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The Costs of Pew-renting: Church Management, Church-going and Social Class in Nineteenth-century Glasgow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Callum G. Brown
Callum G. Brown
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Strathclyde, McCance Building, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XQ
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Extract

The letting of pews was virtually a universal practice in the churches of nineteenth-century Britain. Although letting and private ownership of seats were well known before the 1700s and have continued in the present century, the renting of fixed seats for use during divine service reached its height in the Victorian period. Worshippers paid anything from one shilling to thirty shillings or more to reserve a seat for one person for a year. It thus became a considerable expense to accommodate a large family. By its ubiquity it is clear that the practice was accepted by church-goers as a facet of ecclesiastical life and was accepted by church authorities as a necessary feature of congregational management. But the fact that the system was generally introduced and operated at the discretion of individual congregations or their owners and patrons, with little or no interference from denominational authorities, has meant that comparatively meagre attention has been paid to how it worked in practice and to what its effects were on congregational life.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 347 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 It is notable that one of the most detailed expositions of the system's effects came in a local study (of Sheffield): Wickham, E. R., Church and People in an Industrial City, London 1969, 42–3,Google Scholar 47-9, 57-8, 72-3, 114-15, 142-3 and appendix III. See also Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, London 1963, 48–57,Google Scholar 96-7, 106-8, 129-30.

2 A vociferous opponent in Scotland was the Revd James Begg who campaigned for the new Free Church of 1843 to be free of the system: Begg, J., Seat Rents Brought to the Test of Scripture, Law, Reason and Experience, Edinburgh 1838;Google Scholaridem, Reasons why no Seat-rents should be in the Free Church, Edinburgh n.d.

3 Inglis, loc. cit.

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22 Ibid. ix. 137-8; x. 50. In 1803, £2 was needed for ‘the extraordinary expense of cleaning the [Tron] Church for the Sunday evening lectures’, ibid. ix. 351. Pew-renting as a hygiene measure was also advanced in England, see , Inglis, Churches, 106Google Scholar.

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38 Council Minutes, 19 Sept. 1844, c 1.2.21.

39 These and all subsequent references to seat-price statistics in the City Churches, except those for 1870, are compiled from data in the following: annual accounts of the Ecclesiastical Department given in Council Minutes, 3 Sept. and 29 Oct. 1846, 23 Oct. 1850, 6 Apr. 1853, 2 Apr. 1857, 6 Apr. 1859, 10 Apr. 1862, 5 Apr. 1865, 11 Apr. 1867 and 4 Apr. 1868, c 1.1.64-9; annual accounts in Committee Minutes, 5 Mar. 1833, 15 Dec. 1876, 14 Dec. 1877, 14 june 1880 and 19 May 1886, c 2.7.1-3; Gibson, J., Remarks on the Speech of A. C. Dick Esq., Advocate. With the Expenditure of the Glasgow City Churches, Glasgow 1833, 13–15.Google Scholar The complete data are given in tabulated form in , Brown, ‘Religion’, ii. 296–9Google Scholar.

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