Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    discipline, and spake openly against prelacy and its ad- juncts and consequences. Here, as also at Dunbar, and other places, we observed the manner of thei burials, which is this ; when any one dies, the sexton or bell-man goeth about the streets with a small bell in his hand, which he tinkleth all along as he goeth, and now and then he maketh a stand, and proclaims who is dead, and invites the people to come to the funeral at such an hour. The people and .minister many times accompany the corpse to the grave at the time appointed, with the bell before them, where there is nothing said, but only the corpse laid in. ‘The minister there, in the public wor- ship, does not shift places out of the desk into the pulpit, as in England, but at his first coming in, ascends the pulpit. They commonly begin their worship with a psalm before the minister comes in, who, after the psalm is finished, prayeth, and then reads, and expounds in some places, im some not; then another psalm is sung, and after that. their minister prays again, and preacheth as in England. Before sermon, commonly, the officers of the town stand at the churchyard gate, with a join’d stool and a dish, to gather the alms of all that come to church. The people here frequent their churches much better than in England, and have their ministers in more esteem and veneration. They seem to perform their devotions with much alacrity. There are few or no sectaries or opinion- ists among them ; they are much addicted to their church government, excepting the gentry, who love liberty, and care not to be so strictly tied down. The country abounds with poor people and beggars. Their money they reckon after the French manner. A bodel (which is the sixth part of our penny) they call tway-pennies, that is with them two-pence ; so that, upon this ground, twelve pennies, or a shilling Scotch, (that is, six bodels) is a penny sterling. The Scotch piece marked with XX, which we are wont to call a Scotch two-pence, is twenty- pence Scotch, that is, two-pence sterling, wanting two bodels, or four pennies Scotch; the piece with XL is 11