The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

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, which had become the

favorite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court, the

three sumptuous tables daily spread in his refectory, the

forty-four gorgeous copes in his chapel, his running footmen in

rich liveries, and his body guards with gilded poleaxes. Thus the

sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes.

During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth,

scarce a single person of noble descent took orders. 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.77 And, indeed, for one who made

the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants. A large

proportion of those divines who had no benefices, or whose

benefices were too small to afford a comfortable revenue, lived

in the houses of laymen. It had long been evident that this

practice tended to degrade the priestly character. Laud had

exerted himself to effect a change; and Charles the First had

repeatedly issued positive orders that none but men of high rank

should presume to keep domestic chaplains.78 But these

injunctions had become obsolete. Indeed during the domination of

the Puritan, many of the ejected ministers of the Church of

England could obtain bread and shelter only by attaching

themselves to the households of royalist gentlemen; and the

habits which had been formed in those times of trouble continued

long after the reestablishment of monarchy and episcopacy. In the

mansions of men of liberal sentiments and cultivated

understandings, the chaplain was doubtless treated with urbanity

and kindness. His conversation, his literary assistance, his

spiritual advice, were considered as an ample return for his

food, his lodging, and his stipend. But this was not the general

feeling of the country gentlemen. The coarse and ignorant squire,

who thought that it belonged to his dignity to have grace said

every day at his table by an 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, 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. He was permitted to

dine with the family; but 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.79


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 favor. 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.80 Clarendon, who assuredly bore no ill

will to the priesthood, 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.81 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 espouse a

servant girl, without the consent of the master or mistress.82

During several generations accordingly the relation between

divines 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 cook.83 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.84


In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a benefice

and a wife found that he had only exchanged one class of

vexations for another. Hardly one living in fifty enabled the

incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As children

multiplied end grew, the household of the priest became more and

more beggarly. Holes appeared 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.85 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.


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.86

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, to command the attention of frivolous and worldly

congregations, to guide the deliberations of senates, and to make

religion respectable, even in the most dissolute of courts. Some

laboured to fathom the abysses of metaphysical theology: some

were deeply versed in biblical criticism; and some threw light on

the darkest parts of ecclesiastical history. Some proved

themselves consummate masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric

with such assiduity and success that their discourses are still

justly valued as models of style. These eminent men were to be

found, with scarcely 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

were 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 Saint Paul's Cathedral, Patrick at

Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's,

Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at

Saint Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint

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 important theological works which came

forth from a rural parsonage were those of George Bull,

afterwards Bishop of Saint 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.87


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; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet at all the

weapons of controversy; men who could, in their sermons, set

forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness

of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent

Charles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham

forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of

the world qualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy

and noble; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests

of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he

had learned to write.88 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. Yet it was in

these rustic priests, who derived but a scanty subsistence from

their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the smallest