than cutting it short (P[)a]ter); no, comparing pronunciation as is the Britons' way, for God ought not to be subject to the rules of grammar." ED. From his spelling of the place-name--which never had been anything but _Gresmer_--we suspect him to have been a stranger; and it would probably be difficult to fill posts on the spot that had been summarily made void. Next comes "Thomas Wilson clarke at Gresmere in 1655." He it must have been who fought the battle of ritual with John Banks, bailiff, before a trembling congregation, after the minister Wallas had decamped. (See p. 87.) He, in turn, must have lost the post at the Restoration. The Parliament passed a law in 1653 obliging every parish to supply a layman for the care of the registers, who was oddly called a "parish-register."[182] Accordingly this was done, and certified by the non-conformist magnate of Ambleside Hall. "Bee it remembered that John Benson of Gresmere being elected and chosen Parish Register of Gresmere by the inhabitants ther was approved of and sworne before me the 9th of Aprill 1656. [182] Dr. Fox's _Parish Registers of England_. Tho: Brathwaite." John kept the office, as an entry in the accounts shows, at least twenty years. Rector Ambrose, when he left £50 to the parson and "twenty-four" of the parish, in trust for the school, gave an impetus to education in the place. The sum--or part of it--may have been used for the erection of a school-house. At all events, the quaint little house still standing by the lych-gates was already there when Anthony Dawson, statesman--incited perhaps by the parson's example--bequeathed, in 1635, the sum of £7 to a "School Stock in Grasmeer."[183] He expressly entrusted it to the patron, rector, and incumbent, "towards the maintenance of a Schoolmaster teaching Scholars at the School-House built at the Church Yard Yeates in Gresmere."[184] [183] The dates of these legacies are incorrectly given on the list within the church. [184] Rydal Hall MSS., Grasmere, was by no means behind the times in education. There was no parish school at Clayworth, Notts., in 1676, when an independent master was encouraged by permission to teach within the church; and an effort made to raise a school "stock" or endowment failed five years later. See _Rectors' Book of Clayworth_.