only on the score of childishness, and the absence of any warrant from
Scripture, apart from the rather doubtful sanction of St. Paul's words,
"The elder shall serve the younger."

There are weighty considerations on the other side. The mediaeval Church
derived stores of strength from its sympathetic attitude towards women
and children and the illiterate; and there was a sensible loss of
vitality and interest when the ministry of the Church was curtailed to
suit the common sense of a handful of statesmen, scholars, and
philosophers. At the time the festival was abolished, opinion was
divided even among the leaders of reform. Thus Archbishop Strype openly
favoured the custom, holding that it "gave a spirit to the children,"
and was an encouragement to them to study in the hope of attaining some
day the real mitre. Broadly speaking, then, the Boy-Bishop festival is
evidence of the tender condescension of Holy Mother Church to little
children, and it does not stand alone. At Eyton, Rutlandshire, and
elsewhere, children were allowed to play in church on Holy Innocents'
Day, possibly in the same way as at the "Burial of the Alleluia" in a
church at Paris, where a chorister whipped a top, on which the word
"Alleluia" was inscribed, from one end of the choir to the other. As Mr.
Evelyn White points out, this "quickening of golden praise," by its
union of religious service and child's play, exactly reproduces the
conditions of the Boy-Bishop festival. Certain it is that the festival
was extraordinarily popular. There was hardly a church or school
throughout the country in which it was not observed, and if we turn to
the Northumberland Book cited in the foregoing chapter we shall find
that provision was made for its celebration in the chapels of the
nobility as well. The inventory is as follows:

"_Imprimis_, myter well garnished with perle and precious stones
with nowches of silver and gilt before and behind.

"_Item_, iiij rynges of silver and gilt with four redde precious
stones in them.

"_Item_, j pontifical with silver and gilt, with a blew stone in
hytt.

"_Item_, j owche broken silver and gilt, with iiij precious stones
and a perle in the myddes.

"_Item_, A Crosse with a staf of coper and gilt with the ymage of
St. Nicholas in the myddes.

"_Item_, j vesture redde with lyons of silver with brydds of gold
in the orferores of the same.

"_Item_, j