Life in the Georgian Parsonage
Authors: Stobart Jon 
Published: December 2024

An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies,Life in the Georgian Parsonagelooks at the houses, consumption and lifestyle of Church of England clergy in the long 18th century, linking moral debates and popular representations of the clergy to the material culture of their houses and their motivations as consumers.

By focusing on ethical and moral dimensions of consumer practices, it challenges established readings of consumption in the long 18th century as an essentially secular process in which goods were markers of wealth, status and taste, by bringing the clergyman into the frame – their lives, their habits and their homes.

Cross-disciplinary in its approach, combining material culture and religious and social history and sitting at the intersection of these fields,Life in the Georgian Parsonagefills a significant gap, enhancing in important ways our knowledge of this group as a crucial but understudied set of 18th-century consumers, while also contributing to understanding the parish clergy of England in the context of 18th-century society and culture. Bringing together a wide range of source material – from probate inventories to personal account books, satirical prints to sermons, diaries to designs for parsonages – the author reconstructs the material lives and household arrangements of the Georgian clergy in glorious detail. Examining the parish clergy over this period of profound social and religious change through the lens of consumption, and consumption through the lives of these clergymen, has a transformative impact both on these areas of enquiry and on our understanding of English society in the 18th century.

The historiography of consumption, domestic material culture and the home occasionally touches on clergymen as individuals, but has largely overlooked the clergy as a distinct social and cultural group. Religious and church histories, meanwhile, are only passingly concerned with the material lives of the clergy. This glosses over their distinctive place within local and national society; their obligations in terms of charity and hospitality; their liminal status as householders but not house owners, and their particular moral position in relation to worldly goods. This book addresses these issues by examining Church of England clergy as consumers and householders, linking together and challenging key debates in both consumption and religious history during a period of profound economic, social and religious transformation. By focusing on ethical and moral dimensions of consumer practices and motivations, it challenges established readings of consumption in the long eighteenth century as an essentially secular process in which goods were unproblematic markers of wealth, status and taste. For clergymen, consumption was freighted with economic, social and moral dilemmas: it took place in view not only of God, but also congregations, communities and moralists, and was bounded by the value of the clerical living and the norms of hospitality and politeness. The book thus brings ideas of ‘lived religion’ into the realm of material culture and consumption, connecting the rising incomes of clergymen to their spending, lifestyle and domestic environment. It draws church and consumption history into conversation and explores the largely untrodden common ground that this reveals.