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12 On Rogers' Breviary, see further Hart, Steven E. and Knapp, Margaret M., ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’: David Rogers and the Chester Mystery Plays (New York, 1988);Google Scholar Clopper, L.M., Records of Early English Drama: Chester (Toronto, 1979)Google Scholar [hereafter REED], xxiv, xxvii–xxxv;Google Scholar Lumiansky, R.M. and Mills, David, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents, with an Essay, ‘Music in the Cycle’, by Richard Rastall (Chapel Hill, 1983)Google Scholar [hereafter Lumiansky-Mills], 260–71. Quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the 1609 version in the Chester City Record Office, as transcribed inGoogle Scholar REED, 232–54. The first 1619 copy, in BL Harley 1944, is similar to the 1609 version and is collated with it by Clopper.Google Scholar

13 Cf. REED, 320–6, and Hart and Knapp, ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’, 205–8, ‘The dating of the five versions of the Breviarye’.Google Scholar

14 The description is discussed by, among others, Salter, 54–69; Wickham, Vol. 1, 169–74;Google Scholar Powlick, Leonard, ‘The staging of the Chester Cycle: an alternate theory’, Theatre Survey, 12 (1971), 119–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Clopper, L.M., ‘The Rogers' description of the Chester Plays’, Leeds Studies in English, 7 (1974), 63–94;Google Scholar Marshall, John, ‘The Chester pageant carriage - how right was Rogers?’, Medieval English Theatre, 1:2 (1979), 49–60, and ‘“The manner of these playes”: the Chester pageant carriages and the places where they played’, inGoogle Scholar Mills, David (ed.), Staging the Chester Cycle (Leeds, 1985), 17–48;Google Scholar Hart and Knapp, especially ‘Conclusion’, 131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See further, chapter 4 in Hart and Knapp, ‘The Aunchant and Famous Cittie’, ‘The breviary and seventeenth-century historigraphy’, 109–30.Google Scholar

16 See REED, 258–62.Google Scholar

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18 On antiquarians and their records, see REED, xxiii–xxxvi; William Aldersay, George Bellin, Randle Holme, and David and Robert Rogers, who are mentioned in this paper, were contemporaries who shared this antiquarian interest.Google Scholar

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20 Palliser, D.M., A Revised List of Chester Freemen 1392–1538 (Chester City Record Office, n.d.), 3.Google Scholar

21 The City Record Office Catalogue states positively: ‘The first of these Assembly Books was started on the initiative of Henry Gee during his second mayoral year in 1539–40.’ Clopper (REED, xii) states that ‘it is probable that the book was not copied before 1567–8’ and goes on to say that there is evidence to suggest that ‘the Assembly Book was compiled from the debris of an earlier book or from loose records and that the prefatory the material was added by an antiquarian who either copied the List of Mayors from another source or compiled it himself.’ The ascription of initiative to Gee must, therefore, remain circumstantial, though strongly urged.Google Scholar

22 REED, 39–42.Google Scholar

23 Ff. 30-2. I am indebted to the present Steward of the Merchant Drapers Company for allowing me to examine the Company Book.Google Scholar

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25 On the development of the Cycle, see Clopper, L.M., ‘The history and development of the Chester Cycle’, Modern Philology, 75 (1978), 219–46;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 165–202. It should perhaps be noted that there is no evidence that the Whitsum Plays were ever performed annually, although annual performance may be inferred for the Corpus Christi Play. Rogers makes it clear that he considered the Plays and the Midsummer Show to be alternative annual civic events.Google Scholar

26 This seems to be the import of the comment in a Mayor's List for 1574–75 which states that the final performance was ‘to the great dislike of many because the playe was in on part of the Citty’ (REED, 110).Google Scholar

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32 On Higden's alleged authorship and related proposals, see Salter, , Mediaeval Drama in Chester, 37–42.Google Scholar

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37 On this use of the past see Mills, David, ‘Chester's mystery cycle and the “mystery” of the past’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 137 (1988), 1–23.Google Scholar

38 On Gregorie, see Mills, David, ‘Edward Gregorie - a “Bunbury Scholar”’, REED Newsletter 1982, 49–50; on Bellin, see REED, xxiv–xxxvii;Google Scholar on Miller, see Mills, David, ‘James Miller: the will of a Chester scribe’, REED Newsletter 9:1 (1984), 11–13. The different practices of these scribes are discussed inGoogle Scholar Lumiansky-Mills, 49–76, and their manuscripts are described inGoogle Scholar Lumiansky, R.M. and Mills, David (eds), The Chester Mystery Cycle: Vol. 1: Text (EETS ss.3, Oxford, 1974), ix–xxvii.Google Scholar

39 On the problems presented by this date, see REED, xli–xlii.Google Scholar

40 Assembly Book 2, fol. 119r. The italics are mine.Google Scholar

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42 I have discussed the Show more fully in ‘Chester's Midsummer Show: creation and adaptation’, a paper first given at the Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Theatre, held at the University of Lancaster in July 1989, and to be published in Twycross, Meg (ed.), Festive Drama (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

43 On London's giants, see Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge (ed.), A Survey of London by John Stow (Oxford, 1908), 101–4, andGoogle Scholar Anglo, , Spectacle, 191, 338. London's Midsummer and Lord Mayor's Shows are discussed byGoogle Scholar Williams, Sheila, ‘The Lord Mayor's Show in Tudor and Stuart times’, The Guildhall Miscellany, 10 (1959), 3–18. On giants in the shows of other towns, seeGoogle Scholar REED: Coventry, pp. xxiii–xxiv; REED: Newcastle, xv; REED: York, 399.Google Scholar

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51 REED, 415. Despite Rogers' idealistic view of the dignity of the Show, social tensions were on occasion manifested during it. A case in point is the evidence in the Quarter Sessions Accounts (Chester City Record Office QSE 9/69) of a brawl between the city waits and men in the service of Mr Dutton during the Show. The reference to ‘discord’ in the 1666 order may hint at tensions among the companies.Google Scholar

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53 References from Assembly Book 2 (Chester City Record Office AB/2), fols 119 (1657), 132(1661), 171r-v (1671), 188(1678). The Treasurer's Account is in the 1663–64 account roll (Chester City Record Office TAR 3/54), mb 5.Google Scholar

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55 The annals, erroneously attributed to Edmund Whitbie, Recorder of Chester, were, until 1990, in the Public Library of the City of Chester. They have now been transferred to the Chester City Record Office (Accession No. 682, awaiting catalogue under CR 60). They are in the hand of George Bellin. See my description and selected transcriptions (forthcoming). The entries here cited are from fols 6v (1454) and 24v (1613).Google Scholar

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