ish clerk was
always invited to the banquets or "feasts" given by the corporation of
the borough; and he was honoured annually with a card of invitation to
the "mayor's feast" on Michaelmas Day. On one occasion the mayor-elect
had omitted to send a card to the clerk, Mr. David Absolon, who was
clerk from 1811 to 1831, and had been a member of the corporation and
common councillor previous to his appointment to his ecclesiastical
office. On the following Sunday, Master David Absolon reminded his
worship of his remissness by giving out the following verse, directing
his voice at the same time to the mayor-elect:

Let David his accustomed place
In thy remembrance find."

The words in Tate and Brady's metrical version of Psalm cxxxii. run
thus:

"Let David, Lord, a constant place
In Thy remembrance find[73]."

[Footnote 73: _History of St. Nicholas' Church, Great Yarmouth_, by the
present Clerk, Mr. Edward J. Lupson, p. 24.]

In the same town great excitement used to attend the election of the
mayor on 29 August in each year. Before the election the corporation
attended service in the parish church, and the clerk on these occasions
gave out for singing "the first two staves of the fifteenth Psalm:

"Lord, who's the happy man," etc.

The passing of the Municipal Act changed the manner and time of the
election, but it did not take away the interest felt in the event. As
long as Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms was used in the church,
that is until the year 1840, these "two staves" were annually sung on
the Sunday preceding the election[74].

[Footnote 74: _Ibid._, p. 23.]

In these days of reverent worship it seems hardly possible that the
beautiful expressions in the psalms of praise to Almighty God should
ever have been prostituted to the baser purposes of private gain or
municipal elections.

Sleepy times and sleepy clerks--and yet these were not always sleepy; in
fact, far too lively, riotous, and unruly. At least, so the poor rector
of Hayes found them in the middle of the eighteenth century. Such
conduct in church is scarcely credible as that which was witnessed in
this not very remote parish church in not very remote times. The
registers of the parish of Hayes tell the story in plain language. On 18
March, 1749, "the clerk gave out the 100th Psalm, and the singers
immediately opposed him, and sung the 15th, and bred a disturbance. _The
clerk then ceased_." Poor man, what