Note 1497 — Chapter XVII · MASKS AND MISRULE

Dee, Compendious Rehearsal (Chronicle of John of Glastonbury, ed. T. Hearne, 502), ‘in that College also (by my advice and by my endeavors, divers ways used with all the other colleges) was their Christmas Magistrate first named and confirmed an Emperor. The first was one Mr. Thomas Dun, a very goodly man of person, stature and complexion, and well learned also.’ Warton, iii. 302, describes a draught of the college statutes in Rawl. MS. 233, in which cap. xxiv is headed ‘de Praefecto Ludorum qui Imperator dicitur,’ and provides for the superintendence by the Imperator of the Spectacula at Christmas and Candlemas. But the references to the Imperator have been struck out with a pen, and the title altered to ‘de Comoediis Ludisque in natali Christi exhibendis.’ This is the title of cap. xxiv as actually issued in 1560 (Mullinger, University of Cambridge, 579). The earlier statutes of 1552 have no such chapter.