Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

This day upon intelligence given to the said Commissioners that it is meant and purposed that in the town of Wakefield shall be played this year in Whitson Week next or thereabouts a play commonly called Corpus Christi play which hath been heretofore used there, wherein they are done to understand that there be many things used which tend to the derogation of the majesty and glory of god, the profanation of the sacraments, and the maintenance of superstition and idolatry. The said Commissioners decreed a letter to be written and sent to the Bailiff, Burgesses and other the inhabitants of the said town of Wakefield that in the said play no pageant be used or set forth wherein the majesty of God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost, or the administration of either the sacraments of baptism or of the lord’s supper be counterfeited or represented, or anything played which tend to the maintenance of superstition and idolatry or which be contrary to the laws of God or of the Realm.

Comment

Comment

Garrett Epp in the excellent intro to his edition of the Towneley Plays chronicles the troubled modern history of the plays (Epp 2018), in which between-wars fabrications of evidence by Matthew H. Peacock, headmaster of Wakefield Grammar School, and J.W. Walker, a Wakefield historian (Walker 1934), led to a general belief that they were linked to Wakefield. However, in 1988 it was revealed that Walker had invented or borrowed from elsewhere all but three of the records cited, while others were mis-transcribed and misdated. The earliest of the three survivors is from 1556, during the brief attempt by Elizabeth I’s predecessor, Mary I, to re-establish Catholicism. Fun – which may or may not have had anything to do with the Towneley Plays – was brought forward by two months and made mandatory:

Item a pain is set that every craft and occupation do bring forth their pageants of Corpus Christi day, as hath been heretofore used, and to give forth the speeches of the same, in Easter holy-days in pain of every one not so doing to forfeit 40 shillings [ca. £900 in 2021] (Cawley 1988).

What I know of the Ecclesiastical Commission at York comes from the Tyler article (Tyler 1967), which unfortunately didn’t seem to contain anything directly pillageable!

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Original

This day upon intelligence given to the said Commissioners that it is meant and purposed that in the town of Wakefield shall be played this year in Whitsun week next or thereabouts a play commonly called Corpus Christi play which hath been heretofore used there, wherein they are done to understand that there be many things used which tend to the derogation of the majesty and glory of god, the profanation of the sacraments, and the maintenance of superstition and idolatry. The said Commissioners decreed a letter to be written and sent to the Bailiff, Burgesses and other the inhabitants of the said town of Wakefield that in the said play no pageant be used or set forth wherein the majesty of God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost, or the administration of either the sacraments of baptism or of the lord’s supper be counterfeited or represented, or anything played which tend to the maintenance of superstition and idolatry or which be contrary to the laws of God or of the Realm.

179 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Bible (15) ·
• Ecclesiastical Commission at York (1561-1641) (1), a conciliar court begun amid unsettled conditions in the north and focused on religious affairs, which were neglected by its elder and more powerful sibling, the Council of the North ·
• Elizabeth I (1533-1603) (15), ruled 1558-1603, established an English Protestant church ·
• Elizabethan Religious Settlement (1) ·
• Feast of Corpus Christi (3) ·
• Mary I (1516-1558) (3), reigned 1553-1558, best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation ·
• Mystery play (3) ·
• Theatre (22) ·
• Wakefield or Towneley Mystery Plays (2), a collection of thirty-two Biblical mystery plays including some of the best-known examples of medieval English drama, probably performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi, but probably not in Wakefield ·
• 📌Wakefield (36), cathedral city on the River Calder in the West Riding/West Yorkshire ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• Whitsun (4) ·
• Whitsuntide (4), the week following Whitsunday, traditionally one of three holiday weeks for medieval serfs ·
• York Mystery Plays (3) ·
• 📌York (164) ·

All tags.

Similar

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• 30 May 1415: A native God creates the first Yorkshireman and -woman in the York mystery plays
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