Doubtless Miss Brown has in mind the cathedral of Salisbury, England. In the nave of that great minster there is just such a tomb, with just such a likeness carved upon it. The boy’s foot rests on the figure of a monster with a lion’s head and a dragon’s tail, in allusion to the words of the psalmist “Thou shalt tread on the lion and the dragon.” But to continue. On December 6th the newly elected Boy-bishop with his dean and canons held a grand service in the church to which they were attached, the prayers being chanted in the boy’s sweet childish voice. A great crowd always thronged the church to gaze on so rare a sight, and the offerings that they made were all for the Boy-bishop. After the services were over the bishop and his boy-assistants would form themselves into a procession and parade through the streets of the town or the lanes of the countryside, asking some small money tributes from all they met and at every door where they knocked. This was known as the Bishop’s Subsidy and though no one was likely to give a great deal, yet as the procession was continued every day during the three weeks, the amount collected sometimes rolled up into quite a pretty sum. Faster and more furious grew the fun as the time of the bishop’s rule neared its close. On the afternoon of December 27th little Nicholas and his companions sang vespers, while the real priests of the church acted as altar boys and choristers. Then the Boy-bishop gave a solemn benediction to all present. Making the sign of the cross over the kneeling throngs, he dismissed them with the words: Crucis signo vos consigno; vestra sit tuitio, Quos nos emit et redemit suae carnis pretio. These latin words being translated into English mean: “I bestow upon you the sign of the cross, yours be it to learn what is sent for our redemption through the price of his flesh.” Next day (the actual feast of the Holy Innocents), the Boy-bishop preached a sermon which usually was written for him by some famous prelate. On his dismissal of the congregation at the close of the sermon, the festival of the Boy-bishop was at an end. When Henry VIII became a Protestant and brought over a great many of his subjects to the new faith one of his first acts was to abolish the Boy-bishop and his festival. Henry’s daughter, Queen Mary, restored both for the few years of her own reign, but Queen Elizabeth, her sister and successor, put an end to the mummery forever. We catch our last glimpse of the Boy-bishop in the pages of a historian called William Strype, who informs us that on the fifth day of December, 1556, (Queen Mary being then still alive) “a boy habited like a bishop in pontificalibus, went abroad in most parts of London, singing after the old fashion, and was received by many ignorant but well disposed people into their houses, and had as much good cheer as was ever wont to be had before, at least in many places.”