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Gender and the Clerical Profession in England, 1660–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jeremy Gregory
Jeremy Gregory*
Affiliation:
University of Northumbria
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Extract

The relationship between the two co-ordinates of this essay, ‘gender’ and ‘the clerical profession’, might be interpreted in a number of ways. It could, for instance, be taken to mean the manner in which clergy articulated and encouraged differences in gender roles. For it is certainly true that the most commonly quoted conduct books of the period – and especially those which prescribed roles for women – were written by the clergy. Clerics like James Fordyce, a Presbyterian minister in London, in his popular Sermons to Young Women (1765) advised his presumed audience:

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 34: Gender and Christian Religion , 1998 , pp. 235 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1998

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References

1 Obvious examples include: Wilkes, Wetenhall, A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady (Dublin, 1740 Google Scholar); Fordyce, James, Sermons to Young Women (London, 1765 Google Scholar); idem, , The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex and the Advantages to be Derived by Young Men from the Society of Virtuous Women (London, 1776 Google Scholar); Bennett, John, Letters to a Young Lady on a Variety of Useful and Interesting Subjects, 2 vols (London, 1795 Google Scholar); Gisborne, Thomas, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (London, 1797 Google Scholar); and Home, George, The Female Character as it Ought to Appear when Formed (London, 1801 Google Scholar). Another frequently cited source, Gregory’s, John A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (London, 1774 Google Scholar), was written by the professor of medicine at Edinburgh, but his son William was a cleric Interestingly, ‘conduct literature’ relating specifically to men was not so common, and when it did occur tended to be targeted at specific groups rather than at ‘men’ as a whole: for example, Gisborne, T., An Enquiry into the Duties of Men in the Higher and Middle Classes of Society, 2 vols (London, 1794 Google Scholar).

2 Quoted in Johnson, D. A., ed., Women in English Religion, 1700–1925 (New York and Toronto, 1983), p. 38 Google Scholar.

3 On the problems of interpreting conduct literature, see Vickery, A., ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women’s history’, Hist], 36 (1993). esp. pp. 413–14 Google Scholar.

4 Perry, G. and Rossington, M., eds, Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (Manchester, 1994 Google Scholar) makes no reference to religion, the Church, or Christianity, even in the index; similarly, Carter, P., ‘Mollies, fops and men of feeling: aspects of male effeminacy and masculinity in Britain, 1700–1780’ (University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1995 Google Scholar) discusses masculinity within a totally secular context But for some starting points, see Orr, C. Campbell, ed., Wolbtonecrafis Daughters. Womanhood in England and France, 1780–1920 (Manchester, 1995 Google Scholar); Gill, S., Women and the Church of England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (London, 1994 Google Scholar); and Malmgreen, G., ed., Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760–1930 (London, 1986 Google Scholar).

5 Shevelow, K., Women and Print Culture: the Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical (London, 1989 Google Scholar); Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977 Google Scholar).

6 The most recent collection of essays on religion in the eighteenth century, J. Walsh, C. Haydon, and Taylor, S., eds, The Church of England, 1689–1833. From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993 Google Scholar), includes no discussion of gender roles. However, Jane Shaw’s forthcoming book promises some discussion of the issue: for the present see her The Miraculous Body and other Wonders, Rational. Religion in Enlightenment England’ (University of California PkD. thesis, 1994), ch. 1 Google Scholar.

7 Pugh, S. S., Christian Manliness: a Book of Examples and Principles for Young Men (London, 1867 Google Scholar); Newsome, D., Godliness and Good Learning (London, 1961 Google Scholar); Vance, N., Sinews of the Spirit: the Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge, 1985 Google Scholar); Gay, P., ‘The Manliness of Christ’, in Davis, R. W. and Helmstader, R. J., eds, Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society: Essays in Honour of R. K. Webb (London, 1992), pp. 86–102 Google Scholar. See also, Rotundo, E. A., ‘Learning about manhood: gender ideals and the middle-class family in nineteenth century America’, in Mangan, J. A. and Walvin, J., eds, Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (New York and Manchester, 1987), pp. 35–51 Google Scholar, and Springhall, J., ‘Building character in the British boy: the attempt to extend Christian manliness to working-class adolescents, 1880–1914’, ibid., pp. 52–74 Google Scholar. Studies of religion and femininity after 1850 include S. O’Brien, ‘Lay-sisters and good mothers: working-class women in English convents, 1840–1910’, SCH, 27 (1990), pp. 453–66; and idem, Terra incognita: the nun in nineteenth-century England’, P&P, 121 (Nov. 1988), pp. 110–40.

8 See J. Tosh, ‘Domesticity and manliness in the Victorian middle class’, in M. Roper and Tosh, J., eds, Manful Assertions. Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991), pp. 43–73 Google Scholar; Roper, M., Masculinity and the British Organization Man since 1045 (Manchester, 1994 Google Scholar).

9 For a clerical dining club, see Ditchfield, G. M. and Keith-Lucas, B., eds, A Kentish Parson. Selections from the Private Papers of the Revd Joseph Price of Brabourne, 1767–86 (Stroud, 1990), p. 10 Google Scholar.

10 We may divide the clergy into generals, field officers, and subalterns’: Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 24 March 1711, quoted in N. Sykes, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1934), p. 147. For the Church as a public school, see Frances Knight, ‘English anti-clericalism, 1800–18 50’, unpublished lecture, Anglo- American Conference, London, June 1996.

11 L. Davidoff and Hall, C., Family Fortunes. Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (London, 1987 Google Scholar); Vickery, , ‘Golden age’, pp. 393–401 Google Scholar.

12 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 21–7, 78–149.

13 Vickery, ‘Golden age’, pp. 399–400.

14 Malmgreen, Women; Gill, Women.

15 An example of what has been called ‘Thirsk’s law’: the opening up of opportunities for women and then their repression: Hempton, D., The Religion of the People. Methodism and Popular Religion, c.1750-1900 (London and New York, 1996), p. 181 Google Scholar.

16 Boswell, James, Life of Johnson, ed. Chapman, R. W. (Oxford, 1980), p. 327 Google Scholar.

17 ‘Bernardus Utopiensis’ [J. Rutty], A Second Dissertation on the Liberty of Preaching granted to women by the … Quakers (Dublin, 1739), p. 13, quoted in Corfield, P.J., Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700–1850 (London and New York, 1995), p. 108 Google Scholar.

18 Corfield, Professions, p. 33.

19 Ibid., p. 36.

20 Holmes, G., Augustan England. Professions, State and Society, 1650–1730 (London, 1982), pp. 178, 182, 201 Google Scholar.

21 Sophia, , A Person of Quality, Woman not Inferior to Man; or a Short and Modest Vindication of the Fair-Sex to Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity and Esteem with the Men (London, 1739), p. 36 Google Scholar. Interestingly the High-Church William Jones of Nayland observed that during a sermon he had recently delivered on the liturgy: ‘Among my hearers, to my great happiness, there was a lady of the first liturgical piety in this kingdom, though I say it, that is my own wife. Tis pity but her gown had been of the Preaching Sort; she would have done wonders; but the use of her voice is reserved for the Church triumphant’: Oxford, Magdalen College Archives, MS 471, fo. 34, Jones to George Home, 15 Nov. 1791.

22 Sophia, Woman not Inferior to Man, p. 44. This pamphlet produced a male rejoinder Man Superior to Woman; or a Vindication of Man’s Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman. Containing a Plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of Sophia (London, 1739). He made particular fun of her claims for a female role in religious matters, using the image of the fanatical female Quaker preacher to satirize her position: pp. 52–3. Sophia, retaliated with Woman’s Superior Excellence over Man, or a Reply to the Author of a late Treatise (London, 1740 Google Scholar).

23 Malmgreen, , Women, p. 2 Google Scholar; Crawford, P., Women and Religion in England, 1500–1720 (London and New York, 1993), p. 207 Google Scholar. See also Sheils, R. D., ‘The feminisarion of American Congregationalism, 1730–1835’, American Quarterly, 33 (1983), esp. pp. 48–9 Google Scholar.

24 Mcleod, H., Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789–1970 (Oxford, 1981 Google Scholar), ch. 2.

25 Obelkevich, J., Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–75 (Oxford, 1976), p. 313 Google Scholar.

26 Gibson, R., A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), p. 182 Google Scholar. See also Douglas, A., The Feminisation of American Culture (New York, 1977 Google Scholar); Welter, B., ‘The feminisation of American Religion, 1800–1860’, in Hartman, M. and Banner, L., eds, Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York, 1973), pp. 137–57 Google Scholar.

27 Brent, R., Liberal Anglican Politics. Whiggery, Religion and Reform, 1830–1841 (Oxford, 1987 Google Scholar); Butler, P. A., Gladstone: Church, State and Tractarianism. A Study of his Religious Ideas and Attitudes, 1809–1859 (Oxford, 1982 Google Scholar); Parry, J., Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge, 1986 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

28 Perry and Rossington, Femininity and Masculinity, p. 3.

29 Home, G., A Sermon Preached Before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1762), pp. 5–7 Google Scholar, likened the Church after the Fall to a widow.

30 Ibbetson, J., A Sermon Preached Before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1758), p. 9 Google Scholar, after praising the learning of the clergy, noted ‘the purity of their lives and conversations; if a reverential awe of God and a conscience of keeping all his commandments – if justice, mercy, contentment, sobriety, humility, patience, peacefulness and obedience to governors – be the principal ingredient of a good life’. Porteus, B., A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1776), p. 16 Google Scholar, described clergy as being ‘contented, humble, modest, patient and laborious’. King, A., A Sermon Preached Before the Sons of the Clergy (1751), p. 9 Google Scholar, praised their piety. I am preparing an article on the sermons preached before the sons of the clergy: The clergy, sex and marriage’ (forthcoming).

31 For some typical ‘female’ qualities, see Hill, B., ed., Eighteenth Century Women. An Anthology (London, 1984 Google Scholar), and Jones, V., ed., Women in the Eighteenth Century. Constructions of Femininity (London, 1990 Google Scholar).

32 [Allestree, R.], The Works of the Learned and Pious Author of the Whole Duty of Man (Oxford, 1726): The Ladies Calling’, p. 1 Google Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., pp. vi-viii.

35 Todd, J., ed., A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers, 1660–1800 (London, 1987). p. 239 Google Scholar.

36 Allestree, ‘Ladies Calling’, p. 25. The Revd John Bennett argued that women were more religious than men, because they were more lonely, quoted in Hill, Women, p. 22.

37 Astell, M., The Christian Religion; as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (London, 1705 Google Scholar). On Astell, see Perry, R., The Celebrated Mary Astell. An Early English Feminist (Chicago and London, 1986 Google Scholar). Also Hill, B., ‘A refuge from men: the idea of a protestant nunnery’, P&P, 117 (Nov. 1987), pp. 107–30 Google Scholar.

38 Willen, D., ‘Godly women in early modern England: puritanism and gender’, JEH, 43 (1992), pp. 561–80 Google Scholar; Greaves, R. L., The role of women in early English nonconformity’, ChH, 52 (1983), pp. 299–311 Google Scholar.

39 The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, E. S., 6 vols (Oxford, 1955), 4, p. 422 Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 423.

41 Ibid., p. 150.

42 Mores, E., The Pious Example; a Discourse occasion’d by the Death of Mrs Anne Mores (London, 1725), p. 25 Google Scholar.

43 It is interesting that in the twentieth century’s campaign for the ordination of women, it was often asserted that such ‘caring’ qualities and such ‘female virtues’ made women supremely suited for ordination. Cf. Field, Clive, ‘Adam and Eve: gender in the English Free Church constituency’, JEH, 44 (1993), pp. 663–79 Google Scholar, where at p. 678 he observes that women gave higher levels of commitment to religious membership than mea

44 Lavington, G., The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compar’d, 3 parts (London, 1749-51), pt 2, p. 98 Google Scholar. In pt 3, at p. 196, he maintained that Methodism appealed to ‘persons of a fickle and inconsistent humour’, traits also associated with women.

45 J. Albers, ‘“Papist traitors” and “Presbyterian rogues”; religious identities in eighteenth-century Lancashire’, in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, eds, Church of England, pp. 317–33. Neither does C. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England. A Political and Social History (Manchester, 1993) deal at length with the sexual nature of the sentiment.

46 Lake, P., ‘Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice’, in Cust, R. and Hughes, A., eds, Conflict in Early Stuart England. Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642 (London, 1989), pp. 72–106 Google Scholar; Roper, L., The Holy Household. Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), pp. 108–9 Google Scholar.

47 For the accounts of monastic debauchery (and their reliability) see Youings, J., The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London, 1971 Google Scholar). On the subject of sexuality in religious communities, see Donoghue, E., Passions Between Women. British Lesbian Culture, 1660–1801 (London, 1994 Google Scholar).

48 [Philoprotest], The Protestant Almanack for the year … (Cambridge, ‘printed for the information of Protestants’, 1669). The almanack was printed for various years until 1700. See also the late-seventeenth-century pamphlet, A Passionate Satyr, Upon a Devilish Great He-Whore That Lives Yonder at Rome (np, nd).

49 A Treatise of the Celibacy of the Clergy, wherein its Rise and Progress are Historically Considered (London, 1688), p. 113.

50 Ibid., p. 114.

51 Nockles, P., The Oxford Movement in Context. Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Other eighteenth-century High Churchmen such as Sacheverell, Henry in his A Sermon Preach’d Before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1713), pp. 2–3 Google Scholar, argued that the marriage of bishops and priests was in fact taken for granted in the Bible, and Francis Atterbury in his sermon to the same body in 1709 insisted on the importance of a married clergy.

52 Wesley, J., Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life (London, 1743 Google Scholar).

53 Newsome, D., The Parting of Friends (London, 1966), pp. 93 Google Scholar, 104–5, 113, examines the different views of Newman and Samuel Wilberforce on celibacy. See also Brendon, P., Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement (London, 1974), pp. 75–6 Google Scholar, 113; Faber, G., Oxford Apostles. A Character Study of the Oxford Movement (London, 1933), pp. 215–32 Google Scholar.

54 Kingsley, C., quoted in Religion in Victorian Britain, III. Sources, ed. Moore, J. R. (Manchester, 1988), pp. 84–7 Google Scholar.

55 Quoted ibid., p. 77.

56 This is also true of legislation which was first used against papists, and then employed against Protestant nonconformists. It should be noted, however, that after 1689 the suspicion of Protestant nonconformity softened, only to be re-asserted in times of crisis. For an example of the changing relationship between Anglicans and dissenters in one diocese, see W. J. Gregory, ‘Archbishop, cathedral and parish: the diocese of Canterbury, 1660–1805’ (University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1993), ch. 5.

57 Lavington, Enthusiasm, preface.

58 Greaves, ‘Women in early English nonconformity’.

59 Roper and Tosh, Manful Assertions, p. 13.

60 For a discussion of how this assumption has sometimes distorted the historiography, see the general comments in S. McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy. Women and Men in Lollard communities, 1420–1530 (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 1–15.

61 But see Clive Field’s figures, which suggest that at certain times there was a ‘masculinization’ of dissent: ‘Adam and Eve’, p. 667.

62 The Yale edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, cd. W. S. Lewis, 48 vols (New Haven, 1937–83), 20, p. 378, Mann to Walpole, 8 June 1753. It is worth remembering Lindal Roper’s suggestion that late medieval Catholicism nurtured a peculiarly ‘feminine’ mode of religious experience which was absent in Protestantism: Holy Household, p. 2. It is often suggested that women were attracted to the emotional aspect of dissent, as opposed to the ‘rational’ nature of Anglicanism. This explanation, with its suggestion of gender essentialism, seems to be rather unconvincing. As a theory, it owes much to Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. E. Fischoff (Boston, 1964), pp. 104–6.

63 Lavington, Enthusiasm, p. 196.

64 Lavington, G., The Bishop of Exeter’s Answer to Mr J. Wesley’s Late Letter to his Lordship (London, 1752), p. 9 Google Scholar. See also Aberlove, H., The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (Stanford, 1990 Google Scholar).

65 Walpole’s Correspondence, 22, p. 249, Mann to Walpole, 11 Aug. 1764.

66 This has been called ‘the shoddiest work of fiction [that Fielding] ever wrote’: Battestin, M. C. with Battestin, R. R., Henry Fielding. A Life (London, 1989), pp. 411–12 Google Scholar.

67 Similarly, , Christopher Anstey satirized a highly-sexed Methodist preacher in his poem The New Bath Guide (London, 1766 Google Scholar), which interestingly drew on Bishop Lavington’s criticism of the movement.

68 For a more detailed treatment of the relationship between religion and new cultural forms in the eighteenth century, see J. Gregory, ‘Anglicanism and the arts: religion, culture and politics in the eighteenth century’, in J. Black and J. Gregory, eds, Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800 (Manchester, 1991), pp. 82–109.

69 My reading of eighteenth-century seduction literature, where females were essentially passive, contrasts with Lindal Roper’s suggestion (Holy Household, p. 18) that in the sixteenth century women were seen as active and willing accomplices in their seduction to Catholicism. For a similar shift in the secular literature from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, where women were also increasingly seen as passive, see T. Hitchcock, ‘Redefining sex in eighteenth-century England’, HWJ, 41 (1996), pp. 73–90, and idem, ‘Demography and the culture of sex in the long eighteenth century’ (forthcoming). See also S. Staves, ‘British seduced maidens’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 14 (1980-1), pp. 109–34; R. Ballaster, Seductive Forms; Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684–1740 (Oxford, 1992); and R. Rousel, The Conversation of the Sexes: Seduction and Equality in Selected Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Texts (New York, 1986).

70 See The Franciscan Convert; or, a Recantation Sermon by Anthony Egan, Late Confessor General of the Kingdom of Ireland… now a Minister of the Gospel According to the Ordination of the Church of England (London, 1673).

71 See Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality, 1 (New York, 1978), pp. 21–3 Google Scholar, 57–8, and idem, literature and sex’ in A. Ellis and Abarbanel, A., eds, The Encyclopaedia of Sexual Literature, 2 vols (New York, 1961), 2, p. 637 Google Scholar. See also Foxon, D., Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745 (London, 1964 Google Scholar).

72 Wagner, P., Eros Revived. Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America (London, 1990), pp. 47–86 Google Scholar.

73 Colley, L., Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992 Google Scholar).

74 For an analysis of how religious deviants represented people’s inner desires, see Colin, N., Europe’s Inner Demons (St Albans, 1976), esp. pp. 256–63 Google Scholar.

75 Colley, Britons, pp. 237–81.

76 G. F. A. Best, Topular protestantism in Victorian England’, in Robson, R., ed., Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967), pp. 115–42 Google Scholar; Norman, E. R., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968 Google Scholar); Arnstein, W. L., Protestant Versus Catholic in Mid Victorian England (Columbia, 1982 Google Scholar); Wolffe, J., The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829–1860 (Oxford, 1991 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

77 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 2, 107, 121, 123–7.

78 Wagner, Eros, pp. 59–60. See also Miller, J., Religion in the Popular Prints, 1600–1832 [The English Satirical Print] (Cambridge, 1986 Google Scholar).

79 D. Hilliard, ‘Unenglish and unmanly: Anglo-catholicism and homosexuality’, Victorian Studies, 25 (1981-2), pp. 181–210, and P. Ingram, ‘Protestant patriarchy and the Catholic priesthood in nineteenth-century England’, Journal of Social History, 24 (1991), pp. 783–97. Similarly, Davidoff and Hall have remarked how the concept of ‘Evangelical manhood’, with its stress on self-sacrifice and influence, came dangerously close to embracing what some regarded as ‘feminine’ qualities: Family Fortunes, p. 111.

80 T. Laqueur, Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Creeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990).

81 A. Laurence, ‘A priesthood of she-believers: women and congregations in mid- seventeenth-century England’, SCH, 27 (1990), csp. p. 362. See also R. Trubowitz, ‘Female preachers and male wives: gender and authority in civil war England’, Prose Studies, 14 (1991), pp. 112–33.

82 B. Heeney, The Women’s Movement in the Church of England, 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1988); idem, The beginnings of Church feminism: women and the councils of the Church of England, 1897–1919’, JEH, 33 (1982), pp. 89–109; idem, ‘Women’s struggle for professional work and status in the Church of England, 1900–1930’, Hist], 26 (1983), pp. 326–47. See also O. Anderson, ‘Women preachers in mid-Victorian Britain: some reflexions on feminism, popular religion and social change’, Hist], 12 (1969), pp. 467–84.

83 Hempton, Religion of the People, p. 180.

84 Ibid.

85 Cf. D. Thompson, ‘Women and nineteenth-century radical polities’, in J. Mitchell and Oakley, A., eds, The Rights and Wrongs of Women (London, 1976), pp. 112–38 Google Scholar, and Hollis, P., Women in Public, 1850–1900: Documents of the Victorian Women’s Movement (London, 1979 Google Scholar).

86 See Rowbotham, S., Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight against it (London, 1973 Google Scholar).

87 Valenze, D., Prophetic Sons and Daughters. Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 7 Google Scholar, 22, 138–9. It is also worth recognizing that even Joanna Southcott saw herself as operating within the Church of England: R. Robins, ‘Anglican prophetess: Joanna Southcott and the Gospel story’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 6t (1992), pp. 277–302. See also Harrison, J. F. C, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (London, 1979 Google Scholar) and Hopkins, J. K, A Woman to Deliver her People (Austin, TX, and London, 1982 Google Scholar).

88 M. Ingram, Religion, communities and moral discipline in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England: case studies’, in Greyerz, K. von, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (London, 1984), p. 181 Google Scholar.

89 Crawford, Women and Religion, p. 56.

90 Indeed, there seems to be something of a disjunction in the historiography whereby women are at once supposed to have felt alienated from the Church and were also the most active attenders at its services. This last point would suggest that they liked it, or at least were not alienated from it.

91 Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice (London, 1813 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Lady Catherine consistently treats Mr Collins (the vicar) in an authoritarian manner.

92 DNB.

93 Watt, M. H., A History of the Parson’s Wife (London, 1947 Google Scholar), and Hart, A. Tindal, The Eighteenth-Century Country Parson circa 1689 to 1830 (Shrewsbury, 1955), pp. 90–2 Google Scholar.

94 M. Prior, ‘Reviled and crucified marriages: the position of Tudor bishops’ wives’, in eadem, , Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London, 1985), pp. 118–48 Google Scholar. See also the discussion in P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), pp. 165–72. Both would suggest that the statements by E. J. Carlson, ‘Clerical marriage and the English Reformation’.yBS, 31 (1992), pp. 26–8, and R M Spielmann, The beginnings of clerical marriage in the English Reformation: the reigns of Edward and Mary’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 26 (1987), pp. 251–63, that clerical marriage was the accepted norm by 1560, are overly optimistic.

95 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham, R and Matthews, W., 11 vols (London, 1970-83), 8, 167 Google Scholar.

96 She survived him, living until 1702, highlighting the problem of how clergy widows should be maintained. She was given a £600 annuity.

97 DNB.

98 J. Chamberlain, ‘“The changes and chances of this mortal life”: the vicissitudes of High Churchmanship and politics among the clergy of Sussex, 1700–45’ (University of Chicago at Illinois Ph.D. thesis, 1992), p. 65; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 119. The conviction that clergy wives came from relatively genteel backgrounds was one reason which clergy gave in support of clergy widows receiving financial help: they could not be expected to work for a living.

99 Walpole’s Correspondence, 25, p. 424: Walpole to Mann, 30 July 1783.

100 The Diary of the Revd William Jones, 1777–1821, ed. Christie, O. F. (London, 1929), pp. 78–9 Google Scholar.

101 This phrase, which historians are using with regard to any group which seems unduly neglected by historians, is, of course, E. P. Thompson’s, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 12.

102 See, for example, his The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, P&P, 50 (Feb. 1971), pp. 76–136.

103 Stanhope, G., A Sermon Preached Before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1697), p. 3 Google Scholar.

104 See Gregory, ‘Archbishop, cathedral and parish’, ch. 2.

105 J. Gregory, ed., The Speculum of Archbishop Seeker, Church of England Record Society, 2 (Woodbridge, 1995), p. xv.

106 The Diary of Thomas Turner, 1754–1765, ed. D. Vaisey (Oxford, 1985), p. 336.

107 The Works of John Wesley, vol. 19, Journals and Diaries II (1738-43), ed. W. R. Ward and R. P. Heizenrater (Nashville, TN, 1990), pp. 286–91. See also C. Wallace, ‘“Some stated employment of your mind”: reading, writing and religion in the life of Susanna Wesley’, ChH, 58 (1989), pp. 354–66.

108 Rack, H., Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London, 1989), p. 48 Google Scholar. On the ‘femininity of Wesley’s early environment’, see V. H. H. Green, The Young Mr Wesley. A Study of John Wesley and Oxford (London, 1961), pp. 51–3.

109 Quoted in Pollock, J., John Wesley (London, 1989), p. 20 Google Scholar.

110 Wesley, Journals, II, pp. 284–6. See also C. Wallace, ‘Susanna Wesley’s spirituality: the freedom of a Christian woman’, Methodist History, 22 (1983-4), pp. 158–73, who places her within a ‘puritan’ and ‘revivalist’ context, but downplays her ‘Anglican’ context.

111 Quoted in Tindal Hart, Country Parson, p. 91.

112 DNB.

113 Hints to a Clergyman’s Wife; or Female Parochial Duties Practically Illustrated (London, 1832), preface.

114 Ibid., p. 22.

115 J. Bossy, ‘Blood and baptism: kinship, community and Christianity in Western Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries’, SCH, 10 (1973), pp. 129–43.

116 More, H., Coelebs in Search of a Wife (London, 1809), p. 137 Google Scholar.

117 Paget, F. E., The Owlet of Owlstone Edge: His Travels, his Experience and his Lucubrations (London, 1856), p. 30 Google Scholar.

118 Hints to a Clergyman’s Wife, p. 123.

119 Ibid., p. 122.

120 It might be that the need to maintain the clerical family made it even more pressing for the incumbent to collect his tithes, and this was an extra cause of conflict in the parish: Gregory, ‘Archbishop, cathedral and parish’, ch. 4.

121 See The Journal of a Somerset Rector, 1803–1834, ed. H. and P. Coombs (Oxford, 1981).

122 Quoted in H. C. Kiener, ‘Clergy and community: the Church of England in Buckinghamshire, 1830–1914’ (University of Connecticut PhX). thesis, 1981), p. 191.

123 Most notably through her translation of the works of Epictetus which was published in 1758, with the encouragement of Archbishop Seeker.

124 Catherine Talbot was the daughter of a son of the Bishop of Durham and lived in the household of Archbishop Seeker. See S. Myers, The Bluestocking Circle. Women, Friendship and the Life of the Mind in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1990), and Todd, Dictionary of British and American Women Writers. Jane Austen, of course, was also the daughter of an eighteenth- century cleric. See Collins, I., Jane Austen and the Clergy (London, 1994 Google Scholar), and D. Monnaghan, ‘Mansfield Park and Evangelicalism: a reassessment’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 33 (1978-9), pp. 215–30.

125 A Parson in the Vale of White Horse. George Woodward’s Letters from East Hendred, 1753–1761, ed. D. Gibson (Gloucester, 1982), pp. 61–2.

126 Quoted in Morrow, T., Early Methodist Women (London, 1967), p. 90 Google Scholar. See The Life of Mrs Mary Fletcher, ed. H. Moore (London, 1818).

127 Quoted in Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, p. 50.

128 Christie, Diary of Jones, pp. 90, 92, 96, 98, 110, 270; Tindal Hart, Country Parson, p. 90.

129 The True State of the Case of John Butler, BD. A Minister of the True Church of England: in Answer to the Libel of Martha his Sometimes Wife (London, 1697), p. 34.

130 For example, Lavington, G., A Sermon Preached before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1734), p. 19 Google Scholar.

131 Vaisey, Diary of Turner, p. 98.

132 Ibid., p. 138.

133 More, Coelebs, p. 137.

134 F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modem England (Oxford, 1990), p. 252.

135 P. Collinson, ‘Shepherds, sheepdogs and hirelings: the pastoral ministry in post- reformation England’, SCH, 26 (1989), pp. 214–15. It is worth recalling that James Woodforde, who remained unmarried, relied on his niece Nancy as a companion and house-keeper. She sometimes found this boring: The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758–1802, ed. J. Beresford (Oxford, 1978), p. 451.

136 I. Green, The persecution of “scandalous” and “malignant” parish clergy during the English Civil War’, EHR, 104 (1979), p. 527.

137 J. C. Findon, The Nonjurors and the Church of England, 1689–1716’ (University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1979), p. 100.

138 Crawford, Women and Religion, p. 51.

139 H. McLeod, ‘Weibliche Frömmigkcit – mannlicher Unglaube? Religion und Kircken im bürgerlichen 19 Jahrhundert’, in Bürgerinnen und Burger Ceshlecterverhaltnisse im 19 Jahrhundert, ed. U. Frevert (Gottingen, 1988), pp. 134–56. See also his nuanced comments in his Piety and Poverty: Working Class Religion in Berlin, London and New York, 1870–1914 (New York, 1996), pp. 149–73.

140 Idem, ‘English anticlericalism, 1850–1900’, unpublished lecture, Anglo-American Conference, London, June 1996.

141 Ibid.