The Parish Clerk

by P. H. Ditchfield

"Please, sir, be I to read the responses in the services for the Queen's Accession?"

The same service sadly puzzled the clerk at Haddington, who was in the employment of the then Earl of W----. One Sunday Lady W---- came to be churched, when in response to the clergyman's prayer, "O Lord, save this woman, Thy servant," the clerk said, "Who putteth her ladyship's trust in Thee."

The Rev. W.H. Langhorne tells me some amusing anecdotes of old clerks. Once he was preaching in a village church for home missions, and just as he was reaching the pulpit he observed that the clerk was preparing to take round the plate. He whispered to him to wait till he had finished his sermon. "It won't make a ha'porth o' difference," was the encouraging reply. But at the close of the sermon there was another invitation to give additional offerings, which were not withheld.

In the old days when Bell's Life was the chief sporting paper, a hunting parson was taking the service one Sunday morning and gave out the day of the month and the Psalm. The clerk corrected him, but the rector again gave out the same day and was again corrected. The rector, in order to decide the controversy, produced a copy of Bell's Life and handed it to the clerk, who then submitted. It is not often, I imagine, that a sporting paper has been appealed to for the purpose of deciding what Psalms should be read in church.

One very wet Sunday Mr. Langhorne was summoned to take an afternoon service several miles distant from his residence. The congregation consisted of only half a dozen people. After service he said to the clerk that it was hardly worth while coming so far. "We might have done with a worse 'un," was his reply.

That reminds me of another clerk who apologised to a church dignitary who had been summoned to take a service at a small country church. The form of the apology was not quite happily expressed. He said, "I am sorry, sir, to have brought such a gentleman as you to this poor place. A worse would have done, if we had only known where to find him!"

The new vicar of D---- was calling upon an old parishioner, who said to him: "Ah! I've seen mony changes. I've seen four vicars of D----. First there was Canon G----, then there was Mr. T----, who's now a bishop, and then Mr. F---- came, and now you've coom, and we've wossened (worsened) every toime."

A clerk named Turner, who officiated at Alnwick, was a great character, and in spite of his odd ways was esteemed for his genuine worth and fidelity to the three vicars under whom he served. He looked upon the church and parish as his own, and used to say that he had trained many "kewrats" in their duties. His responses in the Psalms were often startling. Instead of "The Lord setteth up the meek," he would say, "The Lord sitteth upon the meek." "The great leviathan" he rendered "the great live thing." "Caterpillars innumerable" he pronounced "caterpilliars innumerabble." When a funeral was late he scolded the bearers at the churchyard gate.

At Wimborne Minster, Dorset, there used to be three priest vicars, and each of them had a clerk. It was the custom for each of the priest vicars to take the services for a week in rotation, and the first lesson was always read by "the clerk of the week," as he was called. On Sundays, when there was a celebration of the Holy Communion, the "clerk of the week" advanced to the lectern after the sermon was finished, and said, "All who wish to receive the Holy Communion, draw near." These words, in the case of one worthy, named David Butler, were always spoken in a high-pitched, drawling voice, and finished off with a kick to the rearwards of the right leg.

The old clerk at Woodmancote, near Henfield, Sussex, was a very important person. There was never any committee meeting but he attended. So much so, that one day in church leading the singing and music with voice and flute, when it came to the "Gloria" he sang loudly, "As it was in the committee meeting, is now, and ever shall be ..."