A PRETTY GOOD DOSE OF PATRONAGE, EXETER, 1844.

The Western Times of  6th April 1844 set out, not for the first time,  to inform its readers that Henry Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter, (Exeter was then the seat of the bishop for Devon and Cornwall), was a decidedly worldly Christian:

     "....we beg to remind our readers , and the admirers and friends of Bishop Philpotts in particular, that admitting the efficacy of his prelatical labours they have been fitful in the extreme, when compared with his steady labours to reward & exalt the pious and exemplary members of his own family. 

" Lowe, it will be remembered, received the lucrative post of Precentor, on the nomination of Bishop Philpotts, and Bishop Philpott's son immediately stepped into two fat livings which Precentor Lowe had vacated.

"Nephew Philpott's hath a valuable living in Cornwall.

"Son Philpotts hath Stokeinteighnhead, and is also Precentor of Exeter Cathedral/

"Son-in-law Stephens is Sub-Dean and Vicar of Dunsford, and Son-in-law de Bouilli hath also the valuable living of Lawhitton.

"Here is a pretty good dose of patronage for people all talking about the primitive church, and declaring that we must recede more and more towards the primitive simplicity of the early Christian church.""  

The patronage continued far beyond 1844. It was the Cornish socialist historian, A.L. Rowse,   (A Cornish Childhood,  Jonathan Cape, 1943) who best summed up Phillpotts when he wrote that he was: "a nauseating character....a nasty political pamphleteer who recommended himself thus for ecclesiastical propmotion to the Tory reactionaries of before the Reform Bill, who recommended himself still more by marrying Lord Eldon's niece, a grabber of every scrap of church preferment he could lay hands on to serve his family -  he had seven sons in Orders and almost as many sons-in-law;  who kept clear of his cathedral city the whole time of the cholera, an oppressor of the poor, who built himself a fine marine villa at Torquay (now the Palace Hotel), from which he administered his diocese and went up to London to speak in the House of Lords on behalf of every bad cause." 

It is said that, when in the House, Phillpotts fulminated against every reform of the age in a manner that shocked even his fellow diehards and that when in his diocese, in the name of reform, he put fear rather than love into the hearts of his clergy.

The Times here consistently misspelled Phillpott's name. Perhaps they only did it to annoy because they knew it teased.

We still have nauseating bishops and we have 26 bishops in the House of Lords -   Lords spiritual, but not very!