In recent years there has been a surge of interest in the popular medieval festival. The most remarkable of its many genres was misrule, those festive occasions on which a temporary and dynamic upside-down world of boy-bishops and Christmas kings was created. This book, the first in-depth study of the role of misrule in medieval England, uses original source material to argue for a more creative approach to the interpretation of these lively and topsy-turvy customs.