William Smart, the parish clerk of Windermere in the sixties, was a rare specimen.  By trade an auctioneer and purveyor of Westmorland hams, he was known all round the countryside.  He was very patronising to the assistant curates, and a favourite expression of his was “me and my curate.”  When one of his curates first took a wedding he was commanded by the clerk, “When you get to ‘hold his peace,’ do you stop, for I have something to say.”  The curate was obedient, and stopped at the end of his prescribed words, when William shouted out, “God speed them well!”

This unauthorised but excellent clerkly custom was not confined to Windermere, but was common in several Norfolk churches, and at Hope Church, Derbyshire, the clerk used to express the good wish after the publication of the banns.

The old-fashioned clerk was usually much impressed by the importance of his office.  Crowhurst, the old clerk at Allington, Kent, in 1852, just before a wedding took place, marched up to the rector, the Rev. E.B.  Heawood, and said: 

“If you please, sir, the ceremony can’t proceed.”

“Why not?  What do you mean?” asked the surprised rector.

“The marriage can’t take place, sir,” he answered solemnly, “’cos I’ve lost my specs.”

Fortunately a pupil of the rector’s came forward and confessed that he had hidden the old man’s spectacles in a hole in the wall, and the ceremony was no longer delayed.

At Bromley College the same clergyman had a curious experience, when the clerk was called to assist at a service for the Churching of Women.  As it was very unusually performed there, he was totally at a loss what service to find, and asked in great perturbation: 

“Please, sir, be I to read the responses in the services for the Queen’s Accession?”

The same service sadly puzzled the clerk at Haddington, who was in the employment of the then Earl of W——.  One Sunday Lady W——­ came to be churched, when in response to the clergyman’s prayer, “O Lord, save this woman, Thy servant,” the clerk said, “Who putteth her ladyship’s trust in Thee.”

The Rev. W.H.  Langhorne tells me some amusing anecdotes of old clerks.  Once he was preaching in a village church for home missions, and just as he was reaching the pulpit he observed that the clerk was preparing to take round the plate.  He whispered to him to wait till he had finished his sermon.  “It won’t make a ha’porth o’ difference,” was the encouraging reply.  But at the close of the sermon there was another invitation to give additional offerings, which were not withheld.

In the old days when Bell’s Life was the chief sporting paper, a hunting parson was taking the service one Sunday morning and gave out the day of the month and the Psalm.  The clerk corrected him, but the rector again gave out the same day and was again corrected.  The rector, in order to decide the controversy, produced a copy of Bell’s Life and handed it to the clerk, who then submitted.  It is not often, I imagine, that a sporting paper has been appealed to for the purpose of deciding what Psalms should be read in church.