The Parish Clerk | Page 8

clerk with him.
[Footnote 2: Bede's _Hist. Eccles_., ii. v.]
Thus from early Saxon times the history of the office can be traced.
His name is merely the English form of the Latin clericus, a word
which signified any one who took part in the services of the Church,
whether he was in major or minor orders. A clergyman is still a "clerk
in Holy Orders," and a parish clerk signified one who belonged to the
rank of minor orders and assisted the parish priest in the services of the
parish church. We find traces of him abroad in early days. In the
seventh century, the canons of the Ninth Council of Toledo and of the
Council of Merida tell of his services in the worship of the sanctuary,
and in the ninth century he has risen to prominence in the Gallican
Church, as we gather from the inquiries instituted by Archbishop
Hincmar, of Rheims, who demanded of the rural deans whether each
presbyter had a clerk who could keep school, or read the epistle, or was
able to sing.
In the decretals of Gregory IX there is a reference to the clerk's office,
and his duties obtain the sanction of canon law. Every incumbent is
ordered to have a clerk who shall sing with him the service, read the
epistle and lesson, teach in the school, and admonish the parishioners to
send their children to the church to be instructed in the faith. It was thus
in ancient days that the Church provided for the education of children, a
duty which she has always endeavoured to perform. Her officers were

the schoolmasters. The weird cry of the abolition of tests for teachers
was then happily unknown.
The strenuous Bishop Grosseteste (1235-53), for the better ordering of
his diocese of Lincoln, laid down the injunction that "in every church
of sufficient means there shall be a deacon or sub-deacon; but in the
rest a fitting and honest clerk to serve the priest in a comely habit." The
clerk's office was also discussed in the same century at a synod at
Exeter in 1289, when it was decided that where there was a school
within ten miles of any parish some scholar should be chosen for the
office of parish clerk. This rule provided for poor scholars who
intended to proceed to the priesthood, and also secured suitable
teachers for the children of the parishes.
It appears that an attempt was made to enforce celibacy on the holders
of minor orders, an experiment which was not crowned with success.
William Lyndewoode, Official Principal of the Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1429, speaks thus of the married clerk:--
"He is a clerk, not therefore a layman; but if twice married he must be
counted among laymen, because such an one is deprived of all clerical
privilege. If, however, he were married, albeit not twice, yet so long as
he wears the clerical habit and tonsure he shall be held a clerk in two
respects, to wit, that he may enjoy the clerical privilege in his person,
and that he may not be brought before the secular judges. But in all
other respects he shall be considered as a layman."
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the parish clerks became
important officials. We shall see presently how they were incorporated
into fraternities or guilds, and how they played a prominent part in
civic functions, in state funerals, and in ecclesiastical matters. The
Reformation rather added to than diminished the importance of the
office and the dignity of the holder of it.
[Illustration: THE MEDIÆVAL CLERK]
[Illustration: THE CLERK IN PROCESSION]

The continuity of the office is worthy of record. From the days of
Augustine to the present time it has never ceased to exist. The clerk is
the last representative of the minor orders which the ecclesiastical
changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the
Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple,
acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher,
ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers,
exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not
available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a
boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in large churches there were
representatives of all these various officials. They disappeared in the
Reformation; only the clerk remained, incorporating in his own person
the offices of reader, acolyte, sub-deacon.
Indeed, if in these enlightened days any proof were needed of the
historical continuity of the English Church, it would be found in the
permanence of the clerk's office. Just as in many instances the same
individual rector or vicar continued to hold his living during the whole
period of the Reformation era, witnessing