The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings.

Joseph Strutt

Date:: 183l

Credit: The sports and pastimes of the people of England including the rural and domestic recreations, May games, mummeries, shows, processions, pageants, and pompous spectacles, from the earliest period to the present time / By Joseph Strutt. Illustrated by one hundred and forty engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$On the Thursday following-, according to Laneham, “ rtiere was at night a shew of very strange and sundry kinds of fireworks compelled by cunning to fly to and fro, and to mo^nt very high into the air upward, and also to burn unquenchable in tUe water beneath.” And again, sixteen years afterwards, the same queen was entertained by the earl of Hertford at Elvetham m Hampshire, and after supper there was a grand display of fire- works, preceded by “ a peale of one hundred chambers,i dis- charged from the Snail Mount; ” with “ a like peale discharged from the ship Isle, and some great ordinance withal. Then was there a castle of fireworkes of all sorts, which played in the fort; answerable to that ;there was, at the Snail Mount, a globe of all manner of fireworkes, as big as a barrel. When ?hese were spent there were many running rockets upon lines, which passed between the Snail Mount and the castle in the fort. On either side were many fire-wheeles, pikes^of pleasure, and balles of wildfire, which burned in the water.” ^ XXXV.—LONDON FIREWORKS. A writer, who lived in the reign of James I., assures us there were then «abiding in the city of London men very skilful in the art of pyrotechnie, or^of fireworkes.” ^ But, so far as one can judge from the machinery delineated in the books for- merly written upon the subject of firework making, these exhi- bitions were very clumsily contrived, consisting chiefly in wheels, fire-trees, jerbs, and rockets, to which were added, men fantas- tically habited, who flourished away with poles or clubs charged with squibs andcrackers, and fought with each other, or jointly attacked a' wooden castle replete with the same materials, or combated with pasteboard dragons running upon lines and “ vomitting of fire like verie furies.” These men fantastically habited were called green men. Thus, in The Seven Cham- pions of Christendom, a play written by John Kirke, and printed 1638, it is said, “ Have you any squibs, any green men, in your shows, and whizzes on lines. Jack-pudding upon the rope, or resin fireworks ? ” I am decidedly of opinion that the fireworks displayed within these last fifty years'^ have been more excellent in their con- struction, more neatly executed, and more variable and pleasing ® Small kind of cannons. * Nichols’s Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 19. * History of all the Colleges in and about Loudon, printed A. D. 1615. \ [Before 1800.]$