Clergymen
of the
Church
of
England
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
CLERGYMEN
OF THE
CHURCH
OF
ENGLAND
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE MODERN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP 1
II. ENGLISH BISHOPS, OLD AND NEW 16
III. THE NORMAL DEAN OF THE PRESENT DAY 31
IV. THE ARCHDEACON 42
V. THE PARSON OF THE PARISH 54
VI. THE TOWN INCUMBENT 66
VII. THE COLLEGE FELLOW WHO HAS TAKEN ORDERS 78
VIII. THE CURATE IN A POPULOUS PARISH 92
IX. THE IRISH BENEFICED CLERGYMAN 105
X. THE CLERGYMAN WHO SUBSCRIBES FOR COLENSO 119
CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
I.
THE MODERN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP.
The old English archbishop was always a prince in the old times, but the
English archbishop is a prince no longer in these latter days. He is
still a nobleman of the highest rank,--he of Canterbury holding his
degree, indeed, above all his peers in Parliament, not of Royal blood,
and he of York following his elder brother, with none between them but
the temporary occupant of the woolsack. He is still one before whose
greatness small clerical aspirants veil their eyes, and whose blessing
in the minds of pious maidens has in it something almost divine. He is,
as I have said, a peer of Parliament. Above all things, he should be a
gentleman, and,--if it were always possible,--a gentleman of birth; but
he has no longer anything of the position or of the attributes of a
prince.
And this change has come upon our archbishops quite in latter times;
though, of course, we must look back to the old days of Papal supremacy
in England for the prince archbishop of the highest class. Such careers
as those of Thomas à Becket or of Wolsey have not been possible to any
clergymen since the days in which the power of the Pope was held to be
higher on matters ecclesiastical than the power of the Crown in these
realms; but we have had among us prince archbishops to a very late
date,--archbishops who have been princes not by means of political
strength or even by the force of sacerdotal independence, but who have
enjoyed their principalities simply as the results of their high rank,
their wealth, their reserve, their inaccessibility, as the result of a
certain mystery as to the nature of their duties,--and sometimes as the
result of personal veneration. For this personal veneration personal
dignity was as much needed as piety, and was much more necessary than
high mental power. An archbishop of fifty years since was very difficult
to approach, but when approached was as urbane as a king,--who is
supposed never to be severe but at a distance. He lived almost royally,
and his palace received that respect which seems, from the nature of the
word, to be due to a palatial residence. What he did, no man but his own
right-hand chaplain knew with accuracy; but that he could shower church
patronage as from the east the west and the south, all clerical
aspirants felt,--with awe rather than with hope. Lambeth in those days
was not overshadowed by the opposite glories of Westminster. He of York,
too, was a Northern prince, whose hospitalities north of the Humber were
more in repute than those of earls and barons. Fifty years since the
archbishops were indeed princes; but now-a-days we have changed all
that. The change, however, is only now completed. It was but the other
day that there died an Archbishop of Armagh who was prince to the
backbone, princely in his wealth and princely in his use of it, princely
in his mode of life, princely in his gait and outer looks and personal
demeanour,--princely also in the performance of his work. He made no
speeches from platforms. He wrote no books. He was never common among
men. He was a fine old man; and we may say of him that he was the last
of the prince archbishops.
This change has been brought about, partly by the altered position of
men in reference to each other, partly also by the altered circumstances
of the archbishops themselves. We in our English life are daily
approaching nearer to that republican level which is equally averse to
high summits and to low depths. We no longer wish to have princes among
us, and will at any rate have none of that mysterious kind which is half
divine and half hocus-pocus. Such terrestrial gods as we worship we
choose to look full in the face. We must hear their voices and be
satisfied that they have approved themselves as gods by other wisdom
than that which lies in the wig. That there is a tendency to evil in
this as well as a tendency to good may be true enough. To be able to
venerate is a high quality, and it is coming to that with us, that we do
not now venerate much. In this way the altered minds of men have
altered the position of the archbishops of the Church of England.
But the altered circumstances of the sees themselves have perhaps done
as much as the altered tendencies of men’s minds. It is not simply that
the incomes received by the present archbishops are much less than the
incomes of their predecessors,--though that alone would have done
much,--but the incomes are of a nature much less prone to produce
princes. The territorial grandeur is gone. The archbishops and bishops
of to-day, with the exception of, I believe, but two veterans on the
bench, receive their allotted stipends as do the clerks in the
Custom-house. There is no longer left with them any vestige of the power
of the freehold magnate over the soil. They no longer have tenant and
audit days. They cannot run their lives against leases, take up fines on
renewals, stretch their arms as possessors over wide fields, or cut down
woods and put acres of oaks into their ecclesiastical pockets. They who
understand the nature of the life of our English magnates, whether noble
or not noble, will be aware of the worth of that territorial position of
which our bishops have been deprived under the working of the
Ecclesiastical Commission. The very loss of the risk has been much!--as
that man looms larger to himself, and therefore to others also, whose
receipts may range from two to six hundred a year, than does the
comfortable possessor of the insured medium. The actual diminution of
income, too, has done much, and this has been accompanied by so great a
rise in the price of all princely luxuries that an archbishop without a
vast private fortune can no longer live as princes should live. In these
days, when a plain footman demands his fifty pounds of yearly wages, and
three hundred pounds a year is but a moderate rent for a London house,
an archbishop cannot support a semi-royal retinue or live with much
palatial splendour in the metropolis upon an annual income of eight
thousand pounds.
And then, above all, the archbishops have laid aside their wigs.
That we shall never have another prince archbishop in England or in
Ireland may be taken to be almost certain. Whether or no we shall ever
have prelates at Canterbury or York, at Armagh or Dublin, gifted with
the virtues and vices of princely minds, endowed with the strength and
at the same time with the self-willed obstinacy of princes, may be
doubtful. There is scope enough for such strength and such obstinacy in
the position, and our deficiency or our security,--as each of us
according to his own idiosyncrasy may regard it,--must depend, as it has
latterly been caused, by the selections made by the Prime Minister of
the day. There is the scope for strength and obstinacy now almost as
fully as there was in the days of Thomas à Becket, though the effects of
such strength or obstinacy would of course be much less wide. And,
indeed, as an archbishop may be supposed in these days to be secure from
murder, his scope may be said to be the fuller. What may not an
archbishop say, and what may not an archbishop do, and that without fear
of the only punishment which could possibly reach an archbishop,--the
punishment, namely, of deprivation? With what caution must not a
Minister of the present day be armed to save him from the misfortune of
having placed an archbishop militant over the Church of England?
The independence of an archbishop, and indeed to a very great, though
lesser extent of a bishop, in the midst of the existing dependence of
all others around him, would be a singular phenomenon, were it not the
natural result of our English abhorrence of change. We hate an evil, and
we hate a change. Hating the evil most, we make the change, but we make
it as small as possible. Hence it is that our Archbishop of Canterbury
has so much of that independent power which made Thomas à Becket fly
against his sovereign when the archiepiscopal mitre was placed upon his
head, though he had been that sovereign’s most obedient servant till his
consecration. Thomas à Becket held his office independently of the king;
and so does Dr. Longley. The Queen, though she be the head of the
Church, cannot rid herself of an archbishop who displeases her. The
Queen, in speaking of whom in our present sense of course we mean the
Prime Minister, can make an Archbishop of Canterbury; but she cannot
unmake him. The archbishop would be safe, let him play what tricks he
might in his high office. Nothing short of a commission de lunatico
inquirendo could attack him successfully,--which, should it find his
grace to be insane, would leave him his temporalities and his titles,
and simply place his duties in the hands of a coadjutor. Should an
archbishop commit a murder, or bigamy, or pick a pocket, he, no doubt,
would be liable to the laws of his country; but no lawyer and no
statesman can say to what penalties he can be subjected as regards the
due performance of the duties of his office. A judge is
independent;--that is, he is not subject to any penalty in regard to any
exercise of his judicial authority; but we all know that a judge would
soon cease to be a judge who should play pranks upon the bench, or
decline to perform the duties of his position. The archbishops, as the
heads of the endowed clergymen of the Church of England, are possessed
of freeholds, and that freehold cannot be touched. It is theirs for
life; and so great is the practical latitude of our Church, that it may
be doubted whether anything short of a professed obedience to the Pope
could deprive an archbishop of his stipend.
It may, therefore, be easily understood that a Prime Minister, in
selecting an archbishop, has a difficult task in hand. He is bound to
appoint a man who not only has hitherto played no pranks, but of whom he
may feel sure that he will play none in future. In our Church, as it
exists at present, we have ample latitude joined to much bigotry, and it
is almost as impossible to control the one as the other. Such control
is, in fact, on either side absolutely impossible; and, therefore,
archbishops are wanted who shall make no attempts at controlling. And
yet an archbishop must seem to control,--or, else, why is he there? An
Archbishop of Canterbury must be a visible head of bishops, and yet
exercise no headship. He must appear to men as the great guide of
parsons, but his guidance must not go beyond advice, and of that the
more chary he may be, the better will be the archbishop. Of course it
will be understood that reference is here made to doctrinal guidance,
and not to moral guidance--to latitude or bigotry in matters of
religion, and not to the social conduct of clergymen. How difficult then
must be the position of a Minister who has to select for so dangerous a
place a clergyman who shall be great enough to fill it, and yet small
enough; and one who shall also be just enough to remember always that
he is bound to retain that quiescence for which credit was given him
when he was chosen? The archbishop must be a man without any latent
flame, without ambition, desirous of no noise, who shall be content to
have been an archbishop without leaving behind him a peculiar name among
his brethren. He should hope to be remembered only as a good old man,
who in troublesome times abated some trouble and caused none, who smiled
often and frowned but seldom, who wore his ecclesiastical robes on high
days with a grace, and exercised a modest and frequent hospitality,
having no undue desire to amass money for his children.
It is not, perhaps, too much to say that the sort of man exactly wanted
may be selected for any post, and be found adequate to the required
duties so long as the sword of deprivation or dismissal can be made to
hang over the occupant’s head. But it is very difficult to find a man
who shall do his work, not after the fashion which may seem best to
himself, but in the way which seems most desirable to others, who, when
once placed, cannot be removed from his place. Will your groom or your
gardener obey you with that precision which you desire when he comes to
know that you cannot rid yourself of his services? And human nature is
the same in gardeners and in archbishops. It is not that the man is void
of conscience and that he resolves to disobey where he has promised to
obey, but that he tells himself that in his position duty requires no
obedience. Your gardener with a taste for tulips would, under such
circumstances, grow nothing but tulips; and what is to hinder your
archbishop from putting down the miracles or putting up candlesticks?
With Lambeth all ablaze with candlesticks the archbishop would still
hold his place.
The same thing may be said of the bishops; but among so many bishops it
is felt to be well that there should be some few who shall have a flame
of their own. In the house that has many rooms the owner may indulge in
many colours on the walls, and some of them may be of the brightest; but
in the house that has but one or two chambers the colours should be
chosen with a due regard to the ordinary quiescence of every-day life.
Had we not High Church and Low Church among our ordinary bishops, were
we to be deprived of our dear ---- and our dear ----, we should miss much
that we feel to be ornamental to the Establishment and useful to
ourselves. There are a few among us of course who would be glad to see
lights of the same splendour, even though so dangerous, at Canterbury
and at York; but it behoves a Prime Minister to be a moderate man, and a
man moderate, above all things, in religion. In the religion of to-day
moderation is everything. And, therefore, whatever else he may be, let
the archbishop be a moderate man. Let him always be throwing oil upon
waters. Nothing should shock him--nothing, that is, in the way of
religion. Nothing should excite him; nothing should make him angry. He
should be a man able to preach well, but not inclined to preach often.
In his preaching he should charm the ears of all hearers, but he should
hardly venture to stir their pulses. He should speak, too, occasionally
from platforms and chairs; only let him not make himself too common. He
should be very affable on Mondays and Tuesdays, secluding himself
somewhat on the other five days of the week, answering his
correspondents with words which may mean as little as words can be made
to mean, and carefully watching that he commits himself to nothing. How
hard it is to find the man who shall have talent enough for this, and
yet the self-command never to go beyond it, even though no penalties
await him, except such as may come from the venomous baiting of other
clergymen.
But it must not be supposed that the archbishop of to-day can be, or
should be, an idle man. It is his duty to be the precursor--probably the
unconscious precursor--of other men in that religion which shall teach
us that the ways of God are very easy to find, though they may not be so
easy to follow; that forms are almost nothing, so that faith be there.
Of all men, an archbishop should be the least of a fanatic. Can any one
imagine an archbishop of the present day abhorring a Dissenter, or
refusing to dine with a Roman Catholic because of his religion? And to
do this is much, even though it be done unconsciously. An archbishop
thus leading the van against bigotry has to stand with placid unmoved
front against assailants by the hundred. Let us only think of the
letters that are addressed to him, of the attacks made upon him, of the
questions asked of him. Against every attack he must defend himself, and
yet must he never commit himself. He must never be dumb, and yet must he
never speak out boldly. He must be always true to the Thirty-nine
Articles, and yet never fight for any one of them. In the broad his
creed must be infallible, but he himself may make a standing-point on no
detail. To carry an archbishop’s mitre successfully under such
circumstances requires much diligence, considerable skill, imperturbable
good humour, and undying patience.
The selections that have been made by the Ministers of the Crown for the
last twenty or twenty-five years have all apparently been made on the
principle of selecting such archbishops as have been here described, and
English Churchmen in general seem to think that the Ministers of the
Crown have exercised wise discretion in the appointments which they have
made.
II.
ENGLISH BISHOPS, OLD AND NEW.
If it were said that the difference between bishops of the old school
and of the new consists chiefly in the fact that the former wore wigs
and that the latter have ceased to do so, the definition would be true
enough if it were followed out, not literally, but with a liberal
construction. In former days the wig and apron, of themselves, almost
sufficed; but now, these outer things having been, to so great an
extent, laid aside, other things, much more difficult of acquirement,
are needed. There was, however, such an odour of pious decorum round the
episcopal wig, that we cannot but regret its departure; and then, again,
so much of awe has gone, now that the wig is abandoned! We who can
remember the bishops in their full panoply can hardly understand how a
bishop of these times can be a bishop at all to his subject parsons. And
that veneration which arose from outer circumstances used to be so
peculiarly the perquisite of the bench of bishops, that men of the
laity, thinking over it all, are at a loss to conceive why appendages so
valuable should have been abandoned thus recklessly. Even aprons are not
worn as aprons were worn of yore,--but in a shorn degree, showing too
plainly that the reverend wearer is half ashamed of the tranquil
decoration; and lawn sleeves themselves do not seem to envelop the
occupant in so extensive a cloud of sacred millinery as they did in the
more reverent days of George the Fourth. Have the bishops themselves
made this suicidal change; or have they only succumbed to the invincible
force of public opinion in thus abandoning those awful symbols which
were so valuable to them?
A full and true answer to this question would go far towards giving a
history of the Church of England during the last sixty or seventy
years,--from the days in which Lord Eldon was first consulted as to the
making of a bishop, down to the last decade of years in which bishops
are popularly supposed to have been selected in accordance with the
advice of a religious Whig nobleman. Such a history cannot be given
here, but the peculiarities of the old and new bishop may perhaps be so
described as to show something of the result of the changes that have
taken place.
The bishop of George the Third and George the Fourth was never a prince,
as was the archbishop,--but he was a wealthy ecclesiastical baron,
having the prestige of a Peer of Parliament, even when he did not use
the power, living like a great lord in his palace, drawing his income
from territorial domains,--an income which was often so much greater
than his needs as to afford him the means of amassing a colossal
fortune. And as he generally entered upon the possession of this income
without any of the encumbrances which are incidental to the hereditary
possessors of great properties, and usually considered himself to be
precluded by the nature of his profession from many of those
wealth-consuming pursuits to which his lay brother nobles are prone, it
came to pass that the bishop was ordinarily a rich man. He kept no
race-horses; he was not usually a gambler; he could provide for clerical
sons and clerical sons-in-law out of the diocesan pocket: and was
preserved by the necessary quiescence of clerical life from that
broadcast magnificence which is so costly to our great nobles, because
it admits of no check upon its expenditure. The bishop, let him live as
handsomely as he might, was not called upon to live beyond the scope of
accounts;--and many of our bishops were good accountants.
But in those halcyon days, there was this drawback to being a bishop,
that the good things did not all come at once. What was a bishopric with
three thousand a year, when there were others of equal rank with seven,
or eight, or occasionally with ten thousand,--not to speak of the
sublimity of Canterbury, or the magnificence of York, or the golden
opulence of Durham, or the ancient splendour of Winchester, or the
metropolitan glory of London? The interest which made a bishop could
translate a bishop, and, therefore, no bishop in those days could rest
in comfortable content in the comparatively poor houses of Exeter or
Gloucester, while Ely might be reached, or at least Worcester. Thus it
came to pass that men, who in those days were never young when they were
first chosen, were still living always in hope of some rich change; and
that when the rich change came at last, the few remaining years, the
wished-for opportunities of wealth, were used with a tenacity of purpose
which might almost put a usurer to the blush.
But it would be unreasonable to feel strong abhorrence against the old
bishops on this account. Men in all walks of life do as others do around
them, and bishops are but men. It was thought to be the proper thing
that a bishop should exercise his power over the domains of the see to
the utmost extent rendered possible by the existing law. He would run
his life against a lease on the ecclesiastical property. If he died
before the lease expired the benefit would be to his successor. If he
survived he could lease the property for a term of years to his son at a
peppercorn rent, and the see would be so far robbed. It was an
interesting, exciting mode of life, and as the ecclesiastical lands grew
in value as all lands grew,--town lands, for instance, which gradually
covered themselves with houses,--the game became so delightful that it
is almost a pity that it should have been brought to an end. Let no man
say to himself that had he been a bishop in those days he would have
done otherwise,--unless he is quite sure that he is better than those
around him, even in these days.
But when such good things were going who were the men who got them? And
to this may be added a further question, How far did they deserve the
good things which were given to them? It used to be said that there were
three classes of aspirants to bishoprics, and three ladders by which
successful clergymen might place themselves on the bench. There was the
editor of the Greek play, whose ladder was generally an acquaintance
with Greek punctuation. There was the tutor of a noble pupil, whose
ladder was the political bias of his patron. And there was he who could
charm the royal ear, whose ladder was as frequently used in the closet
as in the pulpit. To these was afterwards added the political
aspirant,--the clergyman who could write a pamphlet or advocate a
semi-ecclesiastical cause by his spoken or written words.
That scholarship should be remunerated was very well; that men in power
should reward those who had been faithful to themselves and their
children was, at any rate, very natural; that the Sovereign should
occasionally have a voice in making those selections which, as head of
the Church, it was popularly supposed that he always made, seemed only
to be fair;--and who can say that a Minister was wrong to recompense
ecclesiastical support by ecclesiastical preferment? But it must be
admitted that the bench of bishops as it was constituted under the
circumstances above described was not conspicuous for its clerical
energy, for its theological attainments, or for its impartial use of the
great church patronage which it possessed. They who sat upon it
ordinarily wore their wigs with decorum and lived the lives of
gentlemen; but, looking back for many years, a churchman of the Church
of England cannot boast of the clerical doings of its bishops. Under the
great wig system much of awe was engendered, and that amount of good was
attained which consists mainly of respect and reverence for the unknown.
The mere existence of a Llama is good for people who have no more
clearly expressed God to worship,--and in this way the old, rich,
bewigged bishops were serviceable. But, with a few exceptions, they did
but little other clerical service. New churches were not built under
their auspices, nor were old churches repaired. Dissent in England
became strong, and the services of the State Church were in many
dioceses performed with a laxity and want even of decency which, though
it existed so short a time since, now hardly obtains belief. The wigs
have gone, but in their places have come,--as we are bound to
acknowledge,--many of those qualities, much more difficult of
acquirement, which men demand when wigs will no longer satisfy them. Let
any middle-aged man of the present day think of the bishops of his
youth, and remember those who were known to him by report, repute, or
perhaps by personal intercourse. Although bishops in those days were not
common in the market-places as they are now, some of us were allowed to
see them and hear them speak, and most of us may have some memory of
their characters. There were the old bishops who never stirred out, and
the young bishops who went to Court; and the bishop who was known to be
a Crœsus, and the bishop who had so lived that, in spite of his
almost princely income, he was obliged to fly his creditors; and there
was the more innocent bishop who played chess, and the bishop who still
hankered after Greek plays, and the kindly old bishop who delighted to
make punch in moderate proportions for young people, and a very wicked
bishop or two, whose sins shall not be specially designated. Such are
the bishops we remember, together with one or two of simple energetic
piety. But who remembers bishops of those days who really did the work
to which they were set? In how many dioceses was there a Boanerges of
whom the Church can be proud? It is almost miraculous that the Church
should have stood at all through such guidance as it has had.
This has now been much altered, and the modern bishop is at any rate a
working man. And while we congratulate ourselves on the change that has
been made, let us give thanks where thanks are due. No doubt the
increased industry of the bishops has come, as has the increased
industry of public officers, from the demand of the people whom they
are called upon to serve. But in no way and by no means has more been
done to create this energy than by that movement at Oxford which had its
beginning hardly more than thirty years since, and of which the two
first leaders are still alive. Dr. Newman has gone to Rome, and Dr.
Pusey has perhaps helped to send many thither; but these men, and their
brethren of the Tracts, stirred up throughout the country so strong a
feeling of religion, gave rise by their works to so much thought on a
matter which had been allowed for years to go on almost without any
thought, that it may be said of them that they made episcopal idleness
impossible, and clerical idleness rare. Of course, it will be said, in
opposition to this, that no school of clergymen has so run after
wiggeries and vestments and empty symbols as have the followers of the
men whom I have named. But the wiggeries and vestments have been simply
the dross which has come from their fused gold. If you will make water
really boil, some will commonly boil over. They have built new churches,
and cleansed old churches, and opened closed churches. They have put on
fuel and poked the fire, till heat does really issue from it. It is not
only with the High Church,--with their own brethren,--that they have
prevailed, but equally with the Low Church, whose handsome edifices and
improved services are due to that energy which has been so hateful to
them.
The modern bishop is a working man, and he is selected in order that he
may work. He is generally one who has been conspicuous as a working
parish clergyman, and may be and often is as ignorant of Greek as his
former parish clerk. In discussing archbishops it has been said that the
chosen candidate must have no strong Church predilections of his own. In
choosing a bishop a Minister is bound by no such limit. Perhaps it would
be well if High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church could be allowed to
have their turns in rotation,--as used to be the case with the two
universities. For many years past the Low Church has been in the
ascendant, and the chances now are that in meeting a bishop one meets an
enemy of the Oxford movement. But the bishop’s own predilections matter
little, perhaps, if the man will work with a will. There are few, I
think, now who remember much of the Low Church peculiarities of the
Bishop of London, having forgotten all that in the results of his
episcopate.
But, alas, in losing our fainéant bishops we have lost the great priest
lords whom we used to venerate. A bishop now has no domain, but is paid
his simple salary of 5,000_l._ a year,--quarterly, we suppose,--and
knows not and recks not of leases. He is paid 5,000_l._ a year if his
see was in former days worth as much, or less if the see of old was
worth less. London, Durham, and Winchester are more gorgeous than their
brethren, but even London and Durham have simple salaries, and
Winchester, on the next vacancy, will be reduced to the same humble
footing. It is a great fall in worldly state, and consequently bishops
may be now seen,--as bishops never were seen of yore,--sitting in cabs,
trusting themselves to open one-horse chaises, talking in the
market-places, and walking home after an ordination. These ears have
heard and these eyes have seen a modern bishop hallooing from the top of
his provincial High-street to a groom who was at the bottom of it,
brandishing his episcopal arms the while with an energy which might have
been spared. It is so with all things. In seeking for the useful, we are
compelled to abandon the picturesque. Our lanes and hedgerows and green
commons are all going; and the graceful dignity of the old bishop is a
thing of the past.
There still, however, remains to the bench one privilege, which, though
shorn of its ancient grandeur of injustice, has in it still much of the
sweet mediæval flavour of old English corruption. The patronage of the
bishops is as extensive almost as ever; and though its exercise is now
hemmed in by certain new stringencies of ecclesiastical law,--as in
regard to pluralities, and is also subject to the scrutiny of public
opinion, so that decency must at least be respected,--nevertheless
patronage remains, as the private property of the bishop. 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. A deserving curate has no claim on a bishop for a living as a
reward for the work he has done. 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.
Is it not singular that it should be so,--that the idea of giving the
fitting reward to the most deserving servant should have to reach the
Church the last of all professions and of all trades? Sinecures and the
promotion of young favourites used to be common in the Civil Service;
but the public would not endure it, and the Civil Service has cleansed
itself. The army and navy have been subjected to searching reforms. A
great law officer has been made to vanish into space because he was too
keen in appropriating patronage to family uses. Bankers and brewers will
no longer have men about their premises who do not work; and yet bankers
and brewers may do what they like with their own. But 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. 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. The bishop’s feeling in the matter is not singular, but
it is singular that bishops should not before this have been enlightened
on the subject of Church patronage by the voice of the laity whom they
serve.
III.
THE NORMAL DEAN OF THE PRESENT DAY.
If there be any man, who is not or has not been a Dean himself, who can
distinctly define the duties of a Dean of the Church of England, he must
be one who has studied ecclesiastical subjects very deeply. When
cathedral services were kept up for the honour of God rather than for
the welfare of the worshippers, with an understanding faintly felt by
the indifferent, but strongly realized by the pious, that recompence
would be given by the Almighty for the honour done to Him,--as
cathedrals were originally built and adorned with that object,--it was
natural enough that there should be placed at the head of those who
served in the choir a high dignitary who, by the weight of his presence
and the grace of his rank, should give an increased flavour of
ecclesiastical excellence to those services. The dean then was the head,
as it were, of a college, and he fitly did his work if he looked after
the ceremonies of his cathedral, saw that canons, precentor, minor
canons and choristers, did their ministrations with creditable grace,
took care that the building was, if possible, kept in good repair,--and
thus properly took the lead in the chapter over which he presided. But
the idea of honouring our Creator by the excellence of our church
services,--though it remains firmly fixed enough in the minds of some of
us,--is no longer a national idea; and we may say that deans are not
selected by those who have the appointment of deans with any such view.
We use our cathedrals in these days as big churches, in which multitudes
may worship, so that, if possible, they may learn to live Christian
lives. They are made beautiful that this worship may be attractive to
men, and not for the glory of God. What architect would now think it
necessary to spend time and money in the adornment of parts of his
edifice which no mortal eye can reach? But such was done in the old days
when deans were first instituted. Multitudes, no doubt, crowded our
cathedrals in those times,--when bishops and deans were subject to the
Pope--but they were there for the honour of God, testifying their faith
by the fact of their presence. That all this has been changed need
hardly be explained here; but in the change it would seem that the real
work of the dean has gone,--except so far as it may please him to take
some part in those offices of the church service which it is necessary
that a clergyman should perform. It is now ordinarily believed that to
the dean is especially entrusted the care of the structure itself; and
luckily for us, who love our old cathedrals, we have had some deans of
late who, as architectural ecclesiastics, have been very serviceable;
but should a dean have no such tendencies,--as many deans have had
none,--no penalty for neglect of prescribed duty would fall upon him. A
certain amount of yearly residence is enjoined; and it is expected, of
course, that a dean should show himself in his own cathedral. Let him
reside and show himself, and the city which he graces by his presence
will hardly demand from him other services.
In truth, the lines of deans have fallen in pleasant places. Man, being
by nature restless and ambitious, desires to rise; and the dean will
desire to become a bishop, though he would lose by the change his easy
comfort, his sufficient modest home, and the grace of his close in which
no one overtops him. To be a Peer of Parliament, to rule the clergy of a
diocese, and wear the highest order of clerical vestment, is sweet to
the clerical aspirant. A man feels that he is shelved when he ceases to
sing excelsior to himself in his closet. But the change from a deanery
of the present day to a palace is a change from ease to work, from
leisure to turmoil, from peace to war, from books which are ever
good-humoured to men who are too often ill-humoured. The dean’s modest
thousand a year sounds small in comparison with the bishop’s more
generous stipend:--but look at a dean, and you will always see that he
is sleeker than a bishop. The dean to whom fortune has given a quaint
old house with pleasant garden in a quaint old close, with resident
prebendaries and minor canons around him who just acknowledge, and no
more than acknowledge, his superiority,--who takes the lead, as Mr.
Dean, in the society of his clerical city,--who is never called upon to
discharge expensive duties in London, though he may revisit the glimpses
of the metropolitan moon for a month, perhaps, in the early summer,
showing his new rosette at his club,--seems indeed to have had his lines
given to him in very pleasant places.
There is something charming to the English ear in the name of the Dean
and Chapter. None of us quite know what it means, and yet we love it.
When we visit our ancient cathedrals, and are taken into a handsome but
manifestly useless octagonal stone outhouse, we are delighted to find
that the chapter-house is being repaired at an expense of, say, four
thousand pounds, subscribed by the maiden ladies of the diocese; or if
we find the said outhouse to be in ruins,--in which case the afflicted
verger will not show it if we allow him to pass easily through our
hands,--we feel a keen regret as though all things good were going from
us. That there should be a chapter-house attached to the cathedral,
simply because a chapter-house was needed in former days, is all the
reason that we can give for our affection; and we think that the old
ladies have spent their money well in preserving the relic. We also
think that the Ecclesiastical Commission spends its money well in
preserving the chapter, and should feel infinite regret in finding that
any diocese had none belonging to it. We are often told that ours is a
utilitarian age, but this utilitarian spirit is so closely mingled with
a veneration for things old and beautiful from age that we love our old
follies infinitely better than our new virtues.
Though it is difficult to define the duties of a modern dean, we all of
us know what are the qualities and what the acquirements which lead to
deaneries in these days; and most of us respect them. As it is now
necessary that a man shall have been an active parish parson before he
is thought fit to be a bishop, so it is required that a clergyman shall
have shown a taste for literature in some one of its branches before he
can be regarded among the candidates proper for a deanery. The normal
dean of this age is a gentleman who would probably not have taken orders
unless the circumstances of his life had placed orders very clearly in
his path. He is not a man who has been urged strongly in early youth by
a vocation for clerical duties, or who has subsequently devoted himself
to what may be called clerical administrations proper. He has taken
kindly to literature, having been biassed in his choice of the branch
which he has assumed by the fact of the word “Reverend” which has
attached itself to his name. He has done well at the university, and has
been a fellow, and perhaps a tutor, of his college. He has written a
book or two, and has not impossibly shown himself to be too liberal for
the bench; for it is given to deans to speak their thoughts more openly
than bishops are allowed to do. Indeed, this is so well acknowledged a
principle in the arrangement of church patronage, that it has struck
many of us with wonder that the Government has not escaped from its
difficulty in regard to the Bishop of Natal by making him a dean in
England.
And, when once a dean, the happy beneficed lover of letters need make no
change in the mode of his life, as a bishop must do. He is not driven to
feel that now and from henceforth he must have his neck in a collar to
which he has hitherto been unused, and that he must be drawing ever and
always against the hill. A bishop must do so, or else he is a bad
bishop; but a dean has got no hill before him, unless he makes one for
himself.
Who that knows any of our dear old closes,--that of Winchester, for
instance, or of Norwich, or Hereford, or Salisbury,--has not wandered
among the modest, comfortable clerical residences which they contain,
envying the lot of those to whom such good things have been given? The
half-sequestered nook has a double delight, because it is only half
sequestered. On one side there is an arched gate,--a gate that may
possibly be capable of being locked, which gives to the spot a sweet
savour of monastic privacy and ecclesiastical reserve; while on the
other side the close opens itself freely to the city by paths leading,
probably, under the dear old towers of the cathedral, by the graves of
those who have been thought worthy of a resting-place so near the
shrine. It opens itself freely to the city, and courts the steps of
church matrons, who are almost as clerical as their lords. It is true,
indeed, that much of their glory has now departed from these hallowed
places. The dean still keeps his deanery, but the number of resident
canons has been terribly diminished. Houses intended for church
dignitaries are let to prosperous tallow-chandlers, and in the window of
a mansion in a close can, at this moment in which I am writing, be seen
a notice that lodgings can be had there by a private gentleman--with a
reference. But still it is the Close. There is still an odour there to
the acutely percipient nostrils as of shovel hats and black vestments.
You still talk gently as you walk over its well-kept gravel, and would
refrain within its precincts from that strength of language which may
perhaps be common to you out in the crowded marts of the city. The
cathedral, at any rate, is there, more beautiful than ever,--thanks to
the old ladies and the architectural dean. The musical rooks fly above
your head. The tower bells delight your ear with those deep-tolling,
silence-producing sounds which seem to come from past ages in which men
were not so hurried as they are now; and you feel that the resident
tallow-chandler and the single gentleman with a reference have not as
yet destroyed the ancient piety of the place.
The dean and chapter! How pleasantly the words sound on the tongue of a
reverent verger! The chapters, I fear, are terribly shorn of their old
glory, and each chapter must look at itself, when it meets, with
something of wistful woe in its half-extinguished old eyes. And why does
a chapter meet? Its highest duty is a congé d’élire,--permission to
choose its own bishop. Permission is sent down from the Prime Minister
to the chapter to choose Dr. Smith,--a very worthy evangelical
gentleman, whose name stinks in the nostrils of the old high and dry
canons and prebendaries who still hang round the towers of the
cathedral; and,--under certain terrible penalties,--they exercise their
functions, and unanimously elect Dr. Smith as the bishop of that
diocese. There must be something melancholy in such moments to a
reflective dean and chapter. We may suppose that the number of clerical
gentlemen who really meet together to carry on the business of the
election is not great. It is as small, probably, as may be; but
something of a chapter must be held. The ignorant layman, as he thinks
of it, wonders whether the work is really done in that cold unfurnished
octagonal stone building, which has just been so beautifully repaired
at the expense of the devout maiden ladies.
How English, how absurd, how picturesque it all is!--and, we may add,
how traditionally useful! The Queen is the head of the Church, and
therefore sends down word to a chapter, which in truth as a chapter no
longer exists, that it has permission to choose its bishop, the bishop
having been already appointed by the Prime Minister, who is the nominee
of the House of Commons! The chapter makes its choice accordingly, and
the whole thing goes on as though the machine were kept in motion by
forces as obedient to reason and the laws of nature as those operating
on a steam engine. We are often led to express our dismay, and sometimes
our scorn, at the ignorance shown by foreigners as to our institutions;
but when we ourselves consider their complications and irrationalistic
modes of procedure, the wonder is that any one not to the manner born
should be able to fathom aught of their significance.
Deans and chapters, though they exist with a mutilated grandeur, for the
present are safe; and long may they remain so!
IV.
THE ARCHDEACON.
A dean has been described as a Church dignitary who, as regards his
position in the Church, has little to do and a good deal to get. An
archdeacon, on the other hand, is a Church dignitary, who in diocesan
dignity is indeed almost equal to a dean, and in diocesan power is much
superior to a dean, but who has a great deal to do and very little to
get. Indeed, as to that matter of getting, the archdeacon,--as
archdeacon,--may be said to get almost nothing. It is quite in keeping
with the traditional polity and well understood peculiarities of our
Church that much work should be required from those officers to whom no
payment is allotted, or payment that is next to none; whereas from those
to whom affluence is given little labour is required. And the system
works well enough. There has as yet been no dearth of archdeacons; nor
shall we probably experience any such calamity.
Nevertheless, archdeacons are seldom allowed to starve. The bishops have
it in their power to look to that, and knowing that in these days
starving men seldom can exercise much authority, they take care that
their archdeacons shall be beneficed. The archdeacon always holds a
living. In former happy days he not unfrequently held more than one, and
there are probably archdeacons still living in that halcyon condition.
He always holds a living, and almost always a good living. He not
unfrequently is a man of private means, and has been selected for his
position partly on that account. He is the nominee of the bishop, and
is, therefore, not unfrequently intimately connected with episcopal
things. He is, perhaps, the son or nephew of a bishop, or has married a
wife from the palace, or has, after some fashion, sat in his early days
at episcopal feet. He is one whom the bishop thinks that he can love and
trust; and therefore, before he has obtained his archdeaconry, he has
probably been endowed with that first requisite for a good servant--good
wages. A poor archdeacon, an archdeacon who did not keep a curate or
two, an archdeacon who could not give a dinner and put a special bottle
of wine upon the table, an archdeacon who did not keep a carriage, or at
least a one-horse chaise, an archdeacon without a man servant, or a
banker’s account, would be nowhere,--if I may so speak,--in an English
diocese. Such a one could not hold up his head among churchwardens, or
inquire as to church repairs with any touch of proper authority.
Therefore, though the archdeacon is not paid for his services as
archdeacon, he is generally a gentleman who is well to do in the world,
and who can take a comfortable place in the county society among which
it is his happy lot to live.