Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

It is my opinion, however, that Sir Rowland St. John added very considerably to the parsonage-house; and adopted it as his own residence, (no uncommon thing at this period), by which it arrived at the dignity of a manor-house; and, as the bishop had “left it unto his tenants” to do what they pleased for the cure of souls, Sir Rowland, also in compliance with the fashion of the time, kindly gave house-room to some poor half-starved curate, who had never taken upon himself the ministry as a money-getting profession, or having done so had found his expectations most woefully deceived. The pay of his “reading minister” may astonish those who do not remember the account given by Mr. Macaulay, or some equally trust-worthy author, of the condition of the great majority of the clergy in the seventeenth century.

The learned historian just referred to, states, what one may readily believe, seeing what the lords of Paddington and Marylebone paid the minister of those places, that “for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were menial servants;” and he adds, “a large proportion of those divines who had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small to afford a comfortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen.”

“The Ordinary,” in his “discretion,” or in his hurry to secure a more lucrative preferment for himself—the see of London in Dr. Mountain’s time was not the richest in England, and therefore not worth sticking to—had forgotten to make any provision for that cure of souls in Paddington, which devolved on him, and for which he was paid. “The reading minister;” and afterwards Mr. Anthony Dodd, “the preaching minister,” were glad therefore to become tenants in the great man’s house; having no rectory-house to themselves, and not being provided with a sufficiency of the rectory profits “to do divine service, to inform the people, and keep hospitality.”

At this time, indeed, “a young Levite, such was the phrase in use, might be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a year, and might not only perform his own professional functions, might not only be the most patient of butts and of listeners, might not only be always ready in fine weather for the bowls, and in rainy weather for the shovel-board, but might also save the expense of a gardener or a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the apricots, and sometimes he curried the coach horses; he cast up the farrier’s bills; he walked ten miles with a message or parcel; he was permitted to dine with the family, but he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare, he might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots, but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes make their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had been excluded.” [127a]

This certainly was not a very cheerful state of things for the working clergy and the people; and, although the high dignitaries of the church had few kind words to bestow on Cromwell, or the Commonwealth, it will be observed that the clergy and the people of Paddington had no reason to regret the establishment of the Parliamentary Commission. The commissioners wished to see the tithes let at something like their real value: a new church built out of the rectory funds; and “a godly able preaching minister” appointed, whose pay was to be something more than the paltry stipend allowed by the lessee, previous to the Revolution; or than poor Mr. Anthony Dodd’s liberal salary of twenty-eight pounds per annum, for his two full services and two sermons “every Lord’s day.”

But, if the suggestions of the commissioners were not completely carried out, the report of 1649 was not entirely unheeded, even after the restoration of the episcopacy; for the trustworthy public notary, Newcourt, tells us that Bishop Sheldon bound his nephews “to pay the curate here eighty pounds per year, at the four most usual feasts, viz. twenty pounds per quarter;” and he also informs us that “The church was but small and being very old and ruinious was about the year 1678 pulled down and new built from the ground, at the cost and charges of Joseph Sheldon, knight, sometime Lord Mayor of the City of London, and his brother, Mr. Daniel Sheldon, then lessees of the manor of Paddington.” And one would have thought that the memory of these events would have been preserved in less crazy heads than Mr. Dick’s; that the good example set to his successors by Bishop Sheldon would have been followed; and as the population of this place increased, and the value of the rectory-lands was thereby increased, the religious wants of the people would have been provided for out of these increased funds.

Two hundred pounds per annum, and the quantity of waste land for which Bishop Porteus and his lessees agreed to give the parish fifteen pounds a-year, is, as we have already seen, all that the liberal bishops of London, for the last century, have provided for the cure of fifty thousand souls, [127b] out of an estate which now yearly brings in thirty thousand pounds; and which, like the population, must increase for many years to come. Such paltry provisions for the cure of souls in Paddington will be a lasting monument of disgrace to all parties concerned in these transactions.

To smooth down the unmitigated selfishness developed in the several private Acts of Parliament, which we have examined in a previous part of this Work, it has been said “the system was in fault.” But when it was enacted, that two hundred acres of land which had been claimed by the church might be occupied by human beings, instead of cows and cabbage; “the system” could as easily have provided suitably for the religious education of the contemplated dwellers on this soil, as it did for the increase in the stipend of a single curate; or as it did for the transfer of two-thirds of the estate into the hands of lay lessees; and, when permission was given by another Act, to extend the power of granting building leases to four hundred acres of this estate, we find the rector of the parish, the lord of the manor, the bishop of London—three important personages in one—content with providing out of that estate an increased salary of eighty pounds a-year for a single curate; and with obtaining permission to give, “in case of need or convenience,” land which cost the owners of this estate fifteen pounds a year, I think the most charitable must say, that the inhabitants of this parish are not indebted to “the system” alone, for all the paternal care which their governors have bestowed on them and the cure of their souls.

Newcourt tells us Paddington “is exempt from the Archdeacon, and wholly subject to the Bishop of London and his Commissary;” and that the church is a donative of curacy in the gift of the bishops of that see, and is “supplied by a curate by virtue of the bishop’s license, wherein is committed to him the cura animarum.”

Whether Paddington has lost much by not having been overlooked by the archdeacon—“the bishop’s eye”—I cannot pretend to say; but we see that the rectory of Paddington, like that of many other places, overlooked by archdeacons, has been allowed to become a sinecure; and the curacy to exist without the means of cure; that the parson is a triune body; and that the rights of the parochial church belong much more to the bishop, and his lay lessees, than to the excellent minister, to whom the “cure of souls,” with a stipend few gentlemen could live on, and none perform the necessary duties with, is so considerately bestowed. And, with such scandals as this daily staring us in the face, is it very surprising that the law, which heretofore reposed confidence in bishops, and assumed, “that they will not consent to anything that shall be to the prejudice of the church,” should have at length begun to discover, that its confidence has been somewhat misplaced, and that all bishops cannot be trusted?