Part 3 (1/2)
”From a printed church-book,” says Mr. Hone, ”containing the service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of Innocents'-day, the Boy-Bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles, as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy-Bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, and the pet.i.t-canons the tapers, according to the rubrick.
Afterwards he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy-Bishop repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles; and in conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering _Deo Gratias_.”[27]
The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. Nicholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy among the doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by Dean Colet was in honour of ”the child Jesus.” There was a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, perhaps, a revival, as far as scholars.h.i.+p was concerned. The boys in the older school were not only taught singing but acting, and for a long period were the most popular performers of stage-plays. In the time of Richard the Second, these Boy-Actors pet.i.tioned the King to prohibit certain ignorant and ”inexpert people from presenting the History of the Old Testament.”
They began with sacred plays, but afterwards acted profane; so that St. Paul's singing-school was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common wherever there were choir-boys; and it doubtless originated, partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at which they a.s.sisted, and partly in the delight which the more scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of Terence, still kept up at Westminster school, is supposed by Warton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of Westminster Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth, (who took great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as actors, though not so much so at those of St. Paul's. A set of them were incorporated under the t.i.tle of Children of the Revels, among whom are to be found names that have since become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare--Field, Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It appears that children with good voices were sometimes _kidnapped_ for a supply.[28] Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus pressed into the service; and a relic of the custom is supposed to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. The exercise of the right of might over children, and by people who wanted singers--an effeminate press-gang--would seem an intolerable nuisance; but the children were probably glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to sing and play before a court.
Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile actors:
Weep with me, all you that read This little story; And know, for whom a tear you shed, Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive In grace and feature, As heaven and nature seemed to strive Which owned the creature.
Years he numbered, scarce thirteen, When fates turned cruel; Yet three filled zodiacs had he been The stage's jewel;
And did act (what now we moan) Old men so duly, As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one, He played so truly.
Till, by error of his fate, They all consented; But viewing him since (alas! too late) They have repented;
And have sought (to give new birth) In baths to steep him!
But being so much too good for earth, Heaven vows to keep him.
This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men. It is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston, when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in his female dress after the play. This custom of males appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days; who, besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a boy on the stage _to pretend to be himself_.
One of the strangest of the old ceremonies, in which the clergy of the cathedral used to figure, was that which was performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Commemoration and on that of the Conversion of St. Paul. On the former of these festivals, a fat doe, and on the latter, a fat buck, was presented to the Church by the family of Baud, in consideration of some land which they held of the Dean and Chapter at West Lee in Ess.e.x. The original agreement made with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was, that he himself should attend in person with the animals; but some years afterwards it was arranged that the presentation should be made by a servant, accompanied by a deputation of part of the family. The priests, however, continued to perform their part in the show. When the deer was brought to the foot of the steps leading to the choir, the reverend brethren appeared in a body to receive it, dressed in their full pontifical robes, and having their heads decorated with garlands of flowers. From thence they accompanied it as the servant led it forward to the high altar, where having been solemnly offered and slain, it was divided among the residentiaries. The horns were then fastened to the top of a spear, and carried in procession by the whole company around the inside of the church, a noisy concert of horns regulating their march. This ridiculous exhibition, which looks like a parody on the pagan ceremonies of their predecessors the priests of Diana, was continued by the cathedral clergy down to the time of Elizabeth.
The modern pa.s.senger through St. Paul's Churchyard has not only the last home of Nelson and others to venerate, as he goes by. In the ground of the old church were buried, and here, therefore, remains whatever dust may survive them, the gallant Sir Philip Sydney (the _beau ideal_ of the age of Elizabeth), and Vand.y.k.e, who immortalised the youth and beauty of the court of Charles the First. One of Elizabeth's great statesmen also lay there--Walsingham--who died so poor, that he was buried by stealth, to prevent his body from being arrested. Another, Sir Christopher Hatton, who is supposed to have danced himself into the office of her Majesty's Chancellor,[29] had a tomb which his contemporaries thought too magnificent, and which was accused of ”shouldering” the altar. There was an absurd epitaph upon it, by which he would seem to have been a _dandy_ to the last.
Stay and behold the mirror of a dead man's house, Whose lively person would have made thee stay and wonder.
When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars; And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing; Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and pa.s.sing comely; And G.o.d did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling.
Nature commends her workmans.h.i.+p to Fortune's charge, Fortune presents him to the court and queen, Queen Eliz. (O G.o.d's dear handmayd) his most miracle.
_Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen_; This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd, Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time; First trained him in the stately band of pensioners;
And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard.
Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells, And so, _Vice-Chamberlain_, where foreign princes eyes Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels.
He then aspires, says the writer, to ”the highest subject's seat,” and becomes
Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:) _Robe_, _Collar_, _Garter_, dead figures of great honour, Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence, The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar.
This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other.[30]
The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are only to be equalled by a pa.s.sage in an epitaph we have met with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her husband says:--
”Her graces and her qualities were such That she might have married a bishop or a judge; But so extreme was her condescension and humility, That she married _me_, a poor doctor of divinity; _By which heroic deed_, she stands confest, Of all other women, the phoenix of her s.e.x.”
Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him which he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time; which gives one an equal notion of the Queen's power, and the servility of those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her head was held up by the executioner, ”So perish all Queen Elizabeth's enemies!” He was then Dean of Peterborough. The Queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marrying a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to have hastened his end--a catastrophe worthy of a mean courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the tobacco giving him the _coup de grace_.[31]
Dr. Donne, the head of the metaphysical poets, so well criticised by Johnson, was Dean of St. Paul's, and had a grave here, of which he has left an extraordinary memorial. It is a wooden image of himself, made to his order, and representing him as he was to appear in his shroud.