Not a few of our old parish clerks and sextons were eccentric characters, and it is not therefore surprising that their epitaphs are amongst the most curious of the many strange examples to be found in the quiet resting-places of the departed.

In the churchyard of Crayford is a gravestone bearing the following inscription:—

In addition to being parish clerk, Frank Raw, of Selby, Yorkshire, was a gravestone cutter, for we are told:—

The next epitaph, placed to the memory of a parish clerk and bellows-maker, was formerly in the old church of All Saints’, Newcastle-on-Tyne:—

On a slate headstone, near the south porch of Bingham Church, Nottinghamshire, is inscribed:—

From the churchyard of Ratcliffe-on-Soar, we have a curious epitaph to the memory of Robert Smith, who died in 1782, aged 82 years:—

In a note by Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A., we are told that with the clerkship of Bakewell Church, the “vocal powers” of its holders appear to have been to some extent hereditary, if we may judge by the inscriptions recording the deaths and the abilities of two members of the family of Roe, which are found on gravestones in the churchyard there. The first of these, recording the death of Samuel Roe, is as under:—

He had three wives, Millicent, who died in 1745, aged 22; Dorothy, who died 1754, aged 28; and Sarah, who survived him and died in 1811, at the age of 77. A gravestone records the death of his first two wives as follows, and the third is commemorated in the above inscription.

Millicent,
Wife of Saml Roe,
She died Sepr 16th, 1745, aged 22.
Dorothy,
Wife of Saml Roe,
She died Novr 13th, 1754, aged 28.

Respecting the above-mentioned Samuel Roe, a contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine wrote, on February 13th, 1794:—

“Mr. Urban,

“It was with much concern that I read the epitaph upon Mr. Roe, in your last volume, p. 1192. Upon a little tour which I made in Derbyshire, in 1789, I met with that worthy and very intelligent man at Bakewell, and, in the course of my antiquarian researches there, derived no inconsiderable assistance from his zeal and civility. If he did not possess the learning of his namesake, your old and valuable correspondent, I will venture to declare that he was not less influenced by a love and veneration for antiquity, many proofs of which he had given by his care and attention to the monuments in the church, which were committed to his charge; for he united the characters of sexton, clerk, singing-master, will-maker, and school-master. Finding that I was quite alone, he requested permission to wait upon me at the inn in the evening, urging, as a reason for this request, that he must be exceedingly gratified by the conversation of a gentleman who could read the characters upon the monument of Vernon, the founder of Haddon House, a treat he had not met with for many years. After a very pleasant gossip we parted, but not till my honest friend had, after some apparent struggle, begged of me to indulge him with my name.”

To his careful attention is to be attributed the preservation of the curious Vernon and other monuments in the church, over which, in some instances, he placed wooden framework to keep off the rough hands and rougher knives of the boys and young men of the congregation. He also watched with special care over the Wendesley tomb, and even took careful rubbings of the inscriptions.

While speaking of this Mr. Roe, it may be well to put the readers of this work in possession of an interesting fact in connection with the name of Roe, or Row. The writer above, in his letter to Mr. Urban, says, “If he did not possess the learning of his namesake, your old and valued correspondent,” etc. By this he means “T. Row,” whose contributions to the Gent.’s Mag. were very numerous and interesting. The writer under this signature was the Rev. Samuel Pegge, rector of Whittington, and the letters forming this pseudonym were the initials of the words, T[he] R[ector] O[f] W[hittington].Philip Roe, who succeeded his father (Samuel Roe) as parish clerk of Bakewell, was his son by his third wife. He was born in 1763, and succeeded his father in full parochial honours in 1792, having, we believe, for some time previously acted as his deputy. He died in 1815, aged 52 years, and was buried with the other members of the family. The following curious inscription appears on his gravestone:—

Cuthbert Bede, B.A., says, “As a boy I often attended the service at Belbroughton Church, Worcestershire, where the parish clerk was Mr. Osborne, tailor. His family had there been parish clerks and tailors since the time of Henry the Eighth, and were lineally descended from William FitzOsborne, who, in the twelfth century, had been deprived by Ralph FitzHerbert of his right to the manor of Bellem, in the parish of Belbroughton. Often have I stood in the picturesque churchyard of Wolverley, Worcestershire, by the grave of its old parish clerk, whom I well remember, old Thomas Worrall, the inscription on whose monument is as follows:—

It may be noted of this worthy parish clerk that, with the exception of a week or two before his death, he was never once absent from his Sunday and week-day duties in the forty-seven years during which he held office. He succeeded his father, James Worrall, who died in 1806, aged seventy-nine, after being parish clerk of Wolverley for thirty years. His tombstone, near to that of his son, was erected ‘to record his worth both in his public and private character, and as a mark of personal esteem—h.l.F.H.& W.C.p.c.’ I am told that these initials stand for F. Hurtle and the Rev. William Callow, and that the latter was the author of the following lines inscribed on the monument, which are well worth quoting:—

A memorial record on the church of Holy Trinity, Hull, is as follows:—

In memory of John Stone
Parish Clerk 41 years
Excellent in his way
Buried here 26 May 1727
Aged 78.

First amongst notable sextons is the name of Old Scarlett, who died July 2, 1591, at the good old age of ninety-eight, and occupied for a long time the position of sexton of Peterborough Cathedral. He buried two generations of his fellow-creatures. A portrait of him, placed at the west end of that noble church, has perpetuated his fame, and caused him to be introduced in effigy in various publications. Says a writer in the “Book of Days”: “And what a lively effigy—short, stout, hardy, and self-complacent, perfectly satisfied, and perhaps even proud, of his profession, and content to be exhibited with all its insignia about him! Two queens had passed through his hands into that bed which gives a lasting rest to queens and to peasants alike. An officer of Death, who had so long defied his principal, could not but have made some impression on the minds of bishop, dean, prebends, and other magnates of the Cathedral, and hence, as we may suppose, the erection of this lively portraiture of the old man, which is believed to have been only once renewed since it was first put up. Dr. Dibdin, who last copied it, tells us that ‘Old Scarlett’s jacket and trunkhose are of a brownish red, his stockings blue, his shoes black, tied with blue ribbons, and the soles of his feet red. The cap upon his head is red, and so also is the ground of the coat armour.’”