By the Rev. Clir. Wordsworth. 291 



Grosseteste, in 1236, all three of them at one time members of 

 Salisbury Chapter, forbade the clergy in the thirteenth century to 

 publish notice of scotales,^ and Abp. Langham in 1367 threatened 

 excommunication on any who should attend them. But all their 

 combined virtue had no more avail than Malvolio's to prohibit 

 cakes and ale.' As early as any of these, K. Henry III., in the 

 Charter of the Forest in 1217, had forbidden foresters and beadles 

 to hold " scotales." ^ Some of the ecclesiastical constitutions 

 specify other amusements which were considered undesirable, such 

 as hoisting rams, dressing up like bullocks or stags, and rival 

 parishes carrying banners and fighting. I suppose these affrays 

 were the outcome of local, or tribal, or parochial jealousies, dating 

 perhaps from very early times and bursting out annually in roxvs, 

 when, contrary to the true spirit of the festival, processions, making 

 their way with parish banners, to carry Peter's Pence or Pente- 

 costal 01)lations of smoke farthings, as a sort of chimney-tax or 

 hearth-rate contribution, attempted to pass one another, or came 

 into conflict like the rival factions at Eatanswill. 



Parishes used to send a deputation to the mother Church to 

 fetch a supply of holy oils* and cream from what the Bishop assisted 

 by his Archdeacons had consecrated on Maundy Thursday. 



St. Hugh of Lincoln, c. 1190, charged the householders in his 

 diocese to bring a worthy oblation to the Cathedral Church at 

 Whitsuntide. These in the fourteenth century were looked upon 

 as dues, and in the fifteenth century were known as " le smoke 

 flfardyngis alias diet' Lincoln farthings." ^ 



' Sarum Charters, 134, 160; Spelman, Concilia, ii., 140; 156, 164; 193; 

 200, 211 ; 238, 299 ; cf. 138 (misplaced by Spelman). 



- Whitsuntide Church ales at Kington St. Michael church house, were a 

 flourishing institution in the days of John Aubrey's grandfather. Preface to 

 Nat. Hist, of North Wilts, ed. Jackson, p. 10. 



■' Stubbs, Select Charters, part vi., p. 349, cap. 7. The tenants at South 

 Mailing were bound by antient custom to pay \^d. each for a scotale with 

 the Archbishop's own bedellus. MS. Lambeth, Consuetudijiary de South- 

 mailing, cited by Blount, Lata Diet., s. v. " scotal." 



■' " Paid for 2 pottes to fett oyle in Id." Church Accounts of St. Mary at 

 Hill, ed. Littlehales, 358. 



' See Medieval Services, (T. Baker, 1898), p. 207, s. v. " Pentecostals." 



