The preparing of bacon, meat, and the making of savoury black-puddings, for good cheer after the coming Lent, preceded the day itself, whereon, besides domestic feasting and revelry, with dice and card-playing, there was immensity of mumming. The records of Norwich testify, that in 1440, one John Gladman, who is there called “a man who was ever trewe and feythfull to God and to the kyng” and constantly disportive, made a public disport with his neighbours, crowned as king of christmas, on horseback, having his horse bedizened with tinsel and flauntery, and preceded by the twelve months of the year, each month habited as the season required; after him came Lent, clothed in white and herring-skins, on a horse with trappings of oyster-shells, “in token that sadnesse shulde folowe, and an holy tyme;” and in this sort they rode through the city, accompanied by others in whimsical dresses, “makyng myrth, disportes, and playes.” Among much curious observation on these Shrove-tide mummings, in the “Popish Kingdome” it is affirmed, that of all merry-makers, The chiefest man is he, and one that most deserveth prayse Among the rest, that can finde out the fondest kinde of playes. On him they look, and gaze upon, and laugh with lustie cheere, Whom boys do follow, crying foole, and such like other geare. He in the mean time thinkes himselfe a wondrous worthie man, &c. It is further related, that some of the rout carried staves, or fought in armour; others, disguised as devils, chased all the people they came up with, and frightened the boys: men wore women’s clothes, and women, dressed as men, entered their neighbours’ or friends’ houses; some were apparelled as monks, others arrayed themselves as kings, attended by their guards and royal accompaniments; some disguised as old fools, pretended to sit on nests and hatch young fools; others wearing skins and dresses, became counterfeit bears and wolves, roaring lions, and raging bulls, or walked on high stilts, with wings at their backs, as cranes: Some like filthy forme of apes, and some like fools are drest, Which best beseeme those papistes all, that thus keep _Bacchus’_ feast. Others are represented as bearers of an unsavoury morsel-- ----------------------- that on a cushion soft they lay, And one there is that, with a flap doth keepe the flies away Some stuffed a doublet and hose with rags or straw-- Whom as a man that lately dyed of honest life and fame, In blanket did they beare about, and streightways with the same They hurl him up into the ayre, not suff’ring him to fall, And this they doe at divers tymes, the citie over all.