Monument to a Boy Bishop
IN SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.
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’s day, a boy bishop in the chapel at Heton, near Newcastle-upon-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 (Innocents) day, “come to Paulis Churche and hear the Chylde-Bishop’s sermon: and after be at the 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 July 22, 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 the boy bishops of those years. At that period his estimation in the church seems to have been undiminished; for on November 13, 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.[407]
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Nestflowered Heath. Erica nidiflora.
Dedicated to St. Nicholas.