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The Anglican Hierarchy and the Reformation of Manners 1688–1738

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Tina Isaacs
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Extract

Few have studied the early eighteenth-century Church. Caught between puritan triumphs and the Methodist revival, its polemics and efforts at rejuvenation have gone largely unnoticed. Those historians who have noticed describe an Anglican hierarchy lacking in talent and drive and a population devoid of piety and religious fervour. Both of these images are incorrect, as more recent scholarship has begun to suggest. Church historians now concentrate primarily on biographies of famous ecclesiastics and monographs (and articles) on some of the more lively events such as SacheverelPs trial and the Convocation controversy. But no one has systematically explored the Church's attempts to combat the decline brought about by the Toleration Act of 1689 and by its own avoidance of earlier enthusiasms.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1982 , pp. 391 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Many of the best books available on eighteenth-century English Church history are more than twenty years old. Any student of the period owes a great deal to the vast work of Norman Sykes, as well as to that of Edward Carpenter, Gerald Cragg and A. Tindal Hart. More recent studies include those of G. V. Bennett, Eamon Duffy and Geoffrey Holmes. See the bibliography in W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England 1714–1760, London 1977, 291–2Google Scholar.

2 Bennett, G. V., ‘Conflict in the Church’, in Holmes, G. (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution, London 1969, 162–3Google Scholar.

3 Ellison, Nathaniel, The Magistrate's Obligation to Punish Vice, London 1700Google Scholar, 28; Farbrother, Roger, The Magistrate's Concern in Christ's Kingdom, London 1698, 18Google Scholar. See Duffy, Eamon, ‘Primitive Christianity revived; religious renewal in Augustan England’, Studies in Church History, xiv (1978), 287–300Google Scholar. See also Tina Isaacs, ‘Moral crime, moral reform and the state in early eighteenth century England: a study of piety and politics’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1980, passim.

4 His Majesty's Letter to the Lord Bishop of London, London 1689Google Scholar.

5 James, Hugh, A Sermon Preach'd at the Assizes Held at Norwich, London 1711, 18Google Scholar.

6 Stanhope, George, The Duty of Rebuking, London 1703, 13Google Scholar.

7 Duffy, in ‘Primitive Christianity’, sees a much closer connection between the various religious voluntary associations than I do (see pp. 293–4). Despite contemporaries' occasional confusion of the Religious Societies and the Societies for Reformation of Manners, they were separate organisations. The two groups did have common members and shared a common inspiration in Anthony Horneck, but their avowed purposes were very different from the outset, and acceptance of dissenters cut the SRM off from more conservative Religious Society members. Those who supported the SRM saw little harm i n the confusion, since most people sympathised with the Religious Societies. The enemies of the reforming societies, however, took pains to point out differences. See Isaacs,' Moral crime’, 20–2.

8 The Thirty Nine Articles, and the Constitutions and Canons of the Church of England, London 1739, lays out the method of choosing churchwardens, their presentment duties and the duties of parsons and vicars in this regard. See especially canons 90, 113 and 115. The SRM, however, relied on the 11 statutes against profanation of the Lord's Day, 2 against swearing and cursing, 5 against drunkenness, 2 against blasphemy, 4 against gaming, and 7 against lewd and disorderly behaviour that parliament had passed since the Reformation. See Isaacs, ‘Moral crime’, appendix 1, 364–5.

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21 The Societies for Reformation of Manners successfully attempted to keep their membership secret. The only membership list that survives is from the Bristol Society (MS minutes are found in Bristol City Centra l Library) which migh t or might not have been a typical reformation society. Still, various SPC K correspondent s reported on the founding and business of reforming societies throughout England, and many note the role of the local clergy. See SPCK Abstract Letters 63, 70, 77, 85, 87, 96, no, n8, 122, 123, 158, 159, 192, 198, 204, 226, 228, 235, 267, 301, 342, 344, 353, 1324, 2015, 3449, 5375, 8586, 9349, 14606.

22 An Account of Societies for Refprmation of Manners, London 1699, 121.

23 Ibid., preface, unpaginated.

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35 Henry Sacheverell, The Character of a Low-Churchman, 3rd edn, London 1702, 9.

36 B----t B---sh-t, London 1711, 16. See also Holmes, G., The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, London 1973Google Scholar. Bisset was an obscure minister who frequently got into trouble for his low-church views and his controversial pamphlets. He preached before the SRM in 1704.

37 Thomas Tenison to John Sharp, 7 April 1699, quoted in Hart, Sharp, 256.

38 Matthew Hole, The True Reformation of Manners, Oxford 1699, 26.

39 Thomas Sharp, The Life of John Sharp, London 1825, i. 170–88 (quotation from 183); Hart, Sharp, 179–85.

40 SPCK Original Letter 87, 18 April 1700; Hart, Sharp, 183.

41 Isaacs, ‘Moral crime’, appendix 1; Journal of the House of Lords, xvi. 24–6 February 1698; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 933, fo. 36, January 1702.

42 The Observator, 95, 13–17 March 1704, 2.

43 Parliamentary History, London 1806–30, 895. For more on the bill, see Sykes, N., William Wake Archbishop of Canterbury, Cambridge 1957, ii. 135–9Google Scholar; Parliamentary History, 892–5; Journal, xxi. 29 April 1721Google Scholar, 23 May 1721; Gibson, Edmund, Remarks on a Bill … for … Suppressing Blasphemy, London 1721Google Scholar.

44 The Forty-fourth Account of the Progress made by the Societies for Reformation of Manners, London 1738, claimed that up to and including that year the societies had prosecuted 101, 683 people for various nuisance crimes.

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53 Gibson, Edmund, Remarks on a Bill Now Depending in Parliament, London 1733, 2–3Google Scholar and passim.

54 For a full account of Gibson's relations with Walpole during these years see Sykes, Gibson, 148–59.

55 An Apology for Dr Codex, London 1734, 14.

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58 Andrews, Answer, 38.

59 Ibid., 83.

60 Dr Codex's Fifth Pastoral, London 1734Google Scholar; Savage, Richard, The Progress of a Divine, London 1735Google Scholar; Authentick Memoirs of the Life and Conduct of the Reverend Dr Codex, 1735; Cholmondeley, Noah, Dr Codex No Christian, London 1737Google Scholar; Jura Ecdesiastica, London 1749Google Scholar.

61 'Address to the Clergy' Occasional Paper, (14).