‘The controversys betwixt the Chapter and the Vicars Chorall’: Property and Conflict at the Collegiate Church of Southwell, 1734–37

Abstract

This article examines a dispute between the vicars choral and the Chapter at Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire during the early eighteenth century. The vicars lost their endowments and had been relegated to an inferior status within the ecclesiastical hierarchy following the implementation of new statutes during the sixteenth century and subsequent injunctions issued by the archbishops of York. The article uses vivid accounts relating to the efforts of the vicars to overturn their position both by asserting their rights against the archiepiscopal injunctions and by reclaiming their former endowments of property; by assessing their motives alongside wider ecclesiastical and economic developments, it places the conflicts of 1734–37 within the context of ‘England’s Long Reformation’. The article demonstrates that the events at Southwell are highly significant to our broader understanding of the issues facing the Church of England during a period when the Church was considered ‘in danger’ and the rights and property of the clergy were attacked in anticlerical publications.