No sketch of bygone times, in which the clerk flourished in all his
glory, would be complete without some reference to the important person
who occupied the second tier in the "three-decker," and decked in gown
and bands delivered somnolent sermons from its upper storey. Curious
stories are often told of the careless parsons of former days, of their
irreverence, their love of sport, their neglect of their parishes, their
quaint and irreverent manners; but such characters, about whom these
stories were told, were exceptional. By far the greater number lived
well and did their duty and passed away, and left no memories behind
except in the tender recollections of a few simple-minded folk. There
were few local newspapers in those days to tell their virtues, to print
their sermons or their speeches at the opening of bazaars or
flower-shows. They did their duty and passed away and were forgotten;
while the parsons, like the wretch Chowne of the _Maid of Sker_, live on
in anecdote, and grave folk shake their heads and think that the times
must have been very bad, and the clergy a disgrace to their cloth. As
with the clerk, so with his master; the evil that men do lives after
them, the good is forgotten. There has been a vast amount of
exaggeration in the accounts that have come down to us of the
faithlessness, sluggishness, idleness, and base conduct of the clergy of
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and perhaps a little too
much boasting about the progress which our age has witnessed.
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