"....a certain man of great gifts, a painter by profession, and Northcote by name - finding his end approaching, and pleasant visions of his native county floating before him in his calm slumbers before his hour of dissolution, did determine to leave a work of art which should be worthy the acceptance of his native county. He commissoned his friend, Sir. Francis Chantrey, a most cunning carver in stone, to execute a statue to be placed in the cathedral.
"At great cost of money the statue was made, at heavy charges it was conveyed to this county. But their Shabbiness the Chapter caused it to be placed in a corner of the cathedral where the public shalll not see it without encoutering the pitiful exactations of their Shabbinesses' protogees, the vergers (with whom they do not go snacks it is to be hoped).
"Oh it is pitifully shabby, clerically mean! to disregard the patriotic injunctions and the liberal spirit of the honourable dead!"
I dedicate this blog to those noble souls who are currently trying to stop the Dean and Chapter of Exeter from ripping Kenneth Carter's Testament Sculpture out of the Chapter House. Shabbiness and meaness seem to cling to the clerics of Exeter. Perhaps they are being passed down, somewhat like the Apostolic Succession from the meanest Anglican Bishop of all time, Henry Phillpotts! There is certainly something shabby and mean, not to say slippery and deceitful, in the current Dean's proceedings and they are most certainly an insult to the honourable dead.
To go snacks is delightful. I think I have heard it but it is not in my Oxford Dictionary of Slang (Ayto) nor, as far as I can see, recorded on the internet.
I apologise for losing an accent grave. I can't remember how to find it!
Source: The Western Times 27th July, 1844,
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