Then appeared Skill the skilful, and Ellis the sprawler, before a bench of "Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the parts of Lindsey," in the Moothall of Gainsborough; where the justices acted with sense and discernment, and dismissed the sprawler's suit, saddling him with costs. An end might have come to this episode here; but the sprawler and his son were people of spirit, and were so much dissatisfied with this decision of the justices, that they went home muttering all the way about _law_, and declaring to every one they met, that they "would _yet have it_." And so skilful Skill thought it wise and prudent to let them "have it;" and, therefore, from mere neighbourly good humour, commenced his action, in turn, against the said Jesse Ellis for attempting to pull him out of his own pew, on the said Sunday in November, and in the parish church of Stow aforesaid. Our manuscript hath, in this place, an hiatus; so that we cannot say how the said action terminated: but it will not excite wonder that amidst the ravelled tissue of broils and litigations occasioned by the gospel-mindedness of the illustrious successor to the Sidnacestrian prelates, some of their issues should escape complete and satisfactory chronicle. It behoveth, moreover, that we now attend to the more lofty department of this our history of ecclesiastical revolutions,--for, as the sun transcendeth the stars, so do the acts of sacerdotal personages outshine the brightest deeds of the vulgar laity. And first, of the continued luminous acts and deeds of Clerk Spurr, the notable and notorious "Parson's Clerk," the hero of the hayfork. Let none imagine that he always warred with such a vulgar weapon of the field; forasmuch as his Reverence the Perpetual Curate, being in possession of a grand double-barrelled gun, was wont to commit and intrust it to the lawful custody of his worthy coadjutor in heroic exercises, the heroic Clerk Spurr. Neither did it redound a little to the credit of the Perpetual Curate's humanity, that he did so commit and intrust the said formidable piece of ordnance to the custody of the said Spurr;--forasmuch as the life and safety of that hero of the hayfork were discerned to be seriously in danger,--inasmuch as it had been proven how the malicious urchins of the community, participating deeply in the heart-burnings of their sires and mothers, were wont often to annoy, with sundry small pebbles and other mischief-working missiles, the precious person of the said hero. Lest, therefore, these assaults should issue in some bodily harm to himself, the man of nightly valour was equipped with the gun, and speedily proceeded to defend himself therewith, in the manner that shall now be described and related, together with the fruition of his new act of heroism.