And since these
have been put down, some ministers have complained unto me,
that they are afraid they shall have no parish clerks for
want of maintenance for them."
Mr. Wickham Legg has investigated the subsequent history of this good
Bishop Pierce, and shows how the Puritans when they were in power used
this reply as a means of accusation against him, whereby they attempted
to prove that "he profanely opposed the sanctification of the Lord's Day
by approving and allowing of profane wakes and revels on that day," and
was "a desperately profane, impious, and turbulent Pilate."
It is well known that the incomes of the clergy were severely taxed by
the Pope, who demanded annates or first-fruits of one year's value on
all benefices and sundry other exactions. The poor clerk's salary did
not always escape from the rapacity of the Pope's collectors, as the
story told by Matthew Paris clearly sets forth:
"It happened that an agent of the Pope met a petty clerk carrying water
in a little vessel, with a sprinkler and some bits of bread given him
for having sprinkled some holy water, and to him the deceitful Roman
thus addressed himself:
"'How much does the profits yielded to you by this church amount to in a
year?' To which the clerk, ignorant of the Roman's cunning, replied:
"'To twenty shillings, I think.
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