William Hone 
Ancient Mysteries Described [PDF ebook] 
Especially the English Miracle Plays, Founded on Apocryphal New Testament Story, Extant Among the Unpublished Manuscripts in the British Museum; Including Notices of Ecclesiastical Shows, the Festivals of Fools and Asses the English Boys-Bishop, the Des

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. While at the British Museum I made large extracts from the Coventry Manuscript mentioned by Dug dale. It is remarkable, that in its entire series of forty mysteries there is not one from the Apocrypha to the Old Testament, whilst there are so many as eight that are paraphrases of the New Testament Apocrypha. Transcripts from these paraphrases com pose the early part of the present publication. Some portions that are abridged would have been given entire, perhaps, had I consulted the ms. With a view to this use, but there is quite enough to show how largely the monkish playwright adopted the curious incidents, and the very language of the spurious Gos pels — a circumstance alluded to in the Preface to the Apocryphal New Testament, and which operated in no small degree to the setting it forth.