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A Victorian Curate

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David Yeandle

9. St Ives, Hunts

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  • 1 John Hunt, ed., Poems by Robert Wilde [sic] D.D., One of the Ejected Ministers of 1662, with a Hist (...)

1The next answer came via an advertisement in the High-Church Guardian. It was from the curate of ‘Ousebank‘, who would shortly be leaving for another parish and required a replacement for six weeks. ‘Ousebank’ is Hunt’s pseudonym for St Ives in Huntingdonshire. His time there was clearly an important and largely happy episode in Hunt’s life, not least because he met his first wife there and, after a successful curacy, nearly succeeded in gaining the incumbency. He devotes more words to his time at St Ives than in the whole of Part I, where he had described his previous curacies. Moreover, he writes in a more lyrical way about St Ives, both in Clergymen Made Scarce and in the Preface to the Poems by Robert Wilde.1 For these reasons, we devote special attention to this section.

  • 2 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 27, esp. pp. 32f. ‘The large salary was nominally £120 a year—actually £1 (...)
  • 3 There are no detailed descriptions of everyday life in the vicarage under this incumbent, but the r (...)
  • 4 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 27.
  • 5 Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation: ‘St. Ives Hunts.’ The town, anciently called Slepe, was renamed St Ive (...)
  • 6 See History, Gazetteer & Directory of Huntingdonshire, 1854 (Huntingdon: James Hatfield, 1854), htt (...)

2The new curate was to receive the salary of £11s. a week and to live in the capacious vicarage with the incumbent and his wife,2 where the couple enjoyed a gentrified existence.3 Hunt was allowed to ‘enter at once on the duty’,4 thus travelling over 100 miles south to St Ives, on the north bank of the River Ouse, in Cambridgeshire (then Huntingdonshire),5 a journey that took him roughly thirteen hours. St Ives was a thriving small town, with 3,500 inhabitants, an important market, and yearly fair.6 In 1864, it had a quaint, old-world feel to it. Hunt records this, together with other features:

  • 7 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 28f. The ‘richest man’ refers to Frederick Mutton. See fn. 43, p. 145.

The Parish of Ousebank had many attractions, but it had also some disadvantages. It was a quiet old-fashioned country town. It had no gentry, but the tradespeople were well-disposed, simple, industrious, and, perhaps I may say, with some qualifications, intelligent. There was an honest independence about them, —I might call it pride, but that word would express more than I mean. There were many efforts after caste—everybody tried to be above everybody, and nobody seemed good enough for nobody. Excepting the representatives of the professions, they were all people in business, so that one or two trying to form a class above the others, could not succeed. ‘We are all tinkers and tailors, ’ said the richest man in Ousebank, to me, one day, ‘and there is no use of any one trying to set himself above another.’7

Fig. 2 St Ives Vicarage, c. 1883, courtesy of Mr Rolf Lunsmann.

3The townsfolk could be divided into ‘church’ people and ‘chapel’ people. The former were mainly professional and some working people, the latter mainly tradesfolk. Hunt observes, not without irony:

  • 8 Approx. £649,663 in 2020.
  • 9 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29. This humorous remark refers principally to Potto Brown, a wealthy mil (...)

Ousebank had another disadvantage. It was emphatically a Dissenting town. There was but one Church, while there were seven or eight meeting houses, and the meeting houses were not small places which held only a few people, but large buildings, with congregations numbering three, four, and five hundred. One of them, indeed, was called the Free Church, a fine Gothic building, with a tall spire, and stained-glass windows, erected at an expense of £5000,8 and dedicated by local wit to the gentleman who was the chief contributor, whom they canonised on the occasion of the dedication.9

  • 10 £3,000 was worth approx. £389,800 in 2020, £2,000 approx. £259,865. See Oddities of St Ives, http:/ (...)
  • 11 See ‘Here’s One I Made Earlier’, in Inspire: The Newsletter of the Free Church (United Reformed) Sa (...)
  • 12 As a non-conformist church, this is oriented to fit in with the street layout. The south apse, furt (...)

4Potto Brown, the principal benefactor, who was raised a Quaker, but ejected later, did not approve of a steeple being added to the Free Church and restricted his contribution to £3,000, leaving others to pay £2,000 for the spire.10 The church, which was opened in 1864, replacing the former Independent Chapel, stands impressively on the Market Hill,11 beside the statue of Oliver Cromwell, who had been an inhabitant of St Ives; the statue was not unveiled until 1901. The untrained eye might, and often does, easily mistake the building for an Anglican Parish Church, despite its south-facing orientation. The spire was supposedly intended to rival that of the Parish Church. The interior of the original church, which has subsequently been re-modelled, gave the pulpit pride of place in the apsidal focal point at the south end.12

5The other Dissenting meeting houses of St Ives are by no means as architecturally impressive. The following are listed for 1854: Independent (superseded by the Free Church), Wesleyan, Baptist, Particular Baptist, Primitive Methodist, Friends. Most had seating for several hundred people. Clearly, then, the Parish Church of All Saints was faced with considerable competition amongst the worshippers in the town, with its 680 sittings, as against a capacity of well over 1,500 in the various chapels.13

  • 14 Mrs Eliza Hunt: ‘Yate Fosbroke’. Cf. ‘JAN. 1. [1840] —Rev. Yate Fosbrooke [sic], M.A., formerly of (...)

6Hunt was evidently impressed by his newly found country parish. Church, town, and incumbent, whom he named ‘Mr. Coldstream‘,14 were all to his liking, and he was given a warm, enthusiastic welcome:

  • 15 During Fosbroke’s incumbency, the church was equipped with attractive oak pews amongst other things (...)

The Vicar and his lady gave me a hearty welcome. Before many minutes I was quite at home with them […] The Church was a beautiful building and had been recently restored. It had eight or nine richly stained windows. The spire was the very perfection of symmetry. Mr. Coldstream was proud of his Church, and proud that it had been restored during his Incumbency.15

7Hunt was allowed to preach extempore and did so to the great satisfaction of incumbent and congregation, so that he was asked to be entirely responsible for preaching and was offered a permanent position as curate; moreover, the prospect of additional funding by the congregation was held out to him.

8He was overjoyed at this successful start:

  • 16 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 28. The allusion is to Psalm 16: 6 ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasan (...)

Did I not think myself a happy man? The lines had fallen unto me in pleasant places. I praised that wonderful Providence which by so many apparent accidents had brought me to such a Goshen as this.16

9The situation in St Ives presents an interesting picture, not of the village parson and squire, such as we had encountered in Burley, but of a gentleman parson, who lived with his wife in a large vicarage and kept up customs of the gentry in a rural town environment comprising largely nonconformist shopkeepers and tradespeople:

  • 17 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29.

The new aristocracy was stronger than the old, or, to speak more correctly, the mealocracy—for the richest men were millers—was too powerful a rival for the landocracy. The schism between them was wide and deep. There were but few Church people in the town—that is, people who went to Church from principle. The intelligence and wealth of the town, such as they were, were nearly all on the side of the Dissenters.17

Fig. 3 Interior of All Saints’, St Ives, c. 1860, courtesy of the Norris Museum, St Ives.

  • 18 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 38.

10 Hunt, perhaps mindful of his own origins as the son of a cobbler, comments on the need for the Church to exist harmoniously alongside the tradesfolk: ‘When the Church resolves to be independent of the trading community, it resolves to be independent of the nation.’18

  • 19 See Crockford’s 1865, p. 225: ‘FOSBROKE, Yate, St. Ives, Hunts.—V. of St. Ives with Chapelries of O (...)

11Yate Fosbroke,19 who was not kindly disposed towards the tradesfolk, is nevertheless described benevolently by his curate:

  • 20 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29.

Mr. Coldstream had been Vicar of Ousebank for nearly thirty years. He was an old-fashioned clergyman, and was proud of his office, not so much for the office itself, but because an English clergyman was equivalent to an English gentleman. A clergyman of the Church of England and an old English gentleman were to him nearly the same, and each was the ideal pre-eminently of all that was great, good, and desirable in this mortal life. His ancestors had been clergymen since the days of Charles I.20

  • 21 Cf. Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 30. Snob was originally a dialect or colloquial term for ‘a shoemaker (...)
  • 22 Although this substantial book (384 pp.) was published under the imprint of Longmans, Green, Reader (...)

12Hunt and Fosbroke worked amicably together for the most part, though they differed occasionally on points of theology, a subject on which Fosbroke had rigid views but which did not otherwise greatly occupy him. His principal objective was to live the life of a gentleman. This involved at times an air of haughty superiority. He looked down on the lower classes, whom he called ‘snobs’ in the old sense of the word that had been used disparagingly with reference to the jurymen by Punch in the article about the anatomy scandal.21 He was generally disparaging about Dissenters. He suspected Hunt of heterodoxy, especially with regard to the Essay on Pantheism that Hunt wished to publish at St Ives, for which he achieved a certain notoriety.22 Hunt’s prosecution of progressive theology may have secured his book’s inclusion on the Index of the Roman Catholic Church, but it did not cause him to be numbered among the celebrated proponents of liberal theology such as Stanley, Maurice, Kingsley, and Neander.

9.1 Advowson for Sale

  • 23 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.
  • 24 Ibid.
  • 25 Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation. His name was Joseph Pain. On the sale of benefices and the legal restr (...)
  • 26 As an example, cf. The Ecclesiastical Gazette, 14 May 1867, p. 293
    ‘CHURCH PREFERMENT FOR SALE.
    MR. (...)

13As the Incumbent’s final days on earth approach, Hunt’s account assumes a somewhat novelistic tone, often with a melancholy or sentimental tinge. The narrative becomes much longer and at times more florid than in the case of the accounts of his previous curacies. Apart from tracing Fosbroke’s declining health, Hunt concentrates on the succession and the sale of the living. Here we have a first-hand account of the scramble to acquire a living and to make money out of the process. Fosbroke was forbidden by his doctors to preach, owing to heart disease, but he would not accept this and said that he ‘intended to live some time yet’.23 In this context, he referred to the sale of the living: ‘I’ll make the value of the next presentation to this living fall in the market.’ Hunt comments: ‘This was in allusion to something which had greatly annoyed him ever since his last illness. The patrons had been advertising the sale of the living.’24 Ironically, Fosbroke had himself purchased the living through an intermediary—in fact, his father-in-law.25 Advertisements were usually placed through an agency or in the press.26 Livings were frequently auctioned, as Hunt recounts:

  • 27 Approx. £62,500 in 2020.
  • 28 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 30.

One day he [Fosbroke] stepped into the office of a London trader in Church benefices. The next presentation to the Vicarage of Ousebank was put up to auction. It was knocked down for £600.27 He was the bidder, a friend [his father-in-law] was the buyer. Thirteen months after the purchase the living was vacant. Mr. Coldstream was little fitted to be Vicar in a Dissenting town as a man could well be. He had bought the temporalities and the spiritualities of Ousebank.28

  • 29 Cf. Chadwick: Victorian Church II, p. 210.
  • 30 Cf. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Saturday, 19 October 1839, p. 2; J. Nichols, The Gentleman’s M (...)

14This reveals the practice of buying the advowson of a living, often with an elderly or ailing clergyman still in post, of whom it could be expected that he would die soon, thus enabling the patron to present to the living his own choice of successor, frequently a son or other relative, in this case, his son-in-law. The law forbade the sale of a vacant living.29 In this case, the incumbent, Cuthbert Johnson Baines, was not especially advanced in years, but he was an invalid, though not considered to be in imminent danger of dying. Nevertheless, he died suddenly, aged sixty-three, on 13 October 1839.30 Hence, the advowson was a good speculative purchase, since the purchaser had had to wait only thirteen months before a presentation was possible.

  • 31 Cf. History, Gazetteer & Directory of Huntingdonshire, 1854, p. 411. Ansley lived at Houghton Hill (...)
  • 32 See David Yeandle, The Clash of Churchmanship in Nineteenth-Century St Ives: The Coming of Anglo-Ca (...)

15When Fosbroke was presented, the patron was Gilbert Ansley Esq. (d. 1860), a wealthy landowner, who lived in a grand house in neighbouring Houghton.31 Pain evidently purchased only the next presentation, rather than the advowson. By 1866, the advowson had passed to three heirs of the Ansley family: Gilbert Ansley’s widow and two sons.32 Hunt comments:

  • 33 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39.

A century ago, perhaps, the living of Ousebank was in the gift of the owner of the estates. As the estates came to be subdivided among the different branches of the family, the living had to be sold that the claims of each might be satisfied. The patrons at the present time were three in number. The first [Gilbert John Ansley] was our squire, a man of great integrity—a man who would not have sinned one jot against his conscience for all the wealth in the world. He wished heartily that a law were passed to prevent the sale of livings under any circumstances. The second patron [Benjamin Frederick Ansley] was a wine merchant in London. He declared without any reserve that his sole wish was to turn his right into money. His share in the living of Ousebank was a part of his ancestral inheritance. That inheritance was now but small, and he could not afford to lose any of it. The third patron [Mary Anne Ansley] was of the ‘female persuasion.’ She was the acting partner in the firm.33

  • 34 Hunt’s use of inverted commas here would seem to indicate that he intends the word to be understood (...)
  • 35 Cf. Hunt’s chauvinist remarks about a rector’s wife as ‘Di-rector’, above, 48.

16The use of the terminology female persuasion,34 acting partner, and firm is no doubt intended to indicate a certain ironic distance—possibly with overtones of male chauvinism, such that a woman should preferably not be involved in men’s affairs.35

17Hunt informs us about initial interest in the appointment:

  • 36 Approx. £128,488 in 2020.
  • 37 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

Several persons had applied to him [Fosbroke] for information as to its value, but he always declined to tell them. A clergyman who had just returned from India had written that very week offering £1,00036 for immediate possession.37

18The living was not a rich one, and the parson who took it was expected to be able to contribute to the parish from his own means. The ailing Fosbroke observed the process, concerned that the right man, a gentleman, should be presented:

  • 38 Ibid.

‘Make money out of this poor living, ’ he would often say and forgetting that he had once bought it himself, he would reflect on the patrons for not giving it up to the Bishop to appoint a man who would teach ‘Church’ doctrines as he had done. It might be bought by some ‘wretched Evangelical‘ who would fraternize with the Dissenters and call their ministers his ‘reverend brethren.’ It might fall into the hands of some Rationalist or worse still, some one might buy it who was not a ‘gentleman‘ and who might associate with people in business, that is s___bs [sc. snobs].38

  • 39 Cf. OED, s.v. beat, v.1: ‘27. figurative. With up in many constructions, as to beat up for recruits (...)

19This display of clerical and social superiority—what one might call snobbery in today’s sense of the word—appears to have been commonplace amongst the Anglican clergy of the day; indeed, we have even seen elements of it in Hunt’s own behaviour. High-handed conduct also comes to the fore in Fosbroke’s treatment of the impending parish confirmation and his desire that Hunt should ‘beat up’39 candidates for it, which Hunt professes not to understand.

  • 40 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

20The ‘excitement’ of the situation made Fosbroke ill, and parishioners frequently asked about his health. Hunt relates: ‘Then would follow, in an undertone, “Is the living sold?” Nobody knew. “Sad thing that the souls of men should be bought and sold,” people would say—” Whoever bids the highest for the presentation will be thrust upon us, whether we are willing or not.”’40

  • 41 Approx. £154,187 in 2020.

21Hunt relates how there had been attempts to secure the living for him, as he had proved very popular in the parish. Financial considerations had nevertheless thwarted this. It emerges in this context that the patrons’ price for the living was £1200:41

  • 42 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.
  • 43 Approx. £64,245 in 2020.
  • 44 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 38.

One or two of the parishioners had offered a year ago to pay the patrons the sum required for the living that it might be given to me, but the offer was refused on the ground that I had no private income.42 […] By every law of equity and propriety the living of Ousebank should have been given to me. This was the all but universal wish of the people. The patrons had already refused it, though the £1200 was offered them. They wished it to be sold to someone who could spend something upon it. There was a measure of wisdom in this wish. The value of the living was not over £500 a year,43 and there were three Churches which involved the necessity of keeping two Curates.44

  • 45 ‘A friend of mine in London would have bought it the week before Mr. Coldstream died, but my whole (...)

22Hunt rejected other attempts to obtain this preferment on his behalf out of a sense of probity, or at least a profession thereof, determining that any preferment he should gain should be on merit.45 Such, however, was not to be at this time.

  • 46 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40.
  • 47 See Chadwick, Victorian Church I, pp. 497–501; William Crouch, ‘St. George’s-in-the-East and St. Ge (...)
  • 48 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 38, 43.

23As we have seen, there were several factors at issue in the succession, including principally money and status. Churchmanship had until now not specifically raised its head. The people of St Ives appear to have been content with moderate or Broad-Church clergy, though there had been High-Church leanings: ‘We had always passed in Ousebank for being a little high Church’.46 Evidence of this at the time was the use of the surplice at All Saints’, though probably not for preaching. Its use, particularly in the pulpit, was much detested by the Low-Church party as a badge of Popery.47 Although Hunt had no objection to the use of the surplice in the pulpit, he thought the black academic gown ‘the more appropriate dress when the minister appears as the instructor of the people’.48

24At a time when St Ives had settled to a middle-of-the-road form of nineteenth-century Anglicanism, things were about to change drastically. We have seen how Fosbroke was concerned that the living should go to a gentleman and not a ‘wretched Evangelical‘ or Rationalist, but adherents of other parties appear either not to have occurred to him or not to have troubled him.

  • 49 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 37.
  • 50 Ibid.
  • 51 I.e., Edward Harold Browne, Bishop of Ely, 1864–1873. Cf. ‘Browne, Edward Harold (1811–1891), Bisho (...)

25The daily decline of Fosbroke is depicted sympathetically by Hunt, with some charming allusions to nature in the vicarage garden.49 His death and funeral occurred in July, and immediately the thoughts of the parishioners turned to his successor: ‘No sooner had we laid Mr. Coldstream in his last resting place than the whole parish was on the qui vive about his successor. “Is the living sold?” was everybody’s question.’50 Legally, the living could not be sold while it was vacant. Rumours were rife in the town. The three patrons were supposed to be in disagreement. Many, including Hunt, hoped that they would continue to disagree until, after six months, the presentation fell to the Bishop.51

9.2 Ritualism

  • 52 Hunt’s whimsical pseudonym is ‘Mr Sweetbread’. Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation is not entirely legible— (...)

26One of the persons mooted to have bought the living was a local solicitor, Martin Hunnybun,52 who was rumoured to have purchased it for his son, a curate of All Saints’, Margaret Street, London. This church was a bastion of Anglo-Catholicism, a concept that, at the time, was alien to St Ives. Hunt comments, probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek:

  • 53 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 37.

The town was petrified with horror. Men’s faces turned pale, and even women shuddered at the approaching spiritual calamity. Then there were visions of priests clothed in albs and copes and chasubles; visions of incense and altars, acolytes and thurifers, lighted candles, holy water, rood lofts, altar screens, crosses, crucifixes, and mimic Virgin Marys.53

27Such was not to happen at this juncture, since the solicitor was not minded to pay the amount asked by the patrons. A delay of several weeks then ensued. More rumours about the new incumbent spread abroad. Mary Anne Ansley, who had played the principal role among the three patrons, had offered the living to the Rev. Charles Dashwood Goldie:

  • 54 ‘Goldie’, Mrs Eliza Hunt.
  • 55 Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, 1845–1870. Cf. ‘Wilberforce, Samuel (1805– 1873), Bishop of O (...)
  • 56 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39. See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, p. 6.

She [Mary Anne Ansley] was the acting partner in the firm. Through her astute wisdom the living had been offered to Mr. Goldwing.54 She knew what she wanted, and where to apply for it. She wrote to Sam. Oxon,55 and Sam. sent his favourite man.56

  • 57 The following assessment of the Ansleys, from the point of view of a principal dissenter and Mayor (...)

28Mary Anne Ansley was, as Hunt wryly comments, the ‘acting partner in the firm’. She is further described by Bateman Brown as a ‘lay curate‘, by which her strong religious proclivities are emphasized.57 One is prompted to ask why she should have contacted ‘Sam. Oxon.’, i.e. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford (1845–1870), and also why Goldie was Wilberforce’s ‘favourite man’.

  • 58 I am grateful to Mrs Bridget Flanagan for alerting me to the connection. See Flanagan, A Commanding (...)
  • 59 The grandfather of Mary Anne and her siblings, Francesco Antonio Martelli (1721– 1799), had origina (...)
  • 60 See ‘Holloway v. Webber; Holloway v. Holloway’, in The Law Times, xix (1869), 514–516.
  • 61 Cf. E. R. Kelly, Hampshire, Including the Isle of Wight, ed. by E. R. Kelly. (County Topogr.), 1875 (...)
  • 62 Cf. Phil Mottram, ‘John Macduff Derick (c.1805/6–59): A Biographical Sketch’, Ecclesiology Today 32 (...)
  • 63 BA 1841, MA 1844. Cf. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Early English Newspapers (F. Jefferies, 1859), p. 5 (...)
  • 64 BA 1826, MA 1829.

29In the first instance, family connections are the clear reason;58 in the second, patronage and diocesan associations were paramount. Mary Anne Ansley was born to Horatio Martelli and Catherine Holloway in Hastings, in 1817. The Martelli family came originally from Italy and would doubtless formerly have been Roman Catholic.59 This may in part have influenced the Martelli descendants’ Anglo-Catholic leanings. Mary Anne’s brother, Horatio Francis Kingsford Martelli (1807–1870; Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire), who, in 1828, took his mother’s surname Holloway as a condition of a very considerable inheritance from Thomas Holloway, his maternal grandfather,60 lived in a regency mansion called Marchwood Park and funded the building of St John the Apostle’s church, Marchwood (1839–1843), as well as the parsonage house and schools, which he also endowed.61 The church was designed by the Irish architect John Macduff Derick (c. 1805/6–59), who also designed St Saviour’s Leeds for Pusey (1842).62 His Anglo-Catholic credentials were established. The brother of Horatio Francis Kingsford Martelli and Mary Anne Ansley was Thomas Chessher Martelli (1813– 1859), a graduate of Brasenose. He was first vicar of Marchwood, the living being in the gift of his brother Horatio.63 Wilberforce, a graduate of Oriel,64 was at the time (1843) Archdeacon of Surrey (1839–1845). Although Marchwood was in the Archdeaconry of Winchester, Wilberforce attended the consecration of the new church. The Oxford dimension was a further link. It is thus highly probable that Mary Anne, who, on account of her Italian ancestry, may have been predisposed to ritualist worship, was, together with her brothers, on friendly terms with Wilberforce and that this personal acquaintance with a leading High Churchman would make him the obvious person to whom to turn in the search for an appropriate ritualist incumbent at St Ives.

  • 65 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 45.
  • 66 The nickname is usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, who described Wilberforce’s manner as ‘unc (...)
  • 67 Goldie’s name occurs in the local and national press with regard to his stipend at Colnbrook, from (...)

30Hunt, it seems, cannot resist an ironic swipe at the decision to offer the living to Goldie, referring to Mary Anne Ansley’s ‘astute wisdom’. Although Hunt does not introduce the subject of evolution at this point, it may be noted that Wilberforce had become prominent for opposing Darwin’s science. Wilberforce, like Hunt, was a keen amateur scientist. Hunt refers specifically to Wilberforce’s opponent, Thomas Henry Huxley, later in Clergymen Made Scarce,65 albeit in an analogy designed to demonstrate the differences between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. It is therefore highly likely that on this front, too, Hunt disapproved of Soapy Sam.66 The answer to the question, why was Goldie Sam’s favourite man, would seem to be that Goldie’s parish, Colnbrook, was in the Diocese of Oxford, where Goldie had risen to some prominence.67

31There appear, however, to have been further problems over payment of the sum demanded by the patrons, which resulted in Goldie’s declining the offer at first:

  • 68 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39.

Her [Mary Anne Ansley’s] plans were greatly disconcerted by Mr. Goldwing’s declining. It was said that the wine merchant [Benjamin Frederick Ansley] would not forego his right, that if the living was to be given away, he thought it should be given to an old man, so that the presentation might be sold immediately after.68

32In due course, Goldie accepted the living:

  • 69 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40. Approx. £51,395 in 2020.

A few days later the news came that Mr. Goldwing had consented at last to take the living. The only barrier had been the wine merchant’s objection, and that could only amount to £400.69

  • 70 James Conway Walter, A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Horncast (...)
  • 71 Cf. Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62: ‘The Goldies were an old Manx family; Col. Goldie, his br (...)
  • 72 Cf. Crockford’s 1865, p. 248: ‘GOLDIE, Charles Dashwood, Colnbrook Parsonage, Slough, Bucks.—St. Jo (...)
  • 73 Cf. ‘Charles Goldie’, ESPN cricinfo, http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/13907.html
  • 74 Cf. the 1871 census; Descendants of Quintin Riddell, Probably Born Late 1300s, http://www.airgale.c (...)

33Goldie’s entry into St Ives and his subsequent behaviour were quite unlike anything the town had seen before.70 He had an unusual background, having been born in Paris in March 1825 and baptized apparently twice, once in London in 1825, then again in 1827 at the British Embassy Chapel, Paris. His father was from Dumfries in Scotland, his mother from Devon. The reason for their being in Paris at the time is unknown, but probably because of his father’s occupation as an M.D. Goldie’s six siblings were all born in India, where his father was in the Honourable East India Company Service. The family was well-to-do, of Manx origin, with high-ranking military and other important connections.71 Goldie graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge, where he had been a scholar.72 He was second Senior Optime (i.e. second-best in the Upper Second class of the Mathematical Tripos) in 1847 and also a first-class cricketer, playing for the University, albeit as a stand-in, in 1846.73 He and his wife had twelve children and employed five domestic servants and a governess at St Ives.74 Only the twelfth child was born at St Ives. His wife, Harriet, the daughter of Col. James Nicol, formerly Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army, was a beauty and a hostess, as Walter relates, describing Goldie in his curate days in Horncastle:

  • 75 Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62.

We next take two of the well chosen curates of the Vicar, T.J. Clarke, who were contemporaries at Horncastle; Charles Dashwood Goldie of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took Mathematical Honours in 1847, was ordained as Curate of Horncastle in 1848. An able preacher and indefatigable worker in the parish, he at once made his mark, not only in the town, but in the neighbourhood; he and his beautiful wife being welcome guests in many a rectory and vicarage. He was also a man of good social position and private means, and occupied a good house with large garden […] Mr. Goldie being curate at the time when Holy Trinity Church was built presented the carved oak chairs within the communion rails. After leaving Horncastle he was appointed to the vicarage of St. Ives, in the diocese of Ely.75

34It is not clear where Goldie first developed his ritualist leanings, whether in Cambridge, Horncastle, High Toynton, or Colnbrook, where he had been Perpetual Curate from 1852–1866, immediately prior to coming to St Ives. He had evidently come to the notice, probably in Colnbrook, Diocese of Oxford, of Samuel Wilberforce, the prominent High-Church Bishop of Oxford.

  • 76 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

35At any rate, he was known for his High-Church views. His reputation had gone before him: ‘There were rumours afloat that he was a high Churchman—very high. ‘It will never do in Ousebank‘ was the unanimous remark.’76 Goldie’s entrance on his first Sunday in church was altogether theatrical:

  • 77 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40. See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, pp. 7f.

Next morning the congregation were breathless to see Mr. Goldwing. He walked into the desk. Instead of reading the usual sentences, he shouted at the pitch of his voice the name of a woman who had come to be churched. The people were bewildered, and the woman’s nerves if they were like other womens’ [sic] must have had a shake. Mr. Goldwing went through the morning service part reading and part intoning. He had a rich musical voice of great compass, and sometimes it was really solemn. At other times, especially in the Litany, it degenerated into an effeminate whine like the cry of a sick girl.77

36Goldie had made known his arrival in no uncertain terms. The bells had rung out on the Saturday previously, and he set about demonstrating to the congregation and town how he meant to go on. Hunt comments:

  • 78 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

He was no Jesuit introducing things by stealth. He was no man of half measures. He had a determined will and an unbounded confidence in his own ability to execute that will. He restored neglected rubrics and when there was no rubric he made one. The gown in the pulpit he discarded at once as illegal and unbecoming the priest in his ministrations to the people. He placed the women who came to be churched on a form before the desk—received the offering himself—carried it to the ‘Altar, ’ and there presented it to Jesus Christ, ever present in the Holy Place. Before the act of baptizing he filled the font with pure water. The choristers and some other people laughed when they heard the splashing in the font. He carried the children into the centre of the Church to sign them with the sign of the cross, and to receive them into the body of the congregation [… ]78

37Before a week had passed, Goldie turned his attention to the curate, to whom he sent a letter. The correspondence merits quotation in full:

‘My dear Mr. ________ [Hunt]
‘I enclose a notice to you in the usual form, which I should at any rate have sent in order that I might enter into fresh arrangements with you—as a matter of form. But I cannot but feel that this must be an actual notice and not a form. I have been honoured by the reception of two sermons preached by you in the Church of ________ [All Saints] since the late Vicar’s death, and, according to my view, they are in points so lamentably deficient in the full statement of truth, and in some points so erroneous, that I feel it my duty either personally or by deputy, to supply your place in the pulpit during the next six weeks. I shall be glad to have your assistance in the reading desk and otherwise.
‘I am the more sorry to say this, because I cannot but own the undoubted power the Sermons show; and I should be glad if the opportunity offers, to have some conversation with you, and to aid you (if it is not presumption in me to say this) in finding out the point, where, as it seems to me, you diverge from Catholic truth.
‘I hope that the fact of my acting thus will not in any way destroy our friendly converse during the short remainder of our connection.
‘Ever yours truly,
‘________________.’ [Charles Dashwood Goldie]

  • 79 The Two Sacraments. Two Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of S. Ives, August 5th, 1866, by the (...)

38Hunt had evidently displeased Goldie by the theology he had propounded in his two sermons, the subject of which was the sacraments.79 They were evidently too ‘Protestant‘ for him. In response to the preaching inhibition imposed, Hunt replies:

  • 80 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 40f.

‘My dear Sir,
‘I have received your letter and the notice, the latter of which I have expected daily since Sunday. Indeed, I had no wish to remain in the Parish after seeing how distinctly you identified yourself with a party in the Church with whose peculiar views I have no sympathy in the world. No one will blame you for wishing to have a Curate of your own way of thinking, but to inhibit me from the pulpit is an arbitrary and uncalled for exercise of power, likely, I fear, to recoil upon yourself. This Parish has been virtually in my hands for nearly two years. I have been feeding the flock. I know the sheep and they know me. Not to allow me to preach a final sermon is to make me a martyr when I do not wish to be one. As to the sermons I did not cause them to be sent to you. I believe them to be so thoroughly in accordance with the doctrines of the Protestant Church of England, that I cannot well understand your objections. I had a letter yesterday morning from a friend of mine, a minister of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and reckoned a High Churchman, who says, ‘Without accepting, perhaps, all points in them. I certainly think you have put in clear and forcible terms some important views of your subject.’ I should be glad to have a friendly conversation with you on the doctrine of the sermons. I should like to hear what a sensible man (and I believe you are a sensible man) has to say about what you call ‘Catholic truth.’ There is no such thing in the sense in which you seem to use the words. There are Catholic lies in abundance, Catholic errors and Catholic superstitions, which must be swept away with the besom of destruction. There are, I know, many earnest men who believe in what they call Catholic truth, but the religious sentiment is wild in its wanderings, and ought to be governed and restrained by reason. I have had much experience among men of all kinds of opinion and I have learnt to be tolerant towards all.
‘I will duly consider whatever you wish to say to me, and I shall promise that, on my part, nothing will arise, if I can help it, to promote anything but the most friendly understanding between us.’
‘Yours very truly,
‘___________.’ [John Hunt]80

39Hunt, who, at thirty-nine, was just twenty-one months younger than the forty-one-year-old Goldie, must have felt insulted and belittled. His theology had been disparaged. His social status stood in question—as an unmarried Scot of humble origins, who had studied, as far as we know, for only one year at a university not commonly attended by English clergy, who had failed to achieve preferment, as against the father of eleven children from an old patrician family, a graduate of Cambridge and an accomplished sportsman, married to the daughter of a colonel. Perhaps social considerations did not play a part, but there was an obvious rift between the two men, and Goldie’s bearing was disdainful. The references to friendship and the faint praise of each other’s intellect would hardly make for harmonious relations. Either man was as discourteous as the other in respect of their differing theology and churchmanship.

40Hunt counters Goldie’s haughty condescension in part with Biblical allusions, but one can sense his feelings of wounded pride and inferiority. Although he is intellectually fully a match for Goldie, who, it must be remembered, was a man with an impressive academic record himself, albeit not a theologian, his position is of necessity one of submission.

41Hunt was fatigued by the whole affair and appears not to have offered further resistance. A scandal ensued, of which the newspapers became aware. As with all scandals, good as well as bad can be the outcome:

  • 81 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

As I had only six weeks more to be in the Parish and was really so exhausted by long and incessant work as not to care about preaching much, this inhibition seemed to show a want of ordinary discretion. The Bishop was vexed about it. The newspapers paraded it, and as a consequence the people bought the sermons by hundreds.81

  • 82 Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62.

42People began taking sides. Goldie continued with his high-handed, egotistical behaviour. We saw earlier how, as a curate in Hornchurch, he ‘at once made his mark, not only in the town, but in the neighbourhood’. The same was true in St Ives, though here it was not because he was ‘an able preacher and indefatigable worker in the parish’,82 but because of the confrontational way in which he set about introducing his ideas. Hunt’s text gives a wry account of this, observing:

  • 83 Mrs Eliza Hunt identifies him merely by his surname ‘Wise’. This would appear to be Alderman Richar (...)
  • 84 Cf. Henry John Hodgson and J. Steer, Steer’s Parish Law: Being a Digest of the Law Relating to the (...)
  • 85 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

Mr. Goldwing was determined to do what he thought right. He first did everything his own way, and then he made calls and wrote letters to appease those who were offended. He ignored the existence of the Churchwardens. The Sequestrator83 never had the joy of presenting the new surplice. A sad fate awaited him. He was numbered with ‘persons excommunicated, unbaptized, and who have laid violent hands on themselves.’84 Many years ago he had committed the fearful sin of marrying his deceased wife’s sister, and Mr. Goldwing denied him the benefit of those sacraments which are universally necessary to salvation.85

43Public opinion at the time was greatly divided about this ‘sin’ in general. It was still illegal until 1907, when the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act was passed, and Goldie stuck to a rigid ecclesiastical interpretation, evidently denying communion to the unfortunate churchwarden.86 Public opposition to Goldie grew rapidly. Tact was not in evidence on either side of the quarrel:

  • 87 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

The parish of Ousebank was soon in a ferment. The people could do nothing but growl. The walls were placarded with No Popery; and letters of all kinds, wise and foolish, filled the columns of the local paper. One morning I was sitting at my window which looked into the marketplace. I heard the stentorian voice of the town crier, ‘This is to give notice, ’ he exclaimed in his lofty monitone [sic], ‘that whoever enters a Dissenting place of worship commits an offence against God. These are the words spoken in the Parish Church of Ousebank on Sunday morning last, and he who said them is a liar and a fool.’87

  • 88 E.g. Bradford Observer, 1 April 1875, p. 7.
  • 89 See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, pp. 11f. and passim.
  • 90 Read Adams (1832–1889), who lived in Madeley Court in neighbouring Hemingford Grey, owned a wholesa (...)

44Goldie, who was referred to as a ‘high Ritualist‘,88 was not to be deterred in his pursuit of this form of church service, and later in his incumbency he had many clashes with the congregation, especially at annual vestry meetings,89 in particular with the longstanding parish churchwarden, Read Adams, the first Mayor of St Ives.90 Goldie realized that to inhibit Hunt from preaching a final sermon before his departure would be unwise. Hunt describes his farewell presentation, even making some charitable remarks about Goldie:

  • 91 Approx. £3,835 in 2020.
  • 92 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41. The quotation is from Milton’s Paradise Lost, xii, 508. The continuat (...)

I left Ousebank in the midst of the excitement. It was announced to me that the long-intended presentation was at last to be made and it was intimated that the occasion would be a proper one for a parting address. Mr. Goldwing had the prudence to suspend his inhibition, and asked me to preach once more in the Church, which of course I was eager to do. There was not much wrong with Mr. Goldwing, except the poison of the ‘pernicious nonsense.’ Sacerdotal blood flowed in his arteries, and filled his veins to repletion. On the Friday evening a great multitude assembled in the town-hall. Thirty guineas91 were presented to me in a long purse with dangling tassels. The Chairman made a flaming speech, he spoke of the ‘talented preacher, ’ the ‘great scholar, ’ and the respect which the inhabitants of Ousebank had for ‘all that was great and good.’ He quoted Shakespere, of course, and, in allusion to the Ritualists, the lines of Milton, beginning—
‘Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves.’92

  • 93 ‘Presentation of a Testimonial to the Rev. John Hunt.— The Rev. John Hunt, who has been curate of t (...)

45The presentation was made on Friday, 19 October 1866.93 Although Mrs Eliza Hunt did not reveal his name, we know from newspaper reports that the chairman was Read Adams. Whether Goldie was present we do not know. If he was, the occasion must have been embarrassing for him, but he was not a man to show embarrassment.

  • 94 Here used in the sense of ‘A gift presented to some one by a number of persons as an expression of (...)

46The booklet ends with the text of Hunt’s address, which is printed in full in the Appendix. I do not propose to scrutinize it in detail, merely to pick out some of the main aspects. The opening paragraphs show Hunt’s popularity amongst the townsfolk. Not only the churchgoers but also several Dissenters had contributed to the presentation. Whether this popularity was entirely due to Hunt or existed partly in opposition to Goldie it is hard to say, but probably elements of both are present. Regarding the ‘testimonial‘,94 Hunt displays a degree of modesty—it would be unfair to impute a hint of false modesty to him, but one cannot help wondering if the humility displayed is not an attempt to seize the moral high ground.

  • 95 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 42.
  • 96 Ibid.
  • 97 Ibid.
  • 98 See Chadwick, Victorian Church II, pp. 308–327.

47Hunt next turns his attention to a discourse on the lot of the curate. This theme has, of course, emerged repeatedly in the course of his booklet, but with exemplification far exceeding analysis. He now proceeds to analyse the unfortunate situation in which many a curate found himself at the time, elements of which we have traced in Clergymen Made Scarce, lamenting that ‘The earnest curate, who has nothing but his own merits to depend on, has but few chances of promotion in the Church.’95 He is clearly speaking in propria persona, though his comments are general. He has missed every chance of promotion in London and has just failed in St Ives to secure it, where his objective was almost within his grasp. He is one of the most salient examples of a talented, published theologian who had not secured preferment and was still to wait twelve more years for his own incumbency. He draws attention to the social aspect, whereby it is primarily those whose family owns the gift of a living or who can buy the same who are able to succeed. The comparison of a successful career in the Church and the other professions is very telling: ‘A man who has passed creditably at his university, can reckon upon success, or at least a competency in any other profession, but unless he inherits a family living, or speculates in the purchase of a presentation he has not the same chance in the service of the Church.’96 He proceeds to put forward ways to remedy the situation regarding curates, proposing that they should be chosen and paid for by the congregation. Robust criticism is levelled at ‘the clergy of the Established Church‘, namely that they ‘will know before long that if they are to keep their position, they must pay more attention to the will of the people. They must cease to come into their parishes as hierarchical autocrats.’97 Did Goldie know that this was aimed at him and hundreds of other parsons of all parties in the Church of England? Hunt’s observations were prescient of things to come regarding church governance and power, but in Goldie, he and the congregation had encountered a new type of incumbent, who was convinced by his sincerely held belief in ‘Catholic truth‘ and was prepared to fight a crusade in its defence. The Church was at that time in a state of some turmoil. There was strong opposition in places to the Ritualist movement. Clergy and churchgoers were beginning to be split on this matter at precisely this time.98

48Hunt’s account now turns, after a brief allusion to tensions within the parish and an exhortation to the congregation to show Christian charity in the matter, into a lengthy peroration on the merits and demerits of the ‘Catholic Revival‘. Here he sifts the wheat from the chaff, explaining what he sees as good in the movement and what he rejects. He scrutinizes the Church of Rome from an English Protestant viewpoint and takes issue with Dr Pusey on his desire for rapprochement with Rome. Alluding to evolution and his knowledge of anatomy, he demonstrates the differences between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, despite apparent similarities, further berating the Mariolatry of the Roman Church.

9.3 Beyond St Ives

  • 99 Cf. especially the dedication to Read Adams in Hunt’s Poems by Robert Wilde: ‘a memorial of the ple (...)

49It is clear that Hunt had been happy and successful in St Ives before Goldie’s advent,99 that his leaving was widely regretted and that his parting was performed with charitable sentiment. He sums up in the final paragraph, stressing the need for reason, reasonableness, and the necessity for the Church to mould the human material available to it into reasonable beings in its service:

  • 100 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 48.

The Church is troubled. All its teachers are perplexed, from the Bishop who rides in his carriage, to the Curate who rideth on the top of an omnibus. We do not know whether or not we are sacrificing priests! One half of the clergy are surprised to hear that it is even supposed; the other astounded that everybody does not know it. Wisdom may be crying aloud in the streets, but it is in another sense that she is crying in the Church. Like Rachel, she laments there for her children, because they are not. Can we expect it otherwise, when no encouragement is given to men able and willing to do the Church’s work; when, of the material that is available for the ministry, it is impossible to make anything better than innocent Evangelicals, or brainless Ritualists—preachers of platitudes, or performers of attitudes. Shall it ever be that in religion, as in other things, men will listen to the solemn voice of Reason?100

50Here the open letter ends. It is a telling commentary on the state of the Victorian Church. Many of the ills observed therein would be corrected or lessened in the ensuing years; but the Church’s influence and the faith of the nation would decline, too.

  • 101 See Chapter 11 Postscript: John Hunt in Otford, p. 93.

51After leaving St Ives, Hunt was to serve another two curacies—at St Mary’s, Lambeth, and at St Nicholas’s, Sutton, in Surrey—before finally (twelve years later) obtaining preferment as Vicar of Otford on the recommendation of the progressive liberal theologian, Dean Stanley of Westminster.101 In his fifty-second year, he had, by his own merits, achieved his goal through hard work, intellectual acuity, and hundreds of pages of published scholarship, which a man of no special talent, but with influence, might achieve after two years.

Notes

1 John Hunt, ed., Poems by Robert Wilde [sic] D.D., One of the Ejected Ministers of 1662, with a Historical and Biographical Preface and Notes by the Rev. John Hunt (London: Strahan, 1870).

2 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 27, esp. pp. 32f. ‘The large salary was nominally £120 a year—actually £1 1s. a week, and live in the Vicarage.’ The sum actually received was equivalent to £135 in 2020. Presumably Hunt’s board and lodging were provided free of charge under this arrangement.

3 There are no detailed descriptions of everyday life in the vicarage under this incumbent, but the reminiscences of a domestic servant at the beginning of the twentieth century (c. 1907) during Oscar Wade Wilde’s incumbency (1899–1931) give an impression of its size, grandeur, and gentrified living conditions: ‘it was a beautiful vicarage […] a huge vicarage, the staircase was […] one of those lovely round staircases […] a big square hall. We weren’t allowed to use those stairs, we had the servants’ stairs to go up. Same as we had the servants’ hall where we had our meals, and never the same food as they had in the dining rooms, quite different food’, Memories of St Ives, Cambridgeshire, http://saintives.org.uk/memories.html

4 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 27.

5 Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation: ‘St. Ives Hunts.’ The town, anciently called Slepe, was renamed St Ives after Ivo, a Persian bishop, whose supposed bones were found in a field near Slepe by a ploughman (c. 1000) and claimed by nearby Ramsey Abbey (cf. ‘Houses of Benedictine Monks: The Priory of St Ives | British History Online’, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol1/pp388-389. It was situated in the old county of Huntingdonshire. Huntingdon Archdeaconry belonged to the Diocese of Lincoln until 1837, when it was transferred, along with most of Bedford Archdeaconry, to the Diocese of Ely.

6 See History, Gazetteer & Directory of Huntingdonshire, 1854 (Huntingdon: James Hatfield, 1854), https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/278541; ‘Parishes: St Ives | British History Online’, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol2/pp210-223. In the 1851 census, its population was recorded as 3,572 inhabitants.

7 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 28f. The ‘richest man’ refers to Frederick Mutton. See fn. 43, p. 145.

8 Approx. £649,663 in 2020.

9 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29. This humorous remark refers principally to Potto Brown, a wealthy miller and philanthropist, who ran Houghton Mill and the steam mill in St Ives. See ‘Potto Brown’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Potto_Brown&oldid=994016050. He lived in a substantial mansion in Houghton called ‘The Elms’ (built in 1854). Cf. Bridget Flanagan, A Commanding View: The Houses and Gardens of Houghton Hill (Godmanchester: Great Ouse Valley Trust, 2019), p. 21.

10 £3,000 was worth approx. £389,800 in 2020, £2,000 approx. £259,865. See Oddities of St Ives, http://saintives.org.uk/oddities1.html.

11 See ‘Here’s One I Made Earlier’, in Inspire: The Newsletter of the Free Church (United Reformed) Saint Ives, December 2017, pp. 6–7, https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/5f41930a02cae/content/pages/documents/1511978737.pd f. Bateman Brown notes: ‘… the church standing on the Market Hill, St. Ives, was built in as commanding a position in the town as possible, and, instead of being called a Meeting House, was named “The Free Church, St. Ives,” to denote it was supported by the free gifts of its worshippers, and not by aid derived from the State.’ (Bateman Brown, Reminiscences, p. 68).

12 As a non-conformist church, this is oriented to fit in with the street layout. The south apse, furthest away from the street, would correspond to the east end in an Anglican church.

13 Cf. ‘Kelly’s Directory of Beds, Hunts & Northants, 1898’, p. 51, https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/167113; Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29.

14 Mrs Eliza Hunt: ‘Yate Fosbroke’. Cf. ‘JAN. 1. [1840] —Rev. Yate Fosbrooke [sic], M.A., formerly of Clare Hall [B.A. 1823, MA 1842], curate and lecturer of Enfield, Middlesex, has been instituted to the vicarage of St. Ives, Huntingdonshire’ (‘University Intelligence’, in The Cambridge University Magazine I.1, 1840, p. 279). He died, aged sixty-five, on 6 July 1866. Cf. ‘Deaths. August 1866’, in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review (J. H. and J. Parker, 1866), p. 278, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZlNFAAAAYAAJ. Yate Fosbroke was the son of the Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, the antiquary (1770–1842). Cf. ‘Fosbroke [Fosbrooke], Thomas Dudley (1770–1842), Antiquary’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9954. The name is variously spelled Fosbrooke or Fosbroke. The family had aristocratic roots as the Fosbrookes of Shardlow and Ravenstone. Cf. Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry (London: Harrison, 1875), p. 458, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZNEKAAAAYAAJ. Yate Fosbroke’s branch of the family preferred the spelling with one o.

15 During Fosbroke’s incumbency, the church was equipped with attractive oak pews amongst other things and made a dignified impression. On the financing, including an attempt to levy a church rate, see Mary Carter, 19th Century St Ives (St Ives: Friends of the Norris Museum, 2010), p. 50.

16 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 28. The allusion is to Psalm 16: 6 ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage.’ On the Land of Goshen, see Thomas Römer, ‘Goshen’, in Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, edited by Constance M. Furey, Joel Marcus LeMon, Brian Matz, Thomas Chr. Römer, Jens Schröter, Barry Dov Walfish and Eric Ziolkowski (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2010), https://www-degruyter-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/document/database/EBR/entry/MainLemma_8117/html.

17 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29.

18 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 38.

19 See Crockford’s 1865, p. 225: ‘FOSBROKE, Yate, St. Ives, Hunts.—V. of St. Ives with Chapelries of Oldhurst and Woodhurst annexed, Dio. Ely. (Patrons, J. Ansley, Esq. and other Trustees; V.’s Inc. 500l and Ho; Pop. St. Ives 3395, Oldhurst 174, Woodhurst 554.) Surrogate’.

20 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 29.

21 Cf. Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 30. Snob was originally a dialect or colloquial term for ‘a shoemaker or cobbler; a cobbler’s apprentice’. By the 1830s, it had developed to mean ‘A person belonging to the ordinary or lower social class; one having no pretensions to rank or gentility’, OED. A modern equivalent might be ‘pleb’ or ‘prole’. It was particularly popular amongst Cambridge students in the sense of a non-university ‘townsman’.

22 Although this substantial book (384 pp.) was published under the imprint of Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer in London, it was printed at the St Ives Press, Crown Street, by the Rev. William Lang. Cf. ‘Mr. Watts sold the press to the Rev. William Lang, who published there in 1866 an important book by the Rev. John Hunt, ‘An Essay on Pantheism, ’ which attracted great attention at that time. The press was closed in 1867’, ‘Parishes: St Ives | British History Online’, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol2/pp210-223

23 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

24 Ibid.

25 Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation. His name was Joseph Pain. On the sale of benefices and the legal restrictions, see Chadwick, Victorian Church II, pp. 207–213.

26 As an example, cf. The Ecclesiastical Gazette, 14 May 1867, p. 293
‘CHURCH PREFERMENT FOR SALE.
MR. BAGSTER’s List of nearly 100 Livings for sale may be had on the confidential application of Principals or their Solicitors only free of charge.
The Advowsons Nos. 1117, 954, and 1125, and the Next Presentations Nos. 1029, 1137, 1142, and 1143 have been disposed of.
ADVOWSON.–EASTERN COUNTY.
MR. BAGSTER is instructed to DISPOSE OF the ADVOWSON of a LIVING one mile from the Sea, and near a Town and Railway Station. There is a capital house filled up with every convenience, and standing in its own grounds. The net income from rent-charge and glebe is 760 l. a year. The population is purely Rural. Church is very handsome and in good repair, and there are new and Endowed Schools. The whole circumstances of the parish are most unexceptionable. Very early possession. Price 8500l.’ This was an expensive living, equivalent to £562,569 in 2020.

27 Approx. £62,500 in 2020.

28 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 30.

29 Cf. Chadwick: Victorian Church II, p. 210.

30 Cf. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Saturday, 19 October 1839, p. 2; J. Nichols, The Gentleman’s Magazine (E. Cave, 1840), p. 102, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TCVIAQAAMAA J

31 Cf. History, Gazetteer & Directory of Huntingdonshire, 1854, p. 411. Ansley lived at Houghton Hill House, built in 1840 in eighty-nine acres of grounds. Cf. Civic Society of St Ives: Annual Report 2013, St Ives, 2013, pp. 17f.; Flanagan, A Commanding View, pp. 16f.). The Ansley family’s rise to prominence begins with Gilbert’s father, John Ansley, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1807–1808. Cf. Obituary 1845, in The Gentleman’s Magazine 24, 1845, p. 546.

32 See David Yeandle, The Clash of Churchmanship in Nineteenth-Century St Ives: The Coming of Anglo-Catholicism (London: Anglo-Catholic History Society, 2021), p. 6. On the history of the advowson, see ‘Parishes: St Ives’, in British History Online: ‘“Mr. Pigot” was returned as patron in 1817. Shortly after this date the advowson passed to the Ansley family, probably to John Ansley of London. Joseph Pain [Fosbroke’s father-in-law] presented for one turn in 1839, but Gilbert Ansley of Houghton Hill House had the advowson in 1855 and died in 1860. His widow, Mary Anne, daughter of Horatio Martelli, died in 1896. The advowson seems to have been held by trustees under the marriage settlement of Gilbert Ansley, who shortly after 1899 conveyed it to the Rev. S. J. M. Price and he gave it to trustees for the Guild of All Souls, the present patrons.’ In 1866, in the mandate for the induction of C. D. Goldie, the patrons are recorded as: Mary Ann [sic] Ansley of Houghton Co. Hunt [ingdonshire] widow [of Gilbert], Benjamin Frederick Ansley of 124 Englefield Road, Essex Road Islington Co. Middx Esq [wine merchant] & Gilbert John Ansley of St. Ives Co. Hunt [ingdonshire] Esq. [sons of Gilbert]. Cf. Charles Dashwood Goldie, Vicar of St. Ives with the Chapelries of Old Hurst & Woodhurst Annexed [Mandate for Induction Record], 1866, in Huntingdonshire Archives, AH26/239/7, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/be10958d-2c8b-460e-bb5a-f2f94f813f29

33 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39.

34 Hunt’s use of inverted commas here would seem to indicate that he intends the word to be understood humorously or deprecatingly. The expression of the XY persuasion was applied originally to religious affiliation or another (political or moral) conviction, e.g., of the Jewish/Protestant persuasion. In the course of time, of the female persuasion came to be used humorously and ultimately became a hackneyed (colloquial) phrase, amounting to a laborious way of saying ‘female’ or ‘woman’, e.g., ‘America recently pilloried the misuse of “persuasion” in a list of British vulgarisms—those crimes against proper speech that arouse more antipathy to John Bull than all the indiscretions of his ambassadors and statesmen. A great deal of the responsibility must he fixed on his funny men. The joker of the ’eighties never lost a chance of saying that a woman was of the female persuasion… ’, Irish Independent, 1 December 1913, p. 4; cf. The Illustrated American 4, 1890, p. 308). See H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, The King’s English (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London; New York: H. Frowde, 1908), pp. 171f.; Henry Watson Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 434; H. W. Fowler and R. W. Burchfield, The New Fowler’s Modern English Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 591; OED, s.v. ‘4.c. colloquial and humorous. A group or collection linked by a shared characteristic, quality, or attribute. Esp. in early use in of the —— persuasion: of a (specified) nationality, occupation, inclination, etc.’

35 Cf. Hunt’s chauvinist remarks about a rector’s wife as ‘Di-rector’, above, 48.

36 Approx. £128,488 in 2020.

37 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

38 Ibid.

39 Cf. OED, s.v. beat, v.1: ‘27. figurative. With up in many constructions, as to beat up for recruits, to beat up the town for recruits, to beat up recruits, and elliptical, to beat up’. More usual nowadays is drum up.

40 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

41 Approx. £154,187 in 2020.

42 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 35.

43 Approx. £64,245 in 2020.

44 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 38.

45 ‘A friend of mine in London would have bought it the week before Mr. Coldstream died, but my whole being recoiled at the thought of buying the presentation while Mr. Coldstream lay on his death-bed. The charge of the souls of a parish is responsibility enough in itself, without adopting underhand ways of procuring it. I reflected that after a few short years I should be as Mr. Coldstream is now, and if my work was not successful, how bitterly would I repent of having obtained a living in a way that certainly God never intended livings should be obtained. “No,” I said, “I will take my chance of preferment. When it comes by merit, it shall be doubly pleasant; and if I do my work with a clear conscience, it will bring peace at the last”’, Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 35f.

46 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40.

47 See Chadwick, Victorian Church I, pp. 497–501; William Crouch, ‘St. George’s-in-the-East and St. George’s Mission’, in William Crouch, Bryan King and the Riots at St. George’s-in-the-East, Chapter IV (London: Methuen, 1904), pp. 31–44, http://anglicanhistory.org/ritualism/crouch_king1904/04.html

48 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 38, 43.

49 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 37.

50 Ibid.

51 I.e., Edward Harold Browne, Bishop of Ely, 1864–1873. Cf. ‘Browne, Edward Harold (1811–1891), Bishop of Winchester’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3672

52 Hunt’s whimsical pseudonym is ‘Mr Sweetbread’. Mrs Eliza Hunt’s annotation is not entirely legible—probably Honeybun or Honnybun.

53 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 37.

54 ‘Goldie’, Mrs Eliza Hunt.

55 Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, 1845–1870. Cf. ‘Wilberforce, Samuel (1805– 1873), Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29385

56 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39. See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, p. 6.

57 The following assessment of the Ansleys, from the point of view of a principal dissenter and Mayor of St Ives, Bateman Brown, is a telling summary of personalities: ‘A little prior to the events recorded above, the Squire of the Parish [of Houghton], Gilbert Ansley, who hitherto had been non-resident [in London], married a lady [Mary Anne Martelli] who had come from a parish in a distant part of the country [Hampshire], where her brother [Thomas Chessher Martelli] was a clergyman of considerable influence, and she was his lay curate. She found her lot now cast where the Squire, from his having been non-resident, was comparatively nobody, and two persons engaged in trade in the village were people of the most influence, and, more dreadful still, were Dissenters of an advanced sort’, Bateman Brown, Reminiscences, p. 50, https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/brown_reminisc/pages/chapter_04.html

58 I am grateful to Mrs Bridget Flanagan for alerting me to the connection. See Flanagan, A Commanding View, pp. 16f.

59 The grandfather of Mary Anne and her siblings, Francesco Antonio Martelli (1721– 1799), had originally come from Florence to London.

60 See ‘Holloway v. Webber; Holloway v. Holloway’, in The Law Times, xix (1869), 514–516.

61 Cf. E. R. Kelly, Hampshire, Including the Isle of Wight, ed. by E. R. Kelly. (County Topogr.), 1875, p. 218, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6wsHAAAAQAAJ

62 Cf. Phil Mottram, ‘John Macduff Derick (c.1805/6–59): A Biographical Sketch’, Ecclesiology Today 32 (2004), 40–52 (47).

63 BA 1841, MA 1844. Cf. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Early English Newspapers (F. Jefferies, 1859), p. 540, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=02Q3AQAAMAAJ

64 BA 1826, MA 1829.

65 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 45.

66 The nickname is usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, who described Wilberforce’s manner as ‘unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous’. Cf. Ian Hesketh, Of Apes and Ancestors: Evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford Debate (University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 30f. Other explanations also exist.

67 Goldie’s name occurs in the local and national press with regard to his stipend at Colnbrook, from which it can be deduced that he was potentially a difficult character.

68 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 39.

69 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40. Approx. £51,395 in 2020.

70 James Conway Walter, A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Horncastle: W. K. Morton, 1908), p. 62.

71 Cf. Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62: ‘The Goldies were an old Manx family; Col. Goldie, his brother, of the Scotts [sic] Guards Regiment, being President of the House of Keys, the local parliament. Their residence in that island is ‘The Nunnery, ’ near the town of Douglas, so called from the ruin close at hand of an ancient priory, said to have been founded by St. Bridget in the sixth century. Mr. Goldies’ [sic] nephew is the present Sir George Dashwood Tanbman [read ‘Taubman’] Goldie, Privy Councillor, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S., & c, formerly of the Royal Engineers, but latterly holding various Government appointments, director of several expeditions in West Africa, having travelled in Egypt, the Soudan, Algiers, Morocco, & c., and attended the Berlin Conference in 1884, as an expert on questions connected with the Niger country, where he founded the Royal Chartered Company of Nigeria. His latest honour (1905) is the Presidency of the Royal Geographical Society, in succession to Sir Clements P. Markham, K.C.B., & c.’

72 Cf. Crockford’s 1865, p. 248: ‘GOLDIE, Charles Dashwood, Colnbrook Parsonage, Slough, Bucks.—St. John’s Coll. Cam. 2nd Sen. Opt. B.A. 1847, M.A. 1850; Deac. 1848 and Pr. 1849 by Bp of Lin. P. C. of St. Thomas’s, Colnbrook, Dio. Ox. 1852’; ‘Charles Goldie (Cricketer)’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Goldie_(cricketer)&oldid=938240178

73 Cf. ‘Charles Goldie’, ESPN cricinfo, http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/13907.html

74 Cf. the 1871 census; Descendants of Quintin Riddell, Probably Born Late 1300s, http://www.airgale.com.au/riddell/d15.htm#i33543

75 Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62.

76 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

77 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 40. See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, pp. 7f.

78 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

79 The Two Sacraments. Two Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of S. Ives, August 5th, 1866, by the Rev John Hunt, Curate, Second Edition, With an Appendix (St. Ives, Hunts: W. Lang, 1866).

80 Clergymen Made Scarce, pp. 40f.

81 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

82 Walter, History of Horncastle, p. 62.

83 Mrs Eliza Hunt identifies him merely by his surname ‘Wise’. This would appear to be Alderman Richard Relton Wise, listed in the 1871 census as ‘Bank Manager, Crown St., aged 60’. Kelly’s, for 1869 gives his address as ‘The Pavement’ (p. 268). On the sequestration process, see Philip Jones, ‘Ecclesiastical Sequestration’, Ecclesiasticallaw, https://ecclesiasticallaw.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/ecclesiasti cal-sequestration/

84 Cf. Henry John Hodgson and J. Steer, Steer’s Parish Law: Being a Digest of the Law Relating to the Civil and Ecclesiastical Government of Parishes, Friendly Societies, Etc., Etc.: And the Relief, Settlement, and Removal of the Poor, Nineteenth-Century Legal Treatises (Stevens and Norton, 1857), p. 77, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iLEDAAAAQAAJ

85 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

86 See Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act 1907, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Deceased_Wife%27s_Sister%27s_Marriage_Act_1907; William McKee Dunn, Is Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister Lawful? (London: Rivingtons, 1883), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Is_Marriage_with_a_Deceased_Wife%27s_Sister_ Lawful%3F

87 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41.

88 E.g. Bradford Observer, 1 April 1875, p. 7.

89 See Yeandle, Clash of Churchmanship, pp. 11f. and passim.

90 Read Adams (1832–1889), who lived in Madeley Court in neighbouring Hemingford Grey, owned a wholesale grocery and tallow-chandlering business and was the first Mayor of St Ives, upon its incorporation in 1874. He was presented by the Secretary of State to the Prince of Wales in 1875 (cf. The Morning Post, 27 April 1875) and was generally well known. As Hon. Sec. of the Hunts. Protestant Association, he had many skirmishes with Goldie and others. Hunt expresses his admiration for his staunch Protestantism in the dedication to him of his edition of Poems by Robert Wilde, p. vi. See ‘St Ives 100 Years Ago: Read Adams’, St Ives 100 Years Ago, https://stives100yearsago.blogspot.com/2020/06/read-adams.html

91 Approx. £3,835 in 2020.

92 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 41. The quotation is from Milton’s Paradise Lost, xii, 508. The continuation of the passage makes clear the relevance of these words to the situation in St Ives: ‘Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves, | Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven | To their own vile advantages shall turn | Of lucre and ambition, and the truth | With superstitions and traditions taint, | Left only in those written records pure, | Thought not but by the spirit understood.’

93 ‘Presentation of a Testimonial to the Rev. John Hunt.— The Rev. John Hunt, who has been curate of this parish during the last two years, being about to leave St. Ives, several his friends decided to present him with a testimonial as a token of their respect and esteem for the efficient manner in which he had performed the duties of his sacred office.’ (Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Saturday, 20 October 1866, p. 6). Cf. also Cambridge Independent Press, Saturday 20 October 1866, pp. 6f. For the full text, see Appendix, p. 192–195.

94 Here used in the sense of ‘A gift presented to some one by a number of persons as an expression of appreciation or acknowledgement of services or merit, or of admiration, esteem, or respect’, OED.

95 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 42.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 See Chadwick, Victorian Church II, pp. 308–327.

99 Cf. especially the dedication to Read Adams in Hunt’s Poems by Robert Wilde: ‘a memorial of the pleasant time which I spent as Curate of St. Ives’, p. vi.

100 Clergymen Made Scarce, p. 48.

101 See Chapter 11 Postscript: John Hunt in Otford, p. 93.

List of illustrations

Caption Fig. 2 St Ives Vicarage, c. 1883, courtesy of Mr Rolf Lunsmann.
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Caption Fig. 3 Interior of All Saints’, St Ives, c. 1860, courtesy of the Norris Museum, St Ives.
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