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Under the Normans there had been a great revival in the
monastic system and in over half of the parishes the most
valuable parts of the endowments were stripped to found
and enrich the monasteries. Two hundred years later the
Bishops had wrested some of this back but the monks
kept the lions share until Katherine of Aragon failed to
provide a male heir for Henry VIII and Henry who had
plenty of sons with his mistresses blamed the fact that he
had married his dead brothers widow. When the Pope
refused Henry a divorce Henry refused the authority
of the Pope and in the Reformation of the church that
followed the monasteries were dissolved. However the
endowments were not returned to the parishes – Henry
and his new nobility swallowed them up.
The Reformation halved the number of clergy in England
and what a time it was to be a parish priest! The story of
the Vicar of Bray pops up twice, first in the mid 1500s
during the Reformation and again a hundred or so years
later during the time of the Puritans and the English
Civil War when religious upheavals also made it nigh on
impossible for any individual let alone a clergyman to
comply with the successive religious requirements of the
state. The Vicar of Bray was said to change his creed at
the drop of a hat to suit the times in which he lived
leading to the peculiarly English expression that no
matter what happens -
‘
The vicar of Bray will be vicar of Bray still.’
Those who refused to accept the new Church of England
were called recusants and they risked death. This was the
age of the priest hole built into a house to hide the priest
if Elizabeth’s
pursuivants
arrived. Many priest holes
were built by one man, a lay Jesuit brother Nicholas
Owen. So well hidden were his priests that sometimes
they died of thirst before the pursuivants gave up looking.
Barely taller than a dwarf Owen was known as Little
John: he worked alone and even after he was caught and
tortured he refused to reveal any hiding places.
The Difficulty of Finding a Living
By the 1800s the younger sons of the landed gentry had
begun to enter the church in large numbers. The laws of
primogenitor, first son inherits the lot, intended to preserve
the large landed estates, forced younger sons to find an
independent source of income. A church living meant a
guaranteed income and a home for life and to qualify a
young man must first be ordained. The process began with
a standard honours degree from Oxford or Cambridge and
a college testimonial to present to a Bishop who would set
an examination to check that the young man was competent
in Latin and familiar with scripture, the liturgy and church
doctrine. All being well he could
take holy order
s and be
ordained or
Japanned
as it is became known from the black
clothes he donned that were reminiscent of the black
lacquered Japanware that was fashionable at this time.
Next he must find a living. Easy if your family owned an
advowson, which, because of the entitlement to tithes were
valuable properties that could be sold for five to seven times
the annual value of the living. Short of funds a gentleman
might raise money by selling the ‘right of next presentation’
as did Sir Thomas Bertram in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.
Oxford and Cambridge controlled nearly 5% of advowsons,
the Crown had about 10% which were usually presented in
return for government support, the Bishops controlled
another 20% and the rest, over 60%, were in the gift of the
gentry and the aristocracy. 11,500 benefices or livings
existed in England and Wales at the end of the 18th century
but it wasn’t enough and over half the ordained clergy never
received a living.
Richard Conyers the 18
th
century Rector of St Paul’s
Deptford was a devout man but this wasn’t always the case.
Less religious clerics could buy a book of sermons, carry
out their basic duties to hold a service each Sunday and
Holy Communion three times a year, baptise, marry and
bury their parishioners and still have plenty of time on their
hands. Clergymen did play a key role in local government,
Harvington Hall,, Kidderninster
& statue of St Nicholas Owen in
Kidderminster RC Church