Then there was, seventhly, St. William of Norwich, whose father, after hesitating whether to bind him apprentice to a tailor or a tanner, had just placed him with the latter when the lad was seized upon by the Jews, and by them tortured and crucified, in derision of Christ. On Easter Day they put the body into a sack, and carried it into Thorpe Wood, where it was afterwards discovered, and buried, with many miraculous incidents to illustrate the funeral; and where was afterwards erected the chapel of St. William in the Wood. Now, at first sight, it would appear difficult to decide as to what the tailors’ guild derived from William of Norwich. But it is only at first sight, and to those unaccustomed to follow a trail, and not determined to find what they are looking for. In allusion to what had befallen the body of St. William, or rather in memory of how that body was conveyed away, after life had been expelled from it, the Norwich tailors first adopted that now consecrated phrase of “getting the sack,” and which phrase implies a loss of position, to the detriment of the loser.
But I have not done; Williams are as plentiful as blackberries. There is an eighth, the Abbot of Eskille, who no more liked to play sub-prior to a superior than Garrick liked to play an unapplauded Falconbridge to Sheridan’s King John. William of Eskille was a great reformer of slothful convents, by whose inmates he was as much detested as an honest and vigilant foreman is by operatives who work by the day. One thing deemed worthy of mention by his biographers consists in the dreary fact that he wore the same shirt for thirty years. At the end of that time he turned it, and then piously blessed the saints for “the comfort of clean linen.” I question if even modern tailors have succeeded in attaining to this extent of saintly uncleanliness, but I would not be too certain of that fact. As for what they may further have derived from this excellent person, it is well known that for an abbot to be called an Abbot d’Eskille was the highest possible compliment that could be paid him; and so the phrase fell to other camaraderies, and a Tailleur d’Eskille was the origin of a tailor of skill. But this is confidential, reader,—between you and me. If you are related to an etymologist, or on friendly terms with a lexicographer, I earnestly beg that you will not mention it, even “after dinner.”
Under the mystic number “nine,” I come to that William Archbishop of York, who was the nephew of Stephen King of England, and whom old St. Bernard belaboured with as many hard words as ever Sir Richard Birnie hurled, on a Monday morning, on ex-inebriated tailors captured on the preceding Saturday night. I do not believe a word of what the irate St. Bernard says against St. William, whom he accuses of the most horrible crimes. The slightest charge in the bill of indictment drawn up by him, whom Hurden calls a wicked old impostor, is love of good living. St. William, like honest Archiepiscopus Wilfred, had a tender inclination for roast goose! Oh, benedicte Gulielme! may you have found the bird ever as your inclination,—tender! The sacred goose is an appanage of the tailors, and it dates from that jovial St. William whom St. Bernard hated as cordially as though the former had made the latter’s hair-shirt too tight to comfortably breathe in after supper.
Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of St. Brieux, in Brittany, who often pawned his robes to purchase corn for the poor. Here we see whence the society of tailors borrow their authority for depositing pledges, in order to purchase distillations from corn, and for the poor also,—their poor selves. This is highly satisfactory.
There was one more William, namely, he who, English by birth, was the introducer of Christianity into Denmark, and who was of such good repute when living that he was buried in the mausoleum of the Danish kings, at Roeskild, after death. It was remarked of him that when he was reproving “drunken Denmark,” he invariably held his pastoral staff as though he were taking measure, as he probably was of the royal bad habits; and perhaps on this account he has come in for a share of the patronage exercised over the guild whose members take measure of men.
And now let it be observed, that although I have mentioned eleven Williams, there are only nine of them who really rank among the canonized saints. Is not that suggestive? The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take nine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it is not to one William, but to nine combined, that the guild address, or did in olden times address, their vows and acknowledgments; and exactly for the reason that there are nine Saint Williams have the English tailors chosen them, in a mass, for their one consolidated patron. Quod erat demonstrandum!
And now, having seen how the tailors took their patron, let us consider them generally. There have been many of note, either of themselves or in their sons. Church, bar, army, navy, poetry, and the stage,—they have by turns excelled in all.
If Barrow rose from his father’s shop, where he was early initiated in the mysteries of mercer and draper, to wear his well-earned dignity in the Church, there was nothing wonderful in the elevation. The father of our present Archbishop of York kept, at Cambridge, a shop like that of Barrow’s father. One of the most active and useful of the Yorkshire rectors was himself in early life of the craft; and there is no more zealous or efficient missionary in Ireland than the Rev. Mr. Doudney, the brother of the well-known London tailor of that name.
In the olden times,—that is, some two centuries ago,—the boy who passed from his father’s shop-board to enter, as a man, the pulpit, was of very High Church principles, if we may take Shadwell’s portrait of Smirk in the ‘Lancashire Witches’ as a faithful portraiture. Smirk is a little given, as Brother Ignatius advises all Roman Catholic servants in Protestant families to be, to inquire into the family secrets, for which his patron, Sir Edward Harfort, to whom he is chaplain, reproves him. The following sharp dialogue then ensues:—