Troops. Horse Soldiers.-Foot Soldiers.-Armour.- Arms.-Dress.-Extravagance of Apparel.-Feasts and Banquets.-Boar's Head.-Minstrels.-Hospitality.- Field Sports.-The New Forest.-Woodstock Park.- Wedgenock Park.-Military Exercises.-The Quintain. Commencement of the English Period.-Affectation of a Grand Appearance.-Magnificence of Dress.-Extra- vagant Fashions.-Prohibitions against them.-Piked MARTIAL EXERCISES: Tournaments.-Tilting, or Run- CHRISTMAS GAMBOLS: Lord of Misrule.-King of Christ- mas. King of the Bean. Festival of Fools.-Boy Bishop.-Fool Plough.-Origin of the Term Fool, as here applied.-Yule, an Ancient Name of Christmas. MASQUES: Gammer Gurton's Needle.-Coventry Play. INTERLOCUTORY PLAYS: Stage Decorations.-Introduc- GAMES WITH THE BALL: Hand-ball, or Palm-play.- ENGLISH SPORTS AND PASTIMES. SUPPOSING my young friends to be well enough read in English history, to know that this our favourite island has been successively in the possession of Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and that the English is a mixed race, deduced from some or all of these, I need but briefly run over the characteristics of each people, leaving their political history for the study of other seasons. Remains of these characteristics will be found in different B parts of the country, in various degrees, according as one or other of these people settled in larger or less proportions to the rest of the inhabitants; hence a considerable diversity of manners, and even of dialect, in the several counties of England. THE BRITONS. THE Britons were brave, noble, and courageous; fond of liberty, but incapable of maintaining the independence they sought, from their jealousy of each other. Hence the petty tribes, into which they were divided, were continually in a state of hostility towards each other; so that for want of cordiality among themselves, they were incapable of repelling |