Dixon was the last of the Catwick clerks to keep this custom. Much more
recently, however, than the time he held office, members of the
congregation, usually those seated in the loft, on the publication of
the banns of some well-known people, have called out the time-honoured
phrase. But it is now heard no more. The custom has gone into a like
oblivion to that of the parish clerk himself, once so important a
person, in his own estimation if in that of no other, both in church and
parish. "The old order changeth."
Thomas Dixon died at Catwick when sixty-seven years of age. He was
buried in the churchyard on January 2, 1833, and by the Rev. John Torre,
the rector he served so faithfully.
When Sydney Smith went to see the out-of-the-way Yorkshire village of
Foston-le-Clay, to which benefice he had been presented, his arrival
occasioned great excitement. The parish clerk came forward to welcome
him, a man eighty years of age, with long grey hair, thread-bare coat,
deep wrinkles, stooping gait, and a crutch stick. He looked at the new
parson for some time from under his grey shaggy eyebrows, and talked,
and showed that age had not quenched the natural shrewdness of the
Yorkshireman.
At last, after a pause, he said, striking his crutch stick on the
ground:
"Master Smith, it often stroikes moy moind that folks as come frae
London be such fools.
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