Otham Rectors

http://kentarchaeology.org.uk/research/archaeologia-cantiana/ Kent Archaeological Society is a registered charity number 223382 © 2017 Kent Archaeological Society ( 184 ) OTHAM RECTORS. BY REV. J. CAVE-BROWNE, M.A. IN tracing out the succession of Eectors of Otham, the earliest name we have been able to discover is in the " Sede Vacante " Becords at Canterbury, when, in the interval between the death of Archbishop Peckham and the appointment of Archbishop Winchelsey, the duty of Institution lay with the Prior of Christ Church, the energetic Henry de Estria, and in 1293 BADTJLPHTJS DE MALLING- was presented to him for the vacant Bectory by Eobertus de Valoignes.* The next name is that of EICARDUS DE SANDWICO (SANDWICH) by the same patron in 1315.f Three years after, the Bectory becoming vacant, Bobert de Valoignes appoints a member of his own family, HAIMO DE VALOIGNES ; J and again, in 1322, appears the name of GULLIELMTJS DE LA LEGH.§ Four years after an exchange was effected between him and EOBERTUS DE HEMINGBTJRGH, from Pirton in Worcestershire. He seems to have held the Otham Bectory some five and twenty years, for no appointment appears to have taken place again till 1349, when, there being a vacancy in the See of Canterbury on the death of Archbishop Bradwardine, Prior Bichard de Oxenden, Estria's successor, instituted THOMAS DE WOTTON, on the presentation of Sir Thomas de Aldon (alias Aldelyn) of Crundall, || to whom the Advowson had come through his marriage with Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waresius de Valoignes. In 1355 Sir Thomas Aldon presented EOGER DE ARDELEJII then, in 1374, when Bobert Hathbrand was Prior, during the interval between Archbishops Whittelsey and Simon de Sudbury, he presented ROBERT FTNCHCOTE to the vacant Bectory.** In 1385 Sir Thomas Aldon's widow Matilda presented OUTDO * Cant. MSS., Q., fo. 21. t Arohbishop Reynold's Register, fo. 16. J Ibid., fo. 23b. § Ibid., fo. 30". || Cant. MSS., I., fo. 18. *S Archbishop Islip's Register, fo. 269a. ** Cant. Chapt. MSS., G., fo. 171. OTHAM RECTORS. 185 HEREELD,* who retained it till 1413, when, on his death, the Manor and with it the Advowson, having passed into the hands of the Pympe family, John Pympe, Esq., of Pympe Hall, Earleigh, presented JOHANNES LATBORNE, a member of a neighbouring family. The next appointment was in 1435, when JOHANNES KNOLLYS J (or KNOLLES) was presented by the same patron, who again, in 1441, on Knollys' death, presented WILLIELMUS KENE § (not Kerne, as Hasted gives it), whose name occurs in the will of William Colyn|| as one of the witnesses, and again two years after in that of Bobert Betynham^f as " olim Bector." After him occurs the name of JOHANNES BAMSEX, but no date or mention of his appointment, only of that of THOMAS DANXEL on Eamsey's death in 1504,** when the right of presentation was exercised by the widow of John Pimp, as was also the case twenty years after, in 1525, when she presented LUDOVICUS (Louis) Ar RES on Danyel's resignation.ft His successor was THOMAS CAXLEX apparently^ according to the Church Begister of an Otham family, but no date of his appointment appears either at Canterbury or Lambeth. The Parish Church Begister records his burial in 1567, when PETER HENDLE (or HENDLEX as it is afterwards written) was appointed by his relation Thomas Hendle, to whom the Manor and Advowson had passed by the grant of the Crown.§§ Among the many signs of the Eeformation which were now becoming apparent, the Baptismal Eegister shews that both Cayley and Hendley had been releasedfrom obligatory celibacy. Between the years 1585 and 1590 are several entries of the baptisms of children of " Thomas Crompe, Clerk," while that of " Peter Hendle, Parson " also appears. Was Crompe Curate ? The next name on the list is that of one who in many ways left his mark in the parish. In the Begister at Lambeth[||j it is written JOHN BROME, S.T.P. So it is originally in the Church Begister in all the earlier entries; hut a second " o " appears in a later hand, and in the course of time he signs himself BROOME. TO him the * Archbishop Courtenay's Register, fo. 258. t Archbishop Chichele's Register, fo. 206. § Ibid. || Archdeacon's Court, Canterbury, vol. iii. fo. 25. ^ Ibid. ** Archbishop "Warham's Register, fo. 323. In his will (Archdeacon's Court, Cant., vol. xvii., fo. 2) he expresses a wish to be " buried in the Chancell of Otham Church," and bequeaths to it " one surplice and a mattens Robe," and to his neighbour Parson at Langley " a Sarsenett Typpett, my best Cappe, a shirt, & a portusse (a breviary)." f t Archbishop Warham's Register, fo. 384. %% In the " Hendle MSS." mention is made under date 1547 of " (Sir) Thomas Bayley, Parson of Otham," probably a mistake for Thomas Cayley. §§ Arohbishop Parker's Register, fo. 380b. IIII Archbishop "Whitgift's Register, fo. 335. 186 OTHAM RECTORS. parish is indehted for the earliest Begister now extant there. Henry VIII. had, at the persuasion of Thomas (afterwards Lord) Crumwell in 1538, issued an order that every parish should possess a Begister Book, into which should be made the entry of every baptism, marriage, and burial solemnized in the Church. Prior to that time, apparently,, no system of registering these domestic events had existed, and if any record at all was made it was on waste paper books or loose scraps of paper. Now they were to be duly and carefully entered in a book supplied by each parish for that purpose, and a chest also provided for keeping this book. However, this system would seem to have been very imperfectly carried out; and to insure greater care, Elizabeth, in the " Constitutions " of 1597, required that in future such books should be of parchment, not of paper, and the entries methodically made. Happily at this time the Clergy began to realize the importance of carrying out this plan, and in very many parishes set themselves to collect and transcribe all previously existing records into such parchment hooks.* To the zeal and industry of this new Bector, John Broome, Otham is indehted for having an admirable Church Begister, not only from the date of his own appointment, but going back to the earlier date of Henry VIII.'s Injunction of 1538. He duly recorded on the fly-leaf of the oldest extant Begister that he had strictly complied with the Canon, and had copied out, and given a permanent form to, all the entries he could collect for the preceding sixty years, which he carried on till his death, and hoped to secure its perpetuity hy the following entry:— " The Begister booke of the Parish Churche of Ottham in the Countie of Kent, according to the Canon in that behalfe puhlished in the fortith yere of the most happie reigne of our most gratious Soveraigne Ladie EUzabeth, hy the excellent grace of God Queen of England, ffrance, and Ireland, Defender of the Eaith, etc., and in the yere of our Lord and onely Saviour Jesus Christ 1598. Thus written out hy me, John Broome, Bacchelaur of Divinitie, and Parson of the said Otham. " OBSERVATIONS. " 1. In the lower end of everie page, or syde of a leafe, a convenient space must be left, wherein the names of the Minister, Churchwardens, and Sydesmen are to bee subscribed. * Extract from the Clause " De Registris in Ecolesiis (Constitutiones Ecolesiastiose, Anno 1597) ":—" Ut libri ad hune usum destinati, quo tutius reservari et ad posteritatis memoriam propagari possint, ex pergameno . . . . confioiantur: iisque . . . . ex veteribus libris cartaceis transcripta sint." OTHAM RECTORS. 18 7 "2. Everie yere Certificate must bee made of all Baptismes, Mariadges, and Buryalls wh. shall happen to bee in the said Parish, from Easter to Easter, or from the Ainnun'tian to the Annun'tian, to the ArchD'n, & from Mich, to Mich, to the Commissarie. " 3. This booke must bee kept in a Chest with three locks and three keyes hy the Officers above named." John Broome seems to have more than followed the example of Cayley and Peter Hendley, for having lost his first wife Priscilla in August 1612, on the 24th of the following November he married Mary Delahay, probably one of his own parishioners, the daughter of Katherine Delahay, whose burial is entered by Broome on February 11, 1620, as the "widow of Neville Delahay, sometyme of Wateringbury, Esq., having many yeares before given all her goods by guift (sic) to her children." The vacancy in the Otham Parsonage caused by the death of John Broome brought the little quiet Kentish village within the vortex of the political maelstrom which was at the time sweeping over the country at the end of 1605 and the beginning of the following year. In the height of the panic which the discovery of the " Gunpowder Plot" had caused, the House of Commons on January 21 resolved that a Committee be formed " To consider of some course for the timely and severe proceeding against Jesuits, Seminaries, and all other Popish Agents and Practisers, and for the Preventing and Suppressing their Plots and Practices." The rapid development of this alarm is well depicted in the Journals, for extracts from which the writer is indebted to the kindness of L. Helbert,-Esq., of the Library of the House of Commons. " January 21, 1605-6. " Sir George Moore (M.P. for Guildford) maketh a Motion out of a sense of the late Conspiracy, the like whereof never came upon the Stage of the world. No hour too soon for such a Motion. Encouragement to Papists. (Homines qui ex fraude, fallacia, mendiciis, consistere videbantur. Tantumne Beligio potuit movisse malorum?)." Sir Erancis Hastings, M.P. for Somerset, followed: " 3 Duties : to God, to the King, to God & ourselves. Offered to Consideration, four (points) : The Plot, the Carriage of the Plot, the Discovery, and the Deliverance. Plot, Popish, dangerous and desperate." 188 OTHAM RECTORS. Mr. Solicitor (Sir Thomas Eleminge, M.P. for Southampton) : " A word in time like Apples of gold furnished with Pictures of Silver." Then followed the Motion to form a Committee. The immediate result was the passing of an Act (3 James I., cap. 5) by which it was enacted (Clause xviii) " that all recusants shall be utterly disabled from and after the end of this present Parliament to present to any benefice, with cure or without cure, etc.;" and then Clause xix enacts that " the Chancellor and Scholars of the University of Oxford so often as any of them shall be void shaU have the presentation, etc., of & to every such benefice (in some twenty-five specified counties, of which Kent was one*) as shall happen to' be void during such time, as the patron thereof shall be and remain a Recusant convict as aforesaid." The inference, then, is that the Hendleys, in whom the patronage had for some years lain, were either recusants or suspects. For the next presentation was made by the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the "University of Oxford, and they chose for the vacant Parsonage WILLIAM HXDE, M.A., of Exeter College, whose selection also marks an era in the history of Oxford. The preceding year had seen him nominated by the body of the University Masters, in whom the right then lay, to the important office of Proctor, f Hyde had entered on his duties in April 1628; but by the following June a new " Constitution " had been imposed on them by the King, transferring the nomination from the general body of the Masters of Arts to those of each particular College, from which, according to a Cycle then prepared, the election was to be made. It is probable that the University, to compensate him for the loss of the coveted appointment, conferred on him the first piece of Church patronage which fell to them. And so he became Bector of Otham in 1628.J The vacancy caused by the death of William Hyde was filled by the appointment of THOMAS WILSON, M.A.,§ a man of considerable learning and force of character, but of very strong Presbyterian ' tendencies. His appointment to Otham was effected by an influential Jurat of Maidstone, who purchased the Advowson for the express purpose of placing there a man whose preaching * It was arranged that all the southern counties of England should be assigned to Oxford and the northern ones to Cambridge, a division which holds good to the present day in the case of all benefices in the hands of Romanist patrons. t A. A. "Wood's Hist. University of Oxon, p. 435; Boase's Megistrum Exoniense, p. 63. J Archbishop Abbot's Register, fo. 245. § Ibid., vol. ii., fo. 193. OTHAM RECTORS. 18 9 accorded with his own views, and where he and his fellow-townsmen of Maidstone " might go with little trouble or travail to hear the Word of God."* Some years after Swinnocke was able to introduce him to Maidstone itself as Curate. But it was in connection with Otham that Wilson attained to some public celebrity. The introduction of The Book of Sports and the order that it should be proclaimed in all Churches was the stumbling block in Wilson's course at Otham. He had here a sympathizing parishioner of some position, Henry Tooke,t a medical man, who made common cause with him. Their obduracy came to the notice of the High Commissioner, and three times in the course of 1635 and 1636 they were both summoned to appear before the Court, but refused. The charge against Wilson was that " divers of the (Maidstone) Parishioners, being schismaticaUy affected, had in great troops left the Parish Church, and gone from thence to Otham to hear him preach and expound." He was first " monished," and then as " an inconformable Minister" suspended.^ This led to a memorable scene in the House of Commons : Sir Edward Dering, who was at the time one of the Knights of the Shire for Kent, presented a Petition from WUson to the House, complaining that he had been suspended and was being "persecuted by a Pursuivant." Sir Edward said he had personaUy appealed to the Archbishop, undertaking that Wilson should appear in any of the King's Courts to answer his accusers; but Laud had refused to shew any clemency, and had treated him with a sneer—" I am sure he will not absent himself a twelvemonth together, and I doubt not hut once in a year we shall have hhn."§ Smarting under the recollection of his scornful reception at Lambeth Palace, Dering exclaimed, " I hope, by the help of this House, before this year of threatening he run out, his Grace will either have more grace or no grace at all"—an anathema of sad fulfilment, for not long after the Archbishop's head was brought to the block. Bearing testimony on the other hand to Wilson's worth, Dering described him as " orthodox in doctrine and laborious in preaching as any we have, and of unblemished life." || Such was the spirit in which Sir Edward was persuaded to east in his lot with his temporary Puritan allies, then led by Hampden, and bring in the BUI for " the utter eradication of * Calendar of State Papers, Domestio Series, vol. xxxix., pp. 200, 208. t A younger brother of Sir Nioholas Tooke of Godington in Great Chart. j Calendar of State Papers, Domestio Series, vol. xlii., p. 509. § Ibid., vol. xlviii., p. 254. || Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. ii., p. 416. 190 OTHAM REOTORS. Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, etc.," a step which even Neal condemns as being "a rash and inconsiderate attempt" (vol. i., p. 702).* Dering, however, hved to greatly modify his views, and to give play to his really loyalist instincts, redeeming the error of his vanity and feebleness as a politician by the fame he attained as a scholar and a man of letters, of which the Surrenden Library and MSS. were a lasting proof. Wilson's suspension, however, was cancelled in 1639, and he was restored to Otham; but soon another difficulty confronted him. The Scots were advancing upon England, and a Special Prayer was ordered to be used in Church. To this Wilson objected on Canonical grounds, and was again suspended. However, by 1642 a great change had come over the political world of England: Parliament was supreme, a solemn fast was to be observed, WUson— the victim of Laud's Inhibition—was selected to preach the sermon on the occasion before the House of Commons in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, besides having other honours bestowed on him by his friends, now in the ascendant—among them the post of Curate of Maidstone, f where he took up his abode, leaving the (as he thought) less important duties of Otham to be performed by a substitute. And he who, in the sermon already aUuded to, had denounced non-residence as "an odious sin" became himself nonresident! How his substitute at Otham, Thomas Heron (or Heme), whose signature appears at every Vestry Meeting held * Clarendon (History of the Zebellion, Book iii., A.D. 1641) thus describes the scene. Hampden and his party "prevailed with Sir Edward Dering," a man very opposite to all their designs (but a man of levity and vanity, easily flattered by being commended), who presented the Bill to the House from the gallery, with the two verses of Ovid, the application whereof was his greatest motive: " Cunota prius tentata, sed immedioabile vulnus Ense reddendum est, ne pars sincera trahatur." They desoribe Jupiter's excuse and justification for annihilating the Titans; and Dering seems to have selected his exalted place in the gallery to give more dramatic effect to the words, as though an utterance from Heaven. Dryden has thus rendered the passage in English: " I tried whatever in the Godhead lay, But gangrened members must be lopped away Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay." f Wilson, though Presbyterian in doctrine, was, like the far-famed Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, loyalist at heart, and these higher instinots proved fatal to his happiness at Maidstone, for, preaching on the Sunday after the King's execution, he openly in his sermon denounced the act as murder, when, according to Newton (History of Maidstone), an exciting scene was witnessed at the Church door between him and his infuriated parishioner, AndrewBroughton, who, as Clerk of the Council, had read the warrant for the King's execution, OTHAM RECTORS. 191 during his stay there, performed his duties may he inferred from an entry in the Church Begister made by the succeeding Bector, JOHN DAVIS, that " from 1647 to 1653 " (the period of Heron's holding the Cure) "there was neither Mariage, Christening, or BuriaU enter'd in the Otham Eegister." Again, the appointment to the Bectory seems to have been in the hands of a Maidstone magnate, for THOMAVS WHITE, who was appointed by that new body " The Commissioners for the approval of PubUque Preachers,"* was presented by Walter Francklyn, Esq., a name of frequent occurrence among the Maidstone Jurats. He held the Bectory for- only a few months, and was succeeded hy JOHN DAVIS, under the same presentation^ who, though not formally appointed tiU 1655, had evidently a promise or an anticipation of the preferment, for in the fly-leaf of the Church Begister is the entry " John Davis, who is to be Bector of Otham, 1654." His connection with the parish was, however, of more substantial benefit to Otham than that of WUson had heen, for it would seem that at the time there was no Parsonage House, or it had fallen into uninhabitable disrepair, for an entry in the Church Bate Accounts of the year 1651 mentions the payment of " a year's rent to Mr. Hendle for a house," and there still remains a massive beam running across the kitchen of the present Parsonage bearing the inscription " THIS HOUSE WAS BUILT BX JOHN DAVIS, RECTOR OE OTHAM, 1664." He too, like Wilson, became Curate of Maidstone, where he died and was buried, a laudatory monument in All Saints' Church recording his merits and the esteem in which he was there held. On the death of John Davis the Advowson had apparently passed into the hands of MATHIAS BUTTON, a FeUow of King's CoUege, Cambridge, who was already Dean of Battle in Sussex, for he presented himself to the Bectory, J and held it for nearly a quarter of a century, dying in 1700. The next patron, according to Ecton,§ was John Cook, Esq., who early in 1701 presented WILLIAM SIMMONDS to the vacant Parsonage. || He resigned it in 1727, by which time the patronage had returned to the Hendley family in the person of its representative, Bowyer Hendley, the grandson of Sir Thomas Hendley of Coreshorne in Cranbrook, who had been Sheriff for the County in 1702. His father John Hendley had married PrisciUa, the daughter of Thomas Eludd of Gore Court, * Augmentation of Ohurch Lands, Lambeth MSS., fo. 997. t Hid. J Arohbishop Sheldon's Register, fo. 375b. § Thesaurus, p. 18. || Arohbishop Tenison, I., fo. 207b. 192 OTHAM RECTORS. which estate he purchased from her "brother Alabaster Fludd, thus uniting again the two Manors, and made his future home there. On the resignation of WUliam Simmonds in 1727, Bowyer Hendley presented his son-in-law SAMUEL HORNE, of Pembroke College, Oxford, who had married his daughter Anne. Though httle known beyond the bounds of his small country parish, here he hved for above forty years, earning the reputation, according to his biographer Wilham Jones of Nayland, of being " a most learned and exceUent man," whUe the name seems to have hved rather in the fame of his more distinguished son George Horne, who was born in the Parsonage at Otham in 1730, and whose brilliant career at Oxford as a Scholar of University, a Fellow of Magdalen (of which he was afterwards President), a Chaplain in Ordinary to the King, and then Dean of Canterbury, culminated in his becoming Bishop of Norwich in 1791. His name is especiaUy associated with the Commentary on the Psalms and also the Letters on Infidelity, in which he refuted and exposed the theories of David Hume. The Advowson of Otham being still in the Hendley family, on the death of Samuel Horne, his youngest son WILLIAM HORNE, already Bector of Brede in Sussex and Chaplain to the Earl of Falkland, was presented to the Eectory, which he held from 1769 to 1821. Of him, as of his father Samuel Horne, little seems to be recorded. On his death in 1821, his widow, to whom the patronage had passed as the representative of the Hendleys, presented her son, also WILLIAM HORNE, whose ministerial career had commenced in 1799 as " Archbishop's Curate " in the adjacent parish of Leeds. He only retained the Eectory for ten years, resigning it in 1831. At that time the minds of many English Churchmen were being disturbed hy the grave political changes which were passing over the country. The " Cathohc Emancipation Bill of 1829 " and the threatened " Reform Bill" (which was passed in 1832) alarmed him, and he resigned the Eectory and retired to Gore Court, which he had inherited, living there tUl his death in 1841. On resigning in 1831 (the right of patronage having come to him on his mother's death), he presented his neighbour JOHN ASHBUBNEE, Vicar of Linton, to the benefice, who, under a dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, held the two Cures, residing at Linton, and placing a succession of Curates in the Otham Parsonage. Ashhurner died in 1847, having held the joint hvings for sixteen years. During that interval WiUiam Horne, the OTHAM RECTORS. 193 previous Eector, had also died, and bequeathed the Advowson to his widow, who, dying in 1846, had wiUed the next presentation to her niece's husband TATTON BROCKMAN, who had been appointed to the Vicarage of Bottingdean in Sussex in 1839, and had subsequently succeeded to the Gore Court property, where he lived; but if he should decline to present himself or resign, she further willed that on the next vacancy (in recognition of the close connection which had so long existed between the Horne family and Magdalen College, Oxford,* of which three generations had been Fellows, and an uncle a distinguished President) the reversion of the Advowson should pass to the " President and Scholars" of that College, to hold it in perpetuity " in trust that they present thereto such pious and worthy Clergymen of the Church of England who may have been educated at either of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, as they shall select and approve." Mr, Brockman did present himself, and held the Bectory for twenty years, residing at Gore Court and also at Beachborough, the family seat, to which he had succeeded. He resigned it in 1869, when Magdalen College exercised the right which then fell to it, and presented one of their own Fellows, the Eev. FREDERICK MAULE MILLARD, the present Bector, to whom the writer is indebted for much valuable information and help. * See " Acts and Institutions " in Lambeth Palace Library, and her Will (Somerset House). VOL. XXIII. 0