Lawman and the Sabellian heresy

I wish to thank Dean Bernie Patterson and the Arts and Sciences Level I Committee for support on this project, although ultimately thanks should be extended to the Georgia College Foundation for its generous support of research and faculty development projects at Georgia College. I also wish to thank MEDTEXTLers Jim Marchand, Thomas Izbicki, and P.A. Binkley for bibliographic help on the topic of clerical education in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England.     

“BORN BUREAUCRAT”: THOMAS CUDBERT HARINGTON1

So much has been written and said about the evil effects of patronage on the efficiency of the public service before the introduction of open competitive examinations, that it has become almost a truism that those appointed before the Northcote-Trevelyan recommendations came mainly from the ranks of the unambitious, the indolent and the incapable. Certainly the older method of recruitment produced more than a fair share of Tadpoles and Tite Barnacles. But it would be flying in the face of evidence to describe officials of this kind as making up the bulk of those recruited by this method. Politicians did not invariably use their patronage to gratify some supporter or to provide a safe haven for those unfit to face the competition of their contemporaries. Long before competitive examinations were instituted, Samuel Pepys, William Lowndes, James West, Edward Weston and James Stephen had demonstrated that even political jobbery could produce men who were not only conscientious and gifted administrators, but who also conducted themselves as if “the government of England was becoming a job to be done rather than an opportunity to be exploited”.