In spite of the wars being fought against the resurgence of the Counter-Reformation under the leadership of Louis XIV, and the insecurity of William Ill's regime at home, it was a period of economic expansion leading to a growth in surplus wealth which gave a larger pool of funds from which people might make charitable donations and bequests. There was, in particular, a proliferation of non-landed sources of wealth which contributed to an increasing number of the middling sort having income surplus to their needs. This increase in wealth created greater social fluidity and gave people whose economic position was improving a desire to demonstrate their changing status in society. An important way of establishing one's social position was being seen to contribute to charitable causes by having one's name on a subscription list or charity board in a church. Mandeville may have been cynical in claiming that 'pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all virtue together', but to be identified with public charitable works might be an expression of social ambition as well as of Christian piety. However, as we have seen, much charity was anonymous.
A further factor influencing Christian charitable giving in the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was the development of the joint stock company. This enabled people to subscribe relatively small sums to be deployed and managed by others to increase income and wealth and to work for the relief of distress and the promotion of the Christian Gospel. Thus people of modest means could contribute to charitable causes and people of little wealth but considerable initiative and organising ability could direct charitable work. Clerical propagandists for charity schools were quick to discover a theological and spiritual significance in joint stock companies and noted that 'money invested would bring a dividend in the improved happiness and morality of the poor'.11 The considerable network of schools and hospitals founded in the first half of the eighteenth century provides a dramatic demonstration of what could be achieved by associational action.
During the early eighteenth century charitable activity was also a means of promoting a donor's moral and human enjoyment. Charitable giving was closely associated with artistic expression, as is illustrated by the careers of Hogarth and Handel. Hogarth was connected with almost all the great philanthropic projects of his time in London. For both St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Foundling Hospital he painted pictures to illustrate the Christian ideals of charity and benevolence which, whilst advertising his skill and ability as an artist, also promoted the idea of sensibility and the pleasurable emotions aroused by charitable giving. Handel's Messiah received its first performance at a charitable concert to raise funds for the Lying-in Hospital in Dublin, which provided care and charitable relief for poor women in childbirth. In 1724 after the choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester Cathedrals had for some years been holding an annual meeting at each of the cathedrals in rotation, Dr Thomas Bisse, Chancellor of Hereford, proposed a collection at the cathedral door at these annual meetings, the money collected to be devoted to the 'placing out or assisting to the education and maintenance of the orphans of the poorer clergy belonging to the dioceses ... or of the lay members of the three choirs'. The proposal was unanimously acceded to. Charity could be beneficial to one's soul, socially advantageous, and enjoyable.
Charity was also seen as a means of evangelism. This is particularly clear in the objectives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, founded in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), founded in 1701, and in the charity schools established during the period. Evangelism also played an important part in founding hospitals in London. The order of priorities in the founding of Guy's Hospital in 1726 is shown by paying the chaplain twice the salary of the physicians and surgeons. At an older foundation, St Thomas's, provision was made for a Bible in each ward and for daily services. It was perhaps the use of charity as a means of evangelism which led to later suspicions that philanthropy was a means of social control, and to contemporary suspicion that charitable organisations were used for political influence. For example, in Bristol the immensely rich and high-church merchant Edward Colston refused to provide clothes for boys in the charity schools he had founded whose fathers had not voted for Tory candidates in the 1715 general election.
Social Relocation of the Religious Belief
