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]
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