Ordinary

A chaplain at Newgate prison in London who was responsible for readying condemned men or women for execution.

Mrs. Millamant: “Well, an illiterate man’s my aversion: I wonder at the impudence of any illiterate man to offer to make love.”

Witwoud: “That I confess I wonder at too.”

Mrs. Millimant: “Ah! to marry an ignorant that can hardly read or write.”

Petulant: “Why should a man be any further from being married, though he can’t read, than he is from being hanged? The ordinary’s paid for setting the psalm, and the parish priest for reading the ceremony. And for the rest which is to follow in both cases, a man may do it without book – so all’s one for that.”

William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700).