This same clerk also took up his stand by the chancel steps with a black rod in his hand, and with tremendous importance marched in front of the rector down the aisle to the vestry under the belfry, and waited outside while the clergyman changed his surplice for a black cassock, then escorted him again to the pulpit stairs.

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The Rev. E.H.L.  Reeve, rector of Stondon Massey, Essex, contributes the following excellent stories of old-time services.

The Rev. Thomas Wallace was rector of Listen, in Essex, from 1783, the date of his father’s death, onward.  The following story is well authenticated in the annals of the family, and must belong to the latter part of the eighteenth century or the commencement of the nineteenth century.

It was, of course, a well-established custom in those old times for the church clerk to give out the number of the hymn to be sung, which he did with much unction and long preamble.  The moments thus employed would be turned to account in the afternoon by the officiating clergyman, who would take the opportunity of retiring to the vestry to exchange his surplice for his academic gown wherein to preach.

On one occasion Mr. Wallace left his sermon, through inadvertence, at home; and, finding himself in the vestry, considered, perhaps, that the chance of escape was too good to be lost.  At any rate, he let himself out into the churchyard, and returned no more!  He may possibly have been unable to find a discourse, but these are details with which we are not concerned.  The clerk and congregation with becoming loyalty lengthened out the already dreary hymn by sundry additions and doxologies to give their pastor time to don his robes, and it was long ere they perceived the true cause of his delay.  They were somewhat nettled, as one may suppose, at being thus befooled, and here lies the gist of our story.  Next Sunday the clerk did not give out the second hymn at the usual time, but waited in solemn silence till Mr. Wallace had returned in his black gown from the vestry and ascended the pulpit stairs.  Then, and not till then, he closed the pulpit door with a slam; and, keeping his back against it, called out significantly, and with a tone of exultation in his voice, “We’ve got him, my boys; now let us sing to the praise and glory of God,” etc.

William Wren held the office of church clerk at Stondon Massey in Essex for thirty-six years, from 1853 to 1889.  He was a rough, uneducated man, but with a certain amount of native talent which raised him above the level of the majority of his class.  I can see him now in his place Sunday after Sunday, rigged out in a suit of my father’s cast-off clerical garments—­a kind of “set-off” to him at the lower end of the church.  In his earlier days Wren had played a flute in the village instrumental choir, and to the last he might be heard whiling away spare moments on a Sunday in the church (for he brought his dinner early in the morning and bivouacked there all day!) recalling to himself the departed glories of ancient time.  He turned the handle of the barrel organ in the west gallery from the time of its purchase in 1850 to that of its disappearance in 1873, but I do not think that he ever appreciated this rude substitution of mechanical art for cornet, dulcimer, and pipe.