s,
December 28th, bore the rank and exercised the functions of a bishop,
the other choristers being his prebendaries. During his term of office
he wore episcopal vestments. On the eve of the Holy Innocents he
performed the entire office, excepting the mass, as a real bishop
would have done. At Salisbury on that day the boy-bishop and his
boy-prebendaries went in procession to the altar of the Holy Trinity,
taking precedence of the dean and resident canons. At the first
chapter afterwards the boy bishop attended in person and was permitted
to receive the entire Oblation made at the altar during the day of his
procession. The names of many of the choristers and the amounts of the
oblations offered for the boy-bishops are the subject of many entries
in the capitular registers of both English and continental churches.
Bishop Mortival in his statutes, still preserved among the cathedral
muniments, orders that the bishop of the choristers "shall make no
visit (some commentators consider this has been misinterpreted, to
infer that elsewhere he held visitations), nor keep any feast, but
shall remain in the Common Hall, unless he be invited to the table of
a Canon for recreation." The order of service in use in this diocese
has been preserved (MS. No. 153 of the Cathedral Library); in it we
find as a special collect, "O Almighty God, who out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings," etc., not, however, quite in the form in which
it appears in the Prayer Book of Ed. VI.

The spectacle was so popular, and attracted such great crowds, that by
special edict it was prescribed that the penalty of the greater
excommunication should be incurred by those who might interrupt or
press upon the boys during their procession or in any part of their
service.

In spite of the doubts thrown upon the monument at Salisbury, it is
distinctly recorded that if a boy-bishop died during his term of
power, he was to be buried in his vestments and have his obsequies
celebrated with the pomp pertaining to an episcopal funeral.

This custom was not confined to this cathedral, but practised at many
others in England and on the Continent, where we find records of much
greater power being exercised by the boy-prelate, extending even to
the presentation to prebends. At Winchester it was certainly observed.
So far back as 1263 we find it described at St. Paul's Cathedral as an
ancient custom. Several sermons preached by the boy-bishops are still
preserved; one