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 albe to the same, with stars in the paro.[2] "_Item_, j white cope stayned with cristells and orferes redde sylk with does of gold and white napkins about their necks. "_Item_, j stayned cloth of the ymage of St. Nicholas. "_Item_, iiij copes blue sylk with red orferes trayled with whitt braunches and flowers. "_Item_, j tabard of skarlett and a hodde thereto lyned with whitt sylk. "_Item_, A hode of Scarlett lyned with blue sylk."