ore years of
life knowing that he had not been suffered to finish what he had begun.
He died in 1801; and there is a curious story that he was nearly buried
alive when he was a boy. He had had the small-pox and was actually laid
out for dead. His father went in to see him, raised him in his arms
saying, "I will give my dear boy another chance," and as he did so, saw
signs of returning life.

Another vicar was Samuel Speed, grandson of the John Speed who made the
maps, and at one time he was chaplain of the fleet when Lord Ossory
fought the Dutch. Sir John Birkenhead immortalised him in a ballad on
the fight:--

His chaplain, he plyed his wonted work,
He prayed like a Christian, and fought like a Turk,
Crying now for the King, and the Duke of York,
With a thump, a thump, thump!

Another of Godalming's clergy was the Reverend Nicholas Andrewes, who
came into severe collisions with his parishioners. They petitioned
Parliament against being compelled to bear with him any longer. They
charged him among other offences with "preachinge but seldom, and then
alsoe but in a verie fruytlesse and unprofitable mann^r." They urged
that he was "a Haunter, and frequenter of tiplinge in Innes, and
tavernes, and useth gameinge both at cards and Table as well uppon the
Lords dayes as others." They accused him of having declined to church
one Mrs. Buckley "when she came to church and sate there all the tyme of
dyvine service, because she was not attyred wi^th an hanginge kerchief."
They said that he kept a curious crucifix "in a Boxe wi^th foldinge
windowes." Finally, John Monger and John Tichborne alleged "that the
said vicar and M^r. Wayferar, Parson of Compton, in the said Countie of
Surry, roade to Southampton, to eate Fishe and to make merrie togeather,
and there (dyverse tymes) drank healthes to the Pope calling him that
honest olde man." So much, and more, the parishioners had to say against
him. He was decided to be a Malignant Priest; White, in his _First
Century of Scandalous and Malignant Ministers_, arraigns him, among
other offences, for having "expressed himself to be an enemy to frequent
preaching, inveighing in his sermons against long Sermons, saying that
Peters sword cut off but one eare, but long Sermons like long swords
cut off both at once, and that the Surfeit of the Word is of all most
dangerous, and that the silliest creatures have longest eares, and that
preaching was the worst part of God