anniversary for the exhibition about to be described. Anciently on the 6th of December the choir boys in cathedral churches (1) chose one of their number to maintain the state and authority of a bishop, for which purpose he was habited in rich episcopal robes, wore a mitre on his head, and bore a crosier in his hand; his fellows for the time being assuming the character and dress of priests, yielding him canonical obedience, taking possession of the church, and except mass, performing all the ceremonies and offices. Though the Boy Bishop's election was on the 6th of December, yet his office and authority lasted till the 28th, being Innocents day. (2) From a printed church book containing the service of the Boy Bishop set to music, (3) we learn that on the eve of Innocents day, the Boy Bishop and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy Bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves upon each side of the choir upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, and the petit-canons the tapers according to the rubrick,

(1) Brand, vol. i. p. 330.

(2) Innocents day being an annual commemoration of Herod's murder of the children, "it hath been a custom, and yet is elsewhere, to whip up the children upon Innocents day morning, that the memorie of this murther might stick the closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the cruelty again in kind." This custom is cited from Gregorie, by Brand, who omits to mention another which Gregorie states on the authority of an old ritual belonging to the Abbey of Oseney, communicated to him by his friend Dr. Gerard Langbain, the provost of Queen's College, from which it appears that at the Church of Oseney, "they were wont to bring out upon this day the foot of a child prepared after their fashion, and put upon with red and black colours, as to signify the dismal part of that day. They put this up in a chest in the vestry, ready to be produced at the time, and to be solemnly carried about the church to be adored by the people."- Gregorie's Works, 1684, 4to, (Episcopus Puerorum in Die Innocentium) —p. 113.

(3) Processionale ad usum insignis et preclare Ecclesie Sarum, Rothomagi, 1566, 4to.

Afterwards, he proceeded to the altar of the Holy Trinity, and All saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy Bishop repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles, and in conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering, Deo gratias. After he received his crosier from the cross-bearer other ceremonies were performed, and he chanted the complyn; turning towards the quire he delivered an exhortation; and last of all said, "Benedicat Vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et spiritus Sanctus." By the statute of Sarum no one was to interrupt or press upon the children during their procession or service in the cathedral, upon pain of anathema. It appears that the Boy Bishop at this cathedral held a kind of visitation, and maintained a corresponding state and prerogative; and he is supposed to have had power to dispose of prebends that fell vacant during his episcopacy. If he died within the month he was buried like other bishops in his episcopal ornaments, his obsequies were solemnized with great pomp, and a monument was erected to his memory, with his episcopal effigy.

About a hundred and fifty years ago, a Boy Bishop's monument in stone was discovered in Salisbury cathedral under the seats near the pulpit, from whence it was removed to the north part of the nave, between the pillars, and covered over with a box of wood, to the great admiration of those who unacquainted with the anomalous character it designed to commemorate, thought it "almost impossible that a bishop should be so small in person, or a child so great in clothes." Gregorie, who was a prebendary of Salisbury, relates the finding of this monument, and inserts a representation of it in his treatise from which the sketch on the ensuing page is a copy.(1)

(1) Brand, (vol. i. p. 332.) says that "Gregory in his account of the Episcopus Puerorum, thought he had made a great discovery, and confined it to Salisbury." This is an incorrect representation, which I notice the rather as Brand is usually accurate, and because Gregorie had before been contemptuously spoken of by Bentley,

in his answer to Collins, as 66 one Gregory. There is no affectation of a "great discovery" in Gregorie's narrative; and so far from his supposing that the Boy Bishop was "confined to Salisbury," he adduces instances to the contrary. It is true that at first he did not know the occasion of the monument there, and that the bishop of the diocese (Montague) wishing him to inquire further, he found in the statutes the title concerning the chorister-bishop, which directed him to the processional: yet he afterwards notices the same custom at York; cites Molanus as saying, "that this bishop in some places did reditat census, et capones annuo accipere, receive rents, capons, &c., during his year, &c.," and that a chorister-bishop in the church of Cambray disposed of a prebend which fell void during his episcopal assumption to his master; and refers to the denunciation of the Boy Bishop by the council of Basil as a well known custom. Dr. Sharpe (Argum. in def. of Christianity, 8vo. 1755, p. 156) quotes him as "the learned Mr. John Gregory of Oxford."

and his companion walked about in procession. A statute of the collegiate church of St. Mary Offery, in 1337, restrained one of them within the limits of his own parish. On Dec. 7, 1229, the day after St. Nicholas's day, the Boy Bishop in the chapel of Heton, near Newcastle upon-Tyne, said vespers before Edward I. on his way to Scotland, who made a considerable present to him and the other boys who sang with him. In the reign of king Edward III. he received a present of nineteen shillings and sixpence for singing before the king in his private chamber on Innocents day. Dean Colet in the statutes of the school founded by him in 1512, at St. Paul's, expressly orders that his scholars shall every Childermas (Innocents) day, "come to Paulis Churche and hear the ChyldeByshop's sermon: and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the Chylde-Byshop: and with them the maisters and surveyors of the scole." By a proclamation of Henry VIII. dated July 22, 1542, the show of the Child-Bishop was abrogated, but in the reign of Mary it was revived. One of the flattering songs sung before that queen by the Boy Bishop, and printed, was a panegyric on her devotion, and compared her to Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary. The accounts of St. Mary at Hill, London, in the 10th Henry VI., and for 1549, and 1550, contain charges for the Boy Bishops of those years. At this period his estimation seems to have been undiminished; for on Nov. 13, 1554, the Bishop of London issued an order to all the clergy of his diocese to have a Boy Bishop in procession; and in the same year he went about St. Andrew's, Holborn, and St Nicholas Olaves, in Bread-street, and other parishes. In 1556, the Boy Bishop again went abroad singing in the old fashion, and was received by many ignorant but well-disposed persons into their houses, and had much good cheer.

Warton affirms that the practice of electing a Boy Bishop subsisted in common grammar-schools; for St. Nicholas as the patron of scholars has a double feast at Eton College, where, in the papal times, the Scholars (to avoid interfering as it should seem with the Boy Bishop of the College on St. Nicholas day) elected

a

their Boy Bishop on St. Hugh's day, in the month of November. Brand is of opinion that the anniversary montem at Eton, is only a corruption of the ceremony of the Boy Bishop and his companions, who by the edict of Henry VIII. being prevented from mimicking any longer their religious superiors, gave a new face to their festivity, and began their present play at soldiers, and electing a captain. Even within the memory of persons alive when Brand wrote, the montem was kept in the winter time a little before Christmas, although it is now kept on Whit Tuesday. A former provost of the school remembered when the scholars were accustomed to cut a passage through the snow from Eton to the hill called Salt-hill. After the procession had arrived, the chaplain with his clerk used to read prayers, and then, at the conclusion, the chaplain kicked the clerk down the hill. (1)

During the period of gloom that succeeded the first ages of ecclesiastical power, we have seen the nature of the diversions it provided for the people on the continent: and that one of them, the ceremony of the Boy Bishop, was practised in the churches here. From the same source England derived the precursors of its regular drama, the Mysteries. The first trace of theatrical representations in this country is recorded by Matthew Paris, who wrote about 1240, and relates that Geoffrey, a learned Norman, master of the school of the Abbey of Dunstable, composed the play of St. Catherine, which was acted by his scholars. Geoffrey's

(1) Brand, Warton, and Gregorie, from whom, with the exceptions noted, these particulars are taken, may be consulted for further information concerning the Boy Bishop. Brand has also preserved this Extract from the St. James's Chronicle, of Nov. 16 to 18, 1797:-"From Zug in Switzerland, it is observed, that the annual procession of the Fete of the Bishop and his Scholars, on the fair-day is suppressed by authority. The bishop it seems was only a scholar habited as such. Going through the streets, he was preceded by a chaplain carrying his crosier, and followed by a fool in the usual costume, the latter also carrying a staff with a bladder filled with pease. Other scholars, dressed like canons with a military guard, made up the procession. After going to church, it was the Bishop's custom to go and demand money from all the booths and stands in the fair. The French, and other traders, it is said, had complained of this absurd exaction, and the bishop, it is added, means to appeal to the Pope."