"the superfluities of idle brains."

* * * * *

"THE BOOK OF SPORTS."

But while the mild government of this monarch has been covered with the
political odium of arbitrary power, he has also incurred a religious one,
from his design of rendering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of
devotion and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still
throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in
Elizabeth's reign; and yet "the Protestants of Elizabeth" was the
usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most honour to the reformed.
The king, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire
discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations on
Sundays and holidays, after the church service. "With our own ears we
heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were
busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a
sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus "turning
the people's hearts." But while they were denied what the king terms
"lawful recreations,"[A] they had substituted more vicious ones: alehouses
were more frequented--drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition,
the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed--while a fanatical gloom was
spreading over the country.

[Footnote A: These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping,
vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of
May-poles, and other manly sports.]

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude,
and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming,
published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the
contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."

On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions:
with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular
state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not
sufficiently historical. It was one of the state maxims of this
philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,

"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that
certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people
with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making
playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for
convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendshi