plaudite without further examination, upon the recital of this article in them, ‘For making a man happy, £10:0:0.’ ”(766) (M257) At the English court the annual Lord of Misrule is not to be confounded with the Master of the Revels, who was a permanent official and probably despised the temporary Lord as an upstart rival and intruder. Certainly there seems to have been at times bad blood between them. Some correspondence which passed between the two merry monarchs in the reign of Edward VI. has been preserved, and from it we learn that on one occasion the Lord of Misrule had much difficulty in extracting from the Master of the Revels the fool’s coat, hobby-horses, and other trumpery paraphernalia which he required for the proper support of his dignity. Indeed the costumes furnished by his rival were so shabby that his lordship returned them with a note, in which he informed the Master of the Revels that the gentlemen of rank and position who were to wear these liveries stood too much on their dignity to be seen prancing about the streets of London rigged out in such old slops. The Lords of Council had actually to interpose in the petty squabble between the two potentates.(767) (M258) In France the counterparts of these English Lords of Misrule masqueraded in clerical attire as mock Bishops, Archbishops, Popes, or Abbots. The festival at which they disported themselves was known as the Festival of Fools (_Fête des Fous_), which fell in different places at different dates, sometimes on Christmas Day, sometimes on St. Stephen’s Day (the twenty-sixth of December), sometimes on New Year’s Day, and sometimes on Twelfth Day. According to one account “on the first day, which was the festival of Christmas, the lower orders of clergy and monks cried in unison _Noël_ (Christmas) and gave themselves up to jollity. On the morrow, St. Stephen’s Day, the deacons held a council to elect a Pope or Patriarch of Fools, a Bishop or Archbishop of Innocents, an Abbot of Ninnies; next day, the festival of St. John, the subdeacons began the dance in his honour; afterwards, on the fourth day, the festival of the Holy Innocents, the choristers and minor clergy claimed the Pope or Bishop or Abbot elect, who made his triumphal entry into the church on Circumcision Day (the first of January) and sat enthroned pontifically till the evening of Epiphany. It was then the joyous reign of this Pope or this Bishop or this Abbot of Folly which constituted the Festival of Fools and dominated its whimsical phases, the grotesque and sometimes impious masquerades, the merry and often disgusting scenes, the furious orgies, the dances, the games, the profane songs, the impudent parodies of the catholic liturgy.”(768) At these parodies of the most solemn rites of the church the priests, wearing grotesque masks and sometimes dressed as women, danced in the choir and sang obscene chants: laymen disguised as monks and nuns mingled with the clergy: the altar was transformed into a