Crossword-Solution: ANCIENTRY 9 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 14

Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs (All of a Midsummer morn)! Surely we sing no little thing, In Oak and Ash and Thorn! Oak of the Clay lived many a day, Or ever Aeneas began; Ash of the Loam was a lady at home, When Brut was an outlaw man; Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town (From which was London born); Witness hereby the ancientry Of Oak and Ash and Thorn! Yew that is old in churchyard mould, He breedeth a mighty bow; Alder for shoes do wise men choose, And beech for cups also.

For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance, and with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

Alderman Constantine, a High Churchman, indignant at being passed over by a junior in the contest for the mayoralty, brought the matter before the Council Board, and produced an old by-law by which aldermen, according to their ancientry, were required to keep their mayoralty.

Banish, poor wretch! the passion of thy soul, And seek, instead, acquittance from thy pangs! Belike my words seem ancientry to thee— Such, natheless, O Prometheus, is the meed That doth await the overweening tongue! Meek wert thou never, wilt not crouch to pain, But, set amid misfortunes, cravest more! Now—if thou let thyself be schooled by me— Thou must not kick against the goad.

This is, no doubt, rococo, and at best a pitiful, catchfarthing bit of ancientry: yet it looks back to a time when it was indeed the fact that no choice work could be but useful, and when eyes and ears, as conduits to the soul, had that full of consideration we reserve for mouth and nose, purveyors to the belly.