10s. 3d. and 10s. costs. Whether this order was obeyed or not, I cannot say; but since then, as far as I have been able to learn, the custom has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. I have been told that the custom was enforced at Great Yarmouth until a fisherman, happening to have a tenth child, took it to the vicarage in the vain hope that the vicar would adopt it. Whilst this custom was enforced special religious services were held during the herring season for the spiritual welfare and earthly prosperity of the fishermen; and from an old manuscript I learn that the proper Psalms and Lessons in use at such services were as follows: Psalms, the whole of the 45th, verses 19 to 41 of the 78th, from verse 24 to the end of the 104th, verses 23 to 32 of the 107th; Lessons, Genesis 1st, 20 to 24, 2 Kings 7th, 1, 2, and 20, Habbakuk 3rd, 17 and 18, Matthew 8th, 23 to 27, Luke 5th, 4 to 10, John 6th, 26 and 27. Before the Reformation it was usual for the priest to 'give a blessing to the fishing yearly.'"
It may be mentioned that the half-dole which was claimed by the town of Great Yarmouth (this was enforced by a bye-law dating from 1484 and assigned to the support of the haven and pier) ceased to be collected in 1824, and this evidently proved a death-blow to the Church's half-dole, as it did not long survive after this. Mr. Lupson, the parish clerk, believes a share of the catch is still called the "Vicar's share," but this share never reaches him, it is merely a survival.
The above quotation from Mr. de Caux's work was written in 1881; and some five or six years afterwards a circular was sent out by the then churchwardens of St. Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, which contained the following paragraph: "The vicar is (in lieu of an ancient tithe on the fishing) alone entitled to receive an Easter offering from every inhabitant of the town, whether attending divine worship at the parish church or not."
