He was a widower with no children,
and the Rectory was efficiently kept in order by an aged housekeeper.
Tractarianism had not arisen in 1839, but he was High Church and an
enemy to all kinds of fanaticism, apt to be satirical, even in his
sermons, on the right of private judgment to interpret texts as it
pleased in ignorance of Hebrew and Greek. He was respected and feared
more than any other man in the parish. He had a great library, and had
taken up archaeology as a hobby. He knew the history of every church in
the county, and more about the Langborough records than was known by the
town clerk. He was chairman of a Board of Governors charged with the
administration of wealthy trust for alms and schools. When he first
took office he found that this trust was controlled almost entirely by a
man named Jackson, a local solicitor, whose salary as clerk was 400
pounds a year and who had a large private practice. The alms were
allotted to serve political purposes, and the headmaster of the school
enjoyed a salary of 800 pounds a year for teaching forty boys, of whom
twenty were boarders.
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