THE CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW, PLYMOUTH. 207 
in accordance with the request of Pope Urban IV. in 1264, as so 
many others were in England; the second was the Gild of the 
town, and mixed up with the constitution of the borough. 
The feast of the Body of Christ, kept on the Thursday following | 
Trinity Sunday, was observed in England with great pomp. It 
soon became the principal time for the performance of mysteries 
and miracle plays. As may be seen at the present day on the 
Continent, every person, high or low, rich or poor, old or young, 
took his or her part in the great religious festival. 
I think that the spectacle of the procession of Corpus Christi 
in Old Plymouth must have been a very interesting one. Many 
events have been more important, many in which graver issues 
were involved, but in this recurring festival all could join. 
It is difficult in this age perhaps to understand the good which, 
in a moral and social point of view, was bestowed upon this 
country by the religious pageant, and pious plays, and interludes 
of a by-gone epoch. Through such means, however, the working 
classes were not only furnished with a needful relaxation, but their 
very merry-makings instructed while they diverted them.* 
The best way of ascertaining what the Gild of Corpus Christi 
in Plymouth was like will be to see what the rules of similar Gilds 
were elsewhere, and this is easily done by referring to the account 
of one of the most famous Gilds established for a purely religious 
object, that of Corpus Christi at York, which will be found in the 
late Mr. Toulmin Smith’s “ English Gilds.” 
In connection with the Gilds we often find the establishment of 
a ‘Church Ale.” It must be recollected that in the times we are 
speaking of no tea or coffee was looked for to begin or end the 
day ; the draught, morning, noon, and night, was beer; and in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries an Ale meant malt liquor, of a 
better brew perhaps than could ordinarily be obtained, prepared by 
the churchwardens, and sold by them at a profit, the overplus being 
devoted to some charitable purpose in the parish, for the repair of 
the church, the obtaiming of articles of church furniture, or for 
some similar purpose.ft In fact, they were to our ancestors what 
fancy fairs, bazaars, and such like things are to us. There is no 
difference between the two; and therefore 1t was that in the year 
1420 we find the Mayor of Plymouth and his brethren, the twelve 
and the twenty-four, agreeing that from thenceforth, for the honour 
* Rock’s “Church of our Fathers.” ¢ Roberts’ “Social History.” 
