THE CHURCH AND THE RECTOR.
Two adjacent villages formed here one parish, which may be called Haddenham cum Stonea, from said villages. The living was a good one, as the rector received his house and six thousand dollars a year. This income was principally drawn from tithes, which amounted to about two dollars per acre on the arable land in the parish, and to near five thousand five hundred dollars yearly. From glebe land he drew the remainder of his income. He was, however, bound to keep his house in repair, and for the last eighteen months he had not drawn his full income.
Benton was the principal parishioner in attendance at church. His family, however, did not associate on equal terms with that of Mr. Rounce, the rector. On the occasion of a wedding-breakfast, Mr. Rounce had taken a meal at the farmer’s, and Benton had dined at the rectory on the occasion of a church meeting. But Mrs. Benton did not expect the rector and his daughters to associate with them equally. I heard an intimation that the rector was originally poor, but no one who attended the church was now on a social level with himself.
I attended one Sunday afternoon. The congregation was not large, and very few looked well-to-do. The number of communicants, I was told, was over sixty. One young man, who came into church, was showy in appearance. He was neatly dressed, with plenty of large, silvery-looking buttons. He was the rector’s footman.
The church was a gray stone building. Though plain, its appearance over the level fields was agreeable. The curtains within were rather shabby. From one at the end the rector emerged, so I suppose it concealed the vestry-room. In appearance Mr. Rounce, the rector, was blustering and brawny. His lungs seemed brazen, but perhaps some of the congregation were deaf. He wore a white linen robe, and upon his shoulders behind lay a mantle or hood of black, faced with magenta color. The text of the sermon was, “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I took some brief notes, which I reproduce. They contained one very happy, and, as adapted to the congregation, one very unhappy, remark. He said that it is difficult to continue piety amidst the cares of daily business. “I was going to compare this to tar, to being surrounded by tar; very dirty, very sticky.
“There are people who shut themselves up in cells with one small bed, a chair, and a candle. This is the way that many are taking to become fervent in spirit, forgetting the first part of the text, diligent in business. In my young days there were but six monasteries and nunneries in all England, Scotland, and Wales; now they number over six hundred.
“There are some who think that their religious exercises should be confined to Sunday. There are various things that we shouldn’t do on Sunday; it’s quite right we shouldn’t read newspapers on Sunday. But religion has thus been defined: it is the art of being and doing good.”
As we left the church, I asked its age, and the rector said that it was of the time of Henry VII. (who died in 1509). What is old has a great attraction to the people of our new country, and I looked in the churchyard for interesting monumental stones. The oldest that could be deciphered bore date 1672, and seemed to be that of a great pugilist. The gravestones were not numerous and showy. Some one told me afterwards that those who attend the church are the poorest of the poor, and are generally buried without tombstones.
Concerning the rector, I ventured to draw some conclusions as follows: Mr. Rounce is a strict Sabbatarian, between two fires,—Dissent on the one hand and High-Churchdom and Papacy on the other. In the eyes of a zealous incumbent of the English Church, even of a zealous low-churchman, all the people living in the parish are his people. But many, very many of them, are like lost sheep wandering on the barren mountains of Dissent, and so long have they refused to hear even the church that they have become to him like heathen men and publicans, and with them he does not wish to hold intercourse. He employs members of his own church, however, to distribute tracts among them as regularly as among his chosen people, even although these dissenters are full communicants in their own “chapels.”
I was allowed to visit the rectory grounds and afterward to see the house itself, through the courtesy of an assistant in the National school, who was also a servant in the rector’s family. The house was not so much distinguished by the elegance of its carpets and other furniture as by the number and variety of its cabinets (among them I may reckon a great carved chest), by the quantity of china displayed, and to some extent by paintings and natural history collections. The ladies were absent, but I met the rector for a moment or two, and it seemed to me that he considered me to need pruning or cutting down. But he was kind enough to allow the lady’s-maid who conducted me to find for me in the library one or two works which I wished to consult, and she was sufficiently intelligent to aid me, and obliging enough to do so.
When we walked through the garden I observed that a net was spread to protect cherries from the birds, and that currants were trained to the top of the wall, about eight feet.
Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, received a letter from the former rector. She said that he had removed to the “’op” country, to Kent. She described him as a tiny little man, over eighty, a very stanch liberal in politics; a clever, very learned man.
While I was still in the village, Mr. Rounce’s two daughters had a lawn-tennis party on their grounds, and the guests could be seen from the road. Three of the men appeared to be “in their shirt-sleeves.” I learned at Mr. Benton’s that the guests would be about fifty in number, the farmer’s young daughters being permitted to look on. It was thought that the refreshments would be tea, coffee, and cakes, handed round,—Miss Rounce being a teetotaller.