ABSTRACT
The stress on Sunday had begun to show in the hundred years between the masons' work schedule and that of the wiremongers in 1481. Sunday had been elevated to a 'double' feast - a major holidaywhile many minor holy days had been lost. If the Puritans promoted Sunday at the expense of all other religious occasions, they were not the first to discover its holiness. The potential threat to the country's recreational life had been hinted at even before the Reformation, with the friar, John Bromyard, for instance, regretting that greater Sunday freedom from work also brought more bear-baitings. 16 The assurance of some degree of release every seven days gave a measure of predictability and continuity to people's play, and it is no accident that sports did gain in variety in the fifteenth century, as demonstrated by the growing lists of games in proclamations and edicts. On the other hand, the same motives which fostered the weekly holy day also sought to reserve it more completely for devotion and good works - not at first easy with a population which had always associated all its holy days with both prayer and play.
