Wild Curates?


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..... attacks up the Bishops were not infrequent, suggesting that they were a set of worldly men ignoring their pastoral function. From their point of view, the bishops upheld anti-revolutionary values to the general benefit of a hierarchical society.

Critics of the Anglican Church took a different line: here (the Church) was a political extension of the State (with the Sovereign as its supreme governor. 

Attacks ranged from the crude designation of them as ‘black locusts’, to Francis Place’s more florid malediction – ‘luxurious, rich, overbearing and benumbing’.

Then there was **Sydney Smith’s characteristic barb that the bishops deserved to be ‘preached to death by wild curates’.

(from "Perilous Question === Reform or Revolution?  Britain on the Brink"   (Public Affairs Books,  USA, or  Weidenfeld and Nicholson,  Great Britain) 2013.   by the superb author Antonia Fraser.)

** Sydney Smith,  (born June 3, 1771, Woodford, Essex, Eng.—died Feb. 22, 1845, London), one of the foremost English preachers of his day, and a champion of parliamentary reform. Through his writings he perhaps did more than anyone else to change public opinion regarding Roman Catholic emancipation. Smith was also famous for his wit and charm.

 

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