Examples of such discourses are still extant,[{22}] and are not without quaint touches. For instance the bidding prayer before one of them alludes to “the ryghte reverende fader and worshypfull lorde my broder Bysshopp of London, your dyoceasan,” and “my worshypfull broder [the] Deane of this cathedrall chirche,”[{23}] while in another the preacher remarks, speaking of the choristers and children of the song-school, “Yt is not so long sens I was one of them myself.”[{24}]
In some places it appears, though this is by no means certain, that the boy actually sang Mass. The “bishop's” office was a very desirable one not merely because of the feasting, but because he had usually the right to levy contributions on the faithful, and the amounts collected were often very large. At York, for instance, in 1396 the “bishop” pocketed about £77, all expenses paid.
The general parallelism of the Boy Bishop customs and the Feast of Fools is obvious, and no doubt they had much the same folk-origin. One point, already mentioned, should specially be noticed: the election of the Boy Bishop generally took place on December 5, the Eve of St. Nicholas, patron of children; he was often called “Nicholas bishop”; and sometimes, as at Eton and Mayence, he exercised episcopal functions at divine service on the eve and the feast itself. It is possible, as Mr. Chambers suggests, that St. Nicholas's Day was an older date for the boys’ festival than Holy Innocents’, and that from the connection with St. Nicholas, the bishop saint par excellence (he was said to have been consecrated by divine command when still a mere layman), sprang [308]the custom of giving the title “bishop” to the “lord” first of the boys’ feast and later of the Feast of Fools.
In the late Middle Ages the Boy Bishop was found not merely in cathedral, monastic, and collegiate churches but in many parish churches throughout England and Scotland. Various inventories of the vestments and ornaments provided for him still exist. With the beginnings of the Reformation came his suppression: a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated July 22, 1541, commands “that from henceforth all suche superstitions be loste and clyerlye extinguisshed throughowte all this his realmes and dominions, forasmoche as the same doo resemble rather the unlawfull superstition of gentilitie [paganism], than the pure and sincere religion of Christe.”[{25}] In Mary's reign the Boy Bishop reappeared, along with other “Popish” usages, but after Elizabeth's accession he naturally fell into oblivion. A few traces of him lingered in the seventeenth century. “The Schoole-boies in the west,” says Aubrey, “still religiously observe St. Nicholas day (Decemb. 6th), he was the Patron of the Schoole-boies. At Curry-Yeovill in Somersetshire, where there is a Howschole (or schole) in the Church, they have annually at that time a Barrell of good Ale brought into the church; and that night they have the priviledge to breake open their Masters Cellar-dore.”[{26}]
In France he seems to have gradually vanished, as, after the Reformation, the Catholic Church grew more and more “respectable,” but traces of him are to be found in the eighteenth century at Lyons and Rheims; and at Sens, even in the nineteenth, the choir-boys used to play at being bishops on Innocents’ Day and call their “archbishop” âne—a memory this of the old asinaria festa.[{27}] In Denmark a vague trace of him was retained in the nineteenth century in a children's game. A boy was dressed up in a white shirt, and seated on a chair, and the children sang a verse beginning, “Here we consecrate a Yule-bishop,” and offered him nuts and apples.[{28}]
CHAPTER XIV
ST. STEPHEN'S, ST. JOHN'S, AND HOLY INNOCENTS’ DAYS
Horse Customs of St. Stephen's Day—The Swedish St. Stephen—St. John's Wine—Childermas and its Beatings.