There has been some suggestion on some of the blogs that not all of the councillors in Kent are serving the electorate as well as they could be, so I thought an historical perspective here could be of some use.During the 1700s the parishes of Kent were governed by the clergy and churchwardens, fortunately Archbishop Wake kept a private notebook in Latin (Notitia Dioces Cantuar,) here is what he wrote about some of Kent’s clergy at that time.
Patten of Whitstable kept a mistress and did not pay his debts; Bourn of Ash was "allied to the sons of Eli" ; Roberts of Queenborough, ale-house sot and debtor, "so impudent as nothing is like him"; Bate of Chilham, "proudest and stiffest man" in the diocese, allowing corpses to lie unburied for want of fees; Burroughs of Kingston, "most horribly covetous" ; Ansell of Stowting and Cade of Sellindge, Jacobites and taven-brawlers; Edward Dering of Charing who fought his own sister at the Swan Inn and threw her "head-cloaths" into the fire; Hobbs of Dover, who amassed pluralities; Isles of New Romney a notorious sot and Jacobite; Nicholls of Fordwich who preached that King George was a Foreigner, a Lutheran, and a Beggar-"a wicked, swearing. Lying, Drunken man".
could I get a grant to keep a mistress?
ReplyDelete13.34 In those days it would have been called parish relief, now replaced by the benefits system, so the answer here is definitely yes.
ReplyDeletePretty mild stuff compared to what goes on in Thanet then.
ReplyDeleteLowers de Tone says
ReplyDeleteOne wonders if Edward Deering's sister charged for her head clothes version of parish relief ?
Wake describes the Thanet clergy much more in terms of "vir probus, doctus, diligens; concionator bonus,” I suspect they were a pretty dour lot, Lewis of Margate left instructions in his will that all his sermons be burnt, “lest they tempt others into laziness.”
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