2"d S. No 98., Nov. 14. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



395 



to a man skilful in music, to be from time to time 

 selected by them to teach the art of music to ten 

 or twelve of the poor boys in the Hospital, and to 

 train them up in the knowledp;e of Pricktsong, 

 and to teach them to write and make them able to 

 sing in the choir of Christ's Church ; for which 

 purpose he and his successors should not fail to 

 bring the children every Sunday and every holi- 

 day, and their Vigils, to the said church. And it 

 was farther agreed (inter alia) that, upon the chil- 

 dren attending burials, one half of the singing 

 scholars, at the discretion of the master, should be 

 left behind, that the singing school might not be 

 empty, unless it should be a special or double 

 burial. 



These extracts clearly show it to have been a 

 practice for the children of Christ's Hospital — 

 originally girls as well as boys — to attend funerals 

 (but not those of aldermen exclusively), from the 

 very earliest establishment of the Hospital down 

 to the reign of James I. Mr. Husk's communi- 

 cations bring the custom down to 1720. Would 

 it not be interesting to trace it still later, and to 

 show when it ceased ? 



It is a singular fact that no notice whatever is 

 taken of the subject in either TroUope's or Wil- 

 son's History of Christ's Hospital. 



It is perhaps not altogether irrelevant to the 

 subject to mention that the former work records 

 (on p. 162.) a still existing practice, which is pro- 

 bably a relic of the one noticed above, — that when 

 one of the boys dies in the Hospital, the whole of 

 the boys of the ward to which the deceased be- 

 longs attend his remains to the grave, chaunting 

 on the way a burial anthem selected from the 

 39th Psalm. These funerals formerly took place 

 in the evening, and by torch-light, and are de- 

 scribed as having been peculiarly impressive ; but 

 Mr. TroUope says : — 



" The most imposing features of the ceremony, to a 

 stranger at least, are no longer retained, though it would 

 be difiicult to assign a cause for their discontinuance. 

 The striking effect produced by the funereal glare of the 

 torches is no longer present, and the corpse is committed 

 to the ground in open day-light; the distance along 

 which the procession passes is considerably diminished ; 

 and, except the solemn chaunt of the Burial Anthem, 

 there is little to excite particular attention." 



Thos. Brewee. 



Milk Street. 



Stowe, in his Survey of the Cities of London 

 and Westminster, has recorded that, " in the year 



1562, ' Goodrick, Esq., a great lawyer, died 



at his place in White Fryars, and was carried to 

 St. Andrew, Holborn, to be buried. First went 

 the Company of Clerks singing, &c. And he also 

 relates that " twenty Clerks sung at the burial of 

 Thos. Percy, late Skinner to Queen Mary," who 

 died in the year 1561 ; but in neither account is 



mention made of the attendance of Blue Coat 

 Boys. 



The only notice given of a funeral being at- 

 tended by the " children of the Hospital" is that of 

 Mr. Robert Mellys, late Master of the Company 

 of Merchant Taylors, who was buried at All- 

 hallows (Bread Street) Church, on April 2, 1562. 



" There were the children of the Hospital, two and two 

 together, walking before; and all the masters of the 

 Hospitals, with their green staves in their hands: which 

 is the first time I met with the Hospital boys attending a 

 funeral, with the Governors, without Parish Clerks and 

 "Heralds." 



On the death of Charles II., in the year 1685, 

 Coke says : — 



" He was hurried in the dead of the night to his grave, 

 as if his corpse had been to be arrested for debt ; and not 

 so much as the Blue Coat Boys attending it." 



Within the walls of Christ's Hospital there is a 

 space called the " Garden," and which was, to a 

 recent period, covered with grass. Many burials 

 have taken place in this spot, and the cloisters 

 which surround it, TroUope (formerly a master 

 in the school), in his History of Christ's Hospital, 

 pictures one of them, but makes no mention of 

 the attendance of the children at funerals outside 

 of the building. 



" On the evening appointed for the funeral, the bo3's of 

 the ward to which the deceased belonged * assembled in 

 the quadrangle of the infirmary, for the purpose of at- 

 tending the remains of their departed schoolfellow to the 

 grave. When the melancholy procession began to move, 

 six of the choir, at a short distance in advance, commenced 

 the first notes of the burial anthem, selected from the 39<A 

 Psalm, the whole train gradually joining in the solemn 

 chaunt as they entered, two by two, the narrow vaulted 

 passage or creek which terminated in the cloisters. The 

 appearance of the youthful mourners, moving with mea- 

 sured steps by torch- light, and pealing their sepulchral 

 dirge along the sombre cloisters of the ancient priory, was 

 irresistibly affecting; and the impressive burial ser^'ice 

 succeeding to the notes of the anthem, as it sunk sorrow- 

 fully upon the lips of the children, riveted the spectators 

 insensibly into a mood of serious and edifying reflec- 

 tion." 



EvERARD Home Coleman. 



70. Wood Street, Cheapside. 



Seal Inscription (2"-^ S. iv. 223.) ^ What T. 

 Lampray describes as " the common seal of the 

 corporation of Louth," is obviously, and as appears 

 from his own account, not the seal of that body, 

 but is, or perhaps only was, the seal of the Free 

 Grammar School "in villa de Louth." Dr. Bus- 

 by's chair will be remembered as another exem- 

 plification of sirflilar scholastic discipline. 



Arteeus. 



Dublin. 



♦ Each ward contains fifty boys, 



