[_Authorities._—The facts are taken, where no other reference is given, from T. Sharp, _A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry_ (1825), and J. B. Gracie, _The Weavers’ Pageant_ (1836: Abbotsford Club). The latter accounts of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_ (ninth edition, 1890), i. 335, ii. 289, and M. D. Harris, _Life in an Old English Town_, 319, add a little. The _Leet-Book_ and other municipal archives used by Sharp are described by Harris, 377; his private collection passed into that of Mr. Staunton at Longbridge House, and thence into the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmingham, where it was burnt in 1879. It included two craft-plays, the account-books of the Smiths, Cappers, Drapers, and Weavers, and one or two MSS. (one of which is referred to as ‘Codex Hales’) of a set of brief local seventeenth-century _Annales_, of which other texts are printed by Dugdale, _Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 147, and Hearne, _Fordun’s Scotichronicon_, v. 1438. Several versions of these _Annales_ are amongst the manuscripts of the Coventry Corporation (cf. E. S. Hartland, _Science of Fairy Tales_, 75). On their nature, cf. C. Gross, _Bibl. of Municipal History_, xviii.] _Corpus Christi Craft-Plays._ The earliest notice is a mention of the ‘domum pro le pagent pannarum’ in a deed of 1392. There must therefore be an error, so far as the pageants go, in the statement of the _Annals_, under the mayoral year 1416-7, ‘The pageants and Hox tuesday invented, wherein the king and nobles took great delight[795].’ Henry V was more than once at Coventry as prince, in 1404 for example, and in 1411. His only recorded visit as king was in 1421, too early for Corpus Christi or even Hox Tuesday[796]. There is frequent reference to the plays in corporation and craft documents of the fifteenth century. In 1457 they were seen by Queen Margaret, who ‘lodged at Richard Wodes, the grocer,’ whither the corporation sent an elegant collation, including ‘ij cofyns of counfetys and a pot of grene gynger.’ With her were the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, Lord and Lady Rivers, the elder and younger Lady of Shrewsbury, and ‘other mony moo lordes and ladyes.’ They were seen also by Richard III in 1485 and twice by Henry VII. The first occasion was on St. Peter’s day (June 29) in 1486, and the second in 1493, when say the _Annals_, rather oddly (cf. p. 420), ‘This yeare the King came to se the playes acted by the Gray Friers, and much commended them.’ In 1520 the _Annals_ record ‘New playes at Corpus Christi tyde, which were greatly commended.’ In 1539 the mayor of Coventry, writing to Cromwell, told him that the poor commoners were at such expense with their plays and pageants that they fared the worse all the year after[797]. In the sixteenth century the Coventry plays were probably the most famous in England. The _C.