CCEd Stage 2

The launch of the CCEd makes available an unprecedented powerful research tool for locating and analysing records relating to Anglican clerical careers from the Reformation to the mid-nineteenth century. The Database brings together approximately 1.5 million plus evidence records, each recording an individual event in the career of a clergyman or schoolteacher. Records relating to a single clergyman have then been linked together, a process we have called ‘personification’. To assist interpretation of what is often a confusing abundance or paucity of records linked to each individual ‘personified’ in the Database, the CCEd website provides a wealth of supporting documentation. However, the issues involved in interpreting an individual’s career are often highly technical. For users investigating the structure of the profession, moreover, considerable time will be needed to ‘weed’ the records to enable statistical analysis; for investigations on a national or long timescale, a prohibitive amount. The second stage of career modelling will transform the functionality and accessibility of the CCEd for all users.

Currently records in the CCEd are linked to both persons and ‘locations’. Stage Two involves a process we call ‘Career Modelling’, or CM for short. For each individual cleric (or schoolteacher) CM will, by selecting, filtering and interpreting records, create a reliable ‘career narrative’ giving the most accurate date or date range for each event. This process, which users cannot perform themselves without considerable specialist expertise or investment of time, will leave untouched the integrity of the original evidence records, which will remain readily accessible to those who wish to examine critically our interpretations or who are interested in the contents of particular sources. CM will remove the difficulties posed by multiple or insufficient records for occasional users of the Database, while at the same time facilitating complex structural searches. Software developed as part of this enhancement project will enable researchers to execute such searches across broad chronological and geographical ranges without requiring specialist knowledge of how to write complex queries in programming language. Thus, it will become feasible not only to compare the characteristics of different cohorts of clergy, but also to answer for the first time even such basic questions as how many clergy and licensed there were at any given date between 1540 and 1835. CM holds the key, therefore, to releasing the full potential of CCEd as a research tool.