James Potter, the Chiddingly Parish Clerk, died on September 1822, aged 85. According to the note in the Burial Register, he had been Parish Clerk for forty-six years and had never been “absent from his place of duty except during his confinement on the two Sundays before his death.” What this meant was that he had attended church regularly. It did not necessarily mean that he had been an efficient Parish Clerk, at least towards the end of his days.

The obvious man to succeed him, who had already proved his efficiency in two terms as Assistant Overseer, was Richard Lower, but here a difficulty arose. Richard was a Dissenter, a man not only excluded by law from Oxford, Cambridge and certain high posts of State, but one who was unwilling as well as unqualified to participate in Church of England ceremonies. The Vestry compromised. For Church matters it appointed a new Parish Clerk - Peter Page, who died, aged 52, in a Brighton hospital in 1839 – and also a Vestry Clerk, concerned only with lay matters – Richard Lower. Richard celebrated by buying a large new Minute Book from his relative, Reuben, in Lewes and fashioning its front leaf into a highly decorated title page on which his own name and office were clearly elaborated. The first item he minuted in his new book was the indemnification of David Guy for his expenses in presenting one Stephen Richardson at the Quarter Sessions for felony.

Richard Lower now, as it were, wore three hats: one as Collector of Government Taxes; one as Assistant Overseer (still, as yet, unpaid); and one as the Vestry Clerk. Each year he donned a fourth hat as the bookkeeper for the Surveyors of Highways, the two officials whose duty it was to collect the Highway Rate and apply it to repair of parish roads, another statutory parish duty that dated back to Tudor times. By law, every male parishioner had to give six days free labour to road repair, unless he were a farmer who could furnish carts and draught animals or a gentleman who could buy his exemption. Each year Richard made up the Highways Accounts, for which he received a fee of around 25 shillings; but it was the highways that brought him a sharp rap over the knuckles from the Vestry for being too efficient.