Should I tell all their several services,
Their trentals,[1] masses, dirges, rosaries;
Their solemn pomps, their pageants, and parades,
Their holy masks, and spiritual cavalcades,
With thousand antic tricks, and gambols more;
'Twould swell the sum to such a mighty score'
That I at length should more voluminous grow,
Than Crabb, or Sirius,[2] lying Fox, or Stow.
Believe whatever I have related here,
As true, as if 'twere spoke from porphyry chair.
If I have feigned in aught, or broached a lie,
Let worst of fates attend me, let me be
Made the next bonfire for the powder-plot,
The sport of every sneering Huguenot;
There like a martyred pope in flames expire,
And no kind catholic dare quench the fire.
- ↑ Thirty masses for the dead. According to Burnet, they were distributed over a whole year, three being said at each of the principal festivals of the Church, under the impression that they possessed additional efficacy on those occasions.
- ↑ Laurentius Surius, a Carthusian friar, born at Lubeck in 1522, died at Cologne in 1578. He obtained celebrity by the quantity of his works, rather than by the extent or accuracy of his learning, and is one of the most voluminous compilers of history, biography, and ecclesiastical records in the annals of the Church. His principal works are a History of his own Times, from 1500 to 1566; a Collection of Councils; and The Lives of the Saints.
amice), the vestment lined with fur that covered the head and shoulders—rochet, the surplice—chimer, a vestment worn by bishops, both of the Anglican and Roman church, between their gown and rochet.
