“Then you’ve heard wrong, my lord. It is the pack that keeps me.”
“I do not understand.”
“They stock my larder with hares. You don’t suppose I should have hares on my table unless they were caught for me? There’s no butcher for miles and miles, and I can’t get a joint but once in a fortnight. Forced to eat hares; and they must be caught to be eaten.”
The Bishop then said to Froude: “I hear, sir, but I can hardly credit it, that you invite men to your house and keep them drinking and then fighting in your parlour.”
“My lord, you are misinformed. Don’t believe a word of it. When they begin to fight and takes off their coats, I turns ’em out into the churchyard.”
John Boyce, rector of Sherwell, wishing to have a day’s hunting with the staghounds on the Porlock side of Exmoor, told his clerk to give notice in the morning that there would be no service in the afternoon in the church, as he was going off to hunt with Sir Thomas Acland over the moor on the following day. The mandate was obeyed to the letter, the clerk making the announcement in the following terms:—
“This is to give notiss—there be no sarvice to this church this arternoon; cos maester be a-going over the moor a stag-hunting wi’ Sir Thomas.”
At Stockleigh Pomeroy parish, the rector, Roupe Ilbert, desired his clerk to inform the congregation that there would be one service only on the Sunday in that church for a month, as he was going to take duty at Stockleigh English alternately with his own. The clerk did so in these words: “This is vor to give notiss—there’ll be no sarvice to thes church but wance a wick, as maester’s a-going to sarve t’other Stockleigh and this church to all etarnity.”
On one occasion, as the congregation were assembling for divine service in a church where Mr. Russell was ministering, a man stood on the churchyard hedge, with the band of his hat stuck round with silver spoons, bawling out, “Plaize to tak’ notiss—Thaise zix zilver spunes to be wrastled vor next Thursday, at Poughill, and all ginlemen wrastlers will receive vair play.” The man, with the spoons in his hat, then entered the church, went up to the singing gallery, and hung it on a peg, from which it was perfectly visible to the parson and the greater part of the congregation during service.