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note him to be a squire minsrel, or a minstrel of the superior order. Chaucer, 1921, p. 181, says : " Minstrels used a red hat. Tom Piper's bonnet is red, faced or turned up with yellow, his doublet blue, the sleeves hlue, turned up with yellow, something like red muffettees at his wrists, over his doublet is a red garment, like a short cloak with arm-holes, and with a yellow cape, his hose red, and garnished across and perpendicularly on the thighs, with a narrow yellow lace. This ornamental trimming seems to be called gimp-thigh'd in Grey's edition of Butler's Hudibras ; and something almost similar occurs in Love's Labour's Loft, Ad IV. sc. ii. where the poet mentions, “Rhimes are guards on wanton Cupid's hose. His shocs are brown.

Figures 10. and ii. have been thought to be Flemings or Spaniards, and the latter a Morisco. The bonnet of figure 10. is red, turned up with blue, his jacket red with red sleeves down the arms, his stomacher white with a red lace, his hose yellow, striped across or rayed with blue, and spotted blue, the under part of his hose blue, his shoes are pinked, and they are of a light colour. I am at a loss to name the pennant-like flips waving from his shoulders, but I will venture to call them side-sleeves or long sleeves, fit into two or three parts.

The poet Hocclive or Occleve, about the reign of Richard the Second, or of Henry the Fourth, mentions side-lleeves of pennyless grooms, which swept the ground ; and do not the two following quotations infer the use or fashion of two pair of sleeves upon one gown or doublet? It is asked in the appendix to Bulwer's Artificial Changeling : “What use is there of any other than arming sleeves, which auswer the proportion of the arm ?” In Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. sc. iv. a lady's gown is described with down-fleeves, and fide-leeves, that is, as I conceive it, with sleeves down the arms, and with another pair, of sleeves, slit open before from the shoulder to the bottom or almost to the bottom , and by this means unsustained by the arms and hanging down by her fides to the ground or as low as her gown. If such fleeves were sit downwards into four parts, they would be quartered ; and Holinshed says: “that at a royal mummery, Henry VIII. and fifteen others appeared in Almain jackets, with long quartered sleeves;” and I consider the bipartite or tripartite fleeves of figures 10. and 11, as only a small variation of that fashion. Mr. Steevens thinks the winged sleeves of figures 10. and 11. are alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher in The Pilgrim :

That fairy rogue that haunted me “He has sleeves like dragon's wings.” And he thinks that from these perhaps the fluttering freamers of the present Morris dancers in Sussex may be derived. Markhani's Art of Angling, 1635, orders the angler's apparel to be “without hanging sleeves, waving loose, like fails.”

Vol. XII.

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Figure 11. has upon his head a silver coronet, a purple cap with à red feather, and with a golden knop. In my opinion he personates a nobleman, for I incline to think that various ranks of life were meant to be represented upon my window. He has a poft of honour, or,

6 a station in the valued file, * which here seems to be the middle row, and which according to my conjecture comprehends the queen, the king , the May-pole, and the nobleman. The golden crown upon the head of the master of the hobby-horse, denotes pre-eminence of rank over figure 11. not only by the greater value of the metal , + but by the superior number of points raised upon it. The shoes are blackish, the hose red, striped across or rayed with brown or with a darker red, his codpiece yellow, his doublet yellow, with yellow de fleeves, and red arming sleeves, or down-sleeves. The form of his doublet is remarkable. There is great variety in the dresses and attitudes of the Morris dancers on the window, but an ocular observation will give a more accurate idea of this and of other particulars than a verbal description.

Figure 12. is the counterfeit fool, that was kept in the royal palace, and in all great houses, io make sport for the family. He appears with all the badges of his office; the bauble in his hand, and a coxcomb hood with affes ears on his head. The top of the hood rises into the form of a cock's neck and head, with a bell at the latter; and Minsheu's Dictionary, 1627, under the word cock's comb, observes, that “natural idiots and fools have (accustomed) and still do accustome themselves to weare in their cappes cocke's feathers or a hat with a necke and a head of a cocke on the top, and a bell thereon, &c. His hood is blue, guarded or edged with yellow at its scalloped bottom, his doublet is red, striped across or rayed with a deeper red, and edged with yellow, his girdle yellow, his left side hose yellow, with a red shoe, and his right side hose blue , foled with red leather. Stowe's Chronicle, 1614, p. 899, mentions a pair of cloth-stockings soled with white leather called " cashambles, that is, “ Chausses semelles de cuir," as Mr. Anstis, on the Knighthood of the Bath, observes. The fool's bauble and the carved head with asses ears upon it are all yellow. There is in Olaus Magnus, 1555, p. 524, a delineation of a fool, or jester, with several bells upon his habit; with a bauble in his hand, and he has on his head a hood with asses cars, a feather, and the resemblance of the comb of a cock. Suchjefters seem to have been formerly much caressed by the northern nations,

* The right hand file is the first in dignity and account, or in degree of value , according to Count Mansfield's Directions of War, 1624.

† The ancient kings of France wore gilded helmets , the dukes and counts wore filvered ones. See Selden's Titles of Honour for the Taised points of Coroneis.

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especially in the court of Denmark; and perhaps our ancient jocita lator regis might mean such a person.

A gentleman of the highest class in historical literature, apprehends, that the representation upon my window is that of a Morris dance procession about a May-pole; and he inclines to think, yet with many doubts of its propriety in a modern painting, that the personages in it rank in the boustrophedon form. By this arrangement (says he) the piece seems to form a regular whole, and the train is begun and ended by a fool in the following manner : Figure 12. is the well-known fool. Figure 11. is a Morisco, and figure 10. a Spaniard, persons peculiarly pertinent to the Morris dance; and he remarks that the Spaniard obviously forms a sort of middle term betwixt the Moorish and the English characters, having the great fantastical fleeve of the one, and the laced ftomacher of the other. ' Figure 9. is Tom the Piper. Figure 8. the May-pole. Then follow the English characters, representing as he apprehends, the five great ranks of civil life. Figure 7. is the franklin, or private gentleman. Figure 6. is a plain churł or villane. He takes figure 5. the man within the hobby-horse , to be perhaps a Moorish king, and from many circumstances of superior grandeur plainly pointed out as the greatest personage of the piece, the monarch of the May, and the intended consort of our English Maid Marian. Figure 4. is a nobleman. Figure 5. the friar, the representative of all the clergy. Figure 2. is Maid Marian, queen of May. Figure 1. the lefser fool closes the rear.

My defcription commences where this concludes, or I have reversed this gentleman's arrangement, by which in either way the train begins and ends with a fool ; but I will not assert that such a disposition was designedly observed by the painter.

With regard to the antiquity of the painted glass there is no memorial or traditional account transmitted to us; nor is there any date in the room but this, 1621, which is over a door, and which indicates in my opinion the year of building the house. The book of Sports or lawful Recreations upon Sunday after Evening-prayers, and upon Holy-days, published by King James in 1618, allowed May-games, Morris dances, and the setting up of May-poles; and, as Ben Jonson's Masque of The Metamorphosed Gypsies, intimates, that Maid Marian, and the friar, together with the often forgotten hobby-horse, were sometimes continued in the Morris dance as late as the year 1621, I once thought that the glass might be stained about that time; but my present objections to this are the following ones. It seems from the prologue to the play of King Henry VIII. that Shakspeare's fools should be dressed “ in a long motley coat guarded with yellow;” but the fool upon my window is not so habited; and he has upon his head a hood, which I apprehend might be the coverture of the fool's head before the days of Shakspeare, when it was a cap with a comb like a cock's, as

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both Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson assert, and they seem justified in doing so from King Lear's fool giving Kent his cap, and calling it his coxcomb. I am uncertain, whether any judgement can be formed from the manner of spelling the inscrolled inscription upon the May-pole, upon which is displayed the old banner of England, and not the union flag of Great Britain, or St. George's red cross and St. Andrew's white cross joined together, which was ordered by King James in 1606, as Stowe's Chronicle certifies. Only one of the doublets has buttons, which I conceive were common in Queen Elizabeth's reign; nor have any of the figures ruffs, which fashion commenced in the latter days of Henry VIII, and from their want of beards also I am inclined to suppose they were delineated before the year 1535, when “ - King Henry VIII. commanded all about, his court to poll their heads, and caused his own to be polled, and his beard to be notted, and no more shaven. Probably the glass was painted in his youthful days, when he delighted in Maygames, unless it may be judged to be of much higher antiquity by almost two centuries.

Such are my conjectures upon a subject of so much obscurity; but it is high time to resign it to one more conversant with the history of our ancient dresses. TOLLET.