ffered itself in the shape of a pair of these campanile structures
suited to the taste of each.

That the foregoing is an idle and impertinent invention there is little
need to show, inasmuch as both tower and spire might still have been
built to satisfy the whim of the old ladies, though placed in the usual
manner, one serving as a substratum to the other. A more probable
solution is the following, though it may be as far from the truth:--At
the dissolution of the priory of Burscough in the time of our great
reformer Henry the Eighth--who, like many modern pretenders to this
name, was more careful to reform the inaccuracies of others than his
own--the bells were removed to Ormskirk; but the small tower beneath the
spire not being sufficiently capacious, the present square steeple was
added, and the wonder perpetuated to this day.

De Poininges, on crossing the churchyard, met there a personage of no
less note than Thomas the Clerk, or Thomas le Clerke, retiring from some
official duties, arrayed in his white surplice and little quaint
skull-cap. He was a merry wight, and in great favour with the parish
wives. He could bleed and shave the sconce; draw out bonds and
quittances; thus uniting three of the professions in his own proper
person. He was prime mover in the May games, and the feast of fools.
Morris, Moriscoe, or Moorish dancers, there is good reason for
supposing, were not then introduced, though by some said to have been
brought into England in the sixth year of Edward III., when John of
Gaunt returned from Spain; but few traces of it are found earlier than
Henry VII., so that it is more probable we had them from our Gallic
neighbours, or even from the Flemings.

He could dance, too, and play on the rebeck and citerne, this being a
common amusement with the customers during the time they were in waiting
at the barbers' shops, as newspapers were not then at hand to sustain
this difficult office. He was of a dainty person; clad mostly in a
kirtle of light watchet-colour, thick set with loose points. His hosen
were grey, mingled with black, and his shoes were belayed with knots and
ornaments, of which, and his other stray gear, he was not a little
proud.

This Thomas was used to go about with a censer, on a Sunday, as Chaucer
hath it,--

"Censing the wives of the parish feast."

Absalom, that pink of clerkly portraiture, seemed but a fair prototype
of this individual, Geoffrey Chaucer at this time being