Customs in Conflict: Some Causes of Anti-Clericalism in Rural Norfolk, 1815–1914

Abstract

This article examines aspects of the relationship between the Norfolk poor and the Norfolk clergy between 1815 and 1914. It considers the potential impact clergymen could have upon a number of areas of secular life, especially with regard to the extirpation of popular culture and custom, the social and moral management inherent in charity and Poor Law administration, and the development of ‘power networks’ in the countryside that confronted the challenge posed by religious Nonconformity and political radicalism. The article is principally concerned with the importance of the Church of England as an instrument of secular authority in nineteenth-century rural life. Rival social structures and conflicting economic interests are subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis, while keys to cultural tension are sought in such iconic areas as the pageantry of parish entertainments; the re-casting of law to act against custom; the rise of the clergyman as antiquarian historian and amateur archaeologist; the symbolism and architecture of the restored church. In so doing an attempt is made to address questions that are at once broadly political and narrowly human in their scope. What did the Oxbridge scholar – perhaps having spent the preceding three years conversing in Greek and Latin with his peers – find to ‘say’ to the agricultural labourers now in his pastoral care? And why, when the clergyman (often justifiably) thought of himself as working unstintingly in his parishioners' interests, was he so often heartily despised by them?