NUMBER OF COMMUNICANTS. It must be acknowledged that throughout our period the laity received communion with a melancholy infrequency. Yet though celebrations were so rare, the number of communicants in proportion to the population of parishes will bear comparison with that in our day. No doubt to-day the total number of communions is much greater, for the same person, who in the eighteenth century only approached the Holy Table once a month, now receives communion once or twice a week, or even oftener. Dr. Symon Patrick, when at St. Paul's Covent Garden, says that he had often great Communions, and sometimes large offerings.' This was about 1680. Crowds would approach the Holy Table on certain occasions. Evelyn tells us on Oct. 7, 1688, only a month before the Revolution, when people's minds were full of the danger of the bringing back of popery : Dr. Tenison preach'd at St. Martine's. . . . After which neere 1000 devout persons partook of the communion. That a large number of people did approach the Altar in Queen Anne's time we learn from the expressions used by Nelson: "Where Communions are large we may want some Exercises for the Employing our devout Affections ".2 In 1712 Lord Willoughby de Broke says: never were our Churches so well filled; never our Communions so frequented; never more holy Zeal, more humble Devotion; never larger Charities, than what are constantly offered up at the Holy Table in every Church of this great City.3 At Manchester in 1738 Whitefield visited the chaplain of the "Old Church" and even took duty in his chapel of ease. Here he spent Sunday, December 3 [Advent Sunday] and preached twice in Clayton's church, [i.e. chapel of ease] to thronged and attentive congregations, and assisted six more clergymen in administering the sacrament to three hundred communicants.1 Later in 1748 he writes: 1 The autobiography of Symon Patrick, Oxford, Parker, 1839, p. 88. 2 Robert Nelson, The great duty of frequenting the Christian Sacrifice, London, Churchill, 1706, p. 136. * George, Lord Willoughby de Broke, Blessedness of doing good, London, Joseph Downing, 1712, p. 13. 4L. Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, Hodder and Stoughton, 1876, vol. i. 148. I have preached twice in St. Bartholomew's Church, and helped to administer the sacrament once. I believe, on Sunday last, we had a thousand communicants.1 Clayton, be it noticed, was the chaplain who was attacked by the Whigs at Manchester for high church practices. In 1745 as the young Chevalier passed, he knelt in the streets and prayed for his success. And it should be observed that the churches where these large numbers of communicants were found, were not the churches or chapels served by Whitefield himself, but by their regular incumbents. Of Romaine, the rector of St. Andrew's, Baynard Castle, in the city of London, it is said: The popular enthusiasm in favour of the new rector was such, that the papers of April 1767 assert, that he administered the sacrament to more than 500 persons on the Good Friday of that year, and to 300 on the following Sunday.2 But the figures which have just been given are in round numbers, taken from parishes in London or other large towns where even if we had exact figures given it would not be an easy matter to infer the proportion of communicants to the rest of the population. Yet if it be allowed us to judge from such figures of the period as are at hand, it would seem that the proportion of communicants to the population at large is not much higher nowadays than it was in the eighteenth century. In the first set of figures given below, that set out in 1676 by the Rector of Clayworth, the proportion would seem to be higher than is usual in the early part of the twentieth century. In reply to queries from the Archbishop of York as to the number of persons of age to receive the Communion, the Rector of Clayworth in 1676 replies: That the number of Persons Young and Old within the Parish of Claworth being under 400, there are of them of age to communicate (according to the Canon) 236, and these did actually communicate at our Easter Communion 200; that is to say on Palm Sunday, Good-friday and Easter-day.3 The numbers were divided as follows: Palm Sunday 50, Good Friday 37, Easter Day 113: in all, 200 as stated.* 1 L. Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, Hodder and Stoughton, 1876, vol. ii. p. 186. 2J. P. Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, London, 1803, vol. ii. p. 364. 'Harry Gill and Everard L. Guilford, The Rector's Book Clay worth Notts, Nottingham, Saxton, 1910, p. 18. 4 ibid. p. 14. Later on the Rector attempted three Celebrations at each of the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide; but these extra celebrations appear to have been given up; the communicants sank to 7, 4, and 3 only.1 A few years later we have figures from the Diocese of London. Hillingdon, Middlesex. 1682 This year on Easter Day was [? and] Low Sunday 300 persons received the communion, alarmed to their duty by an order from Henry [Compton], Lord Bishop of London.2 Mr. Messiter has published a very valuable account of the Church life in the small parish of Epworth in the eighteenth century. From the parish documents he has compiled a table of the number of communicants from 1742 to 1762. The lowest average is 34, the highest 70. Commenting upon this and the amount of money collected during the offertory, Mr. Messiter says: Thus, for example, it will be seen that in 1746 there was an average attendance of seventy at each Communion, and the total amount collected in the year was £4. 19s. 6d.; that in 1755 the average attendance was only thirty five, and the total amount collected £3. 4s. 3d.3 He adds that the largest attendance at any one Communion was on Christmas Day: "Dec. 25, 1744: 135 Communicants." On Easter Day, March 22, 1761, there were eighty-six communicants.* I have not been able to make out any certain data for the numbers of the inhabitants of Epworth in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1801, the first English census, the population was 1434. In 1901, it was 1856, having thus risen over 400 in the century. If it be allowed to make a guess at 1200 for the population in the mid-eighteenth century, and deducting a third for those not yet old enough to be communicants, we have some 800 possible communicants, and of these eighty-six communicated at Easter 1761 135 at Christmas 1744. To pass on to the very verge of the nineteenth century. 1 Harry Gill and Everard L. Guilford, The Rector's Book Clayworth Notts, Nottingham, Saxton, 1910, pp. 66, 74, 77, 91, 98, etc. 2J. S. Burn, The History of Parish Registers in England, sec. ed. London, J. R. Smith, 1862, p. 186. A. F. Messiter, Notes on Epworth Parish Life in the eighteenth century, Elliot Stock, 1912, p. 50. 4 • Op. cit. p. 53. In the year 1800 a sort of census is taken in the diocese of Lincoln and the clergy wring their hands over the results: In seventy-nine of those parishes returns have been made of the proportion which the number of attendants on public worship and of the Lord's Supper bears to their population. The aggregate result of these returns stands thus: The number of inhabitants is estimated at 15042 11282 In 79 Parishes Average number in the ordinary congregations 4933 Average number of communicants at each sacrament 1808 So that the ordinary number of attendants on divine service does not amount to one-third part of the number of inhabitants, and the communicants are not one-sixth part of the adults.1 The records of the diocese of St. Asaph for the year 1806 have been examined by Mr. Jebb. He tells us that he has taken the returns "at haphazard," and this is the varying result : In the parish of Llanfair Caereinion, with a population of 2,537, there were 750 communicants at Easter. Of Dissenters there were in the parish only 25 Methodists, and "9 to 12" persons who attended the Presbyterian meeting-house. In the parish of Llanfyllin, with a population of from 400 to 500, there were from 200 to 300 communicants at Easter. In the parish of Castle Caereinion, with a population of 635, there was "only one family of Calvinistic Methodists who do not receive the Holy Communion ". In the parish of Darwen, with 800 souls, there were no Dissenters of any denomination, and no meeting-house, and the monthly Communion was attended by from 72 to 84 persons. In the parish of Machynlleth, with a population of 2,154, there were from 50 to 60 Dissenters and 300 communicants.2 To compare the number of Easter communicants at the beginning of the nineteenth century with those in recent years. In 191112 in the diocese of Lincoln there was roughly speaking a population of 560,000, the communicants at Easter 46,000. Deducting a third from the population as not yet come to years of discretion, we get 380,000 as of age to receive communion and thus only an eighth part approached the Holy Table at Easter. Things are no better if we take the whole population of England. It was over 36 millions, from 1 Report from the Clergy of a district in the diocese of Lincoln, etc. London, Rivington, 1800, p. 6. 2 H. H. Jebb, A great bishop of one hundred years ago, London, Arnold, 1909, p. which a third deducted leaves 24 millions; yet only two and a half millions communicated at Easter, something like a tenth of what was possible.1 Thus there is no room for self-congratulation in the twentieth century over past times. We must say with Elijah: "I am not better than my fathers". NON-COMMUNICATING ATTENDANCE. A writer who claims to be "late of the University of Oxford" in a preface to a revised book of Common Prayer, after directing the Eucharist to be celebrated at evening service, though " it is now generally celebrated in the morning," passes on to recommend noncommunicating attendance: It appears, that we have not only lost sight of the time of the day in which this ordinance should be celebrated, but we have lost sight of the ancient practice, of celebrating it in the presence of the whole congregation, after the manner of the Catholics. For, instead of this, those that will not receive it, are now ordered to depart, that the doors may be closed: thus they appear to be ashamed of the Lord, at the very time they are about to partake of his supper! 2 Evidently this member of the University of Oxford had never heard of the expulsion of the catechumens. And fourteen years afterwards, another writer, though much better informed, suggests a Canon ordering non-Communicants not to leave their seats till the whole service be concluded. He objects to the premature departure of baptized non-communicants directly after the sermon.3 CEREMONIES IN WORSHIP. The ceremonies of Anglican worship in this period were doubtless simple enough; but, given a will to see evil in them, they could no doubt be misrepresented and exaggerated, and a decent pomp be held up to scorn as theatrical. Thus one Easter Day, April 15, 1666, Mr. Pepys goes to the King's Chapel at Whitehall: I staid till the King went down to receive the Sacrament, and stood in his closett with a great many others, and there saw him receive it, which I 1 Official Year-Book of the Church of England, 1913, London, S. P.C.K. p. xxviii. 2 A new arrangement of the Liturgy, London, Baynes, 1820, p. iv. by a Gentleman late of the University of Oxford. 3 Montagu Robert Melville, Esq., Reform not subversion! A Proposed Book of Common Prayer, London, Roake and Varty, 1834, p. 94, Canon xxviii. |