The Church of England, 1688-1832 by Gibson William

Author:Gibson, William
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2002-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

To do nothing to correct vice and immorality meant that parishioners were all partakers in the sin and as liable to punishment by God as the sinners themselves.

Mary Kinnear has shown that in Carlisle diocese after 1700 the assumption that the Church courts were moribund is ‘premature’.83 Presentations to the archdeacons’ and consistory courts increased in Carlisle in the eighteenth century: they were made in about thirty per cent of the parishes in the diocese in the early eighteenth century, and in the period 1731–40 this rose to about sixty per cent of parishes. There was a sharp rise in the percentage of cases for sexual immorality: between 1704 and 1756 such cases rose from fifty three per cent of the total to ninety nine per cent of cases.84 This appears to have been a national trend and may in part be due to external influences; in some dioceses, such as Oxford, midwives were required by their oaths to report illegitimate births to the Church courts. In London, where defamation made up a majority of cases for most of the century, it may have been due to a greater vigilance by parish authorities, such as that exhibited in St Luke’s, Chelsea in the 1790s. Moreover popular opinion swung against ‘bastardy’, as evidenced by the Act of 1732 which permitted the imprisonment of fathers of illegitimate children until they paid the parish funds to support their children.85 A further reason why the Church courts were increasingly active in sexual regulation is that it became of greater concern to parishioners. Eighteenth-century women were increasingly protective of their reputations, and actions for defamation were part of the growth of the defence of sexual reputations.86 The rise of affective marriage may also lie behind an increase in cases for marriage within the proscribed degrees of kinship and affinity;87 certainly the increase in cases of divorce and disputed marriage in London appears to have been the consequence of growing domesticity and affective ideas of marriage.88

Doubtless a further reason for the continued activity of Church courts was also the exhortations of bishops to their clergy to make presentations of offenders to the courts. In 1717, in his first charge to the clergy of Lincoln diocese, Bishop Edmund Gibson told his clergy that if admonition and reproof for immorality failed, ‘there is one step further…and that is the presenting of offenders to the spiritual power to bring them to public shame, and to deter others from falling into the like practices’. Gibson also encouraged his clergy to act in cases of immorality, drunkenness and swearing.89 Besides cases of immorality, presentations to the courts for administrative matters, such as the repair of churches, the enforcement of clerical residence and the provision of pews were common throughout the century. These are in some ways more compelling evidence of the credibility of Church courts, since many of these presentations were by parishioners who were anxious to ensure that they retained access to the spiritual comforts of the Church.

Jan Albers’ study

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