Dec. 5.]

ST. NICHOLAS’ EVE.

Strype, in his Ecclesiastical Memorials (1822, vol. iii. part. i. p. 326), says:—“On the 5th December [1554], the which was St. Nicholas’ Eve, at evensong time, came a commandment that St. Nicholas should not go abroad nor about. But, notwithstanding, it seems, so much were the citizens taken with the mock St. Nicholas, that is, a boy-bishop, that there went about three St. Nicholases in divers parishes, as in St. Andrew’s Holborn and St. Nicolas Olave’s in Bread Street. The reason the procession of St. Nicholas was forbid was because the Cardinal had this St. Nicholas’ Day sent for all the convocation, bishops, and inferior clergy, to come to him to Lambeth, there to be absolved from all their prejudices, schisms, and heresies.”