Kmflett's Blog

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Twelve Days of Christmas: Lords of Misrule, bans on football & rebellion

The Lords of Misrule that appear at various times in the traditional calendar but certainly in the twelve days of Christmas after 25th December.

There is an interesting discussion in correspondence between the US historian Natalie Zemon Davis and the late EP Thompson in 1971/2 published in Past and Present (May 2017).

Thompson was interested in charivari or rough music as forms of revolt and protest but certainly didn’t think that all forms of it were of a progressive nature.

The discussion refers back to an article Davis wrote in Past and Present 50 (1971) the Reasons for Misrule.

Here she argues that the Lords of Misrule elected on 26th December were categorised by age and gender, that is they were young men.

She writes in a footnote about English examples:

The Lords of Misrule seem to be an example of youth officers..not the Lords of Misrule elected at the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn or at Court but the ‘wildheads of the parish’ (described in 1585 by Philipp Stubbs in his Anatomie of Abuses) who elect a captain of mischief called ‘my Lord of Misrule’ and who go about with hobby horses and pipers and drummers..’

Was this subversive of the existing order, a real rebellion or a licensed way of ‘letting off steam’ at a time of year when little rural work could be done?

One piece of evidence that weighs in favour of rebellion is that on the first Christmas that Parliament succeeded in officially banning festivities,1647, in Canterbury part of the response was to engage in a mass game of street football (which was definitely banned)

It’s work still in progress. There are issues about gender and whether there were examples of Ladies of Misrule but also about understanding how rebellious they were. It may have suited some to overplay or downplay the matter much as they would do now