Nor were dogs the only creatures who were accustomed to receive chastisement in church.  The clerk was usually armed with a cane or rod, and woe betide the luckless child who talked or misbehaved himself during service.  Frequently during the course of a long sermon the sound of a cane (the Tottenham clerk had a split cane which made no little noise when used vigorously) striking a boy’s back was heard and startled a sleepy congregation.  It was all quite usual.  No one objected, or thought anything about it, and the sermon proceeded as if nothing had happened.  Paul Wootton, clerk at Bromham, Wilts, seventy years ago performed various duties during the service, taking his part in the gallery among the performers as bass, flute serpent, an instrument unknown now, etc., pronouncing his Amen ore rotundo and during the sermon armed with a long stick sitting among the children to preserve order.  If any one of the small creatures felt that opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum, the long stick fell with unerring whack upon the urchin’s head.  When Mr. Stracey Clitherow went to his first curacy at Skeyton, Norfolk, in 1845, he found the clerk sweeping the whole chancel clear of snow which had fallen through the roof.  The font was of wood painted orange and red.  The singers sat within the altar rails with a desk for their books inside the rails.  There was a famous old clerk, named Bird, who died only a year or two ago, aged ninety, and, as Mr. Clitherow informed Bishop Stanley, was the best man in the parish, and was well worthy of that character.

Even in London churches unfortunate events happened, and somnolent clerks were not confined to the country.  A correspondent remembers that in 1860, when St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields was closed for the purpose of redecorating, his family migrated to St. Matthew’s Chapel, Spring Gardens (recently demolished), where one hot Sunday evening one of the curates of St. Martin’s was preaching, and in the course of his sermon said that it was the duty of the laity to pray that God would “endue His ministers with righteousness.”  The clerk was at the moment sound asleep, but suddenly aroused by the familiar words, which acted like a bugle call to a slumbering soldier, he at once slid down on the hassock at his feet and uttered the response “And make Thy chosen people joyful.”  My informant remarks that the “chosen people” who were present became “joyful” to an unseemly degree, in spite of strenuous efforts to restrain their feelings.

Sometimes the clerk was not the only sleeper.  A tenor soloist of Wednesbury Old Church eighty years ago used to tell the story of the vicar of Wednesbury, who one very sultry afternoon retired into the vestry, which was under the western tower, to don his black gown while a hymn was being sung by the expectant congregation.  The hymn having been sung through, and the preacher not having returned to ascend the pulpit, the clerk gave out the last verse again.