THE CORDWAINER AND THE RECTOR, EXETER, 1843.

 The Western Times, as here of 11th February, 1843, in its sceptical coverage of all religion, took a mischievous delight in reporting the advance of Puseyism and the local reaction to it: 

 "PUSEYISM is going a head in Exeter.  At St. Olave's church, the rector preaches in a white surplice, to the great horror of the old inhabitants:  a couple of parsons go to the communion table - 'the altar' they will have it, one turns his back to the people in reading certain portions - and the clerk Colman has been deposed from the duty of giving out the venerable Sternhold, by the ruthless hand of the rector.

"Clerk Coleman is a cordwainer by trade, and the sensible people in the parish do say, that all the rector hath done by this new move of deposing the clerk from the discharge of of one of his most important functions - is to break the heart of a most worthy shoemaker, and prove him but an indifferent 'psalm-smiter.'

"The rector may see the last of the shoemaker, but we doubt whether the public will see the last of his folly just yet if he go on as he hath begun."

It seems amazing these days that good church-going citizens in 1843 were bothered by a white surplice and by 'you say communion table but I say the altar' but there you are now!

I read the ambiguous second paragraph as meaning that the Puseyite rector of St. Olave's has  dispensed with 'Sternhold' altogether.  Sternhold being the Anglican Church's metrical psalmbook dating from the time of wicked Henry Vlll. 

Need I say it?   The rector may see the last of the shoemaker is an outrageous pun and the hath and the cordwainer are consciously archaic.

In our local parish registers for the eighteenth and early nineteenth century cordwainer is the word mostly used, shoemaker hardly at all.  The etymology, a worker in cordovan leather, is fun! 

Going a head  meaning, as here, to prosper is another Americanism that may well have travelled from Devonshire.  It is subtly different from going ahead and I would bet my boots this is not just a typographical error.