Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the controul of others; and disposed you to relax in that self government, without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue—and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so—if you are conscious of all or any of these effects,—or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire whatever name it may bear in the title page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!—young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rose-wood book case!
CHAPTER XLII. P. I.
DONCASTER CHURCH. THE RECTORIAL TITHES SECURED BY ARCHBISHOP SHARP FOR HIS OWN FAMILY.
Say ancient edifice, thyself with years
Grown grey, how long upon the hill has stood
Thy weather-braving tower, and silent mark'd
The human leaf in constant bud and fall?
The generations of deciduous man
How often hast thou seen them pass away!
HURDIS.
The ecclesiastical history of Doncaster is not so much to the credit of all whom it concerns, as the municipal. Nigel Fossard in the year 1100, granted the advowson of its church to St. Mary's Abbey, York; and it was for rather more than two hundred years a rectory of two medieties, served by two resident rectors whom the Abbey appointed. In 1303, Archbishop Corbridge appropriated it to the abbey, and ordained it a perpetual vicarage. Fifty marks a year out of the profits of the rectory were then allowed for the Vicar's support, and he held the house and garden also which had formerly appertained to one of the Rectors. When upon the dissolution of the monasteries it fell to the crown, Henry VIII. gave it with other monastic impropriations to Archbishop Holgate, as some compensation for the valuable manors which he made the see of York alienate to himself. The church of Doncaster gained nothing by this transfer. The rectory was secured by Archbishop Sharp for his own family. At the beginning of the present century it was worth from £1000. to £1200. a year, while the Vicar had only an annual income of £80. charged upon that rectory, and £20. charged upon a certain estate. He had no tithes, no Easter offerings, and no other glebe than the church-yard, and an orchard attached to the vicarage. And he had to pay a curate to do the duty at Loversall church.
There is one remarkable epitaph in this church upon a monument of the altar form, placed just behind the reading desk.
How, how, who is here?
I Robin of Doncaster, and Margaret my fere.
That I spent, that I had;
That I gave, that I have;
That I left, that I lost. A. D. 1579.
Quoth Robertus Byrkes who in this world did reign
Threescore years and seven, and yet lived not one.