VICARS fiddling with their parishioners, baptising children by the wrong name, brawling in the churchyard, or conducting marriages in the pub, might sound like the stuff of modern tabloids, but members of the clergy have been hauled up before their superiors for such crimes for hundreds of years.
Researching clients’ family histories in the Devon Record Office in Exeter, I often come across fascinating documents, among which are those of the church courts of the Diocese of Exeter, where complaints against Devon’s clergy were heard.
Witnesses were called, statements taken, and judgements ranged from dismissal of the accusations, to suspension and even, for the worst offences, excommunication.
One clergyman in the modern-day Mid Devon area who suffered excommunication was Samuel Coker, who was vicar of Colebrooke and curate of Cheriton Bishop when, in 1739, he was charged with an offence then so serious, he could have been hanged for it if found guilty in an ordinary court.
Coker was charged with having sexual relations with various men over the course of the previous nine years, or, as the prosecutor put it: “did by several actions, wickedly and beastfully express a sodomitical lust and desire towards the bodies of diverse and sundry persons”.
The sexual acts are described in graphic detail, tempered by the use of euphemisms such as “his naked yard”, and Coker’s partners are named.
It seems Coker knew the way the wind was blowing, as he did not turn up to answer the charges.
Coker was summarily deprived of his living, and excommunicated from the church. His humiliation was compounded by a decree ordering the verdict to be read out in church at a time “when the greater part of the congregation are there assembled”, and the written details fixed to the door of the parish church for everyone to read.
Another ‘naughty vicar’ who got off a lot more lightly was John Wood, rector of the parish of Cadeleigh, near Tiverton, who became embroiled in a scandal in the 1750s after allegedly attempting the virtue of one of his parishioners, an Elizabeth Hartnoll.
She told the court Wood had enticed her upstairs in his house on the pretext of asking her advice about where to put a new chimney, only to throw her on the bed “saying he would make an heir for her”.
It got worse. She reported a later conversation with Wood in her house, in which he tried to entice her again, quoting passages from the Old Testament in justification; admitted sleeping with other women in his parish, paying them a guinea a time, and fathering a child with a married one.
Others swore they had overheard this conversation and gave evidence. The allegations then mounted to include refusing to pray with a dying woman and conducting the “sacrament of the Lord’s supper” in such “indecent” haste that it was barely comprehensible.
Another band of parishioners counterattacked by signing a petition in support of Wood on Christmas Day 1753.
Wood’s sentence was the relatively light one of suspension for a year, perhaps showing the court was not convinced of the truth of all the allegations.
Richard Shimell works as a family history researcher and can be contacted by email rs@kennet.eclipse.co.uk
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