Encountering and managing the poor : rural society and the Anglican clergy in Norfolk, 1815-1914
This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between Anglican clergymen and the inhabitants of Norfolk's rural parishes in the nineteenth century. It considers the potential impact clergymen could have upon a number of areas of secular life: on education as school managers, on law and order as magistrates, and on aspects of local economic, social and behavioural management as poor law guardians and charity trustees. Clergymen also negotiated a complex series of social relationships with agricultural labourers, with religious Nonconformists, with trade unionists, with tenant farmers, and with local landowners (who were often their patrons or kinsmen). The thesis examines many facets of social, religious and political dissent in the countryside, and discusses the extent to which individual clergymen - by their attitudes and actions - might exacerbate or soothe tensions within their 'spheres of influence'. The notion of clergymen as 'colonial governors' is posited. The term offers an explanation for their managerial role in local society, and elucidates the way in which the parish clergy operated as administrators rather than instigators of change. Nineteenth-century rural society also witnessed the decline
Lee, Robert James
Nineteenth century
Encountering and managing the poor : rural society and the Anglican clergy in Norfolk, 1815-1914. This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between Anglican clergymen and the inhabitants of Norfolk's rural parishes in the nineteenth century. It considers the potential impact clergymen could have upon a number of areas of secular life: on education as school managers, on law and order as magistrates, and on aspects of local economic, social and behavioural management as poor law guardians and charity trustees. Clergymen also negotiated a complex series of social relationships with agricultural labourers, with religious Nonconformists, with trade unionists, with tenant farmers, and with local landowners (who were often their patrons or kinsmen). The thesis examines many facets of social, religious and political dissent in the countryside, and discusses the extent to which individual clergymen - by their attitudes and actions - might exacerbate or soothe tensions within their 'spheres of influence'. The notion of clergymen as 'colonial governors' is posited. The term offers an explanation for their managerial role in local society, and elucidates the way in which the parish clergy operated as administrators rather than instigators of change. Nineteenth-century rural society also witnessed the decline
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