drunke, they are fain to work all the holy dayes.' Again, 'The schollars come into the hall, where their hungry stomacks had thought to have found good brawne and Christmas pie, roast-beef and plum-porridge. But no such matter. Away, ye profane! These are superstitious meats; your stomacks must be fed with sound doctrine.'" In the _National Magazine_ (1857), Dr. Doran, on "The Ups and Downs of Christmas," remarks upon the stout resistance given by the citizens of London to the order of the Puritan Parliament, that shops should be opened and churches closed on Christmas Day. "We may have a sermon on any other day," said the London apprentices, who did not always go to hear it, "why should we be deprived on this day?" "It is no longer lawful for the day to be kept," was the reply. "Nay," exclaimed the sharp-witted fellows, "you keep it yourselves by thus distinguishing it by desecration." "They declared," says Dr. Doran, "they would go to church; numerous preachers promised to be ready for them with prayer and lecture; and the porters of Cornhill swore they would dress up their conduit with holly, if it were only to prove that in that orthodox and heavily-enduring body there was some respect yet left for Christianity and hard drinking--for the raising of the holly was ever accompanied by the lifting of tankards. "Nor was the gallant Christmas spirit less lively in the country than in the capital. At Oxford there was a world of skull-breaking; and at Ipswich the festival was celebrated by some loss of life. Canterbury especially distinguished itself by its violent opposition to the municipal order to be mirthless. There was a combat there, which was most rudely maintained, and in which the mayor got pummelled until he was as senseless as a pocket of hops. The mob mauled him terribly, broke all his windows, as well as his bones, and, as we are told, 'burnt the stoupes at the coming in of his door.' So serious was the riot, so complete the popular victory, and so jubilant the exultation, that thousands of the never-conquered men of Kent and Kentish men met in Canterbury, and passed a solemn resolution that if they could not have their Christmas Day, they were determined to have the King on his throne again." Of the Canterbury riot an account is given in a rare tract, published in 1647 (preserved in the British Museum), and entitled--