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The Oxford Movement in late-nineteenth-century retrospect: R. W. Church, J. H. Rigg, and Walter Walsh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Martin Wellings
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Extract

Although over 160 years have passed since John Keble’s Assize sermon on National Apostasy, the study of the Oxford Movement continues to absorb the attention of historians. Within the last decade, for example, two major biographies of Newman have appeared, together with a careful examination of the relationship between Tractarianism and the Anglican High Church tradition. In an essay on ‘The Oxford Movement and its reminiscencers’, Owen Chadwick commented concerning the historiography of Tractarianism that ‘too many have made it an industry’: the industry, however, still seems to be productive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 33: The Church Retrospective , 1997 , pp. 501 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997

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References

1 Ker, Ian, John Henry Newman. A Biography (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Gilley, Sheridan, Newman and his Age (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Nockles, P. B., The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Chadwick, Owen, ‘The Oxford Movement and its reminiscencers’, in The Spirit of the Oxford Movement. Tractarian Essays (Cambridge, 1990), p. 152.Google Scholar

3 Chadwick, ‘Oxford Movement’, pp. 136–45.

4 Turner, J. M., Conflict and Reconciliation (London, 1985), pp. 153–67 Google Scholar; Rowell, G., The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

5 Ibid., chs 5 and 6; Chadwick, O., The Victorian Church, 2 vols, 2nd edn (London, 1972), 2, pp. 308–19 Google Scholar; Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, 4 vols (London, 1906), 1, p. 296; 2, pp. 341–73.

6 On Protestant opposition to ritualism, M. Wellings, ‘Some aspects of late nineteenth century Anglican Evangelicalism’ (Oxford University D.Phil, thesis, 1989), chs 2 and 3; on ritual prosecutions, James Bentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain. The Attempt to Legislate for Belief (Oxford, 1978), chs 3 and 5. Ian Farley, ‘J. C. Ryle – episcopal evangelist. A study in late Victorian Evangelicalism’ (Durham University Ph.D. thesis, 1988), ch. 6, presents a different view of the Bell Cox case. Rovvell, Vision Glorious, pp. 153–7, describes the Lincoln case.

7 Lockhart, J. G., Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax, 2 vols (London, 1936), 2, pp. 41–91.Google Scholar

8 Turner, Conflict and Reconciliation, pp. 159–64; Wellings, ‘Some aspects’, pp. 87–95. One example of Wesleyan sensitivity was opposition to the use of Gace’s Catechism in Church schools: The Times (London), 28 Nov. 1895, p. 9, and subsequent correspondence.

9 Machin, G. I. T., “The last Victorian anti-ritualist campaign, 1895–1906’, Victorian Studies, 25 (1982), pp. 277–302.Google Scholar

10 For biographical information on Dean Church, see Church, Mary C., ed., Life and Letters of Dean Church (London, 1895)Google Scholar; Lathbury, D. C., Dean Church (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Donaldson, A. B., Richard William Church (London, 1905)Google Scholar; DNB Supplement (Oxford, 1901), pp. 431–4.

11 Best, Geoffrey, ‘R. W. Church and the Oxford Movement’, in his edition of The Oxford Movement. Twelve Years. 1833–45 (Chicago, 1970), p. xi.Google Scholar

12 Church, Life and Letters, p. 13.

13 Ibid., p. 14.

14 Oxford, Pusey House, Church MSS, misc. letters, Church to E. Hawkins, 23 March 1841, and Hawkins to Church, 29 March and 2 June 1841.

15 Ibid., Church to Greenhill, ? Feb. 1845; Record (London), 13 March 1891, p. 248.

16 Church, Life and Letters, pp. 59, 321–2.

17 Oxford, Pusey House, Church MSS, working papers for The Oxford Movement, dated between Sept. 1884 and May 1886.

18 Chadwick, ‘Oxford Movement’, pp. 139–44; Best, ‘R. W. Church’, p. xix.

19 Chadwick, ‘Oxford Movement’, pp. 143–5.

20 R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement. Twelve Years. 1833–45, p. vi. This, and all subsequent quotations from The Oxford Movement, are taken from the 1900 reprint of the 3rd edn (London, 1892).

21 Ibid., pp. ix, 32, 130–2; Best, ‘R. W. Church’, pp. xv-vi and xix-xxi.

22 For such a critique, see ibid., pp. xvi-xxxi; Chadwick, ‘Oxford Movement’, pp. 145–53; Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 6–7.

23 Record, 13 March 1891, p. 248.

24 Church, Oxford Movement, p. 247. Compare pp. 162 and 320–4 on Hampden. Chapter 9 consistently suggests that Hampden was theologically out of his depth.

25 Ibid., pp. 9–12 and 12–16. Contrast Nockles on the High Church school, and Best, ‘R. W. Church’, pp. xxviii-ix on the Evangelicals. The complex relationship between Evangelical and Tractarian influences on individuals has been studied by David Newsome in The Parting of Friends (London, 1966).

26 Church, Life and Letters, pp. 244ff., 321–2; Church, Oxford Movement, pp. ix, 397; Oxford, Pusey House, Church MSS, misc. letters, Church to J. B. Lightfoot, 4 May 1881 (on S. F. Green) and Church to E. W. Benson, 26 May 1887 (on Bell Cox).

27 Chadwick, ‘Oxford Movement’, p. 153. The Chicago edition of 1970 placed The Oxford Movement in a series of ‘Classics of British Historical Literature’, justifying the inclusion on pp. vii-ix.

28 Rigg, J. H., Oxford High Anglicanism and its Chief Leaders (London, 1895), pp. 87, 91 93–4, 101–2, 104–8.Google Scholar

29 The fullest biography of Rigg is Telford, J., The Life of James Harrison Rigg, D.D., 1821–1909 (London, 1909)Google Scholar. There is also an entry in DNB Supplement, pp. 199–200, and a recent pamphlet by David Carter, James H. Rigg (Peterborough, 1994).

30 Church Quarterly Review, 41 (1896), pp. 361–4, drew mocking attention to Rigg’s lack of first-hand knowledge of Oxford ways and terminology.

31 The Times, 28 Oct. 1895, p. 10; 29 Oct. 1895, p. 4; 2 Nov. 1895, p. 11; 5 Nov. 1895, p. 11; 7 Nov. 1895, p. 14; 11 Nov. 1895, p. 14; 13 Nov. 1895, p. 7; 15 Nov. 1895, p. 3.

32 Guardian (London), 11 March 1895, p. 395.

33 Rigg, Oxford High Anglicanism, pp. v-vii.

34 Turner, Conflict and Reconciliation, pp. 159–65; Gordon S. Wakefield, ‘“A mystical substitute for the glorious gospel”? A Methodist critique of Tractarianism’, in G. Rowell, ed., Tradition Renewed: the Oxford Movement Conference Papers (London, 1986), pp. 192–6; M. Selen, The Oxford Movement and Wesleyan Methodism in England 1833–82: a Study in Religious Conflict (Lund, 1992).

35 Rigg, Oxford High Anglicanism, pp. 90, 94, 100, 298.

36 Ibid., pp. 298–9.

37 Ibid., pp. 7, 9, 57–8, 62, 207.

38 Ibid., pp. 31–2, 299. On the less scrupulous Protestants, see M. Wellings, ‘The first Protestant martyr of the twentieth century: the life and significance of John Kensit (1853-1902)’, SCH, 30 (1993), p. 355.

39 ‘Is Ritualism loyal to the Church of England?’ Report of a Lecture and Discussion before Members of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1879), p. 23.

40 Surveys of Walsh’s career may be found in The English Churchman and St James’s Chronicle (London), 29 Feb. 1912, p. 139; The Protestant Observer (London), April 1912, pp. 57–62; Who was Who 1897–1915 (London, 1920), pp. 543–4. W. L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England. Mr Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia, Mo., 1982), makes no mention of Walsh. Henson’s reference to the ‘Protestant underworld’ may be found in his Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, 2 vols (London, 1943), 2, p. 147.

41 English Churchman, 29 Feb. 1912, p. 139.

42 W. Walsh, The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, p. 182 and chs 9 and 10. This, and all subsequent references, are taken from the popular edition of 1899 (London).

43 Ibid., p. 237.

44 Ibid., pp. 1–6.

45 Compare Berney, T., An Address presented to … Parliament (London, 1895)Google Scholar; Sangar, J. M., England’s Privilege and Curse (London, 1897)Google Scholar.

46 Lambeth Palace Library, Church Society MSS, Church Association Council minutes, 11, p. 66 (17 June 1897).

47 Church Times (London), 9 Sept. 1898, p. 256.

48 Ibid., 3 Dec. 1897, p. 663; Guardian (London), 1 Dec. 1897, p. 1920.

49 Wellings, ‘The first Protestant martyr’, pp. 351–2; Alan T. L. Wilson, “The authority of church and party among London Anglo-Catholics, 1880–1914, with special reference to the Church crisis of 1898–1904’ (Oxford University D.Phil. thesis, 1988), pp. 42–71; Gardiner, A. G., The Life of Sir William Harcourt, 2 vols (London, 1923), 2, pp. 482–7.Google Scholar

50 Henson, H. H., Cui Bono? An Open Letter to Lord Halifax on the Present Crisis in the Church of England (London, 1898), p. 32 Google Scholar. Compare use of the Secret History by Harcourt and Samuel Smith: Speeches of Samuel Smith, Esq., M.P., and the Rt. Hon. Sir William Harcourt, M.P., in the House of Commons … and an Address by Samuel Smith … on Ritualism and Elementary Education (London, 1898), pp. 10, 40; Sir William Harcourt, The Crisis in the Church, 3rd edn (London, 1899), pp. 17, 66.

51 Church Times, 9 Sept. 1898, p. 256; 16 Sept. 1898, pp. 284–5; 23 Sept. 1898, p. 330. The articles were reprinted in pamphlet form under the title A Protestant Mare’s Nest.

52 Rigg, , Oxford High Anglicanism, 2nd edn (London, 1899), pp. vii-xii, 371–404 Google Scholar. Stronger conspiracy references may be found, for instance, on pp. 43, 113, 133, 201, and 329.

53 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 3–6.

54 Walsh’s last book, published posthumously in 1912, was England’s Fight with the Papacy.

55 Church Times, 16 Sept. 1898, p. 285.