Jan. 25.] St. Paul’s Day
Jan. 25.]
ST. PAUL’S DAY.
Strype, in his Ecclesiastical Memorials (1822, vol. iii. part i. p. 331), says: On the 25th of January (1554), being St. Paul’s Day, was a general procession of St. Paul by every parish, both priests and clerks, in copes, to the number of an hundred and sixty, singing Salve festa dies, with ninety crosses borne. The procession was through Cheap unto Leadenhall. And before went two schools; that is, first, all the children of the Gray Friars, and then those of St. Paul’s school. There were eight bishops, and the Bishop of London, mitred, bearing the Sacrament, with many torches burning, and a canopy borne over. And so about the churchyard, and in at the West door, with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and all the Companies in their best liveries. And within a while after, the King came, and the Lord Cardinal, and the Prince of Piemont, and divers lords and knights. At the foot of the steps to the choir, as the King went up, kneeled the gentlemen lately pardoned, offering him their service. After mass, they returned to the court to dinner. And at night bonfires, and great ringing of bells in every church. And all this joy was for the conversion of the realm.
It was on this day that the husbandmen of old used to make prognostics of the weather, and of other matters for the whole year, a custom which Bourne (Antiquitates Vulgares, chap. xviii. p. 159) has tried to unravel.—New Curiosities of Literature, Soane, 1847, p. 42.