there was still pride and interest taken in many of the municipal plays, signs were not wanting that they were an institution which had almost outlived its day. A reason for this need hardly be sought beyond the _Zeitgeist_. No doubt the plays were a financial burden upon the poorer crafts and the poorer members of crafts. There was much grumbling at Beverley in 1411 because certain well-to-do persons (_generosi_), who did not practise any trade or handicraft, had hitherto escaped the payment of contributions to the civic function; and municipal authorities were constantly called upon to adjust and readjust the responsibility for this and that pageant with the fluctuations of prosperity amongst the various occupations. But on the other hand, the plays, were the cause of much and profitable resort to those fortunate towns which possessed them. The mercers’ guild at Shrewsbury found it necessary to impose a special fine upon those of its members whose business avocations required them ‘to ride or goe to Coventrie Faire’ at Corpus Christi tide, and so to miss the procession of guilds at home[365]. And although the mayor of Coventry wrote to Thomas Cromwell, in 1539, that the poor commoners were put to such expense with their plays and pageants that they fared the worse all the year after, yet against this may be set the statement made to Dugdale by ‘some old people who had in their younger days been eye-witnesses of these pageants’ that ‘the confluence of people from farr and neare to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yeilded noe small advantage to this cittye.’ Moreover the levy upon individuals was a trifling one; the whole of the company of smiths at Coventry only paid 3_s._ 4_d._ amongst them for ‘pagent pencys’ in 1552. A _leitourgia_ is always an unpopular institution, and these complaints resemble nothing so much as the groans of an opulent London tradesman in the twentieth century over an extra penny on the education rate. In the smaller places it is clear that plays, far from being a source of expense, were a recognized method of raising funds for public purposes. Even in 1220 the _emolumentum actionum_ from the chapelries of Shipton went to swell the purses of the Salisbury prebendaries. In 1505 the churchwardens of Kingston-on-Thames made £4 towards their new steeple by getting up a play for which they secured the patronage of royalty. At Braintree, in Essex, funds were similarly raised by Nicholas Udall and others, between 1523 and 1534, for the repair of the church. I have little doubt that when the mayor of Coventry said economy he meant Protestantism, just as when, under Elizabeth, the corporation of London wished to make a Puritanic attack upon the theatres, they were always smitten with a terrible dread of the infection of the plague[366].