Page:Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern.djvu/41

 the King; and on the 1st of the same month Edmund Taverner had a warrant for £1400 towards the charge of a mask to be presented at Whitehall the next Twelfth Night. A similar sum for a similar purpose was granted to Michael Oldisworth on 3rd January 1639-40. Many interesting particulars connected with the royal masks will be found in Nichols’s “Progresses of Elizabeth and James the First.”

The Inns of Court continued to maintain their celebrity for these entertainments. In 1635, in particular, there was a splendid one at the Middle Temple, when Mr. Francis Vivian, a gentleman of Cornwall, son of Sir Francis Vivian, was elected the Christmas Prince, and expended £2000 out of his own pocket to support his character with becoming state. But their revels were not confined to Christmas, for in February 1633 there was a celebrated mask called “The Triumph of Peace,” presented jointly by the two Temples, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn, which cost the Societies above £20,000. Evelyn in his Memoirs relates, that on 15th December, 1641, he was elected one of the Comptrollers of the Middle Temple revellers, “as the fashion of ye young Students and Gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this yeare with greate solemnity;” but he got excused from serving.

An order still existed directing the nobility and gentry who had mansion-houses in the country “to repair to them to keep hospitality meet to their degrees;” as Sir J. Astley, on 20th of March, 1637-8, in consequence of ill health, obtained a licence to reside in London, or where he pleased, at