St Nicholas goes abroad

Before the Reformation the boy bishop and his fellows went about the streets at St Nicholastide collecting money, and London was fond of the custom. Queen Mary restored it, and in 1554 St Nicholases went about several parishes, St Andrew’s, Holborn, among them, in spite of an order that evening forbidding it. Strype records that in 1556 a boy dressed as a bishop went round most of London singing in the old way, and was welcomed into many houses for good cheer. The custom vanished with the final settling of Protestantism.