[Footnote 24: _Social Life as told by Parish Registers_, by T.F.
Thiselton-Dyer, p. 197.]

In his little house the clerk lived and tended his garden when he was
not engaged upon his ecclesiastical duties. He was often a married man,
although those who were intending to proceed to the higher orders in the
Church would naturally be celibate. Pope Gregory, in writing to St.
Augustine of Canterbury, offered no objections to the marriage of
clerks. Lyndewoode shows a preference for the unmarried clerk, but if
such could not be found, a married clerk might perform his duties.
Numerous wills are in existence which show that very frequently the
clerk was blest with a wife, inasmuch as he left his goods to her; and
in one instance, at Hull, John Huyk, in 1514, expresses his wish to be
buried beside his wife in the wedding porch of the church[25].

[Footnote 25: Injunction by John Bishop of Norwich (1561), B. i b.,
quoted by Mr. Legg in _The Parish Clerk's Book_, p. xlii.]

One courageous clerk's wife did good service to her husband, who had
dared to speak insultingly of the high and mighty John of Gaunt. He held
office in the church of St. Peter-the-Less, in the City of London, in
1378. His wife was so persevering in her behests and so constant in her
appeals for justice, that she won her suit and obtained her husband's
release[26].

[Footnote 26: Riley's _Memorials of London_, 1868, p. 425.]

We have the picture, then, of the mediæval clerk in his little house
nigh the church surrounded by his wife and children, or as a bachelor