That, whatsoever King shall reign,
I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.”
The air to which the song is set is equally old, but originally belonged to quite another set of verses, called “The Country Garden.” It was, later, used with the words of a ballad known as “The Neglected Tar”; but it certainly appeared set to the words of “The Vicar of Bray” in 1778, when it was published in The Vocal Magazine.
Who, then, was he who first associated Bray with the song, and with what warrant? and by what evidence did Fuller advance his statement that Aleyn was the man? The question may well be asked, but no reply need be expected.
It may be worth while in this place to give another, and perhaps an even better, version of the famous ballad, which gives the Vicar a run from the time of Charles the Second to that of George the First; thirty years, at least:
“In good King Charles’s golden days,
When loyalty had no harm in’t,
A zealous High Churchman I was,
And so I got preferment.
To teach my flock I never miss’d,