Part 11 (1/2)
subsequently kept, however, made amends for the cessation of festivities at the Kyng's ”Still Christmas,” especially the royal celebrations at Greenwich. In 1527 the ”solemne Christmas” held there was ”with revels, maskes, disguisings, and banquets; and on the thirtieth of December and the third of January were solemne Justs holden, when at night the King and fifteen other with him, came to Bridewell, and there putting on masking apparell, took his barge, and rowed to the Cardinall's (Woolsey) place, where were at supper many Lords and Ladyes, who danced with the maskers, and after the dancing was made a great Banquet.”[43]
During the girlhood of the Princess (afterwards Queen) Mary, entertainments were given for her amus.e.m.e.nt, especially at Christmastide; and she gave presents to the King's players, the children of the Chapel, and others. But, Sandys says, that ”as she grew up, and her temper got soured, she probably lost all enjoyment of such scenes.” Ellis, in his ”Original Letters,” gives a curious application from the Council for the household of the Lady Mary to the Cardinal Wolsey, to obtain his directions and leave to celebrate the ensuing Christmas. In this letter the reader is reminded of the long train of sports and merriment which made Christmas cheerful to our ancestors. The Cardinal, at the same time that he established a household for the young Duke of Richmond, had also ”ordained a council, and stablished another household for the Lady Mary, then being _Princess of the Realm_.”[44] The letter which seems to have been written in the same year in which the household was established, 1525, is as follows:--
”Please it youre Grace for the great repaire of straungers supposed unto the Pryncesse honorable householde this solempne fest of Cristmas, We humbly beseche the same to let us knowe youre gracious pleasure concernyng as well a s.h.i.+p of silver for the almes disshe requysite for her high estate, and spice plats, as also for trumpetts and a rebek to be sent, and whither we shall appoynte any Lord of Mysrule for the said honorable householde, provide for enterluds, disgysyngs, or pleyes in the said fest, or for banket on twelf nyght.
And in likewise whither the Pryncesse shall sende any newe yeres gifts to the Kinge, the Quene, your Grace, and the Frensshe Quene, and of the value and devise of the same. Besechyng yowre Grace also to pardon oure busy and importunate suts to the same in suche behalf made. Thus oure right syngler goode lorde we pray the holy Trynyte have you in his holy preservacion. At Teoxbury, the xxvij day of November.
Youre humble orators, John Exon ”To the most reverent Father Jeilez Grevile in G.o.d the Lord Cardinall Peter Burnell his good Grace.” John Salter G. Bromley Thomas Audeley.”
CHRISTMAS AND THE REFORMATION.
The great Reformer, Martin Luther, took much interest in the festivities of Christmastide, including, of course, the Christmas-tree. One of his biographers[45] tells how young Luther, with other boys of Mansfeld, a village to the north-west of Eisleben, sang Christmas carols ”in honour of the Babe of Bethlehem.” And the same writer says, ”Luther may be justly regarded as the central representative of the Reformation in its early period, for this among other reasons--that he, more powerfully than any other, impressed upon the new doctrine the character of glad tidings of great joy.” On Christmas Day, 1521, Martin Luther ”administered the communion in both kinds, and almost without discrimination of applicants,” in the parish church of Eisenach, his ”beloved town.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN LUTHER AND THE CHRISTMAS TREE.]
In England, the desire for some reform in the Church was recognised even by Cardinal Wolsey, who obtained from the Pope permission to suppress thirty monasteries, and use their revenues for educational purposes; and Wolsey's schemes of reform might have progressed further if Henry VIII. had not been fascinated by Anne Boleyn. But the King's amour with the ”little lively brunette” precipitated a crisis in the relations between Church and State.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LITTLE ORLEANS MADONNA OF RAPHAEL]
Henry, who, by virtue of a papal dispensation, had married his brother's widow, Katherine, now needed papal consent to a divorce, that he might marry Anne Boleyn, and when he found that he could not obtain it, he resolved to be his own Pope, ”sole protector and supreme head of the Church and clergy of England.” And among the events of Christmastide may be mentioned the resolution of the King's minister, Thomas Cromwell, and his party, in 1533, to break the ecclesiastical connection with Rome, and establish an independent Church in England.
The necessary Bills were framed and introduced to Parliament soon after the Christmas holidays by Cromwell, who for his successful services was made Chancellor of the Exchequer for life. Authority in all matters ecclesiastical, as well as civil, was vested solely in the Crown, and the ”courts spiritual” became as thoroughly the King's courts as the temporal courts at Westminster. The enslavement of the clergy, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the gagging of the pulpits followed, the years of Cromwell's administration being an English reign of terror. But the ruthless manner in which he struck down his victims sickened the English people, and they exhibited their disapprobation in a manner which arrested the attention of the King.
The time of Cromwell himself was coming, for the block was the goal to which Henry's favourite minister was surely hastening; and it is only antic.i.p.ating events by very few years, to say that he was beheaded on Tower Hill, July 28, 1540.
ANOTHER ROYAL CHRISTMAS.
That following the execution of Anne Boleyn (1536), Henry spent in the company of his third Queen, Jane Seymour, at Richmond Palace, with a merry party, and subsequently crossed the frozen Thames to Greenwich.
During the following summer the Queen went with her husband on a progress, and in the autumn retired to Hampton Court, where she gave birth to a son (who became Edward VI.), and died twelve days afterwards, on the 14th of October, 1537.
During the married life of Queen Jane, the Princess Mary was often with the Court at Richmond, affecting affectionate attachment for the Queen, apparently to conciliate her father. The birth of a prince, followed by the death of the queen, it might have been thought would have a chastening effect upon Mary, as somewhat altering her prospects; but after acting as chief mourner to her friendly stepmother, she spent a pleasant Christmas at Richmond, where she remained till February. Her losses at cards during the Christmas festivities were very considerable, for she was fond of gambling. And she appears to have also amused herself a good deal with her attendant, ”Jane the Fool,” to whose maintenance she contributed while staying at Richmond. One curious entry in the Household Book of the Princess Mary is: ”Item, for shaving Jane fooles hedde, iiiid.”
Another is: ”Item, geven Heywood, playeng an enterlude with his children before my Ladye's grace xls.”
The great event of Christmas, 1539, was
THE LANDING OF ANNE OF CLEVES,
at Deal, on the 27th of December. King Henry had become alarmed at the combination between France and Spain, and his unprincipled Chancellor, Cromwell, desirous of regaining his lost influence with the King, recommended a Protestant marriage. He told Henry that Anne, daughter of John III., Duke of Cleves, was greatly extolled for her beauty and good sense, and that by marrying her he would acquire the friends.h.i.+p of the Princes of Germany, in counterpoise to the designs of France and Spain. Henry despatched Hans Holbein to take the lady's portrait, and, being delighted with the picture produced, soon concluded a treaty of marriage, and sent the Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, to receive the Princess at Calais, and conduct her to England. On her arrival Henry was greatly disappointed. He did not think the Princess as charming as her portrait; and, unfortunately for her, she was unable to woo him with winning words, for she could speak no language but German, and of that Henry did not understand a word.
Though not ugly (as many contemporaries testify), she was plain in person and manners, and she and her maidens, of whom she brought a great train, are said to have been as homely and awkward a bevy as ever came to England in the cause of Royal matrimony. The Royal Bluebeard, who had consorted with such celebrated beauties as Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, recollecting what his queens had been, and what Holbein and Cromwell had told him should again be, entered the presence of Anne of Cleves with great antic.i.p.ation, but was thunderstruck at the first sight of the reality. Lord John Russell, who was present, declared ”that he had never seen his highness so marvellously astonished and abashed as on that occasion.” The marriage was celebrated on the 6th of January, 1540, but Henry never became reconciled to his German queen; and he very soon vented his anger upon Cromwell for being the means of bringing him, not a wife, but ”a great Flanders mare.”
CHRISTMAS AT THE COLLEGES.
The fine old tower of Magdalen College, embowered in verdure (as though decorated for Christmas), is one of the most picturesque of the venerable academical inst.i.tutions of Oxford. It stands on the east side of the Cherwell, and is the first object of interest to catch the eye of the traveller who enters the city from the London Road. This college was the scene of many Christmas festivities in the olden time, when it was the custom of the several colleges to elect a ”Christmas Lord, or Lord of Misrule, styled in the registers _Rex Fabarum_ and _Rex Regni Fabarum_; which custom continued till the Reformation of Religion, and then that producing Puritanism, and Puritanism Presbytery, the profession of it looked upon such laudable and ingenious customs as Popish, diabolical and anti-Christian.”[46]
Queen's College, Oxford (whose members have from time immemorial been daily summoned to dine in hall by sound of trumpet, instead of by bell as elsewhere), is noted for its ancient Christmas ceremony of ushering in the boar's head with the singing of the famous carol--
”_Caput afri differo Reddens laudes Domino._ The boar's head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary, I pray you all sing merrily _Qui estis in convivio_.”
Tradition says that this old custom commemorates the deliverance of a student of the college, who, while walking in the country, studying Aristotle, was attacked by a wild boar from Shotover Forest, whereupon he crammed the philosopher down the throat of the savage, and thus escaped from its tusks.