The sacramental ‘usages,’ so called, belong to the history of the Nonjurors rather than to that of the National Church.  There was, however, no time when the theological and ecclesiastical opinions prevalent among the Nonjurors did not find favour among a few English Conformists, lay and clerical.  Thus, the mixture of water with the wine, in conformity with Eastern practice, and in remembrance of the water and the blood, seems to have been occasionally found in parish churches.  Hickes said he had found it to be the custom at Barking.[1155] Wesley also, and the early Oxford Methodists, approved of it.[1156]

In the early part of the seventeenth century George Herbert had said that the country parson must see that on great festivals his Church was ‘perfumed with incense,’ and ’stuck with boughs.’[1157] Even as late as George III.’s reign it appears that incense was not quite unknown in the English Church.  We are told that on the principal holy days it used to be the ’constant practice at Ely to burn incense on the altar at the Cathedral, till Thomas Green, one of the prebendaries, and now (1779) Dean of Salisbury, a finical man, who is always taking snuff, objected to it, under pretence that it made his head to ache.’[1158]

The bad case into which Church music had fallen was much owing to those worthy men, the Parish Clerks.  These officials were a great institution in the English Church of the last century.  The Parish Clerks of London, from whom all their brethren in the country borrowed some degree of lustre, were an ancient and honourable company.  They had been incorporated by Henry III. as ‘The Brotherhood of St. Nicolas.’  Their Charter had been renewed by Charles I., who conferred upon them additional privileges and immunities, under the name of ’The Warden and Fellowship of Parish Clerks of the City and Suburbs of London and the Liberties thereof, the City of Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and the fifteen Parishes adjacent.’[1159] They had a Hall of their own in Bishopsgate Street; at St. Alban’s Church they had their anniversary sermon; at St. Bridget’s they had maintained, until about the end of the seventeenth century, a ‘music-sermon’ on St. Cecilia’s day;[1160] and Clerkenwell derives its name from the solemn Mystery Plays which their guild in old days used to celebrate near the holy spring.[1161] There were certain taverns about the Exchange where they met as a kind of Club, ’men with grave countenances, short wigs, black clothes or dark camlet trimmed with black.’[1162] In pre-Reformation days they had ranked among the minor orders of the Church as assistants of the Priests;[1163] and so, especially in country churches, they might consider themselves as holding a position somewhat analogous, though on a humbler scale, to that of Precentors.  In 1722 a clergyman, writing to the Bishop of London on the subject of the poverty and distressed condition of some of the poorer curates, spoke of the desirability of again