re their windows. The highest bidder gained the
coveted right.

Before the actual day came, a town-crier was sent round the city to
proclaim the "banes" or banns.[6] Arms were forbidden: "We command that
no man go armed in this city with swords ne with carlill-axes, in
disturbance of the king's peace and the play, or hindering of the
procession of Corpus Christi, and that they leave their harness in their
inns, saving knights and squires of worship that ought to have swords
borne after them!" The plays began betimes. We read that at York the
players were to be ready "at the mid-hour betwixt the IVth and Vth of
the clock in the morning." Finally, for the players themselves, care was
taken to secure good ones for the several parts. Sometimes a player
doubled or trebled the characters in a particular play.

All through the XIVth and XVth centuries miracle-plays went on
being performed regularly, or irregularly, in most of the English
towns and larger villages. One of the smaller cycles was that of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, played at Corpus Christi, from 1426 onwards. _The
Three Kings of Cologne_ is mentioned in 1536, which the goldsmiths,
plumbers, glaziers, and others were to play. Here the pageants were not
movable ones, but were given at fixed points. No doubt some of the spots
associated with the Whitsuntide "shuggy-shows" (as I remember them in my
time) were originally show-grounds of the town pageants too. Only one
play of the Newcastle series has survived, and that fitly enough, having
regard to the Tyneside shipbuilding, is a shipwrights' play. Unluckily
it has been so modernised that not a vestige of the local colour or
Tyneside dialect remains.

We come now to the date and origin of these town pageants. Of the three
chief cycles earliest mention is to be found at Chester, and it carries
us doubtfully back to 1268. Sir John Arnway was mayor in that year,
according to one account: but the name recurs pretty positively in
1327-8, and about that time Randall Higgenet, a monk of Chester Abbey,
wrote the plays. But in the text handed down they are of a much later
style of diction, and no doubt later in date than the Towneley or York
series.

About the real origin of these plays there can be no question. They
began in the churches as liturgy plays, which were given at the
Christmas, Easter, and other festivals, illustrating in chief the birth,
life, death and passion of Christ. We owe to Professor Skeat the
recovery of