Very soon after the Sunday on which the sermon was preached, the
leading clergy of the neighbourhood held high debate together as
to how Mr. Slope should be put down. In the first place, he should
never again preach from the pulpit of Barchester cathedral. This was
Dr. Grantly's earliest dictum, and they all agreed, providing only
that they had the power to exclude him. Dr. Grantly declared that
the power rested with the dean and chapter, observing that no
clergyman out of the chapter had a claim to preach there, saving
only the bishop himself. To this the dean assented, but alleged that
contests on such a subject would be unseemly; to which rejoined a
meagre little doctor, one of the cathedral prebendaries, that the
contest must be all on the side of Mr. Slope if every prebendary
were always there ready to take his own place in the pulpit. Cunning
little meagre doctor, whom it suits well to live in his own cosy
house within Barchester close, and who is well content to have his
little fling at Dr. Vesey Stanhope and other absentees, whose Italian
villas, or enticing London homes, are more tempting than cathedral
stalls and residences!

To this answered the burly chancellor, a man rather silent indeed,
but very sensible, that absent prebendaries had their vicars, and
that in such case the vicar's right to the pulpit was the same as
that of the higher order. To which the dean assented, groaning
deeply at these truths. Thereupon, however, the meagre doctor
remarked that they would be in the hands of their minor canons, one
of whom might at any hour betray his trust. Whereon was heard from
the burly chancellor an ejaculation sounding somewhat like "Pooh,
pooh, pooh!" but it might be that the worthy man was but blowing
out the heavy breath from his windpipe. Why silence him at all?