Which knowne, let us make Joy-sops with the cake; And let not a man then be seene here. Who unurg’d will not drinke, To the base from the brink, A health to the king and queene here. Next crowne the bowle full With gentle lamb’s-wooll; Adde sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, With store of ale too; And thus ye must doe To make the wassaile a swinger. Give them to the king And queene wassailing; And though with ale ye be whet here; Yet part ye from hence, As free from offence, As when ye innocent met here.” In the last century _Twelfth Night Cards_ represented ministers, maids of honour, and other attendants of a court, and the characters were to be supported through the night. John Britton, in his _Autobiography_ tells us “he suggested and wrote a series of Twelfth Night characters, to be printed on cards, placed in a bag, and drawn out at parties on the memorable and merry evening of that ancient festival. They were sold in small packets to pastrycooks, and led the way to a custom which annually grew to an extensive trade. For the second year my pen-and-ink characters were accompanied by prints of the different personages by Cruikshank (father of the inimitable George), all of a comic or ludicrous kind.” Such characters are still printed.--_Book of Days_, vol. i. p. 64. Formerly the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and the Guilds of London, used to go to St. Paul’s on Twelfth Day to hear a sermon. This is mentioned as an old custom in the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Twelfth Day and its customs appear to have been observed by royalty almost from time immemorial. At the English court in the eighth year of the reign of Edward III., the majestic title of _King of the Bean_ was conferred upon one of the king’s minstrels, as appears by a _Compotus_ of that date, which states that sixty shillings were given by the king on the day of the Epiphany to Regan, the trumpeter, and his associates, the court minstrels, in the name of the king of the bean.--Strutt, _Sports and Pastimes_, 1801, p. 255. The grand state of the sovereign on Twelfth Day, and the manner of keeping festival at court, in the reign of King Henry VII., are set forth in Le Neve’s MS., called _The Royalle Book_, to the following effect: