The Church of England in the Forest of Arden, 1660‐1740 By
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The Church of England in the Forest of Arden, 1660‐1740 by Susan Ann Jones A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. School of History and Cultures The University of Birmingham University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This study explores the Anglican Church in a particular locality, namely the Forest of Arden region of Warwickshire, from the Restoration to 1740. This thesis is in sharp contrast to those histories that have depicted the Church of England as a moribund institution. It is contended that Anglicanism was a vibrant and accepted part of the lives of a considerable proportion of the laity, providing the focus of the communal and social life of the parish. What is more, the church and its clergy successfully served the needs of the people. In addition, it played a significant role in the spiritual, educational and moral discipline of the lower orders. This study shows that there was a high level of clerical commitment to the good of the people and that there was a considerable amount of lay participation in all aspects of church life. Evidence is also presented that there was a general Anglican commitment to harmony between those of differing religious views. Table of Contents Acknowledgements Maps List of Abbreviations Abstract Introduction 1 Chapter One-Popular Anglicanism 39 Chapter Two-The Church of England and its Competitors 103 Chapter Three-Church Discipline: Education and Coercion 149 Chapter Four-The clergy: Incomes, Pluralism and Patronage 203 Chapter Five-The Clergy: Lives and Ministry 259 Conclusion 305 Appendix 311 Bibliography 314 In Loving Memory of Nigel And To my Daughters, Emily and Sarah With much Love. Acknowledgments In writing this work, many people have been extremely helpful, and I wish to offer them my personal thanks. My thanks go to the staff of the record offices of Warwick, Worcester and Lichfield for their assistance in finding me documents so quickly and efficiently. Thanks are also due to Sarah Duffield, archivist, Church of England Record Centre for her assistance in helping to identify material concerning Queen Anne’s Bounty for which I am extremely grateful. A great debt of gratitude is due to my supervisor Dr Michael Snape, whose patiance, empathy and support has enabled me to complete this doctoral thesis through difficult personal times. My debt to him is enormous. On a personal note I would like to thank my dear friends Jennet and Steve Gabriel, without their support, encouragement and the use of their home this thesis would not have been completed. Finally, I would like to thank Sally Beadle for her continuing support but, more importantly for just listening. Source, Humphery-Smith, Cecil (ed), Atlas and Index of Parish Registers, 3rd edition (Phillimore2003), p.36 W. Westley Map of Birmingham 1731 Position of the parish of St. Martin’s, Birmingham, 1695 ABBREVIATIONS B.R.L. Birmingham Reference Library C.C.Ed. Clergy of the Church of England Database C.E.R.C. Church of England Record Centre L.R.O. Lichfield Record Office Q.A.B. Queen Anne’s Bounty S.P.C.K. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. V.C.H. Victoria County History W.C.R.O. Warwickshire County Record Office W.R.O. Worcestershire Record Office Introduction With the publication in 1934 of Norman Sykes’ Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century, a new trend in ecclesiastical history was set in motion, one that challenged and questioned the received ideas about the restored Church of England. Sykes was insistent that the restored Church should not be judged by the standards of nineteenth- century commentators and their sharp contrast between ‘pre-Victorian darkness and Victorian light’.1 Nevertheless, he declared that the ‘Church after 1663 was as riddled with poor livings and pluralism as its medieval predecessor’. In addition, he pointed out that the evolving Church had many problems to overcome. On balance, though, Norman Sykes’s Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (1934) is credited with being a landmark volume in providing the first positive general assessment of the Church of England from the Restoration through to the Georgian period. From the beginning of the period under study the Church of England was faced with a number of challenges. In the seventeenth century continuing tensions within the Church of England over theological and liturgical issues were among the factors leading to the English Civil War. It was hoped that by establishing an episcopal church government at the Restoration there would be religious peace and reconciliation. The Restoration of Charles II to the throne after the fall of Cromwell’s Commonwealth was seen as a relief by the mass of the English people from the extreme Puritan attitudes inflicted on them during of the ‘rule of Saints’. Episcopal Anglicans looked to the returning monarchy as their saviour from the extremes of Presbyterianism and Independency. The returning Cavalier Anglicans were determined on revenge. The Elizabethan Prayer Book was reissued, with minor amendments, 1 Gerald, Parsons (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, Volume 1 (Manchester, 1988), p19. 1 and those Puritan ministers who were not prepared to accept it were ejected. Ministers who refused to conform and swear loyalty to the King were forbidden from preaching within five miles of any town. Later, Charles II’s efforts to promote toleration were denounced as a sell- out to popery and created a fear of a Roman Catholic revival in England. More importantly, Charles II’s Catholic sympathies and questions of religious toleration divided the established Church and the court. The ‘popish plot’ and, later, James II’s perceived attempts to reinstate Catholicism heightened worries for the future of Protestantism in England. It was this threat that gave rise to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-89 and the invitation to the Protestant William of Orange to take the throne. The Revolution caused a crisis of conscience for many of the clergy in the Church of England, who were required to swear allegiance to William and Mary. They had previously sworn to be faithful to James II, though he had been a Roman Catholic; many refused to break their oath of allegiance and had to give up their livings. Significantly, during this period one of the most difficult questions was the degree to which Nonconformists and Nonjuring clergymen could participate in the established Church. In addition, the fear of a Catholic invasion or a Catholic rebellion, and wider suspicions of Jacobitism caused a number of riots throughout the eighteenth century. Simultaneously, a conservative Church was experiencing a theological revolution. The age of reason and the theology of the Latitudinarians were challenging traditional standards of belief and doctrine. The Church also had to respond to changes in society such as population growth and urbanisation. Surveyed as a whole, the eighty year period between the Restoration and the evangelical revival can be seen as a period during which the established Church laid the foundations of an evolving, growing and tolerant institution. 2 Nineteenth and early twentieth-century historians had been united in condemning the inefficient organisation of the restored Church of England. Scholars made much of the fact that lay patrons appointed the clergy and that many were non-resident or pluralist. They emphasised the Church’s subservience to the civil government, the fact that the bishops were political appointees and that they were expected to spend a large part of their time in London, sitting in the House of Lords. Thus, bishops such as Benjamin Hoadly, with his quasi- Lockean views, and Lancelot Blackburne became the “whipping boys” of nineteenth and early twentieth-century historians. C.J.Abbey and J.H.Overton, in their classic nineteenth- century work, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, regarded bishops such as Hoadly as men in ‘want of spiritual depth’, and chastised the Church for failing in its spiritual duty and for identifying too much with the secular outlook of the Whig oligarchy.2 Bishop Hoadly’s view that the Eucharist was purely a commemorative act and the fact that during his time as bishop he rarely visited his dioceses and lived instead in London, where he was very active in politics, may have led to their conclusion. As mentioned above, Norman Sykes’s work in the 1930s made the greatest contribution to the rehabilitation of the eighteenth-century Church of England. His work was to remain a solitary beacon for the Church’s institutional history until a renewal of interest occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.3 It would not, of course, be true to say that nothing appeared between these dates. Edward Carpenter’s Thomas Sherlock (1936) and his biography of Thomas Tenison (1948) went some way to present his subjects in a more favourable light. The relative lack of research into the eighteenth-century Church, however, was in part due to the marginalisation of religious history and its separation from political and social history. After decades in the 2 C.J. Abbey and J.H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1878), 2 vols, I, p.