M. F. Snape. The Church of England in Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in the Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003. Index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84383-014-6.
Reviewed by John Smail (History Department, University of North Carolina, Charlotte)
Published on H-Albion (October, 2004)
M. F. Snape's study of the parish of Whalley explores, through the lens of a local study, the strengths and weaknesses of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. As he explains in his introduction, Snape seeks to shed light on the historiographical debate between those who have depicted the eighteenth-century church as a moribund institution that was only revived by Victorian evangelicalism and revisionists who have countered that the church and its clergy successfully served the needs of the people. Snape's contention is that too much of the evidence for the revisionist argument comes from parishes and dioceses in southern England. His research on the Lancashire parish of Whalley, an industrial and pastoral giant situated on the western flank of the Pennines, prompts him to conclude that all was not well with the eighteenth-century church, and that, particularly during the rapid economic and population growth of the last third of the century, it quickly lost what hold it had on popular allegiance. Snape's study is organized on thematic lines, each chapter covering one of the key historiographical questions concerning the church and its relations with the laity. The book embraces the relatively broad definition of religious history characteristic of the discipline's practitioners in the last two decades, and thus it looks well beyond the conventional, if important, questions of patronage and ecclesiastical structure to explore topics as varied as folk Christianity and poor relief.
The book begins with an examination of the provision of religious services and education in this large and fractured parish. (Whalley was a huge parish with seventeen chapelries in addition to the parochial church, eleven of which had full parochial rights of baptism and burial.) Snape's analysis of the frequency of services and communion, attendance at catechism, the history of church festivals, and additions and improvement to church fabric all suggest that while there was a high degree of conformity in the parish, lay enthusiasm and support for the church was low, a conclusion supported by the rapid expansion of Methodism in the last quarter of the century. The second chapter examines the relationship of the church and folk Christianity. Here an analysis of popular beliefs on topics such as possession and witchcraft leads Snape to conclude that the eighteenth-century church was out of touch with popular attitudes, and perhaps more importantly, that there is little evidence of successful efforts by the clergy to close this gap.
The third and fourth chapters examine, respectively, the church's role in philanthropy, both poor relief and education, and its ability to regulate morality by means of the church courts. Again, Snape finds the church in Whalley to be wanting. As compared to earlier centuries, when the church played a major role as the institution through which wealthy parishioners sought to make provision for their less fortunate neighbors, the eighteenth-century church attracted very little in the way of new benefactions and was not an efficient manager of those it had inherited. Most of the charitable giving of the century went towards schools, but here again the church's record was spotty as these schools were able to accommodate only a small fraction of the parish's rapidly rising population. The health and vitality of the church courts has, of course, been a topic of much historical research, and Snape's analysis confirms that their jurisdiction narrowed, leaving most cases other than fornication and defamation to the secular courts. Although the administrative energies of particular bishops temporarily stemmed the tide, the long term decline in the effectiveness of Whalley's church courts (evident in the number of those presented for offenses who never even bothered to turn up for trial) also mirrors national trends.
The last two chapters of the book examine the questions that are perhaps at the heart of the debate about the state of the Anglican Church in the eighteenth century: the extent to which the careers and aspirations of the clergy, and the patrons who appointed them, reflected a genuine pursuit of religious goals or self-interested manipulation for personal and political gain. Although apologists for the church claim that pluralism was a reasonable response to the miserable state of church livings, Snape's analysis shows that in fact pluralism had been less common in the seventeenth century when livings were poorer, and that, moreover, the practice tended to benefit those already in possession of decent incomes. The potential for the political abuse of patronage is evident in the story of the alienation of the advowsons of several of the parish's chapelries.
Taken as a whole, M. F. Snape's study of the church in the parish of Whalley provides readers with a thoroughly researched analysis of a type of parish that expands the range of case studies available to scholars interested in eighteenth-century religious and social history. As such it will be a valuable addition to the literature both for the material itself and as a model of the kind of research that is possible. The extent to which the book makes a telling intervention into the ongoing debate on the health of the eighteenth-century church, however, is more open to question. Snape undoubtedly shows that there were problems with the church in Whalley, problems which help undermine revisionist attempts to depict the church as a healthy and vibrant institution. However, the central argument of the book is presented in a patchy and incomplete fashion. For example, the chapters on folk Christianity, philanthropy, and education are interesting in and of themselves, but neither the evidence presented nor the conclusions Snape draws advance his case to any significant degree. Similarly, the chapter on the church courts suggests that Whalley's history substantially confirms rather than contradicts the assessment of previous scholars. This leaves his argument resting on the evidence of the chapters on patronage, pluralism, and clerical careers, but here Snape does not do enough comparative analysis of either the revisionists' evidence or the historiography to drive home his case. Perhaps more significantly, the author does not articulate how the evidence from Whalley can support generalizations on the state of the Church of England. This, of course, is a perennial struggle for the practitioners of local history, but making the attempt is essential if the genre is to be more than antiquarianism. Snape's work, I should stress, is much more than that, but there is potential here that was not fully realized.
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Citation:
John Smail. Review of Snape, M. F., The Church of England in Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in the Eighteenth Century.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9859
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