of Froissart's Chronicle there is an illustration of the
coronation procession of Charles V of France. The clerk goes before the
cross-bearer and the bishop bearing his holy-water vessel and his
sprinkler for the purpose of aspersing the spectators. We have already
given two illustrations taken from a fourteenth-century MS. in the
British Museum, which depict the clerk, as the _aquaebajalus_, entering
the lord's house and going first into the kitchen to sprinkle the cook
with holy water, and then into the hall to perform a like duty to the
lord and lady as they sit at dinner.

There is a fine picture in a French pontifical of the fifteenth century,
which is in the British Museum (Tiberius, B. VIII, f. 43), of the
anointing and coronation of a king of France. An ecclesiastical
procession is represented meeting the king and his courtiers at the door
of the cathedral of Rheims, and amongst the dignitaries we see the clerk
bearing the holy-water vessel, the cross-bearer, and the thurifer
swinging his censer. The clerk wears a surplice over a red tunic.

One other of these mediaeval representations of the clerk's duties may be
mentioned. It is a fifteenth-century French MS. in the British Museum
(Egerton, 2019, f. 142), and represents the last scenes of this mortal
life. The absolution of the penitent, the administration of the last
sacrament, the woman mourning for her husband and arranging the
grave-clothes, the singing of the dirige, the burial, and the reception
of the soul of the departed by our Lord in glory. The clerk appears in
several of these scenes. He is kneeling behind the priest in the
administration of the last sacrament. Robed in surplice and cope he is
chanting the Psalms for the departed, and at the burial he is holding
the holy-water vessel for the asperging of the corpse.

There are several paintings by English artists which represent the
old-fashioned clerk in all his glory in his throne in the lowest seat of
the "three-decker." Perhaps the most striking is the satirical sketch of
the pompous eighteenth-century clerk as shown in Hogarth's engraving of
_The Sleeping Congregation_, to which I have already referred. As a
contrast to Hogarth's _Sleeping Congregation_ we may place Webster's
famous painting of a village choir, which is thoroughly life-like and
inspiring. The old clerk with enrapt countenance is singing lustily. The
musicians are performing on the 'cello, clarionet, and hautboy, and the
singe