And Gay, too, in his Trivia (book 2) says:—
Cheese, that the Table's closing Rites denies,
And bids me with th' unwilling Chaplain rise.
Addison, commenting on this custom, and the chaplain's status generally, remarks,[554] 'In this case I know not which to censure, the Patron or the Chaplain, the insolence of power or the abjectness of dependence. For my own part, I have often blushed to see a gentleman, whom I know to have much more wit and learning than myself, and who was bred up with me at the University upon the same foot of a Liberal Education, treated in such an ignominious manner, and sunk beneath those of his own rank, by reason of that Character, which ought to bring him honour.'
Again, in the Guardian (No. 163) his position is described: 'I have, with much ado, maintained my post hitherto at the dessert, and every day eat tart in the face of my patron; but how long I shall be invested with this privilege, I do not know. For the servants, who do not see me supported as I was in my old lord's time, begin to brush very familiarly by me, and thrust aside my chair when they set the sweetmeats on the table.'
A curious confirmation of one of Oldham's statements is found in a little brochure of the early part of Anne's reign,[555] 'I turn away my Footman for aspiring to my Woman, her I marry to my Lord's high Chaplain, and give her six Changes of my old cast off Cloaths for her Dowry.'
Royalty, even, was not exempt from this failing of snubbing the chaplains. Swift writes,[556] 'I never dined with the chaplains till to day; but my friend Gastrel and the Dean of Rochester had often invited me, and I happened to be disengaged; it is the worst provided table at Court. We ate on pewter.'
The clergy, when they appeared in public, wore always both cassock and gown; with the wig, of course, which was sometimes carried to excess, when it brought down the ridicule of the satirist, as in the following[557] humble petition of Elizabeth Slender, Spinster, Sheweth.
A CLERGYMAN'S WALKING
COSTUME.
'That on the twentieth of this instant December, her friend, Rebecca Hive, walking in the Strand, saw a gentleman before us in a gown, whose periwig was so long, and so much powdered, that your petitioner took notice of it, and said "she wondered that lawyer would so spoil a new gown with powder." To which it was answered, "that he was no lawyer, but a clergyman." Upon a wager of a pot of Coffee we over took him, and your petitioner was soon convinced she had lost.