England Religious Occupations - International Institute

Religion
The pre-Henrician reformation Roman Catholic clergyman was considered to have an estate, a special standing with God, and these men controlled much of the people’s lives as they encompassed:


 * Members of the religious orders (the regular clergy of monks, friars, nuns etc.) who offered shelter, limited medical care, some elementary education and prayed for the living and the dead.


 * The secular clergy who had a pastoral ministry (rectors, vicars and curates) sermonized and lead the people in prayer.


 * Lay and church administrators, clerks, lawyers, teachers and scholars.

After the split with Rome in 1534 and consequent Dissolution of the Monasteries the number of clergy was halved, and their duties were different. The first group were no longer needed as clergy were not now seen as the only ones who could access deity. The pastoral responsibility of the clergyman to his lay congregation involved teaching the scriptures and how the average man could communicate directly with God. It is worthwhile remembering these distinctions when researching the lives of pre-and post- reformation clergymen. Prest (The Professions in Early Modern England. Croom Helm, London. ) has a detailed exposition of how the profession evolved up until about 1750.

A few definitions follow, and further details can be found in Camp (Clergymen of the Church of England. Family Tree Magazine Vol 17 #3, page 20-21, 2001) and Friar (A Companion to the English Parish Church. Bramley Books, 1998):


 * A priest is any ordained clergyman, but since the Reformation general usage has confined the term to the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches. The term minister is generally used for Protestant nonconformist priests.


 * An incumbent of the parish is the current person in charge of the spiritual welfare, or cure of souls. He holds the benefice or living (ecclesiastical office) with its income derived from land and tithes etc. The incumbent could be a rector who lived in a rectory and received both the great tithes and the small tithes; a vicar living in a vicarage who only received the small tithes; or a perpetual curate who served for a wage in a parish with no regular endowed vicarage.


 * A parson is the colloquial name for any incumbent and his dwelling is generically termed a parsonage. Prior to the 17th century the term curate was also used for the incumbent, but later it was used for an incumbent’s assistant, or an unbeneficed clergyman.


 * The advowson is the right of the patron of the living to make presentation to the bishop of a suitable person as incumbent. The right was inheritable and saleable, and was often used to advance members of the patron’s family rather than the best candidate.


 * Church of England clergy often described themselves as a clerk in holy orders, or simply, clerk. Formerly a commercial clerk was called a scrivener or writer.


 * Magister is the term used to describe a pre-18th century clerk who had been to university; those who had not were termed Dominus, which was sometimes translated as Sir but did not indicate knighthood.


 * A chaplain was a chapel priest without a benefice who ministered to a royal or large household, a body such as a hospital, nunnery, prison or the armed forces, or is a bishop’s private secretary.

Early Records Starting Before 1534

 * Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066-1857 (Le Neve) is useful for higher clergy down to archdeacons. This does not appear to have been filmed yet.


 * Those clergy that had university degrees will be found in the printed registers, in particular the Alumni Oxoniensis from 1500 (Foster) and Alumni Cantabrigiensis from early times (Venn and Venn ).


 * Ordination records will be in diocesan Bishop’s Registers now usually in county archives, and can contain details of baptism, education and character references. Most are on film as is the example shown below; those for the Diocese of Bath and Wells 1309-1920 are on 16 films starting at.

CHART: Example of Curate’s Licence from Register of Diocese of Canterbury (Film )


 * When a new incumbent was appointed he was first instituted and then inducted, as recorded in the Clergy Institution Books at the Public Record Office which provide a useful synopsis of the careers and movements of clergymen but no personal details. For example Repertorium ecclesiasticum parochiale londinense covers London, Middlesex and some parishes in Herts, Bucks and Essex. The volume for 1321-1700 is on films with the index at the end of the second film. Induction was recorded in the Bishop’s Registers.

CHART:Example of Induction of Vicar in Diocese of Canterbury

Other records on clergymen of all denominations include the Guildhall Library leaflet, Bevan, a brief section in Camp (My Ancestors Moved in England or Wales. Society of Genealogists, 1994), and the Royal Literary Fund.

Church of England after 1534 In addition to those above there are many other sources for the Anglican Church such as:


 * The edited Act Books of the Archbishop of Canterbury 1663-1914 are on 6 films starting at ; the original abstracts are on 11 films starting at ; and Dunkin and Jenkins have produced indexes from 1663-1859 which are on fiche; A-K on (7) and L-Z on (7).


 * Crockford’s Clerical Directory annually since 1858. 1858-1940 are on fiche starting at with separate years on different sets.

CHART: Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1948


 * The Clerical Guide from 1817 and the Clergy List from 1841 are less detailed than Crockford’s but a little earlier, and there are 9 films of different years of the Clergy List starting at 1844.


 * Index Ecclesiasticus 1800-1840 by Foster includes many beneficed clergy and their ordination dates compiled from bishops’ certificates.

Royall (Parsons Galore. Family Tree Magazine Vol 8 #12, page 28-29, 1992) describes these four directories. Many other lists and licences are at national, diocesan and local levels in library catalogues. Once a man has been located in a particular place then a thorough search of the appropriate ecclesiastical hierarchy is called for. One such example is a perpetual curate’s licence which turned up on (miscellaneous parish records for Whitwell, Hampshire).

Further sources are in Camp (Clergymen of the Church of England. Family Tree Magazine Vol 17 #3, page 20-21, 2001), the Guildhall Library leaflet, and Bourne and Chicken (Records of the Medical Professions. A Practical Guide for the Family Historian. Self-published.), for example:


 * Clergymen’s journals (Sandra Williams).
 * Clergy’s foibles exposed in the churchwardens’ presentments (Weller)
 * The Church of England Record Centre (Catty).
 * Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy—a charity assisting children of distressed clergy with records at the London Metropolitan Archives (Webb 2002).
 * Anglican university colleges (Titford 1998).
 * Scripture readers—lay assistants who went into people’s homes to read the bible for illiterate folk, and also in the armed forces (Cole 2001).

CHART: Perpetual Curate’s Licence

_______________________________________________________________

Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online courses English: Occupation Records-Professions and Trades and English: Occupations-Military and Services offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

We welcome updates and additions to this Wiki page.