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Mention is made in the book of some sojourns at Windsor, 
but I do not think he was officially connected with S. George’s 
Chapel, or it would have been recorded on his tomb. 
The good writing continues until 1784, and then a change for 
__ the worse takes place. After that time no entries were made for 
, many years, and then they were few and irregular, the last being - 
- Collected for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign parts, June 6, 1819, £3. 19s. 24d. From house to house 
im 19/-.” 
~ But some may ask, what were these Briefs? How came they 
to be so numerous as to fill a book? Here and there we find 
mention of one or two in the Archzxological Journals extracted 
from parish account books, but to the world at large they are as 
unknown as the Dodo, and the services of which they formed 
part have greatily benefited by their extinction. For Briefs were a 
_ part of the service of the Church of England, I might almost say, 
_and we still suffer from the part they played. 
No more effectual plan was ever devised to drive persons from 
Church and the services of the Church, than the reading of Briefs, 
Citations, and Excommunications after the Nicene Creed, 10 or 
12 of these Briefs had been received since the last visitation, 
and they had to be returned with an account of the money 
collected, when next the clergy met. Imagine reading out each 
Sunday in Church, just before the sermon, all the appeals we now 
receive during the week, where would be the congregation. Briefs 
curtailed Mr. Pepys’ generosity. (June 30, 1661.) ‘The Briefs 
come every Sunday we resolve to give no more to them.” 
Though it is ordered in the latter part of the Rubric to which I 
just alluded that nothing shall be published in Church, during 
Divine Service but by the Minister, the many services and badly 
paid Curate left the reading of the Briefs to the Clerk. Some 
read well, but they must have been the exception, and remember 
men were obliged to go to Church in those days, on so many 
Sundays they must listen to the Clerk stumbling over the names, 
