et auditoribus status suos commonstrabunt'.

The end of the

pageant is the departure of Enoch and Elias with Michael

to heaven, with these lines:

'Enock and Helye, come you anon:

My lord will that you with me gone
To heaven blysse, both blood and bone,
evermore there to bee.

You have binne, for you bynne wyse,
Dwellinge in yearthlye paradyce ;

But to heaven, where himselfe ys,

nowe shall you goe with mee.

Tunc abducens eos ad cœlos cantabit Angelus,
Gaudete justi in Domino,' etc.

The thirty-ninth and fortieth pageants of the Ludus CovenCoventry triæ refer to the ascension, the choice of St. Matthew, Plays. and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Some Jews, who view the Apostles under the influence of the miraculous gift, imagine they are intoxicated:

'Mustel in here brayn so selyly doth crepe,

That thei chateryn and chateryn as they jays were.'

The forty-first pageant is in a different hand-writing, and was most likely added to the collection some time after the others. It relates to the assumption of the Virgin, and is not necessarily connected with anything that has gone before.

1 Must is new wine or wort. Wickliffe, in his translation of the Acts of the Apostles, ii, 13, referring to this event, uses the same word,

'Othir scornyden and seiden, for these men ben full of must!' Our present version gives it thus,

Others mocking said, these men are full of new wine.'

THE LAST JUDGMENT.

Plays.

The opening of the twenty-eighth play, entitled Judicium, is wanting in the Towneley manuscript, but it is ob- Widkirk vious that but little has been lost. Four wicked souls, who have heard the last trumpet, are rising in dismay, and after they have talked for some time, and cursed their parents and the day they were born, Primus Angelus cum gladio separates the good souls from the bad, and Christ descends to pronounce the final doom. The sentence, however, is delayed, in order to diversify the performance with a long scene between three Devils, Primus Demon, Secundus Demon, and Tutivillus: the latter does not enter until the two former have recovered, in a degree, from their alarm at hearing the last trumpet, in consequence of which hell was empty of souls. They turn over their books busily, and find a long list of the wicked :

To these are added, by the demon whose business it was to make the entries in the Luciferan ledger,

'Bakbytars,

And fals quest dytars.1

I had no help of wrytars,

Bot thise two dalles.'2

Tutivillus then arrives, and he gives this account of himself and his duties:

'I was your chefe tollare,

And sithen courte rollar :
Now I am master Lollar,'

which establishes that the writer was an enemy of Wickliffe's heresy, and probably an ecclesiastic: this part of the performance is therefore not older than the date when the early reformer gave disturbance to the Catholic church. Tutivillus

1 False inquest indicters.

2 Daddles, i. e., hands.

3 Mr Douce, who superintended the reprint of the Judicium for Mr. Towneley, when he presented it to the Roxburghe Club, derives the name of this fiend from Titivilitium, a word used by Plautus. The more simple and true etymology seems to be totus and vilis. We shall find that he forms an important personage in some of the Morals, or Moralities, which followed Miracle-plays.

The name afterwards came to mean any person with evil propensities: thus in Rauf Royster Doyster, Tom Titivile is spoken of as one of the hero's lawless companions. Skelton, in his Colin Clout, abuses wicked priests who 'talke like Titivelles'; and in his Garlande or Chapelet of Lawrell, he couples 'Titivyllis' with tumblers, dicers, and dancers. In the interlude of Thersytes, 'Tytyfylles', keep no better company―viz., 'taberers, typlers, and taverners'.

• Wickliffe died in 1384, and was in the full tide of his popularity between 1370 and 1380. The stat. 2 Henry IV, c. 15 was passed contra Lollardos; but the term Lollard was in use long before. Wilkin's Concilia, iii, 202, contains a mandate of the Bishop of Worcester, dated 1387, against Lollard preachers, and persons, nomine seu ritu Lollardorum confœderati.

produces his 'roll of ragman1 of the round tabill' of the souls he had secured for hell, including,

'Fals jurars and usurars

To symony that clevys,
Hasardars and dysars,
Fals deeds forgars,

Slanderars, bakbytars'—

and in the course of his speech he gives a description of a lady whose head-dress is 'horned like a cowe', a circumstance which may serve to fix the date of this part of the production.” It appears, by what falls from another devil, that wicked souls. had recently come so thick and fast to the gate of hell, that the porter had had very hard work of it, and was 'up early and downe late'.

We then come to the judgment pronounced by the Sa

1 Wynkyn de Worde printed a poem, a fragment of which only has been recovered, called Ragmannes Rolle in the running title, and consisting of a list of good and bad women in alternate stanzas. Ragman's Roll is mentioned by J. Heywood, in his Pardoner, Frere and Neighbour Pratt, 1533. Mr. Douce says: 'it is used by old writers to express any legal instrument, and the etymology has been much disputed. Rageman is also a name given to the Devil, and in this place it may have that signification.'

2 This horned head-dress was worn about the middle of the fifteenth century; and in Harl. MS. No. 2255, we meet with a poem, attributed to Lydgate, and written in the reign of Henry VII, which contains the subsequent stanza :—

The

'Clerkys recorde of gret auctorite

Hornys were gove to beestys for diffence:

A thyng contrary to femynyte

To be maad sturdy of resistence;

But arche wyves, egre in ther violence,

Fers as tygre for to make affray,

Lyst not of pryde ther hornys cast away.'

poem is particularly directed against female horns, and the wearers.

viour; and after a speech, in the course of which he shows his wounds, he dismisses four good souls to heaven, and four 'cursid catyfs of Kaine's kyn' to hell. The good souls sing Te Deum laudamus and Explicit Judicium: in other words, the pageant ends.

De Judicio extremo is the title of the Chester Pageant, Chester No. 24, and it is conducted as follows. After a speech Plays. from the Deity, Papa Salvatus, Imperator Salvatus, Rex Salvatus and Regina Salvata appear; and they are followed by Papa damnatus, Imperator damnatus, Rex damnatus, Regina damnata, Justiciarius damnatus, and Mercator damnatus: the damned Pope (a remarkable character in a Roman Catholic Miracle-play) is made to say

'sylver and symonye

Made me pope unworthy,

That burnes me now full witterly ;
For of blysse I am full bare.'

Then occurs the stage direction, that Jesus is to appear quasi in nube, si fieri potest: he makes a long address, and his wounds bleed afresh, after which the good are rewarded with bliss, and the bad punished with bale. Demons enter

1 This ought probably to be the last of the Widkirk Pageants, as it is of those of Chester and Coventry, but in the manuscript it is followed by two others, The Raising of Lazarus, and what is called Suspensio Judæ. The first most likely belonged to the series, and having been omitted in the right place, it was inserted at the end. The second is in a different stanza, and certainly by a different hand: it is unfinished, and as far as it goes, it is a monologue by Judas, relating the events of his life-how his mother dreamed that she was brought to bed of a lump of sin, and how he was thrown into the sea and cast ashore on the island from which he derived his name: how the Queen of the island found him, and presented him to the King as her own offspring, until she became actually pregnant and produced a son. The leaves containing the rest of the narrative are wanting in the MS.