The Clerical Profession In The Long Eighteenth Century 16801840 Jacob by Jacob, W. M. 9780199213009, 0199213003 instant download after payment.

This book focuses upon the clergy of the established Church in England and Wales as a professional group, and investigates their role in their parishes and society during the ‘long 18th century’ between 1680 and 1840. It concentrates on the ‘lower clergy’, that is parish clergy, and their role within the broader social context of later Stuart and Georgian society. It considers the nature of professions during the period, and examines the social backgrounds; recruitment and selection; education, at school and university or otherwise; career development; and finances of the clergy. It also investigates what they actually did in their parishes in terms of conducting worship, exercising pastoral care, and providing education in the Christian faith, and their relations with the people amongst whom they lived and worked. It takes account of changing expectations during the period, especially the pressure for, and steps towards, ‘reform’ from the 1780s onwards, and, where possible, offers comparisons with people in other professions, especially doctors, lawyers, and ministers of dissenting churches. It also considers the evidence of the accountability and acceptability of the clergy to their congregations, and the extent of anticlericalism, and the means by which they were supervised by bishops and their officers. The clergy emerge as the most carefully recruited and educated of the ‘learned professions’ with a strong supervisory role exercised by bishops, in relation to a generally responsive but not uncritical or subservient laity. The book effectively challenges the received view that the majority of the clergy were inappropriately educated, poverty-stricken, and inattentive to their canonical duties.