"NO GOOD TO SAY 'CANNOT' HERE!", EXETER, 1847.

 The Church of England liked to claim to be 'The Poor Man's Church'.  The radical Western Times, (23rd January 1847) used these four words with heavy irony to head a short column reporting the efforts of two magistrates and a clergyman at the Castle of Exeter  to extract money from poor 'dissenters' and others from Heavitree who saw no justice in being invited to pay a rate they could not afford to a church they did not respect.  Below are some excerpts from that report:

"Mary Stevenson, a Quakeress, had been summoned; but would neither pay nor answer the summons.  The Chairman said - 'Oh, she's a Quaker - they won't pay' and a warrant was granted for 12s 6d and expences."

"The wife of a labourer called Russell, said  'She would try to do it - but she had five little children and did not know how'  She was threatened with increased costs and a warrant."

"Richard Taylor, - His wife said she could not pay it. Mr Gordon told her that a warrant would be issued and the witnesses sworn and goods taken, which expenses, with auctioneer, &c. would come to 7s or 8s. .... at length she promised to pay it in three instalments."

"Thomas Manning was not able.  His wife died the other day, in child bed, leaving three infant children - and he owed a twelve months rate,  and had not 5s worth of goods in his house....He was ordered to pay 7s 10d but said he could as soon pay £7, and could not see his children starve."

"Thomas Wilson, - His wife said 'I cannot pay.'  Mr. Pitman said - 'It's no good to say cannot here' -  'Be I to starve my children?' said she.  'They have not a shoe to their foot.'"

The unsavoury trio trying these cases was fighting a losing battle.  It was issuing warrants, distraining goods, threatening poor men with prison and saddling people with punitively high 'costs', all in the name of The Church.  The injustice of the Church Rate would not go away.  It divided the country. 

Twenty-one years later the Church Rate was abolished by statute.

(The letters I keep getting from the BBC TV 'Enforcement Officer' pale to insignificance.  

But be I to starve my children?)

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