"There are two good brasses of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in this church [Harford Church]. The former is a knight in armour, Thomas Williams, Speaker of the house of Commons, the other a coloured brass to the Prideaux family, placed here by John Prideux, Bishop of Worcester, in 1639.
Of him it is told, that as a young man in Harford he competed for the post of parish clerk, in the neighboring parish of Ugborough, but failed to get the appointment. He went to Oxford, and worked in a menial position. Afterwards a patron kindly procured for him admittance to a college, where through his ability he rose from one position to another until he was made bishop of Worcester; and was wont to remark "If I could have been a parish clerk of Ugborough, I had never been the bishop of Worcester."
Cresswell 1921
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