“There’s many a dancing, fuddling, hunting priest;
These, you acknowledge, need Reform at least;
But then their studies relaxation plead,
That they their hungry flocks may sweetly feed;
That they a fifteen minute speech may make,
The studious product of the livelong week!”

So Richard Lower expressed his view of the typical Church of England cleric in a poem about the great movement for reform in social and political affairs that culminated in the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. Everyone favoured Reform, said the poem, but no one thought it applied to himself. It concluded with:

“Our country’s good – but self stands highest still!
Then cease your ‘patriotism’; boast no more;
Your hollow nonsense to the winds give o’er.
For after all that’s said and done,
True reformation goes from Number One.”

However, whether the 67-year old Reverend William Lashman, the Vicar of Chiddingly, was such a priest as Richard castigated is doubtful, for it seems he was one of those poor priests, serving a parish but benefiting little from the vast sums that were available to the Church. These revenues in a parish came from the tithes, a tax of 10% annually on each man’s produce, paid in kind unless arrangements had been made previously for a cash commutation. According to the 1839 Tithe Schedule, by which all tithes in Chiddingly were commuted into cash levies related to the value of property a man occupied and to the current price of corn, the total annual value of tithes in the parish amounted to around £800, considerably more than the 8s. a week received by a labourer in work. The Reverend Lashman, however, does not seem to have received any of this.