THE CLERICAL PRINCE OF SINECURISTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 655, 6 November 1874, Page 3

THE CLERICAL PRINCE OF SINECURISTS.

We take the following paragraph from a letter of the Liverpool Mercury’s London Correspondent : “ There is living, at the present time, a clergyman—Thurhnp by name, who has received about half a million of money from the taxes of the country for doing nothvig. Forty years ago, two sinecures which hs held were abolished, and he was granted pension? in compensation to the extent of over a LIOOU a year. Ho still lives at a paik near Horsham, and continues to draw more than the income of a Lord Chancellor without ever having clone a stroke of real honest work for it. The fae*:s are set forth in an interesting article in the Contemporary Review, by Francis Rowsell, a very able civil servant, nephew of the Rev. T. Rowsell, one of the Queen’s Chaplains.” The facts as to the reverend gentlemen’s pickings from the public purse have been set forth year after year in our Almanac. As compensation for the loss of Iris sinecure office “Patentee of Bankrupts,” which was abolished in 1832, he received up to the 11th of January last, L 308.814 19s. In compensation for the loss of another sinecure—that of “Hamper (i.e., hamper of W’astepaper basket) Keeper—ho has received L 4023 per annum from 1852, which, for 22 years, would be LBS.GIC ; and for a third sinecure, that of Prothonotary of tire Palatine, of Durham, L 398 10s lid, since 1842, making L 23.738 ISs Cl-in all L 421.169 7s 6d. The Rev. gentleman had the luck to be born sou of a Bishop of Durham, by far the richest see in the kingdom at that time, and nephew to Lord Chancellor Thurlow who was eminently Christian in at least one respect, that of taking very good care of those of his own household. The nephew was appointed to those offices in his boyhood, to one of them it is said when in his cradle; and as he was born in 1788, he must have been in receipt of his “ Patentee and Prothonotary ” for twenty or thirty years previous to the abolition of the offices, and of Hamper Keeping pay for thirty or forty years. Take the lesser numbers, and assume the compensation to have been measured by fees and pay, and we have L 147,054 10s more for the Patentee, L 80,560 more for the Hamper Keeper, and L11.95G 7s G,l for the Prothonotary—making a grand total of LOGO, 740 5s for the “ three gentlemen in one,” all because he had the luck to have a bishop for his father and a Lord Chancello'' for his uncle. Liverpool Financial Reformer.