Education spread, and
many probably found themselves as competent to act as the clergy.
Still, the ecclesiastical performers for some time resisted all
attempts to interfere with what they viewed as their especial
privileges and vested interests. In 1378 the scholars or choristers of
St. Paul's petitioned Richard II. to prohibit certain ignorant and
inexperienced persons from acting the history of the Old Testament, to
the prejudice of the clergy of the Church, who had expended large sums
in preparing plays founded upon the same subject. But some few years
later the parish clerks of London, who had been incorporated by Henry
III., performed at Skinner's Well, near Smithfield, in the presence of
the king, queen, and nobles of the realm, a play which occupied three
days in representation. As Warton remarks, however, in his "History of
English Poetry," the parish clerks of that time might fairly be
regarded as a "literary society," if they did not precisely come under
the denomination of a religious fraternity.
The religious or miracle plays soon extended their boundaries, became
blended with "mummings," or "disguisings," and entertainments of
pageantry.
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