THE ONLY EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF HER MAJESTY
All the clergy were not College Dons and great scholars. Yet there was always, at that period, a flavour of scholarship about them: the beneficed clergy of the country were generally younger sons of the country gentry, because almost every family had a church living in its gifts, and these livings were too valuable to be bestowed out of the family. A young man who took a curacy in the country without family influence probably found himself stranded for life on eighty pounds a year. Those of the benefices which did not belong to private patrons were either in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, with whom interest was required; or of the Bishop, who had his own relations to provide for: of the sons, nephews, and cousins, for instance, of Dr. Sparke, sometime Bishop of Norwich, it was said “as the Sparkes fly upwards;” or of some college at Oxford or Cambridge which wanted them for its Fellows. The only chance for such a man was to attract attention as a preacher in some town. But this chance came to few; therefore for half the clergy at least their profession was a starveling. Yet those who had no interest entered it, in hopes and under the pressure of a call which they believed to be real, and not to be disobeyed under penalties too awful to be contemplated. Meantime it is now nearly fifty years since Charles Kingsley, who could never shake off the prejudice of small middle-class gentility, uttered the sneer that the modern way of making your son a gentleman was to send him to Oxford first and to put him in Holy Orders next. He here expressed, however, a common feeling about the clergy, which was that they should be scholars first, gentlemen next, and Divines last. And there is no doubt that the social position of the Church, and, therefore, the adhesion of all the better classes to the Church, has proved of the greatest value, in times of religious decay, towards maintaining the Church in her position of ascendency.
The administration of the parish was still that of the eighteenth century. That is to say, the Church was there, before all people, with open doors, offering its services, its sermons, its offices, freely to all who chose to accept them. It was not considered the business of the clergy to run after those who refused their offices. As for the piety and the reputation of the clergy, their lives were pure; there was commonly no scandal: they were supposed, however, to be addicted to wine, and in the City there were some who were known as “three bottle men.” In opinions the majority were of the Evangelical type, with Calvinistic leanings: they preached sermons wholly on points of doctrine. The general belief was that mere membership in the Church was of no importance at all, and that the salvation of the soul was an independent and separate transaction carried on between the individual and his Creator. This kind of preaching has not yet wholly ceased, but it is rare: such preachers are no longer heeded.
COUNCIL CHAMBER, OSBORNE HOUSE
BILLIARD-ROOM, OSBORNE HOUSE
Let us compare the Church of the present day. It is no longer a Church of scholars: there are still some learned members in it, but the old presumption that a clergyman must be a scholar, is quite lost and forgotten; rather the presumption is the other way, that a clergyman is not a scholar. The young scholars of the day do not, as a rule, take upon them Holy Orders: there are too many openings for their intellectual activities. Moreover, the prizes are not what they were. Agricultural depression has ruined the fellowships, cut down by one half the country livings, destroyed the value of Deaneries and Canonries. The Bishoprics still, however, keep their value, and a profession cannot be thought very poor which numbers so many prizes as the Church of England, with her Archbishops and her Bishops. Preaching, which was formerly so important a part of Church work, has decayed deplorably. The reason is the development of the parish work, which now occupies the whole time of the clergy, leaving them no time for meditation and study. For, since the people will not come to the clergy, the clergy condescend to stoop to the people. At the present moment the Church is the centre of numberless institutions and associations which aim at civilising the people rather than making them religious. The clergy preside over clubs for the lads, clubs for the girls, temperance associations, mothers’ meetings, sales of clothing, lectures, concerts, care of the poor and of the sick, benefit societies, visiting organisations, Sunday schools, country holiday funds, convalescent homes, and a thousand other things. Now the working people, and especially the very lowest class, regard this activity with a kind of admiring wonder; they see these young fellows—many of whom are not clergy, but live among them—working morning, noon, and night for no reward: they are touched by this devotion; their lads would follow them to the death. I do not say that this example makes them religious, but it fills them with that new feeling towards religion which has been already considered. The doctrines held by the present clergy are in most cases High Church, with which, personally, I have no kind of sympathy. At the same time, one must admit that the modern views have destroyed the dreadful terrors about Election and Predestination: in the Anglican, as in the Roman Church, once more the Fold protects.
PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN IN ROYAL ROBES