Part 9

And now come we to the final "action" in this concaten_ation_ of litig_ation_, one that gave constern_ation_ to the poor "parish clerk," be it understood. We have spoken of the "actions" at the first Kirton Sessions; namely, the Perpetual Curate _versus_ the Female Ambuscaders, and the Perpetual Curate _versus_ the Cudgellers in the dark: then spoke we of the "action" at the next sessions, Clerk Spurr, the Parson's Clerk, _v._ Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, the Parish Clerk: then of the _petit_ "action" before the Gainsborough Justices--Ellis _v._ Skill: then of the greater "action" at assize--Skill _v._ Ellis: then of the "action" before the Lincoln magistrates for recovery of value for broken church-windows--the Churchwardens of Stow _v._ the Parson's Clerk: lastly, of the _threatened_ action by the parishioner of the long purse, which the Perpetual Curate avoided by rescinding his presumptuous "order" for levelling the graves:--but now come we to the final "action"--the action of actions: that to which all the rest formed but a petty preface: that wherein the Perpetual Curate departing from all by-ways of attack, undisguisedly assumed a position of legal and spiritual antagonism against the foe whom he esteemed as the chief author of his ills, the disturber of his projected schemes, that would, so many months before, have issued in subjugating the rebels, and consuming heresy in his parish,--against the old, hereditary, gentle, moral, upright parish clerk, Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase.

And _where_ was the action commenced?--Before the county magistrates,--or at sessions,--or at assize? Pooh! nonsense!--that was not the way to finish Middleton's business as the parson intended to finish it. Where then? In the Queen's Bench, or the Common Pleas, or the Exchequer? No. What then, in the Vice Chancellor's Court, or the Court of Chancery itself? Not one of 'em, sir; but in a more awful court than any of 'em, or all of 'em put together: in the SPIRITUAL COURT, sir!

What aged dame in Lindsey had not heard of the Spiritual Court? Why the mere sound of the word served to fill her with mysterious awe, and to call up in her memory all the fireside stories of her grandmothers: how such awful "penances" were inflicted by this court, on erring females, in _their_ days,--when the dread power of the priesthood was displayed in punishing the subjects of that natural frailty called "scandal," by compelling them to walk up the church aisle covered with a white sheet, and bearing a wax taper in their hand! With such associations derived from his grandmother, only conceive how awfully queer poor, moral, gentle, religious, upright Clerk William felt when he received the mysterious "writ," issued against him by this mysterious court. "Schollard," as he was, it was so strange a thing to look upon, that he instantly sent for the parish schoolmaster, who, with spectacles on nose, and frequent spelling and some mispelling, read aloud--to a house full of consternated neighbours,--Clerk William turning pale as he heard the beginning,--

"IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN!

"We, John Haggard, Doctor in Civil and Canon Law, Vicar-General in spirituals of the Right Reverend Father in God, John, by Divine Permission, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, and official Principal of the Episcopal and Consistorial Court of Lincoln, lawfully constituted,--to you William Middleton, of the parish of Stow, &c. &c., touching and concerning your soul's health, and the lawful correction and reformation of your manners and excesses, and more especially for profaning the parish church of Stow aforesaid, by brawling, quarrelling, or chiding in the said parish church during the celebration of divine service therein by the Rev. ----, perpetual curate, &c. &c., and also for contumacious behaviour, and refusing to obey the lawful commands of the said----," &c. &c.

And then followed a pompous quotation from a statute of Edward the Sixth, showing that a clergyman had power to prohibit a contumacious member of his flock _ab ingressu ecclesiæ_,--that is to say, from entering the church: in other words, to excommunicate him! Furthermore, an act of the 53d George III. was quoted, declaring that "Persons who may be pronounced or declared to be excommunicate by any ecclesiastical court _in definitive sentences_, or _in interlocutory decrees_, having the force and effect of definitive sentences, as spiritual censures for offences of ecclesiastical cognisance, shall incur imprisonment not exceeding six months, as the court pronouncing or decreeing such person excommunicate shall direct."

That was a sore shake for poor Clerk William! Excommunicated! Why, the thought of such a fate to one who had been brought up in a veneration of the church, whose father was a clerk, and thought himself as fully consecrated as a bishop!--it was no joke to such a one to hear there was a chance of his being excommunicated. Yet he would not "give it up!" No, that he wouldn't: his father had said, "Nobody could turn the parish clerk out of his office so long as he had morality on his side: his office was his freehold:" so his father, Clerk Gervase, of pious memory, had said; and he, Clerk William, would abide by it. So he took the desk on the following Sunday, and kept up the war as usual. Yet he often pondered on "definitive sentences" and "interlocutory decrees,"--when he had learnt the words by heart,--wondering what kind of awful things they were.

The effect of issuing this writ, however, so completely astounded the parishioners that they thenceforth only whispered where they had shouted, and were silent where they had whispered, in all matters relating to the parson: true, whenever a paper for convening any particular parochial meeting was attached to the church door, bearing the usual signature of ---- ----, Incumbent Minister, some wag would be sure to scratch out one of the words, so as to make it read "Incumbrance" Minister, instead: but beyond that there was, now, no further daring.

And, at last, the summons came, and no less than a score of witnesses were taken to the Consistory in Lincoln Cathedral, to be sworn that they would give evidence on the case. And week by week--week by week--the prosing "examinations" were proceeded with, on a certain day of the week, until _a thousand folios_ of "examination" were counted; and when a parishioner asked how much he must pay for a copy of the depositions for Clerk William, the reckoning was made by the "registrar" of the court, at the usual sum per folio--and he was told it would merely be such a trifle as _five-and-twenty pounds_! And then the calculations, and the wonders, and wishes that were expressed, night by night, and day by day, in every cottage at Stow,--nay, in all the villages round, and the wagers that were laid in every village ale-house on a Saturday night, what would be the cost of the whole trial, and how long Clerk William would be imprisoned, and _where_ they would imprison him,--for nobody was so slow of heart or understanding, as not to know beforehand that the "Vicar-General in Spirituals" would give judgment _against_ the poor "parish clerk," as a matter of course, whenever the trial should come to an end.

And _did_ the trial ever come to an end? and _was_ Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, really excommunicated? "By no manner of means, sir," as the pompous fellow says in the play: the grand suit, after causing so tremendous a quassation, and all that, of a considerable quarter of Lindsey, was--given up! Yes, it was: and more than that, the true "parish clerk," Clerk William, was reinstated, fully and entirely, in his rightful office. Ay to this day,--unless our information misleads us,--he exercises the same without losing an inch of his height, or a fragment of his independent spirit; for it is but a few months bygone since he showed it. The grand Perpetual Curate, according to his wont, took upon him to reprehend, at the very grave-side, a Wesleyan, whose child, then being interred, had been baptized by a Wesleyan preacher: Clerk William, right bluntly, told the priest that the Wesleyan had a right to please himself! "Why, as for you, you will say or do any thing," retorted the priest, "if they'll pay you for it!"--"And would you be standing there in that gown, with that book in your hand, unless _you_ were paid for it?" asked and answered Clerk William. The grand Perpetual Curate bit his lip, and walked away!

Reader, we have been relating _facts_: perhaps, in adopting the style of half-rhodomontade, we have not displayed very good taste; but the narrative itself contains uncontradictable _facts_. And these did not occur in a district disturbed by chartism, nor revolutionised by radicalism, or anti-corn-law agitation; but in the old-fashioned, rural centre of Lindsey: it is even there where the "spiritual court" shrinks from employing the foolery of its own worn-out terrors; and where the peasant adventures to beard the priest! Are not these "Signs of the Times?"

DAME DEBORAH THRUMPKINSON,

AND HER ORPHAN APPRENTICE, JOE.

Joe's story opens in that unclassical region, the Isle of Axholme,--a section of Lincolnshire divided from the main body of the county by the broad and far extending stream of the Trent. Insular situations are invariably held to give some peculiarity of manners to their inhabitants; and the Axholmians, or "Men of the Isle," have always been reckoned to be an odd sort of, plain kind of people, by the other inhabitants of Lindsey, the great northern division of the shire, of which the Isle is accounted a part. This was more emphatically true of them seventy years ago; and the face of the country was, at that time, much in keeping with the unpolished character of the Axholmian people. A journey through the Isle, in the autumnal and winter months especially, would then have been studiously avoided by a traveller acquainted with its excessively bad roads, rendered insufferably disagreeable by the stench of the sodden "line" or flax, with which the broad ditches on each side of the rural ways were filled. Low, thatched abodes, built of "stud and mud,"--or wood and clay, were the prevailing description of human dwellings scattered over the land; and swine were the animals most commonly kept and fattened by the farmers and peasantry.

The two considerable villages of Owston and Crowle (pronounced _Crool_ by the euphonious Axholmians), together with the town of Epworth, the modern capital of the Isle, were the only localities in Axholme to which improvements, common in the rest of the shire, had then penetrated. Haxey, the ancient capital of the district, meanwhile, remained unvisited by the spirit of modern change, and drew its only distinction from the historic associations connected with its decay. In remote times, and under its Saxon appellation of "Axel," the town had been fortified with a castle of the Mowbrays, to a chief of which chivalrous race the greater part of "the Isle of Axelholm" was given as a manor, by the Norman conqueror. And, amid the straggling and irregular assemblage of buildings which now form the village, an intelligent visitor would discover indubitable evidence of the former importance of the place. Its large church, displaying the rich architecture prevalent during the wars of the Roses, and supporting a lofty tower resonant at stated hours with chimes of loud and pleasing music, looks from an eminence, almost in cathedral state, over the greater extent of the Isle; and a few ample and curiously built houses of some centuries old,--affording a striking contrast to the paltry erections of the day,--denote the ancient denizens of Haxey to have been the principal possessors of comparative wealth, and, it may be added, of the soil in the neighbourhood.

On a fine summer's evening, at the door of one of these large antiquated houses, sat Dame Deborah Thrumpkinson, the aged widow of Barachiah Thrumpkinson, cordwainer, deceased. Her husband, who had been long dead, was a thrifty man at his trade, and had, by habits of strict industry and parsimony,--holpen therein by the like disposition of his beloved Deborah,--contrived to store a good corner of his double-locked oaken chest with spade-ace guineas. Deborah had acquired sufficient skill in the "art and mystery" of her husband's employment to be able to carry on his trade after his death; and, with the assistance of two stout apprentices, and as many journeymen, was, at the season in which our narrative begins, conducting the best business in that line within a circuit of several miles.

We have hinted that Dame Deborah began to be stricken in years: nevertheless, the labours of "the gentle craft" gave little fatigue to her elastic mind and strong sinewy frame; and as she sat in the old-fashioned oaken chair, enjoying rest, and inhaling the soft breeze, after a day of healthful toil, she neither stooped through infirmity, nor experienced dimness of vision, though sixty winters had gone over her head. The short pipe in her mouth proved that she had discovered an effectual, though unfeminine, solace for a weary frame; and although, through the flitting volumes of smoke, you saw that their frequent visitings had left on the dame's cheek a deeper shade than years only would have imprinted there,--yet, a nearer gaze would have convinced you that, in youth, no contemptible degree of comeliness had been commingled with her strength. With the calmness derived from experienced age, and from a consciousness of honest independence,--thus, then, sat the grave Deborah, receiving, now and then, a mark of respect from the slow, worn labourers of either sex, as they passed homeward, with fork or rake on shoulder, from the hay-field.

The dame had just knocked the ashes out of the head of her pipe, and was about to retire within her dwelling for the night, when her attention was strongly attracted by the conversation of a group which was suddenly formed but a few yards from her threshold. A pale, melancholy-looking woman, with a very little boy clinging to her blue linen apron, was met by a master chimney-sweep, followed by a couple of wretched-looking urchins bowed beneath enormous bags of soot.

"Well, mistress," said the man, in a voice so harsh that it grated sorely on the ears of Dame Deborah, who would have been offended with the words of the speaker, even if they had been uttered in the softest accents, "you may as well take the fasten-penny I offered you the other day, and let me have this lad o' yours."

The child clung more closely to his mother, and looked imploringly and pitifully in her face.

"Nay, I think I mustn't," replied the pale-looking woman, in a faint and somewhat irresolute tone, catching the wistful glance of her child, and then bending her eyes sorrowfully on the ground.

"Why, a golden guinea'll do thee some service," resumed the sweep; "and I'll warrant me, I'll take care o' thy little lad. He shall get plenty to eat and drink,--and I reckon he doesn't get overmuch of ayther with thee."

"I get as much as my mammy gets," said the child, adventuring to speak, but looking greatly affrighted.

"Why, thou art a tight little rogue," said the chimney sweep, smiling grimly through his soot, "and could run briskly up a chimney, I lay a wager.--Come, give us thy hand, and say thou wilt go with us."

The man's attempt at coaxing had a repulsive effect on the child, for he drew back, and trembled lest he should be laid hold of.

"Come, I'll make it two guineas," resumed the sweep, again addressing the mother; "and what canst thou do with him, now his father is dead,--as thou saidst when I met thee at Wroot, the other day? Thou wilt be obliged to throw thyself on some parish, soon,--for they'll never suffer thee to go sorning about in this way; and if thou art once in the workhouse, depend on't th' overseers will soon 'prentice the poor little fellow to somebody that may prove a hard master to him, mayhap. Better take my offer, and let him be sure of kind usage."

The mother was silent and motionless, and tears began to fall fast, while the sense of her present destitution and fears for the impending future struggled like strong wrestlers, with natural affection:--a fearful antagonism within, of which none but Adversity's children can conceive the reality of the portraiture.

"Nay, prythee, do not fret," said the man, with affected pity; and then taking out his begrimed hempen purse under the confident expectation that he was about to gain his point at once from the heart-broken weakness of a woman, added, "Come, come, here's that that will get thee a new gown, and, maybe, put thee in the way of getting on in the world besides."

The woman did not put forth her hand to take the proffered price for her child, for her mind was now too deeply distracted to understand the sweep's meaning; or, if she understood him, her frame was now too weak with grief to permit her making any answer.

"Oh, mammy, mammy!--do not let the grimy man take me away!" exclaimed the child, bursting into violent weeping, and pulling forcibly at his mother's apron.

"What's the matter with your bairn, good woman?" cried the benevolent old Dame Deborah at this moment,--for she had heard too much to be longer a listener, merely;--and the Axholmians were not versed in those refinements of modern society which define a neighbourly and humane interposition to be an act of unmannerly officiousness.

"Mammy, mammy!--good old woman speaks you," said the eager child, striving to arouse his mother's attention, and to call off her mind from the intense conflict which seemed to have paralysed her consciousness.

"Ay, ay," observed the sweep, "Dame Thrumpkinson is a thrifty, sensible body: let us put it, now, to her, as a reasonable matter, and see if she does not say I speak fair."

The group drew near the dame's door, and the man recounted the terms of his proposal with a self-complacent emphasis which indicated that he believed the dame, being a well-reputed tradeswoman, would assent at once to the advisableness of his scheme, and assist him in its immediate accomplishment.

"Now, what d'ye think, dame?" he said in conclusion; "d'ye not think that I speak fair?"

"Think!" answered the aged woman, fixing her keen grey eyes upon the trafficker with an expression which withered his hopes in a moment;--"think!--why I think it would be a sinful shame to soil that bairn's pratty face wi' soot; and I think, beside, that thou hast so little of a man in thee, to wring a widowed-woman's heart by tempting her to barter the body and soul of her own bairn for gold, that if I were twenty years younger, I would shake thy liver in thee for what thou hast said to her."

The man's countenance fell, and he looked, for a moment, as if about to return an answer of abuse; but the dame kept her keen eye bent unblenchingly upon him;--and it seemed as if his courage failed, for he put up the guineas hastily into his purse, and turned from the spot, without daring to attempt an answer, followed by the two diminutive slaves whose hard lot it was to call him "Master."

"Ah, poor woman!" exclaimed Dame Deborah to the weeping and speechless mother;--"what a sorry sight it would have been to see you take yon hard-hearted rascal's money, while this poor faytherless innocent trudged away with a bag o' soot on his feeble back! No, no, it isn't come to that, nayther," she continued, vacating her arm-chair, and gently forcing the distressed woman into it; "sit thee down, poor heart! the bairn shall not want a friend, if aught should ail thee. I'll take care of him myself, if God Almighty should take thee away as well as his poor fayther."

"God bless you, dame!" sobbed the cheered mother, clasping her hands, and bursting anew into tears, which were now tears of joy.

"God bless good old woman!" shouted the little fellow, with the real heaven of guileless childhood in his face.

"My poor child may soon need your goodness, kind dame," rejoined the melancholy mother, turning very deadly pale,--"for I feel I am not long for this world: my strength is nearly gone."

"Well, well, poor heart, cheer up!" said the dame, in a tone of sincere condolence:--"remember, that there is One above, who hath said, He will be "a husband to the widow, and a"----but I'll fetch thee and thy pratty bairn a bite o' bread and cheese, and a horn o' mead.--Lord bless me! how white the poor creature is turning! God Almighty save her soul! she's going!"

The kind old woman hastened to support the sinking head of the dying stranger, and the child clung, convulsively, to the cold and helpless hand of his mother,--and uttered his wailing agony. All was soon over,--for the poor wanderer died almost instantaneously in Dame Deborah's arm-chair.

Reader, if thou hast a heart to love thy mother, I need not attempt to describe to thee how deep was the grief and horror felt by the orphan as he gazed upon his dead mother's face. And if thou hast not such a heart, I will not give thee an occasion to slight a feeling so holy as a child's absorbed love for its loving mother.

Suffice it to say, that after three days of almost unmitigated grief, the child, led by Dame Deborah, followed his mother's corpse, sobbing, to the grave; but the aged hand that conducted him to witness the laying of his heart-broken parent in her last resting-place led him back to a comfortable home. The sudden and striking circumstances of his mother's death saddened the orphan's spirits for some time; but he soon recovered the natural gaiety of childhood, notwithstanding his transference from the care of an affectionate and over-indulgent mother, to that of a guardian of advanced age and grave manners.

Deborah Thrumpkinson in vain inquired after the orphan's full name. He only knew that he had been called "Joe." She guessed that he must be about four years old; and, fearful that a ceremony which she conceived to be an indispensable preparative for his eternal salvation might have been neglected, she took him to the font of the parish church, and had him baptized "Joseph--in a Christian way," as she termed it: the good dame, herself, becoming surety for the child's fulfilment of the vows thus taken upon himself by proxy.

Joe's godmother and protectress taught him to read. And no benefit she conferred upon him in after-life was more thankfully remembered by him than this, her humane and patient initiation of his infantile understanding into the mystery of the alphabet, and the formation of syllables. Here her labour ended, for her science extended little further; but a Bible with the Apocrypha, ornamented with plates,--a valued family possession of the Thrumpkinsons,--was within his reach, and, at any hour of Sunday,--and sometimes on other days of the week when he had washed his hands very clean,--he was privileged with the growing pleasure of turning over the pages of the folio of wonders ever new.