The Clergy in Jane Austen’s Time: A Lucrative Sinecure

By Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

In the 19th century, joining the church could result in either an active or an idle life. Conveniently, many clergymen approached their posts like sinecures—a position with a regular salary but without many, or sometimes any, responsibilities. Perhaps that’s why Jane Austen treats some of her clergymen with so little sympathy, presenting them as comic boors and selfish hypocrites. Nonetheless, clergymen are complicated figures in Austen’s fiction.

Clergymen Heroes

Jane Austen’s novels feature a few clergymen heroes, like Sense and Sensibility’s Edward, Northanger Abbey’s Henry Tilney, and Mansfield Park’s Edmund Bertram. On the other hand, several of the novels feature some who are less heroic, such as, Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins and Emma’s Mr. Elton. They both are men of the cloth, but they’re both obsequious, ambitious, and borderline villainous men.

Interestingly, to become a member of the clergy didn’t necessarily mean seeking a life-defining spiritual vocation. To secure a position as a parish priest—more commonly described as vicars and rectors—meant gaining a respectable, stable job, not a monastic, self-denying calling to serve God.

Being a vicar or a rector brought with it specific, expected duties. Their common tasks included holding Sunday services; conducting baptisms, marriages, and funerals; and serving the sick.

How to Become a Clergyman?

To become a clergyman in the Church of England at the time, a man needed an Oxford or Cambridge university degree. Then, he would arrange to ‘take orders’. This meant passing an examination with a bishop, who could assess the candidate’s knowledge of Latin, the Scripture, the liturgy, and church doctrine. Once successful, the candidate would then be ordained.

The clergyman’s next step was finding a job—ideally, what was called a ‘living’ or a ‘clerical living’, to become a rector. Some clergymen, however, looked for a living for years. Securing such a post meant finding a parish that needed a clergyman to serve its church and parishioners.

Livings were awarded primarily by patrons or landowners, not by the Church of England itself. Once a clergyman had secured such a clerical living, he might hold it for life.

Guaranteed Yearly Income

The clerical living’s guaranteed yearly income came from several sources. The principal one was tithing. Tithes functioned like taxes on parishioner income provided to the clergyman. Amounts of tithes varied but were often around ten percent. Everyone who lived in a parish, who wasn’t indigent, was expected to tithe.

Clergymen with livings had access to further resources, including a free-of-rent residence, a parsonage, vicarage, or rectory, where the he might live alone or with his family. The land adjacent to it could further his income. This land, called the glebe, might be farmed. So when a clerical living is described as valued at a certain amount in Austen’s fiction, that’s income from tithes and glebe.

This article comes directly from content in the video series The Life and Works of Jane Austen. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Leasing Out the Parsonage

It was also possible for a clergyman to hold more than one living, to lease out the other parsonage, and to keep the money that was collected from its rent. It was even possible for the rector to hire a substitute, a curate, at a cut rate, to perform his clerical duties on his behalf. This was considered perfectly acceptable!

Patrons could either award or sell a vacant parish living to a clergyman. For the clergyman, buying one might be a good long-term investment, if the price could made back over the course of several years of salary, through tithes and glebes.

Colonel Brandon’s Delaford Living

Many of the characters in Sense and Sensibility are surprised when Colonel Brandon offers the Delaford living outright, at no cost, to a man he doesn’t know, Edward Ferrars. The colonel could have sold it to enrich himself. Instead he offered it, as an act of generosity, to Marianne Dashwood’s brother-in-law.

Some livings were more lucrative than others. An estate with a lot of tenant farmers—who paid their rent to the landowner—also meant an estate with greater tithes. Colonel Brandon’s Delaford living brings in 200 pounds a year, an amount so low that the colonel apologizes to Edward for it. Some livings brought as little as a quarter of that amount, perhaps 50 pounds a year, but some livings might bring hundreds of pounds more. The amount of the Delaford living was not Brandon’s to set.

Austen’s Father Was a Clergyman

Jane Austen knew that clergymen faced economic challenges. She herself was the daughter of a clergyman with a large family, whose two livings didn’t cover his expenses. That’s why her father took in male boarders as his students. But what that means is that he had the time, in addition to his work as a clergyman, to run a small school out of his home.

Two of Jane Austen’s brothers joined the clergy. One, James, ended up receiving the living at Steventon, after his own father retired from it, so that his son could receive it. Professions also tended to run in families then, so it’s no surprise that another Austen son, Henry, would later join the clergy, too.

And yet, as we have seen, securing a place as a clergyman wasn’t easy and it wasn’t based only on merit. It required money and connections. Positions were regularly filled via favors that we might now consider nepotism. There were systems for the outright purchase of many kinds of positions, which we might see as organized bribes. Few then looked askance at these systems and processes as this was one of the few acceptable professions the elite men could pursue during this era.

Common Questions about the Clergy in Jane Austen’s Time

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The Characters and Relationships in Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’
Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’: The Varied Opinions
The Social and Economic Power in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’