Herring held the deanery of Rochester in commendam with the bishopric of Bangor.  Wilcocks was Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, and was succeeded both in the deanery and the bishopric by Zachary Pearce.  Hoadly held the see of Bangor for six years, apparently without ever seeing the diocese in his life.  Even the excellent Dr. Porteus (one of the most pious, liberal, and unselfish of men) thought it no sin to hold a country living in conjunction with the bishopric of Chester.  He actually had permission to retain the important living of Lambeth as well; but ‘he thought,’ says his biographer with conscious pride, ’with so many additional cares he should not be able to attend to so large a benefice, at least to the satisfaction of his own mind, and therefore hesitated not a moment in giving it up into other hands.’[654] Bishop Watson, of Llandaff, gives a most artless account of his non-residence.  ‘Having,’ he tells us, ’no place of residence in my diocese, I turned my attention to the improvement of land.  I thought the improvement of a man’s fortune by cultivating the earth was the most useful and honourable way of providing for a family.  I have now been several years occupied as an improver of land and planter of trees.’[655] The same bishop gives us a most extraordinary description of the sources from whence his clerical income was derived.  ’The provision of 2,000_l._, a year,’ he says, ’which I possess from the Church arises from the tithes of two churches in Shropshire, two in Leicestershire, two in my diocese, three in Huntingdonshire, on all of which I have resident curates; of five more appropriations to the bishopric, and two more in the Isle of Ely as appropriations to the archdeaconry of Ely.[656]

Pluralities and non-residence being thus so common among the very men whose special duty it was to prevent them, one can hardly wonder that the evil prevailed to a sad extent among the lower clergy.

Archbishop Secker, in his charge to the diocese of Canterbury in 1758, complains of ’the non-resident clergyman, who reckons it enough that, for aught he knows to the contrary, his parishioners go on like their neighbours,’ and attributes to this, among other causes, ’the rise of a new sect, pretending to the strictest piety.’  It seems, however, to have been taken for granted that the evil practice must be recognised to a certain extent.  Thus Paley, in his charge in 1785, recommends ’the clergy who cannot talk to their parishioners, and non-resident incumbents, to distribute the tracts of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge;’[657] and even so late as 1796 Bishop Horsley admits that ’many non-residents are promoting the general cause of Christianity, and perhaps doing better service than if they confined themselves to the ordinary labours of the ministry.’  He thinks it would be ‘no less impolitic than harsh to call such to residence,’ and adds that ’other considerations make non-residence a thing to be connived at.’[658]