Historical Insights on the Clergy of the Church of England

With colleagues at Durham and Kent universities, an historian at King’s has developed the biggest online assembly of historical data on the Anglican church in the Clergy of Church of England Database 1540-1835 (CCEd), shedding interesting light on the lives of its clergy. The clerical ancestor of the actress Patsy Kensit and a globetrotting vicar caught up in the American War of Independence might sound like unlikely bedfellows, but are just two of the extraordinary lives explored in the database, which brings together hundreds of thousands of records relating to the lives of Anglican clergymen over three key centuries of British history.

With colleagues at Durham and Kent universities, an historian at King’s has developed the biggest online assembly of historical data on the Anglican church in the Clergy of Church of England Database 1540-1835 (CCEd), shedding interesting light on the lives of its clergy. The clerical ancestor of the actress Patsy Kensit and a globetrotting vicar caught up in the American War of Independence might sound like unlikely bedfellows, but are just two of the extraordinary lives explored in the database, which brings together hundreds of thousands of records relating to the lives of Anglican clergymen over three key centuries of British history.

Founded in 1999 by Professor Arthur Burns and his colleagues and involving a large team of researchers nationwide, it provides a comprehensive historical record for both academics and the general public for the whole of the Anglican clergy working in England and Wales (and sometimes in North America, Australia and other colonies) from the Reformation to the start of the Victorian age. Offline records from more than sixty archives were compiled into a searchable online tool, which users can sift through according to their own needs – and may also contribute to according to their own findings.

‘It has been a pioneering project for us to use the public’s knowledge to enable us to do academic work, and enabling users to understand the importance of their ancestors’ lives,’ says Professor Burns. ‘We were one of the first teams to do this kind of work: it’s a good example of the way the development of the internet has opened up new possibilities for bringing the general public to us, and it also helps draw academics out of our ivory towers.’