"Some years ago a friend took me to the little Berkshire church of which the celebrated Vicar of Bray was once the incumbent. (Actually it is a few miles from Bray, but perhaps at that time the two livings were one.) In the churchyard there stands a magnificent yew tree which, according to a notice at its foot, was planted by no less a person than the Vicar of Bray himself. And it struck me at the time as curious that such a man should have left such a relic behind him.
. . .
"...it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.
"And, if even one in twenty of them came to maturity, you might do quite a lot of harm in your lifetime, and still, like the Vicar of Bray, end up as a public benefactor after all."
-- George Orwell, "A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray" (1946)

A biographer once said that Orwell's poem "A happy vicar I might have been" had been suggested by "The Vicar of Bray". I ventured to suggest, in another place, that if he had really had that tune running thru his head at the time, the poem might have come out more like this:

A happy divine I might have been
Two hundred years ago, sir,
To preach theology obscene
And watch my walnuts grow, sir,
But, born into an age of cults
Of bullies with mustaches,
I took my place with the adults
In ign'rant armies' clashes.

    And this is law, I will maintain,
    Until my dying day, sir:
    When Fashion doth one way ordain,
    I'll take the other way, sir.