TA<? Baron Court of Little Brought-in. 369 



coughed till they were heard all over the manor of Hangfield ; 

 and every body said that, to a certainty, they would belch up their 

 bowels if they had any. 



The sufferings of the poor clerks soon came to the ears of Lord 

 Lyeandareit, wno had once been a clerk himself, and he resolved 

 to do what he could for them. He had once been a Mutton, but 

 had latterly turned Pork, some say fro*m suspicion that his wife 

 was a Mutton, though that was mere tattle. At all events, he had 

 gobbled up many things to bring him to the proper lard and bristle ; 

 and he was now a Pork of the foremost snout. He got one Sir 

 Speechy Stormcock to help him ; and the two had the clerks at 

 the bar of the Court in a jiffy. But they retched and puked so 

 piteously at the bar, and spread such an odour of black bile all over 

 the place, that many of the very Porks themselves held sal volatile 

 to their noses ; and the buckskins of Sir Speechy slipt down, to be 

 out of the way in case of a commotion in his inside. The clerks 

 were therefore soon sent back, bidding the parish officers bear the 

 pill as well as they could in the meantime ; and the Porks would 

 give them "conserve of hips" to comfort their stomachs, when 

 they came their rounds. 



But this was not the whole, or the worst of it; for the parish 

 officers were put upon regimen, in order to render a second dose of 

 the pill unnecessary. Among other things, they were strictly for- 

 bidden to run up scores at the alehouse and charge them in the 

 parish accounts, even though the parson had his pipe and pot along 

 with the rest. A sad "hullabaloo" was set up at this. It is a fa- 

 vourite argument among the Porks that " a parson is nothing with- 

 out a pipe and pot ; and a Church is nothing without a parson : 

 Ergo, if the parson has no pipe and pot, there will be no Church ; 

 and if no Church, no religion ; Ergo, again, if the parson has not 

 his pipe and pot, the whole inhabitants of Little Brought-in, man, 

 woman, and child, must become pagan heathens." It was in vain 

 that the Muttons and those who sided with them, said that the par- 

 sons could take their pipe and their pot at their own expense in 

 their parsonages like independent family men ; for the answer of 

 the Porks invariably was, " They won't. Love for the best in- 

 terests of his flock will make a parson take a pipe and pot at the 

 parish expense ; but you have no hold on him whereby you can 

 make him do the same at his own expense. In the one case, it is a 

 public duty ; in the other, it is a private affair with which nobody 

 has any title to interfere." 



It is amazing how this doctrine took with every tail of the par- 

 sons'. They loved to spend an hour at the alehouse, where they 

 were " cocks of the walk ; " they loved the pipe and pot ; and a 

 very few had no objection to chuck the bar-maid under the chin, 

 if she was pretty, which was generally the case in the alehouse 

 " used" by the parish officers. So the parsons were up in arms, 

 preaching against not sins but Muttons ; and really putting the 

 Church in some danger by their zeal in declaring that it was so. 

 The boards of more than fifty pulpits are said to have been cracked 

 by the thumping the very first Sunday ; and it was whispered that 



APRIL, 1837. 2 B 



