XIX
VICARS VIGOROUS AND VARIOUS
In a more than usually quiet street, upon the edge of the town, stands the old church of Godalming, dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, whose tall leaden spire rises with happy effect above the roofs, and gives distant views of Godalming a quiet and impressive dignity all its own among country towns. Vicars of Godalming have not infrequently distinguished themselves; some for piety, one for piety combined with pugnacity, two for literature and learning, and at least one for “pride, idleness, affectation of Popery,” and for refusing to preach. This last-named divine, Dr. Nicholas Andrews, had the misfortune to have been born out of due time, for had he but held the living in the sceptical eighteenth century instead of exactly a hundred years earlier, when piety was particularly aggressive, his passion for fishing on Sunday would have done him no harm. As it happened, however, his era fell in the midst of Puritan times, and the Godalming people of that day were at once godly and vindictive: a combination not at all uncommon even now. At any rate, they petitioned Parliament for the removal of this too ardent fisherman, and he was sequestered accordingly.
The times were altered when the Rev. Samuel Speed, grandson of Speed the historian, held the living. He was, according to Aubrey, a “famous and valiant sea-chaplain and sailor,” whose deeds are handed down to us in the stirring lines of a song “made by Sir John Birkenhead on the sea-fight with the Dutch”; in which we hear of this doughty cleric praying and fighting at one and the same time:—
“His chaplain, he plied his wonted work,
He prayed like a Christian and fought like a Turk;
Crying, ‘Now for the King and the Duke of York,’
With a thump, a thump, thump,” &c.
This worthy was at one time a buccaneer in the West Indies, and later, while he held the living of Godalming, was imprisoned several times for debt. He died, indeed, in gaol, and was buried in London, in the old City church, since demolished, of St. Michael, Queenhithe, in 1682.
Manning, scholar and historian of Surrey, was vicar here, and also the Rev. Antony Warton. Their virtues and their attainments are duly set forth upon cenotaphs within the church, as also is the discovery of a certain cure for consumption by
| “Nathaniel Godbold Esqr. Inventor and Proprietor of that Excellent Medicine The Vegetable Balsam For the cure of Consumption and Asthmas.” |
He died in December 1799, aged sixty-nine, and his appreciative relatives caused to be engraved on his epitaph, Hic cineres, ubique Fama; which really is very amusing, because his fame is now-a-days as decayed as are his ashes.
And yet they say these latter days of ours are distinguished above all else by shameless puffery! At least we spare the churches and do not use their walls as advertisement hoardings. And, despite Godbold and his Balsam, consumption still takes heavy toll, and not all the innumerable remedies nor all the Kochs in creation seem able to prevail in any degree against the disease.