Pageants, which had been so common in the days of the Tudors, reached an unexampled stage of extravagant and absurd display under the first two monarchs of the house of Stuart. Even grave lawyers, including the great Mr. Selden himself, took part in getting up these exhibitions; and a particular account is given of a masquerade of their devising, which was performed at the expense of the inns of court, before king Charles, in 1633. Liveries, and dresses of gold and silver, glittering in the light of torches, horses richly caparisoned, and chariots sumptuously fitted up, were set off by contrast with beggars and cripples, who were introduced in the procession, riding on jaded hacks. Very odd devices, illustrative of the taste of the period, and of the way in which satirical feelings found vent, through the medium of emblematical characters, were combined with the other quaint arrangements of this show, such as boys disguised as owls and other birds, and persons representing the patented monopolists, who were extremely unpopular. A man was harnessed with a _bit_ in his mouth, to denote a projector who wished to have the exclusive manufacture of that article; another, with a bunch of carrots on his head and a capon on his wrist, caricatured some one who wanted to engross the trade of fattening birds upon these vegetables. The object was to convey to the king an idea of the ridiculous nature of many of the monopolies then conferred. All sorts of pageants and shows, with a dramatic cast in them, were exhibited at Whitehall under royal patronage, and filled the edifice with revelry and riot at Christmas and other festivals. The genius of Inigo Jones was for many years chained down to the invention of scenery and decoration for these trifles, while Ben Jonson exercised his muse in writing verses and dialogues for the masquerades. At a later period of the reign of Charles I., the year 1638, there was much excitement produced in London by the grand entry of Mary de'Medici, mother of the queen Henrietta, upon which occasion a spectacle of unusual grandeur was exhibited. A very full account of this was published by the Historiographer of France, the Sieur de la Sierre.