Room! room! for my horse will wince
If he comes within so many yards of a prince;
For to tell you true, and in rhyme,
He was foal'd in Queen Elizabeth's time;
When the great Earl of Lester
In his castle did feast her.
--BEN JONSON, MASQUE OF OWLS.

The amusement with which Elizabeth and her court were next day to be
regaled was an exhibition by the true-hearted men of Coventry, who were
to represent the strife between the English and the Danes, agreeably
to a custom long preserved in their ancient borough, and warranted for
truth by old histories and chronicles. In this pageant one party of the
townsfolk presented the Saxons and the other the Danes, and set forth,
both in rude rhymes and with hard blows, the contentions of these two
fierce nations, and the Amazonian courage of the English women, who,
according to the story, were the principal agents in the general
massacre of the Danes, which took place at Hocktide, in the year of God
1012. This sport, which had been long a favourite pastime with the
men of Coventry, had, it seems, been put down by the influence of
some zealous clergymen of the more precise cast, who chanced to have
considerable influence with the magistrates. But the generality of the
inhabitants had petitioned the Queen that they might have their play
again, and be honoured with permission to represent it before her
Highness. And when the matter was canvassed in the little council which
usually attended the Queen for dispatch of business, the proposal,
although opposed by some of the stricter sort, found favour in the eyes
of Elizabeth, who said that such toys occupied, without offence, the
minds of many who, lacking them, might find worse subjects of pastime;
and that their pastors, however commendable for learning and godliness,
were somewhat too sour in preaching against the pastimes of their flocks
and so the pageant was permitted to proceed.