The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Cook.
The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Knight and Lady.
To continue the notes of a parish clerk’s duties, gathered from the churchwardens’ presentations: at Wyghton, in 1510, they find “a faut with our parish clerk yt he hath not done his dewtee to ye kirk, yt is to say, ryngyng of ye morne bell and ye evyn bell; and also another fawt [which may explain the former one], he fyndes yt pour mene pays hym not his wages.”[269] At Cawood, in 1510 A.D., we find it the duty of the parish clerk “to keepe ye clok and ryng corfer [curfew] at dew tymes appointed by ye parrish, and also to ryng ye day bell.”[270] He had his desk in church near the clergyman, perhaps on the opposite side of the chancel, as we gather from a presentation from St. Maurice, York, in 1416, that the desks in the choir on both sides, especially where the parish chaplain and parish clerk are accustomed to sit, need repair.[271] A story in Matthew Paris[272] tells us what his office was worth: “It happened that an agent of the pope met a petty clerk of a village carrying water in a little vessel, with a sprinkler and some bits of bread given him for having sprinkled some holy water, and to him the deceitful Roman thus addressed himself: ‘How much does the profit yielded to you by this church amount to in a year?’ To which the clerk, ignorant of the Roman’s cunning, replied, ‘To twenty shillings I think;’ whereupon the agent demanded the per-centage the pope had just demanded on all ecclesiastical benefices. And to pay that small sum this poor man was compelled to hold schools for many days, and by selling his books in the precincts, to drag on a half-starved life.” The parish clerks of London formed a guild, which used to exhibit miracle plays at its annual feast, on the green, in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell. The parish clerks always took an important part in the conduct of the miracle plays; and it was natural that when they united their forces in such an exhibition on behalf of their guild the result should be an exhibition of unusual excellence. Stow tells us that in 1391 the guild performed before the king and queen and whole court three days successively, and that in 1409 they produced a play of the creation of the world, whose representation occupied eight successive days. The Passion-play, still exhibited every ten years at Ober-Ammergau, has made all the world acquainted with the kind of exhibition in which our forefathers delighted. These miracle-plays still survive also in Spain, and probably in other Roman Catholic countries.
Chaucer has not failed to give us, in his wonderful gallery of contemporary characters (in the Miller’s Tale), a portrait of the parish clerk:—
“Now was ther of that churche a parish clerk,
The which that was ycleped Absolon.
Crulle was his here,[273] and as the gold it shon,
And strouted as a fanne large and brode;
Ful streight and even lay his jolly shode.
His rode[274] was red, his eyen grey as goos,
With Poules windowes carven on his shoos,
In hosen red he went ful fetisly,[275]
Yclad he was ful smal and proprely,
All in a kirtle of a light waget,[276]
Ful faire and thicke ben the pointes set.
An’ therupon he had a gay surplise,
As white as is the blossome upon the rise.[277]
A mery child he was, so God me save,
Wel coud he leten blod, and clippe, and shave,
And make a chartre of lond and a quitance;
In twenty manere could he trip and dance,
(After the scole of Oxenforde tho)
And playen songes on a smal ribible.[278]
Therto he song, sometime a loud quinible.[278]
And as wel could he play on a giterne.
In all the toun n’as brewhouse ne taverne
That he ne visited with his solas,
Ther as that any galliard tapstere was.
This Absolon, that joly was and gay,
Goth with a censor on the holy day,
Censing the wives of the parish faste,[279]
And many a lovely loke he on hem caste.
******
Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie,
He plaieth Herode on a skaffold hie.”