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‘Standing in the old ways’: historical legitimation of Church reform in the Church of England, c. 1825–65

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. Arthur Burns
R. Arthur Burns*
Affiliation:
King’s College London
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Extract

During the early and mid-nineteenth century the Church of England underwent a wide-ranging series of institutional reforms. These were intended to meet the pastoral challenges of industrial society, acknowledge the changing relationship of Church and State, and answer the more pertinent criticisms of its radical and dissenting antagonists. Particularly during the 1830s, the constitutional adjustments of 1828–32, the accession of a Whig administration, and widening internal divisions appeared to place the Church in a newly perilous position. The reforms were consequently enacted in a highly charged and febrile atmosphere. Each measure was closely scrutinized by concerned and sometimes panic-stricken Anglicans,’ seeking to establish whether it would strengthen the Church or was in fact a manifestation of threatening forces. In such circumstances, the legitimation of reform assumed crucial importance. As ever, the prospective reformer required a legitimation which would appeal to the widest possible constituency. Among allies, it could serve to embolden waverers, doubters, and often the reformer himself. If possible, it should engage the sympathies of potential opponents. It was also essential that the legitimation would not so constrain the reformer that the initiative’s practical effectiveness was blunted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 33: The Church Retrospective , 1997 , pp. 407 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997

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References

1 For a few examples of panic, see Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols (London, 1971), 1, p. 47 Google Scholar.

2 The Duke of Newcastle’s coinage, cheerfully accepted by Blomfield: Hansard, ser. 3, 19, cols 914–18 (19 July 1833).

3 Blomfield, C.J., A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London (London, 1834), pp. 16–17 Google Scholar.

4 Hansard, ser. 3, 55, cols 1138, 1137 (30 July 1840).

5 For the Poor Law, see ibid., 25, col. 598 (28 July 1834). Geoffrey Best characterizes this approach to Church reform as ‘the manifestation, in the ecclesiastical sphere, of the general reforming spirit of the age, professional, pious, and (in no precise philosophical sense) utilitarian’: Best, G. F. A., Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne’s Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the Church of England (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 399–400 Google Scholar.

6 Best, Temporal Pillars, p. 347. See also Brose, Olive J., Church and Parliament: The Reshaping of the Church of England, 1828–1860 (Stanford, Calif., and London, 1959), p. 208 Google Scholar; Thompson, Kenneth A, Bureaucracy and Church Reform: The Organizational Response of the Church of England to Social Change, 1800–1965 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 14, 17 Google Scholar.

7 Best, Temporal Pillars, pp. 340, 280, 275.

8 Lord Liverpool to Bishop Tomline, 24 Jan. 1821, quoted ibid., p. 177.

9 For example, justifying the redistribution of Church property: Hansard, ser. 3, 55, cols 1138–9 (30 July 1840).

10 For the early stages of the Revival, see R. Arthur Burns, ‘A Hanoverian legacy? Diocesan reform in the Church of England, c.1800-1833’, in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor, eds, The Church of England, C.1689-C.1833: from Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 265–82; this supplies some corrections to the fuller account in idem, ‘The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England, c. 1825–1865’ (Oxford University D.Phil, thesis, 1990).

11 The revival of both rural deans and ruridecanal chapters is often misdated and misunderstood. For a full and more accurate account, see Burns, ‘Diocesan Revival’, ch. 4, with corrections in idem, ‘Hanoverian legacy?’, pp. 267–70.

12 Ecclesiastic and Theologian, 1 (1849), p. 39.

13 See, for example, Hare, J. C., Privileges Imply Duties: A Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lewes (London, 1842), pp. 43–54 Google Scholar; Sinclair, J., On Divisions in the Church (London, 1846), p. 56 Google Scholar.

14 Quoted in Dansey, William, A Letter to the Archdeacon of Sarum, on Ruri-Decanal Chapters (London, 1840), p. 44 Google Scholar.

15 Dansey, William, Horae decanicae rurales, 2 vols (London, 1835)Google Scholar.

16 Priaulx, John, A Brief Account of the Nature, Use and End of the Office of Dean Rural, Addressed to the Clergy of the Deanery of Chalke, AD 1666–7, ed. Dansey, W. (London, 1832)Google Scholar.

17 Quotations from preface to Dansey, Horae decanicae rurales, 1, pp. v-xxi.

18 British Critic, 19 (1836), p. 274.

19 For example, Edwards, D. L., Christian England: From the Eighteenth Century to the First World War (London, 1984), p. 201 Google Scholar; Russell, A. J., The Clerical Profession (London, 1980), p. 44 Google Scholar.

20 Gentleman’s Magazine, ns 5 (1836), p. 171. For examples of others employing Dansey, see Goddard, Charles, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconries of Lincoln and Stow (London, 1836), p. iv Google Scholar, praising its ‘solid ecclesiastical and antiquarian views’; Hare, J. C., The Better Prospects of the Church, 2nd edn (London, 1840), pp. 80–2 Google Scholar; Stonehouse, W. B., The Office of Deans Rural (London, 1841)Google Scholar.

21 For example, Storer, J., A Plan of Reformation for the Church of England (London, 1833), p. 24 Google Scholar; Robinson, H., Church Reform on Christian Principles (London, 1833)Google Scholar; Willis, W. D., Suggestions for the Regulation of Church Patronage, Preferment, &c. &c, in a Letter to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1835)Google Scholar.

22 See Nockles, Peter B., The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

23 For two important treatments of the relationship of the Tractarians to the ecclesiastical past, see Thomas, Stephen, Newman and Heresy: The Anglican Years (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar, and in particular Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, esp. ch. 2.

24 Storer, Plan of Reformation, p. 22.

25 See Burns, ‘Diocesan Revival’, p. 264, and more generally, ch. 9.

26 George Trevor, Diocesan Synods (London, 1851), p. vi.

27 Pound, William, The Papal Aggression upon the Church of England to be Met and Successfully Repelled by the Revival of Diocesan Synods (London, 1852), p. 8 Google Scholar. The classic discussion of the ‘Norman Yoke’ is Hill, Christopher, ‘The Norman yoke’, in Saville, John, ed., Democracy and the Labour Movement: Essays for Dona Ton (London, 1954), pp. 11–66 Google Scholar. However, historians are increasingly acknowledging its persistence long into the nineteenth century: see Biagini, Eugenio F., Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 56 Google Scholar. In contrast, such references to the ancient constitution destroyed by the Norman Conquest seem to have disappeared from high political discourse, making their appearance in this context, and in the mouths of Tory Churchmen, all the more striking. See Burrow, J. W., A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), p. 102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Hare, Better Prospects, pp. 80–2; Kempthorne, J., The Church’s Self-Regulating Privilege, a National Safeguard in Respect of Real Church Reform (London, 1835)Google Scholar.

29 See Peter B. Nockles, ‘Church parties in the pre-Tractarian Church of England, 1750–1833: the “Orthodox” – some problems of definition and identity’, in Walsh et al., eds, Church of England, pp. 334–59.

30 The Official Report of the Church Congress, held at Portsmouth,… 1885 (London, 1885), p. 479; W. Emery, Church Union and Progress (Cambridge, 1867), p. 14.

31 See Thompson, Bureaucracy and Church Reform, pp. 48–9; Burns, ‘Hanoverian legacy?’, pp. 281–2.

32 As the climate for parliamentary Church reform became less hostile, historical legitimation similarly came to play a larger part in the justification of Commission reforms, which also increasingly took account of the effects of the Diocesan Revival.

33 Blomfield, Charge, pp. 64–5.

34 See the prominence of the Church in John Wade, The Extraordinary Black Book (London, 1832; repr. Shannon, 1971). For a reassessment with implications for the study of Church reform, see Philip Harling, ‘Rethinking “Old Corruption”’, P&P, 147 (May 1995), pp. 127–58.