30
30
impropriation was sacrilege and brought upon the robbers of the Church
inevitable retribution
[
see particularly
43
and
47].
At the other extreme
lawyers (and some clergy, eventually) scoffed at the notion of supernatural
intervention, as did one of Plume’s Bishops of Rochester [11] and as did
Gilbert Burnet [57]. But in practice it was the effect of this plundering of
church revenues which was the real evil. Plume recalled how Dr Hacket
“
would bewail the Sacrilege committed upon very many poor Vicarages”
[3.2(
b)] because the loss of income prevented ministers from buying books
to increase their learning.
Dr Plume’s private attitude may have leant towards the views of Sir Henry
Spelman, for in a different matter of church land of which he found himself
to be in possession, he converted it all to charitable uses [39.1], but, as he
made his Will, a Bill was being prepared for Parliament which would convert
former church revenues, appropriated to the Crown since 1534, into the fund
called Queen Anne’s Bounty for increases to clerical stipends [39.3] and he
had in mind similar measures to improve the incomes of the poorer clergy.
£1,000 was allocated “for buying in of tythes to small livings in any great
towns or villages where the Living is not worth an hundred pounds”; the
household goods in his residences at Greenwich and Rochester were to be
divided among any ten poor ministers of the diocese; 100 parishes were to
get gifts of £1; and two clergy (the ministers of Hadlow, Kent, and Fordham,
Essex) were each to receive £100. Then he altered his mind (or found he had
overspent) and replaced the bounty of £1,000 with a gift of only £400 “to
augment the Vicarage of All Saints, Maldon, by buying in impropriate tithes
or so much glebe as may be had for the same”. Perhaps Dr Plume decided
that his money could be better disposed than in competing with the funds for
the same purpose which would become available from Queen Anne’s
Bounty. His change of mind left this Library as his principal attempt to
ensure that the clergy in the Maldon area and the gentry of central eastern
Essex might be as learned as they had been in the years before the Civil
Wars.
In the late 19th century Maldon’s civic leaders wanted to celebrate famous
local men. There seemed to be few worthies who were truly sons of the town
except Thomas Plume, of whom the Town Clerk reported that he was its
greatest benefactor but “the