take their diversions
(as of old accustomed) after divine service on Sundays, is said to have
been the origin of the _Book of Sports_, soon after promulgated by royal
authority. James being persuaded those were Puritans who forbade such
diversions, and that they were Jewishly inclined, because they affected
to call Sunday the Sabbath, recommended that diverting exercises should
be used after evening prayer, and ordered the book to be read publicly
in all churches; and such ministers as refused to obey the injunction
were threatened with severe punishment in the High Commission Court.
This legal violation of the day which is unequivocally the Christian
Sabbath, roused at the time the indignation of the seriously disposed,
and has been frequently reprobated by historians. Foremost of its
opposers, and eminent in example, stands the virtuous and firm
Archbishop Abbot, who, being at Croydon the day it was ordered to be
read in churches, flatly forbade it to be read there; which the King was
pleased to wink at, notwithstanding the daily endeavours that were used
to irritate the King against him. The _Book of Sports_ is not, however,
without its apologists among modern writers. The following are Mr
D'Israeli's remarks on the subject:--"The King 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' (which are enumerated to consist of
dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales,
morris-dances, and the setting up of Maypoles, and other manly sports),
they had substituted some 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. The King, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised
with the multitude, being perhaps alarmed at this new shape which
Puritanism was assuming, published the _Book of Sports_, which soon
obtained the contemptuous name of 'The Dancing Book'" (_Life of James_,
p. 135). In reply to this view of the subject we shall, for the pr