The nature of conservatism as an ideology, rather than an unreflective tradition of practice, and as a historical creation, rather than an unchanging doctrine, has become increasingly apparent in recent scholarship. A notable example in both respects is British conservatism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After 1885, conservatism was presented to the newly enfranchised masses in terms of ideas as much as policies and party history, and its intellectual and philosophical contours became sharper, particularly through a greater readiness among conservative elites to adopt Edmund Burke as the ‘founder’ of their creed. In this articulation of conservatism, the Church of England featured prominently. Yet how and why it did so remain unclear. The personal influence of leading Conservative statesmen and churchmen such as the third marquess of Salisbury is one factor; the Liberals’ increasing alignment with nonconformity – projected as ‘sectarian’ by Conservatives, in contrast with the inclusivity of the Church4 – is another. But the development of conservative thought within the Church itself was also important.

This essay contributes to understandings of British conservatism by focusing on its ecclesiastical variety from the 1900s to the 1930s, when the Church’s constitutional status was periodically a matter of political and inter-denominational conflict. It does so by examination of two prominent conservatives within the Church, Herbert Hensley Henson (1863–1947) and Lord Hugh Cecil (1869–1956). Other figures might have been included: for example W. R. Inge and Arthur Headlam, among the clergy; and the numerous lay figures who were influential in the Conservative Party, in the lay houses of the convocations, the Representative Church Council (1904–19) and the National Church Assembly (from 1920), and in various Church defence organizations. However, Henson and Cecil, as unusually articulate and learned individuals who reached a broad public, expressed in distinctive forms more widely held perspectives within the Church.

Henson was an outstanding clergyman who became bishop first of Hereford and then of Durham, but with strong political beliefs nonetheless. If, as Edward Norman maintains, he refused to associate himself with any political party, this was only in public; his support for the Conservative Party in his private journal is undisguised. Cecil was a leading lay member of Church bodies and, as a Conservative MP, an original member of the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee created in 1920 to advise parliament on the appropriateness of new legislation for the Church.