The Parish Clerk. P. H. Ditchfield
engaged in his manifold occupations within the same walls which we know so well. When the daylight is dying, musing within the dim mysterious aisle, we can see him folding up the vestments, bearing the books into their place of safe keeping in the vestry, singing softly to himself:
"Et introibo ad altare Dei; ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam."
The scene changes. The days of sweeping reform set in. The Church of England regained her ancient independence and was delivered from a foreign yoke. Her children obtained an open Bible, and a liturgy in their own mother-tongue. But she was distressed and despoiled by the rapacity of the commissioners of the Crown, by such wretches as Protector Somerset, Dudley and the rest, private peculation eclipsing the greediness of royal officials. Froude draws a sad picture of the halls of country houses hung with altar cloths, tables and beds quilted with copes, and knights and squires drinking their claret out of chalices and watering their horses in marble coffins. No wonder there was discontent among the people. No wonder they disliked the despoiling of their heritage for the enrichment of the Dudleys and the nouveaux riches who fattened on the spoils of the monasteries, and left the church bare of brass and ornament, chalice and vestment, the accumulation of years of the pious offerings of the faithful. No wonder there were risings and riots, quelled only by the stern and powerful hand of a Tudor despot.
But in spite of all the changes that were wrought in that tumultuous time, the parish clerk remained, and continued to discharge many of the functions which had fallen to his lot before the Reformation had begun. As I have already stated, his duties with regard to bearing holy water and the holy loaf were discontinued, although the collecting of money from the parishioners was conducted in much the same way as before, and the "holy loaf" corrupted into various forms--such as "holy looff," "holie loffe," "holy cake," etc.--appears in churchwardens' account books as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century.
As regards his main duties of reading and singing we find that they were by no means discontinued. From a study of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI, it is evident that his voice was still to be heard reading in reverent tones the sacred words of Holy Scripture, and chanting the Psalms in his mother-tongue instead of in that of the Vulgate. The rubric in the communion service immediately before the epistle directs that "the collectes ended, the priest, or he that is appointed, shall read the epistle, in a place assigned for the purpose." Who is the person signified by the phrase "he that is appointed"? That question is decided for us by The Clerk's Book recently edited by Dr. J. Wickham Legg, wherein it is stated that "the priest or clerk" shall read the epistle. The injunctions of 1547 interpret for us the meaning of "the place assigned for the purpose" as being "the pulpit or such convenient place as people may hear." Ability to read the epistle was still therefore considered part of the functions of a parish clerk, and the whole lesson derived from a study of The Clerk's Book is the very important part which he took in the services. As the title of the book shows, it contains "All that appertein to the clerkes to say or syng at the Ministracion of the Communion, and when there is no Communion. At Confirmacion. At Matrimonie. The Visitacion of the Sicke. The Buriall of the Dedde. At the Purification of Women. And the first daie of Lent."
He began the service of Holy Communion by singing the Psalm appointed for the introit. In the book only the first words of the part taken by the priest are given, whereas all the clerk's part is printed in full. He leads the responses in the Lesser Litany, the Gloria in excelsis, the Nicene Creed. He reads the offertory sentences and says the Ter Sanctus, sings or says the Agnus Dei, besides the responses. In the Marriage Service he said or sang the Psalm with the priest, and responded diligently. As in pre-Reformation times he accompanied the priest in the visitation of the sick, and besides making the responses sang the anthems, "Remember not, Lord, our iniquities," etc., and "O Saviour of the world, save us, which by thy crosse and precious blood hast redeemed us, help us, we beseech thee, O God." In the Communion of the Sick the epistle is written out in full, showing that it was the clerk's privilege to read it. A great part of the service for the Burial of the Dead was ordered to be said or sung by the "priest or clerk," and "at the communion when there was a burial" he apparently sang the introit and read the epistle. In the Communion Service the clerk with the priest said the fifty-first Psalm and the anthem, "Turn thou us, O good Lord," etc. In Matins and Evensong the clerk sang the Psalms and canticles and made responses, and from other sources we gather that he used to read either one or both of the lessons. In some churches he was called the dekyn or deacon, and at Ludlow, in 1551, he received 3 s. 4 d. for reading the first lesson.
In the accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, there is an item in the year 1553 for the repair of the pulpit where, it is stated, "the curate and the clark did read the chapters at service time."
Archbishop Grindal, in 1571, laid down the following injunction for his province of York: "That no parish clerk be appointed against the goodwill or without the consent of the parson, vicar, or curate of any parish, and that he be obedient to the parson, vicar, and curate, specially in the time of celebration of divine service or of sacraments, or in any preparation thereunto; and that he be able also to read the first lesson, the Epistle, and the Psalms, with answers to the suffrages as is used, and also that he endeavour himself to teach young children to read, if he be able so to do." When this archbishop was translated to Canterbury he issued very similar injunctions in the southern province. Other bishops followed his example, and issued questions in their dioceses relating to clerkly duties, and these injunctions show that to read the first lesson and the epistle and to sing the Psalms constituted the principal functions of a parish clerk.
Evidences of the continuance of this practice are not wanting [38]. Indeed, within the memory of living men at one church at least the custom was observed. At Keighley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, some thirty or forty years ago the parish clerk wore a black gown and bands. He read the first lesson and the epistle. To read the latter he left his seat below the pulpit and went up to the altar and took down the book: after reading the epistle within the altar rails he replaced the book and returned to his place. At Wimborne Minster the clerk used to read the Lessons.
[38] cf. The Parish Clerk's Book, edited by Dr. J. Wickham Legg, F.S.A., and The Parish Clerk and his right to read the Liturgical Epistle, by Cuthbert Atchley, L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. (Alcuin Club Tracts, IV).
Although it is evident that at the present time the clerk has a right to read the epistle and one of the lessons, as well as the Psalms and responses when they are not sung, it was perhaps necessary that his efforts in this direction should have been curtailed. When we remember the extraordinary blunders made by many holders of the office in the last century, their lack of education, and strange pronunciation, we should hardly care to hear the mutilation of Holy Scripture which must have followed the continuance of the practice. Would it not be possible to find men qualified to hold the office of parish clerk by education and powers of elocution who could revive the ancient practice with advantage to the church both to the clergyman and the people?
Complaints about the eccentricities and defective reading and singing of clerks have come down to us from Jacobean times. There was one Thomas Milborne, clerk of Eastham, who was guilty of several enormities; amongst others, "for that he singeth the psalms in the church with such a jesticulous tone and altisonant voice, viz: squeaking like a gelded pig, which doth not only interrupt the other voices, but is altogether dissonant and disagreeing unto any musical harmony, and he hath been requested by the minister to leave it, but he doth obstinately persist and continue therein." Verily Master Milborne must have been a sore trial to his vicar, almost as great as the clerk of Buxted, Sussex, was to his rector, who records in the parish register with a sigh of relief his death, "whose melody warbled forth as if he had been thumped on the back with a stone."
The Puritan regime was not conducive to this improvement of the status or education of the clerk or the cultivation of his musical abilities. The Protectorate was a period of musical darkness. The organs of the cathedrals and colleges were taken down; the choirs were dispersed, musical publications ceased, and the gradual twilight of the art, which commenced with the accession