Most of my clerical readers will agree, I am sure, that being a priest is the best job in the world, and that one would not swap it for anything. Except, that is, on the bad days, when being a priest can be a very tough vocation indeed. It is our privilege to minister to people in the happiest moments of their lives, and also when the bottom has fallen out of their world, and things cannot get better, only worse. One sees rather more of the painful and seamy side of life than most laypeople realise; and for this reason a priest's life can sometimes be rather a lonely existence, because only one's fellow clergy, or perhaps those married to the clergy, fully understand.

There is no reason to believe that the clergy of Colchester a century ago would have had markedly different ministerial experiences, or that they would have disagreed with this description of priestly life. Following the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford Movement, expectations of pastoral care gradually rose throughout the Church of England during the nineteenth century. Just as significantly, the clergy came to have higher expectations of themselves. We find this expressed, for instance, in addresses delivered to ordinands. Bishop Arthur Winnington-Ingram of London, to take one example from a man whom we shall encounter later, delivered a series of addresses to the Leeds Clergy School in 1896 which were published under the title Good Shepherds and ran to several editions. He held up very high standards of ministry and self-expectation to those shortly to be ordained: