STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685 .

323 ;

P6x1 iaps, after some years of service, he was presentedto a living sufficient to support him: but he often found itnecessary to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony,which furnished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry tothree or four generations of scoffers. With his cure he wasexpected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in thepatron’s service; and it was well if she was not suspected ofstanding too high in the patron’s favour. Indeed, the natureof the matrimonial connections which the clergymen of thatage were in the habit of forming is the most certain indicationof the place which the order held in the social system. AnOxonian, writing a few months after the death of Charles theSecond, complained bitterly, not only that the country at-torney and the country apothecary looked down with disdainon the country clergyman, but that one of the lessons mostearnestly inculcated on every girl of honourable family was togive no encouragement to a lover in orders, and that, if anyyoung lady forgot this precept, she was almost as much dis-graced as by an illicit amour.* * Clarendon, who assuredlybore no ill will to the Church, mentions it as a sign of the con-fusion of ranks which the great rebellion had produced, thatsome damsels of noble families had bestowed themselves ondivines.** A waiting woman was generally considered as themost suitable helpmate for a parson. Queen Elizabeth, ashead of the Church, had given what seemed to be a formalsanction to this prejudice, by issuing special orders that no

addressed to a Friend about to leave the University; Tatler, 255. 258.That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the Travelsof the Grand Duke Cosmo, Appendix A.

* “ A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesiserector aut vicarius conlemnitur et fit Iudibrio. Gentis et families nitorsacris ordinibus pollutus censelur: fceminisque natalitio insignibus uni-rum inculcatur saepius praeceptum, ne modeslise naufragium, faciant,aut, (quod idem auribus tam delicalulis sonat,) ne clerico se nuptas daripatiantur.” Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College, Oxford, 1686.

** Clarendon’s Life, ii. 21.

CHAP.

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21