‘The Manner of these Playes’: The Chester Pageant Carriages and the Places Where they Played

The evidence of the early attempts to visualize the English pageant carriage from David Rogers’ descriptions illustrates how problematic is separate interpretation from so selective and ambiguous a source. Fortunately, a number of Chester guild accounts record items of expenditure on the pageant carriages and other aspects of the Whitsun plays. The accuracy of Rogers’ reference to six-wheeled carriages in Chester has recently been questioned, most seriously by Alan Nelson who rejects the notion on the grounds of the complexity of the steering mechanism required by six-wheeled vehicles. The only possible indication of usage in the Chester plays occurs in the 1572 Coopers’ accounts where expense was incurred ‘for cordes and penes to sette up the howsynge of the caryghe’. Conflating the limited evidence suggests that the Chester pageant carriages may have conformed to the basic structure outlined by Rogers with the addition of distinguishing features of location and decoration.