no religious observance of the day.[1018] But such neglect was altogether exceptional.  The custom of carol-singing was continued only in a few places, more generally in Yorkshire than elsewhere.[1019] There is some mention of it in the ’Vicar of Wakefield;’ and one well-known carol, ’Christians, awake! salute the happy morn!’ was produced about the middle of the century by John Byrom.  In George Herbert’s time it had been a frequent custom on all great festivals to deck the church with boughs.  This usage became almost, if not quite, obsolete except at Christmastide.  We most of us remember with what sort of decorative skill the clerk was wont, at this season, to ‘stick’ the pews and pulpit with sprays of holly.  In the time of the ’Spectator’[1020] and of Gay,[1021] and later still,[1022] rosemary was also used, doubtless by old tradition, as referring in its name to the Mother of the Lord.  Nor was mistletoe excluded.[1023] In connection with this plant, Stanley says a curious custom was kept up at York, which in 1754 had not long been discontinued.  ’On the eve of Christmas Day they carried mistletoe to the high altar of the cathedral and proclaimed a public and universal liberty, pardon, and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even wicked people, at the gates of the city, toward the four quarters of heaven.’[1024] A number of other local customs, many of great antiquity, now at last disused, lingered on at Yule into the time of our grandfathers.  On Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Whitsun Day there were very commonly two celebrations of the Holy Communion in the London churches.[1025] In a few cases, especially during the earlier years of the century, there was a daily celebration during the octaves of these great festivals.[1026] John Wesley, writing in 1777, makes mention that in London he was accustomed to observe the octave in this manner ’after the example of the Primitive Church.’[1027] Throughout the latter part of the Georgian period little special notice seems to have been taken, in most churches, of Easter and Whitsuntide, and Ascension Day was very commonly not observed at all, except in towns.

As one among many other indications that at the beginning of the last century a shorter period than now had elapsed since the days that preceded the Reformation, it may be mentioned that ‘Candlemas’ was not only a well-known date, especially for changing the hours of service, but retained some traces of being still a festival under that name.  For instance, it was specially observed at the Temple Church;[1028] and ’at Ripon, so late as 1790, on the Sunday before Candlemas Day, the Collegiate Church was one continued blaze of light all the afternoon, by an immense number of candles.’[1029] Such traditions lingered in the north of England long after they had expired elsewhere.

It may be added that in Queen Anne’s time we may still find the name of the Lord’s Mother mentioned in a tone of affectionate respect not at all akin either to the timidity, in this respect, of later days, or to the somewhat defiant and overstrained veneration professed by some modern High Churchmen.  Thus when Paterson begins to enumerate the London churches called after her name, he speaks of her in a perfectly natural tone as ’the Virgin Mary, the Mother of our ever-blessed Redeemer, Heaven’s greatest darling among women.’[1030]