fails to distinguish forms, and omits strokes; the appearance of the stanza and the page of stanzas is pleasant, as if the scribe still felt faintly that writing was a matter of page design as well as of communi- cation. He is copying a version (see Textual Notes lines 65, 118) . Mrs Yeandle dates the document as c 1550, which is round enough ; she probably dated it years ago while she was calendaring and cataloguing the fairly homogeneous collection to which the leaves belong, so that both her attribution of the heading and her approximate dating are as near as we can now affix to the fragment . Cawarden was Master of the Revels and Masks from 16 March 1544 (retroactive to 11 March 1544) until the day of his death, 29 August 1559 . E.K. Chambers gives most of the available details on the life of Sir Thomas Cawarden in his Notes on the History of the Revels Office under the Tudors (1906), 1 and 9-18, supple- mented in The Elizabethan Stage (1923) II, 477, 480-93, out of previous authors ; what emerges is the portrait of the usual grasping courtier with a )od coloration of arrogance, but one with a talent for `devices' and pageantry . His labelling of the lines as theatrical would carry some weight . The manuscript is a single, small folio sheet (16'/2 inches : 42 cm by 12 inches : 30 cm) folded to make four large quarto size pages . The opening page bears mid- leaf the watermark of an inverted, cuffed, open, right hand with a cinquefoil flower balanced on the index finger ; the dimensions of the figure are 8'h inches by 4. Thick lines (7/8 inches : 20-3 cm) run up and down and the thin lines (10 or 11

2 to the cm) run across. The edges of the sheet have been cut a bit crudely from the original sheet, perhaps with a knife . In the fold of the sheet are some very small holes, which could be from age, but may be stabholes from sewing . There is an older foliation on the first page - 39 - in a different ink which blends through into the verso. What appear to be two wormholes pass ever so slightly out of register through the two leaves (in the right margin of line 4 on the first page and of line 68 on page 3, and on line 21 of page 1 and of line 84 on page 3) . Apparently, the sheet was detached from a bound book, sometime before 1559 when Cawarden died . The text may antedate that separation by some years, if we are to imagine the original book in a state of dilapidation from wear . If the sheets of this volume were gathered in fours, this was a centre sheet since the text is continuous . If so, this sheet would be part of the twentieth gathering, so that this supposed book would have had at least eighty pages, a few of them at the beginning being unfoliated blanks and perhaps a title page . This is of a size sufficient for a play, even if f 39 occupied a place near the end . When Cawarden came to put his annotation, the sheet was already separated from the original binding ; if the volume was still present, he would have re-inserted the loose sheet in its place . His identification of the sheet as 'Parte of a play' is an admission that he did not have a playbook to put it in, and that he did not know the name of the play that he supposed it to come from . Indeed, he may have come across this sheet and mis- takenly supposed it to be dramatic . There are no speech prefixes or any other sign of a dramatic voice, unless it be one in the delivery of an extended address . The passage deals obsurely with matters of theological controversy. Does charity act with faith in justification? Justification is an event which occurs only if God sends grace and is not earned, nor, in this sense, merited by the soul . Is charity dormant until acted on by grace, or is it the source and co-worker in justification? How does mercy enter into this central psychic occurrence? And what is the relation of the divine promises to these important transactions? The speaker feels that some of those who hold views different from his own are not merely mistaken, but are inspired by Satan . The argument and the diction do not readily suggest a dramatic document. If it is theatrical, it is in tone and matter suitable only to a propagandist piece . The argument is too short and confused to reveal its sect distinctly, but it is written from what may be a somewhat Calvinist position against a more Lutheran one - Roman Catholic or indeed Anglican Catholic views being assumed to be out of the question . The positions of the various schools of religious thought at mid-century in England were not altogether clear . One hesitates to doubt the contemporary authority of Sir Thomas's ascription, even though there is little support for its being a play fragment from its contents or its format, except that the sheet came from a book of sufficient size to contain a play. There is no reason why something as bad as this, dramatically speaking, might not have been written by a polemicist for the stage or, rather, for the edi- fication of a suitable but narrow audience . One can even conjecture that it is an attempt by some supporter of these doctrines to copy in fair a sample speech for a play on a sheet that he had removed from his own commonplace book . The initial

3 letter of the opening word of the first page is made oversize, a practice not sus- tained at the other three opportunities to initialize a page (unless one accepts the 0 of page 3 as oversize) ; if this is an incipit, the rhyme word stole should probably be taken as soule (a dubious reading), which would have the fragment begin with the only couplet in the passage, a couplet which can be understood as an introductory summation . Also, the sense and the argument of the whole passage can be taken as complete at the end of page 4, so that nothing need follow . What kind of a play would ask for such a trial passage? When one skips the first two lines and comes to the first three complete stanzas, a difference can be noted . So relatively benign are the first three stanzas (lines 3-14) that one can hear in them an earlier, even pre-Reformation serenity . They could be a speech by the Doctor introducing a play, or even lines appropriate to the opening speech of God as in many a medieval English play . The fourth stanza (lines 15-19) announces a further change from a broadly acceptable description of man's relation to God into the turbulent pugnacity of an academic clerical dispute, which continues through to the end . Also, the relative metrical regularity of lines 3-14 soon disappears in some lines that are unscannable as four-stress . To turn from the grand figure opening a play with this familiar invocation, `Off god etemall that ys but one,' to the fervid gesticulations of such gownish, graceless lines as `But where charite and faithe be sett at contencion,' or

whether god that worketh mannes lustificacon as he geuethe man faithe geuethe charite working Or charite idle withowte Operacion

- this is a considerable artistic and psychic move . The leisurely use of fixed ex- pressions familiar in medieval plays (with prayse and worshipe, render .. . thankes, with hart & thought, of vertewe [or other substantive) is the spring), the comfor- table doublets (as above), the repetitions (God in the second full stanza, good in the third), the unashamedly obvious rhyme fillers (ytt ys sayd trewly, with hart & thought) are all marks of much medieval playwriting . These stylistic devices all disappear abruptly. Metaphors disappear, to be replaced by allusions to nature in a reductio ad absurdum . Direct exhortations appear . Parenthetical syntax, rhetori- cal questions, thorny technical diction, subtle distinctions, a derisive tone un- balance the ease of the opening, and spring the verse into the contortions of an unresilient man made mad with ideas . One can frolic in conjecture that we have here a trial at reforming an older play, a document which came in due course into the royal office delegated to survey such matters, and that when the Masters of the Revels wrote his annotation, he was merely identifying a still-born scrap . But this is perhaps to make much out of little . Whatever the origins of the lines and of the sheet, it had been folded in the binding and in the writing . Later, the four pages were then twice folded over unevenly, the crease marks being still evident . This later folding was done only after a time, time enough for pages 1 and 4 to become noticeably dirtier than the

4 inner pages 2 and 3. it is also possible that the dirtying occurred in a period after the unfolding of the uneven double-fold . The sheet passed with other of Cawarden's papers into the hands of Sir William More of Loseley near Guildford (1520-1600), his executor, and into the sizable number of papers of the More family, to which documents continued to be added into the late seventeenth century . The collection at Loseley was examined by A.J. Kempe in 1835, by J .C. Jeaffreson in 1879, and in the early part of this century by Albert Feuillerat and C .W. Wallace. In 1923 it was still there, to Sir Edmund Chambers' knowledge . Most of the papers were purchased by William H . Robinson, Ltd, and offered for sale by Lionel K . and Philip R . Robinson, from whom, apparently, Henry Folger or the Folger Library purchased them . The scribe does not conveniently distinguish forms : for example, c can degener- ate into a resemblance of o or e ; a descending backstroke on terminal n can be confused with y (man, may, even mercy when the r is a stroke above the line) ; initial f and s are the same ; st, tt, It, ft can fall together; medial e looks like medial a or o (dethe, dothe), a difficulty that can cause of to look like as. He uses various forms of given letters, of course, but takes some exceptional liberties, for example, three per signs, one form of which is not far from the letter p ; both an open and a closed o (one = are = ane) ; a form of d that has an oval and one that does not (so that it look like l) ; c has peculiar variances (com can be read arn). He is not always exact in the number of minims in a string such as min, and he does not dot his i. He occasionally runs words together, or breaks one word in two . An idiosyncrasy is a habit of beginning the first letter of a word with a right to left stroking, so that, for instance, initial co may appear as va, or terminal t may begin mid-line with a cusp formed right to left followed by a descent to the line and then a looping back for the cross right to left with a surprising finish by an almost full reversal from left to right with a flat line . It is a difficult charactery . Dr Bella Schauman has rendered important aid in suggesting readings in several places, and has saved me from error often. The final responsibility for the text presented is, however, mine . The ambiguities promoted by the handwriting are exceeded by the ambiguities left by the crabbed expression of an involved and originally delicate argument . Though the readings of the hand given here are usually fairly certain, the argument does not readily make sense. Therefore, I must apologize for some full comments which are needed to explain the sense so as to defend the readings .

[Ed note : Mr Cummings' paper was ready for printing when REED learned of the forthcoming transcription of the same document by Richard Proudfoot in the Malone Society's Collections Volume Ix . Because the present paper treats the manuscript and its significance more fully (Mr Proudfoot is appropriately con- cerned with providing texts only of several disparate fragments), because the readings are not identical in every instance, and because facsimiles are included here, we have gone ahead with it . Mr Cummings wishes to call attention to two of Mr Proudfoot's readings that he prefers to his own : line 1 scole for stole/stele/soule, which solves the problem alluded to in the introduction ; line 54 ioyned for wyued.]

L.b.554 Parte of a play 39 56

Alone and only in awrong stole haue brought to error many A ffole

Off god eternall that ys but one In persons thre / ytt ys sayd trewly to hym is honor dewe Alone 5 with prayse and worshipe to hym only .

God Alone bathe created man and only god, Ayen man bought So man to god onely, must nedes than render dewe thankes, with hart & thought 10

ffrom god all goodnes dothe pro cede God only of vertewe ys the Spryng his only grace, dothe good men lede and is ther strenght in eche good thyng

Hitherto ther can no error make 15 alone est only withowt thow wylte Godes ordre & wille, frowardly take to thy confusion and dredfull gilte

As thus I meane where god declareth by whom for hym selfe he wylle honor receyve 20 beware of only, for here yt snarethe and by mystakyng, will the deceyve

ffor he that dothe suche ordre obbey and honor as he ys tought by trewe direccon dothe honor god only, and yet dothe paye 25 the same to dyuerse in dewe proporcion

And eke when god / dothe geue by other, his giftes of grace, as he thynkethe best and so vse man, to helpe his Brother Alone and only, the trewthe may wrest 30

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We may not our selfes deceyue by nombre and so call towe, that god makethe one ffor god and his mynyster, be neuer Asonder in ordre, vnyte and operacion

Man vnder god, and yett god Alone 35 Workethe godes plesure, as god wille is So only or alone, can make no reson Why man as mynister may not do that or this

Only and Alone, haue so been abused to deceyver faithe and charite asonder 40 as charite in lustificacon clerely refused bathe made religion talke and worldly wonder

Yett some saye only & not alone mannes faith dothe worke his Iustificacon with charite pro mist and moche they mone 45 men cannot conceyve, ther fonde conclusion

To mayteyne ther speche they haue no wrytte but conceyve yt in fansie, for an evell intent The sentence bathe ne lemyng ne wytte as they do vtter ytt, and by them is ment 50

But where faithe is grownd in significacon conteynethe the hole Moyses lawe excluded Good men declaryng mannes lustificacon haue wyued only to faythe and trewly concluded But where charite and faithe be sett at contencion 55 and faithe Alone chalengethe to be worker only ytt ys vndoubtedly of Satan and his Inuencion To devide godes giftes and graces fon[( .)]dly

In effecte, the bate is in this only thyng whether god that worketh mannes lustificacon 60 as he geuethe man faithe geuethe charite working Or charite idle withowt Operacion

9 C

Off charite idle no man dothe rede and yett they graunte ther charites presens Wherby faithe workethe [mannes lustificacon] `and so confessethe in dede' 65 workyng and not workyng in the self same sentence

ffor this is Amere & Avayne cavillacon by cause faithe by charite, workethe and is lively to say that faithe hathe all the operacion and charite to be but An Instruiment only 70

In Alyke speche / the wood by fyre burnethe and candell eke, by fyre geueth light shall we here gather that wood & candell workethe and fyre dothe nothyng / no worker can be hight

And if we so say we must also gather this 75 that heate and fire be not / in fire conceyved but only in wood wyche by fyre burne is wherein hetherto / all men haue been deceyved

And further where wemen by men ingender we must say nowe that men ther haue no Action 80 but wemen only and the reson rendre lyke as faithe by charite hathe operacion

In workes of nature, where god workethe euer we are not affrayde with god to yoyne company not idle but workyng and so put to gether 85 causes inferior, and to one Acte meny

In the Acte of grace, when god dothe man renewe with the light of faithe and of charite the lyfe God only is Author that is full trewe and only the meane causes / a fonde folyshe stryve 90

1 1

God to hele man, do thus the medicyne make gevyng faithe and charite all in one potion but the right wrong lugement dethe thus yer matter take that only faithe ther workth the worke of lustificacion

And if thowe wilt presse and aske them why 95 thus they Answer and the matter comprehende faith, they say in Office is fit and can only godes . mercy wyche only lustifiethe, Apprehende .

Is not this clere matter playnnere and evident to shyfte from one only to another 100 ffor by only faithe they say ys only ment onely mercy, by correlacion of promes faithes Brother

Nowe if thowe cast no Skylle of correlacion he knowest [what] not what Apprehend dothe clerely signifie thowe cast not lerne ther Iustificacon 105 ne perceyve what is ment by ther faithe only

Thus as they can they lynke the matter tegether Mercy they saye is the promise, and promise only can by faithe be acchevid, and so what skyllethe it whether faithe only or onely mercy be thy speche then 110

In godes promise is mercy none wyll gayne saye ne this, that promise by faithe is apprehended but yett if thowe t....>, ther is yea and naye in ther speache (as they handle it) falsly apprehended

ffor mercy is the hele that god bathe promised 115 to forgeue and renewe / man fallen by synne wyche men receyve, when they be lustified bothe the promise and mercy [theryn] conteyned theryn

1 3 COMMENTARY

561 a twentieth-century pencil annotation . 1 ] The words Àlone and only' are used here and throughout the fragment as simpli- fied labels for the concepts of singularity, of uniqueness, sometimes of absoluteness, of exclusiveness. 1 stole] The first six lines are transcribed in the entry in the Manuscript Catalogue, but this was the cursory work of a calendarist, and there are a few errors . This word is read there as 'soule', which is not the MS but makes sense of the passage . The first vowel is ambiguous in this hand . Read `stele' (?), that is, `style', that is, `linguistic usage, semantic application', which suits the whole argument . 15 can no error make] `can [one] no error make' . 16 est] The forms, which are indeterminate to several readings, might also be read èt' . The reading preferred may be seen in Cappelli (Dizionario, 5th edition, p 114, col 2, 2nd and 3rd specimens) ; here the scribe turns to a more careful charactery to signify a shift in language . This is a crux in the meaning of the text : `The exclusive and absolute power of God to act is unique and unassisted .' Dr Schauman suggests er or or, but the first does not make sense, and the second seems not warranted in the MS . It does look like er, or e plus the Latin abbreviation . 16 withowt] ùnless'. 21 beware of only] `beware of the concept of only, or singleness, in the operation of God's redemptive plan .' 23 suche ordre] refers to the avoidance of attributing single, simple operation in God's agents. 26 ] a flourish over the -con, a syllable often so augmented . 30 may] The scribe writes terminal n with a descender which drifts to the left as if underscoring the word ; hence `may' and `man' are almost indistinguishable, and the form 'Mcy' in the closing stanzas can also be taken as one of these two . Here, however, the very thin descender makes a turn to the right . Another crux. The preferred reading gives this rendition : Just as man should honour God in paying appropriate homage to whatever displays His workings (previous stanza), so God sends grace to man through other ministers including men, but here the concept i of only and alone preserves man from error . 36 god] Read `God's' . 37-8 1 We cannot understand the action of God's imperious will when it acts through His agents, and the concept of only and alone cannot help us here. 40 to deceyver] às to desever' . 41 ] because the refusal to see Charity present in justification . 45 promist] Uncertain. The sense would be that they are wrong who maintain that Faith only acts in justification, with Charity instrumental through the promises of God (see lines 69-70, 101-10) . 52 excluded] exclusively, exclusive of the New Law, that is to say, where Faith is based meaningfully, that Faith acting alone without Charity in justification exists in the Old Law, and not in the New Dispensation .

14 54 wyued] Uncertain . 56 chalengethe] Or more dubiously, 'chalenge the' . 63 rede] Take advisement, understand, or else `read', that is, it is unheard of . 65 workethe [marines lustificacon] I A copying error from line 60 . 70 to be] cf line 56 for lack of spur on b . 70 Instruiment] extra minim. 77 burne] Read `burned' . 84 yoyne] Doubtful. 88 of charite the lyfe] a tumbling inversion for the sake of the rhyme . 90 a fonde folyshe stryve] referring to the preceding erroneous arguments, not to the proximal correction of the errors . 99 playnnere] Doubtful . 102 promes] That is, `promise' . 103, cast] Read 'canst', a tilde sign being omitted . 105 104 ] a parenthetical mock . 113 1 A hole renders the word illegible . 118 [theryn] ] The anticipation of a copyist .

IAN LANCASHIRE

Records of drama and minstrelsy in Nottinghamshire to 1642

Among the shires whose dramatic records are not at present being edited is Notting- hamshire . The early Gough map shows half a dozen places in it, including the Benedictine monastery of Blyth in the north (a site for 12th- and 13th-century 1 tournaments),' Southwell Cathedral in the centre, the borough of Newark-on- Trent on the long eastern border with Lincolnshire, and of course Nottingham in the south . One other important borough, East Retford, lay north of Newark, and the old Archdeaconry of Nottinghamshire (part of the diocese of York) had many religious houses, such as those for Augustinian canons at Thurgarton, Newstead and Worksop, for Cluniac monks at Lenton Abbey, for Carthusian monks at Beauvale, and for Cistercian monks at Rufford .2 Since at least the 12th century the mother church for the whole Archdeaconry was at Southwell, not at York, and until the Reformation each borough and parish had to send representatives in procession to Southwell with offerings each Whitsuntide .3 The county was thus to some extent isolated from the rest of the diocese, particularly from York and Beverley, its eastern cathedral cities . This circumstance and the fact that Southwell was not a

15 borough (and lacked the wealthy craft guilds of Nottingham, a dozen miles south) may explain why the shire appears not to have staged Corpus Christi plays . How- ever, its dramatic activities often resemble those in neighbouring Lincolnshire . Ecclesiastical prohibitions give the first sign of local drama . John Thoresby, archbishop of York, issued on 18 April 1364 a general mandate against churchyard markets and games throughout his diocese .4 Thoresby's 'Constitutiones' of 1367 are more specific : they forbid 'mercata, placita, vel spectacula' and 'luctationes, sagittationes, vel ludi' in all consecrated places .5 Later ordinances show that there were grounds for including Nottinghamshire in these diocesan prohibitions . The Acts of Convocation of Southwell Cathedral (1248) forbid its canons the visiting `tabernarum, et spectaculorum,' and in 1365 Thoresby ordered the parishioners of Worksop, about seven miles west of Retford, to stop wrestling, archery, dancing and singing in their churchyard .6 Two records of dramatic activity in the 15th century indicate what these early 'spectacula' and 'ludi' may have been . They could have been tournaments such as those at Blyth, sports like the compulsory baiting that had to be exhibited in the Nottingham market before the city's butchers could kill a bull, or even the morris dancing and folk games documented in Tudor times . On the other hand, drama was to be found in the county before itinerant interluders first turn up at Newark and Nottingham in Elizabeth's reign . The customs of Norwell, a manor several miles north of Southwell (which, as mentioned, was near 'spectacula' as early as 1248), include, for the reign of Henry IV (1399-1413), the following memorandum, as copied in the so far unpublished 'Liber Albus' of Southwell Cathedral . In return for mowing the lord's meadows in 'Northyng,' evidently in late spring, the twenty- four tenants of the manor are to `eat in the Prebendal-house .. . and, after dinner, they are to sit and drink, and then go in and out of the hall three times, drinking each time they return, which being done, they shall have a bucket of beer, contain- ing eight flagons and an half, which bucket ought to be carried on the shoulders of two men through the midst of the town, from the Prebendal-house unto the aforesaid meadow, where they are to divert themselves with plays the remainder of the day, at which plays the Lord shall give two pair of white gloves .' 8 These `plays,' of course, could be sports . Norwell, however, was Southwell's richest prebend, and accounts at Lincoln Cathedral from 1393 to 1561 recorded payment for several pairs of gloves for Mary and the Angel, and occasionally for Elizabeth and the prophets, in a Nativity play .9 One would like to know more about these and other manor customs. The second record has just been noticed by Siegfried Wenzel . One William Brokshaw of East Retford, in his will dated 18 August 1499, bequeathed a gilded circlet to his guild for the image of the Virgin in the Corpus Christi day procession, at the festival of All Saints, and `in ludo de Mankynd, et aliis ludis .' I0 St Swithun's, East Retford, was `the centre of a rural deanery of sixty parishes, one of five deaneries in Nottinghamshire,' and its Corpus Christi procession was a considerable event in its area. By 15 36 another benefactor, Thomas Gunthorpe, the parson of Babworth, a village just to the west of the city, had given a gilded shrine to be

16 carried on Corpus Christi . 11 As well, the procession must have had music . The City's bailiffs, aldermen and townsfolk met Margaret Tudor, on her journey to marry James 1V of Scotland, at the Rushey Inn, Babworth, and paid two minstrels to entertain her, probably the town waits, who may have been rewarded later at Nottingham in 1571-2 . 12 No discussion has yet appeared on the Retford `Mankind' play, but at least superficially there are grounds for associating it with the version of The Castle of Perseverance described in its banns. The play's latest editor, Mark Eccles, thinks these banns are `quite likely' the work of a second author, and they of course differ from the play-text in hinting that salvation of dead Human um Genus (Mankind) will occur by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, and in not mentioning (what is in the play) the debate among the four daughters of God . 13 Stanley J . Kahrl has shown that the drama of medieval Lincoln had a very strong Marian element, and Eccles, though demonstrating that the language and ortho- graphy of The Castle belong to a scribe from Norfolk, does not contradict W .K. Smart or Jacob Bennett, who observe that allusions within the play itself, particularly one to Canwick, the gallows outside Lincoln, link it at some point with that cathedral city . 14 East Retford, just over twenty miles from Lincoln as the crow flies, probably saw players perform early in the reign of Henry VII a version of a Lincoln Castle of Perseverance . Possibly the play had something to do with East Retford's school, which dated from 1318 at least ; for Christopher Say and Thomas Cooper, school-masters respectively after 1552 and in 1612, were termed `ludimagister.' 15 The terrible effects that plague had on the borough in both 1451 and 1485, years during which half the townsfolk died as a result, suggest that the `Mankind' play of before 1499 may have moralized, like the Macro play, on sudden death and the ephemeral value of worldly goods . The shire's other two important boroughs, Newark and Nottingham, give no sign of dramatic activity until the reign of Elizabeth . The Newark Trinity Guild account book, later the civic minute book, has payments in 1540 and 1542 to minstrels or `histrionibus' (for 16d), and in 1540 also to a man who carried `the dragon' and to a banner bearer, evidently for a procession and for a guild feast in the common hall . 16 The corporation minutes provide for the annual wages of the town waits in 1565, as well as for their monopoly `at any marriage or feasting,' 17 but the first reference to players is in 1569 . On 3 January the Newark minutes record orders that `no players from henceforth shall playe in the Scole house' but ones licensed by the Alderman, and that the Alderman's assistants are to keep him company `at any such playe interlude or tragedie .' 18 Perhaps this set of orders was made to deal particularly with the appearance of the (first?) local troupe of players, those of Sir John Byron (an ancestor of the poet) at Newstead Abbey, about nine miles north of Nottingham. Byron's company, the first players mentioned in the Nottingham chamberlains' accounts (which go back irregularly into the 15th century), were paid there on 14 January 1569 ; a local historian's claim for `numerous town pageants' does not seem well founded. 19 Before 1569 Notting- ham had only spectacular processions, folk dances and minstrelsy, as far as one can tell. Full accounts of the guild of St George in St Peter's church for 1459-1545/6

17 do not mention pageants, though payments are made for the cleaning of the armour of the image of St George (from 1465-6) and for gilded copper spurs and new stirrups for it (1465-6, 1470-1) . 20 This George, termed an `image' in 1479-80, stood with an altar, curtains, lights and a casket for offerings, and was associated with feasts and processions. In 1472-3 the guild had a `breakfast (jantaculum) of Saint George,' in 1489-90 a 'convivium' and in 1530 on St George's day wine was given to the aldermen and the choir singers ('cantantes chori') . Payments for torches to be carried on the feast of Corpus Christi began in 1473-4, both torches and banners are said by 1480-1 to be carried around the sacrament that day, and in 1484-5 and 1499-1500 one penny is paid to protect St George's armour from the torches carried then. The Corpus Christi payments end in 1524, those for the St George feast in 1537, and those for the upkeep of the armour only with the accounts themselves in 1546 . The city seems, then, to have had a Corpus Christi procession, though the 1389 guild certificates for Nottingham have not survived .21 Like Newark, it also made regular provision for a Whitsun Monday procession to Southwell Cathedral for a Te Deum, the mayor and aldermen attending in livery . Charles Deering describes this ceremony briefly in 1751, long after its discontinu- ation, but a 1562 letter from the corporation of Newark to the earl of Rutland to plead for a stop to the annual payment to Southwell refers to a procession there with `their crosse, banners, and such like .'22 In Nottingham, `such like' occasionally meant music and dancing. The city paid the Leicester waits, perhaps as well as its own waits (who are recorded from 1464), to attend the mayor's procession in 1500, and both morris dancers and taborer travelled with him in 1530 .23 Other ceremonials occurred, often with music . In 1446 the civic records refer to a procession at the mayor's election, and Deering says that the waits marched and played before the dignitaries as they went to St Mary's church .24 The mayor and aldermen also processed on All Hallow's, Christmas Day and Candlemas and Easter (1500), and May Day celebrations are recorded for 1530, 1541 (when `we rode Mey' and the young men brought May in), 1569 (when `dancers' brought May in) and regularly 1571-9 .25 Deering also describes a mayoral procession, led by the town waits, on Monday in Easter week out of Nottingham to St Anne's Well (also called Robin Hood's Well) where a chapel, 'Victualling House' and arbors for feasting stood ; and the civic chamberlains' accounts have payments to musicians on this occasion in 1547, 1558, 1569 and 1575-6 . 26 Finally, rewards are regularly given for drums and music at civic watches on Midsummer Eve and St Peter's Eve .27 As these local civic and guild activities gradually subside, buffeted by hostile government statutes and the increasingly puritan public conscience of post- Reformation England, local authorities are more or less forced, through courtesy or fealty, to finance national entertainers, players of no fixed address who are sponsored by the royal court or by an aristocracy with estates spread over many shires. (Thus gifts of wine by Nottingham officials to nobility in the 15th century become, a century later, payments to their players and minstrels .)28 This distinc- tion between local and national activities has sometimes been elevated, not with very good effect, to one between medieval and Renaissance drama .29 Yet clearly

18 local entertainers and itinerant ones co-exist, in varying degrees, from the 14th century, and local activities go on well into the Jacobean period . As with other counties, Nottinghamshire records have been extracted so as to make this dis- tinction sharper than it really is. Three main groups of documents exist for Tudor and Stuart drama and minstrelsy in this county : (1) the Nottingham borough records, including court rolls or books 1303-1547, the Hall Books or town minutes c 1500-1642, the 15th-17th- century Quarter Sessions' rolls, and the many chamberlains' account books, 1464- 1642 ; (2) the household accounts of the Willoughby family at Wollaton Hall near Nottingham, 1502-1602 ; and (3) the Act Books of the Archdeacons of Nottingham, 1565-1642 . None has been exhaustively examined in this respect . The old volume of Nottingham customs and orders, the `Red Book,' was destroyed by fire in 1724, 30 but other records, especially the chamberlains' accounts, are rich with information . Published extracts show the first itinerant entertainer, the king's bearward, paid in 1530, 31 and afterwards about 230 entries appear regarding other bearwards, minstrels, jesters, trumpeters, waits, players and musicians from 1537 to 1642 . These extracts, published in 1882-1900, are explicitly biased against local entertainers . W.H. Stevenson writes in his preface to the 1547- 1625 excerpts :

There are numerous entries of rewards to various troops of players belonging to the households of the neighbouring nobility and gentry and to the surrounding villages. It has been found possible to print only a few of these entries . The payments to bearwards, cripples, maimed soldiers, refugees, and other unfortunates recorded in the following sheets in like manner represent only a small selection from the very numerous entries in the accounts .32

In 1896 John T. Godfrey, a local historian, excerpted sixty-three entries about players from Stevenson's edition (then up to 1625) and drew attention to the unedited material, but it was John Tucker Murray whose seventy-five extracts from Stevenson became the standard reference work .33 As Murray's work has been used for the standard histories of the English stage, 1558-1642, by E .K. Chambers and G.E. Bentley, some account of the serious deficiencies in Murray's selections may be useful . (1) Murray mistranscribes the players of 'Anslay' (Annesley) as ones of 'Austay' (1571-2) and omits the following entry for January 1615-16, `Item payd to Maister Maior vpon a tickett, videlicet, to the Prynce's players, xxs.'34 (2) Murray's grounds for selecting extracts are unstated : frequent in- consistencies tend to misrepresent a large number of entries as a quite small one . His first few extracts concern minstrels, morris dancers and Lockwood the Queen's jester, but he ignores many other similar items in favour of ones about bull-baiting and bearwards . Actually only two of these last are listed ; bearwards of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the earl of Leicester and other noblemen are also overlooked . (3) Stevenson's caveat about the exclusion of various dramatic entries from his extracts

19 is not mentioned . (4) There are, finally, no entries from the civic records for 1625- 1702 (published in 1900) . Though only four visits of players are missed, they are of some interest. Three of the payments are for 1627 : 3s 4d to 'foure players havinge a Commission, and theire Company broken,' 7s to `the King's players of the Chamber of Bristowe in reward,' and 6s 8d to `the players of the King's Revells .'35 The first entry may confirm Bentley's view that the Palgrave's Com- pany broke up in 1626, and the second extends records of John Daniel's company, the Youths of Her Majesty's Royal Chamber of Bristol, by three years .36 The fourth payment to players occurs in a series of accounts and orders relating to the visit of Charles I and his queen to Nottingham on 4 August 1634 for five nights . The royal couple were met by the mayor, the aldermen and their companies at the 'Coortt-gate,' and an expensively apparelled Master Samuel Lightfoot, usher of the city's free school, delivered a speech to them . Charles may have stayed at Notting- ham Castle, near which the roads were repaired, but the entire city was extensively repaired and painted, and during his stay he visited St Anne's Well . His trumpeters and players accompanied him and were rewarded by the city, respectively for lOs and 20s . Another payment of 13s 4d was made to the knight Marshall's man and the trumpeter `for proclayminge the Clarke of the Marketts proclaymacion and prizes' ; possibly a fencing match (or other sport) took place, as at Lincoln in 1617. 37 The seventy-seven bailiffs', household, personal and estate accounts for the Willoughby family seats at Middleton, Warwickshire, and at Wollaton Hall, are now deposited among Lord Middleton's manuscripts in Nottingham University Library . W.H. Stevenson printed them in his report to the Historical Manuscripts Commission, but he does not discuss which of the over 120 payments to entertainers were made at Wollaton and he may not have transcribed everything of interest .38 The most plentiful records are for 1520-7 and 1572-5 . The Act Books of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham, also deposited at the University Library, are records of all personal or official actions heard by the Archdeacon or his delegate in court . R.F.B. Hodgkinson's extracts are based on his transcripts, in twenty-four volumes (with selections only after c 1630), of the original books, which run with some gaps from 1565 to 1642 .39 Of entries relating to violations of church property and the Sabbath by entertainers, almost all concern local rather than itinerant players, musicians and dancers ; and as court minutes by their nature are more circumstantial than accounts the former are important sources of information about strictly provincial activities . The Act Books appear to contain more than their secular counterpart, the Quarter Sessions Order or Minute Books, which survive nearly intact for 1604-42 .40 In these and other published Nottinghamshire records little new, beyond what has been already mentioned, is to be gleaned about the professional acting companies. Only one native county troupe can be added to those now known . Sir William Holles, whose seat was at Haughton Hall (about five miles south of East Retford) and whose musicians were paid three times from 1571-2 to 1578-9 at Nottingham, is said by his descendant Gervase Holles to have `alwais kept a com-

20 pany of stage players of his owne wch presented him masques and playes at festivall times and upon dayes of solemnity . In the summer time they usually acted abroad in the country ... '41 The other locally sponsored troupes include those of Sir John Byron and of a Mr Marcham, probably Robert Markham of Cotham (about fifteen miles east of Nottingham, where they were rewarded in 1572-3) .42 To judge from the Nottingham and Willoughby accounts, Nottinghamshire noblemen imported players for entertainment rather than supporting individual companies . Other records are consistent with this point. The three masques projected for the 1562 meeting of Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots at Nottingham Castle were being organized by the Master of the Revels in London when altered circumstances cancelled the plans . A full plot for these `Devices' exists .43 When James i pro- gressed from Scotland to London in 1603, the only important nobleman to wel- come him in the shire was the 7th earl of Shrewsbury, and he came from Sheffield to his house in the park near Worksop to do so . On 20-1 April James was greeted there by huntsmen and a woodsman's speech before going to hunt, and perhaps the only local people to take part were the `six virgns' paid by the Worksop churchwardens when the king `came to Worksop Manor .' These virgins may have con- tributed the `excellent soule-ravishing musique' that delighted him there .44 After the death of Elizabeth, of course, all acting companies had to be sponsored by the kind or a member of the royal family . Otherwise William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle and a playwright himself, would doubtless have patronized a company from his seat (after c 1618) at Welbeck Abbey, just a few miles south of Worksop . Ben Jonson's The King's Entertainment at Welbeck, performed 21 May 1633, cannot have drawn significantly on native actors .45 The same must have been true of a minor piece like William Sampson's The Vow-Breaker, or The Fair Maid of Clifton, the 1636 title-page of which notes, 'In Notinghamshire as it bath beene diuers times Acted by severall Companies with great applause .'46 This evidence, together with Murray's information, represents our published records of visits to the county by outside companies . Only one additional piece of information can be noted at present. On 19 November 1580 the churchwardens of Lenton, now quite near Nottingham University, were cited `for sufferinge fightinge braulinge and quarellinge in the church' and defended themselves by saying those responsible were `my L . Bartlettes players.' Lord (Henry) Berkeley's second company apparently was a rowdy one ; in July of the very next year it was jailed in the Counter at London after fighting with Inns of Court men . 47 Itinerant companies with noble patrons by no means, however, presented all or even perhaps (given Stevenson's remark) most plays in the shire . Parish drama is frequently recorded, especially within fifteen miles of Nottingham . Willoughby household accounts for 1524 have a payment to the players of Browton, possibly Upper Broughton (at the border with Leicestershire in the southeast) .48 Notting- ham rewarded players from Annesley (a town to the north, towards Mansfield) and Cropwell (about seven miles to the east) in 1571-2, from Barton (five miles south) in 1578-9 and from Selson (probably Selston, a town about eleven miles north) in 1579-80.49 The popularity of these local plays can be measured by the fact that

21 in 1625 and 1627 the county Quarter Sessions had to prohibit Sunday `meetings of people in their own parishes for common plays or unlawful sports,' several decades after the 1603 national proclamation forbidding such Sabbath activities . 50 The Act Books record the chastisement of various spectators who were caught at these plays. On 26 March 1614 fifteen parishioners of St Peter and St Mary, Nottingham, were presented `for beinge at a playe in tyme of divine service uppon the Sabaoth daye,' and Alice Brittaine of Mansfield admitted on 17 November 1627 that on a Sunday night in the previous July she `was at the play at Widow Doughties in Mansfeild.'51 Local minstrels, who thrived on the same kind of patronage as the acting companies and whose entertainment approached drama in type, 52 were rewarded earlier than players. Sir Henry Willoughby paid minstrels of a Mr Strelley, probably John Strelley of Strelley (now in Nottingham District), in 1521, and of Sir Randall of Browton (Upper Broughton?) in 1522 .53 The city records add more sponsored minstrels : of Sir John Byron in 1537-8 ; of a Master Babentun (Babyngton) in 1547 and 1558, probably the predecessor of Anthony Babington, executed for treason in 1586, whose seat was at Kingston-upon-Soar, about nine miles south of the city, in 1558 ; of Sir Thomas Cockayne, its former mayor, in 1558 and 1571-2 ; and of a Master Stanhope, probably Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford, about six miles east of Nottingham, in 1569 (his waits were paid by the Willoughbys in 1573). 54 Before noble patronage was customary in the shire, musicians got em- ployment as civic waits, as which, at Newark and Nottingham, they had wages and a monopoly in playing at marriages and other special events in the city . In Notting- ham this trade was perhaps shared with the schoolmaster, termed 'ludimagister' in 1582-3 : in 1611 he was ordered not to have his children go `so oft playinge as heretofore they haue vsed,' not to play on any Monday, Wednesday or Friday, and not to play for marriages as up to then had been customary .55 Less lucky musicians piped, harped and fiddled where they could . The Act Books present one Gervase Whitehead of Ruddington, four miles south of Nottingham, for profaning divine service by playing on the bagpipes at Clifton in 1613, and a host of present- ments or indictments are recorded in the Quarter Sessions records for illegal music- making . 56 One old outlet for the impulse to music and semi-dramatic playing was May games and morris dancing . As early as 15 30 Nottingham tamed these to the service I of the church at the Whitsuntide procession, but that rural parishes in general financed their churches by such playing is shown in the churchwardens' accounts of Holme Pierrepont, several miles east of the city . An assessment was made on the parish in 1552 `because oyere getheringes wth hobbyhorse and lightes were layed downe.' 57 After Elizabeth came to the throne the morris men were back at Nottingham again . The dancers of Kinoulton came nine miles there in 1571-2, Clifton dancers gathered money there on the same day for building of a bridge, and the men of Stapleford travelled the six miles to Nottingham on the road past Lenton Abbey with their May game in 1582-3.58 Increasing ecclesiastical inter- ference with these folk events then develops . In 1585 the churchwardens of

22 Finningley were penalized for having morris dancers in the church and one Robert Dewyck of Boughton, south of East Retford, was presented for erecting a May pole in the churchyard ; later Laxton, a few miles east of Boughton, regretted its Sunday May game of 1605 .59 Several Wollaton men went with morris dancers to neighbouring Trowell on a Sunday in 1618, when half a dozen Bradmore men, as many miles 60 from Nottingham, were likewise guilty of Sabbath piping and morns dancing . No ceremonialia, procedures for the management of entertainments, have showed up for the county, but one neglected semi-dramatic fragment, a speech by the presenter of a Twelfth-Day `pastime,' the choosing of a King of Wassail, suggests that one private household of the early 17th century may have had a ceremonial . This thirty-two-line 'carlel' is written on the first leaf of the Archdeacon of Notting- ham's Act Book for 24 October 1622 - 21 June 1623, which has `the entries of the courts held before the Commissaries of the Archbishop during one of his Visit- ations.'61 Evidently the Archdeacon or his officials saw this pastime on 6 January 1622 or 1623 when they were touring his jurisdiction,62 and a clerk copied the speech as follows :

Farewell good Christmas adue adue due For now wee must leave you & looke for a new For whille thou returneth Wee lingger in paine Wee Carre not how quickly thou comest againe or eare thou departest wee purpose to see what pleasure & pastime this daye will showe mee the king of our wassel this day wee must chusse or else the whole costom wee Carelesly loves the Wassell well spiced about shall goe round thought cost my good master best parte of a pound the mede in the Buttrye stands reddy to fill with noping good licoure with part & good will to well commusse frendly my Mr. stands by & tells us in frendshippe

23 one tow three goes dry His Beare to drincke freely to pleasure a frend & soe for the twelfte daie my carlel doth end

This song may reply to one by Christmas, who sings the carol, `Here have I dwellyd with more and lasse / From Halowtyde till Candylmas' (16th century), as he departs from one lord of the hall and his guests.63 The Wassail ceremony, however, is not necessarily dramatic . An early Tudor ceremonial for the king's voidee and wassail on Twelfth Night directs that `the chapell to stonde on the one syde off the hall & when the steward comyth In att the hall dore with the washill he must cry iij tymys wassayll wassayll wassayll & then the chapell to Answere with a good song.' The second Northumberland household book has a similar but more detailed order for an earl's Twelfth Night in which the chapel is to `sing bitwixte the wassaill and the voidy for a passe tyme tyme suche carralles as they be purveid of .'64 In these circumstances the speaker of the Nottinghamshire carol would probably have been the hall steward, but the reference to the 'costom' of the Wassail King suggests a folk celebration involving the tenants of the manor as well as the household . Here, as elsewhere, the Lincolnshire records may be helpful . In 1555, at Hagworthing- ham, the churchwardens noted a receipt for money gathered by `the young men called the Wessell.'65 At this point the printed materials from which this report is drawn run out . A fresh search of the manuscripts behind them and of other, undiscussed records should yield new evidence and rectify the errors that are here inherited and (doubtless) committed . The Nottingham, Newark and East Retford records will add something, and the Archdeaconry muniments also have promising libels and depositions from 1563 and churchwardens' presentation bills from 1596 . 66 Southwell Cathe- dral Library holds much of interest : its 'Liber Albus,' accounts for 1455, visitation books for 1563-95, chapter minutes for 1590-1616, chapter registers for 1470-1567 and court act books for 1563-95 .67 The County Record Office has various early churchwardens' accounts, and those for Nottingham St Mary's, 1582-93, are at the Nottingham Public Library.68 Family collections of possible use include the Holles papers in the Newcastle manuscripts (University of Nottingham), the Savile of Rufford household accounts from 1596 (County Record Office), and the Thoresby Park papers (British Library Egerton MSS 3516-3660) . Court rolls and probate documents are very numerous .69 More items could be added at this point, but the records editor would be better advised to start fresh with the standard county bibliographies by J .P. Briscoe and M .W. Barley for printed material and at the county, repositories themselves for surviving manuscripts .70

NOTES

1 R .T . Timson (ed), The Cartulary of Blyth Priory, I, Thoroton Society Record Series XXVII

24 (London, 1973), cxi-cxiii. 2 Only Nottingham, Newark and East Retford represented the present shire at an assembly of wool merchants at York in 1322 ; and by 1377 the county population was about 50-60,000, with under 3,000 persons at Nottingham and about 2,000 at Newark (A.C . Wood, A History of Nottinghamshire [Nottingham, 19471, 73, 99) . 3 Arthur F . Leach (ed), Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, Camden Society, ns XLVIII (Westminster, 1891), xv-xvi, xxxii, 15 . 4 William Page (ed), The Victoria History of the County of Nottingham, II (London, 1910), 57 . 5 Wilkins' Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae ab Anno MCCCL ad Annum MDXL V [1111 (Londini, 1737), 68 . These may be translated as `markets, assemblies or spectacles' and 'wrestling, archery or games .' 6 Leach, Visitations, 208; Victoria History . . . Nottingham, II, 57 . The cemetery of South Leverton parish church was used for shooting and `jocos alios' in 1289-9 (The Registers of John Le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York 1286-1296. Part II. and of Henry of Newark, Lord Arch- bishop of York 1296-1299, Surtees Society CXXVIII (Durham and London, 1917), 280 . 7 Charles Deering, Nottinghamia Vetus et Nova (Nottingham, 1751), 125 . 8 William Dickinson, Antiquities, Historical, Architectural, Chorographical, and Itinerary, in Nottinghamshire, and the Adjacent Counties, I, part 2 (Newark, 1803), 151 ; the translation only is given . Separate rewards for the autumn mowing (152), which had no 'plays .' 'Northyng' is probably Northfield Ho, about a half-mile north of the present town . 9 Wood, History ofNottinghamshire, 111 ; Stanley J . Kahrl (ed), Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, 1300-1585, Malone Society Collections Volume VIII (Oxford, 1974 [for 19691 ), 26-67. 10 `An Early Reference to a Corpus Christi Play,' MP 74 (1977), 393-4 . 11 Allan Jackson, A History of Retford : The growth of a Nottinghamshire borough (Retford, 1971), 8 ; A .D. Grounds, A History of King Edward VI Grammar School Retford (Worksop, 1970), 16 . 12 Jackson, History of Retford, 12 ; W.H . Stevenson (ed), Records of the Borough of Nottingham Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, IV (for 1547- 1625) (London and Nottingham, 1889), 140 (these 'Weytes of Ratford' are unlikely to be from Old Radford, in present-day Nottingham) . Hereafter the latter is cited as Records, IV ; also, II, for 1399-1485 (1883), and III, for 1485-1547, ed W .H . Stevenson (1885) ; V, for 1625-1702, ed W .T . Baker (1900) . See also E .L . Guilford, `Extracts from the Records of the Borough of Nottingham,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 26 (1922), 18-35 ; 27 (1923), 53-72 ; 28 (1924), 73-95 ; 29 (1925), 68-89 ; 30 (1926), 108-36 ; 31 (1927), 85-104. 13 The Macro Plays, EETS, es 262 (London, 1969), xv-xix . 14 Records of Plays and Players in Lincolnshire, xii-xxi ; Macro Plays, xi-xv . 15 Jackson, History of Retford, 9 ; Grounds, History of King Edward VI Grammar School, 44-6, 49. 16 Cornelius Brown, A History of Newark-on-Trent, I (Newark, 1904), 248, 252 . 17 Brown, History of Newark-on-Trent, II (Newark, 1907), 10-11 . The Newark waits were at Nottingham in 1571-2 (Records, IV, 137, 140) . 18 Brown, History, II, 11 . 19 Records, IV, 132 ; Duncan Gray, Nottingham Through 500 Years, 2nd edition (Nottingham, 1960), 39 . He also refers to `many town pageants' associated with the crafts and names 'the Midsummer Night pageant, with morris dancers,' `the raising of Lazarus, or St George and the Dragon' (40-1, 44), evidently in misunderstanding the introduction to Hodgkinson's Account Books (see next note) . 20 The Account Books of the Gilds of St . George and of St. Mary in the Church of St. Peter Nottingham, tr . R .F .B . Hodgkinson, intro . L .V.D . Owen, Thoroton Society Record Series VII (Nottingham, 1939), 17-112 . 21 What certificates survive are listed by H .F . Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (London and New York, 1919) .

25 22 Deering, Nottinghamia, 124 ; Brown, History, II, 8 . 23 Records, III, 71, 362-3 ; II, 379 . 24 Records, II, 424 ; Deering, Nottinghamia, 106-7 . 25 Records, 111, 449, 362, 382 ; IV, 133, 139, 148, 164, 167, 175, 183 . 26 Deering, Nottinghamia, 78, 125 ; Records, IV, 91, 117, 133, 163 . 27 Records, III, 361 ; IV, 117, 135, 143, 151, etc ; cf Deering, Nottinghamia, 123-4. 28 Records, II, 378-9 (1464) . 29 See, for example, Giles E . Dawson (ed), Records of Plays and Players in Kent, 1450-1642, Malone Society Collections Volume VII (Oxford, 1965), where, though 'medieval drama' is defined as 'what lay behind 1450' and Renaissance drama (the volume's interest) as what follows 1450, the main text includes only records of 'public entertainers of any kind who travelled,' excludes evidence about town waits (who elsewhere provide music for civic pageants) and separates as Appendix B the records for 'Town Plays and Shows produced at Home' ([vii]- viii, 188-211) . As Dawson notes, this last material is left incomplete : 'The extracts that follow do not include single entries of payments for home plays which are scattered through the ordinary accounts of the four towns,' Canterbury, Lydd, Maidstone and New Romney (188). The implication appears to be that plays produced locally after 1450 are the business of medieval rather than Renaissance drama historians . 30 Records, I, viii. A schedule of extant documents can be found in the introduction to each volume . 31 Records, III, 363 . 32 Records, IV, viii. Some omitted entries have been transcribed by Walter L . Woodfill, Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, 1953), 287-91 . 33 Notes on the Drama in Nottingham in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1569-1624) ([Newark] 1896) ; English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1642, II (London, 1910), 372-7 . 34 Records, IV, 347 . 35 Records, V, 121 . 36 Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1 (1941 ; rpt. Oxford, 1966), 151-6 ; 11, 419-20 . 37 Records, V, 165-9 ; PRO, Declared Accounts, Treasurers of the Chamber, E.351/545, mb 5r . 38 Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (London, 1911), 327-452 (hereafter cited as Report) . This apparently does not include the accounts of the entertainment of Queen Anne at Wollaton in 1603 (now Nottingham University Library MS Mi Av 1). 39 R.F .B. Hodgkinson, 'Extracts from the Act Books of the Archdeacons of Nottingham,' Trans- actions of the Thoroton Society 29 (1925), 19-67 ; 30 (1926), 11-57 ; 31 (1927), 108-53 . The transcripts are at the Thoroton Society Library ; see Adrian Henstock, 'The Records of the Thoroton Society : A Summary List,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 77 (1973), 108 . 40 Nottinghamshire County Records : Notes and Extracts From The Nottinghamshire County Records of the 17th Century, comp . H . Hampton Copnall (Nottingham, 1915), 1-2 . 41 Records, IV, 138 ; Woodfill, Musicians, 289-90 ; and A .C . Wood (ed), Memorials of the Holles Family, 1493-1656, Camden Society, 3rd series, 55 (London, 1937), 42 . Holles also had a natural fool, 'John Oatesborne at Riby in Lincolnshire' (42-3) . Holles' players seem to have been at Grimsby, Lincolnshire (Edward Gillett, A History of Grimsby [London, 19701, 117) . 42 Records, IV, 148 . 43 E .K . Chambers and W.W . Greg (eds), 'Dramatic Records from the Lansdowne Manuscripts,' Collections Part 11, The Malone Society (Oxford, 1908), 144-8 . 44 John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, I (London, 1828), 85-7 (from STC 17153) ; Robert White, Nottinghamshire . Worksop, "The Dukery, "and Sherwood Forest (Worksop, 1875), 18, 334-5 . The king's older children stopped there c June 20, and Prince Charles still later on 10-13 August 1604 : music was provided on both occasions (HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of . . . the Marquis of Salisbury .. . at Hatfield House, parts 15 [London, 19301, 143, and 16 [London, 19331, 227) .

26 45 The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, III (1956 ; rpt . Oxford, 1967), 142-51 . 46 The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, V (1956 ; rpt . Oxford, 1967), 1043-5 . 47 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 30 (1926), 50 ; E .K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 11 (1923 ; rpt . Oxford, 1967), 103-4 . 48 Report, 379 . 49 Records, IV, 140, 183, 194 . 50 Nottinghamshire County Records, 53 ; Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, IV, 335 . 51 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 30 (1926), 44 ; and 31 (1927), 143 . 52 E.K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 1 (1903 ; London, 1963), 77-86 . 53 Report, 336, 346. 54 Records, 111, 377 ; IV, 90, 117, 137 ; Report, 433 . 55 Victoria History . .. Nottingham, 11, 224, 227 ; Records, IV, 302 . 56 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 30 (1926), 44 ; Nottinghamshire County Records, 53. 57 W .H . Stevenson, 'Churchwardens' Accounts of Holme Pierrepont,' in John P . Briscoe (ed), Old Nottinghamshire, 2nd series (London, 1884), 93 . 58 Records, IV, 140, 200 . 59 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 29 (1925), 58 ; and 30 (1926), 42-3 . 60 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 30 (1926), 46 . 61 Hodgkinson, 'Extracts,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 29 (1925), 19-20 ; and 30 (1926), 55-6 . 62 Possibly the Archdeacon's Visitation Call Books (at the Nottingham University Library), beginning 1609-10, would note the court's location on these dates. 63 Richard L. Greene (ed), A Selection of English Carols (Oxford, 1962), 96-7 ; Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943), no . 1198 . The departure of Christmas is also referred to in 'Old Christmas or Good Order : A Fragment of a Morality Printed by William Rastell in 1533,' W .W. Greg (ed), Collections Volume IV, The Malone Society (Oxford, 1956), 33-9 . 64 British Library Add MS 4712, f 12r ; Bodleian Library MS Eng. hist . b .208, f 42v (see D .M. Barratt, 'A Second Northumberland Household Book,' The Bodleian Library Record 8 [19681, 93-8) . 65 The Editors, 'Hagworthingham Church Book,' Lincolnshire Notes &Queries 1 (1888-9), 5-13 . 66 Nottingham City Libraries acts as the City Record Office . The Gilstrap Public Library, Newark, has accounts for 1392 of the Guild of the Holy Trinity and extracts from the church accounts from 1609 ('Manuscript Sources of Nottinghamshire History,' Transactions of the Thoroton Society 47 [19431, 48-9 ; continued from 46 [1942], 18-26) . See also W.D. Macray, 'The Manuscripts of the Corporation of Newark,' 12th Report, HMC, Appendix, Part IV (London, 1891), 538 . East Retford corporation records were mainly destroyed in 1651 (Jackson, History of Retford, 17), but the Piercy MSS have some antiquarian copies . (Public Libraries at Mans- field and Worksop may also have some useful records .) For the Archdeaconry records, see the Church of English Pilgrim Trust Report for Southwell diocese ; the University of Nottingham, Report of the Keeper of the Manuscripts, nos . 1- (1958/9) ; and J .H . Hodson, 'A university archive repository : the University of Nottingham Department of Manuscripts,' Archives 5 (1962), 145-50. 67 W .D . Macray, 'The Manuscripts of Southwell Cathedral,' 12th Report, HMC, Appendix, Part IX (London, 1891), 539-52 ; and preceding note. 68 The accounts in the Record Office include ones for Bingham (from 1598), Blyth (from 1559), Coddington (from 1630), Edwinstowe and Ollerton (from 1626) and Upton (from 1600) : see P.A. Kennedy, Guide to the Nottinghamshire County Records Office (Notts County Council, 1960), and the Report of the County Archivist (1961-) . Adrian Henstock, 'The Archives and Local History Departments of Nottingham Public Libraries,' Bulletin of Local History: East

27 Midlands Region 3 (1968), 17 . 69 For example, the University has court rolls of East Stoke for 1393-c 1624 and court books of Newark from 1575 . Archdeaconry probate records are at the County Record Office and the Borthwick Institute : see Wills and Where to Find Them, comp . J .S.W. Gibson (British Record Society, 1974), 100-3 . 70 Nottingham Free Public Reference Library, Class List No . 14, Nottinghamshire Collection, comp . John P . Briscoe (Nottingham, 1890) ; and Nottinghamshire : A catalogue of the county library local history collection, foreward by M .W. Barley, 3rd edition (West Bridgford, 1966) .

Research in Progress

R.W . INGRAM

Once upon a long time ago, in 1963, 1 decided to write a short book about medieval dramatic entertainments in Coventry . Primarily, I wished to examine the dramatic, religious and social importance of the Corpus Christi cycle when it was seen as part of the year-round dramatic activity of a city . The production and performance of the cycle would be set against a background of civic pageants and shows offered to royal and noble visitors, the processions and celebrations of religious feast-days, the midsummer and holiday festivities, and special local festival events - installing the mayor, beating the bounds, honouring local heroes and occasions . I chose Coventry because of its centrality to English civic drama, because I was born and educated there and was familiar with its names, places and history, and because it offered a rich but finite amount of material . The basic research had been done (by Sharp, Halliwell-Phillipps and Harris chiefly) and on manuscripts now lost or destroyed. Much of the material Sharp used in his Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries, Anciently Performed at Coventry passed, eventually, to the Birmingham Reference Library where it was lost in the 1879 fire : of what was left, more was lost in the air-raids on Coventry in 1940 and 1941 . 1 assumed that few I manuscripts useful to my purpose remained and that archival research of any scope was out of the question. Thus ignorantly assured, I began to check what remained in Coventry in 1964 . Never was a false assumption more firmly or satisfyingly corrected. Despite great losses, much remains in original manuscripts and in copies of manuscripts now destroyed or lost . Most of the extant original manuscripts are at the Coventry Record Office : others are in Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon, Lichfield, and London ; in all these places, plus Birmingham, Edinburgh and Wash- ington, DC, are copies - at second- and third-hand - of manuscripts now gone . My collections from all these places will form the third volume for REED, Dramatic Records of Coventry, 1392-1642 . It will more than double the amount of material

28 previously recorded (primarily by Sharp, Halliwell-Phillipps for his Shakespeare studies, and Mary Dormer Harris in her transcription of the Leet Book), and more than two-thirds of the total will be transcriptions of surviving manuscripts . Some notes on the sources of the volume follow. The City Record Office in Coventry is very rich in Tudor civic council manuscripts : mayoral accounts, treasurers' payment and receipt books, rental rolls (including a complete city survey of 1581), Leet Books (Harris' transcription of the 1420-1555 volume is as near perfect as any transcription I have seen) . The second volume of the Leet Book commences in 1588, thus leaving an especially tantalizing gap for the historian of drama. Coventry almost specializes in this kind of gap . The earliest extant Account Book of the Mercers' Company begins in 1579 and includes the entry for the last performance of their otherwise unknown pageant in 1578 . It reads: 'Paide ffor ollde ordinarye charges aboute the pageante ffor plaiores wages, and all other thinges, the some of iij Ii vij s viij d .' The Cappers' Account Book runs with only one break from 1494 to the present, but that break occurs from 1556 to 1573 when 'a small black book' was used, a book that was never returned to the Cappers together with their large folio Account Book but went to Birmingham Reference Library to be burned in 1879 (the large Account Book is now safely kept at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon) . The City Record Office has original Guild Account Books of the Carpenters (from 1447), the Weavers (from 1523, also the original copy of their ordinances drawn up in 1453), and the Mercers (from 1579). Those of the Mercers and Carpenters also exist in a mid-nineteenth century transcript by a local historian and newspaperman, Thomas Daffern, who proves to have been a very reliable transcriber . This is reassuring because the Drapers' Accounts, from 15 34, exist only in his transcript . The small library contains a large collection of articles and monographs by local historians, mainly Victorian, that contain references and extracts not otherwise available . Particularly valuable are the annotated books of Sharp and notes and papers of Harris. As a note to bring a blanch to any present-day researcher or custodian, I should add that some assistance comes to the historian of drama in Coventry from Sharp's habit of marking any items in manuscripts that interested him with a lightly pen- cilled double cross! The Coventry Library's extremely valuable collections (including some extensive local histories and two centuries of local newspaper files) were all destroyed, i together with other various rare local manuscripts especially placed in the library's strong-room for safe-keeping, when that room was destroyed in the 1940 air-raid . A particular loss then suffered was a thirty-volume history of the city by William Reader (1782-1852) . A series of articles about the history, by the then City Librarian, was published in the local newspaper in 1926 : that series includes one or two extracts from Guild Accounts to do with the Corpus Christi cycle not otherwise now available . These are some of my third-hand items . However, a five- volume abridgement of Reader or perhaps his first run at the history is in the Bodleian Library, and this contains further extracts from records now lost and not transcribed by other hands . There are some other items of Coventry interest in

29 the Bodleian, chiefly to do with the Priory Cathedral of St Mary put down by Henry VIII . Here, as elsewhere, one must be on guard against that frequent Cov- entry ghost in catalogues that signals only the Ludus Coventriae which, whatever its other merits, is not, as might once have been said, `true Coventry blue' . In London the inexhaustible Harleian and Egerton papers provide several items - transcriptions of Guild charters and records (Pinners and Tylers, Butchers in Harl. 6466) ; gossipy but unreliable Annals of the City (Harl . 6388) ; and a list of relics at St Mary's at the Dissolution, including an arm from each of the saints Justine, Jerome and Augustine, à barrell of Reliques of Confessors,' 'owre ladies mylke in Sylver and gylt,' together with a tart scribbled comment by Cromwell's visitor (Dr London?), Ànd among thees reliqies your lordeshipp shall fynde a peece of the most holy iawe bone of the asse that kyllyd Abell with dyuers like' (Egerton 2603) . In the Public Record Office is a little-known letter from William Coton, mayor of Coventry in 15 39, again to Cromwell, craving relief from many municipal expenses to do with festal entertaining : àt Corpus Christi tide the poore Commeners be at such charges with ther playes & pagyontes that thei fare the worse all the yeaire after.' The search after transcripts of manuscripts now destroyed or missing meant, ultimately, following the trail of the papers of the indefatigable Halliwell-Phillipps from Stratford-upon-Avon, to Edinburgh, to Washington, DC . The bulk of his papers are at the Folger : they turned up a large amount of Coventry material (he was the last scholar to examine the papers in the Staunton Collection after Sharp had them and before they were lost in Birmingham) . When they are fully examined they will doubtless turn up far more material for historians in all fields of drama . His note-books alone, where he lists all the local archives he visited and the notes that he took of the contents, show a range of endeavour easily able to satisfy the time and energy of dozens of researchers today . Indeed, he laid down the outlines of a good deal of REED's work a century ago, just as Sharp carried out a piece of research in early English drama that was not sufficiently to be followed for another hundred years . It is satisfying, therefore, that much of what is lost in Coventry's records today can only be replaced by what they did so long ago . To try and gather The Dramatic Records of Coventry 1392-1642 is to be ever aware of their daunting presence . i

Of note

REED CONFERENCE

A conference on the records of early English drama will be held at Erindale College, University of Toronto, 1-3 September, 1978 . Further information and application forms will be available early in the new year .

30 EARLY DRAMA, ART, AND MUSIC

Early Drama, Art, and Music is a project directed by Professor Clifford Davidson of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo . The project approaches the study of early drama and theatre through the related forms of the visual arts and music . Its first publication, Drama and Art, acts as an introduction to the proposed series and is available through the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008 . The second volume, a subject list and bibliography, York Art Relevant to Early Drama, will be available shortly .

YORK CYCLE PRODUCTION

Souvenir programmes and posters are available from the Toronto production of the York Cycle on 1-2 October. A complete video-tape of the production will be edited for distribution shortly. The York Cycle Planning Committee intends to make available 35mm slide and cassette packages . For further information please contact : Mr Todd Heather, Records of Early English Drama, 85 Charles Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1K5 .

Ubi Sunt?

CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS FROM LEICESTER

The pre-1642 accounts of the churches of St Margaret and St Mary de Castro, Leicester were known and partially transcribed in the eighteenth century . Since that time they have vanished and all attempts to trace them have been unsuccessful . Anyone having any information about these important manuscripts is asked to contact : Professor Alice Hamilton, Department of English, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 2E9 .

Subscriptions to the REED Newsletter are invited. The cost is $2 .00 Canadian (£1 .00) per year of two issues . Cheques should be made payable to Records of Early English Drama . Please address correspondence to the editor, c/o English Section, Erindale College, University of Toronto, Mississauga, L5L 1C6, Canada.

Thanks to Carolynn Jackson, who set this issue .

ISSN 0700-9283 Printed in Canada