A token from a Boy Bishop?

Childermas marked the end of the season for the medieval Boy Bishop. I have written about this custom in and its revival in recent years in Boy Bishops

I also wrote this year about the idea of them conducting ‘marriages’ in medieval France at least, in Medieval ways of celebrating Christmas - or perhaps not

This drew upon an article from Medievalists.com which can be seen at Seven Medieval Christmas Traditions

There is more about the tradition in The Twelve Days of Christmas No.4: ‘Never begin anything on Childermass Day’, from the Earl of Manchester’s Regiment of Foote including quotations from a sermon preached by a chorister, John Stubs, who was Boy Bishop at Gloucester Cathedral in 1558. That text and other evidence for the occurrence of Boy Bishops in the south-west Midlands and the West Country is also referenced in Saints on stage: an analytical survey of dramatic records in the West of England.

The grave cover which survives in Salisbury cathedral is now usually thought to have covered the heart burial of an adult Bishop rather than the body of a Boy Bishop. 

Just before Christmas the BBC News site reported on the discovery at Oxburgh in north Norfolk of a token which it is suggested could to have been given out by the Boy Bishop of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds. The suggestion is that it was a token given in alms to be redeemed and thereby receive charitable supplies. I had not come across this idea before, but, assuming the idea is correct, and that it is not an accounting or gaming jetton, appears to show that people travelled to pop centres such as Bury from across the region. Another possibility however occurs to me, which is that we know from York practice that Boy Bishops travelled out quite extensively to visit local landowners on their estates so the token might have got by that means to where it was found.

The report about the discovery of the token can be seen at Experts unearth medieval Christmas food token