A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



direction on other saints' days, the founder proceeds, 'We allow how- 

 ever that on the Feast of Innocents the boys may say and perform 

 vespers, mattins, and other divine service to be read or sung, according 

 to the use and custom of the church of Sarum.' 



In the festivities, which centred round the boy-bishop, 1 the medieval 

 schoolboy found the relaxation and reaction which were to compensate 

 him for the restraint and repression of the year. It is certain that the 

 boy-bishop was almost universal, not only in every cathedral and col- 

 legiate church, and wherever there was a school ; but, in later times 

 at least, in every parish church where there was a sufficient band of 

 choristers to furnish forth the boy-bishop's ceremonial, or sufficiently 

 well-to-do parishioners to be worth laying under contribution. 



At Winchester College the inventory contained ' a mitre of cloth of 

 gold of the gift of the Lord Founder, with trappings of silver gilt of the 

 gift of one of the Fellows, for the Boys' Bishop, and a pastoral staff of 

 copper gilt for the same.' At Wykeham's Oxford College, where the 

 boy-bishop was probably a chorister, and not a scholar, the mitre was of 

 bawdekin only. 



We have evidence that the boy-bishop's ceremonial was duly 

 observed at Winchester in pursuance of the allowance in the statutes. 

 Thus in 1401 the actors (histriones) dined with the fellows at this 

 time ; and in 1404 the city minstrels were paid 2s. for their presence 

 on Innocents' Day. In 1400 the college paid 'id. for two founder's kin, 

 Philip Bryan and William Aas ' to St. Nicholas' light,' and in 1403-4 

 3*/. for three of them for the same. A penny was no doubt paid by 

 every boy, as was the custom still in the sixteenth century, when 

 Colet's statutes 2 for St. Paul's directed that ' the children shall every 

 Chyldermasse day come to Paule's church and here the Chylde Bysshope's 

 sermon, and after be at the hye masse, and eche of them offer id. to 

 the Childe bisshopp ; and with theme the maisters and surveyors 

 of the scole.' In 1462 the warden seems to have thrown his contri- 

 bution on the college, as there is an item in the accounts of ' \d. given 

 to the Bishop Nicholas visiting the Lord Warden in his lodgings 

 on S. Nicholas' night.' At Winchester there is still a lingering remin- 

 iscence of Bishop Nicholas in the fact that the great football match 

 of the year, ' Six and Six,' between college and commoners, now 

 called ' Sixes ' and become a triangular duel between college and the two 

 divisions of commoners, ' Commoners ' and ' Houses,' is still played on 

 the Hatchthoke or Thursday nearest 6 December. 



Besides these grand performances at Christmas, every saint's day 

 was, and continued to be till 1880, a whole holiday ; but so much 

 chapel first and second evensong, mattins, mass, processions, and the 

 other canonical hours, terce, sext, nones, and compline was involved, 

 that the scholars must have felt like those at King Harold's College of 

 the Holy Cross at Waltham, afterwards Waltham Abbey, who ' went 



1 See an article by me in the fortnightly Review, Jan. 1896, entitled ' The Schoolboy's Feast.' 

 * CoJtfs Life, by J. H. Lupton (1887), p. 278. 



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