Clergy Support Trust

Clergy Support Trust is a charity which was formerly (until March 2019) known as Sons & Friends of the Clergy. The full official name of the charity is "Governors of the Charity for Relief of the Poor Widows and Children of Clergymen". The present charity resulted from an amalgamation of two Anglican clergy support charities in December 2012. The two parent organisations, the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy and the Friends of the Clergy Corporation, date from 1655 and 1820 respectively. The charity exists to provide financial and other support to serving or retired clergy of the Anglican Communion, with a main focus on clergy in the British Isles (that is the Church of England, including the Diocese in Europe, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland, but also including missionary clergy serving overseas with an Anglican mission society). It also provides assistance to clergy widows, children, orphans, and other dependants.
Foundation.
The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy was established in 1655 in response to the distress of the large number of clergymen who were dispossessed of their livings under the regime of Oliver Cromwell. Those who were loyal to the crown and adhered to the traditional form of service were displaced. One of the main instigators of the charity was Edward Wake, who was uncle of William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury. The founders were merchants of the City of London and priests of the Church of England, all of whom were themselves sons of clergymen. The first fundraising events were on 8 November 1655, when a Festival Service was held in Old St Paul's Cathedral, followed by a dinner in the Merchant Taylors' Hall. Collections were taken at each and these events have continued ever since. The charity also had generous support from important and influential people.
Royal Charter.
When Charles II came to the throne, the supporters of the charity sent a message of loyal greeting and in 1678 the King granted the charity a Royal Charter. This Charter committed the administration of the “Charity for Releefe of the poore Widdowes and Children of Clergymen” to a “Court of Assistants”. The Court of Assistants consisted of a President, a vice-president, three Treasurers and up to forty-two Assistants, elected each year from the Governors. The Court first met on 15 July 1678 in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey. The corporation's President was John Dolben, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, whilst the Vice-President was Sir Christopher Wren.
A modernised version of the Royal Charter, based on the model articles of association for a charity in England and Wales, was approved by the Governors of the charity in November 2019 and by Her Majesty the Queen (the charity's Patron) through an Order in Council in February 2020.
Sons of the Clergy.
As time passed the corporation, maintaining its full name, but commonly operating under the shorter name "Sons of the Clergy", became a wider charity for clerical families and provided support such as the payment of the apprenticeship indentures. The charity obtained properties such as a house in Salisbury Square and other church land, and advowsons. The charity was not free from abuse. In 1731 Valens Comyn achieved great distinction in its service by uncovering the fraudulent activities of one of the Treasurers, who had been double listing widows whose pensions he was responsible for paying and lining his pockets on the proceeds.
Clergy Orphan Corporation.
In 1749 a Society was formed for the purpose of founding both a Boys' and Girls' school for the maintenance and education of the orphans of Anglican Clergyman in England and Wales. This society was incorporated in 1809 as "The Governors of the Society for Clothing, Maintaining, and Educating Poor Orphans of Clergymen of the Established Church in that part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain called England, until of Age to be put to Apprentice" by Act 49 of George III of 28 April 1809. The common name for the organisation was the "Clergy Orphan Corporation" and the two schools it supported were generally known as the "Clergy Orphan Schools". Initially the boys were educated under a master in Thirsk in Yorkshire and the girls in a school-house in Chapel Street, Lisson Grove, Marylebone, London. The boys moved to Acton, London in 1805, and in 1812 both the girls and boys were moved to St. John's Wood in London.
In 1852 Dr Samuel Wilson Warneford, purchased a site for a new school in Canterbury and provided funds for the construction of a school and for scholarships. This led to the Boys' School moving to Canterbury and the Girls' School taking over the whole of the St John's Woods site
. The boys school was renamed St. Edmunds in 1897. It is now an independent co-educational schools for boys and girls from 3 to 18.
The girl's school was compulsorily purchased by a railway company in 1895 and demolished. The girls, after a temporary stay in Windsor, moved to a purpose built school at St Merry Hill Road, Bushey, Hertfordshire. The new school was designed by the renowned architect Alfred Waterhouse who was responsible for such buildings as the Natural History Museum in London and many other buildings. The school was named for Saint Margaret of Scotland. It is now an independent day and boarding school for girls.
The Schools Enquiry Commission report (1868) found that the expenditure on both schools was just under £7,500 in 1864, with roughly half for each school. The expenses of the charity administration, printing, appeals, elections, managing bequests etc., were approximately £730. Although both schools could nominally accommodate 100 pupils, there are accommodation for only 90 in the Girls School. In the second half of 1886 there were 85 boarders in the Boys' School, and in 1864 there were 76 boarders in the Girls' School, although this rose to 83 before the Commission printed their report.
The two schools, St Edmund's School Canterbury and St Margaret's School, Bushey were incorporated as limited companies and separate charities on 20 May 1996 and no longer formed part of the Clergy Orphan Corporation. The Clergy Orphan Corporation was fully incorporated into the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy in 1997, via Statutory Instrument 1997 No, 2240 "Charities".
Election to the schools.
The school Bye-Laws provided that children would be elected into the Schools at the General Courts in May and November, and that elections would take place by ballot. A circular containing the name, age, and circumstances of the several candidates to each subscriber one month prior to the election. This was then returned with marks against the names that the subscriber supported. The annual subscription was £1 1s (one guinea). At the November 1868 General Court, ten boys and six girls were elected as students. The number of votes was from 3,139 to 4,717 for boys and 2,330 to 4,721 for girls. The system of electing students continued until 1903. A 1868 newspaper newspaper notices stated that a life subscription was ten guineas, but the Schools Enquiry Commission reports gave it as twenty guineas (£21). However the ten guinea figure appears to be correct as this was the lifetime subscription quoted in the appeal for the schools in October 1871.
Why the schools were needed.
The reason that such schools were needed in the 19th century is simple. Farr's "Life Table No. 3" show that in the period 1838 to 1864 an man who reached the age of 25, the age at which many young clergymen would have completed their academic training and been ordained, had an roughly one in three chance of dying before he was 55. In truth, the odds were better than this as Clergymen suffered lower mortality than other professions, and the risk of a clergyman of 25 dying by age 55 was about one in four in 1861–1871. Wyatt, in 1887, found the risk was less than one in six, but this analysis excluded the unhealthiest lives, and he noted that mortality rates for younger ages were reducing over time. By contrast, the latest life table from the UK's Office of National Statistics, "Life Table No. 17" based on data in 20102012 shows that the risk of man aged 25 dying before 55 was less than one in twenty. The significant risk in the 18th and 19th centuries, that a clerical family would lose the main breadwinner before all of the children were launched into the world led to the founding of the Clergy Orphan Schools.
Not all churches in the UK suffered from this problem. Widows and orphans of the clergymen of the Presbyterian Scottish Establishment were not forced into poverty, as they benefited from annuities paid from the compulsory assurance scheme for the clergy of that church. The scheme was begun as a voluntary one, but was soon made compulsory. However, the editor of the "Ecclesiastical Gazette" commented that when considering the system of assurance in the Established Church in Scotland, "It appears to be generally agreed that the compulsory system could not be worked conveniently in our own Church Establishment; but many think that a voluntary scheme might be adopted with great success." This statement was made in spite of the evidence from the Scottish scheme that it only worked once it was compulsory, and it also ignored the pertinent fact the voluntary solutions already existed through such as the Clergy Mutual Assurance Society. Over 7,000 clergy had joined the Clergy Mutual Assurance Society between 1829 and 1887.
Friends of the Clergy.
In 1820 another charity was established for the relief of poor clergymen and their families. Founded by Phyllis Peyton and the writer Mary Lamb, the "Clothing Society for the Benefit of Poor Pious Clergymen" grew rapidly, and following several changes of name (and amalgamations with smaller charities, culminating in the Friends of the Clergy Corporation Act 1972), became in modern times the Friends of the Clergy Corporation.
The extent of clerical poverty.
Only a fifth of the Anglican clergy active in 1839 had links to the Gentry or Peerage. Presumably, these had some inherited wealth. The others depended on what they could earn. About one quarter of the clergy were considered to be comfortably off, with at least £500 per annum in 1830. Ordained Church of England ministers had a number of potential sources of income:
This is the reason why there were so many charities established to assist Clergymen and their widows and orphans. The list of such charities prepared by the editor of the "Ecclesiastical Gazette" in 1859 shows some 59 central, and 153 Diocesan charities for the assistance of the Clergy.
Amalgamation of charities.
During the twentieth century the Sons of the Clergy Corporation and the Friends of the Clergy Corporation found increasing opportunities to support each other's work, and to cooperate on charitable projects. In 2005 they committed to finding a route to permanent union, with widespread sharing of resources. In 2006 they began a process of "common trusteeship" whereby the same people were appointed as Trustees of both charities. In 2007 the two Corporations moved into a single headquarters together, with a totally unified staff, remaining separate entities only in a legal and accountancy sense. The process of formally amalgamating the two Corporations was complex, but was completed in December 2012, when the Corporation of the Sons & Friends of the Clergy (usually referred to as just 'Sons & Friends of the Clergy") came into being. In March 2019 the charity changed its working name to Clergy Support Trust, to reflect the fact that almost a third of those in ordained Anglican ministry are now women, and the 'Sons & Friends' name was off-putting to many female clergy.
Charitable objects.
The charity's objects, as enshrined in its 1678 Royal Charter as subsequently amended by Order in Council in 1971, 2012, 2017 and 2020, are to support eligible beneficiaries in:
"...the relief or prevention of poverty or hardship or for the relief of illness and the promotion of health, whether physical or mental"
"Beneficiaries" are defined as follows:
"...members of the clergy, ordinands and the spouses, former spouses, children and dependants of living or deceased members or former members of the clergy or of ordinands."
Further definitions are as follows:
Modern operations.
Clergy Support Trust today is the largest charity helping clergy of the Anglican Communion in times of personal hardship, as well as their widows and other dependants. In 1998 Ross Clark wrote in The Independent that in the previous year 3,500 clergy had resorted to one of the two charities (still independent of each other at that date). This number has since fallen as the combined charity now focuses its work on those in greatest need. The charity is based in a Grade 2 listed building at 1 Dean Trench Street, Westminster, which address was for a while after WW1 the home of Winston Churchill. In 2019 the charity's income, mostly from investments, was £4.3 million, while the long-term investments as at 31 December 2019 totalled £117.3 million with another £2.4 million in net assets. The charity had seen a rise of £16.5 million in the value of its investments during the year.
Anglican clergy today receive broadly comparable stipend payments, starting at just under £25k a year for full-time clergy, unlike an earlier age when levels of payment varied enormously, according to the assets of the individual parish. Stipendiary clergy also usually receive a clergy house and associated expenses as part of their remuneration. Nonetheless, clergy and their dependants still sometimes find themselves in financial hardship. Grants are made to assist such clergy, and also in relation to health problems, whether physical or mental. In 2019 the charity expended a record £4.06 million on charitable activities, and £0.33 million on running the charity (including maintaining an office, appeals etc.). The charity also partners with other charities and organisations engaged in the well-being of Anglican clergy.
During the 1970s and 1980s the charity maintained and operated Chatsworth Gardens in Eastbourne as a clergy holiday home. This very large house, donated by the elderly owner during her lifetime, was converted into a series of large apartments, and whilst the donor continued to live in one herself, the others were maintained by the charity as clergy holiday flats. Many clergy families of that era have common memories of the Eastbourne clergy holiday homes. Chatsworth Gardens was however an expensive asset, and was eventually sold.
The Festival.
The annual Festival service at St Paul's Cathedral, which began on 8 November 1655, has continued ever since, and is a major event annually in the calendar of the charity and of the cathedral. Senior clergy and City figures, including the Lord Mayor of London or his or her representative, are usually involved in the event, and in the life of the charity, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of York and Bishop of London serving as Presidents. With two cathedral choirs usually joining the choir of St Paul's, and with several composers such as Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar having written pieces for the event, the Festival is now one of the oldest and best known choral events in the Anglican Communion.
Festival cathedral choirs since 2000 (in addition to the Choir of St Paul's)
Executive leadership.
Register of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy
Registrar of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy
Registrar of Sons & Friends of the Clergy and later Clergy Support Trust (Chief Executive from 2017)
Officers of the charity.
Presidents
From 1716 to 2017 the post of President was always held "ex officio" by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In November 2017 Archbishop Justin Welby became Honorary President.
Vice Presidents (usually a senior judge)
Incorporated bodies.
Over the many years of history of this charity, its legal status has changed several times, and a large number of smaller charities have been incorporated into it by merger, amalgamation, or takeover. The following former clergy charities are all now incorporated into the current day Corporation of the Sons & Friends of the Clergy: