Another curious service at the Cathedral was the mock investiture of the Boy Bishop on Holy Innocents' Day or Childermas, as it was formerly called. On the Eve of St. Nicholas, the special patron of children (December 6th is his festival), the children of the choir elected one of their number to be the Boy Bishop. At St. Paul's he was arrayed in pontifical vestments with a rich pastoral staff and a white embroidered mitre. On St. John's Day, after evensong, the Boy Bishop, with his clerks, officiated at a service; occupying the upper canons' stalls, whilst these dignitaries themselves served in the boys' places as acolytes, thurifers, and lower clerks.
The next day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the Boy Bishop preached a sermon. Two of these sermons have been preserved, and printed by the Camden Society. The foolish and profane rites were sanctioned by so eminent a man as Dean Colet, and formed the subject of regulations drawn up so early as 1263 for the performance of this function at St. Paul's.
A brief description of old St. Paul's, the finest in many respects of our English cathedrals, must now be attempted. Crossing the unsavoury Fleet and ascending Ludgate Hill, the Londoner passed first through Ludgate a little west of St. Martin's Church, and reached the great western gate of the Close spanning the street near the ends of Creed Lane and Ave Maria Lane. The cathedral stood within a spacious walled enclosure. The wall was built in 1109, and greatly strengthened in 1285, and extended from the north-east corner of Ave Maria Lane, running eastward along Paternoster Row to the north end of Old Change in Cheapside, thence southward to Carter Lane, and on the north of Carter Lane to Creed Lane, back to the great western gate.
Besides this principal entrance, the enclosure had five other gates or posterns. Entering at the western gate, the little church of St. Gregory is seen nestling close to the cathedral on its southern side. The church seems insignificant, and helps to show us the vastness of the cathedral, just as St. Margaret's Church brings out by contrast the magnificent proportions of Westminster Abbey.
The western front was flanked by two towers, the northern of which was closely attached to the Bishop's palace; the southern, commonly called the Lollards' Tower, was used by the Bishop as a prison for heretics. The most prominent feature was the spire, which rose from the centre of the roof to a prodigious height, 493 feet in all. The Bishop's palace was at the north-west end of the nave. Passing beyond it and its grounds, you arrived at Pardon Church Haugh. This was a goodly cloister, wherein were buried many persons of note, whose monuments surpassed those of the Cathedral itself in number and curious workmanship. The chief feature of the building was the striking series of paintings on the cloister walls, representing the Dance of Death, and beneath them a metrical description of the allegorical design, translated from the French by John Lydgate, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, and the author of the curious poem, "London Lickpenny." Within the cloister was a chapel founded by Gilbert à Becket, the father of the famous St. Thomas. Cloister, chapel, monuments, and paintings were all swept away by the ruthless hand of the Protector Somerset to find materials for his palace in the Strand.