The bag or purse, [No. 8313], p. 188, is of a kind which not only were used for those liturgical purposes which we have already enumerated, but served for private devotional practices. In that very interesting will made by Henry, Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, among other pious bequests, is the following one, of the little bag having in it a piece of our Lord’s cross, which he always wore about his neck;—“j bursa parva quæ semper pendet circa collum meum cum cruce Domini.”[399]
[395] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. pp. 205, 180, 181, 183.
[396] Act iii. scene iii.
[397] Bury Wills, &c. p. 186.
[398] Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores Tres, ed. Surtees Society, p. cclxxxvii.
[399] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. ix. p. 278.
The crimson velvet mitre,—No. [4015], p. 85,—for the boy-bishop, bairn-bishop, or Nicholas-tide bishop, as the little boy was severally called in England, is a liturgical curiosity, as the ceremonies in which it was formerly worn are everywhere laid aside. Among the things given for the use of the chapel in the college—All Souls—of his founding at Oxford by Archbishop Chicheley, are a cope and mitre for this boy, there named the Nicholas-tide bishope:—“i cap. et mitre pro episcopo Nicholao.”[400] To make good his election to such a dignity, at Eton College, a boy had to study hard and show at the examination for it, that he was the ablest there at his books: his success almost ennobled him among his schoolfellows:—“In die Sti Hugonis pontificis” (17 Nov.) “solebat Ætonæ fieri electio Episcopi Nihilensis, sed consuetudo obsolevit. Olim episcopus ille puerorum habebatur nobilis, in cujus electione, et literata et laudatissima exercitatio, ad ingeniorum vires et motos exercendos, Ætonæ celebris erat.”[401] The colour, crimson, in this boy’s mitre, was to distinguish it from that of bishops.
Of the episcopal bairn-cloth—the Gremiale of foreign liturgists—we have two specimens here,—Nos. [1031], [1032], pp. 19, 20. The rich one of crimson cloth of gold, once belonging to Bowet, Archbishop of York, who died A.D. 1423, brought more money than even a chasuble of the same stuff:—“Et de xxvjs. viijd. receptis pro j. bairnecloth de rubeo panno auri. Et de xxs. receptis pro j casula de rubeo beaudkyn, &c. Inventorium,” &c.[402]
Old episcopal shoes are now become great liturgical rarities, but there is one here,—No. [1290], p. 46. At one time they were called “sandals;” and among the episcopal ornaments that went by usage to Durham cathedral at the death of any of its bishops, were “mitra et baculum et sandalia et cætera episcopalia,” of Hugh Pudsey, A.D. 1195.[403] Later was given them the name of “sabatines;” and Archbishop Bowet’s inventory mentions two pairs:—“pro j pare de sabbatones, brouddird, et couch’ cum perell’; pro j pare de sabbatones de albo panno auri,” &c.[404]
[400] Collectanea Curiosa, ed. Gutch, t. ii. p 265.