Representing the Royal Navy by Margarette Lincoln

Author:Margarette Lincoln [Lincoln, Margarette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351904094
Google: 3AokDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-05-15T01:28:21+00:00

I

The public image of the Navy was influenced also by religious societies of the period that reflected a close relationship between Christian philanthropy and patriotism. These societies actively supported the Navy in ways that were both pragmatic and pious. For example, the Marine Society, set up by London merchants during the Seven Years War, recruited and equipped poor boys for the sea. As a charity, the Society appealed both to humanity and to self-interest. The Navy needed men, and clearly there were boys on the streets whose misery would otherwise expose them to the gallows or another untimely death. Through the agency of the Marine Society, between 1756 and 1815 nearly 31 000 boys were clothed and sent to sea. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), an Anglican mission agency founded in 1698, set up charity schools for poor children and many of the schoolboys were also sent to sea. Unlike the Marine Society, these charity schools were not intended specifically to help the Navy but the numbers they sent to sea were significant. For example, an appendix to the Society’s annual sermon for 1794 records that, in the parishes of London and Westminster, 45 charity schools had sent 1370 boys to sea. The fact that this annual statistic was recorded as a separate item indicates the importance the charity attached to this aspect of their work, and suggests it was likely to win support from the alms-giving public. The Hanoverian kings all showed support for this Society and its work.

In the eighteenth century, the Anglican Church had a pervasive influence throughout politics, law and society. Yet after 1740 the Church became so blatantly partisan and reactionary that people turned towards Nonconformism in increasing numbers, although Dissenters were not necessarily radical in politics. The unreformed parliamentary system depended on the bishops in the House of Lords to support the aristocratic oligarchy that governed the property-based social and political order. Consequently, parsons who aimed to prosper in their careers were likely to court the prevailing political party. Once such clergymen acquired positions of influence, their allegiance to their patron was usually firm – especially if they looked for further preferment. ‘No man can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety,’ observed Dr Johnson in his discourse on the state of the nation on Good Friday, 1775, ‘his only chance for promotion is his being connected with somebody who has parliamentary interest.’3 In the House of Lords, the bishops sat together and voted together; in 1795, for example, every bishop but one voted for a continuance of the war against France. The House was a meeting place where bishops could discuss and determine concerted courses of action. If appropriate, their fixed opinion could then be disseminated to the rest of the clergy through established routes of communication.

Though Evangelicals were increasingly active after the 1740s, it should not be assumed that the more orthodox part of the Established Church was wholly lacking in pastoral zeal. Revisionists have countered the Victorian view of the eighteenth-century Church of England as worldly and lethargic.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.