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The Remarkably Unremarkable Life of England's First Black Parish Priest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

Abstract

Bryan Mackey (1770–1847) was for years the unremarkable, unremarked rector of a rural parish in Gloucestershire. He has, however, the distinction of apparently being the first priest with African ancestry to be ordained into the Church of England and who then served his entire career in Britain. His life history raises questions about historical racism within the Church and the wider society.

Type
Notes and Documents
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2024

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References

1 Registers of St Andrew, Jamaica, at <http://www.ancestry.co.uk>.

2 Ibid.

3 Livesay, Daniel, ‘Privileging kinship: family and race in eighteenth-century Jamaica’, Early American Studies xiv/4 (2016), 688711CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations, XIV: January 1776–May 1782, London 1938. 161. These volumes were originally published by His Majesty's Stationery Office but are now available at <https://www.0-www-british-history-ac.uk.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/jrnl-trade-plantations/vol14/pp328-334>.

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11 Christopher Fyfe, ‘Quaque [Kweku], Philip (1741–1816), first African Church of England clergyman and missionary’, ODNB, at <https://www.0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/70058>, and CCEd, person ID 146155.

12 For brief biographies of Quaque, Wilhelm and Crummell see Killingray, David and Edwards, Joel, Black voices: the shaping of our Christian experience, Nottingham 2007, 108–24Google Scholar. Killingray and Edwards describe later Black Anglican ministers, as well as others in non-Anglican denominations. Crummell does not appear in the CCEd.

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14 Mary, 16 June 1796; Susanna, 17 April 1798; William Henry, 16 October 1799, at <https://www.familysearch.org>.

15 Oxford Journal, 17 Aug. 1799; Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland, a Somerset parson, 1799–1818, ed. Jack Ayers, Stroud 1984; John Disney Thorp says brothers William and Giles Tombs paid £1,800 for the manor and advowson: ‘History of the manor of Coates’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society l (1928), 262–3.

16 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 20 Nov. 1800, records the sale of his house.

17 Paupers and pig killers, 20, 106.

18 His unremarkable career is on CCEd: person ID 43442. The diary provides some disparaging remark on almost every page.

19 Shyllon, Folarin, Black slaves in Britain, London 1974, 9Google Scholar (where Shyllon states that there were slave-hunters in Britain), and Black people in Britain, 1555–1833, London 1977, 106–9. Both books were published under the aegis of the Institute for Race Relations, which was then heavily Marxist-influenced.

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23 I set up a database of some 3,000 entries from all over England and Wales to extract statistical information for my doctoral thesis, published as Untold histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade, c.1660–1807, Manchester 2009. A lecturer in the Geography Department of University College London, a historian then working at the Victoria & Albert Museum and I made three unsuccessful attempts to get funding to put it online. We hoped to inspire local and family historians to research and hence acquire a wider picture of the Black presence. I have since expanded it.

24 Chater, Untold histories, 89–92.

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26 TNA, PROB 11/1422/293.

27 Will of Sarah Read, 1817, parish registers, Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, D1388/box9388/5/4; Correspondence about money left to the poor of the parish by Mr Chanter, P92/CH/1.

28 Gloucester Journal, 9 Sept. 1799, then annually; Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard, 24 Sept. 1844. Both Bryan Mackeys, father and son, held game certificates for which an annual fee was charged.

29 Gloucestershire Archives, GDR/B4/1/760.

30 Thorp, John Disney, ‘Rectors of Cotes or Coates’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society xlviii (1926), 322–3Google Scholar; Gloucester Journal, 19 July 1813.

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32 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 27 Nov. 1847.

33 Tim Everson,‘Picton, Cesar [Caesar] (1754/5–1836), coal merchant’, ODNB, at <https://www.0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.1093/ref:odnb/74647>.

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