"And the part was acted yet more earnestly, for Molanus saith that this Bishop, in some places, did receive Rents, Capons, etc., during his year; And it seemeth by the statute of Sarum, that he held a kind of Visitation, and had a full correspondency of all other State and Prerogative.... In case the Chorister Bishop died within the Month, his Exequies were solemnized with an answerable glorious pomp and sadness. He was buried (as all other Bishops) in all his Ornaments, as by the Monument in stone spoken of before,[83] it plainly appeareth."
Hone, in his Every-Day Book (vol. i. pp. 1559-60), gives a facsimile of this monument from Gregorie's book, and says: "The ceremony of the boy bishop is supposed to have existed, not only in collegiate churches, but in almost every parish in England. He and his companions walked the streets in public procession. A statute of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary Overy, in 1337, restrained one of them to the limits of his own parish. On December 7, 1229, the day after St. Nicholas' Day, a boy bishop in the chapel at Heton, near Newcastle-on-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, a boy bishop 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 St. Paul's School, which he founded in 1512, expressly ordains that his scholars should, every Childermas Day,[84] 'come to Paulis Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's Sermon; and, after, be at hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the Chylde-Bishop; and with them, the maisters and surveyors of the Scole.'"
By a proclamation of Henry VIII., dated 22nd July 1542, the show of the boy bishop was abrogated, but in the reign of Mary it was revived with other Romish ceremonials. A flattering song was sung before that queen by a boy bishop, and printed. It 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 boy bishops for those years. At that period his estimation in the Church seems to have been undiminished; for on 13th November 1554 the Bishop of London issued an order to all the clergy of his diocese to have boy bishops and their processions; and in the same year these young sons of the old Church paraded St. Andrew's, Holborn, and St. Nicholas, Olaves, in Bread Street, and other parishes. In 1556 Strype says that "the boy bishops again went abroad, singing in the old fashion, and were received by many ignorant but well-disposed persons into their houses, and had much good cheer."
Speaking of the Christmas festivities at Lincoln's Inn, Dugdale[85] says: "Moreover, that the King of Cockneys, on Childermass Day, should sit and have due service; and that he and all his officers should use honest manner and good Order, without any wast or destruction making, in Wine, Brawn, Chely, or other Vitaills."
In Chambers's Book of Days we find that, "In consequence probably of the feeling of horror attached to such an act of atrocity, Innocents' Day used to be reckoned about the most unlucky throughout the year, and in former times no one who could possibly avoid it began any work, or entered on any undertaking on this anniversary. To marry on Childermas Day was specially inauspicious. It is said of the equally superstitious and unprincipled monarch, Louis XV., that he would never perform any business or enter into any discussion about his affairs on this day, and to make to him then any proposal of the kind was certain to exasperate him to the utmost. We are informed, too, that in England, on the occasion of the coronation of King Edward IV., that solemnity, which had been originally intended to take place on a Sunday, was postponed till the Monday, owing to the former day being, in that year, the festival of Childermas. The idea of the inauspicious nature of the day was long prevalent, and is even not yet wholly extinct. To the present hour, we understand, the housewives in Cornwall, and probably also in other parts of the country, refrain scrupulously from scouring or scrubbing on Innocents' Day."
At the churches in several parts of the country muffled peals are rung on this day, and with the Irish it is called "La crosta na bliana," or "the cross day of the year," and also, "Diar daoin darg," or "Bloody Thursday," and on that day the Irish housewife will not warp thread, nor permit it to be warped; and the Irish say that anything begun upon that day must have an unlucky ending.
A writer in Notes and Queries (4 ser. xii. 185) says: "The following legend regarding the day is current in the county of Clare. Between the parishes of Quin and Tulla, in that county, is a lake called Turlough. In the lake is a little island; and among a heap of loose stones in the middle of the island rises a white thorn bush, which is called 'Scagh an Earla' (the Earl's bush). A suit of clothes made for a child on the 'Cross day' was put on the child; the child died. The clothes were put on a second and on a third child; they also died. The parents of the children at length put out the clothes on the 'Scag an Earla,' and when the waters fell the clothes were found to be full of dead eels."
Here is a good carol for Innocents' day, published in the middle of the sixteenth century:—
A Carol of the Innocents.