Abstract
Born at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, on 2 June 1840 — less than six months after the marriage of his parents Thomas Hardy ‘the Second’ and Jemima Hand on 22 December 1839 at Melbury Osmond — Thomas Hardy was christened, on 5 July at nearby Stinsford. This had been the family parish since 1801, when the first Thomas Hardy, the writer’s grandfather, moved from Puddletown to the newly built cottage that was to become the family home for the next 112 years. In religious terms, the parish in many ways typified the conservative rural Anglicanism of early nineteenth-century Dorset, with its relaxed approach to religious observances and theological subtleties and a deep attachment to local customs and traditions. This pattern of parish life changed suddenly in 1837, following the arrival at Stinsford of the energetic new vicar Arthur Shirley, who soon set about transforming the relaxed religious mores of his flock along the lines advocated by the Oxford Movement, which he saw launched and growing during his undergraduate years. In spite of his efforts, however, the old ways persisted among his parishioners for quite some time, coexisting, somewhat uneasily at times, with the vicar’s Tractarian seriousness.
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Notes to Chapter 1: Hardy’s Religious Biography
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© 1996 Jan Jȩdrzejewski
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Jȩdrzejewski, J. (1996). Hardy’s Religious Biography. In: Thomas Hardy and the Church. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378278_2
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