Obituaries: Herbert Mayo and Samuel Bethell

At Cheshunt, the Rev. Herbert Mayo, D.D., rector of the parish of St. George, Middlesex, and vicar of the parish of Tollesbury, Essex. He was born in the month of October, 1720; admitted of Brazenose college, Oxford, where he proceeded M.A. 1745, B.D. 1762, and D.D. 1763; and was presented to the rectory of St. George in 1764, by that Society, of which he was then fellow, and to the vicarage of Tollesbury in 1799, by Mr. Rush, the patron. The long and valuable life of this most worthy member of society has afforded abundant matter of instruction to the considerate part of mankind. Under the descriptions of a citizen, a Christian, and a clergyman, in all the domestic and social relations, his character was strictly irreproachable and highly meritorious. His rectitude, steadiness, and liberality of principle, his perfect command of temper and self-government, the firmness of his attachments, and placability of his resentments, the sincerity and openness of his manners, and, above all, the extensiveness, impartiality, and œconomy of his benevolence, are qualities which, it is hoped, have not vainly shed their lustre, though amidst a licentious and a fastidious age. But, not to diverge too far into general panegyrick, it is meant to enlarge upon this exemplary character, with regard to its most appropriate excellence, as it exhibits a singular specimen of the good effects resulting to society from a plain and vigorous understanding, actuated by right principles, and applied to practicable and beneficial objects. Unambitious of celebrity, and incapable of affectation, he made it his chief aim to be useful; and in that aim he most perfectly succeeded. Though possessed of a very competent share both of professional and general knowledge, he thought it no degradation to his mental powers to direct them principally to those less shining but most important offices of the clerical function which are too frequently confined to the care of deputies, or else performed in a spiritless, perfunctory manner. The curacies of two very extensive and populous parishes, St. Mary, Whitechapel, and Christ-church, Spitalfields, in which he was successively engaged for nearly 20 years, afforded him full scope for these exertions during the prime and vigour of life, and excellently qualified him for that preferment, which he accepted from his college, in preference to the rectory of Middleton-Cheney, in Northamptonshire, which, in many respects, appeared more eligible. With what propriety and ability he discharged his ministry in these three several parishes the surviving inhabitants can bear the most convincing testimony; among whom the decorous gravity of his appearance and deportment, the willingness and punctuality of his attendance upon every call of duty, the plain, but earnest and impressive manner in which he performed the sacred offices, are even yet the topicks of respect and admiration. One peculiar commendation should not here be omitted, as applying to him in each relation of rector and curate: that, as no substitute ever more faithfully consulted the interest of his employer, so never was beneficiary more kindly attentive to the ease, the comfort, and credit, of his assistants, on whom indeed he devolved no further employment than what was necessary to render himself more extensively serviceable. For, though the pastoral duties were the primary and constant objects of his usefulness, they by no means circumscribed the bounds of it. In earlier life, when college-offices occasionally required his attendance, he had proved his zeal for the welfare of the society to which he belonged, by a liberal enforcement of its discipline, and a judicious arrangement of the complicated, and at times confused, state of its accounts. With the same assiduity and goodness of intention he afterwards applied himself to every department of parochial business, with which, as rector, it was his province to interfere; and, to do this with the greater effect, he acted as a magistrate for the county. — The farther we trace this interesting character through life, the more clearly shall we perceive that its distinguishing trait was the desire to be useful. The various public charities with which he was connected received more benefit, from his vigilance over their management, and his attention to their finances, than from the aggregate sum of his long-continued contributions. The same inference may be drawn from the many and important trusts in which he was engaged; which were no less cheerfully undertaken by him than conscientiously and ably executed; and, with regard to acts of private friendship and benevolence, it may be confidently said, that there a few, among his numerous acquaintances, but have experienced that, to employ Dr. M. in their service, was to oblige him. Hence it has happened that, while his well-known and acknowledged merits failed to procure the smallest professional remuneration for himself, never, perhaps, was individual, in his station, more signally instrumental in obtaining provision for the destitute and the deserving. Let not a life like this be hastily depreciated as a dull round of drudgery and confinement; it was, on the contrary, a life of perpetual amusement, of perpetual gratification. That rule of prudence, "to make a pleasure of business," which is, in most men, the slow result of habit and self-denial, appeared in him rather a natural principle of action. Hence arose that alacrity which he displayed in conducting public business, and that even flow of cheerfulness and good humour which prevailed in his colloquial intercourse. After a constant residence upon his living, and an unremitting application to the duties of it, the increasing infirmities of old age warned him, at length, to retire from busy life; and, though he felt no small reticence in quitting the scene of his activity, and contracting the circle of his beneficence, yet this was soon absorbed in the delicious expectation of serenely wearing out the short remainder of his days in "the gay conscience of a life well spent," under the triumphant hopes of that religion which he had enlavated and adorned, and amidst the attentions of an amiable family, who strove, with pious emulation, to express their sense of that debt of gratitude and duty which his uniform affection and indulgence had rendered it impossible for them adequately to discharge. Thus gradually prepared for the momentous change, surrounded with every object of consolation, undisturbed by agony of mind or body, and expiring, without a groan, in the arms of those whom he best loved, the "good and faithful servant" was summoned to "enter into the joy of his Lord." — He married the daughter of Wm. Paggen, esq. of Eltham, merchant of London, by whom he has left two sons, Paggen-William, M.D. of St John’s college, Oxford, physician at Doncaster, and Charles, of the same college, M.A. and late Saxon professor; and two daughters. The Doctor’s brother, William, died, advanced in years, at Wooton-Rivers, Wilts, to which rectory he had been presented by Brazenose College.

ТHE REVEREND DOCTOR MAYO
in Memoriâ æternâ erit Justus

GENTLEMEN,
The venerable Herbert Mayo, D.D., rector of St. George's, Middlesex, died on the 5th instant, aged 82 years. Will you permit one who loved him while living, to embalm his memory in your pages, now that he is dead.

Dr. Mayo was a native of Hereford, and was educated at Brazen-nose Coll. Oxford, which presented him to the living of St. George's. Dr. Mayo was a divine of that class, which, though it enjoy not all the splendid celebrity that adorns some others; perhaps excels all in real utility; — that is to say, he was a good parish priest. He was a man of great experience in that particular branch of his profession; having been for some time curate of Bow le Stratford, then ten years curate of Whitechapel, then ten years curate of Spitalfields; before he entered upon the living of St. George in the East, where I think he resided thirty-eight years. There is no church in London where divine service is performed with more rubrical correctness than in St. George's. The assiduity of a pastor, attentive to all the minutiæ of propriety in the use of the Liturgy, produced a correspondent regularity in his congregation. Everything at St. George's is done euschēmenōs kai kata taxin  ['decently and in order': 1 Cor 14.40] — Dr. Mayo had a peculiar, but by no means an unimpressive, mode of preaching, in his earlier years; but his labours were not confined to the pulpit merely. He was the instructor of the young, in the catechetical way; the reclaimer of the dissolute; the grave rebuker of the blasphemer; the admonisher of those who had reached the gradation of unthinking levity, in the scale of offence, and were tottering on the brink of vice. He was the comforter of the sick, and cherisher of those who languished under the depressions of poverty. He administered the aids of religion to those who were passing from time to eternity; and often, by the side of the grave, exerted a vigour beyond the routine of duty, whilst he taught those who attended on the interment of their friends to prepare for their latter end. He was particularly kind to the negroes and uninstructed men of colour; who, employed generally on board of ship, occasionally resided in his parish, which is full of sea-faring people. I suppose no clergyman in England ever baptized so many black men and Mulattoes; nor did he at any time baptize them without much previous preparation; that the inward and spiritual grace might accompany the outward and visible form of baptism. The attachment of these poor people to him was very great. Several of them never came into the port of London, without waiting upon him, by way of testifying the respect in which they held him.

Dr. Mayo was a magistrate for the county of Middlesex, and performed the functions of that office, in his parochial relations, with great attention. The zealous care with which he watched over the charity-schools in his parish, was very becoming. One of them is a shool of high character, — RAINE'S HOSPITAL I mean; into which young girls are transplanted out of the ordinary parochial school, and are taught all sorts of useful household work; and then, after having lived five years in service, and bringing testimonials of their good behaviour, they are intitled to draw lots for a marriage portion of one hundred pounds; and are married to some industrious mechanic, a member of the Church of England. Dr. Mayo was treasurer of this excellent foundation. I saw him, last May-day, in the presence of a numerous assemblage of the trustees and others, among whom were both the members of parliament for the county of Middlesex, deliver a purse, containing one hundred pounds, to one of the young women who had been married by him that morning; whilst another stood by, who had just drawn a prize of a similar portion. The good old man gave the new married pair a suitable charge, in a most affectionate way. His infirmities, it is true, impeded his speech not a little; he feemed to feel it was the last he should make on such an occasion; but I assure you, Gentlemen, there was an eloquence in his very pauses, and something so touching in the tears which trickled down his cheeks, that they must have had hearts of stone who could hear them unmoved.

I hope I shall not hurt the feelings of his family, (a wife, two sons, both married, and two daughters) who survive him, when I say, that never man was happier in all his domestic relations. His children were all pro vided for in his life-time. He was a faithful steward for them. His ambition was to educate them at his own cost, without breaking in upon what was to come to them. His eldest son is a most respectable physician, settled at Doncaster; and was, before he quitted London, physician to the Middlesex Hospital. His younger son is well known to the learned world, Mr. Charles Mayo, the late professor of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, in the university of Oxford; the first-appointed professsor upon Dr. Rawlinson's foundation. Both these gentlemen were fellows of St. John's College, Oxford.

Dr. Mayo was a man of true frugality. But as his frugality never sunk into parsimony, so it was in some measure subservient to his generosity. He has walked, leaning upon my arm, with no small personal inconvenience to himself, through the streets of London, to save the expence of a hackney-coach; but then I have seen him give to the son, the orphan son of a clergyman, before he reached home, the half-crown which he saved. No man better understood the economy of charity. There are few public charities to which he was not a contributor, from Christ's Hospital downward. His known probity procured him the office of executor to many. Many have acknowledged the services he has done them in quality of trustee and guardian. The management of the property which he held in trust for others, often called him to the Bank of England. He has been thought to be busied there on his own account; but whenever this has been objectngly hinted to him, he has only answered with a smile.

A smile he had, of peculiar benignity. He was a man of great good humour; and often indulged in a species of chastened pleasantry; — but his delight was in that sort of wit which distinguished some great men at the beginning of the last age — Punning. Dr. South himself was not fonder of a pun than Dr. Mayo.

He was blessed with a long series of uninterrupted health. Rainy days, or inclement seasons, never stopped him in the career of duty. He was а parish priest of the old school; of the school which bred John Waring, curate of Spitalfields and Bishopsgate, and, last clerk in orders at St. James's, Piccadilly; Mr. Hallinge, the curate of Aldgate, late secretary to the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge; Dr. Markham, late гесtог of Whitechapel; Mr. Southgate, the curate of St. Giles's, and Mr. Richards, the curate of St. Sepulchre's.

Dr. Mayo was in politics a tory. His religious principles were truly orthodox. One of the newspapers said something about "his liberality towards Dissenters of all denominations".  This is a sort of fashionable phrase. Liberal and kind was he to all; but he had none of that mawkish liberality which is mere latitudinariansim or indifference. The proper Presbyterian, who differs from our church only in matters of discipline, he knew how to value justly. The members of the Kirk of Scotland he regarded as person living under an outward establishment of religion, recognized by the constitution of the country. But as for the herd of ordinary Dissenters, whose principles are no where set forth authoritatively, and who can give no rational reason of the hope that is in them, no clear account of the faith which they profess; whilst he pitied them sincerely, no man less approved of their disunited condition, and disuniting tenets, than Dr. Mayo. He had no good opinion of those "who turn religion into rebellion," (to use the language of our Liturgy) and faith into faction.

Thus much I have thought it but right to say, and thus much I have said with truth, respecting so excellent and exemplary a clergyman as the late worthy rector of St. George's, Middlesex. I am, Gentlemen,

Your most obedient servant,
A LONDON CURATE.

Jan. 11, 1802.

from The Gentleman’s Magazine (1803)