ABSTRACT

Recent research into episcopal visitations intensifies our understanding of confirmation in the eighteenth-century church. The study of confirmation was developed in the work of Norman Sykes, who collected further figures from different dioceses and noted the large numbers. The eminent topographer Ralph Thoresby inserts in his diary a solitary passage on a confirmation of Archbishop Sharp. S. L. Ollard researched the copious material in York, which he includes in his 1926 essay and in five volumes on the visitation returns of Archbishop Herring. There are in fact fewer comments justifying non-attendance at confirmation than in the returns of Archbishop Herring. Newspapers provide further information of later confirmation tours. In 1801 the Bishop of Carlisle confirmed in the North and East Ridings for the Archbishop of York. Confirmations being at four-yearly intervals some clergy thought that this was an appropriate pastoral action. Bishop Trelawney, in 1688, had found himself in the Tower, but his biography adds some significant information about confirmation.