The Lord of Misrule, for example, the “Grand Captain of Mischief,” as the Puritans called him, no longer summons around him all the madcap youths of town or village for a brief period of lawless revelry. In Scotland this personage was known as the Abbot of Unreason, a name which clearly shows that he was a direct descendant from the chief performer in the mediæval Feast of Fools, and as such was a great-great-etc.-grandson of Silenus, the merrymaker in the Greek Bacchanalia. King James I of England was succeeded by his son Charles I. During the reign of the latter unhappy monarch, the Puritan party in England gathered so much strength that, under the lead of Oliver Cromwell, they hurled Charles from his throne and cut off his head, sending his entire family into exile for a period of a dozen years. Father Christmas shared the exile of his royal patrons, or if he dared show his face in England at all, it was only here and there in remote country places or behind locked doors in the obscurer parts of the great cities. Meanwhile his absence was greatly deplored by that part of the English people who had remained loyal to the crown. One of these put forward a curious little book entitled “An Hue and Cry after Christmas.” The following paragraph shows the spirit in which the book was written: “Any man or woman, that can give any knowledge, or tell any tidings of an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar guest and visit all sorts of people, both poor and rich, and used to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver, in the court, and in all shapes in the theatre in White Hall, and had ringing, feasts and jollity in all places, both in the city and the country, for his coming--whoever can tell what is become of him, or where he may be found, let him bring him back again into England.” [Illustration: Father Christmas, another conception. Drawing by Kenny Meadows.] Well, Father Christmas did come back to England in the train of Charles I’s son, Charles II who shortly after Cromwell’s death was restored to the English throne by the wish of the majority of the English people. When he resumed the rule that had been wrested by the Puritans from his father the old celebrations of Christmas were to some extent revived in the royal and other mansions and at the theatres. “To some extent”--that is too often a sad phrase! It means, in this case, that pretty much all the life and spirit of the old ceremonies had departed so that no revival could restore them to their former vitality.