A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Saint Augustine to Queen Victoria (review)

Although the English parish as a research subject has intrigued scholars, details of its history, physical makeup, and function have proved elusive. That Norman J. G. Pounds, now retired as a professor in history and geography, should have sought to bring these disparate strands together is not surprising, for he has authored numerous works which reflect his interdisciplinary skills.

In this comprehensive work Pounds spans the centuries from early Christian to Victorian, certifying the English parish as the essential building block of both the country’s secular and ecclesiastical administration. Indeed, the parish became as crucial for attending roads as souls. “Church and Parish”, the first of this book’s twelve chapters, treats the structural evolution of the parish. In “Rectors and Vicars” the author assesses the relationship between the Church’s upper level engagements—investiture, the sale of church benefices, Mortmain—and every day parish life. Further, he examines the “contentious” tithe, regarding it as the “cement which bound the parish together...the nexus which linked patron and parishioner.” (p. 43). Pounds professes as geographer in “Parish, Its Bounds and Divisions”, a chapter which incorporates boundaries and the secular ceremony of perambulation, population, and settlement, all of which inevitably impinge on configurations of parishes (their multiplying, merging, and decaying). Lest the parish be regarded as only a rural entity, Pounds devotes a chapter to “The Urban Parish” in which town origins, the urban/rural dichotomy, parochial wealth and income, local government, cemetery, tithe, and much else are brought into play.

Under the rubric of parish functions Pounds devotes chapters to personnel, economics, community, church courts, and popular culture. In the first of these, “The Parish and its Servants”, Pounds distinguishes between secular and spiritual functions. The priest is viewed from the vantage point of ordination, education, community role, privileges, and even the parsonage in which he lived. The churchwarden, who managed the parish “stock”, was easily the most important lay official. Pounds scrutinizes him as well as the parish clerk, sexton, constable, overseers of the poor, surveyor of highways, and the elite vestry.

In “The Economics of the Parish” and “The Parish and the Community” Pounds distinguishes between the church and the parish in their respective economic and social roles. The “spiritualities” represented income derived from tithe, oblation, and fees and provided upkeep for the priest but not secular parish needs. Pounds’ enumeration of tithes—sheaves of grain, wool, trees, fish, even brushwood and hedge trimmings—and the protests which the tithe levies provoked give a reality to the impoverishment of medieval and early modern life. The priest did oversee repair of the church chancel; the churchwarden, on the other hand, maintained the people’s nave and kept a watchful eye on land, houses, animals, household items, and other such goods given to the church. Collecting the parish rate also fell to the churchwarden who had responsibility for repairing parish roads and bridges and paying performing bellringers. Indeed, clanging bells offered some exhilaration to counter the drudgery of life spent in the fields. Occasional feast days also offered some solace; however, puritans would eventually denounce even these. Small wonder drinking, brawling, and violence were not infrequently a panacea for parish woes. Pounds depicts the practical as well as the spiritual side of the masonry parish church: as the most secure structure in the community, it served parishioners’ by providing storage for valuables and a repository, the parish chest, for registered baptisms, marriages, and burials. By doing so it embodied and preserved community memory.

Pounds considers two remaining aspects of parish “functions”, church counts, “a mirror of society”, and popular culture. Although often given short shrift in legal history surveys, courts christian are attended here in a thorough manner, regarding canon law cases involving clergy and litigation perceived as morally germane to the well being of the laity. These latter included wills...