St George-in-the-East Clergy 1729-1860

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The early Rectors were Fellows of Brasenose College (originally 'The King's Hall and College of Brazen Nose') Oxford, who were the patrons of the living, having long held the patronage of the ancient parish church of Stepney.

The first was Dr William Simpson (24 July 1729 - 19 July 1764); he died on the 35th anniversary of the church's consecration. One of his first acts was to petition for the enlargement of the parsonage house - see HERE for the history of the Rectory.

In 1732 and 1738 he published collections of his sermons, including The Great Benefit of a Good Example, on Matthew 5.16, preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners at St Mary-le-Bow in March 1737. The first such society was founded in Tower Hamlets in 1691 - with Queen Mary's support - and many others, in London and the provinces, followed, forming a loose confederation; they appealed primarily, but not exclusively, to Low Churchmen and Dissenters (Samuel Wesley preached on their behalf). They addressed what were seen as the moral scourges of the day, including prostitution, theatres and all that went with them (see HERE for more local details) and homosexual brothels ('molly-houses'). Their strategy was to use the existing criminal justice system and engineer and pay the cost of prosecutions - over 94,000, they claimed, in the first thirty years of their activity, before their influence waned - as well as to press for changes in the law. Josiah Woodward's 1699 account of their aspirations (he was at the time incumbent of Poplar) and details of current legislation, can be seen here - it was later to influence William Wilberforce.

You can read Simpson's sermon in full HERE (together with statistics of prosecutions from 1708-24, and a prayer for the Societies from a century later). Unfortunately it is somewhat vapid and unspecific, particularly in the second part on the application of his text. Within his increasingly desperate oratorical flourishes there is congratulation for members of the Societies for their achievements, without which he says social conditions would be even worse, and some criticism of indifference and corruption within the current enforcement system; his hope was that in future it would no longer be said that we have the best laws, and worst executed, of any nation under heaven. Many other sermons for the Societies were published; extracts from a sharper one, delivered ten years earlier by the Bishop of St David's, can be read here. The reactionary nature of the Societies is well-explored in the excellent 2009 BBC series Garrow's Law.

mayopicture

William Simpson was followed by Herbert Mayo DD (31 July 1764 - 5 January 1802) - who is not to be confused with Dr HENRY MAYO, the more-famous Dissenting Minister of Nightingale Lane chapel around the same period. They were probably distantly related, for the Mayos were a large, well-connected family, producing a number of eminent men - originally from Ireland, but Herbert Mayo's branch came from Herefordshire, where he was born in 1720. After Brasenose, he held curacies in Stratford-le-Bow, Whitechapel and Spitalfields. From May to July 1764 he was Rector of Middleton Cheney, in Northamptonshire, but resigned this 'more eminent' college living to return to work in London, remaining at St George-in-the-East until his death in 1802 (though from 1799 he was also the absentee incumbent of Tollesbury in Essex). He was buried at the church on 13 January 1802. His wife Mary, a surgeon's daughter, lived until 1824. They had two daughters, Rebecca and Jane, and two sons, Charles, who was ordained and became the first professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and Paggen-William (a name from his mother's family) who was a physician, as were other family members (including another Herbert, a physiologist and surgeon who in the 1840s wrote about clairvoyance and vampirism).

Dr Mayo was much-respected as an 'active and diligent incumbent': one source describes him as a 'great man' among the East End clergy of the time. HERE are two contrasting obituaries. One, from the Gentleman's Magazine, is couched in the florid and respecful terms of the day, without saying what exactly he did - for example:

His rectitude, steadiness, and liberality of principle, his perfect command of temper and self-government, the firmness of his attachments, and placability of his resentments, the sincerity and openness of his manners, and, above all, the extensiveness, impartiality, and œconomy of his benevolence, are qualities which, it is hoped, have not vainly shed their lustre, though amidst a licentious and a fastidious age. But, not to diverge too far into general panegyrick, it is meant to enlarge upon this exemplary character, with regard to its most appropriate excellence, as it exhibits a singular specimen of the good effects resulting to society from a plain and vigorous understanding, actuated by right principles, and applied to practicable and beneficial objects. Unambitious of celebrity, and incapable of affectation, he made it his chief aim to be useful; and in that aim he most perfectly succeeded..... [and so on]

('Spheres of usefulness' was part of the jargon of the day. Fifty years later, a curate who became Lecturer in Public Reading at King's College London entitled his introductory lecture The Importance of Elocution in connexion with Ministerial Usefulness.)

mayosignature The other obituary, written by 'a London curate' (who had worked with him?) is more informative. It describes him - in a phrase more often used now than in those days - as a good parish priest , conscientious and with plenty of previous experience; he served as a magistrate; his conduct of worship was rubrically careful and correct (pointing ahead fifty years to Bryan King's time!); his preaching was initially somewhat mannered; he was held in particular regard by the black seafaring community, with whom he had many contacts; he was ecumenical in spirit, at least towards the 'mainstream' denominations; and he was fond of puns!

Dr Roderick MacLeod may have been his curate around 1780. After a spell in an Aberdeen parish from 1782 (he had studied at King's College in that city), jointly held from 1971 with Great Bentley, near Colchester, he later became the seventh vicar of St Anne Soho (1806-45, where he died at the age of 92). But he was cagey about the beginnings of his ministry: he described himself as a 'poor curate', giving his address as Princes Square (in this parish), and preaching sermons at 'Spitalfields chapel' (which was not). Some sources list him as serving in this parish - for instance, the memoir of his Presbyterian college friend Dr James Lindsay, who stayed with him for a time in London. He was well-connected, and his grand-daughter Lady Caithness produced some RECOLLECTIONS of his life. He wore knee breeches, buckle shoes and a tricorn hat over his powdered hair, and took snuff; and as an old man lapsed into his childhood Gaelic for his prayers.

Lecturers
From the start, the parish appointed a Lecturer - an ordained preacher, chosen by the Vestry meeting and supported by the voluntary contributions of the congregation. At the first Vestry meeting, with 190 vestrymen plus various officers present, they discussed whether to vote by the traditional means of 'coming up to scratch' (on a parchment roll) or holding a ballot; they opted for the former, and proceeeded to elect Charles Huxley (1729-33) by 117 votes to 94 for the other candidate, John Wilkinson. Huxley, a fellow of Brasenose, was from an old Cheshire family - his father was a merchant in Macclesfield; he died in post at the age of 34.

Richard King was Lecturer during the 1740s, and also Curate of St Mary-at-Hill and Chaplain in Ordinary. He preached to the Clothworkers Company, and at Lamb's Chapel near Cripplegate, and was Lord Mayor's Chaplain in 1751. Among his published sermons was one 'before the several Associations of the Order of Antigallicans' in 1751, on Ps 122.6 (O pray for the peace of Jerusalem....) The Anti-Gallican Society was formed in 1745 to oppose the influx of French goods, customs and influence - so it was a partly economic, partly cultural movement, fuelled by prospects of war with France. It had the support of Theophilus Cibber, son of the Poet Laureate, whose family were linked with the DANISH CHURCH in Wellclose Square. (In 1778 the Rev Isaac Hunt preached to the AGM of the Laudable Association of Anti-Gallicans at St George-in-the-East, possibly on St George's Day, which they kept as a patriotic festival. The Rev Isaac Hunt senior had been an early settler in Barbados, where his namesake son practised as a lawyer, but had to flee - with his Quaker wife - because of his royalist support; ordained in England, he never achieved preferment because of too imprudent generosity on a certain occasion, in which royalty was implicated, and ended his life in a debtors' prison. He was the father of the man of letters Leigh Hunt, and published his juvenile writings.)

Samuel Bethell (1784-93) was a relative of Dr Mayo, the Rector [see above]. Both families were from Hereford, where in 1755 Samuel's father, also called Samuel, and incumbent of Dinedor, had married Susanna, daughter of the Revd Charles Mayo - with a marriage settlement involving two plots of land and £140. All these men were members of Brasenose College: Samuel jnr graduated in 1777. He was appointed Lecturer alongside his main job, as curate of Christ Church Spitalfields, and continued until he became Rector of Clayton-cum-Kymer in Sussex (a Brasenose College living) in 1793; he died there in 1803, aged 47, prompting THIS vapid eulogising from the Gentleman's Magazine, including the claim that he was very dexerous in the management of colloquial argumentation, and an assurance (let the reader understand) that he was not an enthusiast, but a man of rational piety!

His successor as Lecturer was James Blenkarne (1794-1830s), who as this obituary in the March 1836 edition of the Gentleman's Magazine shows, simultaneously held a number of other posts: note again the emphasis on being 'extensively useful'. As a headmaster, he gave evidence in 1816 to a Select Committee of the House of Commons into the 'Education of the Lower Orders'.

Feb. 7. Aged 78, the Rev. James Blenkarne. Vicar of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and Chaplain of Guy's Hospital. He was educated at the grammar school of Ashby de la Zouche, in Leicestershire, from whence he proceeded in 1774, with an exhibition to Emanuel College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. 1778 as 9th Junior Optime, M.A. 1780. His intrinsic worth procured for him a variety of appointments, in each of which be became extensively useful, and from each of which he retired with dignity and honour. The Governors of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in St. Olave's Southwark, appointed him in 1790 to the office of Head Master of that establishment, and after a lengthened service of 33 years they marked their sense of the fidelity with which he had discharged his trust, by permitting him to retire from those laborious duties, with an annual pension of £100. In 1791 he was elected Lecturer of St. Bene't Fink, which function he retained until the parishioners of St. George's in the East chose him to be their Lecturer in 1796. During a continued acquaintance of almost forty years, they looked upon him with increasing affection and esteem; and on his recent retirement from this office they presented him with a valuable silver waiter as a public memorial of their respect. About the same time he received a similar testimonial of a tea and coffee service from the parishioners of St. Helen's, to which church be was instituted in 1799. He was elected Chaplain to Guy's Hospital in 1815. In the several relations of a Minister of the Gospel, a father, a husband, and a friend, he evinced an uniform desire to advance the happiness, and secure the love of all with whom he was connected. His private and social conduct as a man was characterized by a primitive mildness and simplicity, and an unassuming humility of deportment, accompanied with that evenness and chastised cheerfulness of temper, which is the result, and the evidence, of conscious innocence and integrity.

Thomas Bankes is described in his 1780 publication The Christian's New and Compleat Family Bible, with Apocrypha, or, Universal Library of Divine Knowledge, illustrated with annotations and commentaries... the whole forming a compleat body of Christian Divinity, as being of St Mary Hall, Oxon, Vicar of Dixton, Monmouthshire, and Assistant Preacher at St George's Middlesex (later versions substitute Morning and Afternoon Preacher at Hampstead). He was a wealthy pluralist, paying his curate in Dixton (straddling the Welsh border - it later opted into the Church of England) £16 a year to run the parish in his absence.

He also published, from 1787 onwards, with Edward Warren Blake, Alexander Cook and Thomas Lloyd, A new, Royal, and Authentic System of Universal Geography Antient and Modern, containing a genuine history and description of the whole world. It includes images and reports of Captain Cook's three voyages, and about 200 original engravings [pictured are two of them - A Man of the Sandwich Islands, and A Man of Oonalashka], making it the most complete report on the then-known world. He died in 1805.

EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Robert Farington DD FSA (in later life he affected the old spelling ffarington) was the third Rector, from 10 March 1803 until his death on 17 September 1841. He was from an old Lancashire family; his father, who died in 1767, had been simultaneously Rector of Warrington and Vicar of Leigh. He was the youngest of eight sons, three of whom served with the East India Company. Another brother Joseph was 'the Royal Academician' - an indifferent artist, but whose 8-volume diary, when edited and published in 1923, proved an intriguing mix of mundane domestic routine and dealings with the great and the good.

Though he organised repair work on the parish church and rectory, he was passive - believing it was his duty to leave things as he found them! - and increasingly reclusive, spending all day reading and writing in his study. William Quekett, who was appointed curate and Lecturer in 1830, and whose extraordinary story is told HERE in connection with Christ Church, Watney Street, said that, although the Rector promised to seek another curate after the mix-up over Quekett's appointment, and to help him find his feet in the parish, he did absolutely nothing in either case. He claimed that he rarely preached (he had a speech impediment), or even attended services, and left Quekett to be present in church every day until noon awaiting funerals and weddings (time which he put to good use in laying plans for Christ Church). Whenever he went away, he took his plate-chest with him and had all the locks on his cupboards changed. However, the parish registers suggest that Farington was a little more active than his curate implies, despite his eccentricities.

HERE, in his autobiography My Sayings and Doings (Kegan, Paul & Trench 1888), Quekett describes Farington's death in some detail, including the discovery of banknotes pinned into many of his books, and his will, made in 1822 with pencil amendments of 1838 found in his pocket-book - which was contested by family members in the Prerogative Court. He was buried, along with other family members, at Broxbourne - where, incidentally, the News International presses, previously in this parish, were relocated in 2007. A tablet records the details.

Other curates in Farington's time

John Welchman Wynne (1802-08), at a stipend of £75 plus £15 in lieu of a house, later Perpetual Curate of Plaxtol, Kent – who by strange coincidence was also involved in legal proceedings over a family will [Graves v Hughes 1819]
P.H. Roche (1809- c1825) frequently appears in the baptismal registers as 'assistant minister' - some years in this period saw over 1,000 baptisms annually
Robert Richardson (1805-??)
James Alexander Wood (1829-??), at a stipend of £100. He was admitted as a Sizar at Catherine Hall [now St Catherine's College] Cambridge in 1813 but did not graduate until 1819. After serving here, he became a schoolmaster; in 1836 a Cornish newspaper advertised

Tavistock School for Young Gentlemen - Conducted by the Rev. J. A. Wood, B. A. late of Catherine Hall, Cambridge - Terms - 10 guineas per Annum - Day Boarders 20 - Day Pupils 8 - Subjects of Instruction - The English, French, Latin, and Greek Languages; Ancient and Modern History and Geography; Algebra and Geometry; Arithmetic, Writing. Dancing and Drawing, by the first Masters, at the usual terms. Mr. Wood will have much pleasure, in referring to the Parents of these Young Gentlemen, whom he has now under his tuition.

From 1837-40 or 41 he was Headmaster of Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet, and Chaplain of the Union [workhouse], then briefly curate of Madron and Morvah in Cornwall, and of Sturminster Marshall in Dorset.

John Saunders (early 1840s) - until 1839 curate of St John the Evangelist Lambeth, and from 1845 until his death Rector of St Luke Old Street in the City.

Henry Burgess Whitaker Churton lasted all of nine weeks as Rector (11 March – 27 May 1842), before getting a better job as Preacher of the Charterhouse. He had succeeded W.W. Champneys (see ST PAUL DOCK STREET) as curate at St Ebbe's Oxford, which had become a centre of Evangelical preaching (Newman, it seems, was suspicious of him). He was tutor at Oxford to Frederick W. Robertson, whose Life and Letters refer to discussions with Churton at a time when his own theological views were shifting, and who at Trinity Chapel Brighton became one of the great humane preachers of the age. (His relative Thomas Townson Churton was also a fellow of Brasenose and an Evangelical - and was Bryan King's tutor there.) According to William Quekett [see above], all the Fellows of Brasenose College in rotation were offered but declined the post at St George's, until just in time to avoid presentation lapsing to the bishop Churton was prevailed upon to accept, although he was already in the frame for the Charterhouse job. When he read himself in, Quekett handed him, via Mr Verrall, the parish clerk, the parochial fees from 18 September 1841 to 27 May 1842 - a total of £284 9s 6d: see the page from the parish ledger HERE . All he gave me in return, said Quekett, was the empty cash box. (Churton did officiate at 13 baptisms here, but only as a visiting minister ten years later, on 25 February 1852.) After only two years at the Charterhouse be moved to Icklesham, near Rye, becoming also a Prebendary of Chichester. You can read Churton's account of two trips to Palestine here, intriguingly described in one review as an elegant and religious work on the East, slightly but not unpleasantly imbued with sentimentalism.

Bryan King

The last Fellow of Brasenose College to be appointed Rector was Bryan King (1843-63); his story is told in connection with the RITUALISM RIOTS. He was born in 1811, and married Martha Mary Fardell, daughter of the rector of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire, in 1842. He was a council member of the English Church Union (originally founded as the Church of England Protection Society) and a correspondent of the Ecclesiological Society (originally the Cambridge Camden Society - founded at the 'other' university with a focus on 'proper' church building design rather than on strictly liturgical issues). Worn out by the riots, he exchanged livings with John Ross Lockhart and became vicar of Avebury; he retired in 1894 - by which time he was almost totally deaf, and his curate son ran the parish - and died in 1895.

Curates in Bryan King's time

George Carpenter (1844-46), of St John's College Cambridge. This was his first post; after two further curacies be became incumbent of Stapleford in Wiltshire, and in 1865 of two parishes in Christchurch, New Zealand. For 14 years from 1870 he was chaplain of Moca in Mauritius (on an annual salary of 2,000 rupees - senior officers were paid five times as much), then for the last five years before retirement he was Chaplain to Sir Robert Menzies, serving the (Episcopalian) chapel of St David's at Castle Menzies, Weem in Aberfeldy, built in 1875; he died in Silesia in 1893.
David Brown Moore became curate in 1851, and Lecturer in 1854 - see ST MATTHEW PELL STREET.
Charles Edward Band junior was curate in 1856. His namesake father had been the non-resident vicar of the family living of Combe Raleigh, and also of Sheldon, in Exeter diocese (though took up residence in the former in 1831); his son, of Exeter College Oxford, was appointed vicar of Langton-on-Swale (near Northallerton) in Ripon diocese in 1856, but signed a bond (valued at £2000) agreeing to vacate this living in favour of the sons of the patron, Captain the Hon. Arthur Duncombe, should either of them want it. Hence, presumably, his service here, and in the 1870s in two Croydon parishes - though he appears to have retained the living, retiring in due course to the family home of Wookey House, near Wells.
William John Bennett DD of Trinity College Dublin and St Edmund Hall Oxford, was a curate for a short time in 1858.

Charles Lowder and his many colleagues at the MISSION were licensed as curates to the parish, and most officiated at the parish church as well as in the mission centres. Curates based at the parish church at the time of the riots (living in the clergy house in Cannon Street Road), both of whom later became Roman Catholics, were

William Pimero Burn (1859-??), a law graduate of Downing College Cambridge who from 1851-56 had been the first incumbent of Ulley, near Rotherham (where he ran a school for 25 boys)
Thomas Dove Dove [sic], from Emmanuel College Cambridge, who brought the first action for 'brawling' under the 1860 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act - see RITUALISM RIOTS. In 1865 the congregation of of St Mary Carden Place in Aberdeen, where George Akers from St Saviour's Mission had been Frederick George Lee's curate, invited Dove to become Lee's successor. In 1859 this congregation had broken away from St John's Aberdeen with Lee, following complaints over his objecting to worshippers leaving after the sermon and before the eucharist; with the bishop's consent they had moved into an ex-Baptist chapel in Correction Wynd. But when they built a new church in 1864 the bishop refused to consecrate it because of its ornaments, and therefore refused to license Dove; instead he became curate of St Mary Magdalene Paddington. You can read an account of worship in the chapel at Aberdeen, and the Episcopal Synod hearing confirming the bishop's action, HERE.

About this time patronage of the benefice passed to the Bishop of London, to whom the Principal and Fellows transferred most of their East End patronage in return for various country livings. In 1879 the Rector's stipend was increased by £500 a year by the voidance of a City rectory - though the parish has never been regarded as an 'ecclesiastical prize'!