Again:
A certain Calvinistic curate of Oswestry met a neighbour who had unhappily seceded to Rome, and thus described the interview to his vicar. "I met —— yesterday, and said to him, 'Not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' And what do you think he said? Why, 'And not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' The impudence of the fellow!"
Here is another:
A certain clergyman of this diocese, risen from the ranks, was preaching at Trinity Church, Oswestry, and found in the course of the service that he had forgotten his pocket-handkerchief. As he felt he should require one during the sermon, the weather being very warm, he asked a lady in a pew close to the pulpit, as he went up, to lend him hers, which he duly returned as he went down again!
Whittington being on the borders of Wales, Dissent was extremely prevalent, and the Church's action towards Dissenters was a burning subject. Hence the following story:
At a clerical meeting soon after I came into these parts the subject discussed was, "How to treat Dissenters." After most of those present had spoken, a neighbouring rector said, "I make it a principle never to speak to Dissenters about religious matters. But I have a very good garden with a southern slope, and I send them baskets of early vegetables, and by this means I have brought several over to the Church."
Next come two stories from the same neighbourhood of Oswestry, but of a more unclerical nature:
A relation of Sir Watkin Wynn was one day hunting with those hounds when his horse stumbled in a lane and fell with him. Whereupon Simpson, at that time Sir Watkin's second horseman, jumped off to help him, and thinking him dangerously hurt tried to comfort him with a text of Scripture, saying, "Ah, sir! naked we came out of our mother's womb and naked we shall return thither!"
Dr. B——, of Oswestry, has three horses which he has named "High Church," "Low Church," and "Broad Church." The reason he gives is that the first is always on his knees, the second never, and as for the third you never know what he will do next.
This last story leads on naturally to a number of good things on the subject of Ritualism. A High Churchman was practically an unknown quantity in those parts when Bishop Walsham How first went to be Rector of Whittington in 1851. The smallest innovation or improvement in a service, such as are generally accepted nowadays in Evangelical Churches, raised a storm of protest, and the ignorance displayed by newspapers as well as by private individuals is almost past belief in these days when we have been satiated with articles and correspondence on "advanced practices." For instance: