Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2019
Catechizing played an important part in domestic religious education in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as in the better documented early modern period. However, its significance has been neglected in comparison with family prayers (often deemed to be an expression of patriarchy), Sunday observance or even private prayers. This article analyses the incidence of catechizing across religious denominations in Britain from 1740 to 1870, and within selected overseas missionary families. Drawing on a wide range of personal memoirs, the article analyses the range of contexts and relationships within which catechizing could occur. These included not only household worship (which could be conducted by women) but also relationships between siblings. It demonstrates that catechizing could provide opportunities for asking questions and spending ‘quality time’ with parents and / or children, rather than embodying an alienating form of rote-learning. The article therefore challenges many stereotypes relating to family domestic education, relating to themes such as patriarchy, denominational difference and adult-child interaction.
I am grateful to members of the Education in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar at the Institute for Historical Research, where this paper was first presented, on 4 November 2017, for their comments and questions, as well as to participants at the EHS Summer Conference.
1 Green, Ian, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), 191–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Prayer Book Catechism of 1549 was enlarged in 1604 and revised in 1661–2: Green, Ian, The Christian's ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England, c.1530–1740 (Oxford, 1996), 71–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 122–3; Jacob, William, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1640–1840 (Oxford and New York, 2007), 236–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Green, Print and Protestantism, 190; Mandelbrote, Scott, ‘The Bible as Didactic Literature’, in Pennell, Sara and Glaisyer, Natasha, eds, Didactic Literature in England, 1500–1800: Expertise Reconstructed (Aldershot, 2003), 75–137Google Scholar, at 92.
3 Wallace, Charles Jr, ‘Susanna Wesley's Child-rearing Letter’, in idem, ed., Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings (Oxford, 1997), 367–76Google Scholar, at 371–2, 378; Green, Christian's ABC, 17–21, 62, 71, 279.
4 Green, Print and Protestantism, 191–3; idem, Christian's ABC, 43, 83–6.
5 Green, Christian's ABC, 266–74; Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, 92–4.
6 Tovey, Phillip, Anglican Confirmation, 1660–1780, Liturgy and Worship Series (Aldershot, 2014), 195–6Google Scholar, 230; Jacob, Clerical Profession, 237–42; Snape, Michael, The Church of England in an Industrialising Society: The Lancashire Parish of Whalley in the Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2003), 20–2Google Scholar.
7 McCann, Philip, ‘Popular Education and Social Control: Spitalfields, 1812–1824’, in idem, ed., Popular Education and Socialisation in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1977), 1–40Google Scholar, at 24; S. Frith, ‘Socialisation and Rational Schooling: Elementary Education in Leeds before 1870’, ibid. 67–92, at 78; Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988), 33Google Scholar; Davin, Anna, Growing up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870–1914 (London, 1996), 115Google Scholar; Horn, Pamela, The Victorian Country Child (Kineton, 1974), 134–5Google Scholar.
8 de Bellaigue, Christina, ‘Faith and Religion’, in Heywood, Colin, ed., A Cultural History of Childhood and Family, 5: The Age of Empire (Oxford and New York, 2010), 149–66Google Scholar, 306; Tosh, John, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle Class Home, 1830–1914 (London and New Haven, CT, 1999), 37, 91–3Google Scholar, 147; Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class (London, 1987), 89Google Scholar, 109; Gill, Sean, Women in the Church of England from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (London, 1994), 66Google Scholar; Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1995; first publ. 1989), 66Google Scholar, 105.
9 Fyfe, Aileen, ‘Reading Dissenting Children's Books in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, HistJ 43 (2002), 453–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 470; Amies, Marion, ‘Amusing and Instructive Conversations: The Literary Genre and its Relevance to Home Education’, HE 14 (1985), 87–99Google Scholar, at 91–2; Cohen, Michele, ‘The Pedagogy of Conversation in the Home: “Familiar Conversation” as a Pedagogical Tool in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England’, Oxford Review of Education 41 (2015), 447–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 454.
10 Jacob, W. M., ‘“Conscientious attention to publick and family worship of God”: Religious Practice in Eighteenth-Century Households’, in Doran, John, Methuen, Charlotte and Walsham, Alexandra, eds, Religion and the Household, SCH 50 (Woodbridge, 2014), 307–17Google Scholar, at 312; Gregory, Jeremy, Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: The Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese (Oxford, 2000), 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, Karen, The Little Republic: Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2012), 46–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Fletcher, Anthony, Growing up in England: The Experience of Childhood, 1600–1914 (New Haven, CT, 2008), 99–106Google Scholar, 245. For a reiteration of the ‘separate spheres’ thesis, see James Marten, ‘Family Relationships’, in Heywood, ed, Cultural History, 19–38, at 21.
12 Porter, Roy, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1988; first publ. 1982), 165–6Google Scholar.
13 Davin, Anna, ‘What is a Child?’, in Hussey, Stephen and Fletcher, Anthony, eds, Childhood in Question: Children, Parents and the State (Manchester, 1999), 15–36Google Scholar, at 22.
14 Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, transl. Baldick, Robert (Harmondsworth, 1973; first publ. 1962), 122–4Google Scholar.
15 Jacob, ‘“Conscientious attention”’, 307–12.
16 For example, Jackson, Thomas, The Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers, 6 vols (London, 1838–64)Google Scholar.
17 Jordanova, Ludmilla, ‘Children in History: Concepts of Nature and Society’, in Scarre, Geoffrey, ed., Children, Parents and Politics (Cambridge, 1989), 3–24Google Scholar, at 5; Hindmarsh, D. Bruce, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2005), 293–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 See Jones, Robert Tudur, Congregationalism in England, 1662–1962 (London, 1965), 171Google Scholar; Ingram, Robert G., Religion, Reform and Modernity: Thomas Secker and the Church of England (Woodbridge, 2007), 81Google Scholar; Gregory, Restoration, 238; Green, Christian's ABC, 43.
19 Hopkins, Eric, Childhood Transformed: Working-Class Children in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1994), 144Google Scholar.
20 Gregory, Restoration, 238; Jacob, Clerical Profession, 238; Green, Christian's ABC, 122.
21 Watts, Michael, The Dissenters, 1: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), 423Google Scholar.
22 Wallace, ed., Susanna Wesley, 371.
23 Everett, James, Adam Clarke portrayed, 2 vols (London, 1843–4), 1: 14–15Google Scholar, 38.
24 Fletcher, Growing up, 99.
25 Jackson, Lives, 5: 1–2, 218.
26 Memoirs of Dr Joseph Priestley to the Year 1795, written by himself, with a Continuation to the Time of his Decease, by his Son, Joseph Priestley, and Observations on his Writings, by Thomas Cooper … and the Rev. William Christie (London, 1809), 5.
27 Fletcher, Growing up, 249, 115, 117, for Hester Thrale's children; Manchester, JRL, Fletcher-Tooth Papers (hereafter: MAM, Fl), Box 23, manuscript autobiography of Mrs Mary Fletcher, Part 1, 1; Chester, Cheshire RO, Journals of William Charles Cotton, vol. 11, fol. 3, June 1846 (Microfilm 3).
28 Bamford, Francis, Dear Miss Heber: An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence (London, 1938), 2Google Scholar; White, Florence, A Fire in the Kitchen: The Autobiography of a Cook (London, 1938), 43Google Scholar; Sandford, Ernest Gray, ed., Memoirs of Archbishop Temple by Seven Friends, 2 vols (London, 1906)Google Scholar, 1: 19.
29 Henry Venn to Stillingfleet, Joseph, 25 January 1785, in The Letters of Henry Venn, with a Memoir by John Venn (Edinburgh, 1993; first publ. 1835), 429Google Scholar.
30 Green, Christian's ABC, 271–4.
31 London, Museum of London (hereafter: MOL), Young Education Scheme (hereafter: YES), 48.85/6, Schemes of lessons, 1825–31.
32 MOL, YES, 48.85/6, List of books; The Catechism broke into Short Questions; to which is added an Explanation of some words, for the easier Understanding of it: Together with some Prayers for the Use of Charity Schools (London, 1830 edn).
33 MOL, YES, 48.85/6, Schemes of lessons, 1825, 1827.
34 Shore, Margaret Emily, ed., The Journal of Emily Shore (London, 1891), 27–8Google Scholar (23 December 1832).
35 Carswell, Catherine MacFarlane, Lying Awake: An unfinished Autobiography and other Posthumous Papers (London, 1950), 35Google Scholar.
36 Tovey, Anglican Confirmation, 199, 249, 257, 316, 334.
37 Mary Clare Martin, ‘Children and Religion in Walthamstow and Leyton, 1740–1870’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 2000), 358–66.
38 Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London, 1890 edn), 1Google Scholar.
39 Adami, Marie, Fanny Keats (London, 1937), 277–9Google Scholar.
40 Coleridge, Christabel, Charlotte Mary Yonge: Her Life and Letters (London, 1903), 119Google Scholar.
41 Oxford, Bodl., MS Acland d.118, fol. 113, Agnes Cotton to William Charles Cotton, 1844.
42 Bamford, ed., Dear Miss Heber, 2; Everett, Adam Clarke portrayed, 1: 14–15; Gray, Almyra, ed, Papers and Diaries of a York Family, 1764–1839 (London, 1927), 21Google Scholar; Shore, ed., Shore Journal, 27–8 (1832).
43 MOL, YES, 48.85/6, Schemes of lessons, 1825–8; Langdon, Life, 67; Peterson, Jeanne, Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (Bloomington, IN, 1989), 36Google Scholar; Cambridge, Selwyn College Library, ‘Reminiscences by Mrs S. H. Sarah Selwyn, 1809, 1867, with an Introduction and Notes by Edith Evans, typed from a Typescript held by the Library of the Auckland War Memorial Museum’ (January 1892), 7, online at: <http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/037748>, last accessed 8 September 2018; Coleridge, Yonge, 96; White, Fire, 43; Fletcher, Growing up, 239, 228; Langdon, Roger, The Life of Roger Langdon, told by himself, with Additions by his Daughter Ellen (London, 1909), 23–6Google Scholar, 67.
44 Fletcher, Growing up, 130.
45 Tosh, Man's Place, 90–3; Hardyment, Christina, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (Oxford, 1984), 31–45Google Scholar; Davidoff, Leonore, Fink, Janet and Holden, Katharine, The Family Story: Blood, Kinship and Intimacy (London, 1999), 125Google Scholar, 149.
46 Tosh, Man's Place, 90–3; Davidoff, Fink and Holden, Family Story, 125, 149.
47 Fletcher autobiography, Part 1, 1; Gray, ed., Diary, 21.
48 White, Fire, 43.
49 Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, 94.
50 Everett, Adam Clarke portrayed, 1: 14–15.
51 Sandford, ed., Temple Memoirs, 18.
52 Gordon, Eleanor and Nair, Gwyneth, Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), 140Google Scholar, 47; Cheshire RO, Cotton Journals, vol. 11, fol. 3, June 1846 (Microfilm 3).
53 Henderson, Thomas, The Missionary's Wife (London, 1855), 99Google Scholar.
54 Langdon, Life, 23.
55 Fletcher, Growing up, 239, 222, 228.
56 Ryan, Linda A., John Wesley and the Education of Children: Gender, Class and Piety (London and New York, 2018), 44Google Scholar.
57 Adami, Keats, 71–2. The Keats siblings were orphans after the death of their father in 1804 and their mother in 1810.
58 MOL, YES, 48.85/6, 1825.
59 White, Fire, 43.
60 Bodl., MS Acland d. 189, fol. 114, Agnes Cotton to William Charles Cotton, 7 February 1847.
61 Bamford, Dear Miss Heber, 2.
62 Bodl., MS Acland d.106, fol. 36, Sarah Angelina Acland to Mrs Sarah Acland, 2 May 1858.
63 Taylor, ‘Memoirs’, 1: 23–5.
64 Meyer, Louisa Clara, The Author of The Peep of Day: Being the Life Story of Mrs Mortimer (London, 1908), 8Google Scholar; Green, Christian's ABC, 228.
65 Richardson, Alan, Literature Education and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780–1832 (Cambridge, 1994), 64–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Cohen, ‘Pedagogy as Conversation’, 447–63.
67 Fyfe, ‘Reading’, 470; Amies, ‘Amusing and Instructive Conversations’, 91–2.
68 Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, 92; Tovey, Anglican Confirmation, 197, 231.
69 Isaac Watts, Catechisms: Or, Instructions in the Principles of the Christian Religion and the History of Scripture, composed for Children and Youth, according to the different Ages. To which is prefix'd a discourse on the Way of Instruction by Catechisms, and the best Manner of composing them (London, 1730), 17; Green, Christian's ABC, 271.
70 Green, Christian's ABC, 272.There were no ‘proofs’ or Scripture references in his version for young children.
71 Stevens, Sylvia, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, 1690–1800 (Lampeter, 2012), 273Google Scholar; Wallace, ed., Susanna Wesley, 371; Gregory, Restoration, 273–8; Green, Christian's ABC, 228.
72 [John Wesley], Instructions for Children, 4th edn (Dublin, 1744).
73 Jacob, Clerical Profession, 237; William Wilson, The Instructor: Conducted by the Parochial Ministers of Walthamstow 1 (1836), 210.
74 MOL, YES, 48.85/6, 1825, Rule 1.
75 Green, Christian's ABC, 122, 228.
76 Fletcher autobiography, Part 1, 1.
77 Ibid. 4, 5.
78 Watts, Dissenters, 1: 426–8.
79 Gray, ed., Papers, 21.
80 Cited in Sangster, Paul, Pity my Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children, 1738–1800 (London, 1966), 41–2Google Scholar.
81 Henderson, Missionary's Wife, 100.
82 Wallace, ed., Susanna Wesley, 371.
83 Bowdler, Thomas, Memoir of John Bowdler, Esq. (London, 1825), 20Google Scholar.
84 Stevens, Quakers, 273; Darby, Abiah, Useful Instruction for Children, by way of Question and Answer (London, 1763)Google Scholar, iii, v–vi.
85 Haldane, Elizabeth Sanderson, ed., Mary Elizabeth Haldane (1825–1925): A Record of a Hundred Years (London, 1925), 45Google Scholar.
86 Everett, Adam Clarke portrayed, 1: 14–15.
87 Shore, ed., Shore Journal, 27–8 (23 December 1832).
88 Sandford, ed., Temple Memoirs, 1: 16, 19. There were eight surviving children, born between 1806 and 1823.
89 Maitland, Frederic W., Life of Leslie Stephen (London, 1906), 25Google Scholar.
90 Cheshire RO, Cotton Journals, vol. 11, fol. 3, June 1846 (Microfilm 3).
91 Wilberforce, Bertrand A. H., A Memoir of Mother Frances Raphael, OSD (Augusta Theodosia Drane): Sometime Prioress Provincial of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of S. Catherine of Siena, Stone; with some of her Spiritual Notes and Letters (London, 1895), xxGoogle Scholar.
92 Coleridge, Yonge, 17.
93 Edward Ranulph Kenyon, ‘Letter to my Grandchildren’, 5, in private hands.
94 Frances Margaret Taylor, ‘Memoirs, Book I, 1894–1927’, 23–5, in private hands.
95 Walthamstow, Waltham Forest Archives, Acc. 10185, Joel Johnson memoir, 1731; Green, Christian's ABC, 80–3.
96 Deacon, Malcolm, Philip Doddridge of Northampton, 1702–51 (Northampton, 1980), 67Google Scholar, 158 n. 67.
97 Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, 92.
98 Darby, Useful Instruction, iii, v, vi.
99 Memoir of the late Eliezer Cogan, from the Christian Reformer for April 1855 (London, 1855), 5; Priestley, Memoir, 5.
100 Meyer, Author, 8–9.
101 Henderson, Missionary's Wife, 100.
102 Wyon, Olive, The Three Windows: The Story of Ann Hunter Small (London, 1953), 10Google Scholar.
103 Kennedy, James, Memoir of Margaret Stephen Kennedy (London, 1892), 235Google Scholar.
104 Everett, Adam Clarke portrayed, 1: 14–15.
105 Churton, Edward, Memoir of Joshua Watson, 2 vols (London, 1861), 2: 11–16Google Scholar.
106 MOL, YES, 48.85, List of books, 1825.
107 Russell, George W. E., The Household of Faith: Portraits and Essays (London, 1902), 240–1Google Scholar.
108 Kew, TNA, Sharpe Papers, Box 13/91, William Sharpe memoir, fol. 33.
109 Fox, E. J., Memoir of Mrs Eliza Fox: To which Extracts are added from the Letters and Journals of her Husband W. J. Fox (London, 1869), 8–9Google Scholar; Fletcher, Growing up, 254.
110 Maitland, Stephen, 25.
