The Winchester Bishop who put family first

In Winchester Cathedral, at the top of the steps to the south transept is a white statue of a man, kneeling in prayer. This is Bishop Brownlow North, Winchester’s 80th Bishop and one of its longest serving. He was appointed in 1781, when he was only 41. In a whirlwind career he had previously been made Bishop of Worcester in 1774, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1771 and Dean of Canterbury Cathedral in 1770. The reason for this rapid rise through the church hierarchy is explained by the Prime Minister’s response to the comment that at only 31 wasn’t North a little young to be a Bishop (of Lichfield), “No doubt my brother is young to be a Bishop but when he is older, he will no longer have a brother for Prime Minister.”

The Prime Minister, Lord North, (Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford) was the son of Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford and his first wife Lady Lucy Montagu, while Brownlow North was Francis’s son with his second wife, Elizabeth Kaye, Lady Lewisham. Lord North was the Prime Minister at the time some American colonies won their independence and formed the United States of America.

Born in 1741 into this aristocratic network, Brownlow followed a conventional route to Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. After graduating in 1762 he was elected a Fellow of All Souls, as “Founder’s Kin”. Then followed his rapid career. In 1771 as well as assuming his first bishopric, he married Henrietta Maria Bannister and they had their first child. Five more were born in the next seven years. A seventh was born in 1785.

While Brownlow was Bishop of Worcester, the Archbishop of York died. Lord North asked for Brownlow to be given the post and when the King said that he had already chosen the next Archbishop, Lord North asked if Brownlow could have Winchester when it became vacant. This was granted.

North had strong reasons for seeking Winchester. Winchester was amongst the richest dioceses in England and the incumbent, John Thomas, was already over 80.

The diocese stretched from the New Forest (and the Channel Islands) to the Thames at Southwark and included what are now the dioceses of Guildford, Portsmouth and Southwark. The Bishop received the revenues from large areas of property (including, historically, the brothels of Southwark whose prostitutes were called Winchester Geese).

He had palaces in Winchester, Farnham and Southwark, but he preferred to live at Winchester House in Chelsea when in London, and at Farnham Castle the rest of the year. He and his wife had a strong interest in botany (he was a member of the Linnean Society) and they carried out a major programme of improvements to the gardens at Farnham.

The Bishop sat in the House of Lords, but was generally not active in politics, claiming it was ‘a great deal too like the Game of Snap-dragon, which I dislike, because it burns my fingers’. Snap-Dragon required players to pick raisins out of  a shallow dish filled with burning brandy.

Both the Bishop and his wife suffered ill-health. He had to call on other Bishops to carry out ordinations between 1783 and 1785 and then again for nearly five years from 1791 when he, his wife, family and servants travelled abroad in a convoy of three coaches emblazoned with the Bishop’s coat of arms.

But the most striking aspect of his episcopacy, both to modern eyes and to his contemporaries, was his use of his position to provide comfortable lives for his extended family.

The basic building block of the Church of England is the parish, a physical area with a church. These are grouped into deaneries which form a Bishop’s Diocese. Each parish legally had a resident parish priest (incumbent), required to carry out two services each Sunday as well christen, marry and carry out funeral services for the parishioners. The parish also had secular responsibilities, (for example care of the poor) which were carried out by senior members of the parish, meeting as the Vestry. These functions were separated from the religious role with the creation of the civil parishes in 1894.

The incumbent was in most cases not chosen by the Bishop, but was presented to the Bishop by a patron. This might be the lord of the manor of the parish, an Oxford or Cambridge college, a religious organisation (the Master and Brethren of St Cross, for example) and in a number of cases the Bishop.

North’s 40 years in office coincided with increasing national concern about pluralism, that is priests holding multiple posts, and, as a result of this and for other factors, the large numbers of parishes with non-resident priests. These absences were usually, but not always, covered by a curate, often poorly paid.

Reflecting the concern for family that his half-brother, Lord North, had shown, Bishop North exercised his patronage rights across his extended family, including direct relatives, in-laws and even, in at least one case, the brother of an in-law, Rev. George Garnier, who later became Dean of Winchester for 32 years. In the most detailed biography of North, published in the Winchester Cathedral Record, Tom Kipling estimates that “At least 26 individuals received about 70 appointments to 50 churches between 1785 and 1820.”

The major beneficiary from North’s appointment programme was his eldest son, Francis (Lord Guilford after 1827). He was Rector of St Mary, Southampton, held the combined livings of Old Alresford, New Alresford, and Medstead, was a Canon of the Cathedral, and was Master of St Cross – for which he later became notorious nationally. But that is a story for another time.

The objections to the use of nepotism on this scale include failure to appoint the most appropriate person to a role, enriching a small number of people, lack of continuity in a parish, as once on the Bishop’s family list you were likely to be offered more financially attractive parishes as these became vacant. Also, since many of these posts were held in plurality, lack of residence.

It is this last which theologically is the most damning. In the middle of the 18th century Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury made it clear that he expected clergy to be resident to look after all aspects of their parishioners’ lives, not just to conduct the services. The first charge to the clergy by North’s successor, George Pretyman Tomline, included a strong statement of the same message.

Judging Brownlow North, not by the standards of the 21st century but by those of his contemporaries, it is not difficult to find a poor shepherd to his flock.

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