[priests], and Jewys, sytting in here astat, lych [like] as it were a convocacyon'. The mechanical contrivances, necessary for this part of the exhibition, were no doubt of comparatively late invention and introduction. TREACHERY OF JUDAS.-CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. We return now to the Conspiratio Christi, No. 18 of the Widkirk plays. Pilate, with his 'burnished brand', Widkirk enforces silence; and as Herod had called himself the Plays. 'cousin', he terms himself 'the grandsire of Mahowne'. Pilate converses with Caiphas and Annas on the miracles wrought by Christ, and here the measure of the verse is peculiarly alliterative and difficult: for instance, Annas thus speaks of what he has seen Christ perform :— 'Lord, dom and defe, in oure present, Delivers he by downe and dayll : And unto us he takes no tent, But ilk man trowes unto his tayll.' The reduplication of the same rhyme added to the difficulty, and rendered considerable ingenuity necessary. Judas enters, and offers to betray his master, accepting thirty pence as his reward. What becomes of Pilate and Caiphas we are not informed; but we next find Christ eating the Paschal lamb, in the house of a person called only Pater Familias. Christ prophesies that Judas will betray him, and a personification of the Trinity is introduced, to tell the Saviour that he must descend into hell to release Adam, Eve, the Prophets, etc. What is termed the Captio Christi then takes place by Pilate, and by VOL. II. K some knights whom he calls 'curtes Kaysers of Kainys Kyn', i. e., 'courteous Cæsars of Cain's kindred'. In the next pageant (No. 19), Primus and Secundus Tortor carry Christ before Caiphas and Annas; and the former, provoked by the silence of the prisoner, wishes the devils durt in his beard', and threatens to 'thrust out both his een', and to 'put him in the stockkys', to 'murder him', and to hang him'. By advice of Annas Christ is sent before Pilate; and after the Tortores, aided by a person named Froward-taunt, have beaten. the Saviour, we find him on Pilate's scaffold in the succeeding piece (No. 20), Pilate having first made a speech, avowing himself 'full of sotelty, falshed, gyle, and trechery', and the friend of all the 'dere darlyngs of Mahowne', who 'use bak-bytings and slanderyngs'. He refuses to sentence Jesus, but while he washes his hands secretly gives orders for his crucifixion. John, the apostle, conveys the sad tidings to the Virgin, Mary Magdalen, etc.; and at the close of the play, Christ is brought in bearing his cross, and prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem. Processus Crucis forms the 21st play; and Pilate, having enjoined the 'harlots, dastards, thefes, and mychers' present to silence, the hands of the Saviour are bound, and the cross elevated: the Tortores taunt and insult Christ by pretending that he is a king, and that he is going to ride in a 'just or turnament'. The nailing upon and raising of the cross is a tedious process, and when it is ended, Jesus makes a long address, reproaching his persecutors, and among other things says: 'All creatures that kynde may kest,1 Bot gods son, that shuld be best, Has not where apon his hede to rest, Bot on his shulder bone." 1 Cast. Alluding, pathetically and picturesquely, to the manner in which his head, after the fatigue and agony he had endured, fell upon one shoulder. The Tortores' draw cuts' for Christ's garment, and after he is dead, Longius, ‘a blind knight', is led in: he thrusts a spear into the Saviour's side, and some of the blood flowing upon his eyes, his sight is restored. In the end, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take down the body from the cross. Besides the undertaking to betray Christ by Judas, the fourteenth play of the Chester collection includes the Chester forgiveness of Mary Magdalen, and the driving of the Plays. money-changers out of the temple. The fifteenth play is De cœnâ Domini: Judas points out his master, and a knight, named Malchus, seizing the Saviour, Peter cuts off the assailant's ear, which Christ, by merely touching, restores to it splace. In the sixteenth play, Jesus is carried before Herod, who thus addresses him : And prove some of thy postee, And moche the gladder woulde I bee Herod swears furiously because Jesus nihil respondebit, and dispatches him to Pilate, who asks Christ 'What is sothnes?' [truth] to which the Saviour replies, 'Sothnes came from godes see'. He is then handed over to the Jews, who, while insulting and torturing him, use what were subsequently known as Skeltonic verses.1 The close of the following quotation is very singular, considering where the scene of the play is supposed to be laid : "Tertius Judeus.-Now he is bounden, Be he never soe wounden, Soone he shalbe fonden With flapes in feare. Quartus Judeus.--In wo he was wonden, And his grave is gronden : No lad unto London Such law cane hym lere.'2 To this succeeds the denial of Christ by St. Peter, and the piece closes with the crucifixion, before the eyes of the spectators, but presenting nothing novel. The twenty-seventh pageant of the Ludus Coventria (they Coventry are sometimes numbered and divided differently) Plays. opens with Christ's prophecy regarding Jerusalem : it proceeds to the interview with Mary Magdalen, the Lord's Supper, and the betraying of Christ. The Devil, aside and unseen, rejoices in the calamity likely to befal the Saviour. Jesus in the next piece ascends Mount Olivet, and when he arrives in a place lych to a park, he byddys his disciples abyde hym'. Jesus subsequently descends to 'the place' or open space between the different scaffolds, and is there taken by 'ten personys weyl be seen in white arneys, [harness or armour] and breganders, and some dysgysed in odyr [other] garments, with swerdys [swords] gleyvys [glaives] and other straunge wepons, as cressetys with feyr, and lanternys and 1 From John Skelton, the poet of the reign of Henry VIII, who wrote usually in that measure. 2 Teach. torchis lyth' [light]. After what is marked as the twentyeighth play of this series, there is a separate leaf, with prayers by two doctors, which seem intended as a sort of prologue.1 The twenty-ninth pageant begins with a speech by Herod, declaring, To kylle a thousand Crystyn I gyf not an hawe, To se hem hangyn or brent to me is very plesauns; He only enters to attract attention; for when he and his knights retire, Jesus is brought before Caiphas and Annas, who send him (in No. 30) to Pilate's scaffold, where he is 'It may be conjectured, that at least all that follows of this series originally belonged to a different collection of Miracle-plays, not performed at Coventry, but at Durham, and that the conclusion of one set has been attached to the beginning of another. On a blank leaf preceding the twenty-ninth pageant is inscribed, in a comparatively modern hand, ‘Ego R. H. Dunelmensis, Possideo: Oυ Kтnois aλλa Xpnois', and 'Robert Hegge Dunelmensis' is written at the very commencement of the series. It is to be observed also, that the handwriting is the same throughout the whole volume called, and perhaps miscalled, the Ludus Coventriæ. The summaries by the Vexillators, in the outset, do not apply with any degree of exactness to the pageants after No. 28, which are often confusedly numbered. Be this as it may, it is very certain that the pageants from No. 29, inclusive, to the end, wherever they were played, were not represented in the same year as those that preceded them. A new personage in this series, but sometimes found in the Chester plays, called Expositor, says, in the opening of No. 29, 'Be the love and soferauns of All myghty god We entendyn to procede the matere that we lefte the last yere; To kepe the passyon in your minde that shal be shewyd here. Giving a summary of the preceding part of the exhibition. 2 Burnt. Dungeons. |