Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1887 — Royal Masks. [ARTICLE]

Royal Masks.

The painters having recently let the world see that they were not too much taken up with their palettes to allow them to divert themselves and their friends with a mask, there is nothing wonderful in the fact that the men of law should have followed suit and demonstrated that Gray’s Inn could hold its owu with Prince’s Hall. Indeed, when we consider that we are living in the year of Jubilee and that the lawyers have any amount of precedent to guide and authorize them in such matters it almost seems as if they had no other course open to them. Tbie Inns of Court may not be able to show such a dining record as the City Company’s, but they have made themselves a name for stately revels. Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner and Middle Temple have severally entertained kings and queens and the great ones of the earth; but probably the most magnificent exercise of legal hospitality was that when, in the year 1633, the four societies combined to show their loyalty and duty to King Charles and his Queen by the outward and splendid visible testimony of a royal mask. The King had just revived his father’s declaration for the toleration of lawful sports on the Lord’s Day, and Mr. Prynne had just published his “Histriomastix,” a book against “Interludes” and women actors—a direct insult, so the court party affirmed, to the Queen, who had recently taken part in a pastoral at Somerset House. Thus the grave lawyers determined, by capering for the nonce in motley, to show their disapproval of Mr. Prynne’s intemperate satire, and a committee was formed to organize the mask. Mr. Edward Hyde and Mr. Bulstrode Whitelocke represented the Middle Temple, Sir E. Herbert and Mr. Selden the Inner, Mr. Attorney Noy and Mr. Girling, Lincoln’s Inn, and Sir John Finch, Gray’s Inn. The abovenamed Mr. Whitelocke tells the story in his “Memorials,” with satisfaction at the part he himself bore in the august ceremonial. “To me in particular was committed the whole care and charge of all the musick for this great masque, which was so performed that it excelled any musick that ever before that time had been heard in England. I made choice of Mr. Simon Joy, an honest and able musician, and of Mr. Laws, to compose the airs, lessons, and songs for the masque, and to be master of the musick under me.” All the Year Round.