The Revd Edward Jenkins: Fareham at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

The Revd Edward Jenkins served as Vicar of Fareham from 1689 until 1721, a ministry of more than thirty years that carried the parish from the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution into the early Georgian period.

At present, very little securely identifiable information survives online about Jenkins himself. There were several clergymen of that name, and I have not found enough evidence to attach a particular education, family background or earlier ministry to Fareham’s vicar with confidence.

His dates, however, place him in a fascinating period of change.

Jenkins began his ministry in 1689, the year William III and Mary II were established on the throne following the departure of James II. That same year Parliament passed the Toleration Act. Protestant Nonconformists who met its conditions were now legally permitted to worship outside the Church of England. The parish church remained the established church of the nation, but Anglican clergy were beginning to minister in a society where alternative Protestant congregations could exist legally alongside them.

This change was significant. Between 1691 and 1710 more than 2,500 dissenting places of worship were licensed across England. Historians describe the period after 1689 as the beginning of an enduring Protestant religious pluralism, although considerable restrictions on Dissenters remained.

Meanwhile, Fareham was increasingly influenced by developments around Portsmouth Harbour. Fareham was already an established market town and port, importing goods such as coal, corn and salt and exporting timber, leather, grain and other local produce. Its proximity to Portsmouth meant that the expanding Royal Navy was becoming increasingly important to the economy and society of the district.

Portsmouth Dockyard expanded substantially during Jenkins’s ministry. Surviving Admiralty records show continuous Dockyard administration and construction throughout the years from 1698 into the 1720s. In 1689 Parliament had ordered the construction of a new dry dock capable of taking the Navy’s largest warships, part of a broader programme that transformed Portsmouth into one of Britain’s principal naval bases.

Jenkins also ministered through years of almost continual European warfare. England fought France in the Nine Years’ War until 1697 and then became heavily involved in the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1714. For a parish only a few miles from Portsmouth, naval mobilisation, sailors, military movements and news of battles overseas would have formed part of the surrounding world.

During his incumbency England itself changed constitutionally. The kingdoms of England and Scotland were united in 1707 to create Great Britain. Queen Anne died in 1714 and George I became king, beginning the Hanoverian dynasty. Jenkins therefore began as the vicar of an English parish under William and Mary and finished as a clergyman of Great Britain under George I.

For the people of Fareham, however, many of the rhythms of parish life continued. Jenkins would have baptised children, married couples, buried parishioners, preached each Sunday and administered Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer.

Thirty-two years is a long ministry. Children baptised by Edward Jenkins when he arrived in Fareham in 1689 could have been bringing their own children to him for baptism before he left.

We may know little about Jenkins as an individual, but his long incumbency places St Peter & St Paul at the meeting point of some of the great changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain: religious toleration, constitutional monarchy, union with Scotland, European war and the rise of the Royal Navy.

His ministry ended in 1721, after more than three decades at the heart of parish life in Fareham.