Wickham Legg,
lvi.]
Archbishop Sancroft, at Fressingfield, caused a comfortable cottage to
be built for the parish clerk, and also a kind of hostelry for the
shelter and accommodation of persons who came from a distant part of
that large scattered parish to attend the church, so that they might
bring their cold provisions there, and take their luncheon in the
interval between the morning and the afternoon service.
There was a clerk's house at Ringmer. In the account of the beating of
the bounds of the parish in Rogation week, 1683, it is recorded that at
the close of the third day the procession arrived at the Crab Tree, when
the people sang a psalm, and "our minister read the epistle and gospel,
to request and supplicate the blessing of God upon the fruits of the
earth. Then did Mr. Richard Gunn invite all the company to _the clerk's
house_, where he expended at his own charge a barrell of beer, besides a
plentiful supply of provisions: and so ended our third and last day's
perambulation[24]."
[Footnote 24: _Social Life as told by Parish Registers_, by T.F.
Thiselton-Dyer, p. 197.]
In his little house the clerk lived and tended his garden when he was
not engaged upon his ecclesiastical duties. He was often a married man,
although those who were intending to proceed to the higher orders in the
Church would naturally be celibate.
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