two rooms, a higher and a lower, upon four wheels.
In the lower they apparelled themselves, and in the higher room they
played, being all open on the top, that all beholders might hear and see
them." They were played, he goes on to say, in every street:

"They began first at the abbey gates, and when the first pageant was
played, it was wheeled to the high cross before the mayor, and so to
every street. So every street had a pageant playing before it at one
time, till all the pageants for the day appointed were played. When one
pageant was near ended, word was brought from street to street, that so
they might come in place thereof, exceeding orderly, and all the streets
have their pageants before them, all at one time playing together, to
see which plays was great resort and also scaffolds and stages made in
the streets in those places where they determined to play their
pageants."

The same writer explains elsewhere that these plays were divided into
twenty-four pageants, according to the number of the city companies, and
that each company brought out its own pageant.

At York, whose plays Miss L. Toulmin Smith edited in 1887, we can turn
to Davies's two books[5] and the local records, to complete the Chester
description. Those who travel to York by rail to-day, and there
dismount, as most of us have often done, to walk through the city to the
cathedral, will be interested to find that the railway station now
stands where once was Pageant Green. Near it was formerly another kind
of station, where stood the houses hired to keep the pageants stored and
put away from one year's show to another. The word "pageant," (_pagina_,
or plank), we ought to recall, was used for the stage, or wheeled car of
two stories, before it was used for the show set forth upon it. Davies
helps us, as we perambulate York to-day, to mark where the old pageants
were performed in 1399, at twelve stations, which were fixed and stated
beforehand. The first station was at the gates of the Priory of the Holy
Trinity in Mickle Gate, and the pageants were moved on them in turn to
places at Skelder Gate end, North Street, Conyng Strete, Stane Gate and
the gates of the Minster, so to the end of Girdler Gate; while the last
of all was "upon the pavement." But the stations were subject to change,
and there was much competition among wealthy householders (one of whom
may have been the Robert Harpham mentioned in a 1417 list) to have the
pageant played befo