The Portal Archive July 2011 | Page 7

THE
P RTAL
Nathaniel
Spinckes
July 2011
Page 7
Anglican
Luminary
by Keith Robinson
As with so many Anglican worthies, Nathaniel Spinckes was a child of the parsonage – a point perhaps
of particular interest to the Ordinariate. He was born in 1653, to Rector of Castor in Northamptonshire, his
earliest education placed in the hands of a neighbouring Rector. In 1670 he went up to Cambridge, from
where he graduated in 1674.
Ordained deacon in 1676,
in December 1678 he was
ordained priest in St Margarets
Westminster. In those heady
days of the Restoration it was
quite normal for noble families
to employ their own chaplains,
and Nathaniel was appointed
Chaplain
to
Sir
Richard
Edgecombe.
In 1681 he was taken on as
Chaplain by the first Duke of
Lauderdale, but on the Duke’s
death the following year he
returned to London to be Curate
and Lecturer at Wren’s new City
church of St Stephen Walbrook.
priests who found themselves
in conscience unable to do this,
came to be known as the “non-
jurers”.
Their problem was partly
their adherence to a high
doctrine of the “Divine Right of
Kings”, based largely on David’s
behaviour towards King Saul in I
Samuel 24, 6. However, following
the execution of Charles I, the
experience of the Commonwealth
and the behaviour of James II,
the doctrine was rapidly losing
its currency. The crunch came in
1690, when nine bishops, some
four hundred priests (Spinckes
among them) and a number
of prominent laymen, were
deprived by Act of Parliament of
all their offices.
He did not remain there long,
being presented to the Rectory
of
Peakirk
–cum-Glinton
by the Dean and Chapter of © National Portrait Gallery, London
There must have followed a
Peterborough in 1685. With
his installation on the 21 July 1687 in the prebendal time of great confusion and hardship of which not a
stall of Major Pars Altaris in Salisbury Cathedral, great deal is known. But on Ascension Day 1713 we
and institution to the Rectory of Sarum St Martin find Spinckes being consecrated bishop by his long-
(Salisbury’s oldest parish), it looked as though the standing friend George Hickes (and others), thus
Church of England had recognised one of her brightest becoming a third generation non-juring bishop.
clerics.
He took no title, and probably functioned rather as
Proficient in Greek, Latin, French and Anglo-Saxon, a kind of “flying bishop”. He died on the 28 July 1727,
a notable pastor and gifted preacher, he might have and was buried in St Paul’s Churchyard in London,
been regarded as “the right man in the right place”. where he according to Chalmers his grave was marked
(Today he is pictured in his old church of St Martin by a “white marble stone”.
on the reredos in the Lady Chapel.) But this was not to
Most notable amongst his eleven books are his
last for very long.
“Devotions”, and “The Sick Man Visited” detaili ng
Along with all other clergy, Nathaniel had taken how a parish priest ought to prepare his parishioners
his Oath of Allegiance to the catholic king James II. for their deaths. He offers us an insight and a model
Now he was being asked to abrogate that oath and for diligent pastoral practice and personal holiness in
swear anew to William and Mary. Those bishops and troubled and confusing circumstances.