Here lieth the body of Peter Snell, Thirty years clerk of this Parish.  He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding, on the 31st of March, 1811, Aged seventy years.

     The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his
     cheerful memory, and as a tribute to his long and faithful
     services.

     The life of this clerk was just threescore and ten,
     Nearly half of which time he had sung out Amen. 
     In his youth he had married like other young men,
     But his wife died one day—­so he chanted Amen. 
     A second he took—­she departed—­what then? 
     He married and buried a third with Amen. 
     Thus his joys and his sorrows were treble, but then
     His voice was deep base, as he sung out Amen. 
     On the horn he could blow as well as most men,
     So his horn was exalted to blowing Amen. 
     But he lost all his wind after threescore and ten,
     And here with three wives he waits till again
     The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.

[Illustration:  OLD SCARLETT]

The duties of sexton and parish clerk were usually performed by one person, as we have already frequently noticed, and therefore it is fitting that we should record the epitaph of Old Scarlett, most famous of grave-diggers, who buried two queens, both the victims of stern persecution, ill-usage, and Tudor tyranny—­Catherine, the divorced wife of Henry VIII, and poor sinning Mary Queen of Scots.  His famous picture in Peterborough Cathedral, on the wall of the western transept, usually attracts the chief attention of the tourist, and has preserved his name and fame.  He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle, and at his feet lies a skull.  In the upper left-hand corner appear the arms of the see of Peterborough, save that the cross-keys are converted into cross-swords.  The whip at his girdle appears to show that Old Scarlett occupied the position of dog-whipper as well as sexton.  There is a description of this portrait in the Book of Days, wherein the writer says: 

“What a lively effigy—­short, stout, hardy, self-complacent, perfectly satisfied, and perhaps even proud of his profession, and content to be exhibited with all its insignia about him!  Two queens had passed through his hands into that bed which gives a lasting rest to queens and to peasants alike.  An officer of death, who had so long defied his principal, could not but have made some impression on the minds of bishop, dean, prebends, and other magnates of the cathedral, and hence, as we may suppose, the erection of this lively portraiture of the old man, which is believed to have been only once renewed since it was first put up.  Dr. Dibdin, who last copied it, tells us that ’old Scarlett’s jacket and trunkhose are of a brownish red, his stockings blue, his shoes black, tied with blue