These were
owned by the magnates of the place, who were wont to bow their
recognitions across the nave. There was a decrepit west gallery for the
band, and the ground floor was crammed with cranky pews of every shape.
A Carolean pulpit stood against a pillar, with reading-desk and clerk's
box underneath. The ante-Communion Service was read from the desk,
separated from the liturgy and sermon by such renderings of Tate and
Brady as the unruly gang of volunteers with fiddles and wind instruments
in the gallery pleased to contribute. The clerk, a wizened old fellow in
a brown wig, repeated the responses in a nasal twang, and with a
substitution of _w_ for _v_ so constant as not even to spare the
Beliefs; while the local rendering of briefs, citations, and
excommunications included announcements by this worthy, after the Nicene
Creed, of meetings at the town inn of the executors of a deceased duke.
Two hopeful cubs of the clerk sprawled behind him in the desk, and the
back-handers occasionally intended to reduce them to order were apt to
resound against the impassive boards. During the sermon this zealous
servant of the sanctuary would take up his broom and sweep out the
middle alley, in order to save himself the fatigue of a weekday visit.
Soon, however, the clerk and his broom followed Moses and Aaron, the
fiddles and the bassoons into the land of shadows.
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