we learn that a grant of £450 was made to George Kirke, Esq., gentleman of the robes, for the masking attire of the king and his party. In 1637, there is a warrant under the privy seal to the same George Kirke, for £150, to provide the masking dress of the king; and, in the same year, another to Edmund Taverner, for £1,400, towards the expenses of a masque to be presented at Whitehall, on the ensuing Twelfth-Night. We have selected these from similar examples furnished by Sandys, in order to give our readers some idea of the sums expended in these entertainments ;-which sums will appear very considerable, when estimated by the difference between the value of money in our days and that of two hundred years ago. Several of the masques presented at court during this and the preceding reigns were written by Ben Jonson.

During the whole of this time, the forms of court ceremonial appear to have been aped, and the royal establishments imitated as far as possible, by the more powerful nobles; and the masques and pageantries exhibited for the royal amusement were accordingly reproduced or rivalled by them, at their princely mansions in the country. Corporate and other public bodies caught the infection all over the land; and each landed proprietor and country squire endeavored to enact such state in the eyes of his own retainers, as his means would allow. The sports and festivities of the season were everywhere taken under the protection of the lord of the soil; and all classes of his dependents had a customary claim upon the hospitalities which he prepared for the occasion. The masques of the court and of the nobles were imitated in the mummings of the people,—which we shall have occasion particularly to describe hereafter, they having survived the costly pageants of which they were the humble representatives. The festival was thus rendered an universal one, and its amusements brought within the reach of the indigent and the remote. The peasant, and even the pauper, were made, as it were, once a year, sharers in the mirth of their immediate lord, and even of the monarch himself. The laboring classes had enlarged privileges, during this season, not only by custom, but by positive enactment; and restrictive acts of parliament, by which they were prohibited from certain games at other periods, con

tained exceptions in favor of the Christmas-tide. Nay, folly was, as it were, crowned, and disorder had a licence ! Sandys quotes from Leland the form of a proclamation given in his "Itinerary," as having been made by the sheriff of York; wherein it is declared that all "thieves, dice-play ers carders" (with some other characters by name, that are usually repudiated by the guardians of order), "and all other unthrifty folke, be welcome to the towne, whether they come late or early, att the reverence of the high feast of Youle, till the twelve dayes be passed." The terms of this proclamation were, no doubt, not intended to be construed in a grave and literal sense; but were probably meant to convey something like a satire upon the unbounded licence of the season which they thus announce.

There are very pleasant evidences of the care which was formerly taken, in high quarters, that the poor should not be robbed of their share in this festival. The yearly increasing splendor of the royal celebrations appears, at one time, to have threatened that result, by attracting the country gentlemen from their own seats, and thereby withdrawing them from the presidency of those sports which were likely to languish in their absence. Ac. cordingly we find an order, in 1589, issued to the gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk, commanding them "to depart from London, before Christmas, and to repair to their countries, there to keep hospitality amongst their neighbors." And similar orders appear to have been, from time to time, necessary, and, from time to time, repeated.

Amongst those bodies who were distinguished for the zeal of their Christmas observances, honorable mention may be made of the two English universities; and we shall have occasion hereafter to show that traces of the old ceremonials linger still in those, their ancient haunts. But the reader who is unacquainted with this subject, would scarcely be prepared to look for the most conspicuous celebration of these revels, with all their antics and mummeries, in the grave and dusty retreats of the law. Such, however, was the case. The lawyers beat the doctors hollow. Their ancient halls have rung with the sounds of a somewhat barbarous revelry; and the walls thereof, had they voices, could tell many an old tale, which the present occupants might not con

sider as throwing any desirable light upon the historical dignities of the body to which they belong. Our readers, no doubt, remember a certain scene in Guy Mannering, wherein the farmer Dinmont and Colonel Mannering are, somewhat inconsiderately, intruded upon the carousals of Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, at his tavern in the city of Edinburgh; and find that worthy lawyer in what are called his " altitudes," being deeply engaged in the ancient, and not very solemn, pastime of “High Jinks." Their memory may probably present the counsellor, "enthroned as a monarch, in an elbow-chair, placed on the dining-table, his scratch-wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine,”—and recall, assisted by the jingle, some of the high discourse of his surrounding court ;—

"Where is Gerunto, now? and what's become of him?"
"Gerunto's drowned, because he could not swim," &c.

Now, if our readers shall be of opinion,-as Colonel Mannering and the farmer were, that the attitude and the occupation were scarcely consistent with the dignity of a gentleman whom they had come to consult on very grave matters, we may be as much to blame as was the tavern-waiter on that occasion, in introducing them to the revels of the Inns of Court. We will do what we can to soften such censure, by stating that there certainly appears, at times, to have arisen a suspicion, in the minds of a portion of the profession, that the wig and gown were not figuring to the best possible advantage, on these occasions. For, in the reign of the first James, we find an order issued by the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, whereby the "under barristers were, by decimation, put out of commons, because the whole bar offended, by not dancing on Candlemas-day preceding, according to the ancient order of the society, when the judges were present ;" and this order is accompanied by a threat, "that if the fault were repeated, they should be fined or disbarred."

There seems to have been a contest between the four Inns of Court as to which should get up these pageantries with the greatest splendor; and occasionally, a struggle between the desire of victory, and the disinclination, or perhaps inability, to furnish the

heavy cost at which that victory was to be secured. Most curious particulars on these subjects are furnished by the accomptbooks of the houses,-by the "Gesta Grayorum" (which was published for the purpose of describing a celebrated Christmas kept at Gray's Inn, in 1594, and had its title imitated from the then popular work called the "Gesta Romanorum”),—by Dugdale, in his " Origines Juridiciales," and by Nichols, in his "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.” For some time, Lincoln's Inn appears to have carried it all its own way, having been first on the ground. The Christmas celebrations seem to have been kept by this society from as early a period as the reign of Henry VI.; although it was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that they began to grow into celebrity, or, at least, that we have any account of their arrangements. When, however, the societies of the two Temples, and that of Gray's Inn, began, with a laudable jealousy, to contest the palm of splendor, the necessary expenditure appears, occasionally, to have "given them pause." Accordingly, they held anxious meetings, at the approach of the season, to decide the important question-whether Christmas should be kept that year or not ?—and one of the registers of the society of Lincoln's Inn, bearing date the 27th of November, in the twenty-second year of Henry VIII.'s reign, contains the following order :-" Yt is agreed, that, if the two Temples do kepe Chrystemas, then Chrystemas to be kept here; and to know this, the Steward of the House ys commanded to get knowledge, and to advertise my master by the next day at night."

There is a curious story told in Baker's Chronicle, of an awkward predicament into which the society of Gray's Inn brought themselves by a play which they enacted amongst their Christmas revels of 1527. The subject of this play was to the effect that "Lord Governance was ruled by Dissipation and Negligence; by whose evil order Lady Public-Weal was put from Governance." Now, if these gentlemen did not intend, by this somewhat delicate moral, any insinuation against the existing state of things (which, being lawyers, and therefore courtiers, there is good motive to believe they did not) it is, at all events, certain that, as lawyers, they ought to have known better how to steer clear of all offence to weak consciences. That respectable min

ister, Cardinal Wolsey, felt himself (as we think he had good right to do) greatly scandalized at what, if not designed, was, by accident, a palpable hint ;—and, in order to teach the gentlemen of Gray's Inn that they were responsible for wounds given, if they happened to shoot arrows in the dark, he divested the ingenious author, Sergeant Roe, of his coif, and committed him to the Fleet, together with one of the actors, of the name of Moyle,—in order to afford them leisure for furnishing him with a satisfactory explanation of the matter.

In Dugdale's" Origines Juridiciales," we have an account of a magnificent Christmas which was kept at the Inner Temple, in the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign ;- -at which the Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, presided, under the mock-title of Palaphilos, Prince of Sophie, High Constable Marshal of the Knights Templars, and Patron of the honorable order of Pegasus. A potentate with such a title would have looked very foolish without a "tail;"-and accordingly, he had for his master of the game, no less a lawyer than Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, with four masters of the revels, a variety of other officers, and fourscore persons forming a guard. Gerard Leigh, who was so fortunate as to obtain the dignity of a knight of Pegasus, describes, as an eye-witness, in his "Accidence of Armorie," the solemn fooleries which were enacted on the occasion, by these worthies of the sword and of the gown.

Of course, it was not to be expected that such shrewd courtiers as lawyers commonly are, if they had ever kept Christmas at all, should fail to do so, during the reign of this virgin queen,-when its celebration offered them such admirable opportunities for the administration of that flattery which was so agreeable to her majesty, and might, possibly, be so profitable to themselves. We have great pleasure in recording a speech made by her majesty, on one of these occasions, nearly so much as two centuries and a half ago, but which, for its great excellence, has come down to our days. The gentlemen of Gray's Inn (their wits, probably, a little sharpened by the mistake which they had made in her father's time) had ventured upon a dramatic performance again; and, in the course of a masque which they represented before the