This is an expansion of material which Sarah Carpenter and I treated briefly in Masks and Masking. It shows how a folk custom can be adapted, overtly as a mini-drama, and covertly as a means of political negotiation. It also shows how context, expectations, and costume can between them create a message, a message the more powerful because, according to the ‘rules’ of the game, it is delivered in complete silence. Besides this, it raises salutary caveats about our modern expectations: that the ostensible message will be the same as the underlying one.

The story has been told several times by historians of folk custom, of London, and of Richard II. Each group has their agenda and consequently their slant on what they see in it. As far as I know, no-one has attempted to put it in its wider context of the liturgical/festive season and its imaginative baggage, which provided the theme for another major performance piece in the same week, the Chancellor’s speech at the Opening of Parliament – though this also has been treated separately. The sequence and dating of these liturgical feasts and how they provided the setting for both the Parliament and the mumming, is an important part of the following discussion.

This is how it was reported. On the evening of Sunday 1 February 1377, a torch-lit cavalcade passed through the City of London via Cheapside, and crossed the river over London Bridge, making towards Kennington. There were 130 riders, dégisement arrayés (‘dressed in costume’):