John Heywood, in his "Four P's, a very merry Enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedler," brings in the Palmer relating that in his Pilgrimages he has been at different parts of the world, and in enumerating them he says, At Saint Botulphe and Saint Anne of Buckstone This was either the Priory of the Holy Trinity of St. Botolph without Aldgate, or our Brethren of the Holy Trinity of St. Botolph without Aldersgate. Heywood, though a stern Roman Catholic, exposes with the humour of Uliespiegel the tricks played on the credulous fondness of the ignorant for reliques, and ridicules the greediness and craft of the preaching friars in their pious frauds. He makes the Pardoner produce "the blessed Jawbone of Allhalowes," on which the Poticary swears -by All-halowe, yet methinketh That All-halowe's breath stinkith. Pardoner. Nay sirs, beholde heer may ye see All his life after, I undertake, He shall never be vext with the tooth ake. By the turn given to the Poticary's answer, it seems likely that Heywood had in his eye the figure with the three heads in one. Poticary. I pray you turn that relique about: Or els, because it is three toes in one, God made it as much as three toes alone. (1) (1) Dodsley's Old Plays, edit. 1744, vol. i. p. 88. The Pardoner bids that pass, and climaxes the absurdity by presenting the "buttock-bone of Pentecost." (1) Gross as all this is, Heywood had as little design to scandalize the belief of his own church, as his patron, Sir Thomas More, had by his philosophical romance of Utopia. He was a great favourite with Queen Mary, and on the restoration of the Protestant ascendancy with Elizabeth, he fled from his native country to secure the exercise of his faith without hazard to his life, and died in exile. (2) Personifications of the supreme attributes have been accomodated to popular understanding in almost every possible way from the earliest ages. By an inquirer into the ancient worship of the Deity under the grossest form that, to apprehension in these times can be represented by the artist, the English reader is acquainted with two statues at the temple of Hierapolis, respecting the active productive Power and the passive productive Power. "Between both was a third figure with a dove on his head, which some thought to be Bacchus. This was the Holy Spirit, the first begotten Love or plastic Nature (of which the Dove was the image when it really deigned to descend upon Man,) (3) proceeding from and consubstantial with Both; for all Three were but personifications of One." (4) Although it is rather foreign to my purpose, yet it is not a departure from the subject, to mention a curious anecdote which Bishop Patrick says is gravely related by the biographers of St. Clara de Monte Falconis :-that after her death, there was found in her gall a plain testimony of the Holy Trinity, consisting of three balls of equal figure, colour, and size, and of equal weight, one weighing the weight of two and also of three, yet all three weighing no more than one. (5) (1) Dodsley's old Plays, edit. 1744, vol. i. p. 101. (2) Ritson's Bibliog. Poetica, p. 242. From whence it appears that Heywood died at Mechlin in 1544. He evidently took his "Four P's" from the Pardoner's tale by Chaucer. (3) [" Matt. c. iii. ver. 17."] (*) A Discourse, &c., by Richard Payne Knight, Esq., London : printed by Spilsbury, 4to, 1786., p. 146. (5) Patrick on Devot. of Rom. Church, p. 273. A desire of relieving the reader's teedium may possibly excuse a wider deviation. It is well known that the personality of the Devil has been exemplified by extraordinary personifications of him, and by relations of his appearance under almost every form; but a personation that he is represented to have assumed in Hertfordshire, is accompanied by circumstances that have never, perhaps, been paral leled. In turning over John Bagford's collection of Title-pages at the British Museum (Harl. MSS. 5419), I find one in his own writing, from a tract that must have been so rare at that time, that he could not possess it, or his collecting hand would have mercilessly torn off the title page; and I suspect it to have been almost, if not quite unique, for its existence is not now traceable by me after very long and diligent inquiry. Although, therefore, I can do no more than lay before the reader the following copy that I made from Bagford's copy, yet that is sufficient to inform him of all that he can perhaps ever know of the alleged event. Here it is: "THE DEVIL seen at St. ALBAN's. Being a true relation, how the Devil was seen there, in a Cellar, in the likenesse of a Ram: and how a butcher came and cut his throat, and sold some of it, and dressed the rest for him, inviting many to supper, who eat of it. "Attested by divers letters of men of very good credit in this towne. "Printed for the confutation of those that believe there are no such things as spirits or devils, 4to, 1648." III. CHRISTMAS CAROLS. The lewid peple than algates agre, And caroles singen everi' criste messe tyde, And holey bowghes aboute; and al asydde And pype, and dansen, and hem rage; ne swinke, MARY'S longing for the fruit on the cherry tree, and Joseph's refusal to gather it for her on the return of his jealousy, a remarkable scene in one of the Coventry Plays, (1) is the subject of a Christmas Carol still sung in London, and many parts of England. From various copies of it printed at different places I am enabled to present the following version: Joseph was an old man, And an old man was he; When Joseph was married, (1) Mystery VIII. p. 67, ante. As Joseph and Mary Walk'd through the garden gay, Where the cherries they grew Upon every tree; O! then bespoke Mary, With words both meek and mild, "Gather me some cherries, Joseph, They run so in my mind; Gather me some cherries, For I am with child." O! then bespoke Joseph, O then bespoke Jesus, All in his mother's womb, "Go to the tree, Mary, And it shall bow down; "Go to the tree, Mary, And it shall bow to thee, And the highest branch of all Shall bow down to Mary's knee, "And she shall gather cherries O eat your cherries, Mary; |