Nepotism, Family, and Merit: The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century

The debate on nepotism in the eighteenth century has developed more fully in the last five than in the preceding fifty years. Within the emergent professions nepotism was difficult to distinguish from the hereditary nature of recruitment into the Church, the law, and the army. The debate on nepotism in the Church has produced contrasting views, one regarding nepotism as a feature of the corruption and abuse that dogged the Church after 1714, the other suggesting that nepotism not only served a specific function, as it did among the laity, but was accorded moral legitimacy by contemporaries. The article suggests that nepotism took its place within the structure of patronage which included the recommendation of deserving clergy to the purveyors of patronage and the nomination of men of talent from the universities to the households of bishops.