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Private Patronage and the Church of England, 1800–1900*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

M. J. D. Roberts
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Extract

It is well known that, during the nineteenth century in England, there was widespread criticism of the traditional professions. Their members, it was alleged, formed an excessively privileged group owing their position more to patronage than to personal merit or competence. It is equally well known that patronage was believed to be particularly rampant in the nineteenth-century Church of England. (The novels of Trollope have ensured this.) It has been suggested, all the same, that of all institutions providing professional services to the nineteenth-century public, the Church of England escaped the reforming spirit of the age most completely. I hope in the course of my argument here to illustrate that this was not so and to show that problems which beset other professional men during the century affected the clergy of the Church of England also. I hope to demonstrate that doubts about the appropriateness of patronage as a device for recruiting and promoting parish clergy were, at times, widespread among the clergy themselves, among practising members of the Church of England and among the general public. Indeed, it becomes clear that, at certain crises, Church patronage (and especially patronage in the hands of private individuals) was subject to vigorous attack. It also becomes clear that, by the end of the century, the experiences and arguments of the preceding years were having their effect—that shifts in attitudes towards patronage were taking place and being translated into practice either directly by legislation or more subtly by social convention.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 1981 , pp. 199 - 223
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Reader, W. J., Professional Men, London 1966, 98Google Scholar.

2 Ecclesiastical historians have seldom been concerned to place the clergy in the context of the history of the professions. See, e.g., O. Chadwick's discussion of patronage in his standard work on The Victorian Church, London 1970, ii. aogff. Cf. B. Heeney who does make brief comparisons with developments in professional life generally, but who restricts his study to the years around mid-century: A Different Kind of Gentleman: Parish clergy as professional men in early and mid- Victorian England, Hamden Conn. 1977, 111–15Google Scholar.

3 Elliott, P., The Sociology of the Professions, London 1972, 32–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This attitude persisted strongly through the century. It was, for example, a stated presupposition of the reports both of the House of Lords select committee on patronage of 1874: Parliamentary Papers (hereafter cited as PP), 1874, vii. 303–4; and of the royal commission on the sale of ecclesiastical benefices: PP 1878–9, xx. 601.

5 Sources: 1821: PP 1822, xv, p. xiv and [? Revd E. Edwards) Quarterly Review, xxix (1823), 554Google Scholar; 1835: PP 1835, xxii. 1052, 1058; 1853: PP 1852–3, lxxxix. 41, based in turn on 1853 Cterp List; 1878: PP 1880, xviii. 488, based in turn on 1878 Clergy List; 1901: Own calculation from 1901 Clergy List.

6 The figures given in the table have been arranged and classified to ensure comparability over the entire time-span so far as this is possible. It should be noted, however, that: (i) The 1821 figures (italicized) are not fully comparable with later figures. They are based on a non-official, though contemporary, calculation which does not observe the categories as they later came to be defined. In particular, the category ‘private patrons’ here includes certain patrons by virtue of office (e.g., incumbents of mother churches in subdivided parishes) as well as patrons exercising their right as private citizens. The figure given thus overstates the position by c. 1,500. The figure given for total number of benefices also needs adjustment. It is based on the 1821 census figure for the total number of parishes, a related but not identical category. PP 1812, x. 159 notes the total number of benefices as 10,261. (ii)The 1835 and 1853 figures for ‘private patrons’ do not distinguish between the patronage of private individuals and patronage exercised by trustees (on behalf of individuals or groups). They classify them all as ‘private’. The 1878 and 1901 figures do, however, distinguish between these groups and it is clear that some churchmen were coming to regard trustee patronage as ‘public patronage’ so long as the trust agreement made the patronage right inalienable, i.e. non-saleable: PP 1880, xviii. 416. The problem of classifying trust patronage is touched on in part IV. For present purposes it is classified (as it is in the Clergy List) as private patronage. The totals given under this heading for 1878 and 1901 are therefore reached by adding the figures (given between brackets in the table) for both private individuals and trustees. (Trustees are defined to include all those listed as ‘Trustees’ in the Clergy List plus Simeon and Church Patronage Society trustees.)

7 Paul, L., The Deployment and Payment of the Clergy, London 1964Google Scholar, Table 46 lists 2,570 benefices in the gift of private individuals and 1,830 in the gift of religious patronage trusts and societies out of a total (England only) of 11,630 benefices existing in 1963.

8 Best, G. F. A., Temporal Pillars, Cambridge 1964, 59–77Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 58.

10 There was only one significant restriction (apart from the requirement diat the presentee be ordained). It was illegal under statute for a clergyman to buy the mere right of next presentation and then to present himself to the living. He had to buy die full advowson.

11 It was calculated that the names of the incumbent and the patron were the same in 1,290 of the livings in the gift of private patrons in 1866: Bartrum, E., Promotion by Merit essential to the Progress of the Church, London 1866, 5Google Scholar.

12 Best, op. cit., 75–7. For the most vivid illustration of tensions between squire and evangelical parson see Chadwick, O., Victorian Miniature, London 1960Google Scholar.

13 Obelkevich, J., Religion and Rural Society: South Undsey 1835–1875, Oxford 1976, 123Google Scholar.

14 Reader, Professional Men, ch. 1.

15 McClatchey, D., Oxfordshire Clergy 1777–1869, Oxford 1960, 10–11, 88Google Scholar.

16 E.g., a bishop could not prevent the presentation of an inaudible, aged clergyman to a demanding town living: PP 1874, vii. 451–2.

17 Best, Temporal Pillars, 41s; Heeney, A Different Kind of Gentleman, 111–12.

18 PP 1880, xviii. 449, 466. See also Appendix M (p. 484) which lists the names of purchasers of the 95 advowsons sold by the Lord Chancellor between 1863 and 187s under the terms of die Lord Chancellor's Augmentation Act of 1863: 31 were clergy and 64 laymen.

19 PP 1880, xviii. 408, 433.

20 Obelkevich, Religion and Rural Society, 112.

21 Chadwick, Victorian Church, ii. 209 citing Church Congress Reports, 1886, 50.

22 Rough calculations from the Clergy List for 1901 suggest that the number of patron-incumbents (and of all clergy owning patronage) fell by approximately one-third between 1878 and 1901. For pensioned retirement schemes (limited until the early twentieth century to beneficed clergy) see Best, Temporal Pillars, 505–6.

25 ‘Attractions’ of this variety were publicised by the writers of guidebooks to careers in the professions at mid-century and after. Pastoral theologians, writing at the same time, admitted the influence of such considerations on clergy—not necessarily with disapproval: Heeney, A Different Kind of Gentleman, 18–9, 94–5.

24 Reader, Professional Men, 199; Rothblatt, S., The Revolution of the Dons, London 1968, 90–2Google Scholar; Stone, L., The University in Society, Princeton 1974, i. 39, 93, 102Google Scholar; Peterson, M. J., The Medical Profession in Mid- Victorian London, Berkeley 1978, 37–9, 204–6Google Scholar.

25 Reader, op. cit., 211: Appendix I.

26 Gilbert, A., Religion and Society in Industrial England, London 1976, 131Google Scholar.

27 The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 required the sale of 76 benefices: PP 1836, xl. 87. Lord Westbury's Act of 1863 empowered the Lord Chancellor to sell his less well-endowed livings. As noted in footnote 18, 95 livings were sold between 1863 and 1872, 31 of them to clergymen.

28 Chadwick, Victorian Church, ii. 249. For ordination statistics before the 1870s, see Heeney, A Different Kind of Gentleman, 126.

29 Reader, op. cit., 183–4. Cf. Musgrove, F., ‘Middle-class education and employment in the 19th century’, Economic History Review, 2nd sen, xii (1959), 99–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H. J. Perkin, ‘Middle-class education and employment in the 19th century: a critical note’, Ibid., xiv (1961), 122–30.

30 Perkin, op. cit., is8.

31 Banks, J. A., Prosperity and Parenthood: a study of family planning among the Victorian middle classes, London 1954, 5Google Scholar.

32 Rothblatt, Revolution of Dons, 88–90. See also Reader, Professional Men, 95.

33 Bishops and patron-incumbents were increasingly hostile to one another as the century progressed: PP 1880, xviii. 410, 435; A. C. Benson, Life of Edward White Benson, London 1899, ii. 98. The practice of self-presentation by clergy patrons was not, however, made illegal until the Benefices Act (Amendment) Measure of 1923.

34 Best, Temporal Pillars, 59.

35 Yates, R., Patronage of the Church of England, London 1823, 110Google Scholar.

36 Best, op. cit., 400. Best dates the end of the ‘quite unreasonable ascendancy’ of ‘private’ over ‘public’ interest in 1843, the year of Peel's Church Building Act.

37 Yates, op. cit., 88–114.

38 E.g., Robert, and Henley, Baron, A Plan of Church-Reform, London 1832, 9Google Scholar. Henley was brother-in-law to Sir Robert Peel.

39 S. Meacham, Henry Thornton of Clapham 1760–181 5, Cambridge Mass. 1964, 3; Smyth, C., Simeon and Church Order, Cambridge 1940, 246–7Google Scholar; Clergy List, 1850, 1901.

40 Thornton Papers, Cambridge University Library, Add. MSS 7674/1/L, vol. 3, fo. 131: Henry Thornton to Hannah More, 28 October 1805: ‘I have been purchasing an advowson … at Ipswich for £2,500. May God grant that this application of some of the mammon of unrighteousness may be for the benefit of some future generations. I look to the possibility of a son or a nephew being possibly an incumbent and what a scene opens when we contemplate these distant events.’

41 Tait, A. J., Charles Simeon and his Trust, London 1936, 39—40Google Scholar.

42 Cf. Revd E. Hollond (a Simeon trustee) in Church Congress Reports, 1871, 469; The Times, 21 August 1869, 9.

43 Arnold, T., Principles of Church Reform (Jackson, M. and Rogan, J., eds.), London 1962, 125–6Google Scholar. Arnold limited ‘the principle of election’ to parishes ‘where there is no endowment and the minister is paid by a general contribution’. The book as a whole, with its readiness to make concessions to nonconformists in an attempt to secure their re-entry into the national Church, was believed to have lost Arnold any chance of being appointed a bishop.

44 The plan was that of [Sir] Robert Phillimore, Gladstone's friend: Hansard, 3rd ser. ccxviii. 1339, 1344; ccxxi. 1194.

45 The immediate reason for an outburst of anti-aristocratic feeling in the 50s was the incompetence of the allegedly aristocratic army command during the Crimean war, but it was reasonably easy to direct this hostility against other professional targets. See Heeney, A Different Kind of Gentleman, 19, citing leading article in The Times, 10 September 1856.

46 The Times, 3 1 August 1869, 9.

47 Macdonnell, J. C., The Life and Correspondence of William Connor Magee, Archbishop of York, London 1896, ii. 5Google Scholar: Earl of Harrowby to Bishop of London, 2 April 1874. Cf. Harrowby Papers, Sandon Hall, Staffs., vol. 38, fos 34–6: Magee to Harrowby, 4 April 1874.

45 PP 1874, vii. 344 (Earl of Harrowby); PP 1878–9, xx. 606 (Earl of Devon).

49 Stephens, W. R. W., The Life and Letters of W. F. Hook, 6th edn, London 1881, 193–207Google Scholar. The ‘protestant’ campaign on this occasion included the threat of a run on a local bank.

50 Hansard, 3 ser. clxix. 1924 (Lord Chancellor Westbury); The Times, J6 July 1874, 9. For examples of ‘ritualist’ unwillingness to found national patronage trusts, see English Church Union Circular, 1867, 198; Church Union Gazette, 1880, 171. It must be admitted that the ritualists did finally found their own patronage trust, but the change of policy was a slow and by no means unanimous development: Ibid., 1881, 239–40. Ritualists were ambivalent, also, when given the opportunity to exploit the private patronage of individuals: cf. Hammond, P., The Parson and the Victorian Parish, London 1977Google Scholar (Revd A. Stan ton of St Alban’s, Holborn); Church Union Gazette, 1881, 216 (Revd S. F. Green of St John’s, Miles Platting).

51 6 & 7 Viet. c. 37. This Act authorised the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to offer the patronage of a new parish to those contributing to its endowment, but seems to have been drafted on the assumption that such patronage would usually be retained (and exercised alternately) by crown and bishops.

52 London Diocesan Church Building Society: Annual Report 1856–7, 24–8.

53 PP 1880 xviii. 416.

54 See table and Clergy List, 1860, 1880, 1901.

55 Wordsworth, C. [bishop of Lincoln], On the Sale of Church Patronage and Simony, London 1874, 16Google Scholar.

56 PP 1874 vii. 352; PP 1880 xviii. 415, 475.

57 PP 1874 vii. 381.

58 Church Congress Reports, 1871, 468–9.

59 Fowle, T. W., ‘The Church and the working classes’ in Clay, W. L. (ed.), Essays on Church Policy, London 1868, 10 14Google Scholar; The Times, 21 August 1869, 9 ; Church Congress Reports, 1871, 463.

60 Thompson, D. M., ‘The Liberation Society, 1844–1868’ in Hollis, P. (ed.), Pressure from Without, London 1974, 825–6Google Scholar.

61 Gladstone, W. E., Letter to the Bishop of Aberdeen on the Functions of Laymen in the Church, London 1852, 16Google Scholar.

62 Wordsworth, Church Patronage, 6.

63 Ibid., 3, 6; Hansard, 3 ser. ccxxii. 827 (Bishop Temple of Exeter). For an interesting early example of this realisation see also [Revd] Bartrum, E., Promotion by Merit essential to the Progress of the Church, London 1866Google Scholar.

64 Church Congress Reports, 1880, 484–5. It is uncertain when the Committee was formed: it was circulating pamphlets and petitions in the early 70s.

65 Hansard, 3 ser. cci. 535 (R. A. Cross); ccii. 1339 (Lord Cairns). Cairns had been Lord Chancellor in Disraeli's ministry of 1868 and was also a strong ‘protestant’ churchman.

66 Chronicle of the Convocation of Canterbury, 1871, ‘Report… on resignation, patronage and the law of simony’. Main debate on report, Ibid., 1872, 18ff.; 1873, 485ff.

67 The Church Congresses, founded in 1861, were unofficial annual gatherings of leading clergy and laity. After 1872, when leading evangelical clergy (though not all laity) decided to attend, they were probably more representative of informed Church opinion than any other body in existence. By the early 70s Congresses were attracting 5,000 each year.

68 Hansard, 3 ser. ccxviii. 900–21; Harrowby Papers, vol. 38, fos 34–6: Magee to Harrowby, 4 April 1874.

69 PP 1874 vii. 383, 434–5. It is worth noting that, when legislation to implement the report was debated in the Lords, most bishops found the report recommendations too mild. Fifteen bishops voted for, and one against, an (unsuccessful) amendment to ban the sale of next presentations: Howard, 3 ser. ccxxiv. 1232.

70 PP 1874 vii. 303–7.

71 Macdonnell, William Connor Magee, ii. 15–6. Both Cross and Sandon (sponsors of the 1870 bill) held office in the Conservative government.

72 Cf. Gallagher, T. F., ‘“Cardwellian Mysteries”: the fate of the British Army Regulation Bill, 1871’, Historical Journal, xviii (1975), 327–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 348, where Gladstone informs Cardwell that he supports reform because, without it, the abolition of purchase will be put off ‘until the day, perhaps approaching, when these reforms will put on aspects we do not desire, and to which we cannot conform’.

73 Hansard, 3 ser. ccxxiv. 1209.

74 Cf. first and second leaders in The Times, 16 July 1874, the first approving the Public Worship Regulation bill, the second warning that, if Church patronage entrenches doctrinal innovation, it will become ‘an intolerable grievance’.

75 Guardian, 1875, 889.

76 Macdonnell, op. cit., ii. 21–2; [Anon.], Remarks on “The Church Patronage Bill, 1875”, London 1875, 22Google Scholar.

77 ‘Siquis’ [Revd P. H. Deane], The Cure for Church Scandal, London 1874, 17Google Scholar.

78 Hansard, 3 sen ccxxiv. 1211 (Magee),. 1457 (Archbishop Tait).

79 Ibid., 1206–7 (Lord Houghton); ‘Siquis’, op. cit.; [Revd] Stuart, E., Simony in the Church of England, London [1875?]Google Scholar.

80 Macdonnell, op. cit., ii. 36–7. See also B.L. Add. MS 51273 (Cross Papers), fos 78–81: Magee to Cross, 23 Dec. 1880: ‘Experience tells me that it (patronage legislation) shouldnot be entrusted to any one of the members for a University—Clerical hostility to reform prevented Walpole carrying through my Bill six years ago’.

81 Report of the Royal Commission on the Sale, Exchange and Resignation of Ecclesiastical Benefices: PP 1878–9, xx. 595. A majority of the commissioners recommended a ban on the sale of next presentations, but die report is otherwise a restatement of the chief 1874 recommendations.

82 Church Congress Reports, 1869, 290 (Revd J. F. Mackarness, later bishop of Oxford).

83 The Times, 83 Sept. 1869; Church Congress Reports, 1869, 283–4, 301–3.

84 Church Congress Reports, 1867, 81 (A. J. B. Beresford Hope MP). The fear of being unable to distinguish between committed and nominal churchmen remained a powerful argument against any form of parishioner consultation until well into the 1880s: The Times, 19 June 1884, 9; Guardian, 1884, 928.

85 PP 1880, xviii. 445, 489.

86 Church Congress Reports, 1869, 291.

87 W1880, xviii. 438–9.

88 Bishop Temple of Exeter believed this to be so, and he had the reputation of being a radical critic of unregulated patronage: PP 1874, vii. 381.

89 Hansard, 4 ser. x. 167.

90 Ibid., 3 ser. cclx. 973, 990.

91 Benson Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, vol. 130, fo. 188: Archbishop Benson to Lord Selbome (annotated draft), 18 December 1894.

92 Guardian 1884, 981 (Revd W. Willimott of Liskeard). See also Benson Papers, vol. 130, fos 157–8.

93 Benson Papers, vol. 130, fos 184–7: Sir John Kennaway to Archbishop Benson, 12 December 1894.

94 Ibid., vol. 150, esp. fos 301–2, 364–5 (pamphlet criticism of 1896 Benefices Bill). The bill attempted to lay down rules for compulsory retirement from a benefice as well as rules for presentation to it. It thus offended the property-rights lobby on two grounds.

95 Ibid., vol. 36, fo. 39.

96 Macdonnell, William Connor Magee, ii. 283–5.

97 Hansard, 3 ser. cclxix. 48; Benson Papers, vol. 150, fos 224–5.

98 Hamer, D. A., The Politics of Electoral Pressure, Hassocks 1977, 155ffGoogle Scholar.

99 Benson, Edward White Benson, ii. 62–4.

100 Ibid., ii. 71.

101 Benson Papers, vol. 130, fos 130–3.

102 Hansard, 4 ser. xxxviii. 673ff., esp. 680, 682, 689 (principal speeches of the evangelical and property-rights lobby in 1896).

103 Benson Papers, vol. 130, fo. 188; Salisbury Papers, Hatfield House, Herts.: Archbishop Benson to Lord Salisbury, 12 June 1896.

104 Hansard, 4 ser. be. 385.

105 61 & 62 Vict. c. 48.

106 Hansard, 3 ser. cclxxxix. 737 (Albert Grey, MP); ‘Fidelis’ [C. W. Wilshere], Leave Church Patronage Alone, London 1880, 9—11. Both are comments on proposals similar to those enacted in 1898.

107 Hansard, 4 ser. lxi. 124–6.