[Footnote 31: Quiet.]

[Footnote 32: Right.]

[Footnote 33: Sight.]

[Footnote 34: Host.]

It was customary, therefore, for the clerk to accompany the priest to
the house of the sick person, when the clergyman went to administer the
Last Sacrament or to visit the suffering. The clerk was required to
carry a lighted candle and ring a bell, and an ancient MS. of the
fourteenth century represents him marching before the priest bearing his
light and his bell. In some town parishes he was ordered always to be at
hand ready to accompany the priest on his errands of mercy. It was a
grievous offence for a clerk to be absent from this duty. In the parish
of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, the clerks were not allowed "to go or
ride out of the town without special licence had of the vicar and
churchwardens, and at no time were they to be out of the way, but one of
them had always to be ready to minister sacraments and sacramentals, and
to wait upon the Curate and to give him warning." This custom of the
clerk accompanying the priest when visiting the sick was not abolished
at the Reformation. _The Parish Clerk's Guide_, published by the
Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks in 1731, the history of which it
will be our privilege to investigate, states that the holders of the
office "are always conversant in Holy Places and Holy Things, such as
are the Holy Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; yea and in the
most serious Things too, such as the Visitation of the Sick, when we do
often attend, and at the Burial of the Dead."