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Counting Religion in England and Wales: The Long Eighteenth Century, c. 1680–c. 1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2012

CLIVE D. FIELD
CLIVE D. FIELD
Affiliation:
35 Elvetham Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2LZ; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The statistical analysis of religion in England and Wales usually commences with the mid-nineteenth century. This article synthesises relevant primary and secondary sources to produce initial quantitative estimates of the religious composition of the population in 1680, 1720, 1760, 1800 and 1840. The Church of England is shown to have lost almost one-fifth of its affiliation market share during this period, with an ever increasing number of nominal Anglicans also ceasing to practise. Nonconformity more than quadrupled, mainly from 1760 and especially after 1800. Roman Catholicism kept pace with demographic growth, but, even reinforced by Irish immigration, remained a limited force in 1840. Judaism and overt irreligion were both negligible.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 693 - 720
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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152 The population base has been calculated as follows. For England in 1680, 1720 and 1760 the mean has been taken of the recent estimates made by back-projection and generalised inverse projection by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Wrigley, Anthony and Schofield, Roger, The population history of England, London 1981Google Scholar, and Wrigley, Anthony, Davies, R. S., Oeppen, Jim and Schofield, Roger, English population history from family reconstitution, Cambridge 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Wales in these years the older estimates reproduced in Williams, John, Digest of Welsh historical statistics, Cardiff 1985Google Scholar, have been used. Estimates for 1800 and 1840 are census-derived: Mitchell, B. R., British historical statistics, Cambridge 1988Google Scholar.

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158 HLRO, Main Papers, 1 Mar. 1706, and references at http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/2531.

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164 HLRO, Main Papers, 5 Mar. 1781.

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167 Lesourd, ‘Catholiques’, Information Historique, 37; unpubl. DLitt diss. ii. 327; and Sociologie, 46, 97–102, 159.

168 Currie, Gilbert and Horsley, Churches and churchgoers, 23, 25; cf. Ward, Bernard, The eve of Catholic emancipation, London 1911–12, i. 18, 186Google Scholar; Carson, ‘Multiplication’, 21–3.

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170 Hulbert, Religions, 462; Brady, Annals, 192, 227. 276, 312; Currie, Gilbert and Horsley, Churches and churchgoers, 25.

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172 HCP, 1852–3, lxxxix, p. clxxxii; Watts, Dissenters, ii. 28.

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174 Although some Muslims came as slaves and servants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as seamen and traders in the early nineteenth century, there was limited permanent Muslim settlement during this period: Matar, Nabil, ‘Muslims in seventeenth-century England’, Journal of Islamic Studies viii (1997), 63–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Islam in Britain, 1559–1685, Cambridge 1998Google Scholar; ‘Islam in Britain, 1689–1750’, Journal of British Studies xlvii (2008), 284–300Google Scholar; and ‘Britons and Muslims in the early modern period’, Patterns of Prejudice xliii (2009), 213–31Google Scholar, repr. in Malik, Maleiha (ed.), Anti-Muslim prejudice, London 2010, 7–25Google Scholar; Ansari, Humayun, The infidel within, London 2004, 26–40Google Scholar; Gilliat-Ray, Sophie, Muslims in Britain, Cambridge 2010, 13–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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178 Wendeborn, View of England, ii. 468; Endelman, Jews of Georgian England, 172.

179 Colquhoun, Patrick, A treatise on the police of the metropolis, 5th edn, London 1797, 120Google Scholar; Lipman, Social history, 6; Endelman, Jews of Georgian England, 172; Jonathan Campbell, ‘The Jewish community in Britain’, in Gilley and Sheils, History, 427–48 at p. 432; Katz, Jews in the history of England, 317.

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181 Hannah Neustatter, ‘Demographic and other statistical aspects of Anglo–Jewry’, in Maurice Freedman (ed.), A minority in Britain, London 1955, 53–133, 243–62 at p. 261.

182 HCP, 1852–3, lxxxix, p. clxxxii; Lipman, Vivian, ‘A survey of Anglo–Jewry in 1851’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England xvii (1951–2), 171–88Google Scholar.

183 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the decline of magic, Harmondsworth 1973, 198–206Google Scholar; Gerald Aylmer, ‘Unbelief in seventeenth-century England’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and revolutionaries, Oxford 1978, 1–21; Hunter, Michael, ‘The problem of “atheism” in early modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser. xxxv (1985), 135–57Google Scholar; Berman, David, A history of atheism in Britain, London 1988Google Scholar; Priestman, Martin, Romantic atheism, Cambridge 1999Google Scholar.

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186 Field, Clive, ‘Churchgoing in the cradle of English Christianity’, Archaeologia Cantiana cxxviii (2008), 335–63Google Scholar at p. 346.

187 For example, in the diocese of Chester in 1804 and 1811: McLeod, Hugh, Religion and the working class in nineteenth-century Britain, London 1984, 20–1Google Scholar; Field, ‘A shilling’, 240.

188 Groth Lyon, Eileen, Politicians in the pulpit, Aldershot 1999Google Scholar.

189 Royle, Edward, Radical politics, 1790–1900, London 1971Google Scholar; Victorian infidels, Manchester 1974; The infidel tradition, London 1976; and ‘Secularists and rationalists, 1800–1940’, in Gilley and Sheils, History, 406–22.

190 For example, JSSL ii (1839–40), 374; iii (1840–1), 19; vi (1843), 21; xi (1848), 215.

191 Gentleman's Magazine xvii (1747), 326.

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193 Young, Arthur, General view of the agriculture of … Suffolk, 3rd edn,London 1804, 331Google Scholar.

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197 Gilbert, Religion, 11–12, 28; Currie, Gilbert and Horsley, Churches and churchgoers, 22–3, 25–6, 85. Also to be found here, and of limited worth, are back-projections to 1800 of national totals for Anglican communicants.

198 Gill, Robin, The myth of the empty church, London 1993, 17, 169, 296–7Google Scholar, and The ‘empty’ church revisited, Aldershot 2003, 13, 124.

199 Obelkevich, Religion, 137–43; Barrie-Curien, Clergé, 312–19, 334–8, 431; Smith, Religion, 51–3, 244; Knight, Nineteenth-century Church, 80–2; Jacob, Lay people, 57–61; Spaeth, Church in an age of danger, 176–88; Gregory, Restoration, 262–70; Snape, Church of England, 16–19; Field, ‘A shilling’, 233–4; Marshall, Church life, 98–104.

200 CM n.s. x (1834), supplement; Monthly Repository n.s. viii (1834), 69.

201 Field, Clive, ‘A godly people?’, Southern History xiv (1992), 46–73 at pp. 50–3Google Scholar; ‘Counting the flock’, Norfolk Archaeology xliii (1998–2001), 317–26; ‘A shilling’, 221–45; and ‘Churchgoing’, 339–49.

202 HCP, 1818, xviii, p. 215.

203 Soloway, Richard, Prelates and people, London 1969, 306–15Google Scholar; Field, ‘Godly people’, 53–4; Gill, ‘Empty’ church, 13, 81, 220–4, 248–9.

204 HCP, 1852–3, lxxxix, p. clxxxii; Watts, Dissenters, ii. 28.

205 Dallas, Alexander, Pastoral superintendence, London 1841, 141Google Scholar. In a slum district of Liverpool, however, more than two-thirds of nominal Anglicans neglected worship: Hume, Missions, 29.

206 Mann, Horace, ‘On the statistical position of religious bodies’, JSSL xviii (1855), 141–59Google Scholar at pp. 152–3.

207 For example, Religion in Hertfordshire, 1847 to 1851, ed. Judith Burg (Hertfordshire Record Publications xi, 1995), p. xxix; Yorkshire returns of the 1851 census of religious worship, ed. John Wolffe (Borthwick Texts and Calendars xxv, 2000), p. v; Church and chapel in … Shropshire, p. xxiii.

208 Gilbert, Memoir, 351; Spinks, Allen and Parkes, Religion in Britain, 15–16.

209 This is suggested by Clark, Jonathan, English society, 1688–1832, Cambridge 1985Google Scholar, and English society, 1660–1832, Cambridge 2000Google Scholar.

210 Brown, Callum, The death of Christian Britain, 2nd edn, London 2009Google Scholar.