The injustice, therefore, done to Simon Aleyn by identifying him with the song, the “Vicar of Bray,” is obvious; for there were very many men, born at an earlier date than he, and living to a much greater age, who certainly did change their official beliefs, for professional purposes, several times, between 1534, when the Reformation was accomplished, and the reign of Elizabeth. There would have been more scope for such a tergiversating person in the reigns of Charles the Second, James the Second, William the Third, Queen Anne, and George the First—in all of which it would have been easily possible for a not very long-lived clergyman to flourish—than in Aleyn’s time; and the ballad in its present form distinctly specifies that period, long after Aleyn was dead. But the ascription to Bray at all can clearly be proved a late one, for the original words, traced back to 1712, when one Edward Ward published a collection of miscellaneous works in prose and verse, make no mention of any particular place. The verses, eighteen in number, are there entitled, “The Religious Turncoat; or, the Trimming Parson.” Among them we find a reference to the troubles under Charles the First, by which it appears that the trimmer’s constitutional, as well as religious, opinions were moderated according to circumstances: “I lov’d no King in Forty-one, When Prelacy went down, A cloak and band I then put on And preached against the Crown. When Charles returned into the land, The English Crown’s supporter, I shifted off my cloak and band, And then became a courtier. When Royal James began his reign, And Mass was used in common, I shifted off my Faith again, And then became a Roman. … To teach my flock I never missed, Kings were by God appointed; And they are damned who dare resist Or touch the Lord’s anointed.” The familiar refrain was, of course, added later: “And this is law, I will maintain, Until my dying day, sir, That, whatsoever King shall reign, I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.” The air to which the song is set is equally old, but originally belonged to quite another set of verses, called “The Country Garden.” It was, later, used with the words of a ballad known as “The Neglected Tar”; but it certainly appeared set to the words of “The Vicar of Bray” in 1778, when it was published in _The Vocal Magazine_. Who, then, was he who first associated Bray with the song, and with what warrant? and by what evidence did Fuller advance his statement that Aleyn was the man? The question may well be asked, but no reply need be expected. It may be worth while in this place to give another, and perhaps an even better, version of the famous ballad, which gives the Vicar a run from the time of Charles the Second to that of George the First; thirty years, at least: