But the disport which they denied to less dignified folk the rulers of the city retained for themselves as the traditional way of paying a visit of compliment to a great personage. A fragmentary chronicle amongst Stowe’s manuscripts describes such a visit paid to Richard II at the Candlemas preceding his accession in 1377. The ‘mummers’ were disguised with ‘vizards’ to represent an emperor and a pope with their _cortèges_. They rode to Kennington, entered the hall on foot, invited the prince and the lords to dice and discreetly lost, drank and danced with the company, and so departed[1430]. This is the first of several such mummings upon record. Some chroniclers relate that it was at a mumming that the partisans of Richard II attempted to seize Henry IV on Twelfth night in 1400[1431]. In the following year, when the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople spent Christmas with Henry at Eltham, the ‘men of London maden a gret mommyng to hym of xij aldermen and there sons, for whiche they hadde gret thanke[1432].’ In 1414 Sir John Oldcastle and his Lollards were in their turn accused of using a mumming as a cloak of sedition[1433]. Thus the London distrust of false visages had its justification, and it is noteworthy that so late as 1511 an Act of Parliament forbade the visits of mummers disguised with visors to great houses on account of the disorders so caused. Even the sale of visors was made illegal[1434]. So far there is nothing to point to the use of any dialogue or speeches at mummings. The only detailed account is that of 1377, and the passage which describes how the mummers ‘saluted’ the lords, ‘shewing a pair of dice upon a table to play with the prince,’ reads rather as if the whole performance were in dumb show. This is confirmed by the explanation of the term ‘mummynge’ given in a contemporary glossary[1435]. The development of the mumming in a literary direction may very likely have been due to the multifarious activity of John Lydgate. Amongst his miscellaneous poems are preserved several which are stated by their collector Shirley to have been written for mummings or disguisings either before the king or before the lord mayor of London[1436]. They all seem to belong to the reign of Henry VI and probably to the years 1427-30. And they show pretty clearly the way in which verses got into the disguisings. Two of them are ‘lettres’ introducing mummings presented by the guilds of the mercers and the goldsmiths to lord mayor Eastfield[1437]. They were doubtless read aloud in the hall. A _balade_ sent to Henry and the queen mother at Eltham is of the same type[1438]. Two ‘devyses’ for mummings at London and Windsor were probably recited by a ‘presenter.’ The Windsor one is of the nature of a prologue, describing a ‘myracle’ which the king is ‘to see[1439].’ The London one was meant to accompany the course of the performance, and describes the various personages as they enter[1440]. Still more elaborate is a set of verses used at Hertford.