The Parish Clerk

by P. H. Ditchfield

The pulpit was considered as convenient a place as any for the "old guse" to hatch her young in.

Canon Venables contributes the following:

The first parish clerk I can in the least degree remember was certainly entitled to be regarded as a "character," albeit not in all moral respects what would be called a moral character. Shrewd, clever, and better informed than the inhabitants of his little village of some eighty folk, he was not "looked up to," but was regarded with suspicion, and, in short, was not popular, while treated with a certain amount of deference, being a man of some knowledge and ability. The clergyman was a man of excellent character, learned, a fluent ex-tempore preacher, and one who liked the services to be nicely conducted. He came over every Sunday and ministered two services. In those days the only organ was a good long pitch-pipe constructed principally of wood and, I imagine, about twelve inches in length. But upon the parish clerk devolved the onerous (and it may be added in this case sonorous) duty of starting the hymn and the singing. In those days few could read, and the method was adopted (and I know successfully adopted a few years later) of announcing two lines of the verse to be sung, and sometimes the whole verse. But Mr. W.M. was unpopular, and people did not always manifest a willingness to sing with him.

At last a crisis came. The hymn and psalm were announced. The pitch-pipe rightly adjusted gave the proper keynote, and the clerk essayed to sing. But from some cause matters were not harmonious and none attempted to help the clerk.

With a scowl not worthy of a saint, the offended official turned round upon the congregation and closed all further attempts at psalm-singing by stating clearly and distinctly, "I shan't sing if nobody don't foller." This man was deposed ere long, and deservedly, if village suspicions were truthful.

After which, I think, he usually came just inside the church once every Sunday, but never to get further than to take a seat close to the door. He died at a great age. Two or three of his successors were worthy men. One of them would carefully recite the Psalms for the coming Sunday within church or elsewhere during the week, and he read with proper feeling and good sense.

Another of the same little parish, well up in his Bible, once helped the very excellent clergyman at a baptism in a critical moment. "Name this child." "Zulphur." This was not a correct name. Another effort, "Sulphur." The clergyman was in difficulty. The clerk was equal to the occasion, for the parson was well up in his Bible too.

"Leah's handmaid," suggested the clerk. "Zilpah, I baptize thee," said the priest, and all was well.

In that church the few farmers who met to levy a poor-rate and do other parochial work insisted on doing so within the chancel rails, using the holy table as the writing-desk, and the assigned reason for so doing was that, being apt to quarrel and dispute over parish matters, there would be no danger at such a place as this of using profane language. All in the diocese of Oxford.

It was in the twenties that I must have seen old P.W. (the parish clerk) and two other men in the desk singing to "Hanover," with a certain apparent self-complacency in nice smock-frocks, "My soul, praise the Lord, speak good of His Name," etc. The little congregation listened with seeming contentment, and it is worth recording that the parson always preached in the surplice. I suppose Pusey was a boy at that time, but the custom in this church was not a novelty, whether right or wrong.