The Curate's Lot

Being myself a new curate, I was fascinated to pick up a copy of:

A. Tindal Hart, The Curate's Lot: The story of the unbeneficed English clergy (John Baker, 1970)

second-hand at Lewes Castle for £4.50. I could have had it for £4 if I were a member of the Sussex Archeological Society, but sadly I am not.

The book tells of curates (and other such non-incumbents) from Saxon times to 1969 and I have learnt lots from the 42 pages I've so far read in my back garden.

More from Hart another time if I can be bothered, but for now, here's his lyrical preface:

The story of the unbenificed English clergyman should be of some interest both to historians and to the general churchgoer. For humble, despised, ill-treated and badly paid as he has been down the centuries, he, more than any other man, has bolstered up our famous parochial system and kept it going for more than a thousand years. Pluralist and non-resident incumbents called him in to run their parishes for them, bishops summoned him to fill the gaps caused by sequestration, sickness or deprivation, and to many a harassed and overworked rector or vicar he has proved a tower of strength, helping to bear the burden of the heat of the day. Others have sat back at their ease, while he has done their work as well as his own. Yet he flits through ecclesiastical history like a wraith: unheeded, unsung, taken for granted, his faults and failings alone remembered. Usually a bird of passage, although there are plenty of exceptions to this rule, he has left few marks of his presence behind him, execpt in the hearts and souls of the men and women he has served so faithfully. In the long run, of course, he would either blossom into an incumbent himself or be cast aside like a worn-out glove by the Church to which he had given the best years of his life. One of G. K. Chesterton's 'Secret People', he has never until recent times begun to take his rightful and honoured place in society, he could well, even in the not too distant past, have echoed the words: 'Smile at us, pay us, pass us, but do not quite forget, that we are the People of England, who have never spoken yet.'

Let us then listen to his voice and follow his odyssey as like the ancient Roman actor he makes his bow: 'If I have ever pleased you, that is my reward; if I have ever offended you, I crave your forgiveness.'

Emphasis added, in an entirely disinterested way.