The History of the York Mystery Plays: part 2

In the second of her two posts about the York Mystery Plays, Ilka Heale uses contemporary texts to learn more about the history and development of the tradition.

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There is no record of the first performance of the York Mystery Plays, but they are first recorded celebrating the festival of Corpus Christi in 1376, by which time the use of pageant wagons had already been established.

At least 48 individual plays would be performed in York. According to civic records for 1399, the day began at 4.30 in the morning with parades through the streets on wagons stopping at twelve special places on the streets, designated by the city banners. The route was just over a mile long. It took them down Micklegate where there were four stations, across Ouse Bridge, down Coney Street, up Stonegate and ending at Pavement.

From Eboracum by Francis Drake, 1736, titled 'Extract out an order for the regulation of the play of
Corpus Christi; dated the 7th day of June 1417'.

The extract above from Eboracum: or the history and antiquities of the city of York …. by Francis Drake, 1736 (Appendix, pg xxxii) shows the route of the 1417 Corpus Christi plays. Indeed this map also from his major two volume work on the history of York show the layout of the street pattern has hardly changed since 1417.

The plays were organised, financed (and often performed) by the York Craft Guilds. In medieval England, the word 'mystery' meant 'trade' or 'craft', and it also refers to a religious truth or rite - hence the name Mystery Plays.

Below is a photograph of The oath of the new brethren of the Merchant Adventurers of the City of York which is part of the Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection housed in the Library's Special Collections. The collection is centred around Yorkshire and ranges from Edwards of Halifax bindings with fore-edge paintings to early writings about Dick Turpin; and from a fine presentation copy of J. Tickell's, The history of the town and county of Kingston upon Hull (1796) to chapbooks of James Kendrew, an early 19th century York printer.

The inscription at the bottom of the oath reads "Wm. Brown admitted to his Freedom of the Com[pany] of the Merchant Adventurers of the City of York. by Servitude this 20th. day of Aprl. 1813. ... [signed] J. Ward Sec[retar]y."

Each guild would perform a play, often one that was most fitting to their members. For example, the marriage of Cana, where Christ turned water into wine, would be acted out by the vintners. More morbid associations included the metal pinners nailing Christ to the cross and the butchers who performed the death of Christ.

Below is an extract from Tomlin's transcript of the Ashburnham Manuscript in the original Middle English. The Guild of Shipwrights performed the building of Noah's Ark

Compare this with the extract below which is a modernised version of the same text.

The opening to the Story of Noah,
performed by the Guild of Shipwrights.

This extract is taken from 'The York cycle of mystery plays: a complete version' by JS Purvis. Cannon Purvis wrote the first modern script for the plays from the original Middle English for the 1951 revival of the York Mystery Plays. This was a shorter version to be performed in under three hours and was published in the same year as 'The York cycle of mystery plays: a shorter version of the ancient cycle'. In 1957, the text was expanded to include a complete version of the plays. From 1953-1963, he was the first Director of the Borthwick Institute and his archive is deposited with the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

This extract from 'The York mystery plays' is the first few lines of the modernised text for the 1951 plays. Found in our collections, there is little information in the book, but we can assume that this is a playscript for the plays written by Cannon Purvis for the York Festival Society. Incidentally, the playscript was donated to the Library from JB Morrell (yes, you are right in thinking that our Morrell Library is named after him. For more details, see the information board by the main entrance).

Along with the text, there are many references to music in the plays.

This is a page of music from The York play: a facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290: together with a facsimile of the Ordo Paginarum section of the A/Y memorandum book. These six settings of music with Latin texts are to be performed as part of the Weavers pageant of The Assumption of the Virgin.

Music plays an important role but it is used in a different manner to music in modern drama. In contemporary drama, it works as 'incidental music', a way of highlighting the emotional content. However, medieval music has a functional role and is used to convey the beginning or ending of a play, to accompany entrances, exits and processions within a play as well as the spectacular stage effects of ascents and descents. Music is also used for a symbolic purpose. Heaven would be symbolised by the high voices and pure harmonies of the angels, with Hell using dissonance to create the chaos of evil.

For more information on medieval music, see our collection of books and scores in the John Paynter room in the Fairhurst Building, along with Music in the English mystery plays at MA 62 DUT.

York Historic Pageant souvenir by Charles Eyre Pascoe.
Shelfmark: Raymond Burton Yorkshire 12.32

The tradition of pageants and wagons was reintroduced in 1909. The York Historic Pageant included a parade of the banners of the Guilds through the streets, accompanying a wagon representing the Nativity. The York Pageant was a six day dramatic re-enactment of York's history from 800BC to 1644 which took place in the grounds of St Mary's Abbey at York. It was intended that 'the York Pageant represent by dramatic means a continuous history of York from the earliest times down to the siege of York in 1644'.

The York Pageant Music by James Rhoades & T. Tertius Noble.
Shelfmark: Special Collections Quarto LM 25 NOB

Thomas Tertius Noble (1867-1953) was the organist of York Minster from 1898 until 1913. He was responsible for the music in the York Pageant of 1909, composing some of it and directing the performances.

For a list of material on the York Mystery plays, please search YorSearch (the Library catalogue) or browse the shelves in our Literature section for MA 62.4 (the shelfmark for York Mystery Plays). In the Library's AV Collection, there are past performances of the mystery plays on DVD and video.

The books are in the University Library's Special Collections and can be consulted in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

For books on the history of York, please see Q 42.741. Books on English History from 1558-1603, including the Northern Rebellion are at Q 42.055.

You can also find material related to the York Mystery Plays in the York Digital Library.

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All photographs have been taken by our own University photographer, Paul Shields, from the Library's collection of books on York Mystery plays.

The battle for Yorkshire hearts...

Sarah Griffin traces the history of the British Civil War, and Charles I's time in York, through items in the Library's Special Collections.

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Today, 3 June, is the anniversary of a meeting at Heworth Moor just outside York. It was called by Charles I, for him to meet the people of Yorkshire, and our Special Collections hold some exciting material that helps us tell this story.

Left: Charles I. Right: Charles I in Parliament.

The British Civil War was a conflict that saw brother set against brother and, ultimately, the execution of an anointed king. The disagreement was between Charles, who believed in the divine right of kings and as such did not take kindly to being told he couldn't do things, and Parliament, who were the people telling the king he couldn't do things. The spoof history book '1066 and all that' says it is easy to tell the sides apart as the Royalists were 'Romantic' and the Roundheads were 'Repulsive'. Sadly it's not quite that straightforward and a quick timeline is probably useful.

Firstly Charles decided to rule without Parliament which meant he was also without the funds that they could grant him. He decided to raise money through a variety of means, several of which seemed guaranteed to annoy everyone, such as taxing soap, or redrawing common land boundaries and then fining people for living in the King's forests.

Eventually, after eleven years, the money ran out and he had to recall Parliament. The atmosphere was, understandably, not relaxed, and  tensions cranked up and up. In January 1642, Charles burst into the House of Commons to arrest five Members of Parliament he had accused of treason. They escaped, and the people of London showed their displeasure of the King's actions by rioting in the streets. Charles had overplayed his hand and the capital had become a hostile place for him.

Illustration from a Civil War Tract

So, in March 1642, Charles abandoned London and brought his court to Yorkshire. Travelling with him was the Royal printer, Robert Barker. Barker set up his press in St William's College, in the shadow of York Minster's Great East Window. The King stayed in York for five months from March to August and, isolated as he was from his capital, he needed to stay in touch with his supporters and the rest of the country. He did this through a series of tracts printed by Barker in York. The publications were not objective pieces of work. In much the same ways as politicians today use information, Civil War Tracts were intended to discredit their opponents and to tell one side of the story. The production of the tracts was not high quality, they were quickly produced and rarely illustrated. Any images tended to be poor quality and often did not match the text, for example a broadsheet from the King complaining about the raising of trained bands was illustrated with an image of a man riding a sea monster!

Charles' letter to John Goodricke

Charles needed to drum up support and as well as publishing tracts he wrote letters and addressed his people. One of his letters survives in the Special Collections. It was to John Goodricke, a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, asking him to remain in the city at the King's pleasure. Goodricke stayed loyal to the crown and was eventually captured and imprisoned by Parliament.

In May, Charles called a meeting of the gentry of Yorkshire to come to York Castle. The Freeholders of the City were unhappy to be excluded, so a second gathering happened on 3 June at Heworth Moor. It is claimed that over seventy thousand people attended. What Charles wanted was for those present to pledge their allegiance to him for the coming conflict.

Parliament was unhappy with this state of affairs. Open hostilities had not been declared and they were keen to avoid war if possible. They prepared a petition to deliver to the king requesting him to stop trying to raise an army, and asked Thomas Fairfax, a Yorkshire gentleman, to deliver it. Charles knew that something like this was going to happen, and refused to let Fairfax anywhere near him. Every time Fairfax came close, the King would gallop off in the opposite direction, once almost running Fairfax down. This game of  'tag' finally ended when Fairfax managed to force the petition under the King's saddle. Fairfax wrote a letter to his father, Ferdinando, listing the people who had been at the meeting. This letter also survives in our Special Collections.

Left: Thomas Fairfax. Right: Fairfax's letter to his father.

Charles was disappointed at the response of the Yorkshire gentry who were less keen to pledge allegiance than he had hoped. One eyewitness described the day as a 'confused murmur of noise', not the ringing acclaim that the King was relying on. Charles left York in August and travelled to Nottinghamshire where he raised his standard, and took the first steps on the road to a war that would divide the hearts of the English people, and eventually led him to the scaffold.

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All the items in the Special Collections are on the Library catalogue and available for study. For more information please contact Sarah Griffin, Special Collections Librarian.

The History of the York Mystery Plays: part 1

This year, from Thursday 26 May to Thursday 30 June, the York Mystery plays are being performed at York Minster for only the second time in their 700-year history. In the first of two posts, Ilka Heale highlights some books on the subject in the University Library.

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The York Mystery Plays are a Middle English cycle of forty-eight plays or pageants that tell stories from the Bible from the Creation to the Last Judgement.

Also known as the York Corpus Christi Plays, these were traditionally performed in the City's streets on the feast day of Corpus Christi (a movable feast which occurs sometime between 23 May and 24 June). There's evidence that the Plays were performed in York from the 1300s for around 200 years before their suppression in 1569, and that they are one of only four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles.

The Plays continued after the Reformation, when in 1548 the feast of Corpus Christi was abolished in England. The plays were adapted to fit the new religious orthodoxy, by cutting scenes honouring the Virgin, but were finally suppressed in 1569 the same year as the Northern Rebellion.

The play cycle was revived in 1951, in the York Festival of the Arts, as a part of the Festival of Britain celebrations. This was performed on a fixed stage in the ruins of St Mary's Abbey in Museum Gardens. Following the great success of the 1951 production selections from the plays have been staged periodically since.

Illustration of a performance of a mystery play in
'Ancient mysteries described, especially the English miracle plays' by William Hone

The earliest manuscript of the York cycle, probably dating between 1463 and 1477, is in the British Library and is known as the Ashburnham Manuscript. Originally belonging to the Corporation of York until 1553, it was later owned by Sir Henry Fairfax, Ralph Thoresby, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Heywood Bright, and Bertram, 5th Earl of Ashburnham (1840-1913). The manuscript was acquired by British Museum from Ashburnham in 1897. A facsimile of the manuscript appears in The York play: a facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290: together with a facsimile of the Ordo Paginarum section of the A/Y memorandum book.

The plays remained little known until Lucy Toulmin Smith obtained the permission of the Earl of Ashburnham to study this manuscript, then in his possession. In 1885, her transcription was published as 'York plays: the plays performed by the crafts of mysteries of York on the day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, now first published from the unique manuscript in the library of Lord Ashburnham' along with an introduction and short glossary.
In the introduction, Toulmin Smith writes "This was the book wherein the plays … were 'registered' by the city officers, and it must have belonged to the corporation. It was in one time in the care of the priory of Holy Trinity in Micklegate, at the gates of which was the first station in the circle of performances through the city as early as 1399."

Illustration of Holy Trinity church taken from Antiquities of York.
Drawn and etched by H. Cave and published in 1813.

For a list of material on the York Mystery plays, please search YorSearch (the University Library's online catalogue) or browse the shelves in our Literature section for MA 62.4 (the shelfmark for York Mystery Plays). In the Library's AV Collection, there are past performances of the mystery plays on DVD and video.

The books are in the University Library's Special Collections and can be consulted in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

For books on the history of York, please see Q 42.741. Books on English History from 1558-1603, including the Northern Rebellion are at Q 42.055.

You can also find material related to the York Mystery Plays in the York Digital Library.

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All photographs have been taken by the University photographer, Paul Shields, from the Library's collection of books on York Mystery plays.

The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 4

In the final post in his Fragments series, Jeff Berry explains how appearances can be deceiving...

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Oddities are not unique to binding fragments, but the lack of a larger context and the incidental damage inflicted by the binding process can make them seem particularly mysterious. Here is an example of such an oddity. Mirror writing, where the script is written backwards as if in a mirror, is a practice that shows up now and again in medieval works. The most famous example is that of Da Vinci, who used it from time to time. Even in his case, however, no one seems to be clear on what the point of the exercise was.

Sometimes with fragments there will be bits of ink that have been transferred from the manuscript to some other page or cover; this can resemble mirror writing, but it is usually fairly obvious what has happened in these cases. In the first fragment below, the paint from the coloured initials has stuck to the wooden board serving as a cover. Some paint remains on the original leaf as well, and side-by-side it is clear what happened.

From the Stainton Parish Library collection,
York Minster Library, printed in Basel 1563

This next fragment is more difficult to assess. It has several layers, and a small roughly triangular shape is from a different manuscript than the more decorated one below it. It is that lower fragment which appears to be mirror writing.

York Minster Library, printed in Basel 1558

The clear, clean lines argue against a gluey, sticky transfer like that in the above case, as does the appearance of not only the red and blue, but the black as well. However, the effort required to perform the complex mis-en-page and the blue initial with the red pen-flourishing would suggest that this, too, is a case of ink transfer. Further detailed conservation work would be needed to be absolutely certain, but while mirror writing is a possibility, the mundane explanation of glue and moisture seems more likely. Whatever the case, the difficult and complex task of reading the backwards writing is now as simple as few keystrokes and mouse-clicks, as the digitally reversed image renders the mysterious text clear:

All photography by Paul Shields.

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The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 1
The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 2
The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 3

The Peter Lewis Gift Collection

Hannah Hogan of the Department of History introduces the Peter Lewis Gift Collection

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Historians of fifteenth-century France will no doubt be familiar with, if not partly indebted to, the work of Peter (Shervey) Lewis (1931-2014), the 'doyenne' of British historians of medieval France and a quintessential Oxford don.

Peter Lewis was a Fellow of All Souls from 1953 until his retirement in 1998, Fellow Librarian for The Codrington Library from 1982 to 1998, and an Emeritus Fellow until his death in 2014. A hugely respected scholar on both sides of the Channel, Lewis held memberships not only to the Royal Historical Society but also l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Société de l'Histoire de France. Lewis' research addressed the political and social history of France during the Late Middle Ages, particularly royal power and political institutions during the fifteenth century. His interests also included iconography, propaganda, and contemporary historians and chroniclers of France such as Jean Juvénal des Ursins (1388-1473).

The Peter Lewis Gift Collection was donated to the University Library in August 2015 and was integrated into our own collections in January of this year. It pertinently reflects the research interests of an eminent scholar, and will certainly be of interest to anyone studying French history and historiography, literature, and medieval Europe more generally. The collection is made up of twentieth-century French language historical works which span the political, religious, economic, and cultural life of France during the High to Late Middle Ages. These range from definitive works by major historians (and contemporaries of Lewis) including Jean Favier, Bernard Guenée, and Philippe Contamine, to catalogues of archival material and literary works translated from Middle French.

 

Cataloguing the personal book collection of an academic can provide a tantalising, sometimes moving, and often entertaining glimpse into scholarly life. This is no less true of the Peter Lewis collection, which frequently turned up forgotten notes, drafts of review articles, letters from colleagues, and invitations. My favourite is an invitation from 1958 to a claret-tasting in All Souls, which aptly fell out of a book on the history of French wine-making (Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France des origines au XIXe siècle).

In addition to the Library's Peter Lewis label, look out for Lewis' lovely personalised bookplate. It's now a life ambition to have an ex libris like this one in my own books one day…

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NOTES ON IMAGES

Portrait of Peter Lewis courtesy of l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. All other images (details from Avril (ed.), Les Grandes Chroniques de France…, written inscription in Maurice, Un grand patriote: Thomas Basin and bookplate in Maurice, Thomas Basin) photographed by Paul Shields.