“In and about this great city, in above a hundred parishes there are but few parish clerks to be found that have either ear or understanding to set one of these tunes musically, as it ought to be, it having been a custom during the late wars, and since, to chuse men into such places more for their poverty than skill and ability, whereby that part of God’s service hath been so ridiculously performed in most places, that it is now brought into scorn and derision by many people.”  He goes on to tell us that “the ancient practice of singing the psalms in church was for the clerk to repeat each line, probably because, at the first introduction of psalms into our service great numbers of the common people were unable to read.”  The author of The Parish Clerk’s Guide states that “since faction prevailed in the Church, and troubles in the State, Church music has laboured under inevitable prejudices, more especially by its being decried by some misguided and peevish sectaries as popery and anti-Christ, and so the minds of the common people are alienated from Church music, although performed by men of the greatest skill and judgment, under whom was wont to be trained up abundance of youth in the respective cathedrals, that did stock the whole kingdom at one time with good and able songsters.”  The Company of Parish Clerks of London [to the history and records of which we shall have occasion frequently to refer] did good service in promoting the musical training of the members and in upholding the dignity of their important office.  In the edition of The Parish Clerk’s Guide for 1731, the writer laments over the diminished status of his order, and states that “the clerk is oftentimes chosen rather for his poverty, to prevent a charge to the parish, than either for his virtue or skill; or else for some by-end or purpose, more than for the immediate Honour and Service of Almighty God and His Church.”

If that was the case in rich and populous London parishes, how much more was it true in poor village churches?  Hence arose the race of country clerks who stumbled over and miscalled the hard words as they occurred in the Psalms, who sang in a strange and weird fashion, and brought discredit on their office.  Indeed, the clergy were not always above suspicion in the matter of reading, and even now they have their detractors, who assert that it is often impossible to hear what they say, that they read in a strained unnatural voice, and are generally unintelligible.  At any rate, modern clergy are not so deficient in education as they were in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, when, as Fuller states in his Triple Reconciler, they were commanded “to read the chapters over once or twice by themselves that so they might be the better enabled to read them distinctly to the congregation.”  If the clergy were not infallible in the matter of the pronunciation of difficult words, it is not surprising that the clerk often puzzled or amused his hearers, and mangled or skipped the proper names, after the fashion of the mistress of a dame-school, who was wont to say when a small pupil paused at such a name as Nebuchadnezzar, “That’s a bad word, child! go on to the next verse.”