The Morris Dancers regarded Whitsuntide as their chief festival. Introduced into this country from Spain, the Morisco or Moorish { 247} Dance had, in the reign of Henry VIII., attained a great popularity. There seems to have been at that time two principal performers, Robin Hood and Maid Marian; then there was a friar, a piper, a fool, and the rank and file of the dancers. In the parish accounts of Kingston-on-Thames for the year 1537 the Morris Dancers’ wardrobe, then in the charge of the churchwardens, consisted of “A fryers cote of russet and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowren’s (Moor’s) cote of buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid and two gryne saten cotes, and disardde’s (fool’s) cote of cotton, and six payre of garters with belles.”
In Elizabethan times the Morris Dance, and indeed every other kind of picturesque country festivity, may be said to have reached the zenith of popularity, soon, alas! to be followed by the chilling austerity of the Puritans, of whom it was so truly said that they “like nothing; no state, no sex; music, dancing, etc., unlawful even in kings; no kind of recreation, no kind of entertainment,—no, not so much as hawking; all are damned.”
These teach that Dauncing is a Jezabell And barley-break the ready way to Hell, The Morrice, Idolls; Whitson-ale can bee But profane Reliques of a Jubilee.[56]
Whitsuntide, with its lengthening days, was specially set apart for sports and old-fashioned games, and amongst the many meetings for such purposes, none attained a wider popularity than the Cotswold or Dover’s Games. Those who are familiar with the country made classic by its associations with the great Master of English poetry, know well the green hill, still called Dover’s Hill, which forms an outpost of the main body of the Cotswolds, and overlooks the smiling vale of Evesham. On this spot, time out of mind, rural sports and festivities had been held under the name of the Cotswold Games. “How does your fallow greyhound, sir?” says Slender to Page, “I heard say he was outrun at Cotsale.” This was the site chosen by Robert Dover, an attorney of Barton-on-the-Heath, for the enlargement and perpetuation of those national sports in which he took so keen an interest, and which he { 248} hoped would counteract the narrow spirit of bigotry which was beginning in his day to curtail the innocent amusements of the people. Armed with a formal authority from King James, Dover was so successful in his organization of the Games that, with a short interregnum during the Commonwealth days, their popularity continued until well into the present century. A curious old volume of poems, called _Annalia Dubrensia_, published in 1636, contains many quaint descriptions of the Games and their object. Drayton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Randall and others of lesser note, contributed each a poem to this collection. One of the contributors thus eulogises the sports and their patron:—
