A HISTORY OF LONDON of parsonages, he declared that he could hardly consider these warrant for total non-residence. These conditions have since his time increased rather than diminished, and the rectors of few City parishes now reside ' within the walls.' One of the commonest pleas in favour of non-residence was that it provided an excellent training ground for the younger clergy."^ The modern ' curate ' or assistant to a resident incumbent was not unusual in London during the 17th and early i8th centuries,"' and the Act of 171 3 seems to have considered him rather than the curate in charge.^" But from about the accession of George I the word ' curate ' was restricted more and more to one serving a cure for a non-resident incumbent ; '" it was not until the end of the 1 8th century that assistant clergy were again employed, and then chiefly by the Evangelicals. John Newton had a curate at St. Mary Wool- noth,"" and a second priest was always attached to St. John's Bedford Row.'" Their employment was becoming more general in 1826,"^ and from that time the word became used in the modern sense,^^' and the class increased until Bishop Creighton found the excess of licensed over beneficed clergy one of the peculiar difficulties of the diocese of London."' A curate, to be recognized by the law and the bishop, must hold an episcopal licence,"" to be obtained at some expense, and on the nomination of the incumbent, who is bound to pay the stipend appointed by the bishop, and give the curate due notice of dismissal. As early as 1694 licences were the exception rather than the rule ; ■" it suited the convenience of the incumbent to have a curate who could be dismissed at a month's notice, and be paid any salary without opportunity of redress,""^ this system obviating appeals to the bishop, such as that of the curate of St. Laurence Jewry, who found his ^^15 a year ill paid, and was dismissed with a week's notice."^' Dr. Lancaster, vicar of St. Martin's in the Fields, on applying in 17 15 for licences for his curates, one of whom had been at St. Martin's for twenty years, said that neither of them had been unwilling to ask for licences if the bishop had demanded it, ' which he did not, presumably to leave them more dependent ' on the rector, who evidently regarded the demand as a hardship. °" Bishop Robinson made some vain attempts to remedy this state of things in 171 5 and 1721. The canons required that every non-resident incumbent should provide a licensed curate.'" To avoid this it was usual for the incumbent to reside during the time of visitation,'^^ and so usual was this evasion that in 1803 Bishop Porteus introduced a Bill making the employment of a licensed curate obligatory on the non-resident incumbent.'" The salary attached to the office was gener- ally wretchedly inadequate. Sharp gave his curates certain fees, and abstained from offices where gratuities were usual, so that in some years his curates received as much as ^120,"^' but this was very unusual. The Act of 1713°^' "' Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 124, 125. "' Archidiaconatus Lond. Stat. 13 Anne, cap. 11. '^* John Johnson, Cler^man's Vade Mecum (ed. 1723), 94. "• Bull, Life of John Newton, 337. "^ Pratt, Mem. of Rev. Josiah Pratt, 8. "' Howley, Charge, 1826, p. 6. "' Blunt, Directorium Pastorale, 404 ; Tait, Lond. Ordination, Advent 1867. "' Creighton, The Church and the Nation, 290. *^° Canon xlviii.
- " Stillingfleet, Misc. Discourses, 373. '** Stackhouse, Miseries of the Inferior Clergy, 172.
«^ Bodl. Lib. Rawlinson MS. B. 376, fol. 112. »" Ibid. 84.
- " Canon xlvii. "' Stackhouse, op. cit. 171. "' Stat. 43 Geo. Ill, cap. 84.
"' Sharp, Life of J. Sharp, i, 47. "^' Stat. 1 3 Anne, cap. 11. .•?56
