religion

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Religion and sexual mores

Our church may still be, what it always hath been, the honour of the reformation, the strongest bulwark of the Gospel against Popery, and the brightest star in the Christian firmament.

Quote from William Stevens in Park, Memoirs of William Stevens (1812).

Stevens makes an effort to realise his vision of what the church should be. It is an uphill struggle.

Not that the Anglican church lacks influence. Its constitution is bound by law, bringing entitlement to be involved in baptisms, marriages and burials. But that entitlement can bring problems in its wake. Small wonder that committed Christians wish to see improvements.

To create a new parish, to amend parochial boundaries or to build a new parish church required legislation. On the other hand, to found a new Dissenting chapel all that was needed was the hire of a hall and magistrate's licence.

From O'Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political & Social History 1688-1832 (London 1997).

The clergy’s hierarchy

There is little encouragement in the eighteenth century for an Anglican cleric to regard his job as a calling. It is common for younger sons of the nobility to enter the church. They may become experts on its rites, but that does not make them exponents of religion. James Hackman takes up the cloth to escape from the army: it does not deter him from committing murder.

And if you rise to become a bishop, does that make you any more spiritual?

Promoted to the Bench late in life, he lingered on in office until he reached the portals of death itself. If his see was poor, he tried to obtain a translation from it as quickly as possible; if it was large, he had no suffragan bishop to help him. Most of his time was spent in London; he only visited his diocese in summer, occasionally touring the countryside. These episcopal visitations were not a pleasant part of his duties; travelling about was slow and tedious. Finally, it was almost certainly the case that he had not been promoted for such administrative capacities as he possessed.

From Virgin, The Church in an Age of Negligence: Ecclesiastical Structure and Problems of Church Reform, 1700-1840 (Cambridge 1989).

The Evangelical Reaction

The evangelical movement, which begins as a companion to Methodism within the confines of the Anglican church, seeks to rediscover earlier Christian morality through the Holy Scriptures. One early exponent is Rev Henry Venn, Vicar of Huddersfield 1759-1770, then of Yelling near Cambridge. Reading through the collection of his letters, you will be struck by his continuous consciousness of the presence of God everywhere.

Christ will comfort the brave soldier that fights for Him, in opposition to self and the world; and vouchsafe him new manifestations of glory. I wish you the enjoyment of great knowledge in the things of God, of great peace in the ways of God, and of a great reward in the kingdom of God.

From letter of Rev Henry Venn, 5 February 1764.

Evangelism and The Thackerays

With my young ones - no guardian angels, no Saint Cecilias - we are of the Clapham Theology.

From letter of William Makepeace Thackeray to his daughters' prospective piano teacher, 1 March 1852.

It is evident from his acquaintanceship with Thomas Babington Macauley and James Stephen (whose son later marries his daughter) that Thackeray comes from an Evangelical background. Nevertheless his beliefs clash strongly with his mother's, particularly in relation to the Old Testament.

It may give you some idea of the misery w^h every letter I have had from home has given me - for they have all more or less spoken of the same subject - they have all told me that you are angry & discontented with me - & instead of looking forward with pleasure to the time of receiving your letter - I have been almost afraid to open them knowing the reproaches & the misery which not the words but the tenor of them conveys.

From letter of William Makepeace Thackeray in Weimar to his mother, 31 December 1830.

What right have you to say that I am without God because I can't believe that God ordered Abraham to kill Isaac or that he ordered the bears to eat the little children who laughed at Elisha for being bald.

From letter of William Makepeace Thackeray to his mother, 2 August 1845

Later he leaves his daughters in her care for long periods, leading to more friction on the religious issue.

They are under my teaching, & that teaching must be fm what I believe it to be the 'word of GOD'... I cannot have them with me, without teaching them, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration fm GOD", & that as "children they must know the Holy Scriptures"... The work will not be mine if they are brought to recognise the truth of GOD's word - poor Nanny's is a stiff heart of unbelief, & it came upon me like a thunderbolt when I hear her declare that she "did not care for the old Testament & considered the New only historical".

From letter to Thackeray from his mother, 26 September 1852

To my mind Scripture only means a writing and Bible means a book. It contains Divine Truths: and the history of a Divine Character: but imperfect but not containing a thousandth part of Him...

From Thackeray's letter to his daughter Anne (“Nanny”), 1852

William Stevens and church finances

Stevens was a city man, partner in a wholesale hosiery business in Broad Street... He twice served as steward of the festival of the Sons of the Clergy, was a governor of many socially valuable institutions (e.g. Christ's, Bridewell, and Bedlam Hospitals and the Magdalen Asylum), and played a leading part in the formation of the Scottish Episcopal Church Relief Fund in 1804 and of the Society for the Reformation of Principles, from which emerged the British Critic.

From G F A Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne's Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Church of England (Cambridge 1964).

William Stevens makes the DNB by virtue of his religious achievements. We learn about his connection with the iron trade elsewhere, through his relations with Anthony Bacon and Richard Crawshay.

His career as a hosier has begun as a fourteen-year-old apprentice in 1746: his master John Hookham's address, 68 Old Broad Street, remains the business’s address throughout. In 1762 he and Bacon both serve as stewards to the festival of the Sons of the Clergy. Their association continues, with Stevens joining the Cyfarthfa partnership in 1781. When Bacon dies, Stevens becomes one of his executors, nothing deterred (despite his piety) by the bequests of Bacon's iron interests to his illegitimate sons. Rev Samuel Glasse, another executor, is one of his friends.

The religious tendency that Stevens advances is noticeably different from that of the Clapham evangelists. His group (known as the Hackney Phalanx) is most concerned with injecting meaning and significance into the services and sacraments of the Church. He can therefore keep on good terms with the clergy’s hierarchy.

The indigent clergy and their families were the particular objects of Mr. Stevens's charities, and, therefore, when in the time of Archbishop Cornwallis, he was elected treasurer of Queen Anne's bounty, it gave him peculiar satisfaction, as it was an office, for which he was well qualified, in every respect suiting his temper and turn of mind.

From Park, Memoirs of William Stevens.

The Board would instruct their treasurer to instruct the Treasury to instruct the Exchequer Officers to pay the money over to him; and, in a typical year, he would then at once put it to the purchase of gilt-edged stocks... The secretary would be instructed to take firm security for the treasurer's doing all this... So far as is known, nothing ever went wrong with this system until the wretched John Paterson defaulted in 1829.

From Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne's Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Church of England.

Queen Anne's Bounty is well explained in Best's book. Its purpose is to use certain money from ecclesiastical sources ("tenths" and "first fruits") for the benefit of indigent clergy. For each eligible parson they select, the board earmarks, out of expected income, a sum for buying a tract of land from which this benefit will accrue. One of the treasurer's main tasks is to invest this sum while the tract is found and the purchase arranged. Bounty records do not reveal where treasurers invest this money.

Where the Cyfarthfa partnership is concerned, Stevens is the sleeping partner: his interest is purely financial. We cannot be sure whether his investment is made with Bounty money or his own. It certainly transpires that his successor as treasurer, "the wretched John Paterson" (formerly his business partner) invests Bounty money unwisely in a family project that goes badly awry, to the board's great embarrassment. No such problem with Bounty money invested by William Stevens.

Eighteenth-century morality

The slave trade

The un-Christian morality of eighteenth-century Anglicanism is nowhere better illustrated than in its attitude to the slave trade. Not only does it condone slavery: it takes advantage of it, running its own plantations in the Caribbean. Not surprisingly it is the Evangelical movement that takes the lead in fighting the trade, but Quakers are well in advance with their condemnation.

Illicit liaisons

We see no signs of disapproval from Anthony Bacon’s Christian friends for his long affair with Mary Bushby. Nor among John Wilkinson’s for siring bastards in his seventies. As for Sandwich’s “scandal to private morality”, nobody seems to worry about his eighteen-year affair with Martha Ray before she is murdered.

Pregnant brides (Ann Becher? The first Mrs Cort?) are also accepted.

Attitudes to illegitimacy

If extra-marital affairs can be excused, so can their issue. Bacon’s bastards even inherit, though Wilkinson’s don’t. What if Henry Cort is an illegitimate child?

Take the case of Thomas Smith, illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton of Hagley Hall. He rises to sufficient prominence in the Navy (presiding at the court-martial of the ill-fated Admiral Byng in 1757) to rank an entry in both Old and New DNBs. Unlike Bacon's sons, Smith is in no position to inherit the Lyttelton fortune, since his father's marriage has produced a number of legitimate heirs. George, the eldest, duly succeeds to the family seat and later acquires the title Baron Lyttelton. The Lytteltons display no shame about Smith's origin.

So what name do you give your bastard?

Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire has a child by Charles Grey, and calls her Eliza Courtney. The birth takes place in France.

The baby's surname comes from a branch of her maternal grandmother's family. Not her mother's name – married or maiden. Not her father's name. Not her foster-parent's name.

The Duke (aka William Cavendish) also has an illegitimate daughter, brought up initially by her mother (surname Spencer): she later becomes Charlotte Williams.

Whether the eldest offspring of the Bacon-Bushby liaison ever goes under the name Anthony Bushby is unclear. At school he is William Addison. Also known as Anthony Frankland. Eventually calling himself Anthony Bacon.

So how has Thomas Smith acquired his surname? From his mother? From a foster-parent? Out of the air? Neither old nor new DNB tells us.

Similarly for our Henry Cort. Cort may not be his father's name. Perhaps it is his mother's. Or has he been adopted from a completely different family?