Archdeacon Marsh, of Chichester, in 1640 inquires:  “Hath your Parish Clerk or Sexton taken upon him to meddle with anything above his office, as churching of women, burying of the dead, or such like?”

During the troublous times of the Commonwealth period it is not surprising that the clerk often performed functions which were “above his office,” when clergymen were banished from their livings.  We have noticed already an example of the burial service being performed by the clerk when he was so rudely treated by angry Parliamentarians for using the Book of Common Prayer.  Here is an instance of the ceremony of marriage being performed by the parish clerk: 

“The marriages in the Parish of Dale Abbey were till a few years previous to the Marriage Act, solemnized by the Clerk of the Parish, at one shilling each, there being no minister.”

This Marriage Act was that passed by the Little Parliament of 1653, by which marriage was pronounced to be merely a civil contract.  Banns were published in the market-place, and the marriages were performed by Cromwell’s Justices of the Peace whom, according to a Yorkshire vicar, “that impious and rebell appointed out of the basest Hypocrites and dissemblers with God and man.”  The clerks’ marriage ceremony was no worse than that of the justices.

Dr. Macray, of the Bodleian Library, has discovered the draft of a licence granted by Dr. John Mountain, Bishop of London, to Thomas Dickenson, parish clerk of Waltham Holy Cross, in the year 1621, permitting him to read prayers, church women, and bury the dead.  This licence states that the parish of Waltham Holy Cross was very spacious, many houses being a long distance from the church, and that the curate was very much occupied with his various duties of visiting the sick, burying the dead, churching women, and other business belonging to his office; hence permission is granted to Thomas Dickenson to assist the curate in reading prayers in church, burying dead corpses, and to church women in the absence of the curate, or when the curate cannot conveniently perform the same duty in his own person.

Doubtless this licence was no solitary exception, and it is fairly certain that other clerks enjoyed the same privileges which are here assigned to Master Thomas Dickenson.  He must have been a worthy member of his class, a man of education, and of skill and ability in reading, or episcopal sanction would not have been given to him to perform these important duties.

It is evident that parish clerks occasionally at least performed several important clerical functions with the consent of, or in the absence of the incumbents, and that in spite of the articles in the visitations of some bishops who were opposed to this practice, episcopal sanction was not altogether wanting.

The affection with which the parishioners regarded the clerk is evidenced in many ways.  He received from them many gifts in kind and money, such as eggs and cakes and sheaves of corn.  Some of them were demanded in early times as a right that could not be evaded; but the compulsory payment of such goods was abolished, and the parishioners willingly gave by courtesy that which had been deemed a right.