Christmas: Its Origin and Associations Part 9

called his first Parliament at Westminster, and concluded the session by the unusual but popular measure of a speech from the throne to the Commons delivered by himself. It was during this session that the statute was pa.s.sed prohibiting the great and rich from giving or wearing any liveries or signs of companionship, except while serving under the king; from receiving or maintaining plunderers, robbers, malefactors, or unlawful hunters; and from allowing dice and cards in their houses beyond the twelve days of Christmas (Parl. Rolls, 488).

The Christmas festival was kept by Edward IV. with great magnificence, the king's natural inclinations leading him to adopt whatever was splendid and costly. "At the Christmas festivities he appeared in a variety of most costly dresses, of a form never seen before, which he thought displayed his person to considerable advantage" (_Croyland Chronicler_). Sir Frederick Madden's narrative of the visit of the Lord of Granthuse, Governor of Holland, to Edward, in 1472, paints in glowing colours the luxury of the English Court. On his arrival at Windsor he was received by Lord Hastings, who conducted him to the chambers of the King and Queen. These apartments were richly hung with cloth of gold arras. When he had spoken with the King, who presented him to the Queen's Grace, the Lord Chamberlain, Hastings, was ordered to conduct him to his chamber, where supper was ready for him. "After he had supped the King had him brought immediately to the Queen's own chamber, where she and her ladies were playing at the marteaux [a game played with small b.a.l.l.s of different colours]; and some of her ladies were playing at closheys [ninepins] of ivory, and dancing, and some at divers other games: the which sight was full pleasant to them.

Also the King danced with my Lady Elizabeth, his eldest daughter. In the morning when Matins was done, the King heard, in his own chapel, Our Lady-Ma.s.s, which was most melodiously chaunted, the Lord Granthuse being present. When the Ma.s.s was done, the King gave the said Lord Granthuse a cup of gold, garnished with pearl. In the midst of the cup was a great piece of unicorn's horn, to my estimation seven inches in compa.s.s; and on the cover of the cup a great sapphire." After breakfast the King came into the Quadrangle. "My Lord Prince, also, borne by his Chamberlain, called Master Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet in her own chamber, at which King Edward, her eldest daughter the Lady Elisabeth, the d.u.c.h.ess of Exeter, the Lady Rivers, and the Lord of Granthuse, all sat with her at one mess; and, at the same table, sat the Duke of Buckingham, my Lady, his wife, with divers other ladies, my Lord Hastings, Chamberlain to the King, my Lord Berners, Chamberlain to the Queen, the son of Lord Granthuse, and Master George Barthe, Secretary to the Duke of Burgundy, Louis Stacy, Usher to the Duke of Burgundy, George Martigny, and also certain n.o.bles of the King's own court. There was a side table, at which sat a great view (_show_) of ladies, all on the one side. Also, in the outer chamber, sat the Queen's gentlewomen, all on one side. And on the other side of the table, over against them, as many of the Lord Granthuse's servants, as touching to the abundant welfare, like as it is according to such a banquet. And when they had supped my Lady Elizabeth, the King's eldest daughter, danced with the Duke of Buckingham and divers other ladies also. Then about nine of the clock, the King and the Queen, with her ladies and gentlewomen, brought the said Lord of Granthuse to three chambers of plesance, all hanged with white silk and linen cloth, and all the floors covered with carpets.

There was ordained a bed for himself of as good down as could be gotten. The sheets of Rennes cloth and also fine fustians; the counterpane, cloth of gold, furred with ermines. The tester and ceiler also shining cloth of gold; the curtains of white sarcenet; as for his head-suit and pillows, they were of the Queen's own ordonnance. In the second chamber was likewise another state-bed, all white. Also, in the same chamber, was made a couch with feather beds, and hanged with a tent, knit like a net, and there was a cupboard. In the third chamber was ordained a bayne (_bath_) or two, which were covered with tents of white cloth. And, when the King and the Queen with all her ladies and gentlemen had showed him these chambers, they turned again to their own chambers, and left the said Lord Granthuse there, accompanied with the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), who undressed him, and they both went together to the bath.--And when they had been in their baths as long as was their pleasure, they had green ginger, divers syrups, comfits, and ipocras, and then they went to bed. And in the morning he took his cup with the King and Queen, and returned to Westminster again."

In 1465 Edward the Fourth and his Queen kept Christmas in the Abbey at Coventry, and for six days (says _William Wyrcester_) "the Duke of Clarence dissembled there."

In 1478 the King celebrated the Christmas festival at Westminster with great pomp, wearing his crown, feasting his n.o.bles, and making presents to his household; and in 1482-3 he kept a splendid Christmas at Eltham, more than two thousand people being fed at his expense every day. Edward almost entirely rebuilt Eltham Palace, of which the hall was the n.o.blest part. In that hall he kept the Christmas festival, "with bountiful hospitality for high and low, and abundance of mirth and sport."

One of the continental visitors who partic.i.p.ated in the royal festivities of this period was Leo von Rozmital, brother of George, King of Bohemia. His retinue included Tetzel, who, in describing the Court of Edward the Fourth, after remarking upon Edward's own handsome person, says, "The king has the finest set of courtiers that a man may find in Christendom. He invited my Lord Leo and all his n.o.ble companions, and gave them a very costly feast, and also he gave to each of them the medal of his order, to every knight a golden one, and to every one who was not a knight a silver one; and he himself hung them upon their necks. Another day the king called us to court. In the morning the queen (Elizabeth Woodville) went from child-bed to church with a splendid procession of many priests, bearing relics, and many scholars, all singing, and carrying burning candles. Besides there was a great company of women and maidens from the country and from London, who were bidden to attend. There were also a great number of trumpeters, pipers, and other players, with forty-two of the king's singing men, who sang very sweetly. Also, there were four and twenty heralds and pursuivants, and sixty lords and knights. Then came the queen, led by two dukes, and with a canopy borne over her. Behind her followed her mother and above sixty ladies and maidens. Having heard the service sung, and kneeled down in the church, she returned with the same procession to her palace. Here all who had taken part in the procession were invited to a feast, and all sat down, the men and the women, the clergy and the laity, each in his rank, filling four large rooms. Also, the king invited my lord and all his n.o.ble attendants to the table where he usually dined with his courtiers. And one of the king's greatest lords must sit at the king's table upon the king's stool, in the place of the king; and my lord sat at the same table only two steps below him. Then all the honours which were due to the king had to be paid to the lord who sat in his place, and also to my lord; and it is incredible what ceremonies we observed there. While we were eating, the king was making presents to all the trumpeters, pipers, players, and heralds; to the last alone he gave four hundred n.o.bles, and every one, when he received his pay, came to the tables and told aloud what the king had given him. When my lord had done eating, he was conducted into a costly ornamented room, where the queen was to dine, and there he was seated in a corner that he might see all the expensive provisions. The queen sat down on a golden stool alone at her table, and her mother and the queen's sister stood far below her. And when the queen spoke to her mother or to the king's sister, they kneeled down every time before her, and remained kneeling until the queen drank water. And all her ladies and maids, and those who waited upon her, even great lords, had to kneel while she was eating, which continued three hours(!). After dinner there was dancing, but the queen remained sitting upon her stool, and her mother kneeled before her. The king's sister danced with two dukes, and the beautiful dances and reverences performed before the queen--the like I have never seen, nor such beautiful maidens. Among them were eight d.u.c.h.esses, and above thirty countesses and others, all daughters of great people. After the dance the king's singing men came in and sang.

When the king heard ma.s.s sung in his private chapel my lord was admitted: then the king had his relics shown to us, and many sacred things in London. Among them we saw a stone from the Mount of Olives, upon which there is the footprint of Jesus Christ, our Lady's girdle, and many other relics."

CARDS AND OTHER CHRISTMAS DIVERSIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

The amus.e.m.e.nts of the people in the fifteenth century are referred to by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., who says: "In England, in the third year of the reign of Edward IV. (1463), the importation of playing-cards, probably from Germany, was forbidden, among other things, by Act of Parliament; and as that Act is understood to have been called for by the English manufacturers, who suffered by the foreign trade, it can hardly be doubted that cards were then manufactured in England on a rather extensive scale. Cards had then, indeed, evidently become very popular in England; and only twenty years afterwards they are spoken of as the common Christmas game, for Margery Paston wrote as follows to her husband, John Paston, on the 24th of December in 1483:--'Please it you to weet (_know_) that I sent your eldest son John to my Lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in the Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports, but playing at the tables, and the chess, and _cards_--such disports she gave her folks leave to play, and none other.... I sent your younger son to the lady Stapleton, and she said according to my lady Morley's saying in that, and as she had seen used in places of worship (_gentlemen's houses_) there as she had been.' ... After the middle of the fifteenth century, cards came into very general use; and at the beginning of the following century, there was such a rage for card-playing, that an attempt was made early in the reign of Henry VIII. to restrict their use by law to the period of Christmas. When, however, people sat down to dinner at noon, and had no other occupation for the rest of the day, they needed amus.e.m.e.nt of some sort to pa.s.s the time; and a poet of the fifteenth century observes truly--

'A man may dryfe forthe the day that long tyme dwellis With harpyng and pipyng, and other mery spellis, With gle, and wyth game.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: LADY MUSICIAN OF THE 15TH CENTURY.]

Another book well known to bibliomaniacs ("Dives and Pauper," ed. W.

de Worde; 1496) says: "For to represente in playnge at Crystma.s.se herodes and the thre kynges and other processes of the gospelles both then and at Ester and other tymes also it is lefull and c[=o]mendable."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUSTIC CHRISTMAS MINSTREL WITH PIPE AND TABOR.]

EDWARD THE FIFTH

succeeded his father, Edward IV., in the dangerous days of 1483. He was at Ludlow when his father died, being under the guardianship of his uncle, Earl Rivers, and attended by other members of the Woodville family. Almost immediately he set out for London, but when he reached Stony Stratford, on April 29th, he was met by his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had arrested Lord Rivers and Lord Richard Grey. The young king (a boy of thirteen) renewed his journey under Gloucester's charge, and on reaching London was lodged in the Tower. His mother, on hearing of the arrest of Rivers and Grey, had taken sanctuary at Westminster. Lord Hastings, a supporter of the king, was arrested and executed because he would not sanction Gloucester's nefarious schemes for obtaining the throne. About the same time Rivers and Grey were beheaded at Pontefract, whither they had been taken by Gloucester's orders. Soon afterwards the Queen was compelled to deliver up the young Duke of York to Richard, who sent him to join his brother in the Tower. On June 22nd, at the request of Richard, Dr. Shaw, brother of the Lord Mayor of London, delivered a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, in which he insisted on the illegitimacy of Edward V. and his brother. On June 25th a deputation of n.o.bles and citizens of London offered the crown to Richard. He accepted it, and began to reign as Richard III.

And, according to a confession afterwards made by Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard's officers, the two young princes remained in the Tower, being put to death by their Uncle Richard's orders. Thus, atrociously, began the reign of the murderous usurper,

RICHARD THE THIRD.

The King kept his first Christmas at Kenilworth Castle, having previously visited the city of Coventry, at the festival of _Corpus Christi_, to see the plays. The accounts of Kenilworth Castle show that in 1484 John Beaufitz was paid 20 "for divers reparacions made in the Castell of Kyllingworth" by order of Richard III. At this time, says Philip de Comines, "he was reigning in greater splendour and authority than any king of England for the last hundred years." The following year Richard kept Christmas in the great hall at Westminster, celebrating the festival with great pomp and splendour, encouraging the recreations usual at the season, and so attentively observing the ancient customs that a warrant is entered for the payment of "200 marks for certain new year's gifts bought against the feast of Christmas." The festivities continued without interruption until the day of the Epiphany, when they terminated with an entertainment of extraordinary magnificence given by the monarch to his n.o.bles in Westminster Hall--"the King himself wearing his crown,"

are the words of the Croyland historian, "and holding a splendid feast in the great hall, similar to that of his coronation." "Little did Richard imagine that this would be the last feast at which he would preside--the last time he would display his crown in peace before his a.s.sembled peers."[33] An allusion to this Christmas festival, and to the King's wicked nature, is contained in a note to Bacon's "Life of King Henry VII.," which says: "Richard's wife was Anne, the younger daughter of Warwick the King-maker. She died 16th March, 1485. It was rumoured that her death was by poison, and that Richard wished to marry his niece Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. It is said that in the festivities of the previous Christmas the Princess Elizabeth had been dressed in robes of the same fashion and colour as those of the Queen. Ratcliffe and Catesby, the King's confidants, are credited with having represented to Richard that this marriage of so near a kinswoman would be an object of horror to the people, and bring on him the condemnation of the clergy."

At a Christmas festival at Rhedon, in Brittany, Henry of Richmond met English exiles to the number of 500, and swore to marry Elizabeth of York as soon as he should subdue the usurper; and thereupon the exiles unanimously agreed to support him as their sovereign. On the 1st of August, 1485, Henry set sail from Harfleur with an army of 3,000 men, and a few days afterwards landed at Milford Haven. He was received with manifest delight, and as he advanced through Wales his forces were increased to upwards of 6,000 men. Before the close of the month he had encountered the royal army and slain the King at Bosworth Field, and by this memorable victory had terminated the terrible Wars of the Roses and introduced into England a new dynasty.

[19] Browning.

[20] "Every-day Book," vol. ii. p. 1635.

[21] "Shorter Poems."

[22] Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Brittany, Flanders, and the adjoining countries; translated from the original French, at the command of King Henry the Eighth, by John Bourchier, Lord Berners. London edition, 1812.

[23] Ca.s.sell's "History of England."

[24] Creighton's "Life of Edward the Black Prince."

[25] "Sports and Pastimes."

[26] Ca.s.sell's "History of England."

[27] Shakespeare.

[28] "History of Chivalry."

[29] "Sandringham Past and Present, 1888."

[30] King's Lynn Chamberlains' Accounts Rolls, 23rd of Henry VI.

[31] "Chronicles of the White Rose of York."

[32] "Paston Letters."

[33] Halstead's "Life of Richard III."

CHAPTER VI.

CHRISTMAS UNDER HENRY VII. AND HENRY VIII.

(1485-1547.)

HENRY THE SEVENTH

Was the son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, son of Owen Tudor, a Welsh gentleman who had married the widow of Henry V. His mother, Margaret, was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford. In early life Henry was under the protection of Henry VI.; but after the battle of Tewkesbury he was taken by his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, to Brittany for safety. Edward IV. made several unsuccessful attempts to get him into his power, and Richard III. also sent spies into Brittany to ascertain his doings. On Christmas Day, 1483, the English exiles, who gathered round Henry in Brittany, took an oath in the Cathedral of Rheims to support him in ousting Richard and succeeding him to the English throne. Henry, on his part, agreed to reconcile the contending parties by marrying Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter and co-heir of Edward IV., and this promise he faithfully kept. After his defeat of Richard the Third at Bosworth he a.s.sumed the royal t.i.tle, advanced to London, and had himself crowned King of England; and at the following Christmas festival he married Elizabeth of York. The Archbishop who married them (Archbishop Bourchier) had crowned both Richard III. and Henry VII., and Fuller quaintly describes this last official act of marrying King Henry to Elizabeth of York as the holding of "the posie on which the White Rose and the Red Rose were tied together." And Bacon says, "the so-long-expected and so-much-desired marriage between the King and the Lady Elizabeth was celebrated with greater triumph and demonstrations, especially on the people's part, of joy and gladness, than the days either of his entry or coronation."

The Christmas festivities were attended to with increasing zest during the reign of Henry VII., for the King studied magnificence quite as much as his predecessors had done. His riding dress was "a doublet of green or white cloth of gold satin, with a long gown of purple velvet, furred with ermine, powdered, open at the sides, and purpled with ermine, with a rich sarpe (scarf) and garter." His horse was richly caparisoned, and bore a saddle of estate, covered with gold. His Majesty was attended by seven henchmen, clothed in doublets of crimson satin, with gowns of white cloth of gold. The Queen appeared with equal splendour, "wearing a round circle of gold, set with pearls and precious stones, arrayed in a kirtle of white damask cloth of gold, furred with miniver pure, garnished, having a train of the same, with damask cloth of gold, furred with ermine, with a great lace, and two b.u.t.tons and ta.s.sels of white silk, and gold at the breast above." And the royal apartments were kept with great splendour. At his ninth Christmas festival (Dec. 31, 1494) the King established new rules for the government of the royal household (preserved among the Harleian MSS.), which he directed should be kept "in most straightest wise."

The Royal Household Book of the period, in the Chapter-house at Westminster, contains numerous disburs.e.m.e.nts connected with Christmas diversions. In the seventh year of this reign is a payment to Wat Alyn (Walter Alwyn) in full payment for the disguising made at Christmas, 14 13s. 4d., and payments for similar purposes occur in the following years. Another book, also in the Chapter-house, called "The Kyng's boke of paymentis," contains entries of various sums given to players and others who a.s.sisted to amuse the King at Christmas, and among the rest, to the Lord of Misrule (or Abbot as he is sometimes called), for several years, "in rewarde for his besynes in Crestenmes holydays, 6 13s. 4d." The plays at this festival seem to have been acted by the "gentlemen of the King's Chapell," as there are several liberal payments to certain of them for playing on Twelfth Night; for instance, an entry on January 7th, 23 Henry VII., of a reward to five of them of 6 13s. 4d., for acting before the King on the previous night; but there was a distinct set of players for other times.

Leland, speaking of 1489, says: "This Cristmas I saw no disgysyngs, and but right few plays. But ther was an Abbot of Misrule, that made much sport and did right well his office." In the following year, however, "on neweres day at nyght, there was a goodly disgysyng," and "many and dyvers pleyes."

That the Christmas festival did not pa.s.s un.o.bserved by the men of this period who navigated the high seas we know from the name of a Cuban port which was

A CHRISTMAS DISCOVERY BY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

On Christmas Day, 1492, Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Genoese navigator, landed at a newly-discovered port in Cuba, which he named Navidad, because he landed there on Christmas Day.

THE FIRE AT THE ROYAL RESIDENCE, SHENE,