The history of the portrait is interesting. It was painted at Shockerwick, near Bradford, where Wiltshire, the Bath carrier, lived, who loved art so much that he conveyed to London Gainsborough's pictures from the year 1761 to 1774 entirely free of charge. The artist rewarded him by presenting him with some of his paintings, _The Return from Harvest, The Gipsies' Repast_, and probably this portrait of Orpin was one of his gifts. It was sold at Christie's in 1868 by a descendant of the art-loving carrier, and purchased for the nation by Mr. Boxall for the low sum of £325. The mediæval clerk appears in many ancient manuscripts and illuminations, which show us, better than words can describe, the actual duties which he was called upon to perform. The British Museum possesses a number of pontificals and other illustrated manuscripts containing artistic representations of clerks. We see him accompanying the priest who is taking the last sacrament to the sick. He is carrying a taper and a bell, which he is evidently ringing as he goes, its tones asking for the prayers of the faithful for the sick man's soul. This picture occurs in a fourteenth-century MS. [6 E. VI, f. 427], and in the same MS. we see another illustration of the priest administering the last sacrament attended by the clerk [6 E. VII, f. 70]. [Illustration: THE CLERK ATTENDING THE PRIEST AT HOLY BAPTISM] [Illustration 2: THE CLERK ATTENDING THE PRIEST AT HOLY BAPTISM] Another illustration shows the priest baptizing an infant which the male sponsor holds over the font, while the priest pours water over its head from a shallow vessel. The faithful parish clerk stands by the priest. This appears in the fifteenth-century MS. Egerton, 2019, f. 135. In the MS. of Froissart's Chronicle there is an illustration of the coronation procession of Charles V of France. The clerk goes before the cross-bearer and the bishop bearing his holy-water vessel and his sprinkler for the purpose of aspersing the spectators. We have already given two illustrations taken from a fourteenth-century MS. in the British Museum, which depict the clerk, as the _aquæbajalus_, entering the lord's house and going first into the kitchen to sprinkle the cook with holy water, and then into the hall to perform a like duty to the lord and lady as they sit at dinner. There is a fine picture in a French pontifical of the fifteenth century, which is in the British Museum (Tiberius, B. VIII, f. 43), of the anointing and coronation of a king of France. An ecclesiastical procession is represented meeting the king and his courtiers at the door of the cathedral of Rheims, and amongst the dignitaries we see the clerk bearing the holy-water vessel, the cross-bearer, and the thurifer swinging his censer. The clerk wears a surplice over a red tunic.