Standards for Admission To the Ministry of the Church of England in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s and 1840s of failing to have any standards for admission to the ministry: if one thing united the stereo typical younger son of the aristocracy and the impoverished curate who entered the clerical profession, so the Church's critics argued, it was that both were woefully unqualified and unprepared for their role.1 It was often alleged that the Church's hierarchy did very lit tle to remedy the situation, being more concerned with politics and their own personal advancement than with the professional standards of the clergy under their charge.2 Historians of the clerical profes sion have in the twentieth century largely concurred with these views. While the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries on the one hand, and the nineteenth century on the other, have been held up as periods when the Church successfully tightened up its entry require ments as a prerequisite to improving the clerical profession, the period between 1660 and 1830 is usually seen as one where few, if any, professional requirements were required.3 It is the contention of this