It has been noted several times that Jane Austen poked fun at clergymen in her novels. Yet her father was a clergyman and her favorite brother became a clergyman after his bank in London failed. Jane adored both men.

In England, clergymen of the day (late 1700s and early1800s) in small local parishes, were rather casual. They didn’t have the responsibilities of today’s churchmen. There was no counseling of parishioners, devoutly religious sermons personally written or strictness of church guidelines. Their income did not necessarily come from the collection plate but from the surrounding farmers who paid in cash rather than produce.

Positions as parish clergymen were often bought from the wealthy landowner on whose land the parish church stood. He was the man living in the usually huge ‘country manor’ or in a castle. He would have owned the nearby town where the shopkeepers would pay him rent. He also collected rent from local farmers, from land he owned in Wales or Ireland and from land owned in the American colonies until the Revolutionary War ended that hold. Often he would be in parliament.