Bray in 1835

Bray, which gives name to a hundred, and in the parish of which the town of Maidenhead partly stands, is celebrated for the versatility of principle manifested by one of its incumbents, whence ‘the Vicar of Bray’ has become a proverbial expression for a man who can shift his principles with the times. The well-known song of ‘the Vicar of Bray’ represents this personage as living in the time of Charles II and his successors, down to George I ; but Fuller, in his ‘Worthies of England,’ gives the following account :- ‘The vivacious vicar hereof living under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again. He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor, and found this fire too hot for his tender temper. This vicar being taxed by one for being a turn-coat, and an unconstant changeling, “Not so,” said he, “for I always kept my principle, which is, to live and die the vicar of Bray.” Such many, now-a-dayes, who, though they cannot turn the wind, will turn their mills, and set them so, that wheresoever it bloweth, their grist shall certainly be grinded. (Vol. i. p. 79, Nichols's edit. 1811.)