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The Church and Education: Anglican Attitudes 1902

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

D. R. Pugh
D. R. Pugh
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Education, University of Alberta, Canada
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Extract

As is well known, the Balfour Education Act of 1902 was the subject of bitter and prolonged controversy between Anglicans and Nonconformists. Ever since 1870 the Church schools had been struggling in unequal competition against the rate-aided School Board system, and many of them by the turn of the century were ‘dragging along a miserable existence’ with inadequate buildings and inadequate staff. Yet, believing their schools to be vital for their Church's survival, Anglicans hung on grimly, hoping that the Unionist government of Lord Salisbury would at last provide its long-promised succour. Fundamentally Anglicans were concerned not just for denominational teaching, but for the presentation of such teaching in a suitable atmosphere. ‘The necessity of a religious temper in teaching religion’ meant the subjection of teachers to religious tests and the retention of denominational control of the schools.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 219 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

page 219 note 1 Rev. Burrows, W. O., addressing Leeds Ruridecanal Conference, 1902: The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 29Google Scholar April.

page 219 note 2 Bishop Creighton, letter to P. C. Horsfall M.P., ii January 1899, quoted in his book ‘Thoughts on Education’ (preface ix-xi), published posthumously in 1902. The of ‘atmosphere'in the schools seemed preposterous to anti-clericals and Dr. Clifford quoted ‘a well known parliamentary rhymester'as follows:

All things on earth we have endowed,

Church, army, land and beer.

And now our statesmen cry aloud

‘Endow the atmosphere':

printed in Clifford's pamphlet, 'The Fight Against the Education Bill: what is at stake, 9.

page 219 note 3 ‘It appears to me that if the State takes a child from the parent during its best weekday hours … the parent mayjustly demand that during some portion of that time, the child should receive the religious teaching which the parent desires, in order to bring him up in the religious faith of the parents': Sir William Anson, 24 March 1902, in Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, cv. 907. On the other hand Asquith, speaking for Liberals, could see no reason why children should be ‘separated into theological flocks and herded into ecclesiastical pens'in order that their religion might be ‘stereotyped in the parental status quo'. See his speech on the second reading: ibid., cvii. 1128–40.

page 220 note 1 Canon Malcom MacColl, The Liberal Party and the Education Question, 1902, 22–5. See also his letter in The Times, 14 April, and letters from Rev. H. Montague Villiers, and from Athelstan Riley: ibid., 21 and 28 April respectively. Nonconformists of course insisted that there was a substratum of religion common to all denominations, and they wondered at the apparent Anglican assumption that the Bible was a Nonconformist book.

page 220 note 2 This was the firm opinion of Rev. J. J. Coxhead, a London vicar and educationist: letter in The Times, 12 April.

page 220 note 3 MacColl, op. cit., 17, 30–1.

page 220 note 4 Letter in The Times, 11 April.

page 220 note 5 Creighton, Thoughts on Education, 52.

page 221 note 1 The Report of the National Society (1903) asserted that the church, by providing rent free school accommodation, was saving the public about £715,000 per annum, whereas the cost of providing religious instruction in church schools amounted to only £175,970. See also archdeacon Fletcher's article ‘The Renewed Struggle for the Schools'in The Nineteenth Century (April 1902).

page 221 note 2 See the bishop of Rochester's letter in The Times, 19 April 1902.

page 221 note 3 A cursory study of the press in April 1902 reveals the following meetings at which resolutions were passed in favour of the bill: Meeting organised by the Board of Education of the archdeaconry of Birmingham (speeches by the bishops of Worcester and Coventry), The Birmingham Daily Post, 5 April; Chichester Diocesan Association, The Times, 10 April; Salisbury Diocesan Synod, ibid., 11 April; The Committee for Church Defence and Church Instruction (speech by Lord Hugh Cecil), ibid., 12 April; York Diocesan Board of Education, The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 12 April; Liverpool Diocesan Board of Education, The Liverpool Daily Post, 12 April; Exeter Diocesan Council for Religious Instruction, The Times, 12 April; Bradford Church of England Schools Society, The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 14 April; the Church Parliamentary Committee, The Manchester Guardian, 17 April; the Voluntary Schools Council of the archdeaconary of Worcester, The Times, 18 April; Leeds Ruridecana l Chapter, The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 19 April; public meeting at Leeds addressed by the bishop of Ripon and the vicar of Leeds, Dr. Gibson, ibid.; Managers of Church Schools in the archdeaconry of Sheffield, The Times, 21 April; conference at Leicester under the auspices of the Church Education Executive Committee, ibid.; London Diocesan Board of Education, ibid., 23 April; Ruridecanal Conference at Worcester, ibid.; Manchester and Salford Church Day Schools Association, The Manchester Guardian, 24 April; Leeds Ruridecanal Council, The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 29 April.

page 221 note 4 See particularly The Times, 3 May. Among the earliest dignitaries in the field were the bishop of Bath and Wells: ibid., 9 April; the bishop of London: ibid., 16 April; and the chancellor of the diocese of Manchester: The Manchester Guardian, 15 April.

page 222 note 1 For an account of this meeting, see The Times, 1 May 1902.

page 222 note 2 Ibid., 6 May. The Council ofthe Imperial Protestant Federation likewise condemned the bill, fearing both the direct growth of Roman Catholic schools and the endowment of ‘the Romanising doctrines of the Ritualists’ in hundreds of Anglican classrooms: ibid., 19 April. The Federation, however, included Nonconformists as well as Anglicans.

page 222 note 3 The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 14 July 1902. The election did in fact result Liberal gain.

page 222 note 4 In September the Liverpool Working Men's Conservative Association passed a resolution thanking Mr. McArthur M.P. for his stand on the bill, and assuring Liverpool M.P.s of their support for any attempt to safeguard the interests of Protestant children in the elementary schools of the Church of England.

page 223 note 1 Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, cxvi. 342–8. The bishop's speech was quoted length in the Liberal Magazine, x. 721–3.

page 223 note 2 See their letters in The Times, 28 July, 2, 4, 14, and 28 August, 3 September.

page 223 note 3 For the attitude and activity of the bishop of Hereford and his supporters, and for details of the interdenominational harmony which in fact existed in many parts of England, see D. R. Pugh "The 1902 Education Act: the Search for a Compromise', British Journal of Educational Studies, xvi (1968), 164–78.

page 224 note 1 Letter in The Times, 19 April 1902.

page 224 note 2 Address t o his diocesan conference, 21 October.

page 224 note 3 See the bishop of Ripon's address to his diocesan conference, 23 October; the bishop of Exeter's address to his diocesan Board of Education, 25 September; the bishop of Wakefield's sermon at the dedication of St. Barnabas Church, Crosland Moor, Huddersfield, in The Yorkshire Post, 6 October; the long letter from the bishop of Winchester in The Times, 27 May.

page 224 note 4 2 May.

page 224 note 5 The Times, 29 May.

page 224 note 6 There were altogether 7,500 single school districts but in the other 1,900 cases, the school was not under Anglican control. Balfour gave these figures in the House of Commons on 30 July 1902. Until then it had been widely assumed that the number of Anglican-controlled single-school districts was much greater.

page 224 note 7 Speech at the Church Congress on 10 October.

page 224 note 8 Address to Winchester Diocesan Conference, 22 October.

page 224 note 9 Letter in The Times, 10 October.

page 224 note 10 This proposal was endorsed publicly by, among others, the bishop of Coventry (speech at the Church Congress, 10 October) ; the bishop of Winchester (address to his diocesan conference 23 October); the bishop of Rochester (address at the Church Congress 10 October) ; and the archdeacon of Huddersfield (address at Wakefield reported in the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 6 May).

page 225 note 1 Sir Almeric Fitzroy, Memoirs, 3rd. ed., London 1925, i. 84–5. Fitzroy was clerk to the Privy Council.

page 225 note 2 See their letters in The Times, g and 19 September, 11 October 1902.

page 225 note 3 These M.P.s were all Conservatives but Bowles later went over to the Liberals, and Cripps ended his career as a Labour Cabinet minister in the twenties.

page 225 note 4 See Lathbury's article ‘The Clergy and the Education Act', in The Nineteenth Century, liii (1903), 1–13.

page 226 note 1 Cecil moved an amendment to this effect at the report stage, but as he expected, it obtained little support. Only 57 votes were cast for the amendment: Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, cxv. 401–50.

page 226 note 2 For Cecil's speech on the second reading, see ibid., cvii. 837–50.

page 226 note 3 ‘What we say is that if a child goes into a school, he should go in through the open door and he should come out into the open street and then enter any church that his conscience or his inclination or his conviction may lead him to go in. He ought not to be beguiled, induced or coaxed to enter another': ibid., 1192–1203.

page 226 note 4 D. C. Anderson, letter in The Times, 8 April 1902.

page 226 note 5 The Times, 1 May 1902.

page 227 note 1 Lloyd George delivered himself of the following in a speech to over 500 Liberal delegates at Caxton Hall on 15 October: ‘Priestcraft is the daughter of the horse leech. You cannot leave it with impunity on any part of the body politic … Year by year it creeps more firmly and it is impressed deeper in the national flesh, and unless … the right hand of Liberalism has lost its cunning it will now tear away the unwholesome thing clean from the childhood of the nation and save the people'.

page 227 note 2 The letters were subsequently reprinted in two widely circulated pamphlets, The Fight against the Education Bill: What is at stake and Clericalism in British Politics. So influential were these pamphlets that Mr. Balfour himself replied in a pamphlet of his own: Letters from the Rt. Hon A. J. Balfour, M.P., on the criticisms of an opponent of the Education Bill.

page 227 note 3 Over 100,000 persons attended from all over the West Riding, and the crowd was addressed from five platforms simultaneously: The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 22 September. The comment is that of archdeacon Mackarness of the West Riding in The Times, 1 October.

page 227 note 4 J. Allan Pride, rector of Bridlington: letter in The Times, 7 October.

page 227 note 5 The bishop was speaking at a special diocesan conference on the education question, 7 October.

page 227 note 6 Letter in The Times, 27 September. See also his previous letter: ibid., 13 August.

page 227 note 7 See Nunn's pamphlet The Education Bill Examined (1902) and his letter in The Times, 7 April.

page 228 note 1 The sixteen reasons were as follows:

(1) It subverts all school trust deeds.

(2) It deprives many school managers of their position.

(3) It destroys beyond possibility of recall the voluntary system.

(4) It involves a breach of faith with those who built church schools under that system and who wish to continue under it.

(5) It prepares the way for the destruction of the denominational system.

(6) It covers the country with School Boards under a new name on the model of the Birmingham League.

(7) It creates a new education rate in places which have been free from this rate.

(8) It brings in all the extravagance of the School Boards.

(9) It makes no provision for an equal treatment of their voluntary schools by the new Authorities.

(10) It demands sums from Church Schools for repairs, the exaction of which will close many town schools.

(11) It puts upon the County Councils duties which they canno t adequately perform.

(12) It involves an enormous increase of costly officialdom.

(13) It makes the election of County Councillors an occasion for religious strife.

(14) It gives Nonconformists the cry of ‘a new church rate.'

(15) It arouses the agricultural interest against the Church by imposing such a rate.

(16) It is uncalled, for, since the need of the 3,000 small schools could have been provided for by half the government grant of £900,000 now to be given. The schools in towns could have been provided for, and School Board extravagance. checked, by compelling the Board to pay Voluntary schools a contribution representing the excess of their expenditure per child over the amount intended to be spent by the Act of 1870.

page 228 note 2 See Spence's letter in The Times, 31 March; Mytton's remarks at Welshpool in connexion with the archidiaconal visitation, reported in The Birmingham Daily Post, 15 April; Heneage's letter in The Times, 27 May.

page 228 note 3 Speech at Leeds reported in The Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 19 April.

page 228 note 4 See the editorials in the three journals on 25 March.

page 229 note 1 The London correspondent of the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 3 November.

page 229 note 2 For the debate in committee on the Kenyon-Slaney amendment, see Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, cxiii. 1303–62.

page 229 note 3 The rejection of the clause was moved by Mr. Cripps (Stretford) supported by Cecil. Only 35 members voted with them. Ibid., cxv. 651–728.

page 229 note 4 Fitzroy, Memoirs, i. 115.

page 229 note 5 See his article, ‘The Clergy and the Education Act', in The Nineteenth Century, liii (1903), 1–13.

page 230 note 1 The Times, 13 November. Apart from the Kenyon-Slanley amendment, the concessions objected to were:

(a) The authority given to the managers to appoint teachers without religious tests f i they so desired, regardless of trust deeds.

(b) The provision that the Local Authority would nominate the pupil teachers if there was an excess of applicants.

(c) The obligation to grant the church schools to the Local Authority free of charge on 3 evenings a week.

(d) The obligation laid on the managers, to meet the costs of ‘wear and tear'in the schools. This clause was later struck out in the House of Lords.

page 230 note 2 The Times, 14 November.

page 230 note 3 Ibid., 1 November.

page 230 note 4 The Yorkshire Post, 10 November.

page 230 note 5 The Times, 13 November.

page 230 note 6 Fitzroy, Memoirs, i. 112. The correspondent referred to the Colonel's amendment as the greatest betrayal since the Crucifixion.

page 230 note 7 See Bishop Gore's letter in The Times, 5 November, and supporting letters from Lord Halifax, Riley, and the bishop of Oxford on 11, 12 and 15 November 1902 re-pectively. Hensley Henson, however, a future bishop, then canon of Westminster, attacked the sentiments of Dr. Gore: ibid. 10 November. See also remarks by the bishop of St. Asaph quoted in the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 29 November.

page 230 note 8 Bernard Allen, Sir Robert Morant: a Great Civil Servant, London 1934, 195–6.

page 230 note 9 Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, cxiv. 666.

page 231 note 1 Ibid., cxvi. 599–618., 626–42. The duke of Northumberland's motion to restore the authority ofthe clergyman was lost by 96 votes against 65, with most bishops voting with the minority.

page 231 note 2 An important factor in the situation was that Balfour resigned before the Election, and the Liberal Cabinet, formed before the triumph at the poll, was less radical-and less determined-than the situation required.

page 231 note 3 A recent writer has argued that the future ofNonconformists as a political force was decisively affected by the events of 1906. See Noel J. Richards, "The Education Bill of 1906 and the Decline of Political Nonconformity'in this JOURNAL, xxiii (1972), 49–63.