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The First Protestant Martyr of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Significance of John Kensit (1853-1902)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Martin Wellings
Martin Wellings*
Affiliation:
Buckingham, Bicester, and Brackley Methodist Circuit
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Extract

On Thursday 25 September 1902 Liverpool’s endemic sectarian violence claimed perhaps its most notorious victim. John Kensit, founder of the Protestant Truth Society and instigator of the Kensit Crusade against ritualism in the Church of England, was attacked by a Roman Catholic crowd on his way from Birkenhead to Liverpool. An iron file was thrown, injuring the Protestant orator, and Kensit was taken to Liverpool Royal Infirmary. Although he began to recover, early in October septic pneumonia and meningitis developed, and on Wednesday 8 October, in the words of Kensit’s biographer, ‘his purified spirit, washed in the precious blood of the immaculate Lamb, was released from its earthly prison.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies , 1993 , pp. 347 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1993

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References

1 Wilcox, J. C., Kemil, Reformer and Martyr. A Popular Life (London, 1903), pp. 67–77 Google Scholar; The Times, 26 Sept. 1902, p. 4; 9 Oct. 1902, pp. 7, 9.

2 LaTrobe-Bateman, M., Memories Grave and Gay of William Fairbairn LaTrobe-Bateman (London, 1927), pp. 79—81 Google Scholar; Brandreth, H. R. T., Dr Lee of Lambeth (London, 1951), p. 66 Google Scholar; Creighton, L., Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton (London, 1904), 2, pp. 288–315 Google Scholar; Churchman’s Magazine [hereafter CM] (London), Sept. 1898, p. 257. The distinctive signature ‘Yours for the Truth’ first appeared in CM in Sept. 1893, p. 259.

3 Hughes, A., The Rivers of the Flood (London, 1961), plate opposite p. 30 Google Scholar; Mackenzie, C., My Life and Times (London, 1963), 2, p. 219.Google Scholar

4 DNB Supplement, pp. 389–90; London, Kensit Memorial Bible College, scrapbook of cuttings.

5 English Churchman [hereaftet EC] (London), 16 Oct. 1902, pp. 682–3; The Times, 13 Oct. 1902, p. 14.

6 Ibid., 9–12 Dec. 1902; Campbell, J., F. E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead (London, 1983), pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

7 Machin, G. I. T., ‘The last Victorian anti-ritualist campaign, 1895–1906’, Victorian Studies, 25 (1982), pp. 277–302 Google Scholar; Wellings, M., ‘Some aspects of late nineteenth century Anglican Evangelicalism’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1989), chs 2, 3, and 7.Google Scholar

8 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (London, 1906), 2, p. 364; Russell, G. W. E., The Household of Faith (London, 1902), p. 402.Google Scholar

9 Lockhart, J. G., Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax (London, 1936), 2, pp. 136–7 Google Scholar. Lockhart misdates this letter 9 Feb. 1902, i.e., eight months before Kensit’s death.

10 Rock (London), 10 and 17 Oct. 1902; EC, 9 and 16 Oct. 1902; CM, Nov. 1902.

11 EC, 9 Oct. 1902, p. 661; 16 Oct. 1902, pp. 680, 684; CM, Nov. 1902, pp. 328, 330.

12 Wilcox, J. C., Contending for the Faith (London, 1989), pp. 68, 70 Google Scholar.

13 Rock, 28 Nov. 1902, p. 1; [hereafter R] (London), 13 Oct. 1905, p. 951.

14 Brief accounts of Kensit’s life may be found in DNB Supplement, pp. 389–90, CM, Dec. 1892, PP. 353–6 and Sept. 1898, pp. 257–8, EC, 9 Oct. 1902, p. 672, and Waller, P.J., Democracy and Sectarianism. A Political and Social History of Liverpool, 1868–1939. (Liverpool, 1981), pp. 191—3 Google Scholar.

15 The incumbent of St Lawrence Jewry was Benjamin Morgan Cowie, later Dean of Manchester: DNB, 22, pp. 498–9.

16 Josiah Pratt the younger, son of a prominent Evangelical (DNB, 16, pp. 293–4), published an edition of Foxe in the mid-nineteenth century. Maguire was a prolific writer and controversalist: DNB, 12, p. 776.

17 Church Association Monthly Intelligencer (London), July 1883, pp. 180–2.

18 Truth (London), 29 Aug. 1889, p. 381.

19 CM, Jan. 1890, p. vii.

20 Ibid., Aug. 1893; R, 30 Nov. 1894, p. 1181; CM, April 1894.

21 Kensit’s protest may have been inspired by S. D. Brownjohn’s protest at Temple’s confirmation in Dec. 1896. See R, 1 Jan. 1897, pp. 1, 20; 22 Jan. 1897, pp. 77, 89; CM, April 1897, pp. 107–8; Aug. 1897, p. 232; Brandreth, Dr Lee of Lambeth, p. 66; Wilcox, Kensit, pp. 33–6.

22 The controversy is described in detail in CM. See also Creighton, , Mandell Creighton, 2, pp. 288–91 Google Scholar; Wilson, Alan T. L., ‘The authority of church and parry among London AngloCatholics, 1880–1914, with special reference to the Church crisis of 1898–1904’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1988), pp. 50–1 Google Scholar; R, 21 Jan. 1898, pp. 55–6; 28 Jan. 1898, pp. 79, 89; 4 Feb. 1898, p. 115; 18 Feb. 1898, pp. 149, 153: 26 May 1899, p. 530.

23 Mackenzie, Life and Times, 2, p. 219; R, 22 April 1898, p. 368; Wilson, ‘Church and party’, p. 61.

24 See, e.g., The Times, 25 July 1898, p. 12; 26 July 1898, p. 10; 4 Aug. 1898, p. 12; CM, Aug. 1898, pp. 242–3; Chronicle of Convocation (London), 14 Vict. 1898, sess. 38, pp. 206–29.

25 Wilcox, Kensit, passim; R, 19 April 1901, p. 387; 24 Jan. 1902, p. 79; Machin,‘Anti-ritualist campaign’, p. 296.

26 R, 3 Feb. 1899, pp. 131–3; CM, March 1899, pp. 68–71. The minutes of the Church Association council imply that attempts were being made to control Kensit.

27 Best, G. F. A., ‘Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain’, in Robson, R., ed., Ideal and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, 1967), pp. 115–42 Google Scholar; Wolffe, John, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829–60 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, chs 1 and 4 Arnstein, W. L., Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England. Mr Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia, Missouri, 1982).Google Scholar

28 Rowell, G., The Vision Glorious. Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism (Oxford, 1983), chs 5 and 6Google Scholar; Bentley, James, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain. The Attempt to Legislatefor Belief (Oxford, 1978), ch. 2.Google Scholar

29 Wellings, M., ‘Some aspects’Google Scholar, ch. 2, and ‘Anglo-Catholicism, the “crisis in the Church” and the Cavalier case of 1899’, JEH, 42 (1991), p. 251.

30 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, passim.

31 R, 27 Aug. 1897, p. 866.

32 Bentley, Ritualism and Politics, chs 4 and 5, describes the drawbacks of the Public Worship Regulation Act. On ‘Protestantism before party polities’, see Machin, G. I. T., Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1869–1921 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 243–73, 293–5 Google Scholar. The phrase’lawlessness in the National Church’ was used by Sir William Harcourt in his letters to The Times.

33 Walsh, W., Secret History of the Oxford Movement, pop. edn (London, 1899), p. 27 Google Scholar; R, 16 March 1900, p. 243, CM, April 1900, p. 109.

34 Truth, 15 Aug. 1889, p. 292; 29 Aug. 1889, p. 382; 12 Sept. 1889, p. 454; 23 May 1901, pp. 1307–9; Bristow, E. J., Vice and Vigilance. Purity Movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin, 1977), pp. 207–8 Google Scholar; Britten, James, A Prominent Protestant [Mr John Kensit) (London, 1898), pp. 3–5 Google Scholar.

35 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 186, 281; Truth, 26 Sept. 1889, p. 553; 11 Jan. 1894, p. 71; 21 Feb. 1895, p. 457.

36 Wilcox, Kensit, pp. 24–7.

37 Truth, 5 Dec. 1889, p. 1040; London, Lambeth Palace Library, Church Society MSS, Church Association council minutes, vol. 11, pp. 198 (20 Oct. 1898) and 228 (5 Jan. 1899).

38 R, 21 Dec. 1900, p. 1223; 28 Nov. 1902, p. 1143; CM, Nov. 1902, p. 344; EC, 23 Oct. 1902, p. 696; R, 13 Oct. 1905, p. 951; Wellings,‘Some aspects’, p. 128.

39 A. Bentley, The transformation of the Evangelical parry in the Church of England in the later nineteenth century’ (Durham Ph.D. thesis, 1971), ch. 3; Wellings, ‘Some aspects’, pp. 163–8.

40 Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic, pp. 88–107; Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, pp. 166–206.

41 CM, 1897, editor’s introduction to the annual volume.

42 EC, 9 Oct. 1902, p. 661; Wilcox, Kensil, pp. 59–60;Church Assocn council minutes, vol. 11, p. 132 (18 Apr. 1898).

43 The Times, 2 Aug. 1898, p. 12; R, 28 Jan. 1898, p. 89; 12 Dec. 1902, p. 1180; Lewis, H., ‘The present condition of the Evangelicals’, Nineteenth Century and After, 19-20 (1907), p. 232.Google Scholar

44 Wilcox, Kensit, p. 62.

45 Pickering, W. S. F., Anglo-Calholicsm: A Study in Religious Ambiguity (London, 1989), ch. 2.Google Scholar

46 Wellings, ‘Cavalier case’, pp. 256–7; ‘Some aspects’, pp. 193–4; Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, pp. 333, 347, 349.

47 EC, 9 Oct. 1902, p. 672.

48 Since 1977 the Kensit Memorial Bible College has housed the London Theological Seminary, founded by Marryn Lloyd-Jones. The ship’s boiler file which brought about Kensit’s death was retained after the McKeever trial by F. E. Smith, presented to the P.T.S. by the Dowager Countess of Birkenhead, and is now kept in a glass case in the college library.

49 The phrase is Hensley Henson’s: Retrospect of an Unimportant Life (London, 1943), 2, p. 147.