[Footnote 77:  Ibid., p. 221.]

[Footnote 78:  Ibid., p. 222.]

Mr. W. Andrews, Librarian of the Hull Institute, has collected in his Curiosities of the Church much information concerning sluggard-wakers and dog-whippers.  The clerk in one church used a long staff, at one end of which was a fox’s brush for gently arousing a somnolent female, while at the other end was a knob for a more forcible awakening of a male sleeper.  The Dunchurch sluggard-waker used a stout wand with a fork at the end of it.  During the sermon he stepped stealthily up and down the nave and aisles and into the gallery marking down his prey.  And no one resented his forcible awakenings.

The sluggard-waker and dog-whipper appear in many old churchwardens’ account-books.  Thus in the accounts of Barton-on-Humber there is an entry for the year 1740:  “Paid Brocklebank for waking sleepers 2 s. 0.”  At Castleton the officer in 1722 received 10 s. 0[79].  The clerk in his capacity of dog-whipper had often arduous duties to perform in the old dale churches of Yorkshire when farmers and shepherds frequently brought their dogs to church.  The animals usually lay very quietly beneath their masters’ seat, but occasionally there would be a scrimmage and fight, and the clerk’s staff was called into play to beat the dogs and produce order.

[Footnote 79:  The reader will find numerous entries relating to this subject in the work of Mr. W. Andrews to which I have referred.]

Why dogs should have been ruthlessly and relentlessly whipped out of churches I can scarcely tell.  The Highland shepherd’s dog usually lies contentedly under his master’s seat during a long service, and even an archbishop’s collie, named Watch, used to be very still and well-behaved during the daily service, only once being roused to attention and a stately progress to the lectern by the sound of his master’s voice reading the verse “I say unto all, Watch.”  But our ancestors made war against dogs entering churches.  In mediaeval and Elizabethan times such does not seem to have been the case, as one of the duties of the clerks in those days was to make the church clean from the “shomeryng of dogs.”  The nave of the church was often used for secular purposes, and dogs followed their masters.  Mastiffs were sometimes let loose in the church to guard the treasures, and I believe that I am right in stating that chancel rails owe their origin to the presence of dogs in churches, and were erected to prevent them from entering the sanctuary.  Old Scarlett bears a dog-whip as a badge of his office, and the numerous bequests to dog-whippers show the importance of the office.