PAROCHIAL CLERGY. iii 



Mr. Morley was succeeded at Aylesbury by the 

 Rev. J. Pretyman, a grand-nephew of the Bishop of 

 Lincohi, and Mr. Pretyman by the Rev. Edward Bicker- 

 steth, Archdeacon of Buckingham, afterwards Dean 

 of Lichfield. The Archdeacon, Purey Cust, now the 

 accomplished Dean of York, was the next incumbent, 

 and was followed by the Rev. Arthur Lloyd, now Vicar 

 and Canon of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who is acting Dean 

 of that new diocese, and a most powerful and eloquent 

 preacher. It is curious that three succeeding vicars 

 have been promoted successively to deaneries, and I 

 may safely say that the parochial re'gn for more than 

 thirty years of three such men has had a great and 

 beneficial effect on the character of the people, their 

 churchmanship, and sense of Christian duties, not only 

 in the town, but in the whole neighbourhood. 



When I was about twenty years of age I had already 

 taken a part in the religious politics of the day. The 

 wrangle over church-rates, which had been steadily 

 growing in rancour for some years, had now become 

 intensified, and in no part of England perhaps did the 

 odium tJieologicum rage with greater violence than at 

 Aylesbury. My father had been Vicar's churchwarden 

 for many years, and, like his people before him, had 

 been very persistent in standing up for the rights and 

 privileges of the Church. A big, burly miller, named 

 Pursell, one of the overseers of the parish, took a very 

 prominent part in the opposition to church-rates, 

 and he came up one evening in June to my father, 

 who was standing under the portico in front of his own 

 house, and began abusing him shamefully, and accusing 



