Nicholas Clagett, Dean of Rochester 1723-1731

David Cleggett investigates the life of Dean Nicholas Clagett. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 2014. The Annual Report for 2003/2004 included an article devoted to Nicholas Clagett (not Claggett) during the period from 1723-1731 when he was Dean of Rochester. The article noted the thoroughness of an inventory taken on his arrival at Rochester and the state of the Cathedral at that time. It was also noted that when Dean of Rochester Bishop Clagett contributed to the library and, like several deans in the following centuries, was ever anxious to beautify the Cathedral in a controversial way. Since the time of the 2003/04 Report diligent research by members of the Clagett, Claggett and Cleggett family has shed new light on the Dean. From the information available at the time it was assumed that Nicholas Clagett the younger, the Dean's father, Archdeacon of Sudbury, was a member of a family long established in Suffolk. This is not so. The Suffolk Clagetts were actually members of the Kentish family of that name. George Claggett¹ of Canterbury was born at West Malling in 1563. By 1609 he was Mayor of Canterbury and held the same office in 1622 and again in 1632. George Claggett married Anne Colbrand at West Malling in 1605. Nicholas, their eldest son was born at Canterbury in 1609.² His son Nicholas Clagett the younger, born in 1654, was numbered amongst the English controversialists. From 1693 until his death in 1727 he was Archdeacon of Sudbury. Archdeacon Clagett had in 1680 been elected preacher of St Mary's Bury St Edmunds, holding that office for forty-six years. He is buried in the Chancel of that church³ near to Henry VIll's sister, the Queen of France. Amongst the Archdeacon's several children was his son Nicholas, sometime Dean of Rochester, subsequently Bishop of St David's and finally Bishop of Exeter. Dean Clagett would have been at home in Kent because he was of Kentish stock. It is often claimed, quite incorrectly, that the English Church before the dawn of the Evangelical and Oxford Movements in the early 19th century had been both lazy and somnolent. It is a particular prop of the Anglo-Catholic myth to make this claim but also serious writers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries followed this line of thought. Fortunately this argument is now shown to be false.§ On the contrary, the hierarchy and clergy strove hard to fulfil their pastoral duties. This short article will show what an energetic clergyman Nicholas Clagett was. Bishop Clagett was a veteran when it came to visitations. He had overseen that for the Archdeaconry of Buckingham before he became Dean of Rochester. On leaving Rochester to become Bishop of St David's, Clagett energetically carried out a visitation in those wild parts. On 2 August 1742 Nicholas Clagett, one time Dean of Rochester, was translated from the Bishopric of St David's to that of Exeter, rendered vacant by the death of Stephen Weston.⁶ Within two years the energetic Bishop Clagett from his residence at 17 Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, not The Palace, Exeter, issued a letter to every incumbent in the diocese, which then included Cornwall, giving notice of a primary visitation of his diocese. The letter of 15 May 1744, similar to those issued in other dioceses at the time, reveals how anxious the episcopate was concerning the state of the church at that time. In his letter to his clergy Bishop Clagett emphasised that the purpose of his primary visitation was for him to obtain proper knowledge of the present state of his diocese and that he was not seeking information that could be used against individual incumbents. Possibly because this was the first such visitation to be conducted in such a manner in the Exeter Diocese the bishop's letter concluded with the promise that answers would not be used against any incumbent. Rather a visitation could be best described as "the keystone of the arch of ecclesiastical administration, upon which to a considerable degree the good estate of the church depended."⁷ The bishop's letter read:

To the Minister Of the Parish of In the Deanery of Good Brother,

In order to obtain a proper knowledge of the present State of my Diocese, which, I am sensible, I cannot have without the Assistance of my Reverend Brethren, I have sent you the following Queries, with vacant Spaces left for you to insert your Answers thereto. You will oblige me in sending as full and particular Answers as you can. I desire that this Paper, with the Answers inserted, may be return'd, sign'd by yourself, at my approaching Primary Visitation, and may be deliver'd either to the Register, or to my Secretary. And because it is possible that some Man's Answer in this Matter may be construed an Accusation of himself, I promise that no such Answer shall be used as Evidence against any Person subscribing.

I heartily recommend both yourself, and your Labours in the Church of GOD, to the Divine Father and Blessing, and am,

Reverend Sir,

Your very affectionate Brother

N. EXON.

Queen's-Square, near the Park, Westminster, May 15. 1744.

The depth of the range of the 11 questions, set out below, reflects the anxieties of the Episcopal bench at that time. Non-conformity and its spread was a great worry and was addressed in the first question. Education and its provision was similarly central to the bishop's thinking. He particularly asked if "care is taken to instruct them (the children) ... according to the Doctrine of the Church of England". How divine service was conducted was a matter the bishop was interested in and also the occasions when the Holy Sacrament was celebrated and administered. The questions settle in the writer's mind that the early-18th century Church was not lazy. It had many faults but was much more alive and certainly not lazy as 19th century writers so frequently claimed.

I	What Number of families have you in your Parish? Of these how many are Dissenters? And of what Sort of Denomination are they? Is there any licenced or other MeetingHouse of Dissenters in your Parish? Who teaches in such Meeting House?
II	Is there any Publick or Charity School, endowed or otherwise maintain'd [sic] in your Parish? What number of Children are taught in it? And what Care is taken to instruct them in the Principles of the Christian Religion according to the Doctrine of the Church of England, and to bring them in the Principles of the Christian Religion according to the Doctrine of the Church of England, and to bring them duly to Church, as the Canon requires?
III	Is there in your Parish any Alm-house, Hospital or other charitable Endowment? Have any Lands or Tenements been left for the Repair of your Church, or other pious Use? Who has the Direction of such Benefactions? Do you know or have you heard of any Abuses or Frauds committed in the Management of them?
IV	Do you reside personally upon your Cure, and in your Parsonage House? If not where do you reside? And what is the Reason of your Non-Residence?
V	Have you a residing Curate? What is his Name? Is he duly qualified according to the Canons in that behalf? Does he live in your Parsonage House? What Number of families have you in your Parish? Of these how many are Dissenters? And of what Sort of Denomination are they? Is there any licenced or other Meeting-House of Dissenters in your Parish? Who teaches in such Meeting-House?
VI	Do you perform Divine Service at any Church besides your own?
VII	On what days is Divine Service perform'd in your Church? If not twice every Lord's Day, with a Sermon in the Morning, for what Reason?
VIII	How often in the Year is the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper administered in your Church?
IX	How many Communicants are there in your Parish? How many of them usually receive? In particular, How many were there, or whereabouts might be the Number of them who Communicated at Easter last past?
X	At what particular Times, and how often, are the Children catechiz'd in your Church? Do your Parishioners send their Children and Servants who have not learne'd their Catechism to be instructed by you.
XI	Have you any Chapels within your Parish? What are the Names of them, how far are they distant from the Parish Church, and by whom are they serv'd? Have you any Chapel in Ruins, in which no Divine Service is perform'd?8

Once his letter had been sent out Bishop Clagett wasted little time before commencing the visitation. During June and July 1744 he visited seven centres in Devon before concluding the visitation by visiting Liskeard, Truro, Penzance and Launceston during the following July.⁹ Bishop Clagett's predecessor, Stephen Weston, spitefully described as "the most indolent of Exeter bishops",¹⁰ conducted his visitation, less exacting in scope, in 1726 and encompassed ten centres in Devon before concluding in 1728 with three centres in Cornwall. An important part of every 18th century visitation was the administration of Confirmation. The number of candidates confirmed by Bishop Clagett has not survived but in 1779 John Ross, bishop from 1778 to 1792, confirmed 16,863 candidates¹¹ during his visitation and this in a church said to be dead by the post-Tractarian myth-makers. Figures for the Rochester Diocese do not survive but if they had one may conclude that they would compare favourably with those of other dioceses. Searches in other diocesan archives show all aspects of Church governance and conduct were generally seemly and firmly rebut in their silent pages that the Church was both lazy and dead. It was very much alive. A good over-view of how every branch of the Christian Church was organised and worked in this island during the 18th century will be found in The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain by Terry Friedman, Yale University Press for the Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2011. This magisterial work explores not only church buildings but churchgoing from the cradle to the grave, showing how congregations were accommodated, how incumbents and ministers lived, how finances were organised and musical events organised in the medieval cathedrals, parish churches and dissenting chapels.

David Cleggett

Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 2014

18th century Rochester. A watercolour from the collection of David Cleggett.

Footnotes

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1 See George B Utley, Life and Times of Thomas John Claggett, First Bishop of Maryland, Chicago, III, Donnelly and Sons Co, 1913.

2 Claggett. Research in several volumes by my cousin Brice Claggett of Holly Hill, Friendship, Md. See also Utley.

3 Personal observation and see also Utley.

4 See R J E Boggis, A History of the Diocese of Exeter, Exeter, 1922, for a recital of the jaundiced view of the 18th century Church and its hierarchy.

5 Jeremy Gregory, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660-1838, Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese, Oxford University Press, 2000, and Arthur Warne, Church and Society in Eighteenth Century Devon, Newton Abbot, 1969, show how erroneous the former position was.

6 Stephen Weston (1665-1742). Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. BA 1687, MA 1690. He was an assistant master at Eton in 1690 and again from 1693 when he took orders. Ill health forced him to retire from teaching in 1707. Through the influence of Sir Robert Walpole, a schoolboy under Weston at Eton, he was appointed Bishop of Exeter and consecrated at Lambeth in December 1724. He remained at Exeter until his death in 1742. See Dictionary of National Biography, Vol XX, for full essay.

7 Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker, Aspects of English Church History 1660-1768, Cambridge University Press, 1959, p 5.

8 The Bishop's letter and questions are in the Exeter Diocesan Archives at the Devon Heritage Centre (DHC).

9 DHC, Visitation Call Book, Diocesan Archives, 225, 1744-45.

10 Arthur Warne, Church Society in Eighteenth Century Devon, Newton Abbot, 1959, p 24

11 DHC, Account of Confirmations, Diocesan Archives, 544, 1779.