These are important, but not always gripping, accounts of church management, but woven among them are also some wonderfully human stories (which come closer to my personal areas of interest). For example:
The St Martin’s vestryman Henry Waller died without immediate heir. He specified his possession be divided among 12 nieces and nephews.
“Foreseeing some difficulty with this arrangement, however, he specified that if any dispute should arise 'they [should] cause fower or sixe of the better sorte of the vestrie of .. St Martin in the feildes … to hear and determine the same without sute of lawe'. (p. 118)
He also left £4 to pay for a dinner for vestrymen – perhaps as a sort of recommence for the likely trouble. Worrying about the lawyers swallowing up your cash was not just a modern concern.
Nor was getting on with the neighbours, a particular problem for St Margaret's with all of the wealthy, and potential imperious, members of the congregation it attracted, at least when the court was in Westminster.
"When building works took place at the Westminster House of the privy councillor Sir Thomas Wentworth, his brother-in-law, Lord Haughton, reported that a local notable 'Mr Ireland' (presumably the St Margaret's vestryman William Ireland was 'so careful of your service ... he came or sent dayly to inquire of the health of my sisters catts, and what rest they had taken the night before'. (p. 134)
Detailed reading of The Social World is likely to be only for the specialist, but the general reader can also find many fascinating tales within it.
(You can read more items like this on my personal blog, Philobiblon.)
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
I bet visitors ask, "Where's the center," if they use that word at all. :-)
2 - Natalie Bennett
I stand corrected. Actually this evening I've just come back from the National Theatre's Henry IV Part I, and American accents were definitely in the ascendent in the audience. It must be August.
What other word would you use, out of interest?