I never once will falter,
But George my King shall ever be—
Until the times do alter.”
Another vicar of Bray distinguished himself in rather a sorry fashion, according to legend, in the time of James the First. He was dining with his curate at the Greyhound, or, by another account, the Bear, at Maidenhead, when there burst in upon them a hungry sportsman, who expressed a wish to join them at table. The vicar agreed, but with a bad grace, but the curate made him welcome, and entertained him well in conversation. When the time came to pay, the vicar let it be seen that, so far as he was concerned, the stranger should settle for his share, but the curate declared he could permit no such thing, and paid the sportsman’s score out of his own scanty pocket. Presently, as they stood taking the air at the window, other sportsmen came cantering along the street, and seeing the first, halted, and one, dismounting, dropped upon one knee, and uncovered. It was the King.
The vicar, too late, apologised, but the King, turning to him, said: “Have no fear. You shall always be vicar of Bray, but your curate I will set over you, and make him Canon of Windsor.”
One of the queerest and quaintest of entrances conducts to the church, beneath a picturesque old timbered house: charming on both fronts, each greatly differing from the other. There are as many as eight brasses in the church, a fine Early English and Decorated building, somewhat overscraped and renewed in restoration. An early seventeenth-century brass has some delightful lines:
“When Oxford gave thee two degrees in Art,
And Love possessed thee, Master of my Heart,
Thy Colledge Fellowshipp thow leftst for mine,
And novght but death covld seprate me frõ thine.”