An email from J.B. in Calgary asks, “Bill, what does this saying mean? Came across it in an English novel written in the thirties: “Vicar of Bray will still be vicar of Bray.”

Below is a direct quotation from Curiosities of Literature by Isaac D’Israeli (1766-1848). Belonging to the same anthological family as Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, this compendium of minor facts, philological trivia, and booklore was published in six volumes between 1791 and 1834.

“The vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a Papist under the reign of Henry the Eighth, and a Protestant under Edward the Sixth; he was a Papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproach-ed for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an unconstant changeling, as Fuller expresses it, he replied, ‘Not so neither; for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray!’

This vivacious and reverend hero has given birth to a proverb peculiar to this country, ‘The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still.’ ”

So therefore one who alters his or her beliefs and principles to remain popular with authorities is a Vicar of Bray.

A Modern Vicar of Bray

My "Bray" candidate from recent history would have been the Nazi rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, dubbed by satirist Tom Lehrer as “history’s most adaptable patriot.” One moment it was World War Two and Herr Doktor Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was in Peenemünde at the Luftwaffe's rocket testing site on Germany’s far eastern Baltic coast, thinking up new ways to bomb Britain and presto! chango! then the war ended and charming Wernher was suddenly at Los Alamos, cavorting in the white sands of New Mexico building rockets for the Americans, with narry a war crimes trial intervening. Nice work, if you can get away with it. Never mind all those incinerated British bodies of children and grannies.

Herr Doktor von Braun ended up an overnight, quickie American citizen and the director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, Alabama. Wernher designed and supervised the building of the Saturn V launch booster that zoomed Yankees to the lunar surface. Wernher von Braun received the National Medal of Science in 1975. Never let it be said that Americans are not flexible in their ability to overlook crimes against humanity and any trifling genocidal incident in a good man's past.

Herr Doktor Wernher even appeared regularly on Walt Disney's television shows as the suave-toned prestidigitator of a moon-bound age. Little was said about Uncle Walt Disney's lifelong admiration of Hitler and his virulent anti-Semitism. Let's just put it this way: Mickey would never have been Shmuel Mouse.

Some of Wernher von Braun’s heroic handiwork as London is bombed during the 1940 Blitz. The uncivilized forces of Nazi Unreason attempted to destroy one of the world's monuments to humane progress, London. The Nazi scum failed.

Famous in Song & Story

The vicar became infamous as the subject of a very popular British song that appears in print first in 1734.

G.B. Shaw

So well-known was this ditty, even as late as 1938, that when Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw came to write a play about the Stuarts he borrowed the first line of the song for his play’s title: In Good King Charles's Golden Days, a Shavian historical fantasy first performed in 1939, in which Charles II gets to meet Isaac Newton!

The terse two-act play is now in the public domain, free of copyright and available at The Gutenberg Project.

To read it, click below.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300441h.html

Here are the complete lyrics of the nearly 300-year-old song.

The Vicar of Bray

In good King Charles's golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Furious High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd Preferment.
Unto my Flock I daily Preach'd,
Kings are by God appointed,
And Damn'd are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's Anointed.

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

When Royal James possest the crown,
And popery grew in fashion;
The Penal Law I houted down,
And read the Declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my Constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.
And this is Law, &c.

When William our Deliverer came,
To heal the Nation's Grievance,
I turn'd the Cat in Pan again,
And swore to him Allegiance:
Old Principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance,
Passive Obedience is a Joke,
A Jest is non-resistance.
And this is Law, &c.

When Royal Ann became our Queen,
Then Church of England's Glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory:
Occasional Conformists base
I Damn'd, and Moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was,
From such Prevarication.
And this is Law, &c.

When George in Pudding time came o'er,
And Moderate Men looked big, Sir,
My Principles I chang'd once more,
And so became a Whig, Sir.
And thus Preferment I procur'd,
From our Faith's great Defender,
And almost every day abjur'd
The Pope, and the Pretender.
And this is Law, &c.

The Illustrious House of Hannover,
And Protestant succession,
To these I lustily will swear,
Whilst they can keep possession:
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will faulter,
But George, my lawful king shall be,
Except the Times shou'd alter.
And this is Law, &c.

The British Musical Miscellany , Volume I, 1734. Text as found in R. S. Crane, A Collection of English Poems 1660-1800. New York : Harper & Row, 1932.

I trust that answers your question, J.B. Any other questions about sayings Canadian or foreign will be cheerfully considered. Click 'contact' below and send them along.

© 2005 William Gordon Casselman

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