The statutes require that the choristers shall be supplied with a consistent dress. This is no longer provided; and the gentlemen forming the chapter would think themselves disgraced by such a set of raggamuffins about their stables or their dog-kennels, as they allow to officiate in the church; while their very rags are held to be a sufficient reason for excluding them from their own well-endowed grammar school.
Several valuable scholarships and fellowships, in the university of——, are tenable by such persons only as have served as choristers in the C—— church at——. Of this endowment the bona fide choristers are deprived. The members of the chapter, and the neighbouring gentlemen, enter their sons as choristers; they appear for a few Sundays in surplices, and are thus enabled to claim the exhibition.
The cemetery is disfigured with posts and lines, and serves as a drying-ground for the inhabitants of the claustral precincts; while the nave of the church is the favourite resort of their children and nursery-maids, who are permitted to disturb the congregation, should there be one, by their noisy sports.
The patronage of the chapter is very extensive; the tithes of the whole district, for many miles in circuit, belong almost exclusively to them; they unite in their own persons the fullest legislative, executive, and visitatorial powers; and the impoverished churches, and vicars, and parishes, within their jurisdiction, afford the same indisputable evidence of apathy and neglect.
I am prepared to fill up the outline by instances of individual meanness. But I forbear. The parties more immediately concerned cannot fail to recognize the picture; for I hope and trust there is no second example in England, where the wills and charters and statutes of founders and benefactors are so utterly disregarded.
A. T.
THE SONG OF ‘MAD TOM OF BEDLAM.’
To the EDITOR of the HARMONICON.
SIR,