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

William Simpson (24 July 1729 - 19 July 1764)
Dr Simpson was born on 25 March 1687. In 1736 Henry Raine appointed him the first Treasurer or Chairman of his schools, and the only known portrait of Dr Simpson hangs in the headteacher's study at Raines Foundation School - we are grateful to the school, and to the foundation governors who own the picture, for their help and permission to reproduce it here.

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 [this link gives the full text and also statistics of prosecutions from 1708-24, and a prayer for the Societies from a century later.) 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 prosecutions, for which they met the cost - 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.

Simpson's sermon is somewhat vapid and unspecific, particularly in the second part on the application of his text. His increasingly desperate oratorical flourishes congratulate members of the Societies for their achievements, without which he says social conditions would be even worse, and make 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 was explored in the opening episode of the excellent 2009 BBC series Garrow's Law (see here for the life of William Garrow).

Herbert Mayo (31 July 1764 - 6 January 1802)
A speedy appointment was made, of Herbert Mayo DD, 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. A Fellow of Brasenose, he was ordained in 1844 and served his title at Chalgrove with

The other obituary, was written by 'a London curate' (who had worked with him - who was it?) and 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 (one was Anne Clossen, a 15-year old slave whom he baptized, and who left her master and secured employment with a local surgeon at the excellent rate of £7 a year); a Tory in politics, he was ecumenical in spirit, at least towards the 'mainstream' denominations; and he was fond of puns!

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. (An abortive attempt - described here - was made by his supporters to appoint Wilkinson as a 'second lecturer'.)

Richard King was Lecturer during the 1740s, combining this the the post of Curate of St Mary-at-Hill and Chaplain in Ordinary to the royal household; he was Lord Mayor's Chaplain in 1751. He was also chaplain to the Clothworkers Company, and minister of their Lamb's Conduit chapel, near Cripplegate (endowed by William Lamb, brother of the Clothworkers who died in 1577, together with a water conduit near Holborn, providing pails for 129 poor women, together with educational and other benefactions elsewhere). Later he was Rector of Kingston Bagpuize, then Berkshire [ now Oxfordshire], until his death in 1783. 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 what was intriguingly described as 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 (1784-96) was a relative of Rector Mayo. Both families were from Hereford, where Samuel's namesake grandfather had been incumbent of Dinedor, and his namesake father of St Nicholas Hereford, marrying Susanna, daughter of the Revd Charles Mayo in 1755, with a marriage settlement involving two plots of land and £140. Like Dr Mayo he was a fellow of Brasenose College Oxford, graduating in 1777 (the year of his father's death). He was appointed Lecturer alongside his main job, as curate of Christ Church Spitalfields, and continued there until he became Rector of Clayton-cum-Kymer in Sussex (yet another Brasenose living) in 1793. He died there in 1803, aged 47 - a year before his mother, who lived to the age of 85; this vapid eulogising from the Gentleman's Magazine, includes 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! 

• R (or P) Rowland (1754-58, reappearing in 1771 as an officiant at weddings): this may have been Robert Rowland, later known as Robert Litchford, of Christ's and Magdalene Colleges, Cambridge, who was Rector of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire from 1733 to his death in 1780, when he was succeeded first by a nephew and then by his son. From 1831 Thomas Fardell, who was to become Bryan King's father-in-law, was rector of the parish.
   
  
• Henry Ellis (1758-59), a student of Brasenose (entering in 1752 at the age of 17) and St John's Colleges, Oxford, went on from here to be curate of Rochford Hundred in Essex for more than thirty years; from 1790 he was curate of Hadleigh (at £30 a year) and Leigh-on-Sea (at £42 a year), and then from 1793 of the villages of High and Good Easter, near Chelmsford, and from 1795 Rector of Sutton, near Rochford (he was a friend of the patron Mr Cockerton, a gentleman farmer), where he died in 1802. All of these parishes were then in the diocese of London. The Revd Mr Archer, an eccentric clericus but of some poetic talent, wrote an elegy on his death.
  
  
• William Purkis DD FSA (1759-61) was from Wisbech, and a graduate of Magdalen College Cambridge (5th Wrangler 1756), where after his curacy he became fellow and tutor (Senior Proctor 1772-73, doctorate 1786). Bishop Watson complained in 1762 that the Cambridge dinner-hour had changed from 12 to 3, and foolish dons, like William Purkis, talked of combining the scholar and the gentleman - for which Purkis acquired the nickname 'Mr Union'. He later also held two Lincolnshire rectories - St Stephen Carlby from 1766 (where he died in 1791), and Anderby with Comberworth from 1772, and was commissioner of the peace for the soke of Peterborough. He was also one of the king's preachers at Whitehall. Among his published sermons were
  
  • At the assizes for Cambridge, 1771, from Matt. vii. 13 (preached at St Peter Wisbech)
  • The Influence Of The Present Pursuits In Learning As They Affect Religion, Considered In A Sermon Preached Before The University Of Cambridge, Commencement Sunday 1786, from Coloss. ii.8 - Smollett's Critical Review for 1787 (vol 64 p236) quotes with approval part of Purkis' conclusion:
    

    They who aim to mark the limits of knowlege, and the boundaries within which each branch of science is confined, are doing an essential service to the cause of truth and religion. They prevent much of that uncertainty and delusion which disturbs the minds of the people at large; who without such assistance are "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."—It will also appear, that in our religious enquiries (which we pursue for the good purpose of explaining the Gospel) to indulge conjecture in points not yet revealed, in order to account for difficulties which arise from the nature of the doctrines themselves, tends to unsettle the opinions of the world, and not to improve their faith.—The consequence must be a growing indifference for religious sentiment, and of course a want of principle in all their actions....

    and comments We have not less admired the sound sense, and accurate discimination, conspicuous in this Sermon, than the energy and purity of the style; equally distant from the rugged force of the last age, and the flippant elegance of some modern compositions.
  • The evils which may arise to the constitution of Great Britain from the influence of a too powerful nobility, considered in a sermon, preached before the University of Cambridge on Friday, May 29, 1789: being the anniversary of the restoration of King Charles II
  • A Review of Modern Literature, as it respects Moral and Religious Inquiry, 1790
  
  
• William Dubordieu (1761-66): from a noted Huguenot family (also spelt DuBourdieu) some of whom had settled in London. Jean Armand Dubordieu (1683-1723) was the pastor of the French Church at the Savoy. Others went to Ireland, where there was a Huguenot community in Lisburn: Armand's grandson Saumarez was its last chaplain, and another relative ran an academy in Dublin attended by Bartholomew Teeling, a leader of the Irish rebellion executed for treason. William's father John was the Vicar of Leyton, then known as Low-Layton, and Master of its free school, established in 1697. (Here he preached that Catholicism led to arbitrary rule, violence and foreign councils). William attended Merchant Taylors School, and was a sizar [subsidised, perhaps in return for performing some menial tasks] at Peterhouse, Cambridge at the age of 17 in 1751, but three years later, aged 19, 'migrated' to Merton College, Oxford - the college of his father (1716) and brother John (1749). What is the story here? During his time here, in 1763 he married Mary Winter at St Martin in the Fields. See Baby on her Back (William J. DuBourdieu 1876, republished 1967) for a family history.
  
  
• Anthony Thomas (1766-67) was a graduate of Jesus College Oxford, ordained priest in 1762 at Whitchurch in the diocese of St Asaph, where he was curate of Guilsfield, Montgomeryshire before coming to London and serving here briefly.
  
  
• Gabriel Tahourdin (1767-71) was also from a family of Huguenot origins which from the 18th to the early 20th centuries produced several generations of parsons, as well as lawyers and merchants. After Winchester School Gabriel attended Corpus Christi College Oxford (as did his brother, who was also ordained), and began his ministry here. He died in 1814 (predeceased by his wife three years earlier) as Rector of Hannington, near Swindon, and perpetual curate for 43 years of Bentley and Frensham, near Farnham, the duties of which, during all that period, he personally discharged with zeal and piety (New Monthly Magazine vol 105). However, he appears to have been a pluralist - unless it was a namesake - for there are documents for an appointment to the Rectory of Bromyard 'Second Portion', in Hereford diocese (a post paid by an unusual arrangement of tithe income), from 1790 to his death. He was a beneficiary of a complex family will of 1727, which had gone to court as Chauncy & others v. Graydon & others in 1743: family members went to law on many other occasions. See the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London vol.23 (1982) p411 on the family.
  
  
• Edward Ireson (1771-2) was a graduate of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and served his title here (his priesting, by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, was at the Chapel Royal in Westminster). His namesake father had been curate of Bringhurst cum Great Easton and Drayton in Leicestershire from 1846, and vicar from 1769; on his death in 1772 his son succeeded him in this post, until his own death in 1824. In Great Easton church are memorial tablets to two of his daughters, Mary and Rebecca - the latter the ever dear and beloved object of the esteem and friendship of William Wignall, who erected it.
  
  
• William Colby (1772-79) was a 'literate' (i.e. non-graduate), ordained in Lincoln diocese in 1764 to the curacy of Hawridge in Buckinghamshire (the diocese was extensive then!) and priested four years later by the Bishop of London in the Chapel Royal, St James' Palace, like his predecessor.
  
  
• Roderick MacLeod DD (1780-82) was from an old Scottish family of Drynoch; he studied at King's College Aberdeen (graduating MA, with Founder's Bursary, in 1773), to which he returned in 1782 as 'assistant minister and pastor' of St Paul's Chapel. From 1791 he held this post jointly with the vicarage of Great Bentley, near Colchester, to which he moved in 1793, resigning his Scottish position (where he had been paid £100 a year). Later he became the seventh vicar of St Anne Soho (1806-45, where he died at the age of 92). He was cagey about the location of the beginnings of his ministry, describing himself as a 'poor curate', who preached sermons at 'Spitalfields chapel'. But his address was in Princes' Square, in this parish (whither his Presbyterian college friend Dr James Lindsay records a stay), and parish registers show that this was indeed where he officiated. 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.
  
  
• John Row (briefly 1783) - of Magdalen Hall, Oxford; he was previously curate of Horley in Surrey (then in Winchester diocese) from 1781, and later of St Thomas' Hospital Southwark until his death in 1786.
  
  
• [Isaac Peach appears in the registers for 1779-80, but was probably not a curate here; born in 1754, of Pembroke Hall Cambridge, he was Lecturer of Barking (marriying Jemima Angles of Bermondsey in 1782, with a marriage settlement), and from 1779 to his death in 1816 curate of Wootton St Lawrence in Hampshire. In a letter of 29 May 1811 to her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen remarks and now it is said that Mr. Peach (beautiful wiseacre) wants to have the curacy of Overton; and if he does leave Wootton, James Digwell wishes to go there. This did not happen, but her description of him is intriguing!]
  
  
• Charles Mayo (son of the Rector) signs as 'curate' in the 1791 registers, and also officiated here in 1790, 1794-97 and 1800; for thirty years or so he was the morning preacher at Highgate Chapel. His obituary suggests that, despite his Oxford chair (he was the first professor of Anglo-Saxon) his greatest pride was his connection with Marchant Taylors' School, for which he was an examiner. Through marriage connections with the Shaw and Gwilt families he had become the lessee of the estate of Cheshunt Great House (which had originally been in the possession of Cardinal Wolsey, and was built in similar style to Hampton Court), and its owner in 1824: he made it available to teetotal groups, and provided land for cottage gardens.
  

• Herbert Jeffreys (1789-90), of Jesus College Oxford, ordained at Christchurch Oxford in 1782; in 1798 he became Vicar of Little Wakering, in Essex (then in the diocese of London), with the Governors of St Bartholomew's Hospital as patrons, until his death in 1812, aged 53, at Ilford (where he was also chaplain of the private mansion of Aldborough Hatch). Daughters Elizabeth married a lieutenant in the East Indies in 1820, and Anne a minor canon of St Paul's Cathedral. Was he related to Colonel Herbert Jeffreys, acting governor of Virgina a century earlier?
  

• Thomas White (1797-1800) - this is probably the Thomas White of Queen's College Oxford who became Minister of Welbeck Chapel, St Marylebone (aka perpetual curate of St James Westmorland Street). In 1805 Hatchards published A Sermon on the Religious Advantages afforded by the Church of England to the Members of her Communion, preached at St Mary-le-Bow on St Mark's Day, April 5th, 1805, in Conformity with the Will of the late Mr. John Hutchins, of which the British Critic (vol 26, p419) said The pious founder of this annual sermon required Instructions to be given on the excellency and use of the Liturgy of the Church of England, shewing that great advantages must necessarily accrue to the poor children educated in the doctrines and principles of the said church.This is a very sensible and pious discourse, in which suitable and forcible arguments are introduced; and the object for which the sermon was instituted, effectually answered. In 1817 R. & R. Gilbert of Clerkenwell published a collection of White's Sermons preached at Welbeck Chapel. Other posts provided an income, and maybe a house: he was Vicar of Feckenham in Worcester diocese from 1805-13, curate of Crayford in Kent, Rector of St Andrew Hertford from 1826 (in Lincoln diocese, patron Lord Bexley) and from 1829 Rector of Epperstone, near Nottingham, also in Lincoln diocese (worth £309 a year), of which he and other family members were the patrons. 

Robert Farington (10 March 1802 - 17 September 1841)
The third Rector was Robert Farington DD FSA (in later life he affected the spelling 'ffarington'), who died in office. He was from an old Lancashire family; his father William, 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 (one of whom, Edward, died of yellow fever at the age of 32). Two were artists: George, and Joseph known as 'the Royal Academician' - an indifferent painter, but whose 8-volume diary, when edited and published in 1923, proved an intriguing mix of information on mundane domestic routine and dealings with the great and the good. Here is an example, mentioning Robert, from volume 5, chapter LXX (1809) [full text here]:

Robert graduated from Brasenose (MA 1784, and BD & DD 1803 - the archive of family documents, now held at UCLA, includes a note of 1 July 1803 about his candidancy for the latter degree). He was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford in 1783, and in 1790 served a curacy at New Windsor, Berks (in the diocese of Salisbury). In his time here 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. Quekett claimed that his Rector 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 more active than his curate implies, despite his eccentricities: when he was in the parish he conducted large numbers of baptisms and weddings, though most years he went away for two or three months at a stretch, and sometimes longer.

Here, in his autobiography My Sayings and Doings  (Kegan, Paul & Trench 1888), Quekett describes Farington's death in 1841 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 there records the details. The sale of his books [left] took several days.

(In 1828 J. Hogarth, who had bought books formerly belonging to Robert's brother Joseph at the sale of property of Sir Thomas Lawrence (another artist, who painted Joseph's portrait), had written to Robert offering to sell these works to his nephew Captain (later Admiral) Farington for £16.)

Other curates in Farington's time 

• John Welchman Wynne (1800-08) - of St John's College Cambridge, ordained in 1790 by the Bishop of London as curate of Chadwell, on a stipend of £30, moving in 1792 to Grays Thurrock, on a stipend of £30 10s. In this parish he was paid £75 plus £15 in lieu of a house, and in his next post at Devizes (Salisbury diocese) £70 a year. In 1821 he became Perpetual Curate of Plaxtol, Kent, to which he was presented by the Rev George Moore, Rector of Wrotham. He was one of the plaintiffs in a complex lawsuit over his aunt's will - described by the judges as a 'singular case' - reported as Graves v Hughes (1819) 4 Mad[dock's Chancery Reports] 381. He died in 1841 - the same year as Rector Farington - aged 76.
  
  
• [A regular officiant at this time was Joseph Patten Rose, minister of the Chapel of Ease, Lower Holloway, and from 1825 Rector of Althorp-cum-Cricksea, Essex, who died in Islington in 1830 aged 66]
  
  
• George Bailey (1806-07) - from Bowes in Yorkshire, a mathematical scholar of Pemboke Hall, Cambridge, ordained in 1791 and curate successively of Melchbourn and Bletsoe, Bedfordshire (stipend £47), Shenley, Hertfordshire from 1799 (stipend £75 and use of house) and Bishop's Hatfield, Hertfordshire from 1803 (all these parishes being in the diocese of Lincoln); from 1822 he was curate of Wakes Colne, near Colchester (then in Rochester diocese) where he died in 1828 at the age of 60.
  

• Peter Henry Roche (1809-26), born about 1764, frequently appears in the baptismal registers as 'assistant minister' - some years in this period saw him conducting the lion's share of over 1,000 baptisms annually, and many of the funerals. He married Emily Robson in 1841 at St Leonard Shoreditch. He became perpetual curate of St Peter Newton, in Pembrokeshire, and in 1856 was granted a licence to be absent from his parish owing to infirmity of body; he died in 1857 at 12 King Edward Street, Liverpool Road, Islington, aged 93, and was buried at Highgate Cemetery (described in the registers as the London Cemetery Company's North London or Kentish Town and Highgate Cemetery of St James, in Swain's Lne, in the Parish of St Pancras, in the Country of Middleesex, next Highgate).
  
  
• Robert Richardson (1805-??) - listed in gazeteers, but his name but does not appear in the registers.
  
  
• William Burwell Coles (1813-15), from Ottery St Mary in Devon, was a mature student at Hertford Hall [now College] Oxford, graduating at the age of 35 having previously lived as a 'gentleman' in Red Lion Square, Holborn. His first curacy, in 1811, was at Abbas (or Temple) Combe in Bath & Wells diocese. He returned to the south-west after his time here, marrying (as a bachelor or widower?) Elizabeth Anstice in Yeovil in 1837.
  

• John Sheldon (1814)
  
  
• Joseph Brown Morris (1814), from Mere in Hampshire, studied at St John's College Cambridge and was curate of Imber [the village on Salisbury Plain evacuated to create an army training ground] from 1808, on a stipend of £31 10s., leasing a house nearby in Chitterne St Mary where he lived with his widowed mother and her negro houseboy. After they both died in 1812 (shamefully, the boy was buried outside the graveyard) Morris came briefly to London - perhaps while a circular extension was being added to the house (with his mother's money?) In September 1814 he was appointed curate of Tilshead, the next parish to Imber, on a stipend of £65 (plus fees and Easter Offering) with use of the parsonage house and garden, but was dismissed from this office in December; he died the following year, aged 30, at what is now known as the Round House, having experienced two very different worlds!
  

• James Alexander Wood (1828-30) was admitted as a Sizar at Catherine Hall [now St Catherine's College] Cambridge in 1813 but was not ordained until 1819. He came here on a stipend of £100, his licence specifying that he was 'to reside in the parish'. In 1833 he became curate of West Halton in Lincolnshire (£150 stipend plus use of the parsonage house), and then 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, then Master and Chaplain of the Union [workhouse], then briefly curate of Madron and Morvah in Cornwall, of Sturminster Marshall in Dorset, and of St Paul Scropton in Derbyshire (where his wife Sophia was buried in 1855).
  
  
• William Quekett (1830-41) - see above, here for his time at Christ Church Watney Street and here for a selection of extracts from his autobiography.
  

• John W Sa(u)nders (1841-43) - graduated from St John's College Cambridge in 1829, and until 1839 was curate of St John the Evangelist Lambeth (who gave him a very handsome testimonial of plate on leaving), then Rector of St Mary Magdalen and St Gregory by St Paul's, and from 1845 until his death Rector of St Luke Old Street - a 'good' City living (stipend £580) in the gift of the St Paul's Cathedral, with a population of over 21,000.

Henry Burgess Whitaker Churton (11 March - 27 May 1842)
lasted all of nine weeks as Rector, before getting a better job as Preacher of the Charterhouse. He was born at Middleton Cheney, the Brasenose college living [All Saints' church right]  - previously held by Herbert Mayo - where for over 40 years his father Ralph Churton (1764-1831) was Rector, and also from 1805 Archdeacon of St David's, and a noted biographer. Henry began his Oxford studies at Balliol before becoming attached to Brasenose College; he succeeded W.W. Champneys (later Rector of Whitechapel) 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 brother Thomas Townson Churton was also a fellow of Brasenose and an Evangelical - and was Bryan King's tutor there.) According to William Quekett, 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: pictured is a page from the parish ledger. All he gave me in return, said Quekett, was the empty cash box. (During his brief time here Churton officiated at 54 baptisms and 5 weddings, returning as a visitor to baptize 13 candidates in February 1852). After only two years at the Charterhouse he became Vicar of Icklesham, near Rye (building Rye Harbour church in 1849), and later Rural Dean of 'Hastings Second Portion' and a Prebendary of Chichester. You can read Churton's account of two trips to Palestine here, described in one review as an elegant and religious work on the East, slightly but not unpleasantly imbued with sentimentalism. He also published various sermons. He died at Icklesham in 1891, leaving an estate of £3,573 3s 11d.

Bryan King (1843-63)
The last Fellow of Brasenose College to be appointed Rector was Bryan King - the college later transferred most of their East End patronage to the Bishop of London in exchange for various country livings. When he arrived, he noted that the four streets within which my parish is situated contained 733 houses - of which 27 were public houses, 13 beer houses, and no fewer than 154 were brothels. The church, he found, scared off the poor, who with their timid delicacy ever shrink from entering. It would be as reasonable to assure such that they would be perfectly welcome as guests in Buckingham Palace. His 45,000 parishioners were of those very classes who are, alas, almost universally alienated from attendance upon the services of the Church. So he sought to rise to the challenge.

His story is more fully told in connection with the Ritualism Riots, and the establishment of the mission led by Charles Lowder. He was born in 1811, and in 1842 married Martha Mary, daughter of Thomas Fardell DCL, the Rector of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire, who conducted services here from time to time when his son-in-law was under stress. Bryan King 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 he 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 at Leignitz (Legnica) in Silesia in 1893.
  
  
• David Brown Moore became curate in 1851, and Lecturer in 1854 with responsibility for St Matthew Pell Street; he was also chaplain of the workhouse - more here.

• Charles Edward Band (1856), though he was only briefly here as a curate, is an interesting and complex example of how clergy deployment changed during the 19th century. His grandfather Edward Wright Band, of Wookey House, Wells (which remained the family home after his death in 1850) was a magistrate for Somerset - his father had been High Sheriff of the county in 1801 - and a former Captain in its militia. He married the daughter of Herman Drewe, Rector and patron of Combe Raleigh (near Honiton) in Devonshire; they had four daughters, and their eldest son, Charles Edward Band senior (of St John's College Cambridge) on Drewe's death was appointed to this living, together with that of nearby Sheldon (which had separate patronage). He was non-resident at first, granted permission because of ill-health, and one Charles James was appointed curate (at a stipend of £80, to be paid quarterly ... together with the Surplice fees and the use of the Rectory House in which you are to reside, Garden and Offices, adding Mr James engages to retain this Curacy for two years unless sooner preferred or he shall resign the same with the Bishop's approbation. But a note, dated 16 April 1831, on the back of his licence states

  Whereas the Reverend Charles Edward Band, having been non-resident on his Rectory of Combrawleigh [sic] in the County of Devon and our Diocese under Licence, has declared his intention of returning to Residence: now we Henry, by diving permission Bishop of Exeter, do hereby give to the said Charles Edward Band our permission to take posssession of the Rectory House, now in the possession of Charles Thomas James the Licenced Curate there, giving to the said Charles Thomas James three months notice of such his intention pursuant to the Statute in this behalf.

  Charles (senior) had married Henrietta Bourke in 1827 (she died, as did his second wife, Harriott [sic] Louisa, of scarlet fever aged 26 soon after her confinement). Charles Edward Band junior was born in 1828 and after Exeter College Oxford was ordained by the Bishop of Exeter in 1851. In 1856 (presumably after his brief time here) he was appointed Rector of Langton-on-Swale, Northallerton, in the diocese of Ripon, where the patron was the Hon. Arthur Dumcombe, of Kilnwick Percy, Captain RN, with a signed bond (value £2000) - substituting his name for that of his predecessor, Leonard H. St George - agreeing to resign the living in favour of one of Duncombe's sons if called on to do so: at the time Arthur was 16 and George Augustus 8. Documents of 1872 show that he continued to hold this office, but also held curacies in Croydon - at St Saviour from 1870-71 and then at St Michael. He married Caroline Agnes Helen Fellowes at St Mark Tollington Park in 1882. His father died in 1878; it's unclear whether he finally took on the 'family living', but Wookey House remained his address for some time; in the 1911 census, aged 82, he was retired and living with 'adopted daughter' Alice Mary Waite (age 38) at Langton, Gordon Road, Camberley.
  
  
• William John Bennett DD of Trinity College Dublin and St Edmund Hall Oxford was a curate for a few months in 1858; he later lived in Dursley, Gloucestershire (1860s) and in Bury St Edmunds (1870s), but held no ecclesiastical appointments. (He is not to be confused with his namesake W.J.E. Bennett - see below.)

• William Pinero Burn (1857-59), a law graduate of Downing College Cambridge - he sometimes added 'LLM' after his signature in registers - was ordained in 1848 as curate of Cretingham in Suffolk (on a measly stipend of £25). After a second brief curacy at Over Darwen (then in Manchester diocese) in 1851 - where the congregation presented him with a testimonial following the withdrawal of his licence [though the Illustrated London News was asked to make clear that  this was not the reason for the testimonial, as they had previously implied] - he became the first incumbent (perpetual curate) of Ulley, near Rotherham (stipend £80), but became insolvent and spent some time in York gaol. On his release, he estalished a school for 25 boys in Ulley, before his time here: his involvement in the Ritualism Riots is described here. He died, as a Roman Catholic layman, in 1862 at his father's rectory, at Rishangles [or Rishangels], Suffolk [then in Norwich diocese], to which his father had been appointed in 1849, also holding a Brecon predendary. (It is now a luxury home 'Chilvers' - right - as is the Grade II* listed church.) His son George Hyam Pinero Burn settled in Australia and had ten children.


• Thomas Dove Dove [sic] (1860-65), from Emmanuel College Cambridge, had been curate for a while to W.J.E. Bennett (the founder of the ritualistic church of St Saviour Pimlico) at Frome, and at first the Bishop of London refused Bryan King's nomination to licence him here. He 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, sending back the wardens' nomination papers (under recently-introduced canons in the Scottish Episcopal Church, the bishop had an absolute right of veto). Instead he went as curate of St Mary Magdalene Paddington, but soon after became a Roman Catholic, taking the additional names Augustin Francis. He lived in Regent's Park, and then in Folkestone, and died in 1883. An account of worship in the chapel at Aberdeen, and the Episcopal Synod hearing confirming the bishop's action, is here.