Volume I Part 9 (1/2)
The impulsive and the ambitious of repute may overlook this consideration, but as I sought neither distinction nor martyrdom, I acted as I did because no other course was open, and no other person would take this.
II.
In the year following the prosecution in the Court of Exchequer, Her Majesty gave me further trouble in discharge of the odious duty imposed upon her as collector of debts for the Church. As few know to-day how hateful this impost was, it will be informing to see how the clerical case was officially stated to me. It began as follows:--
”Mr. George Jacob Holyoake,--Take Notice that in and by certain Rates or a.s.sessments made by virtue of and for the purposes mentioned in the Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in the 4th Year of the Reign of her late Majesty Queen Ann, Cap. 27, int.i.tuled, 'An Act for settling the Impropriate Tythes of the Parish of Saint Bridgett, alias Bride's, London,' You are a.s.sessed in respect of the Houses, Shops, Warehouses, Cellars, Stables, Tofts, Grounds, or other Tenements or Hereditaments, within the said Parish occupied by you, in four several Sums amounting to One pound four s.h.i.+llings and eightpence for four several Quarters of a Year commencing at the Feast of The Birth of our Lord Christ, 1854, and ending at the same Feast in the Year 1855, and that such a.s.sessments are made on a Rental of 74. Dated this 22nd day of May, 1856.
”John William Thomas,
”Collector of the said Rates.”
These ecclesiastical cormorants took a hungry survey of every place containing property on which they could lay hands. After the Rathcormac ma.s.sacre, where two sons of the widow Ryan were shot by the soldiers, employed by the Church in collecting its rates--how appropriate and consoling it must be to a bereaved mother to read that the rates commenced to be due at ”The Feast of the Birth of our Lord Christ!” Yet there are people who go about promoting prosecutions for blasphemy, and with a holy partiality leave untouched outrages like these. The summons sent to me speaks of the ”late Queen Ann,” who had been dead 140 years.
Her name being spelt ”Ann” shows that she had been dead long enough to lose the final ”e” of her name. The rent of the Fleet Street house was 74, 400 having been paid for the lease. Each time there came on the scene the local agent of the Church, who delivered an interesting intimation as follows:--
”Mr. George Jacob Holyoake,--I do hereby demand payment of One pound four s.h.i.+llings and eightpence, due from you for Rates made in pursuance of the Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in the 4th Year of the Reign of her late Majesty Queen Ann, Cap. 17, int.i.tuled, 'An Act for settling the Impropriate Tythes of the Parish of Saint Bridgett, alias Brides, London.' And take notice that unless the same be paid to me within Four Days next after the demand thereof hereby made, I shall Distrain your Goods and Chattels, and sell and dispose thereof, and out of the Monies arising thereby pay the said Sum of Money, and the Costs allowed by the Acts of Parliament in that case made and provided.
”Dated this 22nd day of May, 1856.
”John William Thomas,
”Collector of the said Rates.”
The predatory Vicar of St. Bride's, for whose advantage the contemplated seizure was being made, remained in the background, praying for my soul while he picked my pocket, as I regarded his action.
After two or three seizures of property, I sent to the vicar payment ”in kind”--the form in which the payment of t.i.the was originally contributed. The chief produce of my farm in Fleet Street consisted in volumes of the _Reasoner_. I sent the vicar three volumes, which exceeded in value his demand. He troubled me no more.
The last citation relates to a trial in which Lord Chief Justice Coleridge was concerned, and Henry Thomas Buckle made a splendid defence of a poor well-sinker who was afraid of killing the world.
III.
In a Cornish village in 1857 small patch advertis.e.m.e.nts broke out like small-pox, of which the following is a copy:--
”BLASPHEMY.
”Any person who has seen a man writing Blasphemous sentences on Gates or other places in the neighbourhood of Liskeard, is requested to communicate immediately with Messrs. Pedler and Grylls, Liskeard, or with the Rev. R. Hobhouse, St. Ive Rectory.”
Whether the perturbed Rector of St Ive found out anything, or whether ashamed, as he might well be, at being mixed up in so miserable a business, he retired from it, and the Rev. Paul Bush appeared in his place as a spiritual detective on the pounce, and a poor, eccentric well-sinker, one Thomas Pooley, was accused of writing in chalk incoherent words in a hand only intelligible to the all-construing eyes of the policeman of the Church, who caused to be issued the following ponderous summons in her Majesty's name:--
”To Thomas Pooley, of the Borough of Liskeard in the County of Cornwall, Labourer.
”Cornwall to wit, Whereas Information and Complaint (a) hath this day been laid before the undersigned, one of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and (b) for the said County of Cornwall by The Reverend Paul Bush of the Parish of Duloe, in the said County, for that you the said Thomas Pooley on the twenty-second of May last at the Parish of Duloe, in the said County, did unlawfully and wilfully compose, write and publish a certain scandalous, impious, blasphemous and profane Libel of and concerning the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Religion, and for having blasphemously spoken against G.o.d and profanely scoffed at the Holy Scripture, and exposed it to contempt and ridicule, and also for having spoken against Christianity and the established religion.
”These are therefore to command you in Her Majesty's name, to be and appear on Wednesday the 1st day of July next at 10 o'clock in the Forenoon, at Treean Gate in the Parish of Lanewath in the said County, before such said Justices of the Peace for the County as may then be there, to answer to the said Information and Complaint, and to be further dealt with according to Law.
”Given under my hand and Seal this 27th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, at Liskeard in the County aforesaid.
”James Glencross.”