No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Households were the basic units of society in England until well into the nineteenth century, providing the focus of much economic activity, as well as education and, as this essay will argue, religious and devotional life. Recent research has revealed the centrality of religious life in the home in early modern England, but the extensive research about eighteenth-century households over the past fifteen years has seldom made reference to the place and practice of religion in the domestic context. This essay, focusing on the corporate religious life of Anglican households rather than on the piety and devotions of individuals, suggests that religion remained at the heart of the home and family lives of Anglican laypeople throughout the period. It was not rediscovered by Evangelicals, nor was it a distinguishing feature of evangelical households, but was a continuing element throughout the period.
1 See Green, Ian, ‘Varieties of Domestic Devotion in Early Modern English Protestantism’, in Martin, and Ryrie, Alec, eds, Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain (Farnham, 2012), 9–32 Google Scholar; and, for the Restoration period, Spurr, John, ‘The Lay Church of England’, in Tapsell, Grant, ed., The Later Stuart Church 1660-1714 (Manchester, 2012), 101–24.Google Scholar
2 See, for example, Meldrum, Tim, Domestic Service and Gender 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, 2000)Google Scholar; Tadmor, Naomi, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship and Patronage (Cambridge, 2001);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Horn, Pamela, Flunkeys and Scullions: Life Below Stairs in Georgian England (Stroud, 2004)Google Scholar; Steedman, Carolyn, Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, Labours Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar; Vickery, Amanda, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009)Google Scholar; Richardson, R. C., Household Servants in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2010)Google Scholar; Waddell, Brodie, God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life 1660-1720 (Woodbridge, 2012)Google Scholar, who does argue for the centrality of Christian teaching in the ordering of households and economic and social life generally.
3 For a discussion of the composition of households, see Tadmor, , Family and Friends, 31–43.Google Scholar
4 Vickery, , Behind Closed Doors, 240.Google Scholar
5 Wilson, Thomas, Parochialia: or Instructions to the Clergy in their Discharge of their Parochial Duty, repr. in The Clergyman’s Instructor: or a Collection of Tracts on the Ministerial Duty, 5th edn (Oxford, 1843), 373–443, at 402.Google Scholar
6 The author was almost certainly Allestree, Richard (d. 1681), Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Provost of Eton.Google Scholar
7 Mortlock, D. P., Aristocratic Splendour: Money and the World of Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester (Stroud, 2007), 210.Google Scholar
8 [Allestree, Richard], The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1842), 95.Google Scholar
9 Anon, ., An Earnest Exhortation to House-Keepers To set up the Worship of God in their Families with Daily Prayers for Morning and Evening, 4th edn (London, 1715)Google Scholar, 2. It was in its 22nd edition in 1818.
10 Anon, ., A Regular Method of Governing a Family, or bringing up Children and Servants in the Service of God, 2nd edn (London, 1792 Google Scholar; first publ. 1729), 29-30.
11 Anon, ., A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters, or other Friends, 2nd edn (London, 1724)Google Scholar, no pagination. It was in its 19th edition in 1821.
12 Broughton, Thomas, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants, more especially those of the Nobility and Gentry, 7th edn (London, 1807 Google Scholar; first publ. 1746), iv. Broughton was secretary of the SPCK from 1743.
13 Wake, William, The Principles of the Christian Religion Explained in a Brief Commentary upon the Church Catechism, 4th edn (London, 1720 Google Scholar; first publ. 1699), 120-91. It was still in print in 1841.
14 Gibson, Edmund, Family Devotion, or an Exhortation to Morning and Evening Prayer in Families with two Forms of Prayer suited to those two Seasons, and also fitted for the Use of one Person in Private …, 24th edn (London, 1758 Google Scholar; first publ. 1699). It was still in print in 1862.
15 Anon, ., Earnest Exhortation, 5.Google Scholar
16 Broughton, , Serious Advice and Warning, 11.Google Scholar
17 See Feather, John, The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1985), 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Clarke, W. K. Lowther, The History of the SPCK (London, 1959), 81–4 Google Scholar. For much of the eighteenth century the SPCK almost monopolized the publication of popular religious literature.
19 The Diary of Ralph Thoresby FRS, 1677-1724, ed. Hunter, Joseph, 2 vols (London, 1830), 2: 196.Google Scholar
20 Arthuret and Longtown, 1742-1747: The Diaries of George Williamson, Part 1, ed. Ted Relph (Crosby Ravensworth, 1997), 24, 62.
21 See Clement, Mary, ‘A Calendar of Welsh Letters to the SPCK, 1745-1783’, National Library of Wales Journal 10 (1957), 1–7.Google Scholar
22 First published in 1700 and in its 8th edition in 1765: see Barry, Jonathan, ‘Charles Wesley’s Family and the Musical Life of Bristol’, in Temperley, Nicholas and Banfield, Stephen, eds, Music and the Wesleys (Urbana, IL, 2010), 141–53, at 148.Google Scholar
23 See Leaver, Robin A., ‘ Psalms and Hymns and Hymns and Sacred Poems: Two Strands in Wesley’s Hymn Collections’, in Temperley, and Banfield, , eds, Music and the Wesleys, 41–51 Google Scholar, esp. 43, 49-51; Temperley, Nicholas, Studies in English Church Music 1530-10.00 (Farnham, 2009), 137.Google Scholar
24 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George Hill Birkbeck, rev. L. F. Powel, 6 vols (Oxford, 1934), 4: 296.
25 See, for example, The London Diaries of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle 1705-1718, ed. Jones, Clyve and Holmes, Geoffrey (Oxford, 1985), 68.Google Scholar
26 Wroe, Richard, A Sermon at the Funeral of the Earl of Warrington ([London], 1694), 20–1 Google Scholar, quoted in Trumbach, Randolph, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York and London, 1978), 145.Google Scholar
27 Diary of Ralph Thoesby, ed. Hunter, 1: 344, 355; 2: 56, 86.
28 The Diary of a West Country Physician 1684-1726, ed. Edmund Hobhouse (Rochester, 1934), 65, 104.
29 Jones, M. G., ‘Lady Elizabeth Hastings 1682-1739’, CQR 128 (1939), 80–1 Google Scholar. The extent to which people prepared for receiving communion is illustrated by The New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lord’s Supper, in its 37th edition in 1746, which provided for daily morning and evening meditations during the week before receiving communion, and in the week following. Robert Nelson did not insist on lengthy preparation: perhaps as a layman he realized that such requirements inhibited people from receiving communion.
30 The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754-1765, ed. David Vaisey (Oxford, 1984), 75, 85, 110, 125.
31 The Travels through England of Dr Richard Pococke, ed. Cartwright, James Joel, 2 vols, Camden Society n.s. 42 (London, 1888), 1: 66.Google Scholar
32 Richardson, Samuel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, ed. Harris, Jocelyn, 3 parts (London, 1972 Google Scholar; first publ. 1753-4), 3: 279-80.
33 Vickery, , Behind Closed Doors, 152 Google Scholar; Campbell Orr, Clarissa, ‘The Late Hanoverian Court and the Christian Enlightenment’, in Schaich, Michael, ed., Monarchy and Religion (Oxford, 2007), 317–42.Google Scholar
34 Chatsworth MSSV 50, quoted in Trumbach, Rise of the Egalitarian Family, 144.
35 The Torrington Diaries, containing the Tours through England and Wales of the Hon. John Byng (later 5th Viscount Torrington, between the years 1781 and 17014, ed. C. Bruyn Andrews, 5 vols (London, 1970), 1: 46, 180; 2: 11, 16, 31, 202; 3: 222.
36 Austen, Jane, Mansfield Park, ch. 6.Google Scholar
37 For a fuller discussion of domestic chaplains, see Gibson, William, A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain 1530-1840 (London, 1997).Google Scholar
38 See Collier, Jeremy, ‘The Office of a Chaplain Enquir’d into’, in idem, Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, 7th edn (London, 1732), 185–203, esp. 193.Google Scholar
39 Markham, Sarah, John Loveday of Caversham 1711-1789: The Life and Tours of an Eighteenth-Century Onlooker (Wilton, 1984), 294 Google Scholar; Garry, Mary-Anne, Wealthy Masters – ‘provident and kind’: The Household at Holkham 1697-1842 (Dereham, 2012), 117.Google Scholar
40 See, for example, Ketton-Cremer, R. W., Country Neighbourhood (London, 1951).Google Scholar
41 Jones, , Lady Elizabeth Hastings, 80.Google Scholar
42 Gibson, Donald, A Parson in the Vale of White Horse: George Woodward’s Letters from East Hendred 1753-1761 (Gloucester, 1982), 90–1.Google Scholar
43 Gash, Norman, Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool (London, 1984), 201.Google Scholar
44 [Allestree, ], italic>Whole Duty of Man, 40.Whole+Duty+of+Man,+40.>Google Scholar
45 Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 89, 106.
46 Quoted in Legg, J. Wickham, English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement (London, 1914), 217.Google Scholar
47 Richardson, , Household Servants, 139 Google Scholar, quoting Grey, Oliver, An Apology for Servants (London, 1760), 28.Google Scholar
48 For a fuller discussion see Steedman, Labours Lost, 29, 31.
49 Anon, ., The Husbandman’s Manual Directing Him how to improve the several Actions of his Calling and the most usual Occurrences of his life to the Glory of God, and the Benefit of his Soul, by a Minister in the Country for the use of his Parishioners (London, 1694).Google Scholar
50 Sputford, Margaret, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1981), 211–12 Google Scholar, noted the gloominess of late seventeenth-century godly chapbooks.
51 Gibson, , Family Devotions, 4, 6, 18–19.Google Scholar
52 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 2: 96.
53 Smyth, Charles, Simeon and Church Order (London, 1940), 30–1.Google Scholar
54 The Law Book of the Crowley Iron Works, ed. M. W. Flynn, Surtees Society 167 (Durham, 1952), 162.