THE CLERK GIVING OUT NOTICES
After the Nicene Creed in the Book of Common Prayer occurs a rubric with
regard to the giving out of notices, the observance of Holy-days or
Feasting-days, the publication of Briefs, Citations and
Ex-communications, which ends with the following words:
"And nothing shall be proclaimed or published in the Church, during the
time of Divine Service, but by the Minister; nor by him any thing but
what is prescribed in the Rules of this Book, or enjoined by the King or
by the Ordinary of the place."
This rubric was added to the Prayer Book in the revision of 1662, and
doubtless was intended to correct the undesirable practice of publishing
all kinds of secular notices during the time of divine service. Dr.
Wickham Legg has unearthed an inquiry made in an archidiaconal
visitation in 1630, relating to the proclamation of lay businesses made
in church, when the following question was asked:
"Whether hath your Parish Clerk, or any other in Prayers time, or before
Prayers or Sermon ended, before the people departed, made proclamation
in your church touching any goods strayed away or wanting, or of any
Leet court to be held, or of common-dayes-works to be made, or touching
any other thing which is not merely ecclesiasticall, or a
Church-businesse?"
In times of Puritan laxity it was natural that notices sacred and
profane should be indiscriminately mingled, and the rubric mentioned
above would be sorely needed when church order and a reverent service
were revived. But in spite of this direction the practice survived of
not very strictly confining the notices to the concerns of the Church.
An aged lady, Mrs. Gill, who is now eighty-four years of age, remembers
that between the years 1825 and 1835, in a parish church near Welbeck
Abbey, the clerk used to announce the date of the Duke of Rutland's
rent-day. Another correspondent states that after service the clerk used
to take his stand on one of the high flat tombstones and announce sales
by auction, the straying of cattle, etc., and Sir Walter Scott wrote
that at Hexham cattle-dealers used to carry their business letters to
the church, "when after service the clerk was accustomed to read them
aloud and answer them according to circumstances."
Mr. Beresford Hope recollected that in a Surrey town church the notices
given out by the clerk included the announcement of the meetings at the
principal inn of the town of the executors of a deceased duke.
In the days of that extraordinary free-and-easy go-as-you-please style
of service which prevailed at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the nineteenth century, the most extraordinary announcements were
frequently made by the clerk, and very numerous stories are told of the
laxity of the times and the quaintness of the remarks of the clerk.
An old Shropshire clerk gave out on Easter Day the following
extraordinary notice:
"Last Friday was Good Friday, but we've forgotten un; so next Friday
will be."
Another clerk gave out a strange notice on Quinquagesima Sunday with
regard to the due observance of Ash Wednesday. He said: "There will be
no service on Wednesday--'coss why? Mester be going hunting, and so
beeze I!" with triumphant emphasis. He is not the only sporting clerk of
whom history speaks, and in the biographies of some worthies of the
profession we hope to mention the achievements of a clerkly tailor who
denied himself every luxury of life in order to save enough money to buy
and keep a horse in order that he might follow the hounds "like a
gentleman."
Sporting parsons have furnished quite a crop of stories with regard to
strange notices given out by their clerks. Some of them are well known
and have often been repeated; but perhaps it is well that they should
not be omitted here.
About the year 1850 a clerk gave out in his rector's hearing this
notice: "There'll be no service next Sunday, as the rector's going out
grouse-shooting."
A Devonshire hunting parson went to help a neighbouring clergyman in the
old days when all kinds of music made up the village choir.
Unfortunately some difficulty arose in the tuning of the instruments.
The fiddles and bass-viol would not accord, and the parson grew
impatient. At last, leaning over the reading-desk and throwing up his
arms, he shouted out, "Hark away, Jack! Hark away, Jack! Tally-ho!
Tally-ho![71]"
[Footnote 71: _Mumpits and Crumpits_, by Sarah Hewitt, p. 175.]
Another clerk caused amusement and consternation in a south-country
parish and roused the rector's wrath. The young rector, who was of a
sporting turn of mind, told him that he wanted to get to Worthing on a
Sunday afternoon in time for the races which began on the following day,
and that therefore there would be no service. This was explained to the
clerk in confidence. The rector's horror may be imagined when he heard
him give out in loud sonorous tones: "This is to give notice, no suvviss
here this arternoon, becos measter meyans to get to Worthing to-night to
be in good toime for reayces to-morrow mornin'."
Old Moody, of Redbourn, Herts, was a typical parish clerk, and his
vicar, Lord Frederick Beauclerk, and the curate, the Rev. W.S. Wade,
were both hunting parsons of the old school. One Sunday morning Moody
announced, just before giving out the hymn, that "the vicar was going on
Friday to the throwing off of the Leicestershire hounds, and could not
return home until Monday next week; therefore next Sunday there would
not be any service in the church on that day." Moody was quite one of
the leading characters of the place, whose words and opinions were law.
No one in those days thought of disputing the right or questioning the
conduct of a rector closing the church, and abandoning the accustomed
services on a Sunday, in order to keep a sporting engagement.
That other notice about the fishing parson is well known. The clerk
announced: "This is to gi notus, there won't be no surviss here this
arternoon becos parson's going fishing in the next parish." When he was
remonstrated with after service for giving out such a strange notice,
he replied:
"Parson told I so 'fore church."
"Surely he said officiating--not fishing?" said his monitor. "The bishop
would not be pleased to hear of one of his clergy going fishing on a
Sunday afternoon."
The clerk was not convinced, and made a clever defence, grounded on the
employment of some of the Apostles. The reader's imagination will supply
the gist of the argument.
Another rector, who had lost his favourite setter, told his clerk to
make inquiries about it, but was much astonished to hear him give it out
as a notice in church, coupled with the offer of a reward of three
pounds if the dog should be restored to his owner.
The clerk of the sporting parson was often quite as keen as his master
in following the chase. It was not unusual for rectors to take
"occasional services," weddings or funerals, on the way to a meet,
wearing "pink" under their surplices. A wedding was proceeding in a
Devonshire church, and when the happy pair were united and the Psalm was
just about to be said, the clerk called out, "Please to make 'aste, sir,
or he'll be gone afore you have done." The parson nodded and looked
inquiringly at the clerk, who said, "He's turned into the vuzz bushes
down in ten acres. Do look sharp, sir[72]."
[Footnote 72: This story is told by Mrs. Hewett in her _Peasant Speech
of Devon_, but I have ventured to anglicise the broad Devonshire a
little, and to suggest that the scene could scarcely have taken place on
a Sunday morning, as Mrs. Hewett suggests in her admirable book.]
The story is told of a rector who, when walking to church across the
squire's park during a severe winter, found a partridge apparently
frozen to death. He placed the poor bird in the voluminous pocket of his
coat. During the service the warmth of the rector's pocket revived the
bird and thawed it back to life; and when during the sermon the rector
pulled out his handkerchief, the revived bird flew vigorously away
towards the west end of the church. The clerk, who sat in his seat
below, was not unaccustomed to the task of beating for the squire's
shooting parties, called out lustily:
"It be all right, sir; I've marked him down in the belfry."
The fame of the Rev. John Russell, the sporting parson of Swymbridge, is
widespread, and his parish clerk, William Chapple, is also entitled to a
small niche beneath the statue of the great man. The curate had left,
and Mr. Russell inserted the following advertisement:
"Wanted, a curate for Swymbridge; must be a gentleman of moderate and
orthodox views."
The word _orthodox_ rather puzzled the inhabitants of Swymbridge, who
asked Chapple what it meant. The clerk did not know, but was unwilling
to confess such ignorance, and knowing his master's predilections,
replied, "I 'spects it be a chap as can ride well to hounds."
The strangest notice ever given out in church that I ever have heard of,
related to a set of false teeth. The story has been told by many.
Perhaps Cuthbert Bede's version is the best. An old rector of a small
country parish had been compelled to send to a dentist his set of false
teeth, in order that some repairs might be made. The dentist had
faithfully promised to send them back "by Saturday," but the Saturday's
post did not bring the box containing the rector's teeth. There was no
Sunday post, and the village was nine miles from the post town. The
dentist, it afterwards appeared, had posted the teeth on the Saturday
afternoon with the full conviction that their owner would receive them
on Sunday morning in time for service. The old rector bravely tried to
do that duty which England expects every man to do, more especially if
he is a parson and if it be Sunday morning; but after he had mumbled
through the prayers with equal difficulty and incoherency, he decided
that it would be advisable to abandon any further attempts to address
his congregation on that day. While the hymn was being sung he summoned
his clerk to the vestry, and then said to him, "It is quite useless for
me to attempt to go on. The fact is, that my dentist has not sent me
back my artificial teeth; and as it is impossible for me to make myself
understood, you must tell the congregation that the service is ended for
this morning, and that there will be no service this afternoon." The old
clerk went back to his desk; the singing of the hymn was brought to an
end; and the rector, from his retreat in the vestry, heard the clerk
address the congregation as follows:
"This is to give notice! as there won't be no sarmon, nor no more
service this mornin', so you'd better all go whum (home); and there
won't be no sarvice this afternoon, as the rector ain't got his artful
teeth back from the dentist!"
This story so amused George Cruikshank that he wanted to make an
illustration of it. But the journal in which it ought to have appeared
was very short-lived. Hence Cruikshank's drawing was lost to the world.
The clerk is a firm upholder of established custom. "We will now sing
the evening hymn," said the rector of an East Anglian church in the
sixties. "No, sir, it's doxology to-night." The preacher again said,
"We'll sing the evening hymn." The clerk, however, persisted, "It's
doxology to-night"; and doxology it was, in spite of the
parson's protests.
In the days when parish notices with reference to the lost, stolen, or
strayed animals were read out in church at the commencement of the
service, the clerk of a church [my informant has forgotten the name of
the parish] rose in his place and said:
"This is to give notice that my Lady ---- has lost her little dog; he
comes to the name of Shock; he is all white except two patches of black
on his sides and he has got--eh?--what?--yes--no--upon my soul he has
got four eyes!" It should have been sore eyes, but the long _s_ had
misled the clerk.
The clerk does not always shine as an orator, but a correspondent who
writes from the Charterhouse can vouch for the following effort of one
who lived in a village not a hundred miles from Harrow about thirty
years ago.
There was a tea for the school children, at which the clerk, a farm
labourer, spoke thus: "You know, my friends, that if we wants to get a
good crop of anything we dungs the ground. Now what I say is, if we
wants our youngsters to crop properly, we must see that they are
properly dunged--- put the larning into them like dung, and they'll do
all right."
The subject of the Disestablishment of the Church was scarcely
contemplated by a clerk in the diocese of Peterborough, who, after the
amalgamation of two parishes, stated that he was desired by the vicar to
announce that the services in each parish would be morning and evening
to _all eternity_. It is thought that he meant to say _alternately_.
I have often referred to the ancient clerkly method of giving out the
hymns. It was a terrible blow to the clerk when the parsons began to
interfere with his prerogative and give out the hymns themselves. All
clerks did not revenge themselves on the usurpers of their ancient right
as did one of their number, who was very indignant when a strange
clergyman insisted on giving out the hymns himself. In due course he
gave out "the fifty-third hymn," when out popped the old clerk's head
from under the red curtains which hung round the gallery, and which gave
him the appearance of wearing a nightcap, and he shouted, "That a baint!
A be the varty-zeventh."
The following account of a notice, which was scarcely authorised, shows
the homely manners of former days. It was at Sapiston Church, a small
village on the Duke of Grafton's estate. The grandfather of the present
Duke was returning from a shooting expedition, and was passing the
church on Sunday afternoon while service was going on. The Duke quietly
entered the vestry, and signed to the clerk to come to him. The Duke
gave the man a hare, and told him to put it into the parson's trap, and
give a complimentary message about it at the end of the service. But the
clerk, knowing his master would be pleased at the little attention,
could not refrain from delivering both hare and message at once before
the whole congregation. At the close of the hymn before the sermon he
marched into a prominent position holding up the gift, and shouted out,
"His Grace's compliments, and, please sir, he's sent ye a hare."
In giving out the hymns or Psalms many difficulties of pronunciation
would often arise. One clerk had many struggles over the line, "Awed by
Thy gracious word." He could not manage that tiresome first word, and
always called it "a wed." The old metrical version of the Psalm, "Like
as the hart desireth the water-brooks," etc. is still with us, and a
beautiful hymn it is:
"As pants the hart for cooling streams
When heated in the chase."
A Northumbrian clerk used to give out the words thus:
"As pants the 'art for coolin' streams
When 'eated in the chaise,"
which seems to foreshadow the triumph of modern civilisation, the carted
deer, a mode of stag-hunting that was scarcely contemplated by Tate
and Brady.