Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part 1 Religious geographies: the districts of England and Wales
- Part 2 Religion and locality: parish-level explorations
- 7 A prospect of fifteen counties
- 8 From Henry Compton to Horace Mann: stability or relocation in Catholicism and Nonconformity, and the growth of religious pluralism
- 9 The Sunday school movement: child labour, denominational control and working-class culture
- 10 Free or appropriated sittings: the Anglican Church in perspective
- 11 Conformity, dissent and the influence of landownership
- 12 Urbanisation and regional secularisation
- Technical appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - From Henry Compton to Horace Mann: stability or relocation in Catholicism and Nonconformity, and the growth of religious pluralism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part 1 Religious geographies: the districts of England and Wales
- Part 2 Religion and locality: parish-level explorations
- 7 A prospect of fifteen counties
- 8 From Henry Compton to Horace Mann: stability or relocation in Catholicism and Nonconformity, and the growth of religious pluralism
- 9 The Sunday school movement: child labour, denominational control and working-class culture
- 10 Free or appropriated sittings: the Anglican Church in perspective
- 11 Conformity, dissent and the influence of landownership
- 12 Urbanisation and regional secularisation
- Technical appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The two major censuses of religion that have most preoccupied historians and cultural geographers have, without doubt, been the Compton Census of 1676 and the Census of Religious Worship of 1851. Over more than two centuries, probably indeed throughout British history, no other religious censuses were conducted to rival these two sources. The religious history of the intervening period has, however, been researched by using other documentation, including the Evans list of 1715, the returns of Papists in 1767 and 1780, selected visitation returns, and the 1829 religious returns.
The Compton Census has received growing scholarly attention in recent years, due very largely to the magisterial work of Anne Whiteman. Named after Henry Compton, Bishop of London, this census comprised returns made by the Church of England's clergy, who were told to count inhabitants, Papists and dissenters. The latter two categories were intended to encompass those residents who were ‘Popish Recusants or persons suspected for such Recusancy’ and ‘other Dissenters … in each parish (of what Sect soever) which either obstinately refuse or wholly absent themselves from the Communion of the Church of England at such times as by Law they are required’. The census consisted of a problematical division into three groups, which did not distinguish between separate old dissenting denominations.
Perhaps the main difficulty with this 1676 source is the question of what was being counted by separate incumbents in different dioceses.
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- Information
- Rival JerusalemsThe Geography of Victorian Religion, pp. 232 - 273Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000