By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.b'.A. 



39 



CLEllGY. 1 



Of the ill-endowed vicars of the parish we have a list for five 

 hundred and fifty years, or thereabouts, but I do not see among 

 them the names of any persons of what may be called national 

 reputation, so that where nothing is known there is nothing to be 

 told. But every one must have observed how soon, how very soon, 

 names that made, perhaps, considerable noise in the country in their 

 day, slip out of memory when their day is over. Unless they have 

 left some abiding mark whereby posterity may be reminded of their 

 having once existed, the biography is summed up in the three 

 entries of a parish register — born, married, and died, if even so much 

 as that. It is so (according to Hamlet) with persons of more im- 

 portance than the modest vicars of a country parish : " There is hope 

 that a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year, but by 

 our Lady he must build Churches then, or else shall he suffer not 

 thinking on."" But Time which so mercilessly devours most things 

 has kindly spared us a few crumbs concerning two of the older 

 vicars of this parish. One was 



Philip Htjnton. 



A man of good learning and abilities, who, after being schoolmaster 

 at Abury, was appointed in the Commonwealth period to be minister 

 first at Devizes, then at Heytesbury, and lastly at Westbury. 

 Whilst he was here he was appointed one of the commissioners for 

 Wilts for ejecting from their livings those of the clergy who in the 

 good pleasure of the Puritanical party were considered to be " scan- 

 dalous, ignorant, and insufficient." He afterwards published a 

 treatise on monarchy, in which his views gave such offence to the 



1 There is a singular entry relating to the Church property here, in Domesday 

 Book, at which time the whole lay manor belonged to the Crown. The land 

 belonging to the Church was nearly two hundred acres : held, says the record, by 

 I clericolus quidam." The late Canon Rich Jones, in his edition of the Wilts 

 Domesday (p. 14), observes that " by clericolus the scribe meant clericulus : a 

 word explained by Ducangeto mean a junior clerk or a choir-boy " (both of which 

 interpretations seem highly inapplicable), "but it is difficult to say what is the 

 exact meaning of the word in this passage." 



