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PROCLUS OR PROCULUS
PROCESSION PATHPROCLUS were prescribed. The Puritans, who aimed at setting up the Genevan model, objected; and the visitation articles of the bishops in Charles I.'s time make frequent inquisition England. *nto tne negject °f the clergy to obey the law in this matter. With " the profane, ungodly, presumptuous multitude " (to quote Baxter's Saint's Rest, 1650, pp. 344, 345), however, these " processions and perambulations " appear to have been very popular, though " only the traditions of their fathers." However this may be, the Commonwealth made an end of them, and they seem never to have been revived; Sparrow, in his Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1668), speaks of "the service formerly appointed in the Rogation days of Procession." Among the processions that survived the Reformation in the English Church was that of the sovereign and the Knights of the Garter on St George's day. This was until Charles II.'s time a regular rogation, the choristers in surplices, the gentlemen of the royal chapel in copes, and the canons and other clergy in copes preceding the knights and singing the litany. In 1661, after the Restoration, by order of the sovereign and knights companions in chapter " that supplicational procession " was " converted into a hymn of thanksgiving." Akin to this procession also are the others connected with royal functions; coronations, funerals. These retained, and retain, many pre-Reformation features elsewhere fallen obsolete. Thus at the funeral of George II. (1760) the body was received at the door of the Abbey by the dean and prebendaries in their copes, attended by the choir, all carrying lighted tapers, who preceded it up the church, singing. | |
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