Nov. 17.]

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION.

Queen Elizabeth’s accession was long observed as a Protestant festival, and with the society of the Temple, the Exchequer, Christ’s Hospital, Westminster, and Merchant Taylors’ Schools, is, says Timbs, kept as a holiday. The Pope in effigy, in a chair of state, with the devil, a real person, behind him, caressing him, &c., was formerly paraded in procession on this day in the streets of London, and afterwards thrown into a bonfire. In Queen Anne’s time the Pretender was added to the Pope and the devil. There were also great illuminations in the evening. This anniversary was first publicly celebrated about 1570, twelve years after Elizabeth’s accession. (Timbs, Something for Everybody, p. 122.) Brayley in his Londiniana, vol. iv. p. 74, et seq., has given a very interesting account of these processions.

A correspondent of N. & Q. (1st S. vol. iv. p. 345) says that when he was at Christ’s Hospital the following curious custom prevailed on the 17th of November.

Two or more boys would take one against whom they had any spite or grudge, and having lifted him by the arms and legs, would bump him on the hard stones of the cloisters.

In reading Sir Roger de Coverley, with notes by Willis published in the Traveller’s Library, the same correspondent says that he found (at p. 134) what he considered a fair explanation. A full account is there given, he says, of the manner in which the citizens of London intended celebrating, in 1711, the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession on the 17th of November, some parts of which would almost seem to have been copied during the excitement against the papal bull in November 1850. Probably therefore, originally, the unfortunate boy who had to endure the rude bumping by his schoolfellows was intended to represent the Pope or one of his emissaries, and that those who inflicted the punishment were looked upon as good Protestants.