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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY enacted that the curate's salary should not exceed £^o, nor be less than ^Tao per annum, but no unlicensed curate could claim the benefit of this Act."" Romaine gave his curate £/^o a year in 1786,"' and Churchill had received the same sum at St. John's Westminster,'" but the more usual allowance wras jTao, from which certain deductions were made for surplice fees, rent of glebe house, and so on."' Bishop Robinson made a vain attempt to increase the salaries, but little was done until Bishop Porteus insisted on pluralists paying their curates in charge a liberal allowance,"* and a definite salary was prescribed in such cases by the Act of 1837—8."' The inevitable result of the meagre allowances formerly paid was that the poverty of the London clergy was notorious ; their mean appearance made them the joke of the coffee- houses, and books were to them impossible luxuries."* The London curate, though doing the whole duty of a parish, was too useful to be promoted ;"^ Smithies, one of the most influential preachers in London at the close of the 17th century, was curate at St. Giles' Cripplegate for thirty-one years, and the curate of St. Peter le Pocr had in 171 1 been there for twenty years."* The lecturers held an important place in London church life in the 1 8th century. Their position was preferable in many ways to that of the curate. Generally elected by the vestry after much canvassing, they were independent of the incumbent, who knew that if he dismissed his lecturer the vestry would probably create a scandal, as, indeed, happened at St. Olave's Old Jewry in 1710."' An imperfect list of lecturers about 1685 shows that twenty-two out of fifty-two lectureships were filled by incumbents of City churches, and ten by City curates ; ^^° but most of the lecturers were men who, like John Henley,'" were seeking their fortune in London, or were bent on propagating new ideas. '^' In spite of prejudice in the City,"' many held country livings ; Bishop Robinson, however, refused to license lecturers holding two cures of souls.* According to the canon every lecturer must hold the bishop's licence before preaching, but by 1789 this regulation was often neglected, though in some City churches a register of the names of lecturers and particulars of their licences was still kept.'^° The lecturers had great influence in the 17th century, and their sermons were still well attended in the reign of Queen Anne, twenty-four such lectureships being maintained by religious societies in 1714,'^" while at St. Laurence Jewry Sharp '" and other divines of the day made their reputations as preachers. By a friendly arrangement the lecturer occasionally performed services ; at St. Olave Jewry he took the morning service once a month in 1710;'^' at St. Bar- tholomew Exchange the Friday lecturer took occasional duty falling on that "' Suckhouse, op. cit. 126. "' Goode, Mem. of William Goode, zj. "' J. E. Smith, St. "John the Evangelist Par. Mem. 77. '" Plan for the Better Maintenance and more general Residence of the Curates (B.M. Pres mark 1 1 1 3, h, 1 8), 5. '" Porteus, Charge, 1 790, p. 22. '" Stat. I & 2 Vict. cap. 106, sec. 85. The stipend paid by resident incumbents to their curates is not regulated by law ; Blunt, Bk. of Ch. Law (ed. Phillimore and Jones), 220. "* Stackhouse, op. cit. 74 et seq. '" Refections on the Clergy of the Established Church, 47. '" Archidiaconatus Lond. 105. '" Greene, J Vindication of Thomas Greene. "° Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 31, ibl. 269. '" John Henley, Oratory Transactions, 12. '" To the Beneficed Clergy of the Diocese of Lond. 1759 (B.M. Pressmark 816, m, 22, no. 1 18). '" Greene, op. cit. »** Bodl. Lib. Rawlinson MS. B. 376, fol. 399. •" Porteus, Letter to his Clergy, 1789. '""' Paterson, Pietas Lond. '" Sharp, op. cit. i, 30. '" Greene, op. cit. 357