OLD TOWNS BOOKS & MAPS


powered by FreeFind

     
     
XXX XXX
     
   
 
 
  PICTURES  
     
  ARTICLES  
     
   
     
  PURCHASING  
     
  GENEALOGISTS  
     
  CONTACT  
     
  PRIVACY  
     
  EBAY FEEDBACK  
     
     
     
     

 

 


Bray in 1835

Bray, which gives name to a hundred, and in the parish of which the town of Maidenhead partly stands, is celebrated for the versatility of principle manifested by one of its incumbents, whence ‘the Vicar of Bray’ has become a proverbial expression for a man who can shift his principles with the times. The well-known song of ‘the Vicar of Bray’ represents this personage as living in the time of Charles II and his successors, down to George I ; but Fuller, in his ‘Worthies of England,’ gives the following account :- ‘The vivacious vicar hereof living under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again. He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor, and found this fire too hot for his tender temper. This vicar being taxed by one for being a turn-coat, and an unconstant changeling, “Not so,” said he, “for I always kept my principle, which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray.” Such many, now-a-dayes, who, though they cannot turn the wind, will turn their mills, and set them so, that wheresoever it bloweth, their grist shall certainly be grinded. (Vol. i. p. 79, Nichols's edit. 1811.)

 



Flat-sheet and folded maps of English towns & villages Value for money collections of maps on CD, mainly Kent & London, with more counties on the way...