It is well known to medieval theatre scholars that the medieval word game was used, in one of its senses, somewhat interchangeably with the medieval term play. There is considerable evidence of the interchangeability of these terms in the prologues and epilogues of plays, where the terms of reference for the presentation are established and reinforced. Additionally, in the synonymous relationship between game and play there are many references to ‘game players’, ‘game places’, and ‘game books’.

However, even though some (theatrical) plays are recorded as games, the word game predominantly, both in the Middle Ages and today, possesses non-theatrical meanings, which determine the focus of this work. In this article I propose to examine the structural relationship between games that are ostensibly non-theatrical, and their absorption into fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English plays. Thus, following the modern practice, I shall refer to theatrical plays as plays and non-theatrical games as games.

The word game has most frequently referred to non-theatrical activities conducted by both adults and children. The activity termed play, when formalized as theatre, requires onlookers. Games, however, do not normally require external witnesses, although they may have them, and participants in games may, at times, also be spectators. This may be because of the nature of the game, that individuals are ‘counted out’ for whatever reason (usually concerned with the purpose and structure of the game); or they may deliberately ‘opt out’ as permitted by the rules of the game. Thus, they become observers within the game rather than participants in it. Similarly, personages in plays, depending on theatrical intentions and presentational conventions, may be required to withdraw, retire, or leave the action of the play and, like participants in games, stand around as observers of the action. This practice and resulting convention is accepted by personages and spectators alike.

I have written elsewhere of the necessity for theatre to engage in the process of ‘agreed pretence’: that is, a voluntary agreement between the instigators of the theatre and its witnesses to the effect that an activity called theatre is about to be played. Such an agreement is generally a tacit one established by those who put on the play and confirmed by the continued voluntary contribution of the spectators. All concerned agree that the pretence should take place and the witnesses volunteer their engagement

Another member of Williams's family circle, Francis Barkstead, continued Sheppard's work as receiver, establishing and strengthening the charities in accordance with Dr Williams's will. The trustees also maintained their loyal and active support. DWT's Welsh schools and schoolmasters often met opposition from local dignitaries, hostile to nonconformity. Outside the terms of the will, a register of births for nonconformists was desired.

Barkstead as Receiver – His Early Years in Office

Benjamin Sheppard's death in 1731 led to Francis Barkstead, his brother-in-law, taking on the duties of ‘Receiver & Acomptant’. This allowed continuity as the flow of financial generosity continued; at the meeting when Sheppard's death was announced, three trustees gave £20 each and five trustees two guineas each towards the debts. A year later Obadiah Hughes forwarded £15, from ‘a private Collection’ among trustees, to pay Bond's salary. One stall in the library, set aside for curious items, was labelled ‘the museum’. John Welch presented £50, from an ‘Anonimous Gentleman’, which bought ‘a Handsome Case’ for the ‘Skeleton’ (donated early in DWL's existence), two grates for the attic, and kitchen furniture, and in January 1733 John Hollis gave dozens of knives and forks (his family were cutlers). Later that year several trustees contributed thirteen guineas. In February 1735, the trustee Antonio Walburgh (Anthony Walbarge d.1749), a correspondent member of the SSPCK, gave £100 for purchasing books, and in 1738 Alleyn Smith of Battersea left a similar sum.

On John Evans's death in May 1730, his plan to write a history of the puritans to 1640 (with Daniel Neal continuing the account after 1640) remained unfulfilled. Evans's books were sold by auction in December 1730, with several (Marprelate tracts, John Penry's works, and one tract by Robert Browne) going to DWL. Subsequently Neal (1678–1743) took on the whole project and in 1732 he presented DWL with copies of his History of New England (London, 1720) and volume 1 of his History of the Puritans (London, 1732). Meanwhile the trustees judged certain works as unfit, among them those of Augustine of Hippo. Less surprisingly, in 1737 Thomas Rowe's donation of Samuel Butler's anti-puritan polemic Hudibras was discarded, although Rowe gave other valuable books to DWL.

The ongoing volumes of the University of Toronto’s Records of Early English Drama (REED) and the online REED Patrons and Performances provide information concerning performance activities from about half of medieval and early modern England: 17 counties, 9 municipalities. It also includes Wales. When augmented by information found in other sources, like Ian Lancashire’s Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain, the Malone Society’s Plays and Players in Norfolk and Suffolk, and others, the data reveal thousands of performances in large and small communities throughout the kingdom. A survey and analysis of these records during the reign of Henry VI has revealed an unusual increase in payments to travelling and visiting performers, unmatched in the surviving record evidence from before or after his reign. This paper presents an exploration of this striking pattern.

For purposes of analysis I use a master spreadsheet created from data in the REED volumes and various other sources. The spreadsheet lists travelling performers from one of the earliest records, King Edward I’s ystrioni at Christ Church Priory (1277), until the end of the reign of James I (1625). At present it contains over 9,000 entries from most areas of medieval and early modern England. The spreadsheet includes: performers identified by patron or place of origin, types of performers, dates and places of performances, and payments to performers if such were recorded. The terms performers or entertainers are used to cover a variety of activities. The terminology in the records is often very loose. Until records began to be written in English rather than Latin (c.1525), dramatic records refer to histriones, mimi, luditores, and lusitores. Histriones and mimi could designate ‘actors’ of some sort, and luditores and lusitores are generic terms for ‘players’ (which could mean game players and/or actors). Performers designated as minstrels, which dominate the records examined here, were most often musicians but could be actors, dancers, or all of these. Entertainers such as bearwards, keepers of animals in the royal menageries, jugglers, and jesters are usually specified, and musicians are sometimes identified as trumpeters, pipers, harpists, drummers, or waits. Therefore for the following discussion and tables, in the absence of more specific designation, the Latin terms histriones, mimi, and luditores are all translated as ‘entertainers’ or ‘performers’.

Walter David Jeremy was DWT's receiver for much of the second half of the nineteenth century. His authority was such that he could successfully challenge the trustees’ decisions. Having achieved legal recognition as Unitarians, the trustees had more confidence in their theology, their social importance, and their charity. Crucially, DWL moved home three times, gaining new readers in the process.

Jeremy and His Duties

Jeremy (1825–93) lived on Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, had chambers at 10 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, and became a DW trustee in 1856. Born in Carmarthenshire, he was the son of Revd John Jeremy of Lampeter and, after attending the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen 1841–5, had held a Dr Williams's scholarship in Glasgow 1845–8, graduating in classics and philosophy. Having ministered at the Unitarian chapel, Northampton, 1851–2, he had studied law, being called to the bar in 1859. He was later an honorary examiner for Dr Williams's scholarships and a member of the Presbyterian Board. He published A History of the Presbyterian Fund and Dr Williams's Trust (London, 1885), which resulted from a series of historical sketches in The Inquirer. Until his death Jeremy's chambers in Lincoln's Inn contained all DWT's current documents.

From New Square he sent out parcels of books, accompanying these with curt, matter-of-fact letters. In June 1862, he told Michael Jones of Bala, ‘You may give the Books to Ministers & Students or others’ but remember ‘that Welsh Books are more useful in the neighbourhood’. In July, William Jones of Amlwch was told that his parcel did not include certain books that he had requested, but that these would be sought out for the next parcel. One tenant in Blackfriars was offered a lease at the ‘yearly rent of £28’, with Jeremy expecting an ‘early answer’. In similar fashion Jeremy reminded DWT's tenants when their rents were due. He asked that they transmit the rent through a banker and inform him when this was done. Suspecting that DWT's tenant at Trevalyn Farm, near Wrexham, intended to leave and strip it of its fixtures, he placed the matter with the solicitor Samuel Cotton, DWT's secretary. In 1862–3 Jeremy acted to prevent Thomas Bridge of Stock, six miles south of Chelmsford, from repeatedly trespassing on trust land ‘in pursuit of game’.

This transcription and translation was roughed out by Meg Twycross, and then received thorough and very much appreciated scrutiny from Philip Bennett. It would be difficult now to unpick their contributions from each other, so we have left them unattributed.

The following does not purport to be a scholarly edition of the text of the challenges, merely a transcription and tentative translation of the version in BL Cotton MS Nero D II. (For the manuscript, see <www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_nero_d_ii_f252r>). It preserves the rhetorical punctuation, which gives a sense of how the challenges might have been delivered.

Since this version, like the others, is a later copy, it has inaccuracies and miscopyings. Some of the more obvious are marked in the transcription, though otherwise there is minimal editorial intervention. Occasionally the version in National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 32-6-9 fols 63–69 provides a suggestion, but that version too has its problems.

The translation also attempts the slightly archaic vocabulary and syntax of a royal proclamation, though it is of course a moot point quite how archaic it would have sounded to the original audience – especially since it was delivered in Insular French, much of which has become the accepted vocabulary of honorifics. The syntax is rhetorical and declamatory and proceeds by accumulation. It often defers the important point to the end of the sentence, as is the custom: ‘EDWARD VI, by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in earth the supreme head, to all our most loving, faithful, and obedient subjects, and to each of them, greeting’.

Some vocabulary is almost impossible to translate because it encapsulates a system of courtly values the modern descendants of which to us sound stilted: noblesse (‘nobility’), gentilesse (‘gentility’), bontie (‘bounty’). The ethos of jousting is another problem. The young knights ask to be instructed in le fait desbatement darmes, ‘the fact/performance of the entertainment of arms’. We have translated this as ‘the practice of the recreation of arms’.

The names of the challengers are another problem. Many of them come from the vocabulary of love-literature and again we do not have a direct equivalent.

An outline of Daniel Williams's career provides the background to the trust that bears his name. His concerns, extending from England to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and North America formed part of a lively tradition. Daniel Williams himself was a central figure in London dissent in the early 1700s and shared with his trustees a vision for their Presbyterian understanding of Protestantism. They wished not only to resist the threats of Roman Catholicism and Jacobitism, but also to avoid the pitfalls of a narrow view of predestination, which implied that conduct and morality had no bearing on salvation. Williams's will endowed charities, touching on missions, preaching, elementary education, university training for ministers, and on his library in London. DWL contains books and manuscripts of wider interest than any narrow interpretation of religious dissent would admit. No longer aspiring to a national church order, English Presbyterians were soon to undergo the theological test of the Salters’ Hall debates of 1719.

Daniel Williams (c. 1643–1716) and His Contemporaries

In many ways Williams's career encapsulates the complex relations between English and Welsh dissent in the late Stuart and early Hanoverian periods. Born in Wrexham, Denbighshire, c. 1643, according to one biographer, he devoted himself to ‘Studies’ from an early age and may have been preaching ‘regularly’ by the age of nineteen. Among preachers then active in Wrexham were the Presbyterian Philip Henry (1631–96) whose son, Matthew, was nominated one of Williams's first trustees, and Morgan Llwyd (1619–59) who pastored a gathered church. At the Restoration some of Llwyd's wealthier followers conformed, although a nucleus of gentry and yeomen shunned the established church. A few years later John Evans (1628–1700) became minister of Wrexham's ‘Old Meeting’ (Independent and Baptist) and married the widow of the radical dissenter Vavasor Powell (1617–70). Evans's son, also John, would become Williams's assistant in London. Wrexham's nonconformists were reported in 1669 as numerous, but mostly of ‘ordinary condition’, although by the 1680s this town was deemed a ‘citadel’ of dissent.

The story of the Church of England over the course of the seventeenth century is complicated and multifaceted, and the most complex period, both at the national and local level, is from 1660 to 1700. The latter period has had the sometimes doubtful privilege of being endowed with a heavy burden of historical opinion. Charles II was restored to his kingdom in 1660 and the Church of England was re-established by law in 1662, but it was a fractious kingdom and the church was not universally accepted. The period from 1660 to 1663 was characterized by small rebellions, many executions for treason, large-scale movements of parish incumbents and the persistence of dissent. This Introduction is intended to assist in the understanding of a single document which is itself devoted to a comparatively small number of parishes located, in the main, within the confines of a small area of England. Attention is therefore directed at what the document says and whether any revelations of shortcomings should or could have been remedied in the years immediately following the Restoration, rather than attempting to discuss national issues. Many historians have explicated the national political and religious problems and a few have examined local communities, but this document reveals the problems facing the re-established local church hierarchy, at the parish level.

The Church of England had been officially banned for nearly twenty years and while some of the Canterbury diocesan parishes clung on to their ministers or individuals continued to use the old rites clandestinely, the majority of the parishes, if they had a pastor at all, were subjected to an ever changing mélange of presbyterians, congregationalists, baptists, quakers and itinerant preachers. By 1663, it was apparent that church attendance was alarmingly low and nonconformists survived in numbers and influence, despite the national laws enacted between 1660 and 1663 designed to control matters. The machinery of the church courts was not yet fully operational, making local control more difficult, and support from county leaders was not always guaranteed. Adding to these challenges were the structural problems caused by pluralism, non-residence, low clerical incomes, ruined churches, dilapidated clerical residences and vacant livings.

The document popularly referred to as the ‘Sheldon survey’ presents a blurred and flawed view but assists our understanding of the state of the church, by the end of 1663, in the diocese of Canterbury and the archbishop’s peculiars.

Given Roger Thomas's achievements, his successor suffered by comparison. Although Kenneth Twinn held DWT together, progress was modest. In contrast to the library's ‘old world’ atmosphere, social change in Britain seemed rapid during the 1960s and 1970s, with ecumenism seizing the imagination of the churches. Was DWT necessarily detached from such changes and trapped in its past?

Roger Thomas and Staff Retirements, Kenneth Twinn's Report 1968–9

The coming retirement of the secretary/librarian, Roger Thomas, was the leading issue in 1966. In May, the staffing committee unanimously recommended Revd Kenneth Twinn (1910–96) for the joint appointment of secretary and librarian, which post he held for nine years until his retirement. Thomas had energetically arrested decline and, in so doing, made radical decisions.

Inez Elliott herself retired in September 1969, having joined the staff in 1933 and been deputy librarian since the 1940s. She had served in wartime, throughout the compilation of the Bibliography of Early Nonconformity, and the absorption of the Baynes bequest. She had trained several assistants, including John Creasey from 1959, and had contributed to DWL's ‘efficiency and pleasant atmosphere’. On her retirement Creasey became deputy librarian and Janet Barnes the senior assistant librarian. Clifford Reed was to be the library cataloguer 1970–2.

Twinn reported that in the year to September 1969 DWL enrolled 169 new readers. This compared to 187 in 1968 and 195 in 1967. In 1938 the new members had totalled 453. In 1949 the total number of books issued had been 12,447, while in 1969 it was merely 6,161. Overall statistics showed that use of DWL had declined and was declining, although the number of readers since 1967 had remained the same at 1,957 and was markedly higher than the 1,110 readers recorded for 1951. In March 1969, the trustees reached agreement with Heffers to print 1,500 copies of Twinn's Dr Williams's Library: Guide to the Manuscripts for £136. By December it was selling for five shillings or one dollar.

Describing DWL to Methodist readers in 1972 as a ‘metaphorical ivory tower’ and ‘a largely specialized library for scholars’, Twinn confirmed the transformation inspired by Thomas. He saw it as ‘concerned with those fundamental studies of our religious, spiritual, philosophical and intellectual heritage which are worth exploring’. He did not clarify his word ‘our’.

Although DWL was experiencing change, its claim to be a public library was still questionable. That a reader needed an introduction, though a mere formality, presented an obstacle to newcomers, cautious in the capital and unfamiliar with Unitarians and with dissent in general. A new librarian reordered DWL's life. Would the move to Gordon Square, and the ending of the receiver's post, concentrate resources on the library?

Francis Henry Jones

Jones succeeded Hunter as DWT secretary and librarian in 1886, after the latter's retirement in the previous year. According to Jeremy in 1885, DWL contained some ‘35,000 volumes of printed books, 500 volumes of manuscripts’, and numerous portraits, chiefly of nonconformists. Describing it as ‘primarily a Theological Library’, he allowed that it also contained works ‘ancillary’ to theological and cognate studies. The library was free, open Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings. He added that ‘A large number of gentlemen’, whose names may be seen at DWL, ‘are privileged to introduce Readers’. Evidently readers still needed an introduction, though a less formal arrangement than previously, to consult the books, which now ‘Under certain restrictions’ were lent.

This was DWL on Jones's appointment. Among his innovations, he improved the efficiency of recording and checking the issue of books, and initiated an index of readers. He encouraged the appointment of an assistant librarian (the first in DWL's history) and developed a postal service, so that in 1896 DWL sent out 1,705 parcels, as distinct from 583 in 1886. In 1914, DWL sent 6,896 parcels of books. Although Jones was accused of making DWL stricter and less personal, readers found the service more reliable. Yet, like Hunter, he oversaw DWL's move from one site to another, in his case from Grafton Street, with little room for growth and books crammed tightly on the shelves, to University Hall, Gordon Square, which itself underwent alterations in 1915. In 1890 DWT acquired premises that accommodated for the first time both the receiver and the library and that allowed for expansion. Nonetheless moving DWL three times in thirty years was demanding.

DWT's last quarterly meeting in Grafton Street was held in March 1890 and their first in Gordon Square in June. The former dining room became DWL's lecture hall and the college library its reading room.

Roger Thomas had the courage to innovate, making several improvements without losing DWL's old-world atmosphere. As a Unitarian minister, he understood the fears of cautious trustees and the risks of being patronised by those ignorant of one's views. As a former trustee, he knew DWT well and was able to convince the trustees of the need for change. He also appreciated the demands of scholars. The creation of the Friends of DWL in 1947 was a masterstroke.

Secretary, Librarian, and New Trustees

The ‘sudden death’ in June 1944, after nineteen years as secretary, of Joseph Worthington, was a shock. He was described as having ‘splendidly assisted’ the trustees ‘to relieve the needy and promote the spread of learning and enlightened scholarship’. That same month Miss Shepherd, the assistant secretary, announced her wish to retire. The need to replace them led to a special committee being appointed, while Ernest George Lee (1896–1983), editor of The Inquirer 1939–62 and a trustee, deputised as honorary acting secretary. Lee was soon supplanted when, in August, 1944 Revd Roger Thomas (1900–80), having resigned as a trustee, was chosen DWT secretary from October, intending to continue part-time as minister of the Free Christian Church, Croydon.

A special library post-war committee was set up in March 1945, consisting of no more than six members. It advised on the staffing, use, and running of DWL, on negotiations with the Hibbert Trust, and on the advisability of asking the Charity Commission for modifications to the 1910 scheme. It also applied to the commission for a pension of £300 a year for Stephen Kay Jones, whose retirement date was fixed for 31 March 1946. After his retirement, the librarian's and secretary's posts merged, with Roger Thomas filling the joint position. The committee recommended that the secretary's salary should be increased by £200 a year, that the scheme for raising voluntary subscriptions to DWL should be adopted, and that help be requested from the Hibbert Trust. Roger Thomas's salary remained at £450 plus residence until 1954, when it grew to £600 plus residence.

Stephen Kay Jones was thanked in 1946 for forty years’ service, twenty as DW librarian. His family's associations with the trust extended over sixty years, with his father secretary and librarian from 1886, Stephen having lived in Grafton Street from the age of six, and first helping at DWL in January 1904.

Most of the theoretical contributions to issues of Studies of Medievalism dedicated to “Political Medievalism,” like the many books that have proliferated on this topic over the last ten years, have focused on medievalist tropes revived by members of the English-speaking entertainment industry or deployed by right-leaning politicians as a “conceptual weapon.” In this brief contribution to the theoretical conversation, I would like to take a step backward, to examine medievalism and politics through the lens of a time (1871) and place (France) when episodes of medieval European history were distorted and “weaponized” by factions on left, right, and center alike. By focusing on French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges’s “diplomatic negotiations” (philosopher Bruno Latour’s metaphor for grappling with irreconcilable positions), I hope to encourage debate about public medievalism today.

The Imagined Middle Ages of 1871 France

In 1871, Fustel de Coulanges encouraged politicians forming a new government after the fall of the Second Empire (1851–70) to improve an inequitable justice system. He offered help in the form of a four-part essay, “The Historical Origin of Justice Systems from Antiquity to Modern Times,” which was published in La Revue des Deux Mondes. This venue – a French bi-weekly dedicated to culture, literature, economics, and politics – ensured a broad non-partisan readership.

Fustel could not have anticipated that a civil war would interrupt the publication of this essay. Only three days after the March 15 publication of his second installment (“Justice in the Feudal World”), fighting broke out in Paris between a left-leaning coalition of intellectuals and members of the working class and a recently elected (February 8) conservative government. The conflict resulted in the burning and vandalism of great swathes of Paris and in the establishment of a parallel government, named “The Commune,” which enacted a liberal agenda including expanded voting rights, the separation of Church and State, self-policing, and the abolition of child labor. The Paris Commune was short-lived, however (March 28 to May 28