A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury Volume 3; Scotland, 1643-1674, by T. E. S. Clarke England, 1674-1715, with Bibliographical Appendixes, ... Foxcroft with an Introduction by C. H. Firth
2012 · 244 pages
2012 · 244 pages
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...vested interests; and though he frequently paid them himself he was powerless to discharge fees even in vexatious suits. After some years he "gave over all "hope of doing any good in them" and relinquished attendance. To the characteristic abuses which so long had attracted his pen--non-residence and pluralities, the sale of advowsons and the gross inequality of benefices--he now turned practical attention. His first injunctions to his archdeacons laid strong stress upon residence; and in a very acid correspondence with the Warden of All Souls, who held a living in his diocese, he rejected even academic duties as a plea for inveterate absence. His efforts to equalise in some measure existing preferment, anticipated the aims of the Ecclesiastical Commission; and his schemes had the merit of ingenuity. "I observed," he says, "that the strength of the dissenters was in the "market towns, where the minister's provision was so "small that, according to the common observation, a poor "living had as poor a clerk. I resolved to remedy this all I "could, and there being many Prebends in the Church of "Salisbury, all in the Bishop's gift, I resolved to give these "to the ministers of the market towns, but thought it "reasonable to demand a bond of them that in case they "should leave the market town they would resign the "prebend." He had taken excellent advice; but the cry of simony, raised by his ecclesiastical adversaries, was confirmed by the learning of Stillingfleet. He gave up the bonds he had taken; and finding that many of those who had given them did not consider themselves bound in honour, he let the design fall. He did not, however, abandon the idea of augmenting small livings...
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