Destitute Clergy

But Punch's chief objection to the bishops was that they emphasized in the most glaring way the contrasts which existed in what was at once the wealthiest and the poorest of Churches. If the Church was out of touch with the lay poor, she was even more open to criticism for her neglect of her own poor clergy. The scandal of the ragged curates had attracted Punch's attention in the 'forties. On September 19, 1846, he referred to the recent death, "raving mad, in penury and destitution," of the Rev. Mr. Kaye, of St. Pancras. A return, procured by the energetic inquisitiveness of Joseph Hume at the close of 1847, revealed the fact that the total number of assistant curates to incumbents resident on their benefices amounted in 1846 to 2,642, and the number licensed to 2,094. Of these 1,192 received stipends under £100 a year, and as many as 173 less than £50 a year. But the most bitter comment on this modern clerical instance of Dives and Lazarus is to be found in an article in 1856 on "Bishops and Curates":—

A curate—"an Agueish curate"—wishes to know of The Times if curates in general "may look forward for some provision when age and disease have incapacitated them from further labours?" There is disaffection, insolence, in the very question. This curate for twenty years folded the sheep of two curacies. "They were separated by a hedgerow," and the pastor was "exposed to the pestilential atmosphere of Essex Marshes." And the curate sums up the case of bishop and curate as below:—

"To a bishop who has had his labours sweetened by all that life can give of comfort, luxury, and highest dignity—a palace and £6,000 per annum.

"To a curate who, for thirty years, shall have done his devoir before God and man, till broken with miasmatic fever, or voiceless from excess of oral exertion, he is obliged to confess his inability to be any longer faithful in his calling—the workhouse."

And is it not well that it should be so? A curate on £100 a year, and shaking with a marsh ague, shaking, and praying, and teaching the while, is still a lively representative of the ancient Christian, is still a living extract from the New Testament. Now a bishop, with £22,000 per annum, and, if shaking, shaking with the fat of the land, is, as far as our reading goes, not to be found in the volume to which we have reverently alluded.

It should be explained that on July 10 in the same year a Bill had been introduced in the Lords enabling the Bishops of London and Durham to resign, and making provision for them:—

The annual income of Dr. Blomfield is £10,000 a year, and he has enjoyed it for twenty-eight years, having previously had four years at Chester with £1,000 a year; total receipt, £284,000. And the annual income of Dr. Maltby is £24,000, and he has enjoyed it for twenty years, having previously had five years at Chichester with £4,000 a year; total receipt, £500,000.

The "Prince Bishops," with their princely revenues, have long since departed: nowadays no one charges bishops with indolent opulence. The scandal of the poor curates and underpaid country clergymen still remains, but the disparity is not so great. The best paid prelates find it hard to make both ends meet or to make provision for their families. Some of them even publish balance-sheets of their receipts and expenditure.

Punch and "No Popery"

In the domain of doctrine and religious controversy Punch's record is somewhat chequered. He was equally antipathetic to High Church and Low Church. We have seen what he thought of Exeter Hall. But Pusey and his followers stirred him to even greater wrath. He called the Puseyites "Brummagem Papists." He saw no beauty or dignity in an advanced ritual, but only an absurd and wicked "playing at religion." So when the famous Papal Brief was published in the autumn of 1850, constituting a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in place of the Vicars Apostolic, followed up by the pastoral from the newly appointed Cardinal Wiseman welcoming the restoration of England to the communion of the Roman Church, Punch's indignation knew no bounds; he became the most violent champion of English Protestantism. In earlier days he had welcomed the Liberal political views which Pius IX had expressed in the opening stages of the Risorgimento movement in Italy, and had printed a laudatory set of verses, headed "A Health to the Pope," in the issue of February 20, 1847, in which he had congratulated Pio Nono on his masculine wisdom, courage, and reforming zeal. His severest censures were reserved for the sectarian zealots at home. "Everybody knows that the great obstacle to popular education is the agreement of sects, on the one hand, that it is necessary to teach orthodoxy, together with secular knowledge, and their inability, on the other, to agree what doxy is ortho-."

Early in 1850, when the friends of Church Education met at Willis's Rooms to discuss and protest against the Government's Education Bill, he declared himself a decided opponent of "National Education upon strictly Church principles," which, as interpreted by some of the speakers, were "indistinguishable from those of the heretic-burners of the Inquisition." The cleavage between the various schools, and the narrow bigotry of all, moved him to an impassioned appeal in which the Gorham case, and the secession of Newman, are brought in to reinforce his plea for toleration:—

O Gentlemen! O Servants of the poor dear Church of England, while you are boxing and brawling within the sanctuary, why send forth these absurd emissaries to curse the people outside? They don't mind your comminations, they are only jeering at your battles.... The people in this country will learn to read and write; they will not let the parsons set their sums and point out their lessons, or meddle in all their business of life. And as for your outcries about infidelity and atheism, they will laugh at you (as long as they keep their temper) and mind you no more than Mumbo Jumbo.