2 February 1609: A crowd-pleasing morality play at Candlemas at Gouthwaite Hall in Catholic Nidderdale lands the cordwainer-players and their patron before the Star Chamber
G.W. Boddy. 1976. Players of Interludes in North Yorkshire in the Early Seventeenth Century. North Yorkshire County Record Office Journal, Vol. 3. Northallerton: North Yorkshire County Council. Reproduction by kind permission of North Yorkshire County Record Office. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
In the winter of 1609, the Egton players [led by Robert ahd Christopher Simpson] went on a Christmas tour which took them through Pickering, Helmsley, Thirsk, Ripon, Nidderdale, Richmond and Northallerton, before turning for home. They arrived at Sir John Yorke’s house, Gowthwaite [Gouthwaite] Hall in Nidderdale at Candlemas, 1609. They offered a choice of The three Shirleys or St. Christopher, and Sir John chose the latter. The visit must have been the social event of the year in Nidderdale, because a great throng of tenants, servants and neighbours, young and old, turned up for the performance in the hall that same evening. A bailiff supervised the seating, but such was the press in the hall that he did not notice the unauthorised entry of William Stubbs, the Puritan minister of Pateley Bridge.
St. Christopher was a version of an old morality play with a cast of nine. In itself it was quite harmless and inoffensive. It enacted the well-known legend of Reprobus “that neither feared God nor the Divell, nor was of any religion, but would serve the mightiest man upon the earth, and having served two kings and an Emperor, and hearing the Divell was of more might than they were, left them, and betook himself to the Divell his service.” Then Reprobus discovered the Devil feared the crucifix, “whereupon Raphalus (Reprobus) left the Divell saying there was a mightier man than he was, and went to the cross.” The Simpsons [company; after Christopher and Robert Simpson] used a ‘great yallowe coloured crosse’. Reprobus submitted to the cross, received instruction from a hermit, did penance for his sins and received the new name of Christopher.
That was the standard version that might safely be played in a Protestant gentleman’s house. The Simpsons, however, had an extra, Catholic version into which an interlude was interpolated. It was this interlude that caused the scandal that led Sir John Yorke to the Fleet prison in London. The apprentice, Thomas Pant, in his questioning at first denied that there had been any seditious interlude, as did William Harrison, Edward Whitfield and the other players, but by the time of his trial Pant had left the company and was more vulnerable to pressure than the others. He later testified that there was indeed an interlude, and corroborated the evidence of William Stubbs. The interlude took the form of a disputation “counterfeited betwixt him that played the English Minister and him that played the Popish preist touching matters of religion.” The minister argued on the basis of the Bible but the priest countered that this was not enough and held up the yellow cross. “The minister [did] shew forth his said book or Bible to defend his profession withal, and that it was rejected and scoffed at,” alleged Stubbs. [Sir Stephen] Proctor [the Puritan Justice of Fountains Abbey] described how “he that played the fool [William Harrison] did deride the minister.” When the minister was condemned or overcome “there was flashes of fire cast forth and then he that played the Divell did carry the English minister away.”
Another witness, William Browne, a Nidderdale linen weaver, described “the English minister in a black cloak, also a Popish priest in a black [MS. torn] and a cross on his shoulder: one in white like an angel, and more than one or two divells and a fool. … And the fool did clap the English minister on the shoulder and mocked and flouted him, and said, ‘Well, thou must away anon.'”
The audience, who were practically all Catholics, loved this spectacle. Proctor said they “greatly laughed and rejoiced a long time.” Browne alleged that “the people went after making a merriment and a sport at it.” The story of the interlude spread through Nidderdale. Some said to those who had not seen the play “if they had seen the play as it was played at Gowthwaite, they would never care for the new law or for going to church more.”
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Several years later Sir John Yorke was accused not of “causing a seditious interlude,” and of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot and of harbouring seminary priests. This was finally reduced to “permitting the Simpson players to present an interlude, by which the established religion was brought into derision,” and attempting to bribe witnesses (Howard 1939).
Boddy reminds us of the choice of play offered by the strolling actors in Hamlet. William Harrison, the clown, claimed that in fact two plays were presented, “Perocles, prince of Tire,” and “King Lere,” as “printed in the books.” In the unlikely event that Harrison was not simply trying to misdirect the court, and if the play was not the anonymous 1590s King Leir, then this would be the first performance of Shakespeare’s Lear outside London, an improbability which some academics have gratefully seized.
Boddy suggests that the Simpsons et al might have sprung from the Egton Plough Stots, who appear in Young’s History of Whitby (1816). He also notes the suggestion in Aveling’s Northern Catholics that they might have been coached by seminary priests brought up to the performance of plays at Douai, and one of the boys in the company, Nicholas Postgate, eventually went to Douai to become a priest, returned, and was martyred in 1679.
As part of the creation of the Gouthwaite Reservoir, Bradford Corporation requisitioned Gouthwaite Hall from the Yorke family in 1883, and it was pulled down and [a new Gouthwaite Hall and Gouthwaite Farm were built] on the shore of the lake with some of the stones (Mitchell 1982). “The story goes that the tenants had remained in the old house until the water rose up to the door, which occurred when heavy rain caused a flood in 1899, trapping them on the upper floor of the hall for several days” (Historic Parks and Gardens Study Group 2019/07/20).
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- Act of Uniformity 1558 (1) W/G ·
- Candlemas (3) W/G ·
- Catholic Church (57) W/G ·
- Church of England (94) W/G ·
- City of Bradford (3) W/G ·
- Cordwainer (3) W/G ·
- 📌Egton (1), village in the North York Moors 5 miles west of Whitby, home to the Egton Road Race or Gooseberry Run W/G ·
- Eskdale (1) W/G ·
- 📌Gouthwaite Hall (1) W/G ·
- Gouthwaite Reservoir (1) W/G ·
- Hamlet (3) W/G ·
- Interlude (theatre) (3), a short play or, in general, any representation between parts of a larger stage production W/G ·
- James I (1566-1625) (6), King of England and Ireland from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 W/G ·
- King Lear (2) W/G ·
- King Leir (1) W/G ·
- Nidderdale (3) W/G ·
- North Riding of Yorkshire (51) W/G ·
- Oath of Allegiance of James I of England (2) W/G ·
- 📌Pateley Bridge (4) W/G ·
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1) W/G ·
- Play (theatre) (6) W/G ·
- Popish Recusants Act 1605 (1) W/G ·
- Puritans (15) W/G ·
- Recusancy (3) W/G ·
- Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) (14) W/G ·
- Shoemaking (3) W/G ·
- Star Chamber (2) W/G ·
- Stonebeck Down (1) W/G ·
- Theatre (24) W/G ·
- West Riding of Yorkshire (150) W/G ·
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Several years later Sir John Yorke was accused not of “causing a seditious interlude,” and of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot and of harbouring seminary priests. This was finally reduced to “permitting the Simpson players to present an interlude, by which the established religion was brought into derision,” and attempting to bribe witnesses (Howard 1939).
Boddy reminds us of the choice of play offered by the strolling actors in Hamlet. William Harrison, the clown, claimed that in fact two plays were presented, “Perocles, prince of Tire,” and “King Lere,” as “printed in the books.” In the unlikely event that Harrison was not simply trying to misdirect the court, and if the play was not the anonymous 1590s King Leir, then this would be the first performance of Shakespeare’s Lear outside London, an improbability which some academics have gratefully seized.
Boddy suggests that the Simpsons et al might have sprung from the Egton Plough Stots, who appear in Young’s History of Whitby (1816). He also notes the suggestion in Aveling’s Northern Catholics that they might have been coached by seminary priests brought up to the performance of plays at Douai, and one of the boys in the company, Nicholas Postgate, eventually went to Douai to become a priest, returned, and was martyred in 1679.
As part of the creation of the Gouthwaite Reservoir, Bradford Corporation requisitioned Gouthwaite Hall from the Yorke family in 1883, and it was pulled down and [a new Gouthwaite Hall and Gouthwaite Farm were built] on the shore of the lake with some of the stones (Mitchell 1982). “The story goes that the tenants had remained in the old house until the water rose up to the door, which occurred when heavy rain caused a flood in 1899, trapping them on the upper floor of the hall for several days” (Historic Parks and Gardens Study Group 2019/07/20).
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Similar
15 March 1586: Offered a jury acquittal, Margaret Clitherow of York, concealer of priests, chooses martyrdom and is crushed under her own front door
26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits
3 January 1638: On the eve of the civil war, Henry Slingsby witnesses Royalist cavalry exercising near Wetherby on Bramham Moor, scene of the defeat of the Percy Rebellion in 1408
12 December 1641: John Sugden causes panic in Bradford and Pudsey with news of the imminent advent of genocidal Irish Catholics
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Rimbault quotes one John Gregory, who in the Sarum Processionale found the following:
The Episcopus Choristarum was a chorister-bishop chosen by his fellow children upon St. Nicholas’ day… From this day till Innocents’ day at night (it lasted longer at the first), the Episcopus Puerorum [Boy-Bishop] was to bear the name and hold up the state of a bishop, answerably habited, with a crosier or pastoral staff in his hand, and a miter upon his head; and such an one too som had, as was multis episcoporum mitris sumtuosior, saith one – very much richer than those of bishops indeed. The rest of his fellows from the same time being were to take upon them the style and counterfeit of prebends, yielding to their bishops (or else as if it were) no less then canonical obedience. And look what service the very bishop himself with his dean and prebends (had they been to officiate) was to have performed, the mass excepted, the verie same was done by the chorister-bishop and his canons upon this Eve and the Holy Day.
This may be the origin of the York ritual, which nevertheless, and for reasons unknown to me, starts and ends later. The “account of Nicholas of Newark, guardian of the property of John de Cave, boy bishop in the year of our Lord 96” accounts for receipts (offerings in the cathedral, from canons, and from the nobility and monasteries visited) and expenditure (clothing, beer, food, music, etc.). The world-turned-upside-down visitations of the episcopus puerorum/Innocencium and his band remind me somewhat like those practised by the Raad van Elf of carnival associations in the Catholic Netherlands. Was there a similar serious business + drunken fun combination? For example, “the medieval breviary in the Sarum (but not in the Roman) use prescribed ‘O Virgo Virginum’ as antiphon upon the Magnificat for December 23, but was it sung for the boy-bishop on 23 December in humorous reference to his postulated sexual inexperience?
O Virgin of Virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That which ye behold is a divine mystery (Bls 2007/12/23).
Yann Dahhaoui has compiled a map showing the locations visited by John de Cave numbered in chronological order:
There is a 13th century sculpture of what some say is a boy bishop at the marvellous St Oswald’s Church, Filey – the church guide suggests that it might instead by
one of the canons regular of St Augustine, a member of Bridlington Priory who served the church at Filey. It was not uncommon in the 13th and 14th centuries for such a person to keep up his connection with the church by having his heart buried there with an appropriate miniature representation of himself in stone.
The account documents 42 days starting on 23 December, but I don’t know how long John de Cave’s rule actually lasted. Liz Truss managed 49 days.
Irrelevant, but St. William is presumably William of Donjeon/Bourges, whose feast day is 10 January, to which 7 January was the closest Sunday.
https://archive.org/details/stationsofsunhis0000hutt/page/100/mode/1up
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