e permeated even their amusements.
Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards,
were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or
parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer
were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the
parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more
sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened
by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and
herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a
common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common
smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was
enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of
the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing
at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other
games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use
his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport.
This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him
from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He
was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he
appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II,
c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in
church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other
dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and
sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,'
for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the
Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands
worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other
'engines': the first game law on the English statute book.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 302. No doubt the riches of
the Berkeleys were considerably greater than those of many of the
barons.

[128] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 166. There is no reason to doubt
Smyth, as he wrote with the original accounts before him.

[129] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 156.

[130] The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth
century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were
to all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small