dded that in Queen Anne's time we may still find the name of
the Lord's Mother mentioned in a tone of affectionate respect not at all
akin either to the timidity, in this respect, of later days, or to the
somewhat defiant and overstrained veneration professed by some modern
High Churchmen. Thus when Paterson begins to enumerate the London
churches called after her name, he speaks of her in a perfectly natural
tone as 'the Virgin Mary, the Mother of our ever-blessed Redeemer,
Heaven's greatest darling among women.'[1030]

In some of the London churches, as at St. Alban's, St. Alphege's, &c.,
special commemoration services were, in 1714, still kept in memory of
the patron saints from whom they had been named.[1031] In the country,
at different intervals since the Reformation, there had been frequent
and often angry discussions as to the propriety of continuing or
suppressing the wakes which had been held from time immemorial on the
dedication day of the parish church or on the eve of it.[1032] The
feeling of High Churchmen was now by no means so unanimous in their
favour as it had been in Charles the First's reign. Bishop Bull, for
instance, when he was yet rector of Avening, was quite alive to the
evils of these often unruly festivals, and succeeded in getting them
discontinued there.[1033] Sometimes, where they had been held on the
Sunday, a sort of compromise was effected, and, as at Claybrook, 'the
church was filled on Sunday, and the Monday kept as a feast.'[1034]

The parish perambulations customary in Rogation Week were generally less
of a solemnity in the eighteenth than they had been in the seventeenth
and preceding centuries.

That every man might keep his own possessions,
Our fathers used, in reverent processions,
With zealous prayer, and with praiseful cheere,
To walk their parish limits once a year.[1035]

George Herbert, and Hooker, and many old worthies, had taken great
pleasure in maintaining this old custom, thinking it serviceable not
only for the preservation of parish rights and liberties, but for pious
thanksgiving, for keeping up cordial feeling between rich and poor, and
for mutual kindnesses and making up of differences.[1036] Sometimes,
however, the religious part of the ceremony was altogether omitted; and
sometimes these 'gang-days' provided an occasion for tumultuous contests
or for intemperance,[1037] or served mainly as a pretext for a
churchwardens' feast.[1038] We find S