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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The title of this paper was inspired by a piece of ecclesiastical doggerel published in the Hensal-Cum-Heck Church Monthly for November 1895:
It is not the only ritualist concept of priestly vocation; in a somewhat earlier tract on confession priests are described as ‘the spiritual police of Almighty God; they must hunt out, track, pursue, and arraign sinners, as the police pursue and apprehend thieves and rascals’. Although both concepts are to be found elsewhere in ritualist literature, and both would have been accepted by many ritualist priests as not being mutually exclusive, it would seem that the concept of the priest as ‘friend’ was the dominant one.
1 Both quotations will be found in Walsh, W., Secret History of the Oxford Movement (London 1899) p 388.Google Scholar
2 See especially Clark, G. S. R.Kitson, Churchmen and the Condition of England (London 1973).Google Scholar
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4 Yates, [W. N.], [‘Leeds and the Oxford Movement’], Thoresby Society Publications 55 (Lceds 1975) pp 18, 27.Google Scholar
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6 St Silas, Hull, Parish Paper, July 1894.
7 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, Minutes of Evidence (London 1906) 3, p 99.Google Scholar
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18 Yates pp 35-6, 57-8. Greenwell himself published a pamphlet entitled Priesthood, Confession and Absolution (Leeds C1874).
19 Dolling, R. R., Ten Yeats in A Portsmouth Slum (London 1896) p 142.Google Scholar
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21 Hull Daily Mail, 4 November 1897.
