Diocesan records can yield a wealth of information about life within the parish, including the financial resources available to the parish incumbent. Particularly valuable in this respect are records relating to the bishop's visitation, which include details about the character and value of tithe obligations and the glebe. The variety of material contained in this type of record is demonstrated by Jane Platt's meticulous transcription of recently rediscovered notebooks compiled by Walter Fletcher, who was chancellor of Carlisle diocese from 1814 until his death in 1846, and by Hugh Percy, bishop of Carlisle from 1827 to 1856. The significance of these manuscripts is all the greater given the loss of the original visitation records and articles of enquiry. Combining the notebooks together, this volume provides a snapshot of Carlisle diocese in the decades after the Napoleonic wars. This was a period of social unrest, brought on by agricultural and industrial depression. As a magistrate, Fletcher was himself involved in ending the Dalston cotton workers’ strike in 1830.
The excellent editorial introduction provides an outline of the historical context and a useful biography of Chancellor Fletcher, who is otherwise a largely unknown figure. The eyes and ears of the bishop, he comes across as a very strong minded and industrious character, who on one occasion visited twenty-eight churches in five days. A scrupulous record keeper, Fletcher's ‘Diocesan Book’ contains details of 130 churches and chapels within four deaneries, beginning with Dalston parish, near the city of Carlisle, where Fletcher had been vicar since 1793. Fletcher was determined to uphold the rights of the church. Indeed, he was so dogged in pursuing his tithes that he became embroiled in several lawsuits and some of his parishioners refused to attend church.
The content of these notebooks is in many ways typical of original visitation records, with comments on local schools, charities and the number of dissenters in each parish. Details about the state of the church fabric are often followed by orders for whitewashing, cleaning and re-flooring. Yet it is this standardisation that helps to make this volume of more than purely local interest. There are opportunities for comparison with other regions and a substantial amount of data that could be subject to statistical analysis. For example, Fletcher records the rise and fall in the value of land during and after the Napoleonic wars and there are frequent references to the augmentation of livings through Queen Anne's Bounty. These increases were much needed in Cumbria. Although pluralism was common, with Fletcher himself having four livings, the county's Anglican clergy had an average income of just £175 against a national average of £285. A more idiosyncratic feature of Fletcher's notes, however, is the way in which they also serve as a guidebook for the bishop by including descriptions of local landmarks, antiquities and phenomena.
The transcription of the text is accompanied by superbly detailed footnotes, which flesh out Fletcher's often quite pithy statements, as well as providing helpful points of explanation. Frequent cross references are made to antiquarian texts that Fletcher himself used, as well as more recent articles in Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Transactions and Hyde and Pevsner's Cumbria (The Buildings of England, 2010). Details are also taken from archival sources, particularly those relating to nonconformity. The considerable research undertaken for this edition is further reflected in a comprehensive biographical index of all the clergy mentioned by Fletcher and Percy. The scholarship thus covers a lot of ground and helps to shed light on the condition of parishes within the Carlisle diocese during the early nineteenth century. This volume will be indispensable to historians of Cumbria, or those interested in Anglicanism and nonconformity, but there is also a lot here to recommend it to those researching the social and economic history of the period.
