The Clerk is the warden of the church at Old Welmingham, where evidence of the forgery that Sir Percival Glyde committed—claiming that his parents were married when they really were not—is stored in the vestry. The Clerk is a talkative, forgetful and slightly pompous old man. He helps Walter Hartright when Walter visits the church to examine the marriage register, which Walter rightly suspects contains Sir Percival’s secret, and is present again during the fire which Sir Percival accidentally starts when he breaks into the vestry to destroy the forgery and in which he is killed.