[1317] Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii, 674 ‘Item, unam Mitram de Cloth of goold habentem 2 knoppes arḡ. enameld, dat. ad occupand. per Barnebishop.’
[1318] John Stone, a monk of Canterbury, records in his De Obitibus et aliis Memorabilibus sui Coenobii (MS. C. C. C. C., Q. 8, quoted Warton, ii. 230) ‘Hoc anno, 1464, in festo Sancti Nicolai non erat episcopus puerorum in schola grammatica in civitate Cantuariae ex defectu Magistrorum, viz. I. Sidney et T. Hikson.’
[1319] J. Stuart, Extracts from Council Registers of Aberdeen (Spalding Club), i. 186. The council ordered on Nov. 27, 1542, ‘that the maister of thair grammar scuyll sell haf iiijs Scottis, of the sobirest persoun that resauis him and the bischop at Sanct Nicolace day.’ This is to be held a legal fee, ‘he hes na uder fee to leif on.’
[1320] Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 860 ‘And whereas heretofore dyverse and many superstitious and childysshe observations have been usid, and yet to this day are observed and kept in many and sondry parties of this realm, as upon sainte Nicolas, sainte Catheryne, sainte Clement, the holye Innocentes, and such like; children be strangelye decked and apparelid to counterfaite priestes, bysshopps, and women; and so ledde with songes and daunces from house to house, bleasing the people, and gatherynge of monye; and boyes doo singe masse, and preache in the pulpitt, with suche other unfittinge and inconvenyent usages, rather to the derision than to any true glory of God, or honour of his saints; the kyng’s majestie therefore mynding nothing so moche, as to avaunce the true glorye of God without vayne superstition, willith and commaundeth, 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, than the pure and sincere religion of Christe.’ Brand, i. 236, suggests that there was an earlier proclamation of July 22, 1540, to the same effect. Johan Bale in his Yet a Course at the Romyshe Foxe (1542), says that if Bonner’s censure of those who lay aside certain ‘auncyent rytes’ is justified, ‘then ought my Lorde also to suffer the same selfe ponnyshment, for not goynge abought with Saynt Nycolas clarkes.’ Thomas Becon, Catechism, 320 (ed. Parker Soc.), compares a bishop who does not preach, a ‘dumb dog,’ to a ‘Nicholas bishop.’ The Articles put to bishop Gardiner in 1550 required him to declare ‘that the counterfeiting St. Nicholas, St. Clement, St. Catherine and St. Edmund, by children, heretofore brought into the church, was a mockery and foolishness’ (Froude, iv. 550).
[1321] Machyn’s Diary, 75 ‘The xij day of November [1554] was commondyd by the bysshope of London to all clarkes in the dyoses of London for to have Sant Necolas and to go a-brod, as mony as wold have ytt ... [the v day of December, the which was Saint Nicholas’ eve, at even-song time, came a commandment that St. Nicholas should not go abroad, nor about. But, notwithstanding, there went about these Saint Nicholases in divers parishes, as St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and St.] Nicolas Olyffe in Bredstret.’ Warton, iv. 237, says that during Mary’s reign Hugh Rhodes, a gentleman or musician of the Chapel royal, printed in black letter quarto a poem of thirty-six octave stanzas, entitled The Song of the Chyldbysshop, as it was songe before the queenes maiestie in her privie chamber at her manour of saynt James in the Feeldes on Saynt Nicholas day and Innocents day this yeare nowe present, by the chylde bysshope of Poules churche with his company.’ Warton apparently saw the poem, for he describes it as ‘a fulsome panegyric on the queen’s devotion, in which she is compared to Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary,’ but no copy of it is now known; cf. F. J. Furnivall, The Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), lxxxv.
[1322] Machyn’s Diary, 121 ‘The v day of Desember [1556] was Sant Necolas evyn, and Sant Necolas whentt a-brod in most partt in London syngyng after the old fassyon, and was reseyvyd with mony good pepulle in-to ther howses, and had myche good chere as ever they had, in mony plasses.’ Foxe, Acts and Monuments, viii. 726, celebrates the wit of a ‘godly matron,’ Mrs. Gertrude Crockhay, who shut ‘the foolish popish Saint Nicholas’ out of her house in this year, and told her brother-in-law, Dr. Mallet, when he remonstrated, that she had heard of men robbed by ‘Saint Nicholas’s clerks.’ This was a slang term for thieves, of whom, as of children, St. Nicholas was the patron; for the reason of which cf. Golden Legend, ii. 119. Another procession forbidden by the proclamation of 1541 was also revived in 1556; cf. Machyn’s Diary, 119 ‘[The xxiv day of November, being the eve of Saint Katharine, at six of the clock at night] sant Katheryn(’s) lyght [went about the battlements of Saint Paul’s with singing,] and Sant Katheryn gohying a prossessyon.’
[1323] At Exton in Rutlandshire, children were allowed at the beginning of the nineteenth century to play in the church on Innocents’ Day (Leicester and Rutland Folk-Lore, 96). Probably a few other examples could be collected.
[1324] At Mainz, not only the pueri, but also the diaconi and the sacerdotes, had their episcopus (Dürr, 71). On the other hand at Vienne the term used at all the feasts, of the triduum and on January 1 and 6, was rex (Pilot de Thorey, Usages, Fêtes et Coutumes en Dauphiné, i. 179). The Boy Bishops received, for their brief day, all the external marks of honour paid to real bishops. They are alleged to have occasionally enjoyed more solid privileges. Louvet (Hist. et Ant. de Beauvais, cited Rigollot, 142), says that at Beauvais the right of presentation to chapter benefices falling vacant on Innocents’ Day fell to the pueri. Jean Van der Muelen or Molanus (De Canonicis (1587), ii. 43) makes a similar statement as to Cambrai: ‘Immo personatus hic episcopus in quibusdam locis reditus, census et capones, annue percipit: alibi mitram habet, multis episcoporum mitris sumptuosiorem. In Cameracensi ecclesia visus est vacantem, in mense episcopi, praebendam, quasi iure ad se devoluto, conferre; quam collationem beneficii vere magnifici, reverendissimus praesul, cum puer grato animo, magistrum suum, bene de ecclesia meritum, nominasset, gratam et raram habuit.’ At Mainz lost tradition had it that if an Elector died during the tenure of office by a Boy Bishop, the revenues sede vacante would fall to him. Unfortunately the chapter and verse of history disprove this (Dürr, 67, 79). On the other hand it is certain that the Boy Bishops assumed the episcopal privilege of coinage. Rigollot, 52 sqq., describes and figures a long series of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century coins or medals mostly struck by ‘bishops’ of the various churches and monastic houses of Amiens. They are the more interesting, because some of them bear ‘fools’ as devices, and thus afford another proof of the relations between the feasts of Boys and Fools. Lille monetae of the sixteenth century are figured by Vanhende, Numismatique Lilloise, 256, and others from Laon by C. Hidé, in Bull. de la Soc. acad. de Laon, xiii. 126. Some of Rigollot’s specimens seem to have belonged, not to Boy Bishops, but to confréries, who struck them as ‘jetons de présence’ (Chartier, L’ancien Chapitre de N.-D. de Paris, 178); and probably this is also the origin of the pieces found at Bury St. Edmunds, which have nothing in their devices to connect them with a Boy Bishop (Rimbault, xxvi).
[1325] Ivo Carnotensis, Epist. 67, ad papam Urbanum (P. L. clxii. 87)
‘eligimus puerum, puerorum festa colentes,