Note 248 — Chapter XV

The custom was very general in poor parishes. Thus Reginald of Durham tells us of a certain scholar, Haldene by name, who was wont to attend the school which, “according to the known and accustomed usage,” was held in the Church of St. Cuthbert, at Northam. One day Haldene, who did not know his lessons and was afraid of the rod, conceived the bright idea of getting hold of the key and throwing it into the Tweed, so that when the hour of Vespers came no key was to be found. The example, in far later times, of “Wonderful Walker,” keeping school in his village church, was therefore but a surviving relic of the primitive manners.