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“Unreasonable and Unbecoming”: Self-Recommendation and Place-Seeking in the Church of England, 1700–1900*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

W. T. Gibson
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Extract

Ecclesiastical patrons used a broad range of criteria to select clergy for preferment to livings and dignities in the Church of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The qualifications of nobility, of academic standing, of services to the Church and State, of a patron's influence and strong churchmanship were among those that were most common. But a further factor affected advancement: that of self-recommendation. Ecclesiastical historians, particularly those of the Victorian era, have tended to see this as a morally questionable, if not corrupt, method of gaining advancement—and one which was primarily a feature of the Hanoverian Church. Indeed the traditional view of ecclesiastical history, though increasingly under challenge, regarded the Hanoverian and Victorian Churches as standing in strong contrast to each other. This contrast has tended to include the quality and recruitment of the clergy. Yet, there was no fundamental difference in the methods used by patrons in distributing livings and offices in the Church in these two centuries. Crown livings and senior posts in the Church were distributed by ministers and patrons who were prone to favor, influence, and persuasion. It was to this system that self-recommendation was directed, in the hope of securing preferment. Because of the success of personal solicitation, self-recommendation remained a factor in nominations to places in the Church throughout the nineteenth century. Even when it was declared unacceptable for the appointment to senior Church offices by Gladstone in 1881, self-recommendation remained in existence in a covert form.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 43 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1995

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Footnotes

*

I am pleased to acknowledge the encouragement and advice of Professor Jeremy Black.

References

1 An example of this commonly held interpretation is Brown, C. K. Francis, A History of the English Clergy 1800–1900 (London, 1953), p. 122 Google Scholar. It is also explicit throughout Abbey's, Charles The English Church and its Bishops, 2 vols., (London, 1887)Google Scholar. One of the most recent writers on the subject of episcopal history has defined self-recommendation as “blatant canvassing”: Denny, Barbara, King's Bishop (London, 1985), p. 202 Google Scholar.

2 Hitschberg, Daniel, “A Social History of The Anglican Episcopate 1660–1760” (Ph.D. thesis. University of Michigan, 1976), p. 98ffGoogle Scholar. The same view is echoed in Taylor, Stephen, “Church and State in England in the Mid-eighteenth Century: The Newcastle Years, 1742-62” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1987)Google Scholar.

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6 For examples of requests see: Hirschberg, “A Social History of the Anglican Episcopate,” ch. 1. Gibson, William “Patterns of Nepotism and Kinship in the Eighteenth Century Church,” in The Journal of Religious History 14, 4 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, demonstrates the way in which there was an advantageous “multiplier” effect in the distribution of Church patronage within the client-patron relationship.

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17 B.L., Add. Mss. 32,719 to 32,886, passim. For details of the remarkable Hibbins-Newcastle correspondence see Gibson, William “‘Importunate Cries of Misery’: The Correspondence of Lucius Henry Hibbins & The Duke of Newcastle 1740-1758,” in The British Library Journal 17 (Spring 1991)Google Scholar. It seems clear that Hibbins had quite realistic encouragement from the dukes of Newcastle and Richmond, and they cynically abandoned him to abject poverty. For Austen's claims, see Curtis, Chichester Towers, pp. 93–96 Google Scholar. For Blacow's claims see Robson, R. J., The Oxfordshire Election of 1754 (London, 1949), p. 164 Google Scholar. For Crigan, see Christie, The Diary of William Jones, pp. 189–91Google Scholar.

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20 For the legitimacy of nepotism, see Gibson, “Patterns of Nepotism and Kinship.” For Woodward, see Gibson, A Parson in the Vale of the White Horse. An equally important point is that clergy were often scrupulous in declining advancement as well as seeking it, see Gibson, William, The Anglican Achievement 1689–1800: The Confessional State in Eighteenth Century England (Lewiston, 1995), ch. 2Google Scholar.

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25 Ibid, 38,301 f 116.

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31 B.L., Add. Mss. 38, 302 f 26.

32 For details of the remarkable evolutionary changes in church patronage begun under Liverpool, see Gibson, William “The Tory Governments and Church Patronage 1812-1830,” in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (April 1990)Google Scholar.

33 Southampton University Archives, Wellington Papers, WP1/922/14.

34 Ibid, WP1/937/29. Pepys had strong family connections to fall back on if political promises did not bear fruit.

35 Ibid, WP1/1083/9, WP1/937/7 & WP1/1023/11.

36 Coplestone, see Whatley, Richard, ed., The Remains of the Late Edward Coplestone DD… (London, 1854), p. 2 Google Scholar. For Hall, see B. L., Add. Mss. 38,574 f 176.

37 Southampton University Archives, Palmerston Papers GC/CA/412. Black, Jeremy “A Regency Regius: The Historian Edward Nares,” Oxoniensia 52 (1987): 177 Google Scholar.

38 For an example of how these reforms affected a Cathedral Chapter, see Gibson, William “Continuity and Change, the Chapter of Winchester in the Nineteenth Century,” The Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society 45 (1989)Google Scholar.

39 Lambeth Palace Library, Longley MS. 7, f 87.

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42 Southampton University Archives, Palmerston Papers, MPC/1593. Hart, A. T. and Carpenter, Edward, The Nineteenth Century Country Parson (Shrewsbury, 1961), p. 120 Google Scholar. Ironically, it was Gladstone who eventually offered Seymour a canonry at Worcester.

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49 Though late in the century and into the twentieth the archbishops of Canterbury received direct applications. E.g. Lambeth Palace Library, Temple MS. 15, ff 295-97.

50 Columbia University, New York, Butler Library, MS. X825T34-56, vol. 1 ff 91-93.

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55 B.L., Add. Mss. 44,433 f 34; ibid, 44,435 f 95; ibid, 44,436 f 165. Edward Bickersteth was indeed unfortunate in losing two daughters, Alice and Irene, in 1872. They were soon followed by their mother. The book giving an account of his child was The Master's Call Home. Bickersteth, S., The Life and Letters of Edward Bickersteth (London, 1901), p. 11nGoogle Scholar. B.L., Add. Mss. 44,441 f 213; ibid, 44,438 ff 149, 159; ibid, 44,448 ff 113, 167; ibid, 44,452 f 251.

56 B.L., Add. Mss. 44, 489 f 162, and Aglionby, F. K., The Life of Edward Henry Bickersteth DD (London, 1907), p. 54 Google Scholar. Russell, G. W. E., A Short History of The Evangelical Movement (London, 1915), p. 152 Google Scholar.

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