Pluralism, sinecurism and nepotism in the mid-Victorian Church of England: the case of Robert Moore in context

In September 1865, a London newspaper, the Morning Star, published an acidly-worded obituary of the Reverend Robert Moore. Moore was a pluralist who had held five appointments in the Church of England (or six, depending on how they were counted) plus an outrageously lucrative sinecure in an ecclesiastical court.  His survival, in the increasingly efficient and egalitarian mid-Victorian era, seemed surprising. However, he proved to be merely one manifestion of the persistence of widespread abuses. Historians mostly view the nineteenth-century Anglican Church as a story of building programmes and theological ferment. Contemporaries saw an institution riddled by privilege that was incapable of confronting its own blemishes. 

THE MORNING STAR AND THE REVEREND ROBERT MOORE

A 'viewy' radical newspaper In September 1865, a London newspaper, the Morning Star, published an acidly-worded obituary of the Reverend Robert Moore. Its forensic dissection and cold contempt justify its republication as the starting point of this essay.^[1] Perhaps the most radical voice in the London press, the Morning Star had been launched in 1856 to take advantage of the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty the preceding year. Its political progenitors were the free trade duo, John Bright and Richard Cobden, along with the Quaker Joseph Sturge, who was an anti-slavery and anti-war activist. Much of its capital came from Manchester sources, which caused some tensions between editorial and financial control. In its first year, the Morning Star claimed a circulation of 30,000, with Cobden insisting that it was particularly popular with City clerks. However, it seems subsequently to have struggled, although it had an unlikely admirer in the Tory Benjamin Disraeli, who told a mildly surprised Bright in 1860 that "it was the best paper published". At the time of the publication of the Moore non-tribute, Justin McCarthy, the future Irish Nationalist MP, had recently been appointed editor of the Morning Star. He would later recall with affection its lively (and "rather 'viewy'") staff of writers: the paper's opinions "were odious in the eyes of what was called society … no one at any other period of the world anywhere was ever so anarchical as we were then".^[2] Punch, itself sharp in its criticism of abuses in the Anglican Church, felt some distaste towards what it regarded as the paper's American-style outspokenness. "Would you see how spite infernal / Clutches foulest mud to fling, / Buy the London Yankee Journal / Morning Star they call the thing."^[3] As so often with Victorian journalism, it is not possible to identify precisely who penned the bleak farewell to the Reverend Robert Moore. However, it is fitting to acknowledge that it represented an impressive piece of research, and all the more so if the detailed work was undertaken in the few days between Moore's death and its publication.^[4]

Robert Moore was the son of an undistinguished Archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, who headed the Church of England from 1783 until his death in 1805. The Primate of All England had the right to appoint incumbents to around two hundred parish churches scattered across the country and, in many cases, the lucky beneficiaries became the recipients of generous incomes from tithes.^[5] These annual impositions levied upon their parishioners were often supplemented by acres of glebe, land that went with the job, which could either be farmed, squarson-fashion, or let for rent. Many Georgian and Victorian bishops were aristocrats, who regarded a luxurious lifestyle as their entitlement. John Moore was the son of a butcher from Gloucester – a prosperous butcher, it is true, who was described as 'gent' in local records and could afford to send his son to Oxford. Young Moore got his big break by becoming tutor to two sons of the Duke of Marlborough, and this connection opened doors to ecclesiastical advancement.^[6] His good fortune encouraged a fatherly resolve that his own sons should enjoy a comfortable voyage through life. "He appears to have dispensed his patronage with somewhat more than due regard to the interests of his own family," the Dictionary of National Biography observed in 1894.^[7] For almost two-thirds of a century, Archbishop Moore's son Robert would live off the tithes from five Anglican parishes, plus the endowment income from a cathedral canonry. In addition, he would scandalously (and without embarrassment) pocket large amounts in profit from an office that required him to do no work of any kind.

No doubt the Morning Star was shockingly outspoken in its denunciation of the blatant pluralist who had just gone to his grave, but it is difficult to fault Justin McCarthy and his team in their outrage. Some small points of context and correction may usefully preface the reproduction of its article. Four of the five parishes from which Robert Moore drew his income form a rough circle around Maidstone in Kent, although the grouping was very loose, ranging from six miles east of the town to almost twenty miles to the west.^[8] Their approximate contiguity might perhaps be argued as a justification for assigning their revenues to a single individual if some degree of supervision was required as part of the responsibilities conferred. In fact, in relation to three of the four parishes, there was no obligation on Moore to do anything other than rake in the cash that they generated: they were literally, sinecures.^[9] Furthermore, no amount of special pleading could accommodate the fifth asset in his privileged portfolio, Latchingdon, an Essex marshland parish, over thirty miles in a straight line from Hunton, the Kent village where Moore made his home, but inaccessibly located north of the Thames and Crouch estuaries. It is unlikely that he was a frequent visitor to Latchingdon, even though the Morning Star claimed that the parish netted him around £50,000 in their long if distant relationship.^[10] Even so, we must bend over backwards to be fair to Robert Moore and recognise every point in his favour, however small. The Morning Star was misinformed in alleging that he battened on to Latchingdon for 61 years. In fact, he resigned his Essex living in 1859, and consequently only siphoned off its tithe income for 55 years.^[11] He also gave up his canonry in Canterbury cathedral three years before his death. However, as discussed below, these belated concessions barely affected his overall lifetime financial gain.

Let us now turn to the editorial page of the Morning Star on a September day in 1865.

Text (in italics): the Morning Star mourns the Reverend Robert Moore

The death has recently been announced of one of the representative men of England. Foreigners have probably never heard his name, and to the vast majority of his own countrymen he was all unknown. He was not a great statesman, a great orator, a great merchant, a great engineer, a great shipbuilder, a great chemist, a great scholar, or a great banker. He was, nevertheless, one of the representative men of a phase of English life which is perhaps too seldom brought to the notice of the public – he was a great sinecurist. We refer to the Reverend Robert Moore, Rector of Hunton, Rector of Hollingbourn, Rector of Eynesford, Rector of Latchingdon, Canon Residentiary in Canterbury Cathedral, formerly Registrar of the Will Office in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and at one time Domestic Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This gentleman took his degree at Oxford in 1802, and at once started on his distinguished career as a holder of sinecures. He had an immense advantage at starting, in the fact that his father was Archbishop of Canterbury, and a father evidently deeply sensible of his duty to provide for those of his own household. The Reverend Robert Moore had barely finished his studies when the affectionate archbishop presented him to the sinecure living of Hollingbourn near Maidstone, of which he was patron. Along with Hollingbourn the tithe of Hucking is chucked in because as the former living only yields £647 10s to the rector for doing nothing, that of Hucking was added, which gave the holder £140 a year more, in order that he might have no excuse for doing nothing in the most approved manner. The total sum which the clergyman thus obtained was £787 per annum to begin with, just to keep him from starving until his parent the archbishop could devise some other means for getting him a respectable position in his sacred calling.

We can imagine the worthy prelate's anxiety of mind when he saw his son pining away on such a miserable pittance, but the night of adversity did not long continue. The rectory of Hunton became opportunely vacant. It was the very kind of living for an archbishop's son: a small population of 810 souls, including the sucking infants, a good house, a tolerable glebe of twenty-five acres, sufficient to keep the fat pony in grass and oats, and an income in all of £1,057 sterling. In this obscure corner of the ecclesiastical vineyard the Reverend Robert Moore began to labour – we do not desire to convey by the term any idea of violent exertion – in the year 1802; but in his peaceful retreat he was not destined to remain long undisturbed. The archbishop was apparently still uneasy about his son's financial position. The two livings^[12] amounted to £1,844 per annum, with house and glebe but, after solemnly and prayerfully reviewing the whole circumstances, the pious father doubtless came to the conclusion that the temporal estate of the young man required to be improved. He accordingly pressed upon his acceptance the additional sinecure of Eynesford, in Kent, yielding a gross income of £600 to the gentleman who did not perform the duties. This additional clerical pin-money made the income of the incumbent the neater and more satisfactory sum of £2,444, which, for a man of six-and-twenty years, was a pretty good return from a profession so unselfish and so little given to mammon-worship.

The archbishop had by this time been twenty years in the see of Canterbury and probably feeling that he might soon be obliged to leave his place, his patronage, and his privileges, he resolved still further to secure his son against the vicissitudes of life by adding, in 1804, the rectory of Latchingdon to that of the other emoluments. Here there was another glebe of forty four acres, another house, and, better than either, an income of £910. The gross value is stated at £955. After three years of his ecclesiastical career Mr Moore thus found himself in possession of £3,399 per annum, with two residences and two glebes. A canonry became vacant in Canterbury Cathedral, and again the golden shower poured into the lap of Mr Moore. Opinions vary as to the exact value of the canonry, some placing it as high as from £2,000 to £3,000, with a residence, but we are disposed to take a moderate view of the returns, and estimate the office as worth about £1,000 per annum. With wonderfully rapid gradations the original income of £737 has thus swelled to a total of £4,399 when the recipient had reached the mature age of eight-and-twenty.

About that period the Registrarship of Wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury becoming vacant, the Archbishop had one more opportunity of showing the purity of his official administration in matters of patronage. The office was a perfect sinecure, all the duties attached to it being performed by deputy. In order that no other clergyman in the diocese might be tempted to abandon his clerical duties by the mental dissipation attached to an office where there is a high salary and no duties, the right reverend resolved that his son should bear the burden. We have no exact account of the annual value of this office, and probably that secret would be pretty closely kept by the Reverend Robert Moore himself. However, in 1858, when the Ecclesiastical Courts were abolished, he claimed and obtained an annual compensation of £7,990 and in these circumstances it is not assuming too much to take £8,000 as the former annual income of the Registrarship. This was much better than a rectory, and was doubtless prized accordingly.

The rectory of Hollingbourn, with its salary of £787, was enjoyed by Mr Moore for sixty-three years. Excluding all calculation of compound interest, and merely multiplying the annual income by the number of years for which it was held, we find that this reverend gentleman drew from the country £49,581 on this account alone. The rectory of Hunton, with an income of £1,057 was enjoyed for sixty-three years also, or £67,091. The rectory of Eynesford, at £690 a year for sixty-three years, amounts to £37,800. The rectory of Latchingdon, at an income of £955 for sixty-one years, amounts to £53,255. The Canonry of Canterbury Cathedral, at £1,000 a year for sixty-one years, amounts to £61,000. The Registrarship of Wills, at £8,000 a year for fifty three years, to 1858, yields £424,000, and the compensation allowance of £7,990 for seven years amounts to £55,930. In all, this gentleman, according to the simplest kind of computation, has drawn £753,657 from the public of England.

THE MORNING STAR INDICTMENT EXPLORED 

How parsons were paid Criticism of Robert Moore may be divided into two headings. The first censures his accumulation of the clerical proceeds from five parishes – or, allowing for tiny Hucking, four and a fragment – most of the appointments being sinecures requiring no work of any kind from the beneficiary. The second charge relates to the obscene income that he pocketed as a canon of Canterbury Cathedral, and an even more staggering sum pocketed from the equally nominal post of Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the institution which – until 1858 – processed Wills from the southern half of Britain. These two distinct types of boodle merit separate discussion.

Rectors and vicars To assess Moore's income from his parochial appointments, it may be useful to start by examining the two basic job-titles in the Church of England, rector and vicar.^[13] In practice, there was no distinction between the two, either in status or in function – but there was often a difference in income. In their Latin derivations, rector meant 'ruler', while a vicar was a deputy – hence the adjective, 'vicarious'. In the Middle Ages, many parish churches came under the control of monasteries (and, sometimes, of cathedrals). These institutions assumed rectorial rights, appointing a chaplain to do the work on the ground – their vicar. Clergy were financially supported by the payment of tithes, a ten-percent levy on all produce. Tithes were not only controversial but also extremely complex. Basically, they were divided into two categories: great tithes, imposed upon grain crops, hay and timber, and the more miscellaneous small tithes, which included livestock, wool – and also garden produce: it was not just farmers who were compelled to support the local clergyman, but cottagers as well.^[14] A rector was entitled to the whole range of tithes from his parish, but a vicar could only claim the small tithes.^[15] However, this did not mean that parishes with a vicar were exempt from paying great tithes once the religious houses were swept away by Henry VIII. Monastic property passed to private landowners (and also to institutions, such as Cambridge and Oxford colleges), and those ownership rights included annual windfall of the great tithes. The recipients were called lay rectors or impropriators. Since these major crops generated the larger share of agricultural revenue, the imbalance was often marked. To take a random example, in the Essex parish of Great Totham in mid-Victorian times, the small tithes netted the vicar £178 a year, but the impropriator, a local landowner, drew £450. Thus the 786 men, women and children of Great Totham were paying an annual religious tax of sixteen shillings per head, notionally for the support of a church that many of them refused to attend (there were two Dissenting chapels in the parish), almost three-quarters of which did not even reach the Anglican parson. Since it was estimated that £200 a year represented the poverty line in clerical incomes, the Great Totham situation was unfair both to parishioners and parson. Nor was it unusual: in 1832, the Reverend Hastings Robinson, a reforming cleric, estimated that half of Anglican benefices were worth £150 a year to their incumbents, with the majority of those falling below £100.^[16] In some cases, the situation was so ludicrous that no satirist would have dreamed of inventing it. In the small parish of Childerditch, the vicar received £170 a year, a cash sum based on the estimated value of the small tithes, but the great tithes went to a local landowner, Lord Petre. By the eighteen-fifties, the church was falling down, and services had to be held in the belfry. (It seems that not many of the 247 inhabitants turned up.) Lord Petre not only refused to help, but blocked a scheme to borrow money on the security of local farms, since he owned most of the land. The fact that the Petres were a prominent Catholic family did not go unremarked. Tithes generated anger among those forced to pay and resentment against those who benefited from them. However, the point here is that rectors were generally better paid than vicars. Thus in two neighbouring Essex parishes, the vicar of Great Burstead ministered to five times as many parishioners as the rector of Little Burstead, but received only half the income. Similarly, the rector of Little Canfield pocketed three times as much as the vicar of Great Canfield, who ministered to twice as many people. Robert Moore's four-and-a-fragment parochial appointments were all rectories.

Assessing clerical incomes, gross and net The Morning Star assessed Moore's income from his quiverful of benefices by the simple process of multiplying the headline income from each one by the number of years that it had poured cash into his pocket. For a rounded assessment of his wealth, we need, first, to put those headline figures in context: how did they compare with other forms of employment and, more generally, what kind of lifestyle did the average parsonage support? Second, we need to distinguish between his gross and net income. (The term 'gross' is used here in the strict sense of 'total' and not in the more figurative meaning of 'indecently large'.) In both tasks, historians offer remarkably little guidance, so that this essay proceeds tentatively into unknown territory. It may set the scene by quoting some comparisons.

Thanks to the Bank of England's inflation indicator, it is possible to calculate the purchasing power of the £ sterling year-by-year against its value in the twenty-twenties. Broadly speaking, sums of money from early- and mid-Victorian times may be multiplied by one hundred to tell us that they would buy today. Thus, accepting the overall calculation of the Morning Star, Robert Moore's lifetime loot amounted to a twenty-first century total of £75 million. While this is staggering, there are two reasons for treating these figures with caution. First, comfortable Victorian families spent their money in different ways from modern professionals: for instance, they employed domestic servants, a class now virtually extinct. Although the account-book evidence is either missing or has not been studied, it is likely that a pony and trap cost less to purchase and to run than a modern motor car: a horse required less maintenance and it was cheaper than petrol, especially – as the Morning Star pointed out – for a clergyman whose glebe was "sufficient to keep the fat pony in grass and oats". Of course, at the upper end of the scale of clerical magnificence, a carriage and four probably involved budgetary implications of Rolls-Royce proportions, but these were optional luxury outlays. The second difference between Victorian clerical stipends and twenty-first century incomes lies in the question of deductions. A large slice of modern-day salaries disappears unseen in taxes and pension contributions. By contrast, nineteenth-century clergy received and retained almost all of the money notionally attached to their jobs and, once appointed, they generally stayed in post until they died, which removed any need for pension provision. Just how much they paid in tax is tentatively explored below.

In 1861, Anthony Trollope offered a useful comment which offers a yardstick for measuring the lifestyle of some of the pluralists discussed in this essay. He described households with an income of £800 a year as "second-class gentry", a category in which he included himself. He illustrated his meaning by explaining that such families gave dinner parties but had to hire a local tradesman to serve at table.^[17] Generally speaking, only the big-ticket winners in the lottery of Church patronage had access to that sort of money through a single parish appointment, and many incumbents fell short of Trollope's standard.  William Palin, an acerbic Essex vicar, deplored the fate of a brother cleric, the rector of Bulphan, paid around £400 a year to live among 250 bumpkins in a nondescript village on the edge of a fen.  "Should the prestige of an Established Church be tampered with, that finds highly-educated men and gentlemen to minister and reside in unattractive places?", he asked rhetorically. "And this for Incomes, generally, that lawyers and doctors would laugh at!"^[18] Clergy were expected to dress more elegantly and to educate their children to a higher standard than skilled artisans. It was assumed that they would buy the books, the reviews and the newspapers that would keep them abreast of theological speculation and the politics of Church and State, although not all of them excelled in such intellectual gymnastics. Above all, they had to live, as Palin put it, like "highly-educated men and gentlemen", socially acceptable to gentry and capable of overawing the peasantry.

How, then, were clergy resident in parishes that yielded a poor return able to live in appropriate style and comfort? Palin supplied the answer. "Private means enable the English clergy in general to adopt a somewhat patrician style of living."^[19] It is reasonable to assume a strong correlation between clergy who could call upon inherited wealth and the incumbents who occupied the best-paid parishes. The supporting evidence comes from the fact that those at the top of the pyramid were almost always graduates of Oxford or Cambridge. A quasi-official estimate of the costs of studying at Cambridge in the eighteen-seventies reckoned average annual expenditure at £202, allowing a 'higher estimate' of £295. However, these figures did not allow for additional payment for private tutors ('coaches'), while Tripos (Honours) examinations were inconveniently held during a fourth year in residence. Thus a student who planned to combine a creditable degree with an a gentlemanly student experience required access to a budget of at least £800 to complete the three-year Pass degree course, and more to tackle Honours. (Sydney Smith put the cost of studying for a degree even higher, at £1,250 to £1,500 for the three years.) In almost every case, this cash came from family sources, and these resources may be assumed to have continued to be available in later life. In addition, clergy from the social elite usually married women from similar backgrounds, many of whom brought enticing dowries to the altar. Although both the ancient universities made some provision for poor students, those who survived to graduation and ordination usually lacked the connections to secure prosperous preferment, and either remained long-term curates or were shunted into poorly-paid parishes. Hence we may assume that most graduate incumbents of moderately well-endowed benefices possessed some private means.^[20] The rector of Bulphan might not give many dinner parties on his parochial income of £400 a year but, if he or his wife had inherited money, they too might live as second-class gentry even in their unattractive backwater. Thus the Church's patronage system gave a peculiarly Anglican twist to the Biblical principle, "to them that hath shall be given": the most attractive berths in the Church of England went to those who least needed them.^[21] The pluralists were an extreme example of this inversion of need: many were evidently prosperous, while some of the most brazen examples, like Robert Moore, were independently very rich indeed. This imbalance of wealth explains much of the public anger aroused by their blatant sinecurism.

Yet the mid-Victorian Church itself did nothing to rebuke the surviving pluralists, or ask them to mend their selfish ways. A major reason for this was almost certainly that a substantial and privileged minority among the clergy were themselves beneficiaries of its patronage system, products of the same social background, whose exclusive education, private means and influence with those who controlled the parishes made them into an outer guard protecting an impregnable structure of inequality. We should not forget the wide gap between the lifestyles of Trollope's second-class gentry and the struggling mass of the people to whom they ministered.  In 1867, the statistician R.D. Baxter collected figures for weekly wages paid to various categories of working men. These can be multiplied to produce estimates of annual income, but it should be remembered that they were all classed as 'precarious': if, for some reason or at some season, the man did not work, he did not get paid, unlike clergy who received their stipends whether they showed up or not. It should also be stressed that Baxter's research was limited to male employment. Women were invariably paid less, even where (as in the particular example of school teaching) they discharged similar functions. On the other hand, working class married women could sometimes add to household income if they could find ill-paid employment, whereas the parson's wife was expected to be a lady. Baxter's figures suggest that a small cohort of skilled workers, the labour aristocracy – they included watchmakers and engine-drivers – might earn as much as £90 a year. In the next category, which included bakers, cabinet-makers and printers, annual incomes in good times were around £70-£80. Chimney sweeps, miners, postmen and tailors would be hard-pressed to break the £60 barrier, while most labourers – a category particularly vulnerable to lay-offs through injury – fell below £40 a year.^[22]

School-teaching was generally not valued more highly. Headmasters of classical academies (usually styled just 'masters') were generally expected to be ordained clergymen, but where stipends had been fixed in cheaper times, it was sometimes necessary to have recourse to pluralism to provide them with the remuneration that their calling required. The statutes of Chigwell School, established in 1629, gave the master £20 a year. The trustees, who were patrons of the Norfolk parish of Tottington, made an early nineteenth-century master, William Burford, vicar of the parish, but its tithes only yielded £89 a year – barely enough to pay the necessary curate. In 1832, Burford's financial problems were eased by his appointment as rector of Magdalen Laver, about twelve miles from Chigwell. For two decades the tithes of this small Essex parish in effect subsidised his school salary by around £300 a year. He does not seem to have employed a curate, and so presumably rode over every Sunday to read the service. In 1848, the Reverend James Hutchinson, master of Chelmsford's endowed grammar school received £220 a year, plus a free house but, although "respected", he had become "old and infirm" and hired an assistant to teach the handful of pupils who still attended. Nonetheless, Hutchinson doubled as the town's curate.^[23] Such relatively privileged institutions drew upon endowments to prepare (male) youngsters for the professions. Many towns possessed less prestigious charity schools, which trained boys and girls to become tradesmen and domestic servants, and these rarely employed clergy. At Romford, the master was paid £70 a year, although he also received free accommodation and three tons of coal a year, while the schoolmistress received £40, accommodation and two tons of coal. The gendered monetary disparity was built into the culture, but it is surprising that she was regarded as less vulnerable to cold. For the humbler category of village schoolmasters, a salary of £50 was generally thought adequate. Schoolmistresses received even less: Moore handed over £20 a year to the woman who taught the children of Latchingdon.

In practice, there was often a less dramatic gap between skilled artisans and humble instructors, on the one hand, and lesser Anglican clergy on the other, since by no means all incumbents could aspire to second-class gentry status. Owen Chadwick reckoned that, by early Victorian times, £200 a year represented the poverty line in clergy incomes.^[24] Curates invariably fell well below this. In 1835, the average stipend paid to a curate was £81, and many received even less.^[25] Thirty years later, Anthony Trollope could weave the plot of The Last Chronicle of Barset around the light of the Reverend Josiah Crawley, who struggled to raise a family and bring spiritual counsel to the small community of Hogglestock on a paltry £130 a year.^[26] Crawley held a perpetual curacy, making him a kind of mini-vicar with his own patch. But curates who acted as assistants or – in the case of over three thousand of them in 1838 – as deputies for absentee incumbents,^[27]were paid not institutionally, through some earmarked share of tithes, but directly by the more fortunate clergyman who hired them, and who had the power to fire as well. The need to pay an exploited fellow cleric to perform the tasks that an absentee could not discharge was one of the elements that reduced the effective profit that pluralists could draw from their parochial portfolios – although not always by very much.^[28]

On the face of it, the sums cited by the Morning Star meant that Robert Moore was more than securely located in the comfort zone. Nevertheless, we should not assume that the gross income of a living equalled its net return to the incumbent. True, in good years, the deductions from the headline income were not necessarily exorbitant. Prior to the legislation of 1836 that commuted tithes into rent payments – it was permissive and its actual implementation happened, parish by parish, over about the next decade or so – incumbents could receive tithe income in two different ways. Traditionally, they collected their ten percent share of local produce in kind, the tenth lamb, the tenth sheaf of corn and so on.^[29] This was cumbersome and time-consuming, especially hectic at harvest time, and it was a practice that virtually guaranteed disagreements over quantity and quality. Throughout the eighteenth century, most clergy moved towards composition, agreeing cash payments for each crop or beast or field, usually for a set period of years to allow for revision of arrangements in response to price movements. Taking tithe in kind was expensive and above all disgracefully worldly: the incumbent had to employ agents (often strong-arm specialists who acted with the charm of debt-collectors), maintain a tithe barn for storage and then descend to the sordid levels of the market-place to dispose of the proceeds. Collection costs could swallow one-quarter of the notional value of the tithe, and some estimates were as high as two-fifths.^[30] Consequently it made sense for parsons to strike deals with their flocks for cash payments. Composition reduced the opportunities for friction, but the negotiations required to secure agreement on the amounts to be paid were unlikely to show clergymen at their disinterested and spiritual best.^[31] It is not always emphasised that tithes were a ten-percent tax upon a farmer's gross income, not upon his net profit: having handed over one tenth of his crop, he had to meet his other costs, such as the wages of his labourers, from the remaining ninety percent. Not surprisingly, such demands institutionalised the potential for conflict in the countryside.^[32]

As will be discussed through two examples below, the confident figures for tithe income stated in official reports and clerical directories were not immutable. In years when the harvest was bad, recipients often moderated their demands, conceding rebates that considerably reduced their receipts. Absentee beneficiaries were particularly open to pressure for such concessions. Farmers sometimes went bankrupt and their tithe obligations had to be written off. These uncertainties were largely eliminated by the 1836 legislation, which not only provided for the calculation of tithe valuations in cash but transferred the responsibility for their payment from tenants to landlords, so that clerical incomes came to rely upon a smaller and more financially dependable section of the community.

The Royal Commission that reported on Church finances in 1835 concluded that deductions from the incomes of incumbents were generally small. The commissioners took account of poor rates, payments of land tax on glebe, the expense of collecting tithes and various ecclesiastical charges.^[33] There was, for instance, a form of clerical taxation called tenths, which were paid to the fund for the support of poor clergy, Queen Anne's Bounty.^[34] It might seem appropriate that those who appropriated one-tenth of their neighbours' produce should themselves hand over a similar share of their own incomes to brethren less fortunate than themselves. Yet the enthusiasm that incumbents often showed in ensuring that they benefited from rising prices in agriculture had not been matched by any adjustment in their own outgoings.  Tenths were calculated on the estimated value of benefices in 1535. Not surprisingly, these charges were derisory: at Hunton, worth over a thousand a year, the tenths were £1, thirteen shillings and threepence, three-farthings.^[35] Another deduction which did not apply in 1835 was income tax: its original wartime version was abolished in 1816, but Sir Robert Peel reintroduced it in 1842. In relation to Robert Moore's income, in the twenty-three years until his death in 1865, income tax was levied at an average rate of eightpence in the pound, equal to 3.33 percent, or one-thirtieth of total income. But, then as now, income tax was a nightmare subject. For instance, in 1847, when income tax on land (Schedule B) was threepence-halfpenny in the £, tithes were charged at a concessionary rate of twopence in the £, a rate of less than one percent. Thus a clergyman receiving £600 a year in tithe rents would pay just £5.^[36] The average rate of eightpence from 1842 to 1865 applied to Robert Moore's income from his sinecure Registrarship and his cathedral canonry, costing him about £300 a year. However, from his parish income, mostly derived from tithes, he would have lost just £25. The total, just over £10,000 in the last twenty-three years of his life, could hardly be regarded as burdensome. (Rates charged had been higher during the first incarnation of income tax, a wartime measure, but this was abolished in 1816.) The Royal Commission recognised that clergy incurred other expenditure, for instance for maintenance of farm buildings on their glebe and – in the case of rectors – for occasional chancel repairs, but these were too unpredictable to be taken into account in calculating net income. There were also miscellaneous taxes, on servants, carriages and even hair powder, receipts from the last of which dwindled. The notorious window tax was only repealed in 1851. These nuisance impositions are discussed in relation to Moore's lifestyle at Hunton, where it is suggested that they probably amounted to around £2,000 over a lifetime – again, a minor deduction from so massive an income, and hardly the result of necessary expenditure.

In the case of pluralists, two other questions arise in estimating deductions from their sinecure incomes: first, was it necessary to hire a curate and, second, were they under implied obligation to contribute to the costs of a village school? It would normally be the case that pluralists would have to pay some humbler clergyman to 'do duty' (provide church services) in the parishes where they did not reside, but I have not discovered what financial arrangements they made with these hapless and exploited deputies. In the first half of the nineteenth century many parishes provided no education, although an incumbent might have helped local children attend school in a nearby village or school. In other places, the teacher was sometimes paid either from an endowment or by a generous landowner. At Hunton, the parish where he chose to reside, Robert Moore's pocket benefited from the legacy of a previous rector who had left money to start a school, although his own record in this project was criticised. Another notorious pluralist, Richard Pretyman, was fortunate that the schools in the village where he chose to reside, Middleton Stoney in Oxfordshire, were funded by a local lady-bountiful. Verily, the mega-pluralists alighted in comfortable parishes. 

TWO CASE STUDIES: INCUMBENTS AND THEIR TITHES ON THE EVE OF COMMUTATION

As already noted, lack of evidence means that it is not easy to reconstruct the real income of incumbents, and historians seem generally to have avoided making the attempt. However, some revealing information can be explored for two parishes around 1830, shortly before the commutation of tithes, one in Kent and the other in Essex.

++ [a] Robert Wilberforce and East Farleigh When Robert Wilberforce became vicar of East Farleigh in Kent – and a neighbour of Robert Moore at Hunton – in 1832, he called a meeting of tithe-payers and persuaded them to elect a four-man negotiating committee with whom he could arrange composition payments. He rejected the committee's first offer before settling for a total of £940. Out of this, he expected to pay £10 in land tax – on his own glebe – plus £70 in poor rates, giving him a net annual income of £860, the agreement to run for six years. Robert Wilberforce rejoiced that "I am only rated at half what I should be", which meant that he quietly transferred the other £70 of his notional obligation for the poor to his neighbours.^[37] In fact, their generous gesture was a warning shot for, prior to the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834, parish rates were one weapon that local communities could use against a rapacious parson. An incumbent who was too zealous in enforcing his rights could find his assessment considerably inflated, and his rates bill correspondingly considerably increased.^[38] 

In fact, on first coming to East Farleigh, Robert Wilberforce was probably over-sanguine about his net income. For instance, he was accompanied to his confrontations with the tithe-payers by the village schoolmaster, whom he used to write receipts, and it is likely that he was expected to contribute to the pedagogue's miserly stipend. Six months after his arrival, he was still not sure of his likely outgoings. His initiation experience is a reminder of the mercenary attitude that the tithe system required Anglican clergy to adopt. We should remember that the new vicar was the son of the philanthropic Evangelical William Wilberforce, who was about to clinch his greatest triumph, the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire. His brother Samuel would later become a formidable and occasionally mildly reformist bishop. The high-minded Wilberforces were not the grasping Moores. A conscientious clergyman would naturally make financial contributions to good causes, and would be expected to initiate projects for the benefit of his flock. Robert Wilberforce was soon planning to establish a parish dispensary to provide a primitive health service and he began searching for a site for the erection of a new schoolhouse. He also planned a lending library, somewhat curiously putting up shelves in his bathroom to house the books. The £860 over which he had rejoiced a few months earlier was obviously going to shrink to a less predictable but smaller sum, although no doubt one that would still support  something close to the comfortable lifestyle of Trollope's second-class gentry.^[39]

++ [b[] Joseph Hawkins and Purleigh More detailed information is available about the tithe economics of Purleigh in Essex around 1830.^[40] The parish provided an income for the head of Oriel College Oxford, its Provost, an office held from 1828 by Joseph Hawkins, a notable figure in the University's religious politics and its personality clashes. Purleigh tithes had been compounded into cash payments which were collected on behalf of the college by a professional land agent, Christopher Comyns Parker. As Parker was also a gentleman farmer, he possessed the social status to correspond on frank and trusted terms with his client. Notionally, the tithes generated £1,360 a year, but the sum actually collected was usually smaller. Parker was capable of taking a firm line in defence of his employer's interests, threatening farmers who were laggard in their payments either with arrest for debt, or with the confrontational alternative of meeting their obligations by reversion to payment in kind. Yet, poor harvests each autumn between 1829 and 1834 – years of sometimes violent social unrest in the countryside – obliged him to advise Hawkins to offer rebates on the amounts demanded.  Hawkins agreed to the discounts, which were never lower than fifteen percent and peaked at thirty percent in 1833, thereby reducing his effective maximum income for those years to the £1,150 to £950 range. It should be stressed that there was no obligation on tithe-holders to reduce their demands in bad seasons. Some of them reacted with hostility to pleas that concessions had been made in neighbouring parishes and that they should follow suit. Land quality could vary considerably even within the same district, and C.C. Parker, as a farmer himself, was capable of returning a cold refusal to complaints that he regarded as exaggerated. However, there is some evidence that absentee clergy found it politic to be flexible, and even the voracious Moore offered generous rebates in his adjoining parish of Latchingdon.

Unfortunately – at least for tithe-holders – rebates in recognition of poor harvests were not the only deductions from their income. Two substantial Purleigh farmers failed to weather the tough years: one fled the country after the £50 bank draft for his tithe payments bounced, the other was declared bankrupt and imprisoned for debt. Their payments had to be written off. These disasters are chronicled in an evocative family chronicle, The Oxley Parker Papers, which tactfully omitted any reference to C.C. Parker's charges for collecting the Oriel College tithes, but independent evidence suggests that these amounted to around ten percent of the total.^[41] Thus, even without taking account of defaulters, the total paid to Provost Hawkins was further reduced to £1,055 in years when he conceded a fifteen-percent rebates, and fell as low as £855 in 1833, when he agreed to thirty percent.

At this point, we should begin to consider the Provost's outgoings. In 1828, Parker informed Hawkins that he had retained almost £100 from the tithe receipts to cover payments for land tax, poor rates, and the salary of the village schoolmistress. Rectors of Purleigh had the use of an unusually large area of glebe, eighty acres, which boosted their land tax obligation.^[42] These expenses further reduced the effective income that Hawkins received from the parish to £940 in years where there was a fifteen-percent tithe rebate and pushed the net total as low as £760 when his demands were abated by thirty percent. But these reduced figures still left one substantial debit item: the Provost had to provide a curate. As this was a relationship too sensitive to be handled by the land agent, the amount that Hawkins allowed to his deputy is not recorded. Home to around twelve hundred people, Purleigh was a comparatively sizeable community, and we should pay Hawkins the compliment of assuming that he reimbursed his locum at the generous end of the prevailing range, certainly equal to the £81 average reported in 1835. If so, his net annual income from Purleigh was not the £1,360 headline figure, but closer to £860 for most years between 1828 and 1835, and may have fallen as low as £680 in 1833 – an effective reduction by half.

Hawkins was also prepared to consider other expenditure, slowly moving towards the idea of erecting a small chapel and schoolhouse at an outlying hamlet in the parish: "the expense will probably almost certainly [sic] fall on me". At the 1832 general election, the first after the surgery of the Reform Act, a Tory candidate challenged the incumbent Whigs in the new South Essex constituency. Hawkins cautiously wished him well, but perceived an ethical issue in offering open support. "I am sure it would do harm, in these times especially, if it were ever said that a Parson living out of Essex, and drawing an income from a Parish in which he never resided, subscribed from his Tithes towards a County election". The solution was to ask Parker, a Tory partisan, to subscribe twenty guineas (£21) on his behalf "and detain it from your next remittance". It seems to have been an example of a peculiarly Anglican principle that a morally dubious act was acceptable so long as nobody found out.^[43]

We need not waste our sympathy on the financial constraints experienced by Provost Hawkins – it was a problem that millions of his contemporaries would have been delighted to shoulder – but it is only fair to acknowledge that gross figures for tithe income did not equal actual cash in the clerical pocket. Some demands on incumbents can be quantified, such as the cost of maintaining a curate or a contribution to a schoolteacher's salary. But there were other expectations too – charitable almsgiving within the parish, support for worthy causes at national level and missionary work overseas – where prosperous clergy were expected not merely to contribute but to occupy prominent places on subscription lists in order to stimulate the generosity of others. And there were occasional crises that might impose extraordinary costs. Rectors, both clerical and lay impropriators, were responsible for repairs to the chancels of their parish church: the local community was expected to maintain the rest of the building. In the first half of the nineteenth century, many churches were allowed to decay, not least because they were only used for a Sunday service. From mid-Victorian times, a mania for restoration effectively rebuilt many of them, a process usually driven by ambitious incumbents, who not only raised funds but sometimes generously contributed themselves, whether they were titled rector of vicar. Even taking account of these unpredictable impositions, we may note that Provost Hawkins continued to draw a substantial income from Purleigh for half a century. In 1874, in his mid-eighties, he handed over the running of Oriel College to a Vice-Provost and moved to Rochester, where he held a cathedral canonry. However, he remained Provost and retained the revenues of Purleigh until his death in 1882, at the age of ninety-three. At that point, a long-planned reform took effect, and the parish acquired its own fully-fledged rector, although around half the tithe revenue continued to go to Oriel College.^[44]

The difficulties of tithe collection that complicate attempts to compare gross and net clerical incomes in the early nineteenth century were considerably alleviated by the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act.^[45] To avoid any suspicion of invasion of property rights, the Act was made permissive, leaving it to individual parishes to adopt its provisions: most did in the decade that followed. The Act embodied the principle of composition, with tithe rent charges to be determined by independent commissioners if parson and parishioners could not reach a consensus. Most communities used outside surveyors. To assist them in this process, detailed field plans of each parish were surveyed, incidentally giving historians a valuable source of local information. A major and positive change was that tithes were now chargeable to landlords and not to tenants, although in some places individual farmers paid their money direct to the incumbent. In many parishes, one or two squires owned all the freehold: Robert Wilberforce's negotiations with 64 of his parishioners became a thing of the past. Landlords, of course, recouped the costs through rents, so ordinary farmers still bore the ultimate burden, but at least the element of confrontation was considerably reduced.^[46] The Act did not provide for short-term compositions, like Wilberforce's six-year deal at East Farleigh. However, tithe rent charges would be determined year to year by a rolling index based on the average price of crops over the previous seven years. The elimination of protection brought about by the repeal of the Corn Laws between 1846 and 1849 was followed by a gradual decline of home prices and the consequent fall of the index, to the detriment of clerical incomes. However, the major crisis only set in during the eighteen-eighties, two decades after Robert Moore's death, when cheap imports of North American grain poured into Britain.^[47]

ROBERT MOORE'S NET INCOME  

++ [a] Moore's parishes  There are multiple challenges in any attempt to assess the extent to which these various demands and deductions affected the net income of the Reverend Robert Moore from his five benefices. Indeed, a note of caution is called for in regard to contemporary statistics even when these seem impressively precise. For instance, as discussed above, the Royal Commission on clergy incomes in 1835 listed the net income received by the incumbent of each parish; Crockford's Clerical Directory in 1860 gave the gross figures. There were considerable discrepancies: Hunton was returned at £735 net in 1835, but at £1,057 gross twenty-five years later. For Latchingdon, the increase was from £680 to £955. The differences can be explained. Clergy generally gained from the up-to-date valuations of the tithe commutation process set in motion by the 1836 Act, while Crockford's took account of supplementary income from glebe, the fields held by the incumbent which could either be farmed directly or let out to a neighbour: Moore enjoyed 25 acres at Hunton and could call upon 44 acres at Latchingdon. In using the gross figures, the Morning Star necessarily exaggerated his actual wealth, even if not by very much. One general conclusion would suggest that Moore was obliged to shoulder some moderately substantial deductions from his Essex parish but seems to have been relatively insulated from miscellaneous costs in his Kentish heartland.

Prior to commutation, Moore did not always receive (or even demand) the headline income from Latchingdon. The land agent C.C. Parker noted that he abated twenty percent of his tithe in 1830, which he raised to thirty percent in 1831.^[48] In addition, Moore had to appoint a curate to discharge his duties there. In the eighteen-fifties, the absentee rector seems to have aimed at providing a superior class of cleric to the run-of-the-mill ecclesiastical drudges who were expected to survive on starvation wages. In 1850, a handsome new rectory was erected, obviously not for Moore although he probably contributed to the cost. He appointed a young and energetic new curate, Richard Merewether, a product of Eton who had studied at both the ancient universities. Most curates representing absentee sinecurists concentrated on keeping their parishes ticking over, but Merewether confronted the problem of a crumbling (and inconveniently located) parish church. The tower of the ancient building had collapsed early in Moore's incumbency, decay had set in and the local joke was that Latchingdon and its phantom twin parish of Snoreham "had only half a church between them". Within five years of his arrival, Moore had raised enough money to erect a new building: it was very unusual for a curate to be so proactive in a major parish project. The absentee rector donated communion plate and a bell, and also paid some of the ecclesiastical fees unhelpfully imposed upon a building project. How much he contributed in cash terms is not recorded, but the heavy emphasis upon local fund-raising, notably a spectacular charity bazaar, suggests that he was not a major subscriber. In 1848, it was reported that the rector contributed £20 a year to the salary of Latchingdon's village schoolmistress. It was not a lavish outlay.^[49]

How far, then, would unavoidable outgoings modify the Morning Star's allegation that Moore had pocketed £53,255 from Latchingdon? First, we should note that its journalists seem to have relied upon an out-of-date clerical directory: Moore had actually resigned the benefice in 1859, when the efficient Merewether moved on to his own parish. We must therefore deduct six years of absentee rapacity, reducing the total figure to a mere £47,525. From this point, as indicated in the earlier discussion, the statistics become more speculative, it is simpler to work with round figures. Let us also assume that Moore conceded an average annual rebate of around £100 throughout the 32 years before the 1836 Act fixed the tithe rent charge, and estimate the total discount at £3,200. (This may be an over-generous estimate: agriculture went through hard times after 1815, but during the Napoleonic Wars prices were high and farmers were generally prosperous.) Collection costs in the same period were perhaps £70 a year, or around £2,800 over the three decades: the two items together came to £6,000. Since Latchingdon was a large parish in an unhealthy marshland district, Moore may have found it necessary to pay his curates a moderately decent stipend. Assuming that he paid his deputies at the 1835 average rate of £81 a year, with perhaps a bonus for the dynamic and gentlemanly Merewether, the total would amount to perhaps £5,000 over fifty years.^[50] Estimated at an arbitrary sum of £90 a year, rates and taxes would add another £5,000 to the deductions from Moore's net income. If the £20 contribution to the salary of a schoolmistress was a continuing commitment, the outlay would be a further £1,000. These deductions amount to £17,000 through the half-century in which he held Latchingdon. They do not take account of one-off payments, for instance any contribution to the cost of the new rectory in 1850, or Moore's donations to the new church in 1856.^[51] However, it is fair to suggest that his net profit from Latchingdon was neither the £55,000 unfairly attributed to him by the Morning Star nor the same figure amended to £47,500 after taking account of his resignation six years before his death, but something closer to £30,000 – still enough to employ six hundred village schoolteachers for one year. And, as the Morning Star pointed out, such global figures make no allowance for interest payments or investment returns on the loot.

In Moore's four Kent parishes, the situation seems to have been more favourable to an economically-minded pluralist. From the Garden of England, the Morning Star calculated that Moore drew £154,472 over 63 years.^[52] Again, it will be simpler to round the figures, starting with the assumption that we should discount ten percent of the headline income from 1802 until 1836 to allow for rebates and defaults, a total of £8,300, plus a similar amount for collection costs in pre-commutation days.^[53] Together, these outgoings reduce the Morning Star's headline figure for the Kentish parishes to the slightly more modest sum of £138,000. Thus far, the rate of Kentish deductions parallels that of Latchingdon, but at this point the comparisons diverge. Eynsford and Hollingbourn / Hucking were ecclesiastical anomalies: both parishes had vicar and a rector, with the former appointee responsible for providing pastoral care while the latter (the appointments held by Moore) functioned purely as sinecures. The practical boon for Moore in both these parishes was that, although he was an absentee, he had no obligation to appoint a curate, since the vicar did the work on the ground.^[54]

Moore did use the services of a curate at Hunton, perhaps justified by a mid-century parish population of around eight hundred.  When he first acquired the parish, Moore employed the Reverend George Parry Marriott at a salary of £75 a year.^[55] If we use the same generous formula applied at Latchingdon, and assume that Moore paid his curates an average of £81 throughout his 63 years at Hunton, the total would come to just over £5,000.^[56] This would not have made a huge dent in the £66,591 that he received from his principal parish over the years, according to the Morning Star's calculation, even when that total is marginally reduced to allow for rebates and defaults in pre-commutation days. However, it is open to doubt whether the cost of maintaining a curate at Hunton should be regarded as a legitimate net deduction at all: much would depend on how much time Moore devoted to his largely mechanical responsibilities at Canterbury Cathedral. At Latchingdon, where Moore was an absentee, employing a curate was a necessary expense, but in his own parish, which he might well have worked himself, an assistant was a convenience, and one that other hard-pressed incumbents might have regarded, and perhaps even resented, as a luxury.^[57]

Of other expenses, we are once again in the realm of guesswork. If the postulated ten percent deduction for rates and taxes at Latchingdon (which is probably inflated) is applied to the income from Moore's Kent parishes, then he would have paid around £250 a year in such charges, amounting to almost £16,000 over 63 years. None of the Kent churches with which he was associated underwent restoration in his lifetime: the fact that all four were rebuilt between 1869 and 1878 – relatively late in the Victorian campaign for ecclesiastical renewal – may suggest that he had discouraged such projects.^[58] No doubt he lived in some style at Hunton, and luxury living attracted the tax collector. The British Almanac for 1847 gives a glimpse of some of the more exotic imposts. The window tax, only repealed in 1851, levied £3, ten shillings on a property with fifteen windows: a comfortable rectory might well have had more. There was a tax on male servants, which started at £1, four shillings a head, although there was an exemption designed to encourage the employment of boys under the age of eighteen in their home parishes. A four-wheeled carriage was a piece of flamboyant display that cost its owner £6 a year, and the horses were charged at a further £11.  Individually, these taxes were minor irritations, but cumulatively they added at least marginally to the burden of maintaining a gentlemanly lifestyle by perhaps £25 or £30 a year – maybe as much as £2,000 over a lifetime at Hunton.^[59] But should they be regarded as necessary deductions: taxes were unavoidable, curates were sometimes necessary, but a carriage and four attended by footmen surely fell into the luxury category?

Schoolteachers in his Kent parishes probably cost Moore very little, and his derisory £20 annual contribution in Essex does not suggest that he went out of his way to identify educational good causes south of the Thames. Hollingbourn and Hucking apparently had no school until 1877, when the State stepped in: perhaps the clergy assisted parish children to attend some nearby academy. A National (Anglican) school was erected at Eynsford in 1834, but contemporary directories do not indicate whether Moore supported it.^[60] In his home parish, his record was condemned by a critic in The Times. At Hunton, Moore had succeeded Beilby Porteus, the bishop of London. When Porteus died in 1809, he bequeathed £1,000 in government stocks to endow a school in the parish. Unfortunately, the legacy did not immediately generate enough income to pay for the project. "A few extra hundred pounds, subscribed by the incumbent, the Rev. Robert Moore, at once (and the contribution would hardly have been missed from his plethoric purse), would have furnished the children of Hunton with needful instruction in a becoming dwelling." Instead, Moore chose to allow the Porteus bequest to accumulate at compound interest, a process that took over thirty years to reach the target. However, at his death, when he left a further £300 to the school, it was reported that he had rebuilt the premises at his own expense. Nonetheless, his critics remembered his earlier refusal "to grant to the children out of the abundance of his wealth and the charity of his heart".^[61] In 1855, Hunton boasted both a schoolmaster and a schoolmistress, but their designation – "Porteus Free School" – suggests that that the rector may not have contributed much to the project.^[62]

Overall, these estimated deductions (which, by their nature, are sometimes adventurous and perhaps occasionally too generous) suggest that Moore's net income from his Kent parishes over six decades was not the £154,000 calculated by the Morning Star from the headline figures, but something closer to £120,000. Whereas he sacrificed around one-third of his Latchingdon loot in outgoings, his necessary deductions in Kent were more like twenty percent. The Morning Star's total figure for Moore's parochial income, amended to take account of his resignation of Latchingdon, totals £202,000.^[63] The suggested necessary deductions reduce this by about a quarter, to a net return of £152,000. Of course, as the Morning Star pointed out and the Porteus bequest eventually proved, spare cash of that order could generate compound interest and be invested in other fruitful ways. However, in seeking to be fair to the Reverend Robert Moore in assessing his lifetime income from the five parishes bestowed upon him, we need not waste much sympathy either on his guaranteed returns or upon the opportunities for further profit that the inflow of cash made possible for him.

++ [b]: Canterbury bells

Three-quarters of Moore's income came from two other positions in the gift of the Archbishop, a prebendary (also called a canonry and sometimes a stall) at Canterbury Cathedral, which netted about £1,000 annually in return for mechanical, ritualistic and hardly burdensome duties, and the nominal post of Registrar of the Will Office in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, which was worth a staggering £8,000 a year. In both cases, these are approximate figures, not least because Moore only once deigned to supply any information himself, and that was on the occasion when his Registrarship was abolished and he successfully sought compensation for the loss of fee income.

+++ [b], i: Moore as a canon of Canterbury Cathedral  Robert Moore was appointed as a prebendary (canon) in Canterbury cathedral by his father in 1801, and resigned in 1862. His decision to retire may suggest an awareness that he could no longer discharge such duties as were attached to the stall, but it is characteristic that even his departure carried a whiff of jobbery. Archbishop Sumner, on his deathbed, had wanted to create a snug berth for his son-in-law, and Moore obligingly created the vacancy: it was the type of transaction that he understood.^[64] As a canon (the term used here), Moore formed part of the cathedral chapter, which met for an annual audit of accounts – when miscellaneous revenues were divided among them – apparently the sole occasion in the year at which management and policy issues were discussed.^[65] The appointment carried with it a house in the close,^[66] and the responsibility for canons to reside, in pairs, for two months each year. How far these duties were discharged it is difficult to say.  As late as 1869, Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter held a residentiary canonry at Durham, about as far from his own cathedral as the Anglican universe could stretch.^[67] The two previous rectors of Hunton, both grandees destined for bishoprics, had used the parsonage as a summer residence,^[68] and it may be that Moore led a migratory life, enjoying the orchard blossoms in the warmer months, but retreating to the snug life of the cathedral close for part of the winter. He was certainly not an absentee. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, appointed to a canonry in 1851, provided a glimpse of "[t]he aged Moore, wrapt in the 'Times'", apparently detached from the sordid business at the annual audit.^[69] Walter Pater, the future literary critic, was then a pupil at the King's School, and he fell in love with the cathedral and its ancient precincts. The equally venerable chapter also fascinated him: they all had carriages drawn by splendid horses, and were accompanied by liveried men-servants in powdered wigs. Robert Moore "had the most charming silvery voice you could imagine, and read beautifully".^[70] Until the cold winds of Church reform began to blow in the Cathedrals Act of 1840, there were twelve canons, which suggested to contemporaries that Moore was expected to preach four times a year.^[71] Canons in residence might be expected to shoulder some management responsibilities, especially when the dean was non-resident or infirm, but the burden was perhaps not great.^[72] There was a full complement of cathedral pond life – minor canons, preachers, miscellaneous officials – to keep the show on the road, and the building itself was not open to visitors outside service hours until the eighteen-fifties.^[73]

In return for his contribution to cathedral life, Moore officially received an annual stipend of £17, six shillings and eightpence. However, the dean and chapter also divided among themselves the proceeds of property deals in the management of the cathedral estates, especially 'fines' (fees paid on the commencement or renewal of leases). The dean pocketed two shares, and the canons one apiece. In 1838, the annual net profits were reported at £14,377, which handily split into fourteen dividends of around £1,000.^[74] For a job that required him to turn up for one-sixth of the year and perform four times in the pulpit, the Reverend Robert Moore received the income of twenty village schoolmasters. Unfortunately, in the mid-eighteen-thirties, the Ecclesiastical Commission threatened this cosy regime. Why, it was asked, did Canterbury need twelve canons, when St Paul's, in a notably busier city, managed with just three? Why not suppress some of the Canterbury prebendaries as they fell vacant, and divert their income to supplementing the pay of poorer clergy? The horrified chapter issued a thunderous appeal to the commissioners, "solemnly adjuring you to dispose of the church's lands for Jesus's sake, as the donors intended; let neither friends or flatterers beguile you to do otherwise, and put a stop to the approaching ruin of the church, as you expect comfort on the last day." This appeal to the Day of Judgement did not deter Parliament from legislating in 1840 to suppress half the Canterbury canonries as they fell vacant, and to appropriate their dividends to worthier Church purposes. The reduction to six stalls took effect by the early eighteen-fifties, by which time an additional £5,000 a year flowed into general Anglican funds. Unfortunately, at least for Moore, the shrinking of the chapter meant that individual canons were required to reside for longer and to preach more often. Some crumbs of cash siphoned off from the eliminated canonries were earmarked to compensate them for this additional imposition: by the mid-eighteen-forties, Moore was pocketing an extra £14 a year, which doubled to £28 by the end of the decade. The amounts do not suggest that he was bestirring himself to much additional effort, but one critic was sarcastically impressed by Moore's flexibility in profiting from the spoliation that he had so thunderously denounced.^[75] The reformist project vaguely hoped to centralise control of all cathedral endowments, while Parliament in 1840 had intended to limit the annual income of canons to £500. However, the Canterbury chapter retained ownership and exploitation of their estates and continued their pleasant customs of self-enrichment, although they did nobly resolve to limit their depredations to £1,000 apiece a year.^[76]

In fairness to Moore and his venerable colleagues, it should be noted that the Victorian Church of England spent a great deal of time trying to work out how best to use its cathedrals, and Canterbury was a particular challenge. Some dreamed that the massive buildings might operate as dynamic headquarters in each diocese, platforms from which bishops could inspire their people. But Canterbury's bishop was also Primate of All England, resident at Lambeth, active at Westminster and burdened with the leadership of a national institution. Prior to the railway age, archbishops rarely even visited their see, and they were not always welcome when they did: when Howley had made his first appearance in 1832, four years after his appointment, his carriage was pelted by a mob which resented his opposition to parliamentary reform.^[77] John Bird Sumner in 1848 was the first new appointee to be enthroned in person since 1715 but his Primacy (1848-62) coincided with a pressured time for the Church and he, too, was mainly tied to London.^[78] In 1867, Bishop Tait of London asked: "Can any one doubt that the momentous and every year increasing duties of the Primate of All England must interfere with the full discharge of his diocesan duties in the county of Kent?"^[79] Three years later, Dean Alford complained that Canterbury was "more cut off from episcopal ministrations and presence than any other diocese in the realm".^[80]

Furthermore, Canterbury was not only one of the largest cathedrals in England, but its origins as a major monastery had also endowed it with a massive choir (the cathedral equivalent of a chancel in an ordinary church, sometimes spelt 'quire' to avoid confusion with the choristers). In terms of sheer size, it was a difficult space in which to generate enthusiasm or fervour, and all the more challenging for elderly clergy who could no longer project their voices.^[81] Practically devoid of episcopal leadership (or interference) and realistically sceptical of the effectiveness of innovation, it is hardly surprising that the canons resisted new ideas. When Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was appointed 1851, he asked Thomas Carlyle: "What is the advice which you would give to a Canon of Canterbury?" The Scottish sage prefaced some thoughtful counsel with a jesting quotation of Jonathan Swift's alleged greeting to an Irish Protestant congregation that consisted only of his parish clerk: "Dearly beloved Roger". Carlyle's point was that, even if a reformist canon could identify a purpose, it was hard to identify the targets of his mission. Nor was it easy for an idealistic newcomer to reconceptualise the function of the cathedral when he found that his fellow canons were drawn from a different era. "It was at first difficult for Stanley to understand the feelings of men who were born in a previous generation, and reared under conditions which no longer existed, and who regarded their duties and responsibilities from a totally different point of view."^[82] Stanley based himself year-round in the cathedral close – although he also undertook long study tours as far afield as Egypt and Palestine – and used his duty periods of official residence to improve the standard of cathedral preaching, also venturing forth into the pulpits of the City's parish churches.^[83] Although his elderly colleagues deplored his enthusiasms, they seem to have found him personally likeable, the more so as Stanley was prepared to listen politely to their reminiscences of churchmanship in times past.

Unhappily, this welcoming attitude did not carry over to Henry Alford, the theologian and reformer who was appointed Dean in 1857. Alford quickly found that his authority was very limited – for instance, he had the right to preach just three times a year at Sunday morning services in his own cathedral – and that he could achieve very little without the support of the six canons, Moore included. They grudgingly allowed him to introduce an extra sermon, on Sunday afternoons, but made it clear that their permission could be withdrawn at any time. While their reluctance undoubtedly stemmed in large measure from resistance to any form of innovation, they were also motivated by a more traditional interpretation of the function of cathedral worship, one that focused upon the central mystery of the communion service. Their unease was heightened when the nave was packed on summer Sunday afternoons by pious holiday-makers on excursions from Margate and Ramsgate.^[84] After enduring a decade of frustration and obstruction, Alford lashed out in print. Cathedrals, he insisted, were "in fact the private chapels of the Deans and Chapters … lent for diocesan purposes when so required", and not always willingly. Alford wrote that "in many of our Cathedrals", the office of Dean was "practically useless, involving less responsibility, and less duty, than that of a canon residentiary".^[85] But many of his references were implicitly or even expressly to Canterbury. "The Dean, while nominally the head of the Cathedral Body, is almost without employment, and absolutely without power to act, having in chapter only one vote among many." This placed him at the mercy of the canons who shared "no common bond, qua members of Chapter, except the conservation of their incomes and rights; which last too often, being interpreted in practice, means systematic caution against any precedents being set for regular participation in church work beyond that required of them by their statutes, and constant endeavour to prevent the cathedral from being utilised for other than statutable purposes."^[86] Attempts to work the chapter as a team were further complicated by "continual petty squabbles about etiquette and precedence, arising from acknowledged or presumed difference of rank in office".^[87]

It is only fair to note that these strictures date from four years after Moore's death, and seven years after his resignation from the chapter. Nonetheless, Dean Alford's bleak denunciation of the preferment that he had occupied for six decades told its own story: "there is no position so much looked up to and courted as that of a Cathedral dignitary. And this, not because it is a post of usefulness, but because it is a post of ease. The general idea of such preferment is, that there is 'plenty of money and nothing to do'. And though the reality may in many instances fall short of this ideal elysium, there cannot be much doubt that, in the main, and in character, the estimate is right."^[88] The fact that Alford's condemnation came not from some carping Dissenter but from a defender of the Church added to its force, although we should take note of his qualification that a cathedral canonry was not necessarily the "ideal elysium" that some imagined. In defence of Moore's ling tenure of his canonry, it could be argued that he was in some senses the prisoner of England's cathedral system – if 'system' is the right term – although he could hardly be portrayed as its victim. While the giant bulk of the inherited buildings inspired reformers with the vision that they might be mobilised to connect with the mass of the people, nobody ever worked out an efficient and enduring way of bringing this about. By default, the cathedrals continued to operate inward-looking, temple-like forms of worship, ceremonies that were liturgically mysterious if usually spiritually uninspiring. Somebody had to deliver those services, and – we may charitably conclude – it fell to the Reverend Robert Moore to be one of those fated to undertake this sterile role. Yet, against that modest defence, we may also note that it was the minor canons who bore the daily burden of the chanting and the praying. By agreeing to cap their annual dividends at £1,000, Moore and his colleagues showed some awareness of the widespread view that they were an irrelevance, although their moderation can hardly be described as a self-denying ordinance. Perhaps overall we should conclude that his role as a canon of Canterbury cathedral was that was not so much a sinecure as a non-job, whose duties involved a largely pointless cycle of unappreciated rituals.

Is it possible to estimate Moore's net return from his fifty-eight years as a cathedral canon? The Morning Star failed to notice that Moore had resigned from the chapter three years before his death, so its global figure of £61,000 would have to be reduced to £58,000. Beyond that, it is difficult to go beyond guesswork in estimating necessary deductions. His house in the cathedral close was rent-free, but he was required to meet maintenance costs.^[89] A two-home regime would probably also incur additional staff expenses: liveried servants may perhaps be regarded as optional conspicuous expenditure, but a housekeeper and caretaker were probably needed year-round. An arbitrary annual sum of £120 in housing costs would amount to around £7,000 over the six decades. There seems to have been no system by which absent canons might hire deputies, while rates and taxes were probably relatively light burdens. Land tax did not apply and we may be reasonably sure that members of the chapter managed to place tight limits on their contribution to civic revenues. Before 1816 and again from 1842, income tax would have been charged, but at an average rate of 3.33 percent, it would have claimed little more than £1,000. Poor rates were perhaps – and here I can only guess – twice that amount. All in all, the £58,000 headline figure would perhaps be reduced to around £48,000. Of course, this calculation takes no account of other outlays, lifestyle choices that Moore probably regarded as required by his status – hospitality, charity, money spent on display in clothing, furniture and transport. Indeed, with a net income of a little over £800, he may well have felt that the calls upon his purse dictated by his social position severely reduced the real value of his preferment. Certainly, he refused to concede any of the income from his position as Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, a monstrosity to which this essay now turns.

+++ [b], ii: Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Until the creation of a probate court in 1858, Wills were processed by the Church of England. Each diocese had its own prerogative court, which adjudicated litigation over inheritances and employed clerks who laboriously transcribed probates into ledgers. Where an estate included set values of property in two dioceses, jurisdiction lay with the archbishop's own machinery, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (which, like the Primate himself, in fact operated in London). Given that the Canterbury operation tended to handle larger estates, it also stood to benefit proportionately from higher fees: the 1849-50 parliamentary committee on court fees estimated that two-fifths of the testamentary business in England and Wales came under the jurisdiction of Canterbury.^[90] This meant that many of the wealthiest and most influential households in the country had come into contact with the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and were easily roused by criticism of its shortcomings. Its charges were certainly more than merely nominal: Punch alleged in 1850 that they were as high as 4.35 percent of the value of each inheritance.^[91]

Those fees were divided among a hive of drones, with the Registrar taking a very large share for doing precisely nothing.^[92] (Just how big a slice he received is open to speculative discussion – which I attempt below – since Moore was not forthcoming about a subject that he regarded as a private matter: £8,000 a year was the generally accepted figure by the eighteen-fifties.^[93]) The actual work of the office was supervised by five deputies, who took turns to run the office for a fortnight at a time, and received annual stipends of about £2,400 for their ten weeks' work. Mysteriously, the staff complement of the Prerogative Office also comprised five 'clerks of the seat', who were well paid but had no duties. One of them was the Reverend G.B. Moore, Canon Moore's nephew, who received something over £2,000 a year and also had his own parish. At the base of this grisly pyramid were the Cratchit-like clerks who undertook the drudge work of transcribing Wills and issuing probates. The government imposed stamp duty on probate documents which was recouped from executors.  The Prerogative Office received a two-and-a-half percent discount on its bulk purchase of stamps from the Treasury, but charged the full price for issuing them. This created a profit that was used to meet the wages of the humble clerks. In the late eighteen-forties, Parliament eliminated the discount, leaving the Prerogative Office unable to pay its staff and, consequently, facing collapse.^[94] The crisis hardly represented the finest hour for British financial legislation, but the ensuing crisis directed press attention and public indignation towards the wasteful allocation of the Prerogative Office's fee income. Robert Moore's inability to comprehend the argument that his income should be diverted to the support of the people who did the work deservedly earned him the nickname of 'The Great Sinecurist'.^[95]

It seems that Archbishop John Moore had decided that the eighteenth century should not end without secure provision for his three sons. On 6 December 1799, he issued a patent jointly granting them "the office of Register and Writer of the Acts of the Prerogative Court, and the office of Keeper of the Registers and Muniments of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury". Robert Moore, the youngest of the three, was then a student at Oxford.^[96] He shared his good fortune with his older brothers, Charles and George. Charles Moore sat in the unreformed House of Commons for two pocket boroughs between 1799 and 1812, but made no impact in public life before retiring into deeper obscurity. He died in December 1826.^[97] Like Robert, George Moore was a clergyman and a rampant pluralist, who had been a canon of Canterbury Cathedral since 1795. He based himself in his principal parish, Wrotham in Kent, where, the county historian Edward Hasted noted in 1806, he was "universally hated". When a clergyman married, it was customary for his flock to celebrate his return from honeymoon by singing one of the Old Testament psalms associated with marriage. On George Moore's reappearance, the parish clerk called a funeral hymn which the congregation sang as a gesture of protest.^[98] Nonetheless, Wrotham had to endure George Moore's spiritual ministrations for a further four decades: he died in December 1845, leaving £300,000 in his Will. His brother Robert was then left as the sole beneficiary of their privileged Registrarship.

The Morning Star alleged that Robert Moore received around £480,000 from his two-thirds of a century association with the Prerogative Court. This was clearly an exaggeration, since the paper obviously did not realise that the appointment had originally been made as a fraternal threesome, with Moore receiving one-third of the proceeds until the death of his brother Charles, rising to half over the next two decades as he shared the income with George. However, for the last twenty years of his life he was the sole beneficiary, either of the fees generated by the Prerogative Court or of the compensatory pension that was granted to him when it was abolished. These fractions would reduce the overall return to around £300,000 – still a breath-taking sum of money, roughly the twenty-first century equivalent of £30 million. Furthermore, there were few deductions. The Registrar very definitely did not contribute to the salaries of the subordinates who did the work. Since no property was connected with the appointment, Moore's income was presumably exempt from any contribution to land tax or poor rates. Income tax, before 1816 on one-third of the total and, for two decades after its reintroduction in 1842 on the full £8,000, might have totalled £10,000. This would have left a total of around £290,000 flowing into Robert Moore's pocket – an average of about £4,400 a year, a figure that was of course much higher in the later decades. However, one problem with this estimated calculation is that it back-projects the eighteen-forties figure to the beginning of the century. Inflation was not a serious problem after 1815, when the high prices of the Napoleonic wars actually began to fall. In the mid-century period, railways and free trade helped reduce costs and raise overall living standards, presumably increasingly savings of individuals and hence the dutiable estates that they bequeathed.^[99] Furthermore, the population of England and Wales more than doubled between 1800 and 1860, increasing from nine million to twenty million. A large part of the increase was in the north of England, which was covered by the Prerogative Court of the Province of York, but nonetheless it is likely that, in 1850, Canterbury was handling far more business and reaping much larger fees than it had netted fifty years earlier. If so, the cash flowing into Moore's coffers in 1800 would have been considerably less than he pocketed half a century later. Overall, however, the key point is that Robert Moore was almost certainly able to retain a remarkably high percentage of his gross income from the Registrarship. Not only was the net return very little affected by taxation, but the social demands inherent in the position were virtually non-existent. A rector or a cathedral canon was expected to maintain a gentlemanly lifestyle, ride in a carriage, employ servants and extend appropriate hospitality to neighbouring clergy and gentry. None of these obligations fell upon the Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury who was a phantom with neither corporeal existence nor social responsibilities.

The historian may be permitted to confess inability to penetrate the carefully veiled appointment processes associated with the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, not least because the 1849-50 select committee found them puzzling too. "It appears to have been the practice for the Archbishop, for the time being, to grant this office for three lives, and when one of the lives dropped, for the survivors to surrender the office and receive a fresh grant, with the new life inserted." The death of Charles Moore in 1826 opened a vacancy, which Archbishop Manners-Sutton ("that mild but rapacious prelate" as the Extraordinary Black Book dubbed him) decided would provide an ideal berth for his grandson, who was then a teenager at Eton. (In a confusing crossover of titles, the grandson would eventually become Viscount Canterbury.)^[100] Manners-Sutton did not propose to force the Moore brothers to share their sinecure income, but rather intended to grant the reversion of the Registrarship to his own progeny, so that the boy would eventually inherit the position after their deaths.^[101] Unfortunately, George and Robert Moore refused to surrender their patent, even though they no doubt received assurances that their names would be transferred to the replacement document. It is possible that there was animosity between the two families: Manners-Sutton had succeeded their father twenty years earlier, and the changeover at Lambeth perhaps left some legacy of friction. The Moores may also have feared the faint stirrings of reform that were emerging in the middle of the eighteen-twenties, after the repression of the immediate post-Waterloo years. In 1827-8, the Canningites briefly headed the government. Although their unofficial designation, Liberal Tories, massively flattered their enthusiasm for change, their leader, George Canning, had once criticised sinecures and was regarded by the privileged as a dangerous subversive.^[102] The brothers possibly feared that if they surrendered their patent, a public outcry might force unreliable politicians to block its reissue. The Archbishop asked the House of Lords to back a special act of parliament enabling him to circumvent this obstacle.^[103] The peers duly obliged, and the unreformed House of Commons was unlikely to interfere in the private concerns of the upper chamber. The radical Joseph Hume did protest against giving the Primate power to "perpetuate an office [i.e. department] which levied £29,000 a year on the public", but there was no support for his plea that the legislation should at least be accompanied by an investigation of a position "which he believed to be a mere sinecure".^[104]

By the time the Reverend George Moore died in 1845, the political climate had entirely changed. The 1832 Reform Act had ushered in an era of utilitarian condemnation of quaint ecclesiastical corruption, although legislators remained wary of invading established rights, however bizarre they now seemed. Archbishop Howley had succeeded Manners-Sutton in 1828 (securing his grandson's comfortable future had been one of the old Primate's last acts). Now he, too, recognised the inevitability of reform and decided not to exercise his entitlement to add a third name to the privileged tail of his Prerogative Court. In 1847, Parliament duly decreed that the old regime would slowly make way for change. Robert Moore and Viscount Canterbury were left undisturbed to enjoy their good fortune, but the next-but-one Registrar would be a working administrator, probably with a trimmed salary.  However, nomination to the office remained with the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Howley died the following year, the elevation of John Bird Sumner to the Primacy suggested that Lambeth too had turned a corner. The new Archbishop turned his back on the display that had surrounded his predecessors, who made even the shortest journeys by carriage, escorted by flunkeys. Sumner walked to the House of Lords, carrying not a crozier but an umbrella.^[105] Yet, serious and evangelical as he was, Sumner fell for the temptation created by the vacant third name on the patent for the Registrarship, and placed his son in the line of succession.

This act of family aggrandisement was dragged into the daylight by a Welsh radical MP, Sir Benjamin Hall, who was a critic of clerical corruption. By using the devices of advance notice and subsequent clarification, Hall managed to bring the issue before the House of Commons on three evenings towards the end of April 1850, enabling him to review the whole absurdity of the sinecure regime that weighed down the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in the process.^[106] One complication, which Hall probably exploited, was that Archbishop Sumner had a brother on the episcopal bench, Charles Sumner of Winchester. Both prelates had offspring who were training to become barristers in London, a coincidence that permitted the seemingly innocent enquiry: "whether the vacancy had been filled up by the Archbishop of Canterbury with his son's name, or with the name of Mr Sumner, son of the Bishop of Winchester?" At once it appeared that the Winton Sumners were very cool towards Cantuar's parental generosity, with the bishop urging Hall to take "the earliest opportunity of setting me right with the public". 

Hall outlined the recent history of the sinecure, highlighting its exploitation by Archbishops Moore and Manners-Sutton. The deep background made it possible to gloss over the changed nature of the office and imply that the new archbishop had engaged in a hole-in-the-corner act of squalid corruption. "It seemed tolerably clear that Dr Sumner, with archiepiscopal forethought, had made his nomination in the hope that Parliament would not interfere." He further sweetly enquired "whether it was the intention of the Government to introduce any measure revising this appointment?"  The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, agreed that the Registrarship was an intolerable anomaly. "It appears to me that it is one of those offices which, when Parliament shall deal with the subject, must either be abolished, or so altered, that the only salary to be given shall be for efficient duties actually performed." Obviously, "the enormous amount of salary … must be taken away", and anyone tacked on to the patent by the current Archbishop "will have no claim for compensation whatever". "This last announcement was received with loud cheers."^[107] However, Russell was inclined to engage in tough talk that was not always followed by effective action, and his rider, that "this office is at present undergoing inquiry by a Select Committee", suggests that he did not envisage any early parliamentary action.

Nonetheless, Sir Benjamin Hall's initiative had damaged its target: the Spectator referred to "the excessive public disgust" aroused by the Archbishop's decision to "make these mean family uses of the Church".^[108]   Sumner felt obliged to offer an embarrassed explanation in the House of Lords. He referred to reports "that I have nominated one of my sons to a valuable reversionary sinecure in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The case is so as regards the reversionary office; the case is not so as regards either the value or the sinecure." Thanks to the 1847 Act – which, he assumed, the peers had probably forgotten that they had passed – "the office of registrar, if ever held by my son, which is very uncertain, not to say improbable, will be performed in person, and its salary regulated according to the duties and responsibilities of the station." With some irritation, he referred to the stamp duty that had been charged on the issue of the necessary patent, which ensured that the eventual value of the appointment "according to the doctrine of chances, would be scarcely equal to the stamp on which the nomination is recorded." The 1847 Act "took away the sinecure, and it limited the value; but the office must remain, and must be filled; wherever there is a diocese there must be a registry, and where there is a registry there must be a registrar; and I trust that in nominating, prospectively, that registrar, I shall in the judgment of your Lordships have exercised a privilege to which I was both legally and morally entitled; and have done nothing which, when explained, can subject me to the charge of nepotism, an imputation which I hope neither has been, nor ever will be, the characteristic of my official career."^[109] To admit that he had designated his son for an appointment in his gift but deny that this act constituted an act of nepotism was hardly an impressive plea from the spiritual leader of the English nation. In effect, Sumner had admitted nepotism but pleaded in mitigation that he was not very good at it. His subsequent decision to insert his son-in-law into Moore's canonry twelve years later suggests that Archbishop Sumner never abandoned an eighteenth-century attitude to Church patronage.

There can be little doubt that the episode undermined Sumner's claim to moral authority. But it also opened Moore to searching and sceptical scrutiny, for in describing the scandal of the Registrarship, Hall took the opportunity to pillory its current occupant for more general clerical covetousness. "Robert Moore now held the office, enjoying, concurrently with it, those of a prebend of Canterbury, of the rectory of Latchington [sic], and of the rectory of Hunton, from which preferments, and his registrarship, he derived an income of £14,963 per annum." In the early months of 1850, Charles Dickens was publishing his novel David Copperfield by instalments, and he decided that his hero had business to transact that involved a visit to the Prerogative Office of the Province of Canterbury. It was "rather a queerly managed institution", located in a building that, although "choked" with priceless documents, was structurally "unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof". The operation was simply "a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply". With heavy irony, David Copperfield voiced the author's criticisms: "it was a little unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits of the deputy-registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether they would or no." It also seemed "a little unjust that all the great offices in this great office, should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room up-stairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London." Homing in on Moore himself, the indictment added that "it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a stall in a cathedral, and what not)". In short, the Prerogative Office was "a pestilent job" and "a pernicious absurdity". In a token show of fairness, Dickens allowed the expression of a counter-argument through the mouth of a conservative lawyer. "Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious."^[110] This was a caricature of the extreme case against all projects of reform that had been advanced as late as 1830: there was a mystical interconnection that linked the institutions that had made Britain great, and to touch any one of them was to risk the crumbling of the whole structure. Twenty years later, and under the scrutiny of a House of Commons that had itself been surgically remodelled in the Reform Act, such an argument was ludicrously antediluvian.

After four years in office, and lacking a reliable majority in the Commons, Russell's ministry was weak. It would waste much time and political capital throughout 1850-1 on the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, a futile attempt to ban Roman Catholic prelates from adopting territorial designations. This diversion of energy left little opportunity to tackle Anglican motes and clerical beams, and the government eventually crumbled into defeat in February 1852. Its Conservative successor lacked a majority in the House of Commons, let alone any wish to interfere with the Church of England. Robert Moore thus secured a two-year stay of execration. Nonetheless, Sir Benjamin Hall's continued his campaign through the press, prompting Punch to launch a scornful lampoon in June. "If any one knows what it is to have a dear, kind papa, the son of an archiepiscopal sire is that blessed child." It appealed for charity in studying the natural history of both archbishops and golden eagles. "Let us overlook the gloomier and more painful traits in their natures, such as devouring the lambs – whom the archbishops, in truth, are rather supposed to feed."^[111] The ground was prepared for a scornful and scorching leading article in The Times which appeared on 14 August 1852: not for nothing was Britain's leading newspaper nicknamed The Thunderer.^[112]

"We have not many sinecurists left in comparison with olden times," the editorial began, "but the few who remain are determined that the good old cause of rapacity and idleness shall not suffer in their hands." Its contemptuous tone became even sharper as it unleashed its indictment against Robert Moore's snug berth as Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. "Mr Moore does nothing, but pockets £9,000 for his labour of looking on." This "rev. gentleman – for reverend he is" was also "in possession of two good livings, and of a canonry at Canterbury". The Times had probably overestimated Moore's income from the Registrarship, but had understated his parochial haul. However, it was well informed about the anomalies of the Prerogative Court, with its strange menagerie of Deputy Registrars and Clerks of the Seat who – like Moore himself – were well remunerated but made no contribution to the running of the office. Thanks to the elimination of the stamp discount that had financed their wages, the humble clerks who did the work were facing unemployment. Appeals had been made to Robert Moore for the reallocation of the fee income. "To these remonstrances the reverend gentleman has turned a deaf ear. … He disclaims all responsibility but one – the responsibility of receiving £9,000 a year." The fact that this "over-gorged pluralist" was a clergyman only made his offence worse. "It is certainly not at the feet of Mr Moore we would willingly sit to hear lessons of justice, probity, and self-denial.  The profession of Mr Moore is a heavy aggravation of conduct which would be intolerable even in a layman." The Times closed its diatribe by setting a trap: "no doubt he will tell us that 'he has a right do what he likes with his own – and the clerks may pack about their business!'"^[113] Moore made the tactical blunder of responding, implying his agreement with the first half of that statement and not even bothering to comment on the second.

"The office I hold is a patent one, of great antiquity, which has always been executed by deputy, and its emolument are regulated by act of Parliament," Moore protested, although he was certainly not inviting any legislative invasion of his rights. "I know not why I, any more than other patentees similarly circumstanced, should be held up by you to public odium, and made the subject of misrepresentation and exaggeration." This was not so much a reply as a rebuke. Indeed, far from pleading any defence, he simply dismissed all criticism by asserting that there had been no complaints that he failed to do his duty, made either to the judge of the Prerogative Court or to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This notably missed the point that it was impossible to complain about the discharge of non-existent duties.^[114] Given that his letter was dated on the day of the original attack, it does not seem that Robert Moore had given much thought to his response. He had in fact opened himself to further denunciation: in publishing his letter, The Times dismissed it as "a general assertion of the divine right of sinecurists. Sinecurists exist like any other beautiful or necessary thing in this ugly world, like sweet breezes from the south, the musical laugh of children, &c. There they are. Can we have the cruelty to demand of them that which is a direct contradiction of the first condition of their existence – namely, work?" The Times refused to accept the dual doctrine that "it is Mr Moore's duty simply to receive his salary; it is ours to ask no questions." His defiant letter simply provided a peg upon which to hang a further recital of the Prerogative Office scandal. Unfortunately, the fervour of journalistic denunciation could not disguise the awkward fact that Moore's grip on his ill-gotten emoluments was legally secure. It was his thick-skinned refusal to recognise the immorality of his position that constituted the principal charge against him: "now at length that a chance is afforded him of rendering some slight service in return for the enormous amount of public money he has received, Mr Moore refuses to contribute one farthing to carrying on the duties of his office, on the ground that he is a patentee, and has a right to do what he likes with his own. We leave Mr Moore and the whole affair to the public judgment."^[115]

It is always dangerous to assume that newspaper attacks constitute public opinion, but Robert Moore certainly had his detractors.^[116] Four letters appeared in The Times in the three weeks after the censorious leading articles, condemning him as "the greatest sinecurist in the kingdom" and elaborating the case against him, damning the poor service provided by the Prerogative Office, dissecting his parishes and contemptuously analysing the labours associated with his canonry. "The Reverend Robert Moore likes to do his work by deputy," sneered one correspondent, who denounced his failure to supplement the Porteus bequest and so prevented Hunton from having a village school for three decades.^[117] Early in September, The Times returned to its editorial censure. It conceded that its target was entitled to his haul of ecclesiastical benefices, gifted to him in a different era. "No person proposes that Mr Moore shall be disturbed in his possessions", but "[a] clergyman permitted to retain four rectories and a stall in addition to a gigantic sinecure must be content to balance his pecuniary receipts against his public reputation." However, in the case of the Prerogative Court, the balance between entitlement and obligation was subtly different. "We do not complain of Mr Moore for being Registrar, for doing nothing in that capacity, or for pocketing a large sum in respect of this inactivity; but we complain that when so much is paid for executing the duty those who execute it should not be paid at all." It is possible to detect a slight retreat here, for The Times had bitterly censured Moore for wallowing in his sinecure at all, but the concession that his position was legally impregnable was covered by two columns of renewed angry denunciation.^[118] However, correspondents questioned whether the Registrar of the Prerogative Court really did enjoy such cast-iron protection against honest labour. "I presume that when Mr Moore was inducted into the emoluments of his office some formalities were gone through, some oaths taken, some engagements entered into, some papers signed, some stamps paid for," speculated 'One of the Public'. Another objector, signing himself 'A Solicitor' could not trace any act of parliament defining the duties of the Registrar, and challenged Moore to produce his patent of employment to prove that he bore no responsibility for the payment of subordinates: "I have great doubts if either patent or act so absolve him".^[119] Although ingenious, these flank attacks proved ineffective.

A parliamentary return listing fees paid to the ecclesiastical courts gave The Times an opportunity to renew the attack in November. "It is quite proper that wills should be kept and registered… but the sooner public salaries are limited to those who perform the service, the better it will be. An officer whose obligations are wholly unconcerned with the duties of his office is clearly a person whose appointment may be dispensed with altogether; nor is there any reason for maintaining a fiction which costs a heavily taxed country many thousands a-year in special taxation for the benefit of particular individuals."^[120] One of Moore's epistolatory assailants from August contributed three further letters, peppering the canons of Canterbury cathedral more generally. One of the themes in this tailpiece was a puzzling anomaly in the quasi-official publication, the Clergy List. The combined income from Eynsford and Hollingbourn was entered at £205, when their tithes had been commuted at over £1100. The correspondent hinted at "falsehood and dishonesty", implying under-declaration to evade rates and taxes.^[121] It is an interesting example of the difficulty of unravelling the real income of the mega-pluralists.

Where The Times employed head-on invective, Punch – that other mighty keeper of the Victorian conscience – resorted to the perhaps more insidious weapon of whimsical humour. Its definition of 'Moore's Utopia' certainly reflected confidence that readers would instantly identify the target. "Receiving nine thousand pounds a year for being the Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury; three thousand pounds a year more for being a Canon somewhere; and something like a thousand pounds a year more for some nice little rectories in the country – making altogether upwards of thirteen thousand pounds a year for doing nothing! That is what we call a very pretty realisation of 'Moore's Utopia'!" The following week it published a tongue-in-cheek defence of the canon of Canterbury cathedral who was paid one thousand pounds a year for four appearances in the pulpit. This meant that his sermons were worth £250 apiece, or about eightpence a word. "Mr Moore is a gentleman of extraordinary self-denial" for "he has never published these valuable discourses! The profits that would have accrued to him from their sale would have been enormous". Furthermore, although "[i]t might be urged that four sermons in a year are not many", Moore was to be commended for his restraint, since "a larger number of such rich discourses might have been too much of a good thing". The following week, Punch came up with a new line of ridicule. One of the more idiosyncratic items in the contemporary press were the notices from the Treasury acknowledging receipt of 'Conscience Money':  Victorians who had fiddled their tax returns were sometimes seized with guilt and moved to send in anonymous payments. This feature provided Punch with an irresistible temptation: "we have been extremely disappointed at not finding mention of a single farthing sent in the name of the Reverend Mr Moore, the Monster Pluralist. We must confess, after the numerous exposures that have taken place of his sinecures and many livings, we did slightly expect to read a pleasant little paragraph announcing the restitution of a sum of certainly not less than £50,000 from the much-abused gentleman in question. But no! there has not been a penny sent; not even a postage stamp!" The "Reverend Registrar … has lost a noble opportunity of relieving his conscience and his pocket at the same time". The jests continued through the autumn. "Why is the Office of Registrar of Wills only worth £9,000 a year? Because it's impossible to get Moore out of it." When a much advertised patent medicine claimed fifty thousand cures, "for the life of us we cannot help thinking of Mr Robert Moore, the Monster Pluralist".^[122] The Punch sallies continued into 1853, with declining levels of wit, but nonetheless confirming that the Moore scandal was deeply embedded in the public psyche. His insistence that his preferments were privileges for life not unnaturally prompted speculations about his demise. "When will the Registrar of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury give up his sinecure?", Punch asked in 1854. "When he is no Mo(o)re."^[123]

Nonetheless, Robert Moore retained his lucrative sinecure for a little longer. The broad liberal coalition formed under the Earl of Aberdeen in December 1852 began with good intentions of reforming the whole range of the ecclesiastical courts, but the target quickly retreated as ministers confronted the complexities of drafting the necessary legislation.^[124] There followed the embarrassments of the Crimean War, which dramatically demonstrated the need for fundamental change in a broad sweep of British institutions at a time when organising the fight against Russia – and the military ineptitude that the war effort revealed – dominated political and administrative attention and effort. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury ("a job [i.e. scam] so enormous as to be almost incredible") was a prominent target of William Downing Bruce's 1856 pamphlet, How the Ecclesiastical Courts Rob the Public, which drew heavily on the information (and also the invective) published in The Times four years earlier. Bruce made much of a claim that the Wills stored in the various prerogative courts were in fact the private property of the registrars, with the implied threat that if their privileges were challenged, they might take revenge by destroying these vital public documents. "It is dangerous to provoke Mr Moore and his fraternity; they are very ill-used men. England, instead of complaining of their profligate rapacity and shameless ignorance of moral obligation, is bound respectfully to tender her thanks that they have hitherto been satisfied, no, not satisfied with, but condescended to demand only their fees, and she must trust to their forbearance."^[125]

Yet when legislation to create a probate court finally made its way through Parliament in 1857, the iniquities of Robert Moore dropped out of public view. Everyone now agreed that a secular structure should replace the outdated ecclesiastical machinery, and hence there was no need for a focus of outrage. Furthermore, as The Times had reluctantly acknowledged in 1852, however outrageous was Moore's sinecure, he was legally entitled to draw its benefits. Naming no names, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cranworth, discreetly alluded to the subject when he explained his proposals: "there was a strong feeling against making reforms at the expense of individuals. ... It was the practice of the Legislature, when it deprived a person of an office he held for life, to give him, by way of compensation, the full amount of his emolument".^[126]  Moore negotiated an annual pension of £7,990, the only occasion when he publicly divulged his income as Registrar. Of course, the arrangement renewed the anomaly and extended the grip of the "Monster Sinecurist" upon the public purse but, as he was now in his late seventies, the end of the scandal probably seemed in sight (although the reversion of the pension to Manners-Sutton's middle-aged grandson extended the prospect). The publication of the government pensions list in 1861 triggered a newspaper paragraph noting that the compensation paid to Moore was believed to be "the largest ever granted", prompting the sarcastic comment that his contribution to the administration of legacies must have been "stupendous".^[127] As noted, in his last years, Moore did divest himself of two of his preferments, Latchingdon in 1859 and his Canterbury canonry three years later – but, with a government pension of almost £8,000 a year, he could surely afford the retrenchment.

As the Morning Star editorial so savagely indicated, Robert Moore's death in September 1865 was not widely mourned: surveying a batch of British newspapers that reached Adelaide two months later, a South Australian journalist noted that his death "has elicited much unfavourable comment from the Church's critics".^[128] His estate amounted to a quarter of a million pounds, the equivalent of £27 million in 2026, the bulk of which was split between his two children. He left just £800 in charitable bequests. £300 went to the Hunton village school, much the amount that might have launched the project decades earlier had he supplemented the original Porteus endowment. The remaining largesse was split into five equal packages, £100 to the poor of Hunton and the rest divided among four hospitals in Canterbury and Maidstone.^[129] For sixty years, Robert Moore had drawn a comfortable income from tithes and tithe rents, the ten-percent compulsory gift levied upon his parishioners. In his Will, he bestowed one third of one percent of his considerable fortune upon good causes. It seems somehow an appropriate gesture from beyond the grave.

While Robert Moore was pilloried as 'The Great Sinecurist' largely because of the particularly gross anomaly of that enabled him to draw eight-thousand-a-year as Registrar of the Prerogative Court, he was certainly not the only priestly parasite to emerge from the genteel ecclesiastical corruption of late-Georgian England. What seems difficult to comprehend is that such an unjust absurdity could have persisted for so long, remaining a financial encumbrance and a target for public outrage into the utilitarian era of railways and reform. Specialist studies of Anglicanism and general textbooks both note the formation of the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1835, which enabled the Church of England – notably driven by Charles James Blomfield, the modernising bishop of London – to confront its own problems, and some historians have written as if solutions had emerged, not just quickly but comprehensively.^[130] The most obvious explanation for the persistence of the Robert Moore scandal was the durability of Moore himself. As a sinecurist, he was unlikely to be worn out by overwork, and he survived into his late eighties. His preferments had been acquired in an entirely legal manner, conferring upon him irrefutable rights that the Victorian mind chose not to override. But the priestly calling was gifted with the power of providing moral leadership and burdened with the responsibility of denouncing wrong, a duty that was all the more imperative when directed, as it so often had to be, against those who wielded social and political power. But no bishop publicly criticised Moore for his covetous retention of resources that might have been better spent elsewhere. His 1852 letter to The Times suggests that no Primate had even privately urged him to stand aside from his most indecent sinecure. In truth, ecclesiastical attitudes to familial claims upon institutional patronage changed very slowly.  Even in the mid-Victorian years, when John Bird Sumner seemed a new kind of Archbishop, he began his reign by inserting his son into the succession to one appointment, and ended by slipping his son-in-law into another. The hungry curates who might have yearned to use pulpit or pamphlet to denounce Moore and his kind would never have dared to risk their own prospects of climbing the ladder. The bishops who might have applied moral pressure lacked the ethical purity to take a stand – so much so that it is unlikely that any of them even considered any such course of action.

THE PERSISTENCE OF PLURALISM: ROBERT MOORE IN CONTEXT

The critics of pluralism Robert Moore was certainly not unique. A survey in 1833, by the reformist clergyman Hastings Robinson, calculated that 7,659 clergy shared around 12,200 preferments. One root problem in their distribution was that "upwards of a third" of all benefices were worth less than £150 a year – then the ecclesiastical poverty line – and, of those, "nearly two-thirds produce less than £100". This imbalance helped explain two basic statistics: 3,853 clergy held one appointment while 3,304 occupied two. Many (although not all) of this latter group were simply weaving together a couple of poorly-paid and usually adjacent livings to achieve a living wage and, more or less by definition, the parishes that they served were unrewarding and home to few parishioners. However, at that point, the pyramid narrowed and soared upward towards a penthouse of privilege. 370 clergy each held three appointments, 73 occupied four and 59 reclined upon five.^[131] Most of the lucky winners in this sainted lottery were protégés or offspring of bishops and primates, who had taken for granted that their elevation to the purple gave them the right, as it certainly gave them the opportunity, to enrich their own families. There may have been more: the Extraordinary Black Book in 1832 devoted thirty pages to listing examples, frequently intermingled with disapproving thumbnail biographies.^[132]

Obviously, the scandal of pluralism went hand-in-hand with the abuse of non-residence.^[133] Riding through the pleasant Wiltshire countryside in 1826, William Cobbett deplored the number of villages that had been deserted by their incumbents for so long that the parsonage houses had become uninhabitable through lack of repair. "The tithes remain, indeed, and the parson sacks the amount of them. A journeyman parson comes and works in three or four churches of a Sunday: but the master parson is not there. He generally carries away the produce to spend it in London, at Bath, or somewhere else, to show off his daughters".^[134] Cobbett was ironically contemptuous. The radical William Benbow was incandescent. "Nothing can be more monstrous than the practice of holding pluralities; many parsons have livings from which they derive immense profits, that they never have seen; they undertake the cure of souls by proxy, and are named shepherds of a flock, whom they leave unprotected for the wolf Satan to devour. They eat the bread of idleness, and drink the cup of iniquity." Indeed, in the Regency period, the problem seemed to be getting worse, making it a considerable danger to the Anglican Church should the era of reaction and repression give way to an explosion of demand for fundamental reform – as it did, at the end of the eighteen-twenties. "Solitary instances of back-sliding parsons are not now quoted with sorrow," Benbow fumed in 1823; "they thicken, they swarm like locusts in the field; they are a pestilence visibly destroying by day, and a meteor consuming by night."^[135] In 1830, the Reverend John Acaster, a rare voice raised against clerical abuses from within the Church, reckoned that "the evil of pluralities" had increased to a "frightful extent" during the previous sixteen years – and this at a time of "a vastly-increased, and increasing population, clearly demanding a greater division of clerical labour; and an increase of incumbents to supply the religious wants of the people". His objection to the abuse was fundamentally religious: pluralists "wilfully lied unto God" when they made promises to serve their parishioners on induction to a benefice because "they knew before-hand that it would be utterly impossible for them to keep residence, and to perform the duties required".  Acaster tackled pluralists face-to-face and demanded that they justify themselves. A few pleaded disinterested motives, one that he had "some scheme of benevolence to carry into effect for the advantage of the people", another that he had accepted a second parish "to keep out an improper incumbent" and thereby safeguard the position of a worthy curate. (The obvious riposte to this plea, that the curate should be promoted, was implicitly ruled out by the Church's internal class system. The Anglican ideal of residence aimed to place a gentleman in every parish: curates from humble backgrounds did not qualify.) At the other extreme, there were those who "profanely" replied that the Church was "their trade", that had a "duty to make the most of it; and therefore they will refuse nothing that comes in their way, which they can possibly hold, either by law or custom, or by the licence or connivance of the bishop". Acaster was convinced that a failure of moral leadership was the fundamental cause of all abuses in the Church and especially explained "the profane, sordid, and worldly conduct of the more secular part of the national clergy. Speak to these latter on the subject, and they will instantly and sneeringly reply: 'Surely there can be no harm in the practice, while so many of your godly folk so unhesitatingly lead the way and set the example.'" Others were embarrassed by their own pluralism, but pleaded "that though they conceive the practice to be utterly indefensible, they merely take and hold their preferments, because they are tolerated by law and custom, or by the practice of the bishops, who are either themselves pluralists, or heap upon their sons and relations all the best and richest preferments they have, or on which they can lay their hands." It was the episcopal bench that was particularly responsible for those statistical pinnacles, the bundling together of five or six well-paid positions, relatively small in numbers overall but toxic in their broader effect on the morale and the ethics of the Church as a whole. As Acaster rhetorically asked: "how then can the bishops oppose, or set themselves to remedy in others those very evils of which they themselves have been the greatest promoters?"^[136] The answer, as the next four decades would indicate, was that the bishops chose not to make the effort.

Historians make sense of long sweeps of time by dividing them into sub-periods, and there can be little doubt that Britain was a very different country in its attitudes and ethos in the eighteen-thirties than it had been a decade earlier. But periodisation cannot create watertight compartments: there will always be some continuity in ideas and there will certainly be considerable survival of individuals. Precisely because many of the beneficiaries of the carefree ecclesiastical plunder of Regency days had been the sons of bishops, and given that few of them were plagued by overwork, they proved durable and survived as anomalies, prosperous and unrepentant, into the an era that may retrospectively strike us as the dawn of modern times. Indeed, Geoffrey Best was surprised, and not pleasantly, to encounter several episcopal tribes still infesting the early Victorian era.

The Pretymans George Pretyman, later Pretyman Tomline, Pitt the Younger's tutor at Cambridge, was made a bishop by his former pupil when he was 36, and enjoyed the emoluments, first of Lincoln and later of Winchester, for forty years. "His children", remarked the Extraordinary Black Book "… are not left destitute in the world." The bishop's son George Thomas (Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge) was rector of three parishes, and his name had been inscribed on the payroll of both his father's dioceses, as chancellor and a canon residentiary of Lincoln and also a prebendary of Winchester. George's brother Richard and his cousin John were equally well cushioned from poverty.^[137] "If there is any one name that stands out for all that remained avaricious and self-seeking in the early Victorian church, it is Pretyman," Best remarked. "Not the least remarkable thing about the Pretymans was the unconcerned way they held on to their massed preferments into an age that was frankly horrified and scandalized by such ecclesiastical profiteering." In 1817, Richard Pretyman had been appointed Warden of the Mere Hospital, a former almshouse complex in the city of Lincoln (the buildings had fallen down). His predecessors had followed the practice of charging a low rent, £32 a year, for the extensive land bank attached to the charity, but imposing very large fines for periodic renewal of lease: in effect, the lessees paid the market rent upfront, and then generated just enough money in rent each year to pay for food, lodging and clothing for the thirteen poor persons whom the founder had wished to support back in 1244.^[138] These introductory windfall payments, it need hardly be said, had been pocketed by earlier wardens, and Richard Pretyman would argue in his defence that he had simply followed precedent in doing the same. During his first quarter-century in office, he netted around £13,700, mostly from fines and some from the sale of timber. He also received the £32 annual payment to fund the charity. From this he deducted £8 each year, presumably for expenses, and distributed the remaining £24 among six poor people: no explanation was forthcoming for the halving of the number of beneficiaries. In the late eighteen-thirties, charity commissioners appointed by Parliament found themselves up against a brick wall in their attempts to find out what, if anything, Richard Pretyman did for his money. When the Dean of Lincoln was asked whether the Warden performed the duties of his office, he unhelpfully replied that "as he did not know what those duties were, he could not undertake to say whether they were performed or not". The commissioners sought permission to examine the hospital's founding charter, but the dean and chapter closed ranks and claimed privileged exemption from State investigation.^[139] This was taking arrogance a step too far, and in 1839, the charity commissioners launched proceedings in the Court of Chancery.

When the case was heard in November 1841, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Langdale, criticised both Pretyman's handling of his trust ("[t]hese sums of money, beyond all doubt, belong to the charity") and his arrogant attitude to those who challenged him. It was often the case, he explained, that trustees misapplied charity funds without realising their error until it was pointed out to them. If they then put their hands up and promised to mend their ways, it was his practice to find ways to avoid penalising them for past misdeeds.^[140] However, "if there has been a resistance to the establishment of the right or a concealment of the evidence, which concealment would lead to the presumption that there may have been more previous knowledge than is admitted, it becomes a much more difficult thing to give to a Defendant the benefit of that discretion." It certainly looked as if Pretyman was going to be compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten gains but, after sleeping on the matter, Langdale proposed "a more lenient course" of partial repayment. Quick to interpret the concession as a sign of weakness, Pretyman's lawyers protested that their client had already spent the money, a defence which many a convicted fraudster would no doubt wish to plead. The question of enforcement was referred to the Attorney-General and, since the Conservatives were now in office, no more was heard of the matter.^[141] This seems to have been the most substantial attempt to reclaim the proceeds of Anglican corruption, and it did not recover a single penny.

Cousin John Pretyman also held a lucrative Lincolnshire charity appointment, Spittal Hospital, drawing around £1,000 a year and spending little in return, for a third of a century. Unfortunately, by the time judgment was eventually given against him in 1844, he had died.^[142] More durable, the Pretyman brothers survived into the mid-Victorian era, to be tagged in the scornful pages of Punch as "Georgy and Richard, those two pretty men".^[143] The Times and the Examiner both published hostile reviews of Pretyman plunder in October 1852, again without making any impact upon the offenders. The Morning Star greeted George Thomas Pretyman's death in 1859 with much the same well-informed venom that it would deploy against the memory of Robert Moore six years later. Taking its stand on the New Testament teachings that riches on Earth were a barrier to salvation in Heaven, the Morning Star sardonically deplored his "terrible martyrdom" at the hands of a "cruel father". "If the late bishop really believed in the teaching of the Founder of our religion, which is more than doubtful, he did his best to kill his son's soul by smothering up its life beneath a heap of riches." Much as it would later do with its dissection of the trophies piled upon Moore, the editorial demonstrated "how determinedly and persistently the Bishop proceeded in the work of making it impossible for his son ever to enter in the Kingdom of Heaven". But there was nothing whimsical in its core message. "This Church belongs to the nation. Every man, woman, and child in England is a part proprietor in its immense riches, and the £212,000 which the Reverend George T. Pretyman has been gorging himself and his family with during the last forty-five years represents so far the amount of which the people have been robbed, and leaves on the other side so much ignorance, vice, and crime, which would have never had existence had this money been applied properly. … The aristocracy may feel the existence of such a church linked to its own, and if so we have no desire to invoke the aid of Heaven to preserve either."^[144] However, there are signs that the aristocracy had no intention of tying their fate to that of a corrupt Church, all the more so since its patronage was no longer a source of snug berths for their own offspring. When Richard Pretyman died in 1866, it was the Morning Post, a Conservative publication generally regarded as the house journal of the titled classes, that published a detailed and disapproving list of the preferments piled up by the two brothers.^[145] Nobody regretted the passing of the pluralists, but no Church dignitary had made any public effort to persuade them of the error of their ways.

Lord North's nephew The St Cross Hospital on the outskirts of Winchester was another almshouse charity that was wide open to exploitation, with its expenditure largely set at levels determined by the wishes of its medieval founders, but its endowment yielding a massively increased income.^[146] A revised constitution for the establishment had been drawn up in 1696 which allocated its surplus revenues to the warden as his private property: when the hospital's affairs came before the courts in 1853, a judge described it as a "barefaced and shameless document". However, the 1696 constitution shaped the conduct of the Reverend Francis North, who held the wardenship for almost half a century from 1808. Francis North was the nephew of Lord North, the Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782 whose term of office is forever associated with the independence of the United States. When not quarrelling with the American colonies, he found time to appoint his younger brother Brownlow North to the lucrative see of Winchester. The bishop continued the tradition, showering patronage upon both his younger son and his two sons-in-law.^[147] As the eldest son, Francis North received the most generous patronage: indeed, in 1827 he would inherit the family peerage, becoming the Reverend the Earl of Guilford and possessor of ancestral estates. By the close of the eighteenth century – very soon after his ordination – he held four valuable parishes, which were believed to net him an annual income of £4,500, plus the cathedral canonry which seems to have been the almost obligatory prize of episcopal offspring.^[148] When St Cross fell vacant too, Bishop North was anxious to confer the wardenship upon his heir, but hesitated over the form the gift should take. Even in 1808, the limits of public tolerance placed some constraints upon clerical covetousness, but Brownlow North thought of an ingenious device to fend off criticism. He duly appointed his son, but without 'cure of souls', meaning that he had no spiritual responsibility for the inmates of the hospital. Any disrespectful critic who carped about clerical pluralism could be put down with the assertion that Francis North's position as warden of St Cross was a purely secular appointment. In accepting it, he had in no way made himself into an ecclesiastical pluralist, except insofar as he had acquired that status from the four parishes and the canonry that he already held.  Perhaps it was his training in theology that inclined the bishop to believe that this fine distinction would rebut all critics and quieten all concerns.

In the decades that followed, Francis North / Lord Guilford played both sides of the street on the status issue. The St Cross chapel was used by parishioners from a nearby community whose own church had fallen down. They duly paid fees for special ceremonies, such as weddings, which he pocketed as if he were the incumbent. But when the bishops who succeeded his father attempted to exercise jurisdiction over St Cross, he protested that he was in no way subject to diocesan control. Meanwhile, he drew a comfortable personal income from the hospital's estates, amassing a total profit that has been estimated as around £120,000 but may have been more than twice that amount. The Morning Post observed in 1861 that "all the world now knows how that noble institution was for forty years plundered by its appointed guardian". Indeed, most of the world had been aware of the scandal throughout those forty years: as far back as 1819, the poet John Keats had relished the atmosphere of St Cross but shaken his head at "the appropriation of its rich rents by a relation of the Bishop of Winchester".

How, then, had North / Guilford got away with this feather-bedded fraud for so long? The answer was that, by contemporary standards (which were, of course, not very demanding) he was not the worst of the pluralists. Robert Moore was simply unable to comprehend the notion that he might contribute to the running costs of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. Richard Pretyman had been under no pressure to pay for the maintenance of Mere Hospital, because the buildings had fallen down. But St Cross had a physical existence, its college-style complex housing actual inmates, called brethren (although the warden managed to reduce the number of eligible beneficiaries). To minister to them, it was necessary to hire a chaplain, who was paid £80 and allowed to live in the warden's house. (However, rent was deducted for the garden: pluralists rarely missed a trick.) Lord Guilford raised the annual allowance of the brethren to £6, five shillings (the bill totalled £125 a year), gave them a Christmas dinner and paid for new clothes once a year. He also claimed to have spent £6,000 on building maintenance. The charity commissioners of the late eighteen-thirties had pursued Richard Pretyman for his pillaging of the Mere Hospital charity but, at that stage, they signed off (probably without much enthusiasm) on the running of St Cross. Lord Guilford's downfall was triggered when a local critic challenged the legality of his original appointment, arguing that Bishop North's ingenious formula rendered his claims upon the hospital invalid. It was widely believed that Guilford used his clerical income to pay off debts on the family estates that he had inherited. In 1850, he resigned his benefices, presumably in the hope that his withdrawal would close the legal process against him that had been commenced the previous year. In 1853 a court case decreed an entirely new system of governance for St Cross, which was henceforth to be run by trustees and properly funded from its endowment. However, Lord Guilford was not permitted to walk away until outstanding accounts had been settled the following year. His critics, claiming that his wardenship had been illegitimate from the start, had hoped to make him disgorge forty years of illicit profits. In the event, he had to agree to settle outstanding repair bills, and to refund two windfalls of fines on the renewal of leases that had fallen due since the legal process had been launched five years earlier. He duly handed over £1,108, perhaps the largest and maybe even the only sum of restitution ever disgorged by a clerical pluralist.  In his novel, The Warden, published in 1855, Anthony Trollope specifically related the issues that the plot discussed to the St Cross Hospital case.^[149]

Venables, Vernons and Harcourts  Like the Pretyman-Tomlines, the Venables / Vernon / Harcourt dynasty had a fluid surname, their founder, Edward Venables-Vernon, having added a third identifier, which his family then adopted in various combinations.   After sixteen years as bishop of Carlisle, he served a further 39 years as Archbishop of York, although the verb should be modified by the fact that he preached his farewell sermon in the Minster nine years before his death. Half a century of extensive patronage gave him extensive opportunities to enrich his own relatives. The Extraordinary Black Book identified ten Vernons "with valuable preferments": five of them were netting £11,300 a year, but the editor abandoned any attempt to include the Venables beneficiaries as well. Since the archbishop lasted until 1847, it was not surprising that Best found the clan still entrenched in the mid-century period: "at York, to mark the long reign of Archbishop Harcourt, G. Harcourt Vernon, and E. Vernon Harcourt held four of the fattest jobs between them".^[150] In an ironic historical twist, it was the Archbishop's grandson, the Liberal politician Sir William Vernon Harcourt, who introduced death duties in his 1894 budget, a tax that would (in the long run) go some way towards levelling inherited wealth. Perhaps this should be taken as a strange example of the way in which a corrupt system could generate its own correctives but it would have to be acknowledged that the countervailing force was delayed in arriving and slow in its impact.   

The Manners-Sutton connection The opportunities for plundering patronage available to an Archbishop of Canterbury were greater than those in the northern Province. Since we have already encountered Manners-Sutton casually changing the law of England to create a snug berth for his grandson, it comes as little surprise to find him condemned as "an eminent instance of the perversion of ecclesiastical patronage" by the Extraordinary Black Book. In 1832, no fewer than seven Suttons "shared sixteen rectories, vicarages, and chapelries, besides preacherships and dignities in cathedrals".^[151] The archbishop was even more generous to two of his sons-in-law, no doubt anxious to ensure that they could keep his daughters in the comfort to which they were accustomed. The son of an earl, Hugh Percy was unlikely to starve, but his lifestyle was assured by the gift of eight preferments in eight years. True, he gave up his parishes on becoming a bishop in 1827, briefly at Rochester before translation to Carlisle where he presided until his death in 1856. However, he retained an "enormously valuable" stall in St Paul's cathedral – it was worth £3,000 a year – plus the chancellorship of the diocese of Salisbury, which was a long way from Carlisle. The Dictionary of National Biography in 1895 regarded him as "able and efficient … though not approaching the modern standard of episcopal activity". He was also praised for landscaping the grounds of his official residence, a project on which he was reputed to have spent £40,000 "of his own money", a phrase which is perhaps open to debate. Bishop Percy continued the tradition of nepotism, appointing his 27-year-old son to a valuable living in Northumberland in 1840 (it could at least be said that the young vicar was not the first Henry Percy to be associated with Warkworth) and adding a canonry in Carlisle cathedral seven years later.

Manners-Sutton was also generous to another son-in-law, James Croft, who became Archdeacon of Canterbury as well as holding a stall in the cathedral, and incumbent (or encumbrance) in several Kent parishes, his tithe income alone totalling £3,000 a year.^[152] One of them was Cliffe, a village that looked over the malarial Thames marshes: Croft was no more likely to live there than Moore would choose to reside at equally unhealthy Latchingdon. However, Cliffe was only forty miles from Canterbury, and it did provide him with an income close to £1,400 a year. In 1852, his parishioners complained that he had not even visited them for twelve years. They also grumbled that "for want of a school-room", the village school had to operate in the church. Croft, who had held the living since 1818, had recently subscribed £25 towards a building.^[153] As Archdeacon of Canterbury, Croft had the right to nominate residents to the city's almshouses, "founded for decayed and poor old men and women". He was accused in the House of Commons in 1848 of nominating "servants or dependants of his own", and giving preference to parishioners of the coastal village of Saltwood, where he chose to reside, rather than to the poor of Canterbury for whose benefit the charity had been established.^[154] Croft showed a considerable degree of ingenuity in his nepotism, even finding a way of enriching offspring who did not enter the Church. In 1837, he leased the tithes of one of his parishes, Lympne, worth over £500 a year, to his 22-year-old son Robert Manners Croft, who was a cornet in the Dragoons. The lease was for three lifetimes, which ensured that the Croft dynasty would maintain its grip upon Lympne into the fourth generation. Robert Croft's Army career did not work out, but his future was secured by leases of tithes in three more of his father's parishes between 1849 and 1851, although these agreements were limited to twenty-one years.^[155] In 1852, the Ecclesiastical Commission paid Croft £4,475 for the transfer of cathedral estates attached to his preferments. The deal provoked unfavourable press comment, and Punch published a cartoon of "Mother Church's Greedy Boy". This depicted Croft as an overweight spoiled child in a high chair and a tantrum, shouting "I want more good things. I want all." A curate, sad and wan, sits on a stool nearby clutching a small money bag containing his £50 stipend.^[156] Punch led the way in the development of a popular visual culture of news events which made episodes like this especially damaging to the Church of England: a generation earlier, radical writers had paragraphs of denunciation to arouse anger against Anglican corruption; now a single cartoon could mobilise instant derision. It was the duty of archdeacons to exhort their clergy to perform their duties: Croft was peculiarly ill-suited to discharge this role. Like so many pluralists, he proved remarkably durable if increasingly frail. He was "incapable from his great age from officiating" at the enthronement of Archbishop Tait in 1869, although he continued to draw his archidiaconal stipend. His death a few months later was bleakly noted as marking the passing of an "enormous pluralist".^[157] James Croft was a brother-in-law of Robert Moore: the networks of clerical corruption were interconnected.

Some Welsh Rarebits

[a] Horsley and St Asaph  The Welsh diocese of St Asaph, generally regarded as one of the poorest in England and Wales, seems to have been especially plagued by pluralistic plunder. Samuel Horsley occupied the see for just four years, between 1802 and 1806. Yet the Reverend John Griffith, a lone but fierce critic of clerical corruption, could complain in 1848 that "forty years after the Right Reverend Prelate's death", three of Horsley's relatives continued to draw over £3,000 a year from the preferments he had lavished upon them in that short period.^[158] As it happens, Griffith's indictment, although impressively documented, should be treated with some reservations: he tended to assume that all the windfalls held by the three pluralists came from Bishop Horsley, nor did he know that two of the recipients had died within the previous five years.^[159]

The principal beneficiary of the bishop's institutional generosity was his son, the Reverend Heneage Horsley, who received three preferments before the age of thirty. However, from 1807, he made his own career in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, serving as Dean of Brechin from 1812 until his death in 1847.^[160] He was credited in Scotland with giving most of his local income of £200 a year to charity, a generosity made possible by the fact that he continued to draw the revenues of his Welsh appointments. From Gresford, near Wrexham, he received £714 a year. The parish contained four thousand peoples, and Dean Horsley duly provided two curates to minister to their spiritual needs, paying them – according to Griffith – a combined total of £132 a year. The smaller community of Castell Caereinion in Montgomeryshire added £672 annually to his pocket, and here the Dean maintained one curate, described by Griffith as a man who was seventy years of age and in receipt of a stipend of £86 a year – in fact (and despite his outrage), about the national average wage for that downtrodden caste. In addition to the two prosperous parishes, the bishop also bestowed a cathedral canonry upon his fortunate offspring. Officially this was worth a mere £72 a year, although it is evident that some suspected that the prebendaries of St Asaph shared in more generous pickings. How far the younger Horsley, who lived in Dundee, was able to contribute to cathedral life in north Wales is open to doubt. His death was widely reported in a syndicated paragraph headed "An English Pluralist in Wales", which reported that his cathedral stall was linked to the parish of Llanfair Talhaiarn in Denbighshire, worth £220 a year, a point not noted by Griffith.^[161] During his thirty-five year association with Brechin Cathedral, Dean Horsley siphoned off over fifty thousand pounds from his Welsh benefices. Perhaps this should be regarded as a lateral transfer to one of the poorer branches of the Anglican Communion.  

Griffith named two more pluralists whose good fortunes were rooted in Horsley's brief time at St Asaph, describing both as the bishop's relatives, although I have been unable to establish the precise connection. Frederick Hervey Neve, who had died in 1843, probably owed his parasitical status more to his own endeavours. In 1805, when Neve was barely thirty, Howley certainly gave him the rectory of Llansantffraid, a sinecure worth £198 a year, but two benefices subsequently added in the diocese of St David's, plus the comfortable vicarage of Southill in Bedfordshire, where he chose to reside, were acquired from other patrons. He was certainly a four-job, thousand-a-year pluralist, but the evidence suggests that Horsley merely gave him a gentle push in a direction that Neve energetically pursued himself. Griffith was indignant that Neve lived in England, and contemptuous that the curate at Llansantffraid was paid £98 a year (in reality, a moderately generous salary for so humble a priest in Wales). The third recipient of Bishop Horsley's munificence was George Robson, who won a prize a year between 1803 and 1805, receiving a cathedral canonry plus two parishes near Wrexham, Erbistock, a small living which yielded him £240 a year and the mining community of Chirk, worth £466. (Griffith gave the figures as £270 and £570.) Robson chose to build himself a rectory and live at Erbistock, leaving the sixteen hundred people of Chirk in the care of a curate to whom he paid an annual stipend of £85. Officially, his canonry was worth £176 a year but, at his death in 1851, critics suspected that he had milked the Welsh Church of £100,000, which could only have been possible had the dean and chapter enjoyed substantial bonanzas from the renewal of leases. His demise was noted, without regret, by Punch, which condemned him as "that ecclesiastical monstrosity, called a pluralist".^[162] Apologists for the Blomfieldian process of incremental reform might have pointed to the passing of the three Horsley protégés as evidence that the last pluralists were fading from the scene but, equally, we may note with John Griffith that they had battened on the Church for four decades. Worse still, they did not constitute the biggest scandal to afflict the unfortunate diocese of St Asaph.

[b] The Luxmoores and St Asaph  John Luxmoore was a serial bishop who had already held the sees of Bristol and Hereford when he was translated to St Asaph to begin a fifteen-year reign in 1815. Two sons and two nephews had cause to rejoice in his odyssey. The younger Luxmoores' enjoyment of their good fortune may have been disturbed by a young law student, Arthur Johnes, whose 1832 exposé of clerical corruption in the Principality did for Wales what the Extraordinary Black Book achieved for the United Kingdom at large. A history of the diocese by one of its clergy forty years later admitted that Johnes's strictures contained "a painful degree of truth" although – as a local newspaper had pointed out – only one clerical voice was raised against these rampant abuses in the years that followed.^[163] Moreover, when John Griffith, the radical vicar of Aberdare, denounced the Luxmoores in 1848, the indictment against them remained substantially unchanged, notwithstanding a decade of work by the Ecclesiastical Commission.^[164]

The main beneficiary of the bishop's generosity was his eldest son, Charles Scott Luxmoore, who became both Dean and Chancellor of St Asaph. Charles had begun to accumulate preferments at the age of 23, and was already a prebendary of Hereford Cathedral. He held a comfortable living of Cradley in the county (plus a half-share in another sinecure) thanks to an earlier stage in the paternal pilgrimage, and he preferred to reside on the English side of Offa's Dyke. In his defence, it should be conceded that he did take his diocesan duties seriously: a few weeks before his death in 1854, and in failing health, he had nonetheless announced, in his capacity as Dean, that, in his capacity as Chancellor, he would conduct a visitation of its constituent parishes.^[165] However, he was well rewarded for his long-range diligence: by 1831 he held no fewer than seven livings, while Johnes insisted that he was "possessed of no less than eleven sources of emolument". They included the sinecure rectory of the tiny Montgomeryshire village of Darowen, where actual parish work was undertaken by the resident vicar who, at 77 years of age, was the oldest clergyman in the county. As if this portfolio was not enough, Dean Luxmoore also leased the tithes in two parishes where his father was the impropriator, an arrangement that in one of them enabled him to pocket three-quarters of the £400 annual income. Overall, he was the best paid clergyman in the Welsh branch of the Anglican Church, receiving (one can hardly say 'earning') £6,356 a year. (In 2026 purchasing power, this would be worth about £600,000.) No wonder the Principality was overrun with Nonconformists, Johnes concluded, as he both chronicled and denounced Luxmoore's greed: "I can tell that Reverend gentleman, that however much his immense possessions may be a subject of pride to himself, the exorbitant wealth which has been wrung from this very diocese by himself and his connections, is at this moment the greatest humiliation to the friends of the Church of England – the bitterest of all satires on the lips of her enemies!"^[166] The Dean's younger brother, John Henry Montague Luxmoore, began to accumulate preferments within a year of graduating from Cambridge. A decade later, he held six of them: Johnes estimated his annual income at £3,000. Since he resided in his principal parish, Marchwiel on the edge of Wrexham, and supported local activities, he tended to be less of a target for radical anger. In 1853, in a rare concession, he handed over one of his sinecures to the Ecclesiastical Commission for the endowment of new churches, although he remained indecently wealthy.

The bishop's nephews won smaller prizes in the lottery. In his mid-twenties, the Dean's cousin John Luxmoore was gifted two parishes, one in Denbighshire and the other in Montgomery, each worth £450 a year. As Johnes pointed out, the double presentation was "rather singular" since the beneficiary must "of necessity be a non-resident" in one of his livings. At the canal-side village of Berriew, the work was done by a 73-year-old curate, "more than double the age of his vicar", and, as usual, poorly paid. Nobody considering "the repulsive spectacle of age burdened with labours fit only for youth, and youth enjoying emoluments that could not, with any degree of justice to the parishioners, have been awarded even to age, will envy the feelings of those who are content to profit by such an arrangement," thundered Johnes but, as we have seen, such considerations did not trouble the consciences of clerical pluralists.^[167] The wider parish had a population of over two thousand. "It abounds with Calvinists, Wesleyans, and Independents," complained the vicar of Aberdare, John Griffith.^[168] The other nephew, Charles Thomas Coryndon Luxmoore, known as "Coryn", had to be content with a single parish. He kept Marchwiel warm for six years until his cousin J.H.M. Luxmoore was ready to take it over, when he was rewarded with Guilsfield, a parish near Welshpool that was worth £360 a year in 1832. Coryn Luxmoore's appointment was an act of nepotism, but he was not a pluralist. Johnes had some sympathy for him, since he ministered to about three thousand people and generally employed a curate, which meant that "his real emoluments are but trivial". The downside was that half the population of Guilsfield could not speak English, and Coryn Luxmoore knew no Welsh.^[169] By 1848, John Griffith acknowledged that some attempt had been made to provide a weekly service in Welsh, presumably by the curate, but the vicar himself remained a monoglot Englishman.

For John Griffith, it was "abundantly evident that men in power in England, instead of regarding the spiritual welfare of the people of Wales, thought chiefly of serving their friends. The fleece, and not the flock, was uppermost in their thoughts". In 1848, the Luxmoores symbolised the fusion of issues that simultaneously embodied language, nationality and class. The previous year, an insensitive government report on the state of education in the Principality had denigrated Welsh culture, morality and national intelligence. The arrogance of the 'Treachery of the Blue Books' had provoked an outcry, but the standard of the native clergy constituted a scandalous and embarrassing element of concern. Given that the Church of England had largely lost its control over the industrial workers, miners and quarrymen, its ordinands tended to come from poor farming backgrounds. Usually lacking the resources to acquire the polish of a university education, they were processed by a handful of theological academies that operated at the level of secondary schools. In 1840, a scornful Welsh journalist dismissed the clergy recruits as "raw and uneducated bumpkins" who swarmed in "unwelcome abundance … [an] unfledged brood of misemployed plough-men".^[170] A college had been founded at Lampeter in 1822 in an attempt to raise the standard of clergy training to something like university level, but it struggled in its early decades and – most notably of all – was ineffective in operating in Welsh. The result was a vicious circle. Welsh-speaking clergy, whom the Church ought to have been prized as a vital link with the people, were in fact despised for their lack of sophistication. Since there were plenty of them competing for work, English-speaking incumbents could not only hire them but feel no sense of embarrassment at paying them the miserly wages usually awarded to curates. Sydney Smith had voiced the implied argument back in 1808 (although he did not necessarily agree with it): "the son of a small Welsh farmer, who works hard every day for less than £40 a year, has no great reason to complain of degradation or disappointment, if he get from £50 to £100 for a moderate portion of labour one day in seven."^[171] In England, the underpayment of curates was a scandal, but at least there was a career ladder: young men could acquire an apprenticeship in Church work and hope to earn promotion to their own parishes, and perhaps beyond. But in Wales, the prospects of advancement were narrowed, with the result that "the parishes were left to half-educated and inefficient curates, who took farms, followed the plough, and sat in the ale-house with their people." To John Griffith, the long history of pluralism – and English-directed pluralism at that – was a key cause of the sickness at the heart of his Church. "The poverty and the low qualifications of the Welsh clergy became notorious. Yet the Church of Wales was not poor, had the ecclesiastical revenues been properly used and employed."^[172] A later historian calculated that the five Luxmoores, the bishop, his two sons and the two nephews, netted over £25,000 a year in their family coffers; the working clergy of the diocese of St Asaph received a combined total of £18,000.^[173]

The fact that the indictment of the Luxmoores in the Extraordinary Black Book could be repeated by John Griffith sixteen years later is a reminder of the irreversible lifelong implications of casual patronage decisions made in amoral Regency times. Indeed, it becomes possible to comprehend why Robert Moore felt bewildered and offended at being singled out for censure by The Times in 1852. However, as the bloated beneficiaries gradually left the scene, so the depth of loathing they had aroused crept into their obituaries. Charles Scott Luxmoore, the bishop's eldest son, died in 1854. "The death of the Dean of St Asaph removes another gigantic pluralist," a Church publication coldly remarked, listing preferments that had brought him a minimum of £2,600 a year – and that was only from those that could be priced.^[174] Charles Luxmoore's decanal income was reallocated so that the diocese could support two archdeacons, a form of middle management much favoured by Victorian Church reformers.  They had been appointed a decade earlier, but had to wait until the Dean went to his reward to get paid.^[175]

The death of the Dean's younger brother six years later produced a more complex reaction, for the Reverend J.H.M. Luxmoore had taken his clerical responsibilities seriously and contributed to the wider community. He had been an active member of the Wrexham Board of Guardians, taking a close interest in the workhouse schools. His fellow members made a point of passing a resolution of condolence on his death, with one of them, a Mr Jones, remarking that, when first elected, he (Jones) "scarcely knew a dozen words of English" and "he had always found Mr Luxmoore very kind". The comment suggests that one member of the family had taken the trouble to learn Welsh – and, incidentally, illustrates how institutional modernisation fostered the process of anglicisation, since Mr Jones had clearly become fluent in the global language while serving as a guardian.^[176] His successor at Marchwiel explained to his flock "that Mr Luxmoore having been possessed of much church property had always paid the school-master's salary out of his own pocket, a piece of benevolence which it would not be in his power to carry out, he having only the living of Marchwiel and a large family of ten children".^[177] It may have been an act of justice to provide a berth for a Reverend Mr Quiverful, but meritocratic reform did not always work to the advantage of parishioners.

In 1852, The Times had found Robert Moore an easy target, because his voracity was matched by his thick-skinned sense of entitlement. Eight years later, J.H.M. Luxmoore's benign qualities were not enough to save his memory from obloquy. The abolition of the newspaper stamp tax in 1855 largely explains the changing public tone. There was now a dissenting media voice in almost every provincial town, able to publish at prices low enough to secure a broad readership. The liberal Wrexham Advertiser had in fact been launched shortly before the end of the notorious tax on knowledge and, by 1860, it was well-enough established to pronounce and denounce with the same scornful self-confidence that The Times had unleashed against Moore.  "Of Mr Luxmoore's private worth we have nothing to say," its editorial announced, conceding that "[h]e was a gentleman highly estimable in all the relations of private life – a good clergyman, an active guardian of the poor, and an excellent and kind hearted neighbour."  He could not be blamed for the misfortune of being born the son of a bishop in olden times when "Bishops had a right to give as many livings as they pleased to the same man – a right of which Dr Luxmoore was not slow to avail himself, for he loaded his two sons with a dozen pieces of preferment." But, whatever Luxmoore's good qualities, the pluralism that he embodied remained an outrage, for he "must have received, at a very moderate calculation, £120,000 for shepherding a flock of 553 people at Marchwiel". Combined with his father the bishop and his brother the dean, the three Luxmoores "pocketed half a million of the money of the Welsh Church, what have we now to show for our outlay on this English family?" To those who shrugged and said that nepotism was a thing of the past, the Wrexham Advertiser replied that progress had not come about through any change of heart within the clergy. "Churchmen, as Churchmen, have done their best to uphold every corruption in their own body. … They stuck by pluralities until the people would stand the outrage no longer."^[178]  Nonetheless, the intensity of outrage did subside as the remaining pluralists became fewer and older. Cousin John Luxmoore, holding two parishes, survived until 1876. "Mr Luxmoore was the last surviving pluralist in the diocese," was the terse comment of a Welsh newspaper on his death.^[179]

[c] The Majendies and Bangor It might have been hoped that the neighbouring diocese of Bangor, under the rule of Henry Majendie, its bishop from 1809 until his death in 1830, would have been spared the fate of St Asaph. Majendie had started his clerical career with high-minded principles. Offered a second parish in 1793, he insisted on resigning the first, "conscientiously refusing to hold two cures of souls at the same time". However, thirty years as a bishop had helped him to overcome such scruples and, at the time of his death in 1830, he had amassed a record number of eleven preferments. The Dictionary of National Biography in 1893 gave him credit for being "a favourable specimen of the Georgian prelates", a "good preacher" who was active in his diocese, but it also discreetly signalled another side to his character. "That he was not free from the prevailing nepotism of the day is shown by the advancement of his relatives to the best pieces of preferment at his disposal." Johnes cited the Majendie brood as one of the reasons why the Welsh had turned their backs on the established Church. The Reverend Stuart Majendie had been gifted three parishes by his father but resided in a fourth, near Lichfield in the English Midlands. His brother, named Henry after their father, was a predendary of Bangor cathedral, representing an Anglesey parish where his duties were discharged by a curate, who was paid £90 a year. Henry Majendie contributed just £30 to this hardly princely income, the rest coming from Queen Anne's Bounty, the fund designed to supplement the incomes of poor clergy. The prebendary himself was also a vicar in Berkshire where he preferred to live.^[180] Another cathedral official was the bishop's son-in-law, James Cotton, who enjoyed an annual income of £685 from the tithes of two local parishes, plus "a considerable sum" from a group of parishes in Montgomeryshire. "When preferred to Bangor, he was unacquainted with the Welsh language, and he owes all his preferments to his connection with the late Dr Majendie, Bishop of Bangor."^[181]

Cotton remained in full possession of his various preferments until his death in 1862; the Majendie brothers survived until 1869 and 1871. A local newspaper chose its words carefully in reporting the passing of Prebendary Majendie. "It is many years since the reverend gentleman was resident in this neighbourhood, and he is therefore principally known by the occasional visits he paid to Bangor." He was a "powerful preacher … possessed of a very liberal and open heart". He had "left many instances of his generosity behind him" – in his Berkshire parish, where he had spent his Welsh cash.^[182] His brother Stuart defended Henry's absentee pluralism on the grounds that he "contributed most liberally to appeals from Bangor diocese".^[183] But this was, of course, merely returning some of the profit that he had siphoned off from the Church in North Wales.

'… by the light of little sparks': rampant nepotism in the diocese of Ely  Compared with the bleak hill country of north Wales, the fertile fens of the diocese of Ely offered luxuriant opportunities for clerical corruption. The Isle of Ely itself, where bishops retained an almost viceregal status into the nineteenth century, contained spectacularly fertile farmland, whose tithes underpinned exceptionally desirable livings. Thirteen of the 25 parishes within the Isle generated tithe incomes above one thousand pounds a year – but there were "in the whole but two resident incumbents!!!"^[184] Yet this prairie-like bonanza was not enough to assuage the rapacity of the clergy. Although "from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary" no tithes had been levied on the five thousand acres of Lakenheath Fen in Suffolk, in 1808 – after the marshland had been drained – the dean and chapter began a series of lawsuits designed to overturn the exemption, subjecting the occupiers to seventeen years of litigation and forcing them to incur £5,000 in legal costs. The defendants assumed they had beaten off the challenge after securing verdicts in their favour in 1825, but the dean and chapter renewed their assault six years later, leasing their claim to an Ely solicitor who acted as diocesan business manager. His strategy was to appeal to the legal principle that "the elapse of no time bars the claim of the church", and to insist that the occupiers of the Fen prove "uninterrupted exemption" from the payment of tithes since the accession to the throne of Richard the Lionheart in 1189. Naturally, they protested at the injustice of such an impossible demand, and pleaded that if they lost the case, the cost would be so devastating that they would also lose their property. The local community would be impoverished "merely for the purpose of increasing the wealth of a very rich ecclesiastical body, who bear no part of the heavy drainage taxes imposed upon the said fen; who keep no hospitality in the said parish; who do not in any respect minister to the spiritual wants of the said parish; and who, as your petitioners have good reason to believe, will not apply the said tithes to those religious and charitable purposes to which tithes are properly applicable, but will convert the same wholly to their private use and benefit".^[185]

The Lakenheath complainants had good reason to suspect that the proceeds of their hard work would flow into clerical pockets, especially in the time of Bishop Bowyer Edward Sparke, who presided at Ely from 1812 until his death in 1836.^[186] Indeed, Bishop Sparke took nepotism to new levels, brazenly enriching his two sons and a son-in-law. It was not until 1869, half a century after its creation, that the Sparke incubus was finally lifted from the Church of England. The story began in 1815, when the bishop's eldest son, John Henry Sparke, graduated from Cambridge around the time of his twenty-first birthday.^[187] His degree was a commendable but hardly spectacular fifth place in the second class of the Mathematical Tripos.^[188] The Bishop of Ely was ex officio Visitor of several Cambridge colleges, a role which, in unreformed times, carried extensive privileges. Although young Sparke had studied at Pembroke, his father nominated him to a reserved Fellowship at Jesus College, a distinction that his academic record did not merit. He was too young to be ordained – twenty-four was the normal minimum age – but in 1816 he was appointed steward of the bishop's manorial courts, a chore that he was unlikely to have carried out in person. As soon as he became priest in 1818, his father presented him to a prebendal stall in Ely cathedral and he began to accumulate parishes, starting with the sinecure rectory of Littlebury in Essex, which had belonged to the monks of the Ely in the Middle Ages, and the living of Stretham in the Fens, which launched him with a combined income just short of £1,000 a year. (In this account, I have simplified the machinations involved in the onward march of the Sparke empire.) Bishop Sparke seems to have an income target in mind for each of his dependants, to which they moved by incremental steps, the aim being to achieve the maximum return from the minimum number of prosperous livings, thereby limiting the number of curates who had to be employed. Parishes were bestowed and then traded for better prospects with no concern for the spiritual guidance of their congregations. The acquisition of Stretham was the outcome of a complicated series of exchanges with a cousin, the Reverend Francis Daubeny, who was used as a combined seat-warmer and fall-guy: like the Luxmoores, the Sparkes observed a dynastic hierarchy in the allocation of boodle.

The following year, John Henry Sparke received a dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury that allowed him simultaneously to hold Cottenham, a large parish near Cambridge, where he succeeded Dr Peploe Ward, who had held the position for 39 years. Ward had found his tithe income circumscribed by an agreement which one of his predecessors had reached with the parishioners in 1596. In exchange for seventy acres of recently enclosed land, the Elizabethan rector had waived his claim to tithes on other reclaimed commons, thereby reducing the burden of drainage costs on neighbouring proprietors.  Two centuries later, this did not seem such a good bargain from the clergy point of view. Although the 1596 agreement had been ratified in the Court of Chancery, Ward succeeded in overturning it, while a counter-claim from his parishioners demanding that he give up the seventy acres was dismissed on a technicality. They were also unsuccessful in their demand that Ward should deduct from his overall tithe demands the income generated by the seventy acres. "Can a more palpable case of injustice be adduced?", demanded a reforming MP. Thanks to Ward's campaign, Cottenham added a further £770 to Sparke's income, although he had to deal with a rearguard legal action that lasted until 1826.^[189]

John Henry Sparke continued to benefit from parental benevolence. In 1824, his father promoted him to become Chancellor of the diocese. At the same time, he resigned his canonry (Ely used the term prebendary), but not out of any sense of modesty. The canons each enjoyed the use of a specified residence in Ely College, the local name for the cathedral close. The perquisite was particularly valuable, since the diocese had an endowed fund that reduced maintenance costs on the properties: "The Dean and Chapter find all the materials: the occupiers all the labour."^[190] Labour was cheap. Sparke resigned his canonry in order to accept another that had fallen vacant: "the house and gardens belonging to the latter stall being considered the best in the College".^[191] Three years later, still showing an admirable spirit of moderation, he resigned Stretham and Cottenham, taking instead the enormously rich Fenland parish of Leverington, which yielded just short of £2,100 a year: the reshuffle added almost £600 to his annual income. The death of Francis Daubeny in 1829 made available a minor portfolio of profitable patronage, and J.H. Sparke fell heir to the relatively small windfall of his cousin's Norfolk parish of Bexwell, a mere £375 a year. By the end of the decade, his annual income was estimated at £4,500, the equivalent in 2026 purchasing power of £450,000. In 1830, he was able to purchase Gunthorpe Hall, a small Georgian mansion designed by Sir John Soane and located in an agreeable corner of Norfolk, fifty miles from Ely but just two villages away from his wife's family, the Astleys of Melton Constable Hall.^[192] The owner of Gunthorpe Hall possessed the right to appoint the incumbent. When the rectory fell vacant a year after his arrival, he exercised his rights as patron and appointed himself. With a commendable sense of proportion, he resigned Bexwell, making about £250 annual profit on the exchange. However, in 1848 he maintained two curates at Gunthorpe to serve a flock of seven hundred, which meant that he was probably little better off in real terms.^[193] He remained rector there for almost four decades. At least it could not be said that he owed his advancement in the Church solely to his father's benevolence. The 1869 edition of the Post Office Directory noted that the village boasted a "commodious and substantial" school building, "built at the sole expense of the rector, by whom it is supported". The school had opened on 1 January 1868, thirty-seven years after he had exercised his rights as patron and decided that he was the best clergyman for the job.^[194]

As John Henry Sparke wallowed ever deeper in the warm springs of patronage, a new character joined the payroll. Henry Fardell came from an indelible Church and Tory background. His father was a lawyer who held various administrative offices in the diocese of Lincoln, making him something of a miniature local version of Robert Moore. In the late eighteenth century, he had been able to use his insider positions to lease and even to purchase Church lands, laying the foundation of a family fortune. Henry Fardell's elder brother duly inherited his father's diocesan jobs, and would briefly represent Lincoln in the House of Commons in 1830-1, predictably voting against the Reform Bill.^[195] When Henry decided to enter the Church after graduating from Cambridge in 1818 (with a Pass degree), it is unlikely that he intended to take a vow of poverty. In January 1820, he made the career-enhancing move of marrying Bishop Sparke's daughter, his nuptials being heralded by a spectacular leap from curate to cathedral canon. The parishes rolled in upon him: in 1821, Tydd St Giles in the fertile Fens brought him £653 a year, supplemented by an annual £424 from Waterbeach the following year. In 1823, the long-suffering cousin Daubeny was drawn into a complicated minuet: Fardell resigned Tydd St Giles while Daubeny was prevailed upon to make way from him at Bexwell, a parish just inside in Norfolk. Daubeny's compensation was another Norfolk living, Feltwell, which was also on the fringe of the Fens. For a family so attuned to financial advantage, the Sparkes had not done their homework here. Only about seventy people lived in the parish of Bexwell, which probably meant that the incumbent could get away without paying for a full-time curate. But nobody seemed to have noticed that Bexwell was worth almost £300 a year less than Tydd St Giles, which Fardell had just given up. Worse still, the Sparkes had not realised that Feltwell was a valuable prize: Daubeny the dogsbody cousin had been accidentally handed a preferment worth £1,270 a year. Within a few weeks, the metaphorical penny dropped and the Sparke machine set about putting matters right. Daubeny was ordered to give up Feltwell and return to Bexwell. "This, it is said, he did with great reluctance", only complying when he was bought off with the joint offer of Tydd St Giles. With Henry Fardell now rector of Feltwell, it was – for the Sparke connection – a case of all's well that ends well.^[196]

The bishop's second son, Edward Bowyer Sparke, graduated from Cambridge in 1826. His proud father used his position as Visitor of St John's College to intrude E.B. Sparke into a Fellowship there, overlooking any possible objections to the fact that his son had studied at Pembroke, and that he had only taken a Pass degree. He was also appointed Register (i.e. Registrar) of the diocese, a scaled-down version of Robert Moore's sinecure at Canterbury. That same year, an Ely canonry fell vacant. The prelate ("that venerable cormorant", as The Times would call him^[197]) had already added two members of his family to the cathedral chapter, but young Edward would not be old enough for such an appointment for another three years. It may be that the remaining prebendaries struck him as indecently healthy and hence unlikely to provide him with the necessary third opening needed for young Edward when he became eligible for such preferment. The bishop turned to an old friend for a solution. He had entered Pembroke College (then known as Pembroke Hall) in 1778 alongside a young man from Lancashire called Benjamin Parke. Parke came from a humble background – his father was a skinner and he was only able to study at Cambridge because he was a sizar, a poor student charged cut-price fees and seen as socially inferior to the more privileged undergraduates. Parke and Sparke had become friends – perhaps their surnames marked them out as a double act. In 1782, they graduated together – literally together, gaining seventh and eighth places in the Mathematical Tripos. Then their careers diverged. Parke spent two decades as a Cambridge don. He became a clergyman since it was more-or-less automatic that a college Fellow should be in holy orders, and that qualification enabled Pembroke to shuffle him off to a small East Anglian living in 1805. As vicar of the Norfolk parish of Tilney at £280 a year, Parke had hardly won one of the big prizes in the clerical raffle. Bishop Sparke offered him a deal: he could become a canon of Ely provided he agreed to step aside when the episcopal offspring was old enough to take his place. The transfer duly took place in 1829. We might suspect, even hope, that Bishop Sparke might have been a little shamefaced at so blatant a piece of nepotistic corruption. In fact, "he was so filled with pious gratitude that, as a thanksgiving offering, he gave a ball at the Palace of Ely to all the county of Cambridge", inviting the local notables to join in celebrating the self-enrichment of his family.^[198] Two years after acquiring his stall, E.B. Sparke emulated his brother by resigning it in order to be promoted to a more profitable canonry.^[199]

Meanwhile, the younger Sparke accumulated and exchanged parishes in his march to prosperity. By 1830, he held Littleport in Cambridgeshire, worth almost £1,500 a year, and Connington in Huntingdonshire, which added another £500. The local jest was that "you could find your way across the Fens on a dark night by the number of little Sparkes along the road",^[200] although the pun perhaps flattered the family's commitment to residence in their benefices. The family motto, Scintilla Fit Ignis, was a Latin version of the joke: a spark makes fire. In March 1831, their dynastic rapacity came close to acting like a lighted match thrown into a barrel of gunpowder. At the close of the previous year, Earl Grey had formed a Whig ministry, the first time in 23 years that his perennially oppositionist party had taken office. On 1 March, a government spokesman in the Commons, Lord John Russell, outlined the new government's proposal for parliamentary reform. His list of rotten boroughs slated for abolition was so sweeping that opposition MPs burst out into derisive laughter. But the public mood was undoubtedly favoured change, and change that would go beyond the narrow structures of Westminster: hence the slogan, Reform, which its all-embracing capital letter. Historians of the Great Reform Act (as they have continued to call it) have tended to concentrate on its political aspects, who would have the right to vote, which towns would elect MPs, how would the legislation be pushed through Parliament. They have generally acknowledged that the Church of England was widely criticised, but tended to play down the extent to which its abuses were seen as intertwined with a broken system.^[201] The Extraordinary Black Book made Anglican iniquities the target of its first three chapters, devoting over 100,000 words and much detailed research to its endless scandals. It concluded with the verdict that: "Secular abuses almost sink into insignificance when compared with those of the church establishment."^[202] When, in October, the bishops formed a key part of the majority that rejected the first version of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, there were explosions of popular anger. In Bristol, the bishop's palace was burned down and it was at about this time that Archbishop Howley was hit by a dead cat on the streets of Canterbury.

Patrons of the press who scanned their newspapers on 23 March hoping to learn the fate of the Reform Bill at its second reading would have been disappointed. Although a vote had been expected the previous evening, debate had in fact continued until three o'clock in the morning. Instead, patrons of The Times would have found a report that could only act as a reminder of the reasons why the country faced the need for major institutional renewal. 'An Orthodox Clergyman of the Church of England' had written to the editor complaining that the Reverend Henry Fardell, son-in-law of the Bishop of Ely, had been appointed vicar of Wisbech, one of the most lucrative livings in the diocese.^[203] Listing the parishes that Bishop Sparke had already bestowed upon Fardell, The Times pointedly asked: "Are there no poor curates in his Lordship's diocese to whom some of these livings might have been appropriated and justly bestowed?" If Wisbech was a scandalous piece of jobbery – The Times reported that it was worth £5,400 a year, although this may have been an over-estimate – the act of blatant nepotism was compounded by another family transaction: Fardell was to give up another of his money-spinners, Feltwell, the Norfolk parish that cousin Daubeny had been compelled to disgorge, which would now pass to the bishop's younger son, Edward Bowyer Sparke, who was already Vicar of Littleport, Rector of Barley and a canon of Ely cathedral.^[204] Fardell was now estimated to receive £3,700 a year from his various preferments and E.B. Sparke £4,000. Added to older brother J.H. Sparke's £4,500 a year, the trio were pocketing the annual equivalent of one and a quarter million pounds in 2026 purchasing power. However, their combined total was less than half the £27,742 a year that the Extraordinary Black Book alleged flowed into the pockets of the bishop himself.^[205] An anonymous Ely reformer who was moved to compile a list of their combined depredations drew the obvious conclusion. "It is almost of itself sufficient to convince any honest mind of the necessity of an immediate, full, and effectual reform, both in church and state."^[206] Sparke dynastic greed underlined just how closely the two issues were intertwined.

Even at four o'clock in the morning, crowds waited outside the Palace of Westminster for news of the outcome of the second reading. To their relief, the Reform Bill had survived this crucial hurdle, but the enormous moral victory was quickly overtaken by the realisation that the majority – a single vote in a division of 603, the largest-ever turn-out of MPs – would not be enough to carry such a major piece of legislation through all its parliamentary stages. A general election could not be far off, and it would be hotly contested. The Ely scandal could hardly have been worse timed, and it did not go away. As The Times indignantly pointed out, the right to nominate to Feltwell, E.B. Sparke's share of the carve-up, was shared between the bishop and the Lord Chancellor: since Fardell had been appointed by his father-in-law, his resignation meant that it was the Whig ministry's turn to appoint his successor. How could such a piece of jobbery be tolerated by Lord Brougham, the vocal champion of the people whom Earl Grey had prudently shunted to the Woolsack? A wily politician, Brougham was anxious to justify himself to public opinion, which he sought to do by deflecting the blame.^[207] He explained that he had felt bound by a promise made to Bishop Sparke by a predecessor in office, the reactionary Lord Eldon, who had agreed to waive the Lord Chancellor's turn to the next presentation. "He did not know who was to blame in this business; all he knew was, that he (the Lord Chancellor) was not."^[208]

No doubt realising that this was hardly a robust defence, Brougham decided to muddy the murky waters a little further. He had received two letters from Ely pressing him not to exercise his right to appoint to Feltwell, the second peremptorily informing him that if he did not reply by return of post, "silence would be taken for consent, and the presentation would be made" without consulting him. Although the letters were signed by Bishop Sparke, Brougham noted with puzzled suspicion that they were not in his handwriting. Nine months earlier, newspapers had carried a brief report that the Bishop of Ely was "seriously indisposed". In the event, he would live for another six years, but he was evidently not expected to survive his illness, for the press callously speculated callously speculated on the name of his successor.^[209] Bishop Sparke had suffered a stroke, an affliction that allowed Brougham to imply that he was mentally impaired. He claimed to be sure that "that the reverend Prelate ought to be in a good state of health, for he had recently given away a prebend and the valuable living of Wisbeach, which was worth £2,000 a year, to a near relation of his own." Nonetheless, "as a Minister of the Crown", the Lord Chancellor felt bound to confess his suspicions "that there were persons near that reverend Prelate who disposed of his patronage in a way which he would not sanction if in perfect health".  

The suggestion that there were depths to which even Bishop Sparke would not sink probably flattered the integrity of that reverend prelate, but Brougham's innuendo alarmed the Archbishop of Canterbury. Five nights later, Howley rose in his place in the House of Lords flourishing medical certificates intended to controvert "a doubt [that] had been thrown out by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack as to the soundness of the right reverend Prelate's mind". The Archbishop seemed much more concerned about the allegation that his brother bishop was mentally impaired than he was about charges of corruption. The medics had testified that Sparke was "not only competent to transact any ordinary business, but also to direct any business connected with the administration of his See" – which disposed of Brougham's suspicions about the handwriting of his missives. Nor was there any foundation to complaints "made against the Bishop of Ely, for accumulating his patronage on the members of his own family". The Archbishop claimed that "out of nine only two preferments had been bestowed upon the members of his Lordship's family in the course of several years". Far from showing "how much exaggeration there was in the reports which had reached their Lordship's ears", this was a ludicrous underestimate. Twelve parishes and seven cathedral appointments had been digested through the Sparke family network in thirteen years. Fifty years earlier, rebutting allegations that he had pillaged the people of Bengal, Robert Clive had reviewed the opportunities open to him and grandly concluded:    "I stand astonished at my own moderation." Half a century on, the Archbishop of Canterbury invoked the same ethical indulgence in defence of a rampantly corrupt colleague on the episcopal bench.

Half-hearted Howley: the faltering of reform  The true lesson of Archbishop Howley's weak intervention was that the keeper of the nation's conscience utterly lacked the moral authority, or even the ethical compass, to combat pluralistic nepotism in his own ranks.^[210] His inability to provide leadership was demonstrated in his ineffective attempt to respond to the challenge of the Wisbech / Waterbeach scandal. In August 1831, he introduced a Plurality of Benefices Bill into the House of Lords that would enable Archbishops of Canterbury to block future dual appointments. "Preferment was sometimes invidiously accumulated on one individual, to the discouragement of meritorious clergymen, who might otherwise hope for a better provision".^[211] His proposal aroused opposition from those who feared that it would give archbishops too much power to intervene in individual dioceses. It was also open to criticism for its complexity, which allowed many exceptions, and for failing to tackle existing scandals such as the indecently large Sparke / Fardell portfolios. To such objections, the Bishop of London, Blomfield, replied that "they could not abolish pluralities" and had to be content with limiting their ill effects.^[212] Howley reintroduced the amended bill in March 1832, but found himself at risk of losing control of the process when peers began to talk of banning bishops from holding their tasty in commendam side dishes. There was even a horrifying amendment to limit episcopal incomes to £3,500 a year. The Primate protested that such a sum would be inadequate, pleading with critics to remember "the unavoidable expenses which a Bishop must incur – the expenses he was put to in maintaining more than one residence – in visiting the several portions of his diocese from time to time – in subscribing to every charity within his diocese -- in relieving the poorer clergy – in educating and establishing his sons, besides making some provision for his family after his death." The second home problem would, of course, have been solved had the bishops withdrawn from the House of Lords, thereby removing the need for them to maintain London residences. As for that part of the Primate's plea which I have italicised, one of the few reformist peers curtly commented that "he had yet to learn that providing large incomes in addition for their sons and daughters, constituted the chief object for which Parliament originally invested the Church with its enormous revenues".^[213]

The Whig grandee Lord Holland thought Howley's bill was "liable to all the objections which half measures of reform are sure to meet with". Were it not for their "irresolute and factious" opposition to the Reform Bill, Holland would have felt some sympathy for the bishops. "They have been badgered for years for not doing something, and when they bring forward their plan they are attacked by one party for abandoning the interests of the Church and by the other for deluding the publick by the semblance of reform while they in fact perpetuate and even aggravate the abuses of it." The Archbishop took fright and allowed his faltering attempts to mitigate the scandal of pluralism to vanish in the maelstrom of the final struggle for the Reform Bill. Nepotism was too deeply embedded in the political values system for it to be easily dislodged: the Whigs were determined to impose radical surgery upon the House of Commons but Earl Grey stuffed his ministry with his own relatives, and promoted his brother-in-law in the Irish Church.^[214] Archbishop Howley lacked the stature effectively to challenge the enclosed culture of privilege. In effect, he acknowledged the existence of the abuse but failed to do anything to stop it.^[215]

In a world imbued with nepotism, the Sparke clan had its defenders, as was revealed in an exchange between the bishop of Chichester and his brother of Rochester. Edward Maltby was the son of a Nonconformist weaver: Earl Grey sent him to Chichester after he had been cold-shouldered for promotion for two decades as a dangerous liberal. He was one of two bishops to vote for the first version of the Reform Bill.^[216] Chadwick described George Murray of Rochester, one of the last bishops to wear a wig, as "a blue-blood Tory". The son of an old-school bishop and grandson of a duke, Murray "wanted to follow his ancestors in making Britain safe for aristocrats".^[217] During the debates on the Irish Church in 1833, Murray bluntly denied the existence of any ecclesiastical abuses at all. Maltby responded by challenging him to defend Sparkean pluralism. "What do you say to the Bishop of Ely giving 5 large pieces of preferment to one of his sons?" "That is no abuse," Murray shot back; "it is not contrary to the law."^[218]

Satirising the Sparkes   Legally, Murray was correct. Neither Bishop Maltby's disapproval nor the denunciations of  The Times could prevent Henry Fardell from accepting Wisbech, any more than Archbishop's Howley's ineffective threats against absentee pluralists could deter J.H. Sparke from relocating himself to his wife's home territory in the backblocks of Norfolk. Nonetheless, they paid a price in public derision for their plutocratic pelf. One story, apparently in wide circulation, was perhaps ben trovato, but it caught the mood of the time. The Bishop of Ely was travelling in his coach on the road from Ely to Cambridge, accompanied by his elder son J.H. Sparke and his son-in-law Henry Fardell, when they were overtaken by a poor clergyman of his diocese who was riding his horse in the same direction. For the purposes of the narrative, he was described as the Reverend Mr Singlecure. The bishop explained that his family party was also heading for Cambridge, but they would not arrive until evening as they intended first to call upon one of the more favoured clerics of the diocese, who was referred to as the Reverend Doctor Pluralchurch. Their encounter with Mr Singlecure was fortuitous: the bishop and his family party wished to dine that evening at the Red Lion, Cambridge's premier inn, and they would be obliged if their humbler colleague would call to the hostelry and order dinner for them at six o'clock.

Mr Singlecure was not pleased to be treated as an errand-boy, but he duly called to the Red Lion and ordered the meal as instructed. The landlord was delighted that he was to receive such distinguished patronage, but needed to know how many places he should set. "For how many?" was his question, and Mr Singlechurch had to confess that he was not sure of the precise number. "I only saw the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop's examining Chaplain, two Prebends of Ely, the Registrar to the Diocese of Ely, the lay Rector of Littlebury, the Chief Steward of Wisbeach, the Chief Steward of Burton, the Rector of Leverington, the Rector of Bexwell, the Rector of St Mary Feltwell, the Vicar of Wisbeach, and the Rector of St Nicholas Feltwell." Of course, the landlord was delighted to be catering for such a large and respectable party, and a special effort was made to prepare for their entertainment. When the bishop's coach disgorged its three passengers at the Red Lion that evening, they were obsequiously bowed into a private dining room, the largest on the premises, to find a table set for a banquet of twenty guests. "You have shown us into the wrong room," exclaimed J.H. Sparke. "This is surely intended for a large party," chorused Henry Fardell. "Please your lordship," pleaded the crestfallen landlord, "the Reverend Mr Singlecure called here about two hours and a half ago, and told me to provide a dinner for your Lordship, and two Prebends, and your Lordship's Chaplain, and the Rector of Littlebury, and the Chief Steward of Wisbeach and Burton, and I don't know how many more were to be of the party besides".  The tale paid the bishop the compliment of reporting that he recognised that the unlucky landlord was the innocent victim of the hoax and agreed to pay for the entire feast. It was "almost needless to say, that the dinner and wine were soon despatched by the trio of pluralists". However, they left "Cambridge in high dudgeon, bitterly cursing (inwardly, be it understood) the satirical knave, the Reverend Mr Singlecure".^[219] It was certainly plausible that Bishop Sparke's sense of entitlement would have led him to treat a humble clergyman as a mere messenger, although it is perhaps less likely that a clerical foot soldier would have risked incurring the wrath of his episcopal generalissimo. What can be said is that the story went around the world: I first encountered it in a paper published in New South Wales.

"Will the time ever come when in Ely the Sparkes shall be extinct?"  Neither outrage nor mockery affected the dynasty founded by Bishop Sparke. We have a glimpse of Henry Fardell holding court at Wisbech from the diary of Joseph Romilly, a Cambridge don who visited the town in August 1843. Romilly was a University official and it seems that his visit – by stagecoach since East Anglia was still on the eve of the railway age – was intended to demonstrate institutional support for a fund-raising campaign that Fardell was spearheading.^[220] It has been argued that a handful of clerics, including Fardell, "wielded enormous local influence" in the Isle of Ely even after the abolition of the bishop's special role mainly because there was no substantial resident gentry in the Fens.^[221] Fardell was an important local magistrate, and influential in Wisbech itself. The town had a healthy civic culture, and Romilly was glad to find that the vicar was on good terms with local Nonconformists. Wisbech would acquire one of the earliest purpose-built museums in England: Fardell was the first president of the Museum Society, although he was not solely responsible for its foundation.^[222] He was also chairman of the Board of Guardians which ran the district workhouse. In 1843, he directed his energies to raising money to build a cemetery chapel.

Romilly was not enthralled by Henry Fardell's pulpit oratory. The parish church, which held 2,500 people, was packed for a special service in support of the cemetery chapel campaign, but the vicar preached "a worthless sermon". The congregation was equally unimpressed: the collection raised just £53, which suggests that more sixpences than sovereigns had gone into the plate. Unaware of his limitations, Fardell responded to polite flattery by announcing that he would publish his address: Romilly caustically noted that "if Mr F. had any reputation as an author of sermons this will not add to it". However, he was more appreciative of life at the palatial vicarage that Fardell had built.^[223] On his first evening, he was an honoured guest as forty people sat down to dine. The following evening, there were sixty at dinner, and Romilly was demoted to an overflow table of fourteen people in the library. There followed an evening party for 150 guests and a ball. The Fardell family clearly enjoyed domesticity on a grand scale. However, all was not well between father and daughter. "Miss Elinor" had become engaged to a local curate, "greatly to the annoyance of the Vicar who says he will never perform the ceremony for them". Romilly noted that the young man's "unpardonable crime is poverty" (an occupational hazard for curates) but Fardell also objected that he was vulgar and had red hair. Given that an auspicious marriage had powered his own meteoric rise, his attitude may be regarded as inconsistent.^[224]

Fardell's death in 1854 came at a time when public opinion was in a bellicose mood that would sweep the country into the Crimean War. Contemptuously refusing even to mention his name, Punch resorted to a homonym pun to lampoon his passing. "A canon of Ely has just gone off, aged 59. For five-and-thirty years the said canon was charged with pluralities to the amount of £3,000 a-year; proving that you cannot have a worse report of a Church Canon than by overloading the same with golden shot."^[225] On Henry Fardell's death in 1854, an additional parish was created in Wisbech, and his income was split between two incumbents, the newcomer receiving an annual £900, with Fardell's successor compelled to struggle along on £1,200 a year.^[226] Reform was indeed coming, but painfully slowly. In 1856, the Saturday Review rejoiced that "pluralities and non-residence are now forbidden by statute.... the existing pluralists are merely the survivors of the old system, and belong to a class which will soon be extinct".^[227] The use of the zoological term, 'extinct', was intended to convey a sense of impending finality, but the dinosaur-like offenders gave alarming proof of the survival of the fattest. Fardell was dead, but his Sparke brothers-in-law continued their elegant accumulation of funds into the high Victorian years. "Will the time ever come when in Ely the Sparkes shall be extinct?", the Saturday Review despairingly asked in 1861.^[228]

Crockford's Clerical Directory estimated John Henry's income at £3,159 a year, while Edward Bowyer was locking up £3,809: these figures did not include fees from their diocesan appointments, while the elder brother would also have enjoyed a non-ecclesiastical income from his Gunthorpe Hall estate. When John Henry Sparke died in 1870, he was briefly reported as "one of the last of the pluralists": he left an estate of £140,000, equal to £14.5 million in 2026 values. Press reports of his death were cold in tone, but there was nothing like the revulsion generated by the passing of Moore a little over four years earlier. Punch listed the various parishes that he had held, facetiously observing his career proved "the proverbial tendency of 'Sparks' to 'fly upwards'".^[229] J.H. Sparke's death provided the opportunity to divide Leverington into six separate parishes.^[230] His younger brother, Edward Bowyer Sparke, survived until 1878, and left £160,000 – closer to £17.3 million in modern purchasing power. Of course, their stories are not entirely negative. Both committed funds for new churches, John Henry for a giant black flint chapel to serve a hamlet in Leverington, Edward Bowyer for a district church near Littleport.^[231] A diocesan chancellor had some duties that could not be escaped. J.H. Sparke presided at the 1844 trial that examined the legality of the stone altar installed at the Round Church in Cambridge, one of the first formal challenges to the Anglo-Catholic revival within the Church of England. Romilly noted that "Mr Sparke took no part", leaving the detailed judgment to his Assessor, who happened to be Dr John Daubeny, brother of the Reverend Francis Daubeny, the cousin who had been conveniently shunted around benefices earmarked for the more favoured connections of Bishop Sparke.^[232] Edward Bowyer Sparke has one positive niche in British cultural history. Travels on the continent gave him an enthusiasm for the richness of the stained glass windows of Catholic cathedrals, such as Beauvais in France. Ely had suffered from the attentions of Cromwell's East Anglian Puritans, and Canon Sparke became the "donor, fund-raiser and general instigator" of a campaign to bring colour back into its looming space. At his parish church of Feltwell, he commissioned (and quarrelled with) French craftsmen, but overall he supported English studios and made a major contribution to the development of the art of stained-glass manufacture in Britain.^[233] But with the Sparke family, we are never far from the ancien régime curse of casual entitlement. It was almost certainly E.B. Sparke who organised the memorial window to his brother-in-law, the vicar of Wisbech. It is a fine work of art that illustrates scenes conjured by a series of verses in the New Testament. Yet if the text – " I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat" – was intended to represent Henry Fardell's message to the world, we can only conclude that the Sparke dynasty was beyond satire.^[234]

Charles Almeric Belli: the absenter  It will be apparent that William Howley was not the kind of spiritual leader who would call down repentance upon backsliders in his own ranks. His defence of Bishop Sparke's nepotism was embarrassing, while his alarm at the thought that bishops' incomes might be reduced below the point where they could provide for their offspring was risible. As Primate of All England from 1828 to 1848, he presided over the Church of England at a time when some of its prelates cautiously sought to reform the institution, but he can hardly be regarded as a driving force in the process. Indeed, in his previous incarnation as Bishop of London, he had created a notable example of all that was wrong in the Anglican world of nepotism and sinecures. In 1814, the year of Howley's elevation to the mitre, his wife's younger brother, Charles Almeric Belli, graduated from Oxford and took the first steps towards his ordination two years later.  Over the next seven years he received and traded several benefices in the diocese of London, culminating with Paglesham in 1822 and South Weald in 1823, which he held together. Belli himself chose to reside at South Weald, twenty-five miles inland from the marshland community of Paglesham. It was a large parish, much favoured by resident gentlefolk and centred on a healthy hilltop village where he built himself a comfortable vicarage. The vicar's tithes at South Weald were worth £653 a year: a commission that investigated Church finances – the forerunner of the Peel-Blomfield Ecclesiastical Commission – reported in 1835 that its net worth was just £3 less, at £650. The population of South Weald, 1,450 in mid-century, justified hiring an assistant: in 1848 he was a young Christ Church man called Edward Linzee, a product of Thomas Arnold's seriously Christian public school at Rugby. Technically part of Belli's parish was the adjoining market town of Brentwood, close enough to provide civilised amenities but, functioning as a distinct chapelry with its own independently-funded perpetual curate, thus imposing no direct burden upon the vicar of South Weald.^[235] By contrast, Paglesham was an unhealthy backwater where no gentlemanly cleric could be expected to live. Its tithes netted the incumbent a comfortable £553 a year. There was no glebe and hence no land tax was payable, nor was there a village school. The 1835 commission reported that the net effective income from Paglesham was £521 a year. Of course, a curate had to be employed to minister to the spiritual welfare of the population – 436 people in 1841 – and, to his credit, Belli paid slightly above the national average, rewarding a young Cambridge graduate with a stipend of £90 a year. Income tax after 1842 would have nibbled away a little more, but it is likely that Belli pocketed over £400 a year from his absentee living.^[236] Since he held Paglesham until 1860, it is likely that he realised around £15,000 from this useful windfall.^[237]

By Moore-Sparke standards, Charles Almeric Belli does not sound a particularly rampant pluralist, although – as will be seen – the two-parish arrangement does not constitute the full indictment against him. His good fortune in the lottery of life could not be defended on grounds of special merit. "Mr Belli did not lay claim to any remarkable scholarship. He was a thoroughly educated English gentleman, and he aspired to nothing more." No published sermons or theological tomes ever emerged from his comfortable vicarage. Not only did he lack any particular claim on a comfortable ecclesiastical income, more to the point, he did not need it.

Charles Almeric Belli was the son of John Belli, private secretary to Warren Hastings, the East India Company's governor in late-eighteenth-century Bengal, who was accused of looting the people over whom he ruled. One of the articles of impeachment levelled against Hastings during his seven-year parliamentary trial which began in 1788 was that he had improperly granted Belli a lucrative contract to victual the Company's Calcutta (Kolkata) base, Fort William. Hastings offered a robust defence against this allegation, on which he was acquitted, but there was no doubt that John Belli, like many other late-eighteenth-century 'nabobs', brought home an astronomical fortune from India.^[238] Part of this wealth eventually descended to his youngest child, Charles Almeric, who, at his death in 1886, left an estate valued at £233,000 (worth over £26 million in 2026 purchasing power). Furthermore, his fortune had been reduced by his spectacular benefactions to Church-related projects South Weald and Brentwood, amounting to perhaps £70,000, mostly in his later years.^[239] Of course, we should bear in mind that he was not necessarily so rich for all his life: Belli's father died when he was a small boy but his mother survived until 1842. This may explain why there was a thirty-year gap between his first major project at South Weald, the building of a "commodious" vicarage in 1825 – which he seems to have found a financial strain – and his second, the erection of a village school in 1856-7.^[240]

Charles Almeric Belli was certainly capable of displaying a narrow regard for his own self-interest. The New Poor Law of 1834 made necessary a revised system of rating valuations, designed to ensure that the wealthy bore their fair share of the cost of running the centralised workhouses. At South Weald, the parishioners "liberally consented" to a twenty-percent reduction in the valuation of their vicar's tithe income, reducing the actual figure of £564 to £450. But Belli was not satisfied with this, and took his case to two justices of the peace, both clergymen, who immediately "and without enquiry", agreed that he should be granted a further rebate of fifty percent, reducing his valuation to £225 – about forty percent of his actual income. However, the government assessor appealed the matter to the full bench at the Essex Quarter Sessions, where the magistrates restored the original figure by a vote of eight-to-five – four of Belli's supporters being clerical magistrates. (The remaining vote in his favour came from George Palmer, Conservative MP for South Essex, whose brother was Belli's brother-in-law.)  Belli's initiative was regarded as a test case "of considerable importance to the clergy in most parts of the kingdom" and the clerical justices were criticised for acting – in effect – "as judges and jurors in their own case".^[241] Two points about his attitude stand out. The first was recognised by Robert Wilberforce when he acknowledged the generosity of his Kent parishioners in knocking £70 off his rating valuation: if the incumbent succeeded in reducing his liability, somebody else would have to pay. The second is the relatively small amounts involved. The amounts paid in poor rates were far less than the valuations – at Brentwood in the early eighteen-fifties, payment was collected at one shilling in the pound, or just five percent. One twentieth of £450 would hardly have bankrupted a vicar who would be remembered as "ever loving, affectionate, and most generous" to the poor.

Charles Almeric Belli's major benefactions were concentrated in the second half of his association with South Weald and Brentwood. By the eighteen-fifties, it would have been clear that he and his wife would have no children, and her death in 1868 left him with no immediate dependant whose interests required protection. While Belli was undoubtedly generous in the disposal of his wealth, he aimed his benefactions – as he had every right to do – at the advancement of the interests of the Church of England. Four of his major projects supported church building or restoration. In 1855, he contributed to the cost of erecting a district church at Warley, a suburb of Brentwood that grew after the arrival of the railway in 1840. In 1868, he bore most of the £9,000 cost of 'restoring' (literally, rebuilding and extending) his own parish church.^[242] In 1878, a month before his eighty-seventh birthday, he set the foundation stone of the chapel-of-ease in the north of the parish – a project on which he spent £20,000 – and lived to attend the dedication two years later. In his nineties, he gave generously to a new church at Brentwood, including in his Will an open-ended legacy to meet the cost of the elegant spire that still dominates the Essex landscape. All this explains why his memory remains honoured by local Anglicans: when the parishioners added an annexe to the church in 2011, they called it the Belli Centre.

However, Belli's two educational initiatives seem less high-minded. In 1856-7, he gave the land and an endowment of £1,000 for a village schoolhouse. There had been a village school at South Weald since at least 1818, when his predecessor had agreed to pay the salary of the teacher: in 1846, it was supported by a combination of fees and subscriptions, and we may fairly assume that Belli was a mainstay. Unfortunately, the school hardly represented an imaginative contribution to public education. The children were taught, insofar as they were taught, by the parish clerk, who had been appointed to that office as far back as 1801. He was a shoemaker by trade; tradition recalled him as a sadistic disciplinarian. In the absence of a school building, classes were held in the church porch, protected from the weather by canvas sheets and heated by a portable stove: "the necessary forms and desks were imported every Monday morning" and removed at the end of the week to clear "the entrance to the Church on the Sunday of the great and good of the parish". The implications of this statement (made by his successor as vicar) are revealing, not least in the admission that the building was only in use for one day a week.^[243] It was the death of the shoemaker-pedagogue in 1855 that forced the twin issues of accommodation and staffing, but it should be noted that Charles Almeric Belli had been vicar of South Weald – and, commendably, resident there – for a third of a century before a proper school was established. His other educational project was even less disinterested: in 1875, in collaboration with a wealthy local brewer, he helped establish an Anglican primary school at Warley, "to avoid the formation of a school board".^[244] As his successor grimly put, the initiative was "forced upon the Parish by the Education Act of 1870", Gladstone's legislation that set the foundations for a State system that was not under Church control. The two-decade interval between the construction of a church at Warley and the grudging establishment of a school tells its own story about Belli's priorities. The provision of ladders of opportunity for local children was certainly not the principal motive.

Thus far, Charles Almeric Belli may seem a minor and even a relatively benign player in the persistence of ecclesiastical abuses in Victorian England. As a two-parish pluralist for forty years, he was hardly an offender on the Moore-Sparke scale, while it may be pleaded in his favour that he not only resigned Paglesham in 1860 but also went on to be spectacularly generous with his personal wealth during the final quarter-century of his long life.^[245] However, there is another element in the story that grew into a risible scandal. In March 1819, Belli collected yet another gift from his brother-in-law William Howley who, in his capacity as Bishop of London, appointed him Precentor of St Paul's Cathedral. Belli would hold this position for two-thirds of a century, until his death in 1886. The stipend was £69 a year, the funds apparently drawn from tithes and other income derived from Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire, where – in a somewhat curious arrangement – the precentor also possessed the right to appoint the town's vicar.^[246] The precentorship was also endowed with fourteen houses in St Paul's Churchyard, valuable central London real estate. These generated occasional windfalls when leases fell in for renewal: between 1828 and 1831, Belli received an additional £250 in miscellaneous income. Just how much he received over the years remains a mystery: in 1869 the Musical Standard claimed that Belli had "enjoyed an income attached to his sinecure said to amount to £800 per annum". Perhaps this referred to some bonanza year of major lease renewals, for the paper subsequently backed off this claim, but the report does illustrate the level of public suspicion and denigration directed against Belli.^[247]

 The duties of the precentor (or, in antique English translation, "chief chaunter") were baldly defined in 1837: "To superintend the choir, and to preach on certain days".^[248]  Unfortunately, Charles Almeric Belli's ability to engage in chief-chaunting was severely limited by his reluctance to visit St Paul's. Contemporary critics, no doubt mindful of the law of defamation, tended to comment discreetly that "Mr Belli, during his long tenure of office, was seen … very seldom indeed". "He has held the precentorship for fifty years, and it is generally asserted that he has scarcely ever even entered the church which he was popularly supposed to support by his personal aid." A twentieth-century history of St Paul's was more forthright: Belli "was only known to have entered the Cathedral twice" during his 66 years in office. The first occasion was probably when he was inducted to the precentor's stall. The second was in 1852, when it occurred to him that this reserved seat would give him a privileged vantage point to view the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. There seems to have been general amusement at the report that the vergers did not recognise him.^[249] One tried to stop him taking his place. "You can't go there sir, it's the precentor's stall." "I am the precentor," Belli replied. "Beg pardon, sir, did not know you." Sydney Smith, a canon of St Paul's from 1831 until his death in 1845, strained his sardonic wit to pronounce that, far from being the precentor, Belli should be called the "absenter". The gibe was widely quoted, but it did nothing to stimulate Belli's diligence.^[250]

The quality of music, and especially choral music, in early Victorian St Paul's was dire. However, Westminster Abbey was no better, and it is far from clear that Belli could have raised standards even if he had bothered to turn up, since he is not known to have possessed any musical talent. Most English cathedrals were hampered by restrictive practices, underpaid choristers who refused to rehearse, boy sopranos who could not be offloaded when their voices broke and a general lack of support from deans and chapters.^[251] However, Belli's insouciant attitude to the formal responsibilities of his precentorship made him a symbolic target for the anger of those who wanted to reinvigorate Britain's subdued musical tradition, especially in the late eighteen-sixties when the spirit of reform once more began to stir in London's metropolitan tabernacle. This resentment was further fuelled by an agreement that he reached with the Ecclesiastical Commission early in 1867. In line with their working principle that cash was simpler than confiscation, the Commissioners persuaded Belli to agree to a "scheme for substituting a money payment to the precentor or chief chaunter of the cathedral church of Saint Paul, London, for certain property belonging to his precentorship". Formally, he sold his Bishop's Stortford rights for £1,200. In practice, this represented a commutation of his annual £69 stipend, in a deal probably based on sixteen years' purchase of a sum of £75.^[252]

The vicar of South Weald was now even more of an irrelevance to the life of St Paul's than ever, and the cultural community called loudly for his total elimination. A newcomer to the cathedral team, the Reverend Robert Gregory, favoured structural reforms that would have united offices to canonries, giving quasi-ministerial responsibilities to each member of the chapter. Securing a vacancy in the precentorship would be an important step in any such reorganisation, all the more so because Gregory particularly targeted the slovenly performance of the choir of St Paul's. Following the morning service on a November day in 1869, on which only two of the adult male choristers bothered to appear, he harangued the choir in the presence of the surprised congregation, telling them that cathedral worship was "a public scandal and the talk of the town". When one of the men interjected that they were underpaid, "something exceedingly like an altercation" ensued. Not surprisingly, the spat attracted the attention of the press, and one specialist publication, the Musical Standard, made mock of the cathedral official who so notably failed to "superintend the choir".^[253] In January 1870, it summarised the indictment against the precentor who lived within twenty miles but who had not visited St Paul's in almost twenty years. "It is now well-known that the tithes of Bishop's Stortford, a living in the gift of the 'precentor' or 'absenter' of St. Paul's, the Rev. C. A. Belli, have been purchased by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners," a transaction which assured him of an annuity in lieu of his annual stipend. Thus "if he resigned (as he ought in decency to do, seeing that he does not pretend to discharge any cathedral duty) his emolument would not ipso facto be diminished." The canons of St Paul's "entertain very little pleasure at any public allusions to the affairs of that cathedral" but it was no secret that Belli's unbreakable grip on the precentorship was "a very sore point." However, they were stuck with their absentee liability, for Belli evidently found it "difficult to resign duties handsomely rewarded, and discharged with no less diligence, integrity, and skill!"^[254]

The Musical Standard continued its campaign of denigration, but it does not seem that the wider press was interested.^[255] Indeed, the drive to establish St Paul's as a force in the metropolitan musical world simply proceeded without Belli, especially after the appointment in 1872 of John Stainer as organist. Stainer enjoyed considerable standing as a composer of Church music, and he possessed the patience and the determination to shape the choir to his own purposes. By the end of the decade, Sir Christopher Wren's magnificent space was filled on special occasions by oratorios by Bach and Mendelssohn, and even the German Requiem, which Brahms had composed around Lutheran texts. Living quietly in retirement, Charles Almeric Belli survived to the age of 94. Small in stature but courteous and dignified in bearing, "his long locks of grey hair gave him a most venerable appearance". His evening wear, a velvet coat with brightly coloured silk linings, spoke of the distant Regency times when he had imbibed his beliefs and values. At his death in 1886, newspapers reported him to be the oldest clergyman in England, and described him without comment as precentor of St Paul's Cathedral. No doubt his great age and his generous benefactions shielded him from criticism, but it is noteworthy that his death did not trigger the condemnation that had marked the passing of Robert Moore twenty years before.^[256]

THE PERSISTENCE OF ABUSES IN THE VICTORIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

By the time of his death, Charles Almeric Belli was an irrelevance. Nonetheless, it should be noted that this remarkably durable sinecurist survived to within a year of Queen Victoria's first Jubilee.  "Oh! but such a state of nepotism can never recur again," was the tautological riposte that the Wrexham Advertiser had anticipated to its diatribe against Luxmoore pluralism.^[257] In fact, even in 1860 older attitudes lingered in, as demonstrated two years later by Archbishop's Sumner conferral of a Canterbury canonry upon his son-in-law.  No doubt the outrageous acts of brazen ecclesiastical jobbery of the Moore-Sparke era were no longer feasible as "the increasingly harsh light of nineteenth-century conscience" was directed against them in the early Victorian years.  Returning after thirteen years in New Zealand, Bishop Selwyn noted "a great and visible change" in ground-level clerical diligence, but this sea-change should not obscure the persistence of previous abuses, if only because a sinecure existence seems to have conveyed impressive longevity upon some of its beneficiaries.^[258] Why, then, were the enduring parasites – Robert Moore, C.S. Luxmoore, the Sparke brothers, C.A. Belli – suffered to continue as a cause of scandal? The simple answer, that they enjoyed legal possession of their loot and could not be dislodged, cannot tell the whole story. The Church of England is a preaching organisation, charged with the mission of rebuking error, even where such censures may offend the obstinate and the powerful. Surely, it was not enough to accept that few voices were raised against such practices from the pulpit because there was no point in raising the issue – or rocking the boat – for such reticence hardly squares with the conception of an organisation intended to function as the nation's conscience. Drunkenness and immorality were vices deeply embedded among the people of England and Wales, but the futility of denunciation did not prevent the whole range of Anglican clergy, from primates down to curates, from aiming their sermons at the excesses associated with alcohol and sex. To abstain from criticising fellow clerics because they held influential – or, at least, profitable – offices and were deeply embedded in the social elite may seem like moral cowardice.  In fact, as argued below, the tacit acceptance of continuing abuses was the product of a more complex and internally contradictory set of values among the clergy. Put simply, pluralism and non-residence came to be seen as undesirable, but nepotism continued to be deeply ingrained. Indeed, most of its practitioners would perhaps have indignantly repudiated the pejorative label, insisting rather that they had the same parental duty to launch their sons and sons-in-law and nephews into the world as any other Victorian paterfamilias. It was an attitude that characterised even Charles James Blomfield, "the ecclesiastical Peel" and the hero of the conventional story of a Church that put its own house in order.

These ambiguous attitudes to the use of patronage also need to be set in the context of a new and subtle appreciation of the complexity of the Church of England and the challenges that it faced that emerged around 1830. It is well established that the processes of political and social reform in Victorian Britain were underpinned and, in effect, driven by, the development of concepts of useful knowledge and especially of statistical research. In response to increasing parliamentary demand for information, the Board of Trade established its Statistical Department in 1832, and in the next two years influential statistical societies were formed in Manchester and London.^[259] It is less emphasised, or even noticed, that the Church began to be illuminated by the same informational processes at the same time. Parliamentary returns were crunched into arithmetical analyses of the value of benefices. Clergy lists appeared which could be used to identify the lucky winners in the struggle for preferment. These statistical approaches highlighted problems that seemed far more fundamental than the relatively small number of plundering pluralists. Faced with the figures revealed by the increasingly efficient census, the Church could not ignore the obvious fact that it was failing to serve London and the growing industrial towns, losing their teeming populations to Nonconformity and unbelief. Equally alarming was the realisation that, even in its rural heartlands, Anglicanism rested on a rotten foundation of underpaid benefices, as noted earlier in the essay, with half of them below the generally accepted poverty line of £150 a year, and the majority of those falling below £100.^[260]

On the face of it, such figures ought to have sharpened the will to eradicate the remaining Moores and the Luxmoores in order to redistribute their indecently large incomes among their more deserving clerical colleagues. But in fact it triggered a wider debate on the resources of the Church that perversely diverted attention from the pluralists. The Extraordinary Black Book luridly painted the institution as rampantly plutocratic, but its defenders drew precisely the opposite conclusion. Lord Henley, Peel's brother-in-law, insisted that "it can never be too often repeated, that the Church of England is not a wealthy Church". George Townsend, a canon of Durham cathedral, contested Henley's solutions but shared his analysis. "The evil of the Church is poverty. This poverty is the principal source of non-residence and pluralities." He accepted that there were "some few instances indeed of pluralities with cure of souls, where this plea does not exist", about which "I have nothing to say in extenuation, or defence": essentially, he did not see the Moores and the Luxmoores as the major problem.^[261]

Yet if the Church of England, for all its magnificence, was really mired in poverty, then surely the remaining pluralists should have come under renewed pressure to share their good fortune? However, another manifestation of the interest in statistics tended to undermine any such initiative.  The arithmetically-minded began to estimate the potential average clerical incomes if all Church revenues were collected into the same pot. These calculations – the earliest had been attempted as far back as 1795 – came up with different results, depending upon the sources used and upon whether cathedral endowments were to be thrown into the common fund. If the equalisation was simply based on parochial income – tithes and glebe – the average would probably fall somewhere between £185 and £200 a year. Other estimates spread the net wider: "the whole income of the Church, if equally divided," Sydney Smith declared in 1837, "would be about £250 for each minister".^[262] One conclusion drawn from such exercises in accountancy was that the pluralists, gross though they were, gobbled up only a tiny portion of the available resources. Put crudely, J.H. Sparke with his income of almost £4,000 a year might have been melted down and recast as sixteen industrious vicars each drawing a stipend of £250, but this would have made only a very small dent in the 4,361 benefices worth less than £150. But there was a more mercenary and hence more powerful objection to the concept of a financial level playing field. A university degree was a prerequisite for advancement in the Church, and Sydney Smith estimated that three years' study at Cambridge or Oxford cost between £1,200 and £1,500. Nobody was going to spend that sort of money to climb on to a salary scale that peaked at £250 a year. "At present, men are tempted into the Church by the prizes of the Church, and bring into that Church a great deal of capital, which enables them to live in decency, supporting themselves, not with the money of the public, but with their own money, which, but for this temptation, would have been carried into some retail trade." By "men", Smith meant gentry and the respectable middle class. Some might have felt uneasy that the thought of ambitious would-be prelates being "tempted" to seek holy orders, but Smith argued that, if such candidates were discouraged, the clergy would soon be recruited solely from "men little less coarse and ignorant than agricultural labourers".^[263]

Essentially, then, the Church of England needed more money: Sydney Smith thought three million pounds would be useful, but recognised that the cash was simply not there.^[264] In 1818 and 1824 Parliament had voted £1.5 million for new churches, and there were Churchmen who hoped that the State would renew its generosity in the following decade:  in 1839, the University of Oxford expressed its belief that the people of England would rejoice to see some of the nation's wealth diverted to the service of the Anglican God.^[265] Unfortunately, in the new post-Reform Act world, the people voiced other sentiments. Thomas Gisborne, an advanced if faintly disreputable Whig MP (and son of a canon of Durham) assured the House of Commons in 1834 that the argument "as to the necessity of a Church Establishment for the propagation of religion" was not only erroneous but patently silly. "They might as well propose a national medical establishment, and oblige every one to pay for its support."^[266] Hence imaginative attempts were made to design alternative versions of the miraculous money tree. Canon Townsend proposed that the Treasury should loan money to endow poor livings, which their incumbents would repay over a period of years. Meanwhile, lay impropriators would be taxed for the same purpose.^[267] Since, as he volubly acknowledged, the wealthy landowners who creamed off rectorial tithes had spent the previous three centuries ignoring any moral obligation to the parishes from which they derived their income, it was hard to see how they would agree to such a demand. Bishop Blomfield had a simpler solution, proposing in 1836 to finance new churches in the metropolis through a tax of twopence a ton on coal, a scheme that had worked very well in Sir Christopher Wren's day.^[268] When Peel formed a ministry backed by a secure parliamentary majority in 1841, Anglican Ultras hoped he would turn back the clock and turn on the taps. However, the Prime Minister soon decided that even a proposal to advance an interest-free loan for church building was not politically feasible. "It is very well for clergymen … to argue that it is the duty of the State to provide religious edifices wherever they are wanted, and that Dissenters are bound to build and repair and endow their own churches and those of the Establishment also, and this by new taxation wherever requisite. But … the Church and religion would suffer, and peace and charity would be sacrificed, were we in practice to push these arguments to their just logical conclusions."^[269]

The outlook, then, for the Church of England in the eighteen-forties might have seemed profoundly gloomy, as an institution that lacked money but was still dragged down by scandalous parasites. Yet fast-forward twenty years and a different picture emerges – or, at least, it does if we review the Anglican scene through an appropriately broad lens. To tell the story of the Victorian Church of England in theological and intellectual terms is to see the eighteen-sixties as a time in which believers were on the defensive against Darwin and doubt. But, as the historian Kitson Clark pointed out, a different picture emerges once we realise that the person-in-the-pew had probably not heard of Darwin and had certainly not read Essays and Reviews. The mid-Victorian decade saw a massive programme of church building in the urban areas, while the sad and damp rural real estate was subjected to vigorous restoration. Much of the cost was met by an increasingly involved laity in an increasingly prosperous country: of £2.71 million spent on church extension in the diocese of London, £2.54 million was subscribed from private sources.^[270] Paradoxically, the few dinosaur-like survivals from the lush pastures of sinecurism may even have had the positive effect of pointing up the dynamic revolution that had engulfed the Church.^[271] Certainly the clerical job description had evolved from the one-day-shalt-thou-labour principle of a generation earlier to embrace a much more active contribution to parish life.

In 1860, Trollope even engaged in confected nostalgia for the institutionalised inequality that was gradually being dismantled. "One liked to know that there was a dean or two who got his three thousand a year"; personally, he had rejoiced in the anomaly that that one bishop received fifteen thousand a year while "another with an equal cure of parsons only four". "Our present arrangement of parochial incomes is beloved as being time-honoured, gentlemanlike, English, and picturesque. We would fain adhere to it closely as long as we can, but we know that we do so by the force of our prejudices, and not by that of our judgment." Retreating into a golden past avoided confrontation with the enduring key weakness of utilitarian reform in Church revenues: any attempt at equal division would create "portions so infinitesimally small" that none of the clergy could subsist on them. Hence surely there would be "a screech" among the clergy "even in these reforming days, if any over-bold reformer were to suggest that such an approximation should be attempted? Let those who know clergymen, and like them, and have lived with them, only fancy it! Clergymen to be paid, not according to the temporalities of any living which they may have acquired, either by merit or favour, but in accordance with the work to be done!"^[272] But without such a root-and-branch assumption, there could be no theoretical basis for confronting the remaining pluralists. The Spectator even applied this sentimental nostalgia to the remaining offenders: "we have a respect for antiquity even when it is silly, yea, when it is mischievous; we would oust even the Moores or the Pretymans tenderly".^[273]

It is only fair to acknowledge that some progress was made. Legislation passed in 1838 effectively ensured that the moneybags multiple pluralism of the Moore-Sparke era could not be repeated, but the precise title ("An Act to abridge the holding of Benefices in Plurality") indicated that it allowed the combination of parishes within a distance ten miles under careful control so that small parishes might in effect be combined to provide a dutiful incumbent with a living wage.^[274] By 1850, 589 clergymen had received special dispensations to hold two parishes simultaneously. Parliament thought this a suspiciously large number and the restrictions were tightened: parishes could only be combined if they were within three miles of each other and worth less than £100.^[275] The elimination of pluralities through natural wastage was a slow process. In 1851, the deaths of 291 Anglican clergymen were reported, but their demise only freed 350 livings: a handful were greedy genuine pluralists who had battened themselves upon three or four preferments, but much of the surplus was accounted for by incumbents who combined two adjacent parishes with small populations and poor pickings.^[276] R.J. Phillimore, the prominent ecclesiastical lawyer, exaggerated when he assured the House of Commons in 1853 that "pluralities were rapidly disappearing, and by the existing laws it was impossible they could be renewed".^[277] In any case, legislation to curb pluralities was based on the concept of the 'cure of souls', the spiritual welfare of communities making it undesirable for an incumbent to hold more than one parish. It was still accepted practice to combine a cathedral appointment with a parish, and not all cathedral appointments were as devoid of duties, however mechanical, as the comfortable billet held by C.A. Belli.^[278] Occasionally, too, what might be called 'lateral pluralism' was still possible, allowing one person to hold a range of offices in related fields, one of which might be the incumbency of a parish, whose population would thus be at risk of neglect. For instance, in 1854, Dr Thomas Robinson was Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, Master of the Temple in London and rector of Therfield, near Royston in Hertfordshire, a parish worth £937 a year. He was also a canon of St Paul's and, for some reason, that year Lord Aberdeen's ministry gifted him a second stall, at Rochester. Given the irrelevance of their subject to the narrow curriculum that still prevailed at Cambridge, the University's professors of Arabic (bizarrely, it had two of them) were not under great pressure to perform, nor was £50 a generous wage. Robinson had probably been given the job – it was a Crown appointment – because he had worked as a missionary in India, and he did at least deliver an inaugural lecture, on the study of Oriental literature. London's Temple Church functioned as a chapel for two of the Inns of Court and, as such, did not 'count' as a parish church with cure of souls. As the lineal successor of the medieval Knights Templar, its incumbent was accorded the style of 'Reverend and Valiant Master'. Laden with so much distinction, Dr Robinson was hardly able to do much for the 1,335 people of a parish forty-five miles from London. The Post Office Directory for 1855 does not even name a resident curate.^[279]  

Reform of internal Church finances was also pressed forward, as the Ecclesiastical Commissioners steadily took control of the cathedral estates. Some dioceses resisted, and paid for their obstinacy when agricultural rents collapsed from the eighteen-seventies. In those that cooperated, ornamental dignitaries were limited to fixed stipends, while windfall payments were now absorbed into a central fund that augmented the incomes of poorer clergy. Even Richard Pretyman was compelled to give ground, agreeing in 1846 to cede the endowments of his stall "substituting a money payment" of £260 a year, about five times the income of a village schoolmaster.^[280] It was a slow process: C.A. Belli did not hand over his St Paul's endowment until 1867. A pamphlet of 1863, issued as a public relations exercise, reported that cathedral estates yielding £143,000 a year had been nominally transferred to the Commissioners, but it had to be remembered that "the revenues from the estates were subject not only to the lives of the Dignitaries, but to their right to renew the leases of the properties for lives and years…. Even now (1863) some of these preferments are not vacated, and the Incumbents renew the leases by the insertion of young lives". As a result, "a period of not less than ninety years might be expected to elapse before the whole estates would fall into the possession of the Commission".^[281](italics added) The vestiges of pluralism would linger until 1953: by then, there would be another Queen on the throne.

Nor should it be forgotten that the Ecclesiastical Commission dealt only with Church revenues controlled by Church bodies, such as deans and chapters. A great deal of patronage remained in lay ownership. In 1861, Punch insisted that there was "nothing singular" about its spoof advertisement for the sale of a sinecure rectory of Snoozewell. "There are no duties of any kind to be performed, and the Living may be held with any other Preferment or Clerical Appointment in any part of the globe. The income is £235 a-year fixed, from which there are no outgoings of any kind whatever. The duties of the Parish are performed by a Resident Vicar, who receives the vicarial Tithes. Age of present Rector, 71. Price very low." Notwithstanding the assertion that since such announcements appeared "every week" in ecclesiastical publications, we may guess – or at least hope – that very few sinecure Snoozewells survived, although Robert Moore had held two in Kent for the previous six decades. More likely, Punch had conflated the occasional sale of a sinecure with the wider trading of advowsons. "Clerical auctioneers have pulpits by the score to offer from their pulpit, and pluralists who can afford to purchase sinecure appointments daily hear of something eligible offered to their notice."^[282] Even though pluralism was in overall retreat, the Church of England paid a price in the perception of institutional integrity for its failure to confront the vestiges.

Meanwhile, the flow of money was not all in one direction. In 1833, Parliament had voted a £20,000 subsidy for education, money that was split between schools run by the Anglican National Society and the Nonconformist British and Foreign Society. This financial commitment soon grew into something that contemporaries would not have recognised in a recent historian's description of "a modest system of state aid".^[283] By 1860, the taxpayer was pumping forty times as much cash into the primary education of the people. Concern at the growing expenditure prompted the imposition of the notorious Revised Code of 1862, which tied the incomes of teachers to "payment by results" and so institutionalised an arid curriculum of rote learning. The elaborate statistics collected by the Newcastle Commission, which reported the previous year, carefully disguised the denominational bias in the State subsidy, but with 76 percent of children attending schools subsidised by the State attending at Anglican establishments, it was obvious that the Church of England dominated elementary education.^[284] Nonconformists feared Church schools because of the opportunities they provided for indoctrination. The National Society's full title specified that it existed "for the Education of Poor Children in the Principles of the Established Church": reading, writing and arithmetic were incidental means to a politico-sectarian end.^[285] It was not difficult to calculate that three-quarters of the grant to schools, around £600,000, went to the Church of England. This annual taxpayer tribute was provocatively close to the lifetime loot of clerical dynasties like the Moores and the Sparkes. In reviewing the Pretyman plunder, the Morning Star conflated the whole government budget for Education, Art and Science, which had hit seven figures in 1858: "we are paying out of the taxes of the country a million yearly to help to educate the people, while here, and in the clutches of this corrupt corporation, the Church, are the funds originally destined for that purpose perverted to the aggrandisement of individuals and families in a way to outrage every notion of moderation in jobbery."^[286] Yet no bishop ever reproved the surviving pluralists, no pulpit ever echoed to the cry that their greed was a sinful inversion of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Wider contextual issues of Church finance and the slowly advancing process of internal reform both subtly diverted attention from the continuing legacy of past abuses, but they cannot wholly answer the question: why did the Church of England tolerate such survivals? Surely its leaders had everything to gain, both in cash and public esteem, from pressuring the last remaining pluralists into shedding their surplus rectories and their contentless canonries?

NEPOTISM AND THE MID-VICTORIAN BISHOPS

To understand why the bishops failed to meet the challenge of confronting the unfair allocation of resources, we must recall that (like the pluralists) they could prove remarkably durable, and some marched on into the mid-Victorian period carrying the beliefs and values of an earlier era with them. As an administrative reform, most of Essex was transferred in 1846 from the oversize diocese of London to the smaller pastures of Rochester.  Unfortunately, far from triggering a burst of reform, the cession placed the county under the rule of Bishop Murray, who had flatly denied that Sparke of Ely had perpetrated any kind of abuse in piling preferments upon his own family. Murray was one of the principal villains in a major scandal, in which the headmaster of Rochester's cathedral school was dismissed after publicly accusing the dean and chapter of misusing endowment funds intended to support the pupils.^[287] Maintaining his episcopal wig and Tory principles until his death in 1860, Murray had no intention of driving pluralists from his diocese. It was hardly surprising that, by the eighteen-fifties, cynics took episcopal nepotism for granted. As the Spectator put it in 1853, "we are familiar with the race of Moores and Pretymans and know that the cadets and nephews of a prolific episcopate haunt these old hereditary towers only to prey upon the innocents that may wander in".^[288] There were certainly bishops whose continuing use of their patronage gave colour to such suspicions.

Phillpotts of Exeter A particularly immovable obstacle to change was Henry Phillpotts, appointed bishop of Exeter in 1830 and holding office for 39 years, during which time  he acquired "a reputation for nepotism, time-serving, and pluralism".^[289] As a young man, Phillpotts had acquired an impressive array of appointments, by the age of 31 holding four livings and a stall in Durham Cathedral. In his early forties, he added the County Durham parish of Stanhope, reputedly the richest in the Anglican Church, where tithes on the coal mines boosted the reported income to £4,848 a year.^[290] He invested two-and-a-half years of his tithe rents in the building of a parsonage but, as an obituary writer confessed in 1869, "it is rather difficult to find out where he actually spent his time while livings were thus being showered down upon him. It must be remembered, however, that public opinion as to pluralities and sinecures was very different then from what it has become in our own time".^[291] This defence was not entirely correct. In 1821, when a Durham newspaper editor had launched an outspoken attack on the local clergy, Phillpotts had been one of the targets who had retaliated with a prosecution for criminal libel. His personal contribution to the counter-attack had been to call the journalistic critic "a miserable mercenary, who eats the bread of prostitution". Throughout his career, "this meek and Christian pastor" would be ruthless in his use of legal process to crush his foes. Discussing the Durham case in 1822, the Edinburgh Review remarked "that pluralities and non-residence, and unequal distribution of wealth, leaving the working parish priest oftentimes to starve, while the sinecurist of the Cathedral revels in all the enjoyments of rank and fortune, have no longer the same supporters among the lay parts of the community, which they used to find in less inquiring periods".^[292] Times were indeed changing, but when Phillpotts was raised to the episcopal bench, he struck a deal to supplement his income as Bishop of Exeter by holding a Durham stall that was one of the wealthiest canonries in the Anglican Church. He cracked down on non-residence in his diocese, although he chose to reside at the seaside palace he built for himself at Torquay, twenty-five miles from his cathedral. But on other abuses – like Murray, he refused to recognise them as such – he had no intention of moving with the times. He told the House of Lords in 1836 that Parliament "would do a great mischief by doing away with pluralities…. Pluralities must be endured, and he was sorry to see an attempt made to put an end to them, even in deference to the feeling of the country, which he knew to be strong."^[293] The diocese of Exeter stretched an impossible distance, all the way to Lands End and the Scilly Isles beyond. This made the post of Archdeacon of Cornwall one of unusual responsibility: in 1845, Phillpotts bestowed it upon his eldest son, William John Phillpotts, who was already a canon of the cathedral and whom he later made Chancellor of the diocese. In 1863, a biographer published the first instalment of a multi-volume Life of Bishop Phillpotts, which mentioned that son William had received his first preferment "twelve days after his ordination".^[294] Phillpotts successfully sought an injunction that prevented any further volumes from appearing. Another son, a grandson, a brother and two sons-in-law would also benefit from the Phillpotts patronage.^[295]

Archbishop Howley and Blomfield of London It would have required courageous and principled leadership to counteract reactionaries such as Murray and Phillpotts. As already indicated, this was not and could not be forthcoming from William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the two fraught decades from 1828 to 1848. Howley fought, not always very hard and rarely very effectively, a defensive campaign against secularisation of Parliament as it removed the disabilities of Dissenters and Catholics. He never attempted to impose his personality upon the growing theological stresses within the Church that were escaping from Oxford, not least because he seemed too mild to possess a personality at all.^[296] "No one expected Archbishop Howley to drive. He was more fitted to delay than to advance reform."^[297] As a result, he lost the initiative to Charles James Blomfield, his more assertive successor as Bishop of London. In 1831, Blomfield cut loose in the Lords and welcomed the idea of an enquiry into the revenues of the Church. "The Church had no cause to fear a full investigation into the state of its revenue, and if it had any cause to fear, that would be a reason for inquiry." A detailed review "would serve as the groundwork of the improved distribution of the Church revenues. Defects were apt to creep into all institutions, and these, from time to time, it was necessary to remedy." Howley was observed "writhing" at this solo run, and was heard to exclaim: "These things should not be said without consultation."^[298] It was Howley who offered the weak defence of Bishop Sparke's blatant nepotism in 1831. It was Howley who had so generously made his wife's brother, C .A. Belli, a pluralist and a sinecurist. Even in the House of Lords, where the voice of radicalism spoke in a whisper, he encountered criticism for his half-hearted proposal to ban clergy from holding livings more than thirty miles apart. No doubt he was conscious that any tightening of the leash would bring Belli's two Essex parishes within the ban. When the Ecclesiastical Commissioners put the issue of pluralities back on to the political agenda in 1836, he mildly protested that "it was possible that they might have gone too far" in setting the limit at a mere ten miles. "The general feeling against pluralities was founded in reason," he conceded, admitting "the necessity of some considerable restriction on the present practice."^[299] But such declarations proved to be mere words. Legislation to control pluralities was passed in 1838, despite the objection of Joseph Hume that "the bill would legalize pluralities, and leave between 3,000 and 4,000 of those existing". For the government, Lord John Russell replied that the Commissioners had proved "the necessity of not hastily throwing aside pluralities altogether" and "it would not be right to abolish pluralities altogether".^[300] Moore, Belli and Fardell, the Sparkes and the Luxmoores were safe. Did Howley ever ask Belli to divest himself of Paglesham and resign his sinecure precentorship at St Paul's, pointing out that such a sacrifice would help his brother-in-law to meet the censorious judgement of a new era? If he did, his plea must have fallen on complacently unresponsive ears. Similarly, in an era when archbishops rarely visited their cathedral city, and the diocese had no suffragan to undertake day-to-day supervision, Howley was unusually reliant upon the Archdeacon of Canterbury, who happened to be the pluralist Croft.  But perhaps the Primate never screwed his courage to broach so embarrassing a subject. I take my leave of him with Trollope's charitable verdict "that Dr Longley never in his life was able to say an ill-natured word".^[301]

Nor was Charles James Blomfield the uncompromising reformist hero that he sometimes appears in the textbooks.^[302] Of course the Bishop of London had to tread a careful path through the minefield of Church reform, but his character did not always strike contemporaries as straightforward. In 1831, the Whig Prime Minister Earl Grey believed that Blomfield had encouraged him to reassign surplus revenues from a vacant Irish bishopric, only to find the prelate protesting that he had never entertained such an idea: "slippery chap" was Grey's comment.^[303] Indeed, Blomfield was open to the reproach that he had not always practised what he now preached. Before his translation to London in 1828, he had been Bishop of Carlisle, supplementing his episcopal stipend with benefices held in plurality. He divested himself of these surplus livings on moving to the capital but, when he supported Archbishop Howley's unsuccessful bill to curb pluralities four years later, he was reproached in the House of Lords. The gadfly Whig peer, Lord Kenyon, expressed surprised "at the eagerness displayed by the right reverend Prelate … in supporting a measure of this description, which went to prevent in future others from holding pluralities, when he had himself held at the same time a large living in London, and another in a distant part of the country".^[304] Personal attacks were rare in the calm atmosphere of the Lords, and Howley was quick to defend his brother bishop, just as he had attempted to whitewash Sparke of Ely the previous year. Blomfield had been rector of Bishopsgate in London and had also held the combined parish of Great and Little Chesterford in Essex^[305] – both livings in the diocese over which Howley himself had presided before his promotion to Canterbury. He assured the peers that he could say "from personal observation, that if the duties of all the pluralities of England were as well performed as the two parishes alluded to, there could be no objection made as to pluralities". Kenyon stood his ground, repeating that it seemed "strange" that Blomfield "should now be so eager to prevent the union of small livings, when he recollected that the right reverend Prelate had himself been the possessor of a large union". This goaded the Bishop of London into a petulant reply that illustrated why he was generally unpopular: "he had laid out more upon the Rectory of Chesterford than would have purchased the advowson of it. He had kept one curate at that parish, and had two in his London parish, whether he was in town or not."^[306] In Blomfield's time, Chester had been a very large diocese, both in area and population (it had then covered the whole of Lancashire). Prior to his elevation to the episcopal bench, he had been an energetic presence in Bishopsgate, but it would have been inconceivable that even so efficient a prelate could have served a parish in London. "Under these circumstances," he assured the peers, "he had not had much scruple of conscience in accepting both livings", an explanation that hardly revealed and certainly did not exonerate his motives for becoming a pluralist.^[307] In further self-exculpation, Blomfield added that "even if he had been wrong, that did not afford a reason why he should wish the same erroneous system to be continued". The Bishop of London had evidently become persuaded that pluralism was undesirable, but his sober change of opinion lacked the drama of the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus.^[308]

Another critic who was unimpressed with the depth of Blomfield's repudiation of pluralism was William Cobbett. As Bishop of Chester, Blomfield he had made his younger brother rector of the parishes of Coddington and Tattenhall. George Becher Blomfield was 26 at the time and had worked for two years as a curate in Wales. As pluralism went, this was a comparatively minor outrage. Cobbett, who always found it tactically useful to believe the worst of his opponents, chose to assume that the two livings were " each worth, probably, from a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds a year". In fact, their combined value was £532, and the two villages were just four miles apart. However, at about the same time, a prebendary (canonry) in Chester Cathedral fell vacant, and young George was given the stall. Cobbett ironically dedicated his 1835 valedictory Legacy to Parsons to Bishop Blomfield, for "while this Blomfield has a prebend and two great rectories, it is pretty clear that you want a great deal of enlightening on the subject".^[309] In fact, Cobbett's attack was out of date, for George Blomfield had been purged of pluralism in 1834, just before his brother became the driving force behind the Ecclesiastical Commission. On being appointed rector of Stevenage in Hertfordshire, with an annual income of £603, he divested himself of his appointments in the diocese of Chester. The preferment came from a lay patron in the diocese of Lincoln, but the influence of the Bishop of London may be suspected. George was consoled for the inconvenience by being named as one of his brother's chaplains.^[310]

Thus Charles James Blomfield had repudiated pluralism but continued to practise nepotism. Nor was George Blomfield the only beneficiary of his concern for family advancement. Four Blomfield brothers had acquired Cambridge degrees and entered the Church. Three of them, including one who died young, progressed through three years of academic residence to graduate with the standard Bachelor of Arts degree. Since their father was the proprietor of a private school, in Bury St Edmunds, the cost of their education must have been burdensome, and this may explain why a fourth son – confusingly called James, which was also the middle name of the bishop – had a much less satisfactory experience of the University.  Although he did become an ordained clergyman, he seems to have been marked out for the dead-end job of teaching in his father's school, and a Cambridge degree was an afterthought. He was in his mid-twenties when he was accepted by Emmanuel College in 1819, in the lowly rank of sizar, but he did not come into residence at that time. Instead, he enrolled as a 'Ten Year Man', a bizarre category of student that requires explanation.  In 1570, the University had made it possible for students to study for the Bachelor of Divinity degree by paying an annual registration fee and then studying at home. They were not required to present themselves in Cambridge until the close of the ten-year period, when they took part in a public disputation on some theological topic and conducted in Latin. In effect, this was a distance learning scheme but with no formal provision for the learning.  As a result, an initiative designed to raise the intellectual level of the working clergy had the inverse effect of dragging down the BD degree. The disputations, farcical displays of ignorance and bad grammar, drew large and derisive audiences, but participation was enough to secure graduation. In 1825, a reformer alleged that only ten percent of the candidates deserved to qualify. Some attempts at improvement were made: by James Blomfield's time, Ten Year Men were required to spend three terms in Cambridge during their final two years, but even then nothing was done to provide them with teaching. The embarrassing loophole was quietly abolished during the University reforms of the eighteen-fifties.^[311]

Compared with his more fortunate brothers, James Blomfield's education had been a miserable experience, and his career path hardly became more attractive when he took over his father's school. The Bishop of London probably felt that he owed him a favour, and reckoned that he was entitled to use his extensive patronage to pay off the debt. One of the parishes at his disposal was Launton in Oxfordshire, which yielded its rector £617. When it fell vacant in 1837, Charles James presented it to his brother.^[312] In 1842, an even more attractive opportunity arose. Orsett was a large parish in south Essex which included an area of reclaimed inland fen. It had been valued at £812 in 1831, but when the tithes were compounded a few years later, the annual return to the rector was adjudged to be worth £1,225.  Thus the Bishop of London was able to double his brother's income. It was evidently a condition of appointment that the new rector of Orsett must reside, for James Blomfield promptly built himself a handsome residence, although he took care to inform his parishioners that it was funded by a mortgage which he would be repaying until 1874. He was certainly unable to inject into local projects anything like the cash that C.A. Belli lavished upon South Weald and Brentwood.^[313] Nonetheless, he proved to be an energetic pastor during his thirty-six years at Orsett, both within his parish and more widely by holding office as rural dean, an episcopal appointment who functioned as a kind of clerical shop steward. Apologists for the values of olden times might well have argued that Bishop Blomfield made a good choice. Yet it should also be noted that the late eighteen-thirties and early 'forties were the key years in which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, largely driven by Blomfield himself, began to remodel the finances of the Church of England. Twice in that period, he mobilised his patronage on behalf of his own brother.

Nor was the rising generation forgotten. His brother's move to Orsett also gave the bishop the opportunity to rid himself of an obstinately Puseyite chaplain, T.W. Allies, whom he exiled to Launton.^[314] When Allies completed the logical trajectory of his spiritual pilgrimage and defected to Rome seven years later, James Blomfield's eldest son, another James, was twenty-eight years of age and available to fill the vacancy. In 1853, the bishop's thirty-year-old son, Frederick George Blomfield. became rector of a City church, St Andrew Undershaft. Bishop Blomfield's biographer defended the selection of his eldest son, pointing out that, in making the appointment, he had reduced its income by £500 a year "for the benefit of poorly endowed districts" in the capital.^[315] However, we should note that the biographer, Alfred Blomfield, was writing about an arrangement between his father and his brother. Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1860 noted that, even after its reduction, the gross annual income of the rector of St Andrew Undershaft was £1,025, which made it an enviable billet for a young man. It was a point that Alfred Blomfield somehow overlooked. A sympathetic reviewer of the biography insisted that the bishop "was singularly free from the sin of nepotism. Neither sons nor sons-in-law owed to him more than he was fully justified in bestowing upon them; for he required them all to serve a fair apprenticeship as curates before succeeding to benefices even of trifling value."^[316] Frederick Blomfield did not serve a very long apprenticeship, and the value of St Andrew Undershaft was more than trifling. Unfortunately, nepotism was largely about perception. No doubt Archbishop Moore and Bishop Sparke would have claimed an equally objective confidence in the readiness of family members to shoulder the burdens that carried such clerical plums.

Indeed, Bishop Blomfield's clannish generosity was spread fairly widely. His first wife, Anna Heath, had died in 1818. Sixteen years later, Blomfield made her younger brother, the Reverend George Heath, vicar of Great Bentley in Essex, a living worth about £300 a year. When Essex was transferred from his diocese of London to Rochester in 1846 – part of his own master-plan for Church reform – Blomfield retained control over the bishop's patronage within the county for the term of his episcopacy. This enabled him the following year to move Heath to the more prosperous parish of Canewdon, thereby virtually doubling his income. Fortunately, an encyclopaedic local chronicler noted the Heath-Blomfield connection, which otherwise would have escaped the notice of this historian.^[317]  

Deans and Canons too Bishops were not alone in their readiness to provide for family members, although they possessed the lion's share of patronage that made such indulgence possible. However, deans and chapters were also well placed to direct cathedral livings towards their own kin. William Rowe Lyall acquired a canonry at Canterbury Cathedral in 1841 – after the commencement of the Church's own internal reform process, it should be noted – and became Dean four years later. By the time of his death in 1857, eight of his relations had acquired benefices which have been calculated to have netted them £169,000 over their lifetimes.^[318] At St Paul's, Sydney Smith kept himself "at the head of the preferment list" with the intention of securing his son a comfortable berth after his graduation from Cambridge. It is difficult to understand how so shrewd an observer of humanity could have allowed parental myopia to prevent recognition of his offspring's entire unsuitability to a life devoted to religion. As an undergraduate, Wyndham Smith ran up massive bills in a lifestyle so disreputable that it led to the threat of expulsion from the University. He wisely decided against seeking ordination and, in later life, he became a well-known (and, it seems slightly shady) figure in the world of horse racing.^[319] Sydney Smith had still cherished hopes that his son would follow him into the Church when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners launched a bid in 1837 to transfer all cathedral patronage into the control of bishops, a proposal that he denounced as "flagrantly unjust". "I do not want to go into a long and tiresome history of Episcopal Nepotism; but it is notorious to all, that Bishops confer their patronage upon their sons, and sons-in-law, and all their relations". It would be "quite monstrous" to hand over more ecclesiastical boodle to "men swarming themselves with sons and daughters, and who, in enumerating the advantages of their stations, have always spoken of the opportunities of providing for their families as the greatest and most important". Smith accepted that all Church patronage was often abused but insisted that "the Bench of Bishops are the last persons from whom any remedy of this evil is to be expected".^[320]

A batch of nepotistic bishops   Blomfield's continuing concern for the interests of his close relatives, and Sumner's insouciant decision to place his son in the line of succession for the registrarship of his own prerogative court certainly confirm Sydney Smith's disbelief in any episcopal resolve to combat nepotism. Other instances of blatant favouritism surfaced from time to time. In 1845, C.R. Sumner, the Bishop of Winchester, gifted his twenty-eight year-old son John the rectory of Buriton with Petersfield, worth £1,471 a year, plus a house. Five years later, in 1850, he made his 25 year-old son George rector of Old Alresford, £740 and a parsonage. That same year, the Winton Sumner was distinctly cool when it was wrongly implied that he had pushed another son into line for a massive sinecure, but he evidently saw nothing wrong with queue-jumping his offspring into a lush livings. In 1853, Bishop George Davey of Peterborough bestowed the rectory of the Huntingdonshire village of Stilton upon his son Owen, who was twenty-four. Stilton was only worth £500 a year, so, six years later, the Reverend Owen Davey, now thirty, was elevated to Wheathampstead, where the incumbent annually pocketed £870. In 1854, Henry Pepys of Worcester appointed his son vicar of Grimley with Hallow, a joint parish worth about £700 a year. The Reverend Herbert Pepys was twenty-four, and had just a year's clerical work experience as a curate in Kidderminster. Even by contemporary standards, such as they were, this was accelerated promotion, and all the more convenient to the fortunate recipient in that Grimley vicarage found himself based only five miles from his father's palace. In 1856, Bishop Murray of Rochester sent his twenty-five year-old son to Leigh, a fishing port on the Thames estuary in Essex, where the previous incumbent had erected "a handsome Rectory House in the Elizabethan style". Leigh was worth £500 a year, but, after three years, the Reverend Frederick Murray was moved to Stone in Kent, a promotion that carried a pay rise of over £400 a year.^[321] No doubt in each of these cases the proud father persuaded himself that the exceptional precocious merit of his offspring justified one-off special recognition, but their appointments had the overall effect of reinforcing the general impression that bishops favoured their own. Nor was episcopal nepotism confined to the appointment of their sons. The Bishop of St Davids sent Thomas Thirlwall to Nantmell in 1858. The Bishop of Llandaff chose Edward Ollivant for Llandewi-Rydherch in 1865. In both cases, it seems reasonable to assume a relationship from the unusual shared surname. Indeed, it is difficult to assess the full extent of the favouritism shown by bishops towards their kin and connections, since where patronage was showered upon nephews, cousins and in-laws, surnames offer no identifying clue.^[322] There is certainly reason to assume that it was sufficiently widespread to foster suspicion of episcopal integrity in Church appointments. Reformers began to suggest that all private patronage in the Church might be subjected to diocesan oversight, but a Conservative MP asked in 1853 "whether a bishop would be more or less scrupulous in his investigation of his own son, nephew, or friend than he would be with the nominee of another person".^[323]

Perhaps remarkably, there seems to have been little public reaction to this steady stream of privileged queue-jumping. However, by the eighteen-fifties, the press seems to have been on the look-out for the more blatant episcopal exercises in family advancement. Renn Dickson Hampden, appointed Bishop of Hereford in 1847, was not a conspicuous administrative moderniser.  However, during his earlier career as an Oxford academic, his openness to new approaches to Biblical criticism had twice exposed him to campaigns alleging that he was a heretic. Hence he might have been expected to range himself among the new generation of Church leaders who disavowed the abuses of the past. In the event, he proved himself instead to be an exceptionally generous parent. When his eldest son, Edward Renn Hampden, left Oxford, he had initially thought of a career in the Law, but he quickly changed trajectory and secured ordination. Early in 1854, around the time of his twenty-eighth birthday, the Reverend E.R. Hampden received his first preferment from his father's hands. It would have been hard to have alleged favouritism in the bestowal of Breinton, a humble perpetual curacy which paid a mere £135 a year – Crawley of Hogglestock territory in the clerical career stakes. However, within a few weeks, the rectory of Eaton Bishops fell vacant, and young Hampden was moved to a benefice worth £450 a year. He could scarcely have finished unpacking when an even more attractive opportunity fell to his father's gift. The death of Charles Scott Luxmoore, Dean of (and occasional visitor to) St Asaph, created a vacancy that was too tempting to pass by. Perhaps Bishop Hampden might have paused before making this legacy of pluralism into a trophy of nepotism, but before the autumn leaves had fallen from the trees, the "fortunate youth", not yet thirty, had moved through his first two benefices to find himself in possession of a rectory worth £1,173 a year. Press comment seems to have been not so much unfavourable as downright astonished. The London pleasure gardens often staged balloon ascents as visitor attractions. Punch described young Hampden as "a sort of ecclesiastical aeronaut", since "there is nothing in the annals of ordinary ballooning that beats this achievement in audacity". The family claimed descent from John Hampden, the Parliamentary leader in the English Civil War who had died of wounds fighting for his beliefs in 1643. It was an illustrious name, said Punch, "and 'the cause for which Hampden fell in the field' is never spoken of without respect by Englishmen, but 'the cause for which Hampden rose in the Church', will, we fear, give rise to a feeling of a very different character".^[324] It should be emphasised that young Hampden held the parishes sequentially, an indication of the shift in values from a generation earlier when he might well have been permitted to retain all three at once. Nor could the bishop have foreseen that two such attractive livings would fall vacant so closely together and in such a seductively rising order of value. Indeed, the Bishop of Hereford was patron of the relatively small portfolio of thirty-three parishes. Allowing for a likely average turnover in a quiet part of the world, it is likely that he was called upon to find new incumbents two or three times a year. With young Edward Renn Hampden pushed to the front of the queue, clerical career advancement along the Welsh borders was placed on hold throughout 1854. Press reports seemed stunned that so young a clergyman should have "been preferred to three benefices in the course of a few months".^[325]

Cheese before dessert:  Villiers of Durham and Haughton-le-Skerne  Early in 1861, shortly after he had become Bishop of Durham, Henry Montagu Villiers was called upon to choose a new incumbent for the valuable living of Haughton-le-Skerne. It was a large and attractive parish of around one thousand people, where the incumbent received £1,300 and lived in a handsome parsonage. Care was needed in selecting a successor, since the previous rector had lived in Oxford, where he ran the Bodleian Library and had supplied long-distance spiritual sustenance through curates. In what would become the first major challenge since his translation from Carlisle a few months earlier, Bishop Villiers made the serious blunder  in giving Haughton-le-Skerne to a young clergyman who had been ordained just three years earlier, and whose brief pastoral experience had been as the lowly perpetual curate in a remote Cumberland hamlet.^[326] Defending the fast-track elevation of a young man whose appointment had "set the whole diocese of Durham into all but open rebellion", Villiers praised his nominee for possessing "talent, piety, and pastoral activity" but – so the Saturday Review sourly observed – "the bishop does not add that the talented, pious, and active gentleman's name is … he is twenty-eight years of age, and has married the bishop's daughter".^[327] The lucky protégé was called Edward Cheese, a surname that proved irresistibly unhelpful in the subsequent controversy. The Times was severe: it would be better for the Church "at this moment if Mr Cheese were now working among colliers, on a curate's pay, in a lodging over a shop."^[328]

Edward Cheese had been ordained by Villiers during his time at Carlisle, and had served for a time as the bishop's personal chaplain. Bishops chose young men as their chaplains precisely for their ability and commitment. The chaplain became a valued if exploited member of the episcopal household, on call at all hours. Since the daughters of bishops were guarded in closely chaperoned purdah and had few opportunities to encounter eligible bachelors, it is hardly surprising that marriages ensued, nor that the bridegroom should be seen as destined for great things in the Church. ^[329] "It would be hard that one who, from having won his way to the bishop's confidence as a faithful and efficient chaplain, has become a member of his family (and this is a very common case), should be thereby disqualified from diocesan preferment," Dean Alford would later complain.^[330] Even the acerbic Saturday Reviler (as its detractors dubbed it) was prepared to concede that episcopal kinfolk "deserve promotion as much or as little as other men deserve it. Public opinion never quarrels with a bishop for providing for his family if he only does it decently."^[331] "Great things were expected from his energy and tact", the Dictionary of National Biography said of the translation of Villiers to Durham. He had got off to a disastrous start, but perhaps, in time, the furore would die down and the episode would be forgotten.

Unfortunately, there was another dimension to the Cheese affair, and one that hardly showed Villiers to be a master of tact. Nepotism is not a victimless crime. For every unjustified beneficiary of favouritism, there must be some worthy candidate who was passed over for lack of influence. However, since there were probably many more among the ranks of the disappointed who imagined that their particular qualifications had been slighted, it was usually difficult to identify a specific victim. In this case, the scandal did come to focus on a single deserving individual and, in a ham-handed attempt at damage limitation, Bishop Villiers dug himself into a still deeper hole. Although still semi-rural, Haughton-le-Skerne was located on the fringe of Darlington, which had grown rapidly since it had become the terminus for the world's first railway in 1825. By 1861, it was a booming industrial town of twenty thousand people.^[332] Its historic church had been supplemented by two district chapels, each with its own clergyman "and with curates to pay". Because the tithe system was based on agricultural produce, urban clergy were usually underfunded, and in Darlington the three incumbents partitioned a historic income of just £600 a year. One of these impecunious clerics was ideally cast as the piteous victim of an uncaring Church. Thomas Minton had been in his thirties when he formally entered Cambridge in 1823—'formally' because, like James Blomfield, he was a 'Ten Year Man', an external student who was supposed to study theology through distance-learning courses that the University unfortunately did not provide.^[333] Minton was located so far outside the Anglican magic circle that he could barely touch its external circumference. He had laboured in Darlington for sixteen years. His supporters did not presume to suggest that he should have been given the place that fate had marked out for young Cheese, but they did lay claim to some of Haughton-le-Skerne's money.  

The town's Anglican churchwardens petitioned the Bishop of Durham to divert some of the Haughton-le-Skerne cash to the endowment of a new ecclesiastical district in the town, a move which would improve the Reverend Mr Minton's financial position. Ironically, appeals were made to the precedent set by Bishop Blomfield, when he had appointed his son to St Andrew Undershaft but reallocated some of its revenue to poorer districts of London. As The Times pointed out, reducing the income attached to Haughton-le-Skerne would have reduced the opposition to the intrusion of his son-in-law, and would have been in the young man's longer-term interest. "Mr Cheese, with £900, or even £1,000 a-year would have stood well for future preferment." Instead, Villiers catastrophically mishandled his response. Metaphorically, he pursed his lips and shook his head, telling the petitioners: "I cannot feel it to be the proper course to take from the income of Haughton-le-Skerne to apply the same in furtherance of the good cause in Darlington."^[334] An appointment had been made to the smaller parish – it was then that he failed to mention that thevnew rector of Haughton-le-Skerne was his son-in-law – and he could not retrospectively revise the terms offered. "It is with regret, with sorrow, with sympathy, with pain, with every amiable and kind feeling that he declines, but still duty, stern duty has its claims." With impressive episcopal logic, he deflected the point that Darlington was a fast-growing town to reinforce his decision. "I have good reason for believing that the increased population will pass the boundary line and will come into the parish of Haughton-le-Skerne. For these the new rector will have to provide, and will be prepared to provide." In other words, Cheese was to be paid at an extravagant rate against the possibility that he might eventually have to work as hard as Minton was already doing for one seventh of the income. Of course, their diocesan would welcome "some more equitable proceeding by which the income of the Darlington clergy can be improved", and any such plan – "when it pleases Providence to discover it" as the Saturday Review acidly interjected – "shall meet with his cordial co-operation". It was the employers of Darlington "upon whom a heavy responsibility rests of providing for the spiritual wants of their workmen", an assertion that ignored the inconvenient fact that many of the town's mercantile elite were Quakers. Even more preposterous was his claim that the railway company should foot the bill. The implication that the railways should apologise and make amends for their role in creating a flourishing industrial town was not likely to appeal to directors and shareholders. There was something offensively obtuse about the way in which Bishop Villiers refused to recognise any obligation, let alone any capacity, to meet the needs of Darlington from the Church's – and his own – resources. The massive costs of Auckland Castle, the grandiose country residence of the bishops of Durham, were a perennial target for carping reformers.^[335]

Thus far, his reply to the churchwardens of Darlington could hardly have been bettered had Bishop Villiers set out to disavow any claim to decency or common sense. But some demon tempted him to wade still further into obloquy by oily praise for the intended beneficiary of their campaign. Adopting a curiously conditional mode of speech, the Bishop of Durham added that he "would have been glad to express his sense of the value of Mr Minton's services, and the satisfaction it would afford him to hear so good a man has his stipend increased". What section of the sky this pay rise was to fall from he did not specify. The Saturday Review roundly declared that "the greatest blunder of all is to defend a very commonplace, a very coarse and awkward, if not a very scandalous stroke of business by unctuous affectation of sympathy with the poor clergy of Darlington and the good cause, and the paternal interest in so good a man whom the good bishop is content to leave to starvation".^[336] Fine words buttered no parsonical parsnips. At best, the bishop's sentiments sounded hypocritical. At worst, he was patronisingly reiterating his evident belief that Minton household's poverty was of less importance than his son-in-law's comfort. Punch made the point more succinctly: "Cheese always comes in before Dessert."^[337]

In Victorian Britain, the sign of a true public relations disaster was its raucous celebration in the pages of Punch. The Haughton-le-Skerne scandal supplied the satirical magazine with material for several weeks, much of it depending upon juvenile witticisms about the new rector's surname. Thus the village churchwardens were made to praise Villiers for his generosity: " "Our Bishop's really too anxious to please: / When we ask him for bread, he gives us Cheese!" It was not true that the young incumbent came from a humble background: indeed, he came from "a very old family in Cheshire", positively the crème de la crème.^[338] The affair even justified a full-page cartoon, a measure of the story's headline status, showing Villiers in full canonicals pouring a bottle of liquor (probably port) marked '£1,300' into a wheel of cheese. To a humble black-coated parson leaning sadly on his umbrella, he remarks: "I am exceedingly sorry, dear brother in the Church, but you see, I have not a drop left for you."^[339] Punch was gently censorious of Villiers. "Oh, Bishop! if praises of men you sought, / Which most of your kidney so tickle and please, / If popularity you'd have caught, / You shouldn't have baited your trap with cheese".^[340] The Saturday Review also returned to the subject, and was more succinct in its condemnation. "We know that Bishop Villiers looks upon patronage as a provision for enabling the daughters of Bishops to marry."^[341]

How did a senior diocesan bishop come to make such a blunder? Bishop Villiers was an aristocrat with powerful political connections. His brother, the Earl of Clarendon, and his brother-in-law, baronet and landowner Sir George Cornewall Lewis, were both regular members of mid-Victorian cabinets, but they were not grasping reactionaries. Clarendon, who was sometimes seen as a possible compromise Prime Minister, was a Whig grandee who successfully accommodated himself to the transition to a broader Liberal party, serving first under the laid-back eighteenth-century figure of Lord Melbourne in the eighteen-thirties and ultimately in Gladstone's first hyperactive reformist ministry three decades later. Another brother was C.P. Villiers, one of the leaders of the mid-century campaign for Free Trade, and MP for the industrial town of Wolverhampton. Cornewall Lewis was that rare figure, an aloof intellectual at the heart of politics. Bishop Villiers lived in a dynastic world – his influential connections help to explain his advancement in the Church – but he was close to talented people who were flexible enough to adjust to changing times. Before his elevation to Carlisle, he had spent fifteen years as rector of St George's Bloomsbury, a comfortable preferment, but in a parish with the same population as Darlington. The lowest of Low Churchmen, he was on good terms with local Nonconformists, and must have been aware of their antipathy to Anglican worldliness. He was also a canon of St Paul's, and surely knew of Blomfield's clever public relations move in covering the advancement of his own son to St Andrew Undershaft by diverting some of its revenue to poorer parts of London. Why, then, did he fail to see the warning lights flashing when he named Edward Cheese to Haughton-le-Skerne? Ignorance of his new diocese can hardly be pleaded as a plausible excuse. In seven months at Durham, he would surely have been briefed about the challenges facing the Church in Darlington, while a glance at the map – a sensible preliminary to filling any living – should have been enough to warn him that Haughton-le-Skerne would raise wider issues.

Mid-Victorian bishops were surely aware of the dangers of familial favouritism. Surely it could only have been some demon that persuaded individual prelates that the extension of patronage to their own relations was somehow different. In the era of Barchester Towers, it is tempting to suspect the Mrs Proudie factor. Clergy were infuriated by Trollope's portrait of the hapless Bishop Proudie, trapped within the curtains of a four-poster bed, his metaphorical mitre exchanged for a humble nightcap, quailing before the "midnight anger" of a spouse determined to control his diocesan decision-making.^[342] It would be sad to think of the Bishop of Durham fearing his wife more than the revilements of the Saturday or the barbs of Punch.^[343] Yet there may be a still more tragic explanation for the precipitate misstep that would become irretrievably associated with the episcopate of Bishop Villiers. Six months after the Haughton-le-Skerne scandal broke, he was reported to be "suffering from an alarming illness, which has excited much apprehension among his friends". Despite hopes for his recovery, the forty-eight year-old bishop died in mid-August. The brief but harrowing details published in the press indicate that he had become seriously ill, and that he had experienced health problems for some time.^[344] His health had presumably been sufficiently robust for him to accept promotion to Durham in June 1860 but, by February of the following year, he may have suspected that his days were numbered. In voicing its incomprehension that he could have bestowed his first major exercise in patronage upon his own son-in-law, the Saturday Review had argued that during an average episcopal term, other comfortable berths would become available. Hence, so the Saturday argued, Edward Cheese should have been given some tough assignment where he could gain experience and win respect, so that in the course of time his promotion to a well-paid and easy parish might be regarded as a reward for hard work. But by February 1861, Villiers may have realised that his days were numbered and that Haughton-le-Skerne could prove his only opportunity to ensure that his daughter could live in the luxury to which her upbringing had accustomed her.

Fear that he was dying may help us to comprehend why Villiers acted as he did, but it can justify neither the decision itself nor his clumsy attempt to explain it away. It could indeed be pointed out that there were many calls upon his own £8,000 a year official salary: the head gamekeeper at Auckland Castle, for instance, was paid £120 a year. Yet unrealistic demands that the industrialists and the railway company should accept responsibility for the spiritual welfare of Darlington were particularly inappropriate from a man whose elevated social status could have equipped him to extract cash from wealthy households across the country. His untimely death meant that his brief time at Durham would be remembered for one unsavoury episode. A typical obituary stated: "Shortly after being installed in his new bishopric his lordship incurred a large amount of public censure by conferring upon a young clergyman, the Rev. Edward Cheese, who had married his lordship's eldest daughter, the rich living of Houghton-le-Skerne, though another clergyman was thought to have a much stronger claim to the benefice."^[345] Muddled memory, it seems, had promoted Thomas Minton from a collateral victim to a cheated aspirant. The Saturday Review certainly set its face against the sentimental burial of bygones. "The ridiculous incident of the preferment of his son-in-law showed his total unfitness for his place." It was not so much the nepotism of the appointment as "the blundering stupidity of the way in which the job was done, that offended people. The dull insensibility to the ridiculous with which the poor Bishop tried to make it pleasant to the parishioners was the real mistake. The utter incapacity to understand people, to enter into their minds, or to suppose that their common sense could be taken in with a canting greasy letter … was what ruined Dr Villiers."^[346] Three years later, the Saturday could refer to the episode with the obvious assumption that its readers would recall the details, and Trollope referred to it in his 1865-6 essays, Clergymen of the Church of England, in outline terms that assume his readers would recall the details. In his ill-timed desire to provide his daughter, Henry Montagu Villiers had massively reinforced the widespread impression that all bishops used their patronage in the interests of their own families.^[347]

Wigram of Rochester and Prittlewell   Joseph Cotton Wigram, appointed Bishop of Rochester in 1860, was a Low Church partisan who campaigned to eradicate horse-racing, theatrical entertainments, friendly societies and clergymen with facial hair. (Friendly societies promised working men financial support in time of illness or unemployment: they sometimes defaulted through mismanagement or embezzlement. Wigram's critics suggested that it would be better to consider regulation rather than abolition.) His episcopacy lasted only seven years, but he improved the training of would-be clergymen and energetically toured the diocese in his light carriage, informally descending upon quiet villages and earning the nickname of a 'gig-bishop'.^[348] In comparison with his predecessor at Rochester, the wig-wearing dinosaur Lord George Murray, he seems almost a modern figure, if we make charitable allowances for the narrowness of his views. However, like most mid-Victorians, his values were an amalgam of old and new attitudes. (His enthusiasm for cutting down trees in the grounds of his country residence, Danbury Palace, was positively Gladstonian: locals hoped he might be promoted to Canterbury before he could denude the park.)^[349] Wigram's father had been a successful late-eighteenth century entrepreneur who had received a baronetcy from the Younger Pitt, for which honour he thanked the Prime Minister on behalf of his fifteen sons (there were twenty-three children in all, seventeen produced by a second wife).^[350]  On inheriting the title, the eldest son changed his name to the delightfully absurd Fitzwygram. Bishop Wigram himself had been ordained, in 1823, by the notorious Bishop Sparke of Ely. Another brother, Sir James Wigram, became a senior judge. When he was compelled to retire in 1850 after losing his eyesight, Sir James was granted a pension of £3,500 a year, which he enjoyed until his death in 1866.^[351]

The fact that Bishop Wigram occupied a crossroads between old and new values is perhaps the key to understanding the controversy over his exercise of episcopal patronage in an Essex parish in 1864, an episode complicated by misinformation and misunderstanding. "The Bishop of Rochester has been accused of nepotism for giving the living of Prittlewell in his diocese to his own son."^[352] There was a basic error in the report: the Reverend Spencer Wigram was the bishop's nephew. He was twenty-eight, had been ordained three years earlier and, at the time of his appointment, the young man was gaining work experience as a curate in the nearby market town of Romford. It was also fair to point out that, unlike Hampden and Villiers, Bishop Wigram did not enrich his nephew with one of the glittering prizes in his diocesan patronage. Although Prittlewell was an eight-square-mile thriving agricultural parish, it was also an instance of an unusual imbalance between the income of the vicar and the rectorial tithes which flowed into the pocket of the lay impropriator. Thus Sir Digby Neave, an Essex landowner, drew £1,096 a year from Prittlewell, leaving the vicar to scrape by on an income of £365.^[353] Given that the large population of the parish would probably make it necessary for the incumbent to employ a curate, it was not a particularly attractive living. In making his selection in 1864, Bishop Wigram would have needed to ponder two considerations that made Prittlewell something more than a sleepy Essex parish. Both headings pointed to the choice of an older and more experienced clergyman.

First, Prittlewell was the core parish of the seaside town of Southend. Compared with its more energetic rivals Brighton and Margate, the Essex holiday resort had grown slowly. When characters in Jane Austen's Emma discussed the merits of South End in 1816, its two-word name underlined its status as a mere hamlet of Prittlewell. The young Disraeli found it a discreetly secluded location for a blissful affair with an Older Woman in the summer of 1833. Outsiders tended to assume that any place on the Essex coast was surrounded by malarial marshes, but the parish of Prittlewell lay on a ridge of what in Essex passed for high ground: Southend itself stood "picturesquely on … the crown of a woody eminence rising boldly from the sands".^[354] With the lowest rainfall in Britain, its hinterland was attractive as well. Bishop Blomfield, who liked to do his thinking on horseback, worked out his schemes to remodel the Church of England while "taking my rides in the neighbourhood of Southend".^[355] By the mid-eighteen-sixties, the historic parish contained about three and a half thousand people, although numbers increased considerably in the summer months.

In 1842, a Southend ecclesiastical district had been carved out of Prittlewell, but the obstructive vicar had successfully constricted its boundaries to protect his own financial interests. As a result, only about fifteen hundred Southenders lived within the proto-parish, leaving another thousand in what White's Directory of Essex quaintly called "the suburbs in Prittlewell". To put the figures another way, the vicar of the ancient parish church was called upon to minister to two different types of people, half of them Essex bumpkins, the rest incomers to a seaside resort. The incumbent also faced a good deal of competition. The Baptists and the Primitive Methodists both had well-established chapels in the village, while there were two more Nonconformist congregations in the town. The area was also an outpost of the Peculiar People, a Methodistical sub-sect based in south-east Essex, whose adherents rejected the ministrations of doctors.^[356] Rival denominations represented a common challenge for Anglican clergy. Prittlewell-Southend was especially challenging because its inhabitants were not so much a community as an agglomeration of rootless individuals. The influential residents were retired professionals, desperate invalids, hoteliers and lodging-house keepers, whose needs were catered for by a truly remarkable array of tradespeople, bakers, butchers, drapers, grocers and general shopkeepers, most of whom presumably relied upon the summer trade to make a living: Prittlewell alone had four milliners and five shoemakers. In addition, there were cabmen and bathing-machine owners, while new development employed bricklayers and carpenters. In addition to basic services, Southend could also boast two photographers, two professors of music, a goldsmith, a watchmaker and a fruiterer (who must have faced supply problems in the winter). It is likely that there were social tensions within this collision of individuals, and these may explain why, a decade later, the area would provide fervent support for the Tichborne Claimant, expressed in a famously defamatory petition organised by a former ploughman called James Howard who ran a grocery in Prittlewell village.^[357] If Bishop Wigram wished to supply an incumbent who could bring harmony to such a diverse parish, he would have been well advised to search for a clergyman with maturity and experience.

If demography provided the first reason for treating Prittlewell as a sensitive appointment, its recent ecclesiastical history constituted the second consideration that should have weighed in Danbury Palace. The vicarage was vacant through the death of the Reverend Frederick Nolan, who had been presented to the living forty years earlier, in 1822. (He had in fact succeeded C.A. Belli, who briefly held Prittlewell in his climb to prosperity.) An Irishman and a former Fellow of Oriel College, Nolan was a brilliant scholar, terrifyingly prolific in abstruse publication. He had held all three of the named visiting lectureships in theology at Oxford, an acknowledgement of his talents that was very much to the University's credit, since he had a speech impediment that undermined his effectiveness in his own pulpit.^[358] Unfortunately, his relations with the people of Prittlewell were less agreeable than his dealings with his fellow Oxford dons. Animosity developed between the vicar and the bell-ringers, which became all the more confrontational when they began marathon practice sessions at five o'clock in the morning. Since Nolan's vicarage was next to the church, their campanology campaigns interfered with his abstruse research into the ancient languages of the Middle East, which was of course what the ringers intended. One morning in 1840, Nolan rushed into the belfry while the ringers were in action, and slashed wildly at the bell-ropes with a carving knife. He then took proceedings against his tormentors in the Ecclesiastical Courts, which could still exercise jurisdiction over the laity. When the defendants refused to appear, the secular courts were obliged to step in, and one parishioner spent thirteen weeks in prison for contempt. The vicar locked and barred the church, but the ringers broke in through the roof and the decibels resumed. When the vicarage windows were smashed, Nolan and his wife armed themselves with pistols and, on at least one occasion, they opened fire when they believed themselves under attack. The couple became the target for ribald songs, and Nolan was burned in effigy on the Fifth of November, his detractors having ingeniously acquired a surplice in which they garbed their guy. 

It is hardly necessary to add that the spiritual leadership of the parish church was seriously undermined by the uproar. In the years that followed, the Nolans spent much of their time travelling abroad, leaving Prittlewell in the hands of a series of curates. Ideally, Nolan's continental journeys might have provided cooling-off space that would have enabled him to return, ready to preach understanding and forgiveness which was, after all, what clergymen were supposed to do. Unfortunately, the vicar of Prittlewell returned refreshed and ready to resume battle. Local tradition claimed that, on his first Sunday home after one tour, he mounted the pulpit and announced that he intended to preach on a text from the Old Testament: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart." It was recalled that "several of the congregation vacated their seats".^[359] In 1854, Nolan leased Gerrardstown House, a country estate in County Meath, and returned to the land of his birth.^[360] For the last decade of his formal incumbency, his sizeable and complex parish was entrusted entirely to curates. Prittlewell was not unusual in experiencing a rapid turnover in the army of long-term curates, and they varied in quality. One took temporary refuge by the seaside while paying off his debts. Another was remembered as "an oddity … he used to preach very long sermons during which he occasionally sucked an orange". He also cooked his meals in an upstairs bedroom, which badly needed ventilation.^[361] When Nolan died in 1864, there were surely compelling reasons to choose a successor who could provide the leadership that had been so notably absent for a quarter of a century. In appointing his own nephew, Bishop Wigram's solution was to send another curate and call him vicar.

Both in terms of the nature of the parish and its recent confrontational history, the appointment of Spencer Wigram to Prittlewell could only be regarded as an error of judgement. Yet someone decided to counter criticism by circulating an aggressive rebuttal. Some newspapers were persuaded by its confident tone. "It appears, however, that the living is of very small value, that there is no parsonage nor school house, and that the population is a very poor one; so that it is necessary the incumbent should be a person of considerable private means."^[362] If this statement emanated from what modern journalists would call 'sources close to the Bishop of Rochester', it was an outrageous piece of spin, at best ill-informed and at worse deliberately misleading. It was true that Prittlewell, worth £365 a year, was not one of the big prizes, but there was no reason to assume that its inhabitants were particularly poor. The distinguishing characteristic of the parish was its cadre of middle-class incomers, and their presence probably created employment opportunities for the local population that did not exist elsewhere in rural Essex. There had been an endowed free school, dedicated to Anglican principles, in the village since 1717. A local squire had celebrated its centenary by erecting a second school room, to provide gender-segregated education for both boys and girls, and there was accommodation for both the master and mistress. An infants' school was added in 1839. National schools, again for boys and girls and affiliated to the Church of England, were opened in Southend in 1855, also with a house attached to put a roof over the head of the schoolmaster.^[363] The claim that there was no school in the parish could hardly have been more inaccurate.

At best, the statement that "there is no parsonage" was an exaggeration. There had certainly been a habitable vicarage in 1840 when the Nolans had fortified it against attack. It is likely that its condition deteriorated during their lengthy absences, when it seems it was occupied by the transient series of curates. In 1857 one of them protested about the quality of accommodation available to him, but White's Directory of Essex gave his successor's address in 1863 as 'Vicarage'. Even if the parsonage was in poor condition, the Church of England operated a system called 'dilapidations' by which an incoming clergyman could compel his predecessor – or his predecessor's estate – to pay for necessary repairs. Thus there was funding available for refurbishment of the existing building, which constituted a capital asset if the incumbent wished to build a new vicarage. In the short term, there would have been no difficulty in finding suitable genteel accommodation to rent from Southend's holiday housing stock.  The most that can be said is that the accommodation for both the schools and the vicar needed to be upgraded. Two years after his appointment, Spencer Wigram ranged a transfer: the schools were rebuilt on the site of the vicarage, their old site was sold and a new parsonage was erected on the glebe.^[364] We may note with interest the assumption that the nephew of a bishop would necessarily be "a person of considerable private means". While the relatively small vicarial tithe rent at Prittlewell certainly pointed to the selection of a clergyman who could draw upon his own resources, there were surely other candidates available who could bring more to the challenge and who had earned the right to make the attempt.^[365]

The fact young Spencer Wigram was a ritualist does not seem to have featured in the debate on his selection. The Bishop of Rochester was an Evangelical, but there was every reason for him to reflect the whole range of opinion within the Church in making his appointments. But there is no reason to assume that High Church practices were in use at Prittlewell before his arrival in 1864. Nolan had left Oriel before it became the cradle of the Oxford Movement, and – for obvious marketing reasons – Anglican clergy from Ireland were rarely sympathetic to Catholic practices. The bedraggled succession of curates who acted during his absence certainly lacked the authority to make innovations in liturgy.  Wigram's ritualism contributed to the establishment of a breakaway group called the Reformed Church of England in Southend. A disillusioned Anglican clergyman, T. Huband Gregg (another Irishman), secured consecration as a bishop from a dissident Episcopalian prelate in New York before basing himself in Southend where, in 1878, the sect opened its first purpose-built church in Britain. Gregg's Reformed Church of England may be regarded as yet another example of the fermenting instability of the seaside town's miscellaneous population, and its local manifestation would not be without melodrama.^[366] However, Spencer Wigram had left Prittlewell before its dissensions emerged.  He resigned in 1880 and moved to Oxford, where for some years he abandoned active ministry. Instead, he attached himself to one of Oxford's Anglo-Catholic churches and engaged in research in medieval monastic history. Thanks to the Southend cuckoo in its parochial nest, Prittlewell was a challenging parish. By the eighteen-sixties, informed opinion was hostile to clerical nepotism. A bishop would only be justified in appointing one of his own relatives to an important position if he could justify that his candidate possessed unusual abilities capable of addressing specific challenges. While there is every reason to believe that Spencer Wigram became a conventionally energetic vicar,^[367] equally there is no reason to assume that he possessed any special qualities that equipped him to take on a complex parish. Above all, the Low Church Bishop Wigram made an error of judgement when he decided to send his own nephew to introduce ritualistic practices in a district characterised by a Protestant tradition and fertile in Nonconformist sects.

Anthony Trollope's caricature clergy  In the winter of 1865-6, Anthony Trollope wrote a series of articles for a London evening newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, in which he sketched archetypal clerical personalities. The collection was published in book form at the end of March.^[368] The celebrated novelist would later shock some of his admirers by producing an Autobiography in which he openly admitted that much of his output had been motivated by the desire to make money. Clergymen of the Church of England was almost certainly an attempt to cash in on his status as a spy in the cathedral close, and it is noteworthy that he referred only briefly and obliquely to the project in his memoirs.^[369] The problem was, as he later cheerfully confessed, that Trollope did not have any clergymen among his close friends, and that in writing about gentlemen of the cloth, "I had to pick up as I went whatever I might know or pretend to know about them". After Barchester Towers (1857), clergy probably steered clear of him in case they became caricatured in some future novel.^[370] In reality, this was less of a problem than Trollope claimed since, as a regular churchgoer, he had plenty of opportunity to observe front-line clergy. If some of his caricatures of the lower ranks were unkind and unfair, his portrayals were not necessarily any more absurd than some of real life menagerie of curates that Frederick Nolan sent to Prittlewell. It was when he moved into the Anglican officer caste that Trollope's pen began to mislead. His frank admission that he did not understand the function of cathedral deans led him to assume that they did very little. This aroused the ire of Henry Alford, the Dean of Canterbury who, unfortunately for the author, was the editor of the recently established Contemporary Review. Alford used the platform for what Trollope moodily recalled as "[t]he most ill-natured review that was ever written upon any work of mine".^[371]

When it came to the Church of England's General Staff, Trollope was definitely out of his depth. His only detailed episcopal creation, Bishop Proudie of Barchester, was sad, irresistibly comical and utterly beyond credibility. Bishop Yeld of Elmham, briefly and inexplicably introduced into The Way We Live Now, was allowed to look like a prelate and credited with guiding his diocesan clergy in an appropriately paternal manner. However, even then, Trollope obstinately denied him any genuine religious motivation, "I doubt whether he was competent to teach a creed, or even to hold one, if it be necessary that a man should understand and define his creed before he can hold it. ...he never spoke of his faith, or entered into arguments with men as to the reasons on which he had based it."^[372]

Thus it may not be surprising that, in Clergymen of the Church of England, he not only took for granted that all bishops practised nepotism, but also made light of their weakness. It was undoubtedly a superficial generalisation, but it is obvious that – five years after the scandal – Bishop Villiers and Haughton-le-Skerne had left their mark. "A bishop is not bound, even in theory as the theory at present exists, to bestow his patronage as may be best for the diocese over which he presides. He still gives, and is supposed to give, his best livings to his own friends. …The peculiarly strong case of a Mr Cheese may, here and there, give rise to comment; but unless the nepotism is too glaring, nepotism in bishops is allowed – nay, it is expected. A bishop’s daughter is supposed to offer one of the fairest steps to promotion which the Church of England affords." Wrapped up in this whimsy were harsh condemnations of "the bishop, in whose hands patronage has been placed, that he might use it in the holiest way for the highest purpose, still exercises it daily with the undeniable and acknowledged view of benefiting private friends! And in doing so he does not even know that he is doing amiss." "A deserving curate has no claim on a bishop for a living as a reward for the work he has done."^[373]

Responding to Trollope: Alford, Tait and Wilberforce Henry Alford dismissed Trollope's attack as "an entire misrepresentation". In regard to episcopal favouritism of relatives and friends, "surely there are other elements to be taken into account, which are commonly kept back. Such bestowals ought to be moderate, both as to number and as to amount of income: and it ought to be clear in every case, that the man is fitted for the post. If these requisites are satisfied – and we believe that, though there may be some painful exceptions, such is generally the case in the present day – we really do not see that there is anything to complain of." Alford's brazen 'nothing to see here' defence contrasts awkwardly with his use of the apologetic adverb, "generally". He was equally robust in his rejection of Trollope's sweeping claim that curates went unrewarded. "Any account of the bestowal of patronage by any of our bishops would show that this last is precisely the direction in which it is, as a general practice, given."^[374] But was this true?

In 1875, opponents of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait, analysed twenty-seven appointments that he had made: eight had been given to relatives or members of his wife's family, eight to "chaplains and private friends", leaving " only eleven… to deserving curates".^[375]  The Spectator, which expressed doubts about the comprehensiveness of the survey,^[376] tried to make light of its findings:  the chaplains had been picked out as high-fliers, fast-tracked to promotion through competence rather than connections, the Archbishop's friends would by definition be worthy, that could well also be true of family members and "relationship to Mrs Tait is not a complete disqualification for promotion in the Church". Nonetheless, the Spectator conceded that the report "looks dreadful", and the itemised list of the prizes awarded to beneficiaries described as "married Dr Tait's cousin" and "nephew of Mrs Tait's sister" was likely to arouse indignation.^[377] Trollope might have exaggerated in his sweeping statement that deserving curates had no claim at all for reward upon their bishop, but it was hard to deny that their path to promotion was narrow. There were around three hundred parishes in the Primate's own backyard, the diocese of Canterbury. If we assume that half of them employed a curate, then we would estimate 150 job seekers. However, the number of the truly deserving would have been considerably smaller. Some of the unbeneficed clergy constituted a migrant workforce, men who took a job in a parish for a year or two before moving on to some other part of the country, building up no obligation on the part of the diocese. Others were youngsters, just out of university and – unless they possessed influential connections who could whisk them up the queue – probably content to acquire useful experience of parish work. Then there were the sad cases, clerics too incompetent or uninspiring to inflict upon even the smallest and sleepiest parish. But even with the most generous allowances for the non-starters, the diocese of Canterbury surely contained several dozen – perhaps as many as one hundred – career clergymen,  men who had struggled through University as poor students, who had sought ordination because they felt a deep calling to the Church, many of whom never sniffed the fragrant air of promotion. For just eleven of those deserving cases to secure their own parishes in six years – two scrambles to preferment each year – was hardly a morale-enhancing prospect: some curates would probably never be rescued from poverty. By contrast, it would seem that any suitably qualified (i.e. ordained) relative, friend or confidential employee of the Archbishop of Canterbury could be reasonably sure of advancement within a relatively short period.

Yet the imbalance in basic numbers between the favoured and the humble was not the only shocking aspect of the report. It was also clear that the loaves and fishes had predominantly fallen to the first category, leaving only the crumbs and the tiddlers to the second. Ten of the sixteen benefices bestowed on the relatives and connections were worth more than £500 a year, the top prize yielding its fortunate recipient an annual income of £1,345. By contrast the luckiest of the promoted curates netted a parish that paid him £387. Only four of the relatives and connections were presented to benefices worth less than the most valuable of the small preferments handed down to the rank and file. In some cases, acquiring a parish may not even have meant a net pay rise: public opinion had secured a general increase in the stipends of curates; incumbents were expected to contribute to good causes, such as their village school.^[378] Half a century earlier, prelates like Manners-Sutton and Sparke had made no secret of their determination to divert the wealth of the Church to the enrichment their own kin. Tait, by contrast, belonged to a new and more serious generation: "patronage is a trust" he told the House of Lords in 1875.^[379] In discharging his responsibilities, he probably assured himself that he had struck a balance between rewarding talent and providing for his own connections. In reality, if he was indeed called upon to fill only four vacant livings a year, it is no surprise that the queue-jumpers crowded out the deserving cases. As Tinsley's Magazine put it, if career advancement was a clergyman's principal aim, "one would rather be a connection of Mrs Tait than be a good preacher or parish priest".^[380] Anthony Trollope's breezy gibes were no doubt superficial, and he was wrong to claim that hard-working curates had no hope at all of career advancement from their bishops. Nevertheless, in practice he was not far wrong in his assessment of the imbalance in the exercise of diocesan patronage caused by their continuing attachment to nepotistic favouritism. If the picture was exaggerated, bishops like Blomfield, Sumner, Hampden, Villiers and Wigram had only themselves to blame.

Dean Alford sought to dismiss Trollope through angry rebuttal. The Bishop of Oxford brushed him aside with a characteristic gesture of open contempt. In March 1866, arch-pluralist Richard Pretyman died, just at the time Trollope's sallies appeared in book form. His passing freed a clutch of preferments, one of them Middleton-Stoney in the diocese of the formidable Samuel Wilberforce. The parish was worth £590 a year, and it came with a habitable rectory.^[381] Two months later, Wilberforce presented his recently ordained son to the vacant living.  The Reverend Ernest Wilberforce was twenty-five. According to Ernest's biographer, who acted as the mouthpiece for Ernest's widow, the bishop acted "without misgiving".^[382] Samuel Wilberforce was rarely – if ever – beset by misgivings. It is likely that this fast-tracked appointment was a direct riposte to what he would have seen as the impertinence of Anthony Trollope. Ernest Wilberforce did go on to become a bishop himself, but how far he owed his elevation to his own merits rather than to his illustrious surname may never be known. Evidently suspecting that he was the target of Bishop Wilberforce's gesture, Trollope voiced his disgust: "he gave the living which fell vacant the other day … which had been held for fifty years by a scamp, a son of old Bishop Tomlin[e], to his own youngest son, – just in orders."^[383] The exaggerated advancement of his son was indeed an arrogant rebuke, but Wilberforce had confirmed one of Trollope's speculative allegations. "It may be doubted whether the bishop has yet breathed beneath an apron who has doubted that his patronage was as much his own as the silver in his breeches-pocket."^[384]

Nepotism was not pluralism, but both sprang from the desire to divert institutional resources for the benefit of family members or privileged connections. Indeed, there was symbolism in Bishop Wilberforce's defiant decision to use a legacy of pluralism into a trophy of nepotism. Consequently, the endemic prevalence of episcopal family favouritism disqualified the bishops from adopting the high moral ground in regard to other forms of clerical careerism. This, alone, would have been enough to deter any prelate from denouncing one of his clergy for holding more than benefice, although it is even more unlikely that such public criticism would have been contemplated in any case. Yet the confidence expressed by the Saturday Review in 1856, that the pluralists were "a class which will soon be extinct" failed to take account of the dogged survival of many of its most comfortable beneficiaries, an awkward fact that does not seem to have been mentioned from cathedral pulpits or in diocesan diatribes. There is, however, one apparent exception to this record of episcopal silence, which forms a curious tailpiece to the long tradition of clerical corruption.

Tailpiece: Wordsworth of Lincoln ousts a pluralist for winning the St Leger   In 1874, in the very twilight years of the disappearing pluralists, the eighty-one year-old Reverend J.W. King was pressured into resigning the two parishes that he had long held in the diocese of Lincoln.^[385] However, this episode should not be taken as evidence that the Church of England was indeed capable of dealing with those who persisted in selfishly monopolising its resources. Rather, what angered Bishop Christopher Wordsworth was not King's pluralism – which was only fleetingly mentioned in his indictment – but the fact that he bred racehorses, and very successfully too.

The Kings had been the squires of Ashby-de-la-Launde since the sixteenth century. Their latest incarnation, John King, had been born at about the time Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine. He had a successful student career at Oxford, where Corpus Christi College elected him to a Fellowship. In 1822, his family made him vicar of their home parish, which was worth about £300 a year. Ten years later, his College added a second and more lucrative Lincolnshire parish, Bassingham, which was twelve miles away and yielded its rector between £650 and £750 a year. There were five times as many people in Bassingham and the Methodists were active there. However, the Reverend Mr King preferred to live at Ashby Hall, which he inherited in 1841, choosing to provide the larger parish with basic spiritual facilities through a curate. Allowing for essential deductions of tax and stipends, his net income from the two parishes over fifty-two years was probably close to £40,000: applying a generalised inflation multiplier, this would be worth about four million pounds in 2026 prices.

Yet the 1874 clash, the only episode in which a bishop actually challenged a pluralist, was only obliquely focused on the scandal that the Reverend Mr King had quartered himself on two Lincolnshire parishes for forty years. King was now in his eighties and understandably regarded himself as retired from active ministry, although he retained the titles and the emoluments of his two livings. His principal passion was the breeding of racehorses, a family speciality through the generations.  He did not attend race meetings, he did not gamble and he observed formal propriety by using a false name for the purposes of the turf. The alias did not fool insiders in the racing world, but the public apparently did not know that 'Mr Launde' was a clerk in holy orders. Lincoln Cathedral also seems to have remained conveniently in the dark about his activities. However, sometime after his consecration in 1869, Bishop Christopher Wordsworth discovered that one of his clergy owned a stable of racehorses and that one of them was very successful.

Wordsworth belonged to a new breed of active diocesans. He squabbled with Methodists and denounced, with passionate futility, the trade in advowsons.^[386]  Faced with the shocking news of King's hobby, Wordsworth wrote "courteously but very firmly" to King, "remonstrating with him on the subject" and demanding that he abandon his stud. However, the squire of Ashby-de-la-Launde interpreted the episcopal reprimand as a threat of action in the ecclesiastical courts, and curtly referred the bishop to his solicitor. At this stage, their correspondence was private and their exchanges had reached stalemate. However, the issue flared back into life when a three-year-old filly belonging to 'Mr Launde' won a sensational classic horse race, the 1874 St Leger at Doncaster. 'Apology' (cynics noted that the steed's name did not occur elsewhere in the episode) had suffered a slight injury in training ahead of the race, and her trainer wished to withdraw her. To the joy of the racing public, King was reported to have insisted that the horse should run "even if she only had three legs". There was, of course, a fairy-tale ending when the "game, honest, wear-and-tear mare" won the St Leger in a sprint finish.

Wordsworth did not share in the public celebration. Rather, he not only unleashed a further ferocious reprimand but also took the unusual step of publishing it, thereby revealing to the world the hitherto slightly veiled scandal that 'Mr Launde' was a clerk in holy orders. "I had hoped that you might have been induced, at your advanced age, by regard for your own spiritual welfare as well as for that of others, to listen to my earnest expostulations," he fulminated. It was the sort of reproof that bishops were paid to issue, but the tone seemed "pompous" and its core message – summarised by one journalist as a reminder to King that he would "soon be under that turf on which he now runs his horses" – was distasteful, all the more so because its recipient was seriously ill, reportedly suffering from "gout of the stomach", which sounds like cancer. Professing to be sorrowful in his rebuke, Wordsworth complained "that you have shown no signs of remorse for your offence in bringing discredit on your sacred profession and in inflicting injury on the Church of which you are a minister, and in causing scandal to her members, by training racehorses for the turf instead of devoting yourself entirely to the work to which you pledged yourself at your ordination". It was at this point that he threw in an allusion to King's pluralism. "You are the incumbent of two benefices in this diocese – Ashby-de-la-Launde and Bassingham – and the latter of these on which you do not reside, is largely endowed and you hold these two pastoral cures on the condition that you will promote the welfare of the Church and not bring disgrace upon her". Wordsworth did not elaborate the point, nor did he make clear its relevance: he could hardly have implied that training racehorses would have been acceptable had King held only one parish.

Respectable opinion generally agreed that a clergyman should steer clear of the turf, but even those who sympathised with Wordsworth were uneasy about the tone and the timing of his anathema. For all his outrage, the bishop's position was ambivalent: he censured King for his involvement with horse-racing but, unlike the Methodists who were consistent killjoys on the subject, he did not condemn the sport outright. The Spectator criticised Wordsworth for "a habit of mind which makes a prim and rigid, but not very potent, religion of rather shallow social conventions", although it was rather his inconsistency in regard to those conventions that was really his weak point. Nor was the bishop's bid for the moral high ground helped when King fell and broke his thigh, a life-threatening injury to a man of his age. Coolly regretting "that your lordship has thought fit to publish your last letter", King responded with dignity from his sickbed. Having defended his equine enthusiasms as an inheritance from his ancestors, and repeated his insistence that no law could be invoked against him, he submitted a dignified resignation from his benefices "simply because I desire to live the remainder of my days in peace and charity with all men". Essentially, his graceful retreat implied that he was prepared to give up two jobs that he was no longer capable of doing in order to save his diocesan from making a fool of himself.

The Reverend Mr King's age was obviously a major reason why he managed to emerge from the episode with a wide degree of public sympathy. One journalist observed that "inasmuch as the old clergyman never visits a race meeting nor makes a bet, he might have been left to die unbadgered". "Considering Mr King's age, he cannot be a scandal to his Bishop for very long", wrote another. "We cannot help in our hearts applauding the old gentleman's pluck."

Wordsworth's heavy-handed censure tended to obscure the fact that, in ethical terms, 'Mr Launde' hardly possessed a strong hand of cards to play. Although he did not gamble, he had undoubtedly amassed considerable sums in prize money from the turf: the amount he had won during his racing career might well have prompted some to wonder why he needed his parochial pickings as well. If King was not as blatantly parasitic as Robert Moore or the Pretymans, he had nonetheless drawn an indecently large income from Bassingham as an absentee parson for four decades. However, although he meaningfully referred to King's two parishes, Wordsworth did not specifically brand him as a pluralist. Robert Moore aroused the indignation of London journalists and the scorn of metropolitan satirists because they were expressing the resentments of upper middle-class families, many of whom would have dealt with the frustrations and the fees of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and would feel directly aggrieved at his sinecure. But a clergyman might hold two parishes because they were adjacent and thinly peopled, and Fleet Street almost certainly knew little of the geography of Lincolnshire. The resignation of the vicar of Ashby-de-la-Launde and rector of Bassingham was noteworthy because it seems to have been the sole example of the total ousting of a pluralist. Yet the Reverend J.W. King surrendered his benefices not because his avarice had been shamed nor his absenteeism condemned, but because his horse had won the St Leger. He died a few months later.

Conclusions  In the first three decades of the nineteenth century, at least nine indecently large portfolios of Church appointments were amassed by the families of primates and prelates. This essay focuses on the tribes of Horsley, Luxmoore, Majendie, Manners-Sutton, Moore, North / Guilford, Pretyman-Tomline, Sparke and Venables-Vernon-Harcourt. I suspect there were others, and there were certainly many lower-level pluralists who contented themselves with monopolising just two or three preferments, ensuring their own comfort at the expense of clergy less fortunately located in the networks of influence. While the proactive phase of this golden age of grabbing and greed came to an end in the eighteen-thirties, its beneficiaries enjoyed an extended and largely undisturbed postscript that extended over several decades. The last major scandal, the Sparke-Fardell gobbling of Wisbech in 1831, coincided with the crisis of the Reform Bill, after which a mobilised public opinion discouraged the repetition of such excesses. From 1838, legislation regulated the allocation of benefices, limiting combinations to two parishes of limited value and increasing contiguity. It is easy to assume, as many historians have implied, that pluralism disappeared as the Ecclesiastical Commission steadily eliminated abuses through internal reform.

Yet the pluralists remained, encumbering and embarrassing the Church that so lavishly financed their luxurious lifestyles. Robert Moore and Richard Pretyman both survived for three decades until the mid-eighteen-sixties. Edward Bowyer Sparke died in 1878; Charles Almeric Belli lived until 1886, fifty years after Peel and Blomfield had launched the process of renewal. From time to time, particularly blatant pluralists became targets for parliamentary scrutiny and press anger, which we may reasonably assume voiced wider public outrage. The Pretymans came under attack for their stewardships of almshouses in the eighteen-forties and, to his utter bemusement, Robert Moore was intermittently assailed for his phantom registrarship for several years into the early eighteen-forties. Reviewing Crockford's Clerical Directory in 1858, the Saturday Review likened Pretyman "as a Dinotherium to the weasel" compared with modern clergy and expressed sympathy at "the modest total which this poor this poor servant of the Cross enjoys being only £5,260 15s. 3d. per annum, and five houses to live in". It also threw a spotlight on the Sparke brothers, censuring them for understating the value of their Ely canonries, while noting that "the Episcopal duty of providing for his own is fully recognised in the person of Mr Robert Moore, son of a late Archbishop of Canterbury". Three years later, the same journal would despairingly ask if the diocese of Ely would ever be rid of the Sparke incubus.^[387] There is evidence of widespread awareness of the continuing scandal of plutocratic pluralism: Punch, for instance, usually assumed that its readers would understand mocking allusions to them. The Morning Star's 1865 obituary to Robert Moore was exceptional in its concentrated venom (although it had been equally severe on George Pretyman six years earlier) but reports of the deaths of other notable parasites generally displayed an element of quiet contempt that rarely broke the surface of Victorian propriety.

Pluralists made very occasional concessions, retreats and restitutions. J.H.M. Luxmoore handed over one of his Welsh sinecures in 1853 for the endowment of new churches, and there were three resignations of Essex parishes between 1858 and 1860.^[388] The Reverend Lord Guilford was compelled to disgorge eleven hundred pounds of ill-gotten gains from St Cross Hospital. But, essentially, the pluralists ploughed on to the ends of their days. Most notably, the outrage intermittently expressed by press and parliamentarians met with an echoing silence from the pulpits and the episcopal palaces. It is argued in this essay that one major reason for this failure to challenge the survival of these acts of blatant selfishness was that senior clergy, and the bishops in particular, remained complicit in a related form of abuse, the allocation of preferments – and, be it noted, the most attractive prizes in the lottery – to their own relatives, particularly to their sons and the promising young men who married their daughters. It is fair to note that there was much special pleading that argued that such appointments perhaps reflected recognition of some element of merit that acquits them of outright nepotism. It might be argued that episcopal offspring were likely to inherit exceptional saintliness, assuming that such qualities were present in the parental prelate. Professional distinction often runs in families, and youths reared in the odour of sanctity were perhaps likely to become precociously expert in theology. Yet, even as it bent over backwards to defend the qualifications of Archibald Campbell Tait's clan of beneficiaries, the Spectator had to confess that the list "looks dreadful".  In the mid-Victorian period, public opinion took for granted that bishops looked after their own. As Trollope put it, "unless the nepotism is too glaring, nepotism in bishops is allowed". Such distrust did not give the right reverend gentlemen a strong moral platform from which to urge the remaining pluralists to divest themselves of their worldly windfalls – even if the bishops had been minded to utter such appeals. It was not until the very last years of pluralism, in 1874, that the octogenarian Reverend J.W. King was pressured into giving up the two parishes that he had held for half a century. Moreover, King's retreat was actually an act of defiance: he resigned the livings that he could no longer serve rather than concede his bishop's principal demand that he abandon his racing stud.

There were other reasons why the last of the pluralists were left alone. Life expectancy in Victorian times was relatively short and alarmingly insecure. Sinecurists who had wallowed in ecclesiastical plunder for decades could be quietly expected, even hoped, to be approaching the grave, which would close over their abuses as well as over their coffins. It was particularly unfortunate that several of them displayed what Sydney Smith roguishly called the "rancour" of insisting on remaining in this world for an unconscionable time. Although most people – Bishop Murray was an exception – would probably have given some cautious agreement to the Morning Star's proposition that "[e]very man, woman, and child in England is a part proprietor" of the Church, and hence suffered when its wealth was misapplied, it was usually difficult to identify the precise victims of pluralism and sinecurism, to personalise the losers with face and name. The appointment by Bishop Villiers of his son-in-law to a valuable living was a blunder precisely because critics could point to a specific clergyman, deserving, downtrodden and underpaid, to whom they had urged the transfer of some part of the income to be bestowed upon the inexperienced Reverend Mr Cheese. Robert Moore was a hate figure largely because he appeared to wade through massively undeserved wealth – his income was double that of even the Pretymans and the Luxmoores – but also because the people who read The Times and subscribed to Punch came from prosperous families that were likely to have experienced the Dickensian extortions of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

Thus there are two major arguments advanced in this essay. First, pluralism and pluralists survived in the Church of England for several decades beyond the advent of internal reform in 1835. Second, the higher levels of Anglicanism remained infested with nepotism, even if it was of a genteel kind, at least until the eighteen-seventies. As a result, the bishops had no moral authority to criticise the Moores, the Sparkes and the Pretymans for their continuing pillage, and preferred to pretend that it did not exist. To these two themes, pluralism and nepotism, should be added the subject of a parallel essay, the patronage system that treated as private property the right to appoint incumbents, the rectors and vicars who lived off, if not always in, the parishes of England and Wales. In many cases, the advowson, as the entitlement was called, was in the gift of the Crown, the bishops, the cathedral chapters or the ancient universities, but in about half the parishes in England and Wales these rights belonged to private patrons. Political considerations or personnel issues were likely to intrude in government or academic appointments, while bishops, clergy and gentry were likely to be swayed by various forms of favouritism. Even where private patrons took seriously their responsibility to select the right pastors for the communities under their care, they were programmed to choose clergy from their own class and background, especially if the nomination was made by a resident landowner and the incumbent would become his neighbour and dinner-table guest. Because they were a form of property, advowsons could be traded, and a squalid auction market developed, in which disreputable tricks were practised to evade the already weak laws against simoniacal purchase of office in the Church. Thus, for most of the nineteenth century, the Anglican Church in England and Wales was infested with three elements of sordid materialism, the hogging of its most comfortable berths by a privileged minority, the fast-tracking of privileged young men into its best jobs, and the stench of commerce and competition that surrounded large parts of its appointments system. The first two practices continued into the mid-Victorian period; the third was not regulated until 1898, when Parliament finally began to place some curbs upon abuses of the advowson system.

While bishops preferred to shield their eyes, most informed contemporaries were very aware of these institutional failings, and consequently many were profoundly unimpressed by the organisation that tolerated them. Journalists, Nonconformists, converts to Rome and the vast number of working-class people who turned their backs upon all religion were united in seeing the Church of England as a corrupt racket run in the interests of a complacent clerical elite. This simple point largely explains the difference between England, where Anglicanism had lost its hold upon half the population, and Ireland, where – in the former Gaelic areas of the majority of the country – the Catholic Church remained both respected and powerful. Celibacy removed priests from the temptation to nepotism, at least of the father-to-son or son-in-law variety, while their ostensible dedication to poverty usually proved compatible with a comfortable lifestyle supported by the generosity of their parishioners. Yet this basic point, that the Church of England was characterised by cash-registers, careerism and insider dealing – and hence contemptuously regarded by many contemporaries – seems oddly absent from textbook accounts of nineteenth-century Anglicanism, which concentrate on organisational and doctrinal issues. To take one example, most accounts of the development of Anglican thinking would take note of Lux Mundi, a collection of twelve essays from an Anglo-Catholic point of view published in 1889. The volume was important in moving the focus of High Church activity away from the arid controversies over ritual by confronting the need to accommodate theology to science and harness religious belief to social activity. Lux Mundi merits its place in any study of the ferment of Anglican ideas, even though these probably largely bypassed the parishioner in the pew. Yet the point made here in reference to Lux Mundi is that there are no comparable index references to 'Luxmoore' in the overall story. There are names that stand out in the spiritual narrative of nineteenth-century Anglicanism, landmark symbols such as Keble and Pusey, Arnold and Kingsley – but to comprehend the full story, these totems should be matched by those that represent the forgotten materialistic thread of the story, Moore and Pretyman, Sparke and Manners-Sutton. "Posterity disregards the vituperation partly because it was vituperation and partly because it was gunfire in the political duel," commented Chadwick on the controversies that engulfed the ecclesiastical reform process.^[389] It is a revealing admission. Of course historians should not uncritically accept anticlerical invective: as this essay demonstrates, committed critics were sometimes misinformed, at least in detail. Nonetheless, it is pointless to ignore Benbow, Cobbett and John Wade of the Extraordinary Black Book simply because they were angry, if only because they had much to be furious about. Sir Benjamin Hall did not invent the indictment that he so skilfully pressed against Robert Moore's massive siphoning of cash from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. No doubt The Times pressed its regular outrage button when it denounced Moore, and the humourists of Punch engaged in familiar frolic as they mobilised their puns against the hapless Cheese, but they were capitalising upon real grievances, denouncing genuine scandals. A rounded comprehension of the Anglican Church in the nineteenth century and, above all, a full understanding of its self-destructive weakness, requires frank recognition of the survival of pluralism, the persistence of nepotism and the shortcomings – at their worst, the squalor – of patronage.

Reflections The historical conclusions advanced in this essay (and its counterpart on patronage) are clear and firm: it is necessary both to recognise the abuses that persisted in the mid-Victorian Church of England and the inability of its leadership to confront and eradicate them if we are to appreciate the depth of rejection and disdain in which the institution was so widely held. What, then, of wider reflections in relation to Anglicanism today? In 2022, the Church Commissioners for England – the successor body to Blomfield's Ecclesiastical Commission and to the clergy support fund, Queen Anne’s Bounty – announced that part of its £10 billion endowment was the product of profit from investment in transatlantic chattel slavery. Although the historical research upon which this analysis was based has been challenged, the head of the Anglican Communion, Dr Justin Welby, committed the Church to pay £100 million in reparations.^[390] "The Archbishop of Canterbury has dipped into the back pockets of the Church of England where the Church Commissioners keep their spare cash," remarked the Catholic Herald, which was minded to demand compensation for the Dissolution of the Monasteries.^[391] Many clergy, who in the twenty-first century are poorly paid, were also startled by the sudden availability of so much money, and advanced their own claims for its disbursement. It has also been contended that what is described as "a programme of investment, research and engagement" aimed at former slave communities may not be compatible with the charitable status of the Church Commissioners.

This essay offers no opinion on the slavery reparations programme, but merely notes it to underline a contextual point. The debate on complicity in slavery overseas is no doubt a welcome exercise in self-examination, but few seem now to remember that, for centuries, the Church of England was financed, at parish level in its own country, by the imposition of tithes. As discussed above, legislation in 1836 provided for the commutation of tithe payments into independently arbitrated cash sums to be adjusted in subsequent years according to a sliding scale of crop prices. In the century that followed, falling agricultural returns and rising inflation considerably reduced the real value – and, hence, the effective burden – of these payments. When tithe rents were abolished, exactly one hundred years after commutation, tithe owners were compensated by the issue of government stock. The capital sum was to be redeemed over sixty years through annuities charged to landowners: those who had formerly paid the tithes were still required to meet the capital cost of their extinguishment. In fact, most of these payments had been compounded or eliminated through lump sum payments long before the bonds, now worth very much less, were redeemed finally in 1996. The last tithe in kind, a right to a share of fish caught in a Lancashire river, was commuted in 1961.^[392] The principle of compulsory contribution in support of the Anglican clergy lingered for a very long time.

Even if we assume that critics of the Church Commissioners are correct in arguing that Queen Anne's Bounty did not substantially or directly invest in chattel slavery, it is nonetheless highly likely that the Church of England gained indirectly from this evil system of racially imposed human exploitation. There were undoubtedly clergy who defended the institution, and many seem to have benefited financially from it, even if indirectly.^[393] More widely, donations from laity for the erection of churches or the subsidising of curates almost certainly included tainted cash.  Thus it is reasonable to conclude that some Anglican clergy and some Anglican projects were partly funded by profits from slavery. By contrast, and usually forgotten, every parochial incumbent in the Church of England was entirely financed out of tithes.

It is worth reiterating just how oppressive was this iniquitous imposition. Formally, it was a compulsory ten percent contribution by parishioners to their pastor. However, in the days of collection in kind, it invariably involved the seizure of ten percent of gross produce, not ten percent of net income: the parson simply collected one sheaf of corn or one bale of hay in every ten, leaving the farmer to meet the costs of paying farm labourers or maintaining equipment from the ninety per cent that remained. (In fact, the gross burden could be far greater where local custom permitted such formulae as the grabbing of two lambs out of seventeen.) Although tithes are usually discussed in relation to farmers, who were the principal contributors, cottagers were also liable to pay their mite to the parson. It may well be that many incumbents were too humane or too squeamish to enforce these rights – although, parish by parish, their tiny gardens were duly mapped and assessed during the tithe commutation process – but the Reverend Francis Lundy felt no such scruples. His Yorkshire parish of Lockington was worth around £600 a year to him (plus a residence), but in October 1832 (four months into the brave new world of the Reform Act) he demanded tithe payments from the wages of local labourers, at a customary rate of one-sixtieth. When Jeremiah Dodsworth failed to hand over four shillings and fourpence from his annual earnings of £13, local magistrates – one a brother cleric – imprisoned him for three months, adding court fees to the amount demanded to raise the outstanding sum to twelve shillings.^[394] Widespread outrage suggested that this was an isolated case,^[395] but it almost certainly gave a glimpse of a general atmosphere of intimidation associated with the collection of tithes. Probably more consistently damaging was not the excesses that occasionally came to light, but the fact that there was no exemption allowed on grounds of conscience. In the towns, Nonconformists could resist demands for the parallel form of clerical taxation, church rates, and some memorable battles ensued before the imposition was abolished in 1868.^[396] But in the countryside Dissenters had no option but to pay their tithes to support an incumbent whose services they did not attend. The Quakers, who engaged in passive resistance, were pursued for payment through the courts.^[397] If the Church of England is under obligation to apologise for its occasional and peripheral involvement with chattel slavery, it should surely at least acknowledge that its clergy were funded through the centuries by quartering themselves financially upon the people of England and Wales.

Parallel to the general issue of tithes is the specific scandal of the plutocratic excesses of pluralism. For instance, it was claimed in 1860 that, over half a century, three Luxmoores had "pocketed half a million of the money of the Welsh Church": on the general multiplier of one hundred to modern-day prices, that amounts to fifty million pounds in current values, half the sum in reparations that the Church of England talks of handing to former slave communities accumulated by just three clerics. Of course, it is possible to advance the cynical argument that while conspicuous consumption may be vulgar and offensive, it does inject fluid cash into the economy. So long as there were few sinecurists like Canon Stanhope in Barchester Towers, who spent the proceeds of his lush cathedral stall in Italy, the pluralists did at least make a stimulating contribution to communal prosperity. But they also left large sums in capital inheritance to their families, permanently removing them into dynastic inheritance. In some cases, like Charles Almeric Belli's estate of £233,000, the money had been largely inherited from secular sources – Belli's wealth came from the loot of eighteenth-century Bengal, which makes it hard to understand why he needed to draw around £400 net annually from a second parish in the Essex marshes through four decades. Other pluralists owed the origins of their cash very firmly to the Church. The two Moore brothers, whose estates totalled £550,000, and the two Sparkes, who left a more modest £300,000 between them, were the beneficiaries of parental wealth acquired through the episcopacy and generously topped up from the profits of their own ecclesiastical plums. During the first third of the nineteenth century, the pluralists were nurtured; during the second third, they were tolerated – at least by the Church's own leadership.

It may thus be contended that, if the Church of England has a duty to make restitution for its association with slavery, it is equally obliged to recognise the injustice of the tithe system and the monstrosity of the abuses to which it gave rise, most notably the avarice of pluralism. Yet it is also possible to question the entire basis of the culture of retrospective apology. The collective leadership of the Church of England may be fallible, but it is unlikely that the bench of bishops in 2026 would share the smug prejudices of their forerunners of two centuries ago. Why, then, should they apologise – indeed, how, then, can they meaningfully apologise – for the failings of a past generation in a long-gone era?  The key point here is that terms such as 'generation' and 'era' imply periods of time, but they are in no way defined within temporal limits. Thus, it would be patently absurd to argue that the present Archbishop of Canterbury is morally answerable for everything that has gone wrong in the Anglican Communion since 26 March 1967, her fifth birthday, but utterly blameless for all the absurdities and injustices perpetrated before breakfast on that distant Sunday morning. In human terms, an organisation renews itself in terms of people, and their attitudes and their values will be to some extent shaped by the times in which they live. We may reasonably hope that Darwinian evolution will never produce another Sparke or Phillpotts and, that if it did, the Downing Street appointments machinery would bar them from acquiring a mitre. Thus, in personal terms, today's Cantuar and Ebor, Winton and Dunelm bear no responsibility for the failings and misdeeds of the bishops who wore those gaiters and sported those mitres in times gone by. However, the Church of England exists as an institutional structure as well, with its inheritance of ritual, real estate, its ten billion pound endowment and its remaining privileges. Of these last, it may well be said that the glory has departed. The right to crown the sovereign, the right of bishops to take precedence in processions and to sign their names with silly formulae – as twenty-first century perquisites, these are little more than folkloric.

Yet there remains one glaring and objectionable anomaly in the survival of Anglican privileges from the days of tithe injustice and pluralist plunder. Twenty-six prelates of the Church of England possess the right to sit, speak and vote in the House of Lords. This statement is syntactically straightforward – it is a simple statement of incontrovertible fact –  but it is impossible to emphasise its bizarre significance. Iran is the only other sovereign nation on the planet to accord its religious leaders an institutionalised voice in national legislation, hardly the company on the world stage that most British people would seek.^[398] The bishops are referred to in the preamble to legislation as the 'peers spiritual' but, unlike Iran's Guardian Council, they do not constitute a separate legislative order with the power of veto, and it seems that they rarely attend as a political bloc. Of course, archbishops are not ayatollahs, and it would be inconsistent to mock them as ineffectual. Yet, with the best will in the world, it is difficult to see what the Anglican bishops can legitimately contribute to the legislature of a plural society, let alone what right they have to be there. It may be hoped that no modern-day bishop would echo the arrogance of Archbishop Garbett in 1947 when he claimed that the prelates "express the views not only of the Church but of all Christians on the religious and moral issues" (italics added) that come before Parliament.^[399] The episcopal bench has contributed remarkably little to the major ethical reforms of the past two centuries. As its defenders point out, the Church of England's Clapham Sect made a courageous contribution to the campaigns against the slave trade and chattel slavery. However, its members did not climb high in the Anglican ranks: Peter Peckard did become a cathedral dean, but Thomas Clarkson never completed his ordination. Beilby Porteus, the bishop who partly endowed Hunton's village school, was one of their few sympathisers in the higher echelons, but just as one swallow does not make a summer, so a single humane bishop does not make an episcopal bench.^[400] In other human rights campaigns, from factory reform to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Church was largely invisible, sometimes obstructive and its bishops generally silent.^[401] They have, however, used their presence on the red benches to defend their own interests. It was his place in the Lords that enabled Manners-Sutton to propose special legislation that enabled him to nominate his grandson to a lucrative sinecure. Seats in the Lords allowed Howley to defend Sparke's nepotism, Blomfield to proclaim his absenteeism, and Sumner to explain away his clumsy attempt to secure a job for his own son.   

Charitable observers in modern times might conclude that Anglican bishops have enough to do keeping their own organisation afloat without expecting them to play a part in politics. Sharper critics, including many in their own ranks, might go further and assert that episcopal leadership in the Church itself hardly qualifies its current personnel to pronounce on the affairs of the nation. Twice in the twentieth century, in 1911 and 1999, politicians attempted major surgery on the House of Lords, each bout being described as the first step towards the construction of a more appropriate revising chamber. In reality, few politicians wish to create a rival to the House of Commons, while the asymmetrical structure of the United Kingdom makes it peculiarly difficult to design an effective and regionally balanced Senate. The bishops, left untouched in both upheavals, constitute one of the complications – or, at the very least, excuses – that inhibit governments from confronting this weak element in the British Constitution. Those who have no wish to tackle the swollen chamber of sometimes questionable nominees may even find it useful to have a corps of pantomime prelates – for they invariably dress for the part – underpinning its irrelevance. If the bishops of the modern Church of England seriously wished to draw a line under its record of past abuses and injustices, whether in the Caribbean or the English countrywide, they would announce that the participation in Parliament that they have inherited from the distant past is no longer appropriate, and that they propose to withdraw from all regular proceedings, attending only if their presence was essential for some ceremonial purpose, such as the formal abolition of the House of Lords in its present form. Unfortunately, just as their mid-Victorian predecessors chose to ignore absurdities and avarice, so their modern successors will probably manufacture pretexts to justify their continued attendance at Westminster. So long as the bishops of the Anglican Church insist upon retaining their seats in the Britain's Parliament, so historians should ensure that it is remembered that this objectionable privilege is inherited from the days of the indefensible practices of pluralism and nepotism that were funded by the exaction of tithes from the English and Welsh people.

This essay is the counterpart to another study of Anglican abuses, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons

ENDNOTES I owe warm thanks to Colin Coates, Andrew Jones and Philip Williamson for information and support in the preparation of this essay. 

^[1] Robert Moore died on 5 September 1865. The Morning Star article was republished in the Belfast Morning News, 13 September 1865, which is the version copied here. The Belfast Morning News was a Liberal / Nationalist publication which belonged to the family of the Dublin newspaper entrepreneur, Edward Dwyer Gray. A version of the article also appeared in a South Australian newspaper, the Wallaroo Times, 2 December 1865. Newspaper quotation in this essay has been taken from various sources, including three useful free-access online archives maintained by National Libraries of Wales (Welsh Newspapers), Australia (Trove) and New Zealand (PapersPast). The Welsh newspapers are valuable as many of them printed what were obviously press agency reports. The Australia and New Zealand newspapers (the former in particular) filled their columns by reprinting articles from the British and Irish press, some of which are not easily traced today. As with the accompanying essay, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931", I have used the Endnotes to quote contemporary discussions of the problems, sometimes at length, to demonstrate the vigour of issues that have often been ignored by historians. (https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons)

^[2] N.C. Edsall, Richard Cobden… (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 299-302; W. Hinde, Richard Cobden… (New Haven. Conn., 1987), 261-4; J.L. Sturgis, John Bright and the Empire (London, 1969), 59n; D. Read, Cobden and Bright … (London, 1967), 185-6; G.M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London, 1913), 290; J. McCarthy, Reminiscences (2 vols, London, 1899), i, 163-89, esp. 163-4. The Morning Star lost momentum when John Bright withdrew from active involvement on joining Gladstone's cabinet in 1868. It ceased publication the following year. There is no connection between this mid-Victorian publication and the modern socialist daily newspaper of the same name, a relaunched version of the Communist Daily Worker dating from 1966.

^[3] Punch, xlv, 7 November 1863, 194.

^[4] Rapid production of the article would explain some minor errors in the indictment, discussed below. The Morning Star had published a similarly censorious article on the death of another pluralist, G.T. Pretyman, in 1859. Similarity of style and approach indicates that Justin McCarthy was probably not the author of the 1865 leader on Moore, since he was not a member of the staff at that time.

^[5] Debrett's Peerage, 1891, 127 reported that the Archbishop was patron of 191 'livings' (the technical term for a parochial appointment). Mergers of parishes may have reduced the numbers throughout the 19^th century.

^[6] Sydney Smith in 1837 mockingly sketched the rise of a baker's son to the episcopal purple, in a skit that probably drew on the career of Archbishop Moore. "Young Crumpet is sent to school – takes to his books – spends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in making Latin verses – knows that the crum in crum-pet is long, and the pet short – goes to the University – gets a prize for an Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews – takes orders – becomes a bishop's chaplain – has a young nobleman for his pupil – publishes an useless classic, and a serious call to the unconverted – and then goes through the Elysian translations of prebendary, dean, prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, and power." The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (one vol. ed., London, 1854, cf. 1^st ed., 1839), 624.

^[7] Eleven decades later, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography echoed the verdict: "The two of his four sons who entered the church undoubtedly benefited from their father's scope for patronage." N. Aston, "Moore, John (bap. 1730, d. 1805)", ODNB.

^[8] There have been small changes in the spelling of two of Moore's Kent parishes since the mid-nineteenth century: Hollingbourn has gained an 'e' to become Hollingbourne, while Eynesford has lost one and is now Eynsford.

^[9] 'Sinecure' derives from the Latin phrase 'sine cura', 'without care'. In Church usage, this meant 'without care of souls' (i.e. nobody to minister to), but the phrase has acquired the more secular meaning 'without worry'.

^[10] The railway reached Maldon, 6 miles from Latchingdon, in 1848, but a journey by train would have been over 80 miles and required a change of main-line stations in London.

^[11] I discuss Moore's relationship with Latchingdon, and its symbiotically related enclave, in "Snoreham: a sad loss to the map of Essex": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/425-snoreham.

^[12] 'Living' was the technical term for a benefice in the Church of England. In 1866, Dean Alford commented that they were "ironically so called", given that many of them paid starvation wages. Contemporary Review, ii (1866), 247.

^[13] The formal collective term that covered both rectors and vicars was 'incumbent'. Colloquially, they were also referred to as 'parsons'. In 1874, a New Zealand journalist referred disapprovingly to the term "'parish priest', as the fashion of the day is to call the beneficed clergy of the Church of England". This seems to have reflected the influence of the Oxford Movement. New Zealand Mail (Wellington), 26 December 1874.

^[14] My source here is the informative study by E.J. Evans, The Contentious Tithe … (London, 1976), which deals with tithes in England and Wales. Tithes were a provocative issue in Ireland, where Catholics were compelled to support Protestant (Church of Ireland) clergy. In the southern province of Munster these exactions bore hard upon labourers, since tithes were imposed heavily upon the potato crop, but were relatively light in relation to grazing and dairying, the commercially progressive sectors of the agricultural economy. Resistance was widespread in the two decades before partial reform in 1838. J.S. Donnelly, jr, Captain Rock … (Cork, 2009), 188-216; S. McCormac, "The Tithe War..." History Ireland, xiii (2005):

https://historyireland.com/the-tithe-war-reports-by-church-of-ireland-clergymen-to-dublin-castle/. In Scotland, 'teinds' had been largely diverted from parish clergy into private ownership or the support of institutions (e.g. the universities) and converted into cash payments by the seventeenth century. The reformer Thomas Chalmers made a brave attempt to recover some of them for the Kirk in 1838. M. Lynch, Scotland: a New History (London, 1991), 193-4, 278; S.J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford, 1982), 268-9. W.R. Black, What are Teinds?... (Edinburgh, 1893) provides more than enough information. My impression is that Scottish historians have not been much interested in the subject.

^[15] Anthony Trollope reminded his readers: "That the priests were to be paid from tithes of the parish produce, out of which tithes certain other good things were to be bought and paid for, such as church repairs and education, of so much the most of us have an inkling. That a rector, being a big sort of parson, owned the tithes of his parish in full ­– or at any rate that part of them intended for the clergyman – and that a vicar was somebody's deputy, and therefore entitled only to little tithes, as being a little body: of so much we that are simple in such matters have a general idea. But one cannot conceive that even in this way any approximation could have been made, even in those old mediaeval days, towards a fair proportioning of the pay to the work."  Trollope claimed that he could detect distinctions between the two categories. " There is a pleasant flavour of old crusted port present to the palate of one's imagination when mention is made of a rector, which he misses perhaps in inquiring after the vicar, whose beer may be better than his wine…. But we expect, on the other hand, and are gratified in expecting, a kinder and more genial flow of clerical wit from the vicar than the rector gives us; and I have generally found the vicar's armchair to be easier than that of his elder brother." This passage should probably be regarded as whimsical affectation, not least because Trollope used the informal term 'parson' for both. In his Autobiography, he admitted that he knew very few clergymen. In 1861, Trollope stayed overnight with the Reverend Charles Merivale at Lawford in Essex. This seems to have been a rare instance of his experience of clerical hospitality, certainly in later years. Trollope, Framley Parsonage (1860), ch. xv; Clergymen of the Church of England (London, 1866), 56; Autobiography (1883), ch. v; N.J. Hall, ed., The Letters of Anthony Trollope (2 vols, Stanford, 1983), i. 132n.

^[16] H. Robinson, Church Reform upon Christian Principles (London, 1833), 12-13.Robinson was not popular with neighbouring clergy. Essex figures are taken from White's Directory (1848). For the £200 poverty line, O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1 (3^rd ed., London, 1971, cf. 1st ed., 1966), 127. Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 3 reckoned the clerical poverty line c. 1800 to be £150.

^[17] Trollope made the point in Framley Parsonage, ch. xvii. The novel was written in 1859-60 and published in book form in 1861.

^[18] W. Palin, Stifford and its Neighbourhood [London, 1871], 146-7. Sydney Smith complained in 1837 that he was "considered as a perfect monster of Ecclesiastical prosperity" for holding a St Paul's canonry worth £2,000 a year. "A Lawyer, or a Physician in good practice, would smile at this picture of great Ecclesiastical wealth".  A. Bell, Sydney Smith … (Oxford, 1980), 180. Palin perhaps echoed Smith here.

^[19] Palin, Stifford and its Neighbourhood, 61. Palin was writing in 1871. Writing of the mid-Victorian years, Halévy concluded that, thanks to private incomes, "the majority of the parochial clergy lived on a lavish scale. ... though they were not a wealthy clergy, they were a body of wealthy men". E. Halévy (trans E.I. Watkin), Victorian Years 1841-1895 (London, 1962 ed., cf. 1st ed. 1951), 345.

^[20] The Student's Guide to the University of Cambridge (3^rd ed., Cambridge, 1874), 91. A parliamentary committee was told in 1867 that "a few men live for as little as £150 a year at Trinity, including tradesmen's bills and everything, but the majority spend from £150 to £300 a year". In 1879, E.R. Yerburgh, himself the son of a clergyman and seeking a degree as a step to ordination, entered Magdalene with a three-year budget of £800, which he feared would be inadequate. "I went with some forebodings and with the idea that I should be rather out of it and should have to lead a rather solitary life". If that was the expectation of a young man who could afford the estimated average costs of the Student's Guide, then the challenges facing those who were genuinely poor was much greater.  E.W. Benson, future Archbishop of Canterbury, "managed to get through his first year at Cambridge [1848-9] upon something over £90. All hospitality except of the most casual kind was of course out of the question" and Benson often spoke feelingly "of the miseries he endured through living with a large circle of more or less wealthy friends". A "poor person" could get by at less fashionable St John's on £80 a year.  Poor students were eligible to become sizars, which offered a cut-price but inferior status. St John's commendably offered a number of sizarships, but W.E. Heitland, a Classics don and usually a reformer, doubted their educational value. "Sizars of inferior quality were no great acquisition. There was unfortunately a temptation to use a Sizarship as a step in an ecclesiastical career. A Cambridge Degree was an asset to a curate." Parliamentary Papers, 1867, xii, Questions 1628, 571; Magdalene College Magazine (2000-1), 82; A.C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson... (2 vols, London, 1899), i, 74; W.E. Heitland, After Many Years…  (Cambridge, 1926), 108.

^[21] Carew Anthony St John Mildmay provides an example of a mid-range pluralist who may be assumed not to have needed the prizes awarded to him by his widowed mother, Lady Anne St John Mildmay. Between 1825 and 1827, when he was in his mid-twenties, Mildmay became rector of Chelmsford (worth £590, with a parsonage) and vicar of Burnham (£558). These two Essex parishes were not Sleepy Hollow communities: Chelmsford was the county town and Burnham (twenty miles away) a small river port with a long tradition of militant Dissent. Mildmay based himself at Chelmsford, where he made an active contribution to the community for half a century. But Burnham was handed over to a long-term curate, the Reverend William Hammond, who had acquired his Cambridge degree as a sizar at Queens' College. When Hammond moved on in 1857, Mildmay resigned Burnham. Lady Anne also gave her son the sinecure rectory of Shorwell on the Isle of Wight, yielding £474 a year, which he held until his death in 1878. As a younger son in a large family, he would not have inherited a large amount of cash, but it remains difficult to justify the favours showered upon him. His wife, the daughter of a peer, would not have come to him empty-handed. In 1863, the Daily News commented unfavourably upon his pluralism, listing his benefices without naming him: Daily News, n.d., quoted Hobart Advertiser, 1 October 1863. Mildmay left an estate of £25,000, roughly equal to the revenue of Shorwell for half a century. The Times, 6 September 1878. It is only fair to add that one journalist called Mildmay "an admirable specimen of a clergyman of good family of the old school, who adapted himself heartily to all that was good in modern Church life". He was Archdeacon of Essex from 1861. North Wales Chronicle, 4 January 1879.

^[22] G. Best, Mid-Victorian Britain (St Albans, 173 ed., cf. 1^st ed., London, 1971), 115-17.

^[23] White's Directory of Essex (1848), 317.

^[24] O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1 (3rd ed., London, 1971, cf. 11st ed., 1966), 127.

^[25] Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 9. In 1817, Parliament had decreed that no curate should be paid less than £80 a year. Unfortunately, there were too many hungry curates for this provision to be enforced.  Robinson, Church Reform upon Christian Principles, 19-20. Thirty years later, matters had not improved greatly for many curates. "Without any personal claim for preferment, and unable to obtain it through connections, they are compelled to appear as gentlemen, and bring up large families, on a salary not amounting to the wages of a skilled stonemason." Here Henry Alford agreed with Trollope, whose portrayal of clerical inequalities he generally dismissed as a distorted caricature. Contemporary Review, ii (1866), 247.

^[26] In The Last Chronicle of Barset, ch. iv, Trollope attempted a breakdown of the Crawleys' expenditure. The couple had three surviving children. He allocated to them three pounds of meat a day (eight ounces each), at ninepence a pound, totalling £40 a year. "Bread for such a family must cost at least twenty-five pounds. Clothes for five persons, of whom one must at any rate wear the raiment of a gentleman, can hardly be found for less than ten pounds a year a head. Then there remains fifteen pounds for tea, sugar, beer, wages, education, amusements, and the like." In January 1869 (the year of the publication of The Last Chronicle of Barset in book form, a four-pound wheaten (white) loaf cost between sevenpence and eightpence-halfpenny in London, with "household" (brown) bread a penny-halfpenny cheaper. Thus each of the Crawleys consumed three four-pound wheaten loaves every week. The parsonage garden at Hogglestock was used for intensive vegetable growing, but produce would be seasonal. For much of the year, there would be little alternative to bread.

^[27] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 127. A drive against non-residence followed and, by 1864, fewer than one thousand curates acted for absentees.

^[28] A memoir of the parish of Great Holland, on the north-east coast of Essex, recalled that, during the early nineteenth century, "we had no resident Rector, but a poor curate with £100 a year. Of course he did not possess that influence nor was he looked up to as a clergyman ought to be in a parish". For about a year around 1815, there was not even a resident curate: "we had seventeen different clergymen within twelve months". Recollections of Charles Hicks of Great Holland Hall, A.F.J. Brown, Essex People… (Chelmsford, 1972), 78.

^[29] There were complications when commodities subject to tithe could not be counted in tens, e.g., in some parishes the incumbent could claim two lambs out of a flock of seventeen. An eighteenth-century Essex rector was accused of seizing three lambs from a flock of 21, and two pigs out of eleven. In a Welsh village in 1833, the incumbent compelled a cottager with four geese to pay two shillings in tithe for them. Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 20; E.E. Wilde, Ingatestone… (Oxford, 1913), 139-41; Cambrian, 28 September 1833.

^[30] Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 23-4.

^[31] The wartime rise in agricultural prices in the seventeen-nineties undermined some existing composition agreements. The campaign by the rector of Upminster in Essex to increase his income between 1798 and 1803 is discussed in Ged Martin, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons. In another Essex parish, Earls Colne, a deal was struck between 1805 and 1811: the vicar agreed not to raise his tithe demands, and the parishioners undertook to pay his rates and taxes and to supply him with coal. E.J. Erith, ed., Essex Parish Records… (Chelmsford, 1950), 92.

^[32] Many clergy were tenacious in the defence of what one Hertfordshire incumbent called, in 1830, "rights to which the laws of Heaven and earth entitle me". To protect their own interests and to ensure those of their successors, they often recorded local customs: the vicar of West Mersea in Essex did so in 1738 in response to the "stubborn disposition" of his neighbours, and his compilation evidently remained in use. Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 29; Erith, Essex Parish Records, 156. Some sensitive clerics disliked the confrontations and resentments inherent in the system. At Stock in Essex, tithes were compounded by the late eighteenth century, and the Reverend John Unwin endured the ordeal of hosting an annual dinner at which cash payments were made. In 1786, his friend, the poet William Cowper, attempted to cheer him in verse: "This priest he merry is and blithe / Three quarters of the year, / But oh! it cuts him like a scythe / When tithing time draws near. ... for well he knows / Each bumpkin of the clan, / Instead of paying what he owes, / Will cheat him if he can." At the tithe dinner, the farmers made a point of complaining about the costs they incurred. "One talks of mildew and of frost, / And one of storms and hail, / And one of pigs that he has lost / By maggots at the tail. / Quoth one, 'A rarer man than you / In pulpit none shall hear; / But yet, methinks, to tell you true, / You sell it plaguey dear.'" There can be little doubt that Cowper was recycling Unwin's own accounts of the event. (Widely available on the internet, e.g. https://allpoetry.com/The-Yearly-Distress;-Or,-Tithing-Time-At-Stock-In-Essex) But the Reverend John Radcliffe, absentee vicar of Bramham in Yorkshire, was of sterner stuff when it came to the collection of tithes (by his agents). In 1833, he announced that he was "compelled to adopt measures which may by some be considered harsh or precipitate; but in duty to what he owes to his successors, he feels bound to protect the rights of the vicarage." With mock gravity, the Spectator (7 September 1833, 831) rendered this defence into verse: "No, not for yourselves, ye reverend men, / Do you take one pig in every ten,/ But for Holy Church's future heirs, / Who've an abstract right to that pig, as theirs; / The law supposing that such heirs male / Are already seized of the pig, in tail. / No, not for himself hath Bramham's priest / His "well-beloved " of their pennies fleeced: / But it is that, before his prescient eyes, / All future Vicars of Bramham rise, / With their embryo daughters' nephews, nieces, / And 'tis for them the poor he fleeces. / He heareth their voices, ages hence, / Saying. 'Take the pig' – 'Oh take the pence!' / The cries of little vicarial dears, / The unborn Bramhamites, reach his ears; / And, did he resist that soft appeal, / He would not like a true-born Vicar feel." Bramham parish records in the Borthwick Institute, University of York, contain extensive correspondence about Radcliffe's tithes. Impropriators also enforced demands for tithe payments: in 1837, Trinity College Cambridge committed a man called Gubbins to the debtor's prison at Warwick: he was reputed to be 104 years of age, and he did not survive the experience. The Times, 6 February 1837.

^[33] The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory … (1838), x.

^[34] I have been unable to consult G.F.A. Best, Temporal Pillars … (Cambridge, 1964) which discussed Queen Anne's Bounty.

^[35] E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent...., v (Canterbury, 1798), 173.

^[36] "In the case of tithes, where they are let or compounded for, the lessee or compounder is chargeable with the duty of twopence in the pound in respect of his occupation of the tithes." The British Almanac… (1847), 91.

^[37] D. Newsome, The Wilberforces and Henry Manning (Cambridge, Mass., ed., 1966: published in Britain as The Parting of Friends), 144 (December 1832).

^[38] Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 32. Local communities lost this weapon when poor relief was transferred from parishes to Union workhouses under the 1834 Act.

^[39] To cushion his transition from Oxford to parish life, Robert Wilberforce retained his Oriel College fellowship until the end of 1833. It paid him an annual dividend of £240.  He would later become one of the high-profile Anglican defectors to the Church of Rome.

^[40] Correspondence regarding Purleigh tithes is given in The Oxley Parker Papers (Colchester, 1964), 62-87: the authorship attributed to J. Oxley Parker, but in fact largely written by Dr H.E. Priestley. In days before it became connected with Oriel College, the Purleigh rectory was held by Lawrence Washington, appointed in 1633 and forced out a decade later allegedly because he was 'a  common frequenter of ale-houses'. He died in poverty and three of his children emigrated to Virginia, one of them becoming the grandfather of George Washington. Purleigh adjoins Latchingdon, part of Moore's portfolio.

^[41] When tithes were commuted under the 1836 Act (discussed below), a process that simplified their collection, investigating commissioners often reduced them to take account of the elimination of previous costs. At Purleigh, the total was cut from £1,360 to £1,204, i.e. by ten percent. The Oxley Parker Papers, 81. One complication in Purleigh was the presence of several Quaker farmers, who refused on principle to pay tithes. Parker noted in 1828 that "the process to obtain their Tithes takes several weeks". Court orders would include costs, usually set at punitive rates, so the burden of chasing the Quakers would not fall upon Hawkins or Parker.

^[42] The exact amount was £96, three shillings and sixpence. The 1828 deductions also included surveyors' fees: between 1830 and 1834, the parish was mapped to check its potential to generate tithe income, at a cost of around £278, which was perhaps paid in instalments. Surprisingly, the map revealed that the area of the parish was 500 acres larger than had been previously estimated.

^[43] The Oxley Parker Papers, 83-6. Hawkins was eligible to vote in South Essex. The Tory candidate was elected.

^[44] D.W. Rannie, Oriel College (London, 1900), 212. A large rectory was built in 1883.

^[45] Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 124-32, 163-5.

^[46] Charles Hicks, the farmer of Great Holland, Essex, quoted above, gave a balanced verdict on the Tithe Commutation Act in a memoir written c. 1865. "This Act was decidedly in favour of the tithe owner, but generally approved by both parties. It put an end to all those unpleasant party feelings which so often prevailed in parishes and frequently led to litigation. Previous to the passing of the Tithe Act the farmer was entirely at the mercy of the Tithe owner, in many instances exorbitant tithes were demanded and, if not agreed to, were taken in kind. Since then the farmer has been in a manner independent. The Tithe owner is now in a much better position. Formerly, he looked to the tenant or occupier for his tithes, sometimes losses occurred. The Rent Charge now charged on the estate, if not obtained of the tenant, can by the Act be recovered of the proprietor." Although the incumbent of Great Holland was a rector, and thus entitled to all the tithes from the parish, the use of the term 'Tithe owner' suggests that Hicks had impropriators in mind. Brown, Essex People, 77.

^[47] Tithe rents became an issue in the countryside again from the eighteen-eighties as agricultural prices fell.  If harvest prices were stable for 6 years but fell by 50 percent in the seventh, the seven-year index would drop by around 7 percent, cushioning the parson against a sudden fall in income, but giving little relief to the farmer in a bad season.

^[48] The Oxley Parker Papers, 78; White's Directory of Essex (1848). The 1831 figure suggests that the full value of Latchingdon tithes was £970, which would indicate that collection costs (discounted in the post-1836 settlement) were as low as £60. The rector of Latchingdon had 49 acres of glebe, which probably accounts for the Morning Star figure of a total income of £955 (if the glebe was rented at £1 an acre, less the rectory garden).

^[49] Ged Martin, "Snoreham: a sad loss to the map of Essex": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/425-snoreham.

^[50] This is probably an overestimate: Merewether succeeded William Myall, who had been a sizar at Cambridge, a poor student charged cut-price fees. This was the classic first step on the career path of a long-term, underpaid curate. In 1853 Myall became vicar of Great Maplestead, where the vicarial tithes amounted to £175 a year – a poor living.

^[51] The Post Office Directory (1855), 99 stated that a National (i.e. Anglican) School was "newly erected" at Latchingdon. This may represent Merewether's energy, but Moore would probably have contributed. 

^[52] There was some uncertainty about Moore's income from Hollingbourn / Hucking, where he seems to have reported an archaic figure to the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1835. The Morning Star confidently stated the income to be £787 a year, but The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory  (1838), 100 entered it as just £55, and this was the sum quoted by 'A Friend to the Church' (but not to Moore) in The Times, 25 August 1852. The absentee rector could also benefit from fines, presumably for the renewal of leases, although Moore claimed in 1835 that he had received nothing since 1808. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England (1848) stated that the rectorial tithes had been commuted for £647, ten shillings: (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/pp530-533#h2-s1).  Crockford's Clerical Directory 1860, 433, is the source of the figures given by the Morning Star: Moore received £647 (and ten shillings) from Hollingbourn and a further £140 from Hucking, making the total of £787 for the two. The decision to return Hollingbourn to Church authorities at £55 presumably represented an intention to mislead: a critic in The Times (29 December 1852) commented that "this of itself does not look very honest".

^[53] The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory, 104 gave the net value of Hunton in 1831 as £783, which suggests a 25 percent remission of tithe payments that year.

^[54] Crockford's Clerical Directory 1860, 360, mentions a former curate of Hollingbourn, but neither Eynsford nor Hollingbourn appears to have employed a curate at that time. The vicar of Hollingbourn, the Reverend Edward Hasted, was the son of Kent's county historian. He had been appointed in 1790 and held the office for 65 years. In later decades, he may not have been very active.

^[55] R.F. Scott, ed., Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist… (Cambridge, 1931), 535-6. Scott dated the appointment to 1805, a year after Marriott had become absentee rector of Hazeleigh in Essex. He also received a special dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury to be vicar of Eynsford, where Moore was sinecure rector, "the benefices being not more than 30 miles apart" –- although they were separated by Thames estuary. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, dates Marriott's time at Hunton to 1802-4. Half a century later, Moore's assistant was the Reverend Augustus Green, a gentlemanly young Oxford graduate. Was Gussy Green paid a generous stipend commensurate with his social background, or was he perhaps working for pin money, relying upon private means and hoping that the Moore connection would ease him into a comfortable preferment? According to Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, ii, 555, Green (BA, 1845) was an Etonian, but I cannot trace him in Eton School Lists from 1791 to 1877 (1884). He was still curate of Hunton in 1860 (Crockford's Clerical Directory 1860, 245). He was succeeded that year by another young Oxford man, T.B. Sikes, who did move on to a Kent rectory in 1865. Crockford's Clerical Directory 1865, 258, had lost touch with Green.

^[56] Legislation in 1838 set an £80 minimum annual stipend for curates, rising in stages to £150 in parishes with a population of 1,000, regulations which bishops were required to enforce through annual enquiry. But Dean Alford in 1866 accepted that some young men accepted reduced salaries or even served for free to establish a 'title' for ordination, work experience that pressured a bishop into raising them from deacon to priest. "Such trafficking is become very common" and, in the Dean's eyes, amounted to the sin of simony, since working for free was the equivalent of "the payment of a consideration for the first admission into Holy Orders". Alford reckoned that what he called "the present lowest average" of stipends paid to curates was £100. The establishment of a special charity, the Curates' Augmentation Fund, in 1866 indicated that some incumbents were still reluctant to pay their deputies a living wage. Contemporary Review, ii (1866), 246-8.

^[57] A critic in The Times, 30 August 1852 ('Memor'), commented that the population of Hunton "cannot … impose much duty".

^[58] Eynsford church was "thoroughly restored" in 1869, which suggests that the building had been in poor condition. Kelly's Directory of Kent (1891), 247.

^[59] The British Almanac (1847), 93-4. Bachelors employing male servants were taxed at a higher rate, but Catholic priests were exempt from the surcharge.

^[60] This information comes from Kelly's Directory of Kent (1891).

^[61] The Times, 25 August 1852 ("Memento"); 28 October 1865.

^[62] Post Office Directory (1855), 400. The two pedagogues appear to have been husband and wife. In reporting Moore's death in 1865, a generally reliable weekly newspaper, the Examiner (9 September 1865) called him "a most liberal and generous man … there can be no doubt that he made an excellent use of his wealth". It mentioned that he had an enthusiasm for "the theatrical profession", and had contributed to a retirement home for indigent actors. Other evidence, including Moore's Will, does not bear out this description.

^[63] In fact £201,997, but we should avoid undue precision. In any case, headline figures for tithe income usually omitted shillings and pence which, over six decades, could amount to an appreciable sum in £.

^[64] Crockford's Clerical Directory 1865; Cambridge Independent Press, 2 August 1862. There had been press speculation about the succession to Sumner since June. The son-in-law, the Reverend John Thomas, also retained a prominent London church until his death in 1883. 

^[65] This section is largely based on H. Alford, "Cathedral Reform", Contemporary Review, xii (1869); P.B. Nockles in P. Collinson et al, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford, 1995); F. Alford, Life, Journal and Letters of Henry Alford ... (London, 1873); R.E. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley... ( 2 vols, London, 1893).

^[66] Moore's house was demolished in 1864, as part of an overdue renewal of the cathedral precinct, Alford, Life, Journal and Letters of Henry Alford, 377, 530.

^[67] O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 2 (2^nd ed., London, 1972, cf. 1^st ed. 1970), 379. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (1896), Bishop Phillpotts "regularly" took his turn as residentiary canon at Durham.

^[68] E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, v (Canterbury, 1978), 146-7.

^[69] Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, i, 430. Prothero rendered the allusion as "M---" but the identification is obvious.

^[70] T. Wright, The Life of Walter Pater (2 vols, London, 1907), i, 60.

^[71] I cannot trace that Moore ever published a sermon. Broadly, there were two reasons why clergy printed their pulpit orations: either a desire to spread the Word or an ambition to advance their own careers. Neither motive seems to have applied to Robert Moore.

^[72] Goulden's Canterbury Guide (c. 1900), 43-4 stated that Moore presented to the cathedral a magnificent stained-glass window illustrating the life of Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered in 1170. It seems more likely that he paid for restoration of the medieval glass.

^[73] A.P. Stanley, appointed to a canonry in 1851, was an enthusiast for heritage, and persuaded the chapter to open the cathedral to tourists. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, i, 535. The Honourable Richard Bagot (Dean, 1827-54) had his hands full as bishop of Oxford, where the Tractarian movement split Anglican ranks. After retreating to the quieter pastures of Bath and Wells, his health broke down. The Dictionary of National Biography (ii, 1893) did not even mention Bagot's role as dean. His successor, William Lyall (dean, 1845-57) was an invalid for the last five years of his life.

^[74] The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory, Table II. Fines were up-front payments at the start of a lease, through which the lessor in effect paid part of the rent in advance. Since rental payments went into cathedral coffers, the fines system was a crude device to enrich the dean and chapter at the expense of the foundation.

^[75] Nockles in Collinson et al, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, 258-61 (an account kind to the clergy, but which does not mention Moore by name); The Times, 30 August 1852 ('Memor'). In the first eleven months of 1852, Moore preached five sermons: The Times, 3 December 1852 ('Memor' again).

^[76] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 2, 366-7 (Welsh canons were fobbed off with £350 a year); CR, 44.

^[77] Among the missiles to hit Howley's carriage was a dead cat. His entourage drew consolation from the probability that a live cat would have inflicted more damage. The office of suffragan bishop of Dover, lapsed since Tudor times, was revived in 1870, at Tait's insistence, to help the archbishop with diocesan routines such as confirmations and visitations.

^[78] Arguably, Sumner left more of a mark in Canterbury, New Zealand, where a suburb is named after him, than in his episcopal capital. His tomb in the cathedral is a cenotaph as he was buried at Addington, the archiepiscopal country palace in Surrey. Sumner took for granted the economic caste structure of the Church of England. "Many of the clergy are in painfully straitened circumstances," he told the House of Lords in 1850."... feeling the want of domestic comfort, they are led to marry early, often with no better provision than a precarious curacy, or an ill-paid incumbency. It cannot be matter of surprise that they soon find themselves embarrassed; and they naturally compare their incomes with their labours, their talents, their education, and think them very ill requited. ... when men are distressed, it is easy to persuade them that they are ill used." He deplored the feelings of resentment among the humble clergy directed against more prosperous clerics "who probably, at the very moment when they lie under the imputation of selfishness, are employing their time, their thoughts, their influence, and often not sparing their purses, in promoting the comfort, and increasing the means of usefulness, of their humbler brethren." The debateable word here, of course, is 'probably'. Hansard, 11 February 1850, 630-1: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1850/feb/11/ecclesiastical-commission-bill. 

^[79] R. Davidson and W.C. Benham, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait… (2 vols, 3^rd ed. London, 1891, cf. 1^st ed. 1891), ii, 54. The speech was delivered in the House of Lords: I have not traced the date.

^[80] Nockles in Collinson et al, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, 290n. 

^[81] Charles Dickens captured the atmosphere of Sunday morning service in Canterbury cathedral: "[t]he earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white arched galleries and aisles". David Copperfield (1850), ch. xviii. "Nothing so much interferes with the decency and solemnity of the Cathedral service, as its performance by one who is inaudible, or whose voice has suffered from the enfeebling effects of advancing age," Alford noted. Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 46.

^[82] Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, i, 467, 429.

^[83] In Dean Alford's time, Canterbury, a city of 24,000 people, had ten functioning parish churches (six more were mothballed), plus a garrison chapel which had a captive audience of soldiers. Some big-city cathedrals packed their naves with Sunday services aimed at the masses, but the downside of their success was that they sucked the life out of local congregations. On weekdays, there could be problems with the clientele. The Reverend Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis, a canon of Worcester, "said mad people are apt to come to Cathedrals. … 'you don't know all the little games that go on in Cathedrals'." Conservative canons had reason for caution. Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 47; Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 2, 380-1; W. Plomer, ed., Kilvert's Diary … (London, 1986 ed., cf. 1^st ed. 1944), 84 (21 December 1870).

^[84] Nockles in Collinson et al, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, 272-3; Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 43.

^[85] Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 43.

^[86] Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 41. Alford had indignantly dismissed many of his own strictures when he reviewed Trollope's Clergymen of the Church of England three years earlier.

^[87] Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 44-5. Much of this friction was between the chapter and the poorly paid minor canons, who "had an almost hereditary understanding of themselves as the drudges of Chapter". They particularly resented an edict in 1828 requiring them to attend cathedral services twice on Sundays, a devotion to duty not demanded of their more prosperous superiors. Nockles in Collinson et al, eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, 262.

^[88] Contemporary Review, xii (1869), 41.

^[89] "Houses are assigned for the residence of the dean and the twelve prebendaries and occupied by them. They are bound to keep them in repair." The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory, Table II.

^[90] Information about the operation of the Prerogative Courts comes from the entertaining pages of W.D. Bruce, How the Ecclesiastical Courts Rob the Public … (London, 1856), and from an 1852 pamphlet, The Aristocracy and the Public Service, published in London but apparently commissioned by the Liverpool Financial Reform Association. It was republished in Tracts of the Financial Reform Association (2nd series, Liverpool, 1859). The driving force of the Liverpool Association was Robertson Gladstone, brother of the statesman, a mysterious radical who weighed twenty stone. Both sources drew upon evidence to the 1849-50 House of Commons Select Committee on Fees in Courts of Law and Equity: https://www.google.ie/books/edition/Reports_from_Select_Committees_of_the_Ho/URhcAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq.

^[91] Punch, xix (1850), 185.

^[92] The Select Committee reported in August 1850: "The Registrar of the Prerogative Court … performs none of the duties of the office; they are entirely executed by his Deputy Registrars and other subordinates."

^[93] The 1849-50 Select Committee gave two figures for Moore's annual income, £10,894 to 5 April 1848, and £8,508 for 1848, exact dates unspecified. The Times in 1852 assumed that he netted £9,000 a year from the Registrarship. The Financial Reform Association quoted £8,373 as an average for an unspecified number of years in the 1840s. The historian Geoffrey Best estimated that Moore's "gross income was over £7,000 a year". G.F.A. Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital…", Victorian Studies, v (1961), 135-50, esp. 137. Moore claimed compensation for £7,990 when the office was abolished in 1857.

^[94] The complex financing of the office was explained to the Select Committee by one of the deputy registrars, John Iggulden, on 15 April 1850. The discount was specified in The Times, 14 August 1852.

^[95] The nickname was first applied by The Times, on 25 August 1852.

^[96] The patent, which the Select Committee reprinted, identified him as "of Christ Church in the University of Oxford". Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, states that he took his BA in 1799, probably before December. Thus it is unlikely that he was still an undergraduate.

^[97] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/moore-charles-1771-1826.

^[98] D. LeFaye, ed., Jane Austen's Letters (4th ed., Oxford, 2011), 556. At Wrotham in December 1830, George Moore was confronted by a crowd shouting  for bread or blood. P. Virgin, The Church in an Age of Negligence ... 1700-1840 (London, 1989), 106n.

^[99] See the tables in M.J. Daunton, Progress and Poverty … (Oxford, 1995), 578-82. It is noteworthy that general histories of 19^th-century Britain rarely mention inflation.

^[100] J. Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book … (London, 1832), 41. The archbishop's son was Speaker of the House of Commons. He was granted a peerage when he retired in 1835, and took his title from his constituency, the city of Canterbury. Thus the fortunate grandson of the Archbishop of Canterbury became, in due course, the 2nd Viscount Canterbury.

^[101] As the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, explained to the House of Commons in 1850: "the present Lord Canterbury was appointed to hold that office in reversion after the death of Mr Robert Moore. Mr Robert Moore now holds the office, and Lord Canterbury has the reversion of it." Hansard, 30 April 1850: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1850/apr/30/registrar-of-the-prerogative-court#S3V0110P0_18500430_HOC_9.

^[102] Canning had criticised sinecures in 1812. He was regarded as a threat to the social structure mainly because his mother had been an actress. At his death in August 1827, Canning was succeeded by his ally, Goderich, who promptly awarded himself a pension of £3,000 and found jobs for various family members (although one of them was made Governor of Cape Colony, hardly an inviting appointment). W. Hinde, George Canning (London, 1973), 282; W.D. Jones, Prosperity Robinson … (London, 1967), 187n.

^[103] The preamble breathed entitlement: "whereas the said George Moore and Robert Moore decline to surrender the said grant; and by reason whereof, the present Lord Archbishop of Canterbury is prevented from making a grant according to the usage aforesaid; And whereas it is reasonable that the said present Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and future Archbishops of Canterbury should be enabled to make grants as hereinafter is enacted…". Quoted, Select Committee report, 1850, 169.

^[104] Hansard, 5 June 1828: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1828/jun/05/archbishop-of-canterburys-bill#S2V0019P0_18280605_HOC_2. Viscount Canterbury subsequently realised a capital sum by securing a mortgage on his prospects. This did not prove a good business deal for the lending institution, since Lord Canterbury only survived Robert Moore by four years, at which point the gravy train was finally derailed.

^[105] D. Bowen, The Idea of the Victorian Church… (Montreal, 1968), 39.

^[106] Benjamin Hall was a tall man, whom parliamentary wits contrasted with Benjamin Hawes, the diminutive under-secretary for the colonies. Hall served as First Commissioner for Works under Palmerston in 1855-8, a post that put him in charge of government construction projects. During his term of office, a giant bell was hung in the clock tower of the rebuilt Westminster Houses of Parliament. Hall's nickname was transferred to the bell, which became known as Big Ben. For the two principal discussions of the Prerogative Court: Hansard, 30 April, 1 May  1850:

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1850/apr/30/registrar-of-the-prerogative-court#S3V0110P0_18500430_HOC_9 and https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1850/may/01/registrar-of-the-prerogative-court-of#S3V0110P0_18500501_HOC_4.

^[107] So said the Monmouthshire Merlin, 4 May 1850, probably a news agency report.

^[108] Spectator, 4 May 1850, 1.

^[109] Hansard, cx, 6 May 1850: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1850/may/06/office-of-registrar-. of-the-prerogative. A further clarification and defence of the transaction was required in The Times, 21 August 1852 (letter from the Reverend J.H.R. Sumner, the archbishop's son, and also his private chaplain).

^[110] Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, ii, ch. xxxiii.

^[111] Punch, xxii (1852), 245.

^[112] The timing of the article should be noted. Parliament had risen early, on 1 July, but was due to reassemble on 20 August. The summer months were notoriously devoid of major political news. The Times was pressing a reliable button to generate indignation on the eve of a new Session, and on an issue that would embarrass the Anglican Conservatives.

^[113] The Times, 14 August 1852. There are some apparent parallels between the attack on Moore and the plot of Anthony Trollope's The Warden, published in 1855. In contrast to Moore, the Reverend Septimus Harding is a gentle character who is attacked by the Jupiter (a thinly fictionalised version of The Times) for receiving an inflated income as warden of the Barchester almshouses. He too is a pluralist, but the parish that he holds is near the city. "It was only worth some eighty pounds a year, and a small house and glebe, all of which were now handed over to Mr Harding’s curate." Like Moore, he holds a cathedral appointment, but only as a minor canon and precentor. He cares for the occupants of Hiram's Hospital and trains the cathedral choir. Thus Trollope places a likeable elderly man in a morally dubious position. The scorn of the Jupiter echoes The Times attack on Moore: "Does he ever ask himself, when he stretches wide his clerical palm to receive the pay of some dozen of the working clergy, for what service he is so remunerated? ... We must express an opinion that nowhere but in the Church of England, and only there among its priests, could such a state of moral indifference be found." A. Trollope, The Warden (1855), ch. vii. In his Autobiography (1883), ch. v, Trollope stated that he began The Warden on 29 July 1852, It is more likely that  he conceived the idea of the plot in  May 1852, but did not begin writing until late July 1853. He was "angered by the undeserved severity of the newspapers towards the recipients of such incomes, wo could hardly be considered to be the chief sinners in the matter". If this sympathy related to Moore, it was remarkably charitable. Thus it is likely that the attack on Moore helped shape the evolution of the plot, although the key dates do not point to direct and immediate inspiration. N.J. Hall, Trollope: a Biography (Oxford, 1991), 131. In his Autobiography, Trollope also confirmed that the Jupiter was The Times.

^[114] The Times, 17 August 1852. Trollope evoked Septimus Harding's anguish at coming under press attack. "They say that eighty thousand copies of the Jupiter are daily sold, and that each copy is read by five persons at the least. Four hundred thousand readers then would hear this accusation against him; four hundred thousand hearts would swell with indignation at the griping injustice, the barefaced robbery of the warden of Barchester Hospital! And how was he to answer this? How was he to open his inmost heart to this multitude, to these thousands, the educated, the polished, the picked men of his own country; how show them that he was no robber, no avaricious, lazy priest scrambling for gold, but a retiring humble-spirited man, who had innocently taken what had innocently been offered to him?" But the reactionary and worldly Archdeacon Grantly warned him that if he attempted to reply, he would "be smothered with ridicule; tossed over and over again with scorn; shaken this way and that, as a rat in the mouth of a practised terrier. … What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that the Jupiter is in England."

^[115] The Times, 17 August 1852.

^[116] In Barchester Towers (1857), ch. ii, Trollope recalled the campaign of the Jupiter to redistribute the revenues of Hiram's Hospital. "The wisdom of this scheme was testified by the number of letters which 'Common Sense'’ 'Veritas', and 'One that loves fair play' sent to The Jupiter, all expressing admiration, and amplifying on the details given. It is singular enough that no adverse letter appeared at all, and therefore, none of course was written." This does sound very like the assault on Moore.

^[117] The Times, 23 ('Executor'), 25 ('A Friend to the Church'), 25 ('Momento'), 30 August 1852 ('Memor'). 

^[118] The Times, 2 September 1852.

^[119] The Times, 6 September 1852.

^[120] The Times, 13 November 1852

^[121] The Times, 13 November, 3, 29 December 1852 ('Memor').

^[122] Punch, 4, 11, 18 September, 2, 9 October, 25 December 1852. Punch also published some awkward doggerel, probably based on the rhythm of a popular song. Verses included " You have rectories, I'm told, Mr Moore, Mr Moore … / Which, besides your shovel-hat, Are so many 'bits of fat' / Over thirteen thousand pounds a year you score, Mr Moore" and "We sure must owe you much, Mr Moore, Mr Moore  … / You've a mortgage on the realm / Which would Britain overwhelm / If Australia didn't help us with her ore, Mr Moore". (The gold rushes in Victoria and New South Wales were major news at the time.) Another ditty referred to "the Christian moderation of the Reverend Mr Moore". The squibs in Punch indicate that 'Moore' rhymed with 'whore' and not with 'poor'.  A 'cure' was an alternative name for a parish or preferment. 

^[123] Punch, xxvi (1854), 24.

^[124] The retreat from an initially vague commitment can be traced in statements by Lord John Russell in the House of Commons on 10 February and 27 May 1853.

^[125] Bruce, How the Ecclesiastical Courts Rob the Public, 13, 18-19.

^[126] Hansard, 18 May 1857: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1857/may/18/second-reading.

^[127] The paragraph was published in several Welsh newspapers (e.g. Cardiff Guardian, 18 May 1861), and was probably a syndicated report from a news agency.

^[128] South Australian Register, 18 November 1865.

^[129] The Times, 28 October 1865. The £27 million calculation comes from https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator.

^[130] The Ecclesiastical Commission was discussed in outline by Bowen, The Idea of the Victorian Church, 19-28 and in more detail in Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 126-41. Both these major works unwittingly convey the impression that the substantial work of the Ecclesiastical Commission was confined to its early years. By contrast, O.J. Brose, Church and Parliament … (Stanford, Calif., 1959), 120-77 shows how it gradually broadened its activities to 1860. To take an example from an important general textbook, the message from Asa Briggs was 'problem solved': "The practical reforms which the Commission made possible … were as important to the survival of the Church of England as an institution in a new age as any of the movements of reform from within her own ranks." A. Briggs, The Age of Improvement… (London, 1959), 284. The same impression is conveyed by Boyd Hilton's outstanding (and generally sceptical) contribution to the New Oxford History of England series. Abuses in the Church "were dealt with effectively – even triumphantly – by [the] Ecclesiastical Commissioners ... The grossest abuses relating to simony, pluralism and non-residence were attended to; many of the worst sinecures were abolished." B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?... (Oxford, 2006), 524-5. If simony refers to the trade in advowsons, abuse became, if anything, more blatant in the Victorian period, and was not curbed until 1898. Pluralism was "attended to" in the sense that it became harder to combine benefices simply for personal benefit, but – as this essay establishes – pluralists remained and, by definition, they could only be resident in one parish. In 1864, almost thirty years after the start of the reform process, 955 curates acted for absentee incumbents. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 127. 

^[131] H. Robinson, Church Reform upon Christian Principles, 12, 13, 22n. A radical MP cited different but still disturbing statistics in 1838: 412 cases of clergy holding 3 livings, 57 of 4 and 3 of 5: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1838/may/04/pluralities.

^[132] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 28-9, 98-130. Wade's figures for multiple holdings were slightly different, but he reported that there had recently been an individual (Majendie) with eleven (31). He was Henry Majendie, bishop of Bangor, who had died in 1830. "That he was not free from the prevailing nepotism of the day is shown by his advancement of his relatives to the best pieces of preferment at his disposal," the Dictionary of National Biography remarked of him in 1893. "His contemporaries allude to the corpulence of the bishop's person, and the imperturbable gravity of his countenance."

^[133] In 1840, Bishop Kaye of Lincoln described the situation where livings were held "sometimes at opposite extremities of the kingdom ...  the pluralist, on account of the distance, conceived himself released from the obligation of visiting that on which he did not reside. Content with paying his curate the stipend fixed by law, and contributing more or less liberally towards the temporal wants of the parishioners, he seemed to dismiss their spiritual interests from his thoughts, and to regard the living, not as a trust involving the most serious responsibility, but as a source of income." Works of John Kaye, vii (London, 1888), 222. Kaye regarded those days as past. This was not correct.

^[134] W. Cobbett, Rural Rides… (1830, many editions). The quotation comes from his 1826 journey from Salisbury to Highworth.

^[135] W. Benbow, The Crimes of the Clergy … (London, 1823), 4.

^[136] J. Acaster, Remedies for the Church in Danger … (London, 1830), iii, 11-13, 17-18.

^[137] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 27. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, adds that G.T. Pretyman also held a perpetual curacy in Lincolnshire, which Wade missed. Perpetual curacies were peanut preferments: it took an unusual degree of avarice to hold on to one.

^[138] "Under the fine system, the future was mortgaged to benefit the present." J.J. Fishman, "Charity Scandals as a Catalyst of Legal Change and Literary Imagination in Nineteenth Century England" (2005), 402: https://files01.core.ac.uk/download/46714475.pdf (originally published in Michigan State Law Review,ccclxix).

^[139] Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital", 138-40. The Charity Commission did not become a permanent body until 1853. Earlier ad hoc investigations were only acceptable to powerful interests if extensive exemptions were conceded.

^[140] Langdale said: "where a party has, quite innocently, possessed charity property which ought to have been applied according to the directions of the trust, and has so continued for a number of years, until by some accidental circumstance he has been apprised of the erroneous application, if he then comes forward, and gives every facility to the future due application of the trust money, it is by no means an improper exercise of the discretion of this Court to save him as much as possible from a by-gone account."

^[141] "It was afterwards found that the amount to be paid by the Defendant would… amount to so considerable a sum, that the Defendant would be utterly unable to pay it". C. Beavan, ed., Reports of Cases in Chancery…, iv (London, 1843), 462-7.

^[142] Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital", 143.

^[143] Punch, xxiii (1852), 268. In case its readers missed the allusion, a footnote explained: "The Reverend Brothers Pretyman pluralists par excellence."

^[144] Morning Star, n.d., reprinted Wrexham Advertiser, 2 July 1859. The editor of the Wrexham Advertiser explained that the article was reproduced at the request of local clergy, "concur[r]ing as we do with the sentiments so generally entertained by the hard-worked and ill-paid portion of the clergy, that, the pecuniary resources of the Church are still shamefully abused".

^[145] The undated Morning Post article was reprinted in North Otago Times, 28 June and Armidale Express, 30 June 1866. Punch (xv, 9 September 1848, 97) once called the Morning Post "the conscience-keeper of high life".

^[146] I follow here the useful summary of the St Cross case by Fishman, "Charity Scandals as a Catalyst of Legal Change and Literary Imagination in Nineteenth Century England" (2005): https://files01.core.ac.uk/download/46714475.pdf.

^[147] The second son, Charles North, received three parishes plus a Winchester canonry. Bishop North not only made him Registrar of the diocese, but in 1817 added the reversion of the preferment to his grandson, another Brownlow North, then aged 7. The youngster led a wild life until he dramatically found religion at the age of 44 and became a revivalist Nonconformist preacher. He was a prominent figure in the religious hysteria that swept Ulster in 1859, all the time living off the £300 a year profit from his inherited appointment. Anglican patronage had some strange ramifications. (An early biographer claimed that the inadequacy of his sinecure income drove him to gambling, and thence to his mid-life conversion: K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North… (London, 1878), 9.)

^[148] One of his parishes was St Mary's, Southampton, the core area of the port city, "the value of which he invariably refused to return" to official enquiries. Although he was credited with supporting the enlargement of the parish church, he was said to have used "two wretchedly-paid curates" to serve its growing population. Once again, these quotations come from the Morning Post, a distinctly conservative newspaper. Its undated editorial was reprinted by Empire (Sydney), 30 May 1861. St Mary's was thought to yield its incumbent £2,000 a year.

^[149] Trollope accepted that "the masters of St Cross, for many years past, cannot be called shining lights in the service of Christianity". The Warden (1855), ch. ii.

^[150] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 126-7; Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital", 138.

^[151] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 26, 124.

^[152] 'Memor' in The Times, 30 December 1852 reckoned that Croft had a financial interest in seven parishes.

^[153] 'Memor' in The Times, 13 November, 3, 30 December 1852.

^[154] Hansard, 16 May 1848: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1848/may/16/cathedrals-and-collegiate-churches#S3V0098P0_18480516_HOC_10.

^[155] 'Memor', in The Times, 3 December 1852.

^[156] Punch, 8 January 1853.

^[157] Cardiff Times, 19 June 1869, apparently a news agency paragraph.

^[158] John Griffith was successively vicar of Aberdare and rector of Merthyr Tydfil. In 1874, he recalled: "For twenty years and more I have been doing all I could to bring before the public the spots and the stains which deface our Church. ... I have been abused for it on all hands. I have been branded by my dearly beloved brethren of the cloth as an 'ill bird that is for ever fouling his own nest'." His fellow clergy "have been for a whole quarter of a century telling me that it was wicked of me to bring these things to light[,] that it would have been far better to cast a veil over them[,] that I was only giving the enemy occasion to blaspheme, and encouraging obloquy and calumny to swell the clamour against the Church". At long last, even the bishops had woken to the scandal of patronage abuse and Griffith was happily bemused to find himself "after having been for many years alone – in most excellent company, the company of men arrayed in glorious apparel, shining with mitres, lawn sleeves, copes, and rochets, and the Primate of all England leading the way.... I sometimes call my wife to come and pinch me, in order to assure myself it is no dream I am in." Carnarvon Herald, 23 May 1874; https://biography.wales/article/s-GRIF-JOH-1818.

^[159] Griffith's indictment appeared in the Record, an Anglican publication, and was reprinted in Cardiff Guardian, 21 October 1848.

^[160] https://pglforfarshire.org/Henage_Horsley_Dean_of_Brechin.html.

^[161] The paragraph was published in various Welsh newspapers in October-November 1847.

^[162] Punch, xxii, 10 January 1852, 9.

^[163] A.J. Johnes, On the Causes which have Produced Dissent from the Established Church in the Principality of Wales (Llandidloes, 1832 / 1870 ed.), 130-1, 198, 205, 219 [cited as Johnes]; D.R. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St Asaph... (London, 1874), 153. Arthur Johnes was one of the earliest students at the secular London University, founded in 1826 and reconstituted ten years later as University College. He entered for an essay competition set by the Cymmrodorion Society, which won a prize at the Eisteddfod in 1831, and the first edition had appeared the following year. A revised edition was published soon after. He republished his essay in London in 1870, perhaps encouraged by the interest aroused by Disestablishment in Ireland. Johnes was reading for the Bar at the time, and became a county court judge in 1847. His indictment against the Luxmoores erupts throughout the book, but can be summarised on 219, 124-5.

^[164] Cardiff Guardian, 21 October 1848. It was probably Griffith's campaign that was alluded to by the Wrexham Advertiser, 10 March 1860, as unpopular with his fellow clergy.

^[165] Wrexham Advertiser, 6 May 1854.

^[166] Johnes, 130-1, 198, 205, 219.

^[167] Johnes, 124-5.

^[168] Cardiff Guardian, 21 October 1848.

^[169] Johnes, 127. Christ Church, Oxford drew £900 a year from Guilsfield in rectorial tithes in 1832.

^[170] Quoted, D.T.W. Price, A History of St David's College, Lampeter, i, (Cardiff, 1977), 66.

^[171] The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (new ed., London, 1854), 118-19, from the Edinburgh Review, 1808.

^[172] Cardiff Guardian, 21 October 1848.

^[173] H.W. Clarke, A History of the Church of Wales (London, 1896), 144.

^[174] Clerical Journal [1854], quoted in Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses. "This event will cause a number of vacancies in the numerous livings held by the late Dean", said the more coded report in the Wrexham Advertiser, 6 May 1854.

^[175] D.R. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St Asaph... (London, 1874), 237.

^[176] Wrexham Advertiser, 10 March 1860.

^[177] Wrexham Advertiser, 14 April 1860. The new rector of Marchwiel, the Reverend Stephen Donne, was aged 58 and had been headmaster of Oswestry Grammar School for 23 years.

^[178] Wrexham Advertiser, 10 March 1860.

^[179] Cambrian News, 21 July 1876.

^[180] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 31; Johnes, 184, 185.

^[181] Johnes, 189. Cotton had gained good opinions for his work on the ground, as well as some sympathy after he had "sustained a very considerable pecuniary loss, in consequence of a failure of a savings' bank, at Bangor, for the solvency of which he had pledged himself."

^[182] North Wales Chronicle, 25 December 1869.

^[183] Aberystwyth Times, 29 January 1870; Prebendary Majendie was reported to be holidaying at Dolgelly (Dolgellau) in 1869, his residence being given as his Berkshire parish of Speen (Newbury). Cambrian News, 21 August 1869.

^[184] The Times, 23 March 1831.

^[185] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 71-2; Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 29 October 1831, 286-7. Lakenheath counterattacked, petitioning the dean and chapter to devote two-thirds of their tithe income to poor relief and church maintenance (26 November 1831, 549). In presenting a petition from Lakenheath to the House of Lords in October 1831, a Whig peer caustically contrasted the judicial activism of the dean and chapter with the professed respect for ancient institutions that led the Church to oppose parliamentary reform. "This disturbance of the ancient order of things, then, came from the clergy, who professed to be averse to all changes, and to be desirous that everything should remain unchanged, but who, when their own interests were concerned, became arch-disturbers of the peace." To add further insult, the dean and chapter "had appointed a Vicar of the parish, who, as might be expected, was a non-resident and a pluralist" (italics added). The Fardell / Sparke scandal had left its mark. Hansard, 11 October 1831: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1831/oct/11/prescription-bill-tithes.

^[186] Bishop Sparke was tactfully passed over by the Dictionary of National Biography, and the ODNB has not seen fit to remedy the omission. His career is outlined in Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, and was briefly excoriated in The Times, 7 April 1836. His monstrous selfishness should not be forgotten.

^[187] The story was pieced together in The Times, 8 April 1831 by "Your Constant Reader", who also signed as "A Radical Reformer of every abuse", with Ely as the address. The Constant Reader had worked through 16 years of the Cambridge Chronicle, research that merits recognition two centuries later. The information was summarised in Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 25-6, and is here supplemented by other sources, e.g. Venn's  Alumni Cantabrigienses and J.R. Tanner, ed., The Historical Register of the University of Cambridge … (Cambridge, 1917).

^[188] Charles Scott Luxmoore, future Dean of St Asaph, was four places ahead of him.

^[189] Victoria County History of Cambridge, ix, 58-63, 64-7 (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol9/pp64-67); Hansard, 19 February 1818: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1818/feb/19/tithe-laws-amendment-bill. The MP was J.C. Curwen. Ward was "hurt" when Curwen had raised the Cottenham case the previous year. The rector died at Cheltenham in June 1819.

^[190] The Clerical Guide, and Ecclesiastical Directory, Table II.

^[191] The Times, 8 April 1831. The income of the various prebendal stalls was returned in 1838 at between £13 and £43, but a later historian estimated their real value at £650 a year. A historian of Wisbech stated that Sparke's income from his canonry netted him £800 a year.  Clerical Guide, Table III; W.L. Mathieson, English Church Reform, 1815-1840 (London, 1923), 114n.; F.J. Gardiner, History of Wisbech… (Wisbech / London, 1898), 251.

^[192] A Norfolk directory of 1854 called Gunthorpe Hall "a handsome mansion with tasteful shrubberies and pleasure grounds, ornamented with a small lake". Sparke later commissioned the architect Butterfield to encase the house in Victorian red brick, and sponsored a drastic restoration of the church. A son, Henry Astley Sparke, was killed in the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade. Other descendants remained at Gunthorpe until the nineteen-seventies.

^[193] Gunthorpe had absorbed the small adjoining parish of Bale, which retained its own church. Sparke maintained one of his curates there. A Wisbech historian calculated that Sparke drew £103,000 from Leverington over 43 years, although he was "seldom in residence". Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 251. During his visit to Wisbech in 1843 (see below), the Cambridge don Joseph Romilly walked out to Leverington where he found the church "dreadfully neglected". The caste nature of the Anglican career structure may be illustrated by Arthur Roper, Sparke's curate at Leverington from 1855 to 1870. Although Roper had been born into a Church family (his father was a minor canon of Windsor), his background was evidently not prosperous. He attended the Clergy Orphan School (St John's Wood, Middlesex) and was a sizar at St John's College, Cambridge. Following ordination (1838-9), he held six curacies in succession over 32 years, finally becoming vicar of one the Fenland parishes carved out of Leverington after J.H. Sparke's death.

^[194] It was, of course, a Church of England school, and the timing of its belated construction suggests that Sparke foresaw the passage of the 1870 Education Act, made likely by the further instalment of parliamentary reform in 1867, and wished to block the intrusion of secular education in his village.

^[195] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/fardell-john-1784-1854.

^[196] Fardell's odyssey is distilled from The Times, 8 April 1831; Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 25-6.

^[197] The Times, 14 June 1832.

^[198] G. W. E. Russell, Collections and Recollections (London, 1898), 62. Russell had the story from a later bishop, James Woodford (1873-85), who was horrified by it.

^[199] His new stall included the patronage of a valuable living (Mepal and Sutton). An alternative stall was found for Benjamin Parke, who remained a member of the chapter until his death in 1835. Henry Fardell's brother Thomas was appointed to Sutton in 1846: the gross annual value of the parish in 1860 was £1,215. On his death, the living was bestowed upon Fardell's son-in-law, the Honourable Charles Spencer, brother of the 2^nd Baron Churchill.

^[200] Russell, Collections and Recollections, 62.

^[201] Criticism of the Church as an element in the popular demand for Reform was acknowledged, in almost token form, by J.R.M. Butler, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill (London, 1914), 113, 250-2 and by M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, 1973), 199. The downplaying of this aspect of popular feeling is remarkable, and fails to convey the full picture of public anger in 1831-2.  Sydney Smith recalled that he purchased a blue coat to avoid wearing the clerical black, and thus avoid insult in the streets.

^[202] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 182.

^[203] When Fardell's predecessor, Dr Abraham Jobson, had been appointed to Wisbech in 1802, the tithes had been compounded at £700 a year. Jobson demanded tithes in kind from "the grass lands" (presumably reclaimed fen) and waged a five-year legal campaign that raised his income to £2,000. Jobson was "extremely liberal in his gifts while he was Vicar", but his recorded benefactions totalled around £10,000, about one-quarter of the additional return that his lawsuits had yielded from tithes. Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 239.

^[204] The Times, 23 March 1831. The Clerical Guide (1838), 221 and the Clergy List (1848), 225 both returned Fardell's annual income from Wisbech at £1,779. Lord Brougham (below) spoke of £2,000. The town was often spelt 'Wisbeach' at the time. March 1831 was also a poorly chosen moment to drag E.B. Sparke's parish of Littleport out of bucolic obscurity. Fifteen years earlier, it had been the epicentre of riots that had swept the Isle of Ely. Bishop Sparke was the last prelate to exercise 'palatine' jurisdiction within the Isle of Ely (although not the whole diocese), operating through a chief justice. In 1816, the chief justice was Edward Christian who happened to be the brother of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on HMS Bounty. One historian of the riots concluded that "the Church was seen in the role of an all-pervading oppressor of the poor. What justice there was[,] was clergyman’s justice". The disturbances were suppressed by military intervention, and the rioters rounded up to face trial. To supplement the bishop's authority, the government created a Special Commission to provide two supplementary judges at the next Assizes. The trials were preceded by an imposing service at Ely cathedral, where the choir sang Psalm 2 ("Why do the Heathen so furiously rage together?") and a thunderous sermon was preached on the text: "The Law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient" (1 Timothy, 1:9). The message was clear: five rioters were hanged, and others were shipped to the Australian penal colonies.  The executions were carried out with a more than usually grisly melodrama to emphasise that Good was revenging itself upon Evil. A.J. Peacock, Bread or Blood… (London, 1965), 62, 124-30. The wave of pro-Reform feeling that swept Britain in 1830-2 was a rejection of the post-Napoleonic phase of repression. Reminding the public that the vicar of Littleport was a wealthy pluralist was badly timed. 

^[205] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 26.

^[206] The Times, 8 April 1831.

^[207] Hansard, 28 March 1831: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1831/mar/25/pluralities-the-bishop-of-ely.

^[208] On becoming Lord Chancellor, Brougham had devolved most of the Church patronage associated with his office to the bishops. This move was designed to allay their suspicions of his allegedly unorthodox religious views. (In 1818, he had described himself as "a Church of England man" who viewed its institutions "with a most affectionate regard" but did not feel obliged to defend its abuses.) The gesture also saved him much minor administrative work – and there were few Anglican clergy who supported the Whigs and hence had any claim on their benevolence. R. Stewart, Henry Brougham… (London, 1985), 254; C. New, The Life of Henry Brougham… (Oxford, 1961), 186.

^[209] The paragraph in the Carmarthen Journal, 21 May 1830, was almost certainly copied from other sources. In January 1831, Sydney Smith alleged that the Tory bishops were depriving the Whig ministry of Church patronage by wilfully refusing to die: "The Bishop of Ely has the rancour to recover after three paralytic strokes". Bell, Sydney Smith, 160.

^[210] Howley was much criticised by the Whigs for his indecision over the Reform Bill: Earl Grey called him "a poor miserable creature … there was no dependence to be placed upon him … he would be frightened and vote any way his fear directed". The diarist Charles Greville was equally dismissive. "The Archbishop will not decide; there is no moving him," he wrote shortly before the crucial Lords vote on the revised Reform Bill. "Curious that a Dr Howley, the other day Canon of Christ Church [Oxford], a very ordinary man, should have in his hands the virtual decision of one of the most momentous matters that have ever occupied public attention." In fact, as discussed below, Howley had been Bishop of London for 15 years before his elevation to the Primacy in 1828. His ineffectual attempt to curb the evils of pluralism looks like displacement activity. P.W. Wilson, ed., The Greville Diary… (2 vols, London, 1927), i, 384-5 (23 February 1832).

^[211] Hansard, 30 August 1831: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1831/aug/30/pluralities-in-the-church.

^[212] Hansard, 13 September 1831: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1831/sep/13/plurality-of-benefices.

^[213] Hansard, 23 March 1832:  https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1832/mar/23/pluralities-bill

^[214] Grey's biographers seem to have overlooked the Prime Minister's patronage of Richard Ponsonby, whom he translated (up the episcopal ladder) to the see of Derry in 1831, despite initial reluctance "to incur the odium of another family promotion".   A.D. Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries… (London, 1977), 12, 43. Ponsonby's advancement became public knowledge in early September 1831, five months after the storm over Fardell's preferment to Wisbech and a month before the House of Lords rejected the Reform Bill. A pro-Castle Dublin newspaper defended Ponsonby's appointment: "The accident that he was brother-in-law to Earl Grey was no reason why the latter should do him an injustice." (Dublin Times, n.d., quoted, Monmouthshire Merlin, 3 September 1831). By contrast, the Conservative leader Sir Robert Peel set his face against using either personal or official patronage to advance the career of relatives. During his second term as Prime Minister (1841-6), he stated that his "general rule" in relation to official patronage in the Church was "to confer with the Bishops of the respective dioceses" in order to appoint "the most deserving clergymen who may be candidates for them". C.S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers (3 vols, London, 1899) iii, 422. As  a result, his cousin, an able if querulous priest, W.W. Willock, emigrated to New Zealand: Ged Martin and Jim McAloon, "The Iron Priest…": https://anglicanhistory.org/nz/martin_mcaloon2014.pdf.

^[215] Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries, 159 (23 February 1832). "It admits the existence of abuse and does not remedy it", was Holland's comment on Howley's bill.)

^[216] We should not exaggerate Maltby's modernity: he held two parishes and a Lincoln cathedral canonry for 37 years before his elevation to the episcopal bench.

^[217] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 29, 134, 468.

^[218] Diary of Denis Le Marchant, quoted A. Aspinall, ed., Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries (London, 1952), 303 (February 1833). Murray took an equally reactionary stance during the Rochester Cathedral School scandal from 1848, discussed below. But Bishop Kaye of Lincoln, regarded by Chadwick as a mild if reluctant reformer, took a similar view. He told his clergy in 1828 that non-residence, which he described as the by-product of pluralism, was "an evil of which it is easier to lament the existence and to describe the injurious consequences, than to devise the remedy." He dismissed plans for reform. "Most of them appear to have originated with men who, either through an overweening fondness for the conception of their own minds, overlooked or despised all practical difficulties; or, in their eagerness to accomplish what they thought a desirable end, were careless respecting the means by which it was to be accomplished. All of them involved a direct and extensive interference with the rights of private property – a measure which a wise legislature will be slow to entertain." Works of John Kaye, vii, 52.

^[219] Carpenter's Monthly Political Magazine (February 1832), 257-8; Hill's Life in New South Wales, 28 December 1832. Punch, xxiii (4 December 1852), 244 recycled the joke, listing the clerical guests, with offices held, at a dinner party held by the fictional Dean of Plumsworth: "incredible as it may seem, although a dean, three rectors, two vicars, and an Archbishop's registrar sat down to meet, there was only one clergyman at the table". The jest had another outing in 1854 when Thomas Robinson received his fifth preferment. This time, Punch reported that the Master of the Temple, Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, the rector of Therfield in Hertfordshire and a canon of St. Paul's celebrated the appointment of a new canon of Rochester Cathedral,  rejoicing that they transcended "the unhappy divisions within the Church". At the conclusion of their banquet, "the company rose as one man". (Punch, xxvii (1854), 226) Presumably, this was a jest in wide circulation that could easily be applied to individual cases and may be taken as evidence of the derision aroused by pluralists.

^[220] M.E. Bury and J.D. Pickles, eds, Romilly's Cambridge Diary 1842-1847 (Cambridge, 1994), 65-8.

^[221] Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, iv, 268-89: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol4/pp268-269.

^[222] Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 198-9.

^[223] The vicarage was built in 1831. The Gothic cemetery chapel, erected in 1844, no longer exists. George Basevi, the architect then engaged on work at Ely Cathedral, was involved in the design. S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2014), 698, 699n.

^[224] The marriage does not seem to have gone ahead. The curate was probably Frederick Jackson, son of the headmaster of the town's grammar school. In 1844, he was appointed perpetual curate of Parson Drove, a chapelry of J.H. Sparke's sinecure parish of Leverington, where he remained until his death sixty years later. He was promoted to vicar in 1870 in the creation of new parishes following Sparke's death, but his annual stipend of £270 fell slightly as tithe rents declined towards the end of the century. For many years he was chairman of the Board of Sewers, which monitored local flood defences. It was his proud boast in the 1890s that he had never missed a Sunday service. He may be regarded as the antithesis of the Sparke-Fardell clan. There is much information about the Jackson family in Gardiner's History of Wisbech. Three years after Fardell's death, a daughter identified as Mary Eleanor was threatened with an action for breach of promise. This antiquated law was intended to protect virtuous maidens from inconstant male seducers, and it was highly unusual for a case to be brought against a woman. Miss Fardell was alleged to have thrown over a publicly acknowledged suitor without explanation, and the "discarded bridegroom" demanded £30,000 in damages. The case, which seems to have been either withdrawn or settled out of court, is another reminder that the Fardell family lifestyle was not typical. Liverpool Albion, 8 February; Mount Alexander Mail (Victoria), 30 April 1858.

^[225] Punch, xxvi (1854), 147.

^[226] Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 240 claimed that Fardell's successor found that "some lack of organization and consequent apathy had existed … in the matter of religious and parish work". However, shortly before his death, Fardell had reported that he had supplied a waggon to assist poor parishioners from outlying districts to attend church, "but it soon became abused and I was compelled to abandon the scheme". Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, iv, 232-8: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol4/pp232-238. I have not traced Henry Fardell's Will, but the fact that his daughter could be sued for £30,000 (see above) suggests that he left a considerable fortune.

^[227] Saturday Review, 17 May 1856, 52.

^[228] Saturday Review, xi, 23 February 1861, 169, also reprinted Sydney Morning Herald, 27 May 1861.

^[229] Globe (London), quoted Cardiff Times, 19 February; Western Mail, 4 July 1870; Punch, 19 February 1870, 74. J. Larwood, The Book of Clerical Anecdotes… (London, [1871]), 265-6 included a brief and bleak obituary of J.H. Sparke that had "been lately what is called 'going the round of the newspapers'".

^[230] Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 251-3.

^[231] Gardiner, History of Wisbech, 252; Bradley and Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire, 550.

^[232] Bury and Pickles, eds, Romilly's Cambridge Diary 1842-1847, 105. Dr Daubeny pronounced in favour of the stone altar.

^[233] Bradley and Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire, 408, 509. The useful account in https://www.feltwell.net/feltwell2/written/stmary_stained_glass.htm draws upon B. Haward, Nineteenth-Century Norfolk Stained Glass (1984), which I have been unable to consult. The magnificent and refreshing clear glass windows of the Lady Chapel at Ely make a case for Puritan image-cleansing, as does the impressive church at Blythburgh in Suffolk.

^[234] C.W. Stubbs, ed., Handbook to the Cathedral Church of Ely (20^th ed., Ely, 1898), 113; Matthew, 25: 36-40. Verse 36 reads in full: "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in". In Verse 40, the Almighty reviews such charity and announces: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The Sparke / Fardell approach to life inverted that principle.

^[235] At South Weald, Belli succeeded F.J.H. Wollaston, who might be pleaded as a partial defence of the Anglican patronage system, although he was an unusual pluralist. In 1792, Wollaston was elected Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge University. He not only lectured (a duty which some professors neglected), performing 300 experiments for his students each year, but published his syllabus. In 1794, the Bishop of London appointed him vicar of South Weald, a consolation prize after he had been compelled to vacate his college fellowship on marriage. Although the parish was fifty miles from Cambridge, he seems to have combined the two jobs effectively, in 1801 taking charge of a project to provide work for the parish poor. In 1807, Wollaston was chosen as Master of Sidney Sussex College, but his election was overturned on a technicality, to the amusement of his detractors who, as in any academic community, were numerous. This probably explains his decision to resign his professorship in 1813, base himself full-time at South Weald and launch into a new career, as Archdeacon of Essex. He now became a more conventional pluralist, adding the marshland parish of Cold Norton (worth about £340 a year), plus a sinecure rectory in Norfolk. (He had also been a canon of St Paul's cathedral since 1802, an unusual post for a scientist.) Thus Belli may be seen as belonging to a world where pluralism was taken for granted for clergy who possessed the right connections, but Wollaston undoubtedly belonged to a very different category, both in intellectual endeavour and administrative activity. Belli was probably responsible for, or complicit, in the plaque erected in the parish church to commemorate his predecessor, with the melodramatic inscription: "He went to bed in perfect health on October 11th 1823 and was found a corpse on Sunday morning, reader reflect!!!" G.A. Ward, A History of South Weald and Brentwood (Brentwood, 1961), 29.

^[236] White's Directory of Essex (1848), 195-7, 397; Parliamentary Papers, 1835, lxvii, 666-7. There is an affectionate sketch of Belli by his successor, Duncan Fraser, in D. Fraser, South Weald… (c. 1895), who overlapped with him for ten years as Belli was allowed to remain in the vicarage when he resigned the parish in his mid-eighties. Unfortunately, Fraser's book (a compilation of surplus copies of a parish magazine) was unpaginated. It is the source of information here that is otherwise not referenced.

^[237] No doubt the absentee rector incurred other expenditure which was technically optional but might be seen as socially obligatory: for instance, Belli presented Paglesham church with a new font.

^[238] Hastings argued that the agreement with John Belli was made in wartime, and that to have tendered the contract openly would have revealed the strength and resources of the garrison to the French and their local allies. The much-criticised profit margin allowed to Belli was claimed to be normal at the time, since suppliers needed to reimburse themselves for losses in shipping supplies from Britain. Belli did not take the full profit margin allowed in the contract and it was generally agreed that his character was not impugned. All the same, he did become very rich.

^[239] The Times, 30 April, 1886. On 15 July 1886, The Times reported that it was "estimated that during his lifetime he gave something like £50,000 towards Church work in the district of Brentwood". The report specifically referred to £23,000 for the construction and endowment of a new church at Bentley, in the north of the parish, apparently including this sum in the £50,000 total. F. Boase, Modern English Biography (various editions), iv, 354-5 split the donations, perhaps inadvertently double-counting the expenditure at Bentley. By any standards, C.A. Belli was generous; by any standards, he could afford to be.

^[240] Unfortunately, Fraser wrote that "[t]he expense of the entire building was very great; so great, indeed, that I am almost afraid to mention the whole amount" – which he then omitted. Construction was financed by a £1,300 loan from Queen Anne's Bounty and by 'dilapidations' charged to the estate of his predecessor, supplemented by Belli's own resources. The residence was completed in 1825, but Belli added outbuildings, including a coach house, in 1832-3. At that time, he reported the cost at £6,650, of which £5,720 had come from his own resources. This calculation apparently covered the entire project. Victoria County History of Essex, viii, 74-90: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol8/pp74-90. The property, now in private ownership, was offered for sale in 2023 with a guide price of £6.5 million.

^[241] The Cambrian, 10 November 1838.

^[242] Fraser gave the exact cost as £8,979, five shillings and eleven pence. "With the exception of some assistance on the part of a few, and a few only of his parishioners, he bore the entire expence [sic] of its costly restoration."

^[243] The account comes from Fraser, South Weald, unpaginated.

^[244] Victoria County History of Essex, viii, 74-90: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol8/pp74-90.

^[245] Best pointed out that C.A. Belli held the office of Registrar of two archdeaconry courts in Essex and Hertfordshire. It seems likely that these were sinecures. Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital", 138.

^[246] In 1849, Belli appointed Francis Rhodes, the former perpetual curate of the Brentwood chapelry, to Bishop Stortford. Rhodes fathered children with a fecundity that would have been condemned as feckless in a farm labourer. His fifth son emigrated to South Africa to seek his fortune, which he achieved, along with a political career that caused seismic disruption to both black and white power structures on the sub-continent. Thus, fortuitously, C.A. Belli formed an indirect link between two notorious imperial freebooters, Warren Hastings and Cecil Rhodes. 

^[247] Musical Standard, 1 October 1870, 164.

^[248] Parliamentary Papers, 1837, xli, 56; J.S. Bumpus, The Organists & Composers of S. Paul's Cathedral, (London 1891), 6.

^[249] The cathedrals of England and Wales functioned as miniature self-contained republics, each with its own culture. At St Paul's the attendants were called "virgirs".

^[250] Bumpus, The Organists & Composers of S. Paul's Cathedral, 6; Musical Standard, 6 November 1869, 227; W.M. Atkins in W.R. Matthews, ed., A History of St Paul's Cathedral… (2^nd ed., London, 1964, cf. 1^st ed. 1957, 252; P. Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred …  (Rochford, Essex, 1888), ii, 432. The story of Belli at the Duke of Wellington's funeral also appeared in Musical Standard, 4 December 1869, 275. Although critical of Belli, Sydney Smith thought "the Choir of St Paul's as good as any in England". In any case, he wrote in 1844, "[w]e are there to pray, and the singing is a very subordinate consideration." Bell, Sydney Smith, 168.

^[251] In 1854, the precentor of Durham cathedral was reported to visit members of the choir and beg them to attend rehearsals as a personal favour. As late as 1901, St Paul's was notified of the death of a chorister who had been recruited in 1844 but had been represented by a deputy since he had hit puberty in 1859. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 2, 374-5, 396-7; Atkins in Matthews, ed., A History of St Paul's Cathedral, 272-4.

^[252] London Gazette, 1 March 1867, 1465: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/23225/page/1465, also in Parliamentary Papers, 1867-8, xxiii, 710-11.

^[253] Cardiff Times, 6 November 1869. The Musical Standard's squibs against the "priceless but songless" precentor included the jest that the chapter of St Paul's suffered malnutrition because "its Belli is invariably absent from the body corporate", plus references to a "casus belli" [justification for conflict] and an obscure joke about bellicosity. (20 November, 252; 27 November, 264; 1 December 1869, 288. 

^[254] Musical Standard, 1 January 1870, 6.

^[255] A doggerel verse contrasted Canon Gregory's continuing campaign to smarten up the choir with Belli's equally persistent absence. "See Clericals enjoy their state / While lesser lights succumb to fate / And stand while Canon G. doth rate / The absent, and those coming late / But ne'er Precentor can we spy / Songless he work'd, unsung he'll die / The Rev C. A. B. – Belli!" Musical Standard, 1 October 1870, 164. Unhelpfully, these squibs do not give a consistent guide to the pronunciation of Belli's surname.

^[256] The Musical News (28 August 1891, 526) remembered him as "that singularly negligent Precentor Rev. Charles Almeric Belli, who occupied the post more than half a century, receiving tens of thousands of pounds for his services (!)". Outside the limited circles of the musical world, Belli's sinecure had ceased to matter. Historians should avoid might-have-beens, but the embattled British musical world was entitled to wonder what might have been achieved had St Paul's had a more energetic official. Mendelssohn visited the cathedral in 1829 and played Bach on the organ with such enthusiasm that the vergers eventually disconnected the wind supply so they could close the building for the night. A precentor who had given the choristers leadership and training might have joined forces to give London a vivid choral tradition.

^[257] Wrexham Advertiser, 10 March 1860.

^[258] G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England (London, 1962, various editions), 153-4. A visitation in the diocese of York in 1862 found that the vicar of Hull had been absent for 50 years, while the incumbent of Middlesbrough's principal church had never resided.

^[259] M.J. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain… (Hassocks, Sussex, 1971)

^[260] Robinson, Church Reform on Christian Principles, 12-13.

^[261] Lord Henley, A Plan of Church Reform (2nd ed., London, 1832), 5-6; G. Townsend, A Plan for Abolishing Pluralities and Non-Residence... (London and Durham, 1833), 40. On his title page Townsend described himself as 'Prebendary of Durham and Vicar of Northallerton': there was pluralism and pluralism.

^[262] Wade, ed., The Extraordinary Black Book, 55; Henley, A Plan of Church Reform, 5-6; Townsend, A Plan for Abolishing Pluralities and Non-Residence, 40; Bell, Sydney Smith, 178-9.

^[263] The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, 605 (1837). It is a measure of Peel as a reformer that he confronted such arguments. "Is the Church to be a provision for men of birth or learning? or is its main object the worship of God, according to the doctrines of the Reformed faith?", he challenged the ultra-Tory J.W. Croker in 1835. Peel agreed that the quality of worship was "promoted by inviting men of birth, and men of learning, into the Church", but not at the price of leaving "hundreds of thousands to become Dissenters, or more likely infidels, because you would not divert one farthing of ecclesiastical revenues from this deanery or that great sinecure". C.S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers.... (3 vols, London, 1899), ii, 284-5.

^[264] Of course, critics of the Church did not accept its pleas of poverty. "Spiritual destitution, if it exist in England, is starvation in the midst of plenty," Punch remarked in 1854 (xxvi, 11) impressively employing the subjunctive.

^[265] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 84. 131.

^[266] Hansard, 21 April 1834: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1834/apr/21/church-rates. For Gisborne, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/gisborne-thomas-1789-1852.

^[267] Townsend, A Plan for Abolishing Pluralities and Non-Residence, 58-66.

^[268] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 111.

^[269] To his close associate, Sir James Graham, 22 December 1842: Parker, Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers, ii, 551.

^[270] A parliamentary return in 1876 reported that, since 1840, 1,727 new churches had been erected, and 7,144 older buildings restored. Clark, The Making of Victorian England, 147-8, 168-9.

^[271] There are some indications that, by the 1860s, what might be called lower-level pluralism was becoming less profitable. The Pall Mall Gazette, no friend of clerical abuses, noted that stipends for curates of £130 and £150 were "daily growing more common, even when the livings are not worth more themselves". Along with other pressures for expenditure – village schools with purpose-built premises were becoming the norm from the 1850s – holding a second parish worth £300-£400 was probably becoming less attractive. This may explain why Moore gave up Latchingdon and Belli divested himself of Paglesham around 1860. However, it was not always the absentee employers who bankrolled the curates: "it might reasonably be expected that wealthy rectors would do their curates that justice when they can so well afford, and which their poorer brethren do without affording it. But it seems always most difficult to procure the recognition of other men's needs from those who have no needs of their own." Pall Mall Gazette, n.d., quoted Brecon County Times, 28 July 1866. In 1854, Punch quoted from an advertisement that had recently appeared in a Church newspaper. A clergyman resident in Bath sought a curate to serve a country parish of 700 people. The successful applicant had to be "a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge … of sound Evangelical opinions, with some experience and a good voice". Duties included two Sunday services, home visits and supervision of the village school. "A knowledge of Church Music, and a willingness to impart it to a Choir, already partially instructed, very desirable." The stipend was "£90 a year, with a very small cottage, partly furnished … but fit only for a single man, or one without a family." Punch suggested that such a curate should wear a livery to demonstrate that "he stands in the relation of a menial servant to his master". Punch, xxvii (1854), 228.

^[272] A. Trollope, Framley Parsonage (1860), ch. xv.

^[273] Spectator, 15 January 1853, 12.

^[274] The 1838 act limited the number of parishes that could be held to two, with a joint value of less than £1,000 and neither to have a population of more than 3,000. The dispensation required from the Archbishop of Canterbury was now intended to be a serious control. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 136-7. For discussion of its implications, see the debate on https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1838/may/04/pluralities. Bishop Kaye of Lincoln optimistically summed up the aim of the legislation: "instead of passing at once from the previous lax system to a total abolition of pluralities, it was deemed a safer course to try what would be the effect of limiting them to the distance of ten miles. That distance was chosen because the pluralist would be able to visit, from time to time, without inconvenience, the benefice on which he did not reside: and thus partially to fulfil the personal obligation which he contracted at the time of his institution."  Works of John Kaye, vii, 222 (1840). Twenty years later, incumbents were expected to be more closely involved in their parishes, and Kaye's occasionally commuting parson would become unacceptable. Nine years later, a defender of the 1838 Act began boldly by proclaiming it as a victory over pluralism but quickly acknowledged its shortcomings: the legislation had "utterly terminated this state of things. It could not deprive the existing holders, but it provided that for the future no person should hold two livings if they were more than ten miles apart, or if they were, unitedly, of greater value than £1,000 per annum. I say not that this is all that could be desired". British Magazine, xxxi (1847), 714.

^[275] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 137n; Hansard, 20 February 1850: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1850/feb/20/benefices-in-plurality-bill#S3V0108P0_18500220_HOC_50.

^[276] Punch, 22 January 1853, quoting Morning Post, n.d.

^[277] Hansard 21 June 1853: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1853-06-21/debates/a965fbc7-5df9-415e-b2db-17ff1bd3f019/EpiscopalAndCapitularProperty.

^[278] Parish and cathedral duties were not always effectively combined. Richard Shutte was a minor canon of St Paul's. In 1853, he was presented to the rectory of High Halden in Kent, which was worth £460 a year. As the patron who had appointed him was the Archbishop of Canterbury, it might have been expected that Shutte would do his best to justify his selection. However, in the late summer of 1854 he failed to appear for the weekly service on four Sundays out of five, without providing a substitute. It was a bad year for cholera which was prevalent in the neighbourhood, and some funerals in the village had been conducted without a clergyman to read the burial service. Eventually, in mid-September, the congregation improvised their own service "to offer praise and thanksgiving for all past mercies", and appeal for divine protection against infection. The proceedings began with a reading from Jeremiah, chapter 23, almost certainly the opening verses, in which God declared: "Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!" and tells the faithless pastors: "Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done." Punch, xxvii, 152; Pembrokeshire Herald, 6 October 1861. Such spontaneous activity by one of its own congregations was of course very dangerous for the Church of England and its insistence upon the sacerdotal role of its clergy. Ironically, Shutte was the editor of a volume called Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship. He also attempted to write a biography of Bishop Phillpotts, who blocked his project.

^[279] Thomas Robinson resigned his Cambridge Chair in 1854, but subsequently became chaplain to the Archbishop of York. Episcopal chaplaincies were often honorific. Therfield had a Nonconformist chapel, and there was a resident Independent minister. Punch, xxvii (1854), 226 found Robinson's combination of jobs amusing.

^[280] London Gazette, 29 September 1846, 3432-4. George Pretyman resisted a similar concession, insisting that his preferment "was given me for the express purpose of benefitting my family". Best, "The Road to Hiram's Hospital", 143. In 1863, Alfred Blomfield insisted that the Ecclesiastical Commission had "almost entirely removed the crying evils of pluralities and non-residence" (italics added). A. Blomfield, A Memoir of Charles James Blomfield… (2^nd ed., London, 1864. Cf. 1^st ed. 1863), 172.

^[281] (E.J. Smith), Two Letters to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury on the … Ecclesiastical Commission (3rd ed., L 1863, cf. 1st ed. 1863), 14.

^[282] Punch, xli, 31 August 1861, 91. Real-life examples of such advertisements are given in Ged Martin, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931", esp. endnote 3:

https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons.

^[283] K.T. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation… (Oxford, 1998), 597. The account of the growth of government involvement in education in E.L. Woodward, The Age of Reform… (2^nd ed., Oxford, 1961, cf. 1^st ed. 1938), 48-82 remains useful.

^[284] The statistics are reproduced on https://education-uk.org/documents/newcastle1861/newcastle1.pdf.

^[285] In 1843, Nonconformists had vigorously opposed, and successfully blocked, Sir James Graham's scheme for factory schools because Peel's ministry intended to place them under Anglican control. This helps to explain why a quarter of a century passed before State education returned to the political agenda.

^[286] Morning Star, n.d., quoted Wrexham Advertiser, 2 July 1859.

^[287] The (head)master of the cathedral school at Rochester, Robert Whiston, himself a clergyman, was dismissed after attacking the diversion of endowment income originally intended to support the pupils of the school. Punch playfully upbraided him: "Ah! why did you publish Cathedral disclosures, / Of a good Dean and Chapter such painful exposures, / That they 've everywhere roused very great indignation / Against those holy gentry for gross malversation! / Such grounds 'tis no wonder that you were dismissed on, / Wicked Bob Whiston." It imagined the reaction of the cathedral clergy. "With changed value of money, there's nothing so funny / In the charge of a Canon being duly increased; / But it raises one's choler, to be told that a scholar / Ought to have his allowance enlarged like a priest." Whiston had been wrong to criticise them. "Had you praised our discerning, unselfishness, learning, / Our strong sense of justice, by courtesy ruled, / Laid it on hard and hot, sir, for all that we're not, sir / You'd never have been as you now are, unschooled." Punch gave the dismissed pedagogue its own advice:  "Don't you know – though the maxim is not in the Bible – / That the greater the truth is, the greater the libel?" Punch, xxii (1852), 156, 165. Whiston was ultimately victorious and reinstated. Punch celebrated his victory with designs for a series of stained-glass windows, culminating in "Ye Byschop restoryth Mastere Whystonn against ye Grayne" and "Ye Dene and Chaptere eating Humbil Pye". The clerical figures are not svelte. Punch, xxiv, 2 January 1853, 42-3.

^[288] Spectator, 15 January 1853, 56. Even bishops who did not abuse their patronage could be treated as exceptions that proved the rule. Thus a tribute on the death of Bishop Kaye of Lincoln in 1853 stated that "in the distribution of his patronage, so free from nepotism and favouritism, he set an example which his right reverend brethren will do well to follow". North Wales Chronicle, 25 February 1853.

^[289] Bowen, The Idea of the Victorian Church, 96. In 1854, Punch offered a satirical prediction of the proceedings in the Convocation of Canterbury, which was about to hold its first debate since 1717. Phillpotts was portrayed as making "a protest against anybody who differed from himself in opinion upon this or any other subject being allowed to vote or speak, and suggested that such person should be excommunicated". Punch, xxvii (1854), 203. He had in fact announced that he would not take Communion with Sumner after the Archbishop of Canterbury differed with him on a doctrinal and disciplinary case. Sydney Smith regarded Phillpotts as proof that Anglican bishops stood in the Apostolic succession, and traced his specific descent to Judas Iscariot.

^[290] The parish covered 85 square miles. Trollope used the name Stanhope for a non-resident canon in Barchester Towers. As might be expected of a defender of the Peterloo Massacre, Phillpotts was also a stern magistrate. Years later an aged parishioner recalled that the rector had sent two of his daughters to heaven and two of his sons to prison.

^[291] Western Mail, 20 September 1869.

^[292] Trial of John Ambrose Williams… (2nd ed., Durham, 1823), 13; Edinburgh Review, November 1822, 351.

^[293] Hansard, 10 May 1836: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1836/may/10/benefices-and-pluralities#S3V0033P0_18360510_HOL_32.

^[294] R.N. Shutte, The Life, Times, and Writings of ... Henry Phillpotts…, i, (London, 1863), 325.

^[295] Although there was occasional criticism of his use of patronage, Phillpotts seems to have avoided incurring censure for making blatantly inappropriate appointments. The Saturday Review, no kind critic, commented at his death: "Bishop Phillpotts has been accused of nepotism, but he fairly met the charge, and with tolerable, if not complete, success. In fact, no charge was ever made against him that he did not meet; and if he provided for his own, it is undeniable that he provided for many obscure curates and for those whose claims upon his patronage were not those either of high birth or personal connexion." (Saturday Review, xxviii, 25 September 1869, 410).

^[296] Lord Holland thought Howley acted "a very cowardly or a very disingenuous part" during the attack on the orthodoxy of Professor Hampden at Oxford in 1836. Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries, 343.

^[297] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 104.

^[298] Hansard, 29 July 1831: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1831/jul/29/augmentation-of-small-livings; Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries, 19-20.

^[299] Hansard, 10 March 1836: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1836/mar/10/church-reform-report-of-the-commissioners.

^[300] Hansard, 4 May 1838: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1838/may/04/pluralities. The radical MP Benjamin Hawes pointed out that "if curates could perform the duties of a church for a small salary, there was no force in the argument that pluralities were necessary for the incumbents".

^[301] Trollope, Autobiography, ch. i.

^[302] There is an informed and sympathetic discussion in Brose, Church and Parliament, 67-97.

^[303] Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries, 31 (August 1831).  This seems to be a midpoint example of the evolving meaning of 'chap' as a colloquial term. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes an 1818 source: "it usually designates a person of whom a contemptuous opinion is entertained". "Irish bishopric" here refers, of course, to the Protestant Church. The vacant see was Derry.

^[304] The account in Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries, 157 suggests that Kenyon quoted some scurrilous anticlerical verse which was omitted from the official report.

^[305] Little Chesterford was the location of one of the best anecdotes of a nineteenth-century clergyman. On arriving at the church one Sunday, Blomfield found that he had forgotten to bring the written text of his sermon with him. For the first and only time in his life, he delivered an extempore address from the pulpit, taking as his text: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' As the congregation left the church, he asked one of them what he had thought of the sermon. The parishioner replied that he had liked it well enough, but added "I can't say that I agree with you; I think there be a God". Blomfield, A Memoir of Charles James Blomfield, 40.

^[306] Advowsons, the right to appoint the incumbent of a parish, were openly traded. The subject is discussed in Ged Martin, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931":

https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons.

^[307] A sympathetic article in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (xciii, 1863, 740) noted that Bishopsgate was worth £2,000 and the Chesterfords £427. Perhaps there is a clue to Blomfield's motivation here.

^[308] Hansard, 16 March 1832: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1832/mar/16/pluralities-bill.

^[309] W. Cobbett, Cobbett's Legacy to Parsons… (London, 1835), 7.

^[310] The Duke of Wellington had an issue of a different kind with Blomfield about patronage. Among his many military appointments, the Duke was Constable of the Tower of London, with the right to appoint a chaplain. Under pressure from the bishop, he had appointed Blomfield's nominee but, by 1833, wanted the place vacated. "I have a nephew in the Church … one of the finest, best behaved young men that exists. He is an admirable scholar, and calculated to be a distinguished man in any profession." Wellington had apparently signalled that it was time for the Bishop of London to use his extensive patronage to advance his own client and thereby open the Tower chaplaincy to such a promising young man, "[b]ut his Lordship has never thought it expedient to prefer this gentleman and to leave at my disposal the chaplaincy of the Tower that I might give it to my nephew." Sarcastically, he assured Bishop Phillpotts that there was "no man therefore better qualified than I am to defend the bench of bishops from any imputation that may be cast upon them of political bias in the disposal of their patronage". Shortly after Peel formed his first ministry, Wellington reiterated his complaint direct to Lord Lyndhurst who, as Lord Chancellor, dispensed the government's Church patronage, complaining that Blomfield "has never thought since of promoting that gentleman and of leaving the chaplaincy at my disposal". Lyndhurst was horrified that the nation's hero should be treated in such a discourteous manner, and assured the Duke that the young man "shall have the first living at my disposal which shall fall vacant and that shall be considered worthy of his acceptance". Unfortunately, all that became available before the ministry fell was a parish in North Wales, worth about £300 a year, which the intended recipient declined on the principled ground that he could not speak Welsh. Meanwhile, the Duke had taken his revenge. Blomfield wished to moor a vessel at the Tower for use as a floating church to provide services for mariners in the Port of London. Wellington vetoed the scheme, explaining that the wharf was used to transport gunpowder and other stores. Hence for security reasons, it was impossible "to give permission to seamen and others to resort to the wharf for the purpose or under the pretence on [sic, ? for 'of'] going on board a vessel to attend divine service." A lack of enthusiasm for Blomfield's innovations may be detected. J. Brooke and J. Gandy, eds, The Prime Ministers Papers: Wellington …. i, (London, 1975), 194-5 (10 April 1833), 575 (24 June 1834); R.J. Olney and J. Melvin, eds, The Prime Ministers Papers: Wellington…, ii (London, 1986), 346-7 (15 January, 27 April 1835). The episode is an illustration of the ways in which patronage issues could affect working relationships. In 1836, Wellington provided for his promising nephew by making him the incumbent at Stratfield Saye, parish church of the Duke's country estate. He was Gerald Valerian Wellesley, later Dean of Windsor and a trusted advisor to Queen Victoria in her widowhood.

^[311] D.A. Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge (Cambridge, 1955), 153-4, 166-7.

^[312] His successor, T.W. Allies, viewed the parish in a less favourable light.

^[313] Palin, Stifford and its Neighbourhood, 164, quoting from James Blomfield's History of Orsett, which I have been unable to consult.

^[314] Allies had been appointed chaplain to Bishop Blomfield in 1840, but relations between them quickly became frosty. Allies was a product of the Oxford Movement, and aroused his employer's antagonism by refusing to condemn the controversial Tract XC. The breach between them was all the more awkward since Allies had been appointed to examine intending ordinands, and was responsible for checking the soundness of their theological views. He suspected Blomfield of using his patronage not merely to get rid of an embarrassing junior colleague, but to ensure that he was permanently neutralised. "Being sent to Launton was a disgrace which I had incurred for following bona fide my principles, and not being Lambethised. It seemed to destroy my prospects, remove me out of the way of distinction, from friends and connections, and the power of influencing others, especially the young. The people were singularly rude, and not, alas! singularly, but exceedingly immoral and irreligious. I was burning to have a large and influential congregation.... I longed to carry out my Puseyism on a large field…. Launton was the most thorough damper which I could have received. Dr Blomfield intended it for such. It was his mode of punishing me for having entrapped him into the discredit of having a Puseyite prononcé for his examining chaplain." T.W. Allies, A Life's Decision (2nd ed., London, 1894, cf. 1st ed. 1880), 10-11. Allies escaped in 1850 by joining the Church of Rome.

^[315] Blomfield, A Memoir of Charles James Blomfield, 263. Alfred Blomfield was unduly modest in describing himself as editor of the volume, much of which he wrote. He was later Suffragan Bishop of Colchester.

^[316] Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (xciii, 1863), 749. I have not traced appointments of his two clerical sons-in-law.

^[317] Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, i, 122.

^[318] Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 452, quoting C. Dewey, The Passing of Barchester.

^[319] Bell, Sydney Smith, 166-8. Wyndham Smith was compelled to leave Trinity, the largest and most dynamic college in Cambridge, and retreat to Gonville and Caius. This was hardly the most severe punishment for student misconduct.

^[320] The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, 608.

^[321] These examples are extracted from the 1870 edition of Crockford's Clerical Directory, with biographical information (including confirmation of parentage) from Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses and Foster's Alumni Oxonienses; White's Directory of Essex (1848), 396. 

^[322] The manipulation of influence operated through other channels. In 1863, Bishop Thirlwall sought the help of Lord Houghton, his friend from Cambridge days, to secure a government job for his nephew. The indirect approach was designed to acquit Thirlwall of responsibility for queue-jumping. W.T. Gibson, "'Unreasonable and Unbecoming': Self-Recommendation and Place-Seeking in the Church of England, 1700-1900", Albion, xxvii (1995), 43-63, esp. 58.

^[323] George Butt MP in Hansard, 6 July 1853:  https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1853/jul/06/simony-law-amendment-bill.

^[324] Punch, xxvii, 1854, 112.

^[325] Reports in various Welsh newspapers in September 1854, obviously syndicated. There had been earlier press comment in 1849, when Hampden ordained his wife's brother, who was aged sixty, and appointed him to a parish in his patronage. "His Lordship would have all his family industrious," Punch remarked (xvi, 17 February 1849, 74); "he evidently seems to think that a member of it cannot be too old to get a living." But Coddington, Edward Lovell's prize, was only worth £218 a year (plus a parsonage).

^[326] The Examiner, a weekly newspaper, carried a well-informed article on the Cheese affair, 2 March 1861, 130. It was reprinted in The Inquirer (Perth, Western Australia), 5 June 1861, in a clearer typeface.

^[327] Saturday Review, 23 February 1861, 189. M.M. Bevington, The Saturday Review… (New York, 1966), 77-97 traces the publication's cautious approach to religious issues. It had a High Church flavour. Its outspoken comments on Bishop Wigram probably came from the pen of the Reverend William Scott, a close associate of the review's Tractarian founder, A.J. Beresford Hope.

^[328] The Times leader of 26 February 1861 was widely reprinted in Australia, e.g. South Australian Advertiser, 17 April, Launceston Examiner, 20 April, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 1861. The story made a considerable impact.

^[329] One of the most notable clerical careers to be so founded was that of Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1903 to 1928, who had served an earlier Primate, Archibald Campbell Tait, as personal chaplain and won the hand of his daughter. Davidson learned from the Cheese affair and played the long game. By declining offers of valuable benefices, he avoided the taint of nepotism and gained a reputation for loyalty. More important, as Tait's right-hand, he acquired an invaluable understanding of the inner workings of the Church of England. A later Primate, Frederick Temple, lost control of the Lambeth Palace machine, such as it was. At Temple's death in 1902, Davidson was the obvious candidate to impose order.

^[330] In his review of Trollope's light-hearted book on the English clergy, Contemporary Review, ii (1866), 245.

^[331] In a spirit of scoffing fairness, the Saturday Review observed that bishops were "often accused wrongfully and unjustly of nepotism": the appointment of someone related to them might be a simple recognition of merit. "The chances are that a bishop's son, or son's son, a bishop's nephew, or a bishop's son-in-law, or a bishop's wife's brother, or nephew, or cousin, or a bishop's wife's brother's son, nephew, or cousin as aforesaid, even to the furthest degrees of consanguinity or affinity, should be neither much better nor much worse than the usual average run of clergymen." Saturday Review, 23 February 1861, 189.

^[332] The controversy broke before the 1861 census, and journalists assumed the population of Darlington was about 15,000.

^[333] Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses called him Thomas Webb Minton. In Crockford's, he was Thomas William Minton. There seems no doubt that this is the same person.

^[334] Saturday Review, 23 February, 189 and Examiner, 2 March 1861, 130 both quoted from the reply of Bishop Villiers to the Darlington petitioners.

^[335] In 1853, Punch (xxiv, 194) commented unfavourably on accounts submitted by a previous Bishop of Durham to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.  These included £317 for the wages of four gamekeepers on the Auckland and Weardale estates, £292 to pay 'watchers', who protected the birds from poachers, £491 for the maintenance of gardens and lawns at Auckland Castle – and £15 for the castle chapel.

^[336] Saturday Review, 23 February 1861, 189.

^[337] Punch, xl, 23 March 1861, 125.

^[338] Punch, xl, 2 March, 89; 9 March 1861.

^[339] Punch, xl, 9 March 1861.

^[340] Punch, xl, 2 March 1861, 89. It may also be noted that Punch rhymed 'Villiers' with 'pillars', confirming that the two-syllable pronunciation of the bishop's surname was the correct one.

^[341] Saturday Review, 16 March 1861.

^[342] Barchester Towers was published in 1857: the bedroom scenes are from chs xxvi and xxxiii. A "metaphorical mitre" because Anglican bishops rarely sported such headwear before the twentieth century.

^[343] There were four daughters and two sons. Only one of the boys followed their father into the Church. In 1861, the younger Henry Montagu Villiers was aged 23 and working as a curate at Bishopwearmouth (i.e. Sunderland), just as The Times had insisted Cheese should have done. In 1862, the Archbishop of Canterbury promoted him to a rectory in Kent worth £1,382 a year, plus residence. He had married a daughter of Lord John Russell in April 1861. Would the ecclesiastical elite have been as generous to a bereft Cheese as it was to an orphaned aristocratic Villiers?

^[344] Preaching in memory of Bishop Villiers, his successor at St George's, Bloomsbury, the Reverend Emilius Bayley, revealed that "it would appear, from what had been discovered since that event, that for five or six years a fatal disease had been upon him, which at any moment during those past years might have carried him away". Aberdare Times, 24 August 1861.

^[345] Cardiff Guardian, 27 July; Pembrokeshire Herald, 16 August 1861.            

^[346] Saturday Review, 17 August 1861, 165.

^[347] A word may be appropriate about the other characters in the Haughton-le-Skerne drama. On his first appearance in his new parish, Edward Cheese made a fervent statement expressing his wish to be a friend to his parishioners. He also attempted damage limitation. A district church two miles away, at the hamlet of Sadberge, had been formally separated from the parish of Haughton-le-Skerne in 1856, but no arrangements had been for its endowment. In consequence, the Oxford-based absentee rector had continued to receive the tithe rents. Cheese now handed these over to Sadberge, reducing his income by over £300 – although it would be some years before Crockford's Clerical Directory caught up with the change. Perhaps an awareness that something would have to be done to fund the chapelry had influenced Villiers in his refusal to divert Haughton-le-Skerne cash to Darlington: if so, this merely points up the bishop's appalling sense of public relations in failing to mention the point. Even so, the Reverend and Mrs Cheese were still sufficiently prosperous to undertake a continental tour in 1864, which produced a report (happily unfounded) that they had been drowned in Lake Geneva. In 1882, Cheese would be the plaintiff in an extraordinary tithe case. Legislation for the commutation of tithes in 1836 had transferred responsibility for paying tithe rents from occupiers to landlords. However, a dispute arose at Haughton-le-Skerne over the ownership of some land, which resulted in the seizure of goods belonging to a wholly innocent tenant farmer.  I have not established the details, but the case appears to illustrate how even a well-intentioned clergyman – as we may concede that Cheese was – found himself trapped in an archaic and exploitative system. Cheese died in 1886. Of Thomas Minton, there is little to report. The 1865 edition of Crockford's Clerical Directory reported that his income had been raised from £190 to £300 a year: perhaps the new bishop had sacked a gamekeeper. He retired that year and died in Darlington in 1870. It is not known if he ever holidayed in Switzerland. Aberdare Times, 6 April; Illustrated Usk Observer, 29 June 1861; Monmouthshire Merlin, 2 July 1864; Cardigan Observer, 27 May 1882.

^[348] A.J. Pearman, Rochester… (London, 1897), 319. A gig was a light carriage. Wigram made several false moves early in his episcopacy. He expressed disapproval of clergymen playing cricket, and suspended a semi-retired cleric because he was engaged in farming, an utterly bizarre charge that would have disqualified many reverend gentlemen from exercising their functions. At a dinner of Essex agriculturalists, revellers refused to drink their bishop's health, and it was sarcastically suggested that some revision was required in the Ten Commandments. Wigram's brief career as a bishop merits further exploration.

^[349] Essex Review, ix (1900), 159.

^[350] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/wigram-robert-i-1744-1830. Another brother, George Vicesimus Wigram, became a leading member of the Plymouth Brethren and married an aunt of Charles Stewart Parnell. Victorian networks could be oddly interconnected.

^[351] It is worth pausing a moment to reflect on Sir James Wigram's pension. This was not an earned retirement allowance paid by a contributory funded scheme, but a grant from the Treasury (i.e. the taxpayer). The Bank of England's inflation calculator estimates £3,500 in 1850 to be the equivalent in 2026 (rounded) of £412,550, about three times the pensions granted to modern-day UK Supreme Court judges, and considerably more than former MPs can draw at the age of 65. Bishop Wigram's roots were in a world of comfortable entitlement.

^[352] Aberdare Times, 5 November 1864.

^[353] Contemporary reference works seemed shy about specifying the rectorial tithe, but it was stated in H. Grove, ed., Alienated Tithes… (London, 1896), 172. The Neave family had also done well out of compensation payments for the abolition of slavery: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/25073. The vicar's income was stated in the 1865 edition of Crockford's. Some areas of the parish were covered by the ancient exemption of a 'modus', which limited their tithe obligation to token sums between one shilling and £1. These arrangements further restricted the vicar's income. Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 538.

^[354] White's Directory of Essex (1863 ed.), 392.

^[355] Brose, Church and Parliament, 78.

^[356] Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 614-17.

^[357] Spectator, 24 April 1875, 10, quoting Daily News. Arthur Orton, originally a butcher from Wapping, emerged from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales claiming to be the lost baronet Sir Roger Tichborne. Orton almost certainly underestimated the difficulties of carrying off his unlikely impersonation, and he was contemptuously crushed by the legal system. Support for his pretensions to wealth and title became an outlet for a wide range of paranoid resentments. In 1875, the Tichbornites of Prittlewell and the surrounding area submitted a petition to Parliament in which they impugned the integrity of the judges who had tried the Claimant and, for good measure, called for the impeachment of the Speaker of the House of Commons for allegedly suppressing discussion of the issue. The defamatory vehemence of their petition raised the issue of the limits of free speech. MPs were divided over whether they should even accord cognisance to the document: eventually, they formally received the opinions of the discontented of Prittlewell and then equally firmly dismissed them. It is possible that the tone of the petition is evidence of resentment against the pretensions of the rentier class of Southend settlers, but Michael Roe, the historian of the Tichborne Cause, believes that its language reflected a more general belief among the Claimant's supporters that Orton was the victim of a corrupt system. M. Roe, Kenealy and the Tichborne Cause … (Melbourne, 1974), 82-3.

^[358] Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 541-3, 595-9, 603n. Some of the episodes recounted by Benton had probably grown in the telling.

^[359] Proverbs, xi:29; Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 603n.

^[360] https://www.navanhistory.ie/gerrardstown/.

^[361] Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 603-6.

^[362] Aberdare Times, 5 November 1864, and I suspect widely published.

^[363] White's Directory of Essex (1863 ed.), 391-3.

^[364] Benton, The History of Rochford Hundred, ii, 536, 538, 603.

^[365] The parish was further divided in 1877. By 1887, the income of the vicar of Prittlewell was £295 a year, but this may be explained by the decline in tithe rent charges.

^[366] T. Huband Gregg left his Birmingham parish in protest against the decision by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the 1877 Folkestone ritual case, which condemned some disputed practices but with insufficient fervour to placate extreme Evangelicals. Gregg travelled to New York where he was consecrated by a bishop of a North American breakway group, the Reformed Episcopal Church. He was invited to Southend, where a nucleus of a congregation was already in existence. The Church of England transferred Essex to the new diocese of St Albans in 1877, and Gregg cheekily called himself Bishop of Verulam, the older name for the cathedral city. For a time around 1882, there was a breach between Gregg and his American allies, which seems later to have been healed. The causal role of Wigram's ritualistic practices at Prittlewell is mentioned by R. Fenwick, "The Free Church of England...." (Lampeter, 1995, typescript thesis), 156. A second local congregation was established in Prittlewell village where, in 1891, Gregg was accused of having seduced a teenage girl a few years earlier. He became mentally ill and was confined to an asylum, and there was dissension within the group in 1892. Nonetheless, the Southend church continued. A visiting member of the sect described it in 1900 as "the largest and best of our English churches", capable of holding 600 people. Evangelical Episcopalian (Chicago), xii (1900), 186-7.

^[367] In addition to rebuilding the vicarage and the schools, Spencer Wigram became chairman of the first school board, took the lead in abolishing the annual village fair (a social control measure allegedly directed against immorality) and organised the restoration of the parish church. W. Pollitt, A History of Prittlewell (Southend-on-Sea, 1945), 31-2.

^[368] R. Mullet with J. Munson, eds, The Penguin Companion to Trollope (London, 1996), 92-3; Hall, Trollope: a Biography, 292-6.

^[369] A. Trollope, An Autobiography (1882, many editions), ch, xi.

^[370] In ch. v of An Autobiography.

^[371] Trollope, An Autobiography, ch. xi. One reason for Alford's anger was perhaps that he knew Trollope was right, if for the wrong reasons. As discussed above, three years later, he complained about the obstacles he encountered from the Canterbury chapter. Perhaps the key criticism of Trollope's flippancy about deans is that he was slightly out of date. Randall Davidson would later write that, at the time of Tait's appointment to Carlisle in 1849, "the position of a Dean was regarded as one of dignified retirement rather than of active usefulness". Ideas were changing. Davidson and Benham, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, i, 149. In Is He Popenjoy? (1878), another Trollope Dean beat up a nobleman for calling his daughter a whore. The episode is enjoyable but not very plausible.

^[372] A. Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1875), ch. xvi. In Dr Wortle's School (1881), Trollope says of an unnamed bishop: "To do the best he could for himself and his family – and also to do his duty – was the line of conduct which he pursued." (ch. xi). By then, bishops seem to have been becoming more cautious about favouring family members.

^[373] A. Trollope, Clergymen of the Church of England (London, 1866), 28-30.

^[374] Contemporary Review, ii (1866), 245.

^[375] The hostile analysis was issued by opponents of attempts supported by Tait to limit private patronage. The campaign is discussed in https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons. The document was summarised in Tinsley's Magazine, xvii (1875), 152-3 and discussed by Spectator, 17 July 1875, 3.

^[376] The Archbishop of Canterbury was patron of 191 livings. For one-seventh to fall vacant in six years would suggest an average tenure of 42 years in each parish.

^[377] "Livings given to relatives and connections: St. Martin's, Canterbury, £320, A. B. Strettell, married Mrs Tait's cousin; Appledore, £330, M. D. French, [believed to be] Mrs Tait's nephew; Boughton, £420, H. M. Spooner, Mrs Tait's nephew; Monk's Eligh, £590, J. Connell, Dr Tait's cousin; Staple, £655, R. French Blake, [believed to be] Mrs Tait's nephew; Kennington, £790, E. H. Fisher, married Dr Tait's cousin; Minster, £820, A. H. Sitwell, nephew of Mrs Tait's sister; Hadleigh, £1,345, Edward Spooner, Mrs Tait's brother. Livings given to chaplains and private friends: Archdeaconry of Canterbury, £1,000, Dr Parry, chaplain; Addington, £307, E. W. Knollys, chaplain's son; Bishopsbourne, £700, C. W. Sandford, chaplain; Chiddingstone, £879, E. H. Lee, secretary's brother; Margate, £540, W. H. Benham; Saltwood, £784, W.F.E. Knollys, chaplain; Walmer, £400, Alexander Ewing, Scotch friend; Wittersham, £616, S.H. Parkes, private friend."

^[378] Dean Alford (Contemporary Review, ii, 246) had insisted in 1866 that, by law, curates had to be paid on a scale of £80-£150 a year. Some allowance must be made for partisan polemic in the criticism of Tait, e.g. William Legg, an Oxford graduate in his early thirties, was appointed rector of Hawkinge in 1872. The tithe rent, quoted here, was a miserly £138 a year, but Crockford's (1880 edition) recorded the net income at £314. Even so, this was hardly a glittering prize, and only one of the favoured sixteen relatives and connections was expected to be satisfied with a similar income.

^[379] Hansard, 7 June 1875: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1875/jun/07/third-reading-bill-passed.

^[380] Tinsley's Magazine, xvii (1875), 153.

^[381] Richard Pretyman had resided at Middleton Stoney, described by the Post Office Directory in 1854 as a "remarkably pretty village". There were three village schools, one of which took local girls as boarders and trained them for domestic service. These were financially supported by the Countess of Jersey, whose husband was lord of the manor (and resident squire). Pretyman had held the living since 1819. His other benefice was in Northamptonshire, and he also held two appointments at Lincoln Cathedral.

^[382] J.B. Atlay, The Life of the Right Reverend Ernest Roland Wilberforce ... (London, 1912), 16.

^[383] Hall, ed., The Letters of Anthony Trollope, i, 342 (24 June 1866).

^[384] Trollope, Clergymen of the Church of England, 29-30.

^[385] This section summarises Ged Martin, "Doncaster Races and the downfall of a Victorian clerical pluralist": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/439-doncaster-races-pluralist.

^[386] Bishop Wordsworth's concerns are discussed in Ged Martin, "The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/438-the-uses-and-abuses-of-advowsons.

^[387] Saturday Review, vi, 18 September 1858, 279; xi, 23 February 1861, 169.

^[388] Carew Anthony St John Mildmay resigned Burnham in 1857, Robert Moore gave up Latchingdon in 1859 and C.A. Belli surrendered Paglesham in 1860. Burnham and Paglesham may have been become assets of declining net worth.

^[389] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 128.

^[390] https://www.churchofengland.org/about/governance/national-church-institutions/church-commissioners-england/who-we-are/church-commissioners-links-african-chattel-enslavement.

^[391] Catholic Herald, 14 January 2023.

^[392] Evans, The Contentious Tithe, 166-8; Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 142.

^[393] The Legacies of British Slavery database at University College, London (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/) identifies around 1,600 individuals as 'Reverend' or 'Rev.' This number almost certainly includes some duplication, while the names of schoolmasters are sometimes included as part of biographical detail. Some nominal beneficiaries of related transactions were merely acting as trustees, e.g. the Reverend Hastings Robinson of Great Warley in Essex, quoted above as a Church reformer. The mother of Samuel Hinds, Bishop of Norwich, received State compensation for the freeing of her slaves in Barbados.

^[394] Spectator, 31 August 1833, 804. "Posterity will scarcely believe when the disgraceful statement shall appear in the history of the British clergy, as appear it most certainly will, that in the nineteenth century, at a period when the agricultural interest generally, and more especially the agricultural labourer, was enduring the utmost privations, a Christian pastor, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England could exist, who would make a demand of 4d in the pound upon the wages of labour 'for tithe-offerings, oblations, and obventions'." Cambrian, 7 September 1833. But posterity, in the form of complaisant historians, has generally passed over such incidents. Lundy had succeeded his father as rector (and patron) and also held a perpetual curacy nearby. One radical claimed that canon lawyers argued that clergy were entitled to claim tithe from "profits made by courtezans in the exercise of their profession". Monmouthshire Merlin, 28 December 1833.

^[395] "Lundy of Lockington! / A Rector true, if e'er there was one; / Who, for sake of the Lundies of coming ages, / Gripest the tenths of labourers' wages." Spectator, 7 September 1833, 831. (Lundy was a vicar.)

^[396] Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1,146-58. It will be apparent that tithes were mainly an issue (and a valuable resource) in country districts. The funding of clergy in urban areas merits further examination. Some small towns, e.g. Bocking in Essex and Hadleigh in Suffolk, had large parochial hinterlands which yielded their incumbents substantial tithe income. In the growing cities, incumbents of new churches were often supported by pew rents, a system that reinforced a two-tier class division into congregations. The financing of ancient churches in London certainly requires explanation: an angry public meeting in the parish of St Olave, Hart Street in 1825 revealed some curious arrangements: The Times, 12 August 1825.. Disputes over church rates flared after 1837, when ecclesiastical lawyers discovered an obscure case that allowed a minority within a single parish, even a single churchwarden, the power to ignore the majority and impose a church rate.

^[397] The 1774 Quebec Act allowed the Catholic Church to collect tithes in the province or Lower Canada, but tithes from Protestants were applied to their own clergy. Gladstone, in his High Tory youth, was aware of this exemption. However, it did not apply to Dissenters in England or to Catholics in Ireland. W.E. Gladstone, The State in its Relations with the Church (London, 1839), 260.

^[398] The Bishop of Sodor and Man sits in the Legislative Council of the Isle of Man by analogy with the bishops in the House of Lords, but the Isle of Man is not a sovereign state. Iran's Guardian Council vets all legislation to ensure that it conforms to Islamic principles. Six of the twelve members are clerics nominated by the Supreme Leader.

^[399] C. Garbett, The Claims of the Church of England (London, 1947), 191.

^[400] A. Robinson, " Porteus, Beilby (1731–1809)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, makes clear that Porteus supported the campaign against the slave trade, and argued for the amelioration of conditions on the plantations, but did not seek the abolition of slavery.

^[401] Capital punishment, divorce, and homosexuality might be regarded as the 'usual suspect' issues cited as examples of reforms that owed little to the support of the Church of England and sometimes had to contend with its opposition. I would add a now forgotten cruelty, the 'crime' of attempted suicide: people who had tried to take their own lives who were subjected to the ordeal of appearing in a magistrates' court, usually the day after the episode, to be charged with an offence. By the 1950s, attitudes were changing and most hearings were conducted with sympathy. Nonetheless, between 1952 and 1956, there were 2,922 such prosecutions, of which 21 resulted in a fine and 194 in prison sentences. Because the Church of England frowned upon suicide, it included in its censure to the very people to whom it ought to have extended compassion. When the abolition of this appalling law was debated by the House of Lords in 1961, the Bishop of Carlisle, Dr Thomas Bloomer, was detailed to speak on behalf of the Church.  Dr Bloomer's performance ("I have only an amateurish knowledge of natural law") was muddled and embarrassing. It seems that he was the only prelate present. Hansard, 2 March 1961: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/1961-03-02/debates/bb7dc284-75de-44a0-b846-ce36905cab19/SuicideBillHl and https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1958-02-13/debates/18bbead1-68a-4de3-9000-ee678da83997/AttemptedSuicide(Convictions).