The Rev Samuel Edmund Hopkinson

1754-1841

One of the longest serving parish priests in the Bourne area was the Rev Samuel Edmund Hopkinson who served as Vicar of Morton for 46 years although the record of his activities suggests that he spent more time on keeping order among the populace than saving souls in church.

He was a graduate and later fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree, and was appointed to the living at Morton by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1795 at a time when he was also Rector of Elton, near Peterborough, a post he resigned in 1828 after 42 years. By this time he was also an active magistrate, sitting not only at Peterborough but also in Kesteven, notably at the petty sessions that were held regularly at the Town Hall in Bourne.

A taste of the harsh justice he dispensed surfaced within two years of his appointment to Morton when Edward Bennet, a local carpenter, was censured for walking into church with his hat on and for talking during a funeral service. Hopkinson not only made him publicly confess his crime in church but also to forfeit 10 shillings to the poor of the village although the parish registers for 12th March 1797 record that “Bennet behaved so very well that the money was afterwards returned”.

Nevertheless, the strict discipline imposed by Hopkinson soon became apparent, especially when it involved those unfortunate women who had become pregnant outside marriage. In March 1813, while sitting on the Bourne bench, he sent Sarah Row, a single woman, of Langtoft, to the gaol at Folkingham Castle for one year “for having a bastard child chargeable to the parish”. He passed a similar sentence in June 1820 when he committed Jane Woodcock, a single woman from Bourne, to Folkingham Castle for one year for having brought a charge of three children upon the parish.

In both cases, this meant that the women had been deserted by the fathers of their children and had no means of support and therefore sought assistance from the Overseers of the Poor who administered poor relief such as money, food and clothing to deserving cases, a system that reinforced a sense of social hierarchy and provided a way of controlling the “lower orders”. The Overseers of the Poor were replaced by the Board of Guardians under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, although they undertook similar duties in addition to running the workhouse and Hopkinson would have been a member in both cases.

As a magistrate, he sat regularly on the bench at the petty sessions held at the Town Hall in Bourne where offences were of a minor nature although many of the punishments were quite severe by today’s standards.  The more serious offences were heard before the Kesteven Quarter Sessions, also held in Bourne and where he also sat on the bench. Here, the punishments were far harsher and in October 1821 he was one of the magistrates who sentenced two Morton men, Joseph Stimson and William Knight, to be transported to Australia for seven years for stealing five geese. At the same sitting, Thomas Nix was sent to prison for six weeks with hard labour and to be whipped for stealing a £5 note while in October 1830 a Bourne labourer, Thomas Watson, was given three months and a whipping for stealing a quantity of horse hair.

Men or women were always severely punished for offences including the theft of property, how small or valuable the items may have been and at the 1830 sitting James Oldham was convicted of stealing a quantity of flour and sent to prison with hard labour for 12 months while his wife, Julia, and Maria Oldham, were each given six months, the last week of the sentence to be in solitary confinement.

Apart from his duties as a magistrate, Hopkinson was also a leading member of the Bourne Association for the Prosecution of Felons which had a distinguished membership whose aim was to pursue and punish wrongdoers. These organisations, later known as the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, originated in the 18th century before the formation of a regular police force when the legal system relied on the victims and other private individuals to initiate prosecutions and so promoted well-meaning citizens to band together. Indeed the list of members of the Bourne association in 1825 when they met to dine at the Angel and pay their annual subscriptions contains many of the titled and landed gentry from the district as well as a good sprinkling of wealthy tradesmen and clergymen.

Hopkinson was also a founder member of the Association for the Detection of Horse Stealers for Morton and Hanthorpe, Dyke, Haconby and Stainfield, formed in 1839 by twenty-eight wealthy landowners and farmers in an attempt to reduce the number of horse thefts which were then prevalent in the district, all vowing to hunt down the culprits and bring them to justice.

He is remembered in the church today with an inscription on one of the six bells, installed in 1816, and for his work on installing the first clock in 1831 to mark 30 years of his incumbency and the original mechanism can be seen behind glass where it has been preserved since the timepiece was electrified in 1971. The church plate also includes a silver gilt chalice presented by Hopkinson on 3rd June 1832 to mark his fifty years of marriage to Elizabeth and in 1820 he was also one of the subscribers to help finance the building of the new Town Hall at Bourne, along with other wealthy patrons from the locality.

Through all of this, Hopkinson lived in some style at the vicarage in Morton, a substantial house which was built for him and his wife in 1796 to coincide with their arrival in the village, owning his own horses and carriages and with servants to attend to their needs. He also entertained lavishly and on 18th August 1831, held a big reception for the Lord Bishop of Lincoln and other senior clergymen from the county who were in Bourne for a confirmation service at the Abbey Church. But it is only after his death that we catch a glimpse of his wealth.

Mrs Hopkinson died suddenly at the vicarage on Monday 3rd September 1838, aged 81. He died on Saturday 17th July 1841, aged 87, and two months later the contents of the vicarage were sold by auction which was held on the premises, a sale which attracted hundreds of people from the locality including those who were anxious to snap up a bargain and many more who were merely curious to find out exactly what the vicar had left and they were not disappointed. 

The inventory for the September sale included a vast amount of valuable mahogany furniture and furnishings, Turkish and Brussels carpets, china and pottery, paintings and prints, all the trappings of the fine country house in the midst of a village where his congregation lived largely in poverty.  

One item, a dining room table, measured nine feet by four feet nine inches, an indication of the vicar’s lifestyle, while there was also a handsome four-poster bed with chintz and other hangings, a grand piano by Stoddard, writing and card tables, bookcases, fine glass, porcelain dinner and tea services, japanned trays, tea and coffee urns and a wide variety of kitchen effects while outside in the stables there were carriages, including a phaeton, saddles and bridles, sweet casks and brewing and dairy utensils. In fact, there were so many items that viewing was held over two days and the sale itself was spread over three days and the possessions that came under the hammer hardly reflect the image we have of the impoverished Victorian clergyman. 

Today, the Hopkinson is largely forgotten apart from his name on the roll of past vicars of Morton although his colourful account of a violent storm over the village in 1800 does survive in the archive copies of the Stamford Mercury. But it is this newspaper that also records successive reports of the draconian punishments he doled out in his various official capacities and although it can be argued that these were a sign of the times in which he lived, when life was hard and justice swift and severe, there was no evidence of the mercy and forgiveness which his calling advocated and certainly no sign of the Christian charity he preached from the pulpit every Sunday.

See also The storm of 1800