The Revd Nathaniel Wilson: Vicar of Fareham in the Early Restoration

The Revd Nathaniel Wilson served as Vicar of Fareham from 1664 to 1668, during the first years after the restoration of the Church of England under Charles II.

He followed the Revd John Easter and was succeeded by the Revd James Turner. His four-year ministry therefore came at a time when the parish was still adjusting to the religious settlement that followed the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration.

The Book of Common Prayer had been restored in 1662, bishops had returned to the Church of England, and clergy were once again required to minister within the restored Anglican system. Wilson’s ministry in Fareham belonged to that early period of rebuilding and consolidation.

His years as vicar also coincided with major national events. England was fighting the Second Anglo-Dutch War from 1665 to 1667, a conflict that would have felt particularly significant in a parish so close to Portsmouth and the Royal Navy. The Great Plague struck London in 1665, followed by the Great Fire in 1666.

Very little securely identifiable biographical material survives for Nathaniel Wilson himself. Several clergymen of that name were active in seventeenth-century England, and the surviving records do not yet allow us to identify Fareham’s vicar confidently with any of them.

What we can say is that for four years he served at the centre of parish life in Fareham, preaching, baptising, marrying and burying local people during a period of considerable political and religious change.

His place in the succession of vicars gives St Peter & St Paul a direct link with the early Restoration Church of England.