Bx 5093 .M3 Mathieson , 1923 William Law, 186S English 1840 church reform, 1815- * Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/englishchurchrefOOmath By the same Author ENGLAND IN TRANSITION, 1789-1832 A STUDY OF MOVEMENTS Demy 8 vo. 1 5/. net “ Dr. Mathieson’s volume can be confidently recommended to every student of English history, and it may even be said of it that one can, with profit, read it twice.” — Oxford Magazine. “ Extraordinarily valuable and suggestive ... a fascinating and illuminating book.” — Journal of Education. “ One of the most attractive historical studies that have appeared in recent years.” — Northern Whig. “ Thoughtful as well as readable, and deserves especial commenda¬ tion for its invariably temperate tone.” — English Historical Review. “ This work is the most satisfactory compact treatment of the social movements of the period.” — Political Science Quarterly. “ It is an account of movements, but nobody can fairly complain of lack of picturesque and arresting illustrative detail. In fact it is an admirable short study.” — Liverpool Post. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. London, New York, Toronto, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras POLITICS AND RELIGION IN SCOTLAND, 1550-1695. A Study in Scottish History from the Reformation to the Revolution. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. 21/. net. SCOTLAND AND THE UNION. A History of Scotland from 1695 to 1747. Demy 8vo. iox. 6d. net. THE AWAKENING OF SCOTLAND. A History from 1747 to 1797. Demy 8vo. ior. 6d. net. CHURCH AND REFORM IN SCOTLAND. A History from 1797 to 1843. Demy 8vo. iox. 6d. net. GLASGOW : MACLEHOSE, JACKSON & CO. Publishers to the University / ENGLISH CHURCH REFORM 1815-1840 ENGLISH CHURCH REFORM 1815-1 840 BY WILLIAM XAW MATHIESON HON. LL.D. ABERDEEN LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 4 NEW YORK, TORONTO BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS X923 Made in Great Britain PREFACE A writer of English history at the present day may consider himself fortunate if he has not been anticipated in more than the outline of his task ; and this degree of originality may, I think, be claimed for the following work. The legislation of 1836-1840, which placed the Church of England on its present basis, has of course been described, but not with the fullness and particularity wThich its importance deserves. The best account, so far as I know, is given by Canon Perry in that excellent survey, “ The Student’s English Church History,” but it is necessarily a mere sketch. Mr. Warre Cornish has devoted two volumes to “ The English Church in the Nineteenth Century ” ; but his treatment of reform at this period is even less detailed than that of Canon Perry. “The Political History of England” barely alludes to what one of its writers calls “ a veritable revolution in the financial and disciplinary administration of the Church ” ; and Sir Spencer Walpole dismisses the subject in some ten pages. Ecclesiastical reform in England was a product of the industrial revolution ; for it was the result, though not the original object, of a movement which had origin¬ ated in the early years of the century, when Church¬ men had awakened to the necessity of recovering the ground they had lost owing to the rapid increase of population in the manufacturing districts. The Parlia¬ ment of that day was quite willing to assist in building VI PREFACE churches, and did so at various times from 1809 to 1824 to the amount of two and a half million pounds. But when the House of Commons had been thrown open to Dissenters and Catholics, and had been liberated from aristocratic control, these supplies were not likely to be continued — at all events, until the discipline and financial resources of the Church had been thoroughly overhauled. Peel’s attitude did not differ from that of Lord Grey : "We can do nothing for you if you will do nothing for yourselves.” Conforming to this view of the subject, the narrative opens at the Peace of 1815 ; and from this point I have traced the growth of a feeling hostile to the Church which culminated in 1832, and was then the most cogent plea for remedying its abuses. I may here refer to an aspect of the Oxford Movement which has received but little attention. It was a question much debated by the leaders whether they should com¬ bine and agitate against the threatened inroad of liberalism or should content themselves with providing an antidote in the shape of Catholic theology ; and I have sought to bring out more clearly than has yet been attempted the part played by the " Associationists ” as opposed to the Tractarians. The letters of Newman and of Rose are essential to a proper understanding of this conflict as described, some years later, by Palmer and Perceval ; and, though both were published more than thirty years ago, they have not yet been used for the purpose. At the present day, when the problem of adminis¬ trative reform is again before the Church, and a report on the subject has been drawn up by the Archbishops’ Committee of Inquiry, some of the questions discussed in this book may have a practical interest. To the Carnegie Trustees for the Scottish Universities, who have assisted me in publishing, I tender my cordial thanks. Edinburgh, September 1923. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE Religious parties ; the Evangelicals . . . . i Their slow progress up to 1800 ..... 2 Pharisaical spirit ; lack of culture .... 4 The clergy in general ; low standard of duty . . 6 High Churchmen ; Nonjurors ..... 7 Home, Jones, and Stevens ; Hutchinsonians . . 8 Archdeacon Daubeny . . . . . .11 Marsh’s attack on the Bible Society, 1812 ... 12 National Education Society founded .... 14 Growth of Evangelicalism after the Peace . . 15 CHAPTER I The Pre-Reform Church, 1815-1832 The Church popular in the eighteenth century . . 16 Fails to expand with the new industrial population . 17 The grievance of tithes ...... 19 Plurality and non-residence . . . . .22 Clergy Residence Act, 1803 ; its failure ... 24 Bishop Watson’s proposed reform .... 25 The Church and the democratic movement, 1819 . . 26 Durham clergy at issue with the people ... 28 Anglicanism and social subordination . . . 31 vm CONTENTS PAGE The clergy and secular knowledge 33 Bishops and the sacramental test, 1828 ... 36 Their attitude towards Catholic relief, 1829 . . 38 Parliamentary reform ...... 39 Lord Grey’s Bill, 1831 ...... 40 Attitude of the clergy ...... 42 Two bishops for the second Bill, twenty-one against . 46 Bishop Bathurst ....... 47 Bishops Copleston and Blomfield .... 48 Anti-episcopal demonstrations ; “ Mrs. Partington ” . 50 Attempts to influence the bishops .... 52 Their speeches in the debate of April 1832 ... 53 Twelve for the third Bill, fifteen against ... 56 Lyndhurst's motion ; the twelve reduced to four . . 57 The Bill passed ; five dissent ..... 58 The Establishment despaired of . . . . .58 CHAPTER II Reformers and Anti-Reformers, 1832-1834 Joshua Watson’s proposed Commission . . . 59 Archbishop Howley’s Tithe and Plurality Bills . . 60 “ The Extraordinary Black Book ” . . .62 Beverley’s “ Letter to the Archbishop of York ” . . 64 Bishop Sparke and the living of Wisbeach ... 65 Projects of reform ; Blackwood' s Magazine . . 66 Professor Burton ; British Critic .... 67 Lord Henley’s “ Plan of Church Reform ” . . . 68 Pusey on “ Cathedral Institutions ” . . . 70 Arnold’s comprehension scheme . . . .71 Proposed revision of the Liturgy .... 73 The ecclesiastical situation in Ireland .... 75 The Irish Church Bill ; debate in the Lords . . 76 Church defence ; Hugh James Rose .... 80 CONTENTS ix PAGE Rose’s British Magazine ...... 81 The Oxford Movement ; its leaders .... 83 Keble’s Assize Sermon ...... 85 Meeting at Hadleigh ...... 86 Church Association ; Keble’s proposals ... 88 “ The Tracts for the Times ” ; Newman and Palmer . 89 The old High Church party ; Norris .... 91 Liberality of this school ; Archdeacon Lyall . . 92 British Critic on the crisis . . . . *93 Address of the clergy to the Primate .... 94 Declaration of the laity ...... 96 Tractarianism ........ 98 CHAPTER III Church and Dissent, 1834-1836 Petitions to Parliament ...... 101 Grievances of Dissent ; Marriage Law and Church rates 102 University tests ; movement for abolition . . . 104 Oxford as a national University .... 106 The Universities and the Church .... 108 Non-residence ; Brougham’s Bills .... 109 Grey resigns, 1834 ; Peel’s First Ministry . . .110 Church Revenues Commission, 1832 . . . .111 Its Report, 1835 ....... 112 Abuses'of patronage ; Bishop Sparke . . . . 113 Peel as a Church reformer ; his Commission, 1835 . 115 Newman’s plea for suffragan bishops . . . 117 Legislation delayed . . . . . . .118 Proposed commutation of tithes, 1833-1835 . . 119 Tithe Commutation Act, 1836 ..... 122 The Act in operation . . . . . -123 Peel and the marriage of Dissenters, 1835 . . . 124 Marriage and Registration Acts, 1836 . . .126 X CONTENTS CHAPTER IV Internal Reform, 1836-1840 PAGE Non-residence decreasing ; church-building . . 127 Peel’s Commission of Inquiry ; First Report, 1835 . 129 Second, Third, and Fourth Reports, 1836 . . . 130 Bishoprics reorganised ; the Ecclesiastical Commission 133 Opposition in Parliament ...... 134 Church Rates Bill, 1837 > draft of a Fifth Report . 136 Attacks on the Ecclesiastical Commission . . . 138 Melbourne and the appointment of bishops . . . 139 Cathedral scheme ; opposition of the chapters . . 140 Sydney Smith as an anti-reformer .... 141 British Critic captured by Newman .... 144 Bishops Blomfield, Kaye, and Monk on Church reform 145 Plurality Act, 1838 ....... 146 Cathedral reform in Parliament ..... 149 Dean and Chapter Act, 1840 ..... 152 Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, 1830 . . . 154 Special Report ; new court of appeal, 1832 . . . 155 General Report ....... 156 Attempted legislation, 1836-1839 . . . .158 Thorogood’s case and Act of 1840 .... 161 Church Discipline ; Bills, 1836-1839 .... 161 Church Discipline Act, 1840 ..... 164 Wodehouse and liturgical reform .... 165 His petition rejected, 1840 ..... 166 Ecclesiastical reform reviewed ..... 167 Bishop Blomfield ....... 169 Archbishop Howley . . . . • ... 173 Conclusion ........ 174 ERRATUM. Page 91, note 1. Burgon’s Twelve Good Men was first published in 1888, not in 1891 ; and Dean Church’s Oxford Movement appeared in the latter year, shortly after his death. ENGLISH CHURCH REFORM 1815-1840 INTRODUCTION The reform movement which triumphed in 1832 envisaged the ecclesiastical as well as the civil constitution ; and we cannot appreciate the position of the Church at this crisis without some knowledge of the attitude it had assumed towards the social and political problems which had been ripening for solution since the close of the Napoleonic War. But this attitude was determined to some extent by the principles of religious parties ; and, as these parties must be constantly referred to, it will be well at the outset to review their origin and character. The religious revival of the eighteenth century was the work of Churchmen ; and, though soon compelled to organise itself as a separate communion, it was accom¬ panied by a parallel movement within the Church. The Evangelicals, who inherited this tradition, were at the opening of the next century a compact, energetic, and public-spirited body ; but their progress had been slow in numbers and still slower in official recognition. Wesley in 1764 had reason to believe that some fifty parish clergymen wrere in sympathy with his views ; but Romaine, till he was joined by Newton in 1780, was the only Evan¬ gelical incumbent in London ; and Simeon, when ordained B 2 INTRODUCTION in 1782, thought seriously of advertising his desire to assist gratuitously a minister of this type, “ believing that such persons must exist, though he had now lived three years without finding so much as one.” 1 Even as late as 1808 the Christian Observer estimated the Evangelical clergy as no more than one in ten — perhaps only one in twenty ; and the difficulty they experienced in obtaining cures may be inferred from the fact that so many were in proprietary chapels or in livings which were either in the gift of the parishioners or had recently been purchased. There were several Evangelical laymen of sufficient piety and wealth to provide for the settlement of ministers — notably John Thornton, who acquired so many livings that at his death in 1790 they were formed into a trust. It was frequently asserted, and as frequently denied, that there was a fund for the purchase of ad- vowsons.2 Something of the kind must have existed in later days when Simeon was prosecuting on a large scale, both as donor and receiver of funds, his “ blessed work of purchasing livings ” ; 3 and the practice prevailed to such an extent in 1829 that it was compared to the monastic appropriations.4 Societies had been formed under the same auspices to assist young men of slender means in their preparation for the ministry, such as the Elland Society, dating from 1 777, which had usually eight or ten students on its books at Cambridge ; but, though money could supply Evangelical candidates for ordination, and could even surmount the difficulty of providing them with benefices,5 it was powerless to 1 Carus’s Simeon, p. 22. 3 A fund and a committee for this purpose were started by the Puritans in the reign of Charles I ; but Archbishop Laud made short work of " the specious practice." — J. B. Mozley’s Essays, i. 166. 3 Carus's Simeon, pp. 591, 604. 4 Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1829, i. 384, editor’s note. 6 Josiah Pratt, a prominent Evangelical, was not beneficed — and then only through popular election — till his fifty-ninth year (1823). Thomas Scott, at the age of fifty-four, was rewarded with a country living worth only about ^100. EVANGELICALS 3 further their promotion in the Church. Isaac Milner was the first, and for long the sole, dignitary belonging to this school ; and his appointment to the deanery of Carlisle in 1791 was doubly exceptional ; for, apart from mathematical eminence and convivial habits,1 he owed it to the friendship of Bishop Pretyman (afterwards Tomline), who was so far from countenancing “ the serious clergy ” that he assailed their theology and avowed in private that he thought them “ great rascals/’ The Evangelicals were conspicuous in philanthropic as wrell as in religious enterprise, the abolition of the slave trade being almost as much their work as the establish¬ ment of foreign missions ; and when we remember that most of them were Tories, that Wilberforce, their most prominent layman, was the intimate friend of Pitt, and that from 1787 to 1808 they enjoyed the sympathy and co-operation of Dr. Porteus as Bishop of London, it may not seem easy to account for their long failure to obtain adequate recognition. They were, of course, liable to be classed as Methodists. This, indeed, was their popular designation, and was applied to them even officially by the bishops ; and it was not likely to fall out of use so long as they extended their ministrations to chapels and barns. Simeon lived to be much ashamed of this practice, though he was taxed with it as late as 1809 ; 2 and Evan¬ gelicalism owed much of the stricter Churchmanship which facilitated its diffusion to the reverence for the Liturgy which he impressed privately and from his pulpit at Cambridge on thirteen generations of students. The progress of outward conformity was, however, accom¬ panied by the persistence of a sectarian spirit. Theo¬ logically the Evangelicals were the disciples of Whitefield 1 Despite indifferent health, Milner was a noted bon viveur. To one who had expressed surprise that he could partake of so many different dishes, he said : “ The truth is, I have a very weak stomach, and when it has digested as much as it can of one kind of food, it will set to work and digest some other.” — Gunning’s Reminiscences, i. 271. 3 Carus's Simeon, pp. 277, 278. INTRODUCTION 4 rather than Wesley ; but it betrays a lack of systematic thinking which was characteristic of the party that, whilst many of them resented the imputation of Calvinism, they all preached in its most extreme form the doctrine of natural depravity and supernatural grace, and were thus led to look with pity, if not contempt, on their presumably unconverted brethren, and to arrogate to themselves the title of “ gospel ministers " and “ serious Christians." One can easily understand that the ordi¬ nary clergyman did not care to associate with those who held him in such slight esteem ; and he might have justified his reluctance on the principle followed by Dr. Johnson in his attitude to the Scots : “ When I find a Scotchman to whom an Englishman is as a Scotch¬ man, that Scotchman shall be an Englishman to me." We are told that lists of “ gospel ministers " were con¬ tained in Evangelical pocket-books, and that their portraits were displayed — no doubt often without their knowledge or consent — in the London print-shops.1 Nor was there wanting a verbal freemasonry intelligible only to the initiated and calculated still further to distinguish and isolate the sect ; for Evangelicalism had its peculiar diction, which a Dissenting minister described in no hostile spirit as “ barbarous " and as “ a kind of popery of language, requiring everything to be marked with the signs of the holy Church, and forbidding anyone to minister in religion except in consecrated speech." 2 Disliked as pharisaical, the Evangelicals were also contemned as illiterate ; and humanism, especially in the form of imaginative literature, being excluded from their conception of the religious life, the average level of their culture was inevitably low. There were amongst them a few men of intellectual distinction, but no divines who as such can be regarded as scholars. Thomas Scott, the commentator, and Joseph Milner, the ecclesiastical 1 Christian Observer, Nov. 1808. 2 Foster's Essays, 5th edition, 1813, pp. 289, 291. EVANGELICALS 5 historian, may be cited as exceptions ; but Scott, a heroic student, worked on the piinciple that nothing outside Scripture is to be used in its interpretation ; and Milner deprecated as dangerous to religion “ deep researches into philosophy of any kind.” His brother the Dean viewed with disfavour even' the textual criticism of the Bible, because men might “ spend their lives in the cultivation of this species of knowledge ” without being " remarkable for the soundness of their faith,” or, worse still, through the effect produced on their minds by variations in the text, might “ be¬ come impressed with sceptical surmises and suspicions respecting the truth of the whole book itself.” 1 Ob¬ sessed as they were by their theory of conversion, the Evangelicals were much given to “ dealing with Scripture as chemists do with natural bodies, torturing them to extract that out of them which God and Nature never put in them ” ; 2 and, unfortunately for their reputation, they published a great mass of sermons and controversial tracts. An anonymous and very able writer, who himself belonged to this school, declared that many of the Evangelical clergy were disgusted with the vulgarity, the ill-temper, the “ drivelling cant,” which characterised “ much of what comes out as the produce of authorship on their side ” ; and he affirmed as “ a certain truth that the writings of avowed infidels are not more offensive to several of the clergy in question than are some of the publications here alluded to.” 3 The great majority of the clergy were connected but loosely, if at all, with any particular school ; and, if Surrey may be taken as a representative district, we have a not unfavourable account of their character from Charles Jerram, one of “ the sect called Evangelicals,” who in 1 Strictures on some Publications of Herbert Marsh, 1813, pp. 264, 266. 1 Chemists even in those days were not so ill-advised ; but the quotation is from the “ ever-memorable ” John Hales, 1584-1656. 3 Zeal without Innovation, 1808. 6 INTRODUCTION 1810 was presented by John Thornton’s trustees to the vicarage of Chobham. The news was received very much as if it had been that of a “ pestilence,” and none of Jerram’s brethren called on him for two years ; but he says that, with one or two exceptions, they were good moral preachers and conscientious pastors, and that, though seldom absent from balls and race meetings, they were careful on such occasions to observe decorum.1 The standard of clerical duty and conduct was prob¬ ably higher in Surrey than in regions more remote ; and throughout the country — apart from the evils of plurality and non-residence, of which much will be said elsewhere — great laxity prevailed. Mouldy and dilapidated churches may have been rarer than is generally supposed ; 2 but parochial, and sometimes even political, meetings were held in “ the body of the church,” which was often damaged by their violence — and no wonder, when on one occasion at Sheffield there was “ an actual trial of personal strength between two gentlemen, each trying to eject the other from the chair.” 3 If a clergyman had a taste for secular business, there was nothing to prevent him becoming a Justice of the Peace ; and as late as 1832 the rector of the parish presided daily in the Lambeth Street Police Court. We read of an incumbent who was postmaster in a large town, and of another who was, or hoped to be. Mayor of Macclesfield. Intemperance, though becoming much less of a scandal, was still common ; and not all the offenders could plead the excuse which startled Bishop Blomfield : “ But, my lord, I never was drunk on duty.” Country clergymen were notoriously fond of shooting and fox-hunting, especially the latter ; and in the newspapers, in a list of advowsons for sale,4 1 Memoirs of J err am, pp. 261, 262. 2 Wickham Legg’s English Church Life, 1660-1833, p. 125. 8 Hansard, 3rd Series, xxxvi. 1212, xxxviii. 864. 4 Nothing was done to check the sale of livings till 1898, when an Act was passed permitting it only where the advowson is sold in con¬ junction with a manor or an estate of not less than a hundred acres, HIGH CHURCHMEN 7 one might read, “ Single duty in a good sporting country and in the neighbourhood of the - hounds ” ; or that “ the Rev. Lord Henry Fitzroy, Prebendafy of West¬ minster/' was disposing of his racing stud. An anti¬ clerical writer of 1831 declared that a parson might hunt “ without the slightest impropriety " so long as he wore a black or dark grey coat ; but some six years earlier Bishop Blomfield was refusing to license curates who would not promise to refrain from hunting, and said that the practice was spoken of with disapprobation “ by every gentleman whom I have ever heard mention the subject/’ 1 Zealous upholders of the Church as a national insti¬ tution were in those days denominated High Churchmen,2 but they included a few who attributed a super¬ natural efficacy to its priesthood and ritual. The fore¬ runners, though not the progenitors, of this school were the eight bishops and four hundred clergy who refused to recognise the Revolution Government of 1689, and, finding a fresh grievance in the deprivation of bishops by the civil power, seceded from the Church. Archbishop Sancroft perpetuated the schism by authorising the and prohibiting absolutely what was a much worse abuse — the sale of the next presentation. The Lower House of Convocation of Canter¬ bury have declared their satisfaction with this Act ; but the Archbishops’ Committee recommend, with two dissentients, “ that the sale of advowsons be entirely abolished, except to church bodies.” 1 Beverley's Letter to the Archbishop of York, 1831, pp. 27, 33 ; The Present State of the Established Church, 1832, pp. 31, 46 ; Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 103-105. a This use of the word was still current in 1828, and was then repudiated by Bishop Copleston : “ I cannot concede the title of High Churchmen to those who seem to me almost exclusively to claim it, and who are distinguished by an excessive care for the temporal interests of the Church more than by a devotion to its spiritual duties. When assumed on this account, I contend that the term is wholly misapplied, and even used in an inverted sense.” — Hansard, New Series, xix. 183. The reader will have to discover from the context in which sense the term “ High Churchman ” is used in this work. Canon Overton suggested that the Establishment-men should be called “ The Orthodox ” ; but the word was less often applied to them and at the present day would be quite misleading. 8 INTRODUCTION assumption of colleagues, though he did not live to see them consecrated ; but this step was unwelcome to the majority of his adherents, who were uneasy under the imputation of schism — a sin which they had been wont to denounce — and hoped to escape from it as soon as the intruded bishops, through the death or resignation of their predecessors, had acquired a canonical title to their sees. In less than thirty years all but a remnant of the errant pastors and their flocks had returned to the national fold, where during their absence the atmosphere had become very unfavourable to sacerdotal ideas. High Churchmanship continued, but only in its political form ; philosophical speculation superseded the study of Catholic tradition; and the patristic writings, which had been highly valued by the Non jurors, soon fell into general neglect. The schismatic episcopate survived till 1779 or — if we choose to recognise an irregular branch — till 1805 ; but as a formative influence it had long been extinct ; and the modem High Churchmen are separated by too wide a gap from the days of its power to claim the antiquity involved in a lineal descent.1 The founder, or at least the first prominent representative, of this school, was George Horne, an Oxford scholar, who in 1776 became Vice-Chancellor of the University, and later Dean of Canterbury and Bishop of Norwich. Closely associated with him and even more influential were William Jones, a country clergyman, and William Stevens, cousin of Horne and a divine in all but his regular business, which was that of a hosier in London. These men gloried in the term “ Catholic/’ upheld the jus divinum of Episcopacy, and studied the Fathers at a time when they were “ but little known and less relished.” All three wrote against schism, telling the Nonconformists “ some 1 Canon Overton cites examples to show that the original High Church party had not died out, but the first is Bishop Horsley, 1733-1806. — The English Church, 1800-1833, p. 25. HUTCHINSONIANS 9 things which it could not be very agreeable to them to hear,” such as that schism was “ as undoubtedly a sin as adultery and drunkenness ” ; that, “ generally speak¬ ing,” there was no salvation outside the Church ; and that schismatics, infidels, and apostates were all equally under “ the curse of God.” They respected the Methodists on account of their spiritual fervour and their desire still to be reckoned as Churchmen ; and they were as much displeased as the Evangelicals with " some of our most celebrated divines ” who had extolled " the dignity of human nature and the wisdom of human reason.” In politics they were Tories, even to the extent of passive obedience — a doctrine which they revived in favour of George II. But the most remarkable feature of this school was the combination of considerable learning with a timidity and puerility of thought which would be unaccountable, did we not remember that they were a reaction against the spirit of rational inquiry which had extinguished the Nonjuror tradition. With few exceptions, the High Churchmen of this period were Hutchinsonians — disciples of John Hutchinson, who in 1737 had attempted to confute Newton’s theory of gravitation on the ground that it attributed innate powers to matter and was therefore calculated to promote materialism — which, indeed, he more than suspected to be its actual design ; and there is no lack of evidence to support the statement of Jones, that, when a student had assimilated this system, “ a great revolution succeeds in his ideas of the natural world.” Indeed one hardly sees how he could have any such ideas at all. Horne held, and Jones agreed with him, that the reason was made to learn, not to teach. It was the mental, as the eye was the physical, organ of vision ; and as the eye could not see without light, so the reason could not know without supernatural instruction — a conclusion which appears to have been illogically confined to the “ things of heaven.” Even 10 INTRODUCTION as thus limited, however, it ruled out as impious as well as futile natural religion, which Hutchinson called " the religion of Satan,” moral philosophy, and metaphysics, and made inroads even on pure scholarship. It might have been supposed that any attempt to secure the verbal authenticity of Scripture would be welcomed by those who believed it to be literally inspired. Yet when Dr. Kennicott in 1753 published proposals for a revision of the Hebrew text, he was opposed by the Hutchin- sonians because ” it hurt and alarmed them to see a learned gentleman plead and argue as if he had a victory to obtain by proving the corruption of the Hebrew text ” ; because infidels had found imaginary errors and would be encouraged to find more ; and because the spirit must be endangered ” while the rage of editing prevails and the state of the copy is the grand object.” One cannot wonder that the term Hutchinsonian became a “ damnatory title,” and that those who bore it were accused not only of “ insulting and trampling upon reason,” but of “ a great contempt for learning.” 1 Bishop Horne died in 1792, and was followed eight years later by his biographer, Jones. Stevens, who wrote the life of Jones, survived till 1807. Fond of bestowing sobriquets on his associates, he had selected that of ” Nobody ” for himself ; and there still exists, or existed very lately, a club composed mainly of High Churchmen, which had been formed in honour of Stevens some years before his death and called itself “ Nobody’s Friends.” His successor as lay adjutant to this corps was Joshua Watson, a wealthy wine merchant of pious and energetic 1 Jones’s Life of Horne, 1795, pp. 32, 36, 66, 67, 96-98, 108, no, 184 ; Park’s Life of Stevens, p. 79 ; Horne’s Apology for Certain Gentlemen, etc. (published 1756), 2nd edition, 1799, pp. 15-19. 22. 37* Horne believed that the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was foretold in Amos. But his wit was keener than his intelligence. Hume having remarked that all the devout persons he had ever met were melancholy, Horne said this was likely enough, as he probably saw very few, and " the sight of him would make a devout person melancholy at any time." ARCHDEACON DAUBENY ii character whom he had playfully extolled as “ the first man of the age/’ But Watson had escaped the Hutchin- sonian contagion, and the chief representative of this cult was now Archdeacon Daubeny, his uncle by marriage. Daubeny beheld with horror the growth of Dissent or, as he called it, schism, and denounced its chapels as “ synagogues of Satan.” 1 He lamented the almost universal ignorance " with respect to the nature and con¬ stitution of the Church,” and believed that the tide of defection would be stemmed if the clergy could but con¬ vince the people — having previously convinced them¬ selves — of the supernatural virtues inherent in their commission ; for “ from being uninterested in our office they soon become indifferent to it.” He admitted, how¬ ever, that even this remedy might fail, and more than hinted that “ our governors ” might then be expected to redress the balance, unless, indeed, they had " drunk so deep of the intoxicating cup of modem liberality as to profess an equal indifference to all religious persuasions.” The liberty claimed by the schismatics was in his opinion ” rather a liberty of their own making than any portion of that liberty with which Christ has made them free.” 2 That the Church could promote but could not secure the salvation of its members was the principle asserted at the Reformation ; and it has been well said of this principle as revived by Wesley that “ the birthday of a Christian was shifted from his baptism to his conversion, and in that change the partition line of two great systems is crossed.” 3 The change, however, was one which the 1 The doctrine of schism has at least this disadvantage, that it " chalks out one path more to the devil than he had before." — Jeremy Taylor. * Daubeny’s Guide to the Church, 3rd edition, i. 106 ; Charge, 1809, pp. 10, 14, 37. The Archdeacon had another and better way of com¬ bating schism ; for, through his exertions, and largely at his expense, was built at Bath in 1798 the first church in which all seats — to the number of 1360 — were free. * Julia Wedgwood's John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction, P- 157- 12 INTRODUCTION generation that witnessed it could not fully appreciate ; for in those days the rites of the Church were regarded rather as the framework of devotion than as the vehicles of grace ; and the reproach of enthusiasm which was brought against the Methodists is in itself a proof of this mundane spirit. It is significant that Bishop Home was considered as liable to the same charge ; and it was not till the reaction caused by the French Revolution had stimulated both types of religion that the antagonism between them became acute. To High Churchmen the Evangelicals were far more obnoxious than the Non¬ conformists, whom, whilst regretting the extreme dubiety of their salvation, they professed to respect ; for the Evangelicals were addicted to an alien theology and attached no exclusive value to the government and sacraments of the Church, and could thus be represented as fighting under the banners of one party whilst accepting the pay of another. Two great societies had been established by the Evangelicals since the beginning of the century — the Church Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. The latter was managed by a committee, the clerical members of which were composed in equal numbers of Churchmen and Dissenters ; and its object was the circulation of the Scriptures without note or comment. In November 1811, when the Bible Society had existed for seven years, Herbert Marsh, Lady Mar¬ garet Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, was startled and incensed by what he regarded as the democratic as well as the methodistical proposal that a branch should be formed amongst the Cambridge undergraduates ; and, the design having been accomplished, he published early in 1812 “ An Inquiry into the Consequences of the Neglect to give the Prayer Book with the Bible.” When the Evangelicals read these words on the title page of Marsh’s tract, they may well have believed that their assailant had delivered himself into their BIBLE AND PRAYER BOOK 13 hands. If they were liable to be called Methodists, High Churchmen were equally liable to be called Papists ; and here was one of this school maintaining that, whilst Churchmen might combine with Dissenters to circulate the Bible abroad, where the object was to promote Protestantism in general, they could not at home dis¬ sociate it from the Liturgy without endangering the Church. Marsh did not conceal his repudiation of Chillingworth’s adage, " The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants/’ and warned his brethren that, if they were content with the “ generalised Pro¬ testantism” which satisfied Chillingworth, they might live — as he very nearly did — to see the Liturgy abolished by Act of Parliament.1 The Professor was inevitably reminded that, when he enlarged on the danger of a perversion of Scripture, he was employing the very argument used by Papists in defence of their denial of the Bible to the laity ; and this rejoinder was enforced by a Romanist pamphleteer, who congratulated him on having given up the “ vital principle of Protestantism.” Many High Churchmen hastened to his support ; but some of them wrote in defence of the Bible Society ; and Robert Southey, whilst expressing his concurrence in Marsh’s argument, said it was almost certain to be misrepresented and was not worth the risk, as nine-tenths of the Bible Society’s business was in foreign countries. “ I wish Herbert Marsh had let the Bible Society alone.” The controversy was violent and prolonged, but not too much so for Marsh, who defied all his opponents, from the Edinburgh Review to “ the Evangelical Magazine and the other broods of Methodism which are hatched at the expiration of every month and peck by instinct at the Margaret Professor.” 2 Those who thought it unsafe to circulate the Bible 1 Inquiry, 2nd edition, pp. 31, 36, 75. 2 Most of the tracts in this controversy are summarised in Baker's History of St. John’s College, Cambridge, pp. 741-857. INTRODUCTION 14 without the Prayer Book were naturally even more anxious that it should not be taught to children under other auspices than those of the Church ; and Marsh’s attack on the Bible Society was no doubt prompted by the fact that he and his friends were then engaged in an attempt to counteract its principles in education. On October 21, 1811, a week or two before the Bible meeting at Cambridge, a society had been formed on the principle that the “ national religion ” must be " the first and chief thing taught to the poor.” The Evangeli¬ cals assented heartily enough to this scheme ; but the ” National Society ” originated with Watson and two other High Churchmen who met at his house ; he him¬ self became its treasurer ; Marsh was its most active promoter ; all the bishops were ex officio members of committee ; and the object was to combat the undenomi¬ national instruction provided by the British and Foreign Schools Society, which its opponents regarded as little better, if not worse, than secular. Joseph Lancaster, the founder of this system, had been at work for more than ten years ; but he had recently begun to itinerate as an educationist, and the annual subscriptions, which in 1808 were only £24 8, had now increased to nearly ^ooo.1 But Evangelicalism, however it may have been dis¬ couraged as a means of education, was now forging ahead. When Marsh attacked the Bible Society in 1812, it had been joined by twenty English and Irish bishops,2 and he himself declared that its progress up to this point was a phenomenon “ to which we have had nothing similar since Peter the Hermit went preaching the Crusade.” 8 In 1815 Lord Harrowby, a Cabinet Minister, succeeded, after much opposition, in procuring for his brother the see of Gloucester ; and Dr. Ryder was the first prelate 1 Bartley's Schools for the People, p. 64. * Otter’s Vindication, 1812, p. 23, note. 3 Inquiry, p. 52. EVANGELICALISM SPREADING 15 whom the Evangelicals could regard, not as a patron, but as one of themselves. The Church Missionary Society, founded under another name in 1801, was so markedly Evangelical that to join it had long been a test of courage ; but in 1817 its income had risen from £900 to £20,000, and about 1823 there were as many as 1600 clerical members.1 Meanwhile Marsh in 1819 had become Bishop of Peterborough, and was trying to hamper the enemy’s advance by laying a “ trap to catch Calvinists.” This consisted of a list of eighty-seven questions which he was in the habit of putting to can¬ didates for ordination or licence, apparently with a corrective rather than a punitive purpose ; for the episcopal “ argument and expostulation ” are said to have been successful in all but two cases. It is more difficult to account for the rapid progress of Evangelicalism than for its long depression ; but the middle classes were the stronghold of its power, and it must necessarily have participated in the growth of their influence throughout the pre-reform decade. In 1828 Keble referred to “ the amazing rate at which Puritanism seems to be getting on all over the kingdom ” ; 2 and in the same year another High Church divine lamented that clergymen of his own school were “ rapidly losing ground ” ; that there were few districts into which the rival system had not made its way ; and, in short, that it was “ creeping like a mist over the whole surface of the country and bearing with it all the properties of a noxious fog.” 3 1 Memoirs of Jerram, p. 295. a Coleridge's Memoir of Keble, p. 176. 3 Warner’s Evangelical Preaching, p. 6. CHAPTER I THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 The Church of England had triumphed over Puritanism in 1660 and over Popery, professing to befriend Puri¬ tanism, in 1688 ; and throughout the eighteenth century it retained its popularity as a compromise between these two extremes. Popery lost some of its terror after the suppression in 1746 of the last Jacobite revolt ; but Methodists as a common target for clerical and popular abuse were no bad substitute for Papists, with whom, indeed, they were frequently confounded ; the substitu¬ tion of a native for a foreign-bred king in 1760 evoked an enthusiasm for throne and altar not unlike that which under similar conditions had signalised the accession of Queen Anne ; and this spirit, after barely surviving the disasters of the American War, was recalled to full vigour by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. A democratic movement had been in progress in England for twenty-one years, having been started by John Wilkes in 1768, and its leaders at once responded to the summons from Paris ; but the alien character now assumed by the agitation, and the fact that it was sup¬ ported almost exclusively by Dissenters, made it extremely unpopular. The multitude which had once shouted “ Wilkes and Liberty ” was now shouting “ Church and King ” ; the riot of 1791 at Birmingham, provoked by a meeting to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, was directed mainly against the chapels and houses of CHURCHLESS MASSES 17 Dissenters ; and Priestley, “ a sort of Metropolitan of the Unitarians/' 1 and the principal victim of this out¬ rage, was justified in his assertion that “ the same bad spirit pervaded the whole kingdom." Burke noted with natural satisfaction that the democratic societies in all parts of the country were with difficulty protected from the mob. Of the Sedition and Treason Acts passed in 1795, Francis Place said that “infamous as these laws were, they were popular measures " ; and at a great meeting of the Yorkshire electors, though it had been called to protest against them, they were enthusiastically approved. " I remember when the word ‘Church’ would have raised a mob whenever it was used ; but now, thank God, it would as soon raise a ghost." 2 These words had some temporary justification when they were uttered in the House of Lords about the middle of the eighteenth century ; but they were far more applicable to the temper of the masses at the close of the great war with France. The enthusiasm for the Church which was conspicuous in 1791 had given place in 1815 to a spirit rather hostile than indifferent ; and this revulsion of feeling can be no mystery to those who are acquainted with the conditions of the time. At the outbreak of hostilities water-power as the mainspring of industry was just beginning to be supplanted by steam ; and the parochial system, within the area of this process, was soon overwhelmed by the growth and fluidity of population to which it gave rise. Villages sprang into towns, towns into cities ; and districts almost uninhabited — “ wild heaths and barren moors " — became densely peopled. Manchester and Salford, com¬ prising thirty townships and a population of 136,000, were “ one immense parish " ; 3 and both in Lancashire 1 Abbey and Overton’s English Church, ii. 403. 2 Ibid., p. 401. 3 In 1812 the Bishop of Chester confirmed 8000 children at Manchester in one day between eight in the morning and half-past eight in the evening. — Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 97. 18 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 and Middlesex the deficiency of church accommodation was estimated at a million seats. In the rural parishes within a radius of a hundred miles from London the average number of inhabitants was about 640 ; but the urban parishes within eight miles of St. Paul’s — exclusive of the City, which even then was over-churched — had a population of 1,162,300, whilst the churches and Anglican chapels could accommodate only 220,000. Marylebone had 75,000 inhabitants, and St. Pancras came next with 46,000; but in each of these parishes there was room for only 6000 worshippers. “ The mind shrinks,” says the compiler of these figures, “ from the contemplation of such a concentrated mass of exclusion, separation, and necessary disaffection to the Established Church.” 1 Nor was the availability of the churches less limited than their space. Most of the area was occupied by seat- holders, who were usually more anxious to secure than to use their proprietary rights ; and from the strength of the Establishment as a popular institution must be deducted a considerable number of chapels, built as a commercial speculation and consequently closed to the poor. The first attempt to recover for the Church its influ¬ ence over the masses was made towards the end of the war. For the eleven years beginning in 1809 Parliament voted £100,000 annually towards endowing and aug¬ menting benefices in populous districts ; and we are told that but for this assistance the Forest of Dean " would have continued in a state little removed from heathenism.” 2 Perceval, at the time of his assassination in 1812, was contemplating “ some active step ” in the direction of church-building, and the project was renewed in 1813 ; but nothing of any consequence was accom¬ plished till a society to raise funds for this purpose was 1 Yates, The Church in Danger, 1815, pp. 36-77 ; The Basis of National Welfare, 1817, p. 354. a Bishop Monk’s Charge, 1838, p. 32. CHURCH-BUILDING 19 formed in 1817. Next year Parliament voted a million, and in 1824 half a million.1 It was proposed to cater for the entire population by providing such facilities for worship as should make it possible for one person in three to be present at a time — a task much greater than need have been attempted had there been a disposition to recognise the resources of schism. The Dissenters had been building during the war, whilst Churchmen, intent on the public purse, had been waiting for peace ; and the institution of a Sunday evening service, which originated with the Methodists, had enabled them, in the absence of counter-attractions, to enrol the listless and the idle as well as the devout. In 1810 there were said to be more meeting-houses than churches ; and Lord Harrowby, a leading Evangelical, declared that “ we were tending towards that most alarming of all situations in which the religion of the Established Church would not be the religion of the majority of the people." 2 The menace of Dissent was confined mainly to the towns and industrial villages, where, as we shall see, it was soon to be aggravated by the growth of a democratic spirit ; but the freedom from competition enjoyed by the rural clergy was much marred at this period by their unpopularity as tithe-owners. Many laymen were — and less justifiably — in the same position. A large pro¬ portion of the tithe was owned by the descendants or representatives of those who had obtained monastic estates at the Reformation ; but in their case it was associated with the payment of rent ; and the lay im¬ propriator, though he rendered no service in return for his tithes, was in a less anomalous position than a man who was “ at once the plaintiff and the priest, the pro¬ secutor and the pastor, the guardian of the flock and the sharer in the fleece." 3 1 Of this sum, ^50,000 was assigned to the Church of Scotland. a Cobbett’s Pari. Debates, xvii. 762, 769 ; Quarterly Review (1824), xxxi. 232, 236. * Quarterly Review (1830), xlii. 109. 20 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 Tithe in itself did not affect the existing landowners, who, in view of this ancient encumbrance, had inherited or purchased only nine-tenths of their estates. The hardship was in the mode of payment and in the influence which such a tax could not fail to exert on the develop¬ ment of agriculture. Throughout much the greater part of England the tithe-owner had agreed to accept a money payment in lieu of his claim on the produce ; but these agreements, except where they had been ratified by Parliament in Enclosure Acts, were not permanent ; and as late as 1810 as much as eighteen per cent, of the tithe was still levied in kind. Protracted law suits and churches almost deserted by their parishioners were the natural result of this practice, which, according to a writer of 1816, opened to the rival claimants “ a dreadful field of rancour and malice/' The Small Tithe, levied on root crops, was usually drawn by the vicar, and its incidence was vexatious — peas being exempt, but not beans or cabbages, turnips, if sheep fed on them growing, but not if they were uprooted and thrown into the fold. And in regard to the Great Tithe, which was at least uniform, weather or the enforced idleness of his labourers might cause great loss to the farmer whilst he was waiting for the “ tithe-cart " to take off the allotted sheaves. Tithe discouraged agriculture because it was levied on the gross produce, whether this was due in the main to natural fertility or to the employment of labour, skill, and capital on inferior land. A man might be willing to devote £1000 to intensive cultivation if he expected to have a gross return of £1100 ; but on this basis the tithe-owner, who had borne none of the expense, would appropriate the whole of his profit and £10 of his outlay.1 1 A law of Edward VI, which was still in force, exempted reclaimed land from tithe for seven years ; but this, though a valuable concession when much good land was yet untilled, was quite inadequate when all but the worst land had been taken into cultivation. TITHES 21 So long as agriculture remained more or less stationary there was probably not much ground for complaint ; and it was not till the era of wide and intensive tillage which culminated during the Napoleonic War that the hardship was acutely felt. We are told that lands which had been reclaimed at great expense were frequently on this account allowed to fall out of cultivation, and that " thousands of acres have been laid down to grass ” partly, at least, with a view to escaping the payment of tithe. The grievance was magnified by agitators who pointed to the crushing burden of pauperism, and reminded their hearers that in the Middle Ages tithes had been a provision for the poor as well as for the priests. In 1797 an apologist for the Church said of tithes : “ Every shaft which industry, wit, or malice could devise hath been levelled against them ; insomuch that there is hardly an imaginary or real grievance with which this kingdom is so pathetically said to be oppressed which hath not been attributed to the payment of tithes.” During the disastrous harvest of 1799 farmers in the west, though their tithes were not paid in kind, were “ clamorous against them ” ; 1 and Pitt submitted a proposal to the bishops by which the whole tithe of the country was to be sold and the proceeds invested in the funds as a maintenance for the clergy, with provision for its periodical adjustment to the price of grain. Still louder complaints were caused by the agricultural de¬ pression which followed the Peace. In 1816 a clerical pamphleteer referred to “ the injurious and vexatious litigations between clergymen and their parishioners at all times arising from the collection of tithes/’ and declared that “ the antipathies between them are now in a tenfold degree aggravated.” Next year many 1 “ Oh, why were farmers made so coarse, Or clergy made so fine ? A kick that scarce would move a horse May kill a sound divine.” — Cowper. 22 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 petitions were presented to Parliament against tithes ; and it appears from the debates that 120 tithe causes — 69 of these instituted by the clergy, and mostly of long duration — had been decided in the previous seven years, and that as many, if not more, were awaiting decision. In 1836 Lord John Russell declared that the experience of more than half a century had caused tithe to be regarded as “ a heavy mulct on those who expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the cultivation of the land,” and as compelling the clergy “ to lose either their income by their indulgence or their popularity.” 1 It greatly aggravated the burden of tithe that in so many cases it was paid to absentees. A majority of the incumbents were liable to this reproach, which was more damaging to them than to the lay impropriators, because residence was essential to the effective discharge of their duties. That the incumbent did not reside was, however, in many cases rather his misfortune than his fault. In nearly five thousand of the parishes there was no parsonage or none that was habitable ; and many of the livings were so poor — nearly 2000 being under £100 — that two or more of them had necessarily to be conjoined. But tithe-payers had a more legitimate object of aversion than the houseless or impecunious vicar. It was estimated in 1811 that of 7 167 incumbents with stipends of over £150 a year, which was usually taken as the dividing line between comfort or affluence and poverty, 3611 were non-resident ; and the cry against this abuse was sharply accentuated by the rapacity of men who, having other sources of income, official or private, accepted benefices of £50 to £70, appropriated " a portion of this wretched pittance, and left much less 1 Hansard, xxxvii. 545, 552, 555 ; 3rd Series, xvii. 275, xxvii. 200, xxxi. 186 ; Cove’s essay on Church Revenues , 1797, p. 252 ; The Pamphleteer, 1816, viii. 154, 342, 354, 357 ; The Injurious Effects of Tithe, 1830, pp. 5-15 ; Life of Bishop Watson, p. 306. NON-RESIDENCE 23 than the wages of a day labourer for the subsistence of their curates.” 1 What Bentham called “ this English manufactory of sinecure out of cure ” was a contraband traffic ; but down to the close of the eighteenth century it could be indulged in with a minimum of risk. Plurality, except in the case of livings under £8 a year, had been prohibited at the Reformation ; and residence had then been enforced under the enormous penalty of £10 a month — about ten times the value in those days of the average benefice. The law of course declined in severity with the purchasing power of money ; but it remained practically, if not quite, inoperative till about 1798, when informers, inspired by or taking advantage of the Evangelical revival, began to institute prosecutions. An evil so long sanctioned by usage could obviously be corrected in this manner only at the cost of great hardship to individuals ; and in July 1801, proceeding on a recital that many of the provisions of Henry VIII. ’s law had been found incon¬ venient and had given occasion to “ many vexatious prosecutions,” an Act was passed which stayed all such proceedings till March 25, 1802. The hunting of peccant divines seems to have been resumed soon after the period of their protection expired ; for in the following June the Act was revived till April 8, 1803 ; and on the day before this date it was extended to July 8. 2 During the period covered by these temporary measures Parliament was endeavouring to remodel the statutory guarantee for the discharge of pastoral duties ; and the difficulty of reconciling the comfort and the conscience of the Church was frankly acknowledged by Sir William Scott, who declared that there were clauses in his Bill which nothing but the perilous situation of the clergy could have induced him to accept.3 After two ineffectual 1 Cobbett’s Pari. Debates, xvii. 760, 761, 765. 2 41 Geo. Ill, c. 102 ; 42 c. 86, 43 c. 34. 3 Hansard, xxvii. 361. 24 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 attempts, the Bill became law on July 7, 1803 ; and so marked was the attempted compromise that it could be described with equal accuracy as an Act to prevent and an Act to authorise non-residence. On the one hand, a clergyman who had deserted his cure for three months in one year without being resident at another 1 was to forfeit a third of its income. On the other hand, a number of offices were enumerated which conferred exemption ; and licences for non-residence could be obtained in certain specified cases. The power both to punish and to protect was lodged in the bishops, who were exempted from the Act — an invidious distinction which the poverty of some of the sees made inevitable.2 Though thus limited in scope, the Act was a strict and workmanlike measure. Nobody was to be entitled to exemption who did not yearly notify its grounds. A delinquent who had been admonished by his diocesan could not be prosecuted ; but in actions not covered by this plea provision was made for indemnifying and rewarding the plaintiff ; and annually from March 25, 1805, a return from every parish was to be submitted to the King in Council. This was an excellent expedient for testing the efficacy of the Act ; and in 1808, when the return for the third year was laid before Parliament, it appeared that 3699 clergymen were non-resident legally, and no fewer than 2446 illegally — that is, “ without notification, licence, or exemption/’ 3 In subsequent returns we find that the number of the latter fell to 672 in 1809 and rose again to 1033 in 1811. In that year the machinery provided in the Act for checking its infringement was set in motion by a Mr. Wright who had 1 This point, however, was not clear. See Hansard, xxvii. 741. 2 43 Geo. Ill, c. 84. 3 Cobbett’s Political Works, iv. 57. Bentham ( Church of Eng- landism, Appendix, p. 309) is mistaken in saying that the earliest returns published were for the three years 1809-1811. Licences are said to have been unpopular because the holder had to pay a fixed salary to his curate. BISHOP WATSON 25 been secretary or registrar at different times to four bishops. According to his own account, he had lost in fees, owing to the failure of non-residents to apply for licence, as much as £300 annually ; and his scheme of reparation was on a proportionately extensive scale, embracing twenty dioceses and a total in penalties of £80,000. Almost all his prosecutions are said to have been founded on points of technical illegality or inadvert¬ ence ; and this, at all events, was the ground alleged for an Act which in 1814 put an end to the activity of informers.1 Non-residence was attacked, but can hardly be said to have been exposed, by Bentham, writing as “an Oxford graduate/' in 1817. His “ Church of Eng- landism,” a volume of 689 closely printed pages, is a curious commentary on the heading borne by one of its sections, “ How to Organise a Chaos ” ; its style is, if possible, more involved than its method ; and it ends abruptly and appropriately with the printer’s lament that “ the matter with which this work was to have been concluded has failed of coming to hand.’’ A much more dangerous assailant of ecclesiastical as well as political abuses was John Wade, whose “ Black Book ’’ was published anonymously in 1820. Wade concluded his indictment of the Church by calculating its wealth — “ the source of all its vices ’’-—which he vastly over¬ estimated ; and it is significant of the time that a plan for equalising ecclesiastical revenues, which had been published by Bishop Watson as early as 1783, was reprinted in The Pamphleteer for 1816. Watson wished to put an end to episcopal plurality and the political subservience which he attributed to the prospect of translation ; and these results would, he believed, be attained if the bishops had an average official income about equal to that of the judges. He therefore proposed that, as the richer sees became vacant, some of their 1 Bentham's Church of Englandism, Appendix, pp. 314-316 ; Hansard, xxvii. 129, 406, 553. 26 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 emoluments should be annexed to the poorer ; and, in order to diminish the great inequality of livings, he also suggested that a third of all deaneries, prebends, and canonries which, when thus reduced, yielded not less than £100 a year, should be applied to augment the smaller cures.1 It was at this period, when weakened by the un¬ popularity of tithes and the scandal of non-residence, that the clergy incurred a more serious danger by opposing the democratic spirit. This temper, the reverse of that which had prevailed at the beginning of the war, was the tardy product of economic conditions. The last two years of the eighteenth century were a time of almost unparalleled distress ; and in the autumn of 1811 a commercial crisis and a disastrous harvest provoked the violent disturbances known as the “ Lud¬ dite Riots.” At the former period Wilberforce was prematurely alarmed by the growth of a “ rooted dis¬ affection to the Constitution and Government ” ; and even in 1812 he was the only member of a Parliamentary Committee who could persuade himself that " the disease was of a political nature.” But next year Major Cartwright, one of the “ antediluvians ” who had advocated manhood suffrage before the French Revolu¬ tion, endeavoured with some success to turn ” the discontents into a legal channel favourable to Parlia- 1 Watson died in 1816 before the reissue of his tract. It appears from his autobiography, which was published in the following year, that this absentee bishop and professor held nine livings in addition to seven annexed to his see. On the death of a Mr. Luther, who had been his private pupil at Cambridge, he came into an estate in Sussex, which he sold for ^23,500 ; but, not deeming this a sufficient provision for his eight children, he spent the last twenty years of his life as a land-improver in Westmorland, declaring that, if the world had lost anything by his “ absolute dereliction of all learned labour,” it was the fault of the Government, which had left him on the lowest rung of the episcopal ladder. Llandaff was the poorest see ; and Watson, vehemently as he resented the penalty of independence, was a sincere and outspoken Whig. — Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, pp. 144, 438, 490. CLERICAL MAGISTRATES 27 mentary Reform ” and the seed he had sown sprouted luxuriantly during the dislocation of industry which followed the peace. In 1817, as the result rather of political agitation than of industrial riots, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Two years later, after a brief return of prosperity, the masses asserted their right to representation in vast open-air meetings ; and one of these had the tragical termination which caused it to be known and remembered as “ the Manchester Massacre/' With this affair the Church was unhappily associated ; for amongst the magistrates who employed a troop of cavalry to break up the meeting were two clergymen, and one of these had read the Riot Act ; and nothing did more in those distressful times to excite resentment against the clergy than the fact that so many of them were conspicuous as Justices of the Peace.2 To co-operate with the squire against poachers 3 and with the Govern¬ ment against Radicals was a function more congenial to their temper than consistent with their credit. “ They are all for coercion/' wrote a violent pamphleteer, who described them as " with the accents and exterior of angels perpetrating the work of demons " ; and, in proof of his assertion, he mentioned that in Cheshire one-tenth of those who had subscribed to equip an armed force 1 See the author’s England in Transition, 1789-1832, pp. 87, 138. 2 From a return published in 1832 it appears that 5371 persons had qualified as Justices of the Peace and that of these 1354 were clergymen. The number of the latter varied greatly in different parts of the country. In Lincolnshire, for example, there were 52 clergy¬ men to 59 laymen, whilst Kent had only two clerical magistrates, and Derbyshire and Sussex none. — Church Reformers' Magazine, 1832, p. 63. It was stated in Parliament in 1834 that in many counties, and especially in Suffolk, a person who wished to have recourse to a lay Justice might have to travel thirty or forty miles. — Hansard, 3rd Series, xxiii. 942. Clergymen interested in poor law or public- house reform had, of course, good reasons for accepting this office. See Memoirs of J err am, p. 275. 3 At least one clergyman found “ that the Game Laws pressed so harshly on the poor that he could hardly bring himself to be instru¬ mental in enforcing them.” — Memoir of Bishop Blompeld, i. 39. 28 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 were clergymen, and that in Staffordshire it was a clergyman who had proposed that infantry as well as yeomanry should be raised.1 Two of the clerical magis¬ trates in Lancashire were so zealous in the work of repression that they corresponded with the Government, and even employed spies.2 Had this been all, it might at least have been contended that the temper of in¬ dividuals was no indication of the prevailing spirit ; but the clergy in at least one diocese did not scruple to range themselves as a body against the people. Whigs and Radicals were unanimous in calling for an inquiry into the proceedings at Manchester ; and great public meetings were held to enforce this demand. A meeting at which 30,000 people are said to have been present was held at Newcastle ; and a few weeks later what was, or professed to be, a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and freeholders of Durham assembled under the presidency of Lambton — member for the county and son-in-law of Lord Grey — whose popular sympathies had won for him the sobriquet of “ Radical Jack." The Durham clergy at once protested against the use of their name ; and the Declaration they sub¬ scribed was vindicated in a “ Letter to the Freeholders." The writer was Henry Phillpotts, who at this period laid the basis of a reputation which he was to develop in later days as the most pugnacious of bishops. Ad¬ mitting that the resolutions passed at the meeting were unexceptionable, and that the address to the King was comparatively moderate, he maintained that the demonstration would be judged by the speech of its 1 Black Book, 1820, p. 330. On the preceding page is the quotation from John Locke : “ Who does not see that these men are more ministers of the Government than ministers of the gospel ? ” The “ clerical Cossack ” is portrayed in Charlotte Bronte’s “ Shirley.” 2 Hammond, The Town Labourer, pp. 258, 260. On the other hand, there were clergymen whose sympathy with the social and even the political aspirations of the people exposed them to suspicion. — Ibid., pp. 268, 269. CLERICAL TORYISM 29 chairman, which had certainly been violent ; and he described Lambton as “ playing with the torch of sedition and wantonly tossing it about amidst the combustible matter which surrounds him.” 1 In December 1819 the Government replied to its critics by the repressive legislation known as the Six Acts. A few weeks later the Prince Regent succeeded to the Crown as George IV, and proceeded at once to make a martyr of his unhappy consort, Queen Caroline — who at least was less guilty than himself — by attempting to procure from Parliament a dissolution of his marriage. The effect of this was to alienate a section of the Tories and to create a new bond of sympathy between the Radicals and the Whigs. On December 13, 1820, the nobles, gentry, clergy, and freeholders held another meeting at Durham and voted an address to the King, in which they complained that the just complaints of the people had been met with " repulsive harshness ” ; that “ force and coercion ” had been substituted for the ordinary law ; and that the discontent produced by such a policy had been aggravated by the treatment of the Queen. Feeling that no mere “ Declaration ” would be sufficient to redeem them from “ disgrace,” the clergy had a meeting and an address of their own. What alarmed them was not the measures of “ a Prince ever watchful for the best and highest interests of his people,” but “ the successful attempts of evil-minded men, by reviling and misrepresenting all those measures, to seduce the lower orders from their allegiance.” Nor had “ the evil spirit of the time ” been confined to the populace. With feelings which they forbore to express, they had seen “ men of exalted rank and distinguished talents fostering and stimulating the discontents of the mul¬ titude ” ; and as Christian pastors they were determined to impress upon their flocks “ the solemn duty of obedience 1 Letter to Freeholders, 1819, pp. 7, 9, 20, 31. 30 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 to Government.” Lord Grey had taken part in the second Durham demonstration. At a subsequent meeting in Northumberland he commented on “ the patience with which the people have borne their recent sufferings and the insults offered them by such meetings as that of the clergy of Durham ” ; and he referred to the latter as “ these animals ” and stigmatised their address as “ most contemptible and abusive.” 1 The controversy which had been excited by the prosecution of the Queen was revived by her death in 1822. The event was announced in most places by the tolling of bells ; but the cathedral and six churches of Durham were silent ; and the omission of this tribute of respect was denounced in the local newspaper as " conduct which renders the very name of our established clergy odious till it stinks in the nostrils.” An eccle¬ siastical system so unworthy of its principles could not, it was said, long survive ; and “ the beetles who crawl about its holes and crevices ” were acting in a manner which must hasten its doom. The “ animals ” of Lord Grey’s speech had left their vindication to the pen of Phillpotts ;2 but the “ beetles ” of the Durham Chronicle invoked the protection of the law, and were so far successful that Williams, the proprietor of the paper, was indicted for libel at Durham under an order which had been procured by the bishop from the Court of King’s Bench. Nominally they were again successful ; for the jury, after deliberating for nearly six hours, returned a verdict of guilty, but a verdict of such a kind that it did not admit of sentence. Williams’s counsel was Brougham, who had gained immense popu¬ larity by his defence of the Queen ; and his speech on this occasion has been pronounced “ by far the best he ever delivered at the bar or in Parliament.” It was published by the convicted but triumphant journalist 1 Phillpotts’s Letter to Earl Grey, 1821, pp. 12, 15, 23. Both addresses are prefixed to this pamphlet. 8 Ibid. CLERGY AND REPRESSION 3i in his account of the trial ; and its effect was intensified by a furious assault on “ Clerical Abuses ” in the Edin¬ burgh Review, to which Phillpotts and at least six other Churchmen replied.1 The partisan spirit shown by the clergy of Durham was no doubt exceptional ; but we read elsewhere of clergymen throwing their weight as individuals into the Government scale ; and the cumulative effect of their utterances must be borne in mind if we wish to under¬ stand the extreme unpopularity of the Church which developed after the Peace and culminated in 1832. One of the arguments for church-building adduced by a clergyman whose pamphlet was quoted with approval in Parliament was that it would check “ daily increasing insubordination ” and might thus forestall an “ assault upon the enviable possessions of those now distinguished by wealth and power.” 2 Equally characteristic, though in better taste, was an assize sermon published in 1820 by William Otter, afterwards Bishop of Chichester. Otter was the friend of Malthus, and so moderate a High Churchman that he had defended the Bible Society against Marsh ; but his sermon must have been unpleasant reading for the Radicals, whom he described as " a desperate indeed but a baffled and degraded faction,” and as “ sunk irremediably in the public estimation by immoralities and enormities extrinsical to their general pursuits.” Parliament in passing the Six Acts had, he believed, proceeded on the sound principle that “ the constitutional privileges of the people are not consistent with their limited knowledge and virtue ” ; but many were blaming the Church for having contributed to the late disturbances by its zeal for education ; and Otter 1 Edinburgh Review, xxxvii. 350-379 ; Campbell’s Lyndhurst and Brougham, pp. 330-337. The " libel ” is printed in Phillpotts's Letter to Francis Jeffrey, p. 30. To a barrister who encroached on his solitude the night before the trial, Brougham " exclaimed in a hollow voice, ‘ Avaunt, depart ! I am distilling venom for the Durham clergy.' " 8 Yates, The Basis of National Welfare. 32 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 had no difficulty in showing this to be a mistake. The National Society was quite alive to the necessity of excluding from the instruction of the poor “ everything which may give them a taste for the occupations or a relish for the pleasures of the higher ranks ” ; and it was mainly with a view to introducing them to the Bible and the formularies of the Church that it undertook “ to furnish them with the first rudiments of what is called the trivial literature of the country in which they live.” In concluding his discourse the preacher was careful to explain that there were higher elements in Christian instruction than that which “ teaches every man to be contented with his station ” ; but it was a signal instance of divine wisdom that “ the revelation of the gospel harmonises with all that is lovely and valuable in the institutions of mankind, and that the best Christian is the most loyal subject.” 1 Some years later, when Mechanics* Institutes were being formed, the British Critic 2 commended the design of this movement, but objected to its inclusion of debating societies and said that, if not wisely guided, it might foster “ most mischievous ideas of grandeur and self- importance.” Dr. Birkbeck, in opening the London Institute, was said to have spoken with horror of “ im¬ mortal man counterpoising a coal-basket.” If so, he was deservedly ridiculed; but Brougham, who spoke on the 1 Reasons for Continuing the Education of the Poor at the Present Crisis, pp. 3-6, 34, 44. The same desire to exploit religion as a support for what the upper classes thought most “ lovely and valuable ” in existing institutions is evident in the otherwise admirable Charge (p. 24) of Archdeacon Lyall, 1833 : " If we can only bring our people to be really in earnest about the great business of their eternal salva¬ tion — can only imbue their minds with a deep conviction that this world is not their continuing city — accustom them to measure the good or ill that befalls them solely by a reference to their eternal happiness — all the wretched sophisms of revolutionary philosophy will at once vanish from their minds, like clouds before the sun.” * Organ of the High Church party, founded by Jones and Stevens, and recently purchased, on account of some slackening of principle, by Watson and his friend Norris. CLERGY AND SECULAR KNOWLEDGE 33 same occasion, had identified himself with the members, speaking of “ our president/’ and even of “ my fellow mechanics ” ; and “ this idle and spurious condescension ” was also objected to, because the workmen might “ think that they are raised or intended to be raised almost to the level of persons who move in the same sphere of life with Mr. Brougham.” 1 The Church, having outridden the social and political storms which were the aftermath of war, was to enjoy a period of calm — welcome, but delusive ; for, though Radicalism had been crushed and the return of prosperity had removed its chief stimulus, there were many indica¬ tions that the intelligence of the people was outgrowing the constraints of oligarchical rule. This was admitted as early as 1820 by Peel, who asked a correspondent whether he did not agree with him that the tone of public opinion had become more liberal than the policy of the Government. In 1822 Lord John Russell stated in Parliament that the number of newspapers had doubled within the life of a generation, and that in fifty years the London circulating libraries had increased from four to a hundred, whilst throughout the country there were nine hundred such libraries and nearly two thousand book clubs. About 1824 literary and technical institu¬ tions were springing up “ as if by magic.” A year later the Useful Knowledge Society was founded ; and its first series of cheap publications had an immediate sale of 10,000 copies. Most significant of all was the estab¬ lishment in 1828 of the University of London, which confined itself to secular knowledge and thus deprived the clergy of their monopoly of academic education.2 Intellectual activity, when not pursued under a religious sanction, was viewed with jealousy, if not disfavour, by the Church ; and the clerical battalions had no idea of falling into step with the pageant which 1 British Critic (1827), i. 179-183. 3 England in Transition, 1789-1832, pp. 184, 202, 205-207. 34 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 its admirers were fond of calling the " march of mind.” Nothing, indeed, but disparagement of this spectacle was evinced in the utterances of Church leaders. Daubeny had no liking for ” that new species of philosophy which under the assumed pretence of more improved reason and more enlarged notions of liberality has long been sapping the foundation of every established system, both religious and moral as well as political.” 1 Dr. Howley, Bishop and future Archbishop, was pilloried in the Edinburgh Review for asserting that “ the diffusion of knowledge, disjoined from religious instruction, stands in the same relation to ignorance as positive evil to the absence of good ” — an aphorism which he soon un¬ pleasantly expanded by alluding to “ that prostration of the understanding and the will which are indispensable to proficiency in Christian instruction.” 2 Preaching before the University of Cambridge in 1826, Hugh James Rose condemned the prevailing enthusiasm for physical science, because it tended only “ to increase man’s sway over the material universe, to render it tributary to him, and thus increase his stock of wealth and power,” whereas “ the improvement of our intellectual and moral being with reference to its ultimate destiny,” which was fostered by literature, was the only “ legitimate object.” He denied the possibility, or at least the fact, of progress, maintained that the present age had no more knowledge than the age of Plato or Bacon — the only difference being “ that a stock not larger is spread over a wider surface,” and dismissed all the talk of enlightenment as “ miserable jargon.” 3 In an article on “ Modem Methods of In¬ struction,” which has already been quoted, the British Critic approved generally of Rose’s conclusions, but thought that he had given an advantage to the enemy 1 Charge to Archdeaconry of Sarum, 1809, p. 6. 2 Edinburgh Review (1823), xxxvii. 457, 458. 3 The Tendency of Prevalent Opinions about Knowledge Considered, PP- 3. 9, 17- LONDON UNIVERSITY 35 by pushing them too far, justly remarking that a certain degree of material comfort is essential to intellectual progress, and that “ wisdom and virtue have no enemy like want/’ The writer was naturally indignant that theology was not to be taught in the University of London ; but he sought to prove that not one of the eight groups of subjects included in the University syllabus could be adequately treated without reference to religion ; and, citing as an illustration the language group, he maintained that if any lecturer should propose in this department to dispense with “ the speech of Adam and the tower of Babel ” as revealed in Scripture, “ such a declaration, if it were made, would be beneath the notice of a schoolboy.” These evidences of the Church’s temper are the more suggestive when we re¬ member that many religious people of every shade of opinion, far from anticipating for the world a new and brighter future, were expecting the day of retribution wffiich was to bring it to an end. This belief 1 was most general amongst the Evangelicals ; but it was avowed by men so far removed from these and from each other as Daubeny and Arnold. Numerous as were the points of antagonism between the temper of the Church and that of the age, it was of course in the political sphere that these forces came into most serious conflict ; and the first and much the mildest phase of a threefold battle was fought in 1828. London University opened to Dissenters the facilities for higher education which were denied to them at Oxford and not fully conceded at Cambridge ; a.nd they were the more likely to take advantage of this boon as their civil disabilities had just been removed. Before the period we have reached nobody could be admitted into a corporation or to office under the Crown who had 1 " We are undoubtedly living in the last days of blasphemous infidelity, in that awful period which is the peculiar reign of Antichrist.” — Faber’s Dissertation on Prophecies, 5th edition, ii. 492. 36 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 not taken the oath of supremacy, professed his disbelief in transubstantiation, and received the Church sacra¬ ment. Catholics were debarred by all three qualifica¬ tions, Dissenters only by the last. The sacramental test had originally been imposed as evidence that the office-seeker was really a Churchman ; but it soon became usual to communicate merely as a qualification ; and in order to obviate the scandal of this practice an Act of Indemnity had been passed annually since 1743, which, however, was far from satisfying the more conscientious Dissenters, since the Act assumed negligence, not refusal, and professed merely to extend the time for compliance with the law. In 1828 a resolution in favour of repealing the test was carried in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell. Sir Robert Peel, on behalf of the Wellington Government, had opposed the resolution, but now ac¬ cepted it on condition that officials should be required to subscribe a declaration binding them not to injure the Church. The Archbishop of York was deputed by his brother of Canterbury to second Lord Holland, who had charge of the Bill in the Lords ; several bishops rose to support the measure ; and the second reading was agreed to without a division. “ Our revered Church has greatly won on the public esteem and affection by the truly honourable and Christian part which our prelates have taken on this occasion, not merely as respects the religious liberties of our fellow-subjects, but in vindication of the insulted ordinance of God/’ 1 To have conceded the principle that Dissenters as such should be eligible for office was no doubt creditable to the Church, especially in view of the resistance urged upon it by Lord Eldon ; but the only bishops who fully merited this eulogium were Blomfield of Chester and Kaye of Lincoln. “ I think,” said the former, “ we have within the citadel that which renders unnecessary these homworks and 1 Christian Observer (Evangelical), 1828, p. 279. THE SACRAMENTAL TEST 37 counterscarps without ” ; and the latter declared that the Church could have no better security than “ the hold which it possesses on the esteem and affection of the people.” The other prelates were content to set the declaration against the test as a new safeguard prefer¬ able to one which was admittedly both sacrilegious and useless. “ The question,” said Van Mildert of Durham, “ is not whether the fortress shall be surrendered, but whether the outworks shall remain as they are or be reconstructed on a somewhat different plan.” And when the Bill emerged from committee, thirteen bishops voted approval of the new defences, but eight voted against them as inadequate. Amongst these was Van Mildert, who regarded the amended Bill as “ anything but satisfactory,” and was much distressed at having neither supported it enough to please Wellington nor opposed it enough to please Eldon. “ God knows,” he wrote to Watson, “ this whole proceeding has been a bitter pill to me, from the effects of which I shall not soon recover.” 1 To Nonconformist succeeded Catholic Emancipation 2 — a far more serious question for the Church, since the Catholic disabilities could not be evaded and had never been relaxed. The mass of both clergy and people were strongly opposed to this measure ; but Evangelicalism 1 Churton’s Joshua Watson, i. 299 ; Hansard, New Series, xviii. 1491, 1514 ; xix. 164, 236. The division list in Hansard is dated April 23 — a mistake for April 28. The expediency of repealing the test was much agitated about 1732. It appears from a pamphlet of that year that Dissenters in general bore so good a character that they were usually preferred as domestic servants, and were “ frequently chosen as constables, yea, as wardens of our churches ” ; and it was seriously contended that Churchmen, if reduced to compete with Dissenters in official life, would either have to secure protection in high quarters or “ grow sober and diligent, which is not very agreeable to many of them.” — A True Churchman’ s Reasons for Repealing the Corporation and Test Acts, p. 11. 2 I have dealt with these topics more fully in England in Transition, 1789-1832, where, however, the bishops are represented as more favourable than they were to the repeal of the test. 38 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 lent to the cause some of its most eminent divines and laymen and its three undoubted representatives on the episcopal bench — Ryder and the brothers Sumner. It was, of course, on account of their “ divided allegiance " that Catholics were said to be unfit for the exercise of political power ; but in this connection a prominence was given to the royal supremacy which shows that the High Churchmen of that day, besides being unabashed Protestants, had, little respect for a principle so dear to their successors as that of ecclesiastical independence. Far from being jealous of the civil power, they were anxious that it should not be curtailed. “ Spiritual functions/' said Van Mildert, “ belong exclusively to the Church ; spiritual jurisdiction to the State as allied to the Church. If spiritual jurisdiction or authority, in whatever degree, be acknowledged as the right of some other potentate, this authority, whether more or less, is so much subtracted from the supreme authority claimed, and justly claimed, by the head of the State." The British Critic had had the ingenuity, if not the audacity, to apply this reasoning to the Protestant Dissenter, arguing that, as the Church in his view could have no earthly head, “ therefore his is a divided or restricted allegiance as well as the Romanist's, and no less an object of jealousy " — allegiance in this case being divided, not between the King and the Pope, but between the King and Christ.1 Twenty prelates, including the Archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Armagh, voted against the Catholic Relief Bill, and ten voted for it. Bishop Lloyd of Oxford, once the tutor and always the confidant of Peel, was one of the few High Churchmen in the minority. He argued that exclusion could not be maintained because almost all who had entered 1 British Critic , 1828, iii. 452. As the English Dissenters had never seriously challenged the civil power, and were as far as possible from doing so now, the argument as applied to them was mere sophistry ; but it would have been strictly applicable to Scottish Presbytery for ninety years after the Reformation. PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 39 public life as its partisans had “ passed over to the other side ” ; but, far from rejoicing that educated opinion had turned in favour of relief, he alluded to “ those who, like myself, behold these things with fear and agony and sorrow.” 1 Bishop Lloyd did not live to see the Reform Bill ; and he can hardly have anticipated that such a measure would become law within three years of his death. We have seen that the political agitation of 1819 had been crushed by the Six Acts, and that its renewal had been discouraged by the dawn of more prosperous days than had been known since the Peace. The revival of trade began in 1821 and increased yearly till 1825, when it culminated in a commercial crisis which was followed by long and acute depression. Meanwhile in 1824 Joseph Hume, acting under the direction of Francis Place, had contrived to rush, or rather to smuggle, through Parliament a Bill which put an end to the illegality of Trade Unions ; and though the working classes had taken little interest in his attempt, apparently because they thought it hopeless, they were ready enough to use the weapon he had put into their hands both to procure a rise of wages during the trade boom and to resist a fall after its collapse. The energies of the people were thus diverted from political to industrial warfare. The question of reform was indeed raised in Parliament in each of the four years 1827-1830, but only in the form of a proposal for the enfranchisement of one or two large towns. The last motion for a general change in the representation had been made by Lord John Russell in 1822 ; and it is remarkable that not a single petition of this nature had been presented since 1823. This apathy was suddenly and completely dispelled by the “ July Revolution ” of 1830 at Paris, which was as favourable as the first French Revolution had been adverse to English liberalism, since, though not free 1 Hansard, New Series, xxi. 77, 694 ; Ive’s Bishop Van Mildert, p. 96. 40 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 from bloodshed, it resulted in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy dependent for its main support on the middle class. The news reached England during the general election which had been necessitated by the accession of William IV ; and, enthusiasm for reform coinciding with the disgust of the Tories at Catholic Emancipation, the Government majority was con¬ siderably reduced. In November the Duke of Wellington was succeeded as Prime Minister by Earl Grey ; and the latter was found to have much surpassed what had been either hoped or feared of him as a reformer when his scheme was submitted to the Commons by Lord John Russell on March 1, 1831. “You must be a Radical indeed/ ’ wrote John Camp¬ bell to his brother, “ if Ministers have not satisfied you. We are quite appalled ! There is not the remotest chance of such a Bill being carried by this or any House of Commons/’ 1 If a Whig could write thus, we may imagine what were the thoughts of the Tories ; and even Francis Place, “ a Radical indeed,” was more than satisfied. “ None believed, none expected any such propositions.” 2 These exclamations of dismay and delight could not fail to be elicited by a scheme which, as Campbell said, was “ unquestionably a new con¬ stitution.” Not only was there to be a great shifting of seats from villages and small towns to populous centres, but the owners of land were no longer to monopolise its political value, and urban representation, which had become a mere chaos of archaic rights, usurped privileges, and perverted usages, was to be remodelled on definite principles and a more or less numerical basis. In the counties copyhold and leasehold were admitted as qualifications, and to these were added in the second Bill tenancy-at-will. In the boroughs householders to the annual value of £10 were enfranchised. Nobody 1 Life of Lord Campbell, i. 504. 2 Wallas’s Place, p. 258. THE REFORM BILL had expected so low a qualification ; 1 but it extinguished one or two really popular constituencies, and could thus be represented, according to the fancy of opponents, either as reducing the labouring classes to “mere hewers of wood and drawers of water ” or as enfranchising " the millions whose lodgings are worth 3s. 10 d. a week.” 2 Nomination, which had been the dominant feature of the old system, disappeared ; borough-owners, with all the lucrative interests they had inherited or purchased, were “ bowled out v ; 3 aristocratic rule, disguised rather than tempered by a dash of democracy, gave place to a middle-class electorate which, being uniform, was capable of indefinite expansion ; 4 and the general result was to substitute a system of popular representation, genuine as far as it went, for one which nominally included all classes, but which even Lord Eldon, in a moment of candour, had admitted to be no more than a sham.5 Such in theory was the “ new constitution ” ; but in practice there were compensations for the great pro¬ prietors, who were strengthened by an addition of sixty- five to the county membership, could coerce the tenant farmers, and were free to exploit seventy-six borough constituencies, some of them new, which were too small to be independent. “ The truth is,” said Lord Grey in reference to the Bill, “ that it takes from them a power which makes them odious and substitutes for it an influence which connects them with the people.” 6 1 James Mill said to Brougham before the introduction of the Bill that he would be satisfied if the franchise were given to every man who had an income of ^ioo. — Le Marchant’s Viscount Althorp, p. 420, note. 2 Hansard, 3rd Series, iii. 1090 ; The Second Reading of the Reform Bill, 1832, p. 4. 8 Creevey Papers, p. 564 : " There is no end to the fun and con¬ fusion that this measure scatters far and wide." 4 Whately was of opinion that the fio franchise " must go on to universal suffrage." — Life, i. 88. 5 Trevelyan's Lord Grey, p. 39. 8 Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, ii. 178. 42 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 It might have been supposed that the clergy would be less hostile to parliamentary reform than they had shown themselves to Catholic relief ; but the latter measure had been dreaded mainly as a blow to the privileged position of the Church ; and Bishop Marsh had predicted in 1827 that, if both Catholics and Dis¬ senters should be raised to the level of the Church through the repeal of their disabilities, it would then become a question whether the ancient endowments should be enjoyed exclusively by the ministers of one religious body.1 The best guarantee that such a question would not be seriously raised was the influence of the borough-owners in the House of Commons ; but that barrier was now to be removed ; the centre of gravity in the constitution was to be shifted from the upper to the middle class, with its large proportion of tithe- burdened farmers and Dissenters impatient of Church rates ; and it was notorious that those who were clamour¬ ing for a system of genuine representation proposed to use it as an instrument of ecclesiastical as well as political reform. One cannot, however, recall the obscurantism avowed by zealous Churchmen and their efforts to combat the spread of secular education without realising that the Reform Bill was abhorrent to them as the culmination of a spirit of unrest, social, political, and intellectual, which for more than ten years had been permeating and disintegrating the existing order ; and this aspect of the question was emphasised in a pamphlet published by “ A Country Clergyman ” in 1831. Dealing with the argument that institutions which had originated in semi-barbarous times must be capable of improvement in times of enlightenment, the writer declared that “ the increased knowledge of the present day ” was grounded mainly " on mere delusive theories of man’s wisdom,” whereas in regard to “ simple, practical, intuitive common 1 Charge, July 1827. CLERGY AND THE BILL 43 sense,” which was the direct gift of God, “ it may well be maintained that the past ages, which were less con¬ founded by those many false and dazzling lights of theory that now beguile ourselves, had the advantage of us.” But we could at least supplement our blunted intuitions by having recourse to the Bible, which it was “ the special province ” of the clergy to study and expound ; and some of the lessons drawn from this source were peculiar. Thus in one place we are told that the Bill did not even “ attempt to extinguish those abuses which are alone of deep religious consequence,” and in another that the West Indian planters would have no influence in the reformed House of Commons, and that its doors would be closed to all candidates not pledged to the abolition of slavery. How far representation was really a benefit to a place or the franchise to a person, this, “ in common with all other moral bearings of the whole question, was overlooked.” The desire to remove abuses ought to spring “ from a Christian sense of the depravity and destructive influences of corruption ” ; but a system of “ real purity ” would have this drawback that, elections being inexpensive, men of little substance would be able to tome forward as candidates. It might therefore be necessary to impose a “ yearly tribute ” on members of Parliament ; but the writer was disposed to think that, if the principles he had inculcated were generally understood, “ plain single-hearted men ” would see ” that it is good for them to be where they are, and there they would resolve within themselves accordingly, by God’s blessing, to abide.” 1 We may safely assume that the mass of his brethren were in sympathy with the author of this pamphlet ; but no petitions seem to have been presented by the clergy as such, and those in which they concurred were 1 What Can he Done ? A Letter to Sir Robert Peel on the Reform Question. By a Country Clergyman, 1831, pp. 7, 10, 27, 43, 46, 47, 61, 63. 44 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 not exclusively in support of the Opposition. At Oxford a petition against the Bill, drawn up mainly by Gladstone, was signed within forty-eight hours by about four-fifths of the resident bachelors and undergraduates, whilst the Oxford Union, which in 1829 had been two to one for Catholic relief, declared itself against reform by 94 to 38 ; and the University of Cambridge not only expressed the same opinion, but inconvenienced the Government by unseating a Cabinet Minister — Lord Palmerston. The Quarterly Review, whilst claiming as anti-reformers the great majority of the Bar, the three Universities, and “ the educated youth of the country/’ said that the clergy were “ unanimously hostile ” ; but this was a manifest exaggeration which can be disproved without referring to such well-known names as Arnold, Whately, and Sydney Smith. In February 1831, before the Bill was introduced, a number of Wiltshire clergymen concurred in two Whig petitions — one of them, signed by the Archdeacon, for “ a full and efficient reform ” ; and later we find the vicar of Worksop heading a petition in favour of the Bill. The Durham clergy, reversing the precedent they had set in 1820, refrained from emulating the Toryism of their bishop,1 and some of them are said to have exerted themselves as reformers by attending meetings and promoting petitions.2 Apart, however, from such sporadic support, the Government had a powerful ally in the religious Press. The British Critic made no allusion to the crisis ; but its Evangelical rival, the Christian Observer, warmly sup¬ ported the Bill, not as a democratic, but as “an anti oligarchical measure,” declaring that the Church would 1 Bishops Van Mildert and Phillpotts, the latter of whom was a prebendary of Durham, signed a petition against the Bill, which was thus promoted by the agent of the Duke of Northumberland : “ The Duke requires the names of tenants who do not sign, and hopes that they will not embark rashly in politics." Hansard, 3rd Series, iii. 1722. 2 Hansard, 3rd Series, ii. 366, 487 ; iii. 1183 ; iv. 581, 583 ; vii. 1130 ; Bishop Wordsworth's Early Life, pp. 84, 86 ; Quarterly Review, xlv. 504. UNPOPULARITY OF THE CHURCH 45 never be purged of its abuses so long as the borough- owners were dominant in Parliament. Patronage must necessarily be perverted under this malign influence ; and “ it was hard indeed if a man who could oblige Government could not provide for a clerical friend beyond the worth of a single benefice encumbered with residence.” The odium of such abuses had “ well-nigh ruined the Church ” ; and one such instance of rapacity as had just been brought home to Bishop Sparke 1 2 did more to paralyse it as a spiritual force and " to prepare the way for the confiscation of its temporal revenues than the worst Parliamentary Reform Bill that its greatest enemy could devise.,, 2 An unreformed Church was the natural complement of an unreformed Parliament ; and the former was unpopular enough even before it was identified with the latter. “ If,” said Bishop Marsh in his charge of July 1831, “ we except the period which preceded the Church’s overthrow in the time of Charles I., there never was a time when the clergy were assailed with so much calumny and so much violence as they are at present ” ; and a week or two later the Edinburgh Review said that never, with the same exception, had public opinion been so unfavourable to the Church. When these statements were made, the attitude of the Church to reform had not been officially defined ; but there was one grade of the clergy, and that the highest, whose decision on this question could not be long delayed. The first Reform Bill obtained a second reading on March 22 by the bare majority of one, and on April 19 it was lost in committee. Parliament was dissolved ; and, a general election having 1 See p. 65. 2 Christian Observer, 1831, pp. 245, 578. The school of Evangelical¬ ism which found expression in the Christian Observer was that of Wilberforce and the “ Clapham sect.” As a pro-Catholic and a reformer, Sydney'Smith might have found a better target for his jibes than “ that patent Christianity which has been for some time manu¬ facturing at Clapham.” — Peter Plymley's Letters — Letter V. 46 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 more than fulfilled the anticipations of the Whigs, the second Bill suffered from nothing worse than obstruction in the Commons, and came up for second reading in the Lords on October 3. The Lords had thrown out the Catholic Relief Bill in July 1828, and accepted it, though it was by no means a popular measure, in the following spring ; and on the morrow of the general election it seems to have been expected that, under conditions much less favourable, they would not venture to defeat reform. But this belief in their discretion or want of courage did not survive the summer ; and the bishops as peace¬ makers by profession were adjured to avert a collision.1 They were told that it depended on their attitude at this crisis whether the impending reform of the Church should be moderate or drastic ; and The Times warned them — as also in more temperate language did the Edinburgh Review — that if they should add to the votes against the Bill just enough to procure its defeat, the Church would be “ driven from her moorings in the hearts of the people and exposed to a hurricane the like of which was never blown.” It was not the fault of the bishops that the contingency thus indicated did not occur. Only two of them voted for the Bill and as many as twenty- one 2 against it ; but it was thrown out by 199 to 158 — “ a majority,” wrote Lord Grey, “ more than double of what I expected.” 3 The issue had thus been decided by the lay peers ; but, though a majority of one in favour of the Bill would have been of no more practical use in the Lords than it had been in the Commons, it was naturally remarked that this result would have been attained if all the bishops who voted in person or by proxy had supported the Government. With the exception of Maltby, who had been raised 1 The majority of the bishops were at one time disposed to vote in favour of committing the Bill. — Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 167. The King expected this “ from what he has heard.” — Correspondence of Earl Grey, June 8. 2 Including four Irish prelates. 3 Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, ii. 287. BISHOP BATHURST 47 to the see of Chichester a week or two before the division, all the bishops had been appointed by Tory administra¬ tions. Maltby was a zealous Whig, but was surpassed in this respect by one who in years, though not in office, was the father of his order. Henry Bathurst was over sixty years of age when in 1805 be became Bishop of Norwich. Though Locke and Hoadley, as he afterwards declared, had been the guides of his youth and were the solace of his age, he had not then dissociated himself from the Toryism of his family ; but he declined to follow his relative, Earl Bathurst, in deserting Lord Grenville when that statesman took office with Fox ; and from this point his liberalism rapidly developed. Fox referred to him in 1806 as “ the only tolerant bishop ” ; and two years later he received unstinted applause and abuse by rising from “ the sacred bench ” to support Catholic Emancipation. In 1819 we find him inciting his neighbours in Norfolk to protest against the “ Man¬ chester Massacre ” and the Six Acts. A bishop who identified himself with the Whigs was frequently at a loss how to dispose of his proxy. On one occasion he offered it to Lord Lansdowne, who said he should be proud indeed of such a trust, “ but I fear it must be held by one of your Lordship’s bench, and it may not always be easy to find one agreeing sufficiently with your own just and enlightened views.” Bathurst was as little of a courtier as Bishop Watson, but, instead of bewailing and resenting his lack of further preferment, as Watson did, he used playfully to allude to the great prizes that might have come his way, had he been “ a good boy.” On two occasions, when the Whigs either were or expected to be in power, they offered him the see of Dublin on an assumption, which in both cases proved to be unfounded, that the Archbishop had died ; 1 1 Such reports seem to have been common. Bathurst himself was reported dead, and so was Bishop Charles Sumner. 48 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 and in 1830, when there really was a vacancy, the offer was renewed by Lord Grey, who could safely pay this tribute of respect to so aged a prelate.1 No man, indeed, stood higher in the esteem and affection of the Whigs, and Lord Wellesley expressed their unanimous opinion when he wrote : “ To the last moment of my life I shall venerate your lordship’s character and your constant and, I must add, glorious services in the cause of pure justice and rational freedom, civil and religious.” 2 Though Bathurst and Maltby were the only bishops who voted in 1831 for the Reform Bill, one of the ablest of its opponents had intended to take the same course. For fourteen years before he became Bishop of Llandaff in 1828, Edward Copleston had been Provost of Oriel College, Oxford. It was under his influence that Oriel developed the intellectual activity which made it first a focus of liberalism and then of Tractarianism ; and one of his most distinguished pupils and his lifelong friend was Whately, who traced to him “ the main principles on which I have acted and speculated through¬ out life.”3 About a month before the first Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell, Copleston wrote to a friend that a purely popular system of representation must be fatal to the Crown and the aristocracy, and probably also to the Church ; but he soon convinced 1 This affair gave little satisfaction to the religious public — Bathurst, who refused the see, being a whist-player, and Whately, who accepted it, a non-sabbatarian. 2 Memoirs of Bishop Bathurst. By His Daughter, Mrs. Thistle- thwayte, pp. 166-168, 171, 240-242, 327, 351, 374, 381-383. This is an excellent and charming work though it opens inauspiciously, the date of the Bishop’s birth being given as 1774, instead of 1744. For his lax administration of his diocese, see Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley, p. 33. At the time of his death, confirmations were septennial ; but as to non-residence, it should be remembered that the diocese of Norwich comprised an unusual number of small parishes, and that the Bishop on this account had been empowered to form “ small pluralities.” — Hansard, 3rd Series, xi. 315. Also in a large majority of the parishes there was no parsonage, or none that was habitable. 3 Overton’s English Church, 1800—1833, p. 117, note. BISHOPS AND THE BILL 49 himself that the “ unseen influence ” of the borough- owners in the House of Commons ” could never be made intelligible to the people/’ and that public opinion had decreed its suppression. He went to town in October “ fully resolved ” to vote for the Bill, and he decided to vote against it only when Lord Grey announced that no substantial amendments would be allowed. Even then he would probably have voted with the Government but for his belief — which was not realised — that resolu¬ tions would be moved pledging the House to a measure little less thorough.1 Seven of the English and Welsh prelates took no part in the division ; and one of these was Dr. Carr, who , having just been promoted from Chichester to Worcester, and being, moreover, a member of the royal household, was dubbed “ the runaway bishop.” But the most conspicuous of the absentees was Blomfield, of London, who had made up his mind to vote for the Bill long before it reached the Lords, and had refrained from doing so only through his ” invincible reluctance to oppose those with whom he had always acted.” The death of his father on September 28 furnished him with a pretext for absenting himself from Parliament ; but he rather diminished the force of this plea by preaching at the opening of King’s College on the day after the division, or rather on the same day, as the House divided at half-past six in the morning.2 Lord Grey, in supporting his motion for the second reading, had besought the bishops to consider what their situation would be if their votes should suffice to turn the scale against reform ; and, complimenting rather than threatening them, he had referred to a Plurality Bill introduced by the Archbishop of Canter¬ bury as evidence of a disposition, which he hoped would be shown also on the present occasion, “ to set their 1 Memoir of Bishop Copleston, pp. 139, 147. 1 Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 167, 168. 50 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 house in order and prepare to meet the coming storm.” He would hardly have chosen this text for his sermon if he had remembered it in full — “ Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” But it was all the more welcome to popular orators on account of its unspoken conclusion ; and the storm which overtook the bishops was certainly severe. Archbishop Howley had to come back from Canterbury without holding a visitation, and was mobbed at Croydon on his return from a meeting of the Bible Society ; Bishop Ryder was hooted in church at Coventry ; Carr, “ the runaway,” found “ Judas Iscariot, Bishop of Worcester,” chalked on his cathedral walls ; and the palace at Exeter, though the bishop was absent, had to be garrisoned by coast¬ guards. The only clergyman who attended the King’s levee after the Bill had been thrown out was mistaken for a bishop, assaulted, and rescued by the police. The parishioners of Clerkenwell petitioned their church¬ wardens that the pulpit should be closed to bishops “ in consequence of their irreligious conduct in respect of the Reform Bill ” ; and Bishop Blomfield had to forgo his engagement to preach in another London church owing to an announcement in the papers that eleven hundred persons had agreed to go out in a body as soon as he entered the pulpit. The Times described this incident as “ without example in modem history, and worth a whole library of comment.” The Bishop had not opposed the Bill, but neither had he supported it, “ and the nation will not be served by halves.” 1 Effigies appropriate to the crisis were prepared for burning on November 5 ; but the populace had a pre¬ scriptive right to make a bonfire of Guy Fawkes and the 1 Biber’s Bishop Blomfield, pp. 115, 116 ; Butler’s Reform Bill, p. 297 ; Life of Bishop Charles R. Sumner, p. 196. The episcopal palace at Bristol was burnt in the great riot of October 30 ; but the two prisons and the Mansion House had previously been fired ; and, though Bishop Gray was a resolute anti-reformer, the disturbances were not primarily directed against him. SYDNEY SMITH ON THE LORDS 5i Pope ; and the magistrates of Exeter were not singular in their resolve “ not to be inquisitive as to the additional figures they might choose to burn.” Bishop Phillpotts indeed was anxious that his own effigy “ should be got rid of, else the peace would be endangered on some other night when the authorities were less able to meet the mischief.” And the popular indignation was prolonged as well as fierce ; for a pamphleteer wrote in January 1832 : “At this very moment there are new churches waiting till the bishop of the diocese can gain courage to consecrate them.” 1 It was well for the clergy, involved as they were in the obloquy incurred by the bishops,2 that one of their own dignitaries had the wit to extract from the popular resentment a good deal of its venom. At Taunton on October 11, Sydney Smith, whom Lord Grey had made a canon of St. Paul’s, delivered the famous speech in which he ridiculed the Lords by comparing them to a certain Mrs. Partington who in a great storm which swept the south coast in 1824 was seen “ with mop and pattens ” at the door of her house on the beach “ vigor¬ ously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up ; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady — you will beat — Mrs. Partington.” It has been well said that this apologue, which was turned to the fullest account by popular writers and artists, “ did more than argument or entreaty to relax the savage temper of the nation and to turn defiant hostility, which 1 Beverley’s Second Letter to the Archbishop of York, p. 5 ; Welling¬ ton’s Despatches, viii, 35, 36. 2 “ It was not safe for a clergyman to appear in the streets. I bought a blue coat, and did not despair in time of looking like a lay¬ man.” — Sydney Smith's Works, iii. 374. 52 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 threatened a breach of the peace, into good-natured contempt which made patience possible.” 1 Prelacy and aristocracy were closely associated. Nearly a third of the bishops belonged to this class, and most, if not all, had been tutors to young nobles or future statesmen. Merit, however, and not birth, appears to have been the essential qualification of a tutor ; and the bench of 1831 was not only rich in scholarship, but com¬ prised an unusual number of men who had begun life with nothing to commend them but their own abilities.2 It was only as a disagreeable necessity that parliamentary reform was at all likely to commend itself to the bishops ; and, popular pressure having failed to achieve its purpose, attempts were made in the same direction by the Govern¬ ment and the Court. Lord Grey found a coadjutor as well as an adherent in Bishop Blomfield, who had great influence with his colleagues and exerted it with some success to remove their scruples ; but all that could be extorted from Archbishop Howley was an admission that the effect of the late proceedings in the Lords and of the part taken by the bishops had been much greater than he expected. William IV, never a very zealous reformer, refused at first to assist his Minister in the task of per¬ suasion, but soon consented to attempt the conversion of Bishop Carr, who was Clerk to the Closet, and of the Primate. The former yielded, and was charged with a letter of admonition to his brethren ; but Howley refused to commit himself, alleging as his chief difficulty the over-representation of London, which was also a difficulty to the King ; and as late as February 27, 1832, he could 1 Stuart Reid’s Sydney Smith, p. 298. 2 Eight of the bishops were the sons or near relatives of peers ; two were the sons of military or naval officers ; seven were the sons of clergymen ; and nine were of comparatively humble origin. “ The bench of bishops at this moment, though never more respectable, is, on the whole, a plebeian bench.” — Quarterly Review, July 1832. A better administration of ecclesiastical patronage is said to have begun and ended with the premiership of Lord Liverpool, 1812-1827. BLOMFIELD AND THE BILL 53 be induced only to say that he was inclined to vote for the new Bill, but thought he could not do so without loss of character. Soon afterwards Grey was informed that the King was to see Dr. Harcourt, Archbishop of York, and “ to speak to him seriously respecting the course which the bishops were pursuing.”1 Howley was the only prelate who had taken part in the debate of October 1831 ; but when the third Bill came before the Lords in April 1832, there was much less reticence on the episcopal bench. It soon appeared that the Bill had two faint-hearted friends in Bishops Copleston and Kaye and a very decided one in the Bishop of London. Dr. Blomfield explained why he had not fulfilled his intention to vote for the previous Bill and said that, though a more moderate measure might originally have sufficed, no such expedient could succeed now ; for “ it would be as vain to expect that the sun would trace back his degrees on the dial as that the people of England would ever return to the same channel of thought and opinion as before the introduction of this measure.” He deprecated undue alarm about the Church, which would probably be protected by a revival of conservatism and might even be strengthened by judicious reform ; and he concluded by heartily com¬ mending the Bill as “ a measure which would improve the representation, conciliate the affections of the people, and, adding strength and perpetuity to whatever was valuable in the constitution, cherish religion and con¬ solidate the best interests of the country.” 2 Van Mildert of Durham, whose condemnation of the Bill was endorsed by four other prelates, developed a line of argument which has been illustrated more than once in these pages, and in this connection from the pamphlet of “A Country Clergyman.” In his opinion 1 Correspondence of Earl Grey with William IV, i. 443, 444, 448 ; ii. 19, 2i, 34, 63, 64, 240, 254. 3 Hansard, 3rd Series, xii. 244, 267-271, 287. 54 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 the Bill would remedy “ no great practical grievance ” and achieve “ no great practical good " ; but he opposed it mainly as the embodiment of “ a restless disposition ” which fostered atheism, infidehty, dissent, and discord, attacked institutions merely because they were ancient, and sought to set subjects above their rulers. “ The so-called march of intellect had done much, but its good remained to be proved/' Knowledge was power ; but much of the knowledge now being diffused was super¬ ficial and injurious, and it was unfortunate that “ that species of knowledge, when possessed by a person of inferior station, too often gave him an evil influence over his associates." Bishop Murray of Rochester, a grandson of the Duke of Atholl, adopted the same tone of social superiority without attempting to give it a religious guise. No one had greater respect than he for the people “ so long as they maintained their respective and private stations " ; but the Government had capitu¬ lated, not to public opinion, but to popular clamour ; and “ the lower classes should not be called into council ; they should not be suffered to interfere with matters connected with legislation." His ancestors as members of the House had at all times supported this principle, and " he would never disgrace their name or his own " by assisting to subvert the constitution. Bishop Monk of Gloucester, who had been Porson’s successor in the Chair of Greek at Cambridge, said that the Bill was supported mainly by the rabble — “ persons incapable of forming an opinion on political subjects " ; and he denounced it as “ subversive of all morality " on the somewhat inadequate ground that it multiplied oaths and would thus encourage perjury.1 Dr. Phillpotts, just before the late Government went out of office, had been raised to the see of Exeter.2 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, xii. 49-51, 400-402, 407. 2 He had been a zealous anti-Catholic, and The Times said that he “ spun completely round, and never ceased from turning until he settled PHILLPOTTS AND LORD GREY 55 Though content to give a silent vote on October 8, he had violently attacked the Government, three days later, for words of warning addressed to the bishops, which, he said, had exposed them to the insults of the mob ; and Lord Grey, with equal vehemence, had repelled “ the most intemperate and the most unfounded in¬ sinuation wThich he had ever heard from a member of that House.” Both were men of fiery spirit, impetuous and eloquent ; and the encounter had even a spectacular interest from the tall and commanding figure of the statesman, the “ desperate and terrible countenance ” of the Bishop, and the evident discomfort of his brethren, “ who feel all the danger (in these times) of such a colleague.” 1 Phillpotts spoke with great effect against the third Bill on April n in reply to Bishop Blomfield ; and, though most of his arguments had necessarily been worn threadbare, he put forward one which, at least in the use he made of it, was new — that the Irish Reform Bill would extinguish the power of the Protestant borough- owners, and that the King would be bound by his corona¬ tion oath to resist “ a mere huckstering of pure religion ” for the worthless support of Irish Catholics. This was not the only passage in the speech which roused the wrath of the Prime Minister, who disposed of a “ doctrine mischievous, he had almost said wicked,” by showing, as had often been shown in defence of Catholic Emancipa¬ tion, that the oath bound the King in his executive, not in his legislative, capacity.2 Attempts were made to show that the popular enthusiasm for reform had waned ; but a considerable number of the peers, known as the “ waverers,” were of a different opinion. They recognised that the nation as a whole was determined to have genuine representa- into a bishop.” As, however, he had advocated concession on certain conditions, he could make out a better case for consistency than Wellington or Peel. 1 Greville Memoirs, ii. 287, 289. 2 Hansard, 3rd Series, viii. 475 ; xii. 282, 445. 56 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 tion ; and they were influenced still more by their belief that the King had consented, if nothing else would serve, to overcome resistance by a creation of peers. Lord Harrowby, brother of Bishop Ryder, had delivered against the previous Bill what in the biased opinion of the Annual Register was “ by far the ablest oration that had been pronounced on either side of the question in either House of Parliament.” He still “ retained his conviction that the day on which the King on his throne had promulgated the plan of that measure was a day fatal to its integrity — perhaps existence,” but counselled that it should be passed with a view to “ very great amendments.” Lord Whamcliffe, who had moved its rejection in the previous October, spoke to the same effect. “ For his own part, he believed that the con¬ stitution of Parliament was the best that ever was devised or put together for the purposes of legislation ” ; but he ruefully admitted that, if this conviction was to be acted upon, it must be shared by the people.1 These arguments could not fail to make some impression on the bishops, exposed as they had been to the worst severity of the late storm. On April 13, 1832, twelve of them voted for the Bill, but fifteen, including Arch¬ bishop Howley, voted against it ; and the second reading was carried by 184 to 175. This result evoked great enthusiasm in the country, and was a practical as well as a moral victory in so far as it averted the delay and exasperation which would have been involved in the introduction of a new Bill. But of the peers actually present the Government had a majority of only two ; and to this exiguous margin, as proxies could not be used in committee, they were now reduced. Believing that the Opposition would shrink from precipitating a crisis, they expected no dramatic encounter, but a long series of minor defeats, serious enough in their cumulative effect to discredit them with 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, xii. 156, 180. BISHOPS DESERT REFORM 57 the Commons and the public, but not so serious that the King would consent to make peers. Great, therefore, was their astonishment and delight when it was rumoured that the Tory leaders meant to wrest from them the control of the Bill, to invert its order and, by insisting that the case of the unrepresented towns must first be considered, to procure at least a reprieve for the con¬ demned boroughs.1 None but a few irreconcilables now believed that these moribund constituencies could be saved ; but Lord Lyndhurst, in proposing his motion on May 7, did not scruple to encourage their hopes. He said that the nomination boroughs should be effaced not as “ blots or nuisances,” but only in so far as their seats were required for new constituencies, and that to treat them otherwise would be to sanction the idea — which was an article of faith with most reformers — that Parliament was utterly corrupt. " Let them enfranchise first, and afterwards disfranchise, if necessary, and only to the extent of the necessity.” The motion was carried by 15 1 to 1 16 ; and Grey believed that the result would have been " very different ” if a scheme of reform which was then adumbrated by Lord Ellenborough had been previously announced.2 This unexpected irruption from the Tory camp all but dissipated the episcopal corps which had been formed with such difficulty under the banner of reform. Maltby and Blomfield, needless to say, stood firm, and so did Charles Sumner and Jenkinson of St. David’s, brother of the late Lord Liverpool ; but of the other bishops who had supported the second reading on April 13, four were absent, including the aged Bishop Bathurst, and Carr, Copleston, Kaye and Ryder deserted to the Opposition.3 1 " I pronounced so great a blunder impossible,” says Brougham. — Memoirs, iii. 190. * Roebuck had often heard this scheme spoken of by Tories as ” incredible.” — History of the Whig Ministry of 1830, ii. 280. * Grey showed his opinion of Carr by underlining “ the Bishop of Worcester ” in his report to the King, but was mistaken in saying that the Archbishop of York had voted against the Government. He 58 THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 Lord Grey would have been sorry to divert his opponents from their purpose ; but he left them in no doubt as to what would happen in the event of his defeat ; and on the King’s refusal to create peers he resigned. Lyndhurst and Wellington having failed to form a Ministry, he soon returned to power ; and the Bill passed the Lords on June 4. Twenty-two anti¬ reformers who persisted to the last in opposition were all lay peers ; but the Bishops of Rochester, Bristol, Exeter, Carlisle, and Gloucester were amongst the seventy- three who recorded their dissent. The borough-owners, on whom the Church had relied for protection even after the admission to Parliament of Dissenters and Catholics, were now overthrown ; and it was generally supposed that the clergy would participate in the humiliation of their allies. Arnold and Blomfield were both convinced that large concessions must be made to popular opinion. The former wrote three days after the Reform Bill became law : “ The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save ” ; and Blomfield towards the end of the year : “ It is impossible that the Church (in so far as it is of human institution) can go on as it is.” And at least two eminent men of widely divergent views were of opinion that there was no future for the Church as a partner with the State. “ I fear its days are numbered,” wrote Archbishop Whately ; and Southey was “ apprehensive that no human means are likely to avert the threatened overthrow of the Establishment.” 1 was one of the absentees. — Grey's Correspondence, ii. 392 ; Hansard, 3rd Series, xii. 680-683. Nevertheless, his palace at Bishopsthorpe was attacked by the mob, whilst Ryder was mobbed in London. — Church Reformers’ Magazine, i. 229, 233. 1 Stanley's Arnold, Letter 49 ; Memoir of Blomfield, i. 207; Life of Whately, i. 159 ; Life of Southey, vi. 222. CHAPTER II REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-1834 The agitation against the Church which accompanied the Reform Bill was intensified rather than diminished when that measure had become law ; but for four years the ecclesiastical constitution remained substantially in¬ tact ; and the only change made was not a product of the crisis, being the result of an inquiry which had been instituted before it arose. We shall find at a later stage that this change took the form of a new court of appeal from the ordinary Church tribunals, and was adopted on the advice of a Royal Commission which had been appointed by the Duke of Wellington in 1830 and renewed by Lord Grey in 1831. In the matter of an inquiry into the ecclesiastical courts the Whig Ministers had been ready enough to follow in the steps of their Tory predecessors ; but they were less enamoured of a kindred proposal which emanated from the same source. The Church had two critics in Parliament who were never tired of exposing its abuses — Lord King in the Lords and Joseph Hume in the Commons ; and, in order to forestall a motion which the latter was to bring forward in 1831, Joshua Watson proposed and outlined a Commission of Inquiry which, if possible, was to be obtained from the Crown. This body, in order that its formation should be looked upon as a voluntary concession on the part of the Church, was to consist wholly of ecclesiastics — one-third bishops, the rest deans, archdeacons, heads of colleges, and 60 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 parochial incumbents ; its members were to be selected by the Prime Minister out of a list drawn up by the Primate ; it was to be “ strictly limited ” in scope, and was to confine itself to the means of obviating frequent translations, commendams held by bishops, and " in¬ convenient pluralities ” — these being “ the spots most commonly seen.” That a Royal Commission thus manned and thus restricted would venture to deal drastically even with such “ spots,” conspicuous though they were, was probably neither expected nor desired ; and Watson’s scheme, which naturally commended itself to the Duke of Wellington, was welcomed but soon put aside by the Government. There was a moment, indeed, when he believed it to have been adopted.1 Lord Grey was as anxious as the clergy themselves that they should succeed in averting “ the coming storm ”; but it was one thing to encourage their efforts and another thing to endorse them as adequate ; and it was therefore agreed that the Primate on his own respon¬ sibility should introduce certain measures of reform. On February 14, 1831, when Lord King had moved for a return of resident and non-resident clergy, the Prime Minister complimented Archbishop Howley on his anxiety to remove abuses, referred to his views — rather incongruously — as ” very moderate and liberal,” and vouched for his intention to deal with tithes, plurality, and livings held in commendam by bishops. The last of these measures was not, however, one of the three which the Archbishop introduced on June 24. If clerical opinion was not yet ripe for a general commutation of tithes, it was at least advisable that they should cease to be levied in kind ; and it was a serious obstacle to the abandonment of this practice, where it still survived, that an incumbent could not compound for a longer 1 Churton’s Joshua Watson, ii. 3-7. Churton was quite mistaken, as we shall see, in his assumption that reforms were afterwards adopted “ without previous inquiry." PLURALITY BILL 61 period than his life, and could not even do that if any of his parishioners objected. It was now proposed, with the cordial approbation of Brougham, to legalise com¬ positions for a term of years and to nullify any hostile majority which fell short of two-thirds. There was also a Bill for enabling ecclesiastical corporations to augment their livings. Both Bills passed, and some of the bishops were commendably prompt in availing themselves of the latter.1 There is no report of a debate on the third Bill, which professed to restrain pluralities and was extinguished by the dissolution ; but a Bill, apparently identical, was introduced and fully discussed in the following year. This Bill, which passed the Lords but was abandoned in the Commons, prohibited plurality only where the livings held by one incumbent were over thirty miles apart. Within that distance the archbishop was em¬ powered to sanction it at his discretion, if the living already occupied was not more than £400 a year,2 and in all cases if the incumbent was a Master of Arts or was recommended by a bishop on account of his attainments and character. The measure — though Lords Grey and Harrowby professed to be satisfied — met with little but criticism even from its friends ; and Lord King denounced it as “ nothing more than a mockery and a delusion.” It was justly said that plurality should be tolerated only in the case of livings too poor to be held separately, and near enough to be served effectively by one pastor. Howley maintained that the thirty-mile limit would reduce plurality by two-thirds ; but this distance was obviously too great for personal supervision ; and though an ancient statute was to be repealed which allowed the sons and chaplains of peers to hold more than one living, the poorer clergy, who had seldom more 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, ii. 478 ; iv. 292, 1362 ; xi. 933. 2 So in Hansard, but the Christian Observer gives ^400 as the total value of the two livings. 62 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 than a Bachelor’s degree, were disqualified in this respect, to the advantage of their richer brethren. In vain was it contended that the standard ought to be value and not distance. Van Mildert thought this “ a dangerous principle ” of boundless application ; and Blomfield declared that the Church would lose much of its splendour if the upper classes should be deterred from choosing it as a profession. The Christian Observer had indeed good grounds for its remark : “ It is not the smallest class of livings that keeps up the tenacity for pluralities ; it is because what is called a tolerably good living is in reality a starving to the sons of our nobility and gentry.” And the Bill was actually amended to meet a case stated hypothetically by Lord Wynford, but understood to be his own — that of a patron who, having only a small living to bestow on his son, had purchased another.1 The Plurality Bills of 1831 and 1832 showed clearly how little the Church could be trusted to reform itself ; and meanwhile popular opinion was becoming more and more impatient of the abuses which were to have been so delicately pruned and circumscribed. In February 1831, just when Lord Grey was announcing the Primate’s “ very moderate and liberal reforms,” appeared “ The Extraordinary Black Book.” The original work, a reprint of periodical articles, and entitled “ The Black Book,” had been published in 1820. It had been fre¬ quently reprinted, and, despite the silence of respectable reviewers, more than 14,000 copies had been sold. John Wade, the anonymous author, was then occupied mainly with the “ Borough Government,” i.e. the rule of the borough-owners. Now his theme was ” Church, State, Law, and Representation ” ; and the Church not only came first, but the sixty pages devoted to it in 1820 had expanded in 1831 to a hundred and fifty. Wade was credulous and prejudiced, but not dishonest, as is shown 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, x. 1108, mo ; xi. 315, 789, 795, 798, 800, 801 ; Christian Observer, 1832, pp. 195, 363, 728. WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 63 by the fact that in 1820, whilst he vastly overvalued most of the sees, there were some which he correctly estimated and others which he much underrated. Had the clergy been alive to their own interests, they would long ago have insisted on an official inquiry into the amount and distribution of their funds. Such an inquiry was in fact instituted on June 23, 1832 ; 1 but the Royal Commission which was then appointed did not report till June 16, 1834. The value of bishoprics was peculiarly liable to misrepresentation. Their income was derived largely from fines on the renewal of leases, which fell due at varying intervals and were frequently of large amount ; and consequently there might in any one year be a great difference between the actual and the average value. Again, livings were notoriously held by bishops in com- mendam, but few people were in a position to distinguish between livings so held and livings which had been permanently annexed to the see. The whole benefices of the Church were indeed rated in the “ King’s Book,” a valuation made in the reign of Henry VIII ; and this obsolete standard was supposed to have been retained in the interest of pluralists, whose livings were there entered at a fraction of their present value. They would probably have done better to face the facts than to leave them to popular conjecture. There was no constant relation between the value of sees, dignities, and livings, as recorded in the “ King’s Book,” and their value in 1832. Winchester was nominally four times richer, London thirteen times, St. Asaph twenty-five times ; whilst Stanhope, the second richest rectory in England, was valued by the Commissioners at £4843, but stands in the “ King’s Book ” at £6 7 6s. 8 d. It was thus easy, by excluding all factors but the fall in the purchasing 1 After being mobbed at Canterbury in October 1831, Archbishop Howley is said to have at once intimated to the Government that " he at any rate ” would not oppose this step. — Life of Charles Richard Sumner, p. 197. The schedule of thirty-two inquiries sent to all in¬ cumbents in August 1832 is printed in the British Magazine, ii. 80. 64 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 power of money, so to exaggerate the wealth of the Church that people " had a kind of magical Oriental notion of it.” 1 “ The Extraordinary Black Book ” was merely the biggest of many guns which — to adopt the current phraseology — were then bombarding the Church. R. M. Beverley, writing and publishing from the place of that name, opened fire simultaneously with his ” Letter to the Archbishop of York ” — a small piece, but highly charged with venom. He had no quarrel with Dr. Harcourt, the doyen of the bench, whom, indeed, he rather com¬ plimented than censured ; and he respected the Church — of which he had once been a member — as a religious institution and greatly admired its cathedrals. What he execrated and furiously assailed was the manner in which ecclesiastical offices were disposed of by the borough-owners and their underlings, the bishops. With one or two exceptions, the latter, in his view, had reached the episcopal ladder only by flattering the great and making themselves useful to Government ; obsequiousness in Parliament and a heavy toll of dignities and livings were exacted from them as the price of ascent ; and such preferments as they had managed to save from the clutch of politicians were reserved for their relatives and per¬ sonal friends. “ I am thoroughly impressed with the truth as paramount to all other truths, excepting the high mysteries of our religion, that the Church of England as it is now constituted is a machine of Antichrist, greatly surpassing in the grossness of its abuses all other jobs or systems of corruption that ever have afflicted the king¬ dom.” 2 Thirty thousand copies and at least fourteen editions of this shilling pamphlet were speedily sold ; and the writer affirmed in the preface to a subsequent pub¬ lication 3 that a number of clergymen had written to him 1 J. B. Mozley’s Essays, ii. 26. * A Letter to the Archbishop of York, p. 16. a The Tombs of the Prophets, 1831, p. 5. BISHOP SPARKE 65 in approval and had even suggested " further remarks for a future occasion.” Few of Beverley’s clerical correspondents can have agreed with him that the Church would never be rid of its maladies till it had parted company with the State ; but we shall find that many staunch Churchmen — High, Evangelical, and Tory — had no higher opinion of the average bishop ; and it may be well in this connection to cite an instance — no doubt an extreme instance — in which episcopal patronage had been grossly abused. Dr. Sparke was one of the few prelates who had voted neither for nor against the Reform Bill. He was Bishop of Ely, the sixth wealthiest see, and had liberally endowed his sons and his son-in-law with the good things in his gift. On March 25, 1831, Lord King, in presenting a petition for the commutation of tithes, commented on this accumulation of benefices, and said that it reflected on the Lord Chancellor, as Wisbeach, a vicarage so held and worth about £2000 a year, was in his gift. Lord Brougham explained that the presentation to Wisbeach was alternately in the Great Seal and in the see of Ely. His predecessor, Lord Eldon, had consented to forgo his turn at the request of the bishop ; and he himself, soon after he assumed office, had received two similar applications. The first he ignored, but the second, which was accompanied by an intimation that silence would be interpreted as consent, he referred to Lord Eldon, on whose recommendation he granted the request — with great reluctance, as the unfortunate successor of Bishop Sparke would thus be deprived of his nomina¬ tion to the next three vacancies.1 The critical condition of the Church was sorrowfully admitted by its friends and proclaimed with indecent exultation by its foes. The former were by no means unanimous in the remedies they prescribed ; but those 1 Hansard, 3rd Series, iii. 927-929. Sparke, being old and infirm, may have been less to blame than his family. 66 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 of them who had graduated in the Tory school of state¬ craft were naturally disposed to favour medical rather than surgical treatment, or, in other words, to attempt nothing more than administrative reform. This was the course recommended by a writer in Blackwood , whose “ Letter to Lord Brougham/* published in the February number of 1832, attracted considerable attention. He declared that the statesmen of both parties had equally abused the ecclesiastical patronage of the Crown, which was “ only considered as so much oil for greasing the wheels of government/’ and that there could be no hope for the Church so long as bishops were appointed through parliamentary influence. In recent years, and especially during the administration of Lord Liverpool, the sees had occasionally been filled in a more disinterested spirit ; but the men selected had been eminent for scholarship rather than professional merit, and some of them were “ positively to be reckoned amongst the very worst bishops upon the bench.” It was suggested that there should be a Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs — which was the more necessary as the Home Secretary or even the Prime Minister might now be a Catholic — and that he should be advised, especially in the choice of bishops, by ten unpaid Commissioners.1 Such a scheme would do nothing to relieve the 4000 livings which were under £150 a year ; but the writer disposed of this difficulty in a manner which was happily peculiar to himself. He asserted that the poorest members of the clerical corps were the most energetic, that their energy was inspired by “ a spirit of Christian self-renouncement,” and that, if their benefices were improved, they might indeed " be better enabled to keep the wolf from their own door, but it would be by means which must ensure his admission amongst the flock.” 2 1 Mixed councils of clergy and laymen are suggested for this purpose by the Archbishops’ Committee and in Patronage and Tenure, a pamphlet issued by the Life and Liberty Movement. 8 Blackwood’s Magazine, xxxi. 181-194. CHURCH REFORM SCHEMES 67 A method of relief too limited to demoralise the impecunious pastor had, however, been proposed. Queen Anne had initiated a fund for the augmentation of small livings by giving up for this purpose the First Fruits and Tenths which at the Reformation had passed from the Papacy to the Crown. These taxes were adjusted to a valuation made as early as 1535 ; and, whatever may have been the burden of the First Fruits, that of the Tenths, where they had not been remitted, was little more than nominal. It had frequently been suggested that this impost should be reconstituted on a modem basis ; and in 1831 Dr. Burton, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, put forward a scheme, tempered by exemption and graduation, which in his opinion would raise the annual value of Queen Anne’s Bounty from £ 10,000 to £35, 000. 1 This was no great sum ; and, whilst objection was taken to the levelling principle of the project and its tendency to depreciate the market value of advowsons, there was a general feeling that the more affluent clergy were not, as a rule, so well endowed that they should be required to subsidise their poorer brethren. The prostitution of ecclesiastical patronage which incensed the Blackwood writer had been denounced with equal vigour in the previous month by the British Critic , which declared that jobbery not only made but corrupted bishops, and that the “ poison which is thrown into the spring at its source may be detected in every drop which is drawn from the stream as it flows.” But we shall find that the whole attitude to reform of this High Church organ was dominated at this period by a truly liberal spirit ; and it did not hesitate to propose, as “ a plan which has long been in our thoughts and which seems more necessary, if not more practicable, every day we live,” that the cathedral chapters should be called upon 1 Sequel to Remarks upon Church Reform, p. 32. The First Fruits and Tenths yielded about £1 4,000 a year ; but they were collected by two sinecure boards which absorbed at least £4000. — Hansard, 3rd Series, xli. 280. 68 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 to give up great part of their property in order to endow parish churches in populous towns. Prebends might no doubt be valuable as an endowment for learned leisure ; but they too had been contaminated by the poisoned spring ; and “ how many of them are occupied at this moment by persons whose services in the cause of religion are unknown to their nearest connections ? ” 1 Evangelicalism, in so far as it found expression in the Christian Observer , had also declared for a diversion to parochial purposes of cathedral endowments ; and Lord Henley, the brother-in-law of Peel, was thus assured of sympathy as well as of attention when he published in the early summer of 1832 “ A Plan of Church Reform/* Robert Henley Eden, who had succeeded to an Irish peerage in 1830, was a Master of Chancery, and his “ Plan,” which he expounded in a prefatory pamphlet, was drawn up in the form of an Act of Parliament. Regarding plurality as “ the most prominent evil in the Church,” he proposed to prohibit it only in the case of incumbents whose benefices were not under £400 a year ; and his main object was consequently to diminish the poverty which was its only valid excuse. It was no part of his scheme that the poorer livings should be enriched at the cost of those better endowed ; and, far from wishing to intensify the First Fruits and Tenths, he desired their abolition. Nor were the sees to be drawn upon, their total revenue being no more than adequate ; but in their case he proposed a rectification of frontiers and incomes. Part of the diocese of Chester was to be transferred to that of Carlisle ; and two new sees, without seats in Parliament, were to be erected at Windsor and Southwell. The two Archbishops, the Bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, were to have incomes varying from £15,000 to £7000. All the rest were to have £5000, except the two new bishops, who were to have £3000. There would thus be no need 1 British Critic, xi. 226, 227, 230-232. LORD HENLEY’S SCHEME 69 for commendams, and little or no scope for jobbery, as only the two archbishoprics were to be open to trans¬ lation. Pastors being in want of funds and bishops unable to supply them, there remained those secluded comers of the vineyard in which the tradition of labour survived only in the munificence of its reward. Henley proposed that the cathedral services should be maintained by the deans with the assistance of two chaplains, and that all prebends should be abolished except at Oxford or where they could be annexed to large parochial charges within the cathedral city.1 The interests of all persons affected by the scheme were, of course, to be secured to them for life ; but, as each individual died, the emolu¬ ments of his office were to be transferred to “ Commis¬ sioners for the Management of Ecclesiastical Property ” ; and the total surplus, estimated at £150,000, was to be applied to augmenting country livings, building parson¬ ages, and planting and endowing churches in large towns. Lord Henley was anxious that the bishops should be excluded from Parliament, where he thought that they must either incur the charge of servihty, or, if they identified themselves with the Opposition, become “ gladiators in the strife of bitterness and personality ” ; and he suggested, by way of compensating the Church for their exclusion, that Convocation, then practically dormant, should be revived. His scheme provided that a commission should be appointed to consider this proposal ; and a commission for the exercise of ecclesias¬ tical patronage, though not included in the scheme, had his approval.2 Henley’s “ Plan ” was frequently reprinted. No similar publication did so much to mould public and probably also administrative opinion ; but it was of 1 A very similar suggestion had been made by Yates as early as 1815. — The Church in Danger, p. 214. 1 Lord Henley presided over a meeting of Churchmen at Exeter Hall on September 6, 1832, at which it was resolved to form a society for ecclesiastical reform. — British Magazine, ii. 175. 70 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 course criticised, and condemned as well as praised. Burton examined it in detail, and declared as the result of his analysis that the various charges which were to devolve on the Ecclesiastical Commissioners would reduce the surplus at their disposal from £150,000 to £26, 000. 1 “ This spurious aristocratical reform/' as Beverley called it, was of course anathema to the Radicals, who would hear of nothing but the complete abolition of tithes and the sale of episcopal and capitular estates for the benefit of the public ; 2 and, on the other hand, it was much too drastic for the new type of High Churchmanship which was developing at Oxford. Much the best reply from this quarter was that of Dr. Pusey, who argued, with great learning and in excellent temper, that the original object of capitular endowments, and one which they had once fulfilled, was to encourage the study of theology, and that, whilst in other Protestant countries cathedrals in this respect had been superseded by universities, it was not so in England. Prussia, for example, had forty-five theological professors ; but England with a larger population had only seven, and at Oxford a student was qualified for orders who had studied divinity for a fortnight in addition to the ordinary course. Pusey distinguished between sinecures and sinecurists, main¬ taining that the latter existed only “ in the imagination of unprincipled journalists ” ; for most prebendaries were parochial incumbents, and their parishes — contrary to the general impression — were ill-endowed. But on this showing the argument was as good against the present system as against its abolition ; and there was little prospect of that improvement in the exercise of patronage which was “ alone needed ” to re-convert cathedrals into theological schools.3 On the question of right Pusey 1 Sequel to Remarks on Church Reform, p. 15. 2 Church Reformers’ Magazine, i. 14. 3 Archdeacon Butler also suggested this reform. — Thoughts on Church Dignities, 18^3, p. 10. Pusey’s pamphlet had appeared, but he had not seen it. DR. ARNOLD’S SCHEME 7* contended that funds left for the training of religious teachers could not be diverted to the preaching of rehgion ; and another writer of this school went so far as to argue against Burton’s scheme that one benefice could not be taxed for the augmentation of another.1 A contemporary Irish scholar,2 whom Oxford had not cured of his native exuberance, says of this period that “ the Press groaned beneath the perpetual issue ” of Church reform pamphlets ; that these were “ as numerous as the motes in sunshine ” ; and that “ each sciolist presented his puny design for reconstructing this august temple built by no human hands.” Nor was Lord Henley the only man of note who attempted the audacious task. In January 1833 Dr. Arnold wrote to Whately, “ Nothing, as it seems to me, can save the Church but an union with the Dissenters ” ; 3 and the pamphlet he then published was the practical application of this text. “ The reform really needed ” was, he announced, " to make the Church truly and effectually the Church of England.” In this there was nothing new, all other reformers being equally alive to the necessity of winning back the lapsed or neglected industrial population ; but instead of inquiring, as they did, how funds could be raised to obviate non¬ residence in the country and the lack of churches in the towns, he expatiated on “ the monstrous evil of secta¬ rianism,” by which he meant the mutual intolerance of Churchmen and Dissenters, and proceeded, as if hostilities and even animosities had ceased, to dictate the terms of a lasting peace. Episcopacy was to be preserved and all ministers were to be episcopally ordained ; but a bishop, retaining nothing but “ the mere name,” was to act only on the advice of a council comprising laymen as well as clerics, and was to be further 1 Pusey's Remarks on the Benefits of Cathedral Institutions, 2nd edition, pp. 6, 25, 63, 76, 144, 146 ; Perceval’s Letter to Lord Henley, p. 15. * William Palmer. 3 Stanley’s Arnold, Letter 57. 72 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 restricted by a diocesan assembly. Dissenting pastors were to be eligible as members of these bodies ; for — the Articles having been made “ far more comprehensive " — they were to be assumed as “ assistant ministers/' excluded indeed from the endowments, but “ easily and, I believe, most cheerfully maintained by Easter offerings," and free to conduct worship as they pleased in the parish churches, except that the Liturgy was to be read at the morning service. Where there was no endowment, the congregation was to elect its pastor, and in other cases a sort of “ kirk-session " was to report to the bishop’s council on the qualification of presentees. Arnold attached enormous importance to the national acknow¬ ledgment of religion, holding that society on a secular basis could exist “ for no higher than physical ends — to enable men to eat, drink, and live luxuriously," 1 and that, if the State were to abandon its profession of Christianity, the establishment of paganism, even though a majority of Englishmen were still Christians, “ would be an absolute blessing." A mediator of this temper could not be unbiased ; and difficulties were more likely to be overlooked than surmounted by a man who was so intoxicated by the glamour of his ideal and so appre¬ hensive that even its present shrunken embodiment was about to collapse. Arnold’s pamphlet went through four editions in six months ; but there was no rush for seats in the “ new national omnibus," 2 despite the urgent solicitations of its conductor, which, indeed, were more urgent than tactful. “ The godless party " and “ those extraordinary persons," the High Churchmen, had something to complain of ; and so had the Dissenters, whose comprehension was advocated as a means of 1 So on p. 75 of his pamphlet • but on p. 105 he says of the State : “ Our physical wants may have led to its actual origin, but its proper object is of a higher nature — it is the intellectual and moral improve¬ ment of mankind.” 2 Christian Observer, 1833, p. 365. LITURGICAL REFORM 73 mollifying their fanaticism and dissociating them from the “ utter coarseness and deformity ” of their chapels.1 It was characteristic of Arnold's rash and summary methods that he gave as one of his reasons for suggesting the joint use of liturgical and extemporary prayer that it would avoid the difficulties involved in a revision of the Prayer Book. But many reformers of a less im¬ petuous type were anxious that the Prayer Book should be revised both in deference to their own scruples and as a means of conciliating the Dissenters. This was the oldest branch of ecclesiastical reform — as old, indeed, as the Liturgy itself. The first English Liturgy had been issued in 1549, but within three years it was re-issued as the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI ; and in this form it was revised in 1559, in 1604, and finally in 1661, when several new services were added and about six hundred alterations were made.2 In 1689 it was proposed to signalise the national character of the Revolution by bringing about a union of Churchmen and Dissenters ; and on the suggestion of Tillotson, who wished to obviate the reproach that the Reformation had been effected solely by the civil power, certain bishops and divines were commissioned to revise the ritual, canons, and discipline of the Church ; and their recommendations were to be brought first before Convocation and then before Parliament. The Commission, though disowned or deserted by some of its members, agreed upon a drastic revision of the Liturgy ; but the Lower House of Con¬ vocation showed its opinion of this scheme by rejecting Tillotson when proposed as its Prolocutor and voting two to one for Dr. Jane, who had refused to serve on the Commission ; 3 and no progress was made with a Com- 1 Principles of Church Reform, 4th edition, pp. 44, 45, 50-57, 68, 70, 72, 75, 99. * Wodehouse’s edition (1834) of Prideaux’s Letter to a Friend on the Convocation of 1689 — Preface. 3 Birch’s Life of Tillotson, pp. 179-209. 74 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 prehension Bill which had been brought into Parliament. As the Revolution Government could not afford to estrange, much less to persecute, its best friends, the Dissenters must be either reconciled to the Church or protected in their separation by the State ; and, the latter solution having been adopted in the Toleration Act, the question of liturgical revision was not seriously revived, at all events from the Nonconformist standpoint, till the Church had entered, a hundred and forty years later, on the steep and perilous path which commenced abruptly with the repeal of the sacramental test, and descended, by way of Catholic relief, to the raging torrent of parliamentary reform. The case for revision was opened in 1828 by two writers 1 whose pamphlets were described by a reviewer as “ pilot-balloons/ ’ Henley, in dedicating to the King a re-issue of his tract, advocated “ some healing and charitable measures of peace and comprehension " in regard to Church government, discipline, and ritual, and expressed his confidence that such changes as were recommended by the Commission of 1689 “ would bring in much the greater part of the Dissenters/’ Similar advice was tendered a few months later to the University of Oxford in a sermon which was afterwards published ; and in one pamphlet after another the Church was counselled to look for its political salvation to an expur¬ gated Prayer Book. On this question the High Church view was expressed with its usual moderation and courage by the British Critic. “It is absolutely libellous to our constitution, either in Church or State," said the Critic in 1829, “ to tremble at the very name of innovation ; as if the structure must necessarily fall to pieces at the first touch of reform." In January 1833 it declared itself not indisposed, for the sake of conciliation, “ to listen to the proposal for removing the Athanasian Creed 1 Archdeacon Berens, who published anonymously, and the Rev. W. W. Hull, one of Arnold's correspondents. THE IRISH CHURCH 75 from our Liturgy ; and we say this because the objections come from so many quarters and from persons of such genuine piety ” ; and in the following October, whilst insisting that no changes in ritual would satisfy the Dissenters, to most of whom the Establishment principle was “ wormwood and abomination,” it yet admitted that the time might come when the general feeling of the Church would require “ some very few erasures ” and substitutions. Bishop Copleston in his charge of this year said he was not prepared to contend against the proposed revision of the Liturgy, “ except so far as to deny its necessity .” Bishop Marsh had declared in 1814 that the anathemas “ might have been consistently rejected from the Athanasian Creed when it was adopted by our Reformers ” ; and it appears from a private letter of Bishop Blomfield that he was of the same opinion.1 Reports that Parliament would be called upon to remodel the Liturgy were no doubt unfounded, and in regard to the temporalities of the Church, the Govern¬ ment could do little or nothing till they received the report of their Commission ; but meanwhile they had been forced to take action in Ireland, and their policy in this quarter was anxiously scanned as an indication of what might be expected of them at home. Precarious as was, or seemed to be, the position of the English Church, it was security itself as compared with that of the Protestant Establishment in Ireland — a prey to racial as well as religious antagonism and strong only in external support. The English Church comprised at least two-thirds of the population, but the Irish Church, proportionately much richer, comprised only a tenth ; and, though its 1200 separate livings were less than belonged to the diocese of Lincoln, it had twenty-two prelates. Forty-one of its incumbents had no Protestant parishioners, and over 160 had fewer than twenty-five. 1 Baker’s St. John’s College, Cambridge, iii. 865 ; Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 116. 7 6 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 There were, of course, many livings without churches ; and, as a qualification for holding one of these sinecures, which was worth £1000 a year, we find the presentee reading the service within the ruins of an abbey to the clerk and three Protestants, whom he had been “ obliged to borrow ” from a neighbouring parish.1 Tithes could no longer be levied, or at least were a million pounds in arrear ; several of the clergy had been murdered, many were refugees, and such was their condition as a body that Parliament had advanced a large sum for their relief. Lord Grey's Irish policy, corresponding to a difference of opinion in his Cabinet, was a compound of severity and conciliation. A Coercion Bill, which restored order “like magic,” 2 was consequently accompanied by proposals for making the Church less unpopular as well as more efficient ; and these were explained to the Commons by Lord Althorp in February 1833. In England the episcopal revenues were comparatively small, whilst the capitular revenues were large ; but in Ireland these conditions were reversed, the four arch¬ bishops and the eighteen bishops having a net revenue of £130,000, and the deans and chapters in their official and corporate capacity a balance over expenditure of little more than £2000. It was proposed, as vacancies occurred, to eliminate two of the archbishops and eight of the bishops ; to reduce in value the two richest sees ; and, as a substitute for the obsolete First Fruits and the Church rate or “ cess,” which was levied by Protestant vestries and paid mainly by Catholics, to impose a graduated tax on all ecclesiastical incomes not under £200. The Irish bishops were precluded by statute from leasing their lands for more than twenty-one years ; but 1 Greville Memoirs, 4th edition, iii. 9. The incident was told to Greville by Lord Duncannon, who had it from the incumbent himself. 2 So, with little exaggeration, said Archbishop Howley. See also Greville, iii. 27. IRISH CHURCH BILL 77 the law was to be altered, and their tenants, on an offer of six years’ purchase, were to have the right of acquiring the land in perpetuity at a fixed com rent. The proceeds of the income tax, estimated at £60,000, and a sum of about the same amount which would accrue gradually from the consolidation of sees, were to be vested in Commissioners and applied to the augmentation of small livings and the building and upkeep of churches ; 1 but the “ perpetuity fund,” which, if all the tenants exercised their option, would amount to between two and three millions, was to be at the disposal of Parliament. And Lord Althorp in dealing with this part of the scheme expressed his confidence — which proved to be quite unfounded — that even those who denied the right of Parliament to dispose of Church property would agree that any increase in its value which was due, as in this case, to legislative action might justly be claimed by the State.2 Churchmen had little faith in the Whigs as ecclesi¬ astical reformers, and there were concessions both to voluntaryism and to Popery in this scheme which could not but deepen their distrust. Some degree of peace might no doubt be purchased for the present by the abolition of Church rates ; but could an Establishment, it was asked, be permanently maintained without parochial assessments, and, if so, might not naval officers as well be expected to maintain the fleet out of their pay as clergymen to keep up the parish churches out of their tithes ? Moreover Popery, where it occupied the whole field, was not to be disturbed ; for the Ecclesiastical 1 Misled by an ambiguous passage in Althorp 's speech, more than one modern historian has supposed that the surplus from the con¬ solidation of sees was to be at the disposal of Parliament. What Althorp meant was — as appears from the context — that this sum would be “at the disposal of the Commissioners,” who would thus be able to augment small livings, or Parliament might direct them to put it to some other kindred use. See Hansard, xv. 574. Walpole’s account (iii. 152, 161) is incomplete as well as inaccurate. * Hansard, xv. 568-575 — 3rd Series henceforth assumed. 78 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 Commissioners were empowered to suppress livings where no duty had been performed for three years, and to refrain from church-building where they had no assurance of local aid. On such grounds the Government was accused of treating the Protestant Establishment in Ireland as “an evil to be borne with and mitigated rather than as a blessing of which we should wish the extension and perpetuity ” ; 1 and the suppression of bishoprics was, of course, particularly obnoxious to High Churchmen, some of whom indeed regarded it with horror.2 But no part of the scheme caused so much alarm as the proposal to deprive the Church of a sum due to the virtual sale of its lands and to appropriate this surplus to purposes which were long unspecified and consequently the more dreaded, but which were at last defined as educational and philanthropic. Catholics and Radicals, who thought themselves on the high road to Disestablishment, attached even more importance to the “ appropriation clause ” than to the abolition of Church rates. But the flag of piracy, after terrifying Churchmen for over four months, was eventually hauled down as a signal of deference to the Lords ; and two similar but less important concessions were made. The income tax was not to be exacted from the present holders of benefices, and the limit of exemption was raised from £200 to £300. The Lords would certainly have made short work of “ appropriation,” and it was doubtful whether they would accept the Bill even as it stood. Lord Grey opened the second reading debate with a very able speech in which he showed that there was nothing new in the consolidation of Irish dioceses, their number having once 1 Christian Observer, 1833, p. 31 1. 2 The Bill did not affect the doctrine of Apostolical Succession as commonly understood ; but extremists were of the opinion, which had been held by some of the Nonjurors, “ that each see and each local succession must be perpetual.” — Thomas Mozley's Reminiscences, i. 309. IRISH CHURCH DEBATE 79 been thirty-three, and in the reign of James I as low as eighteen, and that half of the unions now proposed had previously been in force. Tories, High Churchmen, and ultra-Protestants were, however, a formidable combination, and most of them appealed to that vener¬ able and often-demolished bogey — the Coronation Oath. Archbishop Howley insisted that the principle of appro¬ priation was still embodied in the Bill, the tax on the clergy and the sale of “ see-lands ” at the option and for the benefit of the tenant being both invasions of Church property ; and Bishop Van Mildert said that, if the object of the scheme was to suppress Protestantism and promote Popery, no better means could have been adopted. The Government had, however, a powerful ally in the Bishop of London, who was now entering on his long and distinguished career as an ecclesiastical reformer. Blomfield declared that the payment of tithes in Ireland had been " absolutely extinct ” for two years, and that these were the least unfavourable conditions under which it could be revived. There were some things in the Bill which he disliked, and he would have opposed it altogether in its original shape ; but, even if it could be proved to encroach in some degree on the jurisdiction of the bishops, the House would not be justified in rejecting a measure which was all that stood between the Irish Church and “ immediate ruin ” ; and in reply to the Duke of Newcastle, who had referred to him as having “ lately been collated to the situation of priest in the temple of expediency,” he said that no statesman could accept the Duke’s advice to vote on this or any other question “ without looking to con¬ sequences.” Wellington vigorously enforced this appeal, asserting that, if expediency were not to be considered, “the Church of Ireland must go”; and the second reading was carried by the handsome majority of 157 to 98. The Primate had recently been rebuked by William IV for having voted against the Government 80 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 on a purely political question ; but on this occasion his Toryism and his Churchmanship were no doubt at one. He and fourteen other bishops voted against the Bill, which was supported by eleven bishops, including Whately, Harcourt, Copleston, Ryder, and the two Sumners.1 Having thus reviewed the various schemes of ecclesi¬ astical reform which had been suggested by individuals in England or carried out by the legislature in Ireland, we have now to consider what was being done or projected by those who opposed all concessions to the liberal spirit. It appears that as early as February and March 1832 resolutions for the forming of a General Church Associa¬ tion were adopted by some of the clergy in Cheshire ; 2 and their efforts, though unsuccessful, may have facilitated another but similar design. The most prominent of the younger High Churchmen at this period was Hugh James Rose, a man of great energy, talent, and personal charm, but already struggling with the disease which was to cut short his career. In 1825 Rose had made his mark as a theologian with a work on German Biblical criticism which involved him in a controversy with Pusey. The two disputants, who had both lived in Germany, were at one in denouncing this science, their dissension being confined to the causes of its growth ; but some concessions to liberalism, made and subsequently recanted by Pusey, added lustre to the unblemished orthodoxy of Rose. Reference has been made to a sermon preached by the latter in 1826, in which he condemned the irreligious tendency of scientific as opposed to literary studies, and 1 Hansard, xix. 720, 736, 766, 915, 924, 945 ; Greville Memoirs, 4th edition, ii. 383. An amendment to secure church-building where there were no Protestants was carried in the Lords. 2 Palmer’s Narrative of Events connected with the Tracts for the Times, p. 101. This work was published in 1843. It was repub¬ lished by the author, with introduction, notes, and supplement, in 1883 ; and this is the edition here used. Additional information is contained in his article in the Contemporary Review for May of that year. ROSE’S BRITISH MAGAZINE 81 declared himself no believer in modem enlightenment and progress ; and, such being his attitude to the trend of opinion in those pre-reform days, we may be sure that he agreed with one who wrote in 1833 : “ The universal spread of intelligence amongst all ranks is a favourite cant phrase of the day ; and rightly enough, by the way, is it called a spread, confined as it is to a surface.” The British Magazine , from which these words are quoted, had begun its career, with Rose as its founder and editor, in March 1832. This monthly journal was not intended, however obvious its bias, to be an organ of the High Church party — an imputation which, when challenged, it angrily disclaimed. The editor declared in his opening address that his object was to draw Church¬ men together in defence of “ a great establishment,” that he wished as far as possible to avoid controversial questions, and to give Churchmen “ a point of union on matters where they agree ” ; and he appealed unmis¬ takably, though not explicitly, for Evangelical support. What chiefly concerns us is the definition of his attitude to ecclesiastical reform. “ Communications written in a spirit of acrimony and abuse ” would not be accepted ; and “ he will not allow, as he has seen with equal surprise and regret, very lately, in a very unexpected quarter, undeserved censure and complaint of the existing state of things, resting on grounds falsely alleged .” This was a manifest allusion to the article in the British Critic for January 1832, which has been quoted ; 1 and the editor did not hesitate to avow his personal opinion that no suggestion for improvement could be unexceptionable which did not emanate from the bishops. It was not till October 1832, the eighth month of its publication, that the new journal presented the first of a long series of articles on Church reform ; and it then became notorious for its defence or extenuation of almost 1 See p. 67. G 82 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 every ecclesiastical abuse — a task in which it frequently exposed itself to the charge which it was never tired of bringing against the reformers, that they sacrificed principle to expediency. It had of course conscientious objections to a revision of the Liturgy ; but we find it defending plurality and non-residence, whilst of course admitting them to be evils, on the purely utilitarian ground that, if every benefice was to be filled by a resident incumbent as soon as it became vacant, the son of a patron might have to wait twenty or thirty years before he could avail himself of the presentation,1 and during all that time might be contracting idle, if not dissipated, habits owing to the reduced demand for curates.2 This was the application of a general argument which was sarcastically summarised by the Christian Observer, that without “ the attraction of golden sinecures and a constellation of pluralities ” brilliant or well-born youths could not be “ inveigled ” into the service of the Church. It is a curious fact that High Churchmen who magnified the “ apostolical commission ” of the clergy were far more tolerant than the Evangelicals of those who were too indolent or indifferent to exercise it in person,3 and that, whilst acutely alive to any attempt on the part of the State to secularise ecclesiastical pro¬ perty, they could see nothing actually “ sinful ” 4 in an incumbent devoting to uses not only secular but private the greater part of his tithes. Archbishop Howley had 1 The practice of a presentee giving a bond to resign his benefice when required to do so by the patron was disallowed by the House of Lords on appeal in 1827 ; but it was legalised next year, and such bonds are said to be " now common.” Without this resource, the patron might be tempted to put in a succession of aged and infirm men. — Reform in the Church of England, edited by Douglas Eyre, 1915, p. 193. 2 British Magazine, ii. 289. Hurrell Froude lamented that Rose clung to this “ gentlemanly heresy.” — Miss Guiney’s Froude, p. 118. 3 According to the returns of 1827, less than half the non-residents were “ resident on other benefices ” — that is, did parochial duty. 4 Perceval’s Letter to Lord Henley, p. 7. Plurality, being a rural grievance, was also underrated by Dr. Arnold, whose interest lay in the towns. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 83 a truer perception of the case when he declared in his charge of 1833 that a clergyman who lived “ in selfish indulgence or ostentatious luxury ” on his official income was guilty of “ gross desecration, amounting almost to sacrilege.” The British Magazine, whatever may have been the value of its services to Church defence, was a means of bringing together for this purpose the five clergymen who now come before us as originators of the Oxford Movement. Two of these may require a word of intro¬ duction — William Palmer, a thoroughly equipped theo¬ logian and scholar, and a member of Dublin as well as of Oxford University, who had just published a treatise on the sources of the Liturgy ; and Arthur Philip Perceval, Rector of East Horsley in Surrey, and a royal chaplain, who as a pamphleteer had replied to Lord Henley and twice assailed Lord Grey. Keble, Newman and LIurrell Froude were Fellows of Oriel College, which under their influence was to lose the reputation it had long enjoyed as a focus of liberalism ; 1 and the first of these, though resident as a parish clergyman in Gloucester¬ shire, was Professor of Poetry. They all contributed to the British Magazine ; and Palmer led the way in June and July 1832 with two articles on the Dissenters, in which he came to the comfortable conclusion that they were becoming disillusioned, and that “ the Church will ultimately afford them a refuge from despair.” Un¬ fortunately, these short-sighted sectaries were quite unconscious of their doom, and, far from seeking to preserve their future city of refuge, were bent on pubing it down ; and Churchmen were naturally preoccupied with the coming assault. “ I have been considering as well as I could,” wrote Keble in October 1832, “ what line it becomes the clergy to take with a view to the possible proceedings of the first revolutionary Parliament when it assembles, and I have made up my mind that 1 Mark Pattison’s Memoirs, pp. 98, 99. 84 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 we can hardly be too passive until something really illegal, and contrary to our oaths and engagements, is passed on us ” — such as unauthorised changes in the Liturgy or Articles or a transfer of corporate property.1 But this attitude was too quiescent for Palmer. Early in 1833 he submitted to Rose some scheme he had devised for a union of Churchmen ; and the latter, whilst unable to approve of this particular plan, wrote on February 1 : " That something is requisite is certain. The only thing is, that whatever is done ought to be quickly done ; for the danger is immediate, and I should have little fear if I thought that we could stand for ten or fifteen years as we are.” 2 These words were written a week or so before Althorp introduced the Irish Church Bill ; and, though the British Magazine exhausted its vocabulary in condemnation of “ this atrocious measure,” it was July before the projected association seemed likely to be realised. The clergy as a whole were not much concerned about the ecclesiastical situation in Ireland, feeling no doubt that a measure could not be very “ atrocious ” which had been supported in the Lords by as many as eleven bishops, and the protest against which had been signed by only one bishop — Murray of Rochester. Oxford, as Palmer confesses, was almost wholly apathetic.3 “ The most frightful thing to me,” wrote Keble from Gloucestershire, “ is the apparent apathy of most of the clergy even, both in Oxford and here in the country ” ; 4 and he must have welcomed the opportunity for sounding an alarm, when called upon to preach at Oxford on July 14, before the Judges of Assize. Taking as his text the words of Samuel, “ As for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, but I will teach you 1 Liddon’s Pusey, i. 266. 2 Palmer's Narrative, 1883, p. 101. 3 Contemporary Review, xliii. 642. 4 Burgon's Twelve Good Men, p. 78. KEBLE’S ASSIZE SERMON 85 the good and the right way,” he drew a parallel between the case of the Jews when they gave up theocracy and desired to have an earthly king and that of a Christian nation which had reorganised its polity on a secular basis. As individuals we had come almost to this pass that, in bestowing offices, forming partnerships, educating and marrying our children, we paid no attention to differences in matters of faith ; and, ‘'if it be true any¬ where ” that enactments conceived in this latitudinarian spirit “ are forced on the legislature by public opinion, is apostasy too hard a word to describe the temper of that nation ? ” Again, disrespect to the clergy implies “ enmity to Him who gave them their commission,” and this, if general and national, must involve the same reproach. An apostate nation was never at a loss for pretexts to justify its compromise with evil. “ Some¬ times toleration may be the word,” as when Saul showed “ his impious liberality in sparing the Amalekites ” ; and it was significant that this ill-fated chief ascribed his ruin to “ fearing the people and obeying their voice.” Confronted with a nation “ fast becoming hostile to the Church,” the clergy must remember that “ submission and order are still duties,” and confine themselves, as Samuel did, to intercession and remonstrance ; and in interceding for the wicked they had the consolation of the Psalmist — " They shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb.” Keble’s hearers were left to make their own application of the sermon — but not his readers ; for it was published with an announcement that “ the calamity in anticipation of which it was written has actually overtaken this portion of the Church of God ” — Parliament having suppressed certain Irish sees without consulting the clergy and contrary to the votes of the bishops.1 It is not clear whether Keble on this occasion had authority to speak for more than himself ; but his 1 Keble’s Sermons, Academical and Occasional, pp. 128-148. 86 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 utterance, when published, had the character of a mani¬ festo ; for Newman, who returned from the Continent on July 9, had resolved to form a society or association “ for Church purposes/’ and says of the printed sermon that “ the advertisement prefixed to it was the first intimation of what was to follow on our part.” 1 He was joined first by Froude and then by Palmer ; and, when Keble expressed hesitation, he “ wrote him word he might join it or not, but the league was in existence,” though at that time Froude and himself were the only members. Such is the account given in Newman’s diary and letters ; but, as he himself admits elsewhere,2 the movement had originated before his return ; for Palmer had been in communication with Rose ; and Rose had invited his Oxford friends to a conference at his rectory of Hadleigh in Sussex. Newman and Keble were unable, and perhaps not very anxious, to be present ; but the invi¬ tation was accepted by Palmer, Froude, and Perceval. The discussions, which began on July 25 and continued for several days, seem to have been dominated by the idea that the Church must discover some principle of cohesion independent of civil sanctions and privileges, which had become unreliable with the admission to Parliament of Nonconformists and Catholics and might at any moment be withdrawn. This would be obtained if people could be taught to regard the government and ceremonies of the Church as having the same apostolical origin as its doctrine, and the popular mind might be enlightened by an issue of tracts ; but these were not likely to be widely read, and there was no agreement as to whether or how they could be got into general cir¬ culation. Two suggestions of a more definite kind were put forward by Rose — one that they should strengthen 1 As the advertisement said nothing of “ what was to follow,” it can have been intelligible only to the initiated. * Apologia, ed. 1902, p. 36. " Newman and I are determined to act as soon as he returns, and you must join us,” said Froude to Isaac Williams. — Autobiography, p. 64. MEETING AT HADLEIGH 87 the authority of the bishops by ascertaining the exact obligation undertaken by the clergy in their oath of canonical obedience, the other that the Church might obtain a synod, lay and clerical, by some sacrifice of its temporalities, such as an offer to take upon itself, as in Ireland, the burden of Church rates. A much more revolutionary proposal was made and keenly pressed by Froude, that they should agitate for repeal of the law which required the dean and chapter to elect as bishop the person nominated by the Crown.1 This was put aside as quite impracticable by the others — if not also as audacious by Rose, who was chaplain to Bishop Blom- field, and was soon to be chaplain to Archbishop Howley, and who held, as we have seen, that the initiative in ecclesiastical reform should be reserved for the bishops. Moreover, he had receded from his position of the previous February — " that whatever is done ought to be quickly done,” being in hopes of a reaction — apparently a political reaction — which would avert the threatened interference with the Church. Newman, after he had seen Froude, wrote to Keble, “ I fear they did not get on very well at Hadleigh.” Froude, in fact, had returned in dudgeon, if not in disgust, resenting the rejection of his plan for the free election of bishops and wishing to “ break with Rose,” whom, though too extreme for most people, he regarded as “ not yet an Apostolical ” — the name by which these “ conspirators ” were known to each other. Keble felt that it boded ill for union if four men who thought so much alike as the “ Hadleighans ” could not agree, and considered that a synod would be of little use so long as the bishops were “ nominated by an infidel Government ” 2 1 Froude sought to expose “ the enormity of this persecuting law ” in a letter signed " F.” — British Magazine, September 1833. 5 Newman’s Letters, i. 438-442 ; Palmer in Contemporary Review, May 1883. Rose had to resign Hadleigh on account of his health in September 1833, having held the living for only nine months. “ True to the end, it dismissed me with a violent fit of asthma. Syren-like, 88 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 The conference, having come to no conclusion at Hadleigh, was resumed at Oxford — Newman, Froude, and Palmer meeting at Oriel College, and the first and second corresponding with Keble. When Newman spoke of associating “ for Church purposes,” he had meant only a group of divines co-operating in the diffusion of certain religious ideas ; 1 but Palmer prevailed upon his colleagues to adopt a stricter bond of union ; and a declaration of principles embodying their views rather than his was drawn up mainly by Keble. This was a practical document in so far as it deprecated Disestablish¬ ment and affirmed the necessity of providing for such a contingency, should it arise ; but these two clauses were neither framed nor approved by Keble, who, in accord¬ ance with his sermon on national apostasy, considered as sinful the union of Church and State “ as now under¬ stood.” Other clauses were in favour of making the Church more popular in constitution and against the interference in its spiritual concerns of persons or bodies who were not members ; and the whole was prefaced by a series of propositions asserting the exclusive validity of the sacrament as dispensed by the “ commissioned delegates ” of the bishops, who were the successors of the apostles, being “ descended in a direct line from them by the imposition of hands.” This declaration did not meet the views of Palmer, who wanted a broader basis, less controversial and comprising “ a minimum of theological detail ” ; 2 and, after Perceval had approved it with the same reservations as Keble, it was withdrawn, and Keble again set to work. In his new draft there it looked pleasanter than ever while it stabbed me.” — Burgon’s Twelve Good Men, p. 96. He obtained two small cures — one of them in London, and from October to March occupied the Chair of Divinity in the new University of Durham. Froude, whose health was even worse, left for the West Indies at the end of November. 1 Letters, ii. 32. 2 Contemporary Review, xliii. 650. “ THE TRACTS FOR THE TIMES ” 89 was no allusion to Disestablishment, spiritual independ¬ ence, or a Church synod ; but it began as before by insisting on the sacrament, canonically dispensed, as “ the only way of salvation ” ; and the subscribers were to pledge themselves to diffuse the idea of an apostolical succession by providing and circulating books and tracts, and to resist any attempt to alter the Liturgy “ without the free and deliberate judgment of the Church.” 1 This draft was accepted by Palmer, as appears from his letter to Newman of August 31, on the understanding that the issue of tracts was to be controlled by a committee ; but it was never circulated, and within about a month was superseded, as we shah see immediately, by a document drawn up by Palmer himself. Newman’s assent to the committee had probably been too hastily assumed. At ah events, on September 9 he put an end to the long hesitation about tracts by initiating on his own responsibihty the series afterwards entitled “ The Tracts for the Times ” ; 2 and this at once raised the question of corporate or individual action. Palmer approved generally of the tracts, but thought them extreme and needlessly controversial. Maintaining that the Association must be compromised by members who wrote anonymously from Oxford, though in the first person, he reiterated his demand for a revising com¬ mittee ; and, this being refused, he did his utmost to stop the publication. He was so far successful that No. 5 of the series was the only one issued from Sep¬ tember 21 to October 29 ; and during this period he succeeded in reconstituting the society on the only basis which was pubhcly, or at least generally, avowed — “ Suggestions for the Formation of an Association of 1 Perceval’s Theological Movement of 1833, published 1842, pp. 12-14; Coleridge’s John Keble, p. 211. * The Tracts were issued for some time by Turrill, publisher of the British Magazine. Only one of them was written by Palmer. go REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 Friends of the Church,” 1 a document which was revised by Newman and Froude and cordially accepted by Keble, who, however, thought it " somewhat vague.” The dangers impending over the Church as an Establish¬ ment were here referred to as less serious than those which threatened its spiritual economy — “ the annihila¬ tion of our creeds and the removal of doctrinal statements incidentally contained in our worship ” ; but nothing further was attempted in the way of theological definition. The tract question, after repeated attempts to reach an agreement on this point, was simply ignored ; and the objects of the Association were thus defined : to maintain in their integrity the doctrine, ritual, and discipline of the Church and “ to afford Churchmen an opportunity of exchanging their sentiments and co-operating together on a large scale.” At this stage, when the idea of pro- pagandism had all but succumbed to that of union, it was suddenly revived by Rose, who thought the tracts “ excellent and not too strong,” and was “ quite put out and perplexed ” when informed by Palmer that they had been given up ; and at the end of October, in response to this encouragement,2 their publication was resumed with such vigour that thirty more were issued before the end of the year. The Tractarians had never liked Palmer’s Association, which was intended to include Evangelicals as well as High Churchmen,3 and had been formed when their distinctive project was in abeyance, and they were now anxious to resuscitate that of Keble ; but the prospectus drawn up by Palmer had been widely circulated ; and Newman, acting on a suggestion made to him by Rose, proposed that the correspondence which had been 1 Palmer’s Narrative, p. 103. a “ Directly your letter came to me, I abjured the Association and went on with the tracts.” — Newman to Rose, March 30, 1834. 3 Palmer's Narrative, p. 223. THE OLD HIGH CHURCH PARTY 9i established amongst the clergy should be used to get up an address from them to the Primate. Palmer fell in readily with this idea ; and steps were at once taken to put it into shape.1 So far it had been possible to direct the movement from Oxford ; but the leverage for a national address could be obtained only in London ; and in that quarter prudence and tolerance were qualities more appreciated than dogmatism and zeal. The two chiefs, clerical and lay, of the old High Church party at this period were Henry Handley Norris and his brother-in-law, Joshua Watson — both equahy distinguished for the dedication to religion of wealth and gratuitous service. Norris had been at work for over twenty years as coadjutor to Watson’s elder brother, the rector of Hackney — a name which had much the same significance for this party as had Clapham for the Evangelicals. Two canonries, the proceeds of which he returned to the Church, were the extent of his preferment ; but no reward need have been beyond his ambition ; for Lord Liverpool in his creditable appointments to the episcopal bench was supposed to have been advised mainly by Norris. In those days he had earned the name of “ The Bishop-maker ” ; and Bishop Lloyd used to write to him as “ My dear Patriarch,” on the ground that his ecclesiastical province was wider than that of an archbishop.2 Another brother-in-law of the Watsons was Thomas Sikes, a country clergyman, whom the Tract arians regarded as one of their precursors ; and prominent in the same group were Archdeacon Lyall 1 Newman's Letters, i. 434, 464-468 ; ii. 32 ; Burgon’s Twelve Good Men, pp. 104, 105. No satisfactory account of this, the initial phase of the Oxford Movement, could have been written till these two works appeared in 1891 — a date which rules out Dean Church ; and no such account has since been published. Mr. Warre Cornish hardly attempts to deal with the matter in his History of the English Church. 2 Churton’s Joshua Watson, i. 279 ; Overton's English Church, PP- 35-37* 92 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 and Christopher Wordsworth, brother of the poet and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.1 The enlightened attitude of these men towards the question of ecclesiastical and even liturgical reform has already been illustrated from the British Critic , which was owned by Norris and Watson, and in the editing of which the former took a keen interest ; 2 and we have direct evidence that the tone of this journal was in harmony with their views. Norris was accounted a rigid High Churchman ; but we are told by a young disciple of Newman that he was “ ready to close with anybody who was not an Evangelical,” and that several latitudinarian divines entered on their profession as his curates. The same writer, who dined with Sikes shortly before his death in 1834, says that " aF his talk was against pushing Church principles too hard, and making breaches never to be healed.” 3 Of Christopher Wordsworth we are told by his son that he “ had an open mind and an open heart for every¬ thing that was good and true, wherever it was to be found ” ; that he wished the Christian Knowledge Society to circulate tracts written by Dissenters " if otherwise worthy of approval ” ; and that he himself included one of Baxter’s works in his “ Christian Institutes.” 4 1 Rose was the intimate friend of Joshua Watson, but was too much of an extremist to be at home in this circle. Newman writes of him as complaining that “ he has no one all through London in whom he can confide.” Nor was he trusted by the Tractarians. Newman professed wholly to defer to him, and yet could say of him to Froude, “ I never have reckoned him as in his opinions one of ourselves, so to say.” Burgon, p. 104 ; Newman's Letters, ii. 34, 50. Preferment was also denied to Rose ; and one thinks with sorrow of this highly gifted man sinking in isolation under the burden of over-work and ill-health. He died at Florence in 1838. 2 Churton’s Joshua Watson, i. 280. 3 Thomas Mozley’s Reminiscences, i. 333, 338, 339. This is a lively but not very reliable work. Writing in 1882, the author says (p. 322) that Palmer “ died, it may be said, in obscurity.” He must have been disconcerted when Palmer published next year his article in the Contemporary Review and the new edition of his Narrative. 4 Charles Wordsworth’s Annals of My Early Life, p. 330. BRITISH CRITIC ON THE CRISIS 93 Archdeacon Lyall in his charge of 1833, published just before Keble’s assize sermon, and warmly commended by Watson, exhorted his brethren, however much they had opposed the recent political changes, to devote them¬ selves, now that these measures had become law, “ to the task of healing divisions, allaying animosities, and restoring harmony and good wilL,, He pointed to the vast social changes which had taken place since the Reformation, declared that ecclesiastical reform might be “ called for by the altered spirit of the age," and claimed for the clergy that they were too sensible of the advantage they enjoyed in a liberal education “ not to be favour¬ able to whatever may assist in the spreading of human as well as of divine knowledge." 1 We have seen that Rose, in introducing his new journal, reflected implicitly on the liberal tone of the British Critic ; and the latter was censured by name in March 1833, when it was declared “ that three articles in it, two on Church Reform and one on Education, have given such offence (a stronger word might be used) to the party whose opinion it was supposed most nearly to represent as to threaten serious injury to the circu¬ lation of the work." This reproof seems only to have strengthened the disposition it was intended to correct ; for in the following October, just when the Oxford movement was getting under way, there appeared a re¬ markable article, entitled “ The Recent Session : Aspect of Affairs." The British Critic found much that was alarming in the general outlook. Parliament had come “ within a hair’s breadth " of violating the sacredness of ecclesiastical property in Ireland ; no calumny against the Church was too gross to be believed ; resistance to the tithe-collector had “ leapt almost at a single bound across the Irish Channel " ; and mounting up on the horizon might be descried “ other and more awful shapes." But the Critic , though anxious, was not dis- 1 Charge to the Archdeaconry of Colchester , pp. 8, 9, 19, 20. 94 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 mayed. Dreading the effects of popular passion and caprice, it yet recognised as beneficial that the voice of the people should make itself heard in Parliament, and applauded the efforts that were being made by purely secular journals to diffuse “ cheap instruction and enter¬ tainment.” Especially did it impress upon its readers that what had happened was irrevocable, that there could be no going back. " Away, therefore, with vain lamentations and impotent regrets.” Those who had opposed the recent changes were like voyagers who, after a stormy passage, had landed on a foreign shore. “ Our interest, as our duty, is to adapt our conduct to our situation and look manfully at things under their ex¬ isting aspect, without dreaming to carry the past into the present.” And excellent was the advice given to the clergy, who, far from being exhorted to testify against an apostate nation, or even to magnify their office, were advised to gain the heart of the people by the faithful and unobtrusive discharge of their pastoral duties. “ We would desire to see the clergy have recourse only to the quiet arms of peace and gentleness ; we would have them endeavour to entwine themselves, by the sublime arts of faith and charity, with the feelings and affections of the community in the spots where they reside.” 1 From these indications of opinion we may judge how the Address to the Primate was likely to be dealt with by the High Church leaders when it was sent up from Oxford for their approval. The original draft was by Keble ; but, this not being available when it was wanted, another was written by Newman. “ The London artists,” as he calls them, did not hesitate to chasten, if not to embellish, his work ; and the Address in its final form was as follows. The clergy expressed their veneration for the Primate’s sacred office, their respect and affection for his character, and their gratitude for his “ firmness and discretion.” At a time of growing latitudinarianism 1 British Critic, xiv. 443-445, 447, 452-455. ADDRESS TO THE PRIMATE 95 and general ignorance as to the spiritual claims of the Church, they were anxious to express their devotion to " the Apostolical Doctrine and Polity ” and their “ deep-rooted attachment ” to the Prayer Book ; and, whilst earnestly deprecating “ that restless desire of change which would rashly innovate in spiritual matters/’ they were not less solicitous to declare their conviction “ that should anything from the lapse of years or altered circumstances require renewal or correction,” his Grace and the other prelates might rely on their “ cheerful co-operation and dutiful support.” Joshua Watson, who had had his share of the revision, commended the Address because it “ involved neither a denial nor an admission of the question of reform,” and betokened such a reason¬ able spirit amongst the clergy as had been assumed by Archdeacon Lyall in his recent charge ; and, though the Oxford people had prevented this impression being con¬ veyed “ so completely as was intended,” he recognised the readiness with which they had “ come down from their own high ground.” On the other hand, the Address was anything but satisfactory to Newman, who said “ it was indeed far more lax than we sent it to London. Indeed so much altered that we may safely say it was not ours.” And he complained that a clause against “extra-ecclesiastical interference” had been struck out, and that “ the restoration and completion of the Church system,” which pointed to primitive usage, had been changed into “ renewal or correction,” which savoured of reform. Froude wrote " I would not have had a hand in printing that Address ” ; and the satisfaction of Palmer, who had wished it to be comprehensive, was shared by very few of his friends. They considered it a “ milk- and-water production ” ; and one of them, in reporting that it had been signed by 215 out of about 240 clergy¬ men in Wiltshire, added, “ I do not think much of this, as Radicals and Whigs are able to swallow it.” Such as it was, the Address, with some 7000 or 8000 signatures, 96 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 was presented on February 5, 1834, to Archbishop Howley, who summed up its character by saying, ‘'You discourage rash innovation, without shutting the door against any improvements which may be deemed suffi¬ ciently important to outweigh the evils incidental to change.” 1 Palmer tells us that he “ took the labouring oar ” in promoting this Address, and that at one time he was receiving a hundred letters a day. Some of his corre¬ spondents suggested that a similar expression of opinion should be elicited from the laity ; and Sir Robert Inglis was invited and consented to take the lead in this move¬ ment, which, by way of distinction, was to emanate from Cambridge. He and Sir William Heathcote went to Cambridge in December 1833, and an Address to the Primate was there drawn up, in which Dr. Howley and his colleagues were assured of support in upholding “ un¬ impaired ” the Creeds and Articles and Liturgy, and “ in maintaining in all their integrity the institutions of our venerable and apostolical Establishment.” It soon appeared, however, that these “ honourable and high-minded men ” were “ so circumstanced ” — being both violent Tories — that they could not circulate “ this admirable document ” ; and Joshua Watson, the usual resort of baffled enthusiasts, was then entrusted with the task. The paper he drafted was not an address, but a declaration, in which the laity affirmed their attachment to the faith, worship and apostolical govern¬ ment of the Church, and their “ firm conviction that the consecration of the State by the public maintenance of the Christian religion is the first and paramount duty of a Christian people.” So unpopular was the Church 1 Newman’s Letters, i. 434, 469, 475, 492 • ii. 7, 19, 26 ; Froude’s Remains, i. 331 ; Churton’s Joshua Watson, ii. 32 ; Palmer’s Narrative, pp. 107, 109, 224. He must have been a very simple divine who described this affair — which is not mentioned in the Annual Register — as “ the greatest victory that has been achieved since the battle of Waterloo.” — Palmer's Narrative, p. 217. THE DECLARATION 97 at this juncture that the clergy had not ventured to advertise their Address ; and, though meetings were held throughout England in support of the Declaration, they were “ in general restricted to those friends who were provided with tickets/ ’ A copy of the Declaration, as adopted at a meeting at Nottingham, was presented in February 1834 t° Lord Grey, who said he took for granted that it “ did not go to oppose the correction of any abuse or the removal of any cause which had given occasion of complaint in some respects against the Church ” ; and he received the satisfactory assurance “ that such questions must necessarily be left for the consideration of the Government/' Having been signed by 230,000 householders, the Declaration was on May 27 brought to the notice of the King. What William IV said on this occasion is not recorded ; but on the following day he assured the Irish bishops of his “ fixed purpose ” to maintain the Church of England and Ireland, and of his desire that, if any reform were required — which he greatly doubted — it should be left to episcopal authority “ unimpaired and unshackled/’ The speech was fully reported, and naturally " made a great noise.” 1 Watson considered the clerical Address — and so also did Norris — as a safety-valve for all the explosive gas which had been accumulating in the Church since the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 — “ not as connected with, but as superseding, associations, tract circulations, etc. altogether.” His wish was fulfilled in regard to the Asso¬ ciation — “ a body without a head, presbyters without bishops, at once acephalous and anomalous ” 2 — which 1 Annual Register, 1834, p. 43, and (Chronicle) p. 71 ; British Magazine, v. 349 ; Palmer’s Narrative, pp. 110-115, 221 ; Greville Memoirs, iii. 94 ; Churton’s Joshua Watson, ii. 29, 33-36. Palmer represents the Declaration as having initiated the Conservative reaction which, a few months later, brought Sir Robert Peel into power — greatly to the disgust of Watson, who had deprecated the publica¬ tion of Palmer’s Narrative, and was “ only solicitous to get rid of all the history of the agitation.” 2 Churton, ii. 31, 32. H 98 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 in this effort culminated and expired. But a longer life and far greater influence were reserved for the Tracts, which went on till January 25, 1841, when with Tract 90, in which Newman attempted to put a Romanist con¬ struction on the Articles, they came abruptly to a close. Tractarianism as a theological movement is outside the scope of this survey ; but a few words must be said on its origin as a reaction against liberalism and reform. We have seen that the majority of High Churchmen were little more than zealous upholders of the Church as by law established, but that some of them, whilst valuing the connection of the Church with the State, re¬ garded it as a divine society, distinct from the “ human institutions ” with which it was classed by Archdeacon Lyall. An example of the first school was Yates, the apostle of Church building after the Peace, who referred to the Church as “ the clerical department of the State " ; and the second school had never been without repre¬ sentatives 1 since Horne and Jones and Stevens had upheld the jus divinum of Episcopacy and classed schismatics with apostates and infidels as under “ the curse of God." 2 Not only, however, was the doctrine of Tractarianism not new, but the thing itself had previously existed ; for the first person who wrote and circulated a tract on the Apostolical Succession was not Newman in 1833, but Archdeacon Daubeny in 1817. In that year the latter published “ A Word in Season " on the nature and authority of the English Church ; and on the title-page we read “ Price 6 d., or 5 s. per dozen." 1 See, for example, Dr. Hook’s sermon of July 3, 1822, on " The Peculiar Character of the Church of England independently of its connection with the State.” Hook co-operated with Palmer in form¬ ing the Association of 1833. — Newman's Letters, ii. 32. 2 Palmer wTote thus of schism : “ The heinous nature of this offence is incapable of exaggeration, because no human imagination and no human tongue can adequately describe its enormity.” — Treatise on the Church of Christ, 1838, i. 54-55. TRACTARIANISM 99 The writer deplores the general neglect of “ all correct and primitive notions respecting the Church ” ; refers to ministers deriving their commission in succession from the apostolic source ; and cites as a warning to schis¬ matics the fate of Korah, whose crime was “ his attempt to assume the priesthood in opposition to the divine ordinance. ” So long as the Church retained its civil privileges under the protection of an aristocratic legis¬ lature from which all but its own members were at least nominally excluded, those who insisted on its super¬ natural basis were not likely to command attention ; but their teaching acquired a new significance when the Church had lost its monopoly of public office and was even in danger of being disowned by the State ; and this had been foretold by Bishop Jebb as early as 1814: "Per¬ haps a little of persecution, or of somewhat resembling persecution, may be providentially permitted to train up men with an attachment to the Church as a hierarchy as distinct from the State and as dignified only by its intrinsic excellence, by its venerable antiquity and by its apostolical institution/’ The Tractarians shrank with as great a horror as Dau- beny from “the intoxicating cup of modern liberality”; but the more they developed their idea of the Church as a spiritual society, the less were they disposed to respect the social exclusiveness which characterised it as an Establishment. Froude spoke with contempt of “ prizes to tempt men into the Church and the whole train of stuff.” 1 Newman, in September 1833, told a friend who was leaving England that on liis* return he might find him and his associates “ unflinching Radi¬ cals ” ; and, a few months later, he wrote to the same correspondent : “ Those who live by the breath of State patronage, who think that the clergy must be gentlemen, and the Church must rest on the great, not the multi¬ tude, of course are desponding. Woe to the profane 1 Miss Guiney's Hurrell Froude, p. 118. 100 REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-4 hands which rob us of privilege or possession ! but they can do us no harm/’ 1 Tractarianism had none of the breadth and tolerance which characterised the riper High Churchmanship of an older school ; but, unlike the Evangelical movement which influenced its growth,2 it was the fruit of genuine, though restricted, culture ; 3 and, considering the untrammelled conditions of its birth, one might have expected that it would adapt itself much sooner and much more largely than it has done to the critical spirit. We have seen that Newman was prepared rather to discontinue the Tracts than to subject them to official or collective supervision. The following words were written by Palmer half a century later ; but, if his impressions at the time were accurately recalled, he may be thought to have foretold the influence for liberalism which Newman was to exert, not in the English Church, but as the father of Modernism in the Church of Rome : “ It seemed to me that the unbounded freedom of specu¬ lation and argument which formed the basis of the system did not very well harmonise with the dogmatic and objective basis (?) upon which it rested ; and that, as it was identical in essence with the spirit of the philosophic systems of the nineteenth century, so it might have the result of converting Christianity into another form of philosophy.” 1 Letters, i. 454 ; ii. 35. 2 Newman had been brought up as an Evangelical, and Froude detected Methodism in Keble’s Christian Year. — Autobiography of Isaac Williams, p. 22. 3 Consider the words of Chrysostom prefixed to Tract 34 : “ He who is duly strengthened in faith does not go so far as to require argu¬ ment and reason for what is enjoined ; but is satisfied with the tradition alone.” This looks unpromising ; but tradition as a record of human experience may well have been a more hopeful study than the juggling with texts in a historical vacuum which was the bane of Evangelicalism. CHAPTER III CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 The problem of ecclesiastical reform had a twofold aspect according as it was concerned with the internal economy of the Church or with the Church's relations to the com¬ munity at large ; and the latter question, being the more urgent, was the first to engage the attention of Parlia¬ ment. The promoters of the Clerical Address and the Lay Declaration wer* naturally anxious to make their influence felt in this quarter. They were rather slow in mobilising their forces, for it was not till the summer of 1834 that the Church could be congratulated on its “ host of petitions." Some of these were against Dis¬ establishment, but most of them were of a Tractarian complexion, deprecating “ any change in the Church which can possibly injure or weaken her apostolical institutions and thereby betray her into the hands of her enemies." Meanwhile a great agitation was going on amongst the Dissenters for the completion of the process which had begun with the repeal of their political dis¬ abilities in 1828. The whole number of their petitions was not much larger than the total of those from the Church, but as many as 550 had been presented to the Commons before Easter ; 1 and their principal demands were a general registration of births, deaths, and marriages, the right to baptise, marry, and bury according to their own forms, and admission to the Universities. It was 1 Commons’ Journals, 1834. 102 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 urged, not only by Dissenters but by some Churchmen, that all these reforms should be conceded at once in “ one general and comprehensive measure ” ; 1 but the Government were as anxious to conciliate their opponents as to gratify their friends, and sought to make as easy as possible to the Church the descent from its privileged position. A good example of this policy was the Dissenters’ Marriage Bill introduced by Lord John Russell on February 25, 1834. This measure secured to Dissenters the legalisation of their rites ; but these rites were to be performed in chapels licensed for the purpose, and then only on evidence, for which a fee must be paid, that the banns had been published in the parish church ; and the minister of a licensed chapel was required to transmit his record of marriages every three months to the diocesan registrar. So qualified a boon was far from satisfying the Dissenters, who claimed that, like Jews and Quakers, they should have the right of celebrating their marriages " wholly by and among themselves,” and declared that they were placed " upon a footing inferior to their fellow- subjects by getting from another Church a rite which they should have from their own.” The Bill was aban¬ doned, but we shall find that a measure not liable to these objections became law in 1836. 2 A less practical grievance of the Dissenters, but one which on account of its injustice they always put first, was their liability to Church rates. The annual amount of this tax was about £560,000, 3 of which £250,000 was applied to the upkeep of edifices ; and it appears to have been only for this purpose that payment could be legally enforced. Resistance had been growing since 1818, when church-building was subsidised at the cost 1 Hansard, xxi. 788. 2 Ibid., xxi. 776, 784 ; xxii. 396. 3 In 1830-1831 repairs of churches cost ^248,000 ; organs and bells, .£41,000 ; books and wine, £46,000 ; salaries of clerks and sextons, £126,000 ; and sundries, £184,000. — Hansard, xxii. 383. CHURCH RATES 103 of the national exchequer ; and it was fortunate for the Church that the Parish Vestry Act of the same year had given a plurality of votes to persons rated at not less than £50. Thus in the huge parish of Manchester in 1833 the levy of a halfpenny in the pound was carried by 156 votes, though the majority of individuals who voted against the tax was nearly two to one. At this period there was a lull in the agitation, as it was known or at least believed that Ministers would propose a measure of relief ; and Sir Robert Inglis did not impress the House when he declared that only in fifty or sixty parishes had the imposition been successfully opposed. It was on principle, not on hardship, that the Dissenters founded their case ; but, had they preferred the latter ground, it would have been a powerful argument in their favour that they raised from £300,000 to £400,000 a year for the support of their ministers, chapels, and missions.1 Rates might be abolished or they might be continued on a basis of exemption. It was an obvious objection to the second of these alternatives that persons not seriously religious might be induced to declare themselves Dissenters ; and a distrust of voluntary contributions was not the most serious objection to the first. For whilst the Dissenters maintained that they should not be compelled to support a ritual of which they dis¬ approved, Ministers were equally emphatic in their declaration — which surprised and delighted Inglis — that a religion recognised by the State must be maintained at the common expense. “ If there was anything more than another,” said Stanley, “ which constituted an established religion, it was that.” The Government scheme as outlined by Lord Althorp was consequently in the nature of a compromise, and was compared, not inaptly, to their " odious Marriage Bill.” Church rates were to be abolished ; but, though much was left to 1 So said Wilks, member for Boston and a leading Dissenter. Other speakers put the amount at a million. 104 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 private liberality, the £250,000 required for the repair of buildings was to be supplied from the Land Tax. Dissenters, of course, complained that they were still to be taxed, not, indeed, directly as parishioners, but in¬ directly as citizens ; and it did not escape them that the new impost, unlike the old, would be beyond their control. In addition to the Church Rates Bill, there was a Bill for the commutation of tithes ; but both were withdrawn, the Cabinet having resolved, in view of its preoccupation with the Poor Law, that these measures should be proceeded with only if generally approved.1 The academic disabilities of the Dissenters were a greater hardship, though less obnoxious in principle, than their subjection to Church rates ; and the endeavour to remove them caused much controversy both in and outside Parliament. The University of Oxford was closed to all but Churchmen ; for the Thirty-nine Articles had to be subscribed on entrance ; 2 and, in order to qualify for graduation, the student had to declare that he believed the whole of the Articles to be agreeable to the Word of God. At Cambridge there was no bar to matriculation ; but subscription was required for a doctorate in law or medicine ; and no one could graduate in Arts without a declaration of Churchmanship. Dis¬ senters, however distinguished as students, had thus to leave without taking a degree, and were consequently disqualified for the two years’ abbreviation of study which was allowed to graduates by the legal and medical societies. Dr. Arnold was one of the very few Oxford scholars who sympathised with the Dissenters in their desire to 1 Hansard, xxi. 995 ; xxii. 384, 1014, 1015, 1032, 1035, 1057 ; Le Marchant’s Earl Spencer, p. 482. 2 “ It appears to me a melancholy thought and indeed a crying grievance,” said Lord George Germaine in 1772, “ that my son at sixteen must subscribe, upon entering the University, what I cannot understand, much less explain to him, at sixty.” — Pari. Hist., xvii. 245. Bentham, in 1760, subscribed at the age of twelve. UNIVERSITY TESTS 105 obtain the full advantage of an academic education, and he drew up and circulated from Rugby a declaration in their favour ; 1 but they were more fortunate at Cam¬ bridge, where they had the powerful support of Connop Thirlwall. On March 21, 1834, Lord Grey presented to the Lords a petition from Cambridge in favour of the Dissenters which was signed by sixty-three residents — about a third of the whole number — including two Heads of Houses and nine Professors ; and in supporting the petition he referred to Thirlwall as “ one of the most eminent scholars in Europe/’ The petitioners were of opinion that the University “ as a lay corporation invested with important civil privileges could rest securely on no foundation which is not in harmony with the social system of the State ” ; and, as Christians of all denomina¬ tions were now admitted to the legislature and public office, they craved the intervention of Parliament to abolish all religious tests as a qualification for degrees. Three days later the same document was presented to the Commons by Mr. Spring Rice — not yet a member of the Cabinet, as stated in the Annual Register, but soon to enter it as Colonial Secretary ; and as early as possible after the Easter recess, which was then close at hand, a BiU to give effect to the petition was brought in by one of the members for Lancashire. Short of taking the matter into their own hands, as they had done in the case of marriage and Church rates, Ministers did all they could to further this reform ; but there were, of course, counter-petitions, far more numerously signed ; and the Bill, after a stormy but triumphant passage through the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. Such in any case must have been its fate ; but those who acted for the Dissenters could not be congratulated on their discretion. The Cambridge petition asked only for the admission of Dissenters to degrees ; but in many of their own petitions they claimed to participate in the 1 Stanley’s Arnold, Letter 82. io6 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 University endowments ; and Disestablishment as the ultimate, if not the immediate, aim of their policy was never disavowed. It also militated against them that as many as fifty-eight members had voted for what was euphemistically called a motion “ to relieve the arch¬ bishops and bishops from their legislative and judicial duties in the house of peers.” 1 That the Universities were national institutions and as such ought to be open to all was, as one would expect, the principal argument put forward by the Dissenters ; but here the question presented itself how far in this sense, for any effective purpose, they could be said to exist. At Oxford — and the same may be said of Cam¬ bridge — there were two systems of education — com¬ plementary in design, antagonistic in practice — the academic and the collegiate ; and the latter, though still nominally subordinate, had been assured of ascendancy when the modem constitution was established under the auspices of Archbishop Laud. The University of Oxford had existed for at least a century and a half before the oldest of its colleges were founded and endowed to provide for students better accommodation, better discipline and preliminary instruction than were to be had in the licensed boarding-houses or “ halls ” ; and the University was fully confirmed in its pre-eminence by the Laudian statutes of 1636, which made attendance in the schools essential to graduation in all the four faculties of Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law. But the duty of “ inquiring into, and taking counsel for the observance of, the statutes ” was practically confided to the “ Heads of Houses,” who for this purpose were to hold a weekly or “ Hebdomadal Meeting ” ; and the Heads were so far from faithful to their trust that they abolished or absorbed what accommodation was still available for non-collegiate students, encouraged the professors — who were poorly paid — to treat their offices as sinecures, and made all degrees nominal, except that 1 Hansard, xxii. 131, 497, 569, 596, 900. OXFORD UNIVERSITY 107 of Bachelor of Arts, for which alone their Fellows were at all competent to teach. Sir William Hamilton, him¬ self an Oxonian, may have made too little allowance for the formality inseparable from customary obligations when in the Edinburgh Review of 1831 he accused the Hebdomadal Board of perjury, though it is rather remarkable that this is the very charge brought against them in the Statutes, should they allow any of these enactments “ to fall into desuetude and silently, as it were, to be abrogated.” Some striking facts were, however, disclosed in the course of his powerful, but diffuse, indictment. “ England,” he wrote, “ is the only Christian country where the Parson, if he reach the University at all, receives only the same minimum of theological tuition as the Squire ; 1 — the only civilised country where the degree which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly of practice is conferred without in¬ struction or examination ; — the only country in the world where the Physician is turned loose upon society with extraordinary and odious privileges, but without professional education or even the slightest guarantee for his skill.” In fact, as the same writer said, “ the University w^as annihilated or reduced to half a faculty ” ; and so insignificant wrere its remains that even Bishop Copleston was not aware that it had ever existed. “ The University of Oxford,” he wrote, “ is not a National Foundation. It is a congeries of foundations, originating, some in royal munificence, but more in private piety and bounty.” 2 Hamilton appears to have conceded that Dissenters had no right of admission to the Universities as then constituted, and both he and Arnold suggested the opening of new halls. One writer, not favourable in 1 See p. 70. 2 Sir William Hamilton’s Discussions on Philosophy , etc., pp. 398, 419, 426, 430, 441. Hamilton’s essays on this question, logical yet confused, remind one of Bentham’s Church of Englandism. Both writers, despite much parade of steering, seem to lose themselves in an ocean of words. 108 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 other respects to the Dissenters, was of opinion that, when the Heads assumed control of the whole institution, the Oxford colleges were ipso facto nationalised ; 1 but the historical aspect of the question was not much dis¬ cussed either in Parliament or in the Press. The ex- clusionists had as little respect as Archbishop Howley for humanism.2 They held that enlightenment was not in itself desirable, and that the religious teaching required to make it innocuous must be denominational ; 3 and the main point at issue was whether this principle as incul¬ cated by the Church was so fully recognised at the Universities that an infusion of Dissenters — recognised as such — would seriously affect their studies and social routine. In regard to clerical education this could not be maintained ; for Pusey was cited as a witness against Oxford in view of his statement that the hearing of ten lectures in divinity was enough to qualify for orders ; and at Cambridge prospective divines were said to have been assured on high authority that it was not impossible for them to find time for such private reading as might fit them for their profession.4 A knowledge of the Articles had been required since 1800 at Oxford for graduation ; and this was a better test of Churchmanship than the daily services which students at both Univer¬ sities were required to attend. “ Was it either essential or expedient,” asked Lord Palmerston, “ that young men should be compelled to rush from their beds every morning to prayers, umvashed, unshaved, and half- dressed ; or in the evening, from their wine to chapel, and from chapel back again to their wine ? ” 5 1 Moberly, A Few Remarks on the Admission of Dissenters, p. 6. 2 See p. 34. 3 “ We believe knowledge without religion to be mischievous." — Moberly, p. 11. 4 Ihirlwall, Letter on Admission of Dissenters, p. 7. 5 Hansard, xxii. 701. University tests were not wholly abolished — apart from theology — till 1871. On this subject, see Lewis Camp¬ bell, The Nationalisation of the Old English Universities. A PLURALIST RECTOR 109 Nothing was done in this session to improve the internal economy of the Church ; but the necessity for reform was made manifest in a petition which was presented to both Houses from the parishioners of Allhallows, Lombard Street, London. It appeared that the late rector of this populous charge, which was worth about £800 a year, had resided during the eighteen years of his incumbency at Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and that Mr. Dawson, late chaplain to the House of Commons, who had just been appointed in his place, was rector of Chiselhurst, rector of Orpington, sub-dean and a prebendary of Canterbury. It also appeared, though this was not mentioned in the petition, that he was titular rector of Hayes and perpetual curate of Down, the stipend in both cases having been relinquished in favour of a friend. Archbishop Howley explained that Dawson had been recommended to the King for prefer¬ ment, and that the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury could not have overlooked him in their disposal of patronage. Commenting on the petition, a member of the Commons remarked that returns presented last year showed that 3687 incumbents were non-resident, and that 1139 of these, or nearly a third, had stipends of at least £300. It was naturally assumed that this evil would not be dealt with till the Church Revenues Commission had presented its report, which indeed was rather overdue ; and no little indignation was expressed in the Lords when it was discovered that Brougham, at a late hour, when hardly anyone was present, had brought in two Bills, one of which simply abolished non-residence, and the other prohibited plurality in the case of a living over £ 200 , and below that level restricted it to a distance of five miles. Howley declared that, though a summary of the Bills had been sent to him, he had not been con¬ sulted, or even informed when they were to be intro¬ duced ; and Brougham said frankly that, the Primate’s Bill of two years ago being totally unlike his own measures. no CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 he had thought it useless to ask his opinion. On a subsequent occasion Howley made the surprising ad¬ mission that he and two other prelates, having considered non-residence for three years, had given it up as incurable. Under the present law a resident incumbent could not be absent for more than ninety days in the year ; and Brougham said he knew of a parish where the clergyman was so closely watched that he could not get away even on the most necessary business without the fact being noted down by half-a-dozen farmers, each of whom kept a “ log-book ” for the purpose.1 Lord Grey’s Ministry, or at least his own tenure of power, did not survive this summer of 1834. The Irish Church Act had always been distasteful to several of his colleagues ; and dissension became acute in May, when Lord John Russell revived the “ appropriation clause ” by asserting in the House that Church revenues might, under certain conditions, be diverted to secular objects. A motion to this effect having been announced by a private member, four Ministers resigned ; and the aged Premier, who would gladly have followed their example, succeeded on July 9 in obtaining his release. The Cabinet was reconstituted under Lord Melbourne ; but William IV was tired officially of the Whigs and per¬ sonally disgusted with Brougham ; and on November 14, after Lord Althorp, the leader of the Commons, had succeeded his father as Earl Spencer, he sent for the Duke of Wellington, who undertook to carry on the Government till Peel, who was then in Italy, could be recalled. Peel took office unwillingly, knowing that the Conservative reaction was still immature. He greatly strengthened his position as the result of a general election in January 1835, but was still far from com¬ manding a majority of the House, and his first Ministry ended on April 8. 1 Hansard, xxi. 560-567, 631-633 ; xxiii. 1103, 1250-1261 ; xxiv. 837- CHURCH REVENUES COMMISSION hi Ecclesiastical reform was not one of the unfinished tasks which Grey mentioned with regret in his valedictory speech ; but he had begun the work — not certainly where it was most needed — by erecting, as we shall see, a new court of appeal ; and he had prepared the way for his successors by instituting a complete and exhaustive survey of the whole field. We have seen that a Royal Commission to inquire into the financial position of the Church was appointed, three weeks after the passing of the Reform Bill, in June 1832. This inquest, so much less restricted than that which had been proposed by Joshua Watson, was regarded with some apprehension by the clergy, especially as it emanated from a Whig Government ; but the malevolence of Radicalism and the lurid exuberance of its imagination soon convinced them that truth in this matter could hardly be stranger than fiction ; and they were now complaining that the expected revelation wras long delayed. The Commissioners themselves were anxious not to keep the public longer than necessary in suspense ; and on June 16, 1834, they issued a brief Report which showed the total annual yield of episcopal, capitular, and parochial endowments, a classification of benefices according to their value, and the number of incumbents and curates. They announced that the tabulation of details, “ though nearly completed, must still occupy some further time ” ; and their full and final Report was not signed till June 16, 1835. Had this invaluable record, the Domesday Book of the Church, been published four years earlier, it would have checked the rise of an apocryphal literature in regard to Church revenues. Judicious reformers, such as Lord Henley, can have found little to surprise them in the Report ; but it must have been a rude awakening for those who had been led to form a “ magical Oriental notion ” of ecclesiastical wealth. On an average of three years ending with 1831, the total net income of the ii2 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 English and Welsh bishoprics, including ah preferments annexed or “ accustomably ” held in commendam, was found to be £157,737 ; that of chapters and their individual members, £284,141 ; that of archdeacons, £4878 ; and that of the parochial clergy, including an estimate for the 178 incumbents who had made no return, £3,005,451 — an average for 10,718 livings of £285. The aggregate net income of the Church was thus under three and a half millions. In the Black Book it had been estimated at nine and a half millions ; and in 1830 so well known a financier as Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, had stated in the Commons that some of the sees would soon be worth £100,000 a year.1 From the Report of another Commission,2 which had previously been issued, it appeared that one half of the sees were insolvent, the income not being sufficient to balance the outlay, and that the expenses incident to appointment consumed a whole year’s revenue in most cases and in others much more. Nor did it appear, on the whole, that episcopal revenues were supplemented where not actually deficient. Had the public been earlier enlightened, commendams must have been condoned and the jobbery of transla¬ tions more leniently judged. Ryder, for example, was appointed in 1815 to the bishopric of Gloucester, and, this being one of the poorest sees, he was unjustly blamed for retaining with it the deanery of Wells. It is true that he held the deanery for seven years after he had been translated to the better endowed see of Lichfield, and even then exchanged it for a prebend — not so valuable — at Westminster ; but even Lichfield, according to the Report, must have been more expensive than lucrative. Remuneration and duties were alike hopelessly 1 Hansard, xxiv. 122. On the other hand, the British Magazine of March 1832 estimated the income of the parish clergy as no more than ^1,694,991. 2 Peel’s Commission. See p. 115. ANOMALIES AND ABUSES i*3 unequal. The bishoprics ascended in value from Llandaff with about £1000 to Canterbury and Durham with £17,000. The Bishop of Rochester had the oversight of 94 incumbents, whilst his brethren of Norwich and Lincoln were responsible respectively for 1026 and 1251. Ely, one of the richest sees, had a population of 126,000 and 149 livings. Chester, a poor see, had a population of almost two millions and 554 livings. There were seventy sinecure rectories with an average net stipend of £275. 1 2 Nearly 300 benefices were under £50 a year, and 1629 were between £50 and £100 ; but there were 184 benefices over £1000, and eighteen of these were over £2000, including Winwick in Lancashire, £3616 ; Stanhope in Durham, £4843 ; and Doddington in Cam¬ bridgeshire, £7306.2 One cannot miss these anomalies, as they are shown in tabular statements ; but abuses of patronage can be detected only by those who happen to come across them in the diocesan returns. It is evident from the Report that, whilst the commonest cause of pluralism was the poverty of benefices, a far too common cause was — to say the least — a want of conscientiousness in patrons and incumbents. Lord John Russell declared that there were many instances of clergymen holding two or three livings to the value of about £3000 3 ; and a writer who had analysed the Report said that he had before him a list of 485 pluralist incumbents, each with a benefice of at least £500 a year, whose total net income, derived from both cathedral and parochial endowments, was £654,579, an average of nearly £1350. 4 One finds that the Marquis of Bath, having three livings (£1236) in his gift, had bestowed them all on his son, and that the 1 By far the richest of these was Elm with Emneth (£1641) in the diocese of Ely. 2 Most of the super-benefices have since been reduced by special Acts of Parliament to about ^1500. 3 Hansard, xxxv. 25. 4 British Magazine, xii. 176. H4 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 Duke of Beaufort had disposed similarly of four livings — two being sinecures — to the value of £2422. Peel was horrified to find that a large country parish, “ overrun with Dissent,” could have only one church service on Sunday, because Trinity College, Cambridge, absorbed the whole tithes to the amount of £2000 a year and ahowed the vicar only £24. 1 We learn also from Peel that the vicar of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, was wholly dependent on pew rents and Easter offerings 1 2 ; but the Report shows that he raised in this way £700 a year and derived £780 from three other livings. We have seen that Bishop Sparke was the black sheep, or rather the black shepherd, of the bench ; and how well he had provided for his family was revealed in the returns from Ely. Happily he had only two sons, but both had stalls in his cathedral, and so had his nephew and son-in-law. The elder son was also Chan¬ cellor of the diocese, and the younger son was Registrar. The former had received from his father a rectory of £2100 as well as a small sinecure, and he had helped himself — as patron — to a rectory of £534. The latter received in 1830 a vicarage of £1487, and next year a rectory of £1207. The unfortunate nephew had only a small college living (£280) in addition to his prebend ; but the Rev. H. Fardell was indebted to his father-in-law for two vicarages, one of £424, the other 3 of £1779. Ecclesiastical patronage could, of course, be abused for political as well as personal ends. Reference has been made to two clerical magistrates of Lancashire who in 1819 were active against the Radicals. One of these 1 Parker's Peel, ii. 283, 285. 2 Peel's Memoirs, ii. 81. 2 This was Wisbeach (see p. 65). The see of Ely was returned at £1 1,000, but was found later to be worth only about £ 8000 , and the value of a prebend in its cathedral was about ^650. Bishop Sparke had distinguished himself as a classical and mathematical scholar at Cambridge, and was promoted through the influence of the Duke of Rutland, to whom he had been tutor. “ This worthy and learned prelate ” died on April 4, 1836. — Gentleman’s Magazine. PEEL’S COMMISSION ii5 was the Rev. W. R. Hay. He was rector of Ackworth, a Crown living to wThich he had been appointed in 1802 ; but in 1820 the Archbishop of Canterbury presented him to the vicarage of Rochdale ; and, this not being enough to evince the gratitude of the Government, Canterbury’s brother of York wras induced to add a stall in his cathedral. The preferments held by Hay in 1831 are thus valued by the Commission : Ackworth, £403 ; Rochdale, £1730 ; Dunnington Prebend, £1228 — a total of £3361 -1 In “ that frank exposition of general principles,” which was published in the form of an address to the electors of Tamworth, Peel referred to the great benefits that would accrue to the Church from an improved distribution of its revenues ; and this, we are told, was one of the measures which received his “ earliest attention the moment that the Government was formed.” The expedient he adopted was the issue on February 4, 1835, of a Royal Commission to consider the state of the dioceses, cathedrals, and parochial incumbents, with a view to making the first less unequal in revenue and extent, the second more useful to the Church, and the third less liable to the reproach of non-residence. It was a much smaller body than Lord Grey’s Church Revenues Commission, which was still at work, though it comprised almost the same prelates ; 2 and Peel, who vras himself a member, had resolved to select as his colleagues only men vrhose attachment to the Church was above suspicion. The healing waters, if they could not be made palatable, must at least proceed from an 1 See also Prentice's Historical Sketches of Manchester, p. 169. Dr. Manners Sutton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had presented Hay to Rochdale, thought it worth while in 1828 to promote a private Bill in Parhament for the purpose of procuring for his son a reversion of the Principal Registrarship in his Prerogative Court. — Hansard, New Series, xix. 1035. 2 Archbishops Howley and Harcourt, Bishops Blomfield, Kaye and Monk — all but the last being members of the Grey Commission. n6 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 unimpeachable source. He feared that many Churchmen, who were now eager for reform, when it was “ dimly seen at a distance and was merely a convenient topic for the safe display of liberal opinions and professions,” would be repelled by it as soon as it assumed “ a definite shape ” ; and he foresaw that, if popular clamour should be allayed by the proposals of this Commission, a feeling would gain ground amongst the clergy and their friends that “ the necessity for any change whatever had passed away, and that the Church might safely be left un¬ molested.” Nor was he less anxious to win over those “ who were most adverse to any innovation ” ; and thus urgent was his appeal to the redoubtable Bishop Phill- potts : " My earnest advice is that the Church should avail itself of this, possibly the last, opportunity of aiding its true friends in the course of judicious reform, to enable us to go all the lengths we can go with perfect safety, and to make, if possible, a satisfactory and final settlement.” 1 The British Critic and the Christian Observer had nothing but praise for the appointment of this Com¬ mission ; but the British Magazine was much perturbed, and blamed those Churchmen and clergy who had so welcomed and diffused the idea of reform that they had “ rendered it impossible for even a friendly Government to commence its course without speaking of a fresh distribution of Church property.” It disclaimed any wish that the clergy should have “ very large incomes,” but insisted that they must be sufficiently well endowed “ to mix with the gentlemen of the country.” 2 Newman and Keble reluctantly accepted the Com¬ mission as an exercise of royal and episcopal authority ; and the former published a pamphlet in which he de¬ precated the rearrangement of dioceses, and urged as a preferable alternative that advantage should be taken 1 Parker’s Peel, ii. 265 ; Peel’s Memoirs, ii. 65, 69-71. 2 British Magazine, vii. 85, 86. SUFFRAGAN BISHOPS ii 7 of an Act of Henry VIII to revive the order of suffragan bishops. At least ten of these had been appointed ; and, though the office was not continued beyond the reign of James I, its re-establishment had been promised by Charles II at the Restoration “ because the dioceses, especially some of them, are thought to be of too large extent/' No temporal provision had been made for the suffragans, who were assumed to be benehced clergymen, and as such were exempted from the obligation of residence ; and Newman suggested that “ certain chapter dignities " might be assigned for their support. His pamphlet appeared in March 1835, almost simultaneously with the First Report of the Commissioners, and therefore too late to influence their decision ; but this was of no consequence, as the bishops when they saw his scheme entirely disapproved of it. They feared that the appoint¬ ment of non-parliamentary bishops would result event¬ ually in their own exclusion from Parliament ; and the proposal was advocated on political grounds which cannot have been acceptable to the new Prime Minister. In his Tamworth address Peel had declared that he considered “ the Reform Bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question," which no true friend of the country would seek to disturb. Newman, at a time “ when Democracy is let loose upon us," regarded the Church as “ the providential instru¬ ment of re-adjusting Society," and thought that it was quite able to do what it had done before — “ to wrestle with lawless minds and bring them under." At present ecclesiastical affairs were “ almost a mere department of the Government," and, “ were the Church in the King’s own hand, we might rest content " ; but “ the Democracy may any day step in between the King and the Church " ; and the latter must therefore be made sufficiently independent to resist attack. What all this has to do with suffragan bishops the reader of Newman’s pamphlet may be at a loss to imagine ; but we are told n8 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 in the end that the appointment of these functionaries would strengthen the Church, “ being a visible display and concentration of ecclesiastical power and the sub¬ stitution of the definiteness and persuasiveness of per¬ sonal agency for the blind movements of a system.” And the writer concludes with an intimation — which was certainly much needed — that he is not to be under¬ stood as recommending “ any perversion of the Church to mere political purposes.” 1 We need not concern ourselves at present with the recommendations made by Peel’s Commission, as more than a year was to elapse before anything was done to carry them into effect. Even if Peel had remained in office, it is unlikely that he would have been able to deal with them during this period ; for the question of municipal reform, which he had put first in his Tamworth address, came up for settlement this spring, when the Commissioners who had been investigating the subject reported to Parliament. Melbourne, who returned to power on Peel’s resignation on April 8, 1835, made this his principal business ; and the Municipal Reform Bill, which encountered much opposition in the Lords, occupied almost the whole session, and did not become law till September. Three great questions — slavery, the Poor Law, and the municipalities — had dominated in succession the first three years of the Reformed Parliament ; but the field was now clear for ecclesiastical legislation, and 1836 was to be the year of the Church. As early as 1833 Lord Grey’s Government had endeavoured to effect a permanent settlement of tithes. This question, so much agitated during and after the French war, had again become urgent, first in con- 1 Newman’s Via Media, ii. 49, 72-81 ; Letters, ii. 90, 96. Suffragans have been revived under an Act passed in 1888 ; but the Archbishops’ Committee recommends their abolition and a sub-division of dioceses. TITHE PROPOSALS 119 sequence of the agricultural depression and disorder which preceded the Reform Bill, and then owing to successful resistance in Ireland ; and it was said of the newspapers in 1833 that they “ constantly teem with quarrels, all arising from this one cause/’ 1 Lord Althorp’s Bill of that year was based on the principle that tithe should be commuted for a rent varying with the price of corn. A year was to be allowed during which tithe- payers and tithe-owners might voluntarily come to terms ; but after the expiry of that period commutation could be enforced at the option of either payer or receiver. Valuators were then to be appointed on both sides, and tithes were to be estimated, not at their actual value, but by the amount paid during the previous seven years, though the award might exceed or fall below that standard to the extent of ten per cent. The measure was so well received that Althorp expressed his " un¬ feigned satisfaction,” and he had reason to be gratified ; for the acceptance of commutation was in itself a great gain, not more than forty members having previously declared in its favour. Compulsion was approved by the lay impropriators, but not by the clergy, and still less by the tithe-payers,2 who were soon petitioning against it ; and the Bill, having been made merely permissive, was at last withdrawn in order that public opinion might have time to decide on its merits.3 Next year new methods were proposed for the attainment of the same object. Lord Althorp had now abandoned his idea of making actual payment the measure of tithe, because such a standard would be unfair to those tithe-owmers who had been content — in¬ cluding most of the clergy — with less than their legal due, and also because it made no allowance for a rise or fall in 1 A Plan for the General Commutation of Tithes. By H. S. p. 4. * Hansard, xxvii. 172. The opposition of the tithe-payers appears to have been unexpected. 3 Hansard, xvii. 275-281, 377, 382 ; xxii. 838, 840. 120 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 the value of land. The proposal he now made was that tithe should be commuted at a fixed proportion to rent — the economic, not necessarily the actual, rent. But here the difficulty presented itself that where different soils yielded the same aggregate produce, they paid the same tithe, though rent might be low in one case because the expenses of cultivation were great, and high in another case because these expenses were small. Althorp’s way of meeting this difficulty was ingenious, but, as he himself admitted, it looked “ exceedingly complex.” The value of land and the amount paid in tithe for the last five years were to be ascertained in each parish ; but, in order to neutralise the differences arising from a lenient and a rigorous exaction of tithe, there was to be a general investigation for each county ; and the Justices of the Peace, by striking an average, were to determine for each parish the proportion which tithe should bear to rent. So far there was no remedy for the great evil of tithes as an obstacle to the improvement of land, since they would rise with its value ; but the landowner who wished to have a free hand for the em¬ ployment of capital was to have the right of redeeming his tithe at twenty-five years’ purchase. The House agreed with Peel when he declined to pledge himself to the general principles of this scheme ; and the debate ended in the passing of a resolution that the tithe ques¬ tion should be settled on a basis of commutation and redemption.1 Peel was of opinion that much might be done to encourage voluntary commutation, and in any case that it should have a much longer trial than the year allowed under Althorp’s first scheme. He was impressed by the fact that in a great many parishes 2 tithes had 1 Hansard, xxii. 820-826, 831, 834. 2 A thousand parishes, according to Peel, but another speaker gave the number as 2300. Both estimates may have been correct — one referring to parishes in which the whole tithe had been commuted, 121 PEEL’S TITHE SCHEME been voluntarily commuted under the sanction of an Enclosure Act, the cost of which was sometimes as much as £ 2000 ; and he believed that the practice would soon become general, if it could be adopted easily and without legal expense. Criticising the scheme of 1834, which he thought much too complicated, he had suggested that Commissioners should be appointed to carry out com¬ mutations wherever they were desired ; and this was the plan he proposed, during his brief tenure of office, in 1835. Three persons appointed for five years — two by the Crown and one by the Archbishop of Canterbury — were to act as a Tithe Commission in London, and were to be assisted by a staff of itinerant deputies. Tithe was to be commuted for a corn-rent payable in money or by allotment of land, and subject to periodical revision ; and an agreement which had been concluded by parishioners paying two-thirds of the tithe was to be binding on the rest, if approved by the Commissioners. Peel was confident that before the expiry of his Com¬ mission tithes would have been generally commuted ; but it was objected that there were many parishes in which the present system, bad as it was, had worked well, and that payers stood to lose by commutation where the tithe was low, and owners where it was high. And the argument from enclosures was not con¬ clusive, for agricultural improvement was in the interest of both landowner and tithe-owner ; and the former, who bore the wdiole expense, could and frequently did extort commutation by making it a condition of enclosure.1 On April 7, 1835, a fortnight after he had explained his commutation scheme, Peel resigned ; and the Bill the other including both such parishes and those in which commuta¬ tion was confined to the enclosed lands. A return of Enclosure Acts from 1757 to 1830 is in Parliamentary Papers, 1831-1832, vol. xxx. The equivalent for tithe under these Acts was usually an allotment of land, but very frequently an annual payment or a corn-rent. 1 Hansard, xxii. 839; xxvii. 178-182, 194. 122 CHURCH; AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 he had prepared was never introduced. Much of it, however, was adopted by the Melbourne Government. Lord John Russell, in bringing forward the third Whig Bill on February 9, 1836, said that two things had to be considered — the principle to be observed in commutation and the machinery required for carrying it out ; and the machinery he proposed was that of Peel. There was to be a central Board of Commissioners, consisting of three persons — two appointed by the Crown and one by the Primate, and these were to appoint Assistant Com¬ missioners. Peel had not laid down any general principle of commutation, because there was to be no compulsion, and every parish was to be allowed to make its own terms ; and this also was to be the character of Russell’s scheme — but only for six months. During that period the owner or owners of tithe to the extent of one quarter of its value could summon a meeting of landowners ; and any agreement made between those paying and those receiving three-quarters of the value was to be binding on the whole parish. After six months, if there was no agreement, an Assistant Commissioner could be called in at the instance of any landowner or tithe-owner to commute the tithes of a parish. His award would be determined by the amount of tithe or of composition for tithe levied during the previous seven years, minus the cost of collection ; and this sum would be expressed by the quantity it would purchase annually in equal proportions of wheat, barley, and oats. But any person interested might appeal against the award ; and in that case the Assistant Commissioner would estimate the gross value of the tithe and either reduce the award if it exceeded seventy-five per cent, of the gross value, or laise it if it fell below sixty. Subsequently a standard not more and normally not less than seventy per cent, was prescribed ; and finally the discretion of the Com¬ missioners was limited to one-fifth of the actual payment. By another amendment the period allowed for voluntary COMMUTATION OF TITHES 123 commutation was extended to October 1, 1838. The reduction of tithe, and especially its reduction on a principle which made the clergy suffer for their for¬ bearance, was naturally resented by many Churchmen ; but it was well said that incumbents could have exacted their full legal due only at the cost of discouraging cultivation and consequently of diminishing the fund out of which their incomes were paid.1 The Tithe Commutation Bill received the royal assent on August 13, 1836. The first agreement was received by the Commissioners on October 27 ; and a year later they reported that they saw grounds for believing that a large proportion of the tithe would “ eventually ” be commuted voluntarily. The progress of the movement during the next nine months would have justified a far more sanguine forecast ; and on August 27, 1838, when the two years’ grace had only a month to run, the Com¬ missioners sent out a circular in which they intimated that, so long as voluntary commutation proceeded at its present pace, they should resort to compulsion only in four specified cases — where litigation was in progress, where tithe was taken in kind, where their intervention was desired by both parties, and where there had been a change of incumbents. In their Report for 1839 they estimated that rent-charges had been fixed in about five- twelfths of the parishes, exclusive of those in which tithes had previously been commuted by local Acts. Commutation involved two processes — the fixing of the rent-charge by agreement or compulsory award and its apportionment among the landowners ; and the latter proceeding, though somewhat dilatory, proved much less difficult and contentious than had been anticipated. In their final Report, referring to 1851, the Commissioners announced that the rent-charge had been established in 12,144 districts — voluntarily in 6778, compulsorily 1 6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 71. Hansard, xxxi. 188, 192-195, 200, 703 ; XXX1V- 593, 594- 124 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 in 5366 1; but the last of the apportionments was not completed till 1886, and even then there were twenty- four parishes in which commutation had been barred by disproportionate expense. 2 The settlement of the tithe question was of national rather than sectarian interest, but a grievance peculiar to the Dissenters was also remedied in the same year. The latter had long demanded that they should have the right of marrying in their own chapels. They had rejected Russell’s Bill of 1834 which conceded this right, but required it to be exercised under the surveillance of the Church 3 ; and during the few months when the Whigs were out of office the question was taken up, rather unexpectedly, by the Conservative Government of Sir Robert Peel. It could hardly have been antici¬ pated that Peel would propose to dispense with the religious celebration of marriage, which indeed he was most anxious to encourage ; but it seemed to him that the ministers and chapels of Dissent had not sufficient permanence to permit of their being recognised for this purpose, except under such conditions as had been rejected in Russell’s Bill ; and he was therefore driven to the solution that marriage should be legally a religious rite for members of the Church, but for Dissenters merely a civil contract. His Bill of 1835 would have enabled such persons to marry by acknowledging their union before a Justice of the Peace ; but the parish clergyman was to be registrar and was to be recognised as such by the payment of a fee. After fourteen days there might or might not be a religious ceremony ; and Peel was hopeful that the Church rite would in many cases be preferred when it had ceased to be compulsory. The 1 They were therefore right in the main who said that, if Peel's purely voluntary Bill had passed, “ it would have been still-born.” — Hansard, xxxi. 700. 2 Reports of Tithe Commissioners ; Millard, The Law Relating to Rentcharge, p. 21. 3 See p. 102. REGISTRATION AND MARRIAGE 125 measure was an agreeable surprise to the Dissenters who were members of the House ; but, much as they lauded its liberality, they showed no disposition to accept it as a satisfactory solution. They all maintained that their rites were as much entitled to recognition as those of the Church — especially as the great majority of their co-religionists were opposed to the secularisation of marriage. They objected to the clerical registrar ; and a more serious difficulty — which one of their leaders declared to be insuperable — was that a fourth of the magistrates, whose duty it would be to preside at the civil ceremony, were clergymen.1 The real objection to Peel’s Marriage Bill was that it discriminated unfairly between the Church and Dissent. Lord Brougham, in manifest allusion to this measure which never reached the Lords, said that every proposal was inadmissible on principle which made “ any dis¬ tinction in the marriage contract, declaring it to be of a nature civil only with respect to one class and civil and religious with respect to another ” ; and Russell was of opinion that equality in this respect could not be established without a system of civil registration. The present system was ecclesiastical and consequently defective. It recorded baptisms, but not births, and only the marriages that were celebrated in church, thus excluding at least Baptists, Quakers, and Jews. We have seen that a general registration of births, deaths, and marriages was one of the demands put forward by the Dissenters in 1834. 2 But the Government had then no officials whom they thought competent to discharge such a task ; and, unwilling to incur the expense of a separate staff, they had declined to countenance the scheme when it was brought before Parliament in that year by William Brougham, the Lord Chancellor’s brother. This difficulty was removed by the introduction of the : Hansard, xxvi. 1080, 1081, 1085, 1087, 1090, 1091, 1097, 1101. 1 See p. 101. 126 CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1834-1836 New Poor Law ; and in 1836, when he was again in office, Russell brought in both a Registration and a Marriage Bill. The country was then being divided under direction of the Poor Law Commissioners into groups of parishes known as “ unions,” 228 of which had already been formed. In these districts certain officials were to act as registrars and were to transmit their entries every two months to a registrar for the county, who in turn was to send them at intervals to the Registrar-General in London. Provided they had been registered for twenty-one days, or in the case of marriage by licence for seven days, marriages might be solemnised in church, in chapels licensed for the purpose, or, as a civil contract, before the chief superintendent of the district ; but, as Dissenting ministers did not always hold office for life, the registrar was to be present when the ceremony took place in a chapel. Churchmen complained that their people were offered the option of a civil marriage which had not been permitted to them 1 under Peel’s Bill, and Russell accepted with reluctance some of the Lords’ amendments ; but the system established by the two Acts met with general approval when it came into force on March 1, 1837. 2 In regard to Church rates and University tests, the other two controversies which affected the external relations of the Church, no settlement was to be reached within the period of this work ; and we shall therefore be occupied henceforth with the question of internal reform. 1 The Political History, xi. 355, is here in error. 3 6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 85 ; Hansard, xxxi. 368-370, 375-377 ; xxxiv. 1023, 1122. CHAPTER IV INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 The Church of England was now to undergo the statutory reconstruction which it had foreseen and dreaded as a consequence of parliamentary reform ; but the mechan¬ ism of the Church, antiquated and defective as it was, had been working recently at much higher pressure ; and the course of this development must first be re¬ viewed. Only at one point indeed had the machinery been actually repaired ; 1 and here it was an open question whether the tinkering of Tory politicians had not done as much harm as good. The measure designed both to encourage residence and to protect non-residence was passed, as we have seen,2 in 1803. The earliest returns under this Act are compiled in a form which does not lend itself to effective comparison ; but from 1813 to 1827 the number of non-residents, exclusive of those who did duty,3 had fallen from 4734 to 4530 — an average decrease of only thirteen a year. From this period, however, and especially during the anti-clerical agita¬ tion which accompanied and followed the Reform Bill, a great and rapid improvement set in. In 1831 the number of benefices on which the incumbent neither resided nor did duty had fallen to 4227, and in 1838 to 3153 — a decrease of over a thousand in these last eight years. Many of the bishops now made it a matter of conscience 1 Apart from the new court of appeal. See p. 59. 5 See p. 24. 3 Many could not technically " reside ” because there was no parsonage or none that was habitable. 128 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 not to give livings in plurality.1 One of these was Bishop Phillpotts ; and he declared in 1836 that in his own diocese of Exeter sixty parishes then served by residents had been served by non-residents in 1833. 2 We have seen that Parliament in 1818 had voted a million, and in 1824 about half a million, in aid of church-building. As the outcome of these grants, supple¬ mented by private donations, 212 new churches and chapels had been built with sittings' — more than half of which were free — for 283,555 persons. An incorporated society which confined itself mainly to the enlargement of existing edifices had also been at work. Dependent entirely on voluntary support, it had raised a sum of nearly £200,000, had elicited an outlay on the part of those who received assistance of £900,000, and had pro¬ vided over 307,000 additional sittings, of which 222,000 were free.3 Two other societies had been formed to provide additional clergymen in populous parishes, and their annual subscriptions were between £20,000 and £30, 000. 4 A measure which produced unexpectedly good results — being merely permissive — was the Act of 1831, empowering ecclesiastical corporations to augment their livings.5 Bishop Monk of Gloucester, one of the poorest sees, had set a noble example by devoting to this pur¬ pose a tenth of his scanty income. Peeks Commissioners found that arrangements for augmentation would diminish the revenues of Canterbury and Durham respectively by £1020 and £1170 ; and they testified to the “ very large sums ” which had recently been applied by many chapters to the upkeep and adornment of their cathe¬ drals. These facts illustrate the greater earnestness and the higher ideal of duty which had been fostered — under pressure, indeed, of hostile public opinion — by the Evan¬ gelical revival ; and further proofs might be cited from 1 Hansard, xliii. 599. 2 Charge, 1836, p. 41. 3 Second Report of Peel’s Commission. 4 Bishop Blomfield’s Charge, 1838, p. 44. 5 See p. 61. ENTANGLED DIOCESES 129 the bishops' charges. Thus of 620 churches and chapels in the diocese of Chester, there were but sixty in 1826 which had only one service on Sunday ; and Bishop Marsh in 1831 said that there were sixty churches in the diocese of Peterborough which a few years earlier had one service and now had two. Peel’s Commissioners to draw up a scheme of reform for bishoprics, cathedrals, and parochial livings were appointed on February 4, 1835. They had before them the statistics compiled, but not yet published, by Grey's Church Revenues Commission, and were thus able to present their First Report — which was confined to bishop¬ rics — as early as March 19.1 Some curious anomalies were shown on an accompanying ecclesiastical map. Parts of several dioceses were embedded in others. York owned an island, so to speak, in the midst of Durham ; so did Lincoln in York, and Bangor in St. Asaph ; Canterbury bisected Chichester and mutilated Rochester ; and London seemed really to have sprayed itself over Lincoln. A Bill to abolish these “ peculiar jurisdictions " had been contemplated by Brougham ; 2 and the Com¬ missioners disposed of them by recommending that all detached parishes should be subject to the jurisdiction in which they were situated. The dioceses were very unequal both in population and extent, and in some cases very ill arranged — the county of Dorset, for example, being separated by Somerset from its see of Bristol ; and a general shuffling of territories was proposed with a view to contracting the larger divisions and expanding 1 A fact which ought to have astonished those writers who are evidently not aware of the earlier Commission. See Walpole, iv. 404, and the Political History, xi. 355. Canon Perry (iii. 202) says that this Commission was “ renewed " by Peel. We shall find that there were four Commissions during this period : The Ecclesiastical Courts Commission (Wellington), 1830 ; the Church Revenues Commission (Grey), 1832 ; the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Commission (Peel), usually called the Commission of Inquiry, 1835 ; and the Ecclesiastical Commission (statutory and permanent), 1836. 2 Hansard, xix. 932. K 130 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 the smaller. Three dioceses were to be unchanged — Exeter, Bath and Wells, and Chichester ; Llandaff, which had no episcopal residence, was to be merged in Bristol ; Bangor and St. Asaph were to be united;1 the huge diocese of Lincoln was to take over Nottingham¬ shire from York, but otherwise was to be greatly re¬ duced, ceding Buckinghamshire to Oxford, Leicestershire to Peterborough, Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire to Ely ; and, in order to relieve the great industrial dioceses of Chester and York, two new sees were to be created at Manchester and Ripon. Not equality, but a lesser degree of inequality, was the object aimed at by the Commissioners. They recommended that Canter¬ bury, York, London, Durham, and Winchester should retain in some measure their present superiority of in¬ come ; and that the other sees should not be reduced where the income was no more than £5500, and should not be augmented where it was as much as £4500. On this basis at least a dozen sees would have to be provided for ; and if the total episcopal revenues were really £158,000, as returned for 1829-1831, their re¬ quirements could be met ; but a decrease of about £9000 was anticipated ; and the Commissioners there¬ fore proposed that some of the poorer sees should be supplemented from cathedral endowments, preferably in St. Paul’s and Westminster. On April 8, 1835, about three weeks after the pre¬ sentation of this Report, Peel resigned. On June 6 the Melbourne Government issued a new Commission in iden¬ tical terms and — except for the necessary change in Ministerial members — to the same persons ; and the Commission, thus reconstituted, presented its Second Report on March 4, 1836. The see of Bristol, instead of absorbing Llandaff, was now to be suppressed, the city and suburbs falling to Bath and Wells, and the country districts to Gloucester ; and Sodor and Man, 1 This suggestion, though not withdrawn, was never carried out. THE CATHEDRALS 131 with only eighteen parishes, was to be united to Carlisle.1 In this Report the average income of a bishop was re¬ duced by £500, and the suggestion of preferments in commendam was consequently withdrawn. Four sees were to be financially unchanged — York, Bath and Wells, Norwich, and Salisbury ; six sees — Canterbury, London, Durham,2 Winchester, Ely, and Worcester — were to be reduced. The total surplus would be £30,800, and this would suffice to provide the remaining sees with in¬ comes varying from £4000 to £5000. Having thus disposed of the bishoprics, the Commis¬ sioners passed to a far more controversial question — that of the cathedral and collegiate chapters. These were of two classes, known as the Old and the New Foundation, according as they had or had not existed in their present shape before the reign of Henry VIII.3 In the former case the corporate funds were divided between the dean and resident canons, each of whom had in addition a separate estate ; and, outside these participants, there were non-resident prebendaries, who also, as a rule, had separate estates, and whose duties were confined to the preaching — usually by deputy — of an occasional sermon. In the latter case — that of the New Foundation — there were no such prebendaries, and the residents, except at Durham and Ely, were not separ¬ ately endowed. The Commissioners proposed to abolish, as they became vacant, nearly all the non-residen- tiary prebends, only a few of the smallest being retained as marks of distinction for deserving clergymen. But the magnitude of this reform was rather apparent than 1 Not carried out. 2 Durham was to be reduced from £17,800 to £8000 ; and this was made possible by the abolition of the Bishop’s Palatine or secular jurisdiction. It was in this court that Williams (p. 30) had been prosecuted for libel. Similar jurisdictions, in so far as they were still retained by the sees of York and Ely, were also to be abolished. 3 The New Cathedrals included both those which were founded at the Reformation and those which, having previously been served by regular clergy, were then reorganised. 132 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 real ; for the preferments in question were either of small value or lucrative only on the renewal of leases, so that it was possible to hold one and get nothing from it.1 Residents, whether of the Old Foundation, or — at Durham and Ely — of the New, were not in future to hold estates ; and, most important of all, seventy-two residentiary prebends, or nearly half of the whole number, were to be abolished, in order that the cathedrals, one or two excepted, might be reduced to a uniform staff of four canons. Thirty sinecure rectories, not in private patronage, were also to be suppressed. It was esti¬ mated that these sweeping reforms, when complete, would yield £130,000 a year ; and this sum was to be applied to parochial augmentation according to a scale which was afterwards announced by Lord John Russell 2 — livings with less than a thousand parishioners to be brought up, where necessary, to £150, and other small livings to be raised in the ratio of population to £400. The chapters, even as at present constituted, were to lose most of their patronage, for the presentation to a vacant living, if not accepted by one of their own number or a minor canon, was to lapse to the bishop ; and a similar destination was intimated for the patronage accruing to prebendal estates. In the last section of their Report the Commissioners addressed themselves under discouraging conditions to the question of plurality. As 1926 benefices were under £100 and 3528 were under £150, as 2878 benefices had no parsonage, and in 1728 the parsonage was uninhabit¬ able, it would have been impossible in this matter to enforce a simple prohibition. Desiring to restrict the evil “ within as narrow limits as the actual state of the Church will permit,” the Commissioners recommended that plurality should not be permitted within a wider radius than ten miles ; that not more than two cures 1 Bishop Monk's Charge, 1838, pp. 15, 21 ; The Prebendary, p, 17. 2 Hansard, xxxv. 355. BISHOPRICS REORGANISED 133 should be held by the same person, and then only if neither of them exceeded £500 ; and that the exemptions and licences allowed under the Act of 1803 should be curtailed. They also recommended that not more than two preferments of any kind should be held by the same person, except in the case of an archdeacon, the worst paid of all dignitaries, who, in addition to his office, might hold both a cure and a canonry. Two further Reports were issued in the summer of 1836. The Commissioners had been unfortunate in their two attempts to dispose of the see of Bristol, both being equally unpopular ; and in their Third Report they proposed that it should be united with Gloucester, and that the bishop should reside alternately at the two cities.1 That certain persons must be appointed to carry out the proposed reforms, had hitherto been assumed rather than suggested ; but they now definitely recommended a statutory Commission. The Fourth Report had reference mainly to the Welsh cathedrals, which, being poorer than the English, were to have no more than two canons. By way of retarding the proposed reduction of chapters in England, it was proposed that every third vacant canonry should be filled. Melbourne, who was himself one of the Commissioners, lost no time in seeking to give effect to their decision. Three important measures with this object were brought into Parliament — an Established Church Bill, confined mainly to the reorganisation of bishoprics ; an Eccle¬ siastical Duties and Revenues Bill, relating to the cathe¬ drals and usually called the Dean and Chapter Bill ; and a Plurality Bill. Only the first of these measures became law this session, and it was framed in a manner which caused some surprise. Nothing was directly en¬ acted in regard to the Church. All the proposed reforms were thrown into the preamble ; and, proceeding on a recital that the appointment by Parliament of Commis¬ sioners to lay schemes before the King in Council had 1 The see of Bristol was reconstituted in 1897. 134 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 been recommended, it not only appointed but incorpor¬ ated such a body as “ The Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England/’1 The two Archbishops, the Bishop of London, and several Cabinet Ministers were appointed ex officio , and these and all their colleagues were members of the existing Commission of Inquiry. Knowing that they could carry this measure, but would probably have to proceed more warily with the other two, the Government pushed it on with great vigour ; and it had been read a second time in the Commons before the Third Report was laid on the table — a course which was described as unexampled “ in all the annals of Parliamentary precipitation/’ The oppo¬ sition was rather violent than formidable, being confined to one or two Ultra-Tories, and about forty Radicals. Sir Robert Inglis declared that now for the first time in England Parliament was asked to sanction the principle that Church property was public property ; and so little inclined was he to recognise this principle that he had opposed even the Church Revenues Commission as an unjust inquisition “ into the property of one class of the King’s subjects.” Radicals commented on the large incomes — £15,000 to £7000 — still retained by some of the prelates ; and, though four-fifths of the sees were to be levelled up, they asserted that the hope of transla¬ tion would be as potent and as mischievous as ever. Fowell Buxton admitted that the liberal endowment of bishoprics was in itself desirable, but thought it could not be defended so long as many of the rural clergy were so poor that a society existed for their relief, which dis- 1 6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 77. The Commissioners had suggested that it might be advisable in some cases to transfer estates from a richer to a poorer see ; and the incorporating clause was inserted on legal advice in order that they might be enabled to hold such estates pro tempore during the process of transfer. In this manner the new see of Ripon was subsequently endowed. As the episcopal estates were to be revalued every seven years, the Commission was unlimited in duration. — Bishop Kaye’s Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1838, p. 20. ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION 135 tributed doles of £5 and £10 and even cast-off clothes. He also maintained that the under-churched town parishes had an equally good claim on any superfluous funds ; and another speaker, who took the same view, concluded with the remark : “ Where your population is, there let your church be also/’ In the House of Lords, the Duke of Cumberland, most reactionary and ill- natured of royal dukes,1 bestowed his wonted male¬ diction on the whole measure ; and he was supported by Lord Grey’s brother, the Bishop of Hereford, and, to some extent, by Bishop Phillpotts. The latter entirely approved of the Bill in so far as it put an end to com- mendams and discouraged the practice of translation ; but he strongly objected — as also did Bishop Grey — to the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Commission, not as a body intended to carry out certain definite reforms, but as “ a perpetual corporation ” empowered to suggest Orders in Council ; and the same objection to this pro¬ vision for " perpetual change ” had been urged in the Commons, where one member described the measure as “ a Bill which throws the duty of legislating for the Church of England on another body.” On the whole, however, the chief merit of the scheme was unconsciously indicated by Inglis when he said that it did not satisfy two parties : “For the one it went too far, for the other not far enough.” 2 Peel’s Commission had not suffered in point of 1 “ There is no person,” wrote Wellington to Peel, “ who feels more than I do the inconvenience of the Duke of Cumberland. I feel it every day and all day. Others feel it only occasionally. But I can’t see a remedy. His wThole business is to pass the time. His amusement is mischief.” — Parker’s Sir Robert Peel, ii. 323. 2 Hansard, xxxv. 51, 344, 345, 351, 921 ; Annual Register, 1836, p. 149. There are several obvious inaccuracies in the Hansard reports. Melbourne is made to say (xxxii. 131) that the sinecure rectories were worth £130,000 per annum ! An amendment to prohibit translations met with little support. It appears (xxxv. 29) that a Bill to abolish this practice was read a second time in the Commons as early as 1701. It was introduced by Sir John Pakington, a Tory and High Church¬ man, and the alleged original of Addison’s Sir Roger de Coverley. 136 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 harmony from the substitution, when he resigned, of Whig for Tory Ministers. Indeed, Archbishop Howley said in Parliament, nearly a year later, that he did not believe there ever was a Commission, so numerous and occupied with matters so important, in which “ so little difference of opinion prevailed.” 1 Unanimity was not, however, to be maintained. It appears that the original members of the Commission had received an assurance from Melbourne that no measure affecting the property of the Church should be brought forward without their approval ; and in the spring of 1837 they had reason to complain that this promise had not been kept. We have seen that Lord Grey’s Government had failed in 1834 to solve the problem of Church rates. Their pro¬ posal that the nation should be taxed for the upkeep of fabrics had never been accepted by Dissenters, and was no longer deemed fair even to Churchmen ; for inquiries had shown that more than one-third of the parishes had resources which enabled them to dispense with Church rates, and these, if the burden were made general, would be paying only for the benefit of others. Something had, however, to be done, if only to put an end to the scandal of resistance, successful or unsuccess¬ ful, in several large towns.2 The solution now favoured was one which had been adopted in Ireland. The whole estates of bishops, deans, and chapters were to be vested in commissioners, under whose management it was ex¬ pected that they would yield the sum required (£250,000) over and above their present annual value. The prin¬ ciple involved — that the State was entitled to dispose of any increase in ecclesiastical revenues which might result from its own action — was obviously that of the “ appropriation clause,” 3 as indeed was frankly avowed ; 1 Hansard, xxxii. 135. 2 Church rates had not been levied in Manchester for four years, in Sheffield for twenty years. — Hansard, xxxvi. 1213. 3 See p. 78. BISHOPS AND CHURCH RATES 137 but, apart from this difficulty, the Commissioners of Inquiry had recommended that the Church estates should be left in the hands of their present holders, and should not be thrown into a common fund ; and even Whig Ministers had declared, as we have seen, that an Estab¬ lished Church, supported exclusively by its own members, was a contradiction in terms.1 As early as January 12, 1837, Bishop Blomfield had anticipated “ a complete break-up of the Commission on the subject of Church rates " ; and the new scheme, a day or two after it had been expounded to the Commons on March 3, was unani¬ mously condemned at a meeting of all the fifteen bishops who were then in town. Melbourne, having received no notice of this step, considered it “ politically the most hostile that could be devised " and “ personally neither civil nor considerate " ; and on the same evening there was “ a grand flare-up in the House of Lords "-—Arch¬ bishop Howley expressing himself “ with as much venom as so mild a man can muster," Melbourne denouncing the bishops as “ ministers of peace banded together to prevent the passing of a measure of peace," and Blomfield retorting “ fiercely" in defence of his order.2 The Commission of Inquiry never met again, and, not having been renewed within six months after the death of William IV on June 20, 1837, it then expired; but on December 22 the draft of a Fifth Report was laid before Parham ent. In this document the late Commissioners had made a notable concession to the chapters, leaving them their whole patronage so long as any of the existing members survived. Meanwhile the Church Rates Bill had been virtually defeated on May 23, when the majority in its favour fell to five ; but the Government seemed still to have 1 See p. 103. * Hansard, xxxvi. 1212, 1213, 1223, 1225, 1243 ; Torrens's Viscount Melbourne, ii. 220 ; Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, ii. 2 13-2 15 ; Greiille Memoirs, iii. 392. 138 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 a fancy for this scheme ; for a Committee was appointed to consider whether Church lands might not be more economically managed, and the Dean and Chapter Bill, as if to await the result of this inquiry, was repeatedly introduced and withdrawn. A writer referred to this measure in 1839 as " now three years old, yet hardly bom.” 1 Anti-reformers had thus ample time in which to stir up an agitation against Whig designs on the Church ; and they employed it partly in bewailing the Established Church Act, which had passed in 1836, and partly in deprecating the Dean and Chapter Bill, which did not pass, as we shall see, till 1840. It was objected to the former measure that it erected and suppressed sees, as if the civil power could make or unmake “ the conse¬ crated overseer of Christ’s flock,” and that it dismembered dioceses without regard to sacred associations and attach¬ ments, “ counting human souls like a flock of sheep to be penned within a certain space.” The diocese of Oxford was one of the smallest ; but Bishop Bagot con¬ sented most reluctantly to undertake the superintendence of Berkshire, and refused absolutely to attempt that of Buckinghamshire as “ utterly beyond my power.” But by far the most violently assailed section of the Act was that which established the Ecclesiastical Commission. This body was denounced because it comprised a majority of laymen, because all its members, except the two Archbishops and the Bishop of London, were either Ministers or removable at the pleasure of the Crown, or, in other words, of the party in power, and because it was unlimited in duration and all but unlimited in scope. Bagot considered it “a power as irresponsible as it is gigantic — an imperium in imperio which before long must supersede all authority in the Church.” Phillpotts predicted that it would soon be “ invested with attributes compared with which the highest authority over the 1 British Critic, xxvi. 355. MELBOURNE AND BISHOPS 139 Church claimed by the Tudors or the Stewarts will appear powerless and insignificant.” Manning, a recent convert to the doctrine of apostolical succession, declared that it reduced the Church to “ a mere secular establish¬ ment for popular religious instruction ” ; and another writer, commenting on the power of the Commission to call for persons and documents and to examine on oath, pronounced it “ an inquisitorial tribunal of the most vexatious kind.” The Bill was received by the Lords late in the session, and is said to have been opposed by all the English bishops, not members of the Commission of Inquiry, who had not left London. But only four of them appear to have denounced it in their charges.1 Such protests might have been more numerous but for the unwonted mortality amongst bishops which characterised the two years, 1836 and 1837 — much to the annoyance of Melbourne, who had great difficulty in filling the vacant places, and said “ he positively believed they died to vex him.” The seven new prelates were naturally unwilling to signalise their promotion by opposing both their metropolitans and the Government, though one was a Tory, and the rest, on the Church rates question, proved to be better Churchmen than Liberals. Indeed, Melbourne by his own account was continually reproached with " having disposed of more ecclesiastical patronage than any other Minister within so short a period, and having so managed it as neither to secure one steady personal friend nor one firm sup¬ porter of my own principles and opinions.” 2 Whatever dangers may have lurked in the Ecclesias¬ tical Commission, they were too impersonal and remote to excite any general alarm ; but cathedral reform, which 1 Bishop Phillpotts’s Charge, 1836, pp. 21, 25 ; Bishop Bagot's Charge, 1838, pp. 7, 11 ; Blakesley’s Thoughts on the Recommendations of the Ecclesiastical Commission, 1837, p. 6 ; Manning’s Principle of the Ecclesiastical Commission, 1838, pp. 26, 40 ; British Critic (Pusey), xxiii. 415. 1 Torrens's Viscount Melbourne, ii. 224. 140 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 affected the professional interest of several hundred dignified clergy, was promptly and vigorously opposed. The Second Report was presented, as we have seen, on March 4, 1836. At least seven of the chapters had protested against it before their usual midsummer meeting ; and Canterbury then took the lead in organising a meeting of delegates, which sat for two days in the chapter-house of St. Paul’s. The General Memorial adopted by this body on July 19 set forth that the cathedral foundations were still of great use ; that their guardians had sworn to preserve them, and that their subversion would unsettle all other bequests ; that the advantage of a common fund could not justify the transference of endowments from one diocese to another ; that the benefit designed for the poorer incumbents might be secured by the annexation of stalls to parochial cures ; that, as the clergy had increased in number, the rewards open to merit ought rather to be multiplied than diminished ; that the number of canons ought to vary with the population and importance of cities ; that chapters were essential to constitutional government, supporting the legitimate authority of the bishop, but restraining his arbitrary power ; that existing members should be secured for life in their patronage 1 as well as their income ; and that, even if stalls were to be sup¬ pressed as they became vacant, the houses attached to them could not be alienated without interfering " with the domestic regulations or, it may be, the peace and comfort of those who have hitherto lived as one family.” 2 As the General Memorial had been anticipated by several separate protests, so it was followed by many more. Bristol and Winchester echoed Pusey’s suggestion that the cathedrals might be utilised as theological schools ; and the former commented on the strange anomaly of 1 This was before the publication of the Fifth and unsigned Report. 2 It is pointed out in one of the Memorials that the cathedral precincts were like colleges, the gates being closed at night. DEFENCE OF CATHEDRALS 141 “ an establishment without provision for the ministerial education of its clergy.” Lincoln complained that “ fifty - two dignities or nearly so ” were to be lopped off from its “ magnificent foundation,” and that “ thirty-seven advowsons will be found amid the wreck of prebends/’ And Canterbury, when the Fifth Report appeared at the end of 1837, sent an address to ah the deans and chapters in England and Wales, exhorting them to petition against the obnoxious proposals, and “ that you may be heard by counsel before both Houses as well against their enactment as against the permanence of the Ecclesias¬ tical Commission for England and the extension of its powers.” General, however, as was the opposition of the chapters, it was not unanimous. Three of them — Chichester, Gloucester, and Peterborough — took no part in the movement. Chester was represented only by “ Certain Prebendaries.” The SouthweU Memorial was carried by a majority of two ; and a counter-memorial, the only one of its kind, was presented from this quarter by Archdeacon Wilkins.1 Amongst those who wTote in defence of the cathe¬ drals was a Canon of St. Paul’s who, despite his liberal antecedents, might well have been expected to espouse this side. Sydney Smith had rendered great and dis¬ interested service to political reform, but he had dis¬ couraged rather than promoted reform in the Church. He had no compassion for ill-paid curates, who in his view were either independent of the salary or so plebeian that it ought to satisfy their ambition. Rich non¬ resident incumbents found in him a most lenient judge, 1 Memorials and Communications addressed to his late Majesty’s Commissioners — printed as a Parliamentary Paper and reprinted in book form. The chapters found an able and well-informed advocate in the anonymous author of The Prebendary or Cathedral Establish¬ ments ; but the numerous figures given in this pamphlet are rather conjectural than accurate. Maltby, who had succeeded Van Mildert as Bishop of Durham, thought the Dean and Chapter Bill rather too “ sweeping ” as regards the residentiary stalls. — Charge, 1837, p. 15. 142 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 and he was so indulgent to residents that he would have allowed them to be absent from their cures five months in the year. The salary of a curate had been fixed in 1714 at a minimum of £20 and a maximum of £50. At the end of the eighteenth century these sums were reckoned as equivalent to £60 and £150 ; yet Parliament in 1796 raised the maximum to only £75, and left the minimum unchanged. Perceval in 1808 sought to carry a Bill which provided that, where a living exceeded a certain value, the curate should have a fifth of the stipend ; but Smith talked in the Edinburgh Review of revenues being melted down into curacies, and was so far from regretting the loss of Perceval’s Bill that he could not “ abstain from bestowing a little gentle violence to aid its merited descent into the gulf of oblivion ” — a gulf from which it was not rescued till 1813.1 Smith was a zealous upholder of the capitular founda¬ tions, but in private expressed great contempt for their official defenders. “ I think the best reason for de¬ stroying the cathedrals is the abominable trash and nonsense they have all published since the beginning of the dispute ” ; and it was an aggravation of their folly in his opinion that they had “ collected their addresses and published them in a single volume.” 2 It must, however, be admitted that a great deal of this “ trash and nonsense ” is reproduced in the three “ Letters to Archdeacon Singleton ” ; and, if the chapters had over¬ estimated the sanctity of their endowments and patron¬ age, Smith was guilty of far greater exaggeration in taking what he himself called “ a Mammonish view of the subject.” His great desire was that the Church should retain its social position by continuing to enlist men of good birth and independent means — men who intended to do their duty and did it, but in whose case duty was “ not the motive but the adjunct.” Hence 1 Works, i. 105, 258, 263. 2 Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 219. SYDNEY SMITH 143 he advocated “ the old plan of paying by lottery, instead of giving a proper competence to each ” ; and it greatly annoyed him that so many valuable prizes were to be withdrawn for the sake of adding “ £10 or £20 per annum to a thousand small livings/ * the occupants of which would still be “ a collection of consecrated beggars.” We have seen that Joshua Watson’s idea of ecclesiastical reform was, or had been, to efface “ the spots most commonly seen.”1 Similarly, Smith would not " have done one thing more than was absolutely necessary to remove the odium against the Establishment ” ; and he thought very little was needed, being one of those people who justified the foresight of Sir Robert Peel by thinking that public opinion demanded no real reforms because it had been pacified by their proposal.2 Viewed from this standpoint, the schemes of the Commissioners naturally loomed large. They were “ the most awful con¬ fiscations ever known in England ” ; they were “ the horn-book and infantile lessons of revolution ” ; they would inaugurate “ such a scene of revolution and com¬ mutation as has not been seen since the days of Ireton and Cromwell ” ; the new Queen, not yet crowned, would shudder as she looked upon “ the degraded Ministers of the Gospel ” and realised that she was “ stalking to the throne of her Protestant ancestors over the broken altars of God ” ; and such was the writer’s indignation that he must express it “ to avoid bursting ” — very tolerable “ trash and nonsense,” es¬ pecially in view of the remark, “ I hate to overstate my case.” 3 1 See p. 60. 2 See p. 1 16. Writing to Bishop Blomfield in 1838, Peel himself claimed the fulfilment of his prediction : “ Because the heat and excitement died away in the confidence that the Church would under¬ take the task of reformation, it was discovered that there was no need for reform at all.” — Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 210. 3 Works, iii. 327, 328, 331, 369, 377, 378, 384, 390, 407, 408. The Letters to Archdeacon Singleton are very good reading ; but one may agree with Bishop Blomfield that the first Letter, with exception of one famous passage, is "less funny than I had expected.” — Memoir, i. 218. 144 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 Unfortunately for the Commissioners, they were now assailed from a quarter in which they had hitherto received loyal support. We have seen that Watson and Norris were joint proprietors of the British Critic , and that, as one would expect, they were in full sympathy with its moderate and liberal views ; and, considering how drastically they had revised in this direction the Clerical Address of 1834, one is the more astonished that they should have entrusted their magazine to Newman,1 under whose auspices it tacitly revoked and repudiated all that it had been saying for years in favour of ecclesiastical reform. The new editor appears to have entered on his duties at the beginning of 1838 ; and the January number of that year executed a sort of war dance on liberalism by denouncing the so-called “ glori¬ ous revolution ” of 1688 as “ a foul and horrible sin.’, A sermon on passive obedience, preached by Pusey at Oxford on November 5 and appropriately dedicated to Keble, was the occasion of this outburst ; and Pusey occupied more than a hundred pages of the April number in what Newman considered “ a most overpowering and melancholy exposure ” of the several Church Commis¬ sions. These had all been “ clearly illegal/ ' since none but the clergy had the right to inquire into, much less to regulate, the affairs of the Church ; but the Commis¬ sion of Inquiry had directly violated even its own un¬ lawful terms. Appointed to consider the cathedrals with a view to making them more serviceable to the Church, it had dealt not only with the cathedrals, but with their endowments and even their patronage — a distinction certainly not easy to grasp. In regard to patronage, Pusey thought it “ a sorry exhibition ” that the episcopal Commissioners should “ transfer to their 1 Archdeacon Churton did his utmost to prevent this step, but is mistaken in saying that it was adopted in the spring of 1839. — Life of Joshua Watson, ii. 146. Newman says that he conducted the Critic for three years, ending in the summer of 1841 ; but his editorship began earlier, as appears from his Letters, ii. 251, 314. REFORM VINDICATED *45 own order what belonged to another but, when the Commissioners yielded to clamour and announced that the chapters would be allowed to retain their patronage and even the houses belonging to the suppressed prebends till the death of their longest lived member, he was even more indignant : “ These concessions to supposed selfishness are a fresh aggravation of the arbitrariness of the past dealings/’ The last or Ecclesiastical Commis¬ sion was of course in his eyes the most criminal of all ; and he quoted largely from Bishop Phillpotts in regard to " this frightful power.” 1 The Commissioners of Inquiry did not reply to criti¬ cism outside Parliament till their labours were concluded in 1837 ; but next year their case was laid before the public in a pamphlet published by Bishop Kaye and in the charges of Bishops Blomfield and Monk. From these sources it has already been explained why the Ecclesiastical Commission was not limited in duration and why it was incorporated ; and it may now be added that the clause which made five of its thirteen members removable at the pleasure of the Crown was not in the original Bill, but was reluctantly inserted at the instance of the Commons. It was a frequent objection to the scheme of diocesan reorganisation that the new diocese of London was too large for the superintendence of any one man ; but the addition of thirty urban parishes south of the Thames was just about balanced in popu¬ lation by the detachment of 374 country parishes ; and, whereas formerly the diocese had been eighty miles long and thirty miles broad, there was now no part of it which was more than fifteen miles from London House. To create bishops ineligible as spiritual peers would, it was said, have led to the exclusion of the whole order from Parliament ; in the dioceses of Chester and Lincoln, 1 British Critic, xxiii. 147, 456. The Christian Observer favoured a reform of the cathedrals, but was opposed, on the whole, to the diversion of their endowments. — 1837, p. 263. 146 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 where suffragan bishops were most needed, they could not have been maintained without commendams ; and, cathedrals being “ slenderly endowed ” in some of the most populous districts, it was useless to think of bene¬ fiting industrial parishes by the annexation of stalls. Only by the accumulation of a general fund, applicable wherever it was required, could the needs of such parishes be supplied ; and £130,000 employed in “ meeting bene¬ factions from other quarters ” would elicit a large addi¬ tional sum.1 With regard to the patronage of suppressed prebends, the appropriation of which was now postponed. Bishop Monk said that the livings in the gift of a chapter were usually scattered over the whole kingdom, and that the lay Commissioners, presumably impartial, were unani¬ mously of opinion that the presentation to any living affected by the Dean and Chapter Bill should be given to the bishop in whose diocese it was situated, partly as a means of equalising the patronage of bishops, which was very unevenly divided, but mainly because the merits of " unfriended, unconnected clergymen ” could be known only to their diocesan.2 A Plurality Bill, framed by the Commissioners of Inquiry, had passed the Lords in 1836, but too late to permit of its passing the Commons. In 1837 it was brought into the Commons, but abandoned, and now in 1838 it became law.3 It bore the modest title of “ An Act to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality and to make better provision for the residence of the clergy.” The old system of exemption and licence was retained ; but two benefices could not be held by the same person unless they were under ten statute miles 1 In 1886, in their thirty-eighth Report, the Ecclesiastical Com¬ missioners announced that the increase in the annual revenue of the Church from grants was £739,000, from benefactions £151,000. 2 Bishop Kaye’s Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, pp. 16, 28 ; Bishop Blomfield's Charge, 1838, pp. 25, 30, 42 ; Bishop Monk’s Charge, 1838, pp. 24, 25. 3 1 & 2 Viet. c. 106. PLURALITY ACT 147 apart, and not even then if the population of one was over 3000 or the joint value over £1000. The Arch¬ bishop of Canterbury could, however, grant a dispen¬ sation in the latter case if one benefice was under £150 and the population over 2000. No clergyman was to hold preferment in more than one cathedral, and no pluralist in any cathedral, archdeacons in both cases excepted. Provision was made for uniting and dis¬ uniting parishes, for building parsonages, and for the appointment and remuneration of curates. Where there was no parsonage, the bishop could authorise a house within three miles of the church in the country and within two miles in towns. In accordance with previous statutes, it was enacted that incumbents were not to farm more than a certain area of land or to engage in trade ; but the latter restriction was not to extend to any business “ carried on by or on behalf of any part¬ ners exceeding the number of six/' The reason of this was that the Court of Exchequer had recently disallowed the claim of a certain joint stock company to recover payment of a debt on the ground that two clergy¬ men were on the list of shareholders.1 An amendment was proposed by the Church party in the Commons that existing pluralists affected by the ten-mile limit should be exempted on condition that they exchanged one of their livings for another less distant 2 ; but the Lords made ample amends for the loss of this motion by limiting the Bill to future presentations. A measure for the partial abolition of plurality had thus been converted into one for its partial prevention ; and those who had deemed the Bill inadequate when it left the Commons must have wholly condemned it when it was accepted in this form from the Lords. Poverty of endowment was the original cause of plurality and — strengthened by the necessity of finding employment for curates — was still its official excuse ; but it may have 1 Annual Register, 1838, p. 224. 2 Hansard, xlii. 932. 148 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 been a just suspicion that the authorities were influenced quite as much by the desire to maintain the Church as an eligible career for talent and good birth. Many livings under £50 a year — as many, it was said, as fourteen out of nineteen in the diocese of Chester 1 — were held singly, because the incumbent, being undistinguished or over¬ looked, had been unable to do better, and many good livings, under more favourable conditions, were conjoined ; but the abolitionists do not seem to have proved their case that plurality was more common in the case of large than in that of small benefices.2 We have seen that, owing to a change in public opinion, over a thousand cases of non-residence — most of which must have been due to plurality — had been extinguished in the last eight years ; and the Act of 1838 could not fail to accelerate this process. Under the old system plurality was legal within a circuit of thirty canonical miles, which meant forty-five statute miles ; and the distance was measured from any part of one parish to any part of another — an important consideration in a parish such as that of Halifax, which was eighteen miles long.3 There was nothing in the new Act to prohibit this mode of measure¬ ment, discountenanced though it was in the Solicitor- General’s speech ; but the future pluralist, even if he made the most of his ten statute miles, could hardly be too distant to supervise his curate. So keen a Church¬ man and Tory as Lord Wynford was, however, now convinced that plurality ought to be confined to con¬ tiguous parishes4; and this was the rule adopted when the practice was virtually abolished in 1850. The Act of that year made it illegal to hold together any two benefices, unless the churches — not the parishes — were 1 Hansard, xliii. 598. 2 It all depends, of course, on what one considers an adequate benefice. According to the return for 1835, on benefices, the gross value of which was under ^300, there were 2115 non-residents; on benefices over that value, 1003. 3 Hansard, xlii. 930. 1 Ibid., xliv. 222. CATHEDRAL SCHEME 149 within three miles by the nearest country road, and the annual value of one did not exceed £100. 1 Bishops and parochial incumbents had now been brought within the widening circle of reform ; but the cathedral communities, which Lord King had once called “the rotten boroughs of the Church, ” were still annu¬ ally reprieved. In 1839 a fourth edition of the Dean and Chapter Bill was brought into the Commons, where, after the usual opposition, it was read a second time on February 25 and was then withdrawn, in order that the Government might consult Archbishop Howley on an alternative proposal which had been devised by a sub-committee of the body appointed by the chapters to conduct their defence. This proposal, as subsequently appeared, was that the existing number of canonries should be retained, but that they should all contribute to a fund for the augmentation of small livings. Howley reported unfavourably on the scheme, which indeed had no chance of acceptance as the chapters were not united in its support ; and all that seems to have been con¬ templated was “ a stated contribution to uses near and congenial/ ’ 2 Mellowing with age, the Bill had become considerably less stringent when it made its final appearance in 1840 ; and Sir Robert Inglis was supported by only ten members when he moved the rejection of a measure which, though “ founded on the same evil principle/' he admitted to be much improved. Replying to Inglis, who had said that so revolutionary a scheme could not have been contemplated by the late Conservative Government, Peel declared that his object in appointing the Commission of Inquiry had been to find a remedy for “ spiritual destitution ” in the large towns. “ It was requisite that they should widen and strengthen the foundation of the 1 13 & 14 Viet. c. 98. The Act was somewhat relaxed in 1885, the restrictions being extended to four miles and £ 200 . 3 Hansard, liii. 590-592. 150 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 Church ; if they did not, the ornamental capital would be too heavy for the base.” No less emphatic was Peel’s repudiation of the idea that the proposed legislation had originated in panic, and now in “ some temporary abate¬ ment of danger ” might safely be withdrawn. But his opinion on this point had been well expressed by the preceding speaker : “ Let it not be said that the vows of amendment which were made in the hour of sickness were forgotten in the day of recovery.” 1 More serious opposition was to be expected in the Upper House, which, after five years of enforced silence, was now to pronounce its decision. The chapters had employed counsel to put their case before the Lords, and some of their most zealous supporters were on the epis¬ copal bench ; but they met with as little encouragement from the Conservative as from the Liberal leaders. The Duke of Wellington, in presenting a petition against the Bill from Oxford University, of which he was Chancellor, said he had “ heard with astonishment ” of such a move¬ ment at Oxford ; and his sympathy with the object of the Bill was thus forcibly expressed : “It has been my lot to live amongst idolaters — among persons of all creeds and of all religions — but I never knew yet of a single instance in which public means were not provided to teach the people the religion of their country.” Mel¬ bourne must have disconcerted his colleagues on the Eccle¬ siastical Commission by thus disposing of the scholastic plea for cathedrals : “ The study of theology may be a very good thing in its way, but it is not a thing that we want in these days.” He was on safer ground when he said : “ There could be no course on the part of Govern¬ ments and Parliaments which led more certainly to ruin and destruction than to withhold that concession in a moment of returning security which they were ready to make when under the pressure of danger.” Archbishop Howley cited a district in Yorkshire which had a popu- 1 Hansard, liii. 592, 593, 602, 603. CATHEDRAL DEBATE I5i lation of 400,000 and church-room for 29,000 ; and, dealing with the argument that such deficiencies ought to be met by a parliamentary grant, he quoted language which had been used by Lord Grey and in effect by both his successors : “ We can do nothing for you if you will do nothing for yourselves.” The second reading of the Bill was carried on July 27, 1840, by 99 votes to 48, twelve bishops voting against it, and ten, including of course the five episcopal Commissioners, voting for it.1 Three days later, on the motion for going into com¬ mittee, there was another important debate. Dr. Phillpotts referred to a meeting of bishops a few months after the passing of the Reform Bill, and said that Arch¬ bishop Howley had then agreed with the great majority of his colleagues that all the institutions of the Church must be preserved intact.2 But the effect of this speech was neutralised by Bishop Blomfield, who showed that Phillpotts had himself been inconsistent, having suggested at one time to the Commissioners that they should appro¬ priate great part of the Durham revenues for the endow¬ ment of new parishes in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Blomfield’s speech occupies twenty-two columns of Hansard, and some of the passages in which he dissi¬ pated “ visionary schemes ” may be thus summarised : That the chapters of the New Foundation which now denied the right of Parliament to re-distribute Church property “ exist only in virtue of re-distribution ” ; that there could be nothing iniquitous in the suppression of prebends, which were ecclesiastical but not spiritual offices, one being held by an Oxford professor who was a layman and the Queen herself being a prebendary of Brecon ; that the Laudian oath which bound a bishop to defend the rights and privileges of his see was aimed 1 Hansard, liii. 903, 984, 996, 999, 1022, 1122, 1132. 1 See an account of this meeting in a letter of Phillpotts to Welling¬ ton, December 19, 1833. — Wellington’s Despatches. The Duke was then as much opposed to cathedral reform as Phillpotts himself. 152 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 only at unlawful aggression ; that the chapters were bound by a similar obligation to the observance of their statutes and customs, many of which were notoriously obsolete ; that the canons residentiary, knowing nothing of the diocese at large, were not qualified to be the bishop’s council ; that they could have little time for study, being also as a rule parochial incumbents ; and that it would be suicidal in the Church to plead present security as a pretext for evading the fulfilment of its promises. “ The winds are chained for a season in their cavern, but ere long they will burst forth with redoubled violence and shipwreck perhaps the vessel of the Established Church.” 1 The Bill, which received the royal assent on August 11, 1840, bore considerable traces of the criticism to which it had been so long exposed. A pamphleteer had con¬ temptuously said of the original scheme that it went “ on all fours ” 2 ; but now, whilst the great majority of the cathedrals and collegiate churches were to have only four canons, there were to be six at Canterbury, Westminster, Durham, and Ely, and five at Winchester and Exeter. Christchurch, Oxford, being a college chapel as well as a cathedral, was to retain its present staff ; but three of its canonries — in addition to two already so applied — were to be annexed to professorships ; and any canonry at Ely which might be annexed to a pro¬ fessorship at Cambridge was to be retained. These were concessions to the plea that cathedrals were the natural home of theology ; and the Government had already announced its intention to found two Chairs at Oxford — one of Ecclesiastical History, the other of Biblical Criticism.3 The Bill in its original form retained about twenty non-residentiary prebends and abolished no fewer than 317 ; but, as amended by the Lords, it preserved 1 Hansard, liii. iii6, 1139, 1142-1144, 1146, 1147, 1153. 2 The Prebendary , p. 25. 3 Hansard, liv. 1203. Only the former of these chairs was founded by the Crown. CATHEDRAL LEGISLATION 153 the whole number as titles of distinction, whilst “ sus¬ pending ” them as sources of income1 ; and in cathedrals where such preferments did not exist there were to be honorary canons. Provided that the emoluments of a suspended canonry had been paid to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the chapter might with their sanction re-endow it either from corporate revenues or by an¬ nexing to it any suitable benefice ; seven of the chapters were to benefit from the separate estates of which their future members were to be deprived ; and in certain populous districts the revenues of suspended canonries were to be diverted locally to parochial needs. With these modifications, the scheme proposed by the Commissioners of Inquiry was remorselessly carried out — a great reduction of cathedral establishments and the pooling of their surplus revenues in order to form a general fund for the increase and better maintenance of the parish clergy. Of 204 residentiary stalls, 72 were marked for extinction ; and estates were no longer to be held by individuals or “ corporations sole.” The emoluments of a dean had hitherto ranged from £165 at Ripon and £316 at Chester to £8000 at Durham, and those of a canon had been similarly unequal.2 It was now provided that the Dean of Durham should pay to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners such fixed annual sum as should leave him with an average income of £3000, that the Deans of St. Paul's, Westminster, and Manchester should each retain £2000, and the canons of ail these four churches £1000. Elsewhere in England, deans, whether by deduction or addition, were to have £1000 and canons £500. All the members of a chapter, except the dean, were henceforth to be styled canons. Sinecure rectories in the gift of the Crown or ecclesiastical corporations were to be surrendered, and the remainder were to be purchased out of the general fund. Advantage was taken of this opportunity to amend 1 Hansard, lv. 992, 1361. 9 Parliamentary Paper, 1840. 154 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 in its most vulnerable points the Established Church Act of 1836. All the bishops, the Deans of Canterbury, St. Paul’s, and Westminster, and — provided they were Churchmen — six leading judges, four laymen appointed by the Crown and two appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury were to have seats on the Ecclesias¬ tical Commission ; and every Commissioner was to be irremovable so long as he “ well demean himself.” 1 One measure of ecclesiastical reform had been accom¬ plished with remarkable expedition — the remodelling of dioceses and episcopal incomes ; but in all other respects progress had been slow. It had taken four years to pass the Tithe Bill, three years to pass the Plurality Bill, five years to pass the Dean and Chapter Bill ; and a reform of the Church courts, which had been inaugu¬ rated in 1832, made no further progress till 1840, and even then was not much advanced. The judicial ad¬ ministration of the Church had long been a subject of complaint ; and the Tory Government which preceded that of Lord Grey was induced to take action by a case which had become notorious for intricacy, pro¬ crastination, and expense. In January 1830 a Royal Commission of five bishops and eight judges was appointed to inquire into the jurisdiction and working of the ecclesiastical courts. A new Commission, com- 1 3 & 4 Viet. c. 1 13 — amended 1841 and 1868. The Acts of 1836 and 1840 are still the corner-stones of the ecclesiastical constitution. It has been said that they violated the fundamental principle that the Church of England has no property apart from the separate endow¬ ments of its bishoprics, cathedrals, and parishes. This was inevitable, the principle in question being the root of inequality ; and at the present day we find that the Archbishops’ Committee “go so far as to recommend ” that the whole of the endowments should be vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and managed under them by diocesan boards. Two of the Committee dissent from this opinion ; and they take great risks, material and immaterial, who would divorce the Church entirely from its territorial basis. Though the endow¬ ments retained by the cathedrals in 1840 are now more or less in¬ adequate, the superiority of their position to that of the parochial clergy is again attracting attention. See Bishop Welldon's article in Contemporary Review, July 1922. HIGH COURT OF DELEGATES 155 prising one more bishop and two more lawyers, was appointed in July 1831, and was soon engaged on a proposal submitted to it by Brougham, the Whig Lord Chancellor, for a new ecclesiastical court of appeal. As a permanent tribunal no such court had existed since the Reformation ; but any person who thought himself aggrieved by a decision in the provincial court of Canterbury or of York was entitled to have the question re-tried under the delegated authority of the King in Chancery. The High Court of Delegates had in 1534 been established — or rather had then been pro¬ vided for when required — to take over the appellate jurisdiction of the Pope ; and its deficiencies were set forth by the Commissioners in a Special Report. It usually consisted of three common law judges — one from each court — and three or more civil law advocates. The latter were not a numerous body ; the members chosen were taken from a list without regard to their qualifi¬ cations ; and, as the most eminent counsel had usually been retained in the case, it was necessary to employ junior barristers, with or without practice, and frequently of no more than a year and a half's standing. The court might be equally divided, consisting only of six, or the majority, if there was one, might not include one of the common law judges. In either case the bench had to be supplemented by a Commission of Adjuncts ; and, even in the event of a valid decision, the Crown, if petitioned by the dissatisfied party, might issue a Com¬ mission of Review. The average number of cases tried annually by the Delegates within the previous thirty years was only three or four ; but it had now risen to eight or ten ; and on the unanimous recommendation of the Commissioners, supported in Parliament by Brougham, the court in 1832 was abolished and its function vested in the Privy Council.1 1 Special Report of Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, 1832. — Hansard, xiv. 78. 156 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 One of the reasons assigned for this measure was that the Privy Council comprised spiritual as well as temporal peers ; but the presence of the former was not expressly required when the hearing of ecclesiastical appeals was transferred in the following year from the Privy Council at large to its Judicial Committee ; and by recent legislation the function of bishops on this body has been confined to that of assessors. That questions of doctrine would be appealed from the Church courts can hardly have been anticipated in 1832 ; for only seven prosecutions for heresy had come before the Delegates since 1586 — the last in 1775, and in all but two of these the proceedings had been discontinued. Nor would there have been anything alarming in such a prospect to High Churchmen of the old school ; for Van Mildert, their chief representative, was one of the episcopal Commissioners ; and he, as we have seen, held that spiritual jurisdiction belonged exclusively to the State.1 The Special Report of the Commissioners, relating only to the jurisdiction in appeals, had been carried out as well as presented in 1832 ; but their General Report, drawn up mainly by Lushington and signed unanimously in that year, surveyed a far wider field ; and the legis¬ lation it recommended was to be prepared or attempted by five successive Governments. Joseph Hume described the Church courts as “ nests of sinecures/' ’ and they were certainly more numerous than useful. There were pro¬ vincial, episcopal, commissary, and archidiaconal courts, and below these a host of discordant petty tribunals founded on the principle of exemption from diocesan authority, and hence known as “ Peculiars.” The Com¬ missioners reported that there were altogether from three to four hundred courts, and the actual number as stated by Lord Chancellor Cottenham was 386. This may have been an over-estimate. At all events in 1856 it was 1 See p. 38. CHURCH COURTS 157 found that only ninety-eight courts were accustomed, and only fifteen more were equipped, to execute one of their principal functions. The characteristic feature of these courts was of course their spiritual jurisdiction, which extended to laymen in cases of immorality, defamation, and “ brawling ” in churches and churchyards. But by far the greater part of their business was purely civil, relating to matrimonial causes and especially to the proving of wills and the granting of letters of adminis¬ tration for the disposal of personal estate — a form of wealth which had enormously increased with the growth of manufactures and commerce. They had no jurisdic¬ tion in land, and a suit involving both real and personal property might therefore result in contradictory decisions. In 1842, for example, a wealthy landowner died in Ireland, whose capacity to make a will was allowed in the ecclesiastical and disallowed in the civil courts.1 The recommendations of the Commissioners were not wanting in courage. They proposed to amalgamate the Court of Arches and the Prerogative or Testamentary Court of Canterbury, which in all but their functions were practically one 2 ; and, finding that the latter court engrossed four-fifths of the contested business in regard to personal property and nearly all the uncontested, they suggested that the provincial court of York might at least be restricted and expressly advocated the abolition of all subordinate jurisdictions, diocesan as well as “ Peculiar/ ’ Prosecutions for misconduct, in so far as they still continued, were to cease, except in cases of incest and “ brawling,” which might be left to the ordinary courts ; and all sinecure offices — valued at £60,000 a year — were to be suppressed. Authority to 1 Hansard, xxxi. 326 ; cxliv. 424, 425, 427. * They had the same judge and advocates, and both used the same hall in Doctors’ Commons — a building so called from the common table and dining-hall of the Doctors of Civil Law. The Court of Arches had originally met in the Church of St. Mary le Bow of the Arches. 158 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 try clerical delinquents had long been delegated by the bishop to his chancellor ; but there was no longer to be a diocesan court ; and it was consequently proposed that the personal jurisdiction of the bishop, sanctioned in such cases by the canon law, should be revived. Pro¬ ceedings were to commence with a criminal information laid before the bishop, who might either dismiss or try the case. If he dismissed it, the informer or “ promoter ” might appeal to the archbishop ; and the accused, if tried and found guilty, might also appeal. The first attempt to carry out, or at least to prepare the way for carrying out, this comprehensive Report was made by Lord Brougham, who thought that the scheme in its entirety was as likely to be rejected as approved, and consequently drew up six, if not nine, Bills. The late Commissioners, however, advised that these several measures should be consolidated; and on July 12, 1833, the Bill was read a first time in the Lords merely with a view to its being printed and considered. Soon afterwards the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee which examined some of the Com¬ missioners and, with certain modifications, adopted their Report. Somebody undertook to prepare a new Bill, but gave it up in despair, and the task was then assigned to Lushington, the reputed author of the Report, who had his Bill ready at the opening of the session in 1834, but prevailed upon the Government to postpone it in view of their preoccupation with tithes and Church rates. In November of this year William IV dismissed his Whig Ministers ; but the Bill as it stood was avowedly taken over by Peel and was brought into the Commons on March 12, 1835. Within the next four weeks Melbourne returned to power, and the Bill was again introduced, but too late in the session to permit of its being passed. From this point the Report of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commissioners had to compete with the much more sensational documents issued by CHURCH COURTS 159 the Commissioners of Inquiry ; but Lord Chancellor Cottenham took up the project in 1836, and his Bill was substantially approved by the Lords on the recom¬ mendation of a Select Committee. It was now said that Parliament could not abolish the diocesan courts till it had provided otherwise for the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline ; but in 1844, after such provision had been made, Lyndhurst proposed, not to abolish but to improve these courts, and was supported by Brougham and Bishop Blonffield — a striking confession of failure, when we remember that the latter was a member of the Com¬ mission, which indeed had been appointed on the advice of Lyndhurst.1 That a scheme of ecclesiastical reform recommended by leading bishops and lawyers, acceptable to both political parties and approved in substance by Select Committees of both Lords and Commons, should have been held up in this fashion for twelve years and then abandoned may well surprise us. The exasperated critic who described it as “ of second rate importance and of first rate difficulty ” may have been more epigrammatic than accurate ; but at least it was not of sufficient general interest to overcome the antagonism of those whom it adversely affected. Brougham informed the House of Lords in 1844 that as soon as he addressed himself to this question he raised “ a host of adversaries/’ who overwhelmed him with deputations and petitions; and he illustrated his plight by referring to the reception of a somewhat similar measure. In 1831 a Bill was introduced with the approval of the Government to establish a general office — such as had long existed in Scotland — for the registration of deeds. So powerful was the opposition that a member said “ he never knew such a unanimity of opinion prevail against any measure.” It was said that great part of legal practice in the country 1 Hansard, xix. 612 ; xxvii. 909, 925, 926, 931, 935 ; xxviii. 1120 ; xxxi. 324; xlvii. 536; lxxiii. 1312, 1340, 1341. i6o INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 would be transferred to London ; that, as title-deeds were frequently deposited as security, it would be im¬ possible either to lend or borrow money ; that the veil of “ mystery and secrecy ” would be withdrawn from private affairs ; and that there were people in London who would ransack title-deeds for flaws in the hope of being rewarded by those whom they should put in possession. Brougham said that the opposition to the Reform Bill outside Parliament was “ really a joke compared to the opposition to the Registry Act.” Soon after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill in October 1831, he went for a brief holiday to his home in Westmorland ; and on his journey back to London, if he saw one bill or placard against reform, he saw a score against the registration scheme. It was, he asserted, the same combination of country lawyers and country gentlemen who frustrated the attempt to con¬ solidate the ecclesiastical courts, both denouncing it as a conspiracy to despoil the rural districts for the enrich¬ ment of London.1 The Church courts having thus made good their defence, the natural course was to leave them more or less intact, but to take away their extraneous jurisdiction and to confine them, as they are now confined, to Church business and clerical discipline. In 1847 the jurisdiction of a bishop was made co-extensive with his diocese, except in testamentary and intestate affairs ; and, ten years later, these and matrimonial affairs were trans¬ ferred to the civil courts.2 In 1855 charges of defama¬ tion, and in i860 charges of “ brawling,” when brought against laymen, were similarly transferred ; and, though Church rates continued to find occupation for the ecclesiastical courts till their abolition in 1868, a con¬ siderable mitigation of the grievance was effected in 1 Hansard, ix. 125, 563, 977, 979, 1187; lxxiii. 1340, 1341. a A reform advocated by Bishop Blomfield as early as 1832, but not accepted by his fellow Commissioners. — Hansard, lxxiii. 1338. CHURCH DISCIPLINE 161 1840. In the previous year a conscientious Dissenter named Thorogood had been imprisoned at Chelmsford for refusal to pay 5s. 6 d. of Church rate, or at least for contumacy in failing to appear when summoned before the Consistorial Court of London. Lushington, the judge of this court, had been the reluctant instrument of his fate, and held — though the Attorney-General was of a different opinion — that he could not release him without payment of both tax and costs. In the summer of 1840 Thorogood had been eighteen months in prison ; and, his case having attracted much attention in Par¬ liament, an Act was then passed which empowered the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council or, under certain conditions, the judge of any ecclesiastical court to order the release of persons imprisoned on this charge.1 It must not, however, be supposed that the General Report of 1832 proved wholly abortive. One of its most important suggestions was in great measure adopted and is still in force ; and, singularly enough, this was almost the only part of the scheme which did not meet with immediate approval, being presented to Parliament first in an altered, and then in quite a different, form. There was general agreement that the existing practice in what was technically called the “ correction of clerks ” should not continue. The procedure in cases of discipline was the same as in civil suits, being set in motion by an informer or “ promoter/’ and was so dilatory and expensive that in the five years preceding the appoint¬ ment of the Commission there had been only fifteen prosecutions in the whole province of Canterbury.2 We 1 3 & 4 Viet. c. 93 ; Hansard, lv. 1189, 1193, 1255, 1388. One finds with surprise that people at this period were being imprisoned by the civil courts — at least in Lancashire — under the Act of Eliza¬ beth enforcing attendance at church ; but the real offence was usually that of being drunk and disorderly on Sunday. Persons convicted on this charge merely incurred a fine, which they were seldom able to pay, whereas under the Act of 1559 they could be imprisoned in default of payment. — Hansard, lx. 309. 2 Hansard, xlvii. 1312. M 162 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 have seen that the Commissioners had recommended that the bishop in such cases should resume his personal jurisdiction, this being the corollary of their proposal to abolish the diocesan courts ; and the Ecclesiastical Courts Bill was consequently accompanied by a Church Discipline Bill. Introducing such a measure in 1836, Lord Cottenham said that it had been found advisable not to give the bishop full power in the trial of his clergy, but that the latter should be tried, like their fellow-citizens, by a jury. The bishop was to preside, but was to be advised by a legal assessor ; and the accused could be convicted only with the concurrence of six out of nine clergymen. The Bill passed the Lords without opposition, but was then abandoned owing to “ a great cry ” raised against it by the clergy, who much disliked the idea of sitting in judgment on their delinquent brethren. Recognising, though it limited, the personal jurisdiction of the bishop, this measure was plainly founded on the Report ; but the limitation had an unexpected development ; for it soon appeared that, with the exception of Lord Wynford, all the Commissioners — at least all who expressed an opinion — had entirely receded from the proposal they had put forward in 1832. They had come round to the view which was expressed at the time by one of their colleagues, the late Dr. Van Mildert, that the bishop would not have leisure, and would seldom be competent, to determine questions of ecclesiastical law, whilst in three cases out of four he would be prosecutor as well as judge ; and they had become alive to the fact that there were inferior courts, possessing or claiming a right to try clerks, which were notoriously incompetent, their judges in many cases being deputies with a salary of only ten guineas a year. Under such conditions the clerical jury would have been a considerable safeguard ; and, this expedient having been repudiated by the clergy, it was proposed in the next Bill — that of 1838 — that matters CHURCH DISCIPLINE BILLS 163 of discipline should be tried exclusively by the Court of Arches.1 A summary of this measure had been seen and approved by all the bishops then in town, with the exception of Phillpotts and Monk. The former de¬ nounced the Bill — after it had passed the Commons — in one of his most violent speeches, declaring that it was inconsistent with the divine origin of Episcopacy, would wrest from the bishops their spiritual weapons, and, in short, was “ the greatest blow that ever was struck against the Church of England as a Church." No law, he declared, should prevent him from prosecuting criminous clerks, and even from proceeding, if necessary, to excommunication. Next year the Bill was again introduced in a slightly modified form, the chief change being that appeals, instead of being heard in the Arch¬ bishop’s court, were to come directly before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Phillpotts declared this to be a change for the worse, pointing out that there need not be more than two bishops on the Judicial Committee, and that the other members, except the Lord Chancellor, might be Catholics or Dissenters. The Dean of Arches derived his appellate jurisdiction from the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the original juris¬ diction contemplated in this and the previous Bill would be conferred on him by Act of Parliament ; and as a layman he was no more competent to take away holy orders than to confer them. The Church had long been deprived of its legislative, and now it was to be stripped of its judicial, power. In reply to this argument it was said that the Dean of Arches was already concerned with spiritual censures, since he could annul them on appeal ; that nearly every case of discipline now came up to this court either by letters of request ” before it had com¬ menced or by appeal on some technical point during its progress ; that, even where the case was tried locally, 1 Hansard, xliv. 616 ; xlvii. 1029, 1308, 1330, 1331. M 2 164 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 the principal documents were all prepared in London ; and that the bishop could not really be deprived of a jurisdiction which he rarely exercised and never in person. The Bill was referred to a Select Committee and passed, but in a form so greatly altered that it was indignantly repudiated by the Lord Chancellor and consequently abandoned.1 The question was brought for the fourth time before Parliament in 1840 ; and a measure was then proposed which, though much less of a compromise than it seemed, was accepted by all parties and became law. Where a clergyman was accused of any offence or had given occasion for scandal, the bishop was empowered to issue a commission of inquiry 2 to five persons, one of whom must be his vicar-general or one of his archdeacons or rural deans. If these persons reported that there was sufficient ground for suspicion, he might summon the accused and pronounce sentence on his confession ; but, if the accused did not appear or did not confess, he might try the question with the advice of three assessors, one of whom must be an experienced lawyer, or he might remit the case to the provincial court of appeal either before taking action or on the report of a prima facie case. The last of these options was of course a concession to those who had contended that all cases of discipline ought to be tried at headquarters by a thoroughly competent and impartial court. Such, as wTe have seen, was the view taken by most of the bishops themselves ; and, some forty years later, it was affirmed on high authority that in virtue of this clause the personal 1 Hansard, xliv. 603, 610 ; xlvii. 1310, 1322, 1326, 1327, 1329, 1336 ; xlix. 769, 772. 2 Some such “ species of precognition ” had been suggested by Bishop Phillpotts in 1836. — Hansard, xxxiv. 1168. Lord Chancellor Cranworth in 1857 said that it involved “ a great waste of time and enormous expense.” In one case the bishop had incurred a cost of £4000 which could not be recovered. — Hansard, cxliv. 436. THE LITURGY 165 jurisdiction allowed to the bishop, if he chose to exercise it, had been practically “ paralysed/' 1 We have seen that a revision of the Liturgy had at one time been included in the popular programme of ecclesiastical reform. Mainly as a means of winning back the Dissenters or at least of checking their increase, it had been countenanced by Lord Henley and advocated in detail by a host of undistinguished pamphleteers. This aspect of the question lost much of its importance when the Church had outlived the storm of unpopularity provoked by its opposition to the Reform Bill ; and the Oxford Movement had greatly diminished the influence of those liberal divines who in this matter were more concerned about their own than the Nonconformist conscience. Charles Wodehouse, the leader of this group and a prebendary of Norwich, showed his interest in the Dissenters by reprinting a contemporary account of Tillotson’s comprehension scheme 2 ; but his spiritual progenitors — though he disavowed their Socinianism — were the clergymen and laymen who in 1772 met at the Feathers Tavern and petitioned Parliament to repeal the law which required subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. Wodehouse had taken up this question long before the reform era, and continued to agitate it for at least sixteen years. As early as 1824 he drew up a petition to the House of Lords in which he demurred to certain parts of the Liturgy, such as the Athanasian Creed and the forms of absolution and ordination, and also to the “ unfeigned assent to all and everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer," which was then required of a clergyman on institution to a benefice. The petition was to have been presented in 1828 ; but 1 3 & 4 Viet. c. 86 ; Report of Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, 1883. A special procedure was prescribed in 1874 for clergymen accused of ritual offences ; and it was enacted in 1892 that a benefice should be declared vacant if the incumbent had been convicted of certain offences in the secular courts. 2 See p. 73. 166 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 the author withheld it, apparently with a view to its circulation in high quarters, where it is said to have been much discussed. In 1832 he published and defended it in a pamphlet, and next year it was brought before the Lords. Lord Suffield declared that “ a more excellent and exemplary character ” than the petitioner did not exist, and said that he knew of many clergymen who would be relieved should the object be attained ; and, though Archbishop Howley, Bishop Blomfield, and two other bishops were present, none of them replied to this speech or objected to the petition being received.1 A few years later the decline of Radical agitation, coinciding as it did vrith the growth of Tract arianism, had wrought a great change in the temper of the Church ; and Wodehouse met with a severe rebuff vThen, with fifty-nine other petitioners, only half of whom were clergymen, he again approached the House of Lords in 1840. The bishops, so few of whom had attended on the previous occasion, were now present “ in serried ranks.” Archbishop Whately, who presented the petition and commended it only as entitled to consideration, is said to have “ trembled from head to foot as he presented the alarming document.” Bishop Kaye was mildly sympathetic ; but Archbishop Howdey said he could recall no “ greater apprehension and excitement ” than had prevailed “when it went abroad” that the formulas were to be revised ; and he declared, “ with a vehemence of voice and manner ” which were quite foreign to his disposition, that, if the clergy did not conform to their standards, it was they and not the Articles or the Liturgy that required to be reformed. The petitioners had an outspoken friend in Wodehouse’s diocesan, Bishop Stanley, who said that, as no two minds were constituted 1 Mirror of Parliament, August 5, 1833 ; Prideaux’s Letter to a Friend on the Convocation of 1689, with Preface and Notes by Rev. C. M. Wodehouse, 1834 ; British Critic, xiv. 388. RETROSPECT 167 alike, there must be some latitude in subscription, and that no more was asked for than the public acknow¬ ledgment of what was privately admitted. Bishop Blomfield had no sympathy with this plea, asserting that only through precise definition had the Church been able “ to keep true to the one point of the theological compass and to go straight forward, guided only by the polar star of truth, as expounded in her Articles and Liturgy ” ; and with such energy did he denounce the policy of concession to “ maudlin scruples ” that “ the debate abruptly closed and the peers broke up as rapidly as if a burning shell had dropped into the House which might explode if they waited another moment.’ ’ Bishop Stanley’s son, from whom these words are quoted, was also present in the House twenty-five years later when, with hardly a word of protest, all that savoured of particularity in the formula of subscription was swept away, and clergymen were required in future only to express their assent to “ the doctrine of the United Church of England and Ireland ” as contained in the Articles and Prayer Book.1 Eight years had now elapsed since the Reform Bill became law, and neither “ the first revolutionary Parliament ” nor the second had justified the epithet bestowed upon them by Keble. Bishops still sat in the House of Lords 2 ; the Liturgy was intact ; Dissenters, though gratified by the recognition of their marriage rites, had not been relieved from Church rates or University tests ; and the ecclesiastical constitution had been amended with the result — certainly with the intention — of restoring it to vigour. The aim of all 1 Hansard, liv. 552-563 ; Dean Stanley’s Essays on Church and State, ed. 1884, pp. 157-161. 2 And Arnold was not amongst them. The possibility of such an appointment was often cited by High Churchmen as the limit of their endurance. Rather than consecrate, Archbishop Howley was pre¬ pared to “ sacrifice fortune, office, and even life.” — Churton's Joshua Watson, ii. 262. 168 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 the legislation we have reviewed was so to improve the discipline and economy of the Church that it should be enabled to meet the demands made upon it by a greatly increased population. These Acts were the consum¬ mation of a movement which had begun in 1809 when Parliament made the first of its annual grants for the endowment and augmentation of benefices ; and the only change made by a reformed legislature was that the Church — its object, but not its method being approved — had been brought — or should we say wrenched ? — into a position to supply its own needs. It was not a severe ordeal for Churchmen who in 1832 had almost resigned themselves to the prospect of Disestablishment ; but this was no longer a word to conjure with in 1840 ; and, but for the influence of two master minds, the Dean and Chapter Bill would have been passed with great difficulty, if indeed in so drastic a shape it had ever been introduced. The Whigs could not have avoided dealing with the Church, and Lord Grey had committed them by issuing a Commission to ascertain the amount and distribution of its revenues ; but their task was immensely lightened in 1835 when, during their brief exclusion from office, Peel, as head of a Conservative Government and without even waiting for the completion of this inquiry, issued a new Commission to consider the problem of ecclesiastical reform in all its aspects — diocesan, capitular, and parochial. The question was at once raised to the non-party level ; and no objection could be taken to Peel’s choice of episcopal Commissioners which, with one justifiable exception, was the same as that of Lord Grey. Yet nothing at all heroic could be expected from four of these prelates. Archbishop Howley had recently confessed that he thought the evil of non-residence incurable ; he and Bishops Kaye and Monk had opposed the Irish Church Bill ; and nobody supposed that Arch¬ bishop Harcourt, “ hearty and good-humoured ” 1 as he 1 Times, February 12, 1848. BISHOP BLOMFIELD 169 was, had been selected for anything but his official position. There remained Bishop Blonffield ; and, if Peel had disarmed the resistance to reform, it was Blonffield who ensured that the measures proposed should be adequate to their purpose. It was not in the nature of this man to do things by halves. As a student at Cambridge, where he obtained the highest classical and all but the highest mathematical honours, he had been a pheno¬ menon of industry, reading for nine or even twelve hours at a stretch. He was the foremost representative of the new school of Greek criticism which had been founded by Porson and included Maltby, Kaye, and Monk ; and when he became Bishop of Chester in 1824 at the age of thirty-eight, he had just completed his edition of the plays of fEschylus, which had occupied him for fourteen years and was long to be the edition most used in England. There was nothing to prevent a competent scholar becoming an incompetent bishop, as indeed had too often happened ; but it was not so in the case of Blonffield, who had already given proof of his capacity as rector of a large London parish. The enormous and ill-endowed diocese of Chester had suffered from the rapid succession of its administrators, who regarded it merely as a step to higher preferment ; and, though Blonffield was no exception to the rule, he made the most of his time on the maxim which he thought pecu¬ liarly applicable to this see, “ Ars longa, vita brevis.” Non-resident and convivial clergymen found in him a stern mentor ; and, whilst not objecting to dancing and cards, he made a stand against fox-hunting, which, it seems, was “ the Cheshire idolatry.” Not long after his appointment he wrote to Monk that he had worked harder during the last three months than ever before in his life; and to Joshua Watson, “ I am wading through business with my seven-league boots on.” A clergyman, writing also to Watson, said that the new bishop, who 170 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 combined conciliatory manners with the utmost firmness, had “ made an impression on the public mind and feeling such as I never saw or could have believed possible,” and “ the only fault I can find is that he will soon sacrifice his constitution if he persists in working so outrageously both with mind and body.” It was said in some quarters that Blomfield’s advancement would be prevented by the usual infirmity of strong men — a want of tact and discretion ; but this talk was silenced when in 1828 he succeeded Howley as Bishop of London ; and the wit and geniality he displayed in his private intercourse with the clergy 1 must have tempered the severity of his public admonitions. These, however, were sometimes conveyed in a tone of caustic humour, as when he thus addressed some of the Essex incumbents who had obtained licences for non-residence on account of the unhealthiness of their parishes : “ There are two well-known preser¬ vatives against ague : the one is a good deal of care and a little port wine ; the other a little care and a good deal of port wine. I prefer the former ; but, if any of the clergy prefer the latter, it is at all events a remedy which incumbents can afford better than curates.” 2 There was a time in Blomfield’s career when it was doubtful whether the weight of his powerful personality would be thrown into the scale for or against reform. His sympathies at the outset were with the Whigs ; but in London as chaplain to Bishop Howley he was brought into close relations with High Churchmen ; and in view of his recent elevation to the episcopate, he exposed himself in 1825 to a storm of abuse by opposing Catholic relief and confessing that he did so contrary to his early convictions.3 Determined not to vote against the Reform Bill, he was unwilling to break with his associates 1 “ The store of his reading and the fund of his anecdotes diffused a charm over the society of every circle which he entered.” — Times, August 7, 1857. 2 Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 5, 9, 12, 23, 101-106, 144, 161. 3 Ibid. i. 39, 80, 129. BISHOP BLOMFIELD I7I by voting for it ; but this scruple was not permitted to bind him at the final crisis of 1832, when he spoke eloquently for the Bill, and declared in the striking words which have already been quoted that “ it would be as vain to expect that the sun would trace back his degrees on the dial as that the people of England would ever return to the same channel of thought and opinion as before the introduction of this measure/’ Blomfield was well aware that the Church as well as the State must adapt itself to the requirements of a new era. Towards the end of 1832 Archbishop Howley was requested by Lord Grey to call a meeting of the bishops in order to obtain their opinion on certain questions of ecclesiastical reform which were then before the Cabinet ; and Blomfield, having been consulted by the Primate, wrote to him on December 11 : “I have long been convinced of, and have for some time been urging, the necessity of a mixed Commission of clergymen and laymen to consider what measures should be adopted in the way of Church reform, whether as to the estab¬ lishment of a consistent scheme of discipline or the arrangement of ecclesiastical property. Whether this Commission should be permanent and be invested with the power of initiating all legislative measures affecting the Church in its spiritual character or in its secular provisions, or in both, I am not quite prepared to say.” Here we have foreshadowed the Commission of Inquiry instituted by Peel in 1835 and its conversion by Parlia¬ ment in 1836 into the Ecclesiastical Commission. The meeting of bishops was held about a week later ; and in regard to the fate of the cathedral bodies, which was the chief topic of discussion, we learn from Phillpotts, who was present, that Blomfield and two other bishops 1 were “ disposed to go far in breaking in upon them,” 1 Probably Bathurst and Maltby. Lord Grey’s brother, the Bishop of Hereford, “ was earnest in sustaining the rights of the Church and its highest principles.” — Wellington’s Despatches. 172 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 but that the great majority were in favour of upholding “ all the institutions of the Church in their full integrity.” A very different conclusion was arrived at by the Com¬ mission of 1835 ; but by that time ecclesiastical reform had become the policy of a Conservative Government, and we cannot, therefore, agree with Sydney Smith that “ our holy innovator ” had secured unaided the triumph of his policy, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury had “ melted away before him.” 1 Smith foretold that the permanent Ecclesiastical Commission would dominate the Church, and that Blomfield, with his “ ungovernable passion for business,” would dominate the Commission ; and the second at least of these predictions would seem to have been fulfilled. At all events, we have the naive confession of Archbishop Harcourt : “ Till Blomfield comes we all sit and mend our pens and talk about the weather.” 2 And to the great influence he exerted in originating measures of reform must be added the extra¬ ordinary ability he displayed in defending them in Parliament. His biographer rates him even more highly as an orator and debater than as a man of affairs. Bishop Copleston said, “ As a public speaker he is the best I ever heard ” ; and similar testimony was borne by Daniel Webster and by Guizot in recording their impressions of visits to England.3 Even so able a man as Blomfield could, however, have done little as an ecclesiastical reformer without the cordial support of his colleagues ; and his position 1 Sydney Smith, whilst fighting the battle of the chapters, did not flatter them in his private correspondence with the enemy. “ They have not the elements of sedition in them,” he wrote to Blomfield ; ” if one bishop was to come in his pontificals and charge them, they would all run away, and then thank him for his charge and beg him to publish it.” — Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 219. 2 Ibid. i. 223. Another and less probable version of this saying is given in vol. ii. 184, note. 3 Ibid. i. 123, 124, 206, 223 ; ii. 192 ; Wellington’s Despatches, viii. 488 ; Sydney Smith’s Works, iii. 355, 363, 404, 417. During Blomfield’s episcopate nearly 200 churches were consecrated in London. ARCHBISHOP HOWLEY 173 may be described as that of chief of the staff to a general, more imposing than brilliant, whose popularity facilitated the execution of unwelcome plans. William Howley was a scholar and learned divine, “ of poor lineage and power¬ less connexions,” who in 1813 had mounted at a step from a theological chair at Oxford to the bishopric of London, and thence in 1828 had ascended to Lambeth. The first of these preferments was ascribed to the fact that he had been tutor to the Prince of Orange, who was to have married the Princess Charlotte, and the second to the personal influence of George IV, who never forgot that Howley had declared, in reference to the royal divorce suit, that the King can do no wrong “ either morally or politically.” Greville thought him “ a very ordinary man,” and the student of contemporary records is likely to be of the same opinion. But his placid saintliness and the extraordinary charm of his personality were attested by his chaplains, Rose and Archdeacon Harrison, and also by Lord Aberdeen ; and, having erected his “ mitred front ” against both Catholic relief and par¬ liamentary reform and in defence of the Irish Church, he had obtained a reputation for firmness as well as meekness which caused him to be adored by the clergy and venerated, though “ a miserable speaker,” in the House of Lords. It was a great gain to the cause of ecclesiastical reform when on this question he threw in his lot with Blomfield and Peel, and his services were warmly acknowledged. Lushington told the House of Commons in 1835 that “ within the short space of ten minutes ” the Archbishop had decided to relinquish sinecure patronage to the amount of £10,000 a year, much of which his predecessors had diverted to their own profit. “ It is so proper and just,” he had said, “ that I cannot hesitate an instant.” Similarly ham¬ pered by their antecedents, Bishops Kaye and Monk proved equally steady and sincere ; and one has only to read the admirable publications in which they defended 174 INTERNAL REFORM, 1836-1840 the Commission to see how fully they understood and appreciated its measures.1 Enough has probably been said in these pages to elucidate the question at issue between the friends and opponents of ecclesiastical reform ; but it may be well in conclusion to look more closely at an argument much relied on by the latter, especially as we meet with it at the present day in an authoritative publication. Accord¬ ing to this view, the legislation we have considered was the work of men who were still obsessed by the perilous position of the Church “ in the early part of 1832,” who could not believe that the storm had really subsided, and who must therefore be convicted of “ mistaking a transient effervescence for an expression of settled hostility to the Establishment/’ 2 The reader in this matter may judge for himself. He will remember that the “ Black Book ” was published in 1820 ; that the “ Extraordinary Black Book,” directed mainly against the Church, appeared in February 1831, at a time when the sweeping character of Lord Grey’s measure was unknown and unexpected ; that the first and most furious of Beverley’s diatribes was also then published ; and that the Reform Bill had not reached the Lords, when in the following July Bishop Marsh and the Edinburgh Review both declared that the clergy had never been so unpopular since the days of Charles I. We have seen, indeed, that the anti-clerical agitation originated at latest during the political disturbances that followed the Peace of 1815 and increased, or at least continued, till it culminated in the mobbing of 1 Times, February 12, 1848 ; Archdeacon Harrison’s Charge, 1848 ; Churton’s Joshua Watson, ii. 262 ; Hansard, xxvi. 912 ; Greville Memoirs, ii. 263; iii. 392 ; Burgon’s Twelve Good Men, p. 99. 2 Cripps, The Law Relating to the Church and the Clergy, 7th edition, p. 82. Another objection to the settlement was that it had no ecclesi¬ astical sanction. Bishop Blomfield advocated his “ mixed commission " as a substitute for Convocation, the revival of which at this period was not desired even by High Churchmen. See British Magazine, ix. 565. CONCLUSION 175 bishops. It could not long continue at that height, though it is remarkable that even in 1834 the promoters of a Church defence movement did not venture to adver¬ tise and confined their meetings to ticket-holders ; but the question why it declined brings us from the historical to the practical value of this plea. One reason certainly was, as Peel said, that the ecclesiastical authorities had committed themselves to the consideration of reform. To suppose that they could gain by raising expectations and not lose by disappointing them was a short-sighted view, and mainly irrelevant ; for the question really vital to the Church was not whether it could conciliate public opinion in the immediate future, but whether it could hope to retain that support if it failed to adapt itself to the social conditions of the age. It must be admitted that the religious alienation of the masses has not been diminished by the removal or lessening of their “ spiritual destitution ” ; but the reproach of indifference to this problem was at least effaced ; and, though the results achieved by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were for some time disappointing, one may well doubt whether, without the additional income of £916,000 which they announced in their survey of forty-five years, the Church of England would have been able to maintain its national position. “ They now blame me for these measures/’ said Bishop Blomfield, “ but they will hereafter confess that those very measures have been the saving of the Church.” INDEX Aberdeen, Earl of, 173 Advowsons, sale of, 6 note Althorp, Viscount, 76, 77, 103, 110, 119, 120 Anne, Queen, 16 Annual Register, 56, 105 Archbishops’ Committee, 1918, 7 note, 66 note, 118 note, 154 note Arnold, Thomas, 35, 44, 58, 71-73, 82 note, 104, 167 note Bagot, Bishop, 138 Baring, Alexander, 112 Bath, Marquis of, 113 Bathurst, Bishop, 47, 48, 57, 171 note Bathurst, Earl, 47 Beaufort, Duke of, 114 Bentham, Jeremy, 23, 24 note, 25, 104 note, 107 note Berens, Archdeacon, 74 note Beverley, R. M., 64, 70, 174 Birkbeck, George, 32 Bishoprics, reorganisation of, 25, 68, 112, 113, 129, 130, 134, 138, 145 Bishops, appointment of, 64, 67, 87, 139 “ Black Book,” 25, 62, 64, 112, 174 Blackwood’ s Magazine, 65 Blomfield, Bishop, 6, 7, 36, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58, 79, 115 note, *37, 145, I5E 159, 160 note, 166, 167, 169-172, 173, 175 Bristol, riot at, 50 note British Critic, 32, 34, 38, 44, 67, 92, 93, 116, 164 British Magazine, 81-84, 88, 116 Bronte, Charlotte, 28 note Brougham, Henry Peter, 30, 31 note, 32, 33 ; Lord, 65, 66, 109, IIQ, 155, 158-160 Brougham, William, 125 Burke, Edmund, 17 Burton, Professor, 67, 70 Butler, Archdeacon, 70 note Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 134 Cambridge University, 2, 12, 35, 44, 104-106 Campbell, John, 40 Caroline, Queen, 29, 30 Carr, Bishop, 49, 50, 52, 57 Cartwright, Major, 26 Cathedrals, reform of, 67-70, 131- 133, 137, I39-I42, 149-153 Catholic Emancipation, 37-39, 42 Charlotte, Princess, 173 Chillingworth, William, 13 Christian Observer, 2, 36, 44, 62, 68, 1 16, 145 note Church-building, 18, 19, 128, 172 note Church courts, 59, 154-161 Church discipline, 161-165 Church rates, 102-104, 126, 136, 137 Church revenues, 25, 63, m-115, 168 “ Commendams,” 60, 63, 112 Commission of Inquiry, 115, 116, 129, 135-137 Copleston, Bishop, 48, 53, 57, 75, 80, 172 Cottenham, Earl of, 156, 159, 162 Cranworth, Lord, 164 note Cumberland, Duke of, 135 Daubeny, Archdeacon, 11, 34, 35, 98 Dawson, pluralist, 109 Delegates, High Court of, 155, 156 Dissenters, 12, 16, 19, 35-37, 42, 71- 75, 83, 92, 101-108, 114, 124-126, 136, 161, 165 Durham, clergy of, 28-30 INDEX 178 Ecclesiastical Commission, 133- 135, 138, 139, 141. 145, 146 note, 154, 172, 175 Edinburgh Review, 13, 31, 34, 45, 46, 174 Eldon, Earl of, 36, 37, 41, 65 Ellenborough, Lord, 57 Evangelicals, 1-5, 12, 14, 15, 37, 44, 81, 90, 100 Fardell, H., 1 14 Feathers Tavern petition, 165 First Fruits, 67 Fox, Charles James, 47 Froude, Richard Hurrell, 82 note, 83, 86-88, 90, 95, 99, 100 note George IV, 29, 173 Gladstone, Wiliam Ewart, 44 Gray, Bishop, 50 note Grenville, Lord, 47 Greville, Charles, 76 note, 173 Grey, Bishop, 135, 171 note Grey, Earl, 28, 30, 4°, 4L 46, 49, 5*~ 53, 55, 57-62, 76, 97, *°5, no, hi, 136, 151, 154, 168 Guizot, F., 172 Hales, John, 5 note Halifax, parish of, 148 Hamilton, Sir William, 107 Hansard, citation of, 77 note Harcourt, Archbishop, 53, 64, 80, 115 note, 168, 172 Harrison, Archdeacon, 173 Harrowby, Earl of, 19, 56, 61 Hay, W. R., 115 Heathcote, Sir William, 96 Henley, Lord, 68-71, 74, 111, 165 Henry VIII, 23 131 High Churchmen, 7-15, 38, 70, 72, 78, 80-82, 91, 100 Holland, Lord, 36 Hook, Walter Farquhar, 98 note Horne, Bishop, 8-10, 12, 98 Howley, Archbishop, 34, 50, 52, 56, 60, 82, 108, 109, 115 note, 136, 137, 149-151, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173 Hull, W. W., 74 note Hume, David, 10 note Hume, Joseph, 39, 59, 156 Hutchinsonians 9-1 1 Inglis, Sir Robert, 96, 103, 134, 149 Irish Church, 75-80, 84, 85, 93, 136, 168 Jane, William, 73 Jebb, Bishop, 99 Jenkinson, Bishop, 57 Jerram, Charles, 5, 6 Johnson, Samuel, 4 Jones, William, 8-10, 32 note, 98 Justices of the Peace, clergy as, 6, 27, 125 Kaye, Bishop, 36, 53, 57 115 note, 145, 166, 168, 169, 173 Keble, John, 15, 83-90, 93, 100 note, 116, 144, 167 Kennicott, Benjamin, 10 King, Lord, 59, 60, 61, 65 “ King’s Book,” the, 63 Lambton, John George, 28, 29 Lancaster, Joseph, 14 Lansdowne, Marquis of, 47 Laud, Archbishop, 2 note, 106 Liturgy, 3, 13, 72-75, 95. 96, 165- 167 Liverpool, Earl of, 52 note, 57, 66, 9i Lloyd, Bishop, 38, 39, 91 Locke, John, 28 note London University, 33, 35 Lushington, Stephen, 158, 161, 173 Lyall, Archdeacon, 32 note, 91, 93, 98 Lyndhurst, Lord, 57, 58, 1 59 Maltby, Bishop, 46, 47, 57, 141 note, 169 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 31 Manchester, 17, 27, 103, 136 note Manners-Sutton, Archbishop, 115 note Manning, Henry Edward, 139 Marriage Law, 102, 124-126 Marsh, Herbert, 12-14, 31 ; Bishop, I5» 42,45,75,174 INDEX 179 Melbourne, Viscount, no, n8, 130, 136, 137, 139, 150, 158 Methodists, 3, 9, 13, 16, 19, 100 note Mill, James, 41 note Milner, Isaac, 3, 5 Milner, Joseph, 4, 5 Monk, Bishop, 54, 115 note, 128, I45> 146, 163, 168, 169, 173 Mozley’s “ Reminiscences,” 92 note Murray, Bishop, 54, 84 Newcastle, Duke of, 79 Newman, John Henry, 83, 86-90, 92 note, 95, 98-100, 116-118, 144 Newton, Sir Isaac, 9 Newton, John, 1 Nonjurors, 8, 9, 78 note Non-residence, 22-25, 82, 109, 127, 128, 148 Norris, Henry Handley, 32 note, 91, 92, 97, 144 Norwich, diocese of, 48 note Otter, William, 31 Oxford Movement, 48, 70, 83-100, Oxford University, 35, 44, 84, 104- 108 Palmer, William, 71, 83, 84, 86, 88-91, 92 note, 95, 96, 97 note, 100 Palmerston, Viscount, 108 Parliament, reform of, 40-46, 48- 58, 65, 74, 117, 167 Peel, Sir Robert, 33, 36, 38, no, 114-118, 120-122, 124-126, 128- 13°, 143, 149, 15°, I58, 168, I7U 173, 175 Perceval, Arthur Philip, 83, 86, 88 Perceval, Spencer, 18, 142 Phillpotts, Henry, 28, 30 ; Bishop, 44 note, 51, 54, 55, 128, 138, 151, 163, 164 note, 1 71 Pitt, William, 3, 21 Place, Francis, 17, 39, 40 Plurality, 61, 62, 68, 82, 109, 113, 132, 133. 146-149, 154 Porson, Richard, 54, 169 Porteus, Bishop, 3 Pratt, Josiah, 2 note Pretyman, Bishop, 3 Priestley, Joseph, 17 Pusey, Edward Bouverie, 70, 80, 140, 144 Quarterly Review, 44, 52 note Registration Act, 126 Registration of deeds, 159 Rice, Thomas Spring, 105 Roebuck, John Arthur, 57 note Romaine, William, 1 Rose, Hugh James, 34, 80-84, 86, 87, 92 note, 173 Russell, Lord John, 22, 33, 36, 39, 40, 48, 102, 113, 122, 124, 126 Ryder, Bishop, 38, 50, 56, 57, 80, 112 Sacramental test, 36, 37, 74 Sancroft, Archbishop, 7 Scott, Thomas, 2 note, 4, 5 Scott, Sir William, 23 Sikes, Thomas, 91, 92 Simeon, Charles, 1-3 Smith, Sydney, 44, 45 note, 51, 141- 143, I72 Southey, Robert, 13, 58 Sparke, Bishop, 45, 65, 114 Stanley, Bishop, 166 Stanley, Lord, 103 Stevens, William, 8, 10, 32 note, 98 Suffield, Lord, 166 Suffragan bishops, 117, 118, 146 Sumner, Charles, Bishop, 38, 57, 80 Sumner, John Bird, Bishop, 38, 80 Thirl wall, Connop, 105 Thornton, John, 2, 6 Thorogood's case, 161 Tillotson, Archbishop, 73, 165 Times, 46, 50, 54 note Tithes, 19-22, 60, 93, 118-124, 154 Tractarianism. See Oxford Move¬ ment University tests, 104-108 Van Mildert, Bishop, 37, 38, 44, 53. 54. 62, 79, 156, 162 Victoria, Queen, 143, 151 i8o INDEX Wade, John, 25, 62 Watson, Bishop, 25, 26, 47 Watson, Joshua, 10, 11, 14, 32 note, 37. 59, 91-93, 95-97, in, 144, 169 Webster, Daniel, 172 Wellesley, Marquis, 48 Wellington, Duke of, 36, 37, 40, 58, 59, 60, 79, no, 150 Wesley, John, 1, 4, 11 Whamcliffe, Lord, 56 Whately, Archbishop, 41 note, 44, 48, 58, 71, 80, 166 Whitefield, George, 3 Wilberforce, William, 3, 26 Wilkes, John, 16 Wilks, John, 103 note Wilkins, Archdeacon, 141 William IV, 40, 52, 79, 97, no, 137, 158 Williams, Ambrose, 30, 131 note Wodehouse, Charles, 165, 166 Wordsworth, Christopher, 92 Wright, informer, 24, 25 Wynford, Lord, 62, 148, 162 Yates, Richard, 18, 69 note, 98 Printed in England at The Ballantyne Press Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd. Colchester, London & Eton I Date Due IT Tffl v ; i '41 ] Mr 1 2 4 * , — r . faculty - *J' P r JPN ,3 5- I83T ^ V! 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