MA Student Profile
Project Title
The Reverend Caleb Parfect: Person, Power and Publishing
Biographical Note
Pete Joyce has just completed a, full-time Masters by Research in the Theology and Religion department. He obtained an Upper Second-Class Honours degree in Theology with Philosophy, Religion and Ethics from Canterbury Christ Church University in 2017. His dissertations centred around Father Dolling and his Excluded Congregations and Christian colonisation of Jewish Scripture. His principle research interest is Excluded congregations and local parish response to poverty in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Research Outline
Rev. Caleb Parfect MA (1685 -1770) left the most complete record of any known clergyman that served in the Diocese of Rochester in the 18th Century. By doing this he left a unique insight into the formation of the workhouse in Stroud (Strood) which then spurred the SPCK to form a national network of workhouses. His notes also contain first-hand and personal accounts of the smallpox epidemics, poverty, and the social complexities of three parishes. As well as the first known complete census of a village c.1765. Parfect’s large collection of writings have seen little academic rigour and have offered a unique and full insight in what it meant to serve in the Church of England as a clergyman during the 18th Century.
Supervisory Team
- Dr Ralph Norman (First Supervisor)
- Dr Maria Diemling (Second Supervisor / Chair)