There are so many little items in the “Diary” which are of interest as illustrating old customs, some of which still exist, and others which have died out, that it would be quite impossible to allude here even to a fraction of them. One or two instances, therefore, gathered at random, must be sufficient. Pepys on several occasions mentions the custom of “beating the bounds” in the various parishes on Ascension Day or Holy Thursday, when a boy was in some cases beaten, or, as in Dorsetshire, tossed into a stream, in order to impress very forcibly upon his memory the locality of the parish boundaries. At one time he writes, “This day was kept a holy-day through the town; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broomstaffs in their hands, as I had myself long ago gone,”[356] and at another, “They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their procession.”[357] Allusion has already been made to the mixed motives that drew Pepys to church, and how he often attended more to the pretty faces in the congregation than to the words of the preacher. He had high authority for his conduct in the demeanour of the court, and he himself tells us how, while Bishop Morley (of Winchester) was preaching on the song of the angels, and reprehending the mistaken jollity of the court, the courtiers “all laugh in the chapel when he reflected on their ill actions and courses.”[358]
There is comparatively little in the “Diary” about the Nonconformists, although in the early part of his career Pepys was more favourable to their claims than to those of the conforming clergy. He was once induced to give five shillings to a parson among the fanatics, who said a long grace like a prayer, and was in great want, although he would willingly have done otherwise. His aunt James, “a poor, religious, well-meaning, good soul,” told him that the minister’s prayers had helped to cure him when he was cut for the stone.[359]
We have a curious peep into a rustic church which Pepys and his cousin Roger attended on the 4th of August, 1662: “At our coming in, the country people all rose with so much reverence; and when the parson begins, he begins ‘Right worshipful and dearly beloved,’ to us.”