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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
A significant proportion of Church of England clergy in the early nineteenth century took up the role of magistrate to help enforce the law in local communities, partly in consequence of the growth of clerical wealth and status which had begun in the previous century. This legal role was perceived by some as contradictory to clerical pastoral duties, and as such detrimental to the church. Some would view it as contributing to a decline of the Church of England, which was seen as too much associated with the established powers in an era of social change. After the peak of the 1830s, the number of clerical magistrates began to fall dramatically, marking the emergence of a more exclusively religious clerical profession uneasy with the antagonisms associated with local law enforcement. This study, focusing on the diverse county of Staffordshire, presents the case that the decline of the clerical magistracy is an early indicator of the withdrawal of the clergy from involvement in secular concerns, and as such provides important evidence for the growth of secularization in British society.
1 For details of the changing functions of magistrates, see Taylor, David, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1750–1914 (London, 1998), 7–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Source material to support this forms part of my doctoral research: John W. B. Tomlinson, ‘From Parson to Professional: The Changing Ministry of the Anglican Clergy in Staffordshire, 1830–1960’ (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2008).
3 Parliamentary enclosure was a key factor in the rise of the income of landowners: Mingay, Gordon E., Parliamentary Enclosure in England: An Introduction to its Causes, Incidence, and Impact, 1750–1850 (London, 1997)Google Scholar.
4 For evidence of less involvement in local communities and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle based in London, see Rosenheim, James M., The Emergence of a Ruling Order: English Landed Society, 1650–1750 (London, 1997)Google Scholar.
5 National figures quoted here and later can be found in Carl H. E. Zangrel, ‘The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831–1887’, JBS 11 (1971), 113–25; see also Eric J. Evans, ‘Some Reasons for the Growth of English Anti-Clericalism c.1750–c.1830’, P&P 66 (1975), 84–109 (based in part on doctoral research on parishes in Staffordshire); Robert Lee, Rural Society and the Anglican Clergy, 1815–1914 (Woodbridge, 2006), 105.
6 W. White, ed., History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (London, editions of 1834 and 1851); E. R. Kelly, ed., The Post Office Directory of Staffordshire (London, editions of 1872, 1896, 1912 and 1921); Lichfield RO, Archdeacons Returns 1829–32; Lichfield Annual Directory (Lichfield, editions of 1860, 1890 and 1920); see also Roger Swift, ‘The English Urban Magistracy and the Administration of Justice during the Early Nineteenth Century: Wolverhampton 1815–1860’, MidH 17 (1992), 75–92.
7 Roe M. Wallis, ‘The Relationship between Magistrates and their Communities in the Age of Crisis: Social Protest c.1790–1834’ (PhD thesis, University of the West of England 2016), 89; Lee, Rural Society, 105, 107. Some idea of the extent of local variations can be gained from William C. Lubenow, ‘Social Recruitment and Social Attitudes: The Buckinghamshire Magistrates 1868–1888’, Huntington Library Quarterly 4 (1977), 247–68.
8 Wallis, ‘Relationship’, 91; Evans, ‘Some Reasons’, 104; Lubenow, ‘Social Recruitment’, 264.
9 An example in Staffordshire would be the Talbot family, earls of Shrewsbury, who through familial connections controlled both the appointment of magistrates and the patronage some of the wealthier parishes in the county.
10 Zangrel, ‘Social Composition’, 115.
11 Jones, Marjorie, ‘Justices of the Peace in Wolverhampton: The Clerical Magistrates’, West Midlands Studies 11 (1978), 19–22Google Scholar.
12 Zangrel, ‘Social Composition’, 115. The boundaries of this status are as defined in contemporary records, and largely include businessmen and industrialists. However, these figures need to be treated with some caution because in some areas the clergy were also industrialists, as in the north-east of England where some were substantial coal-mine owners: Christopher J. Frank, ‘“Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice”: English Trade Unions, Lawyers, and Magistracy, 1842–1862’ (PhD thesis, York University, Toronto, ON, 2003).
13 Zangrel, ‘Social Composition’, 124; see also E. Moir, The Justices of the Peace (London, 1969), 106–7.
14 White, ed., Directory of Staffordshire, 1834, 1851; Kelly, ed., Post Office Directory of Staffordshire, 1872, 1896; Lichfield Annual Directory, 1860, 1890. This is supported in Anthony Russell, The Clerical Profession (London, 1980), 165.
15 The debate about the nature and expression of social crime in this period is covered in Lee, Rural Society, 114; see also Andrew Charlesworth, ‘An Agenda for Historical Studies of Rural Protest in England, 1750–1850’, Rural History 2 (1991), 231–40, at 232–3.
16 Criticism of clergy during the Swing Riots can be found in Griffin, Carl J., Protest, Politics and Work in Rural England, 1700–1850 (Basingstoke, 2014), 132–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Clergy are described as exercising repressive force in local society in Reed, Mick and Wells, Roger, Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside, 1700–1880 (London, 1990), 91Google Scholar. See also Jones, David, Crime, Protest, Community and Police in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Archer, John E., Social Unrest and Popular Protest in England, 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), 252–6.
18 This argument is put forward in Wallis, ‘Relationship’, 159.
19 Ibid. 168, 169. The way clergy enforced the Game Laws was evidence of their commitment to the landed classes: see David Eastwood, Governing Rural England (Oxford, 1994), 81-2.
20 K. D. M. Snell, Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge, 2006), 496–504.
21 A full account is given in David J. Cox, ‘“The Wolves let loose at Wolverhampton”: A Study of the South Staffordshire Election Riots, May 1835’, Law, Crime in History 2 (2011), 1–31.
22 Figaro in London, 6 June 1835, 95.
23 Clare claimed he was too infirm to do so: Cox, ‘“Wolves let loose”’, 28.
24 At the same time magistrates were required to be more competent and conversant in the law as they worked with increasingly professionalized lawyers. For a Staffordshire example, see Christopher J. Frank, ‘“Let but one of them come before me, and I'll commit him”: Trade Unions, Magistrates, and the Law in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Staffordshire’, JBS 44 (2005), 64–91.
25 The 1835 Municipal Corporations Act and 1888 Local Government Act provided the legislation for these significant changes.
26 See House of Commons, Nominal Returns of all Clerks in Holy Orders in the Commission of the Peace in each County in England and Wales (London, 1863, 1873), as examples.
27 HC Deb (3rd Series), 18 June 1873 (vol. 216, col. 1150), prompted by the Chipping Norton case, in which two clerical magistrates passed harsh sentences on sixteen women for intimidating blackleg labour.
28 For example, Viscount Hill in Shropshire: David. J. Cox and Barry S. Godfrey, Cinderellas and Packhorses: A History of the Shropshire Magistracy (Logaston, 2005).
29 Church Magazine, September 1840, 287.
30 Wolverhampton Chronicle, November 1831, quoted in Swift, ‘English Urban Magistracy’, 89.
31 Swift, ‘English Urban Magistracy’, 81.
32 James Obelkevich, Religion and Parish Society: South Lindsey 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976), 161; Evans, ‘Some Reasons’, 103.
33 George Herring, The Oxford Movement in Practice: The Tractarian Parochial Worlds from the 1830s to the 1870s (Oxford, 2016).
34 Russell, Clerical Profession, 146–68.
35 A series of parliamentary acts from c.1830 to 1860 was introduced to restrict absenteeism and pluralism, redistribute church funds more equably and make the Church of England more responsive to an urban and pluralistic society.
36 The Spectator, 19 January 1895, 81.
37 For the statistics from the 1851 Religious Census, see K. D. M. Snell and Paul S. Ell, Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000), 121–72. In other regions, the effect of the growth of Nonconformity on the magistracy was significant: Rachel Jones, Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales (Cardiff, 2018), 31–51.
38 This unrest was particularly strong in Staffordshire and magistrates were often a target: Frank, ‘Trade Unions, Magistrates and the Law’, 72.
39 Stafford, Staffordshire RO, D4327, Baptismal Register, Salt, 1843–78.
40 As part of my doctoral research, I compared the Staffordshire magistrate lists with the records of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Staffordshire. Further detailed investigation of the familial and associational links between clergy and other significant people in local society would probably reveal a network of influence and control which faced the challenges of social unrest and the rise of the middle class.
41 David Philips, ‘The Black Country Magistracy 1835–1860’, MidH 3 (1975), 161–90.
42 Ibid. 174–5.
43 This was a land agent's view expressed to Lord Melbourne: quoted in Wallis, ‘Relationship’, 201.
44 Lee, Rural Society, 117–18 (examples from Norfolk).
45 Evans, ‘Some Reasons’, 101–3; Norma Landau, Justices of the Peace (Berkeley, CA, 1984), 141–3; Eastwood, Governing Rural England, 31; Frances Knight, ‘Did Anticlericalism exist in the English Countryside in the Early Nineteenth Century?’, in Nigel Aston and Matthew Cragoe, eds, Anticlericalism in Britain c.1500–1914 (Stroud, 2000), 159–78.
46 Brougham, Lord Chancellor in 1843, quoted in Evans, ‘Some Reasons’, 106.
47 A classic example of this would be R. A. Soloway, Prelates and People: Ecclesiastical Social Thought in England, 1783–1952 (Abingdon, 1969).
48 A land agent's view expressed to Lord Melbourne, quoted in Wallis, ‘Relationship’, 201.
49 Evans, ‘Some Reasons’, 104.
50 Wallis, ‘Relationship’, 281.
51 Lee, Rural Society, 114.
52 Frank, ‘“Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice”’, 111.
53 Swift, ‘English Urban Magistracy’, 80.
54 Philips, ‘Black Country Magistracy’, 181–4.
55 The law required magistrates in such cases to be unconnected to the industry: Frank, ‘Trade Unions, Magistrates and the Law’, 81.
56 Lee, Rural Society, 104.
57 In rural areas the role was being taken up by the country doctor: Russell, Clerical Profession, 165.
58 Quoted in Zangrel, ‘Social Composition’, 118.
59 Staffordshire RO, Lieutenancy Papers, D649/9/10, Outletter Book 1822–42, 19 September 1835.
60 Other areas show a similar growing acceptance of ‘middle-class’ magistrates: see, for instance,Foster, D., ‘Class and County Government in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’, NH 9 (1974), 48–61Google Scholar; Saunders, Janet, ‘Warwickshire Magistrates and Prison Reform 1840–75’, MidH 11 (1986), 79–99Google Scholar.
61 Zangrel, ‘Social Composition’, 119.