The dullest sermon ever?
Have I found, here in Dorset, evidence of the most boring sermon ever? One so dull that the preacher sent even himself to sleep?
In the gorgeous medieval church at Tarrant Crawford, on the chancel floor, right in front of the altar, is this brass cross and plaque:
“On this spot, the Rev. Francis Alfred Smith fell asleep July 15 1877”
Being right in front of the altar, he must have fallen asleep during the service, and presumably whilst conducting it.
To fall asleep during your own sermon suggests a level of dullness that would have attracted the attention of Narcolept, Peter Simple’s reporter on the fabled tournaments organised by the British Boring Board of Control. Definitely a world-class bore.
So what really happened?
Of course he didn’t really start snoozing, and the Victorians would certainly not have commemorated it had he done so.
Yes, I know, “fell asleep” was a standard Victorian euphemism for dying, and by the 1870s was a common phrase on memorials to the dead (displacing the more earthy “here lies the body of…” used in more pragmatic days).
That means the unfortunate man must have dropped dead part way through the service, presumably to the consternation of the congregation.
You may say the double meaning in the phrasing shouldn’t amuse me, but it does. But now I have stopped sniggering, let’s look into this a bit more.
The nearby church of Tarrant Rushton, where he was rector, has a bigger memorial to him:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
FRANCIS ALFRED SMITH B.A.
RECTOR
DIED JULY 15 1877, AGED 35
INSCRIBED WITH DEEP ATTACHMENT
BY HIS PARISHIONERS[1]
Aged only 35; poor chap. Although dying at that age was not as rare as it is today, it was relatively uncommon by 1877.
At that time roughly one in ten men who made it into their 30s would die before they turned 40,[2] and presumably even fewer in the middle-class learned professions. So, unless there were any particular personal circumstances that suggested he was on his last legs, this must have been something of a shock to the congregation, even if it hadn’t happened right in front of them during a solemn public service.
A family tradition
But there might have been a congenital reason for his early death, since his father, also rector of Tarrant Rushton, also died at a relatively early age, as his memorial attests:
NEAR TO THIS CHURCH,IN WHICH FOR TEN YEARS HE HAD FAITHFULLY PREACHEDTHE WORD OF GOD,REST THE REMAINS OFTHE REVD FRANCIS SMITH,FIFTH SON OF SIR JOHN WYLDEBORE SMITH. BART…IN THE MIDST OF HIS USEFULLNESSHE WAS SUDDENLY CALLED "TO SLEEP IN JESUS"DEC 29TH 1851 IN THE 41ST YEAR OF HIS AGE[3]
41 for the father, 35 for the son; that was unfortunate even then.
Note that the earlier memorial enquotes “to sleep”, suggesting the use of euphemism was not as commonplace in 1851 as it was 26 years later.
The father is described as having died “in the midst of his usefullness [sic]”. Should we take that literally? Did he, like his son, drop dead whilst actually carrying out his ministry? That would be a notable coincidence, but if he had it would surely have been noted somewhere, so presumably not. I assume it merely refers to him dying part way through what should have been his working life.
Smith is a very common surname, so am I jumping to conclusions that they were related? No, in this case very little digging around was needed to establish the connection because the father (as his memorial says) was “fifth son of Sir John Wyldebore Smith, Bart.”,[4] and the pedigree of close descendants of a holder of an hereditary title is generally recorded, just in case one of their descendants ends up inheriting it.
Debrett’s Illustrated Baronetage (how’s that for a coffee-table book?) includes amongst the “Grandchildren of the late Rev. Francis Smith … 5th son of 2nd baronet, b. 1810, d. 1851” the “Issue of the late Rev. Francis Alfred Smith, b. 1841, d. 1877”. The dates match. Our Rev. Francis Alfred must therefore have been the son of the Rev. Francis Smith, for FA’s “issue” to be F’s grandchildren.
More family connections
Father and son both rector of the same village church; can that be a coincidence?[5] Unlikely, especially once we know that they were descended from a family of baronets.
The then head of the family, Sir William Henry Smith-Marriott (no relation to the William Henry Smith who founded the chain of newspaper, book and stationery shops[6]) had his seat at The Down House, just outside Blandford Forum and only six miles or so away. What’s more, he is listed in Debrett’s as being “Patron of three livings” (i.e. having the right to appoint the rector), including Tarrant Rushton.
The post was therefore within the gift of one of their relatives, so given the way things worked then, it is not surprising that they both ended up in one of the family churches.
As an aside, I do feel a little sorry for Rev. William Frederick Radclyffe, MA of Queens College, Oxford, who was granted the living on Rev. Francis’ death but then resigned it in 1866 to make way for Rev. Francis Alfred. Francis Alfred was only ten when his father died, which was a bit young to be given even a family rectorship, so Radclyffe seems to have been appointed as a stop-gap, keeping the rectory warm and the duties performed, only to be turfed out as soon as Francis Alfred was old enough to be ordained.
And it does seem Francis Alfred really was installed as soon as possible; he was only 24 or 25 when he was made rector, so had only just reached the minimum age to be ordained priest in the Church of England – “every man which is to be admitted a Priest shall be full twenty-four years of age”.[7] But with his father having died aged 41, there was possibly not much money in that branch of the family. Appointing him to the family living, with a church house to live in and a church income to keep him, was an easy way for the head of the family to provide for his relative at no cost to himself.
Out of his patch
But why was Francis Albert taking a service in Tarrant Crawford church on that fateful July day in 1877? As we have seen, he was rector of Tarrant Rushton, where his main memorial is, not of Tarrant Crawford.
So I set out to try to discover what led him to take a service outside his parish, which ended in – and may have contributed to - his death.
An unsustainable parish
Tarrant Crawford has a population of 20 or thereabouts today, and even in the 1871 census it only had 67; not enough to support a church and rector.
Indeed it seems it never did support a priest by itself; until the Reformation, Tarrant Abbey, a large Cistercian nunnery (said to be the richest in the country, with an annual income of over £125), was nearby,[8] and it is thought that the church was a “lay chapel”, provided and run by the nunnery for the local population.
It’s not certain how things were run for the next century or so after the Reformation. There is no record of any rectors, or of any house for them to live in once the nunnery was demolished,[9] so either poor clergy from nearby parishes were paid to come in and look after things as jobbing curates, or the rector of another parish was also appointed rector of Tarrant Crawford.[10]
But after the civil war, Cromwell’s government set out to tidy up the rural parish system. Their Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers investigated the population and income of each parish, and attempted to amalgamate smaller ones into a large enough unit to fund a minister. Dorset seems to have been in need of a lot of amalgamation; of the 152 rectories, 43 were sustainable (with an income of at least £100 a year, the level the new law set as “sufficient to make up the maintenance of the Minister”[11]), 53 provided something in between £50 and £100, but 56 of them didn’t even have the £50 that was generally thought to be the bare minimum to keep a minister out of embarrassing poverty.[12]
Tarrant Crawford, with its tiny population, must surely have been well down in the under-£50 category.
Not surprisingly therefore Tarrant Crawford was one of the 18[13] Dorset parishes to be merged, in its case with the neighbouring Tarrant Keyneston, half a mile along the valley. The Augmentation Books of the Trustees said:
“Craford Parva: It is not above four furlongs [half a mile] from Kynston, and is united to it by order of the Committee”[14]
However it seems the legal mergers of parishes were reversed on the Restoration, which invalidated all Acts of Parliament of the Commonwealth and Protectorate eras for not having received Royal Assent; “few of these changes [parish mergers] survived the Restoration”.[15]
The two parishes were again formally united centuries later, in 1928, by an Order of Council (which supports the view that the 1650s merger had not been considered legally valid in the meantime):
“that… the two said Benefices of Tarrant Keynston[16] and Tarrant Crawford shall as hereinafter recommended and proposed also be united[17] … into one Parish for ecclesiastical purposes” and that “the Church of the Parish of Tarrant Keynston shall be the Parish Church of the United Parish of Tarrant Keynston with Tarrant Crawford”[18]
But what happened between the Restoration in 1660 and the Privy Council merging the parishes in 1928? There is still no record of Tarrant Crawford having its own rector, and still nowhere to house one, so I assume the two parishes continued their merger on an informal basis; remaining legally separate but with the same man appointed rector of each, and in practice run as one.[19] [20]
So why was Francis Albert there?
Unfortunately none of that helps us, because although Tarrant Crawford almost certainly was served by the rector of a neighbouring parish in 1877, that parish was Tarrant Keyneston, while Francis Albert was rector of Tarrant Rushton. Although they are now all merged together into a larger unit, that did not happen until much later; in 1877 Tarrant Keyneston and Tarrant Rushton (each with its appendages) were very separate, and Tarrant Crawford was definitely under the former.
So why was Francis Albert taking the service in Tarrant Crawford?
The likely answer is that the living at Tarrant Keyneston was probably temporarily vacant.
The previous rector, John Hiley Austen, had died in 1876,[21] but his successor, Rev. Edmund Dowland, was not appointed until some time in 1877.[22]
I cannot find a date for Dowland’s installation, but it does seem the most likely explanation is that in July 1877 Dowland was not yet in post, so Francis Alfred was looking after Tarrant Keyneston and its subsidiary at Tarrant Crawford until their new rector arrived.
15th July 1877 was a Sunday, so presumably Rev. Francis Albert was taking services in his own parish of Tarrant Rushton, probably his own subsidiary parish of Tarrant Rawston,[23] probably Tarrant Keyneston, and certainly Tarrant Crawford, where he died. Not just four services, but also travelling (either walking or on horseback; it seems his rectory had 18th century stables) between the four churches.
Worse, the weather was foul that weekend; it was not a sunny July that year. The reports for the South West for the 15th show "raining very heavily" with around an inch of rain in 24 hours, temperatures around 60F (15C), and the sky ranging from 'overcast' through 'dark, gloomy' to 'ugly, threatening'. Not the day to be trudging along the muddy Tarrant valley bottom to take services in a series of damp, draughty churches.
End points
My rather flippant amusement at the double meaning in a church inscription has led to a lot of research as I tried to find out what had actually happened and why.
The route was rather convoluted, but the answer was rather a sad one - it seems this was a neighbourly act that had tragic consequences.
Would dying during a service have been ‘the way he would have wanted to go’, or an unwanted result of slogging round four churches in foul weather?
In either case, Francis Albert probably didn’t want to die at 35, so after being amused at the wording on his memorial, I said a brief prayer for his soul.
Tarrant Crawford church was made 'redundant' by the Church of England, so is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. If you visit, do bung them a bit of money to help with their work. But possibly best to do so online; sadly it seems someone has been raiding the collection box:
[2] Data here - taking the column for 1871 to 1880, on average 630,038 men a year survived until 30, but only 563,077 of them would make it to 40, giving a 10.6% risk of an 1870s man dying during his 30s.
[4] Although mentioning your father’s title on your memorial might look like snobbery today, it was normal practice then.
[5] The neighbouring parish of Tarrant Keyneston also had a son following his father as rector; John Austen from 1806 to 1856, then his son Henry Austen - however they went further, with Henry’s brother John Hiley Austen taking over from him.
[6] Although there was nearly an entirely coincidental connection. One of Rev. Francis Alfred’s children, Sir Edmund Charles Wyldbore Smith, was Chairman of Thomas Cook, the travel agent, in the 1920s, which the newsagent WHSmiths attempted (but failed) to take over in 1973.
[7] See the Ordination Preface of 1662. It was possible to be ordained at 23, but only with the approval of an archbishop. This is still the rule today.
[8] The Churches Conservation Trust speculate that there were abbey buildings immediately to the south of the church (“the almost windowless south wall of the nave, suggest that there were once other buildings immediately south of the church”); Church of St Mary, Tarrant Crawford, Dalton, 2007, but an archaeological study found nothing of note in that area and did find a probably site of the abbey a short stroll away (An Investigation into the Ecclesiastical History of Tarrant Crawford, Bryant, 2000; see map on page 11)
[9] There is no likely clergy house now, and an archaeological survey found nothing in the immediate vicinity of the church; see An Investigation into the Ecclesiastical History of Tarrant Crawford, Bryant, 2000
[10] The church made repeated attempts to prevent ‘pluralism’, the holding of multiple ecclesiastical offices simultaneously, but there were many exceptions and enforcement was fairly ineffective at this time.
[12] This was of course far more than a labourer’s wages, but £50 to £100 would have been about the income level of the lower end of the legal profession, provincial attorneys or solicitors, so an expected level for a member of the learned professions.
[13] Church and people in interregnum Britain, ed McCall, 2021, chapter 2, ‘Soe good and godly a worke’, Craven
[14] Quoted in Investigation into the Ecclesiastical History of Tarrant Crawford, Dorset, Bryant, 2000, Volume II
[15] Church and people in interregnum Britain, ed McCall, 2021, chapter 1, “What happened in English and Welsh parishes c.1642–62?”, Foster
[16] The London Gazette seems to use Tarrant Keynston in some places, and Tarrant Keyneston in others, with the former spelling seeming to be the norm for ecclesiastical purposes. Even today there seems to be a spelling divide between the civil authorities (Keyneston) and the Church of England (Keynston).
[17] By 1959 this had happened and the two were legally one combined parish – the London Gazette then refers to “the parish of Tarrant Keynston with Tarrant Crawford”, i.e. legally a single combined parish.
[18] London Gazette, 30 March 1928
[19] Kelly’s Directory of Dorset of 1889 says that the rector of Tarrant Keynston “is also incumbent of Tarrant Crawford”, as does the edition of 1895, for a different rector. By 1911 the then rector of Tarrant Keynston is described as “also perpetual curate of Tarrant Crawford” – different terminology and perhaps legal status, but in practice the same approach of appointing one man simultaneously to two neighbouring, but legally separate, parishes.
[20] The Pluralities Act 1838 made another attempt to forbid the same person holding more than one ecclesiastical office, but one of several exemptions was if the two “shall be situate within the Distance of Ten Statute Miles” of each other; these are only half a mile apart
[21] Died 16 July 1876, probate granted 2 September. See also the records of Jesus College, Cambridge, which give the date of his death and also the dates when he was Rector of Tarrant Keynston. His will was Gazetted on 20th October 1876.
[22] Kelly’s Directory of Dorset of 1889 says that the rectory of Tarrant Keynston had then been “held since 1877 by the Rev Edmund Dowland M.A. of St John’s College, Cambridge, who is also incumbent of Tarrant Crawford”.
[23] Tarrant Rushton and Tarrant Rawston seem to have been in a similar situation to Tarrant Keynston and Tarrant Crawford; although they were not legally merged until 1928, one man usually held both from 1827 (compare links), and from 1852 Radclyffe is described as being appointed “to the combined livings of Tarent Rushton and Tarent Rawston”, both of which were within the grant of the aforementioned Smith-Marriott baronets.
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