It was not merely that their style of living was lowered or changed for the worse, but that they suffered distress of the severest description--want, destitution, and hunger, in their worst forms.

First came inconvenience from a delay in the receipt of their incomes; then the necessity of asking for a longer term of credit; after this the melancholy certainty that tithes would not be paid; again followed the pressure from creditors for payment, with its distracting and harassing importunities; then the civil but firm refusal to supply the necessaries of life on further credit; then again the application to friends, until either the inclination or ability failed, and benevolence itself was exhausted.
After this came the disposal of books, furniture, and apparel; and, when these failed, the secret grapple with destitution, the broken spirit, the want of food--famine, hunger, disease, and, in some cases, death itself.

These great sufferings of a class who, at all events, were educated gentlemen, did not occur without exciting, on their behalf, deep and general sympathy from all classes.

In their prosperity, the clergy, as a body, raised and spent their income in the country.

They had been kind and charitable to the poor, and their wives and daughters had often been ministering angels to those who were neglected by the landlords or gentry of the neighborhood, their natural protectors.