324

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

ill.

clergyman should presume to marry a servant girl, without1 the consent of the master or mistress. * During severalgenerations accordingly the relation between priests andhandmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would it beeasy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, asingle instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above therank of a cook.** Even so late as the time of George theSecond, the keenest of all observers of life and manners,himself a priest, remarked that, in a great household, thechaplain was the resource of a lady’s maid whose characterhad been blown upon, and who was therefore forced to giveup hopes of catching the steward.***

In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for abenefice and a wife found that he had only exchanged oneclass of vexations for another. Not one living in fifty enabledthe incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As childrenmultiplied and grew, the household of the priest becamemore and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and moreplainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his singlecassock. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feedingswine, and by loading dung-carts, that he could obtain dailybread; nor did his utmost exertions always prevent thebailiffs from taking his concordance and his inkstand inexecution. It was a white day on which he was admitted intothe kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants withcold meat and ale. His children were brought up like thechildren of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys followedthe plough; and his girls went out to service. Study he

* See the Injunctions of 1559, in Bishop Sparrow’s Collection. Je-remy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction wiLh abitterness which proves that his own pride had not been effectuallytamed.

** Roger and Abigail in Fletcher’s Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nursein Vanbrugh’s Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwcll’s LancashireWitches, are instances.

*** Swift’s Directions to Servants.