It is Twelfth Night (Epiphany eve). In 1510 Thomas More served as Lord of Misrule for that festival. It is well known that St. Thomas More was devoted to his family. Yet duty prevented him from spending the twelve days of Christmas 1510 with them.
John Guy tells the story this way, reminding the reader that at this time Margaret was only five years of age and More's first wife, Joanna, was still alive:
"Money was no longer a problem; the children had their presents and their father had never seemed happier. And yet, instead of enjoying dinner with his family and playing with his children over the Twelve Days of Christmas, his chair stood empty. And he was nowhere to be seen when the London 'waits' [bands of musicians] called, as they did at the houses of all civic dignitaries, singing carols and entertaining the household, playing their oboes and cornets and taking down the serpent [a wind instrument] from its hook on the wall, before drinking from a wassail cup filled with hot milk curdled with wine and spices. Instead, he was at Lincoln's Inn, where he'd been elected to preside over the Christmas and New Year revels, playing the fool as 'Lord of Misrule' (or king of hoaxing) and making merry. He was an obvious choice for . . . he had a natural, laughing, bantering, rapier wit . . . He would have been in his element in his Inn of Court, where the Christmas revels marked the climax of the lawyers' social calendar, except that it was an honour that kept him away from home."
According to Peter Ackroyd, however, "A 'master of the revels' . . .
was not some figure out of Rabelais but an official in charge of [Lincoln
Inn's] most elaborate and prestigious annual ceremonies". And, "a lord of misrule supervised the
festivities of Christmas, which included masques and plays [.]"
Thus, it seems likely that it was St. T.M.'s organizational ability at least as much as his sense of humor that resulted in his election to this post.
Sources:
John Guy, A Daughter's Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) and Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (Anchor Books, 1999), Kindle editions without pagination
