ABSTRACT This article sheds light on precarious clergymen in early modern England. Such figures sit uneasily amidst John Milton’s condemnation, across his entire career, of the established clergy. Milton claimed that these men were “Blind mouthes” and little better than wolves, undeserving of governmental tithes “in wealthiest times.” This article uses the issue of precarious preachers to query and qualify some of Milton’s attitudes towards the clergy as a whole. It also addresses the precarious emotional state of individuals who struggled to find their first clerical position after university training and ordination, as well as the ways this manifested itself in their correspondence and printed works. In doing so, it questions why these histories have remained silent thus far and considers further the manner in which the experiences of these individuals resonate with PhD graduates in the humanities struggling to stay in academia today.
Hannah Yip (Sun,) studied this question.
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