Note 38 — HINCHINBROOK HOUSE, HUNTINGDONSHIRE.

On each side of the gate, upon projecting pillars, stand statues of wild men, the size of life. Each holds a tree uprooted; they are represented as covered with shaggy hair, wearing long beards and mustachios, with no article of dress but a girdle round the waist. These “Wodehouses,” or “Green Men,” for they were known by both names in the olden time, were favourite characters with our ancestors—as well in this country, as on the Continent. Froissart relates a melancholy story of a masque of wild men, among whom was King Charles VI. of France, which was performed at a marriage in 1392, when four of the noble masquers were burnt to death, owing to the curiosity of the King’s brother, who approached too near them with a lighted torch, which set fire to their dresses, that were made of cloth, and covered with pitch, upon which flax was fastened, to imitate shaggy hair. They were very commonly displayed in court masques and public processions in England. When King Henry VIII. kept his Christmas at Greenwich in the fifth year of his reign, “a mount,” upon which sat the King and five others, was drawn into the great Hall by “five wodehouses,” dressed in skins, or rugs resembling skins, so as to appear like savages. When Queen Elizabeth visited Kenilworth Castle, she was addressed by the pert Gascoigne habited like a savage, covered with ivy, holding in one of his hands an oaken plant torn up by the roots. They were frequently used to clear the way in processions, when the clubs were filled with fireworks. When Anne Bullen was conveyed upon the water from Greenwich to London in 1533, “there went before the Lord Mayor’s barge,” says Hall, “a foyste (a barge or pinnace propelled by rowers) full of ordnance, in which foyste was a great red dragon, continually moving, and casting forth wildfire; and round about the said foyste stood terrible monsters and wilde men, casting of fire and making a hideous noise.” They were usually employed in land processions, and the danger of too near an approach to them is alluded to by one of the characters in Wilson’s play, called “The Cobler’s Prophesy,” 1594, who exclaims, “Comes there a pageant by? I’ll stand out of the green man’s way, for fear of burning my vestment.” They were constant precursors of the annual pageants exhibited on Lord Mayor’s Day in London; in the Mayoralty procession of 1681, a body of twenty preceded the principal device. As a part of ancient public state and magnificence, the wild men of Hinchinbrook are most appropriately placed to watch and ward the principal gate.