Nottingham City Centre Church Group

1686 - 1810

The Vicars of St Mary’s Church, 1686 - 1810

Samuel Crowbrow, M.A. D.D.

Fellow of Queen’s College Cambridge 1668 - 1679, Prebendary of Southwell 1678 - 1690, Prebendary of York 1680 - 1690, Rector of Barton-in-Fabis, Nottinghamshire 1680 - 1689, Archdeacon of Nottingham 1685 - 1690
Vicar of St Mary’s Church, Nottingham 10 Nov 1686 - 1690

Son of Hastings Crowbrow of Repton, Derbyshire. Master of Bawtry Hospital, Yorkshire. Non-juror. Samuel Crowbrow (or Crowborough) was ejected in 1690 for refusing, like Archbishop Sancroft and some of the higher clergy, to take the oath to King William.

Benjamin Camfield, M.A. (d. 12 Sept 1693)

Probable Rector of Whitwell, 1663 - 1672, Prebendary of Southwell, 1669 - 1693, Chaplain to the Earl of Rutland, Rector of Aylestone 1672/3 - 1693
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 2 Aug 1690 - 1693

Son of Nathaniel Camfield of London. Benjamin Camfield’s patron was the Earl of Kingston. He died aged 56 on 12 Sept 1693.

Timothy Caryl, M.A. (d. 13 Sept 1721)

Ordained 1689
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 25 Oct 1694 - 1698
Rector of Cotgrave 1698 - 1721, Prebendary of Southwell 1695 - 1721

Son of Sampson Caryl. Timothy Caryl’s patron was the Earl of Kingston.

Edward Clarke, M.A. (d. 1729)

Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 19 Aug 1698 - 1708
Prebendary of Southwell 1701 - 1729, Rector of Hazelbeach 1711 - 1729, Rector of Bugbrooke, 1728 - 1729

Son of ‘Josuae’ Clarke of Baconsthorpe, Norfolk. Edward Clarke’s patron was the Earl of Kingston.

Samuel Berdmore, M.A. (d. 24 Mar 1742/3)

Ordained 1699, Curate at Mersham 1697
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 15 June 1708 - 1723
Prebendary of Southwell 1713 - 1742/3, Rector of Lambley 1714 - 1719, Rector of Holme Pierrepont, 1719 - c.1722, Rector of Cotgrave, 1722 - 1724, Vicar General of Southwell, Canon of York, 1735

Son of Rev. Edward Berdmore of Worcester. Samuel Berdmore’s patron was the Marquis of Dorchester.

John Disney, M.A (1677 - 1729/30)

Vicar of Croft and Kirkby-on-Bain, Lincolnshire 1719 - 1722
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 2 Oct 1722 - 1729/30

Son of Daniel Disney of Swinderby. John Disney was born at Lincoln on 26 Dec 1677 and was educated at the grammar school. His parents were dissenters and he moved school to a private college, also in Lincoln. Despite his upbringing he was confirmed in the Church of England, sometime before 1698. In May of that year, he married Mary Woodhouse. He entered the Middle Temple in order to study law, but with no intention of practising at the bar. He gained sufficient knowledge to act as a competent magistrate and more than once was publicly complemented by the judges of the circuit for being efficient and impartial.
As a supporter of the societies for the reform of manners he was working on a publication Corpus Legum de Moribus Reformandis shortly before his death.

Until the age of 42 he worked as a lay churchman and then he entered holy orders, encouraged by the archbishop of Canturbury, William Wake, who had been bishop of Lincoln in Disney’s early days. He was ordained priest in Lincoln cathedral in 1719 by the bishop of Lincoln (Edmund Gibson), and immediately took the nearby livings of Croft and Kirkby-on-Bain. In 1722 he resigned these and became vicar of St. Mary’s.

The story for which Disney is remembered involves the buccaneering Archbishop Blackburne performing confirmation in St. Mary’s. At the end of the proceedings, the archbishop sent out his messenger to fetch his pipe, tobacco and some ale. The messenger, returning laden up the aisle, was ejected by the Rev. John Disney with the words Neither Bishop nor Archbishop shall make a tippling house of St. Mary’s so long as I am its Vicar.

Upon his death on 3 Feb 1729-30, he left behind a widow and eight children, five sons and three daughters. The entry for his death in the parish registers is followed by the abbreviation “Aff.”. This was in accordance with the law passed in 1678, which demanded an affidavit that the bodies had been buried in woollen shrouds.

His writing mostly relating to the societies for the reformation of manners was prolific, but he also found time to research and publish The Geneology of the most Serene and Illustrious House of Brunswick-Lunenburgh, the present Royal Family of Great Britain in 1714

St. Mary’s has a copy of one of the books by Disney A View of Ancient Laws against Immorality and Profaneness, Cambridge, 1729. This book has a handwritten inscription on the title page Swinderby Library, which meant nothing until recently. Mr. Disney Keble, parishioner and one time churchwarden at St. John the Baptist in Beeston, is a descendent of the Disney family, and unusually takes their surname as his christian name. His studies into the Disney family have brought out the Swinderby connection. Disney’s grandson (1746-1816), also John, was vicar of Swinderby in Lincolnshire from 1769 until 1782. More information on the succeeding generations of Disney’s can be found here.

Thomas Berdmore, M.A. (d.1743)

Ordained 1728, Curate of Colwick 1728 - 1732, Curate of St. Peter’s Nottingham 1728 - 1730
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 9 Jan 1730/1 - 1743

Probably son of Matthew Berdmore of St. Gregory’s, London. Thomas Berdmore’s patron was the Archbishop of York. He was buried on 11 Sept 1743 at Sneinton.

Scrope Berdmore, D.D. (b. 19 Feb 1708/9 - d. 16 Feb 1770)

Ordained 1733/4
Rector of Holme-Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire 1740 - 1770
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 29 Oct 1743 - 1770
Prebendary of Southwell Minster 1749 - 1769, Vicar-General, Vicar of Cropwell Bishop, Nottinghamshire c.1769 - 1770

Scrope Berdmore was the son of Samuel Berdmore (see above) and was baptised in St. Mary’s on 7 March 1708/9. Scrope Berdmore’s patron was the Duke of Kingston. He died on 16 February 1770 “after many years confined by the gout”.

Nathan Haines, D.D. (b. ca.1735/6 - d. 27 Apr 1806)

Ordained 1761
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 24 Mar 1770 - 1806
Rector of Weston, 1770 - 1797, Curate of Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire 1772 - 1799, Prebendary of Southwell 1788 - 1806, Perpetual Curate of Tong, Yorkshire 1789 - 1806, Domestic Chaplain to Viscount Newark (later Earl Manvers) 1796 - 1806, Rector of Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire 1797 - 1806

Nathan Haines came from Dorset. He was the son of the Rev. John Haines of Cattistock. Nathan’s wife’s cousin, Elizabeth Chudleigh was the wife of Evelyn Pierrepont, the second Duke of Kingston, whose family had bought the living of St. Mary’s in 1616, and this connection probably secured Haines the living in 1770.

Although Nottingham was a strong dissenting town, relationships between Anglicans and Dissenters were largely cordial; many dissenters attending chapel and receiving communion in their parish church. It was widely recognised that the poor of the town received more charity from the Anglican clergy than from any of the dissenting ministers.

In 1801, the Nottingham Journal published figures for St. Mary’s - 3,872 inhabited houses, 5,312 families, 10,895 males and 11,759 females, giving a parish population of 22,654. This was double the figure in 1770 when Haines took the living.

During Haines incumbency, the cordial relations between Anglicans and dissenters deteriorated. In 1799, shots were fired through the vicarage bedroom window, “manifestly with a destructive and malicious intent” while Dr and Mrs Haines were asleep in bed. In 1800, the Nottingham Journal reported loitering, gaming and other nuisances in the churchyard during divine service. In 1801, the vestry demanded the restoration of the right to elect one of the churchwardens, and “during this time some highly reprehensible irregularities were committed in the church”. The election of a sexton in 1805 turned into a party-political affair with the parading of rival banners. By 1806, the year of Haines death, railings were erected around the churchyard with lockable gates and the age-old footway across the churchyard dug-up and discontinued.

Adapted with kind permission from The Anglican Church in the Industrialised Town, St. Mary’s Parish, Nottingham 1770-1884 M.W.Bowen MA, M Phil, University of Nottingham, October 1997

John Bristow, D.D. (b. ca.1760 - d. 17 Feb 1810)

Rector of Weston 1797 - 1806
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 8 May 1806 - 1810
Rector of Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire 1806 - 1810, Domestic Chaplain to Earl Manvers

John Bristow, came from Cumberland and was a ten-year sizar at Cambridge. In 1797, Bristow took the rectory of Weston from Nathan Haines, and was appointed to St. Mary’s on Haines death in 1806. His obsession with collecting the vicarage tithe dues made him very unpopular during his brief incumbency, at a time when the other two parishes in Nottingham had ceased from collecting them and generally tithes were dying a natural death. He also claimed exorbitant damages from Haines’ widow for the dilapidated state of the High Pavement vicarage. In the end he only received £70 but this was enough for him to have the whole house renovated inside and out, and the front “new modelled and stuccoed”.

His unpopularity was characterised with attacks from the dissenting press and his incumbency did not last long. On 17 February 1810 he died in an asylum at York. There is no obituary in the local press.