258 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE OLE ROT IN THE April The Social Status of the Clergy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries THBBE has already been much discussion of the passage in which Lord Macaulay some seventy years ago described the social position occupied by the clergy of the church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He wrote that when the Downloaded from church lost its old wealth and splendour at the Reformation, the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes. During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth scarce a single person of noble descent took Orders. At the close of the reign of Charles II two sons of peers were bishops ; four or five sons of peers were priests, and held http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ valuable preferments; but these rare exceptions did not take away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded, on the whole, as a plebeian class ; and, indeed, for one who made the figure of a gentle- man, ten were mere menial servants.1 It was of this passage that Mr. Gladstone wrote: Few portions of his brilliant work have achieved a more successful notoriety. It may perhaps be said to have been stereotyped in the common English at University of California, San Francisco on March 6, 2015 mind. It is, in its general result, highly disparaging, and yet that genera- tion of clergy was, as we conceive, the most powerful and famous in the annals of the English Church. If we do not include yet earlier times, it is from want of record, rather than from fear of comparison.2 Recent historians 8 of the church of England have concurred in Mr. Gladstone's estimate of the general character and ability of the clergy at this time ; but there is still room for an examina- tion of Macaulay's statement. If it were true, it would seriously affect the reputation of the cadet members of noble families at the Reformation period, and the gentry of the succeeding century, who are said to have ceased to aspire to Holy Orders because the emoluments had fallen in value. Equally it would redound to the credit of poorer men that they were content to serve for smaller stipends and in a less exalted sphere. It is, however, greatly exaggerated. The following is a list, admitting of extension, of some near relations of peers who entered Holy Orders during the seventeenth century : Richard Annesley, D.D. (d. 1701), dean of Exeter, 3rd Baron Altham, son of Arthur, earl of Anglesey. George Berkeley, M.A. (d. 1694), rector of Cranford, canon of West- minster, son of George, Baron Berkeley. Robert Booth, B.D. (1662-1730), dean of Bristol, &c., son of Robert, Baron Delamere. 1 Bislory of England, ed. Firth, i. 318. • Review of Trevelyan, Life of Lord Macaulay in Quarterly Review, July 1870, p. 76. 1 Wakeman, History of the Church of England, p. 380. 1922 SEVENTEENTH—EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 259 George Brereton, M.A., canon of St. Davids, 1672, second son of William, Baron Brereton. Henry Compton, D.D. (1632-1713), bishop of London, sixth son of Spencer, second earl of Northampton. Nathaniel Crewe, D.D. (1633-1721), bishop of Durham, second Baron Crewe of Stene. Samuel Crewe, M.A. (d. 1661), brother of Nathaniel. Henry Fairfax, D.D., canon of York, rector of Bolton Percy (d. 1665), Downloaded from fourth son of Thomas, first Baron Fairfax. John Feilding, D.D., canon of Sarum, chaplain to William HI (d. 1698), son of George, first earl of Desmond. Richard Fiennes, rector of Oakley, grandson of William, first Viscount Saye and Sele, and father of Richard, sixth viscount. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Leopold Finch, D.D. (1663-1702), warden of All Souls College, son of Heneage, second earl of Winchilsea. William Graham, D.D. (1656-1713) dean of Carlisle 1686, and Wells 1704, brother of Viscount Preston. Denis Grenville, D.D. (1637-1703), dean of-Durham, son of Sir Bevil Grenville. Anthony Grey, D.D., rector of Aston Flamville, succeeded as earl of Kent, 1639. at University of California, San Francisco on March 6, 2015 James Montagu, D.D. (1568-1618), bishop of Winchester, brother of Edward, Baron Montagu of Boughton. John North, DJD. (1645-83), master of Trinity College and professor of Greek at Cambridge, prebendary of Westminster, fifth son of Dudley, fourth Baron North.1 The lists of incumbents and the matriculation registers of colleges and universities clearly show that men of gentle if not of noble birth continued to seek ordination. Nor was Macaulay right in drawing a sharp line between the clergy of the early sixteenth century and those of the period after the Reformation. The striking instances of display in the earlier period belonged to an age when great position demanded a proportionate magnifi- cence. The lower clergy even then were drawn from plebeian homes, some of them coming of villein parentage; and while influential ecclesiastics were frequently of noble, and sometimes even of royal descent, many, like Wolsey himself, were raised by their abilities from a humble origin. In the later period there is a manifest distinction between the more lucrative and the poorer country cures. The former were held by persons of some eminence, and their rank or com- parative wealth commended them to the upper strata of society, to which, in many cases, they already belonged ; while the small rustic cures could not provide a good living, and, if held by men of position, were regarded as a subsidiary source of income, the duties being discharged by a curate of little note and » See also Churchill Babington, Mr. Macaulay'e-Character of the Clergy, 1849. S2 260 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE CLERGY IN THE April smaller pay. This distinction may be illustrated by reference to the town church of Gillingham, in Dorsetshire, which was held during the latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries by men of note. John Jessop, B.D., who was vicar from 1579 to 1625, was a member of a Dorset county family seated at Chickerell. TTia brother was a physician resident in the town, and their two recumbent effigies, hand Downloaded from clasped in hand, remain in the chancel aisle. Jessop's successor, Edward Davenant, D.D., treasurer of Sarum, was a nephew of Bishop John Davenant, and his daughters married well, Anne to William Ettrick of Wimborne, gentleman, Margaret to George Solme, esquire, and Katherine to Thomas Lamplugh, http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ who was afterwards archbishop of York. The next vicar, John Ward, D.D. (1679-96), was a nephew of Seth Ward, bishop of Sarum. He again was succeeded by John Craig, 1696-1731, a scholar of some repute, who was in residence till 1723, after which year he was represented by a curate, Gilbert Craig, 1724-7, and later by Robert Edgar. All these men were capable of holding their own socially among the neighbouring gentry, by their attain- ments, connexions, and the importance of their ecclesiastical at University of California, San Francisco on March 6, 2015 preferment. Of Craig, who had been collated by Bishop Burnet to the prebendal Stall of Durnford, 1708, and by Bishop Hoadly to that of Gillingham Major, 1726, it is said that he was an inoffensive virtuous man, master of a good Latin style, an excellent mathematician, and esteemed by Sir Isaac Newton. Many years before his death he resided in London, expecting to have been taken notice of for his mathematical abilities, but died there in a mean condition 11th October, 1731 -1 He died intestate, and administration was granted to bis son William, 16 November 1731. Gillingham had several daughter chapelries, and tradition points to William Young, curate of East Stower, as the original of Parson Adams in Fielding's Joseph Andrews. Adams is described as serving four churches at a stipend of £23 per annum, ' with which he could not make any great figure, because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with wife and six children ' ; and even that position was insecure, as he could not afford to pay for a licence. Though Adams was learned in modern and ancient languages and his constant companion was a manuscript copy of Aeschylus, and though he had a marked sense of his dignity as a priest with cure of souls and was loved and respected by his parishioners, he could not compete socially with Lady Booby, who for his poverty indecently held him up as a laughing-stock to her friends. 1 Hutchina, Dorstt, 3rd ed., iii. 647. 1922 SEVENTEENTH—EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 261 The country living of Folke, a small village near Sherborne in Dorset, may now be examined. William Hymerford (Hemerford), rector, who died in 1583, belonged to a family seated at East Coker, Somerset, as early as the reign of Richard II, if not earlier, of which a branch was in possession of the manor—or a moiety of the manor—of Folke in the time of Henry VHI, when Henry Hemerford was escheator of Dorset and Somerset; Downloaded from and one of his daughters, Elizabeth, was married to Thomas Molyns, eBquire, of West Hall. The family also intermarried with the Trenchards of Wolveton, Dorset.1 Of his successor Walter Chubb, 1583-1614, nothing is known except that he had been curate to Hemerford, but Abraham http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ Forrester, 1614-68 (B.A. Caius College, Cambridge, incorporated M.A. Oxford), married as his third wife Mrs. Joane Paulet, widow, and his grandson, born in 1666, married Bridget, daughter of Henry Seymer, esquire, of Hanford.