the Clergy in mind that they ought not to aspire above an Abigail. Certainly discretion and merit ran very low in the Church AT THAT TIME; or else some people were willing to make the nation believe so. But to return to the Canons."-Jeremy Collier's Essays on Pride, pp. 40, 41, (3rd edit. Lond. 1698).

The piece of antiquity alluded to is one of the Apostolic Canons, which forbids the ordination of one who had married a slave.

Mr. Macaulay had read this passage and alludes to it in the note to Queen Elizabeth's injunction. His remark is truly singular, that Collier's words prove that his own pride had not been effectually tamed! They prove unquestionably that he thought the times changed.

Now at length that the investigation of the subject of this section is concluded, let us remark how ill-advised it was of Mr. Macaulay to represent the marriages of the Reformed Clergy in such a light as he has done. Most unquestionably, whatever follies or crimes the married Clergy since the Reformation may have been guilty of, there cannot be a doubt that their liberty to marry has vastly contributed to the morality and credit of their order.

Let us terminate the section with the following words of Bishop Hall, in his Treatise on the Honour of the Married Clergy, dedicated to Archbishop Abbot:

"The Church of England is blessed with a true Clergy and glorious, and such a one as his Italian generation may impotently envy and snarl at, [but] shall never presume to compete with in worthiness and honour; and (as Dr. Taylor, that courageous martyr, said at his parting) blessed be God for holy matrimony." -Treatise &c. sect. 17. p. 707, (edit. 1641).

SECTION V.

ON THE INCOMES OF THE CLERGY.

WITH respect to the revenues of the Clergy about the time of the accession of James the Second, Mr. Macaulay writes as follows:

"The rural Clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than the rural gentry, and were a class scarcely less important. It is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as compared with the individual gentleman, then ranked much lower than in our days. The main support of the Church was derived from the tithe; and the tithe bore to the rent a much smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole income of the parochial and collegiate Clergy at only four hundred and eighty thousand pounds a-year; Davenant at only five hundred and forty-four thousand a-year. It is certainly now more than seven times as great as the larger of these two sums. It follows that rectors and vicars must have been, as compared with the neighbouring knights and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth than in the nineteenth century." Macaulay's History of England, vol. I. pp. 324, 325.

1.

It is not my intention to dispute the accuracy of either of these estimates. I will only state a fact or two which may possibly enable any person of a financial turn to approximate towards discovering the average of Clergymen's incomes, and by allowing for the altered value of money, to compare their situation with that of the Clergy in our own times. The following passage from Prideaux is important:

"And all this with the forty-eight cities which they had to dwell in, and their share in the second tithes, and tithes of

the poor, the Levitical ministry had over and above the tithes, which are now claimed among us by the ministers of the Gospel, and were by the same divine appointment fixed and settled on them. And therefore the glebes and church lands, which are now held with these tithes in this realm, can by no means make any such alteration in the case, but that the precedent, which God hath given by commanding the payment of those tithes in the Jewish state for the support of his worship in the maintenance of those who there ministered in it, will now under the Gospel hold good for the same payment in this state also, notwithstanding any such glebes or church lands, because what was held with these tithes by the Levitical ministry, was vastly more than all the glebes and church lands in this realm can amount to. For putting them all together, they will not come to above one hundred thousand pounds per annum. What belongs to bishops and deans and chapters at the largest computation, reckoning in their fines as well as their rents, I cannot make to arise higher than seventy-five thousand pounds per annum, and of this at least a third part being in appropriated tithes, there remain only fifty thousand pounds per annum in lands belonging to all the bishops and deans and chapters in this realm; and if we add hereto the glebe lands belonging to parish churches, fifty thousand pounds per annum, I reckon, is the highest value they can be laid at. So then the whole income of all the church lands and glebes in England and Wales will amount to one hundred thousand pounds per annum, which, computing the value of all the lands of both, that is the whole realm, at fifteen millions per annum (as it is usually reckoned at), is about the hundred and fiftieth part of it; whereas the cities and lands alone assigned the Levitical ministry in Canaan was a thirtieth part of that land, which is five times as much: and this is but one of those many particulars which (I have shewn) did over and above their tithes belong unto them."-Prideaux's Original and Right of Tithes, pp. 81-83, (Lond. 1713).

The information of Prideaux as to the particulars he mentions may probably be depended on, considering that he was himself a Dean, and is generally considered an honest man.

Before quitting the subject of the entire revenues of the Church, I will produce a passage from an anonymous tract entitled "A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions, shewing the Nature and Measures of Crown Lands, Assessments, &c.," London, printed for Obadiah Blagrave, 1679. It is very probable that his estimate of Church revenue is highly exaggerated; but on this point the reader can form his own opinion:

"One cause of public charge in matters of religion, is the not having changed the limits of parishes and cures with the change of religion from popery, and with the changes in plantation and trade. For now when the ministers of the Gospel preach unto multitudes assembled in one place, may not parishes be bigger, that is may not flocks be more numerous than when every particular sheep was, as heretofore, dressed and shorn three or four times per annum by shrift? If there be in England and Wales but about five millions of people, what needs be more than five thousand parishes, that is one thousand sheep under every shepherd? Whereas in the middling parishes of London there are about five thousand souls in each. Upon which account there needs be in England and Wales but one thousand parishes, whereas there are near ten thousand.

"Now the saving of half the parishes would (reckoning the benefices one with another, but at £100 per annum apiece) save £500,000. Besides, when the number of parochial parsons were halved, then there would need but half the present number of bishops, deans and chapters, colleges, and cathedrals, which perhaps would amount to two or three hundred thousand pounds more: and yet the Church of God would be more regularly served than now, and that without prejudice to that sacred, ancient order of episcopacy, and the way of their maintenance by tithes; and all this in a method of greater reformation and suitableness thereunto."-A Treatise &c. p. 6.

The reader may now make the best estimate he can of the entire income of the Clergy from the above conflicting statements.

The number of parishes may be known with much greater

certainty. Chamberlayne, in his State of Britain for the

year

1684 (at the commencement of the book), estimates their number at 9725; and in a later edition of the same work in Anne's reign, their number is stated to be 9913, 'of which 3845 are churches impropriate.' Oley, in his Preface to the Country Parson, speaks of the Church of England as a Church having eight or nine thousand parishes, and perhaps as many clerks or more.'

The average income of each Clergyman may now be known approximately from the above data. It is still however necessary to make some remarks on the altered value of money its value was undoubtedly much greater in the latter part of the seventeenth century than at present. The following passage from Mr. Macaulay will enable any one to form some judgment on the subject:

Two

"The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best informed persons, at about three thousand a-year, the average income of a baronet at nine hundred a-year, the average income of a member of parliament at less than eight hundred a-year. A thousand a-year was thought a large revenue for a barrister. thousand a-year was hardly to be made in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crown lawyers. It is evident, therefore, that an official man would have been well paid if he had received a fourth or fifth part of what would now be an adequate stipend." Macaulay's History of England, vol. 1. pp. 308, 309.

The above data, though of course far from being entirely satisfactory, are the best which I am able to furnish. The entire income of the Church, the value of each living (supposing the whole to be equally divided), and the modern value of the Clergyman's average salary, may be calculated (though very roughly) at leisure, and the result compared with the present state of things.

Mr. Macaulay, in a passage already cited, states that not one living in two hundred, after the Reformation, afforded