In one of the subplots of P.G. Wodehouse’ The Code of the Woosters (1938), Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, ward and niece of magistrate Sir Watkyn Bassett of Totleigh Towers, intends to marry a curate, the Rev. Harold “Stinker” Pinker, who is just starting his clerical career. She is looking for a way for Harold to make a good impression on her uncle – “If we play our cards properly, I am hoping that he will give him a vicarage that he has in his gift. Then we shall begin to get somewhere.”
Why would a squire get to appoint a vicar? Wouldn’t the bishops appoint the vicars?
I think I asked this question here many years ago, but I can’t seem to find the thread.
In a nutshell though, this goes back to the English Reformation and the ensuing seizure of RCC monastic properties and associated parishes. The lands and the rights to tithe income passed into the hands of lay gentry, who thus gained the right to nominate vicars subject to episcopal approval. IIRC later reforms ended this practice.
In the Wodehouse story–and the Bassett-Spode-Totleigh Towers story arc is probably my favorite–Harold receives a very modest stipend as a curate, but rising to vicar would be a huge step up, obviously. By custom he’d be able to allow a comfortable lifestyle for his family and himself, to go with a vicar’s level of responsibility for administration of the parish.
So, in Vicar of Dibley the person who preaches in the church gets the lesser tithes to support her? Or does her income come from the Church, or the town?
[Near as I can remember from my parents church the money to support he and his family and pay for the church buildings came from the donations of the members of the church - protestants in the US frequently are not members of any larger grouping that shares income in any way]
The Church of England is now the sole ‘employer’ of priests.
A Patron was most often a local squire, or sometimes a local aristocrat; but through inheritance of the patronage for that church ( Advowson ) it could be anyone; and the Patron could demand money for appointing someone — quite like laying out a sum to purchase an army commission and then receiving the pay for as long as you stayed in the position; or in some countries paying someone to be appointed to a civil service position.
Priests could combine church livings ( pluralism ). If they lived and administered in one living they were a Rector; if they administered it for another, he was a Vicar [ obviously ], or a Curate ( a junior office ). Curates were paid pretty badly by the Rector or Vicar. The income from local tithes paid for the latter two. Someone buying a living ( or in real terms, renting it for his lifetime — which for all of us is as good as it gets ) had to satisfy the Patron doctrinally ( eg: be of the same high, broad or low church as the Patron ) and politically ( teach the poor to respect the social system and their place therein ).
Supposedly it helped maintain the independence of the Church from big bad government ( Archbishop Laud fought against it since he didn’t like lay control of the Church; so they killed him ): in practice it was just another money-spinner.
Talking of the Vicar of Dibley, I nearly threw something at the television when the first episode showed the parish council debating the appointment of a new vicar. It’s none of their business - the parish council is a purely secular body to do with fixing potholes and street-lights, granting planning permission (or at least rubber-stamping it and passing it up the chain) and so on. The parochial church council is another body entirely.
In good King Charles’s golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Zealous High-Church man I was,1
And so I gain’d Preferment.2
Unto my Flock I daily Preach’d,
Kings are by God appointed,
And Damn’d are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord’s Anointed.3
And this is law,4 I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!
When Royal James possest the crown,
And popery5 grew in fashion;
The Penal Law I shouted down,
And read the Declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my Constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,6
But for the Revolution.7
And this is Law, &c.
When William our Deliverer came,
To heal the Nation’s Grievance,
I turn’d the Cat in Pan8 again,
And swore to him Allegiance:
Old Principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance,
Passive Obedience is a Joke,
A Jest is9 non-resistance.
And this is Law, &c.
When Royal Anne became our Queen,
Then Church of England’s Glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory:10
Occasional Conformists base
I Damn’d, and Moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was,
From such Prevarication.
And this is Law, &c.
When George in Pudding time11 came o’er,
And Moderate Men looked big, Sir,
My Principles I chang’d once more,
And so became a Whig, Sir.12
And thus Preferment I procur’d,
From our Faith’s great Defender13
And almost every day abjur’d
The Pope, and the Pretender.
And this is Law, &c.
The Illustrious House of Hanover,14
And Protestant succession,
To these I lustily will swear,
Whilst they can keep possession:
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will faulter,
But George, my lawful king shall be,
Except the Times shou’d alter.
And this is Law, &c.
From the C of E. Who appointed her depends on what sort of parish it is. Most of the time nowadays the patron of a parish is the local see (the office of the local bishop, in layman’s terms, though often the right is technically held by the cathedral chapter or somesuch instead of the bishop himself). In those cases, the bishop essentially appoints any vicars. Some parishes own their own advowsons and the parochial/ecclesiastical council selects the vicar by recommending an appointment to the bishop. In some cases, the Crown is the patron and Her Majesty “selects” the vicar (follows the recommendation of a minister, in other words).
The living of the parish church here was in the gift of the Marquis of Salisbury until recently. The last one he had to OK was the Rev. Bill Todd, who was appointed about 1971 and died a few years ago. This practice no longer occurs here.
This is recurring issue in Jane Austen’s books (her father and brother were both Anglican clergymen), such as Pride and Prejudice, as well as a minor plot point in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
Which reminds me - in Peter Hennessy’s excellent The Secret State (about British nuclear weapons policy and Cold War planning) he tells of President Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, first visiting 10 Downing Street. Zbig notices a wall map of the UK covered with dots.
“What are those, missile sites?” he asks. “Army bases?”
Just finished Brian Hoey’s Not in Front of the Corgis, a breezy collection of British Royalty trivia. On p. 198 I learned that the Queen still has “the right to bestow livings to clergy in forty-two parishes [in areas ranging from] Yorkshire to Avon, Essex to Lincolnshire, Norfolk to Gloucestershire and Leicestershire to Durham.” Apparently these are left to her discretion, and not on advice of Cabinet ministers or any Anglican cleric.
Which only suggests that Hoey is hopelessly confused. What he is presumably referring to are the 42 livings in the gift of the Duchy of Lancaster. But appointments to those livings are made by the Chancellor of the Duchy, who is a Cabinet minster, and he does so after taking advice from the local bishop (as well as from the parochial church council). Moreover, there is no real difference between those livings and the far larger number of other livings in the gift of the Crown, with the Chancellor of the Duchy making appointments to those Duchy livings in exactly the same way that the Lord Chancellor makes the appointments to the Crown livings elsewhere.
Why would a squire get to appoint a vicar? Wouldn’t the bishops appoint the vicars?