Nearing Maidenhead, and coming to the Bath road, running right and left, we turn to the right and then down the first road to the left (Oldfield road), then the next two turnings in the same direction, when the old tower of Bray Church comes in sight; that Bray celebrated for its vicar immortalised in the well-known song, who, when reproached with being a religious trimmer and inconstant to his principles, replied, “Not so; for I always keep my principle, which is to live and die the Vicar of Bray.” Simon Alleyn was the name of this worthy, who lived, and was vicar, in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth.
First a Papist, he kept his place by becoming a Protestant, recanting when Mary came to the throne, and again becoming a Protestant under Elizabeth. Called apostate, renegade, turncoat, and denier of Christ, modern times would give him the kindlier name of “opportunist.” At anyrate, his opportunism was successful, for he held office from 1540 to 1588. The ballad originated in 1712, in a song entitled “The Religious Turncoat; or, the Trimming Parson,” which refers to no particular place or person, and has no fewer than eighteen verses, quite distinct from the modern ballad. Thus they run, for example:—
“I lov’d no king in ’Forty-one,
When Prelacy went down;
A cloak and band I then put on,
And preached against the Crown.
When Charles returned into the land,
The English Crown’s supporter,
I shifted off my cloak and band
And then became a courtier.
When Royal James began his reign,
And Mass was used in common,
I shifted off my Faith again,
And then became a Roman.”
These verses, it will be noticed, place the trimming story a hundred years later.
The churchyard is entered by a lich-gate with a curious old house over it. In the church itself is a monument to William Goddard, the seventeenth-century founder of Jesus Hospital, and Joyce, his wife. That celebrated old almshouse stands on the road as we leave Bray for Windsor. It is a quaintly gabled, red brick building, with a statue of the founder in an alcove over the entrance. A central courtyard has little dwellings ranged round it, and a rather striking chapel, familiar in Frederick Walker’s famous picture, the “Harbour of Refuge,” painted here in 1871-72. Unfortunately, those who are familiar with that beautiful picture (now in the National Gallery) will be disappointed on seeing the real place, for the painter has quite idealised Jesus Hospital, and has imagined many details that have no existence.
JESUS HOSPITAL, BRAY.