Career Patterns among the Clergy of Lincoln Cathedral, 1660–1750

In every diocese in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a clerical elite whose most visible members were the clergy attached to the local cathedral. They included the bishop, the bishop's major judicial and administrative assistants and the cathedral's dean and chapter. What were the general career patterns of these men in the late Stuart and early Georgian periods? From what geographical, social and educational backgrounds were they recruited? What economic rewards did their appointments carry? One might answer these questions by citing contemporary writers and by relating case histories of the clerics involved, but contemporary writers are not always accurate reporters, and individuals are not always representative members of the group as a whole. What is needed is a more systematic investigation of the late Stuart and early Georgian cathedral clergy than has so far been made—one that can establish general patterns for the group as a whole by actually looking at the group as a whole. Collective biography makes it possible to delineate general patterns for an entire group and to relegate the individual example to its proper function—that of illustrating hypotheses that have already been demonstrated by more systematic means. This article attempts such an analysis: it is a prosopographical study of the cathedral clergy of Lincoln Diocese under the late Stuarts and early Hanoverians.