inerant players sometimes invaded the province of the churchmen, and
performed their mysteries, or others similar to them, as we find from
a petition presented to Richard II. by the scholars of St. Paul's
School, wherein complaint is made against the secular actors, because
they took upon themselves to act plays composed from the Scripture
history, to the great prejudice of the clergy, who had been at much
expense to prepare such performances for public exhibition at the
festival of Christmas."

[Illustration: A COURT FOOL.]

In his Christmas feasts Richard the Second outdid his predecessors in
prodigal hospitality. He delighted in the neighbourhood of Eltham,
and spent much of his time in feasting with his favourites at the
royal palace there. In 1386 (notwithstanding the still prevalent
distress, which had continued from the time of the peasant revolt)
Richard kept the Christmas festivities at Eltham with great
extravagance, at the same time entertaining Leon, King of Armenia, in
a manner utterly unjustified by the state of the royal exchequer,
which had been replenished by illegal methods. And, on the completion
of his enlargements and embellishments of Westminster Hall, Richard
reopened it with "a most royal Christmas feast" of twenty-eight oxen
and three hundred sheep, and game and fowls without number, feeding
ten thousand guests for many days. Yet but a few years afterwards
(such is the fickleness of fortune and the instability of human
affairs) this same king, who had seen the "Merciless Parliament," who
had robbed Hereford of his estates, who had been robed in cloth of
gold and precious stones, and who had alienated his subjects by his
own extravagance, was himself deposed and sentenced to lifelong
banishment, his doom being pronounced in the very hall which he had
reared to such magnificence for his own glory. Thus ingloriously
Richard disappears from history, for nothing certain is known of the
time, manner, or place of his death, though it is conjectured that he
was speedily murdered. How history repeats itself! Richard's
ignominious end recalls to mind the verse in which an English poet
depicts the end of an Eastern king who was too fond of revelling:--

"That night they slew him on his father's throne,
The deed unnoticed and the hand unknown:
Crownless and sceptreless Belshazzar lay,
A robe of purple round a form of clay!"

[Illustration]

GRAND CHRISTMAS TOURNAMENT.

An example of the to