In the MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle there is an illustration of the coronation procession of Charles V of France.  The clerk goes before the cross-bearer and the bishop bearing his holy-water vessel and his sprinkler for the purpose of aspersing the spectators.  We have already given two illustrations taken from a fourteenth-century MS. in the British Museum, which depict the clerk, as the aquaebajalus, entering the lord’s house and going first into the kitchen to sprinkle the cook with holy water, and then into the hall to perform a like duty to the lord and lady as they sit at dinner.

There is a fine picture in a French pontifical of the fifteenth century, which is in the British Museum (Tiberius, B. VIII, f. 43), of the anointing and coronation of a king of France.  An ecclesiastical procession is represented meeting the king and his courtiers at the door of the cathedral of Rheims, and amongst the dignitaries we see the clerk bearing the holy-water vessel, the cross-bearer, and the thurifer swinging his censer.  The clerk wears a surplice over a red tunic.

One other of these mediaeval representations of the clerk’s duties may be mentioned.  It is a fifteenth-century French MS. in the British Museum (Egerton, 2019, f. 142), and represents the last scenes of this mortal life.  The absolution of the penitent, the administration of the last sacrament, the woman mourning for her husband and arranging the grave-clothes, the singing of the dirige, the burial, and the reception of the soul of the departed by our Lord in glory.  The clerk appears in several of these scenes.  He is kneeling behind the priest in the administration of the last sacrament.  Robed in surplice and cope he is chanting the Psalms for the departed, and at the burial he is holding the holy-water vessel for the asperging of the corpse.

There are several paintings by English artists which represent the old-fashioned clerk in all his glory in his throne in the lowest seat of the “three-decker.”  Perhaps the most striking is the satirical sketch of the pompous eighteenth-century clerk as shown in Hogarth’s engraving of The Sleeping Congregation, to which I have already referred.  As a contrast to Hogarth’s Sleeping Congregation we may place Webster’s famous painting of a village choir, which is thoroughly life-like and inspiring.  The old clerk with enrapt countenance is singing lustily.  The musicians are performing on the ’cello, clarionet, and hautboy, and the singers are chanting very earnestly and very vigorously the strains of some familiar melody.  The picture is a very exact presentment of an old village choir of the better sort.

[Illustration:  THE DUTIES OF A CLERK AT A DEATH AND FUNERAL]

[Illustration:  THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD BY W.P.  FRITH]