The English Spy, page 89 by Bernard Blackmantle
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f Eton and King's colleges, to the British Museum, is a note which
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mentions that the ceremony of the Bairn or Boy-Bishop was to be observed by charter, and that Geoffry Blythe, Bishop of Lichfield, who died in 1530, bequeathed several ornaments to those colleges, for the dress of the bairn-bishop. But on what authority this industrious antiquary gives the information, which, if correct, would put an end to all doubt on the subject, does not appear. But, after all, why may not this custom be supposed to have originated in a procession to perform an annual mass at the altar of some saint, to whom a small chapel might have been dedicated on the mount called Salt-Hill; a ceremony very common in Catholic countries, as such an altar is a frequent appendage to their towns and populous villages? As for the selling of salt, it may be considered as a natural accompaniment, when its emblematical character, as to its use in the ceremonies of the Roman Church, is contemplated. Till the time of Doctor Barnard, the procession of the Montem was every two years, and on the first or second Tuesday in February. It consisted of something of a military array. The boys in the remove, fourth, and inferior forms, marched in a long file of two and two, with white poles in their hands, while the sixth and fifth form boys walked on their flanks as officers, and habited in all the variety of dress, each of them having a boy of the inferior forms, smartly equipped, attending on him as a footman. The second boy in the school led the procession in a military dress, with a truncheon in his hand, and bore for the day the title of Marshal: then followed the Captain, supported by his Chaplain, the head scholar of the fifth form, dressed in a suit of black, with a large bushy wig, and a broad beaver decorated with a twisted silk hatband and rose, the fashionable distinction of the dignified clergy of that day. It was his office to read certain Latin prayers on the mount at Salt-Hill The third boy of the school brought up the rea