Hoc regimen fore longævum vix cre dere possum, Justus enim Deus est, qui non permittit iniquos Illa tenere diu quæ vi quæ fraude parabant. Donec ad id redeat caput unde corona fugata est. But he soon forgot his troubles in buying scarlet serge, out of which he made a library cupboard carpet, and a waistcoat as well. He paid, too, "for barbouring for six moneths," 78. 6d., and for being blooded, "though I was so cold that I bled but one ounce, 18." The money that it galled him most to record was the money that he lent"Lent to my brother (i.e., brother-inlaw) Duxford, at the Widdow Newports, never more to be seene, 18." And he says with regret: "I gave away 4 doz. of the Assembly's shortest Catechisms to the youth of Horsted Keynes; they cost mee 38. 4d." He had no taste for such doctrine as they contained. But he was evidently a charitable man, as he often seems to have paid a nurse for looking after his poor Invalids; and he gave as much as 3s. to a general collection for the distressed Protestants of Bohemia and Poland in 1659. He records how he bought a new "portmantle," with a "locke-key," and a "male pillion," adding ruefully: "This portmantle and all that belonged to it I lent to my cousin Lewen, which he never returned, contra fidem datam." He records that at the "three several sacraments, at Esther" in 1659, the whole number of communicants was not above 156 persons, including strangers. It appears that he had expected a larger number; but instead of quickening his missionary zeal, this disappointment seems to have had the contrary effect, for the next entry is a statement that he ceased to reside at the rectory, and went to board with his son-in-law Brett, at Walstead, in the neighboring parish of Lindfield. On There is no allusion to the Restora- Among a few of the curious prices which may be quoted, a pound of .sugar cost him 18.; a rabbit, 9d.; newsbooks (i.e., a newspaper) for half a year, 38.; a pair of worsted stockings, 58. 4d.; a silver spoon, 98.; a goose, 18. 9d.; a hindquarter of mutton, 38. 4d.; a lamb, 78. Gd.; a silver sugar-dish, 178. 6d.; a roll of sealing-wax, 3d.; Prayer-book, 28. 2d.; a walking-cane, cow eight years old, £2 128.; a leaden milk-pan, 108. In 1661 the rector's health began to give trouble. He went to London to see a doctor, and paid for "a peck of @curvy grasse," an item which now begins to recur. He consoled himself by buying at the same time a large parcel of books, such as Quarles's "Divine Fancies and Emblems" and a folio of funeral sermons. He records with regret the death of the squire of Broadhurst, Mr. Lightmaker, and adds that he was carried in a coach to London to be buried. Shortly after, the rector had to attend in London to be properly inducted, and puts down ruefully an account of the fees he had to pay to the bishop's officers and servants: Capellario, 58.; secretario, £1 178.; camerario, 58.; domesticis, 58.; sigillo, 68. 8d.; cerario, 38. 4d. Some legal business with regard to the patron of the living took him again to London. "I payed to Mr. Kempe, whom I take to bee the best and honestest of all those who belong to the Court of the Exchequer, who liveth at Salisbury Court, and is to be found at the Exchequer in the forenoone and at Hatton Garden in Holborne in the afternoone, 28. Gd. for a subpœna." His military ardor seems to have been short-lived, for he began to pay a deputy for going out soldiering in his arms. And then followed a repentance for having gone to law, so that probably Mr. Kempe had turned out to be more expensive than was contemplated. "All this cost me £7 08. 10d., which was foolishly cast away upon lawyers, having been misled sillily by Mr. Orgle. Hee who goes to law, when hee can possibly avoid It, is an absolute foole, and one that loveth to be fleeced. I ever got by losing, and lost by striving to get." A little later he had to repair his chancel, and speaks bitterly of Mistresse Sapphira Lightmaker, who "would not keep up her chancel," this being no doubt the family chantry. Mrs. Lightmaker was the sister of Archbishop Leighton, and the rector complains that "shee stripped a good part of my church to lay her leads," which no doubt accounts for the demolition of the chantry. Mrs. Lightmaker seems to have not acted with the piety that might have been expected of the archbishop's sister, though the inscription on her tomb re cords that "she was a devout woman and a mother in Israel, a widow indeed, and, notwithstanding solicitations to a second marriage, lived so forty-four years." She died in 1704. In the same year the rector summarily arrested a man and kept him all night at the empty parsonage, to which he had not yet returned, adding with chagrin that the prisoner afterwards escaped by the connivance of the bailiffs, though the prudent rector gleefully adds that he left them uDpaid. And as a set-off against this, he makes a note that on the following day he gave to the three collections made at the several sacraments "three several sixpences." On April 1, 1665, he records that he bought a "shaggy demicastor hat of the fashion" for 168. Gd. Demicastor hats, which were a mixture of felt and beaver wool, had been expressly forbidden, as a species of adulterated product, by a proclamation of the time of Charles I., but had been reintroduced. He made a good bargain about this time, giving his brother £10 and his own bay gelding in exchange for a mare, about which transaction he tri umphantly records that he had purchased the gelding for £10 sixteen years before, and that "shee was now old and foundered in the forefeet.” It is curious to note in passing that, among all the agricultural produce mentioned in the book, no mention is ever made of the potato, which had on the subject, intending to return all been introduced into England sixty his irregular profits; but "seeing," he years. But it seems that potatoes were adds, "nobody of our noblest mernever planted in the neighborhood of chants to do it, I thought it not decent Horsted Keynes till 1765, when a few for me to do it." were brought from Ireland by Lord Sheffield, whose house of Sheffield Park is close by. No one knew how to plant them at first, and for many years they were kept in the ground all the winter, covered with fern, and taken up as they were wanted. It is remarkable that there existed a strong prejudice against the root in the country, and that at an election at Lewes, about the same time that they were first introduced, there was an election ery, "No Popery, no potatoes!" In the year 1666, the rector revised his wardrobe, bought a cassock of hair prunella, a satin cap plaited, and a pair of olive-colored boots. Then he returned to his parsonage in October, complaining that he had been "hackneyed out of it" for over six years, during which time he had "lived a deade kind of life." He adds: Me miserum! Invitum quem sub tecto sors dira tenebat, In quo nec pietas, ordo nec ullus erat. In the following February he had an ague, which he cured by syrup of roses; and in March he writes: "I gave Richard Wood for two dozen of mouses, which hee had caught on a holiday and which hee begged of me, 28. Gd." In June he writes complacently that bis "poll money" came to £4 2s., and that it was the greatest payment of any minister in Sussex. But the truth is that the rector was more honest than his neighbors. The tax was largely evaded. Samuel Pepys has an entry in his diary about the same tax. Pepys was assessed at £40 17x., and he says that it was a shame it was not more. Indeed, Pepys had gone to the vestry-meeting In the following year, on February 4, the rector veils an entry in the decent obscurity of Latin, to the effect that at ten o'clock in the evening, when he had begun to read his family prayers, he was so much overcome by the effects of some perry which he had drunk, not knowing how strong it was, that he was compelled to stop in the middle. "O God," he adds, "lay not this sin to my charge!" In April he rode to London to put bis "little mayd" to school, and went to buy her some new clothes. He was tempted by some purple serge to have a new "nightgowne" made for himself, with silver clasps and silk lining, and laments over the cost. In the August of the same year he paid a visit to his brother at West Cowes, but was detained there by the long and painful illness of his brother, which is detailed at full length. It is difficult to see what the illness can have been; but at the crisis of it, the sufferer escaped in a fit of delirium from his room, and jumped into a well with ten feet of water. He was rescued, and then, so far as one can see, he was deliberately bled to death by the surgeons, and made a very virtuous end. No word of grief escapes the rector, but he seems to have been disappointed that he received nothing under his brother's will, who was a man of substance. He thought later on in the year that he was overtaxed, and went to state his case before the magistrates at Marsefield. He does not say if he obtained relief, but adds: "I was too high in my carriage and language." There is a curious entry about this time. "I gave the howling boys Gd.," which refers to an old custom that the boys of the parish should go round the orchards at the end of the year, and tap the tree-trunks, singing an old rhyme. At Christmas he sent one of his parishioners "a worthy turkey," but soon after he enters a solemn protest that his churchwardens, together with an alehouse-keeper and a smith, set up, without his consent, a big pew in the church next to the rectory pew. There does not seem to have been any machinery for getting the pew removed, and the rector contents himself with a protest, on the ground that if another such pew were to be erected opposite, "there would be no coming up for the ministers or the people to the table." At the succeeding Christmas he sent the parishioner to whom he had given the worthy turkey in the previous year "a ribspare and hoggs puddings," and seems to have been dissatisfied with the present he received in return -"a boxe of pills and sermons." In 1677 he seems to have been on uncomfortable terms again with some of his parishioners. "18th July; Mr. Payne came together with Ned Cripps to pay his tythe; hee layed down 208. on the table, which he told, and I tooke up for the tythe of 1674-75; at which time hee sayd I was a knavish priest, and having gone out of the hall door as far as the yard gate, he sayd againe that I was a knavish priest, and that 'bee could prove mee to be so, Edward Cripps being all the while in the hall, and Mary Holden in the kitchen, who distinctly heard him." A little later he says that he paid a man 2d. for a letter, "for carrying news books, 28. 6d.”—probably delivering a gazette-adding, "and Gd. more gratis to stop his mouth." At this date letters were delivered according to mileage, 2d. being the charge for a letter of one sheet below eighty miles. The whole revenue of the Post Office was then some £43,000 a year. There are many purchases of books recorded, as the rector grew older. The entries of the last year, 1680, are melancholy enough. He went up to town, where he saw the Archbishop, as well as the King and Queen. But his visit was to consult a surgeon "about the turning of my neck." He paid much for medicines and blisters, and he was evidently suffering greatly. But the last entry but one shows that be was still occupied in monetary transactions. "Sep. 16. For a pig which I sent to Mr. Hely, I gave my daughter 18. 6d., which pig was so carryed by Morley that it smelt, which he falsely sayd smelt upon receipt." On August 3 he bought a cephalic plaster and a julep, and a sleepingdraught. But his illness was gaining upon him, and the above is the last entry. He was buried on October 3 of the same year, according to the register. It is a curious and interesting thing to be able to look so close into the life of this simple, guileless, fussy, moneyloving man. It is strange to feel that one knows so much about him, what he ate, and drank, and wore, the books he read, his tours and little adventures, and yet to feel that, after all, one knows so little. He seems to have been ashamed, at intervals, of caring so much about the things of this world, and yet the temptation to record them was all too strong. The people among whom he lived just appear at Intervals, like ghosts, among his entries. And while we know to a penny what his income and tastes were, we can form no conception of his thoughts or emotions. It seems an undignified sort of life, and though clerical Incomes nowadays are sadly inadequate, yet the clergy are spared the constant bargaining and huckstering about small payments, to which so much of the rector's life was devoted. But the book is essentially a human document, and to turn the faded pages, with their precise entries and naïve confessions, makes one smile indeed, The Cornhill Magazine. but it is with a smile that is not wholly of amusement-mentem mortalia tangunt! Arthur C. Benson. THE BAD LUCK OF KAPTAN HOLAR. The Norwegian steamer Ole Bull, carrying seven hundred tons of coal and sundry stores from Leith to her company's hvalstation on the northeast coast of Iceland, was jogging past the Faroe Islands at her average speed of nine knots. It was eleven o'clock on an evening towards the end of June, and had the weather been clear the sun would have still been visible in the north. A wet fog blanketed the Faroes, some six miles to port; only the strange peaks of Fugloe and Svinoe loomed dimly above the vapor-bank. On the sea, however, the fog was thinning, and the captain of the Ole Bull sighted the little whaler in time to avoid the necessity of an abrupt change of course. He spoke to the man at the wheel, and telegraphed an order to the engine-room. The engines were slowed, stopped, and reversed a couple of turns, and the Ole Bull came to rest within hailing distance of the whaler-steamer Gisli, which was wallowing idly in the heavy oily swell. The captains-one on his high, narrow bridge, the other in his little, square steering-box-bawled cheerfully across the water. They were old friends from Tonsberg, but their courses seldom met or crossed during the whaling season. "It is a lucky meeting, Bjarni," the captain of the Ole Bull shouted, after he had asked concerning the Gislï's recent hunting and got an unsatisfactory reply. "I bring you luck. I am glad I met you. It is not ten minutes since we sighted a cachalot." But the young captain was already giving orders to his crew and calling down the tube to his engineer. He waved his hand to his friend, bawled his thanks, promised a merry meeting at Tonsberg in October, and turned to his business. For the cachalot is a rare visitor to these waters, and is worth several large rorquals-the "finner" whales on which the Norwegians make much war and some profit; and young Kaptan Andersen had never yet had the fortune to encounter such a prize. So the Ole Bull resumed her journey north, and the Gisli went dancing south, her thin black funnel belching smoke, her eighty-five feet of deck quivering. Kaptan Andersen sang softly as he inspected the gun in the bow, ready charged and loaded with the big bomb-pointed harpoon. His was good luck indeed! Good luck to have met the Ole Bull; good luck that the cachalot should appear at a time of year when there was no dark night. A little more good luck, and the prize Iwould be his; for the weather was clearing quickly; the man in the crow's-nest had the eyes of a hawk; the sea, though swelling, was smooth; and he did not doubt his own skill with the gun. Good luck indeed! He The young captain of the Gisli fairly repeated the words aloud. |
