There is no reason to doubt that England had its full share in the earlier development of the religious drama. Texts of the liturgical period are, indeed, rare. The tenth-century version of the _Quem quaeritis_ from Winchester and the fourteenth-century version from Dublin stand, at least for the present, alone. But the wholesale destruction of liturgical books at the Reformation is sufficient to account for such a sparseness, and a few stray notices gathered from the wreckage of time bear sufficient witness to the presence in this country of several amongst the more widespread types of liturgical play. The Lichfield statutes (1188-98) provide for _repraesentationes_ of the _Pastores_, the _Resurrectio_, the _Peregrini_; those of York (†1255) for the _Pastores_ and the _Tres Reges_; a Salisbury inventory of 1222 includes ‘crowns’ or more probably ‘stars’ (_coronae_) _ad repraesentationes faciendas_; while Lincoln account books of the early fifteenth century appear to add the _Annuntiatio_ and the _Prophetae_, a _visus_ called _Rubum quem viderat_ in 1420 perhaps forming a Moses scene in the latter. So late as 1518 the _Quem quaeritis_ was performed in Magdalen College chapel, and plays of the Nativity and the Resurrection by the clerks of the chapel are contemplated at about the same date in the household regulations of the Earl of Northumberland at Leconfield. Nor were dramatic versions of the legends of saints unknown. I do not trace a St. Nicholas cycle in England, although Hilarius, in whose repertory a St. Nicholas play is included, is thought to have been an Englishman by birth. But the memory of a play of St. Catherine prepared by Geoffrey the Norman at Dunstable early in the twelfth century was preserved, owing to the accident which led to Geoffrey ultimately becoming abbot of St. Albans; and towards the close of the same century William Fitzstephen records the representations of the miracles of holy confessors and the passions of martyrs which took the place of minstrelsy in London. For the most part such early plays are found in close connexion with the cathedrals and great monasteries. But a document of about 1220, the interpretation of which must, however, be considered doubtful, would seem to suggest that plays (_actiones_) were habitually given at no less than five chapelries within the single parish of Shipton in Oxfordshire, and that the profits thereof formed an appreciable part of the income derived from that living by the prebendaries of Salisbury cathedral.