The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1840
W. M. Jacob
Oxford University Press, £55
(978-0-19-921300-9)
Church Times Bookshop £49.50
“A VERY elegant dinner the bishop gave us. We had 2 courses of 20 dishes each course, and a dessert after of 20 dishes. Madeira, red and white wines.” Thus Parson Wood-forde in 1783, evoking a Hogarthian world of clergy with bland faces and bush wigs tucking into large joints, before going back to their parishes, their wordy services, and complacent routine of life.
“Spiritually comatose” — so Ronald Blythe has called them. It is a view that we have inherited from the Victorians, as that of the Middle Ages derives from the Renaissance. It forgets how much of the dynamic of church life in the 19th century can be traced back to the 18th: the building and reordering of churches, the revival of church dedications, church choirs, and hymnology. It ignores the heartfulness of Woodforde’s prayers, his concerns for his parishioners, and his charity to the poor.
The Ven. W. M. Jacob is not the first to revalue the Georgian Church, but few have spoken for it so persuasively. In a comprehensive study of the “long eighteenth century” from 1680 to 1840, he deals methodically with every aspect of clerical life.
We follow the clergy from their social origins, education, and recruitment to their incomes, houses, life-style, and politics. There are excellent accounts of how they took services, preached, and dispensed parochial care and government.
Without losing the thread of the story, we learn a good deal about the Church as a whole. There are valuable discussions about lay participation in worship, and of anticlericalism. As in Chaucer’s day, people disliked aspects of the Church, such as tithe-paying and church courts, while rarely imagining that the Church could be different.
Jacob does not ignore the Church’s defects. Some stipends were poor (many curates in particular were badly paid and lacked security), and there were some unsatisfactory clerics. Nevertheless, his judgements, calm and fair, are generally positive. Education was good, and bishops were conscientious. The clergy were better trained and supervised than lawyers or doctors. Even pluralism and non-residence often came about for cogent reasons.
The arrangement of the book is by topics, not chronology, which works satisfactorily up until 1800. The social and intellectual world of Woodforde, who died in 1803, was not vastly different from that of
his fellow-diarist Anthony Wood, who died in 1695. But after 1800,
as Jacob makes clear, change quickened; and one senses a new
era as much as the tail of a long
18th century.
This book is like a well-built Georgian church or rectory: neat, well planned, exact, imposing, and satisfying to visit.
Canon Nicholas Orme is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University.
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