Scholars, Saints and Sinners: the stories of some of Norfolk’s more idiosyncratic clergy of the 19th and early 20th centuries

At a time when there were perhaps three or four parish priests caring for an area, which today may have just one, some Norfolk clergy found they had ample leisure time. How they used this time depended upon their own inclinations. Augustus Jessopp and Whitwell Elwin of Booton became well known in literary circles. Walter Marcon indulged his passion for cycling while rebuilding the church at Edgefield, Joseph Brereton was a leading educational reformer, while the eccentric Harold Davidson of Stiffkey claimed to have devoted his ministry to the salvation of London prostitutes - an approach which finally resulted in his being de-frocked in a notorious case, the equity of which, is still a matter of debate today. Norfolk born George Smith emigrated to South Africa and became one of the heroes of Rorke’s Drift. Some were less than exemplary. Thomas Berney, having successfully appealed against a court judgement that he had ‘solicited the chastity’ of both the wife and sister-in-law of a neighbouring clergyman became a legal groupie, bringing a series of bizarre actions, to the irritation of the court, while writing extremely eccentric pamphlets, largely influenced by his Francophobia. Edmund Holmes, suspected of the attempted rape of a young girl underwent an amazing transformation in a mental home, from inmate to chaplain in a matter of weeks, while the extraordinary Arthur Loftus recruited his housemaid and cook from a local brothel, sharing their less domestic services indiscriminately with his manservant. The allegedly fratricidal Lord Frederick Townshend, the agriculturist Thomas Munnings, the would be Indian missionary Frank Lillingston and the short-fused Augustus Beevor complete this collection of the stories of some of Norfolk’s idiosyncratic clergy.