The sexton shook his head. He was only a middle-aged man, and therefore not yet arrived at sextonial ripeness; for a sexton only begins to be mellow when he is ninety or thereabouts. He knew nothing of the Davenants except that there were once Lords Davenant, now lying in the family vault below the chancel, and none of them left in the parish at all, nor any in his memory, nor in that of his father's before him, so far as he could tell.
After a careful examination of the books, the professor was enabled to state with confidence that at the time in question the Davenant name was borne by none but the family at the castle; that there were no cousins of the name in the place; and that the heir born in that year was christened on such a day, and received the name of Timothy Clitheroe.
If this had been the only evidence, the case would have made in favor of the Canaan City claimant; but, unfortunately, there was another discovery made by the professor, at sight of which he whistled, and then shook his head, and then considered whether it would not be best to cut out the page, while the sexton thought he was forcing a card, or palming a ball, or boiling an egg, or some other ingenious feat of legerdemain. For he instantly perceived that the fact recorded before his eyes had an all-important bearing upon the case of his illustrious friends.
The little story which he saw was, in short, this:
In the same year of the birth of the infant Timothy Clitheroe, there was born of a poor vagrant woman, who wandered no one knew where from, into the parish and died in giving him to the world, a man-child. There was no one to rejoice over him, or to welcome him, or to claim him: therefore he became parish property, and had to be christened, fed, flogged, admonished, and educated, so far as education in those days was considered necessary, at the charge of the parish. The first step was to give him a name. For it was formerly, and may be still, a custom in country parishes to name a waif of this kind after the village itself, which accounts for many odd surnames, such as Stepney, Marylebone, or Hoxton. It was not a good custom, because it might lead to complications, as perhaps it did in this case, when there was already another family legitimately entitled to bear the name. The authorities, following this custom, conferred upon the baby the lordly name of Davenant. Then, as it was necessary that he should have a Christian name, and it would be a pity to waste good Richard or Robin upon a beggar brat, they gave him the day of the week on which he was born. This was intended to keep him humble, and to remind him that he had no right to any of the distinguished Christian names bestowed upon respectably born children.