mous
treatise on the Boy Bishop is printed in "Gregorii Posthuma,"
1649-1669, admits there that it might well seem impossible to everyone
that either a bishop should be so small in person or a child so great
in clothes. Thomas Fuller also echoes the same objection when he
writes: "But the curiosity of critics is best entertained with the
tomb in the north of the nave of the church, where lieth a monument in
stone of a little boy, habited all in episcopal robes, a mitre upon
his head, a crozier in his hand, and the rest accordingly. At the
discovery thereof, formerly covered over with pews, many justly
admired that either a bishop could be so small in person or a child so
great in clothes; though since all is unriddled; for it was then
fashionable in that church (a thing rather deserving to be remembered
than fit to be done), in the depth of Popery, that the choristers
chose a boy of their society to be a bishop among them from St.
Nicholas' till Innocents' day." If the effigy represents a boy it is
hard to explain why it is not life-size. Stothard in his "Monumental
Effigies," in common with most later authorities, favours the idea
that it is a miniature representation of a real bishop. Canon Jones
suggests probably Walter Scammel, Henry de Braundeston, or William de
la Corner. Mackenzie Walcott inclined to the belief that it
represented Bishop Wykehampton, who died 1284. A small figure of
Bishop Ethelman, 1260, about the same date, is in Winchester
Cathedral; there is also one 14-1/2 inches long in Abbey Dore Church,
Herefordshire, one at Ayot, St. Lawrence, Herts, 2 feet 3 inches, and
other small effigies of knights and civilians elsewhere. According to
Digby Wyatt the custom of burying different portions of the body in
different places was common in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;
from which he infers that probably these figures commemorated the
place of sepulture of the heart.

Whether the monument in question be connected with the Chorister
Bishop or not, there are so many records of the function with which
popular credence has associated it, that a short digression is almost
unavoidable. The pamphlet by John Gregory is elaborately minute and
much too long to be quoted fully, yet some of the facts he brought
together may be briefly noted. It seems that on the feast of St.
Nicholas, the patron saint of children, the choir-boys[9] elected one
of their number, who from that day to the feast of the Holy Innocent