"Churchwarden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might have taken place legally, leisurely, and under proper Government supervision, had missionaries been business-like, had Downing-Street officials known what colonizing meant, and had Lord Glenelg been fitted to be anything much more important than an irreproachable churchwarden. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Calvados. When a boy at school, though poorly clad, he was full of bright intelligence; and the master, who taught him to read and write, when praising him for his diligence, used to say, "Go on, my boy; work, study, Colin, and one day you will go as well dressed as the parish churchwarden!" A country apothecary who visited the school, admired the robust boy's arms, and offered to take him into his laboratory to pound his drugs, to which Vauquelin assented, in the hope of being able to continue his lessons. But the apothecary would ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... expense, that she might therein do penance and end her days." In conformity with this sentence, the culprit having been conducted with much pomp to the cell which had been prepared for her, the door was locked by means of two keys, one of which remained in the hands of the churchwarden (marguillier) of the Church of the Innocents, and the other was deposited at the office of the Parliament. The prisoner received her food from public charity, and it is said that she became an object of veneration and respect by ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the Bentons I'm thinkin' so much about," he continued. "There are others. Look at Mike Gibband, fer instance, an' him a churchwarden, too. Why, he swears like a trooper, an' would do a man a mean trick whenever he could. I could tell ye what he did to ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... lucrative, of course, than a bishopric or the woolsack, and of a narrower range, but quite as important on a small scale. "The world might get on pretty well without bishops," thought Mr. Stoneham, when he pondered upon these things as he smoked his churchwarden pipe; "but what would become of a parish in ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... it is splendid. My husband is in the churchwarden's pew; he left before me; he is becoming a fanatic—he speaks of lunching ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... wretches, whom I don't look upon as my fellow-creatures. Faugh! how it stinks! It doth not smell like a Christian. If I might be so bold to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, and sent out and laid at the churchwarden's door. It is a good night, only a little rainy and windy; and if it was well wrapt up, and put in a warm basket, it is two to one but it lives till it is found in the morning. But if it should not, we have discharged ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Dick became a churchwarden and a philanthropist (he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), and a highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange. He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to a buxom ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... them!' But Marsh said, 'I'll just take a bit of bread and cheese in my pocket, and I'll take my short pipe with me, and I'll be back soon.' He laid great stress and emphasis on having 'his short pipe' with him, probably reserving a regular long-shanked 'churchwarden' for home use. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... way as with that Raratongan girl last year. She'll go to sleep after supper, and I can open any door in the saloon, as you know, don't you, old man?" and he laughed coarsely. "Dear, dear, what times we have had together, Louis, my esteemed churchwarden of Darling Point, Sydney!" ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Mr Sharnall, the organist, who under my direction presides over the musical portion of our services; and this is Dr Ennefer, our excellent local practitioner; and this is Mr Joliffe, who, though engaged in trade, finds time as churchwarden to assist me in the supervision of the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently dangling his heels,—the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking a churchwarden,—"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that I cheerfully avail myself ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... should hold no private assemblies or conventicles with the doors shut; that nothing should be construed to exempt them from the payment of tithes or other parochial duties: that, in case of being chosen into the office of constable, churchwarden, overseer, &c. and of scrupling to take the oaths annexed to such offices, they should be allowed to execute the employment by deputy: that the preachers and teachers in congregations of dissenting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... still sticking to a wooden altar-candlestick, which the Imperialists had not thought it worth their while to steal, for they had only taken the brass ones. I sent three fellows in a boat with Hinrich Seden, the churchwarden, with this letter ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... II.) William Copeland, churchwarden of Bow, gave a new bell to the church, or had the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... weather-beaten man, who was smoking a long churchwarden pipe at my end of the table, "my heart softens for him. Why, gossips, we've been in the same straits ourselves. Gadzooks, never did mother feel more concern for her eldest born than I when Rory Random went out to make his own way in ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... archdeacon, prebendary, canon, rural dean, rector, parson, vicar, perpetual curate, residentiary^, beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular^; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman^; clerk, precentor^, choir; almoner, suisse [Fr.], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth^, acolothyst^, acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen^, flamen^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of Virginny Will cost you a guinea, Which you reckon too much by five shilling or ten; But light your churchwarden And judge it accordin' When I've told you the troubles of ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... which I venture to think is worthy of its surroundings: it is simple in form, stately in proportion, and in excellent preservation. Through the metal plate of the vane itself are cut boldly, stencil fashion, the letters "A. R." (I was unable to find out to whom they referred—presumably a churchwarden), and immediately below them, the date 1703. The pointer is very thick and richly foliated, and the wrought ironwork which supports the arms, which indicate the four cardinal points of the compass, is excellent ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... there. A purse she to a thief exposed, At once his ready fingers closed; He opes his fist, the treasure's fled; He sees a halter in its stead. She bids ambition hold a wand; He grasps a hatchet in his hand. A box of charity she shows, 'Blow here;' and a churchwarden blows, 50 'Tis vanished with conveyance neat, And on the table smokes a treat. She shakes the dice, the boards she knocks, And from all pockets fills her box. She next a meagre rake address'd: 'This picture see; her shape, her breast! What youth, and what ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked churchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, and how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood; of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of limb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled for all time ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... capital good fellow—an auctioneer and land surveyor, my churchwarden in fact, by name Jobling—found that in spite of constant good resolutions, certain small vices were gradually creeping upon him. There was an occasional outburst of temper to his clerks, an occasional half glass too much; and on one lamentable market day, he actually discovered himself ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... have remained; but the records connected with the building are fragmentary, and it by no means follows that the absence of record proves the non-existence of such a tower. In the case of Wimborne Minster the churchwarden's accounts contain no record of the building or of the fall of the spire, yet we know from outside testimony that such a spire did fall in 1600, and that a representation of it occurs on a seal. So here at Christchurch a seal is in existence ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... old gentleman, "I will consent for this year, and this year only. I have been churchwarden of this parish for between forty and fifty years, and we have always given the harvest festival collection to the hospital, and although under these exceptional circumstances it may possibly be desirable ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... I sat in easy-chairs at opposite sides of a table that was littered with books and papers, glasses, a bottle of whiskey, and a canister of tobacco. He was smoking a long churchwarden, I a stubby and blackened short one. At a small table at the other end of the room three officers of the fort were playing cards with the silence and attention of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a great shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might have been anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised to learn that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me he looked like a churchwarden. He had the appearance of a man from whom you would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude or two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... shaft, as is proved by what has been found in it. But in mediaeval times the puticolus was enlarged and converted into a hermitage, and a hermit is known to have occupied it till the eve of the Reformation, for in the Churchwarden's book of the parish of Bassingborne, under the date 1506, is the entry, "Gyft of 20d. recd, off a Hermytt depting at Roiston in ys pysh" It is true that this entry does not absolutely fix the residence of the hermit at ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... big armchair bowed in silence, I turned to Ethelwynn and discussed the situation with her. Their friends were most kind, she said. The husband was churchwarden at Kew Church, and his wife was an ardent church worker, hence they had long ago become ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... clothes he was wearing—in a rather peculiarly constructed heap, as you can see. Among them, by the way, I found this flattened and corroded bullet. That puzzled me. I think I understand it now." Thus Borsdale, as he composedly smoked his churchwarden. "In short, the whole affair ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... they sailed contentedly downstream. Philip's public spirit and industrious habits would not permit of what he called "a life of indolent ease." He rose early and put in a good eight hours' day at various unpaid labours. He became churchwarden of the parish, joined the vestry, and was a much valued unit of that obscure element in the population which does a great part of the public work for which individuals of a less ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. In one of these two houses, sixteen years ago, lived our friend Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land-agent, churchwarden, guardian of the poor, justice of the peace,—in a word, viceroy of Whitbury town, and far more potent therein than her gracious majesty Queen Victoria. In the other, lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor of medicine, and consulting physician of all the country round. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... led me past the vicarage. Just as I was in sight of it, two figures came out of the gate and waited to let me pass. One of them was the churchwarden, Mr. Townsend, and the other was Mr. Hamilton. It was impossible to avoid recognition in the bright moonlight; but I was rather amazed when I heard Mr. Hamilton bid Mr. Townsend good-night, and a moment after he ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gloomy now; the bitter hour is o'er, The man of many sorrows sighs no more. - Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below: There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee: No more, O Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer claims his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now their games suspend, ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... to despair; that he abuses the King's authority to make money, sells wine and brandy at retail, quarrels with officers who are not punctilious enough in saluting him, forces the inhabitants to catch seal and cod for the King, and then cheats them of their pay, and countenances an obnoxious churchwarden whose daughter is his mistress. "The country groans, but dares not utter a word," concludes the accuser, as he ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... restful; and on the whole lacks that agreeable air of wickedness which the Italian town possesses to perfection. It is impossible to be a day in Naples without discovering that it is the most depraved city in Europe; there is something in the atmosphere which relaxes the moral fibre, and the churchwarden who keeps guard in the bosom of every Englishman falls asleep, so that you feel capable of committing far more than the seven deadly sins. Of course, you don't, but still it is comfortable to ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... all in one line, was the limit; let them keep this well in their minds. Then calling over six lads, he bid them take note likewise of the boundary, that when the old people were dead they might stand up as witnesses; but as such things were easily forgotten, he, the priest, and the churchwarden would write it down for them, so that it never, by any ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... such as the rose, lavender, woodruff, and box were formerly in request for decking churches on St. Barnabas' Day, the officiating clergy having worn wreaths of roses. Among the allusions to the usage may be mentioned the following entries in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, London, in the reigns of Edward IV. and Henry VII.:—"For rose garlondis and woodrolf garlondis on St. Barnabe Daye, xj'd." "Item, for two doss (dozen?) di bocse (box) garlands for prestes and clerkes on St. Barnabe ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... nearly ten, a new vicar came. He was about my father's age and a widower, like him; only he had no child. Like him, too, he had no private fortune, and the living is a very poor one. He soon became very intimate with us, and made my father his churchwarden; and, after being present at some of our lessons, volunteered to teach me Greek, which, he said, it was time I should begin ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... hands with Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black board was split, three panes of the school windows were broken, an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody's horror, was the venerable incumbent's, owing to the zeal of an emancipated ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Unless that Walter was churchwarden of East Budleigh in 1561, and that a conveyance by him of the Sidmouth Manor fish tithes proves him to have been alive in April, 1578, nothing more is known of him. It has not been ascertained when he and Katherine died, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth—as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish—to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... for him, neither," said the girl. She was but a child, yet she spoke positively, and yet again without disrespect in her manner. "'Tis poison for 'ee," she added, knocking out the ash from her master's churchwarden pipe and refilling it from the tobacco-jar. "You know what the ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... overseer of the poor, having great firmness in enduring other people's pain, which firmness, he said, was due to his great benevolence; he always did what was good for people in the end. Mr. Chaloner had even selected him as clergyman's churchwarden, for he was a very handy man, and much more of Mr. Chaloner's opinion in everything about church business than the older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... the story of old Doby's meerschaum," Westholt said, "pleased me enormously. She managed to convey to him—without hurting his aged feelings or overwhelming him with embarrassment—that if he preferred a clean churchwarden or his old briarwood, he need not feel obliged to smoke the new pipe. He could regard it as a trophy. Now, how did she do that without filling him with fright and confusion, lest she might think him not sufficiently grateful for her present? But they tell me she did it, and that old Doby is rapturously ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for thirty years, ample evidence exists in various documents. Sir Robert Schomburgk was shewn by the rector of the parish, the Rev. J.H. Gittens, an old vestry-book of St John's, in which various entries occur of the name of Ferdinando Palaeologus, from 1649 till 1669, as vestryman, churchwarden, trustee, surveyor of the highway, sidesman to the churchwarden, and lieutenant, &c. The last entry is that of his burial, 'October 3d 1678.' His name also appears in a legal document respecting the sale of some land, executed in 1658. But the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... one would say, with the room itself), a snuff-box, and long pipes serve to recall that respect for the past and for tradition which is one of the most delightful, as it is one of the most successful, elements in Punch's composition. Here you may see Sir John Tenniel's long churchwarden, with his initials marked upon it, and Charles Keene's little pipe—for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of Douglas Jerrold, decorate the mantelpiece or the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out 'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,' without a word of protest from the Prime ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he would have none of that either. He did not wish to learn that 'woman's talk', not he; and when one of the teachers advanced on him with a book and an ink-horn and waved them before him in a mild persuasive way, much as a churchwarden invitingly shakes the offertory bag under the nose of a rich but niggardly parishioner, he sprang up with a fierce oath and flashed Inkosi-kaas before the eyes of our learned friend, and there was an end of the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... and a chain rattled. Rangsley pushed me through the doorway. A side door opened, and I saw into a lighted room filled with wreaths of smoke. A paunchy man in a bob wig, with a blue coat and Windsor buttons, holding a churchwarden pipe in his right hand and a pewter quart in his left, came ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... by nature imperious, and had always (it would seem) been liable to intemperance of another kind. Moreover, a contested election for the Borough in 1774 had brought with it its familiar temptations to protracted debauch—and it is significant that in 1775 he vacated the office of churchwarden that he had held for many years. George, to whom his father was not as a rule unkind, did not shrink from once more assisting him among the butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay. Poetry seems to have been for a while laid aside, the failure of his first venture having perhaps ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... stand on end or activating his digestion; he is worse off than the youthful British painter who, as those that have haunted the English studios and the ateliers on the Surrey side of the Seine well know, can give a kind of birth to his insults to the taste of the churchwarden. Once down upon canvas a picture is at least half-alive, whilst nothing is more pitifully dead than the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter of more authority—a stout, potential old man, with a double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a churchwarden's pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... little girl, which she told my wife her name was Jinny, by which name we shall call her. I think a good likely girl, and a parish child of St. Bride's, of honest parentage, and recommended by the churchwarden. After dinner among my joyners laying my floors, which please me well, and so to my office, and we sat this afternoon upon an extraordinary business of victualling. In the evening came Commissioner Pett, who fell foule on mee for my carriage to him ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... era of Charles Peace, no less than of John Bull—on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." May it set ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... Horbury's an innocent man, and the victim of foul play. But—he may be a guilty man! Lord bless you!—I don't attach any importance to reputation and character, not I! It isn't ten years since Jim Chambers and myself had a case in point—a bank manager who was churchwarden, Sunday-School teacher, this, that, and t'other in the way of piety and respectability—all a cloak to cover as clever a bit of thievery and fraud as ever I heard of!—he got ten years, that chap, and he ought ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite like one of two centuries before. You entered a long antiquely-brown room, traversed full length by a table. Before every chair was placed a little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought to every visitor at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal, mechanical action of all the people's minds was then wonderful. An average German peasant was a genius compared to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland |
