the people, but to illustrate them also, within such compass as I can allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall[71] a description of a play which was acted by the boys of St. Paul’s School, in 1527, at Greenwich, adding some particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from another source.[72] It is a good instance of the fantastic splendour with which exhibitions of this kind were got up, and it possesses also a melancholy interest of another kind, as showing how little the wisest among us can foresee our own actions, or assure ourselves that the convictions of to-day will alike be the convictions of to-morrow.  The occasion was the despatch of a French embassy to England, when Europe was outraged by the Duke of Bourbon’s capture of Rome, when the children of Francis I. were prisoners in Spain, and Henry, with the full energy of his fiery nature, was flinging himself into a quarrel with Charles V. as the champion of the Holy See.

At the conclusion of a magnificent supper “the king led the ambassadors into the great chamber of disguisings; and in the end of the same chamber was a fountain, and on one side was a hawthorne tree, all of silk, with white flowers, and on the other side was a mulberry tree full of fair berries, all of silk.  On the top of the hawthorne were the arms of England, compassed with the collar of the order[73] of St. Michael, and in the top of the mulberry tree stood the arms of France within a garter.  The fountain was all of white marble, graven and chased; the bases of the same were balls of gold, supported by ramping beasts wound in leaves of gold.  In the first work were gargoylles of gold, fiercely faced with spouts running.  The second receit of this fountain was environed with winged serpents, all of gold, which griped it; and on the summit of the same was a fair lady, out of whose breasts ran abundantly water of marvellous delicious savour.  About this fountain were benches of rosemary, fretted in braydes laid on gold, all the sides set with roses, on branches as they were growing about this fountain.  On the benches sate eight fair ladies in strange attire, and so richly apparelled in cloth of gold, embroidered and cut over silver, that I cannot express the cunning workmanship thereof.  Then when the king and queen were set, there was played before them, by children, in the Latin tongue, a manner of tragedy, the effect whereof was that the pope was in captivity and the church brought under foot.  Whereupon St. Peter appeared and put the cardinal (Wolsey) in authority to bring the pope to his liberty, and to set up the church again.  And so the cardinal made intercession with the kings of England and France that they took part together, and by their means the pope was delivered.  Then in came the French king’s children, and complained to the cardinal how the emperour kept them as hostages, and would not come to reasonable point with their father, whereupon they desired the cardinal to help for their deliverance; which wrought