There is only one other matter much concerning the life of the people at this period for which I have space left, and that is their Mystery Plays. Two celebrated instances occur in these years before the invasions of the English and the siege of Rouen. In November 1365 the King gave two hundred crowns of gold to a troupe of "dancers and musicians" who had played before him at the castle in the Place Bouvreuil. In 1374 the Confrerie de la Passion was instituted at the Church of St. Patrice, and on Holy Thursday held a procession in which all the instruments of the Passion of Christ were carried through the streets by children in the garb of angels. The Mystery that followed was given by the direct sanction of the Church in presence of the King, and in 1476 these representations became a regular annual performance, and the Confrerie had developed by 1543 into a strong rival of that more famous Confrerie de la Conception, or Puy des Palinods, of which I have already traced the beginning (see p. 69), in the verses of Robert Wace. The first of these old Mystery Plays had been merely copies of those Fetes de l'Eglise, of which I have spoken in suggesting the origin of the ceremonial at the Levee de la Fierte St. Romain, and were in fact "tableaux vivants" of the religious office. Then dialogues were added, and the "Drame Liturgique" appeared within the churches themselves. But the inevitable element of caricature and buffoonery soon necessitated an "outside show." The traces of this transition may be seen in the Chapterhouse Records of Rouen. In 1451, for example, the Christmas mystery is performed "cessantibus tamen stulticiis et insolenciis," and in 1457 "ordinaverunt quod misterium pastorum fiat isto festo nativitatis decenter in cappis." The "jeux de Fous" had been forbidden by the Town Council in 1445 to be held in the churches, and so was the "Procession de l'Ane" (from which the anthem "Orientis partibus adventavit asinus" has been so often quoted) with its prophets and sibyls, and the poet Virgil. But in 1374 the Confrerie de la Passion led their procession in all solemnity on the fete day of St. Patrice from his church to the parish of their warden, and all the poor school children went before, and the last twelve wardens followed after, each leading a beggar man by the hand, whose feet they washed during the performance of their Mystery. And this continued until 1636. The last written "Mystere du Lavement des Pieds" that exists was by one Nicolle Mauger, who laboured under the disadvantage of living in the same century with Corneille. [Illustration: MAP OF ROUEN SHEWING EXTENSION EASTWARD IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY] CHAPTER VIII _The Siege of Rouen by Henry V._