ne Providence, from the Creation to the Day of
Judgment, is set before the spectator. Four noted groups of plays were
the Chester, the Towneley, Coventry, and York Mystery plays. The Chester
plays began on Whit Monday, and, continued till the following Wednesday.
Permission to perform them, in the beginning of their institution, had
twice to be asked of the Pope. They consisted of 24 plays, and were
almost annually performed till 1577. Before the suppression of the
monasteries the Grey Friars at Coventry were celebrated for their
exhibitions of the Mystery plays usually on _Corpus Christi_. The
Towneley, or Woodkirk group of plays were acted at Woodkirk, about four
miles from Wakefield, and they are of a style that may be likened to the
times of Henry VI., or Edward IV. Until the Mystery play fell into
disuse, the trading companies and guilds seem principally to have
maintained them. The mixture of secular with ecclesiastical players
helped to change the characters of the English plays and to provoke
censure, which began to be levelled at them from the beginning of the
thirteenth century.

The practise of performing plays in sacred edifices in England, had not
ceased in 1542, when Bishop Bonner prohibited them in his diocese.
However, so late as 1572, it appears that Interludes were occasionally
performed in Churches.

Collier speaks of a kind of Mystery, or Miracle play, exhibited in the
last century, with the characters of Herod, Beelzebub, and others. In
1838 Sandy mentions of having seen the play of "St. George and the
Dragon," presented in the Northern and Western parts of the Kingdom, or
rather Queendom, as Victoria had just ascended the throne. I myself
remember quite well, within a couple of decades ago, what was probably
at the time a remnant of the old Mystery play presented in a rural part
of Lancashire by men in a fantastic garb, and termed by the country
folk, "Paste-eggers." They generally appeared about Good Friday and on
to Easter; and their performance consisted of a mixture of music (?),
songs, and sometimes not over choice language. This custom does not now
exist where I write of, but it may do--though I very much doubt--in some
rural parts. On the Continent, as at Oberammergau, Mystery plays are
still enacted.

The following account of the Chester Mysteries may be of interest, and
appears (says Warton) in the Harleian Catalogue. M.S. Harl. 2013, etc.
Exhibited at Chester in the year 1327 at the ex