Richard Culmer

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Sir Richard Culmer (1612-1669) was the eldest son of Sir Henry Culmer (~1574-1633), the first Baron Culmer. Sir Henry, himself a son of a Henry Culmer, had married Mary Baldwyn in 1602, and was created a Baron by King Charles I in 1630.

Richard Culmer was the son of Sir Richard Culmer by his first wife and was born in 1640/1. Richard was buried in the parish church of Monkton, on the Isle of Thanet. Of his legacies was the endowment on Broadstairs of an area of six acres (24,000 m²) of ground for the poor of the parish. The name survives to this day as "Culmer's Allotment". Richard Culmer had been educated at Oxford and established himself as a Puritan Minister of some note. He was generally known in Kent as "Blue Dick Culmer" on account of his refusing to wear the usual black gown of a cleric, preferring blue.

In 1643 Culmer obtained the living of the parish of Chartham, where he soon became unpopular. As a General serving under Oliver Cromwell he became quite notorious, so disliked that the parishioners of Harbledown objected, that so long as it was not Culmer they cared not who ministered unto them.

He had been known to have despised William Laud, who had him committed to the Fleet for refusing to read 'the Book of Sports' after his services in Church.

Already disliked he delighted in his promotion as a Commissioner to oversee the demolition of superstitious (Catholic) monuments, and set about his task at Canterbury with enthusiasm, so much so that his parishioners would openly flock to attack him, to the extent that soon he had to carry out his task with Cromwell's soldiers to protect him.

For his services to Parliament he was offered the living of the parish of Minster in Thanet in 1644, where his parishioners had locked the church against him at his ordination, when he attempted to break in to the church he was mobbed and beaten. So despised was he that the parish refused to pay tithes to support him, but then offered his arrears if he would but go away! To this day, his name does not appear in the list of incumbents displayed in the church porch.

He later found himself under arrest in London, and asked why he had destroyed the figure of Christ in the Cathedral windows, and not that of the Devil, he merely replied that Parliament's orders were for the removal of the same and made no reference to Satan.

Described as "odious for his zeal and fury", he survived in his position until shortly before the Restoration of Charles II.

He had married in 1639 to Miss Beeson, and again twenty years later to a Dutch woman, the widow Mrs. Bocher of Haarlem in Holland, the country in which he died in 1669.