Saint Michael Underbell

Saint Michael Underbell is an old parish church of London, better known for its clerks than for its stones. Its parish clerks lead the psalms, keep the clerk's book and witness and date the parish's papers, and over the generations they have said things the city has gone on repeating. Two centuries ago Clerk Thomas Renshaw wrote, after forty years with the book, that he had never yet set down a quiet day in the town, since there was always a bell, a psalm, a shanty, a ballad or a hymn for a grave somewhere.

Over the clerk's desk are lines painted in 4508, reminding all comers that the year has twelve months of thirty days and five days besides that belong to none of them, set there so that no lodger could claim he was not told. The present clerk, Walter Ayot, has held the office forty years and keeps the Five Days strictly, dating nothing and witnessing nothing until they are past, and telling any clerk who asks the date in that season that it is no day at all. He will also have a newcomer try a psalm verse in the vestry once the service is done, then tell him frankly which part suits his voice and on what Sunday he should return, for a good bass is wanted in every choir.

Like every city parish it is judged by its singing, its funerals and its watches, and Saint Michael Underbell is judged well. Its singers lead the psalms under the clerk's eye, its ringers keep the changes in the tower over the nave, and on the Bell of the Dead in November the clerk reads the parish dead at the door in a level voice, name after name, while every bell in the city rings. Through the Five Days the parish feeds its poor at its own charge, as all London does, and a hungry stranger at the door is fed with the rest and asked nothing about whose he is. The clerk's book records all of it, and has done since long before Renshaw complained of the noise.