The Reverend Caleb Parfect: person, power, publishing

This thesis examines the ministry of the Reverend Caleb Parfect and the communities that he served, based on the annotations he left in the parish registers and the publications he printed during his lifetime. Parfect served in the Diocese of Rochester, which has seen minimal academic interest in terms of micro-history at parish level. This thesis demonstrates the value of looking at these parishes in greater detail and reveals that there is a great deal of unexplored archival data that is of interest not only to the church historian but also the social historian. The thesis is split into three main chapters, Person, Power and Publishing, each exploring a different aspect of Parfect’s life. Person covers Parfect’s biography, which examines his whole life and route into ministry in the Diocese of Rochester. Power covers the fledgling workhouse at Stroud, Kent, along with Parfect’s connection with the inception of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK). The final chapter, Publishing, covers the period of Parfect’s publishing career c.1748 to 1760. In constructing the thesis this way, it has been possible to demonstrate that Parfect’s career was not only influential on the workhouse movement, but also in the communities that he served. Parfect’s was a continued and strong Christologically based ministry that was steeped in the deep practical and pastoral needs of the communities that he served. His publications add weight to this hypothesis and establish Parfect as a true advocate of the Church of England and a most capable churchman who placed the care of his community at the heart of all he did.