Note 417 — SCENE III.

Is’t Shrove Tuesday, that these ghosts walk] “From this passage, I apprehend it was formerly a custom for the peace-officers to make search after women of ill fame on that day, and to confine them during the season of Lent. So Sensuality says, in Microcosmus, ‘But now welcome a cart, or a Shrove Tuesday’s tragedy.’” Reed. “The progress of the constables on Shrove Tuesday was for the purpose of checking the outrages of the apprentices. See Taylor’s Jack-a-Lent, 115.” O. Gilchrist. Demolishing houses of bad fame was one of the amusements of the apprentices on Shrove Tuesday (see my note on Webster’s Works, vol. iii. p. 225); and their riots no doubt required the check of the constable and his attendants: but it appears also, that on the same day an official search was made for brothel-keepers, who were either forthwith carted, or confined during Lent: vide Nares’s Gloss. in v. Shroving.