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Elite and Popular Religion in the Religious Census of 30 March 1851

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

John Wolffe
John Wolffe*
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Extract

In December 1853 Horace Mann, summing up his report on the census of religious worship conducted on 30 March 1851, offered some of the more famously sweeping generalizations in English religious and statistical history:

Even in the least unfavorable aspect of the figures just presented, and assuming (as no doubt is right) that the 5,288,294 absent every Sunday are not always the same individuals, it must be apparent that a sadly formidable portion of the English people are habitual neglecters of the public ordinances of religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 360 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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References

1 Census of Great Britain, 1851: Religious Worship, England and Wales – Report and Tables, House of Commons Sessional Papers 1852–3, 89 (London, 1853), clviii.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1989), 111.Google Scholar

5 For an overview of the literature on the census, see Field, Clive D., ‘The 1851 Religious Census of Great Britain: a Bibliographical Guide for Local and Regional Historians’, The Local Historian 27 (1997), 194–217.Google Scholar

6 K. S. Inglis’s influential article,’Patterns of Religious Worship in 1851’, JEH 11 (1960), 74–86, was founded on Mann’s figures and assumptions. Pickering, W. S. F., ‘The 1851 Religious Census – a Useless Experiment?’, British Journal of Sociology 18 (1967), 382–407 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Thompson, D. M., ‘The 1851 Census: Problems and Possibilities’, Victorian Studies 11 (1967), 87–97 Google Scholar, developed more critical approaches. However the most recent substantial work on the Census, Snell, K. D. M. and Ell, Paul, Rival Jerusalems: the Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, continues to treat statistics of attendance as an index of religiosity, although computerization facilitates a sophistication of analysis impossible for Mann.

7 Yorkshire Returns of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, ed. John Wolffe, 4 vols, Borthwick Texts and Calendars 25, 31, 32 and forthcoming (York, 2000, 2005 and forthcoming) [hereafter: YR].

8 For a list, see YR, 1.ii, n. 4.

9 YR, 3.1781, 4.2684 (these citations give the volume number and the number of the individual return); Buckinghamshire Returns of the Census of Religious Worship 1851, ed. Edward Legg, Buckinghamshire Record Society 27 (Oxford, 1991) 109, 118; Wickes, Michael J. L., Devon in the Religious Census of 1851 (n.p., 1990), 30, 125 Google Scholar; Ede, Janet and Virgoe, Norma, eds, Religious Worship in Norfolk, Norfolk Record Society 52 (Norwich, 1998), 43, 8 Google Scholar3; The Religious Census of Sussex 1851, ed. John A. Vickers, Sussex Record Society 75 (Lewes, 1989), passim.

10 For example Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 45.

11 YR, 2.1052, 4.2726; Ede and Virgoe, eds, Norfolk, 220.

12 YR, 2.1393, 2.1404, 3.1651, 3.2655. A few southern returns, however, reported the converse: see The Religious Census of Hampshire 1851, ed. John A. Vickers, Hampshire Record Series 12 (Winchester, 1993), 59, 201.

13 Ede and Virgoe, Norfolk, 2.2.0.

14 YK, 2.933, 3.1790.

15 YR, 2.1335.

16 YR, 2.1104. Summer visitors to the resort doubled this figure.

17 YR, 2.1458.

18 YR, 2.1597.

19 University of Leeds Library [hereafter: ULL], MS Holden Dep2/2, letter dated 7 Feb.1845.

20 YR, 3.1918.

21 YR, 3.2368.

22 University of York, Borthwick Institute [hereafter: BI], Primary Visitation Returns to Archbishop Thomson, V.1865/Ret.1, 9. Among surviving visitation returns for the diocese of York these are the closest in date to the census.

23 YR, 2.1029.

24 West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds [hereafter: WYL], CB/1, Primary Visitation Returns to Bishop Bickersteth.

25 YR, 4.3294.

26 YR, 2.1516; ULL, MS Holden Dep 2/2, fol. 37V.

27 ULL, MS Holden Dep. 2/2, letter from J. W. Grane to Mr Attwood, 2 April 1851.

28 YR, 1.317.

29 YR, 2.782.

30 BI, V1865/Ret.1, 22.

31 YR, 2.2478, 2.2479.

32 Lincolnshire Returns of the Census of Religious Worship 1851, ed. R. W. Ambler, Lincoln Record Society 72 (Fakenham, 1979), 934; Wickes, Devon, 288, 1252, 1307.

33 BI, V1865/Ret.1, 24.

34 Ambler, Lincolnshire, 584.

35 BI, PR/SEL/270.

36 David Hey, Yorkshire from AD 1000 (Harlow, 1986), 215; Patricia Scott, The History of Selby and District Part Two (Leeds, 1987), 21–32.

37 This figure is the ‘corrected’ one (that is making allowance for defective returns) as given by B. I. Coleman, The Church of England in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: a Social Geography, Historical Association Pamphlets, General Series 98 (London, 1980), 40.

38 Cf.Gillingham, John, Worship North and East of Leeds (Leeds, 1998), 200–6.Google Scholar

39 Boase, F., Modern English Biography, 6 vols (Truro, 1892–1921), 5: 580–1 Google Scholar; Harper, F. W., The Parson and the Publican (London, 1877)Google Scholar; The Official Report of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Church Congress, Held at Sheffield, 1878 (Sheffield, 1879), 199–200.

40 YR, 3.2583.

41 BI, V1865/Ret.2, 461.

42 BI, V1868/Ret.2, 470.

43 Calculated from YR, 3.2583-9.

44 BI, PR/SEL/270, 8.

45 Ibid., 11.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., 6.

48 Ibid, 10. This family was not counted in the sample used for table 2, because of the ambiguous and incomplete nature of the information recorded.