A HISTORY OF LONDON day,* and the Sunday afternoon lecturer at St. Paul's Covent Garden was expected to read the service in 1679." In the middle of the i8th century, however, it became very unusual for a service to precede the lecture, even on Sundays. The post afforded an excellent opportunity for the spread of new ideas, and was a stronghold of the early Evangelicals, who advertised their sermons weekly and attracted congregations from all over London." The loose supervision of the bishops is evident from the fact that it was not until 171 2 that the question of the right of the bishop to refuse to license a lecturer was brought before the courts and decided in his favour.-'- Not merely in respect of freedom from week-day duties, but in regard to salarv, the lecturer was in a much better position than the curate ; for his lecture at St. George's Hanover Square Thomas Newton received jC^oo a year in 1747,^'" and it was not unusual for a lecturer to have a salary equal to that of three or four curates ; ^'* while an attempt to establish a lecture at St. Botolph Aldersgate seems to have been a commercial specu- lation.='^ The idea that it was beneath the dignity of a beneficed clergyman to read the prayers resulted in the employment of readers. Nine City churches had readers in 1711,-'^ the large parish of St. Martin's in the Fields having two,-" and one was attached to the chapel in Whitehall.^' Considered inferior to a curate, the reader was wretchedly paid, and often depended on subscriptions, as at St. Leonard's Eastcheap, where the reader in 1685-6 received £2^ z year.- The parish clerk regarded the reader with some contempt as being much worse paid than himseh?"" Indeed, the second reader of St. Martin's in the Fields was chosen clerk in 1726 with a salary of _^300,'°^ and this was not a unique case in the i8th century, though the presence of the clergy created friction among the clerks,'°- who were organized as a company with regular courts, meetings, and hall. Dressed in gown and bands, as in Hogarth's ' Sleeping Congregation,' *°^ the clerk was responsible for the music of the church. He had probably been trained at St. Paul's or Westminster, and led the singing,'"* giving out and even choosing the metrical psalms which held the place of the modern hymns. Choirs were established at Westminster Abbey and the royal chapels, and one was constituted at St. Paul's,^"^ but they were unknown in the parish churches until the 19th century, though Bishop Gibson, in 1727,'°* advocated the training of selected members of the congregation. On occasions such as charity sermons professional singers were engaged," and crowds went to church to hear the music ; '°* wholly musical services were held in some churches on Sunday evenings towards the end of the i8th century. Organs were still regarded with some suspicion in the 17th century, and in 1708'°' '" The Case of the Bishop of London in Two Causes respecting tie Licensing a Lecturer, 59. »» Patrick, Jutobiog. Si. ^^ To the Beneficed Clergy, &c.
- " Case of the Bishop of London. "' Newton, If'orks, i, 44.
"' St.ickhouse, op. cit. 85. "' St. Botolph Aldersgate Vestry Minutes. "* Archidi.iconatus Lond. '" Reliquiae Hearnianae, ii, 619. "' Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi, 553. "' Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 125, fol. 173. "^ Stackhouse, op. cit. 85-6. "" Reliquiae Hearnianae, ii, 619. "' Christie, Parish Clerks, 2 1 2. "" Austin Dobson, William Hogarth, 68. "" Christie, op. cit. 1 95. "" D. and C. St. Paul's, A. box 55, no. 4. '°« Gibson, Charge, 1727. '" Hodgson, Life of Porteus, 108. ^ Sunday Ramble, 36. '™ Hatton, New Fietv of Lond. 358
