Next come two stories from the same neighbourhood of Oswestry, but of a more unclerical nature:
A relation of Sir Watkin Wynn was one day hunting with those hounds when his horse stumbled in a lane and fell with him. Whereupon Simpson, at that time Sir Watkin's second horseman, jumped off to help him, and thinking him dangerously hurt tried to comfort him with a text of Scripture, saying, "Ah, sir! naked we came out of our mother's womb and naked we shall return thither!"
Dr. B----, of Oswestry, has three horses which he has named "High Church," "Low Church," and "Broad Church." The reason he gives is that the first is always on his knees, the second never, and as for the third you never know what he will do next.
This last story leads on naturally to a number of good things on the subject of Ritualism. A High Churchman was practically an unknown quantity in those parts when Bishop Walsham How first went to be Rector of Whittington in 1851. The smallest innovation or improvement in a service, such as are generally accepted nowadays in Evangelical Churches, raised a storm of protest, and the ignorance displayed by newspapers as well as by private individuals is almost past belief in these days when we have been satiated with articles and correspondence on "advanced practices." For instance:
A Wellington paper, commenting severely on the supposed ritualistic practices at Welsh Hampton, spoke of the Vicar as "practising the most unblushing celibacy."
The same paper describing an evening service at St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, spoke of the vicar as walking in procession with his curate from the vestry and then entering the desk and beginning the evening service, "or, as, borrowing the language of these gentlemen, we ought more correctly to say, evening matins."
A short time ago the Reverend James Hook, Vicar of Morton, was coming to see me by train. There were several women in the carriage, and one of them began to talk to the others about Whittington, asking them if they knew what shocking things were done in the church there. She then said she once went into Whittington Church and saw the host on the altar. There were great exclamations of horror, when Mr. Hook quietly looked up from his paper and said, "I beg your pardon, what did you see?" "The host on the altar, sir," she said. "Oh, and what was it like?" She hesitated and said she could not exactly describe it. He told her not to mind about being very exact, but would she tell him what sort of a thing it was? She then said she did not notice very carefully. So he then said he would tell her what it meant, and having done so, he told her how wicked it was to invent such stories. She was then frightened, and said with some alarm, "Well, sir, I am certain I saw two rows of candlesticks down the two sides of the church."