or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc.  This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in large churches there were representatives of all these various officials.  They disappeared in the Reformation; only the clerk remained, incorporating in his own person the offices of reader, acolyte, sub-deacon.

Indeed, if in these enlightened days any proof were needed of the historical continuity of the English Church, it would be found in the permanence of the clerk’s office.  Just as in many instances the same individual rector or vicar continued to hold his living during the whole period of the Reformation era, witnessing the spoliation of his church by the greedy Commissioners of Henry VIII and Edward VI, the introduction of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI, the revival of the “old religion” under Queen Mary, the triumph of Reformation principles under Queen Elizabeth; so did the parish clerk continue to hold office also.  The Reformation changed many of his functions and duties, but the office remained.  The old churchwardens’ account books bear witness to this fact.  Previous to the Reformation he received certain wages and many “perquisites” from the inhabitants of the parish for distributing the holy loaf and the holy water.  At St. Giles’s, Reading, in the year 1518-19, appears the item: 

EXPENS.  In p’mis paid for the dekays of the Clark’s wages vis.

In the following year we notice: 

     WAGE.  Paid to Harry Water Clerk for his wage for a yere ended
     at thannacon of our lady a deg. xi deg. ... xxvi s. viii d.

In 1545-6, Whitborne, the clerk, received 12 s. towards his wages, and he “to be bound to teche ij children free for the quere.”

After the Reformation, in the same town we find the same clerk continuing in office.  He no longer went round the parish bearing holy water, but the collecting of money for the holy loaf continued, the proceeds being devoted to the necessary expenses of the church.  Thus in the Injunctions given by the King’s Majesty’s visitors to the clergy and laity resident in the Deanery of Doncaster in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI, appears the following: 

“Item.  The churchwardens of every Parish-Church shall, some one Sunday, or other Festival day, every month, go about the Church, and make request to every of the Parish for their charitable Contribution to the Poor; and the sum so collected shall be put in the Chest of Alms for that purpose provided.  And for as much as the Parish-Clerk shall not hereafter go about the Parish with his Holy Water as hath been accustomed, he shall, instead of that labour, accompany the said Church-Wardens, and in a Book Register the name and Sum of every man that giveth any thing to the Poor, and the same shall intable; and against the next day of Collection, shall hang up somewhere in the Church in open place, to the intent the Poor having knowledge thereby, by whose Charity and Alms they be relieved, may pray for the increase and prosperity of the same[3].”