The term is used in this general sense in certain rubrics of the English Book of Common Prayer, in which it is applied equally to rectors and vicars as to perpetual curates.
Sacheverell was among its rectors (1713-1724), and Thomas Chatterton (1770) was interred in the adjacent burial ground, no longer extant, of Shoe Lane Workhouse; the register recording his Christian name as William.
Among the rectors of Hadleigh several notable names appear, such as Rowland Taylor, the martyr, who was burned at the stake outside the town in 1 555, and Hugh James Rose, during whose tenancy of the rectory an initiatory meeting of the leaders of the Oxford Movement took place here in 1833.
These extensive domains were usually administered by specially appointed agents, - rectors and defensors, - who resided on the spot; but the general superintendence devolved upon the pope.
He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed for sale that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning.