Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/457

 The Chcvauclu'c dc St. Michel. 423:.

were wont to do from ancient times. And he answers freely therein and puts himself upon the jury of the country, but he cannot show any Royal grant made to him therein,, nor that it was allowed elsewhere in the Court of the Lord the King, but only that he says they were so used from ancient times."

This date of 1309 proves that the theory put forward by many of our historians, that this Chevauchee was derived from the Corpus Ciiristi festival, is incorrect, as the Corpus Christi procession was not instituted until 1261, nor generally enforced until early in the fourteenth century, whereas we see that in 1309 the Chevauchee was regarded as an institution dating from " ancient times." Also the earliest official notices of the Chevauchee prove that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the ceremony invariably took place on a Monday, whereas the festival of Corpus Christi has always been held on a Thursday.

The books of the Court of St. Michel do not seem to have been officially kept until 1507; the greater part of them are now to be found in the Greffe of our Royal Court. The earliest notice of the Chevauchee I have come across in these records is dated 26th April 1530, when, at the Chief Pleas of the Court held after Easter, it is ordained that the Chevauchee shall take place " le prochain lundy d'apres le . jo' St. Nichollas en moys de May prochain." This St. Nicholas, who is no longer to be found in the Roman Breviary, was a Swedish saint whose festival was kept on either the 6th or the 9th of May ; so that the Chevauchee was then apparently originally held about a fortnight earlier that in later years, for in 1536 it is ordained to be held " le lundy de la my May si le temps est convenable." This change in the date may possibly be due to the change in the calendar instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582, although not adopted in England until 175 1.

From 1599 onwards the last Monday in May seems to have been the generally recognized date, and it took place