Dr.
Wickham Legg has unearthed an inquiry made in an archidiaconal
visitation in 1630, relating to the proclamation of lay businesses made
in church, when the following question was asked:
"Whether hath your Parish Clerk, or any other in Prayers time, or before
Prayers or Sermon ended, before the people departed, made proclamation
in your church touching any goods strayed away or wanting, or of any
Leet court to be held, or of common-dayes-works to be made, or touching
any other thing which is not merely ecclesiasticall, or a
Church-businesse?"
In times of Puritan laxity it was natural that notices sacred and
profane should be indiscriminately mingled, and the rubric mentioned
above would be sorely needed when church order and a reverent service
were revived. But in spite of this direction the practice survived of
not very strictly confining the notices to the concerns of the Church.
An aged lady, Mrs. Gill, who is now eighty-four years of age, remembers
that between the years 1825 and 1835, in a parish church near Welbeck
Abbey, the clerk used to announce the date of the Duke of Rutland's
rent-day. Another correspondent states that after service the clerk used
to take his stand on one of the high flat tombstones and announce sales
by auction, the straying of cattle, etc., and Sir Walter Scott wrote
that at Hexham cattle-dealers used to carry their business letters to
the church, "when after service the clerk was accustomed to read them
aloud and answer them according to circumstances.
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