Some Economic Aspects of Parochial Churches in the Diocese of Bath and Wells in the Seventeenth Century

Extract

Recent historical literature has posed certain standard questions about the economic problems of the church. They cluster around the specific issues of impropriation, simony, valuation of benefices, and the income of the clergy. What proportion of benefices were impropriated and to whom? What kind of consequences resulted from impropriation? What was an acceptable income? How did a clergyman obtain a living?

These questions, which are usually raised about the Church of England as a whole, are now being asked in the specific context of the diocese of Bath and Wells. The diocese is, with only minor exceptions, coterminous with the county of Somerset. In the seventeenth century it had something over 400 parishes. Camden gave the number as 385. An eighteenth century county history gives 482. Given the casual attitude of the seventeenth century toward statistics, it is impossible to be any more precise.

These parishes were divided principally between rectories and vicarages. Rectories were differentiated from vicarages on the basis of the tithes they received. A rector received all tithes, great and small, but a vicar might receive only small tithes or none at all. If he received none, he was dependent on the generosity of the rector who did receive them. One writer of a handbook on tithes attempted to comfort vicars by informing them that the generous custom of England allowed them small tithes not allowed vicars on the Continent. He was at that point discussing hops and woad, but the income from hops and woad would scarcely have allowed the vicar of Mudford, annual income £30, to compete with the rector of North Cadbury, annual income £300, especially since Somerset has never been noted for its production of either hops or woad.