Every inhabitant of Craven has heard tales of this eccentric person, and
numberless are the anecdotes told of him. I have not the history of
Craven, and cannot name the period of his death exactly, but I believe
it happened between fifty and sixty years ago. He was a learned man and
a wit--so much addicted to waggery, that he sometimes forgot his
office, and indulged in sallies rather unbecoming a minister, but
nevertheless he was a sincere Christian. The following anecdotes are
well known in Craven, and may amuse elsewhere. One of Mr. Alcock’s
friends, at whose house he was in the habit of calling previously to his
entering the church on Sundays, once took occasion to unstitch his
sermon and misplace the leaves. At the church, Mr. Alcock, when he had
read a page, discovered the joke. “Peter,” said he, “thou rascal! what’s
thou been doing with my sermon?” then turning to his congregation he
said, “Brethren, Peter’s been misplacing the leaves of my sermon, I have
not time to put them right, I shall read on as I find it, and you must
make the best of it that you can;” and he accordingly read through the
confused mass, to the astonishment of his flock. On another occasion,
when in the pulpit, he found that he had forgotten his sermon; nowise
disappointed at the loss, he called out to his clerk, “Jonas, I have
left my sermon at home, so hand us up that Bible, and I’ll read ’em a
chapter in Job worth ten of it!” Jonas, like his master, was an oddity,
and used to make a practice of falling asleep at the commencement of the
sermon, and waking in the middle of it, and bawling out “amen,” thereby
destroyed the gravity of the congregation. Mr. Alcock once lectured him
for this, and particularly requested he would not say amen till he had
finished his discourse. Jonas promised compliance, but on the following
Sunday made bad worse, for he fell asleep as usual, and in the middle of
the sermon awoke and bawled out “Amen at a venture!” The Rev. Mr. Alcock
is, I think, buried before the communion-table of Skipton church, under
a slab of blue marble, with a Latin inscription to his memory.