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OBSERVATIONS, &c. ON THE PRECEDING

CHARGES.

The churchwarden's accounts of a particular parish may in themselves be thought, justly, as a matter of no great consequence, and not worthy of much regard. But these seem to deserve some consideration, as they relate to a very remarkable period in our history, and prove by facts the great alterations that were made in religious affairs under the reigns of queen Mary and queen Elizabeth, together with the time and manner of putting them into execution; and may therefore serve both to confirm and illustrate several things related by our ecclesiastical historians.

1. We find mention made in these extracts of the rood and rood loft. By the former of which was meant either a crucifix, or the image of some saint erected in popish churches. And here that name is given to the images of saint Mary and saint John, and to saint Helen, the patroness of the church. These images were set in shrines, or tabernacles, and the place where they stood was called the rood loft, which was commonly over or near the passage out of the body of the church into the chancel. In 1548, the first of king Edward VI., all images and their shrines were ordered to be taken down, as bishop Burnett informs us. But they were restored again on the accession of queen Mary, as we find here, by

the first article.

2. The ship for frankincense, mentioned in the year 1556, was a small vessel in the form of a ship or boat, in which the Roman catholics burn frankincense to perfume their churches and images.

3. The boke of articles, purchased in 1556, seems to be that which was printed and sent over the kingdom by order of queen Mary, at the end of the year 1554, containing instructions to the bishops for visiting the clergy.

4. We find frequent mention made of lights and other expenses at a funeral, the months mind, the years and two years mind, and the obit of deceased persons, which were masses performed at those seasons for the rest of their souls; the word mind, meaning the same as memorial or remembrance. And so it is used in a sermon yet extant of bishop Fisher, entitled A mornynge remembrance had at the monteth minde of the most noble prynces Margarete, countesse of Richmonde and Darbye, &c. As

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to the term obits, services of that kind seem to have been annually performed. The office of the mass for each of these solemni

ties may be seen in the Roman Missal, under the title of Missal pro defunctis. And it appears by the different sums here charged, that the expenses were suited to persons of all ranks, that none might be deprived of the benefit which was supposed

to accrue from them.

5. It was customary in popish countries on Good Friday to erect a small building, to represent the sepulchre of our Saviour. In this they put the host, and set a person to watch both that night and the next. On the following morning very early, the host being taken out, Christ is risen. This was done here in 1557 and two following years, Elizabeth. Du Fresne has given us a parthe last of which was in the reign of queen ticular account of this ceremony as performed at Rouen in France, where three persons in female habits used to go to the sepulchre, in which two others were placed to represent angels, who told them Christ was risen. (Latin Glossary, under the words Sepulchro officinum.) The building mentioned must have been very slight, since the whole expense amounted to no more than seventeen shillings and sixpence.

6. In the article of wax to thense the church, under the year 1558, the word thense might use wax with the frankincense in is, I presume, a mistake for cense, as they censing or perfuming the church.

7. In 1559 the altar was taken down, and in 1560 the communion table was put in its place, by order of queen Elizabeth.

8. Masses for the dead continued to this time, but here, instead of a moneths mynde, the expression is a months monument. But as that office was performed at the altar, and this being taken down that year, the other could not be performed. And yet we have the word mass applied to the service performed on Christmas-day the year following.

9. The morrice bells, mentioned under the year 1560 as purchased by the parish, were used in their mortice dances, a diversion then practised at their festivals; in which the populace might be indulged from a political view, to keep them in good humour.

10. In 1561 the rood loft was taken down, and in order to obliterate its remembrance, (as had been done before in the reign of king Edward VI.,) some passages out of the Bible were painted in the place where it stood, which could give but little offence, since the images had been removed

the preceding year by the queen's injunction, on the representation of the bishops.

11. In 1562 a Bible is said to have been bought for the church, which cost ten shillings. This, I suppose, was the Geneva Bible, in 4to., both on account of its low price, and because that edition, having the division of verses, was best suited for public use. It was an English translation, which had been revised and corrected by the English exiles at Geneva, in queen Mary's reign, and printed there in 1560, with a dedication to queen Elizabeth. In the year 1576 we find another Bible was bought, which was called the New Bible, and is said to have cost forty shillings; which must have been the large folio, usually called archbishop Parker's Bible, printed at London, in 1568, by Richard Jugge, the queen's printer. They had prayer-books, psalters, and song-books, for the churches in the beginning of this reign, as the whole Bible was not easily to be procured.

12. In 1565 there is a charge of sixpence for two common prayer-books against invading the Turke. It was then thought the common cause of the Christian states in

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Europe to oppose the progress of the Turkish arms by all methods, both civil and religious. And this year the Turks made a descent upon the Isle of Malta, where they besieged the town and castle of St. Michael four months, when, on the proach of the Christian fleet, they broke up the siege, and suffered considerable loss in their flight. (Thuanus, lib. 38.) And as the war was afterwards carried on between them and the emperor Maximillian in Hungary, the like prayer-books were annually purchased for the parish till the year 1569 inclusive.*

of convocation in 1562, and printed the year following. But in 1571, being again revised and ratified by act of parliament, they seem to have been placed in churches.

16. The last article in these extracts is fourpence for an houre glass for the pulpit. How early the custom was of using hour glasses in the pulpit, I cannot say; but this is the first instance of it I ever met with.

It is not to be thought that the same regulations were all made within the same time in all other places. That depended with the several bishops of their dioceses, and according to their zeal for the Reforma tion. Abingdon lies in the diocese of Salisbury, and, as bishop Jewel, who was first nominated to that see by queen Elizabeth, and continued in it till the year 1571, was so great a defender of the reformed religion, it is not to be doubted but every thing was there carried on with as much expedition as was judged consistent with prudence.

Garrick Plays.

No. XIII.

[From the "Battle of Alcazar, a Tragedy, 1594.]

Muly Mahamet, driven from his throne into a desart, robs the Lioness to feed his fainting Wife Calipolis.

Muly. Hold thee, Calipolis; feed, and faint no more.
This flesh I forced from a Lioness;

Meat of a Princess, for a Princess' meat.
Learn by her noble stomach to esteem

13. In 1566 there is an article of eight- Penury plenty in extremest dearth; eenpence for setting up Robin Hoode's bowere. This, I imagine, might be an arbour or booth, erected by the parish, at some festival. Though for what purpose it received that name I know not, unless it was designed for archers.

14. In 1573 charge is made of paper for four bookes of Geneva psalms. It is well known, that the vocal music in parochial churches received a great alteration under the reign of queen Elizabeth, being changed from antiphonyes into metrical psalmody, which is here called the Geneva psalms.

15. In the year 1578 tenpence were paid for a book of the articles. These articles were agreed to and subscribed for by both houses

Pref. ad Camdeni "Eliz." p. xxix. 1. i. g.

Who, when she saw her foragement bereit,
Pined not in melancholy or childish fear;
But, as brave minds are strongest in extremes,
So she, redoubling her former force,
Ranged through the woods, and rent the breeding

vaults

Of proudest savages, to save herself.
Feed then, and faint not, fair Calipolis;
For, rather than fierce famine shall prevail
To gnaw thy entrails with her thorny teeth,
The conquering Lioness shall attend on thee,
And lay huge heaps of slaughter'd carcases

As bulwarks in her way to keep her back.
I will provide thee of a princely Ospray,
That, as she flieth over fish in pools,
The fish shall turn their glistering bellies up,
And thou shall take the liberal choice of all.
Jove's stately Bird with wide-commanding wings
Shall hover still about thy princely head,

And beat down fowls by shoals into thy lap. Feed then, and faint not, fair Calipolis.*

[From the "Seven Champions of Christendom," by John Kirk, acted 1638.]

Calib, the Witch, in the opening Scene, in a Storm.

Calib. Ha! louder a little; so, that burst was well.
Again; ha, ha! house, house your heads, ye fear-
-struck mortal fools, when Calib's consort plays
A hunts-up to her. How rarely doth it languell
In mine ears! these are mine organs; the toad,
The bat, the raven, and the fell whistling bird,
Are all my anthem-singing quiristers.

Such sapless roots, and liveless wither'd woods,
Are pleasanter to me than to behold

The jocund month of May, in whose green head of youth
The amorous Flora strews her various flowers,
And smiles to see how brave she has deckt her girl.
But pass we May, as game for fangled fools,
That dare not set a foot in Art's dark, sec-
-ret, and bewitching path, as Calib has.

Here is my mansion

Within the rugged bowels of this cave,

This crag, this cliff, this den; which to behold
Would freeze to ice the hissing trammels of Medusa.
Yet here enthroned I sit, more richer in my spells
And potent charms, than is the stately Mountain Queen,
Drest with the beauty of her sparkling gems,
To vie a lustre 'gainst the heavenly lamps.
But we are sunk in these antipodes; so choakt
With darkness is great Calib's cave, that it

Can stifle day. It can ?-it shall-for we do loath the light;

And, as our deeds are black, we hug the night.

But where's this Boy, my GEORGE, my Love, my Life,
Whom Calib lately dotes on more than life?
I must not have him wander from my love
Farther than summons of my eye, or beck,
Can call him back again. But 'tis my fiend-
-begotten and deform'd Issuet, misleads him:
For which I'll rock him in a storm of hail,

And dash him 'gainst the pavement on the rocky den;
He must not lead my Joy astray from me.
The parents of that Boy, begetting him,
Begot and bore the issue of their deaths;
Which done, the Child I stole,
Thinking alone to triumph in his death,
And bathe my body in his popular gore;
But dove-like Nature favour'd so the Child,

*This address, for its barbaric splendor of conception, extravagant vein of promise, not to mention some idiomatic peculiarities, and the very structure of the verse, savours strongly of Marlowe; but the real author, I believe, is unknown.

A sort of young Caliban, her son, who presently enters, complaining of a "bloody coxcomb" which the Young Saint George had given him.

+ Cálib had killed the parents of the Young Saint George.

That Calib's killing knife fell from her hand; And, 'stead of stabs, I kiss'd the red-lipt Boy.

[From "Two Tragedies in One," by Robert Yarrington, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth.]

Truth, the Chorus, to the Spectators.

All
you, the sad Spectators of this Act,
Whose hearts do taste a feeling pensiveness
Of this unheard-of savage massacre :
Oh be far off to harbour such a thought,
As this audacious murderer put in act!
I see your sorrows flow up to the brim,
And overflow your cheeks with brinish tears:
But though this sight bring surfeit to the eye,
Delight your ears with pleasing harmony,
That ears may countercheck your eyes, and say,
"Why shed you tears? this deed is but a Play."

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Murderer to his Sister, about to stow away the trunk of the body, having severed it from the limbs.

Hark, Rachel! I will cross the water strait,
And fling this middle mention of a Man
Into some ditch.

:

It is curious, that this old Play comprises the distinct action of two Atrocities; the one a vulgar murder, committed in our own Thames Street, with the names and incidents truly and historically set down; the other a Murder in high life, supposed to be acting at the same time in Italy, the scenes alternating between that country and England the Story of the latter is mutatis mutandis no other than that of our own "Babes in the Wood," transferred to Italy, from delicacy no doubt to some of the family of the rich Wicked Uncle, who might yet be living. The treatment of the two differs as the romance-like narratives in "God's Revenge against Murder," in which the Actors of the Murders (with the trifling exception that they were Murderers) are represented as most accomplished and every way amiable young Gentlefolks of either sex-as much as that differs from the honest unglossing pages of the homely Newgate Ordinary.

C. L.

The whole theory of the reason of our delight in Tragic Representations, which has cost so many elaborate chapters of Criticism, is condensed in these four last lines: Aristotle quintessentialised.

The Old Bear Garden

AT BANKSIDE, SOUTHWARK.

BEAR BAITING-MASTERS OF THE BEARS AND DOGS-EDWARD ALLEYN-THE

FALCON TAVERN, &c.

The Bull and the Bear baiting, on the Bankside, seem to have preceded, in point of time, the several other ancient theatres of the metropolis. The precise date of their erection is not ascertained, but a Beargarden on the Bankside is mentioned by one Crowley, a poet, of the reign of Henry VIII., as being at that time in existence. He informs us, that the exhibitions were on a Sunday, that they drew full assemblies, and that the price of admission was then one halfpenny!

"What follie is this to keep with danger,
A great mastive dog, and fowle ouglie bear;
And to this end, to see them two fight,
With terrible tearings, a ful ouglie sight.

And methinkes those men are most fools of al,
Whose store of money is but very smal;
And yet every Sunday they wil surely spend
One penny or two, the bearward's living to mend.

"At Paris garden each Sunday, a man shal not fail To find two or three hundred for the bearwards vale, One halfpenny apiece they use for to give,

When some have no more in their purses, I believe;
Wel, at the last day, their conscience wil declare,
That the poor ought to have al that they may spare.
you therefore give to see a bear fight,
Be sure God his curse upon you wil light!"

If

Whether these "rough games," as a certain author terms them, were then exhibited in the same or similar amphitheatres, to those afterwards engraved in our old plans, or in the open air, the extract does not inform us. Nor does Stowe's account afford any better idea. He merely tells us, that there were on the west bank "two bear gardens, the old and the new; places, wherein were kept beares, bulls, and other beasts to be bayted; as also mastives in several kenels, nourished to bayt them. These beares and other beasts," he adds, 66 are there kept in plots of ground, scaffolded about, for the beholders to stand safe."

In Aggass's plan, taken 1574, and the plan of Braun, made about the same time, these plots of ground are engraved, with the addition of two circi, for the accommodation of the spectators, bearing the names of the "Bowll Baytyng, and the Beare Baytinge." In both plans, the buildings appear to be completely circular, and were evi

dently intended as humble imitations of the ancient Roman amphitheatre. They stood in two adjoining fields, separated only by a small slip of land; but some differences are observable in the spots on which they are built.

In Aggas's plan, which is the earliest, the disjoining slip of land contains only one large pond, common to the two places of exhibition; but in Braun, this appears divided into three ponds, besides a similar conveniency near each theatre. The use of these pieces of water is very well explained in Brown's Travels, (1685) who has given a plate of the "Elector of Saxony his beare garden at Dresden," in which is a large pond, with several bears amusing themselves in it; his account of which is highly curious:

"In the hunting-house, in the old town," says he," are fifteen bears, very well provided for, and looked unto. They have fountains and ponds, to wash themselves in, wherein they much delight: and near to the pond are high ragged posts or trees, set up for the bears to climb up, and scaffolds made at the top, to sun and dry themselves; where they will also sleep, and come and go as the keeper calls them."

The ponds, and dog-kennels, for the bears on the Bankside, are clearly marked in the plans alluded to; and the construction of the amphitheatres themselves may be tolerably well conceived, notwithstanding the smallness of the scale on which they are drawn. They evidently consisted, within-side, of a lower tier of circular seats for the spectators, at the back of which, a sort of screen ran all round, in part open, so as to admit a view from without, evident in Braun's delineation, by the figures who are looking through, on the outside. The buildings are unroofed, and in both plans shown during the time of performance, which in Aggas's view is announced by the display of little flags or streamers on the top. The dogs are tied up in slips near each, ready for the sport, and the combatants actually engaged in Braun's plan. Two little houses for retirement are at the head of each theatre.

The amusement of bear-baiting in England existed, however, long before the mention here made of it. In the Northumberland Household Book, compiled in the reign of Henry VII, enumerating " al maner of rewardis customable usede yearely to be yeven by my Lorde to strangers, as players, mynstraills, or any other strangers, whatsomever they be," are the following

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The Bear Garden in Southwark, a. d. 1574.

FROM THE LONG PRINT OF LONDON BY VISCHER CALLED THE ANTWERP VIEW.

"Furst, my Lorde usith and accustcmyth to gyff yerely, the Kinge or the Queene's barwarde. If they have one, when they custome to com unto hym, yearely-vj. s. viij. d."

66 Item, my Lorde usith and accustomyth to gyfe yerly, when his Lordshipe is at home, to his barward, when he comyth to my Lorde in Christmas, with his Lordshippe's beests, for makynge of his Lordship pastyme, the said xij. days-xx. s." It made one of the favourite amusements of the romantic age of queen Elizabeth, and was introduced among the princely pleasures of Kenilworth in 1575, where the droll author of the account introduces the bear and dogs deciding their ancient grudge per duellum.*

"Well, Syr (says he), the bearz wear brought foorth intoo coourt, the dogs set too them, too argu the points eeven face to face, they had learnd coounsell allso a both parts: what may they be coounted parciall that are retained but a to syde, I ween. No wery feers both tou and toother eager in argument: if the dog in pleadyng woold pluk the bear by the throte, the bear with trauers woould claw him again by the skaip, confess and a list; but a voyd a coold not that waz bound too the bar: and hiz counsell toll'd him that it coold be too him no poliecy in pleading. Thearfore, thus with fending and proouing, with plucking and tugging, skratting and byting, by plain tooth and nayll, a to side and

Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth, p. 22, quoted by toother, such erspes of blood and leather

Mr. Pennant, in his Account of London, p. 36.

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