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 Mr. Macaulay's character of the clergy i 
 
 olin 
 
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By the same Author. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN PROMOTING 
 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN EUROPE. 
 
 (Bultean Essay for 1845.) 
 " A solid treatise, full of sound historical information." — Christian Remembrancer. 
 
MR. MACAULAY'S 
 
 CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY 
 
 IN THE LATTER PART OF THE 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 
 
 CONSIDERED. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX ON HIS CHARACTER OF THE GENTRY, AS GIVEN 
 IN HIS HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 BY CHURCHILL BABINGTON, M.A., 
 
 fellow or st. john's college. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 J. DEIGHTON; MACMILLAN AND Co.; 
 
 LONDON : RIVINGTONS ; OXFORD : J. H. PARKER. 
 
 1849 
 
sns 
 
 A > I ^ U<6 
 
 7^ 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 Ketcalfo and Palmer, Printers, Trinity Street. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Section Page 
 
 I. Survey of Mr. Macaulay's Principal Authorities . 3 
 
 II. Of the Extraction of the English Clergy in the Seventeenth 
 
 Century ..... 13 
 
 III. Of the State of Schools and Universities . . 24 
 
 IV. Of the Marriage of the Clergy ... 37 
 
 V. Of the Incomes of the Clergy . . .53 
 
 VI. Of the Children of the Clergy ... 69 
 
 VII. Of the Clergyman's Library and Studies . . 78 
 
 VIII. Of Mr. Macaulay's Distinction between the Town and 
 
 Country Clergy . . . .90 
 
 IX. Of the Intercourse of the Clergy with the Gentry . 99 
 
 Conclusion. — An Unexpected Revelation . . 107 
 
 Appendix . . . • • m 
 
ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 
 
 Page 2. For the pluralists and their curates see Cardwell's Documentary 
 Annals, vol. n. pp. 335, 336 ; and especially Prideaux's Draught of a Bill 
 prepared to have been offered to the Parliament in the reign of King William and 
 Queen Mary, a.d. 1691, with Reasons for the said Bill, Norwich, 1710. 
 
 Page 18, for Slemham read Glemham ; and add, Sir Charles Leventhorp, 
 Bart., and Dr. Hall, who was probably a Baronet, were in orders : the 
 Rev. Dr. Gordon too was of noble family ; and the Rev. N. Monk was 
 son of Sir Thomas and brother of General Monk. — (Walker's Sufferings 
 of the Clergy). 
 
 Page 49, add, the Rev. Dr. Stanley married Mary, second daughter 
 of Sir F. Pemberton, Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas and King's 
 Bench. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The object of the following pages is to enter upon such 
 an examination of one portion of Mr. Macaulay's History of 
 England, as may enable any person to form some kind of 
 notion as to his general accuracy and merits as an historian. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay's work has been read with great interest; 
 and no wonder, for a more attractive book was never 
 written. But if in the midst of its merits, mistakes or 
 exaggerated statements abound, he does a service to the 
 public who puts them on their guard against believing as 
 a matter of course the vivid representations of that enter- 
 taining writer. 
 
 I have therefore in the following pages considered Mr. 
 Macaulay's account of the social condition of the Clergy 
 about the time of the accession of James the Second, and 
 have tried to take a purely historical view of it. 
 
SECTION I. 
 
 SURVEY OF MR. MACAULAY's PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Before entering on a specific examination of the several 
 features of the Clergyman's portrait in the latter part of the 
 1 7th century, as drawn by Mr. Macaulay, let us take a pre- 
 liminary survey of the sources from which it is professedly 
 drawn. We say professedly, for in the course of our inquiry 
 the real original of the picture will be revealed. 
 
 The principal authorities to which he refers in vindication 
 of his statements, are Eachard, Oldham, and Wood; others 
 which he cites or alludes to, are either irrelevant or com- 
 paratively unimportant, or do not belong to the period of 
 which he is treating, being in some cases very widely 
 removed from it. 
 
 Let us then briefly consider the value of these testimonies 
 by which his account is not indeed borne out (as shall be 
 shewn in the proper place), but which more or less sub- 
 stantiate some of its particulars. The first authority in 
 point of time is Eachard : he was Master of St. Catharine's 
 Hall in the University of Cambridge, and in the year 1670 
 published an anonymous tract, entitled " The Grounds and 
 Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion in- 
 quired into. In a Letter written to E.. L." His work 
 became excessively popular, and in the year 1685 had 
 reached the ninth edition. The object of his work appears 
 to have been in the main good : he no doubt wished that 
 the information and the incomes of the inferior clergy should 
 be augmented. Want of learning and want of money he 
 
 B2 
 
makes two of the principal (though by no means the only) 
 causes which had brought the clergy into contempt. These 
 causes were probably much less predominant than several 
 others to which attention is drawn by numerous writers 
 of the period. The licentiousness, the deism, the latitudi- 
 narianism, the popery, the puritanism, the erastianism of 
 the age were unquestionably among the causes which con- 
 tributed to the result, several of which are dwelt upon 
 strongly, not only in divers anonymous pamphlets, but also 
 by Dr. South in various sermons, one of which is expressly 
 dedicated to the consideration of the unjust contempt into 
 which the ministry had fallen. The Clergy themselves too 
 did not, of course, entirely escape the general corruption 
 of the period. More especially, the ill lives and conver- 
 sations of many pluralists and their curates gave cause for 
 scandal to the Church; although the conduct of the ma- 
 jority of the Clergy was probably exemplary. Difficult 
 it undoubtedly is to form a decided opinion on all these 
 points with satisfaction, because in the writers of the time 
 there is some conflicting testimony. 
 
 To return however to Eachard. His whole book from 
 beginning to end is a series of jocose caricatures.* He 
 burlesques unmercifully the sermons of sundry injudicious 
 and ignorant clergymen, and draws the most facetious picture 
 of the extremities to which others were reduced by poverty : 
 and he has done it in such a manner that he was perhaps 
 
 * The following specimen from one of his replies to an opponent, where 
 he is not speaking of the Clergy, will give a notion of his style, and shew 
 that he must not be always too implicitly believed : 
 
 " And to conclude this, sir, I cannot forget him, who having at some time 
 or other been suddenly cured of a little headache with a. rosemary posset, 
 would scarce drink out of anything but rosemary cans, cut his meat with 
 a rosemary knife, and pick his teeth with a rosemary sprig : nay, sir, he 
 was so strangely taken up with the excellencies of rosemary, that he would 
 needs have the bible cleared of all other herbs, and only rosemary to be 
 inserted." — Some Observations on the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds 
 Qe. p. 88, Lond. 1685, (Sth edition). ' 
 
not very unnaturally supposed to have meant his descriptions 
 for the Clergy generally, and to have made up his book 
 for the express purpose of bringing them into contempt.* 
 So far from being a just picture of the Clergy of the time 
 taken as a whole, it is in respect of their ignorance false, 
 and in respect of their poverty much exaggerated, insomuch 
 that he himself falls foul on his reviewers, and ridicules their 
 stupidity for misunderstanding his meaning and applying 
 his description generally to the Clergy which he intended only 
 for a few or some. An instance or two of this jeering man- 
 ner of reply will be found in our section on the Clergyman's 
 library and attainments. So careless too was he whence 
 the materials for producing his ludicrous effect were derived, 
 that he scraped together some of the fooleries of the fanatical 
 preachers of the day and charged them upon the Clergy of 
 the Church.f However (as we shall see anon) both Eachard 
 and his opponents agree perfectly in several very material 
 points respecting the extraction, the marriage, the attain- 
 ments, and the intercourse of the Clergyman in society, 
 in points in which Mr. Macaulay's description differs from 
 them. The only charitable supposition therefore that can 
 be made, is that Mr. Macaulay had read Eachard's original 
 work carelessly, and was entirely ignorant of his reviewers 
 and of Eachard's rejoinders. 
 
 The next witness on Mr. Macaulay's list is Oldham. 
 Except that he somewhat generalizes certain observations 
 of Eachard, and applies them to persons in a higher con- 
 
 * " The pretence of your book was to show the occasions ; your book is 
 become an occasion of the contempt of God's ministers."— 0%'s Preface to 
 Herbert's Country Parson— The folio-wing is scarcely an unmerited sarcasm. 
 " To close up all in » syllable, there is [in Eachard's Grounds, #<;.] a 
 pretty fardle of tales bundled together, and they have had the hap to fall 
 into such hands as had rather lose a friend, not to say their country, than 
 a jest." Preface to a Vindication of the Clergy. Facit indignatio. Lond. 1672. 
 
 t Olcy's Preface to Herbert's Country Parson. 
 
dition, he gives little information beyond that which may 
 be collected from Eachard. 
 
 It is sufficiently probable that Oldham's description is 
 taken from Eachard (as he is a writer extremely prone to 
 imitation); but whether this be so or not, I am principally 
 concerned to remark that his testimony to" anything which 
 makes against the Clergy is to be regarded with great 
 suspicion. His poetry is described in the Athena Oxoni- 
 enses as "mad, ranting, and debauched." The following 
 passages in his papers will shew from his own wretched 
 despair, that he was while in health and strength an atheist. 
 
 A Sunday thought in Sickness. 
 
 " There is, there is a hell, and damned fiends, and a never- 
 dying worm, and that sceptic that doubts of it may find 'em 
 all within my single breast. I dare not any longer, with the 
 atheist disbelieve them, or think 'em the Clergy's bugbears 
 invented as nurses do frightful names for their children to scare 
 'em .into quietness and obedience."— (Posthumous) Remains of 
 Oldham (1710), p. 33. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " How have I abused and misemployed those parts and talents 
 which might have rendered me serviceable to mankind and repaid 
 an interest of glory to their donor ! How ill do they turn to 
 account what I have made the patrons of debauchery and pimps 
 and panders to vice !" — Ibid. p. 36. 
 
 Such is his character of himself. Can such a man's 
 testimony be worth much attention when it tells against 
 the Clergy ? 
 
 The remaining testimony which I shall now examine is 
 that of T. Wood, which Mr. Macaulay deems so important 
 that he has printed the Latin at length. This is so much the 
 more fortunate, as it is the only one of his authorities to 
 which I have not access. It runs as follows : 
 
" A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesise 
 rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis et familiae 
 nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur: fceminisque natalitio 
 insignibus unicum inculcatur ssepius prseceptum, ne modestiae nau- 
 fragium faciant, aut, (quod idem auribus tarn delicatulis sonat) ne 
 clerico se nuptas dari patiantur." — Anglice Notitia, by T. Wood 
 of New College, Oxford, 1686. 
 
 On this passage Mr. Macaulay, for the benefit of his 
 English readers, observes: 
 
 " An Oxonian, writing a few months after the death of 
 Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that the country 
 attorney and the country apothecary looked down with disdain 
 on the country clergyman, but that one of the lessons most 
 earnestly inculated on every girl of honourable family was to give 
 no encouragement to a lover in orders, and that, if any young 
 lady forgot this precept, she was almost as much disgraced as "by 
 an illicit amour." — Maoaulay's History of England, vol, i. pp. 328-9. 
 
 As I have not the context to consult, it is necessary to 
 speak with becoming caution. In the extract itself there is 
 certainly no complaint directly expressed, nor should I have 
 inferred that any was implied : and if there be any bitterness, 
 the general complexion of the Latinity would rather have led 
 me to suspect that it was the bitterness, not of complaint, but 
 of contempt. 
 
 Now it appears by the Oxford List of Graduates and by the 
 AthencB Oxonienses, that there is only one T. Wood of New 
 College at all, near the time. In the latter work I find the 
 book noticed which Mr. Macaulay has cited ; and also that 
 this T. Wood translated certain Odes of Anacreon in the 
 manner of Oldham ; and from the same book, that Oldham's 
 Remains are ushered into the world by a commendatory 
 Poem by T. Wood of New College. He therein calls 
 
 " Oldham, the man that coidd with justice write ; 
 Our Oxford's glory, and the world's delight." 
 
Suspicions begin to arise. Another sample is — 
 
 " Let dull divinity no more delight, 
 
 It spoils the man and makes a hypocrite ; 
 The chief professors to preferment fly, 
 By cringe and scrape, the basest simony. 
 The humble clown wfll best the Gospel teach, 
 And inspired ignorance sounder doctrines preach. 
 
 A WAY TO HEAVEN MERE NATURE WELL DOES SHEW, 
 
 Which reasoning and disputes can never know." 
 
 Oseon. May 26, 1684. 
 
 We have now some ground to suppose that the "bitter 
 complaint" which Mr. Macaulay put into T. Wood's mouth 
 was hardly borne out by the context, but was introduced by 
 himself for the sake of efFect. 
 
 Since then we are referred to infidel writers for our 
 views on the state of the Clergy, and of course even their 
 sentiments are not to be entirely neglected (though they 
 ought not to be dressed in other men's coats), there can be no 
 just reason why their friends may not be heard also. 
 
 Dr. South, who really does "bitterly complain" of the 
 contempt which the Clergy had fallen into writes thus : 
 
 " Read but the practice of Christian emperors and kings all 
 along, down from the time of Constantine, in what respect, honour, 
 and splendour they held the ministers ; and then let our adver- 
 saries [the Puritans] produce their puny, pitiful arguments against 
 the general, clear, undoubted vogue and current of all antiquity. 
 As for two or three little countries about us, the learned and 
 impartial wiH not value their practice ; in one of which places 
 the minister has been seen, for mere want, to mend shoes on 
 the Saturday, and been heard to preach on the Sunday. In the 
 other place, stating the several orders of the citizens, they place 
 their ministers after their apothecaries; i.e. the physician of the 
 soul after the drugster of the body: a fit practice for those, 
 who, if they were to rank things as well as persons, woidd place 
 their religion after their trade." — South's Sermons, vol. I. p. 66. 
 Lond. 1843. 
 
Again : 
 
 " We may take notice of two usual grounds of contempt men 
 cast upon the Clergy, and yet for which no man ought to think 
 himself at all the more worthy to be contemned. The first is 
 their very profession itself; concerning which it is a sad, but 
 an experimented truth, that the names derived from it, in the 
 refined language of the present age, are made but the appellatives 
 
 of scorn But call a man priest or parson, and you set 
 
 him, in some men's esteem, ten degrees below his own servant. 
 But let us not be discouraged or displeased, either with ourselves 
 or our profession, upon this account. Let the virtuosos mock, 
 insult, and despise on : yet after all they shall never be able 
 to droll away the nature of things ; to trample a pearl into a 
 pebble, nor to make sacred things contemptible, any more than 
 themselves, by such speeches, honourable. — Ibid. p. 84. 
 
 He concludes by a general praise of the Clergy : 
 
 " And thus I have shewn four several causes [viz. ignorance, 
 viciousness, mean compliances, and proneness to despise others] 
 that may justly render any ruler despised ; and by the same work, 
 I hope, have made it evident how little cause men have to despise 
 
 the rulers of our Church That which makes the Clergy 
 
 glorious, is to be knowing in their profession, unspotted in their 
 lives, active and laborious in their charges, bold and resolute in 
 opposing seducers, and daring to look vice in the face, though 
 never so potent and illustrious ; and lastly, to be gentle, courteous, 
 and compassionate to all." — Ibid. pp. 87. 88. 
 
 South, however, expresses himself on most subjects not 
 very impartially. Let us therefore take the judgment of 
 other churchmen also, of Evelyn for example, himself no 
 clergyman : 
 
 " 1683. July 15 [London]. A stranger and old man preached 
 on Jerem. vi. 8, the not hearkening to instruction, portentous of 
 desolation to a people: much after Bp. Andrewes' method, full 
 of logical divisions, in short and broken periods and latin sentences; 
 now quite out of fashion in the pulpit which is grown into a far 
 more profitable way, of plain and practical discourses, of which 
 
10 
 
 sort this nation or any other never had greater plenty or more 
 profitable (I am confident) : so much has it to answer for thriving 
 no better on it." — Evelyn's Diary, vol. iii. p. 90, Lond. 1827. 
 
 Proceed we next to Prebendary Dixon (a.d. 1676): 
 
 " These high and magisterial dictates imposed [by the Church 
 of Rome, &c] upon the pain of damnation, together with the 
 intolerable pride, avarice, and luxury of churchmen, open the 
 mouths of the adversary to cry down the Clergy for cheats and 
 robbers of the souls, honours, and estates of mankind ; cause them 
 to question all truths, and fall into direct atheism and profaneness. 
 Yet am I not without powerful hopes, and do already see and 
 wonder at the wise and gracious providence of God in stirring 
 up the spirits of rare men, to baffle the carnal fallacies and super- 
 stitious riddles that have bewitched the age, and advance the 
 power of godliness and pure worship with obedience to princes ; — 
 never purer wits since the world stood; neveb, bbaveh clergy 
 since the world stood ; never holier souls since the world stood ; 
 never baser spirits since the world stood. As for this dross of 
 the age, the ranters and atheists, they will die and be damned 
 like base fellows as they are: they will soon be kicked off the 
 stage, and drove out of the hives, as useless and hurtful in Church 
 and State, the very shame of mankind." — Dixon's (Prebendary of 
 Rochester) Nature of two Testaments, vol. ii pp. 619, 620. Lond. 
 1676. 
 
 The opinion of the learned and excellent Kettlewell may 
 follow those that have preceded it. The testimony belongs 
 to the reign of James II. 
 
 " As for our Mr. Kettlewell in particular, notwithstanding that 
 he was no enemy to that which might seem to him good and 
 laudable in any Christian Communion, there can be no greater 
 conviction than that which he gave of a sincere adherence to those 
 principles he professed, and of an uniform practice, under all variety 
 of times and circumstances, with respect to the things of God; 
 not inclining either to one extreme or the other, but with all caution 
 still observing the true mean as much as it was possible : the truth 
 of which, by what follows, will appear more clearly. The Church of 
 
11 
 
 England (as he had observed) was never known to he hi a more 
 flourishing condition than at this time, all things duly weighed : it 
 became much more powerful (he saw) by the opposition made 
 against it, and grew by the favours indulged to its adversaries ; the 
 number of converts made in the reign of this king to his 
 religion was most inconsiderable, if it could be said to be any at all. 
 On the other side, for every one that was lost to the established 
 religion, it was thought there were ten at least added to it another 
 way ; for certain great numbers of Dissenters were brought into the 
 communion of the Church by the learned writings of the orthodox 
 Clergy at that time ; yea, they who had before conceived a pre- 
 judice against them, as making too near approaches to Popery, now 
 on the contrary, when they saw them such champions for the 
 Protestant cause, convinced hereby of the mistake, could not but 
 as much commend them, as heretofore they had condemned them : 
 and no wonder if some thought themselves also bound in con- 
 science to return to the Church which they had separated from, the 
 very foundation of their separation from it appearing to be now 
 taken away. Yet these were but few in comparison of the rest. 
 Now the use Mr. Kettlewell made thereof was this, to call both 
 upon his brethren of the Clergy on the one hand, and upon the 
 dissenting brethren on the other, that, without regard to building up 
 themselves, or their party, they should all unite their endeavours to 
 build together upon the foundation of Christ and his Apostles, 
 maintaining the bond of Catholic charity ; and should study every 
 one to excel herein for the edifying of the whole body of the 
 faithful. For which he thought there was means remaining suf- 
 ficient in the Church of England, whether supported or not from 
 without by the civil power. Nay, it was observed, both by him 
 and by others who were in the number of his friends, that as soon 
 as the outward supports began to be withdrawn from it but never 
 so little, upon which it had before but too much leaned; this 
 Church was then beginning to flourish more than it had done ever 
 since the Reformation." — Life of Kettlewell, pp. 141-144, Lond. 
 1718. 
 
 Looking back upon the Deists and the Clergy, Hughes 
 (early in the following century) a Fellow of Jesus College, 
 Cambridge, cannot even conceive what consideration has 
 
12 
 
 led the former to despise the latter : 
 
 " Ego, ita me deus amet, ne conjectando qdidem assequi 
 possum, quid sit in clero anglicano, quod ullo modo despicere 
 possit improba ilec deistarum colltjvies. slve enim ingenium, 
 srvte doctrinam, sive morum pkobitatem integritatemque con- 
 sideremus, vel inimicissmi concedant necesse est, nihil eccle- 
 sle anglicanj3 theologis superius unquam extitisse." — Pre- 
 fatory Essays to St. Ghrysostom's Treatise on the Priesthood, p. x. 
 Camb. 1.710. 
 
13 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 OF THE EXTRACTION OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY IN THE 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay opens the subject of the present section in 
 the following words : 
 
 " The place of the clergyman in society had been completely 
 changed by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had 
 formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and 
 splendour, equalled, and sometimes outshone, the greatest of the 
 temporal barons, and had generally held the highest civil offices. 
 
 Among them were sons of all the most illustrious families, 
 
 and near kinsmen of the throne, Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, 
 
 Staffords, and Poles Down to the middle of the reign of 
 
 Henry the Eighth, therefore, no line of life bore so inviting an 
 aspect to ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood. Then 
 came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monasteries 
 deprived the Church at once of the greater part of her wealth, 
 
 and of her predominance in the upper house of parliament 
 
 The spiritual character not only ceased to be a qualification for 
 high civil office, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. 
 Those worldly motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so 
 many able, aspiring, and high born youths to assume the eccle- 
 siastical habit, ceased to exist. Not one parish in two hundred 
 then afforded what a man of family considered as a maintenance. 
 There were still indeed prizes in the Church : but they were few ; 
 and even the highest were mean, when compared with the glory 
 which had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy. The 
 state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed beggarly to those who 
 
 remembered the imperial pomp of Wolsey, his palaces, &c 
 
 Thus the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes." 
 — Macaulay' s History of England, pp. 325^326. 
 
 \) t* 
 
14 
 
 It is beside the present purpose to take much notice of 
 the state of the Clergy before Charles II. 's time : yet as it is 
 Mr. Macaulay's object to draw as vivid a picture as possible 
 by contrast, it may be worth while to observe that however 
 rich and noble the great ecclesiastics may have been before 
 the Reformation, yet with regard to the ordinary sort of 
 them, it may reasonably be doubted whether their place in 
 society has been much altered for the worse. The following 
 picture is drawn by a master hand, and one too which is by 
 no means disposed to paint in the blackest colours the charac- 
 ter of the English Church before the Reformation. 
 
 " Meanwhile, the people were disgusted with this gross and 
 cruel invasion of the rights of their pastors ; and the representatives 
 of the monasteries read themselves in amidst reproaches loud and 
 deep, of the by-standers. But they were not thin-skinned. They 
 prepared, however, a sop for Cerberus, by exacting with little 
 rigour the small tithes, or, in some cases, by accepting an easy 
 composition instead of them ; hoping, by such modus (decimandi) 
 to purchase the more cheerful and prompt payment of the great 
 tithes, which was their affair ; and not at all uneasy because 
 the propitiation happened to be made at the vicar's expense. Their 
 only remaining concern was to find some " Sir Johns" (as the 
 poor clergy were called before the Reformation), sometimes with 
 an honourable adjunct of " lack-Latin," or " mumble-matins," or 
 " babbling Sir Johns," or " blind Sir Johns," as it might be, who 
 were just qualified, according to the letter of the law, to stand 
 in the gap ; masspriests, who could read their breviaries, and 
 no more, — for in those days men seem to have received ordination 
 without any adequate examination either as to learning or cha- 
 racter — persons of the lowest of the people, with all the gross 
 habits of the class from which they sprung; loiterers on the 
 ale-house bench ; dicers ; scarce able to say by rote their Pater- 
 noster, often actually unable to repeat the commandments ; divines 
 every way fitted to provoke the 75th canon, which was, no doubt, 
 in the first instance, levelled against them. Such were the minis- 
 ters to whom was consigned a very large proportion of the parishes 
 
15 
 
 of England before the Reformation." — Blunt's Reformation in 
 England, pp. 65. 66. 
 
 Have we never heard of the Constitutions of Clarendon in 
 Henry II.'s time, which enact that the sons of villeins shall 
 not be ordained without the consent of the lord on whose 
 land they were born, because that it would be to deprive 
 him of his property ? Or is it a secret that manumissions of 
 slaves preparatory to their entering orders are to be found as 
 late as the middle of the fifteenth century ? Whatever the 
 social condition of the mass of the clergy may have been 
 under the Stuarts, it will be difficult to persuade most people 
 that it was much better before the Eeformation. 
 
 " During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth, 
 scarce a single person of noble descent took orders." 
 
 Here again appears the colourist : several persons of noble 
 descent who took orders in that period are mentioned in 
 Oley's preface to Herbert's Country Parson; and there is no 
 great probability that he has recounted all. 
 
 " At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons 
 of peers were bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests 
 and held valuable preferment: but these rare exceptions did not 
 take away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were 
 regarded as on the whole a plebeian class ; and indeed for one who 
 made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants." 
 
 It shall be my object to examine this statement, so far as 
 the extraction of the Clergy is concerned. Yet let it be 
 remarked at the outset that in the cases of those clergy who 
 came from the middle classes (who both then were and 
 always have been numerous)* or even from a lower grade, 
 
 * The clergymen of the latter part of the seventeenth century whose 
 parentage I have chanced to discover, were descended with few ex- 
 ceptions from the gentry, clergy, and merchants. No doubt those about 
 whom we gain personal information in any period are on the whole of a 
 
16 
 
 of whom there ever have been some, it does not at all follow 
 that they did not make the " figures of gentlemen," merely 
 because their parents were not gentlemen. A man of good 
 education is and always has been very justly reputed a 
 gentleman, whatever may have been his parentage. And 
 indeed so far from being a just subject of reproach to the 
 Church of England, that she admits into her priesthood 
 none but men of gentle descent, it is rather her glory (and 
 always has been, before the Reformation as well as since) 
 that the path to honour and distinction has lain open to all 
 who deserve them. What was the extraction of Wolsey, 
 with " his imperial pomp, his palaces, which had become the 
 favorite abodes of royalty, "Whitehall and Hampton Court;" 
 with "his three sumptuous tables daily spread in his hall," 
 with " the forty -four gorgeous copes in his chapel, his run- 
 ning footmen in rich liveries, and his body-guard with gilded 
 pole-axes"?* "Would the English Church have escaped, or 
 would she rather have incurred reproach, had she excluded 
 from her ministry such a man as Jeremy Taylor, a man to 
 whom all learning, ancient and modern, was familiar, and 
 whose genius was perhaps still greater than his erudition ? 
 
 As, however, there can be no doubt that it does contribute 
 to the credit of a class to have a fair proportion of men of 
 noble and good family belonging to it, it is worth while to 
 examine the truth of the statement whether or no the clergy 
 were on the whole a plebeian order in the 17th century. 
 "At the close of Charles II.'s reign two sons of peers," it 
 seems, " were bishops ; four or five sons of peers were 
 priests." * 
 
 better sort than the common mass, whose names and extractions are for- 
 gotten. If there were any class of persons who deserved to be^called " low- 
 born" generally among the English Priesthood, it was the body of curates 
 (in the modern sense of the word) who appear to have been much less 
 numerous than at present. 
 
 * Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. 326. 
 
,17 
 
 Again, 
 
 " Dr. Henry Compton, Bishop of London, spoke strongly [in 
 
 1685] for the motion He was one of the few clergymen 
 
 who could in that age boast of noble blood." — Macaulay's 
 History of England, vol. ii. pp. 32, 33. 
 
 There were, however, more examples of such clergymen 
 in that age than Mr. Macaulay's account would lead us to 
 believe. The following is Chamberlayne's professedly im- 
 perfect catalogue in the year 1694 : 
 
 " Nor is the present age wholly destitute of this honor. Witness 
 the present bishop of London, Dr. Compton, brother to the Earl 
 of Northampton; Dr. Feilding, uncle to the Earl of Denbigh; 
 Dr. Fane, late brother to an Earl of Westmoreland ; Mr. Fineh, 
 son to the late Earl of Winchelsea ; Dr. Montague, uncle to the 
 Earl of Sandwich ; Dr. Annesley, uncle to the Earl of Anglesea ; 
 Dr. Greenvile, late Dean of Durham, brother to the Earl of Bath ; 
 Mr. Berkeley, son to the Earl of Berkeley ; Mr. Finch, brother to 
 the Earl of Nottingham ; Dr. Booth, brother to the Earl of War- 
 rington ; Dr. Crew, Bishop of Durham, son to the late Lord Crew ; 
 Dr. Grahame, brother to the Lord Viscount Preston ; Sir Jonathan 
 Trelawney, Knight and Baronet, Bishop of Exeter ; and many 
 others, now living, OB lately dead." — Chamberlayne's State 
 of Britain, 1694, p. 369. 
 
 The enumeration has been made more complete : 
 
 " We have evidence (says the Quarterly Reviewer of Mr. 
 Macaulay's work) that there were at that time [the age of Bishop 
 Compton] in holy orders at least the following : Dr. Fane, brother 
 of the Earl of Westmoreland ; Mr. Finch, son of the Earl of Win- 
 chelsea; and another Mr. Finch, brother of the Earl of Notting- 
 ham ; Dr. Montagu, uncle of the Earl of Sandwich ; Dr. Annesley, 
 uncle of the Earl of Anglesey ; Dr. Greenvil, brother of the Earl 
 of Bath; Mr. Berkeley, brother of the Earl of Berkeley; Dr. 
 Booth, brother of the Earl of Warrington ; Lord Crewe, Bishop 
 of Durham; Dr. Graham, brother of Viscount Preston; Sir 
 Jonathan Trelawney, Bart.; Sir William Dawes, Bart.; Sir George 
 Wheeler ; together with sons of Lord Fairfax of Cameron, Lord 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 Grey of Wark, Lord Brereton, and Lord Chandois, to whom 
 may be added near relatives of the Earl of Shrewsbury and the 
 Marquis of Kent. And we have no doubt that a longer search 
 would largely increase this already respectable list." — Quarterly 
 Review, No. clxviii. p. 589. 
 
 That it is not perfect is certain from the following passage 
 in Evelyn's Diary : 
 
 " Nov. 30, 1684. In the morning Dr. Fiennes, son of the Lord 
 Say and Sele, preached before the king." — vol. ni. p. 122. 
 
 The Hon. J. North too and Sir L. Playters, Bart., were 
 in holy orders. Among the sons of knights may be named 
 Bishops Feme, ^emham, and Hyde (who was promoted 
 by his kinsman Lord Clarendon, first to the deanery of 
 Winchester and next to the see of Salisbury) : Crofts also, 
 dean of Norwich, brother to Lord "William Crofts, of Suffolk ; 
 and Dean Honywood : the names of obscurer clergy, sons 
 of knights^ are here designedly omitted. 
 
 Whether however there were half-a-dozen sons of peers 
 in orders more or less than have been mentioned, is of 
 much less consequence than to know whether the sons of 
 gentry were in the habit of entering orders. And on this 
 point there cannot be any question, because Eachard and his 
 opponent both agree that they were; whence it of course 
 follows that it is unfair to consider the then Clergy as 
 "on the whole a plebeian class." 
 
 " The next thing that does much heighten the misery of our 
 Church as to the poverty of it, is the gentry's designing not 
 only the weak, the lame, and usually the most ill-favored of their 
 children for the office of the ministry, but also such as they 
 intend to settle nothing upon for their subsistence, &c." — Eachard's 
 Grounds, SfC. pp. 141, 142, (9th edit. Lond. 1685). 
 
 Divesting this sentence of its buffoonery it amounts to 
 this — that the younger sons of gentlemen went not uncommonly 
 
19 
 
 into orders; for if that happened but seldom, how could 
 the misery of the Church be much heightened by the 
 poverty of that part of them for which their friends made 
 slight provision? 
 
 Let us remark also the reply to his observations, in which 
 the fact indeed of the gentry's sons entering the ministry 
 is assumed, but the rest denied. 
 
 " The next thing so much concurring to heighten our clergy's 
 poverty and disesteem, he lays at the gentry's door, wherein he 
 
 shews himself as much a gentleman as a master of reason 
 
 Having already set out the clergy, he now proceeds to render the 
 gentry ridiculous. But have not the gentry {and nohliity too) also 
 deserved better at our hands than thus to be traduced for dedicating 
 some of their sons to God's service ? Is this so ready a way to 
 bring more contempt upon the clergy, and not rather a mean to 
 redeem their credit, to make church and state a compacted body of 
 one common interest, and keep a fair correspondence between clergy 
 and laity, and prevent all future quarrels between them, which 
 used to be grounded upon an old mistake that they are naturally 
 as little related as the outward and the inward man, or the flesh 
 and spirit ? ' Yea, but (he says) they design the weak, lame, and 
 most ill-favoured of their children for the ministry, having just 
 limbs enough to climb the pulpit, and an eye or two to find 
 out the day of the month, and then leave them to God's blessing 
 and the warm sun, without one penny of money or inch of land 
 excepting only a small stock to buy a broad hat at second hand, 
 and a small system or two of faith, whereupon you shall meet 
 with few of them worth above two spoons and a pepperbox, 
 besides their spiritualities.'" — [N.B. This is taken almost verbatim 
 from Eachard by his opponent.] 
 
 " And now, gentlemen, as you were! A very pretty relation 
 indeed! Which if it wore true, I would fain ask our little- 
 mighty oracle whether it reflects more upon the clergy or gentry ? 
 Oh! without doubt it adds a great lustre to the family, and 
 commends his paternal wisdom, care, and impartial providence, 
 when a father leaves a thousand pounds per annum to his eldest 
 son, and plentiful portions to all the rest of the brethren, ex- 
 cepting only the poor divinity thing, who is left so poor it 
 
 c2 
 
20 
 
 can but just creep, having nothing but two spoons and a pepper- 
 box to keep it from starving. But the world is grown too 
 wise to account all gold that glitters, or to shut their eyes till 
 they be trepanned into the belief of a falsehood, though never 
 so plausibly varnished over with specious whimsies and merry 
 mad conceits." — A Vindication of the Clergy from the Contempt 
 imposed upon them by the Author of the Grounds, #c, pp. 96-98, 
 (Lond. 1672). 
 
 But whence does it appear that Mr. Macaulay has 
 obtained his information ? " That the English Clergy were 
 a low-born class is remarked in the travels of the Grand 
 Duke Cosmo." Assuming that some such remark is made 
 (for really it boots not to enquire, although it may be just 
 added that the Quarterly Reviewer searched the huge book 
 in order to find it without effect), what is its value, when 
 certain information can be obtained? A stranger and a 
 foreigner may be excused for being led into error more 
 easily than a native and a professed historian. His other 
 authority is the Deist Wood, who "bitterly complains" 
 forsooth of the low estimation of the clergy in the eyes 
 of "pettifogging attornies, quack doctors, and the motley 
 band of artisans." " Good family and descent," he adds, 
 " is reckoned to be defiled by Holy Orders." No doubt it 
 was by the rabble mentioned just before and by the faction 
 of deists like himself. But if we would have the judgment 
 of men of respectability and information, let us take 
 first the testimony of Archdeacon Oley. 
 
 " Blessed be God ! who hath secured the honour of the function 
 from being disparaged by the misdemeanors of men that officiate 
 in it; or by the malignity of such as observe their fellings with 
 design to revile them. Though the vulgar ordinarily do not, 
 yet the nobility and gentry do distinguish and abstract the errors 
 of the man from the holy calling, and not think their dear 
 relations degraded by receiving holy orders." — Oley's Preface to 
 Herbert's Country Parson, a.d. 1675, (Pickering's edit.- 1836). 
 
21 
 
 To this may be added the testimony of an excellent 
 layman in a work referred to by Mr. Macaulay in his 
 description of the Clergy. Having mentioned that Bull's 
 descent was from an ancient family of very good note 
 among the gentry of Somersetshire, Nelson proceeds thus : 
 
 " By this it appears that Mr. Bull was by extraction a gentle- 
 man, an advantage which he the less wanted because he was 
 engaged in a profession which is not only highly honourable 
 in itself, but conferreth greater degrees of honour on those who 
 are the best born." [Bull was ordained a.d. 1655, and was 
 made a Bishop in the following century.] — Nelson's Life of Bull, 
 pp. 7, 8, (Lond. 1713). 
 
 In conclusion, let the following evidence of Jeremy 
 Collier be adduced; he stands the fourth in order on 
 Mr. Macaulay's own catalogue of the twelve distinguished 
 London preachers, " all of high note in ecclesiastical history." 
 
 " In this country of ours persons of the first quality have 
 been in orders 
 
 " To come a little lower and to our own times. And here we 
 may reckon not a few persons of noble descent in Holy Orders. 
 Witness the Berkeleys, Comptons, Montagues, Crews, and Norths; 
 the Annesleys, Finches, Grayhams, fyc. And as for the gentry, there 
 are not many good families in England but either have or have had 
 a clergyman in them. 
 
 " In short the priesthood is the profession of a gentleman." 
 — Jeremy Collier's View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the 
 Stage, pp. 135, 136, Lond. 1698. 
 
 With this work Mr. Macaulay is well acquainted. We 
 have indeed from his own pen an elegantly written account 
 of it (composed a few years since), with which this section 
 shall be concluded. 
 
 " In 1698, Collier published his Short Vifew of the Profaneness 
 and Immorality of the English Stage, a book which threw the 
 whole literary world into commotion, but which is now much less read 
 than it deserves. The faults of the work, indeed, are neither few 
 
22 
 
 nor small. The dissertations on the Greek and Latin drama do not 
 at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been thought of 
 them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church had 
 refuted Bentley, are such as, in the present day, a scholar of very 
 humble pretensions may venture to pronounce boyish, or rather 
 babyish. The censures are not sufficiently discriminating. The 
 authors whom Collier accused had been guilty of such gross sins 
 against decency that he was certain to weaken instead of strengthen- 
 ing his case, by introducing into his charge against them any 
 matter about which there could be the smallest dispute. He was, 
 however, so injudicious as to place among the outrageous offences 
 which he justly arraigned, some things which are really quite 
 innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, though not 
 perhaps strictly correct, could easily be paralleled from the works 
 of writers who had rendered great services to morality and religion. 
 Thus he blames Congreve, the number and gravity of whose real 
 transgressions made it quite unnecessary to tax him with any that 
 were not real, for using the words " martyr" and " inspiration" in a 
 light sense ; as if an archbishop might not say that a speech was 
 inspired by claret, or that an alderman was a martyr to the gout. 
 Sometimes, again, Collier does not sufficiently distinguish between 
 the dramatist and the persons of the drama. Thus he blames Van- 
 brugh for putting into Lord Foppington's mouth some contemptuous 
 expressions respecting the Church service; though it is obvious 
 that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making 
 Lord Foppington express contempt. There is also throughout the 
 Short View too strong a display of professional feeling. Collier is 
 not content with claiming for his order an immunity from indis- 
 criminate scurrility ; he will not allow that, in any case, any word 
 or act of a divine can be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does 
 he confine this benefit of clergy to the ministers of the Established 
 Church. He extends the privilege to [Roman] Catholic priests, 
 and, what in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This, 
 however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, 
 priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed for 
 making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called 
 to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the most 
 curious passage is that in which Collier resents some uncivil reflec- 
 tions thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden's Cleomencs, on the calf Apis 
 
23 
 
 and his hierophants. The words " grass-eating, foddered god," 
 words which really are much in the style of several passages in 
 the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian divine 
 as they could have given to the priests of Memphis. 
 
 " But when all deductions have been made, great merit must 
 be allowed to this work. There is hardly any book of that time 
 from which it would be possible to select specimens of writing 
 so excellent and so various. To compare Collier with Pascal 
 would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know where, except in 
 the Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously and 
 becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View. In 
 truth, all the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and 
 antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier's command. On the other 
 hand, he was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indig- 
 nation. We scarcely know any volume which contains so many 
 bursts of that peculiar eloquence which comes from the heart 
 and goes to the heart. Indeed the spirit of the book is truly 
 heroic. In order fairly to appreciate it, we must remember the 
 situation in which the writer stood. He was under the frown 
 of power. His name was already a mark for the invectives of 
 one half of the writers of the age, when, in the cause of good 
 taste, good sense, and good morals, he gave battle to the other 
 half. Strong as his political prejudices were, he seems on this 
 occasion to have entirely laid them aside. He has forgotten that 
 he is a Jacobite, and remembers only that he is a citizen and 
 a Christian. Some of his sharpest censures are directed against 
 poetry which had been hailed with delight by the Tory party, 
 and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is inspiriting 
 to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies, 
 formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible 
 when combined, distributes his swashiug blows right and left 
 among Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched 
 D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet, and strikes with all 
 his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." — Macaulay's 
 Essays, vol. ill. pp. 298 — 301 ; or, Edinburgh Beview, Jan. 1841. 
 
 We shall have occasion to recur to this description of 
 Collier's work, which, so far as we are concerned, leaves 
 nothing to be desired. 
 
;>4 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 ON THE STATE OF SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 Our notion of the young Clergyman, as he enters on his 
 professional life, will " depend much on our view of his 
 previous preparation at school and in the University. There 
 is a Treatise of Education with respect to Grammar Schools 
 and the Universities, by F. Brokesby, Esq., which was pub- 
 lished in London in 1710; it may be expected that it will 
 furnish valuable information to those who can obtain access 
 to it. It will be my main object to make it appear con- 
 clusively, from such evidence as will now be adduced, with 
 what kind of reason Mr. Macaulay has made certain state- 
 ments respecting the low state of Greek knowledge in the 
 Universities during Charles II. 's time and among the Clergy, 
 or rather the total ignorance of that language among many 
 of them. 
 
 Yet before examining his assertion and the proof of it, the 
 way will be cleared by taking a preliminary view of the 
 schools. To take a glance at one or two of the great ones 
 first : — 
 
 St. Paul's school then possessed a very rich library of 
 philological works, which the fire of London destroyed 
 (Meggott's Sermon before the School, 1676). In 1664 Greek 
 was undoubtedly taught there : and Pepys, having mentioned 
 that he was told how Dean Colet in his will would have 
 a master found for the school, 'that hath good skill in 
 Latin, and (if it could be) one that hath some knowledge 
 of the Greek,' adds this reflection : 
 
25 
 
 " So little was Greek known here at that time." — Pepys' Diary, 
 vol. ii. p. 149, 2nd Edit. 
 
 Let us take for another example the school at which 
 Kettlewell was educated, North Alverton in Yorkshire. 
 The author of his life speaks of this school as having 
 heen long in great reputation on account of its master, 
 Mr. T. Smelt, "who was an excellent grammarian both 
 of Latin and Greek." (KettleweWs Life, p. 1 0.) 
 
 Here were trained Palliser, Archbishop of Cashel, Burnet 
 Master of the Charter-house, Eymer, Radcliffe, and Hickes. 
 
 To pass from the more illustrious seminaries to those of 
 obscurer fame. Payne, in his Sermon before the scholars 
 of Brentwood in 1682, excuses himself for treating them 
 "neither with Greek nor Latin," because he "knew that 
 they had enough of those at Brentwood." 
 
 Nor does it seem reasonable to doubt that Greek was 
 taught generally in the grammar schools of the country, 
 even in those of the most ordinary description. And on 
 these " common schools," Eachard thought that " the learn- 
 ing and wisdom of the Clergy and the prosperity of the 
 Church very much depended." (Grounds, fyc, p. 14.) 
 
 Now with regard to such schools, if we take Eachard's 
 statements and the reply to them, we shall find a good 
 deal in common : that common part may be admitted in- 
 dubitably. Let us look at Eachard first. 
 
 " And first of all, it were certainly worth the considering, whether 
 it be unavoidably necessary to keep lads to sixteen or seventeen 
 years of age in pure slavery to a few Latin and Greek words ? Or 
 whether it may not be more convenient, especially if we call to 
 mind their natural inclinations to ease and idleness, and how hardly 
 they are persuaded of the excellency of the liberal arts and sciences, 
 any further than the smart of the last piece of discipline is fresh in 
 their memories ; whether I say it be not more proper and beneficial 
 to mix with those unpleasant tasks and drudgeries, something that 
 
26 
 
 in probability might not only take much better with theni, but 
 might also be much easier obtained ? 
 
 " As suppose some part of time was allotted them for the reading 
 of some innocent English authors ; where they need not go every 
 line so unwillingly to a tormenting dictionary, and whereby they 
 might come in a short time to apprehend common sense, and to 
 begin to judge what is true : for you shall have lads that are arch 
 knaves at the nominative case, and that have a notable quick eye at 
 spying out the verb, who, for want of reading such common and 
 familiar books, shall understand no more of what is very plain and 
 easy than a well-eduoated dog or horse. Or suppose they were 
 taught (as they might much easier be than what is commonly 
 offered to them) the principles of Arithmetic, Geometry, and such 
 alluring parts of learning : as these things undoubtedly would be 
 much more useful, so much more delightful to them, than to be 
 tormented with a tedious story how Phaeton broke his neck, or 
 how many nuts and apples Tityrus had for his supper : for most 
 certainly youths, if handsomely dealt with, are much inclinable to 
 emulation and to a very useful esteem of glory, and more espe- 
 cially if it be the reward of knowledge; and therefore if such 
 things were carefully and discreetly propounded unto them, wherein 
 they might not only earnestly contend amongst themselves, but 
 might also see how far they out-skill the rest of the world, a 
 lad hereby would think himself high and mighty, and would 
 certainly take great delight in contemning the next unlearned 
 mortal he meets withal. But if instead hereof you diet him 
 with nothing but with rules and exceptions, with tiresome repeti- 
 tions of Amo'a and rvVrw's, setting a day also apart to recite 
 verbatim all the burdensome task of the foregoing week (which 
 I am confident is usually as dreadful as an old parliament fast), 
 we must needs believe that such a one thus managed will 
 scarce think to prove immortal by such performances and accom- 
 plishments as these. You know very well, sir, that lads in the 
 general have but a kind of ugly and odd conception of learning, 
 and look upon it as such a starving thing and unnecessary perfec- 
 tion (especially as it is usually dispensed out unto them), that 
 ninepins and span-counter are judged much more heavenly em- 
 ployments : and therefore what pleasure, do wo think, can such 
 a one take in being bound to get against breakfast two or three 
 
27 
 
 hundred runiblers out of Homer, in commendation of Achilles' 
 toes or the Grecians' boots: or to have measured out unto 
 him, very early in the morning, fifteen or twenty well laid-on 
 lashes, for letting a syllable slip too soon, or hanging too long 
 upon it? Doubtless, instant execution upon such grand mis- 
 carriages as these will eternally engage him to a most admirable 
 opinion of the Muses. 
 
 " Lads, certainly, ought to be won by all possible arts and 
 devices ; and though many have invented fine pictures and games 
 to cheat them into the undertaking of unreasonable burdens, yet 
 this by no means is such a lasting temptation as the propound- 
 ing of that which in itself is pleasant and alluring : for we 
 shall find very many, though of no excelling quickness, will 
 soon perceive the design of the landscape, and so looking through 
 the veil, will then begin to take as little delight in those pretty 
 contrivances, as in getting by heart three or four leaves of ungayed 
 nonsense. 
 
 " Neither seems the stratagem of money to be so prevailing 
 and catching, as a right-down offering of such books which are 
 ingenious and convenient ; there being but very few so intolerably 
 careful of their bellies, as to look upon the hopes of a cake 
 or a few apples to be a sufficient recompence for cracking their 
 pates with a heap of independent words. 
 
 " I am not sensible that I have said anything in disparagement 
 of those two famous tongues, the Greek and Latin, there being 
 much reason to value them beyond others; because the best 
 of human learning has been delivered unto us in those languages. 
 But he that worships them purely out of honour to Rome and 
 Athens, having little or no respect to the usefulness and excellency 
 of the books themselves (as many do), it is a sign he has a great 
 esteem and reverence of antiquity but I think him by no means 
 comparable for happiness to him who catches frogs or hunts 
 butterflies. 
 
 " That some languages therefore ought to be studied is in a 
 manner absolutely necessary, unless all were brought to one (which 
 would be the happiest thing that the world could wish for) : 
 but whether the beginning of them might not be more insensibly 
 instilled, and more advantageously obtained, by reading philo- 
 sophical as well as other ingenious authors, than Janua Lin- 
 
'28 
 
 guarum'ss, crabbed poems, and cross-grained prose, as it has been 
 heretofore by others, so it ought to be afresh considered by 
 all well-wishers either to the Clergy or learning. 
 
 " I know where if is the fashion of some schools, to prescribe 
 to a lad for his evening refreshment, out of Commenius, all the 
 terms of art belonging to Anatomy, Mathematics, or some such 
 piece of learning. Now, is it not a very likely thing that a 
 lad should take most absolute delight in conquering such a 
 pleasant task, where perhaps he has two or three hundred words 
 to keep in mind, with a very small proportion of sense thereunto 
 belonging ; whereas the use and full meaning of all those difficult 
 terms would have been most insensibly obtained by leisurely 
 reading in particular this or the other science?" — The Grounds 
 and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquired 
 into, in a Letter written to R. L. [By John Eachard'], pp. 4-9. 1670. 
 
 Now let it be seen what the author of a Vindication of the 
 Clergy has to say to the contrary : 
 
 " A great part of their pretended ignorance he lays upon 
 the old-fashioned methods and discipline of schooling, to assure 
 us he is a well-wisher to some new model, he knows not what, 
 but is content at present to be only so far a regulator as to 
 mention some very mischievous abuses of youth in common schools, 
 which I shall enquire into by-and-bye : for it were not amiss 
 to inform him by the way, that all men are not of the fanatick 
 skip-jack's mind, for new models and methods, (more than for 
 new moons and new Gods), provided the old have been found 
 by long experience neither uncertain nor ineffectual. Etdo-a fiera- 
 /5o\)j <pv<rec iKOTaTiKov, says plodding Aristotle, and 'tis as true 
 as if Cartes himself had said it, that changing foundations is 
 oftentimes of dangerous consequence 
 
 " I now proceed to consider the abuses our author observes 
 in the old received way of school-education. 
 
 " The first is, that boys are kept in pure slavery to Latin and 
 Greek words till sixteen or seventeen years of age: so that if 
 you will believe him, Rider's Dictionary and Scapula's Lexicon are 
 the only books they do, or at least need converse with, for that 
 
29 
 
 purpose. To remedy this abuse (which yet is of his own making) 
 he starts the fancy of -putting them upon English authors: that 
 doubtless would be as pleasing as Tityrus's apples and nuts to 
 them who are naturally inclined to ease and idleness, but would 
 not so well satisfy their parents, who send them to school chiefly 
 to learn Amo's, and tvtttw's, for so we are taught to call the 
 Greek and Latin tongues. But that they should fall upon 
 Geometry and Philosophical discourses for that end, rather than 
 Homer, Virgil, Tully, &c, is such a monster as the teeming 
 Africa ne'er brought forth the fellow of it : 'twere to Kaivorarov 
 indeed, to put boys upon puzzling their tender brains about crabbed 
 theories and knotty problems, such as grown men of the pro- 
 foundest judgments can scarcely fathom or understand; as if 
 Hercules' shoes would fit a dwarf, as if lambs could wade where 
 elephants are forced to swim, and every little Philistine could 
 play at quarter-staff with Goliah's beam." — Vindication of the 
 Clergy, pp. 35, 36. 
 
 Now, surely, does it not appear plain from these two 
 jesters, that hoys, intended for Clergymen, had a fair classical 
 education? Eachard found fault with the preponderance 
 of classical studies, not the defect. 
 
 His opponent is of the contrary opinion ; hut, at any rate, 
 the fact of Greek and Latin being ordinarily read in com- 
 mon schools is as clear as noonday. 
 
 However, the very driest facts will sometimes give better 
 and livelier notions of a state of things than any arguments 
 whatever. 
 
 There is a work entitled " The General Catalogue of Books 
 printed in England since the Fire of London, 1666, to the 
 end of Trinity Term, 1674," with divers other matters, and 
 among them, " with a Catalogue of School Books" collected 
 by Robert Clavel; his work, being printed in London 
 1675. 
 
 The Catalogue of School Books occupies five folio pages 
 and twice as many columns ; each column averages nearly 
 forty works j the great majority are Greek or Latin; 
 
30 
 
 the fact tallying exactly with Eachard's and his opponent's 
 account of things. Among the Greek books and the books 
 on Greek are Aristophanes, priced 6s.; Busby's Greek 
 Grammar, Demosthenes, and the Odyssey, marked 4*. each ; 
 while the Iliad is marked sixpence higher. Here too are 
 to be found Hesiod, Isocrates (with the Greek text only, 
 or accompanied by a version), the minor Greek poets, and 
 Xenophon, besides the Greek Testament, and the Psalms 
 in Greek ; to say nothing of sundry royal Grammars, lights 
 to Grammars, keys, easy entrances, princely ways, poetic 
 mystagogues, portals of tongues, woods of synonymes, apoph- 
 thegms, colloquies, posings of the parts, &c. on the Latin, 
 Greek, Hebrew, or French tongues, as the case may be. 
 Youth's Behaviours in two parts, Logics, School Pastimes, 
 Child's Delights, are among the few English books which 
 are not of a grammatical character. 
 
 By reason of the preponderance of Greek and Latin 
 over other books in schools, it must, all things considered, 
 be evident that both languages were pretty generally taught 
 throughout the seminaries of the country; though un- 
 doubtedly the Latin works were much the more numerous. 
 
 Having thus obtained some notion of school education, 
 we are now more qualified to examine with what justice 
 Mr. Macaulay makes the following startling announcements 
 respecting the Universities : 
 
 " The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen 
 of that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and pro- 
 found than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at least, 
 did not flourish among us in the days of Charles the Second, as it 
 had flourished before the civil war, or as it again flourished long 
 after the revolution. There were undoubtedly scholars to whom 
 the whole Greek literature, from Homer to Photius, was familiar : 
 but such scholars were to be found almost exclusively among the 
 clergy resident at the universities, and even at the universities were 
 few, and were not fully appreciated. At Cambridge it was not 
 
31 
 
 thought by any means necessary that a divine should be able to 
 read the Gospels in the original.* Nor was the standard at Oxford 
 higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, Christ Church 
 rose up as one man to defend the genuineness of the Epistles of 
 Phalaris, that great college, then considered as the first seat of 
 philology in the kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic 
 learning as is now possessed by several youths at every great public 
 school." — Macaulay's History of England, vol. I. pp. 395, 396. 
 
 With regard to the observations about Oxford, the reason- 
 ing is remarkable. Supposing that it were, as stated, 
 unnecessary for a Cambridge divine to read the Gospels 
 in Greek, how would it appear that the Oxford standard 
 was no higher ? Because, it seems, all Christchurch put 
 together was no match (in William III.'s time) for Bentley ; 
 and because things unknown to Oxford men then are now 
 known to our best public-school boys. If the latter remark 
 seem specious, it should be remembered that Bentley's 
 work being in the hands of those school-boys is the true 
 cause why they know what Oxford men knew not ; besides 
 the same boys know laws of Greek metre (such as Porson's 
 rule respecting the final cretic in an iambic line) of which 
 Bentley himself never heard. Bentley's opponents were 
 far from being despicable : Mr. Dyce, the editor of Bentley, 
 calls Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch, under whose 
 auspices Charles Boyle edited Phalaris, 'learned and ac- 
 complished.' And if the name of Boyle is in our minds 
 now-a-days commonly associated with contempt (as it ought 
 not to be), it is because his opponent was incomparably 
 the greatest scholar in the kingdom (or rather the world), 
 and not'only'so, but a most merciless and sarcastic scourger. 
 So far from learning being low at Oxford in Charles II.'s 
 
 * •<' 
 
 • Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek Professor 
 at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek 
 tongue among the academical clergy."— Mr. Macaulay's Note. 
 
time, it was, at all events in the earlier part of his reign, 
 the very contrary, and great attention was bestowed upon 
 the writings of the Fathers, and by consequence upon 
 the Greek language. Let Burnet be witness to this point : 
 he is speaking of the year 1662. 
 
 " Learning was then high at Oxford ; chiefly the study 
 of the oriental tongues, which was much raised by the Polyglot 
 Bible, then lately set forth. They read the Fathers much there: 
 mathematics and the new philosophy were in great esteem. And 
 the meetings that Wilkins had begun at Oxford were now held in 
 London too, in such public manner, that the King himself en- 
 couraged them much, and had many experiments made before 
 him." — Bwrnets Own Time, vol. i. pp. 321, 322. 
 
 Let us now proceed to examine Mr. Macaulay's proof 
 that "at Cambridge it was not thought by any means 
 necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels 
 in the original." 
 
 The proof appears to depend upon Roger North's account 
 of his brother John's bitter complaints ' of the general neglect 
 of the Greek tongue among the academical Clergy.' 
 
 The reader can form his own judgment upon the passage, 
 which is subjoined entire, and consider whether it raises 
 so much as a presumption that any clergyman was so 
 absolutely ignorant of the language, as not to be able to 
 construe the original Greek of the Gospels: 
 
 " During his former residence in Trinity College, the doctor 
 persevered in his application to the Greek literature ; and his time 
 and pains therein were not lost, for he made such advances that 
 he was reputed one of the best Grecians in the university. And 
 accordingly, in November 1672, he was elected Greek professor. 
 That service obliged him to read lectures publicly in the schools at 
 appointed times ; which he performed most punctually, and thereby 
 confirmed the opinion that was preconceived of him ; for he was 
 really a prime critic in that language. He used to say that a due 
 knowledge of the Greek tongue was absolutely necessary for a 
 
divine : and as the Grecian, so the divine. He much wondered to 
 see that skill so much slighted and laid aside as it was by the 
 clergy in general. For his part, he did not see with what face 
 a man could pretend to be of the clergy, and not understand 
 Greek ; since not only the New Testament, but most of the eminent 
 ecclesiastical writers were in Greek : and the idiom of that language 
 (not justly transferable into any common speech) gives the greatest 
 light towards clearing obscure questions in divinity. Latin, and 
 the vernaculars westward, which are almost all deduced under it, 
 carry nearly the same idiom ; but the Orientals and Greek par- 
 take not so much of them." — North's Lives, vol. m. pp. 321, 322. 
 
 Although it is almost a waste of time and paper to add 
 a syllable by way of comment on the above passage from 
 North; yet let us produce the two following citations from 
 one of our most eminent Latin scholars, who was for some 
 years engaged in tuition in Trinity College, Cambridge; 
 and let us suppose them to fall, a couple of centuries hence, 
 into the hands of such an historian as Mr. Macaulay. 
 
 The passages are these : — 
 
 " No person who is conversant with the subject will venture 
 to assert that Latin scholarship is at present nourishing in England. 
 On the contrary, it must be admitted that, while we have lost that 
 practical familiarity with the Latin language which was possessed 
 some forty years ago by every Englishman with any pretensions to 
 scholarship, we have not supplied the deficiency by making our- 
 selves acquainted with the results of modern philology so far 
 as they have been brought to bear upon the language and litera- 
 ture of ancient Rome." — Donaldson's Vcvrroniatms, Pre/. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " If there is one idiom which seems both worthy and likely 
 to include within it the articulate utterances of all the world, 
 it is our own, for we too ' are sprung of earth's first blood/ and 
 the sun never sets upon our Saxondom. Still we ought not 
 to neglect or discourage the study of the old Roman language : 
 though it will never again become the spoken language of Europe, 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 there is no reason why it should not resume its place as the 
 organ of literary communication." — Ibid. p. 292. 
 
 Now what shall hinder some future historical romancer 
 from affirming, on the strength of these passages, that it was 
 not deemed by any means necessary at Cambridge in the reign 
 of Queen Victoria for a student to be able to read Virgil, 
 seeing that Latin had fallen into so general a desuetude; 
 and that any one who was able to scan a line of it, was 
 looked upon as a prodigious scholar ? It would be a merry 
 jest truly, if such a thing ever should be said; but it 
 would not be at all a better one than Mr. Macaulay's account 
 of things in Charles IPs time. 
 
 If any one would wish to know the state of Greek scholar- 
 ship at Cambridge in that reign, he may learn something 
 from the following passages of Burnet and Barrow: the 
 latter writer is, of course, not to be understood too literally, 
 but still his testimony is most abundantly subversive of 
 Mr. Macaulay's proposition. 
 
 Burnet then writes as follows : he is speaking of the 
 Cambridge students who were formed under Whichcot, 
 Cudworth, Wilkins, and More. He then gives a character 
 of each of these great men: 
 
 " Whichcot was a man of a rare temper, very mild and obliging. 
 He had great credit with some that had been eminent in the 
 late times, but made all the use he could of it to protect good 
 men of all persuasions. He was much for liberty of conscience : 
 and being disgusted with the dry systematical way of those times, 
 he studied to raise those who conversed with him to a nobler 
 set of thoughts, and to consider religion as a seed of a deiform 
 nature, (to use one of his own phrases). In order to this, he 
 set young students much on reading the ancient Philosophers, chiefly 
 Plato, Tully, and Plotin, and on considering the Christian religion 
 as a doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten human 
 nature, in which he was a great example, as well as a wise and 
 kind instructor." — Burnet's Own Time. vol. i. pp. 311, 312. 
 
35 
 Barrow thus harangues his academic audience : 
 
 " Quod faustum, felixque sit, Academici, anno in se redeunti, 
 mensibusque circumvolutis, cum Serpente isto JSgyptio, veteri 
 pelle deposits, viridem resumit, et quasi renovari se sentit Aca- 
 demia. Rursus in hanc quasi Jovis iEgyptii sedem solennes ludos 
 acturi confluxistis. Adhuc a bellorum rabie incolumes, et a tot 
 mutationibus Reipublicaj inconcussi, adhuc ab importunis querelis 
 et convitiis ingrate contra vos lascivientis populi superstites per- 
 sistitis. Nondum aut fortunaj fluxa instabilitas, aut oppugnationes 
 publicse, aut clandestine molitiones improborum hominum, saluti 
 vestra insidiantium, efficere potuerunt, ne etiamnum applaudere 
 vigentibus, et florentibus Uteris, et ne divino favori almo nostra? 
 Academia? Statori et Protectori gratiarum anniversarium debitum 
 persolvere possimus. Enimvero quasi inesset periculis vis qusedam 
 salutaris, nunquam magis quam per has tempestates, et lubricas 
 rerum fluctuationes bonarum literarum omne genus crescere et 
 germinare videbatur: de qua re praecipue opportunum fuerit 
 vobis impense gratulari ; nee quidvis succurrit cogitanti et sancti- 
 tate hujusce loci, et teniporis solennitate, et meo genio, et vestrll 
 omnium illustri frequentist, gravissim&que expectatione dignius di- 
 cendi argumentum : ex quo et Dei Opt. Max. prtestantissima dona 
 et boneflcia agnoscere, et vos ad ulteriorem studiorum profectum 
 excitare; et clarissimos hospites vobis benevole omnia prospera 
 optantes felicitatis vestrse qualicunque amcenS, reprsesentatione re- 
 creare valeamus. Unde autem vobis gratulari incipiam potius 
 quam ab iis, per quas loqui concessum est, Unguis, istis totius 
 literature quasi stabilibus fundamentis, et nucibus quas frangere 
 oportet quemvis nucleum intimioris doctrinse devorare cupientem? 
 quarum singulari gloria sive peritiam, sive varietatem spectemus, 
 nulla Academise tempora cum nostris fuerint conferenda: adeo 
 ut quas antiquior Academia vix intellexit, nostra expedite loquatur, 
 et quarum ilia famam vix audivit, hsec mentem fatmliariter in- 
 telligat : imo et quas grande aliquid fuit, provectiorem aliquem Ma- 
 gistrum, Doctoremve mediocriter callere, eas nos vixdum egressos 
 e matrice Academica inque suis cunis vagientes infantulos distincte 
 pronunciantes audiamus. Gr^ecos authores omne genus, poetas, 
 
 PHILOSOPHOS, HISTORICOS, SCHOLIASTAS, QUOS NON ITA PRIDEM 
 TANQUAM DARBAROS MAJOROM INSCITIA VERITA EST ATTINGERE, JAM 
 
 D2 
 
MATRIS NOSTRA ETIAM JUNIQflES FILII INTBEP1DB PERVOLVUNT, 
 IPSORUM LECTIONEM IN LEVIS NEGOTII CENSU REPUTANTES ; NEC 
 MINUS PROMPTE LYCEUM, AUT ACADEMIAM ADEUNT, QUAM SI RE- 
 MEANTIBUS SECUMS CUM PLATONE ET ArISTOTELE IN MEDIIS ATHENIS 
 
 versarentur." — Barrow Opuso. vol. iv. pp. 123, 124, 
 
SECTION IV. 
 
 OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 On this head Mr, Macaulay favours us with a very special 
 account, reaching backwards and stretching forwards over 
 nearly two centuries: in the course of it he is pleased to 
 insinuate that about the time of James II.'s accession (the 
 time of which his history treats) the wives of chaplains had 
 not much better cla"im to morality than to station, and he 
 Garries this accusation forward into the reign of George 
 the Second : 
 
 " Perhaps after some years of service he was presented to a 
 living sufficient to support him : but he often found it necessary 
 to purchase his preferment by a species of simony, which furnished 
 an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three or four generations 
 of scoffers. With his cure he was expected to take a wife. The 
 wife had ordinarily been in the patron's service ; and it was well 
 
 IF SHE WAS NOT SUSPECTED OF STANDING TOO HIGH IN THE PATRON'S 
 
 favour. Indeed the nature of the matrimonial connections which 
 the clergymen of that age were in the habit of forming is the most 
 certain indication of the place which the order held in the social 
 system. An Oxonian, writing a few months after the death of 
 Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that the country 
 attorney and the country apothecary looked down with disdain on 
 the country clergyman, but that one of the lessons most earnestly 
 inculcated on every girl of honourable family was to give no 
 encouragement to a lover in orders, and that, if any young lady 
 forgot this precept, she was almost as much disgraced as by an 
 illicit amour.* Clarendon, who assuredly bore no ill will to the 
 
 * " A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artifioum farragine, ecclesue rector 
 aut vicarius contemnitur ct fit ludibrio. Gentis et familise nitor sacris ordi- 
 
38 
 
 Church, mentions it as a sign of the confusion of ranks which 
 the great rebellion had produced, that some damsels of noble families 
 had bestowed themselves on divines.* A waiting woman was 
 generally considered as the most suitable helpmate for a parson. 
 Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what seemed to 
 be a formal sanction to this prejudice, by issuing special orders that 
 no clergyman should presume to marry a servant girl, without the 
 consent of her master or mistress.f During several generations 
 accordingly the relation between priests and handmaidens was a 
 theme for endless jest ; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy 
 of the seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who 
 wins a spouse above the rank of a cook.J Even so late as the time 
 of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life and 
 manners, himself a priest, remarked that, in a great household, the 
 chaplain was the resource of a lady's maid whose character had 
 been blown upon, and who was therefore forced to give up hopes 
 of catching the steward.||" — Macaulay's History of England, 
 vol. i. pp. 328, 329. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay's charge is two-fold ; or rather there is one 
 insinuation and one charge. Let us take the former first : 
 
 I. Now where is the proof to warrant this insinuation of 
 want of chastity anywhere near the time of which he is writ- 
 ing? whence is it derived? Until a certain discovery was 
 made, it gave me the greatest perplexity to conjecture. A 
 very grave charge this is to be made against the wives of a 
 large proportion of the Clergy. But in vain did I try to find 
 
 nibus pollutua censetur : foeminisque natalitio insignibus unicum inculcatur 
 saepius praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragium faciant, aut, (quod idem 
 auribus tam delicatulis sonat,) ne clerico se nuptas dari patiantur. — An- 
 glic® Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College, Oxford, 1686. 
 
 * Clarendon's Life, ii. 21. 
 
 t See the Injunctions of 1559, in Bishop Sparrow's Collection. Jeremy 
 Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction with a bitterness 
 which proves that his own pride had not been effectually tamed. 
 
 X Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nurse 
 in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan iu Shadwell's Lancashire Witches, 
 are instances. 
 
 || Swift's Directions to Servants. [Mr. Macaulay's Notes]. 
 
39 
 
 out by which of his authorities he intended it to be substan- 
 tiated ; for it was most evident that he had something in his 
 eye when he wrote, " even so late as the time of George the 
 Second" Dean Swift made some remark or other. It was of 
 course impossible to know what weight was to be attached to 
 the evidence against the chaplains' wives towards the end of 
 the seventeenth century, till it was previously determined what 
 that evidence was. The reader however may perhaps dis- 
 cover by the concluding chapter ; and he may find too that 
 the form of the insinuation has been altered in such a 
 manner that Swift's authority seems to confirm it. 
 
 However (though it does not strictly fall within the 
 present enquiry) we will consider whether Swift is good 
 proof of such immoralities being frequent during George 
 the Second's reign. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay has truly given the substance of Swift's 
 remarks : and perhaps it may be advisable to carry the 
 quotation forward into the first sentence of the following 
 paragraph, at which (for obvious reasons) we are compelled 
 to stop. 
 
 " I must caution you (the waiting-maid) particularly against my 
 lord's eldest son : if you are dexterous enough, it's odds that you 
 may draw him. in to marry you and make you a lady." — Stvift's 
 Directions to Servants : Works, vol. xvi. p. 185 (Lond. 1784). 
 
 Now surely if Swift is good proof that chaplains were in the 
 habit of marrying such waiting-maids as have been men- 
 tioned, he is equally good proof that a waiting-maid had 
 little difficulty in gaining my lord's eldest son. No one 
 however (I suppose) will pretend that such marriages were 
 then common in high life; and no one (I should have 
 thought) would consider such an authority to be legitimate 
 testimony of the ordinary marriages of clergymen at any 
 period. 
 
40 
 
 II. Having dispatched the charge of immorality, let us 
 proceed to examine that of vulgarity. 
 
 The first authority belongs to the sixteenth century, 
 a period which does not properly enter into the present 
 enquiry. One thing is certain, that the condition of the 
 Clergy was much improved afterwards in the time of Charles 
 II., for the fact is agreed upon between Eachard and his 
 opponent, to say nothing of other reasons for so thinking. 
 It follows therefore that we cannot safely argue from the 
 time of Elizabeth to the time of Charles II. But in truth 
 Mr. Macaulay has overstrained the inference from Eliz- 
 abeth's Injunctions. There is much less speciality about 
 them than his account would lead us to suppose : she pro- 
 vides that a clergyman shall not marry any manner of 
 woman — not merely a waiting-woman — without leave had 
 either from her parents or her relations, or in default of 
 these, the master and mistress where she serveth. The 
 whole passage given at large will prevent the necessity 
 of further comment on that point : 
 
 " Item. Although there be no prohibition by the Word of God, 
 nor any example of the primitive Church, but that the priests and 
 ministers of the Church may lawfully, for the avoiding of forni- 
 cation, have an honest and sober wife, and that for the same 
 purpose the same was, by Act of Parliament in the time of our dear 
 brother King Edward the Sixth, made lawful ; whereupon a great 
 number of the Clergy of this realm were then married, and so yet 
 eontinue : yet because there hath grown offence and some slander 
 to the Church, by lack of discreet and sober behaviour in many 
 ministers of the Church, both in choosing of their wives and in 
 undiscreet living with them, the remedy whereof is necessary 
 to be sought; it is thought therefore very necessary that no 
 manner of priest or deacon shall hereafter take to his wife any 
 manner of woman without the advice and allowance first had 
 upon good examination by the bishop of the same diocese and 
 two justicos of the peace of the same shire dwelling next to the 
 
41 
 
 place where the same woman hath made her most abode before 
 her marriage, nor without the good will of the parents of the 
 said woman, if she have any living, or two of the next of her 
 kinsfolks, or for lack of knowledge of such, of her master or 
 mistress where she serveth. And before she shall be contracted 
 in any place, he shall make a good and certain proof thereof to 
 the minister, or to the congregation assembled for that purpose, 
 which shall be upon some holy-day where divers may be present. 
 And if any shall do otherwise, that then they shall not be permitted 
 to minister either the word or the Sacraments of the Church, 
 nor shall be capable of any ecclesiastical benefice, and for the 
 manner of marriages of any bishops, the same shall be allowed 
 and approved by the metropolitan of the province, and also by 
 such Commissioners as the Queen's Majesty thereunto shall appoint, 
 and if any Master or Dean, or any Head of any College shall 
 purpose to marry, the same shall not be allowed but by such to 
 whom the visitation of the same doth properly belong, who shall 
 in any wise provide that the same tend not to the hindrance of 
 their house." — Sparrow's Collection of Articles, pp. 71, 72 (Lond. 
 1661). 
 
 Yet, though from the low condition of the Clergy at 
 that period (which appears elsewhere in the Injunctions) 
 there is every probability that low marriages were then 
 not uncommon, I am inclined to think it may reasonably 
 admit of some doubt whether very much could be in- 
 ferred to that effect from the provisions of this injunction. 
 The following passage of Hebers Life of Taylor will explain 
 my meaning : 
 
 " In the time of our ancestors, the interval between the domestics 
 and the other members of a family was by no means so great, 
 nor fenced with so harsh and impenetrable a barrier, as in the 
 present days of luxury and excessive refinement. As the highest 
 rank of subjects was elevated then at a greater height than they 
 now are above the most considerable private gentry, so the latter 
 constituted a far more efficient link in the great chain of society, 
 and a far easier gradation existed between the nobles and that class 
 of men from whom their own domestics were taken. There was, 
 
42 
 
 in those days, no supposed humiliation in offices which are now 
 accounted menial, but which the peer then received as a matter 
 of course from " the gentlemen of his household ;" and which were 
 paid to the knight or gentleman by domestics chosen in the families 
 of his own most respectable tenants ; while, in the humbler ranks 
 of middle life, it was the uniform and recognised duty of the wife 
 to wait on her husband, the child on his parents, the youngest 
 of the family on his elder brothers or sisters. But while the 
 subordination of service was thus perfect and universal, this very 
 universality softened its rigours. The well-born and well-educated 
 retainers of a noble family were admitted by its head to that con- 
 fidence and familiarity which their rank and attainments justified. 
 The servants of the manor-house were usually the humble friends 
 of the master and mistress, whose playmates they had been during 
 childhood, and under whose protection they hoped to grow old. 
 We have been, most of us, impressed with the tone of equality 
 assumed by the valets of the old French comedy ; and the jovial 
 familiarity of Furnace, Amble, and Order, in Massinger's "New 
 Way to pay Old Debts," is a well known, and probably an accurate 
 portrait of that species of graduated intercourse which once con- 
 nected the aristocracy, and the throne itself, with the humblest 
 orders of society, and in the abolition of which it may be reason- 
 ably doubted whether all parties are not rather losers than gainers." 
 — Bishop Heber's Life of Jeremy Taylor, pp. vii. viii. 
 
 The social position then of the higher domestics was 
 much more elevated in the sixteenth and beginning of the 
 seventeenth centuries than in later times. 
 
 Such being the state of society in Jeremy Taylor's boy- 
 hood, it is easy to see that no very great force is be attached 
 to Mr. Macaulay's remarks on the first of the three plays 
 which he has referred to, viz. Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 Scornful Lady. In that piece, written in James the First's 
 time, Sir Roger a chaplain marries not indeed " a cook," but 
 a person greatly " above the rank of a cook," viz. Abigail, a 
 waiting-yera£fe-woman, a title never, I believe, given to any 
 but the higher kind of attendants. Although for the matter of 
 
43 
 
 it, had it been otherwise, Sir Roger is so foolish, and Abigail 
 so intriguing, that no general inference of a prejudicial nature 
 against clerical marriages could have been drawn from this 
 example. Jeremy Collier accuses the play heavily, as design- 
 ing to bring the Clergy and religion into contempt. 
 
 We are now beginning to find our way down to the proper 
 period of our investigation. 
 
 The testimonies are those of Clarendon and two plays ; 
 likewise of Eachard, Oldham, and Wood. 
 
 To begin with Clarendon : 
 
 " He [the King] grew more disposed to leave all things to their 
 natural course and God's providence ; and by degrees unbent his 
 mind from the knotty and ungrateful part of his business, grew 
 more remiss in his application to it, and indulged to his youth and 
 appetite that licence and satisfaction that it desired, and for which 
 he had opportunity enough, and could not be without ministers 
 abundant for any such negotiations ; the time itself; and the young 
 people thereof of either sex having been educated in all the liberty 
 of vice without reprehension or restraint. All relations were con- 
 founded by the several sects in religion, which .discountenanced 
 all forms of reverence and respect as reliques and marks of 
 superstition. Children asked not blessing of their parents; nor 
 did they concern themselves in the education of their children, 
 but were well content that they should take any course to maintain 
 themselves, that they might be free from that expense. The 
 young women conversed without any circumspection or modesty, 
 and frequently met at taverns and common eating-houses ; and 
 they who were stricter and more severe in their comportment 
 became the wives of the seditious preachers or of officers of the 
 army. The daughters of noble and illustrious families bestowed 
 themselves upon the divines of the time, or other low and unequal 
 matches. Parents had no manner of authority over their children, 
 nor children any obedience or submission to their parents; but 
 every one did that which was good in his own eyes." — Clarendon's 
 Life, vol. II. p. 21. 
 
 By divines Mr. Macaulay understands the noble writer 
 to denote the divines of the Church of England : he appears 
 
44 
 
 to me to mean presbyterian divines, by his additional words 
 of the time, and by the general context. 
 
 The following passage from his History of the Rebellion 
 will shew that he calls such persons divines : 
 
 " This fresh example the assembly of godly and learned divines 
 had before their eyes when this covenant was sent to them for their 
 consideration, and speedy resolution ; and according to the haste 
 it required that clergy returned within two days their full appro- 
 bation of it ; there having been but two ministers who made any 
 pause or scruple of it, and they again soon confessing 'they had 
 received satisfaction to their doubts in the debate, and that they 
 were fully convinced of the lawfulness and piety of it.' Having 
 received so absolute an approbation and concurrence, and the battle 
 of Newbury being in that time likewise over, (which cleared and 
 removed more doubts than the assembly had done,) it stuck very 
 few hours with both houses ; but being at once judged convenient 
 and lawful, the lords and commons, and their assembly of divines* 
 met together at the church with great solemnity to take it, on 
 the five-and-twentieth day of September; a double holyday, by 
 the earl of Essex's triumphant return to London, and this religious 
 exercise. There two or three of their divines went up into the pulpit 
 successively, not to preach, but to pray ; others, according to their 
 several gifts, to make orations upon the work of the day." — Cla- 
 rendon's History of the BebelUon, book vn. pp. 262, 263 (Oxf. 1839). 
 
 Similar expressions occur elsewhere in his works. 
 
 But, in truth, when he has occasion to speak of the divines 
 of the Church of England he uses very different language. 
 Thus, for example — 
 
 " Dr. Gorges, the King's chaplain, being a gentleman of a good 
 family near that place, and allied to Mr. Norton, supped with them.'' 
 — Ibid, book XIII. 
 
 Again, speaking of Dr. Hewet whom Cromwell put to 
 death — 
 
 " Dr. Hewet was born a gentleman and bred a scholar, and was 
 a divine before the beginning of the troubles." — Ibid, book xv. 
 
45 
 
 "Whereas the men of whom he speaks in the passage alluded 
 to were divines of the time. I hope now to have made 
 Clarendon's meaning clear: at any rate the consideration 
 that he himself recommended the Hon. E. Boyle to enter 
 holy orders must surely remove all doubt. His testimony 
 therefore was altogether beside the purpose. 
 
 Two plays remain to be considered. In Vanbrugh's 
 Relapse, Bull marries Nurse, a governante. 
 
 How can Mr. Macaulay (knowing, as he perfectly well 
 does, the character of this writer, as appears by the passage 
 quoted at the end of our second section) refer us to him 
 in proof of the ordinary marriages of the Clergy ? 
 
 The following account of the play by Jeremy Collier will 
 relieve me from saying a syllable more on the subject: 
 
 " This is rare Protestant diversion, and very much for the 
 credit of the Reformation! The Church of England, I mean 
 the men of her, is the only communion in the world that will 
 endure such insolences as these. The Relapse is if possible more 
 singularly abusive [than The Provoked Wife']. Bull the chaplain 
 wishes the married couple joy in language horribly smutty and 
 profane: to transcribe it would blot the paper too much. In 
 the next page Young Fashion desires Bull to make haste to Sir 
 Tunbelly. He answers very decently, I fly, my good Lord. 
 At the end of this act Bull speaks to the case of bigamy, and 
 determines it thus. 1 do confess, to take two husbands for the 
 satisfaction of — is to commit the sin of exorbitancy, but to do it 
 for the peace of the spirit is no more than to be drunk by way 
 of physic : besides, to prevent a parent's wrath is to avoid the 
 sin of disobedience, for when the parent is angry, the child is 
 froward: the conclusion is insolently profane, and let it lie. 
 The spirit of this thought is borrowed from Ben Jonson's Bar- 
 tholomew Fair, only the profaneness is mightily improved, and 
 the abuse thrown off the meeting-house upon the Church. The 
 wit of the parents being angry and the child froward is all 
 his own. Bull has more of this heavy stuff upon his hands. 
 He tells Young Fashion, Your worship's goodness is unspeakable, yet 
 
46 
 
 there is one thing seems a point of conscience; and conscience is 
 a tender babe, fyc. 
 
 " These poets I observe, when they grow lazy and are inclined 
 to nonsense, they commonly get a clergyman to speak it : thus 
 they pass their own dulness for humour, and gratify their ease 
 and their malice at once. Coupler instructs Young Fashion which 
 way Bull was to be managed. He tells him, As chaplains go 
 now, he must be bribed high; he wants money, preferment, wine, 
 and a whore. Let this be procured for him, and l'U warrant thee 
 he speaks truth like an oracle. 
 
 " A few lines forward, the rudeness is still more gross and 
 dashed with smut, the common playhouse ingredient. 'Tis not 
 long before Coupler falls into his old civilities. He tells Young 
 Fashion, Last night the devil run away with the parson of Fatgoose 
 living. Afterwards Bull is plentifully railed on in downright 
 Billingsgate ; made to appear silly, servile, and profane, and 
 treated both in posture and language with the utmost contempt. 
 
 " I could cite more plays to this purpose, but these are suf- 
 ficient to shew the temper of the stage." — Collier's Short View, 
 Sfc. pp. 108-110, (Lond. 1698). 
 
 Again, in Shadwell's Lancashire Witches Smirk marries 
 the housekeeper Susan. 
 
 If Mr. Macaulay had read the preface, he would hardly 
 have referred us to such an example : 
 
 " Now, for reflecting upon the Church of England, you will find 
 by many expressions in the play that I intended the contrary. And 
 I am well assured that no learned or wise divine of the Church will 
 believe me guilty of it. I profess to have a true value and respect 
 for them. 
 
 " But they who say that the representation of such a fool and 
 knave as Smirk (who is declared to be an infamous fellow, not 
 of the Church, but crept into it for a livelihood, exposed for his 
 folly and knavery, and expelled the family) should concern or 
 reflect upon the Church of England, do sufficiently abuse it. 
 A foolish lord or knight is daily represented; nor are there any so 
 silly to believe it an abuse to their order." — Shadwell's Lancashire 
 Witches, Pref. 
 
47 
 
 Had this passage of Shadwell been better considered 
 of by Mr. Macaulay, a great part of his chapter on Society 
 had been re-written. 
 
 Eachard, Oldham, and Wood still remain. Eachard's 
 Abigail whom the chaplain is destined to marry is related 
 to the knight's family ; his testimony therefore makes clearly 
 against Mr. Macaulay. 
 
 The chaplain (at present but a lay-probationer), Abigail, 
 the knight, and my lady, all dine at the same table, and 
 are waited upon by servants: 
 
 " What then shall we do with them, and where shall we dispose 
 of them until they come to a holy ripeness? May we venture 
 them into the desk to read service? That cannot be, because 
 not capable: besides, the tempting pulpit usually stands too 
 near. Or shall we trust them in some good gentlemen's houses, 
 there to perform holy things? With all my heart, so that they 
 may not be called down from their studies to say grace to every 
 health: that they may have a little better wages than the cook 
 or butler: as also that there be a groom in the house besides 
 the chaplain, (for sometimes to the ten pounds a-year, they 
 crowd the looking after a couple of geldings) : and that he 
 may not be sent from table, picking his teeth, and fighting with 
 his hat under his arm, whilst the knight and my lady eat up 
 the tarts and chickens : it may be also convenient if he were 
 suffered to speak now and then in the parlour, besides at grace 
 and prayer-time ; and that my cousin Abigail and he sit not 
 too near one another at meals, nor be presented together to the 
 little Vicarage." — The Cfrounds and Occasions of the Contempt of 
 the Clergy and Religion enquired into, in a Letter written to B. L. 
 pp. 23, 24. 
 
 Again, in an answer to an opponent : 
 
 " But if these all fail and should not humble me, then by way 
 of pigeons, and a postscript, he advises the gentry of the nation to 
 raise all the trained bands and country troops to be in arms against 
 me ; and having well whetted their swords, to make sharp thrusts 
 at me, and to wound my reputation, in order to the redemption of 
 
48 
 
 their cousin Helen, who was carried captive to a small vicarage." — 
 Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds 
 and Occasions of the Contempt, fyc., pp. 3, 4, (5th edit. Lond. 1685). 
 
 And once more in the same tract — 
 
 " What a fool was I, that I could not as well have put in Betto 
 or Bidde, Susan or Sarah ; but must make the answerer angry, and 
 put in Abigail : or if I had put her in, what had I to do to trouble 
 myself concerning the chaplain's sitting so close to her ? Is it to be 
 expected that every gentleman should maintain two tables, to keep 
 them at a distance ? or that he should keep a servant on purpose to 
 watch private winks, treading upon toes, twitching of napkins, or 
 breaking of merry thoughts underboard ? And is there anything 
 more natural than for prettiness to beget looking, and for looking 
 to beget admiration? and what if admiration and love together 
 afterwards beget a vicarage?" — Ibid: pp. 116, 117. 
 
 The Atheist Oldham and the Deist Wood alone are left : 
 the former makes the chaplain marry 
 
 " My lady's antiquated waiting-maid, 
 In dressing only skilled and marmalade." 
 
 The testimony of "Wood has been already cited. To 
 their evidence I am not very careful to reply. 
 
 III. Having at length gone through Mr. Macaulay's 
 evidence to shew the nature of the Clergy's matrimonial 
 connexions in the seventeenth century, it remains to produce 
 evidence of the opposite kind. 
 
 "With regard to the actual instances of Clergymen's mar- 
 riages in that age, which I have happened to find as they 
 turned up almost by chance among diaries and biographies, 
 &c, the number of them is far too small to enable me to 
 generalize with any great confidence. However it is cer- 
 tainly easy to find numerous instances of the Clergy marry- 
 ing persons of ancient or respectable family; they would 
 seem to have chosen especially the daughters of men of their 
 
49 
 
 own profession. The following are a few instances of Clergy- 
 men marrying women of titled family: — Fuller married 
 a sister of Thomas Koper, Viscount Baltinglass; Burnet 
 (before he was made bishop) twice won a spouse of noble 
 blood. His' first wife was Margaret, daughter of the Earl 
 of Cassilis; his second, Mrs. Scott, was descended from a 
 younger branch of the family of Buccleugh on the father's 
 side, and related to the principal families in Guelderland 
 on the other. Dr. Bradley, rector of Ackworth in Yorkshire, 
 married the Lord Savile's daughter; Dean Herbert Astley 
 married Barbara, daughter of John, only son of Sir John 
 Hobart, Bart. Mr. Eaton, dispossessed of Aldford Bectory, 
 had married a sister or daughter of Sir P. Oldfield, Bart. ; 
 Dr. D. Horsmansden, rector of Ulcomb, married a daughter 
 of Sir W. St. Ledger ; Mr. Rawson, restored rector of Hoby, 
 had married a daughter of Sir R. Nevison, Knt. ; Mr. Gib- 
 bons, Priest Vicar of Exeter, married a near relation of the 
 Lord Spencer's.* 
 
 And it may possibly be worth while to add that the lowest 
 marriage that has happened to occur to me is that of 
 Jonathan Swift, (who married the daughter of Sir "W. Temple's 
 steward,) the very man from whose later writings Mr. 
 Macaulay tries to prove the low marriages of our Clergy. 
 
 Nor can we see any proof that a lady was disgraced by 
 marrying a Clergyman unless in the eyes of libertines and 
 Deists. Even Pepys himself, though certainly no friend 
 to the Clergy generally, can yet express himself thus : 
 
 " 1667, March 18. Comes my good old friend Mr. R. Cumberland 
 to see me, being newly come to town, whom I have not seen almost, 
 if not quite, these seven years. In a plain country parson's dress. 
 
 * Sir T. Browne's Works, vol. rv. p. 7 J Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 
 passim. At an earlier period (1629) George Herbert married Jane Danvers 
 who was nearly connected with the Earl of Danby's family. She after- 
 wards (about 1640) married Sir. R. Cook, Knt. 
 
 E 
 
so 
 
 I could not spend much time with him, but prayed him to come 
 with his brother, who was with him, to dine with me to-day : which 
 he did do, and I had a great deal of his good company ; and a most 
 excellent person he is as any I know, and one that I am sorry 
 should be lost or buried in a little country town, and would be 
 glad to remove him thence : and the truth is, if he would accept of 
 my sister's fortune, I would give £100 more with him than to 
 a man able to settle her four times as much as I fear he is able 
 to do." — Pepys' Diary, vol. ra. pp. 170, 171. 
 
 The writings of various divines during the seventeenth 
 century shew incidentally that Clergymen were not debarred 
 from making matches with the upper classes. Thus Herbert 
 in his Country Parson writes : 
 
 " If the parson be unmarried, and means to continue so, he 
 doth at least as much as hath been said. If he be married, 
 the choice of his wife was made rather by his ear than by his 
 eye ; his judgment, not his affection, found out a fit wife for him, 
 whose humble and liberal disposition he preferred before beauty, 
 riches, or honor." — Country Parson, ch. 9. 
 
 Yet if beauty, riches, or honour were out of the reach of 
 country parsons in his time, his language is unintelligible. 
 
 Archdeacon Oley in particular, Isaac Walton, and Dr. 
 Duport speak so strongly of the applicability of Herbert's 
 work as a model to their own (i. e. Charles II.'s) times, that 
 I should almost be justified in carrying down the testimony 
 to that period. It is however unnecessary to do so. 
 
 Beveridge in his Private Thoughts, written when he was 
 quite young and just entering orders, makes reflections 
 on the folly and wickedness of which he should be guilty 
 were he to marry merely for beauty or riches. But how 
 could he have justly made such a reflection, had riches 
 and beauty been shut out from a young clergyman ? 
 
 The mode again in which Nelson speaks of Bull's marrying 
 a priest's daughter is not intelligible on Mr. Macaulay's sup- 
 position of the generality of low marriages among the clergy : 
 
51 
 
 " In the change of his condition, Mr. Bull seemed to have 
 a regard chiefly to the character of the person he chose for the 
 companion of his life, and preferred the qualifications of piety 
 and virtue to those temporal advantages which for the most part 
 influence the minds of men upon such occasions. And as this 
 
 ought to be pursued by all , so it appears still more necessary 
 
 in a clergyman, because not only himself, but his family ought 
 to be a pattern to the whole parish." — Nelson's Life of Bull, p. 44. 
 
 Nelson adds that humility, gravity of garb, &c. will make 
 the wife of a clergyman rise in the esteem of others "the 
 more she keepeth at a distance from the vanity and gaiety 
 of the age." (p. 45.) 
 
 I shall now conclude with a testimony, which does not 
 indeed altogether agree with the interpretation of Elizabeth's 
 Injunction which has been proposed, but which is conclusive 
 testimony that the Clergy of the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century were not in the habit of marrying ordinary 
 servants. 
 
 With Jeremy Collier's opinion about an old injunction we 
 are much less concerned than with the incidental testimony 
 that things were not in his own age what he seems to have 
 supposed them to be in the time of Elizabeth : 
 
 " PhUotimus. Say you so ? Then I fancy those who drew up 
 Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions, knew nothing of this piece of anti- 
 quity [the Canon] you mention. 
 
 PhUalethes. Your reason ? 
 
 Plidot. Because by those Injunctions a clergyman could not 
 lawfully marry till he had gone and made his complaint against 
 celibacy before two Justices of the Peace, and gained their consent 
 and the good will of the master or mistress where the damsel served. 
 
 PhUal. And then I suppose, if he could not prevail by his 
 rhetoric, they gave him a warrant to distrain. 
 
 PhUot. Or possibly, if he courted in formd pauperis, they 
 assigned him a wife gratis out of an hospital. 
 
 Philal. Upon my word, this order, take it which way you 
 will, has a singular aspect, and looks as if it intended to put 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 the Clergy in mind that they ought not to aspire above an Abigail. 
 Certainly discretion and merit ran very low in the Church at 
 that time ; or else some people were willing to make the nation 
 believe so. But to return to the Canons." — Jeremy Collier's 
 Essays on Pride, pp. 40, 41, (3rd edit. Lond. 1698). 
 
 The piece of antiquity alluded to is one of the Apostolic 
 Canons, which forbids the ordination of one who had mar- 
 ried a slave. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay had read this passage and alludes to it in 
 the note to Queen Elizabeth's injunction. His remark is 
 truly singular, that Collier's words prove that his own pride 
 had not been effectually tamed ! They prove unquestionably 
 that he thought the times changed. 
 
 Now at length that the investigation of the subject of this 
 section is concluded, let us remark how ill-advised it was of 
 Mr. Macaulay to represent the marriages of the Reformed 
 Clergy in such a light as he has done. Most unquestionably, 
 whatever follies or crimes the married Clergy since the 
 Reformation may have been guilty of, there cannot be a 
 doubt that their liberty to marry has vastly contributed 
 to the morality and credit of their order. 
 
 Let us terminate the section with the following words of 
 Bishop Hall, in his Treatise on the Honour of the Married 
 Clergy, dedicated to Archbishop Abbot : 
 
 " The Church of England is blessed with a true Clergy and 
 glorious, and such a one as his Italian generation may impo- 
 tently envy and snarl at, [but] shall never presume to compete with 
 in worthiness and honour; and (as Dr. Taylor, that courageous 
 martyr, said at his parting) blessed be God for holy matrimony.'' 
 —Treatise SfC. sect. 17. p. 707, (edit. 1641). 
 
53 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 ON THE INCOMES OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 With respect to the revenues of the Clergy about the 
 time of the accession of James the Second, Mr. Macaulay 
 writes as follows : — 
 
 " The rural Clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than 
 the rural gentry, and were a class scarcely less important. It 
 is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as 
 compared with the individual gentleman, then ranked much lower 
 than in our days. The main support of the Church was derived 
 from the tithe ; and the tithe bore to the rent a much smaller ratio 
 than at present. King estimated the whole income of the parochial 
 and collegiate Clergy at only four hundred and eighty thousand 
 pounds a-year; Davenant at only five hundred and forty-four 
 thousand a-year. It is certainly now more than seven times as 
 great as the larger of these two sums. It follows that rectors 
 and vicars must have been, as compared with the neighbouring 
 knights and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth than in the 
 nineteenth century." — Macaulay's History of England, vol. I. 
 pp. 324, 325. 
 
 It is not my intention to dispute the accuracy of either 
 of these estimates. I will only state a fact or two which 
 may possibly enable any person of a financial turn to ap- 
 proximate towards discovering the average of Clergymen's 
 incomes, and by allowing for the altered value of money, 
 to compare their situation with that of the Clergy in our own 
 times. The following passage from Prideaux is important : 
 
 " And all this with the forty- eight cities which they had 
 to dwell in, and their share in the second tithes, and tithes of 
 
54 
 
 the poor, the Levitieal ministry had over and above the tithes, 
 which are now claimed among us by the ministers of the Gospel, 
 and were by the same divine appointment fixed and settled on 
 them. And therefore the glebes and church lands, which are 
 now held with these tithes in this realm, can by no means make 
 any such alteration in the ease, but that the precedent, which 
 God hath given by commanding the payment of those tithes in the 
 Jewish state for the support of his worship in the maintenance of 
 those who there ministered in it, will now under the Gospel hold 
 good for the same payment in this state also, notwithstanding any 
 such glebes or church lands, because what was held with these 
 tithes by the Levitieal ministry, was vastly more than all the 
 glebes and church lands in this realm can amount to. For putting 
 them all together,, they will not come to above one hundred thou- 
 sand pounds per annum. What belongs to bishops and deans and 
 chapters at the largest computation,, reckoning in their fines as 
 well as their rents, I cannot make to arise higher than seventy-five 
 thousand pounds per annum, and of this at least a third part being 
 in appropriated tithes, there remain only fifty thousand pounds 
 per annum in lands belonging to all the bishops and deans and 
 chapters in this realm j and if we add hereto the glebe lands belong- 
 ing to parish churches, 'fifty thousand pounds per annum, I reckon^ 
 is the highest value they can be laid at. So then the whole income 
 ©f all the church lands and glebes in England and Wales will 
 amount to one hundred thousand pounds per annum, which, com- 
 puting the value of all the lands of both, that is the whole realm, 
 at fifteen millions per annum (as it is usually reckoned at), is about 
 the hundred and fiftieth part of it; whereas the cities and lands 
 alone assigned the Levitieal ministry in Canaan was a thirtieth part 
 of that land, which is five times as much : and this is but one of 
 those many particulars which (I have shewn) did over and above 
 their tithes belong unto them." — Pridecmx's Original and Eight of 
 Titlies, pp. 81-83, (Lpnd. 1713). 
 
 The information of Prideaux as to the particulars he 
 mentions may probably be depended on, considering that 
 he was himself a Dean, and is generally considered an 
 honest man. 
 
55 
 
 Before quitting the subject of the entire revenues of the 
 Church, I will produce a passage from an anonymous tract 
 entitled "A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions, shewing 
 the Nature and Measures of Crown Lands, Assessments, 8fc," 
 London, printed for Obadiah Blagrave, 1679. It is very 
 probable that his estimate of Church revenue is highly 
 exaggerated; but on this point the reader can form his 
 own opinion: 
 
 " One cause of public charge' in matters of religion, is the not 
 having changed the limits of parishes and cures with the change of 
 religion from popery, and with the changes in plantation and trade. 
 For now when the ministers of the Gospel preach unto mul- 
 titudes assembled in one place, may not parishes be bigger, that is 
 may not flocks be more numerous than when every particular sheep 
 was, as heretofore, dressed and shorn three or four times per annum 
 by shrift? If there be in England and Wales but about five millions 
 of people, what needs be more than five thousand parishes, that is 
 one thousand sheep under every shepherd ? Whereas in the middling 
 parishes of London there are about five thousand souls in each. 
 Upon which account there needs be in England and Wales but 
 one thousand parishes, whereas there are near ten thousand. 
 
 " Now the saving of half the parishes would (reckoning the 
 benefices one with another, but at £100 per annum apiece) save 
 £500,000. Besides^ when the number of parochial parsons were 
 halved, then there would need but half the present number of 
 bishops, deans and chapters, colleges, and cathedrals, which perhaps 
 would amount to two or three hundred thousand pounds more : and 
 yet the Church of God would be more regularly served than now, 
 and that without prejudice to that sacred, ancient order of episco- 
 pacy, and the way of their maintenance by tithes ; and all this in a 
 method of greater reformation and suitableness thereunto." — A 
 Treatise $c. p. 6. 
 
 The reader may now make the best estimate he can 
 of the entire income of the Clergy from the above con- 
 flicting statements. 
 
 The number of parishes may be known with much greater 
 
56 
 
 certainty. Chamberlayne, in his State of Britain for the year 
 1684 (at the commencement of the book), estimates their 
 number at 9725; and in. a later edition of the same work 
 in. Anne's reign, their number is stated to be 9913, 'of 
 which 3845 are churches impropriate.' Oley, in his Preface 
 to the Country Parson, speaks of the Church of England 
 as ' a Church having eight or nine thousand parishes, and 
 perhaps as many clerks or more.' 
 
 The average income of each Clergyman may now be 
 Jsnown approximately from the above data. It is still how- 
 ever necessary to make some remarks on the altered value 
 of mopey : its value was undoubtedly much greater in 
 the latteKjpart of the seventeenth century than at present. 
 The following passage from Mr. Macaulay will enable any 
 one to form some judgment on the subject : 
 
 " The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the 
 best informed persons, at about three thousand a-year, the average 
 income of a baronet at nine hundred a-year, the average income 
 of a member of parliament aKJess than eight hundred a-year. A 
 thousand a-year was thought a large revenue for a barrister. Two 
 thousand a-year was hardly to be made in the Court of King's 
 Bench, except by the crown lawyers. Nit is evident, therefore, 
 that an official man would have been well paid if he had received 
 a fourth or fifth part of what would now be an adequate stipend." 
 Maemlay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 308, 309. v 
 
 The above data, though of course far from being entirely 
 satisfactory, are the best which I am able to furnish. The 
 entire income of the Church, the value of each living (sup- 
 posing the whole to be equally divided), and the modern 
 value of the Clergyman's average salary, may be calculated 
 (though very roughly) at leisure, and the result compared 
 with the present state of things. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay, in a passage already cited, states that not 
 one living in two hundred, after the Reformation, afforded 
 
57 
 
 what would be considered as a maintenance by a man of 
 family; and that the priesthood had lost its attraction for 
 him. Now "Wood writes thus of Henry Compton : 
 
 "Afterwards he travelled beyond the seas, and at his return, 
 which was after the restoration of King Charles II., he became a 
 cornet in the royal regiment under the command of Aubrey, Earl 
 of Oxford. At length being persuaded to take holy orders, which 
 was the readiest way for 'preferment for the younger sons of noblemen, 
 he went to Cambridge, where he was actually created master of 
 arts. Afterwards entering into orders, &c." — Athen. Oxon. vol. n. 
 p. 968 (folio edit.), or British Magazine, vol. xvi. p. 31. 
 
 "With regard to the generality of livings between the 
 Restoration and the Eevolution, Mr. Macaulay writes thus : 
 
 " Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up 
 a family comfortably. As children multiplied and grew, the house- 
 hold of the priest became more and more beggarly. Holes ap- 
 peared more and more plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in 
 his single cassock. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by 
 feeding swine, and by loading dungcarts, that he could obtain daily 
 bread ; nor did his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from 
 taking his concordance and his inkstand in execution. It was 
 a white day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great 
 house, and regaled by the servants with cold meat and ale. His 
 children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring 
 peasantry. His boys followed the plough ; and his girls went out 
 to service. Study he found impossible : for the advowson of his 
 living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase 
 a good theological library." — Macaulay' s Hist. ofEng., vol. i. p. 330. 
 
 It may at the outset fairly be conceded that Chamber- 
 layne's account is not much exaggerated, when in 1684 he 
 writes : 
 
 " At present the revenues of the English Clergy are generally 
 very small and insufficient." — State of Britain, p. 269. 
 
 The same remark might be made, though not with equal 
 cogency, on the ordinary salaries of curates in the present 
 
58 
 
 day. Burnet has some very strong remarks on this subject 
 (though it is quite clear that he was not in possession of 
 accurate statistical information) in the preface to the second 
 part of his History of the Reformation. 
 
 " Some private persons have done great things this way, but the 
 public has yet done nothing suitable to the occasion : though their 
 neighbour nation of Scotland has set them a very good example, 
 where, by the great zeal and care of king James, and the late 
 blessed king, acts and orders of parliament have been made, for 
 examining the whole state of the clergy, and for supplying all 
 poor livings so plentifully, that in glebe and tithes all benefices are 
 now raised to at least fifty pounds sterling yearly. What greater 
 scorn can be put upon religion than to provide so scantly for those, 
 that are trusted with the care of souls, that some hundreds of 
 parishes in England pay not ten pounds a-year to their pastors, and 
 perhaps some thousands not fifty?" — Burnet's History of the 
 Beformation, part n. Pref. 
 
 It will of course be remembered that these incomes must 
 be multiplied by some figure, by four perhaps, to bring 
 their sums up to their present value. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay's account is in some degree justified by 
 Eachard ; but he has certainly exceeded even that authority : 
 
 " Neither must people say, that besides bishoprics, prebends, and 
 the like, we have several brave benefices, sufficient to invite those of 
 the best parts, education, and discretion. For imagine one living 
 in forty is worth a hundred pounds a-year, and supplied by a man 
 of skill and wholesome counsel : what are the other thirty-nine the 
 better for that?" — The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of 
 the Clergy, Sfc, pp. 146, 147. 
 
 Now if one living in forty were £100 (i.e. £400 of our 
 present money), Mr. Macaulay's remarks are far too strong ; 
 and besides, Eachard himself is accused of exaggeration, and 
 (it can hardly be doubted) with perfect justice. 
 
 The reader shall be put in possession of one of Eachard's 
 pictures which Mr. Macaulay has copied, and shall also have 
 
59 
 
 the reply to it from his opponent. I would only remark that 
 I observe twenty or thirty pounds to be numbers frequently 
 mentioned by Eachard as the income of bad livings ; so that 
 it may be supposed that those of less value were not ex- 
 tremely numerous. 
 
 " Oh, how prettily and temperately may half-a-score children 
 be maintained with almost twenty pounds per annum! What 
 a handsome shift a poor ingenious and frugal divine will make, to 
 take it by turns, and wear a cassock one year and a pair of breeches 
 another. What a becoming thing is it for him that serves at the 
 altar to fill the dungcart in dry weather, and to heat the oven and 
 pill hemp in wet ! And what a pleasant sight is it to see the man 
 of God fetching up his single melancholy cow from a small rib of 
 land that is scarce to be found without a guide ; or to be seated 
 upon a soft and well grinded pouch of meal ; or to be planted upon 
 a pannier with a pair of geese or turkies bobbing out their heads 
 from under his canonical coat, as you cannot but remember the 
 man, sir, that was thus accomplished ; or to find him raving about 
 the yards, or keeping his chamber close, because the duck lately 
 miscarried of an egg, or that the never-failing hen has unhappily 
 forsaken her wonted nest ! 
 
 " And now, shall we think that such employments as these can 
 any way consist with due reverence or tolerable respect from 
 a parish ? And he speaks altogether at a venture, that either says 
 that this is false, or, at least it need not be so, notwithstanding the 
 mean condition of some of the Clergy. For let any one make it 
 out to me, which way it is possible that a man shall be able to 
 maintain perhaps eight or ten in his family with twenty or thirty 
 pounds per annum, without a most intolerable dependence upon his 
 parish, and without committing himself to such vileness as will 
 in all likelihood render him contemptible to his people. Now 
 where the income is so pitifully small (which I'll assure you is the 
 portion of hundreds of the Clergy of this nation), which way shall 
 he manage it for the subsistence of himself and his family ? " — The 
 Grounds of the Contempt of the Clergy, fyc, pp. 112-114. 
 
 In answer to this let the following passages from the 
 Vindication of the Clergy be adduced. 
 
60 
 
 " Nor is he much more ingenuous in representing the poverty of 
 our inferior Clergy (for them alone he must mean), by making 
 it far more extreme and desperate than in truth it is. For if any 
 man hath such a miraculous faith as to take his word rather than 
 believe his own eyes, he must needs fancy them a company of 
 sneaking Mendicant friars, who live from hand to mouth, who are 
 pinched with want of the common necessaries of life, and spend all 
 their days in studying only to stave off those two troublesome cre- 
 ditors, the back and belly. 
 
 " Indeed it must be confessed that the Church of England is not 
 now so rich, fat, and well-liking as she was in diebus Ulis his days, 
 and consequently not able to settle such plentiful portions upon her 
 younger children as she would : for she lost a considerable collop 
 by the Pope, (however, our author is so civil to the old gentleman 
 as not to mention him,) who laid a fair foundation of sacrilege by 
 impropriating 3845 of the 9284 parishes then in England, as Doctor 
 Basire notes out of Camden. And when she had somewhat picked 
 up her crumbs again, by the accession of new revenues, King Henry 
 the Eighth, knowing as infallibly as the Pope himself that the 
 church-lands were very good lands, could not forbear writing after 
 his Holiness's copy, but gave her such a tearing purge that she hath 
 never recovered her complexion since. Not to mention how far 
 Queen Eb'zabeth did patrizare, thanks be to God our vicarages 
 are not all so poor as they left them ; for, however our author's 
 memory fails him again, he speaks not a syllable of any late 
 augmentations , no, he never heard that our reverend bishops and 
 deans and chapters have (by the gracious intimation and to the 
 eternal honour of his present Majesty) competently augmented 
 most, if not all the small viea'rages belonging to them respectively. 
 And now I have told him, it would be a good jest indeed if he 
 should write an effectual piece to make the sky fall, — I mean, to 
 persuade all other impropriation-mongers to follow so good an 
 example, and bring them to some satisfaction however, for I despair 
 he should ever win them to refund the whole and make us all 
 parsons again, although it be a grievance to our consciences that 
 vicarages and sacrilege came first into England together from 
 Rome, and in the same cloak-bag : and besides, experience tells us 
 that church-lands (like the ark of God amongst the Philistines) 
 
61 
 
 have been but a plague to the families, and a canker in the estates 
 of their purchasers, as saith the heathen prophet, 
 
 Vix gaudet tertius htsres. 
 
 " Now though we dare not be so bold as to say with my Lord 
 Bacon, that all parliaments since the 27 and 31 of King Henry the 
 Eighth stand obliged to God in conscience to reduce the patrimony 
 of the Church, (to which he adds, that since they have debarred 
 Christ's spouse of a great part of her dowry, it were reason they 
 made her a competent jointure,) yet thus much we dare boldly 
 say, that our gracious Sovereign and this present parliament have 
 already given a signal earnest of their pious intentions, by restoring 
 that part of the Church's patrimony which was bought and sold by 
 those unhallowed rumpers ; and our little historian was unworthy 
 to mention that noble act (reserved for some great hand to record 
 it), for which their names shall be had in everlasting remembrance. 
 " In the mean time, those vicars whose incomes are but small as 
 yet, content themselves to make a virtue of necessity, and cut their 
 coat according to their cloth. Enough sometimes is as good as 
 a feast, and a dinner of herbs is more pleasant and acceptable to 
 some than a stalled ox attended with all varieties is to others. 
 Not one of an hundred of the Clergy but is as well provided for 
 as those the poet cries up for the happy men, Quels Deus pared 
 dedit quod satis est manu. Indeed I have oft admired to observe 
 how contentedly, yea how plentifully, sev&al of them live upon 
 a little; and though I have imputed it somewhat to their own 
 prudence, frugality, temperance, and cutting off many artificial 
 necessities others create to themselves, yet. I could not but call 
 to mind the widow's cruse of oil and barrel 6f meal that never 
 consumed while they were feeding the prophet, and almost fancied 
 God gave them blessings other men know not of, and made some 
 secret addition to their store: nay, I have known some of them 
 grow insensrbly into the number of the rich, whilst many of their 
 neighbours have (by their own imprudence or some unlucky 
 accident) lived to bury fair estates before them, and left nothing 
 when they died but a wife perhaps, and five or six pretty children, 
 by way of legacy to the parish. However, admitting they steer but 
 Agur's middle course between the two extremes all their lives, it 
 is sufficient for my present purpose ; and I have reason to conclude 
 
62 
 
 that poverty as well as ignorance is most injuriously attributed 
 to the generality of our present English Clergy, Quod erat demon- 
 strandum." — A Vindication of the Clergy, pp. 28 — 32. 
 
 Again: 
 
 " At first he makes a formal face like some piteous statue in the 
 wall, that would have us believe it bears up the whole fabric by its 
 shrugging; as if it were a burden to his little conscience that 
 our Clergy is not so well provided for as the Priesthood of old : but 
 all he drives at in the end is only to let off a quirk or two, and 
 certify mankind that the souls of men are a greater charge than 
 sheep and oxen, and that money and victuals were not types and 
 shadows to cease with the ceremonial law. At length he shews 
 upon the high rope, and advances to the top of his design, his 
 elaborate description of the vicar, which, that it might be to the life, 
 he hath ransacked all the romances and plays written since the King 
 came in, for accoutrements to make him the most despicable Lazarillo 
 in nature : ' For he discovers him Walking pensively alone in his 
 churchyard, either without a cassock or without breeches (according 
 as it happened to be the breeches or cassock year), and studying 
 merely how to live; casting with himself what pigs, geese, and 
 apples are towards, who is likely to marry or die next, and sadly 
 remembering that the last kilderkin of drink is near departed, and 
 that all his treasure is reduced to one single groat. Returning 
 to the little hut, his mansion-house, he meets with new disasters 
 to enhance his sorrows : a scurvy mole had ploughed up most of his 
 glebe, and the malicious crows trampled down the remaining grass ; 
 then sweep comes the kite and robs him of the most hopeful 
 chick in all the brood ; and to make up the scene and ruin him 
 quite, the jackdaws and starlings (idle birds that they are!) scattered 
 and carried away forty or fifty of the best straws from his thin 
 thatched roof. Thus racked and tortured he tries to weather out 
 his melancholy by retiring into the little hole over the oven called 
 his study (contrived there I suppose to save firing), a pretty little 
 Vatican, the whole furniture whereof is a German System, a 
 Geneva Bible and Concordance of the same, a budget of old 
 stitched sermons, some broken girts, with two or three yards of 
 whip-cord behind the door, and a saw and hammer to prevent 
 dilapidations. But finding his family cannot be maintained with 
 
63 
 
 texts and contexts, (the child in the cradle crying all this while 
 for want of milk,) down he creeps again, and betakes himself 
 to those heavenly employments of filling the dung-cart in dry 
 weather, pilling of hemp, and heating the oven in wet: and, to 
 evidence his willingness to turn a penny in an honest way, one 
 day he went to market upon a pannier with turkies and geese 
 bobbing out their heads under his canonical coat : but, alas, alas ! 
 in his absence the beloved duck miscarries, or the never-failing 
 hen forsakes her wonted nest; at which he either runs raving 
 about the yard like a lunatic, or else confines himself to the little 
 hole aforesaid, being e'en overwhelmed with grief and despair.' — 
 Now did you ever meet with such a romantic whimsy as this in 
 all your travels? Do you believe he really thinks this is a man 
 of God he thus sets out and makes so bold with ? Doth he not 
 fully betray that mighty reverence he has fqr the holy profession, 
 thus to prevaricate and coin an Utopian vicar merely to laugh at ? 
 Besides, granting there ever was such a forlorn creature as he 
 describes, yet how ridiculous a thing is this new way of argu- 
 mentation which concludes from particulars. For if you will take 
 his word for good logic, one instance or two reflects disparagement, 
 and procures a general disesteem to all that order of holy men 
 (p. 98). As much as to say, that if some of the gentry of England, 
 being decayed in their estates through their loyalty to the king, 
 or by their own imprudence, their children come to be tapsters or 
 hostlers, or any other servile officer, there must needs be a blot 
 in the scutcheons of all the rest, though never so flourishing, till 
 doomsday." — A Vindication of the Clergy, $c. pp. 80 — 84. 
 
 Certainly it seems hardly credible that Eachard's picture 
 could be true, except in some few cases, or at most in some 
 few districts, judging from Oley's remark in reference to 
 Eachard's book. 
 
 " There be two main occasions of contempt which you take 
 no notice of. The one external, and that is, envy; a mighty 
 engine which sometimes casts hatred and instruments of death, 
 sometimes bolts of scorn, upon men. Laid sunt infensi clericis, 
 is a proverb that holds in the many. It daily feeds, partly, upon 
 the patrimony of the Church, by God's wonderful providence 
 
64 
 
 restored to the Clergy, and rescued from those that had devoured 
 it ; (and I do here, in the name of my brethren, acknowledge, that, 
 for that mebct, and the mean profits of it, we are all accountable 
 to God and man) ; partly, upon the sedentary lives of churchmen : 
 because they do not make tents as St. Paul did, nor hold the 
 plough, thresh, or drive trades, as themselves do, they think them 
 idle persons." — Pre/, to Herbert's Country Parson. 
 
 In Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy it is always spoken 
 of as an hardship when Clergymen were reduced by the 
 sequestration of their livings to follow mean and servile 
 employments. He contrasts the independent ministers with 
 the orthodox Clergy in this very, particular* 
 
 With what degree of frequency the larger livings were 
 scattered over the country, I am not able to say. It may 
 be supposed that they were not very scarce, from the fol- 
 lowing passage of Miege's New State of England, (in 1693): 
 
 " As to the revenues of the inferior clergy, they are (as in all 
 places) unequally divided ; some having a very plentiful, some but 
 a" competent, and others but a small maintenance. Some £200 or 
 £300 per annum, or more ; others £100 or thereabouts, and some 
 much short of that." — The New State of England under their 
 Majesties King William and Queen Mary, 2nd edition, 1693, 
 part n. c. 23. pp. 226, 227. 
 
 Indeed the most cursory survey of Walker's Sufferings of 
 the Clergy shews that there were a very considerable number 
 of livings of one or two hundred a-year; many were much 
 more. He calls a living of £40 or £45 per annum small, 
 (vol. II. p. 238, &c. &c). 
 
 With regard to the salaries of chaplains Mr. Macaulay 
 writes : 
 
 " The coarse and ignorant squire, who thought that it belonged 
 to his dignity to have grace said every day at his table by an 
 
 * Walter's Sufferings of the Clergy, vol. n. pp. 329, 369, 375, 390. See 
 also p. 30. 
 
65 
 
 ecclesiastic in full canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity with 
 economy. A young levite — such was the phrase then in use — might 
 be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a-year." — 
 Macadai/s History of England, vol. i. p. 327. 
 
 The only authority to which Mr. Macaulay has alluded 
 that seems to bear him out, is Eachard ; the passage has been 
 quoted in the foregoing section; it is of course manifest 
 to every one who reads it, that the chaplain was then not 
 in orders at all; and this is so clear, that the error would 
 be unaccountable, had not Mr. Macaulay followed a copyist of 
 Eachard quoted in our concluding section, and not the author 
 himself. Oldham (in his Satire) makes the salary higher : 
 " Some think themselves exalted to the sky, 
 
 If they light in some noble family; 
 
 Diet, a horse, and thirty pounds a-year, 
 
 Beside th' advantage of his lordship's ear : 
 
 The credit of the business and the State 
 
 Are things that in a youngster's sense sound great." 
 
 However, it is evident that the poet was making it as 
 great as he could, and was speaking of noblemen's families. 
 Though £30 was certainly sometimes given, yet £20 was 
 probably nearer the average. Evelyn gave his chaplain, 
 Mr. Bohun, £20 in money, besides other conveniences. It 
 is not probable that a chaplain's salary was in general so low 
 as £10. 
 
 Having been employed thus long in discussing the in- 
 comes of the Clergy, we may appropriately conclude the 
 section with the following account of the efforts made to 
 increase small livings. 
 
 King Charles II. was scarcely restored to his paternal 
 throne, before he proceeded to take measures for increasing 
 the revenues of the poorer Clergy. He addressed a letter 
 and declaration to the bishops, deans, prebendaries, &c, 
 touching the augmentation of small vicarages. "We do 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 resolve," says his majesty, " that, because where tithes have 
 been appointed for the support of bishops, deans and chap- 
 ters, collegiate churches and colleges, and other single 
 persons, that have not taken due care to provide and ordain 
 sufficient maintenance for the vicars of their respective places 
 or for the curates where vicarages were not endowed, 
 to settle for the future some good addition and increase 
 on such vicarages and curates' places. Our will therefore 
 is, that forthwith provision be made for the augmentation 
 of all such vicarages and cures, where your tithes and 
 profits are appropriated to you and your successors, in such 
 manner that they who immediately attend upon the per- 
 formance of ministerial offices in every parish may have 
 a competent portion of every rectory impropriate to your 
 see. And to this end our further will is, that no lease 
 be granted of any rectories or parsonages belonging to your 
 see, belonging to you or your successors, until you shall 
 provide that the respective vicarages or curates' places, 
 where are no vicarages endowed, have so much revenue 
 in glebe, tithes, or other emoluments as will commonly 
 amount to £100 or £80 per annum, or more if it will 
 bear it, and in good form of law settle it upon them and 
 their successors. And where the rectories are of small 
 value, and cannot admit of such proportions to the vicar 
 and curate, our will is, that one half of the profit of such 
 a rectory be reserved for the maintenance of the vicar or 
 curate."* On Aug. 7, 1660, a communication of the King's 
 letter to the bishops was made to the House of Commons, 
 the house resolving that a bill be drawn up immediately, 
 reciting the substance of the declaration, together with pro- 
 visions for giving it effect. Though parliament did not 
 at this time proceed further, yet thenceforward many and 
 large augmentations were made; and Oley was not aware 
 * Cardwell's Document. Annals, vol. n. pp. 221-223, and Notes. 
 
67 
 
 that any cathedral had omitted its exertions to procure 
 better incomes for its scantier livings. For the confirmation 
 and perpetuation of such augmentations a statute (29 Charles 
 II. c. 8) was passed in 1677, which recited the King's letter 
 of June 1, 1660, and affirmed the alterations in the value 
 of livings which had been voluntarily made in compliance 
 therewith, and the validity of such other augmentations 
 as might be made afterwards in accordance with certain 
 expressed conditions. In reference to this Act Abp. San- 
 croft wrote as follows, in 1680, to the Bishop of London: 
 " It would be an indelible blot on us, if we should be found 
 to have finally neglected any act enjoined us by that statute, 
 whereby the payment of those augmentations is directed 
 to be evidenced and secured. And yet (with grief I write 
 it) I think I have ground to fear, that what, in obedience 
 to that excellent law, ought to have been done by us above 
 three years since in order to so pious a purpose, is not 
 to this day by us all universally performed." The good 
 primate therefore requires that the deans, &c. perform what 
 is enjoined them in the Act above mentioned, and that the 
 bishops send him a particular of all the augmentations made, 
 " that I may know (he adds) what hath been done herein 
 throughout the whole province."* 
 
 It will now be clear that the authorities of the English 
 Church were fully alive to the fact that many livings were 
 very insufficient, and were bestirring themselves to get the 
 scandal remedied. Nor did public men alone, but private 
 individuals also, make sacrifices for the public good. " I must 
 confess," says Eachard himself writing in 1671, t " it rejoices 
 my heart more than a little to call to mind how the bishops 
 have augmented the vicarages in their gift, and to hear 
 
 » Caldwell's Document. Annals, vol. n. p. 295. 
 
 t Some Observations upon the Answer to An Enquiry into the Grounds 
 and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy, pp. 104, 105, (5th edit. 
 Lond. 1685). 
 
 F2 
 
68 
 
 of several sums of money now employed towards the re- 
 deeming of the great tithes, and to understand that there 
 be many well-disposed people that have already given 
 back their impropriations to the Church; and that there 
 be others that have made such purchases on purpose so 
 to settle them afterwards: and above all to consider the 
 great care and good inclinations of our present parliament 
 towards the Church." 
 
 Indeed there is a great change of tone in this tract on 
 several points, as Eachard's opponent remarks. 
 
 " I think myself concerned briefly to animadvert upon those par- 
 ticular passages therein, whereby the author seems to mince the 
 matter and excuse himself, or put by the thrusts and weaken any 
 argument I have made against his first letter. I begin with those 
 passages where he alters the scene, and commends the learning and 
 wisdom of our Clergy, which (saith he, p. 33) the whole world have 
 always admired, and have reason still to do, and our adversaries to 
 dread. And again (p. 35), / know no reason to deny that the Clergy 
 of the land doth daily considerably improve. And again (p. 184), It 
 is a sign of nothing but perfect madness, ignorance, and stupidity, 
 not to acknowledge that the present Church of England affords as 
 considerable scholars and as solid and eloquent preachers as are any- 
 where to be found in the whole Christian world. This is somewhat 
 like : I hope we shall bring him to speak truth in time. Now our 
 Clergy is either strangely improved in a very short space, or else 
 T. B. hath changed his mind ; for it is not a year ago since he laid 
 the imputation of ignorance and folly upon the very same Clergy 
 to which he now attributes so much learning and wisdom." — A 
 Vindication of the Clergy, pp. 121, 122, (Postscript). 
 
 The facts above mentioned will at least answer this pur- 
 pose — they will in a good degree exculpate the Church from 
 blame if many of her priests were poor ; and they will shew 
 her anxiety and exertions to provide for them competently. 
 
 These early dawnings of reformation broke forth into 
 clearer light (and have ever since waxed brighter and 
 brighter) under the bounteous Anne. 
 
69 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 OF THE CHILDREN OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 The normal condition of the Country Clergyman's family 
 is told in few words by Mr. Macaulay : 
 
 " As children multiplied and grew, the household of the priest 
 
 became more and more beggarly His children were brought 
 
 up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys 
 followed the plough, and his girls went out to service." — Macaulay s 
 History of England, vol. i. p. 330. 
 
 The reader may judge of the accuracy of this description 
 from the following evidence. Herbert in his Country Parson 
 writes thus : 
 
 " The parson is very exact in the governing of his house, making 
 
 it a copy and model for his parish His children he first makes 
 
 Christians, and then commonwealth's-men ; the one he owes to his 
 heavenly country, the other to his earthly, having no title to either, 
 except he do good to both. Therefore having seasoned them with 
 all piety, not only of words in praying and reading, but in actions, 
 in visiting other sick children, and tending their wounds, and 
 sending his charity by them to the poor, and sometimes giving 
 them a little money to do it of themselves, that they get a delight 
 in it, and enter favour with God, who weighs even children's actions, 
 he afterwards turns his care to fit all their dispositions with some 
 calling, not sparing the eldest, but giving him the prerogative of his 
 father's profession, which happily [i. e. haply] for his other children 
 he is not able to do. Yet in binding them apprentices (in case he 
 think fit to do so), he takes care not to put them into vain trades, 
 and unbefitting the reverence of their father's calling, such as are 
 taverns for men, and lace-making for women ; because those trades, 
 
70 
 
 for the most part, servo but the vices and vanities of the world, 
 which he is to deny, and not augment. However, he resolves with 
 himself never to omit any present good deed of charity, in con- 
 sideration of providing a stock for his children ; but assures him- 
 self, that money thus lent to God is placed surer for his children's 
 advantage, than if it were, given to the chamber of London. Good 
 deeds, and good breeding, are his two great stocks for his children ; 
 if God give any thing above those, and not spent in them, he 
 blesseth- God, and lays it out as he sees cause." — Country Parson, 
 chap. x. 
 
 It appears therefore that in Herbert's time one, at the 
 ],east, of a country parson's children was commonly educated 
 for his own profession, and therefore usually received an 
 university education. 
 
 Fuller (who shall be the next witness) wrote his Worthies 
 soon after the Restoration. He is speaking of events gene- 
 rally between the Reformation and his own time. His 
 section is thus headed : 
 
 f That the Children of Clergymen have been as successful as the Sons 
 of Men of other Professions. 
 
 " There goeth a common report, no less uncharitable than untrue, 
 yet meeting with many believers thereof, as if clergymen's sons 
 were generally signally unfortunate, like the sons of Eli, Hophni and 
 Phinehas, dissolute in their lives, and doleful in their deaths : this 
 I may call a libel indeed, according to Sir Francis Bacon's descrip- 
 tion thereof: for first, it is a lie,, a notorious untruth; and then 
 a bell, some loud and lewd tongue hath told, yea rung it out, 
 and perchance was welcome music to some hearers thereof. 
 
 " It is first confessed, that the best saints and servants of God 
 have had bad as well as good children extracted from them. 
 It is the note of Illyricus on those words of St. John to the 
 Elect Lady: 'I rejoiced greatly, when I found of thy children 
 walking in the truth.' He saith not all thy, but of thy chil- 
 dren; intimating that she had mingled ware, corn, and tares in 
 those who were descended from her. Thus Aaron (for I desire 
 to restrain myself in instances of the priests) had Nadab and Abihu, 
 
71 
 
 two 'strange fire offerers', as well as his godly sons Eleazar 
 and Ithamar. Yea, I find one of the best fathers having two (and 
 those I believe all he had) of the worst sons, even Samuel himself. 
 
 " Nor do we deny but that our English Clergy have been un- 
 happy in their offspring (though not above the proportion of other 
 professions) ; whereof some have not unprobably assigned these 
 causes. First, if fellows of colleges, they are ancient before 
 they marry. Secondly, their children then are all Benjamins; 
 I mean, 'the children of their old age,' and thereupon by their 
 fathers (to take off as much as we may the weight of the fault from 
 the weaker sex) cockered and indulged, which I neither defend or 
 excuse, but bemoan and condemn. Thirdly, such children, after 
 their father's death, are left, in their minority, to the careless care 
 of friends and executors, who too often discharge not their due 
 trust in their own education ; whence it is, such orphans too often 
 embrace wild courses to their own destruction. 
 
 " But, all this being granted, we maintain that clergymen's 
 children have not been more unfortunate, but more observed, than 
 the children of the parents of other professions. There is but one 
 minister at one time in a whole parish ; and therefore, the fewer 
 they are, the easier they are observed, both in their persons and 
 posterities. Secondly, the eminency of their place maketh them 
 exposed and obvious to all discoveries. Thirdly, possibly malice 
 may be the eye-salve to quicken men's sight, in prying after them. 
 Lastly, one ill success in their sons maketh (for the reasons afore- 
 said) more impression in the ears and eyes of people, than many 
 miscarriages of those children whose fathers were of another func- 
 tion (I speak not this out of intent to excuse or extenuate the 
 badness of the one by the badness of the other, but that both may 
 be mutually provoked to amendment). In a word, other men's 
 children would have as many eye-sores if they had as many eyes 
 seeing them. 
 
 Indeed, if happiness be confined unto outward pomp and plenty, 
 and if those must be accounted unfortunate, which I in the true 
 meaning of the word must interpret unprovidenced, who swim not 
 in equal plenty with others, then that epithet may be fixed on the 
 children of the clergy ; whose fathers coming late to their livings, 
 find surprised by death, not staying long on them, which at the best 
 afforded them but narrow maintenance, leave them ofttimes so ill 
 
provided, that they arc forced, without blame or shame to them, as 
 I conceive, to take sometimes poor and painful- employments for 
 their livelihood. 
 
 " But by our following endeavours it will plainly appear, that 
 the sons of ministers have, by God's blessing, proved as eminent as 
 any who have raised themselves by their own endeavours. For 
 statesmen, George Carew, Privy Councillor of England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, and as able a man (absit invidia) as the age he lived in 
 produced, was earl of Totness, the same place whereof his father 
 was archdeacon. Sir Edward Sandys, son to archbishop Sandys, 
 will be acknowledged even by his enemies a man of such merit, that 
 England could not afford an office which he could not manage. 
 For lawyers, Sir Thomas Richardson, lately, and the never suffi- 
 ciently to be commended Sir Orlando Bridgeman, now Lord Chief 
 Justice, with many others. For seamen, Sir Francis Drake, that 
 great scourge and terror to the Spanish pride. 
 
 " If any say, these are but thin instances out of so thick a 
 number, de tot modo milMbus units, 'few of so many hundreds;' 
 know, we have only taken some eminent persons, leaving the rest 
 for fear to be counted forestalled to the collection of the reader in 
 our ensuing book. 
 
 " But the sons of ministers have never been more successful than 
 when bred in the professions of their fathers, as if some peculiar 
 blessing attended them whilst they continue therein. Thus, of the 
 prelatical clergy, we have Francis Godwin, a bishop, the son of 
 a bishop ; and Doctor John King, son to his reverend father the 
 bishop of London. And of other clergymen we have three gene- 
 rations of the Wards in Suffolk ; as many of the Shutes in York- 
 shire, no less painful than pious and able in their professions. 
 
 " Let me add, that there were at one time three Fellows of King's 
 College, sons of eminent divines, and afterwards Doctors of Divi- 
 nity: 1. Samuel Collings; 2. Thomas Goad; 3. William Sclater. 
 And I believe there were not severally, in their generations, men 
 more signal in their different eminencies. 
 
 " It is easy for any to guess out of what quiver this envenomed 
 arrow was first shot against the children of clergymen ; namely, 
 from the Church of Rome ; who, in their jurisdiction, forbid the 
 banns of all clergymen, against the law of nature, scripture, and the 
 practice of the primitive Church ; and in other places unsubjected 
 
to their power, bespatter the posterity of the clergy with their scan- 
 dalous tongues." — Fuller's Worthies of England, vol. i. pp. 78— 80. 
 
 In a following chapter of the same work, he says — 
 
 " The Church, before the Reformation, advanced many families : 
 for, though bishops might not marry, they preferred their brothers' 
 sons to great estates ; as the Kemps in Kent, Peckhams in Sussex, 
 Wickham in Hampshire, Meltons in Yorkshire. 
 
 " Since the Reformation, some have raised families to a knightly 
 and worshipful estate; Hutton, Bilson, Dove, Neil, &c. But for 
 sheriffs, I take notice of Sandys in Worcester and Cambridgeshire, 
 Westphaling in Herefordshire, Elmar in Suffolk, Rud in Caermar- 
 thenshire, &o. 
 
 " Sure I am, there was a generation of people of the last age, 
 which thought they would level all clergymen, or any descendants 
 from them, with the ground. Yea, had not God's arm been 
 stretched out in their preservation, they had become a prey to their 
 enemies' violence, and what they had designed to themselves, and 
 in some manner effected, had ere this time been perfectly com- 
 pleted. 
 
 " As for the inferior clergy, it is well if their narrow maintenance 
 will enable them to leave a livelihood to their little ones. I find 
 but one, Robert Johnson by name, attaining such an estate, that 
 his grandson was pricked sheriff of a county, but declined the place, 
 by pleading himself a deacon, and by the favour of Archbishop 
 Laud."— Ibid. vol. I. p. 96, (Lond. 1840). 
 
 The testimony of Fuller is very valuable. It shews that 
 the children of the Clergy about the time of the Restoration 
 were only in extraordinary or accidental cases put out 
 to "poor and painful employments;" and it is tolerably 
 certain that the inferior Clergy were even able in general 
 to leave something to their children. 
 
 Beveridge, too, about the same time contemplates that 
 his children may be in some honourable calling or pro- 
 fession. He was then just entering holy orders: 
 
 " If I train up my son in the ways of religion, and teach him 
 what it is to keep a conscience void of offence towards God and 
 
74 
 
 towards man ; he will then not only have an inward sense of his 
 own duty, but take all possible care to instil it into others, whether 
 children or servants, that are committed to his charge. And these 
 again will do the same to theirs, by teaching them to walk in the 
 same path ; till by degrees, the piety and holiness of one man has 
 diffused itself to all succeeding generations." — Beveridge's Private 
 Thoughts, pp. 170, 171, (Lond. 1710). 
 
 Again, soon after : 
 
 " And when they come to years of discretion, capable of doing 
 farther honour and service to God and their country, by some calling 
 or profession, I must be sure to place them in such a one as may 
 be no hindrance to that high and heavenly calling which they have 
 in Christ Jesus, but rather contribute to further and promote it ; 
 that, being like tender plants engrafted into the true Vine, they 
 may bring forth much fruit to God's glory, to my comfort, and 
 their own salvation."— 1 bid, p. 173. 
 
 Not long after the Revolution (circa a.d. 1698), Mr. White 
 Kennett wrote a letter to Bishop Stillingfleet, in which he 
 recommended him to apply £10,000 of Sir T. W. Cook's 
 property, of which his lordship had the disposal, to the 
 founding of a distinct school for the sons of the Clergy. 
 In the course of this letter are various incidental allusions 
 to the state of Clergymen's families about that time and 
 rather before it. That many of them were left in a very 
 indifferent condition is manifest, but is equally certain 
 that they did not commonly follow the plough. 
 
 " The sons of clergymen (says he) seem generally born to a 
 more than ordinary inclination to letters, and the better deserve 
 some public helps and assistances to cherish and promote that usual 
 bent and impulse of nature. I need not suggest, that the quality 
 and condition of parents does commonly transmit an hereditary 
 
 genius to their issue I might appeal to many instances [of 
 
 this transmission] in the Corporation of Clergymen's sons established 
 by King Charles II." — Collectanea Curiosa, vol. n. p. 404. 
 
75 
 
 Soon afterwards he expresses himself thus : 
 
 " As the sons of clergymen may be justly thought more adapted 
 to learning and to orthodoxy; so I am too sure the condition of 
 their friends does more especially require the benefits of charity for 
 the good education of them. For the legal maintenance of the 
 Clergy being for their own lives, and that generally bare com- 
 petence, does not enable them to make such provision for their 
 children as is commonly made by the laity of all degrees. And 
 what a discouragement is it, that while many of the poorer Clergy 
 indulge the inclination of their sons by breeding them to a good com- 
 petence of scliool-learning, when they should remove them to the 
 University, they cannot there support them ; and so out of neces- 
 sity divert them to mean and unsuitable employs. Especially, if 
 such lads are left minors, their father's blessing dies with them, and 
 they are thrown upon an uncharitable world with hopeful parts, 
 and no dependence. 
 
 " The enemies to our blessed Reformation are well known to 
 charge this odium upon the marriage of our Clergy; that their 
 numerous issue are often exposed to neglect and want, and so 
 bring a reproach upon that function to which they were related ; 
 whereas the celibacy of Priests would at least have this political 
 effect, that they could not burden the nation by leaving families 
 destitute and poor. Now nothing would sooner stop the mouths of 
 these adversaries than to see a new reformed seminary founded and 
 endowed for the sons of our English Clergy, by whose ingenuous 
 education and competent support the Protestant religion would 
 be more firmly entailed to posterity, and the son of Priest would be 
 as honourable in this nation as it is scandalous abroad. 
 
 " Many pious and charitable persons of our own communion have 
 been sensible there is no greater object of charity than the families 
 which the poorer Clergy leave behind ; and upon this motive there 
 have been many suitable provisions made for the widows of deceased 
 ministers. But sure a College for the sons would be of larger 
 extent in doing good than an hospital for the mothers. For one 
 son being so provided, might by degrees be able to provide for 
 a whole family, or at least to encourage and assist them in their 
 other honest ways of living, 
 
 " It can scarce bo imagined what a life and spirit it would put 
 
76 
 
 into all the rural Clergy, to hear of such a noble and magnificent 
 project. For though very few of them might ever come to any 
 actual benefit by it, yet the hopes and expectations would extend to 
 all. It might possibly have some effect upon the more creditable 
 matches of young divines ; their children to be born capable of such 
 provision might be one argument to excuse the defect of better 
 settlement. It would however comfort and relieve the thoughts of 
 many a parson and vicar, charged with a numerous family, to flatter 
 himself that one of his forward boys might come at least to be 
 a member of the Clergy-College, and so rise to a capacity of helping 
 all the rest. It would excite the Clergy to a stricter guard upon 
 their own lives and conversation, when the preferment of a son 
 might depend much upon the father's character. It might en- 
 courage them to the preserving and augmenting their libraries when 
 they have the prospect of transmitting them to a child that will 
 understand them. It may have a great many good consequences, 
 and above all other ways and means may in time wipe off that 
 contempt of the Clergy which has been the sin and shame of 
 this latter age." — Collectanea Cwiosa, vol. II. pp. 304 — 307. 
 
 The reader has now sufficient evidence to judge of the 
 accuracy of Mr. Macaulay's description of the general cha- 
 racter of the wives and families of the country Clergy 
 in the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
 
 This section shall be concluded with three extracts from 
 Dr. Sprat's Sermon preached at the Anniversary Meeting 
 of the Sons of Clergymen, at St. Marylebone, London, 
 Nov. 1678: 
 
 " What argument either civil or ecclesiastical can justify, can 
 commend the marriage of churchmen, and vindicate our whole 
 reformation on that account, if this sight be not sufficient to 
 do it? This assembly? The lawful offspring of such marriages, 
 the genuine seed, the proper issue of the Reformation; and, if 
 you permit me to say it, I dare say the honour of it too. An 
 assembly composed of men considerable in all worthy professions ; 
 eminent in many ways of life, all honest ways, some venerable, 
 some honourable; men favoured by God in your birth, your 
 education, your several stations in this world ; so far above what 
 
77 
 
 the adversaries of our Church most maliciously upbraid, so far 
 above contempt or meanness, that you are plentifully blessed 
 by our gracious God with abilities ; and, which is more, endowed 
 by him with hearts too to do good to others." — Spratfs Sermon, 
 pp. 2, 3. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " 'Tis an evident observation, that no other one race, not the 
 sons of any one other profession, not perhaps all together, are 
 so much scattered amongst all professions, all ways of life, as 
 the sons of clergymen alone. Of most others the children are 
 commonly bred up in their father's way: or so plentifully pro- 
 vided for that they are left at large ; some few permitted to venture 
 on the Church. But with churchmen 'tis far otherwise: their 
 children, we see, flow abroad, are confined to none, overspread 
 all our ways of breeding and life; our shops, our schools, our 
 universities, our inns of court, our college of physicians, our 
 towns, our country, our court, our cities; this court, this city 
 especially."—/^, pp. 32, 33. 
 
 And to take one more passage in conclusion : 
 
 " Though it should be true, as I fear it is, that never any time 
 since the Reformation can shew so many poor among the widows 
 and orphans of churchmen, as this particular time ; yet I believe it 
 to be as true, and we ought to rejoice at it, that God in his mercy 
 has now more than ever provided and pointed out a proportionable 
 supply for them within ourselves. As more clergymen were im- 
 poverished by the calamities of the late war and oppression of the 
 Church and State than ever in the like space before, so I think 
 it may be said without envy, (I am sure, if this work proceeds, 
 it may) that more clergymen or their heirs than ever in one 
 time before, since they were allowed marriage, have been brought 
 to a plentiful and prosperous condition by his majesty's and with 
 him the Church's most happy restoration." — Ibid. pp. 41, 42. 
 
78 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 OF THE CLERGYMAN'S LIBRARY AND STUDIES. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay, speaking of the country Clergyman gene- 
 rally, describes his literary opportunities as follows : — 
 
 " Study he found impossible : for the advowson of his living 
 would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a good 
 theological library ; and he might be considered as unusually lucky 
 if he had ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the pots and pans 
 on his shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected 
 to rust in so unfavourable a situation." — Ilacaulay's Hist, of Eng. 
 vol. i. p. 330. 
 
 From the above graphic account it should seem that in 
 general the library of the country parson was considerably 
 short of ten volumes. At first sight it may appear that 
 it is justified by Eachard's statement, from which it is 
 no doubt taken: 
 
 " As for books, he is (for want of money) so moderately furnished 
 that except it be a small Geneva bible, so small as it will not be 
 desired to lie open of itself, together with a certain Concordance 
 thereunto belonging ; as also a book for all kind of Latin sentences, 
 called Polyanikea, with some exposition upon the Catechism (a por- 
 tion of which is to be got by heart and to be put off for his own) ; 
 and perhaps Mr. Caryl upon Pineda, Mr. Dod upon the Command- 
 ments, and Mr. Clark's Lives of famous men both in Church and 
 State, such as Mr. Carter of Norwich, that used to eat such abun- 
 dance of pudding : besides these, I say, there is scarce anything to 
 be found but a budget of old stitched sermons, hung up behind the 
 door." — The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy, 
 tfc. pp. 106, 107. 
 
79 
 
 Now let it be remembered that Eachard is not speaking 
 of the country Clergy generally, but of those who " are 
 pinched as to the tolerable conveniences of life." In one 
 of his answers to an opponent (who, like Mr. Macaulay, 
 concludes what Eachard says of a few to be meant of 
 all, though he could not believe that such an account could 
 be generally true) he expresses himself in these words: 
 
 " The case is this (or as you are pleased to read it, the ball of 
 contention), Whether there may not be here and there a clergyman 
 so ignorant, as that it might be wished that he were wiser. For 
 my own part I went and guessed at random, and iliought there might 
 he one or so : but my adversary holds and maintains not only that 
 there is not so much as one now in the whole nation, but shews it 
 to be impossible that there ever was one, or ever shall be one." — 
 A Letter to the Author of the Vindication of the Clergy from T. B. 
 [Eachard'}, p. 234, (Lond. 1685). 
 
 The truth is, that Eachard was speaking of the very 
 worst cases he knew of; and was endeavouring, through 
 an innate love of drollery, to make the very worst of those 
 bad cases: Mr. Macaulay seizes upon these extreme and 
 colored cases, and makes it out that these unfortunates 
 were the " unusually lucky" ones of the whole body ! In 
 a word, Eachard's droll minimum is Mr. Macaulay's serious 
 maximum. The inkstand and the concordance seem (ac- 
 cording to him) to have been the average furniture of the 
 country parson's library, (p. 330). 
 
 However let us look at Eachard himself. His obser- 
 vations (strained as they always are) naturally gave offence 
 to many, and amongst the number to the author of a tract 
 which was written in reply to his own, " wherein is contained 
 a Sober Vindication of the Clergy of England from the im- 
 putation of folly and ignorance." Eachard, in reply to this 
 pamphlet, maintains that his words had been supposed to 
 mean more than he meant by them. 
 
80 
 
 " Neither, sir, was I altogether ignorant how much the ordinary 
 sort of our English Clergy do far excel in learning the common 
 priests of the Church of Rome." — Some Observations upon the An- 
 swer to an Enquiry into the Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt 
 of the Clergy, 5th edit. p. 41. 
 
 And argues that 
 
 "The answerer taking no great delight in understanding what 
 1 meant, on he goes (p. 25) most historically shewing that the 
 English Clergy since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign 
 is much improved." — Ibid. p. 41. 
 
 But if any one would like to see n little more from 
 Eachard, he may know that Plato, Plutarch, and Cicero, 
 as well as works of theology, were not very uncommon 
 in country parsons' libraries. Speaking of the unreasonable 
 grounds of contempt of the Clergy, he writes thus : 
 
 '* In the first place comes rattling home from the Universities the 
 young pert Soph, with his atoms and globuli ; and as full of disdain 
 and defiance of all country parsons (let them be never so learned and 
 prudent) and as confident and magisterial, as if he had been 
 prolocutor at the first Council at Nice. And he wonders very much 
 that they will pretend to be gownsmen, whereas he cannot see so 
 much as Cartes' Principles nor Gassendus' Syntagma lying upon 
 the table ; and that they are all so sottish and stupid as not to sell 
 all their libraries, and send presently away for a whole waggon-full 
 of the new philosophy." [Qit ? Would the price of " ten or twelve 
 dogeared volumes" have realised money to purchase " a waggon 
 full" of new books ?] " I'll tell you, sir, (says one of these small 
 whifflers, perhaps to a grave, sober, and judicious divine) the Univer- 
 sity is strangely altered since you were there : we are grown strangely 
 inquisitive and ingenious. I pray, sir, how went the business of 
 motion in your days ? we hold it all now to be violent. I hear your 
 old dull friend Aristotle drowned himself, because he could not 
 
 understand the flux and reflux of the sea, &c Yes, but for all 
 
 that, this youth of so much worth, ingenuity, inquisitiveness, and 
 demonstration, may be very ignorant, and be very much a coxcomb, 
 and have so little grounds to contemn so worthy a person, that if 
 
81 
 
 the gentleman please to carry him into his study, and shew him his 
 Plato, Plutarch, and some other of his Greek authors, the poor tiling 
 perhaps may find as much reason to hang himself, as Aristotle did for 
 disposing himself otherwise ; for he never stands to consider whether 
 there be authors, such as Euclid, Tully, Plutarch, and many .others 
 that have been for many generations of constant fame, and are 
 likely so to continue; whereas we find that curiously laid hypotheses 
 have their periods, and their credit much depends upon the humour 
 of the world : and a country divine that is well skilled in those books, 
 together with such as peculiarly belong to his profession, may deserve 
 very good respect and be of great use in the world." — Ibid. p. 173 
 —176, (9th edit.) 
 
 It will now probably be deemed almost a work of super- 
 erogation to prove that books and libraries were pretty 
 liberally scattered among the country -Clergy. If any one 
 however would wish to form a notion of the actual state 
 of letters among the country Clergy, let him consult 
 Thoresby's Diary. From this work it will be manifest that 
 wherever that celebrated antiquary went, the Clergy in the 
 towns and in the country were the men with whom he 
 associated, to whom he was in the habit of communicating 
 his researches, and from whose manuscripts he took notes. 
 For example, on January 25, 1683, he has left it recorded in 
 his Diary as follows : 
 
 " Morning went to Wakefield, thence with Mr. R. Beavot to 
 Ackworth, where kindly entertained by honest parson Bolton, whose 
 library kept me company some hows." 
 
 Or again, to take Walker's account of the sufferings of 
 the parochial Clergy not then prebendaries (many of whom 
 were restored under Charles II.), notices are numerous of 
 the plunder of their libraries ■: sometimes he remarks their 
 skill in the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, some- 
 times in the Oriental or other languages, sometimes in other 
 branches of polite literature. Mr. Chase had manuscripts 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 and a library, which last he estimated at £500. Mr. Willing- 
 ton's library was worth £600. Mr. Raynolds was plundered 
 of plate, goods, books, and papers, to the value of £1500. 
 Mr. Jones lost ' a study of books which were of great value.' 
 Dr. Seward was deprived of his manuscripts and 'of his 
 study of books which was very valuable.'* 
 
 In Bull's neighbourhood too it is probable that there was 
 no great want of country Clergymen of good learning. 
 While he was rector of Suddington in Glocestershire, his 
 manner of life is described as follows : 
 
 " I cannot find that after he entered into holy orders he was 
 ever addicted to any innocent pleasure, which is often necessary to 
 unbend the mind, and to preserve the body in health and vigour. 
 If there was any thing that looked like a diversion, it was the en- 
 joyment of agreeable conversation : the best that neighbourhood 
 afforded he was always master of, because he was a welcome guest 
 wherever he made any visits. But what he chiefly loved was 
 to receive learned and good men at his own house, especially those 
 of his own profession." — Nelson's Life of Bull, p. 84. 
 
 Let us note in conclusion the amount of acquirements 
 which were expected from the Clergy generally in the 1 7th 
 century. Herbert supposes the country parson to have read 
 a great part of the Fathers, schoolmen, and later writers.f 
 Various places in Barrow's Sermons imply that the Clergy 
 of his time were commonly men of study, of which a single 
 specimen will suffice : he says — 
 
 " They may reasonably be presumed more intelligent and skilful 
 in divine matters than others ; for as they have the same natural 
 capacities and endowments with others (pr rather commonly some- 
 what better than others, as being designed and selected to this 
 sort of employment), so their natural abilities are -by all possible 
 means improved: it is their trade and faculty, unto which their 
 
 * Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, vol. ii. pp. 217, 400, 340, 280, 269. 
 t Herbert's Country Parson, co. 5, 9 ; Bee also cc. 21, 23. 
 
83 
 
 education is directed : in acquiring ability toward which they spend 
 their time, their care, their pains; in which they are continually 
 versed and exercised (having, as the Apostle speaketh, by reason 
 of use, their senses exercised to discern both good and evil), for 
 which also they employ their supplications and devotions to God. 
 
 " Many special advantages they hence procure, needful or very 
 conducible to a more perfect knowledge of such matters, and to 
 security from errors ; such as are conversing with studies which 
 enlarge a man's mind and improve his judgment ; a skill of dis- 
 quisition about things, of sifting and canvassing points coming under 
 debate ; of weighing the force of arguments, and distinguishing the 
 colours of things ; the knowledge of languages in which the divine 
 oracles are expressed, of sciences, of histories, of practices serving 
 to the discovery and illustration of the truth : exercise in medita- 
 tion, reading, writing, speaking, disputing and conference, whereby 
 the mind is greatly enlightened, and the reason strengthened ; 
 acquaintance with variety of learned authors, who with great dili- 
 gence have expounded the Holy Scriptures, and with most accuracy 
 discussed points of doctrine ; especially with ancient writers, who 
 living near the Apostolical times, and being immediately (or within 
 few degrees mediately) their disciples, may justly be supposed most 
 helpful toward informing us what was their genuine doctrine, what 
 the true sense of their writings : by such means, as in other faculties 
 so in this of Theology, a competent skill may be obtained ; there is 
 no other ordinary or probable way ; and no extraordinary way can 
 be trusted, now that men appear not to grow learned or wise by 
 special inspiration or miracle ; after that all pretences to such by- 
 ways have been detected of imposture, and do smell too rank of 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 " Since then our guides are so advantageously qualified to direct 
 us, it is in matters difficult and doubtful (the which require good 
 measure of skill and judgment to determine about them) most 
 reasonable that we should rely upon their authority, preferring 
 it in such cases to our private discretion ; taking it for more pro- 
 bable, that they should comprehend the truth than we (unassisted 
 by them, and judging merely by our own glimmering light) can 
 do; deeming it good odds on the side of their doctrine against 
 our opinion or conjecture." — Barrow's Sermon on Hebr. xm. 17, 
 
 part iv. Works, vol. iii. pp. 299, 300, (Lond. 1686). 
 
 g2 
 
84 
 
 That there may be no doubt as to the persons who are 
 here intended, the author tells us in the first part of his 
 Sermon — 
 
 " As to the persons unto whom obedience is to be performed, they 
 are, generally speaking, all spiritual guides or governors of the 
 Church," i.e. bishops, priests, and deacons, pp. 269, 274. 
 
 Barrow has doubtless drawn a somewhat more favourable 
 picture of the spiritual guides of the time than is true of the 
 generality of them ; but is it credible that such a description 
 should have been penned by such a man, had the general 
 character of the Clergy been anything at all like that which 
 Mr. Macaulay has drawn ? Or is it conceivable that South 
 could have drawn such a contrast between the fanatical 
 ministers and the English Clergy as is subjoined, had not the 
 generality of the latter been tolerably well informed ? 
 
 " I cannot see how to be a butcher, scavenger, or any such 
 trade does at all qualify men for this work [the ministry]. But as 
 unfit as they were, jet to clear a way for such into the ministry, 
 we have had almost all sermons full of gibes and scoffs at human 
 
 learning. 'Away with vain philosophy !' &c Willaman exhaust 
 
 his livelihood upon books, and his health and the best part of his 
 life upon study, to be at length thrust into a poor village, where 
 he shall have his due precariously, and entreat for his own? and 
 when he has it, live poorly and contemptibly upon it, while the 
 same or less labour bestowed upon any other calling would bring 
 not only comfort but splendour ; not only maintenance but abun- 
 dance? It is, I confess, the duty of ministers to endure this 
 condition ; but neither religion nor reason does oblige either them 
 to approve or others to choose it." — South's Sermons, vol. i. pp. 67, 
 70, 71, (Lond. 1843). 
 
 Passages from other discourses of those times might be 
 multiplied indefinitely. Still however it will be said perhaps 
 that sermons are somewhat given to be declamatory and exag- 
 gerated. Let us then take the deliberate judgment of several 
 
85 
 
 celebrated divines as to the literary requirements of a parish 
 priest ,* that of Bishop Bull first : 
 
 " He was much troubled when he was under a necessity of 
 ordaining persons who were but meanly qualified, which could not 
 be avoided sometimes in that country (Wales) where the Clergy are 
 so meanly provided for. When he had admitted persons into orders 
 of a more liberal education and of some sufficiency as to their 
 fortunes, he advised and recommended the reading of the Fathers 
 of the Church, next to the Holy Scriptures, at least those of the 
 three first centuries. This degree of skill and acquaintance with 
 primitive antiquity, he looked upon not only as useful but absolutely 
 necessary to support the character of a priest." — Nelson's Life of 
 Bull, p. 428. 
 
 Burnet's requisite theological course is somewhat different, 
 yet it would now-a-days be thought by no means con- 
 temptible. 
 
 " So far have I dispatched the first and chief part of the prepara- 
 tion necessary before orders. The other branch of it relates to their 
 learning and to the knowledge that is necessary. I confess I look 
 upon this as so much inferior to the other, and have been convinced 
 by so much experience, that a great measure of piety, with a very 
 small proportion of learning, will carry one a great way, that I may 
 perhaps be thought to come as far short in this as I might seem to 
 exceed in the other. I will not here enter into a discourse of 
 Theological learning, of the measure that is necessary to make a 
 complete divine, and of the methods to attain it. I intend only to 
 lay down here that which I look on as the lowest degree, and as 
 that which seems indispensably necessary to one that is to be a 
 priest. He must then understand the New Testament well. This 
 is the text of our religion, that which we preach and explain to 
 others ; therefore a man ought to read this so often over, that he 
 may have an idea of the whole book in his head, and of all the parts 
 of it. He cannot have this so sure, unless he understands the 
 Greek so well as to be able to find out the meaning of every period 
 in it, at least of the words and phrases in it ; any book of an- 
 notations or paraphrase upon it is a great help to a beginner.. 
 Grot ius, Hammond, and Lightfoot are the best. 
 
86 
 
 " Bishop Pearson on the Creed is a book of great learning 
 and profound exactness. Dr. Barrow has opened it with more 
 simplicity, and Dr. Towerson more practically; one or other of 
 these must be well read and considered : but when I say read, 
 I mean read and read over again, so oft that one is master of one 
 of these books ; he must write notes out of them, and make abridg- 
 ments of them ; and turn them so oft in his thoughts that he must 
 thoroughly understand and well remember them. He must read 
 also the Psalms over so carefully, that he may at least have a 
 general notion of those divine hymns ; to which Bishop Patrick's 
 Paraphrase will help to carry him. 
 
 " A System of Divinity must be read with exactness. They are 
 almost all alike : When I was young, Wendelin and Maresius were 
 the two shortest and fullest. 
 
 " I would advise him that studies divinity, to read two larger 
 bodies, writ by some eminent men of both sides ; and because the 
 latest are commonly the best, Turrettin for the whole Calviniat 
 hypothesis and Limburgh for the Arminian, will make a man fully 
 the master of all the notions of both sides. Or if one would see 
 how far middle ways may be taken, the Theses of Saumur or 
 Le Blanc's Theses will complete him in that. These books well 
 read, digested into abstracts, and frequently reviewed or talked 
 over by two companions in study, will give a man an entire view 
 of the whole body of divinity. 
 
 " But by reason of that pest of Atheism, that spreads so much 
 among us, the foundations of religion must be well laid : Bishop 
 Wilkins' Book of Natural Religion will lead one in the first steps 
 through the principles he has laid together in a plain and natural 
 method. Grotius, his book of the Truth of the Christian Religion, 
 with his notes upon it, ought to be read and almost got by heart. The 
 whole controversy both of Atheism and Deism, the arguments both 
 for the Old and New Testament, are fully opened, with a great 
 variety both of learning and reasoning, in Bishop Stillingfleet's 
 Origines Sacne. 
 
 " There remains only to direct a student how to form right 
 notions of practical matters ; and particularly of preaching. Dr. 
 Hammond's Practical Catechism is a book of great use, but not to 
 be begun with as too many do ; it does require a good deal of previous 
 
87 
 
 study before the force of his reasoning is apprehended, but when 
 one is ready for it, it is a rare book, and states the grounds of morality 
 and of our duty upon true principles. To form one to understand the 
 right method of preaching, the extent of it, and the proper ways of 
 application, Bishop Sanderson, Mr. Faringdon, and Dr. Barrow are 
 the best and the fullest models. There is a vast variety of other 
 sermons, which may be read with an equal measure of advantage 
 and pleasure. And if from the time that one resolves to direct his 
 studies towards the Church, he would every Lord's-day read two 
 sermons of any good preacher, and turn them over a little in his 
 thoughts, this would insensibly in two or three years' time carry 
 him very far, and give him a large view of the different ways of 
 preaching, and furnish him with materials for handling a great 
 many texts of scripture when he comes to it. 
 
 " And thus I have carried my student through those studies that 
 seem to me so necessary for qualifying him to be an able minister of 
 the New Testament, that I cannot see how any article of this can 
 be well abated. It may seem strange that in this whole direction 
 I have said nothing concerning the study of the Fathers or Church 
 History. But I said at first, that a great distinction was to be 
 made between what was necessary to prepare a man to be a priest, 
 and what was necessary to make him a complete and learned divine." 
 — Burnetts Pastoral Care, [written a.d. 1692] chap. vii. 
 
 How could such requirements have entered into the con- 
 ception of any sane man in a state of things where " to study 
 was impossible" ? 
 
 Or, to take another Bishop : 
 
 " Because (says Sprat in his Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese 
 of Rochester, a.d. 1695) I may speak to some whose circumstances 
 in this world are not so plentiful as to enable them to purchase 
 large libraries, yet, &c." — Clergyman's Instructor, pp. 261, 262. Oxf. 
 1827. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " If a clergyman shall resort immediately to the fountain itself 
 
 with a sincere love of truth .joined with a sufficient 
 
 skill in the original languages, and in those other introductory 
 studies which no man, if it be not the bishop's fault as well as his 
 
own, can possibly be altogether to seek in ; and if withal he shall 
 be assisted with some of the ancient and some few of the modern 
 sound and orthodox commentaries, he will in all human probability 
 be a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." — Ibid. p. 261. 
 
 It is particularly to be noticed that these directions are 
 given to the less learned Clergy, in cases — 
 
 " Where multitudes of fathers, councils, schoolmen, histories are 
 wanting, which are all very beneficial helps where they can be had." 
 —Ibid. p. 261. 
 
 In conclusion, let us have the opinion of a most learned 
 layman, Henry Dodwell : 
 
 " In these letters the reader may discern his singular piety, while 
 he discourses of the ends of the ministerial function; his serious 
 deep thoughts of the momentousness of this sacred office ; and his 
 great learning, when he gives directions for theological studies, and 
 the authors he advises young divines to read. He shews what 
 obligations they that intend to take holy orders h&ve, seriously 
 to consider the weight of this office; to have pure designs and 
 truly pious ends in undertaking it; viz. the service of God, and 
 the salvation of souls ; to be prepared to perform the most self- 
 denying duties, and cheerfully to suffer the greatest troubles that 
 may befal them in the faithful discharge of their duty, and not 
 be discouraged from the difficulties they must expect to meet with. 
 Also to consider whether they have abilities to fit them for this 
 weighty employment. Here he shews what learning is requisite 
 to this end ; viz. that of the Holy Scriptures chiefly, as also that 
 of the fathers of the three first centuries, who best understood the 
 doctrines of the apostles conveyed by unanimous tradition from 
 them; especially when they find those first ages exemplifying 
 Christianity in their holy lives, and in their readiness to suffer 
 tortures and death for Christ's sake. Then he mentions other 
 learning which distinct communions at this time make requisite 
 to be known, in order to the establishing of their flock in the 
 true communion ; and also casuistical divinity. He after shews the 
 necessity of prudence, courage, of a sweet and winning and of 
 an exemplary conversation in God's ministers; and also a firm 
 jesolution to persist in the discharge of their duty. Then concludes 
 
89 
 
 the first letter, with directions in managing the cure of souls, with 
 respect to particular persons. To this he subjoined a catalogue 
 of the works of the Fathers of the three first centuries, and tells 
 which was the best edition of them." — Brokesb^s Life of Dodwett, 
 vol. i. pp. 33, 34. 
 
 These divines are by no means of the same school : and 
 it is not very likely that they would all agree in giving such 
 directions as could be followed out nowhere but in Utopia. 
 
 Let all allowance be made for exceptional cases : in "Wales 
 and other semi-barbarous districts there were doubtless many : 
 in Derbyshire Sir T. Browne found the Clergy very ignorant ; 
 others too might be found scattered about the country. 
 Young curates again (as Burnet remarks) could not be 
 expected to have many books at first. The London chaplains 
 likewise appear to have had few opportunities for reading, 
 a circumstance which induced Tennison to project a library 
 for their common advantage. Let all allowance be made — 
 and we can well afford to be liberal — for these and all other 
 imaginable cases, yet still there will surely be but one 
 opinion as to Mr. Macaulay's general description of the 
 literary attainments of the rural Clergy. 
 
 If it is true of any of them, it can only be applicable to 
 those whose libraries were plundered by the Puritans. 
 
90 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 ON MB. MACAULAY*S DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TOWN AND 
 COUNTRY CLEKGY. 
 
 The subject of this section has been reserved till an 
 advanced period of the discussion, because the reader will 
 have had so many facts brought before him incidentally in 
 the preceding sections, that he will now be much better 
 prepared to pass a judgment upon the present question. 
 Mr. Macaulay then writes as follows in reference to it : 
 
 "Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English 
 Church of ministers distinguished by abilities and learning. But 
 it is to be observed that these ministers were not scattered among 
 the rural population. They were brought together at a few 
 places where the means of acquiring knowledge were abundant, 
 and where the opportunities of vigorous intellectual exercise were 
 frequent.* At such places were to be found divines qualified 
 by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledge of literature, of science, 
 and of life, to defend their Church victoriously against heretics 
 
 and sceptics These eminent men were to be found, with 
 
 scarce a single exception, at the universities, at the great cathedrals, 
 or in the capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge; and 
 Pearson had gone thence to the episcopal bench. Cudworth and 
 Henry More were still living there. South and Pococke, Jane 
 and Aldrich, were at Oxford. Prideaux was in the close of 
 Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it was 
 chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a 
 class apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and 
 eloquence was upheld. The principal pulpits of the metropolis 
 
 * This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is strongly 
 marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every person who has 
 studied the ecclesiastical history of that age. — Mr. Macaulay' s Note. 
 
91 
 
 wore occupied about this time by a crowd of distinguished men, 
 from among whom was selected a large proportion of the rulers 
 of the Church. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson at 
 Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's Inn, Burnet 
 at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at St. Paul's Cathedral, Patrick at St. 
 Paul's, Covent Garden, Fowler at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, Sharp 
 at St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, Tennison at St. Martin's, Sprat at 
 St. Margaret's, Beveridge at St. Peter's in Cornhill. Of these 
 twelve men, all of high note in ecclesiastical history, ten became 
 bishops, and four archbishops. Meanwhile almost the only im- 
 portant theological works which came forth from a rural parsonage 
 were those of George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's; 
 and Bull never would have produced those works, had he not 
 inherited an estate, by the sale of which he was enabled to collect 
 a library, such as probably no other country clergyman in England 
 possessed.* 
 
 Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections, 
 which, in acquirements,- in manners, and in social position, differed 
 widely from each other. One section, trained for cities and courts, 
 
 comprised men familiar with all ancient and modern learning 
 
 The other section was destined to ruder and humbler service. 
 It was dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons 
 not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers 
 
 or upper servants The very consciousness that there was little 
 
 in his worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the villagers to 
 whom he preached led him to hold immoderately high the dignity 
 of that sacerdotal office which was his single title to reverence. Hav- 
 ing lived in seclusion, and having had little opportunity of correcting 
 his opinions by reading or conversation, he held and taught the 
 doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, 
 and of nonresistance in all their crude absurdity." — MacauUty's 
 History of England, vol. I. p. 330-333. 
 
 Before adducing any fresh proofs, let me request the 
 reader to consider the facts which have already tran- 
 spired, or which lie immediately within his reach. He has 
 seen what literary attainments have been looked upon 
 
 * Nelson's Life of Bull. — Mr. Macaulay s Note. 
 
9!3 
 
 as necessary for every clergyman by various prelates ; he 
 has seen the state of school and university education 
 (and it was a standing rule at the time of which we are 
 treating, that, except for some special reason, no one should 
 be ordained without an university degree)*; and he has 
 seen that country Clergymen had sometimes rather more 
 than a dozen volumes on their shelves. He may also see by 
 the most cursory inspection of Walker's Sufferings of the 
 Clergy, that good or fair livings were scattered over the whole 
 country ; and may find very numerous instances of priests of 
 ancient and respectable family officiating In all parts. He may 
 also remember that some few instances have been adduced 
 of country clergymen (not themselves titled) marrying the 
 daughters of noblemen, baronets, and knights, and may easily 
 find a considerable number of others who married women of 
 good family, f He may also bear in mind that the patronage 
 in the gift of the universities would be distributed (to 
 speak generally) among their more distinguished members. 
 Besides, it is a priori incredible that there should be so great 
 an interval between the learned university and city Clergy, 
 and between the clownish country parsons, with almost no 
 links to connect the two classes, as Mr. Macaulay contends. 
 
 Although these considerations alone are almost sufficient 
 to shew that there can be no such distinction between the 
 town and country Clergy, as he endeavours to establish ; yet 
 still the following passage from a letter of Sir T. Browne shall 
 be adduced, written in November 1661 : 
 
 " Our bishop Dr. Reynolds, my loving friend, hath been in 
 Norwich these three months; he preacheth often and comes con- 
 stantly to Christchurch on Sunday mornings at the beginning of 
 prayers, about which time the Aldermen also come; he sitteth in 
 
 * See Cardwell's Documentary Annals, vol. n. pp. 304, 305 &e. 
 t See Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, passim ; to say nothing of 
 numerous instances scattered among other books, 
 
93 
 
 his seat against the pulpit, handsomely built up, and in his episcopal 
 vestments, and pronounceth the Blessing or the Peace of God, &c. 
 at the end : where there is commonly a very numerous congregation 
 and an excellent sermon by some preacher of the Combination, 
 appointed out of Norfolk and Suffolk, the one for winter, the other 
 for summer." — Sir T. Broime's Works, vol. i. p. 14. 
 
 This, however, only applies to the diocese of Norwich. 
 In the following passage Burnet gives such an account of the 
 state of the Clergy generally throughout the nation in 1686, 
 as is perfectly incompatible with any such ignorance as 
 Mr. Macaulay has ascribed to them. With regard to Burnet's 
 remark ' past errors,' the reader may see a very different 
 view of the matter taken in the passage from Kettlewell's 
 Life, which is cited in my first section. Burnet's facts are 
 important : with regard to his opinions we can all form our 
 own judgments : 
 
 " Many of the clergy acted now a part that made good amends 
 for past errors. They began to preach generally against popery, 
 which the Dissenters did not. They set themselves to study the 
 points of controversy. And upon that there followed a great 
 variety of small books, that were easily purchased and soon read. 
 They examined all the points of Popery with a solidity of judg- 
 ment, a clearness of arguing, a depth of learning, and a vivacity 
 of writing, far beyond any thing that had before that time appeared 
 in our language. The truth is, they were very unequally yoked : 
 for, if they are justly to be reckoned among the best writers that 
 have yet appeared on the Protestant side, those they wrote against 
 were certainly among the weakest that had ever appeared on the 
 Popish side. Their books were poorly but insolently writ; and 
 had no other learning in them, but what was taken out of some 
 French writers, which they put into very bad English; so that 
 a victory over them might have been but a mean performance. 
 
 " This had a mighty effect on the whole nation : even those 
 who could not search things to the bottom, yet were amazed at the 
 great inequality that appeared in this engagement. The Papists, 
 who -knew what service the Bishop of Meaux's book had done 
 
94 
 
 in France, resolved to pursue the same method here in several 
 treatises, which they entitled Papists represented and misrepre- 
 sented; to which such clear answers were writ, that what effects 
 soever that artifice might have, where it was supported by the 
 authority of a great King, and the terror of ill-usage, and a dra- 
 goonade in conclusion, yet it succeeded so ill in England, that it 
 gave occasion to enquire into the true opinions of that Church, not 
 as some artful writers had disguised them, but as they were laid 
 down in the books that are of authority among them, such as the 
 decisions of councils received among them, and their established 
 offices, and as they are held at Rome, and in all those countries 
 where Popery prevails without any intermixture with heretics, 
 or apprehension of them, as in Spain and Portugal. This was 
 done in so authentical a manner, that Popery itself was never 
 so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this 
 occasion. 
 
 " The persons, who both managed and directed this controversial 
 war, were chiefly Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Tennison, and Patrick. 
 Next them were Sherlock, Williams, Claget, Gee, Aldrich, Atter- 
 bury, Whitby, Hooper, and above all these Wake, who having 
 been long in France, chaplain to the Lord Preston, brought over 
 with him many curious discoveries that were both useful and 
 surprising. Besides the chief writers of those books of controversy, 
 there were many sermons preached and printed on those heads, 
 that did very much edify the whole nation." — Burnetts Own Time, 
 vol. m. pp. 1148-1150. 
 
 It is no doubt true that in the Universities, in the Cathedral 
 Closes, and in the Metropolis, a much larger number of 
 great and learned men would be found than elsewhere. 
 This has always been the case, it would be truly marvellous 
 if it were at any time otherwise. Places of this kind being 
 furnished with munificent libraries, and being the abodes 
 of men of distinction, naturally draw to themselves a large 
 body of the more literary Clergy. It is also perfectly true 
 that at London the fame of the preachers was very high: 
 " I have lately heard," says an anonymous writer in 1686 to 
 Mr. Ellis, " there never were such eminently able men to serve 
 
95 
 
 in those (i.e. the London) cures;" (Ellis' Original Letters 
 Second Series, vol. iv. p. 84). Words to the same effect 
 occur in Burnet, and doubtless in many other writers. Yet 
 still they were not (I believe) spoken of as ' a class apart' in 
 any such sense as that which Mr. Macaulay implies; they 
 were not spoken of as the only or even the principally 
 gentlemanlike class of Clergy, or indeed in any strict 
 sense as a separate body. Archbishop Tennison in 1699 
 says that he does not doubt but that many of the parochial 
 Clergy are sufficiently sensible both of their own duty and 
 the danger we are in : 
 
 " In the cities of London and Westminster and other places 
 I am sure (he adds) the good effects of their diligence have been 
 very evident of late years." — CardweU's Documentary Annals, vol. n. 
 pp. 347, 348. 
 
 No doubt then a distinction did exist between the Aca- 
 demical, Cathedral, and City Clergy on the one side, and 
 between the rural Clergy on the other : the distinction being 
 precisely this, that the former were as a whole more literary, 
 and more wealthy than the other class taken as a whole. 
 It is superfluous to add that the same distinction obtains 
 at this day. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay truly observes that Eachard draws a dis- 
 tinction between the town and country Clergy. He does 
 so, but makes no such distinction as Mr. Macaulay lays 
 down. As he has appealed to Eachard, the following passage 
 from that writer shall be cited : 
 
 " After this, sir, he returns triumphantly to the College, not 
 only very full of the vanquishment of the minister of the town, but 
 also thoroughly confirmed in what he has so often heard, that all 
 country parsons, be they who they will, are the strangest and 
 most mean things that belong to the earth. But why so fast, dear 
 child? Is it impossible that the word parson, especially if you 
 put country before it, should admit of any milder signification? 
 
96 
 
 And is it necessary that every man, though of very good worth 
 and knowledge, if once he be settled out of the noise of the Bells, 
 and does not every day see the Schools, should presently grow deaf 
 and blind, lose all his memory and parts, and general ignorance 
 should suddenly surprise him, so soon as he moves his name off 
 the tables ? Perhaps it is but a report ; and I do not apprehend 
 but a gentleman may understand as well at Barnet, as at his lodg- 
 ings in Lincoln 's-Inn-fields ; neither does he find any such present 
 decay and wasting of parts, so soon as his coach gets off the stones, 
 nor such great improvement of himself, when he is coming down 
 Highgate-hill." — Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry 
 into the Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of tlie Clergy, fyc, 
 (5th edit.) pp. 177, 178. 
 
 This citation is tolerably conclusive; but if any one 
 is not satisfied, let him consult the work, and he will find 
 several pages together immediately following, written in 
 the same strain, in which he takes occasion to shew that 
 the Clergy were no less skilled in natural science than 
 in Greek philosophy. 
 
 On Mr. Macaulay's hypothesis, it must of course have 
 been impossible that the country Clergy should be able 
 to produce any works of consequence, or to speak more 
 truly any works at all : seeing that he who possessed a dozen 
 volumes was an unusually fortunate parson. And as this 
 must be so in the nature of things, even so in Mr. Macaulay's 
 story we find that it was so ; or at least nearly so : 
 
 " Meanwhile almost the only important theological works which 
 came forth from a rural parsonage were those of George Bull, 
 afterwards Bishop of St. David's; and Bull never would have 
 produced those works, had he not inherited an estate, by the sale 
 of which he was enabled to collect a library, such as probably no 
 other country clergyman in England possessed." 
 
 'Almost' is an elastic adverb, and it will require stretching 
 to the utmost. To begin with Mr. Macaulay's twelve London 
 preachers, two of them at least produced works of importance 
 
97 
 
 in rural parsonages before they were removed to London. 
 Beveridge then was collated to the Vicarage of Yealing, Jan. 4, 
 1660, and left it when he was admitted to the Rectory of 
 St. Peter's, Cornhill, London, Nov. 22, 1672, {Newcourt, 
 vol. I. p. 93, ed. 1708). Now, to say nothing of his Institu- 
 tiones Chronologicce, published in London 1669, he here 
 brought out two huge folios, his Pandectce Canonum, an ad- 
 ditional work of great value, and which is always priced 
 now-a-days at several guineas. Patrick again was at Bat- 
 tersea from 1658-1662. His Jewish Hypocrisy is dated 
 from Battersea (1660): here also he composed two of his 
 best known works, his Mensa Mystica (1658), and his Heart's 
 Ease (1659). If it be objected that Battersea was near 
 London, it must be remembered that Chelsea was at that 
 time a country village (Macaulay, vol. i. p. 350). Again, 
 Archdeacon Fullwood's Soma Ruit, one of the most im- 
 portant theological productions of the time, was composed 
 in 1679 in a rural parsonage. 
 
 Kettlewell, one of the most considerable writers of the 
 period, composed at Coleshill his Help and Exhortation to 
 
 Worthy Communicating, in 1682; and his Practical Believer 
 at the same place in 1687. Towerson's standard work too 
 on the Church Catechism (of which, as we have seen, Burnet 
 speaks so highly), was composed in a country parsonage at 
 Wellwynne, Herts. (1678-1685). Fuller in 1658 was pre- 
 sented to the Rectory of Cranford, and he was buried in 
 the church there, in August 1661. Here he composed his 
 
 Worthies; and Pepys, in his Diary, Jan. 21, 1661, mentions 
 conversing with him upon it: it was not published till after 
 his death, and it was then in an unpolished state. Scrivener, 
 a priest, composed in 1672, 'Intra Privatos Parietes,' a 
 sterling work in vindication of the Fathers against Daille, 
 entitled Apologia pro S. Ecclesice Patribus adversus Johannem 
 Dallceum de Usu Patrum. Puller's Moderation of the Church 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 of England (which has been lately re-edited) was composed at 
 Sawcombe, Herts., and published in April 1679: before he 
 was presented in the September of the same year to the Rec- 
 tory of St. Mary-le-Bow {Newcourt, vol. i. p. 440, edit. 1708). 
 Sherlock, Rector of Winwick after the Restoration, was the 
 author of the Practical Christian, commended most highly 
 by Bishop Wilson, which reached the sixth edition in 1713 ; 
 he died before the Revolution. John Norris, a writer greatly 
 admired by the lovers of Metaphysical Theology, produced 
 at Bemerton in 1691, his Discourses on Divine Subjects ; and 
 in 1690, at Newton- St.-Loc, his Discourses on the Beatitudes, 
 which reached the third edition in 1694. 
 
 All the above works certainly deserve to be called im- 
 portant; some of them are first-rate. Others too there are 
 which well deserve to be mentioned, though perhaps inferior 
 to the foregoing. I shall only name a few of the authors, and 
 designedly omit others of less consequence. Walker then 
 is described by Wood, in the Athenee Ozonienses, as very 
 useful in his generation : he wrote many works, of which the 
 Doctrine of Baptisms is perhaps the most important ; it is 
 dated Colsterworth, near Grantham. The works too of the 
 following parochial Clergymen are much commended by 
 Walker in his Sufferings of the Clergy : Fulman, Bentham, 
 Samwaies, and Vaughan. Bragge and Falkner also were 
 authors of respectability ; to say nothing of a great number 
 of minor publications which indicate their authors to have 
 been men of good education. 
 
99 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 ON THE INTERCOURSE OF THE CLERGY WITH THE GENTRY. 
 
 This is a subject on which we must be very short : after 
 what has been already proved, it is well-nigh superfluous to 
 say anything. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay represents the generality of the Clergy as 
 not being gentlemen, as not associating with gentlemen, and 
 as being condemned to menial services, in the two following 
 passages among others : 
 
 " The coarse and ignorant squire, who thought that it belonged to 
 his dignity to have grace said every day at his table by an eccle- 
 siastic in full canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity with 
 economy. A young levite — such was the phrase then in use — might 
 be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a-year, and 
 might not only perform his own professional functions, might not 
 only be the most patient of butts and of listeners, might not only 
 be always ready in fine weather for bowls, and in rainy weather for 
 shovelboard, but might also save the expense of a gardener, or of 
 a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the apricots, and 
 sometimes he curried the coach horses. He cast up the farrier's 
 bills. He walked ten miles with a message or a parcel. If he was 
 permitted to dine with the family, he was expected to content himself 
 with the plainest fare. He might fill himself with the corned beef 
 and the carrots : but, as soon as the tarts and cheesecakes made 
 their appearance, he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was 
 summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of 
 which he had been excluded."* — Macaulay' s History of England, 
 vol. i. pp. 327, 328. 
 
 * Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy ; Oldham, Satire 
 addressed to a Priend about to leave the TJuiversity ; Tatler, 255, 258, 
 That the English Clergy were a low born class, is remarked in the Travels 
 of the Grand Duke Cosmo." — Mr. Macaulay' a Note. 
 
 H2 
 
100 
 
 Again : 
 
 " It would be a great error to imagine, because the country 
 rector was in general not regarded as a gentleman, because he 
 could not dare to aspire to the hand of one of the young ladies at 
 the manor-house, because he was not asked into the parlours of the 
 great, but was left to drink and smoke with grooms and butlers, 
 that the power of the clerical body was smaller than at present." 
 — Ibid. vol. i. p. 333. 
 
 The proofs of all this (so far as our present section is con- 
 cerned) appear to depend on Eachard and Oldham ; and on 
 the much later authority of the Tatter for November 1710. 
 
 The passage from Eachard has been already cited at p. 47 
 of this treatise. If Mr. Macaulay had not been copying the 
 Whig under several denominations instead of Eachard, he would 
 not have represented " an ecclesiastic in full canonicals " as 
 being subjected to such indignities on the authority of the 
 latter. 
 
 The passage from Oldham is, it must be admitted, altogether 
 to the point. It runs as follows : 
 
 " Little the unexperienced wretch does know 
 What slavery he oft must undergo ; 
 Who tho' in silken scarf and cassock dress'd, 
 Wears but a gayer livery at best. 
 When dinner calls, the implement must wait 
 With holy words to consecrate the meat, 
 But hold it for a favour seldom known, 
 If he be deigned the honour to sit down. 
 Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape, withdraw, 
 Those dainties are not for a spiritual maw : 
 Observe your distance, and be sure to stand 
 Hard by the cistern with your cap in hand ; 
 There for diversion you may piek your teeth, 
 Till the kind voider comes for your relief. 
 For mere board wages such their freedom sell, 
 Slaves to an hour and vassals to a bell. 
 
101 
 
 And if the enjoyment of one day be stole, 
 They are but prisoners out upon parole : 
 Always the marks of slavery remain, 
 And they tho' loose still drag about their chain." 
 
 — Oldham's Works. Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the 
 University and come abroad into the World, pp. 281, 282, 7th edit. 
 Lond. 1710. 
 
 The reader may attach whatever importance to this passage 
 he considers its writer to deserve : it seems to be an adapta- 
 tion from Eachard, and to possess no independent value 
 whatever. The Taller had read Oldham, and quotes him at 
 length, and is so utterly ignorant of his character as to call 
 his raillery " the raillery of a friend !" It may be suspected 
 that he was not speaking of his own knowledge (whatever, as an 
 Essayist, he may affect to have seen), but was merely copying 
 Oldham, and writing a humorous paper which no one was 
 expected to believe. However, whether this be so or not, 
 the author undoubtedly considered chaplains to be gentlemen. 
 The following passage makes his sentiments clear : 
 
 " In this case I know not which to censure, the patron or the 
 chaplain, the insolence of power, or the abjectness of dependence. 
 For my own part, I have often blushed to see a gentleman, whom 
 I knew to have much more wit and learning than myself, and 
 who was bred up with me at the University upon the same foot 
 of a liberal education, treated in such an ignominious manner, and 
 sunk beneath those of his own rank, by reason of that character 
 which ought to bring him honour. This deters men of generous 
 minds from placing themselves in such a station of life, and by that 
 means frequently excludes persons of quality from the improving 
 and agreeable conversation of a learned and obsequious friend." — 
 The Tatler, No. 255. 
 
 South and Collier, in various places of their writings, 
 unquestionably imply that chaplains were not always treated 
 with proper respect. This is likely enough ; their situation 
 was a very delicate one : but it is not very likely that it was 
 
102 
 
 customary for a chaplain to leave the second and third courses 
 untasted, if he had any inclination to such kickshaws. All 
 Mr. Macaulay's evidence seems to me to resolve itself into 
 that of Eachard only ; and if so, the following answer may be 
 given to the whole of it : 
 
 " Indeed if our gentry entertain scholars to save a- servant's 
 wages (sometimes crowding in the looking after a couple of 
 geldings into the ten pounds a-year), and allow them little more 
 respect than they do their cooks and butlers, or keep the young 
 levite against a small' vicarage falls, to put my cousin Abigail fairly 
 
 off with it, I must confess it to be an intolerable fault But 
 
 there's as little wit as truth in that fetch, that any christened 
 English gentleman should make the same person his own confessor 
 (or companion at least) and the groom of his horses' bedchamber. 
 His tales are not well laid together ; for is it not extremely pro- 
 bable that one who rubs his horses' scabby heels should be such 
 excellent company for Sir John, that he forsooth must be called 
 down to say grace to every health? Trjg dvaiSeiaQi What a 
 petulancy of humour is this, to invent such foppish chimeras not 
 only to abuse the Clergy and its candidates, but to disoblige the 
 gentry also into the bargain ? But stay ! whither will this Che- 
 valier Errant load me? for like a dog that hath lost the scent, 
 he is continually roving about for new game. You see what a 
 preacher he's likely to make, if ever he be effectually called by 
 some fat benefice, where Henry the Eighth took no toll; for he 
 is quite run from his text ; and if you please to call in about seven 
 pages backwards, you'll find him there only preparing his lads for 
 the university, whereas here he hath packed them down into the coun- 
 try again, and makes them stand sighing and picking their teeth, while 
 the knight and my lady are at their dainties. And because he is 
 used to confess every one's faults but his own, I must tell him he 
 forgets himself much, and is preposterous : for had he designed to 
 treat us methodically, our first course should have been school- 
 butter, college-commons the second, and the chickens and tarts re- 
 served till the last : and yet the man is so confident as to say, he 
 now passeth from schooling to the universities."— .4 Vindication of 
 the Clergy, pp. 48-51. 
 
103 
 
 In the Eawdon Papers, in Sir T. Browne's Works, in 
 Mrs. Evelyn's Letters, in the Diaries of Thoresby and Pepys, 
 in Wotton's dedication prefixed to his Reflections on Ancient 
 and Modern Learning, and in Nelson's Life of Bull, it 
 appears conclusively that chaplains were in the cases therein 
 mentioned well treated, regarded as equals by those who 
 maintained them, that they dined with the family, conversed 
 freely and disputed with the master of the house, were 
 promoted to good preferment, were consulted in cases of 
 difficulty, and kept up a friendly correspondence with the 
 family when they were absent from it. 
 
 There seems to be no proof that chaplains, who were 
 perhaps somewhat below the average rank of clergymen, 
 were not in general regarded as gentlemen. 
 
 With regard to the Clergy generally associating among 
 gentlemen all over the country, if any one would wish to 
 make a collection of examples of the intercourse of gentry 
 and Clergy, and of their mutual esteem for each other, which 
 he might meet with in all the diaries of the time, in Walker's 
 Sufferings of the Clergy, in Clarendon's Rebellion, and in 
 perhaps every biography that contains anything applicable to 
 the subject, and in several poems, as well as a collection of 
 the scattered intimations of their being considered gentlemen 
 in the works of Collier, Prideaux, &c, he might, it may be 
 affirmed with confidence, soon collect several hundreds of 
 instances and quotations. Perhaps the two following pieces 
 of banter from Eachard will sufficiently shew that Clergy 
 were in the habit of associating in polite society : 
 
 " That which increases the unprovided-for number of the clergy, 
 is people posting into orders before they know their message or 
 business, only out of a certain kind of pride and ambition. Thus 
 some are hugely in love with the mere title of Priest or Deacon ; 
 never considering how they shall live, or what good they are 
 likely to do in their office : but only they have a fancy that a 
 
104 
 
 cassock, if it be made long, is a very handsome garment, though it 
 be never paid for ; and that the desk is clearly the best, and the 
 pulpit the highest seat in all the parish ; that they shall take place 
 of most but esquires and right-worshipfuls." — The Grounds and 
 Oocasions, #c., p. 137. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " But the great destroyers, sir, are still to come ; fur next 
 appears the modish, grave, and well considering gentleman, that 
 often calls himself to account, and always finds himself full weight 
 and measure, but all the clergy to be very light and contemptible, 
 for several reasons. And in the first place he observes, that 
 divines are a sort of people that mind only the inconsiderable things 
 of this world ; they never take notice how this duke's or that lord's 
 livery differs from another ; and they will idly suffer many a noble- 
 man's coach to pass by, and never consider the things that is 
 behind, or whether they be horses or mares, English or Flanders. 
 Which of them can tell the private passage out of Covent Garden 
 
 into without asking at the barber's shop ? or where the 
 
 several ambassadors lodge ; where they dined yesterday, and where 
 they shall dine tomorrow ? And then for the humour of the town, 
 alas ! sir, there is not one divine of forty that does or ever can 
 understand anything of it. 
 
 Be not deceived, sir, it is not logic, Metaphysics, Fathers, and 
 Councils, and all the rest, that ever can expect to know or do these 
 things, or half of them. Besides, if we consider the great rude- 
 nesses that are ofttimes by Clergymen committed, in barbarous 
 managing of hat, immoral picking of teeth, uncouth and unfashion- 
 able sneezing, clownish pronouncing of words, that should have 
 been gracefully lisped, and rude and flat setting both feet upon the 
 ground when one should have stood in tittering readiness upon the toe 
 for a conge ; when we consider, I say, these and five and fifty thousand 
 things more, we must plainly conclude that it is only for great 
 head-pieces, men of birth and education, of prudence, and a mighty 
 reach, to pretend to honour and reputation; not for poor unob- 
 serving book-men that go in black. Then, to all this must be 
 added, the vast skill that is required to the tendering a visit, with 
 approved and modest accuracy, that it be done punctually at the 
 
105 
 
 critical minute, neither before nor after; that the servant, that 
 comes to the door, be duly spoken to, according to the rule pro- 
 vided in that great affair ; that the goloshoes be left in their true and 
 proper place, that the foot-boy be expert in observing his tutored 
 distance, that he gives allowance for summer and winter, and that 
 he never stands exactly behind, but bearing a respectful point or so, 
 north or south of his master. Then having got over all these 
 difficulties and made a suitable address, there is further to be 
 weighed whether the visit is to be a silent visit or a speaking one, 
 and if anything is to be said, whether the visitor is first to open or to 
 expect till discourse be offered, and when and in what order the 
 health of the family is to be enquired into. 'Lack-a-day ! says one 
 of the accomplished, in what a lamentable condition I have seen 
 a mortal Clergyman when he has asked for a son or a daughter 
 that has been dead a month ; whereas he should have felt out all 
 those things by degrees, and never have run himself into the danger 
 of a stumbling excuse for not knowing of it before ; how will his 
 puling conscience bo put to it, to rap out presently half a dozen 
 swingers to get off cleverly. But still, sir, there be many things 
 behind ; it is no such easy matter, upon my word, to judge how 
 much of the handkerchief shall hang out of the coat pocket and how 
 to poise it exactly with the tortoiseshell comb on the other side; 
 and if there be a peruke to be ordered, where is a man of the 
 Church that can tell when it is to be done to old Simon the king, 
 and when, after the pangs of a desperate lover ? Heavens and stars ! 
 It is such a task to be considerable, and of any moment in the 
 world, that it would almost crack the brains of the most steady 
 Clergymen, but to hear repeated all the accomplishments that are 
 required to make up a man of worth. But then suppose a divine 
 of extraordinary parts and quickness, and that has got, I know not 
 whence, so much of our modish blood in his veins, as to apprehend 
 in some low degree what makes men for ever blessed, and should 
 arrive to some set forms of being acceptable ; how will they make 
 shift for speeches and compliments, passes and repasses, parties and 
 reparties. Put the case, sir, that a fair lady or person of honour, 
 by some chance or other, drops a glove or handkerchief; where is 
 now, say they, your man in orders that can presently snatch it up 
 in an extacy, deliver it with bonne grace, and instantly say some- 
 thing suitable to so great and sudden occasion?" — Some Obser- 
 
106 
 
 vatiom upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds and 
 Occasions, fyc. pp. 183 — 188. 
 
 If a graver authority be required, let trie following article 
 be adduced, one of those which Archbishop Sancroft in 1688 
 recommended to all the Bishops within his metropolitan 
 jurisdiction. It is the eighth of the " heads of things to be 
 more fully insisted upon by the bishops in their addresses to 
 the Clergy and people of their respective dioceses." It runs 
 in these words : 
 
 " That they [the Clergy] maintain fair correspondence (full 
 op the kindest kesfects of all sorts) with the gentry and 
 persons of quality in their neighbourhood ; as being deeply sensible 
 what seasonable assistance and countenance this poor Church hath 
 received from them in her necessities." — CardweWs Docwm. Ann. 
 vol. ii. p. 324. 
 
107 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED REVELATION. 
 
 Persons unaccustomed to research, but possessed of a com- 
 petent knowledge of letters, naturally take pleasure in tracing 
 in the descriptions of a well-read writer some touches of that 
 literature with which they are themselves familiar. Many 
 persons accordingly thought that Fielding's characters had 
 been ushered into the world half a century before they were 
 due ; and that his parsons were above all others the real (or 
 at least the really described) Clergymen whom Mr. Macaulay 
 had in his eye. Others bethought themselves of the drama- 
 tists: others perhaps had different opinions of their own. 
 But from henceforth there may probably be but one opinion. 
 Many of Mr. Macaulay's readers had doubtless observed that 
 his description of the Clergy opens in these words : 
 
 " The rural clergy were even more vehement in tortism than 
 
 THE RURAL GENTRY." 
 
 Now it so falls out that there is a portrait of a Clergy- 
 man which agrees in some very important particulars with 
 Mr. Macaulay's description, though, indeed, this Clergy- 
 man is not wholly unacquainted with Homer, the study 
 of whose language was " by no means necessary" for an 
 Oxford or " a Cambridge divine." His books too, it may 
 be supposed, were sufficiently numerous, if not to place 
 him among " the unusually lucky" ones, yet at least in 
 the class of those who might be considered lucky. Abating 
 
108 
 
 these advantages which he possessed over Mr. Macaulay's 
 Tory Clergyman, the resemblance is well-nigh complete. 
 His wife's character too " had been blown upon," and was 
 suspected. Yet this man was so far from exceeding the 
 standard of the gentry's Toryism, that he was actually a 
 whig : his description is given as follows, in a pamphlet 
 entitled, The Character of a Whig under several Denomina- 
 tions ; to which is added The Reverse, or the Character of a 
 True Englishman in opposition to the former, and published 
 without name of author or printer at London in the year 
 1700. The tract is so rare that its possessor is not aware 
 of the existence of a copy in the public library at Cambridge. 
 The writer had (it need scarcely be said) read Eachard, and 
 almost copies him, except that he applies his knowledge to his 
 own purposes. Apology is due for printing such language as 
 one sentence contains, and it would not have been done but 
 for the absolute necessity of the case. The account is wound 
 up with little else but a history of the sermon, which it 
 would be little to our purpose to introduce, even were it less 
 indecent. Mr. Macaulay too winds up with an account of his 
 parson's violent Tory sermon. Eachard's arrangement is dif- 
 ferent, and he has nothing to do with politics. 
 
 The Church Whig, on the Ecclesiastical Bepabhjs 
 " Is the offspring of ignorance and nonconformity, who being 
 dieted a while in a country school, upon rules, exceptions, and 
 tedious repetitions of Arm's and tvtttoi's till he had learned how 
 Phaeton broke his neck ; how many apples Tityrus had for his 
 supper; and understood Homer's commendations of Achilles' 
 toes and the Grecian's boots ; knew a hexameter from a pentameter, 
 a spondee from a dactyl, and could fit them in that sense to 
 his finger's end; though his parts were contemptible and the 
 purses of his friends at too low an ebb to, maintain him like a 
 scholar, to the University he must go for a little logic and ethics, 
 and is predestinated by his relations to be a Clergyman, in hopes 
 that a benefice where Henry the Eighth had not been too busy 
 
109 
 
 with his toll-dish, but that yet there remained some good land, 
 that afforded milk and honey, might be the portion of our 
 juvenile levite. Now that success might answer the desires 
 of his parents, and that the babe of grace might not surfeit 
 on human learning, the tutor employs him in bed-making, cham- 
 ber-sweeping, and water-fetching, that the sizar's brains might 
 not be overheated with too much vain philosophy. Having sucked 
 in about six or seven mouthfuls of University air, exactly learned 
 to respond to Quid est logica ? and Quot sunt virtutes morales ? 
 with Burgurdicius, Eustachius, and such excellent helpmeets in 
 divinity in his coat pocket ; down he goes by the first carrier on 
 the top of a pack into the country to propagate the gospel, and 
 by that time he can say his predicaments and his creed you may 
 find him in a pulpit; for now he has the choice of preaching 
 or starving : though it had been ten times better for the lad 
 and the Church that he had been made a tooth-drawer or a 
 porter. Some poor starved vicar, that ne'er could keep a curate 
 in his life, gives him a title to ordination, and then a neighbouring 
 knight takes him into his family at the price of ten pounds a- 
 year, and a Sunday pudding, to perform holy offices and spoil 
 his children by making him their tutor. Being a stranger to 
 the house and a decent behaviour, my cousin Abigail, out of 
 charity and in hope of the benefit of her Clergy, instructs him in 
 the knowledge of a Chaplain's duty, viz. that he must never speak 
 in the parlour but at grace and prayer-time, and be sure with 
 a low bow to rise in time from the table, take away his plate, 
 and march off with his hat under his arm, and cleave a log 
 into billets for the parlour fire, whilst the knight, my lady, and 
 her children eat up the chickens, tarts, and custards, and then 
 calls in the chipling to dismiss them. This obligation upon the 
 young levite gives him a liking to Mrs. Abigail, which she cherishes 
 with the remains of her ladies' caudles and the pills of her China 
 oranges, and lays the foundation of his ruin. To please his mistress, 
 and gain the vicarage that is entailed upon her office by the custom 
 of the manor, he is sometimes found cracking nuts and reading in his 
 study, and having luckily discovered a vacuum in his upper room, 
 he fills it with learned jargon, materia prima, occult qualities and 
 atoms, which the lady of the house observing she breaks out in 
 his commendation, Truly the young man is much improved since 
 
110 
 
 he came into our family. The lady's good word, the knight's 
 good-nature, and Mrs. Abigail's apron-strings growing too short, 
 prefers him at once to a benefice and a belly-piece, where the 
 all-wise patron, and the all-understanding adjoining justice being 
 both severe and sour whigs, the chipling, to gain their favours 
 and re-assume what he was bred to, sets up for a Church Whig also, 
 and leaves nothing unattempted that may shew his respects 
 to the dissenting party. Now he sets up for a conforming dissenter, 
 and carries the fair outside of a man, and is an arrant knave in 
 his heart: one that indifferently divides his body and his soul 
 betwixt right and wrong : the government has his head and 
 purtenances, and the schism his affections." — The Character of 
 a Whig under several Denominations ; to which is added the Reverse, 
 or the Character of a true Englishman in opposition to the former, 
 pp. 72-75, Lond. 1700. 
 
 So it seems, 
 
 " Quem quacrimus, hie est." 
 Even so : 
 
 " Here our solemn search hath end." 
 
 It was a bold and perhaps not very politic stroke of Mr. 
 Macaulay to take the above description, reproduce it mutatis 
 mutandis, and apply it to the Tory Clergy. And all this 
 not in an avowed work of fiction, but in a professed History 
 of England. Some may consider the fraud pious ; all must 
 confess its conception facetious: but his joke, once dis- 
 covered, is at the expense of the author and his history. 
 
Ill 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 On Mr. Macaulay's Character oftlie Gentry. 
 
 "My notion," says Mr. Macaulay, "of the country gentleman 
 of the seventeenth century has been derived from sources too 
 numerous to be recapitulated. I must leave my description to 
 the judgment of those who have studied the history and the 
 lighter literature of that age." — (Vol. i. p. 324). 
 
 These things being so, it becomes more difficult to decompose 
 Mr. Macaulay's description into its original elements. However, 
 it may perhaps be possible to discover one source of his informa- 
 tion. In The Character of a Whig wider several Denominations is 
 an account of the senseless upstart Whiff country gentleman, occupying 
 ten pages (pp. 62 — 72). The writer had in view some Whig gen- 
 tleman of the day ; for he adds at the end of his account, " If this 
 don't reform him .and cause him to make restitution, the next 
 setting shall produce his effigies more to the life than this is, and 
 give you his name in words at length, and not in figures." I shall 
 put down in one column passages of his description as given in 
 this pamphlet, and in the other column print select sentences of 
 Mr. Macaulay's description of the Tory aristocracy, which will be 
 found in his third chapter (pp. 319 — 324). 
 
 The Whiff, fyc. Macaulay's History of England. 
 
 The senseless, upstart, Whig The gross uneducated, untravelled 
 
 country gentleman is an aDimal country gentleman was commonly 
 
 begot betwixt enthusiastic dulness A TORY, 
 and sophisticated reason. 
 
 With a soul full of hypocrisy, a Though devotedly attached to 
 
 heart full of treachery, a mouth hereditary monarchy, he had no 
 
 full of commendation of Oliver's partiality for courtiers and min- 
 
 usurpation, and lies against the isters. 
 present court. 
 
 Heraldry knows nothing of his His family pride was beyond that 
 
 ancestors on either side ; for like of a Talbot or a Howard. He knew 
 
112 
 
 The Whig, %c. 
 mushrooms, they grew up in a 
 night of rebellion, by plundering 
 the loyal party, and agreeably to 
 his stock had this miscellany of 
 whig and publican his education. 
 
 He now perches up into squire 
 ad worshipful, and drinks as 
 , and 
 
 swears as- 
 
 as like a gentleman as is 
 
 possible for a woodmonger's ap- 
 prentice to attain to. 
 
 Sobriety and temperance he 
 reckons among the number of the 
 seven deadly sins. 
 
 His next affair is to keep that 
 character (of gentleman) among the 
 party by herding with all factions 
 against the government, ecclesiasti- 
 cal and civil, and sets up for a 
 drunken saint, though the im- 
 modish coxcomb knows religion is 
 out of fashion. The surname 01 
 his sect is unknown in Alexander 
 Ross' 'View of Religions; and though 
 fools make up the guts of all 
 
 Macaulay's History of England. 
 the genealogies and coats of arms 
 of all his neighbours, and could tell 
 which of them had assumed sup- 
 porters without any right, and which 
 of them were so unfortunate as to 
 be great grandsons of aldermen. 
 Nor indeed was his soldier- 
 ship justly a subject of derision. 
 In every country there were elderly 
 gentlemen who had seen service 
 which was no child's play. One 
 had been knighted by Charles the 
 First, after the battle of Edgehill. 
 Another still wore a patch over the 
 scar which he had received at Nase- 
 by. A third had defended his old 
 house till Fairfax had blown in the 
 door with a petard. The presence 
 of these old Cavaliers, with their 
 old swords and holsters, and with 
 their old stories about Goring and 
 Lunsford, gave to the musters of 
 militia an earnest and warlike aspect 
 which would otherwise have been 
 wanting. Even those country gen- 
 tlemen who were too young to have 
 themselves exchanged blows with 
 the cuirassiers of the parliament 
 had, from childhood, been sur- 
 rounded by the traces of recent 
 war, and fed with stories of the 
 martial exploits of their fathers and 
 uncles. 
 
 His ignorance and uncouthness, I 
 his low tastes and gross phrases, | 
 would, in our time, be considered 
 as indicating a nature and a breed- 
 ing thoroughly plebeian. 
 
 As the habit of drinking to ex- 
 cess was general in the class to which 
 he belonged. 
 
 There was one institution, and 
 one only, which they prized even 
 more than hereditary monarchy; 
 and that institution was the Church 
 of England. Their love of the 
 Church was not, indeed, the effect 
 of study or meditation. Few among 
 them could have given any reason, 
 drawn from Scripture or ecclesi- 
 astical history, for adhering to her 
 doctrines, her ritual, and herpolity ; 
 
113 
 
 The Whig, $c. 
 churches, yet his life is so scandal- 
 ous he is not owned as a member 
 of any. 
 
 His religion consists in railing 
 against all governments but Oliver's : 
 and cursing the Whore of Babylon 
 
 worse than He would be a 
 
 Presbyterian, but for fear of the 
 close-stool 'of repentance ; an In- 
 dependent, but that he has neither 
 gifts nor graces, and thinks himself 
 not fool nor madman enough yet 
 to be a Quaker : though he has the 
 ill manners of 'em all, in bespatter- 
 ing the court, notwithstanding he 
 lives on the alms-basket of the 
 Treasury. 
 
 Though he gives his brother 
 whigs their bellies full of bacon 
 when they come to see him, he 
 makes them so drunk before they 
 go, that 
 
 He holds the scale of justice as 
 blindly as the goddess that was 
 born so : shews his wisdom most in 
 
 Macaulay s History of England. 
 
 nor were they, as a class, by any 
 means strict ooservers of that code 
 of morality which is common to all 
 Christian sects. But the experience 
 of many ages proves that men may 
 be ready to fight to the death, and 
 to persecute without pity, for a 
 religion whose creed they do not 
 understand, and whose precepts 
 they habitually disobey. 
 
 His animosities were numerous 
 and bitter. He hated Frenchmen 
 and Italians, Scotchmen and Irish- 
 men, Papists and Presbyterians, 
 Independents and Baptists, Quakers 
 and Jews. Towards London and 
 Londoners he felt an aversion which 
 more than once produced important 
 political effects. 
 
 His table was loaded with coarse 
 plenty; and guests were cordially 
 welcomed to it. But, as the habit 
 of drinking to excess was general 
 in the class to which he belonged, 
 and as his fortune did not enable 
 him to intoxicate large assemblies 
 daily with claret or canary, strong 
 beer was the ordinary beverage. 
 The quantity of beer consumed in 
 those days was indeed enormous. 
 For beer then was to the middle 
 and lower classes, not only all that 
 beer now is, but all that wine, tea, 
 and ardent spirits now are. It was 
 only at great houses, or on great 
 occasions, that foreign drink was 
 on the broad. The ladies of the 
 house, whose business it had com- 
 monly been to cook the repast, re- 
 tired as soon as the dishes had been 
 devoured, and left the gentlemen 
 to their ale and tobacco. The coarse 
 jollity of the afternoon was often 
 prolonged till the revellers were 
 laid under the table. 
 
 He was a magistrate, and, as such, 
 administered gratuitously to those 
 who dwelt around him a rude patri- 
 
114 
 
 The Whig, &. 
 his silence, and does his country 
 best service in his absence. His 
 severity is all against regretors and 
 forstallers, and cares not if they 
 raise the devil, so they dont raise 
 the market. 
 
 Being thus accomplished, he sets 
 up for a worshipful Shustice of the 
 Peace, and the 'tother thing too, 
 Quorum, though he no more under- 
 stands the meaning of it in English 
 than if it was Arabic : to complete 
 the character of a finished fop he 
 also sets up for a wit by swearing 
 with a bonne grace, telling bawdy 
 stories, and convincing all the world 
 that he has no sense, no learning, 
 no religion, no good nature. 
 
 In the country he lives like a 
 hawking, setting, hunting fool. 
 
 Maeaulay's History of England. 
 
 archal justice, which, in spite of in- 
 numerable blunders and of occa- 
 sional acts of tyranny, was yet better 
 than no justice at all. 
 
 His language and pronunciation 
 were such as we should now expect 
 to hear only from the most ignorant 
 clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and 
 scurrilous terms of abuse, were 
 uttered with the broadest accent of 
 his province. It was easy to discern, 
 from the first words which he spoke, 
 whether he came from Somerset- 
 shire or Yorkshire. 
 
 His chief pleasures were com- \ 
 monly derived from field sports and ) 
 
 from an unrefined sensuality. 
 
 ) 
 
 Hcec satis inter se conveniunt. It seems, therefore, after all, that 
 Mr. Macaulay has described, not the Tory aristocracy, but a Whig 
 squire (for he was a Whig, r\v aoa) who had the misfortune to 
 incur the displeasure of the writer above quoted. Unhappy Whig 
 squire ! it remains for him, like Ajax, to exclaim Mas .' twice, o"ig 
 aldfaiv; and indeed his latter calamity is worse than the former. 
 Not only is he kicked like a football by both sides, by a Tory 
 pamphleteer and by a Whig historian, but the latter adds insult to 
 injury by dressing him up in the guise of a tory. 
 
 If any one wishes to see what the gentry of the time really 
 were, let him consult the Diaries of Evelyn and Thoresby, and 
 Sir R. Twysden's work, just published by the Camden Society. 
 
 In a passage however, of the same chapter, Mr. Macaulay does 
 give an authority for an assertion respecting one of the gentry. 
 
 "Few knights of the shire," says he, "had libraries so good 
 as may now perpetually be found in a servants' hall, or in the back 
 parlour of a small shop-keeper. An esquire passed among his 
 neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, 
 Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of Christendom lay 
 
 in his hall-window among the fishing-rods and fowling-pieces." 
 
 vol. I. p. 393. 
 
115 
 
 At the end of the paragraph there is this note. " Cotton seems 
 from his Angler to have found room for his whole library in 
 his hall-window: and Cotton was a man of letters." If this 
 be so, of course Mr. Macaulay's readers will naturally suppose 
 that the stock of books must have been small indeed which was 
 ordinarily possessed by " the gross, uneducated, untravelled country 
 gentleman who was commonly a Tory." But how stands the 
 case with regard to Mr. Macaulay's assertions respecting. Cotton? 
 The following passage in his Angler is, I suppose, the place he 
 has in view: at least I am quite at a loss to know upon what 
 other foundation his remark is built. 
 
 " Piscator. _ Sir, to make part of amends for sending you so uncivilly 
 out alone this morning, I will myself dress you this dish of fish for 
 your dinner ; walk but into the parlour, you will find one book or other 
 in the window to entertain you the while, and you shall have it pre- 
 sently."— Chap, x. p. 81, (Lond. 1774). 
 
 Now what hindered Cotton from having the greatest part of his library 
 in his study, or in some other place beside the ^ar/ow-window ? It is 
 not the Aa$-window, moreover, as Mr. Macaulay has inadvertently 
 written: for the AaW-window contained the angling-rods (chap. ill. 
 p. 24) ; Mr. Macaulay's readers therefore would naturally suppose that 
 Cotton's entire library, like those of the squires aforesaid, held a divided 
 empire with the fishing apparatus in the window. But 'Cotton was 
 a man of letters.' Certainly he was, and not only so, but the author 
 of as many books as would fill a fair proportion of a window of a hall 
 or even of a parlour. " Among his poems are divers Odes, Songs, and 
 other love verses .to ladies :" he also translated some considerable parts 
 of Virgil : likewise Gerard's History of the Duke of Espernon in twelve 
 books; also a translation of the Tragedy of Horace from the French 
 of P. Corneille ; also a version of a French novel entitled ' The Fair One 
 of Tunis ;' also a translation of the Commentaries of Blaise de Monluck, 
 Mareschal of France. In the year 1675 appeared two books of his own : 
 The Planter's Manual and Burlesque upon Burlesque, being some of 
 Lucian's Dialogues put into English fustian, which passed through five 
 editions at least. In 1685 he gave a new version of all Montaigne's 
 Essays, in vols. 8vo., which passed through several editions. All these 
 works of Cotton appeared before his Angler, (Cotton's Life). It is there- 
 fore not very probable that Cotton's whole library was contained in his 
 hall-window. 
 
116 
 
 With Tarlton's Jests our modern country gentlemen are perhaps not 
 generally familiar: but if they possess another work, and will sometimes 
 verify its references (when they are not too numerous to be recapitulated), 
 they may enjoy a little quiet mirth occasionally. 
 
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