FOSTON

CHAPTER IV

PERSECUTING BISHOPS -BENCH AND BAR

Ar the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the most serious evil which beset the Church of England was the system of Pluralities and Non-Residence. A prosperous clergyman might hold half-a-dozen separate preferments, and, as long as he paid curates to perform the irreducible minimum of public duty, he need never show his face inside his deserted parishes. The ecclesiastical literature of the time abounds in quaint illustrations of the equanimity with which this system, and all its attendant evils, was regarded even by respectable and conscientious men. Thomas Newton, the commentator on Prophecy, was Dean of St. Paul's as well as Bishop of Bristol, and, before he became a bishop, held a living in the City, a Prebend of Westminster, the Precentorship of York, the Lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and "the genteel office of SubAlmoner." Richard Watson (who is believed never to have set foot in his diocese) was Bishop of Llandaff and Archdeacon of Ely, and drew the tithes of sixteen parishes. William Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was Rector of St. Mary-lc-Bow, Cheapside, and also held the living of Farningham, near Sevenoaks, as an agreeable retreat within a convenient

distance from town." Richard Valpy was Head Master of Reading School, and Rector of Stradishall in Suffolk. George Butler, afterwards Dean of Peterborough, was Head Master of Harrow and Rector of Gayton in Northamptonshire. Nearly every bishop had a living together with his see. The valuable Rectory of Stanhope in Durham was held by four successive bishops. Henry Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, was Rector of St. George's, Hanover Square. George Pelham, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Sussex, and Christopher Bethell, Bishop of Exeter, had a living in Yorkshire.

When Sydney Smith was appointed to the rectory of Foston, there had been no resident Rector since the reign of Charles II. The churches of non-resident Rectors were commonly served by what were called "galloping parsons," who rattled through the services required by law, riding at full speed from parish to parish, so as to serve perhaps three churches on one Sunday. In many places the Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year. At Alderley, before Edward Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, became Rector there, "the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see whether there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom enough to make a congregation. The former Rector used to boast that he had never set foot in a sick person's cottage." When the shepherds thus deserted and starved their flocks, it was only natural that the sheep betook themselves to every form of schism, irreligion, and immorality. To remedy these evils, Spencer Perceval, whose keen interest in the affairs of the Church had a curiously irritating effect on Sydney

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Smith, took in hand to pass the Clergy Residence Bill, and the Bill became an Act in 1803. In 1808 a new Archbishop1 was enthroned at York. immediately began to put the Act in force, and summoned Sydney Smith from the joys of London to the austerities of Foston-le-Clay. The choice lay between complying and resigning, for no exchange of livings seemed practicable. On the 8th of October 1808, Sydney wrote to Lady Holland-"My lot is now cast, and my heritage fixed-most probably. But you may choose to make me a bishop, and, if you do, I think I shall never do you discredit; for I believe it is out of the power of lawn and velvet, and the crisp hair of dead men fashioned into a wig,2 to make me a dishonest man.

Two months later he wrote-"I have bought a book about drilling beans, and a greyhound puppy for the Malton Meeting. It is thought I shall be an eminent rural character." The expense of removing his family and furniture from London to Yorkshire was considerable, so he published two volumes of sermons and paid for the journey with the £200 which he received for them. The rectory-house at Foston was ruinous and uninhabitable, and it was necessary to rebuild it. Meanwhile, the Rector hired a house some way off, in the village of Heslington, and there he established himself on the 21st of June 1809, "two hundred miles," as he ruefully remarked, "from London."

Edward Vernon, afterwards Harcourt (1757-1847).

2 Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), Bishop of London, was the first bishop to discard the episcopal wig; and John Bird Sumner (1780-1862), Archbishop of Canterbury, the last to wear it.

Three days later he wrote to Lady Holland that he had laid down two rules for his own guidance in the country :

"1. Not to smite the partridge; for, if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau.1

"2. I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintances gradually falling off. I shall by this time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination. . . . Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season."

To Jeffrey he wrote on the 3rd of September:

"Instead of being unamused by trifles, I am, as I well knew I should be, amused by them a great deal too much. I feel an ungovernable interest about my horses, my pigs, and my plants. I am forced, and always was forced, to task myself up into an interest for any higher objects."

Six days later he wrote to Lady Holland :—

'I hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or dies I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment than is generally supposed. But, if life is to be, then it is common sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but that which

1 In later life he said :-"If you shoot, the squire and the poacher both consider you as their natural enemies, and I thought it more clerical to be at peace with both."

(all things considered, as well as I could consider them) appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such-like trash. I am prepared, therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability) I am come to the end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly, I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, and many friends who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly, foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence."

If ample occupation be, as some strenuous moralists assert, the true secret of happiness, Sydney Smith had plenty to make him happy during the early years of his life in Yorkshire. Here is his own account of his translation:

"A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from London, and not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to build a Parsonage House."

He was his own architect, his own builder, and his own clerk of the works. The cost of building a house, with borrowed money, made him a very poor man for several years.

"I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a gover

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