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Ministering to the Ministers: The Discipline of Recalcitrant Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln 1830–1845
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
By 1830, the effectiveness of the Church of England’s ministry was believed to have become seriously compromised, because it still possessed no adequate means for disciplining its clergy. It had long been recognized that the Church’s structure, and in particular the strength of the parson’s freehold, made it impossible for it to exercise the same sort of authority over its ministers as the dissenting bodies, or even the Church of Scotland. The view that the inadequacy of disciplinary measures was detrimental to the standing of the Established Church was in fact shared both by those hostile to and those supportive of it. On the one hand, John Wade’s Extraordinary Black Book, published in 1831 and intended as an indictment of corruption, rapacity, and jobbery within the Establishment, made the exposure of abuses in Church discipline one of its principal objectives. Not unnaturally, loyal churchmen also expressed considerable anxiety at the spectacle of bishops almost powerless in the face of clerical malefactors within their dioceses. Throughout the 1830s, the correspondence of clergy and the speeches of senior Anglicans in Parliament reflect an urgent desire that appropriate measures be swiftly introduced in order to combat cases of clerical irregularity.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989
References
1 Wade, John, Extraordinary Black Book (London, 1831), p. 8 Google Scholar.
2 Hansard’s, Parliamentary Debates: Third Series Vol. 47 cols 1029–30; 1314–30 Google Scholar.
3 Hansard’s, Parliamentary Debates: Third Series Vol. 55 col. 74 Google Scholar.
4 3 & 4 Vict. c. 86, An Act for Better Enforcing Church Discipline, 7 August 1840.
5 Report of the Commission on Ec lesiastical Courts: The Ecclesiastical Courts: Principles of Reconstruction (London, 1954), p. 28.
6 It is only mentioned in passing by Best, G. F. A. in Temporal Pillars (Cambridge, 1964), p. 399 Google Scholar.
7 John Kaye, 1783–1853. The son of a Hammersmith linen draper, he entered Christ’s College Cambridge in 1800 and remained there until 1830, by which time he was Master, and had occupied other important posts in the university. Kaye’s assiduity and ability attracted favourable notice from Lord Liverpool, who raised him to the episcopate—first Bristol (1820) and then Lincoln (1827). Kaye remained at Lincoln until his death. When he arrived in the diocese, it was still the largest in the country—stretching from Grimsby to Eton—but during his episcopate it was transformed into a smaller, more manageable unit. The diocese of Lincoln during John Kaye’s episcopate is the subject of the doctoral research upon which I am currently engaged.
8 For an invaluable discussion of this type of pre-Tractarian high church orthodoxy see Nockles, Peter B., ‘Continuity and Change in Anglican High Churchmanship in Britain 1792–1850’ (unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1982 Google Scholar).
9 Of greatest significance being the Plurality Act 1838.
10 Lincolnshire Archives Office (LAO) Cor B5/19/2 & 3 Missing to Kaye, 20 April 1837.
11 LAO, Cor B5/5/5/1 Start to Kaye, 28 June 1831.
12 LAO, Cor B5/5/5/1 Kaye to Start, 30 June 1831.
13 LAO, Cor B5/8/22 Eyre to Kaye, ? May 1841.
14 LAO, Cor B5/8/22 Kaye to Eyre, 28 June 1841.
15 Bernard Smith, 1815—1903. He seceded in 1842, attracting notoriety because of rumours that he had been advised by Newman to keep his conversion secret and retain his living.
16 Richard Waldo Sibthorp, 1792—1879. A member of a distinguished Lincolnshire family, he appeared to find litde peace within eidier the Anglican or the Roman Communion. Kaye readmitted Sibthorp to Anglican orders in 1847, but he seceded again in 1865. Both Smith and Sibthorp are treated, if somewhat hagiographically, by Middleton, R. D., Magdalen Studies (London, 1936), pp. 195–267 Google Scholar.
17 LAO, Cor B5/3/3/5 Kaye to Penny, 7 November 1844.
18 LAO, Cor B5/3/20/3 Archdeacon Hill to Kaye, 10 September 1845 with respect to Medmenham church.
19 Goddard, Charles, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lincoln (London, 1839 Google Scholar).
20 LAO, Cor B5/8/19 Wilkins to Kaye, 29 June 1841.
21 LAO, Cor B5/3/12/4 Godolphin Osborne to Kaye, 8 April 1841.
22 LAO, Cor B5/19/2 & 3 Archdeacon Hill to Kaye, n.d.
23 LAO, Cor B5/5/1/2 Kaye to Thomas Vowe, 7 January, 28 February 1833.
24 LAO, Cor B5/5/1/2 Vowe to Kaye, 4 January, 25 February 1833; Archdeacon T. K. Bonney to Kaye, 3 April 1833.
25 LAO, Cor B5/5/1/2 Kaye to Bewicke, 4 April 1833.
26 LAO, Cor B5/3/10/2 Archdeacon Hill to Kaye, 26 June 1833 and following.
27 LAO, Cor B5/8/7/3 Archdeacon Wilkins to Kaye, 10 May 1839.
28 LAO, Cor B5/3/14/1 G. Cracroft to Kaye, 27 May 1835.
29 LAO, Cor B5/19/11 Benjamin Harrison to Kaye, 23 December 1843.
30 LAO, Cor B5/19/11 Harrison to Kaye, 3 February 1844.
31 LAO, Cor B5/3/14/1 Robert Swan to Kaye, 24 March 1845.
32 LAO, Cor B5/19/11 Harrison to Kaye, 29 September 1843.
33 LAO, Cor B5/19/11 Willis to Kaye, 5 April 1844.
34 LAO, Cor B5/19/11 Paul Wilmot to Kaye, 30 October 1843.
35 LAO, Cor B5/3/16/2 J. R. Pigott to Kaye, 4 and 12 November 1844.
36 LAO, Cor B5/3/16/2 B. G. Parker to J. R. Pigott, 26 November 1844.
37 LAO, Cor B5/3/16/2 Haggard to Kaye, 4 December 1844.
38 LAO, Cor B5/3/16/2 Kaye to Dashwood, 12 March 1845.
39 LAO, Cor B5/3/16/2 Dashwood to Kaye, 9 April 1845.
40 LAO, Cor B5/19/15 George Watson to Kaye, 28 December 1835 and Cor B5/19/7 William Pym to Kaye, 26 March 1840.
41 Ibid.
42 This figure is based on a sample of forty Leicestershire incumbents from four deaneries between the period 1841—51. The information is extracted from the Clergy List, and does not take into account those incumbents who were non-resident for part or all of the period.