Note 75 — BOOK III THE COMPANIES

Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 28, 38; Bernard Andrew, Annales Hen. VII (Gairdner, Memorials of Hen. VII), 104; Halle, i. 25; Professor Wallace seems to think that the annual Christmas rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber to the Gentlemen, which went on to the end of the reign, were for plays. But these were of £13 6s. 8d., whereas the reward for a play was £6 13s. 4d. They were paid on Twelfth Night, and are sometimes said to be for ‘payne taking’ during Christmas. In 1510 they had an extra £6 13s. 4d. for praying for the Queen’s good deliverance. The ‘payne taking’ was no doubt as singers. An order of Henry VII’s time (H. O. 121) for the wassail on Twelfth Night has, ‘Item, the chappell to stand on the one side of the hall, and when the steward cometh in at the hall doore with the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell; and then the chappell to answere with a good songe’. The Gentlemen also had 40s. annually from the Treasurer of the Chamber ‘to drink with their bucks’ given them for a summer feast, which was still held in the seventeenth century (Rimbault, 122).