A vivid and accessible reappraisal of the frequently uneasy relationship between the Victorian clergyman and his congregation. The conduct of divine service was only one item on the agenda of the nineteenth-century clergyman. He might have to sit on the magistrates' bench, or concern himself with business as a farmer or landowner, or attend a meeting of the Poor Law guardians. He would, in all probability, be closely involved with the day-to-day running of the local school, and he would almost certainly be the principle administrator of the parochial charities. While some of theseroles were clearly predestined to bring him into conflict with certain members of his flock, others seem ostensibly designed to operate in their interests. None, however, seem to have earned him much in the way of devotion and respect: instead, each of them at one time or another attracted the direct hostility of parishioners, most particularly those attached to dissenting and/or radical groups. This book is a detailed exploration of the relationship between Anglican clergymen and the inhabitants of rural parishes in the nineteenth century. Taking Norfolk as a focus, the author examines the many and profound ways in which the Victorian Church affected the daily lives and political destinies of local communities.

A vivid and accessible reappraisal of the frequently uneasy relationship between the Victorian clergyman and his congregation.

Is North East England really a coherent and self-conscious region? The essays collected here address this topical issue, from the middle ages to the present day.

The study of popular culture has been an abiding preoccupation of historians and other academics, not just in the British Isles but elsewhere too. This volume of essays explores the manifestations of popular culture and belief in England, Ireland and Wales from the Reformation onwards. As an interdisciplinary collection it brings together specialists in English Literature, History, Celtic and Religious Studies. It offers new insights thematically via a selection of diverse contributions. The nexus between religion and popular culture links the contributions together, while the geographical spread of the topic facilitates a dynamic comparative methodology. What emerges from these explorations of rites of passage, festivals, revivalism, print culture and gender is the remarkable resilience of popular culture and the extent to which all levels of society were prepared to compromise.

An engaging account of the life of a nineteenth-century priest.

A detailed survey of the Anglican mission to the coalfields in an era where rapid industrialisation crucially affected the old ecclesiastical structures. In 1860 the Diocese of Durham launched a new mission to bring Christianity - and specifically Anglicanism - to the teeming population of the Durham coalfield. Over the preceding fifty years the Church of England had become increasingly marginalised as the coalfield population soared. Parish churches that had been built to serve a scattered, rural medieval population were no longer sufficiently close - or relevant - to the new industrial townships that werebeing constructed around the coalmines. The post-1860 mission was a belated attempt to reach out to the new coalfield population, and to rescue them from the forces of Methodism, labour militancy and irreligion. It was posited onthe need to build new churches, to delineate new parishes and to recruit a new type of clergyman: working-class and down-to-earth in origin and outlook, and somebody who could make an empathetic connection with his new parishioners. This book is a detailed exploration of the way in which the Church of England in Durham handled its mission. It follows the Church's relationship with the coalfield, which ranged from an early-nineteenth-century aloofness to an early-twentieth-century identification which many church leaders considered had gone too far, and in so doing reveals how the Durham experience relates to national attempts to maintain Anglicanism's relevance and presence in an increasingly secular and sceptical society. Dr ROBERT LEE lectures in History at the University of Teesside, Middlesbrough.

This book reveals the huge sales and propagandist potential of Anglican parish magazines, while demonstrating the Anglican Church's misunderstanding of the real issues at its heart, and its collective collapse of confidence as it contemplated social change.