ABSTRACT
A parish clergyman of the Church of England was a man occupying a place in an established order of society. When considering the social obligations of a parish priest there is one point which in the early nineteenth century it is easy to forget, but which is, even for that date, important to remember. In cases of urgency man would be expected to give relief in kind – probably soup to the hungry, which seems to have been a normal nineteenth-century method of relief. One of the most attractive figures among the clergy of the early and mid nineteenth century was J. S. Henslow, professor of botany in the University of Cambridge. Between 1850 and 1872 the rectors and vicars of England seem on the whole to have felt sure of their position, proud of their progress from an unregenerate past, and to have looked to the future with confidence.
