Thomson, Andrew, The Clergy of Winchester, England, 1615-1698:A Diocesan Ministry in Crisis, Seventeenth-Century Studies 2 (Lampeter: Mellen Press, 2011) [availability]
This monograph is based on one of the first investigations of the Anglican clergy across the seventeenth century and traces the impact of the revolutionary years from 1640 to 1660 on the character and performance of their ministry.
Did you know that the seventeenth century Diocese of Winchester stretched from the Channel Islands all the way to Bermondsey and Rotherhithe on the Thames? That the average vicar at that time earned £80 a year, his curate £30? That some of the more rapacious clergy were accumulating eight or nine jobs spread over four or five counties? That communicants were so numerous in some Southwark churches before the Civil War that they had to be ‘staggered’ in ‘relays’ Sunday by Sunday? That average spending on church furnishings was seldom more than £2 a year?
This study of the clergy and parish life includes all these facts and more; but they are just some of the highlights in a purposeful academic survey of the seventeenth century Diocese of Winchester. The book attempts to assess the ministry of the Church in Winchester – a premier diocese – in the seventeenth century – a time of outstanding upheaval. The Church faced awesome challenges – the reforms of Archbishop Laud in the 1630s, the struggles over Toleration in the 1670s and 80s and, above all, in the middle of the century, the shattering blows of the Civil Wars, the Interregnum, and the abolition, for 14 years, of the Church of England. During these turbulent times, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was immersed in national policy or diocesan administration and it was the parish clergy who manned the ‘front line’ – the interface – between Church and people. They performed the daily offices, from baptisms to communion, which were the ‘rites of passage’ in seventeenth century communities. Their character and performance, as much as the bishops’, would determine the fate of the Church.
Five groups – all the incumbents of 1615, 1637, 1663, 1675, and 1697 – form the basis of the study. Successive chapters feature ‘class’, education, experience, family, and income, comparing the groups and assessing the significance of these characteristics for the Church’s ministry. Two further chapters – one on baptism, marriage, burial, and communion levels, the other on fabric, fittings, and charity – examine church life at the strategic dates. In these ways the state of the Church in the times of Abbott and Bilson (respectively Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Winchester under James I), of Laud in the 1630s, of Charles II, of Duppa and Morley (Bishops of Winchester after the Restoration) can be assessed; likewise its condition after the momentous events of the Glorious Revolution can be established and its ‘fitness for purpose’ evaluated
as it entered the eighteenth century facing the renewed challenge of rival religions and the growth of Non-Conformity now legitimised by the arrival of religious toleration.
Getting detailed and accurate information without modern ‘Murdochian’ phone-tapping aids presents a challenge (obviously). Large collections of documents survive, fortunately, and the book is entirely ‘document-driven’. Collections from many libraries have been used. A very large number of these are lodged at Hampshire Record Office – bishops’ accounts, visitation books, parish registers, churchwardens’ accounts, wills – together with the cathedral’s priceless collection of ‘minute’ books, surveys, and leases; and all have be pressed into service to describe and assess the state of clergy, people, and parishes in the seventeenth century Diocese of Winchester. These documents are not without problems – damage, legibility, and (sometimes) Latin among them – but it has proved possible to present a fairly coherent and complete account of the state of the Diocese of Winchester in the seventeenth century from these building blocks.
At the heart of the argument in this book is the contention that the mid-century upheavals mashed traditional loyalties but that, while the body of parish clergy had undergone some change by 1660, they recovered in the main, ‘reverting to type’. The system, moreover, remained unchanged, the lessons of the 1640s and 50s – the need for better incomes for the parish clergy, for example, and
reform of parish boundaries – went unheeded. With such failings unaddressed, the Church of England was thus deprived of the vigorous ministry needed to face the challenges of the times.
Earlier studies of the clergy either stop in 1640 or start in 1660; few proceed to tackle matters of ‘practice’ or ‘worship’; fewer attempt to assess the sources in detail; and none focuses on the Diocese of Winchester. This survey is unique in considering both ‘characteristics’ (what the parish
clergy were like) and ‘performance’ (what they did), in a diocese of major importance, and in a tumultuous century full of events and crises critical for the survival of the Church.
From a Peer Review:
“…unprecedented religious and political upheaval of civil war was followed by the bitter aftermath of suppressed nonconformity in Restoration England…doctrine and conscience may command the foreground…the routine occupations of clergy… are no less eloquent. This is a model of the kind of ….. painstaking research upon which advances in English historical understanding must always rely.”
Professor Henry Roseveare PhD FRHistS
From the Preface:
“Through all the storms, parochial life is notable for its persistence. Dr Thomson provides us with quiet grounds for optimism as the Diocese of Winchester seeks to serve,through a new cohort of dedicated clergy, the people of its parishes in the later years of the rapidlychanging and uncharted waters ofa second Elizabethan age.”
The Very Revd JamesAtwell
Dean of Winchester