Three hundred people gathered at St Mary's church, Bottesford recently for the High Sheriff of Leicestershire's annual Justice Service.
The County’s High Sheriff Mr John Chatfeild-Roberts and his chaplain Revd Simon Shouler, unusually, chose Choral Mattins for the service.
Justice Services are held in each county at the start of the legal year in Micaelmas. They give thanks for our system of law and order and acknowledge, with gratitude, the contributions of all those who work to uphold the law and administer justice.
In addition to the High Court Judges, the service also welcomed the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, Dean of Leicester, the Very Revd Karen Rooms and the County’s Chief Constable Rob Nixon amongst its guests.
Simon writes, “The rubrics used in the service were as near to their original form as appropriate. This was to preserve 470 years of tradition going back to the first Prayer Book of 1549 compiled by Thomas Cranmer, who was born in Aslockton, just ten miles from Bottesford.”
The service also feature an extended bidding prayer, a new collect for the judiciary, both composed in Tudor prose and “a non-PC extra third verse of the National Anthem” which includes the exhortation to ‘frustrate their knavish tricks’ when referring the the ‘enemies’ of the Monarch.
“The High Sheriff and I could be accused of having indulged our Prayer Book tastes and half-century-old public school memories,” says Simon. “But adding plenty of Charles Villiers Stanford, a couple of trumpets, some wonderful contemporary Tudor-meets-Gershwin responses by Joanna Forbes LeStrange, and several pews full of men and women in tights and wigs; the result was a wonderfully joyful, uplifting and inclusive act of worship, appreciated, we were fulsomely assured afterwards, by Hindu, Catholic and Anglican alike”.
