[Illustration]
THE PARISH CLERK
BY
P.H. DITCHFIELD
M.A., F.S.A.
WITH THIRTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS
_First Published in 1907_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OLD-TIME CHOIRS AND PARSONS 1
II. THE ANTIQUITY AND CONTINUITY OF THE OFFICE OF
CLERK 16
III. THE MEDIÆVAL CLERK 31
IV. HIS DUTIES OF READING AND SINGING 48
V. THE CLERK IN LITERATURE 63
VI. CLERKS TOO CLERICAL--SMUGGLING DAYS AND
SMUGGLING WAYS 79
VII. THE CLERK IN EPITAPH 90
VIII. THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF PARISH CLERKS 104
IX. THE CLERKS OF LONDON: THEIR DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES 115
X. CLERKENWELL AND CLERKS' PLAYS 130
XI. THE CLERKS AND THE PARISH REGISTERS 140
XII. THE CLERK AS A POET 154
XIII. THE CLERK GIVING OUT NOTICES 169
XIV. SLEEPY CHURCH AND SLEEPY CLERKS 179
XV. THE CLERK IN ART 195
XVI. WOMEN AS PARISH CLERKS 201
XVII. SOME YORKSHIRE CLERKS 206
XVIII. AN OLD CHESHIRE CLERK AND SOME OTHER WORTHIES 225
XIX. THE CLERK AND THE LAW 245
XX. RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD CLERKS AND THEIR WAYS 255
XXI. CURIOUS STORIES 306
XXII. LONGEVITY AND HEREDITY--THE DEACON-CLERKS OF
BARNSTAPLE 318
XXIII. CONCLUSION 333
INDEX 335
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE PARISH CLERK. By Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. _Frontispiece_
_From the original in the National Gallery_
PAGE
THE VILLAGE CHOIR. By Thomas Webster 8
_From the original in the Victoria and Albert Museum_
THE MEDIÆVAL CLERK: THE CLERK IN PROCESSION 18
_From old engravings_
THE CLERK BEARING HOLY WATER AND ASPERGING THE COOK,
AND OTHERS 28
_From old engravings_
THE OLD CHURCH-HOUSES AT HURST AND UFFINGTON, BERKS 42
_By permission of Messrs. G.J. Palmer and Sons_
THE CLERK AND PRIEST VISITING THE SICK AND ADMINISTERING
THE LAST SACRAMENT 46
_By permission of the S.P.C.K._
OLD BECKENHAM CHURCH. By David Cox 60
_From the drawing at the Tate Gallery_
OLD SCARLETT 98
_From_ "_The Book of Days_"
_By permission of Messrs. W. and R. Chambers, Ltd_.
ENTRANCE TO THE HALL OF THE COMPANY OF PARISH CLERKS. 104
THE MASTER'S CHAIR AT THE PARISH CLERKS' HALL 106
PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM ROPER, SON-IN-LAW AND BIOGRAPHER OF
SIR THOMAS MORE, BENEFACTOR OF THE CLERKS' COMPANY 110
THE GRANT OF ARMS TO THE COMPANY OF PARISH CLERKS 111
STAINED GLASS WINDOW AT THE HALL OF THE PARISH CLERKS'
COMPANY, SHOWING PORTRAITS OF JOHN CLARKE AND STEPHEN
PENCKHURST 112
A PAGE OF THE BEDE ROLL OF THE PARISH CLERKS' COMPANY. 114
THE ORGAN AT THE PARISH CLERKS' HALL 121
A PAGE OF AN EARLY BILL OF MORTALITY PRESERVED AT THE
HALL OF THE PARISH CLERKS' COMPANY 122
INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF THE PARISH CLERKS' COMPANY 126
PORTRAIT OF JOHN CLARKE, PARISH CLERK OF THE CHURCH OF
ST. MICHAEL, CORNHILL 128
OLD MAP OF CLERKENWELL 130
A MYSTERY PLAY AT CHESTER 132
_From a print after a painting by T. Uwins_
THE DESCENT INTO HELL 136
_From William Hone's "Ancient Mysteries_"
THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION. By W. Hogarth 182
_From an engraving at the British Museum_
THE CLERK ATTENDING THE PRIEST AT HOLY BAPTISM 196
_By permission of the S.P.C.K._
THE DUTIES OF A CLERK AT A DEATH AND FUNERAL 198
_By permission of the S.P.C.K._
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By W. P. Frith 199
_From a photograph by Messrs. W.A. Mansell and Co_.
PORTRAIT OF RICHARD HUST, THE RESTORER OF THE CLERKS'
ALMSHOUSES 200
THE CHURCH OF ST. MARGARET, WESTMINSTER 210
_After an engraving from a photograph by Messrs.
W.A. Mansell and Co_.
WILLIAM HINTON, A WILTSHIRE WORTHY. Drawn by the Rev.
Julian Charles Young 239
_By permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co_.
SUNDAY MORNING. By John Absolon 270
_From a photograph by Messrs. W.A. Mansell and Co_.
THE PARISH CLERK OF QUEDGELEY 280
_By permission of Miss Isabel Barnett_
JAMES CARNE, PARISH CLERK OF ST. COLUMB MINOR, CORNWALL,
THE OLDEST LIVING CLERK 320
_From a photograph by Mr. R.P. Griffith, Newquay_
PREFACE
The race of parish clerks is gradually becoming extinct. Before the
recollection of their quaint ways, their curious manners and customs,
has quite passed away, it has been thought advisable to collect all that
can be gathered together concerning them. Much light has in recent years
been thrown upon the history of the office. The learned notes appended
to Dr. Wickham Legg's edition of _The Parish Clerk's Book_, published by
the Henry Bradshaw Society, Dr. Atchley's _Parish Clerk and his Right to
Read the Liturgical Epistle_ (Alcuin Club Tracts), and other works, give
much information with regard to the antiquity of the office, and to the
duties of the clerk of mediæval times; and from these books I have
derived much information. By the kindness of many friends and of many
correspondents who are personally unknown to me, I have been enabled to
collect a large number of anecdotes, recollections, facts, and
biographical sketches of many clerks in different parts of England, and
I am greatly indebted to those who have so kindly supplied me with so
much valuable information. Many of the writers are far advanced in
years, when the labour of putting pen to paper is a sore burden. I am
deeply grateful to them for the trouble which they kindly took in
recording their recollections of the scenes of their youth. I have been
much amused by the humorous stories of old clerkly ways, by the
_facetiæ_ which have been sent to me, and I have been much impressed by
the records of faithful service and devotion to duty shown by many
holders of the office who won the esteem and affectionate regard of both
priest and people. It is impossible for me to publish the names of all
those who have kindly written to me, but I wish especially to thank the
Rev. Canon Venables, who first suggested the idea of this work, and to
whom it owes its conception and initiation[1]; to the Rev. B.D.
Blyn-Stoyle, to Mr. F.W. Hackwood, the Rev. W.V. Vickers, the Rev. W.
Selwyn, the Rev. E.H. L. Reeve, the Rev. W.H. Langhorne, Mr. E.J.
Lupson, Mr. Charles Wise, and many others, who have taken a kindly
interest in the writing of this book. I have also to express my thanks
to the editors of the _Treasury_ and of _Pearson's Magazine_ for
permission to reproduce portions of some of the articles which I
contributed to their periodicals, to the editor of _Chambers's Journal_
for the use of an article on some north-country clerics and their clerks
by a writer whose name is unknown to me, and to the Rev. J. Gaskell
Exton for sending to me an account of a Yorkshire clerk which, by the
kindness of the editor of the _Yorkshire Weekly Post_, I am enabled to
reproduce.
[Footnote 1: Since the above was written, and while this book has been
passing through the press, the venerable clergyman, Canon Venables, has
been called away from earth. A zealous parish priest, a voluminous
writer, a true friend, he will be much missed by all who knew him. Some
months ago he sent me some recollections of his early days, of the
clerks he had known, and his reflections on his long ministry, and these
have been recorded in this book, and will now have a pathetic interest
for his many friends and for all who admired his noble, earnest, and
strenuous life.]
THE PARISH CLERK
CHAPTER I
OLD-TIME CHOIRS AND PARSONS
A remarkable feature in the conduct of our modern ecclesiastical
services is the disappearance and painless extinction of the old parish
clerk who figured so prominently in the old-fashioned ritual dear to the
hearts of our forefathers. The Oxford Movement has much to answer for!
People who have scarcely passed the rubicon of middle life can recall
the curious scene which greeted their eyes each Sunday morning when life
was young, and perhaps retain a tenderness for old abuses, and, like
George Eliot, have a lingering liking for nasal clerks and top-booted
clerics, and sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors.
Then and now--the contrast is great. Then the hideous Georgian
"three-decker" reared its monstrous form, blocking out the sight of the
sanctuary; immense pews like cattle-pens filled the nave. The woodwork
was high and panelled, sometimes richly carved, as at Whalley Church,
Lancashire, where some pews have posts at the corners like an
old-fashioned four-posted bed. Sometimes two feet above the top of the
woodwork there were brass rods on which slender curtains ran, and were
usually drawn during sermon time in order that the attention of the
occupants of the pew might not be distracted from devout meditations on
the preacher's discourse--or was it to woo slumber? A Berkshire dame
rather admired these old-fashioned pews, wherein, as she naively
expressed it, "a body might sleep comfortable without all the parish
knowin' on it."
It was of such pews that Swift wrote in his _Baucis and Philemon_:
"A bedstead of the antique mode,
Compact of timber many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use
Was metamorphosed into pews;
Which still their ancient nature keep
By lodging folks disposed to sleep."
The squire's pew was a wondrous structure, with its own special
fire-place, the fire in which the old gentleman used to poke vigorously
when the parson was too long in preaching. It was amply furnished, this
squire's pew, with arm-chairs and comfortable seats and stools and
books. Such a pew all furnished and adorned did a worthy clerk point out
to the witty Bishop of Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce, with much pride and
satisfaction. "If there be ought your lordship can mention to mak' it
better, I'm sure Squire will no mind gettin' on it."
The bishop, with a merry twinkle in his eye, turned round to the vicar,
who was standing near, and maliciously whispered:
"A card table!"
Such comfortable squires' pews still exist in some churches, but
"restoration" has paid scanty regard to old-fashioned notions and ideas,
and the squire and his family usually sit nowadays on benches similar to
those used by the rest of the congregation.
Then the choir sat in the west gallery and made strange noises and sang
curious tunes, the echoes of which we shall try to catch. No organ then
pealed forth its reverent tones and awaked the church with dulcet
harmonies: a pitch-pipe often the sole instrument. And then--what
terrible hymns were sung! Well did Campbell say of Sternhold and
Hopkins, the co-translators of the Psalms of David into English metre,
"mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, they turned into bathos what they
found sublime." And Tate and Brady's version, the "Dry Psalter" of
"Samuel Oxon's" witticism, was little better. Think of the poetical
beauties of the following lines, sung with vigour by a bald-headed
clerk:
"My hairs are numerous, but few
Compared to th' enemies that me pursue."
It was of such a clerk and of such psalmody that John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester, in the seventeenth century wrote his celebrated epigram:
"Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms
When they translated David's Psalms,
To make the heart more glad;
But had it been poor David's fate
To hear thee sing and them translate,
By Jove, 'twould have drove him mad."
When the time for singing the metrical Psalm arrived, the clerk gave out
the number in stentorian tones, using the usual formula, "Let us sing to
the praise and glory of God the one hundred and fourth Psalm, first,
second, seving (seven), and eleving verses with the Doxology." Then,
pulling out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would
strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west
gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices
their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk
returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and
started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! What a
trouble they were! You could find them if you knew where to look for
them at the end of the Prayer Book after Tate and Brady's metrical
renderings of the Psalms of David. There they were, but the right one
was hard to find. Some had two syllables too much to suit the tune, and
some had two syllables too little. But it did not matter very greatly,
and we were accustomed to add a word here, or leave out one there; it
was all in a day's work, and we went home with the comfortable
reflection that we had done our best.
But a pitch-pipe was not usually the sole instrument. Many village
churches had their band, composed of fiddles, flutes, clarionets, and
sometimes bassoons and a drum. "Let's go and hear the baboons," said a
clerk mentioned by the Rev. John Eagles in his Essays. In order to
preserve strict historical accuracy, I may add that this invitation was
recorded in the year 1837, and therefore could have no reference to
evolutionary theories and the Descent of Man. This clerk, who invariably
read "Cheberims and Sepherims," and was always "a lion to my mother's
children," looking not unlike one with his shaggy hair and beard, was
not inviting a neighbour to a Sunday afternoon at the Zoo, but only to
hear the bassoons.
When the clerk gave out the hymn or Psalm, or on rare occasions the
anthem, there was a strange sound of tuning up the instruments, and then
the instruments wailed forth discordant melody. The clerk conducted the
choir, composed of village lads and maidens, with a few stalwart basses
and tenors. It was often a curious performance. Everybody sang as loud
as he could bawl; cheeks and elbows were at their utmost efforts, the
bassoon vying with the clarionet, the goose-stop of the clarionet with
the bassoon--it was Babel with the addition of the beasts. And they were
all so proud of their performance. It was the only part of the service
during which no one could sleep, said one of them with pride--and he was
right. No one could sleep through the terrible din. They were the most
important officials in the church, for did not the Psalms make it clear,
"The singers go before, and the minstrels" (which they understood to
mean ministers) "follow after"? And then--those anthems! They were
terrible inflictions. Every bumpkin had his favourite solo, and oh! the
murder, the profanation! "Some put their trust in charrots and some in
'orses," but they didn't "quite pat off the stephany," as one of the
singers remarked, meaning symphony. It was all very strange and curious.
Then followed the era of barrel-organs, the clerk's duty being to turn
the handle and start the singing. He was the only person who understood
its mechanism and how to change the barrels. Sometimes accidents
happened, as at Aston Church, Yorkshire, some time in the thirties. One
Sunday morning during the singing of a hymn the music came to a sudden
stop. There was a solemn pause, and then the clerk was seen to make his
way to the front of the singing gallery, and was heard addressing the
vicar in a loud tone, saying, "Please, sor, an-ell 'as coom off." The
handle had come off the instrument. At another church, in
Huntingdonshire, the organ was hidden from view by drawn curtains,
behind which the clerk used to retire when he had given out the Psalm.
On one occasion, however, no sound of music issued from behind the
curtains; at last, after a solemn pause, the clerk's quizzical face
appeared, and his harsh voice shouted out, "Dang it, she 'on't speak!"
The "grinstun organ," as David Diggs, the hero of Hewett's _Parish
Clerk_ calls it, was not always to be depended on. Every one knows the
Lancashire dialect story of the "Barrel Organ" which refused to stop,
and had to be carried out of church and sat upon, and yet still
continued to pour forth its dirge-like melody.
David Diggs may not have been a strictly historical character, but the
sketch of him was doubtless founded upon fact, and the account of the
introduction of the barrel-organ into the church of "Seatown" on the
coast of Sussex is evidently drawn from life. A vestry meeting was held
to consider about having a _quire_ in church, and buying a barrel-organ
with half a dozen simple Psalm tunes upon it, which Davy was to turn
while the parson put his gown on, and the children taught to sing to.
The clerk was ordered to write to the squire and ask him for a liberal
subscription. This was his letter:
"Mr Squir, sur,
"Me & Farmer Field & the rest of the genelmen In vestri
sembled Thinks the parson want parish Relif in shape of A
Grindstun orgin betwin Survisses--i am to grind him & the
sundy skool kildren is to sing to him wile he Gos out of
is sete.
"We liv It to yuresef wart to giv as we dont wont to limit
yur malevolens
"Your obedunt servunt
"DAVY DIGGS."
Of course this worthy scribe taught the children in the school, though
writing was happily considered a superfluous accomplishment. He taught
little beyond the Church Catechism and the Psalms, which he knew from
frequent repetition, though he often wanted to imbue the infant minds
entrusted to his charge with the Christening, Marriage, and Burial
Services, and the Churching of Women, because he "know'd um by
heart himself."
The barrel-organ was scarcely a great improvement upon the "cornet,
flute, sackbut, psaltery"--I mean the violins, 'cellos, clarionets, and
bassoons which it supplanted. The music of the village musicians in the
west gallery was certainly not of the highest order. The instruments
were often out of tune, and the fiddle-player and the flutist were often
at logger-heads; but it was a sad pity when their labours were brought
to an end, and the mechanical organ took their place. The very fact that
all these players took a keen interest in the conduct of Divine service
was in itself an advantage.
The barrel-organ killed the old musical life of the village. England was
once the most musical nation in Europe. Puritanism tried to kill music.
Organs were broken everywhere in the cathedrals and colleges, choirs
dispersed and musical publications ceased. The professional players on
violins, lutes, and flutes who had performed in the theatres or at Court
wandered away into the villages, taught the rustics how to play on their
beloved instruments in the taverns and ale-houses, and bequeathed their
fiddles and clarionets to their rustic friends. Thus the rural orchestra
had its birth, and right heartily did they perform not only in church,
but at village feasts and harvest homes, wakes and weddings. The parish
clerk was usually their leader, and was a welcome visitor in farm or
cottage or at the manor when he conducted his companions to sing the
Christmas carols.
The barrel-organ sealed the fate of the village orchestra. The old
fiddles were wanted no more, and were hung up in the cottages as relics
of the "good old times." For a time the clerk preserved his dignity and
continued to take his part in the music, turning the handle of
the organ.
Then the harmonium came, played by the school-mistress or some other
village performer. No wonder the clerk was indignant. His musical
autocracy had been overthrown. At one church--Swanscombe, Kent--when, in
1854, the change had taken place, and a kind lady, Miss F----, had
consented to play the new harmonium, the clerk, village cobbler and
leader of parish orchestra, gave out the hymn in his accustomed fashion,
and then, with consummate scorn, bellowed out, "Now, then, Miss F----,
strike up!"
It would have been a far wiser policy to have reformed the old village
orchestra, to have taught the rustic musicians to play better, than to
have silenced them for ever and substituted the "grinstun" instrument.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE CHOIR]
Archbishop Tait once said that there is no one who does not look back
with a kind of shame to the sort of sermons which were preached, the
sort of clergymen who preached them, the sort of building in which they
preached them, and the sort of psalmody with which the service was
ushered in. The late Mr. Beresford Hope thus describes the kind of
service that went on in the time of George IV in a market town of Surrey
not far from London. It was a handsome Gothic church, the chancel being
cut off from the nave by a solid partition covered with verses and
strange paintings, among which Moses and Aaron show in peculiar
uncouthness. The aisles were filled with family pews or private boxes,
raised aloft, and approached by private doors and staircases. These were
owned by the magnates of the place, who were wont to bow their
recognitions across the nave. There was a decrepit west gallery for the
band, and the ground floor was crammed with cranky pews of every shape.
A Carolean pulpit stood against a pillar, with reading-desk and clerk's
box underneath. The ante-Communion Service was read from the desk,
separated from the liturgy and sermon by such renderings of Tate and
Brady as the unruly gang of volunteers with fiddles and wind instruments
in the gallery pleased to contribute. The clerk, a wizened old fellow in
a brown wig, repeated the responses in a nasal twang, and with a
substitution of _w_ for _v_ so constant as not even to spare the
Beliefs; while the local rendering of briefs, citations, and
excommunications included announcements by this worthy, after the Nicene
Creed, of meetings at the town inn of the executors of a deceased duke.
Two hopeful cubs of the clerk sprawled behind him in the desk, and the
back-handers occasionally intended to reduce them to order were apt to
resound against the impassive boards. During the sermon this zealous
servant of the sanctuary would take up his broom and sweep out the
middle alley, in order to save himself the fatigue of a weekday visit.
Soon, however, the clerk and his broom followed Moses and Aaron, the
fiddles and the bassoons into the land of shadows.
No sketch of bygone times, in which the clerk flourished in all his
glory, would be complete without some reference to the important person
who occupied the second tier in the "three-decker," and decked in gown
and bands delivered somnolent sermons from its upper storey. Curious
stories are often told of the careless parsons of former days, of their
irreverence, their love of sport, their neglect of their parishes, their
quaint and irreverent manners; but such characters, about whom these
stories were told, were exceptional. By far the greater number lived
well and did their duty and passed away, and left no memories behind
except in the tender recollections of a few simple-minded folk. There
were few local newspapers in those days to tell their virtues, to print
their sermons or their speeches at the opening of bazaars or
flower-shows. They did their duty and passed away and were forgotten;
while the parsons, like the wretch Chowne of the _Maid of Sker_, live on
in anecdote, and grave folk shake their heads and think that the times
must have been very bad, and the clergy a disgrace to their cloth. As
with the clerk, so with his master; the evil that men do lives after
them, the good is forgotten. There has been a vast amount of
exaggeration in the accounts that have come down to us of the
faithlessness, sluggishness, idleness, and base conduct of the clergy of
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and perhaps a little too
much boasting about the progress which our age has witnessed.
It would be an easy task to record the lives of many worthy country
clergymen of the much-abused Hanoverian period, who were exemplary
parish priests, pious, laborious, and beloved. In recording the
eccentricities and lack of reverence of many clerics and their faithful
servitors, it is well to remember the many bright lights that shone like
lamps in a dark place.
It would be a difficult task to write a history of our parish
priesthood, for reasons which have already been stated, and such a
labour is beyond our present purpose. But it may be well to record a few
of the observations which contemporary writers have made upon the
parsons of their day in order to show that they were by no means a set
of careless, disreputable, and unworthy men.
During the greater part of the eighteenth century there lived at
Seathwaite, Lancashire, as curate, the famous Robert Walker, styled "the
Wonderful," "a man singular for his temperance, industry, and
integrity," as the parish register records.
Wordsworth alludes to him in his eighteenth sonnet on Durdon as a worthy
compeer of the country parson of Chaucer, and in the seventh book of the
_Excursion_ an abstract of his character is given:
"A priest abides before whose lips such doubts
Fall to the ground, as in those days
When this low pile a gospel preacher knew
Whose good works formed an endless retinue;
A pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays,
Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew,
And tender Goldsmith crown'd with deathless praise."
The poet also gives a short memoir of the Wonderful Walker. In this
occurs the following extract from a letter dated 1775:
"By his frugality and good management he keeps the wolf from the door,
as we say; and if he advances a little in the world it is owing more to
his own care than to anything else he has to rely upon. I don't find his
inclination in running after further preferment. He is settled among the
people that are happy among themselves, and lives in the greatest
unanimity and friendship with them; and, I believe, the minister and
people are exceedingly satisfied with each other: and indeed, how should
they be dissatisfied, when they have a person of so much worth and
probity for their pastor? A man who for his candour and meekness, his
sober, chaste, and virtuous conversation, his soundness in principle and
practice, is an ornament to his profession and an honour to the country
he is in; and bear with me if I say, the plainness of his dress, the
sanctity of his manners, the simplicity of his doctrine, and the
vehemence of his expression, have a sort of resemblance to the pure
practice of primitive Christianity."
The income of his chapelry was the munificent sum of £17 10 s. He reared
and educated a numerous family of twelve children. Every Sunday he
entertained those members of his congregation who came from a distance,
taught the village school, acted as scrivener and lawyer for the
district, farmed, and helped his neighbours in haymaking and
sheep-shearing, spun cloth, studied natural history, and, in spite of
all this, was throughout a devoted and earnest parish priest. He was
certainly entitled to his epithet "the Wonderful."
Goldsmith has given us a charming picture of an old-world parson in his
_Vicar of Wakefield_, and Fielding sketches a no less worthy cleric in
his portrait of the Rev. Abraham Adams in _his Joseph Andrews_. As a
companion picture he drew the character of the pig-keeping Parson
Trulliber, no scandalous cleric, though he cared more for his cows and
pigs than he did for his parishioners.
"Hawks should not peck out hawks' e'en," and parsons should not scoff at
their fellows; yet Crabbe was a little unkind in his description of
country parsons, though he could say little against the character of
his vicar.
"Our Priest was cheerful and in season gay;
His frequent visits seldom fail'd to please;
Easy himself, he sought his neighbour's ease.
* * * * *
Simple he was, and loved the simple truth,
Yet had some useful cunning from his youth;
A cunning never to dishonour lent,
And rather for defence than conquest meant;
'Twas fear of power, with some desire to rise,
But not enough to make him enemies;
He ever aim'd to please; and to offend
Was ever cautious; for he sought a friend.
Fiddling and fishing were his arts, at times
He alter'd sermons, and he aimed at rhymes;
And his fair friends, not yet intent on cards,
Oft he amused with riddles and charades,
Mild were his doctrines, and not one discourse
But gained in softness what it lost in force;
Kind his opinions; he would not receive
An ill report, nor evil act believe.
* * * * *
Now rests our vicar. They who knew him best
Proclaim his life t' have been entirely--rest.
The rich approved--of them in awe he stood;
The poor admired--they all believed him good;
The old and serious of his habits spoke;
The frank and youthful loved his pleasant joke;
Mothers approved a safe contented guest,
And daughters one who backed each small request;
In him his flock found nothing to condemn;
Him sectaries liked--he never troubled them;
No trifles failed his yielding mind to please,
And all his passions sunk in early ease;
Nor one so old has left this world of sin
More like the being that he entered in."
A somewhat caustic and sarcastic sketch, and perhaps a little
ill-natured, of a somewhat amiable cleric. Dr. Syntax is a good example
of an old-world parson, whose biographer thus describes his
laborious life:
"Of Church preferment he had none;
Nay, all his hope of that was gone;
He felt that he content must be
With drudging-in a curacy.
Indeed, on ev'ry Sabbath-day,
Through eight long miles he took his way,
To preach, to grumble, and to pray;
To cheer the good, to warn the sinner,
And if he got it,--eat a dinner:
To bury these, to christen those,
And marry such fond folks as chose
To change the tenor of their life,
And risk the matrimonial strife.
Thus were his weekly journeys made,
'Neath summer suns and wintry shade;
And all his gains, it did appear,
Were only thirty pounds a-year."
And when the last event of his hard-working life was over--
"The village wept, the hamlets round
Crowded the consecrated ground;
And waited there to see the end
Of Pastor, Teacher, Father, Friend."
Who could write a better epitaph?
Doubtless the crying evil of what is called "the dead period" of the
Church's history was pluralism. It was no uncommon thing for a clergyman
to hold half a dozen benefices, in one of which he would reside, and
appoint curates with slender stipends to the rest, only showing himself
"when tithing time draws near."
When Bishop Stanley became Bishop of Norwich in 1837 there were six
hundred non-resident incumbents, a state of things which he did a vast
amount of work to remedy. Mr. Clitherow tells me of a friend who was
going to be married and who requested a neighbour to take his two
services for him during his brief honeymoon. The neighbour at first
hesitated, but at last consented, having six other services to take on
the one Sunday.
An old clergyman named Field lived at Cambridge and served three country
parishes--Hauxton, Newton, and Barnington. On Sunday morning he used to
ride to Hauxton, which he could see from the high road to Newton. If
there was a congregation, the clerk used to waggle his hat on the top of
a long pole kept in the church porch, and Field had to turn down the
road and take the service. If there was no congregation he went on
straight to Newton, where there was always a congregation, as two old
ladies were always present. Field used to turn his pony loose in the
churchyard, and as he entered the church began the Exhortation, so that
by the time he was robed he had progressed well through the service. My
informant, the Rev. M.J. Bacon, was curate at Newton, and remembers well
the old surplice turned up and shortened at the bottom, where the old
parson's spurs had frayed it.
It was this pluralism that led to much abuse, much neglect, and much
carelessness. However, enough has been said about the shepherd, and we
must return to his helper, the clerk, with whose biography and history
we are mainly concerned.