Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/268

 260 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE CLERGY IN THE April smaller pay. This distinction may be illustrated by reference to the town church of Gillingham, in Dorsetshire, which was held during the latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries by men of note. John Jessop, B.D., who was vicar from 1579 to 1625, was a member of a Dorset county family seated at Chickerell. His brother was a physician resident in the town, and their two recumbent effigies, hand clasped in hand, remain in the chancel aisle. Jessop's successor, Edward Davenant, D.D., treasurer of Sarum, was a nephew of Bishop John Davenant, and his daughters married well, Anne to William Ettrick of Wimborne, gentleman, Margaret to George Solme, esquire, and Katherine to Thomas Lamplugh, who was afterwards archbishop of York. The next vicar, John Ward, D.D. (1679-96), was a nephew of Seth Ward, bishop of Sarum. He again was succeeded by John Craig, 1696-1731, a scholar of some repute, who was in residence till 1723, after which year he was represented by a curate, Gilbert Craig, 1724-7, and later by Robert Edgar. All these men were capable of holding their own socially among the neighbouring gentry, by their attain- ments, connexions, and the importance of their ecclesiastical preferment. Of Craig, who had been collated by Bishop Burnet to the prebendal stall of Durnford, 1708, and by Bishop Hoadly to that of Gillingham Major, 1726, it is said that he was an inoffensive virtuous man, master of a good Latin style, an excellent mathematician, and esteemed by Sir Isaac Newton. Many years before his death he resided in London, expecting to have been taken notice of for his mathematical abilities, but died there in a mean condition llth October, 1731 .* He died intestate, and administration was granted to his son William, 16 November 1731. Gillingham had several daughter chapelries, and tradition points to William Young, curate of East Stower, as the original of Parson Adams in Fielding's Joseph Andrews. Adams is described as serving four churches at a stipend of 23 per annum, ' with which he could not make any great figure, because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with wife and six children ' ; and even that position was insecure, as he could not afford to pay for a licence. Though Adams was learned in modern and ancient languages and his constant companion was a manuscript copy of Aeschylus, and though he had a marked sense of his dignity as a priest with cure of souls and was loved and respected by his parishioners, he could not compete socially with Lady Booby, who for his poverty indecently held him up as a laughing-stock to her friends. 1 Hutchins, Dorset, 3rd ed., iii. 647.