The Maid of Sker by R.D. Blackmore

Knowing now what I had to expect from Parson Chowne and from all his train (whether clothed or naked), and even perhaps from Parson Jack, who lay beneath his thumb so much, and who could thrash me properly; I seized the chance of a good high tide, and gave a man sixpence to help me, and warped the Rose of Devon to a berth where she could float and swing, and nobody come a-nigh her without a boat or a swimming-bout. Because I knew from so many folk what a fiend I had to deal with, and that his first resort for vengeance (haply through his origin) generally was to fire. They told me that when he condescended to do duty in either church -- for two he had, as I may have said -- all the farmers took it for a call to have their ricks burned. They durst not stay away from church, to save the very lives of them, nor could they leave their wives behind, on account of the unclothed people: all they could hope was that no offence had come from their premises, since last service. The service he held just as suited his mood; sometimes three months, and the church-door locked; sometimes three Sundays one after the other, man, woman, and child demanded. Whenever this happened, the congregation knew that the parish had displeased him, and that he wanted them all in church; while his boy was at the stackyards. He never deigned to preach, but made the prayers themselves a comedy, singing them up to the clerk's "amen," and the neigh of his mare from the vestry.

I cannot believe even half that I hear from the very best authority; therefore I set nothing down which may be overcoloured. But the following story I know to be true, because seven people have told it to me, and not any two very different. Two or three bishops and archdeacons (or deacons of arches, I know not which, at any rate high free-masons) desired to know some little more about a man in their jurisdiction eminent to that extent, and equally notorious. They meant no harm at all, but just to take a little feel of him. Because he had come to visitation, once or twice when summoned, with his huntsman and his hounds, and himself in leathern breeches. There must have been something amiss in this, or at any rate they thought so; and his lordship, a bishop just appointed, made up his mind to tackle him. He came in a coach-and-four, and wearing all his high canonicals, and they managed somehow to get up the hill, and appear at Nympton Rectory. Then a footman struck the door with a gold stick well embossed; and he struck again, and he struck again, more in dudgeon every time.