In most churches the boys performed all the ceremonies, and said all the offices save mass during this period; in some they were even permitted to make a travesty of mass. On the Continent, a variety of indecent levities were by degrees admitted, such as the boy being dressed in a bishop's robes reversed, and old shoes being burnt instead of incense; and when they had raised sufficient scandal in the church itself, they then paraded the streets, or sought to make levies in the market-place. To the credit of the church, it should be remarked that these excesses were on several occasions interdicted by pre-reformation councils, though apparently with but partial success. The Council of Basle, which sat in 1431, issued the following stringent canon:--"This sacred synod, detesting that foul abuse frequent in certain churches, in which, on certain festivals of the year, certain persons with a mitre, staff, and pontifical robes, bless men after the manner of bishops, others being clothed like kings and dukes, which is called the Feast of Fools, of Innocents, or of Children in certain countries; others practising vizarded and theatrical sports; others making trains and dances of men and women, move men to spectacles and cachin-nations; hath appointed and commanded as well ordinaries as deans and rectors of churches, under pain of suspension of all their ecclesiastical revenues for three months space, if they suffered these and such like plays and pastimes to be any more exercised in the church, which ought to be the house of prayer, nor yet in the churchyard, and that they neglect not to punish the offender by ecclesiastical censures and other remedies of law." Boy-bishoping was by no means confined in England to the cathedral and large collegiate churches, but it was so generally prevalent and popular that it appears to have prevailed wherever there was a choir school, attached to any church, whether in town or country. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary Hill, London, 1485-6, contain the two following entries:--"Item, six copes for children of dyvers sortes. Item, a myter for a bishop at Seint Nycholas tyde, garnyshed with sylver and anelyd, and perles and counterfete stones." The same accounts make mention of the purchase of properties for a like purpose in 1549-50 during Queen Mary's reign. We have met references to a like children's pageant in comparatively out-of-the-way places of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and West Somersetshire.