Quotable Clergy
The Country Clergy in Elizabethan and Stuart Times 1558-1660. By A. Tindal Hart. (Phoenix House, 2I s.)
DR. HART'S book covers the first century of the independent existence of the Anglican Church. During most of the period the Church held a monopoly position, no rival religious organisa- tion being tolerated. But neither the doctrine nor the discipline of the Church won universal accep- tance; and its clergy were freely criticised. We must therefore make allowances for bias in con- temporary accounts of their character and con- duct. But even so the clergy whom Dr. Hart describes (often from official sources) include many unexpected characters.
Mr. Glascock, Vicar of Hockley, for instance : Some time a servingman, unable to preach, for he cannot render an account of his faith neither in Latin nor English,' or Thomas Morley, who was 'in the holy scriptures unacquainted.' Of one church it was reported in Elizabeth's reign, 'They have had no sermon . . . these twenty years.' The rector of Kirk-Smeaton tath been suspected to live incontinently with one Perkins's wife . . . and with certain other light women, corners and goers. . . . And moreover he hath in his house one Frances Lancaster, a woman of evil conversa- tion and an incontinent liver.' One Lincolnshire vicar, we learn, 'beats his wife in the churchyard,' but apart from the publicity this was perhaps less heinous in him than in most men since 'he has two wives' and was only accused of beating one of them. It was a rector who 'hung his wife up by the heels and tied her to the bedposts and Whipped. her.' Matrimony was still a new experience for the Elizabethan clergy. They were perhaps a little uncertain in their handling of that difficult state. If bellicosity began at home for
some clergymen, it did not remain there for all of them : the Rev. Richard Pole gave one of his churchwardens 'many blows with a naked sword'; another minister, less selective, was described as `a notorious fighter, with man, woman and child, in church, field and town.'
Drunkenness was common; but unfavourable comment was aroused by the Vicar of Sustead, who was often 'so distempered with drink that he could not read divine service,' especially since he was also accused of being 'a professor of the art magic, and in particular charming of pigs.' A more ambitious vicar used witchcraft to sink a ship with all hands `by the help of six imps which he had that frequented him daily.' More modern in his tastes was the Vicar of Somerby, who was in the habit of hunting in his surplice. This created difficulties when he tore the surplice on a gate whilst coursing a hare, and 'the parish was forced to provide a new surplice for him to read prayers in, and to keep the old one for him to hunt in.' Whilst the standard of living and of education of many laymen was rising sharply, many clerics were extremely poor: marriage in- creased their expenditure if it also increased their comforts, and in an age of inflation not all in- comes kept pace with prices. This no doubt accounts for the many instances where the parson (or his wife) kept an ale-house. One hopes it was hospitality and not good salesmanship that made a Cambridgeshire rector entertain his congrega- tion so lavishly after morning service that they `spewed most shamefully' during their afternoon devotions.
It is a rare pleasure to read a book so fair, so scholarly and so freshly written as that of Dr. Hart. An Anglican himself, he does not hesitate to remind us that `if Laud became a martyr, he had first been a tyrant and a brute.' His book is a serious study, based on wide research; but it con- trives to be entertaining as well. Some of it has been said before; but the details are put together skilfully so as to give us a convincing picture of what the country clergy were like in the century between Reformation and Restoration. Saints and normal human beings, as well as the more quot- able sinners, combine to give us a picture free from either exaggerated piety or nostalgic senti- mentalism. It is a pity that the publisher squeezed so readable a book into 170 pages of small print.
CHRISTOPHER II ILL
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