¹ I wish to thank the Trustees of the British Museum, the Corporation of the City of Chester, the Cheshire Record Office, Mr. A. Edwards, the current steward of the Coopers' gild, and Mr. H. R. J. Swinnerton, the current steward of the Painters, Glaziers, Embroiderers and Stationers' Company for allowing me to use and cite material from the manuscripts in their possession. I also wish to express my gratitude to Professor Martin Stevens for his helpful and constructive criticism of the first draft of this article.

² smiths' accounts, 1561: Morris, Rupert, Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns (Chester, [1895]), pp. 305–306, 310–11:Google Scholar, Painters' accounts, 1568, 1572, 1575: Bridge, J. C., “Items of Expenditure from the Sixteenth Century Accounts of the Painters, Glaziers, Embroiderers and Stationers' Company,” Journal of the Architectural, Archaeological and Historic Society of Chester, and North Wales, 20 (1914), 157–173;Google Scholar Smiths' accounts, 1554, and Coopers' accounts, 1572, 1575: Salter, F. M., Mediaeval Drama in Chester (Toronto, 1955), pp. 72–75Google Scholar. The Coopers' accounts had been previously published by Salter, in “The ’Trial and Flagellation,’“ The Trial and Flagellation with Other Studies in the Chester Cycle, ed. Greg, W. W. (Oxford: Malone Society, 1935), pp. 15–19Google Scholar. Only the three Salter transcriptions are complete and trustworthy.

³ Chester Archives, unnumbered manuscript; BM Harl MS 1944; Cheshire Record Office MS DCC 19; BM Harl MS 1948. The fifth version has been temporarily misplaced; I have used the version in the notes (BM Add 9442, f. 295^rv) compiled by the Revs. Daniel, and Lysons, Samuel for their Magna Brittania, II, ii (London, 1810), 590–591Google Scholar. Printed texts of BM Harl MSS 1944 and 1948 are to be found in Greg, Trial, pp. 163, 169.

⁴ Chester Archives, Assembly Files, A/F/l, f.12^r; Harl 2013, f.l*^r (a seventeenth-century copy). See Wyckham, Glynne, Early English Stages (London, 1966), I, 340–345Google Scholar, for a printed text of A/F/l. In the texts cited throughout the paper, abbreviations have been silently expanded. Ellipses represent editorial deletions from the text; square brackets indicate that the MS is defective at that point or that the scribe deleted the words within the brackets.

⁵ Chester Archives, Assembly Files, A/F/l, f. ll^r. Morris, p. 317, n. 1, prints a text.

⁶ The agreement does conclude with the statement that the parties agree “from hensforth yerely [ (to)] fynd kepe & susteyn the Thrid parte of all & euery reparacon” and to “cause to be paide yerelye from the thrid part of all the rentes due.” It is likely that the latter part of this agreement refers to the upkeep of the carriage and not the performance of the plays. The rent obviously would have to be paid whether the plays were performed or not.

⁷ BM Harl MS 2054, f. 36^V.

⁸ Mag. Brit., 592. They deny the 1600 revival, as do most later critics, and link that tradition with George Bellin's copy of the Banns in Harl 2013 which is dated 1600. See also, Salter, F. M., Mediaeval Drama in Chester, p. 46Google Scholar, and Baugh, A. C. et al. , A Literary History of England, 2nd ed. (New York, 1967), 1, 278, 282Google Scholar, and the works cited in note 9.

⁹ Chambers, The Mediaevàl Stage (Oxford, 1903), II, 353Google Scholar. Chambers does not clearly cite his sources: most of the dates are consistent with some of the Mayors' lists discussed below; the 1546 date is derived from Furnivall, F. J., ed., The Digby Plays, EETS, ES 70 (London, 1896), xxvGoogle Scholar; the 1551 date is based on a misprint for 1561 in Morris, , p. 306, n. b. Gardiner, Mysteries' End (New Haven, 1946), p. 79Google Scholar; Ormerod, George, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (London, 1819), I, 235–236Google Scholar; Salter, F. M.Google Scholar, “Trial,” p. 25. Craig, Hardin, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1955), p. 356Google Scholar, follows Gardiner.

¹⁰ The following MSS contain Mayors' lists which do not refer to the plays: Harl MSS 1989, 2125 (the second list), 2133 (a fragment), the Chester Assembly Book (Chester Archives, AB/1), and the Rogers' Brevarye in the Chester Archives.

¹¹ I have been unable as yet to locate the copy of the Brevarye which the Lysons brothers used; however, it is described in their Mag. Brit., 584, n. u., and by Stewart-Brown, R. in his note, “Annals of Chester,” Cheshire Sheaf, 3rd ser., 27 (1930), 50Google Scholar. The list was published by Irvine, W. Fergusson as a series of items in “The Annals of Chester,” Cheshire Sheaf, 3rd series. The references to the plays occur in vols. 29 (1934), 13Google Scholar, and 30 (1935), 13, 16, 19 and 25.

¹² Chester Archives, Brevarye, f. 23^r; Harl 1944, f. 26^r; Cheshire Record Office MS DCC 19, ff. 39^v–40^r; Harl 1948, f. 67^r; BM Add MS 9442, f. 295^V. See note 20 for the documents which corroborate the 1575 performance.

¹³ Harl 2009, f. 27^r.

¹⁴ BM Add MS 29780's date of 1566 is probably an error. The volume contains Mayor Aldersey's list of Mayors and Sheriffs in its earliest state; the entry was dropped in such later editions as Harl MSS 2057 and 2133, Add MS 39925 and the Lysons' copy of the Brevarye. See also the discussion of the Webster case below.

¹⁵ Harl 2054. Unless otherwise stated the date cited is one specifically related to the year of performance. In the original account books these may have been separate entries: 1554 (ff. 14^V–150^r); 1561 (ff. 16^v–17^r); 1567 (ff. 18^rv); 1568 (ff. 18^v–19^r); 1572 (f. 19^v; the account is undated but about 1571 according to Holmes; nevertheless, in the sequence of accounts, it would cover 1571–72); 1575 (ff. 20^v–21^r; the account is dated 4 July 1574, the day the new stewards took over, but includes the expenses for the performance at Midsummer the following year).

¹⁶ Coopers Account Book 1571 (sic)-1611. The book is still in the possession of the company.

¹⁷ Salter, “Trial,” p. 25, on the basis of these dates asserted the Coopers went in 1572 and 1574 but not in 1569, 1570, 1571, 1573 and 1575. Gardiner, p. 79, cites Salter as his source for these two dates.

¹⁸ Accounts of the Painters, Glaziers, Embroiderers and Stationers, ff. 35^r, 47^r, 59^r. The book is still in the possession of the company.

¹⁹ Chester Archives, Shoemakers' Accounts 1547–98, G 8/2, f. 16^r.

²⁰ Chester Archives, Assembly Files, A/F/3, f. 25^r. Unless otherwise noted the documents cited in the discussion which follows are all located in the Chester Archives.

²¹ The exception is the Mayors list in Add MS 29780; however, the list is probably inaccurate. See note 14 above.

²² See note 3 above.

²³ See note 4 above.

²⁴ I remain somewhat sceptical of Morris' dating of the document on two grounds. First, the rest of Morris' transcription suggests that in fact he could read no more than is still preserved of the document; therefore, the document may have read either “xxiij” or “xxiiij.” Secondly, since most documents dealing with the plays originate either a few months before or after the performance, I find it unlikely that the gild would have been looking forward to a performance some nine months before it was to take place. The agreement could have been made in August 1532, after the performance of that year and in anticipation of future performances.

²⁵ “The Banns of the Chester Plays,” RES, 15 (1939), 455Google Scholar. See Morris, pp. 316–7, who, without comment, inserts the dates into his transcription.

²⁶ There is one piece of evidence that suggests there may have been a performance in 1521. In the Mayor's Book for 1520–21, M/B/12, f. 24^v, there is an agreement, dated 4 February, between the stewards of the Founders and Pewterers on the one part and the stewards of the Smiths on the other part in which each party agrees not to interfere with members entering the other's company, but also agreeing to bring forth the Whitson play and Corpus Christi lights together as “they of olde tyme haue donne.” The agreement is very probably a reaffirmation of the separate nature of the gilds and thus may not arise from a decision to perform the plays that year. The intent of the document seems to be that there was a concern over infractions of gild controls rather than a concern over obligations for a performance and cannot be cited with assurance as evidence for a proposed performance in 1521.

²⁷ Other documents, such as charters and rentals for carriage houses, have not been discussed because they do not provide us with evidence specifically directed to dates of performance. Though a gild charter may mention the gild's obligation to bring forth its play, the charter is primarily concerned with establishing safeguards for the gild; consequently, the promulgation of a charter cannot be linked to a specific year of performance. The only exception may be the Sadler's charter of 11 Edward 4 (1471–72), Harl 2009, 38^r, which was granted “for the terme of 40 yeares to the maintaynance of their pagent in the whitsone pleas.” Likewise, city rentals, though they may tell us when a particular gild started renting land for a carriage house, do not provide information for specific years of performance since the rentals were annual even when the plays were not. I have not discussed the fifteenth-century documents which are extant because they are too few and scattered to be of help in determining a sequence of years of performance.

²⁸ It is probably not coincidental that official intervention occurred after Grindal had been made Archbishop of York in June 1570. In 1572, the year he attempted to halt the plays at Chester, he also called in the play books at York. See Stevens, Martin, “The Missing Parts of the Towneley Cycle,” Speculum, 45 (1970), 261–262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Harl 1944, ff. 21^r-26^v. See Ormerod, I, 296–300, for a text.