Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:24:19.199Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

God and the Great Reform Act: Preaching against Reform, 1831–32

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2014

Robert Saunders
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The struggle for the “Great” Reform Act was one of the most serious crises of the nineteenth century, stirring controversy not only in Parliament and the political unions but in churches and chapels across the country. For many of its supporters, reform was a holy cause; for its opponents, it was a “Satanic” measure. This article seeks to reestablish reform as a religious controversy, paying special attention to the religious press and to the hundreds of sermons preached by the Anglican clergy. Anglicans mobilized an array of scriptural authorities against the reform bill, contributing directly to the rising temperature of debate. This was a “Constitution in Church and State,” and the church possessed both an authority and an audience that few institutions could match. Restoring it to the center of debate helps us to understand what was at stake in the reform bill and why it aroused such bitter passions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 378 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1964), 817Google Scholar; Hilton, Boyd, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), 426Google Scholar.

2 Salmon, Philip, “English Reform Legislation,” in The House of Commons, 1820–1832, ed. Fisher, D. R., 7 vols. (London, 2009), 1:374–412Google Scholar.

3 Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1660–1832, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2000), 550Google Scholar.

4 Taylor, M., “Empire and Parliamentary Reform: The 1832 Reform Act Revisited,” in Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain, 1780–1850, ed. Burns, A. and Innes, J. (Cambridge, 2003), 295–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Morley, J., The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols. (London, 1903), 3:182Google Scholar; W. E. Gladstone, “A Letter Addressed to the Right Honourable Charles Grant . . . on the Tendency of the Reform Bill,” July 1831, Gladstone Papers, British Library (hereafter BL), Add. MSS 44721, f. 88, 93.

6 Jacob, W. M., The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680–1840 (Oxford, 2007), 304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellison, R., The Victorian Pulpit: Spoken and Written Sermons in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Selinsgrove, 1998), 43–56Google Scholar.

7 Brent, R., Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion and Reform, 1830–1841 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Clark, English Society; Gibson, W., Church, State and Society, 1760–1850 (Basingstoke, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Sack, J., From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar; Skinner, S., Tractarians and the “Condition of England”: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Brock, Neither M., The Great Reform Act (London, 1973)Google Scholar, nor Cannon, J., Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar, paid much attention to religion, though see Brock, Great Reform Act, 40, 199, 247–48, and Chadwick, O., The Victorian Church, Part One: 1829–1859 (London, 1987), 24–47Google Scholar.

9 Hole, Robert, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), 246CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Norman, likewise, stressed “the proximity of the leaders of the Church to prevailing parliamentary practice.” Norman, Edward, Church and Society in England, 1770–1970: A Historical Study (Oxford, 1976), 83Google Scholar.

10 Important exceptions include LoPatin, Nancy, Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832 (Basingstoke, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pentland, Gordon, Radicalism, Reform and National Identity in Scotland, 1820–1833 (Woodbridge, 2008)Google Scholar; Gleadle, Kathryn, Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender, and Political Culture in Britain, 1815–1867 (Oxford, 2009), 159–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Quoted in Hutton, F. H., “This Day Is a Day of Trouble, and of Rebuke, and Blasphemy”: A Sermon Preached at the Chapel of the Philanthropic Society, on Sunday Morning, August 28, 1831 (London, 1831)Google Scholar.

12 As Clark has argued, the idea of a “Protestant Constitution” appears to have been taken up partly to disable radical appeals to the “Ancient Constitution.” Clark, English Society, 503.

13 Clark, English Society, 492.

14 Lee, R., Rural Society and the Anglican Clergy, 1815–1914: Encountering and Managing the Poor (Woodbridge, 2006)Google Scholar; Jacob, Clerical Profession.

15 Gibson, Church, State and Society, 5–8, 13; Zangerl, C., “The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831–1887,” Journal of British Studies 11, no. 1 (November 1971): 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Gorman, Frank, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989), 359Google Scholar; Thorne, R. G., ed., The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986), 1:16Google Scholar.

16 Of those ordained between 1834 and 1843, 81.9 percent had attended either Oxford or Cambridge, and ordinands comprised 72 percent of graduates in Cambridge and 76 percent in Oxford. Of the 1,367 members of Parliament elected between 1820 and 1832, 705 (51.6 percent) attended Oxford or Cambridge. Haig, A., The Victorian Clergy (King's Lynn, 1984), 30, 32Google Scholar; Fisher, House of Commons, 1:252, 255.

17 Williamson, Philip, “State Prayers, Fasts and Thanksgivings: Public Worship in Britain, 1830–1897,” Past & Present 200, no. 1 (August 2008): 169–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolffe, J., “British Sermons on National Events,” in A New History of the Sermon: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Ellison, Robert (Leiden, 2010), 181–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Nockles, P., The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), 46–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Gascoigne, J., “The Unity of Church and State Challenged: Responses to Hooker from the Restoration to the Nineteenth-Century Age of Reform,” Journal of Religious History 21, no. 1 (February 1997): 67–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Gladstone, W. E., The State in Its Relations with the Church, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1841), 1:14Google Scholar.

20 Nockles, Oxford Movement, 57, 63. Warburton, W., The Alliance Between Church and State, 4th ed. (London, 1766), 279Google Scholar. For Anglican usage of Hooker, see Gascoigne, “Unity of Church and State”; Macculloch, D., “Richard Hooker's Reputation,” English Historical Review 117, no. 473 (September 2002): 773–812CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Burke's debt to Hooker, see Gascoigne, “Unity of Church and State,” 67–68.

21 Anon, Remarks on the Anti-Protestant and Democratic Tendency of the Reform Bill (Bristol, 1831), 24Google Scholar.

22 Fowle, F. W., National as well as Individual Sin Visited by Temporal Punishment: An Assize Sermon, Preached in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, on Sunday, the 4th of March, 1832 (London, 1832), 8–9Google Scholar. For similar disclaimers, see D'Arblay, A., The Apostolic Gift of Tongues, Contrasted with Some Modern Claims to Inspiration: A Sermon Preached in Camden Chapel, St Pancras (London, 1832), 15Google Scholar; Feilden, Randle, Sin, the Cause of Suffering (London, 1831), 15Google Scholar; Hutton, “This Day Is a Day of Trouble,” 4.

23 Scott, John, Reformation, not Subversion: An Appeal to the People of England on Behalf of their National Church (London, 1831), 11–12Google Scholar; Cattermole, Richard, The Moral Causes and Remedy of the Public Distress (London, 1831), 28Google Scholar.

24 Record, 20 June 1831.

25 Suggestive titles include Hutton, “This Day Is a Day of Trouble”; Irons, J., Jehovah's Controversy with England: The Substance of a Sermon Preached at Grove Chapel, Camberwell, March 21st, 1832 (London, 1832)Google Scholar; Champnes, Charles, The Awful Signs of the Times: A Sermon, Preached in the Parish Church of Langley, Bucks, Dec. v. MDCCCXXX (London, 1831)Google Scholar; Berens, E., The Christian's Duty in Turbulent Times: A Sermon, Preached before the Special Commissioners of Aylesbury, January 10, 1831, and in Salisbury Cathedral, on Sunday, Jan. 30, 1831 (Oxford, 1831)Google Scholar. For the influence of the French Revolution on prophetic readings of scripture, see Ian S. Rennie, “Evangelicals and English Public Life, 1823–1850” (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1962), 18–19.

26 Hutton, “This Day Is a Day of Trouble,” 2–3; Wilson, Richard, A Sermon on the Awful Visitation of the Cholera, Preached in the Mariners' Church, at Liverpool, on Sunday, November 13th, 1831 (Liverpool, 1831), 5Google Scholar; Record, 10 November 1831. See also Morris, R. J., Cholera, 1832: The Social Response to an Epidemic (London, 1976), 129–58Google Scholar.

27 “View of Public Affairs,” Christian Observer 31, no. 12 (December 1831): 774–75.

28 James, John, A Sermon, Preached at the Visitation of the Right Rev. Herbert Lord Bishop of Peterborough, at Oundle, July 11, 1831 (London, 1831), 18Google Scholar. For millenarianism, see Hilton, Mad, Bad and Dangerous People, 397–407; Harrison, J. F. C., The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

29 Moultrie, John, A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of Rugby, on the Occasion of the General Fast, March 21, 1832 (London, 1832), 14–15Google Scholar. W. E. Gladstone, “A Letter Addressed to the Right Honourable Charles Grant . . . on the Tendency of the Reform Bill,” July 1831, Gladstone Papers, BL Add. MSS 44721, f. 89. Moultrie's celebrated anti-Catholic poem, The Black Fence: A Lay of Modern Rome, was published in 1850.

30 Whitehead, W. B., The Dangers of the Church, as Connected with the Prevalence of an Excessive Spirit of Reform: A Sermon, Preached in the Parish Church of Crewkerne, Somerset, on Wednesday, May 25, 1831, at the Triennial Visitation of the Right Hon. the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells (Bath, 1831), 7Google Scholar. See Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the view that “Satan is here at work, to shake the confidence of undiscriminating minds in the truth of Christianity,” see “Christian Retrospect,” Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine 10 (November 1831): 791; Greenwood, T., The Latest Heresy; or, Modern Pretensions to the Miraculous Gifts of Healing and of Tongues, Condemned by Reason and Scripture (London, 1832)Google Scholar. D'Arblay, Apostolic Gift of Tongues, 10, blamed the “spirit of innovation”: “like the Athenians of old, men are always panting for something new.”

31 Record, 21 March 1831.

32 Dyfedensis, “The Church in Danger,” Christian Guardian (December 1831): 476. For the “Recordites,” see Rennie, “Evangelicals and English Public Life,” chap. 2. The Bible Society controversy is best followed through the pages of the Record and the Christian Observer, but for a summary, see the Christian Guardian (1831): 343–48, 370–76, 417–21, 493–96.

33 Prorogation of Parliament: Second Address of the Council of the Birmingham Political Union. Birmingham, October 21, 1831 (Birmingham, 1831). For “God is our Guide,” see The Times, 9 May 1832. For religion and the Birmingham Political Union, see Lyon, Elizabeth Groth, Politicians in the Pulpit: Christian Radicalism in Britain from the Fall of the Bastille to the Disintegration of Chartism (Aldershot, 1999), 81–124Google Scholar. See also Yeo, E., “Christianity in Chartist Struggle,” in The People's Charter: Democratic Agitation in Early Victorian Britain, ed. Roberts, Stephen (London, 2003), 64–93Google Scholar; Fraser, W. Hamish, Chartism in Scotland (London, 2010), 82–94Google Scholar.

34 [Unknown artist] “A Memento of the Great Public Question of Reform” (1832), National Portrait Gallery, London, D10854; Benjamin Robert Haydon, “The Meeting of the Unions on Newhall Hill, Birmingham, 16 May 1832,” Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1937P370.

35 Objects and Rules of the National Political Union, Instituted October 31st, 1831 (London, 1831), 7Google Scholar.

36 “State and Prospects of the Country,” Monthly Repository 6, no. 61 (January 1832): 1–2; “Christian Patriotism,” Monthly Repository 6, no. 66 (June 1832): 397.

37 LoPatin, Political Unions, 12; Pentland, Radicalism, Reform and National Identity, 114, 141–43.

38 “The Recent Political Crisis,” Monthly Repository 6, no. 66 (June 1832): 397. St. John of Patmos saw the apocalyptic visions of the book of Revelation.

39 Maltby voted for the second reading of the Reform Bill on 7 October 1831, while Bathurst gave his proxy to a reformer. Blomfield was absent in October but spoke in favor of reform on 11 April 1832. The following bishops voted for the second reading of the amended bill on 13 April 1832: George Law (Bath and Wells), John Sumner (Chester), Maltby (Chichester), Henry Ryder (Lichfield and Coventry), John Kaye (Lincoln), Edward Copleston (Llandaff), Blomfield (London), Robert Carr (Worcester), and Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt (archbishop of York). Edmund Knox (Killaloe), Bathurst (Norwich), and John Jenkinson (St. David's) gave their proxies to reformers.

40 Blomfield, 11 April 1832, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 12 (1832), cols. 267–71.

41 “View of Public Affairs,” Christian Observer 31, no. 4 (April 1831): 244–45; “View of Public Affairs,” Christian Observer 31, no. 6 (June 1831): 384.

42 Record, 3 March 1831.

43 For Blandford, see Fisher, House of Commons, 7:237–41.

44 “Parliamentary Reform,” Fraser's Magazine 3, no. 15 (April 1831): 275.

45 Christian Observer 31, no. 4 (April 1831): 244.

46 Record, 20 June and 5 October 1831.

47 Courtney, John, A Sermon, Preached in the Parish Church of Sanderstead, Surrey, on Sunday, the 20th of November, 1831 (London, n.d.)Google Scholar.

48 Gibson, Church, State and Society, 106. David Robinson, “The Ministry's Plan of Reform,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 29, no. 180 (May 1831): 798–99. The 1829 Franchise Act had reduced the county electorate in Ireland by 82 percent and the borough electorate by 90 percent. S. Farrell, “Ireland,” in Fisher, House of Commons, 1:171.

49 Anon, Remarks on the Anti-Protestant and Democratic Tendency of the Reform Bill (Bristol, 1831), 20–22Google Scholar. Gascoyne's amendment, protesting against the reduction of seats in England, is invariably described as a pretext for the bill's defeat. Yet it was treated by evangelical journals as a crucial safeguard for “the preservation of religious and civil liberty.” “Register of Events,” Christian Guardian (May 1831): 199.

50 D. Robinson, “Letter on the Spirit of the Age,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 28, no. 174 (December 1830): 913; 13 April 1832, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 12 (1832), col. 408.

51 Baptist Magazine (April 1831): 154–55; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine (July 1831): 526, 529. For Methodist constitutional conservatism, see Clark, English Society, 284–300.

52 “Strictures on Some Political Allusions at Recent Anniversary Meetings,” by “ALPHA,” Congregational Magazine 8, no. 7 (July 1831): 405–08; “A Defence of the Political Conduct of Dissenters,” by “BETA,” Congregational Magazine 8, no. 9 (September 1831): 531–34; see also “Ought a Christian to be a Politician?” by “A.Z.,” Congregational Magazine 9, no. 7 (July 1832): 421–24.

53 “Christian Patriotism,” Monthly Repository 6, no. 66 (June 1832): 380, 399.

54 LoPatin, Political Unions, 58–61.

55 Record, 5 October 1831.

56 11 April 1832, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 12 (1832), col. 282.

57 26 July 1832, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 14 (1832), cols. 761–62.

58 Gibson, Church, State and Society, 108–09.

59 Marsh, Herbert, A Charge, Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Peterborough, in July, 1831 (London, 1831), 7Google Scholar. Marsh, who translated German biblical criticism, studied the Koran, supported Baptist missionary work, and promoted Welsh-speaking clergy, illustrates Arthur Burns's insistence that critics of reform were not necessarily reactionaries. A. Burns, “English ‘Church Reform’ Revisited, 1780–1840,” in Burns and Innes, Rethinking the Age of Reform, 136–57; R. K. Forrest, “Marsh, Herbert (1757–1839),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).

60 Addison, Joseph, The Sure Fruits of Genuine Christianity, displayed in Two Sermons, Applicable to the Present Times, preached in St Mary's Church, Melcombe-Regis, on the 12th and 19th of February, 1832 (Weymouth, 1832), 10–11Google Scholar.

61 3 October 1831, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 8 (1831), col. 968; The Age, 4 December 1831, 389. See Isaiah 38:1 and 2 Kings 20:1.

62 Quoted in Berens, The Christian's Duty, 10.

63 Thomas Macaulay, 2 March 1831, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 2 (1830–31), col. 1204. See also Francis Jeffrey, 4 March 1831, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (1831), col. 77.

64 Robson, A. and Robson, J., eds., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols. (Toronto, 1963–1991), 22:228–29Google Scholar.

65 9 April 1832, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 12 (1832), cols. 49–50.

66 E. A. Varley, “Van Mildert, William (1765–1836),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). In his 1806 Boyle lectures, Mildert, Van waged holy war on “Jacobinical principles; principles compounded of hatred to God and hostility to all Institutions political or religious, which tend to restrain the destructive passions and propensities of mankind.” The Theological Works of William Van Mildert, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1838), 2:339Google Scholar.

67 Record, 31 March 1831 and 7 October 1831.

68 Record, 31 March 1831.

69 Erdozain, D., “The Secularization of Sin in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62, no. 1 (January 2011): 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Irons, Jehovah's Controversy, 9.

70 Berens, Christian's Duty, 4. Berens was a High Anglican who prized hierarchy; Berens, A Sermon on the Christian Priesthood (London, 1823)Google Scholar. This position drew on Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1851), 1:47–48Google Scholar.

71 Preston, George, The Dignity and Use of the Priesthood. A Sermon Preached May 28th 1831, in St. Sepulchre's Church (London, 1831), 6Google Scholar.

72 Feilden, Sin, the Cause of Suffering, 23.

73 Berens, The Christian's Duty, 12.

74 Preston, Dignity and Use, 4, 15.

75 Russell, for example, thought man a “creature of passion and of imagination,” capable of unbounded “rapacity and ambition.” But, in his view, this made reform more urgent in order to restore the disciplinary authority of government. Parry, Jonathan, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1993), 134Google Scholar.

76 Preston, Dignity and Use, 5, 15.

77 For example: Ephesians 6:5; 1 Peter 2:18; Hebrews 13:17; Proverbs 24:21; and Romans 13:1–2.

78 Addison, The Sure Fruits, 39. The reference is presumably to Matthew 17:24–27.

79 Record, 10 November 1831 and 9 January 1832.

80 Gladstone, “On the Principle of Government,” [c.1831], Gladstone Papers, BL Add. MSS 44721, f. 11, 14–16.

81 Prest, J., Lord John Russell (London, 1972), 51Google Scholar.

82 Record, 22 December 1831.

83 Record, 13 March 1831.

84 W. E. Gladstone, “A Letter Addressed to the Right Honourable Charles Grant . . . on the Tendency of the Reform Bill,” July 1831, Gladstone Papers, BL Add. MSS. 44721, f. 91; Perceval, 14 February 1831, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 2 (1830–31), col. 544.

85 James, A Sermon, 9.

86 Champnes, The Awful Signs of the Times, 17.

87 Ainger, William, A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of St. Bees (London, 1832), 9, 11–12Google Scholar.

88 Champnes, Awful Signs of the Times, 17.

89 Rennie, “Evangelicals and English Public Life,” 113–14.

90 Wolffe, “British Sermons,” 188–89.

91 James, A Sermon, 16–17.

92 Pretyman, Richard, Precentor of Lincoln, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Lincoln (London, 1832), 5–6Google Scholar, 8, 10. Whitehead, Dangers of the Church, 10. Pretyman's father was the former bishop of Winchester and High Church theologian Sir George Pretyman Tomline.

93 Sir Charles Wetherell, 6 July 1831, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 4 (1831), col. 865.

94 “Sermons on Various Subjects and Occasions,” British Critic 11, no. 22 (April 1832): 447.

95 Hutton, “This Day Is a Day of Trouble,” 10. See also Berens, Christian's Duty in Turbulent Times, 8; Anon, A Plain Sermon on the Presence of God's Judgements in the Land (London, 1831), 14Google Scholar; Irons, Jehovah's Controversy, 9.

96 Thompson, Henry, A Word to the Labouring Classes on the Tumults at Bristol (London, 1831), 5Google Scholar.

97 For an iconic representation, see William James Müller's 1831 canvas, “The Burning of the Bishop's Palace,” Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, M4122.

98 J. Eagles, “The Art of Government Made Easy: A Discovery of the Only True Principle, in a Letter from Satan to the Whigs,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 31, no. 193 (April 1832): 665–72.

99 “Satan—Reformer,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 31, no. 193 (April 1832): 597.

100 Thompson, A Word, 10–11.

101 Hutton, “This Day Is a Day of Trouble,” 3–5; Cattermole, Moral Causes, 28.

102 Feilden, Sin, the Cause of Suffering, 21.

103 Quoted in D'Arblay, Apostolic Gift of Tongues.

104 Quoted in Zangerl, “Social Composition,” 113. Socinians denied the Trinity and, in some cases, the divinity of Christ; but the term more commonly served as a shorthand for theological heterodoxy.

105 Frye, Perceval, The Seat of the Scornful the Consummation of Irreligion: A Sermon, Preached in Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, on Sunday, January 2 1831 (London, 1831), 16Google Scholar.

106 Seeley, R. B., Essays on the Church, by a Layman (London, 1834), 255Google Scholar.

107 “View of Public Affairs,” Christian Observer 31, no. 12 (December 1831): 773; “Preface,” Christian Observer 32 (1832): iv.

108 Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 10 (July 1832): 308–09.

109 “The Reform Ministry and the Reformed Parliament,” British Critic 14, no. 28 (October 1833): 451–54.

110 See Cragoe, M., “The Great Reform Act and the Modernization of British Politics: The Impact of Conservative Associations, 1835–1841,” Journal of British Studies 47, no. 3 (July 2008): 581–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newbould, I., “Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Party, 1832–1841: A Study in Failure?” English Historical Review 98, no. 3 (July 1983): 552–54Google Scholar. 149 A total of Conservatives voted against the third reading of the Maynooth bill, 148 in favor.

111 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event, 2nd ed. (London, 1790), 146Google Scholar.

112 See in particular Keble, John, National Apostasy Considered in a Sermon, Preached at St Mary's, Oxford, on July 14, 1833 (London, 1833)Google Scholar.

113 Nockles, Oxford Movement.

114 Quoted in Clark, English Society, 559.

115 Frank Turner, in his brilliant study of Newman, identifies evangelicalism, not liberalism, as “the Tractarian enemy.” Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven, 2002), 23Google Scholar. The relative importance of these foes to Newman lies beyond the scope of this article, but Tractarianism was a diverse movement whose views were not reducible to those of Newman. For the links between evangelicalism and early Tractarianism, see Herring, G., What Was the Oxford Movement? (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

116 Clark, English Society, 514, 548.

117 For example, Close, Francis, The Chartists' Visit to the Parish Church: A Sermon (London, 1839)Google Scholar and The Female Chartists' Visit to the Parish Church: A Sermon (London, 1839)Google Scholar.