A BOOK ABOUT THE CLERGY.* THE gravity of his new

subject has somewhat oppressed Mr. Jeaffreson, and has compelled him to forego much of that anec- dotical interest for which his two former books were so conspicuous. Treating of doctors and lawyers, he was able to catch the character- istics of those professions without much apparent labour, and the lightness of touch with which the greater part of his information was conveyed to the reader made those books deservedly popular. Mr. Jeaffreson now takes a higher flight, but he is unduly weighted. His object, if we mistake not, has been to draw a picture of the changes that have occurred in clerical life since the days of Wycliffe, and to trace the development of the modern and thoroughly national English clergyman from the semi-Roman type that existed before the Reformation. Although many of the germs of the present state of things may be found in those earlier times, the violence of the convulsion which parted England from Rome must be taken fully into account. On this ground it might have been better if Mr. Jeaffreson had not begun so early. The account of " Wycliffe's England," as the first part of his book is headed, contains many interesting details; but it is too long, and we cannot sufficiently identify its characters with the post-Reformation clergy. The division of the book into parts, though convenient both to the author and his readers, interferes with the general treatment of the subject, and leads to what we may call a fragmentary completeness. These appear to us the chief blemishes in a book which has many and striking merits. Mr. Jeaffreson's research has been large, the pains he has taken in collecting, as in digesting, his materials highly creditable. A little more attention to brevity and terseness would improve his style, but this is not absolutely needed, and his book will be as readily accepted by the general public as by those who curiously observe the growth of customs and the influence of the learned professions upon the habits of society.

No doubt the clergy themselves will be grateful to Mr. Jeaffreson for not having written a comic book about them. We find here none of the old stock stories which make up the clerical Joe Miller. There is, however, another aspect in which the book will hardly recommend itself to such an eminently conservative body as the Church of England. Mr. Jeaffreson takes a delight in upsetting a great many established notions. Perhaps the worst instance of this revolutionary spirit is his demolition of the legend about the Vicar of Bray. According to the received tradition, the parish of Bray, in Berkshire, was the scene of a long life of accommodating principles and unwavering prosperity. Fuller says that one Simon Aleyn, Canon of Windsor, held the vicarage of Bray from 1540 to 1588, and during that time was successively a Papist, a Protestant, a Papist again, and again a Protestant, according as the throne was oocupied by Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, or

* A Book About the Clergy. By John Gordy Jeaffreson. 2 role. London : Hors and Blacken. 1870.

Elizabeth. On being taunted with these continual changes, he replied that though a turncoat in creeds, he had stuck to his one grand principle, which was to live and die the Vicar of Bray. In fact, like Governor C., in the Biglow Papers,—

" Consistency always was part of his plan,

He's been true to one party, and that is himself."

Mr. Jeaffreson, however, shows by the parish register of Bray that no one vicar held the living during so long a period. Instead of Simon Aleyn being instituted in 1540 and remaining undisturbed till 1588, Simon Symonds came into the living in 1523 and held it till 1551. As this covers all the latter part of Henry VIII.'s reign, and nearly the whole of the reign of Edward VI., the changes of creed open to Symonds' successor are reduced in number. Yet

though Fuller's account is obviously incorrect, Mr. Jeaffreson does not quite persuade us that the whole story is mythical. Another legend with which he deals is that of the storm said to have raged at the time of Cromwell's death. Here the quotation from the autobiography of Anthony is Wood will probably be thought con- clusive. But no such value is likely to be attached to Mr. Jeaffreson's views on persecution. It may comfort us in looking back at those cruel times of the Tudors to think that death by fire was worse in imagination than in reality. Mr. Jeaffreson, who says that flogging which would kill a Victorian Englishman was nothing worse than a rather disagreeable stimulant to the nerves of a Marian yeoman, may no doubt be sincere in the following expression of opinion, although his readers will find it difficult to agree with him :—

"Notwithstanding the universal belief in the extreme painfulness of the fiery death, I am disposed to think that it was much more terrible to the imaginations of sympathetic beholders, than excruciating to the sufferers themselves. When the piles were badly arranged, so that the reeds burnt with a clear, crackling fire for some minutes before they ignited the wood : or when the fagots were so green that it was difficult to make them burn at once, and quickly cause enough smoke to effect the martyr's suffocation ; or when a high wind bore away the flames from the sufferers' bodies, and the smoke from their mouths and nostrils, —the victims of the hideous punishment suffered acutely, and for a considerable length of time. But it is no less consolatory than reason- able for us to believe that under ordinary circumstances the steady ascent of such black smoke, as necessarily results from the quick com- bustion of a huge pile of wood-fuel, stifled the martyrs, and reduced them to unconsciousness long before their bodies were so far consumed, that the executioners deemed it fit time to knock down the stakes with their halberds, and conclude the burning with measures that ensured the perfect destruction of the corporeal fragments. When the martyr had walked to the stake, had stript himself to his shirt, had endured the harsh counsels of the officiating chaplains, and having distributed his cast-off raiment amongst friendly bystanders, had been placed against the fatal post, the worst of his pains were, in most cases, at an end. Usually the actual punishment, I am happy in thinking, was neither longer nor more painful than death by strangulation,— effected at the old gallows-tree before the use of the ladder, or, in yet more remote days, before the merciful invention of the drop."

Luckily we are not qualified to judge. We think, however, that Mr. Jeaffreson's defence of clerical persecutors against Blackstone's charge.of hypocritical cruelty carries with it its own refutation. Blackstone alluded to the conduct of ecclesiastics in handing over heretics to the secular arm, and to the phrases in which mercy and gentleness were implored for the culprit by the judge who con- signed him to a painful death. The distinction between such expressions as these and those in which Mr. Justice Blackstone himself prayed for the soul of a convicted murderer is perfectly obvious. Mr. Justice Blackstone did not sentence a man to death, and then ask the sheriff not to execute the sentence if he could possibly help it. We are amused when Mr. Jeaffreson proceeds to argue that there was no affectation of delicacy in the floggings and tortures inflicted by the clergy with their own hands. It was easy enough for them to throw off the mask when they were under no legal disability.

If the clergy in those days were zealous in applying fire and torture, their successors are frequently accused of adopting another method of persecution. We need hardly say that the allusion is to their sermons. So much has been written on that subject, that. Mr. Jeaffreson's readers will be surprised at the new light which he has been able to shed upon it. Beginning with the written sermons which were so obnoxious to the Puritans, and which were called "bosom-sermons," from being taken out of the bosom folds of the clergyman's gown when be entered the pulpit, we are led through a full account of the ancient discourses. The Puritans thought written sermons betokened indolence, but they held above all that a sacred orator should speak with the im- mediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost. When Bishop Bull, as a young man, was officiating as a minister near Bristol, he dropped the notes of his sermon, and the congregation thinking he was preaching from a book, exulted at the prospect of his not being able to continue. But he silenced their laughter by a burst of unstudied eloquence which showed that he had no cause to rely on his manuscript. In those days the audience did not preserve its present discreet silence. If a sermon was popular it was greeted with "humming," that is, with "a monotonous purring noise made by repeating very rapidly in an undertone the words, ' Hear, hear, hear.'" We may remember Sydney Smith's description of the embarrassment caused him by a similar sound proceeding from Lord Dudley and Ward during one of his sermons. Yet the early English congregations did not confine themselves to expressions of approval. If a sermon gave offence there was at first an ominous silence, and then came inarticulate groans. Thus public opinion could be brought summarily to bear, instead of venting its dissatisfaction out in the street, where the unfavourable criticisms rarely come in their native vigour to the preacher's ears. The comparative in- frequency of sermons rendered them naturally more elaborate, and gave them a greater significance, than is the case at present. We are told that Henry VIII. considered four sermons a year enough for a congregation. Our modern Sunday services add exactly a hundred to the number. An unwritten etiquette requires every parish clergyman to preach morning and afternoon, while some have a further sermon in the evening, and we remember one pastor who preached every saint's day to the village school-children and his own family. Mr. Jeaffreson shows that in Henry VIII.'s time many preachers exceeded the required number, but there must be 'clergymen now who would be glad if the present number were to be diminished.

Another subject on which we find some curious details is the gradual growth of the pew system. Pews do not appear to have existed before the Reformation. There were few of them in the

churches of London during the reign of Henry VIII., and Sir Thomas More protested against those which were to be found there. Under Elizabeth they were .generally introduced, though there were contentions and even riots about them as late as the time of Charles I. Mr. Jeaffreson observes that "after pews had

become common in the naves of churches, the word 'pew' was so far from being restricted to its present signification, that we find Pepys applying it indifferently to a private closet in a house of

worship, and a private box in a theatre." Certainly, some of the ipews which have been swept away during the last twenty years would have passed with great ease for private boxes. It may

be said that the pew system was an improvement on the state -of things which preceded it, when the body of the church was a lounge for the idle and the lovers of gossip, or was used at certain times for a fair or market. We quote Mr. Jeaffreson's description of the manners of a feudal congregation : —

"One bad result of the ancient social use of the Christian temple, was the air of irreverent familiarity that distinguished the medireval church- assemblies during Divine service. On such occasions the public quarter was never without a due complement of frequenters, but their dress and .conduct were such, that the spectators whose religions proclivities were in the direction of Lollardy had cause to disapprove the lightass and in- quietude of the gossiping throng. The women donned their brightest attire ere they set out for church on sacred days ; and on entering the place of worship they often showed that their presence in the house of prayer was quite as much due to love of the world as to delight in holy -thoughts. Having duly crossed themselves half-a-score times, knelt on the bare floor for ten minutes, and muttered a few prayers to the rood, they deemed themselves at liberty to look about for their admirers and prattle to their acquaintance. The ladies of superior degree very often had pet sparrow-hawks perched on their wrists, and toy hounds follow- ing close at their heels. The case was the same with the men, who, having walked to church on the look-out for wild birds and four-legged game, brought their hounds and falcons into the sacred edifice,—where the chants of the choir and rolling melodies of the organ were often marred by the barking of dogs, the jangling of hawk-bells, and the screams of children terrified by the noise of savage mastiffs. And while this riot was going on in the nave, the priests in the quire or chancel would put their heads together and gossip about the latest scandals of their chapter or of the neighbourhood, make engagements for pleasure- meetings after service, and exchange opinions on the newest affairs of politics. In the Ship of Fools, Alexander Barclay tells how, when a priest sitting on one side of the quire wished to communicate daring service a piece of trivial gossip to a brother priest on the other side of the chancel, he would beckon to the rector chori, and make him act as a messenger sr medium of intelligence between the two sides of ' the queere.' " The contrast which this scene presents to the interior of a modern church is significant of the variety of materials that Mr. Jeaffreson has had at his disposal. We have left a great part of his book untouched, as it was not our wish to furnish a mere index, when we might hope to call attention to some of the more striking features. But we have done even this in a cursory manner, and if we were to write the whole review over again we should come to the same conclusion. It is enough if we have whetted the curiosity of our readers: we must leave Mr. Jeaffre- son to allay it.