Hull Institute, has collected in his
_Curiosities of the Church_ much information concerning sluggard-wakers
and dog-whippers. The clerk in one church used a long staff, at one end
of which was a fox's brush for gently arousing a somnolent female, while
at the other end was a knob for a more forcible awakening of a male
sleeper. The Dunchurch sluggard-waker used a stout wand with a fork at
the end of it. During the sermon he stepped stealthily up and down the
nave and aisles and into the gallery marking down his prey. And no one
resented his forcible awakenings.

The sluggard-waker and dog-whipper appear in many old churchwardens'
account-books. Thus in the accounts of Barton-on-Humber there is an
entry for the year 1740: "Paid Brocklebank for waking sleepers 2 s. 0."
At Castleton the officer in 1722 received 10 s. 0[79]. The clerk in his
capacity of dog-whipper had often arduous duties to perform in the old
dale churches of Yorkshire when farmers and shepherds frequently brought
their dogs to church. The animals usually lay very quietly beneath their
masters' seat, but occasionally there would be a scrimmage and fight,
and the clerk's staff was called into play to beat the dogs and
produce order.

[Footnote 79: The reader will find numerous entries relating to this
subject in the work of Mr. W. Andrews to which I have referred.]

Why dogs should have been ruthlessly and relentlessly whipped out of
churches I can scarcely tell. The Highland shepherd's dog usually lies
contentedly under his master's seat during a long service, and even an
archbishop's collie, named Watch, used to be very still and well-behaved
during the daily service, only once being roused to attention and a
stately progress to the lectern by the sound of his master's voice
reading the verse "I say unto all, Watch." But our ancestors made war
against dogs entering churches. In mediaeval and Elizabethan times such
does not seem to have been the case, as one of the duties of the clerks
in those days was to make the church clean from the "shomeryng of dogs."
The nave of the church was often used for secular purposes, and dogs
followed their masters. Mastiffs were sometimes let loose in the church
to guard the treasures, and I believe that I am right in stating that
chancel rails owe their origin to the presence of dogs in churches, and
were erected to prevent them from entering the sanctuary. Old Scarlett
bears a dog-whip as a badge of his office, and t