It is generally assumed that clergy who were ejected or deprived of their livings between 1660 and 1662 after the Restoration of Charles II were thrown into destitution. Not only were they banned from preaching or any other clerical activities, but also from that other resort of impoverished clergy – teaching. A surviving diary of the Reverend Francis Chandler, rector of Theydon Mount from 1656 to his ejection in 1661, provides an interesting and somewhat different insight.
Chandler was the son of a Bishop's Stortford silkweaver, and after ordination became rector of Danbury in 1645, moving to Woodham Ferrers in 1646 and Kelvedon in 1654. Though sufficiently puritan to meet with the approval of the authorities, he seems to have been a very lukewarm enthusiast for the parliamentary cause. He noted ' very desirous of King Charles restoration, and pray'd for him as rightful king some time before; and on May 29 1660 went to London with great joy to see his pompous entry.'
Nevertheless his parish was sequestrated in 1661 and he was replaced by the Reverend James Meggs. Curiously Meggs appointed Chandler as his curate, paying him what was for that time a generous salary of 20 shillings a week. However Chandler, clearly a man of conscience, gave notice to Meggs that he would be unable to conform with the Act of Uniformity. A year earlier, his diary had recorded Meggs' attempts to persuade him to conform – 'after dinner (he) took me into his little study, where with many words and in various manners he endeavoured to induce me to conformity.' He was allowed to continue with preaching and schoolmastering until 24 August 1662 when he gave his last sermon at Theydon on a rather obscure text from Deuteronomy xxx: 'I recall heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.' He then joined the ranks of the very large number of deprived Essex clergy.
Chandler's diary shows how much he moved around before his deprivation – his aunt's funeral in Ongar, sermons in Theydon Garnon, Ongar, Romford and Brentwood, baptisms at Lambourne and visits to London. He was asked to intercede in a dispute between Meggs and his son who had caused his father great offence by marrying without his consent. In May 1662 he went to Epsom, presumably for his health as he drank the waters there – though not direct from the well, but after their conversion to beer made from that source! A few days after his deprivation he attended a meeting of 'ejected brethren' at Moulsham Hall in Chelmsford, and subsequently travelled widely over much of Essex, visiting former clergy in the same position as himself, both socially and to hold days of fasting and prayer. He also preached sermons in various private houses, including that of a close friend, Judge Archer of Coopersale House. Some of private congregations were sizeable – at the end of 1663, one numbered 60 people. Such activities would have been regarded most unfavourably by the authorities who would have been alarmed by the prospect of religious and political dissent.
Chandler clearly maintained an extensive correspondence. For example, he was summoned to London to see a colleague detained in the Fleet prison and, on another occasion, to visit someone who had accidentally taken 100 grains of opium (between one and three grains would have been the normal therapeutic dose; surprisingly the victim survived). He undertook the private tuition of two boys at £36 per annum, and in 1665 attended a prayer meeting and day long fast 'on account of the plague'. There was a similar meeting the following year at the time of the Great Fire of London.
Ejected ministers, unable to earn a living, often suffered from profound poverty. Chandler himself seems to have had some private income, though he would have lost the rent he received from the houses he rented out in London which were destroyed in the Great Fire. He also had several wealthy and sympathetic patrons, including Judge Archer of Coopersale, who could be approached for help. Other benefactors were supportive too – in 1666 Chandler received £10 from a general bequest to deprived ministers. What Chandler's diary makes very clear is that there was an extremely active network amongst these unfortunate clergy, and doubtless a great deal of mutual financial support between them.
Chandler died in 1667 in Bishop's Stortford where he had settled in 1666. His diary (written in Latin) appears to have been lost, but translated extracts have survived in a manuscript in the British Library, selected portions of which were published in the Congregational Historical Society Journal in 1916.