for merry
Christmases and their pies; witness the Italian proverb, "_Ha piu di
fare che i forni di Natale in Inghilterra_:" "He has more business than
English ovens at Christmas." Wherever the king resided, there was
created for that merry season a Christmas prince, usually called "the
_Lord of Misrule_;" and whom the Scotch once knew under the significant
title of "the _Abbot of Unreason_." His office, according to Stowe, was
"to make the rarest pastimes to delight the beholder." Every nobleman,
and every great family, surrendered their houses, during this season, to
the Christmas prince, who found rivals or usurpers in almost every
parish; and more particularly, as we shall see, among the grave students
in our inns of court.

The Italian Polydore Vergil, who, residing here, had clearer notions of
this facetious personage, considered the Christmas Prince as peculiar to
our country. Without venturing to ascend in his genealogy, we must admit
his relationship to that ancient family of foolery we have noticed,
whether he be legitimate or not. If this whimsical personage, at his
creation, was designed to regulate "misrule," his lordship, invested
with plenary power, came himself, at length, to delight too much in his
"merry disports." Stubbes, a morose puritan in the days of Elizabeth,
denominates him "a grand captaine of mischiefe," and has preserved a
minute description of all his wild doings in the country; but as Strutt
has anticipated me in this amusing extract, I must refer to his "Sports
and Pastimes of the People of England," p. 254.[134] I prepare another
scene of unparalleled Saturnalia, among the grave judges and serjeants
of the law, where the Lord of Misrule is viewed amidst his frolicsome
courtiers, with the humour of hunting the fox and the cat with ten
couple of hounds round their great hall, among the other merry disports
of those joyous days when sages could play like boys.

For those who can throw themselves back amidst the grotesque humours and
clumsy pastimes of our ancestors, who, without what we think to be
taste, had whim and merriment--there has been fortunately preserved a
curious history of the manner in which "A grand Christmas" was kept at
our Inns of Court, by the grave and learned Dugdale, in his "Origines
Juridicales:" it is a complete festival of foolery, acted by the
students and law-officers. They held for that season everything in
mockery: they had a mock parliament, a Prince of _Sophie