When King Edward First was on his way to Scotland, in 1299, we are told, "he permitted one of these Boy-Bishops to say vespers before him in his Chapel at Heton, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and made a considerable present to the said bishop, and certain other boys that came and sang with him on the occasion, on the 7th of December, the day after St. Nicholas's Day" (408. I. 422).
The records of the churches contain many particulars of the election, duties, and regalia of these boy-bishops, whence it would appear that expense and ceremony were not spared on these occasions.
Another boy-bishop was paid "thirteen shillings and sixpence for singing before King Edward the Third, in his chamber, on the day of the Holy Innocents" (408. I. 428).
The Boy-Bishop of Salisbury, whose service set to music is printed in the Processionale et usum insignis et preclare Ecclesie Sarum, 1566, is actually said "to have had the power of disposing of such prebends there as happened to fall vacant during the days of his episcopacy" (408. I. 424). With the return of Catholicism under Mary, as Brand remarks, the Boy-Bishop was revived, for we find an edict of the Bishop of London, issued Nov. 13, 1554, to all the clergy of his diocese, to the effect that "they should have a Boy-Bishop in procession," and Warton notes that "one of the child-bishop's songs, as it was sung before the Queen's Majesty, in her privy chamber; at her manor of St. James in the Field's on St. Nicholas's Day, and Innocents' Day, 1555, by the child-bishop of St. Paul's, with his company, was printed that year in London, containing a fulsome panegyric on the queen's devotions, comparing her to Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary" (408. I. 429-430). The places at which the ceremonies of the Boy-Bishop have been particularly noted are: Canterbury, Eton, St. Paul's, London, Colchester, Winchester, Salisbury, Westminster, Lambeth, York, Beverly, Rotherham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, etc. The Boy-Bishop was known also in Spain and in France; in the latter country he was called Pape-Colas. In Germany, at the Council of Salzburg, in 1274, on account of the scandals they gave rise to, the ludi noxii quos vulgaris eloquentia Episcopatus Puerorum appellat, were placed under the ban (408. I. 426).
It would appear from the mention of "children strangely decked and apparelled to counterfeit priests, bishops, and women," that on these occasions "divine service was not only performed by boys, but by little girls," and "there is an injunction given to the Benedictine Nunnery of Godstowe in Oxfordshire, by Archbishop Peckham, in the year 1278, that on Innocents' Day the public prayers should not any more be said in the church of that monastery per parvulas, i.e. little girls" (408. I. 428).
Though with the Protestantism of Elizabeth the Boy-Bishop and his revels were put down by the authorities, they continued to survive, in some places at least, the end of her reign. Puttenham, in his Art of Poesie (1589), observes: "On St. Nicholas's night, commonly, the scholars of the country make them a bishop, who, like a foolish boy, goeth about blessing and preaching with such childish terms as make the people laugh at his foolish counterfeit speeches" (408. 427). Brand recognizes in the iter ad montem of the scholars at Eton the remnants of the ceremonies of the Boy-Bishop and his associates (408. 432); and indeed a passage which he cites from the Status Scholæ Etonensis (1560) shows that "in the Papal times the Eton scholars (to avoid interfering, as it should seem, with the boy-bishop of the college there on St. Nicholas's Day) elected their boy-bishop on St. Hugh's Day, in the month of November." In the statutes (1518) of St. Paul's School, we meet with the following: "All these children shall every Childermas Day come to Pauli's Church, and hear the Child-bishop sermon; and after he be at the high mass, and each of them offer a 1_d_. to the Child-bishop, and with them the masters and surveyors of the school." Brand quotes Strype, the author of the Ecclesiastical Memorials, as observing: "I shall only remark, that there might be this at least said in favour of this old custom, that it gave a spirit to the children; and the hopes that they might one time or other attain to the real mitre made them mind their books."
In his poem, The Boy and the Angel, Robert Browning tells how Theocrite, the boy-craftsman, sweetly praised God amid his weary toil. On Easter Day he wished he might praise God as Pope, and the angel Gabriel took the boy's place in the workshop, while the latter became Pope in Rome. But the new. Pope sickened of the change, and God himself missed the welcome praise of the happy boy. So back went the Pope to the workshop and boyhood, and praise rose up to God as of old. Somewhat different from the poet's story is the tale of the lama of Tibet, a real boy-pope. The Grand Lama, or Pope, is looked upon as an incarnation of Buddha and as immortal, never suffering death, but merely transmigration (100. 499).
Among various peoples, the child has occupied all sacerdotal positions from acolyte to pope—priest he has been, not in barbarism alone, but in the midst of culture and civilization, where often the jest begun has ended in sober earnest. In the ecclesiastical, as well as in the secular, kingdom, the child has often come to his throne when "young in years, but in sage counsel old."