Thomas Skill, was a skilful yeoman of good report, holding two farms in the ancient parish of Stow; and although he eschewed all heresy and dissent, and willed to worship after the fashion of his forefathers,--who had been creditable yeomen in Stow from time immemorial,--yet liked he not of the wayward doings of his Reverence the Perpetual Curate. Now it chanced that on a certain Sunday in November that the said Skill the skilful went, as was his pious and religious wont, to pay his devotions _according to law_, in the parish church of Stow, the ancient and venerated sanctuary of his forefathers. As a holder of two farms, be it observed, this creditable yeoman had a right, by the customs of this rural district, to _two_ pews; nevertheless, being by no means a person of an unreasonable disposition, he was content, on that day, to occupy but _one_, if so be that he might be allowed to worship quietly. Nevertheless, scarcely was he seated, ere a certain Jesse Ellis, an aged man of some rural rank as a master-husband-man who had been selected by the Perpetual Curate as _his_ churchwarden, came up to the pew-door, said "he was _ordered_ to pull Skill out," and, forthwith, attempted to put the "order" into execution. Did Skill the skilful resist?--Did he yield? No, no: he knew a trick worth two of either. He had not his name for nought! When Ellis laid his grasp vehemently on the pew-door, skilful Skill held it fast for a few moments, and then skilfully let it go,--all in a moment,--so that the vehement Ellis, by the vehemence of his grasp and the rebound of the pew-door, was overthrown; and there he lay,--he, the parson's own churchwarden,--on the floor of the aisle of Stow church, in the time of "divine service," with the congregation from their seats and pews, and the Perpetual Curate, from his reading-desk, and Clerk Spurr, the "Parson's Clerk," and Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, squeezing one another in the desk below, and yet looking on, and all looking on, at his signal defeat and overthrow: there he "lay vanquished--confounded;"--like Milton's Satan, sprawling on the "fiery gulf," when all the fallen angels were sprawling there likewise, but yet looking on and shaking their heads at him for a rash captain--no doubt!