Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Cooper

It was at the very time,—for History is notoriously fond of synchronisms for her greatest events,—witness Mycale and Platæa, fought and won on the self-same day,—it was at the very time that Papineau and the Canadian rebels took up swords and guns to resist Sir John Colborne and the English troops,—that the old women of Stow, in the parts of Lindsey, took up eggs to pelt the parish parson!

All the world knows, or if it doth not know it has profited but little by the industry of antiquarians, that Stow, in the division of Lindsey, and eight miles north-and-by-west of Lincoln, was an ancient Roman station, under the euphonic appellation of Sidnacester; that under that name it was the seat of a Saxon bishopric; that although Remigius de Feschamp, one of the Norman tyrant's fighting churchmen, transferred the seat of the diocese to Lincoln, yet when the stately cathedral which he founded was finished, while they placed his episcopal effigy on one of the grand pinnacles of the imposing west front, they fixed the grotesque image of "the Swineherd of Stow" (holding in his hand the horn which he gave filled with silver pennies, towards building the Minster,) on the other; that the episcopal palace of Stow was the favourite residence of the bishops of Lincoln down to the close of the fourteenth century, and that Stow still gives title to an archdeacon; lastly, that its venerable-looking church, dedicated to the blessed Virgin, constructed in the form of the Holy Rood, and adorned with a west door of decayed Gothic grandeur, is, to this day, called "the Mother of Lincoln Minster."

Now such being the distinctions of Stow itself, of course the "Perpetual Curate" of Stow, on receiving the awful impressment of episcopal hands, and the mysterious investiture of canonical habits, together with the comfortable appointment of the patron to the vacant curacy, entered on the discharge of his spiritual functions with strong notions of the altitude of his office, and of the plenary powers attached thereto. The ideas of the governed, however, in these days, somehow or other, don't happen to preserve an equal altitude, respecting office, with those of the governors; and the new Perpetual Curate of Stow, the successor to the once vice-regal priests of Sidnacester, was stricken with ghostly astonishment at finding that sundry rustics of his parish cared not a bodle for his new authority; that they snapped their fingers at his counsel and reproofs; and, setting at nought his college learning, preferred lending their ears to the unlearned Wesleyan local preachers,—a race of heretics who are so vulgar and unfashionable as to follow the example of Paul, and other vulgar workers of old, who earned their bread with the labour of their own hands, and yet, occasionally, ministered in word and doctrine. In the very nature of things this was unsavoury to a clergyman,—especially to a young one,—but more especially to one who actually stood in the shoes, speaking spiritually, of the princely and potential bishops of Sidnacester: it was not for him, above all established teachers in the shire, to endure such contemptuous preferences, and by that endurance permit heresy to bud and blossom unchecked.

Now, a neighbouring reverend brother of his, the fox-hunting shepherd of Willingham, was also very grievously pestered with these energetic heretics,—and he had resorted to the ancient evangelical custom of thundering forth anathemas against them from his pulpit: but that only seemed to render the pestiferous teachers more successful,—so the Perpetual Curate of Stow resolved to exert the whole power of his wit in discovering some effectual way of doing, what his zealous and pious brother of Willingham could not do,—driving out heresy, and subduing the rebellious spirit of his flock. So to work the Perpetual Curate went with his wit, and a profound mine he wrought: such a mine as would, no doubt, have blown up heresy for ever in his parish, had he ever been able to put the match to it: so profound, that, since his scheme was frustrated, no one has ever been able to fathom it, and, therefore, nobody can tell anybody what it really was. But how was it that a scheme so profound, so workmanlike, so masterly, did not succeed? Alas! how often in this frail humanity of ours do the most exalted enterprises fail, yea, often by the unexpected resistance of the very instruments on which we think we can most unerringly and safely depend! And thus it was with the great Perpetual Curate: he was most magnanimously bent on subduing revolt and heresy, when, lo! even Sir Amen, his clerk, lifted up his heel against him!

Now this was a notable event of a very auspicious character for the revolters. Clerk William Middleton was no ordinary clerk. Gervase Middleton, his father, had been clerk before him. Clerk William Middleton had, therefore, an important hereditary stamp upon him. And then, he was a schollard, as the old women called it, and was so gentle, that he was never known to hurt a worm; so moral, that he was never seen drunk in his life; so religious, that he never used a stronger oath than "Marry good faith!" and "By'r Lady!" (old oaths of popish times that are not yet lost in old Lincolnshire); and so upright, that he would not deny his conscience, even for the parson! This was no ordinary auxiliary on the side of the enemy; and there was no wonder that it put the Perpetual Curate, for a while, to his wit's end, to hear the reports which were brought to him by one Spurr (who was spurred on by his own inward aims to reach Sir Amen's office), of the stout and unflinching and open assertions made in the streets of Stow, by Clerk William Middleton, that the Methodists had as much right to preach as the parson! It was heresy he did not expect from such a quarter; but he was resolved he would be even with this member of the revolt, however; so he played a master-stroke so suddenly, that it shook the whole parish like an earthquake: he actually un-clerked Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, the old, learned, hereditary, gentle, moral, upright, pious, and religious parish-clerk!!!

This was a most unprecedented and most unexpected event; and it gave rise, as may be guessed it would, to a mighty concatenation of stupendous occurrences. The spirit of the Perpetual Curate was roused, and his genius, too, as was proved by his statesmanlike blow at the ring-leader of the rustic confederacy; and the spirit of the parishioners was roused likewise, for they were determined that, although the parson might appoint a new clerk, they would stick by the old one. The ensuing Sunday, accordingly, brought forth the strange anomaly of one parson with two clerks, reading the church service in the ancient aisle of Stow! Moreover, when the chosen of the Perpetual Curate was beheld to be the egregious tale-bearer and notorious sycophant, Spurr, who was no adept at the letters of his prayer-book, the churchwarden and parishioners were alike wroth, and resolved, still more resolutely, on abiding by their old respected utterer of amens, Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase. Thus it fell out that Clerk Spurr,—we know not, nor care we, what was his pronomen, or "christened" name, as they call it in Lincolnshire; whether it were Moses or Mahershalalhashbaz, Nahum or Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah or Judas Iscariot, we cannot tell, nor doth it concern the dignity of this our record, to say with positiveness,—for the fellow was but as a buzzard to a sparrow-hawk, when compared with the rightful clerk; but thus it fell out, that Clerk Spurr was called "the Parson's Clerk," while Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, bore the creditable and legitimate epithet of "the Parish Clerk."

And, then, it came to pass that, when announcements of christenings, burials, or marriages, had to be made, the parishioners, in the spirit of their preference, commissioned their own clerk, "the Parish Clerk," to inform his Reverence the Perpetual Curate of the same, and to request the fulfilment of the accustomed rites. But the cooler the parishioners grew towards "the Parson's Clerk," the hotter did the parson grow towards his parishioners. He scorned to compromise his sacerdotal dignity by attempting a reconciliation with the unruly spirits by which he was surrounded: he spurned the ignoble example of the ancient worthies who thought the first and last part of Christianity was meekness and long-suffering; and he meditated a still more afflictive stroke of retaliation on his spiritual rebels.

Clerk William Middleton conveyed a request to his spiritual superior from a sorrowing villager to bury his dead child;—but the grand Perpetual Curate would not fulfil the request because it was brought him by the discarded, though old, hereditary Amen,—and adjourned, in dudgeon, to the hamlet of Coates,—while the poor villager's child was put into its grave,—as every child of such rebels deserved to be put,—like a dog,—without a prayer being read, or a hope expressed about its resurrection!

This circumstance sank deeply into the minds of the Stow revolters: it was a something that had never been heard of a clergyman in the memory of man,—at least at Stow in the parts of Lindsey: it made their skin creep, and the very "hair of their flesh to stand up,"—for they were simple, unsophisticated sort of people, and, therefore, all strong mental emotions had the same effects upon their physical frames, as the author of "Job" and Homer describe in their days. But the strong feeling did not evaporate through the pores of their skin, especially with the more noble, though tenderer, sex: they laid their heads together to do such a deed upon a parson as had never been done upon one since the name of parson had been known in Stow. In a short time another message had to be despatched to the Perpetual Curate: a woman had to be churched, and a child to be buried, on the same afternoon,—and, judging from the former example, the villagers conjectured that his Reverence would "make himself scarce" after the churching, and leave this child, also, unburied. And now, a valorous army of the female gender, their pockets plentifully provided with plenipotent ammunition of eggs, formed themselves, in heroic ambuscade, near the church door, purposing right courageously to assail the clerical enemy, if he should haughtily refuse the offices of Christian sepulture to the deceased child. "Enterprises of great pith and moment," however, as the immortal one saith, often "their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action." So it was in this ambuscade so gloriously planned. The clerical enemy wisely capitulated: his clerk, "the Parson's Clerk," preceded the Perpetual Curate from the church, as a herald of moderation, assuring the armed battalion that his reverence would peaceably inter the child; and, forthwith, some of the gallant troop immediately grounded their arms, while others preferred throwing them to a distance,—in token that they put away all hostile thoughts far from them.

And here, perchance, this chivalrous history might have ended, had not the demon of Litigation, who was doubtless hovering near the field of intended affray, taken the case into his own foul hands. Some part of the rejected artillery chanced to alight upon the garments of "the Parson's Clerk's" wife, and of the Perpetual Curate's servant-maid. It was in vain that the members of the ambuscade protested this mishap to be owing in no degree to their intent:—the parson commenced an action at law against the entire petticoat regiment, or its ringleaders, for "assault and battery."