y scarcely with any justice
withhold our meed of praise and admiration of the philosophy of those old
monks, who, seeing the immorality that characterized the exhibitions
provided by strolling players, jugglers, tumblers, dancers, and jesters,
journeying from town to town, and castle to castle, and filling the large
square court-yards provided for their express accommodation by every
house of any pretensions to rank, set their inventive powers to work, to
find a substitute for these recreations of dubious tendency, and
endeavoured to supersede the secular by the religious drama.
Appolonarius, and Gregory, Archbishop of Constantinople, had done
likewise, and dramatised scenes both from the Old and New Testament, as
substitutes for Euripides and Sophocles, when the study of Greek
philosophy was deemed heresy, and to have read Virgil required from St.
Augustine penitence and prayer for pardon. Hence priests turned
playwrights and actors, and instead of profane mummeries presented
scriptural stories, or legendary tales, which they at least deemed
improving and instructive. Most old cities present traces, more or less
distinct, of these specimens of clerical ingenuity.

The Coventry and Chester mysteries have been preserved almost entire;
royalty honoured them with its presence, both in the person of Richard
III. and Henry VII. and his queen; York and London have contributed their
store of relics, and the performances of the company of Clerks that gave
the name to far-famed Clerkenwell, and the fraternity of the Holy
Trinity, St. Botolph's Aldersgate, have become matters of history.

We have to borrow light from these richer stores, to comprehend the full
meaning of the few traces left among our chronicles, that bear evidence
of similar practices in the other localities; and here we return to the
petition of the St. Luke's guild or fraternity. Each branch of trade had
then its company, or guild, and was governed by laws of its own, under
general supervision of the municipal authorities. The St. Luke's guild
was composed of pewterers, braziers, bell-founders, plumbers, glaziers,
stainers, and other trades, and upon them it would seem that the whole
expense of the Whitsunside dramatic entertainments had fallen; wherefore
they besought their "discreet wisdoms" to enact, and ordain, and
establish, that every occupation within the city, should yearly, at the
procession on Monday in Pentecost week, set forth one pageant, by th