It is a peculiarity of the English Mystery plays that they were combined into a series of plays on the Old and New Testament; and in which the whole course of Divine Providence, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment, is set before the spectator.  Four noted groups of plays were the Chester, the Towneley, Coventry, and York Mystery plays.  The Chester plays began on Whit Monday, and, continued till the following Wednesday.  Permission to perform them, in the beginning of their institution, had twice to be asked of the Pope.  They consisted of 24 plays, and were almost annually performed till 1577.  Before the suppression of the monasteries the Grey Friars at Coventry were celebrated for their exhibitions of the Mystery plays usually on Corpus Christi.  The Towneley, or Woodkirk group of plays were acted at Woodkirk, about four miles from Wakefield, and they are of a style that may be likened to the times of Henry VI., or Edward IV.  Until the Mystery play fell into disuse, the trading companies and guilds seem principally to have maintained them.  The mixture of secular with ecclesiastical players helped to change the characters of the English plays and to provoke censure, which began to be levelled at them from the beginning of the thirteenth century.

The practise of performing plays in sacred edifices in England, had not ceased in 1542, when Bishop Bonner prohibited them in his diocese.  However, so late as 1572, it appears that Interludes were occasionally performed in Churches.

Collier speaks of a kind of Mystery, or Miracle play, exhibited in the last century, with the characters of Herod, Beelzebub, and others.  In 1838 Sandy mentions of having seen the play of “St. George and the Dragon,” presented in the Northern and Western parts of the Kingdom, or rather Queendom, as Victoria had just ascended the throne.  I myself remember quite well, within a couple of decades ago, what was probably at the time a remnant of the old Mystery play presented in a rural part of Lancashire by men in a fantastic garb, and termed by the country folk, “Paste-eggers.”  They generally appeared about Good Friday and on to Easter; and their performance consisted of a mixture of music (?), songs, and sometimes not over choice language.  This custom does not now exist where I write of, but it may do—­though I very much doubt—­in some rural parts.  On the Continent, as at Oberammergau, Mystery plays are still enacted.

The following account of the Chester Mysteries may be of interest, and appears (says Warton) in the Harleian Catalogue.  M.S.  Harl. 2013, etc.  Exhibited at Chester in the year 1327 at the expense of the different trading companies of that city.  “The Fall of Lucifer,” by the tanners; “The Creation,” by the drapers; “The Deluge,” by the dyers; “Abraham, Melchizedeck and Lot,” by the barbers; “Moses, Balak and Balaam,” by the cappers; “The Salutation and the Nativity,” by the wrights (carpenters); “The Shepherds feeding the Flocks by Night,”