the
Council of Basle had decreed the suppression of it throughout
Christendom. In imitation too of the Boy-Bishops of Bayeux, Salisbury,
and other churches, the nuns of the Holy Trinity had their
Girl-Abbesses. The ancient rolls of the monastery make mention, under
the head of expenses in 1423, of six sols given, by way of offering, on
Innocents'-Day, "_aux petites Abbesses_." This was the day on which the
Girl-Abbess was elected: the superior of the convent resigned to her the
abbatial stall and crozier at vespers, as soon as they came to the verse
of the _Magnificat_, beginning "_Deposuit potentes de sede_;" and the
farce was kept up till the same hour the succeeding evening. The Abbe De
la Rue, who mentions this fact, observes with justice, that another
circumstance, which appears from these accounts, is still more
extraordinary;--that, even as late as 1546, the abbess was in the habit
of making an annual payment of five sols to the cathedral of Bayeux, for
its Boy-Bishop. The entry is in the following terms: "_Au petit eveque
de Bayeux, pour sa pension, ainsi qu'il est accoutume, V. sous._" During
the early part of the preceding century, the abbot of St. Stephen was
also accustomed to pay twenty sols per annum, on the same account; but
his payment was probably discontinued immediately after the edict of the
Council of Basle, though the ceremony of the Boy-Bishop was not
suppressed at Bayeux till 1482. Indeed, only six years before that time,
the inventory of the sacristy of the cathedral enumerated, among its
other valuables,

"Two mitres for the Boy-Bishop,
The crozier belonging to the Boy-Bishop,
The Boy-Bishop's mittens,
And four small copes of scarlet satin, for the use
of the singing-boys on Innocents'-Day."

The abbess of Caen, through the medium of her official, exercised
spiritual jurisdiction over the parishes of St. Giles, Carpiquet,
Oistreham, and St. Aubin-d'Arquenay, by virtue of a privilege granted by
the bishops of Bayeux, as well for herself and her nuns, as for the
vassals of the several parishes. This privilege, however, extended no
farther than to an exemption from certain pecuniary fines, which the
diocesans, in the middle ages, exacted from their flocks; and even in
this confined acceptation, it was more than once the subject of
litigation between the convent and the see. In like manner, the civil
and criminal jurisdiction claimed by the abbess over the same parishes,
brought her