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NOTES ON THE RECTORS OF STAVELEY. 77 
born at Staveley, and baptized there 7th December, 1732. He 
received the rudiments of his education at Netherthorpe School, 
under Mr. Richard Robinson; from hence he went to Peter- 
house, Cambridge, and appears to have arrived just at the time 
when the Collegians, by their mimicry of Gray’s effeminate 
manner, had driven him from his College. ‘This was in March, 
1756. The bard readily gave up his rooms to Mr. Gisborne, 
who was always a grave man, and even then stood aloof from this 
indiscretion of his companions. It does not seem clear that Mr. 
Gisborne was originally designed for an ecclesiastic—indeed, I 
- have heard the contrary; but the decease, at Cambridge, of his 
next elder brother, in 1750, probably decided his views and those 
of his family in favour of his entering into holy orders in that 
Church, the religious duties of which he afterwards lived to per- 
form through so protracted a period. He-preached his first 
sermon in Staveley Church on Sunday, 23. December, 1759, 
from St. John xiii. 34. On the 14th November, 1809, being the 
day on which he completed the soth year of his rectorate, a 
jubilee was held in Staveley. There was a public dinner, and 
bread and meat were given to the poor, etc. Mr. Gisborne 
preached his last sermon in the place where he had laboured so 
many years, on Sunday, 26th December, 1819. He died a 
bachelor, on the 30th July, 1821, remarkable for his age (89), his 
eccentricities, and his charities. There is a short biographical 
notice of him in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1819, where it is 
said that, “although in his 88th year, he continues to fulfil all 
the functions of a village rector, christening, marrying and burying 
his parishioners ; in the latter office he never fails, be the weather 
ever so unfavourable, to meet the corpse at the church gates, and 
_ proceed before it to the church, and at the grave always refusing 
_ any temporary shelter, be the season ever so inclement.” Like 
many others, he had his foibles, and he only exceeded them in 
the number of his virtues. Grave as was his manner generally, 
gravity is hardly the most frequent characteristic of the tales of 
remembrance of the village greybeards, who tell a profusion of 
anecdotes respecting the domestic life and conversation of the 
