Close to the centre of the Maltese capital of Valletta there stands an imposing neoclassical church with an Ionic portico of six columns and a 210-foot tower crowned with a spire. Presenting a striking contrast with the large dome of the neighbouring Carmelite Church (rebuilt after the Second World War and completed in 1981), this tower occupies a prominent position on the city's skyline. Above the portico of the church is written in Latin: ‘Queen Adelaide with a grateful heart dedicated this Collegiate Church to Almighty God 1844’.Footnote ¹ Consecrated to St Paul, this Anglican pro-cathedral has been more commonly known as ‘Queen Adelaide's Church’, after its royal benefactress. Why did King William IV's widow make such a bold statement of Anglicanism in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic colony? The question has never been adequately answered. The standard explanation, expressed at length by Arthur Bonnici and Alan Keighley, is that Adelaide was simply providing for the needs of the English Protestant population of the island.Footnote ² Yet contemporary observers saw the building of the church in more complex terms. As Robin Gill has noted in passing, there existed a definite perception that St Paul's was not simply an expatriate church, but also a means of propagating Protestantism.Footnote ³

This perception was shared by two religious groups with widely divergent perspectives: evangelicals and Roman Catholics. The evangelical Malta Times stated after the consecration of St Paul's: ‘it may be said that the public worship of the Church of England was never, with any good effects, celebrated in Malta until the 1st of November, 1844, from which day we hope we may date the rapid progress of the true faith in that island’.Footnote ⁴ Meanwhile, the Catholic periodical The Tablet complained that the Anglican bishop of Gibraltar had offended the Maltese by giving St Paul's the same dedication as the principal Catholic church in Valletta, and that ‘the observant Maltese remark that his lordship. . . devotes his thoughts and time very particularly to laying schemes for proselytising themselves’.Footnote ⁵

To what extent were such perceptions grounded in fact? This question relates to the wider historical debate about the extent to which Anglicans in general had a proselytizing mission in the period of the British Empire's expansion. Investigation affords important insights into the rationale, means and consequences of Anglican extension in an era of governmental ambivalence concerning support for religious exertion in the colonies. Furthermore, the building project's largely high church origin draws attention to the ways in which Anglican extension had alternative modes to the evangelical archetypes typified by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the nondenominational British and Foreign Bible Society. These societies have generally been the focus of previous assessments of missionary activity in Malta. In Imperial Meridian, Christopher Bayly related Anglican missionary efforts to ‘a growth of evangelical ideas within the established churches’, arguing that a ‘secondary aim’ of evangelical missions was the conversion of Catholic and Orthodox Christians to Protestantism, with ‘particular attention . . . paid to Malta and the eastern Mediterranean’.Footnote ⁶

More recent studies have broadened our understanding of Anglicans’ imperial exploits. According to Rowan Strong, there was a consistent desire on the part of Anglicans, both evangelical and non-evangelical, to proselytize in the colonies, exemplified by the activities of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the creation of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund.Footnote ⁷ Hilary Carey has argued that churches were involved in all stages of colonization, and that the Church of England's ‘orthodox mainstream’ took a renewed interest in colonial endeavours from the 1830s.Footnote ⁸ Joseph Hardwick has shown how the Colonial Bishoprics Fund was ‘overwhelmingly associated with high churchmen and high church ecclesiology’.Footnote ⁹ Yet Malta, where debates concerning Anglican missionary activity and episcopacy were strikingly evident, has not yet been the object of any sustained enquiry. Historians have displayed a tendency to focus on settler colonies, while discussions of the place of Roman Catholicism in the British Empire have mostly revolved around Ireland and its diaspora.Footnote ¹⁰ Additionally, the role of royal patronage in promoting Anglicanism abroad has received little attention.Footnote ¹¹ This article aims to address these lacunae, and draws upon a wide range of neglected sources in London, Cambridge and Malta.

British sovereignty over Malta had been confirmed by the Treaty of Paris of 1814, since which time there had been a strong understanding that the British government would leave the rights and privileges of the Roman Catholic Church in Malta undisturbed. The support of the Maltese Catholic clergy had been of vital assistance in Britain's capture of the island from Napoleonic France in 1800 and in sustaining the subsequent occupation. Hence there was a firm desire on the part of the colonial authorities to avoid antagonizing the local clergy and the religious sensibilities of the Maltese.Footnote ¹² Catholic bishops were accorded military honours by the British soldiers stationed in Malta, who also fired salutes and furnished guards of honour for Catholic feast days.Footnote ¹³ This attracted considerable Protestant censure, but an even greater focus of complaint was the lack of a proper Anglican place of worship. Church of England services were held in a dingy vault, formerly a kitchen, in the governor's palace, which could barely accommodate colonial functionaries, let alone the wider English community.Footnote ¹⁴

From the mid-1820s, a steady stream of complaints regarding this situation was articulated. In January 1826, John Cleugh, the government chaplain in Malta, wrote to Sir Frederick Bouverie, chief secretary to the government, that ‘the respectability of our character as a nation, (to say nothing of the interest of our religion) is materially injured by the inadequacy & meanness of the present chamber; in a country where so much consequence is attached to externals’. Cleugh went on to state that Protestants desired ‘an edifice that shall correspond with their important rank in the Island’.Footnote ¹⁵ The following month, Lord Hastings, the governor of Malta, wrote to the bishop of London, William Howley, of ‘how desirable it would be to exhibit to the Maltese a more dignified stile of attention to the Duties of our Communion’.Footnote ¹⁶ However, the position had not changed by 1829, when John Le Mesurier, chaplain to the forces in Malta, wrote to the new bishop of London, Charles Blomfield, expressing the hope that the established Church in Malta would be placed on ‘that respectable & efficient footing which even in a political view our national character demands’. He further remarked:

Referring to Anglican difficulties in other parts of the Mediterranean, Le Mesurier suggested the remedy of ‘an Ecclesiastical head of talent & rank appointed to superintend & on the spot the concerns of our Mediterranean Church’.Footnote ¹⁷ Thus, by 1830, a strong argument for extending Anglicanism in Malta had taken shape, and had been brought to the attention of those in influential quarters. Its main premises were the importance of established religion to the national character, the necessity of an architectural manifestation of this and the potential for Malta to become an active focal point for an enlarged sphere of Anglican activity in the Mediterranean. Such a line of thought was made possible by Britain's naval dominance of the region and its rule of the Ionian Islands, which placed Malta at the centre of an emergent British Mediterranean empire stretching from Gibraltar to Kythira.Footnote ¹⁸

The case was reiterated in extended fashion around 1835, in a pamphlet by the high church Winchester prebendary George Nott.Footnote ¹⁹ Nott was frequently resident in Italy, and his account of the state of Anglicanism in Malta suggests a detailed knowledge of local conditions, as well as an acquaintance with the views of Cleugh and Le Mesurier. He argued that the Maltese would not ‘take umbrage at the English Government should they build a Church . . . for the sake of placing religious service among the English at Malta, on a footing of respectability similar to that on which their own is placed’.Footnote ²⁰ On the contrary, the Maltese would see Anglicanism in a more favourable light if its worship were conducted in consecrated buildings.Footnote ²¹ The British Government's obligation to maintain Roman Catholicism among the Maltese did not require it to allow Anglicanism ‘to remain in a state that tends to make it contemptible in their sight’.Footnote ²² If Malta were better provided with Anglican ministry, ‘numerous would be the advantages we should gain, in a civil and political, as well as in a religious point of view’.Footnote ²³ The Anglican clergy would inculcate spiritual and political orthodoxy, while a new church ‘would facilitate the attendance not of the British only, but of various believers, of the Greek and other Christian communions, of whom there are a large number at Malta’.Footnote ²⁴ Moreover, a ‘superintending Minister’ could be appointed to oversee all Mediterranean Anglican congregations.Footnote ²⁵ ‘If a free and brotherly intercommunion between all these congregations were effected’, Nott asked, ‘what means could be devised better adapted for the diffusion of Christian Knowledge, and the free circulation of the Scriptures, along the shores of the Mediterranean?’ Accordingly, ‘a more regular direction might be given to the exertions of the properly appointed Church Missionaries sent from England’.Footnote ²⁶ Malta, in Nott's scheme, would be an important base for Anglican missionary activity.Footnote ²⁷ Additionally, he believed that Anglican extension was emphatically justified by Malta's status as ‘an integral part of the British empire, and one which an approaching crisis may prove to be . . . indispensable towards the maintenance of our national greatness, and independence’.Footnote ²⁸

It seems that, indirectly, Nott's pamphlet finally accomplished the building of an Anglican church in Malta. A copy of it was transmitted to the Foreign Translation Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), for whom Nott had worked on an Italian translation of the Book of Common Prayer.Footnote ²⁹ More importantly, it appears to have found its way into the hands of Queen Adelaide, whose support for a variety of Anglican causes was generous and constant.Footnote ³⁰ In widowhood, Adelaide aligned herself closely with the high church party within the Church of England, which dominated the SPCK increasingly and had a powerful advocate in William Howley, now archbishop of Canterbury and the society's president.Footnote ³¹ During a stay in Madeira in 1848, Adelaide was to take up the cause of the British chaplain there, Richard Lowe, who was threatened with dismissal by the foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, after accusations of ritualism.Footnote ³² Robert Gray, bishop of Cape Town, observed after meeting Adelaide in Madeira that she was ‘a capital Churchwoman . . . and has told the Consul here that if the Chaplain is turned out and another thrust in without the Bishop's license, she will be very sorry, as it will prevent her attending church’.Footnote ³³

The queen dowager's commitment to high church activism had been equally evident a decade earlier. On a visit to Malta for health reasons in the winter of 1838, Adelaide had expressed severe dissatisfaction with the lack of an Anglican church in a fruitless appeal to Queen Victoria, before determining to erect one at her own expense.Footnote ³⁴ The project moved apace: a site was granted by the government and the foundation stone of St Paul's was laid by Adelaide in March 1839.Footnote ³⁵ Her rationale for this enterprise was expressed in a letter to Archbishop Howley of November 1840:

Adelaide proceeded to expand on her aims for this project:

It is apparent that in the quoted section Adelaide was directly paraphrasing Nott's opinions that the Maltese would not be offended by the building of an Anglican church, and that such a project would have numerous advantages.Footnote ³⁷ That she was already thinking in these terms during her visit to Malta may be inferred from a letter of January 1839 from her chamberlain Earl Howe to Archbishop Howley, expressing the hope that the building of St Paul's would lead to ‘the establishment of a Mediterranean Bishopric’ which would ‘give a dignity to our Church in the eyes of R[oman] Catholics & prevent their constant observation that a faith in which its votaries shew so little interest cannot be a true one!’Footnote ³⁸

By endorsing Nott's pamphlet, Queen Adelaide identified herself with the agenda of those who wished to make Malta a centre for the active extension of Anglicanism. Shortly before her visit, an attempt to build an Anglican church in Malta had been made by Christopher Schlienz of the CMS.Footnote ³⁹ This had been obstructed by the governor, Sir Henry Bouverie, who expressed fears that:

By contrast, Adelaide's proposal was, at least ostensibly, less ecclesiologically partisan; it was also more difficult to refuse on account of her status. In November 1844 her completed church was consecrated.Footnote ⁴¹

The church's neoclassical design was atypical for its period, and was deliberately intended to contrast with Roman Catholic places of worship.Footnote ⁴² Resisting suggestions to introduce more gilding, the architect William Scamp stated that ‘the principle by which I have been guided, both to the interior and exterior’ was ‘Simplicity’.Footnote ⁴³ An allegorical statue of Faith donated by Earl Howe to the church was removed to the Garrison Library on the grounds that its appearance was too Catholic.Footnote ⁴⁴

The building of ‘Queen Adelaide's Church’ coincided with the establishment of a Mediterranean bishopric of the kind which Adelaide had called for, with the support of the newly established Colonial Bishoprics Fund. In 1841, Archbishop Howley had stated in a public meeting in aid of this fund that ‘the proper seat’ of a Mediterranean bishopric had ‘been all but determined upon by the erection of a splendid church at Malta, at the expense of an illustrious lady . . . who was not more exalted in her rank and station than respected for her virtue and piety’, but that ‘[t]he object was not proselytism’.Footnote ⁴⁵ In one respect, however, the wishes of Adelaide and Howley were not fulfilled: to avoid offending the Catholic bishop of Malta, the new Anglican bishop assumed the title of bishop of Gibraltar and St Paul's was not made a cathedral. But, in effect, the plan was realized: the bishop of Gibraltar's main residence was in Valletta, and St Paul's functioned as a cathedral in all but name.Footnote ⁴⁶

In 1842, George Tomlinson was consecrated the first bishop of Gibraltar. A high churchman and former chaplain to Howley, Tomlinson was a secretary of the SPCK, and had been heavily involved, alongside Schlienz and Nott, in furthering the efforts of its Foreign Translation Committee.Footnote ⁴⁷ In his first charge to his clergy, delivered in St Paul's the month after its consecration, Bishop Tomlinson echoed Howley's denial of a proselytizing urge:

Yet, while eschewing overt proselytism, Tomlinson did take some steps that accorded with Nott's vision of Malta as a centre of Anglican missionary activity. Upon his arrival in Malta, he purchased the Valletta printing press of the CMS, who had recently abandoned their Maltese missionary post, for the SPCK's use.Footnote ⁴⁹ In 1844, he admitted to Anglican orders Michael Angelo Camilleri, a Maltese Roman Catholic priest who had converted to Anglicanism.Footnote ⁵⁰ Camilleri was a controversial figure among the Maltese, not least because he had eloped with a widow to Gibraltar and had been imprisoned for assaulting two legal officials in Valletta.Footnote ⁵¹ Tomlinson nonetheless championed him, commissioning him to translate the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer into Maltese under the auspices of the SPCK, which printed these at its newly acquired Valletta press.Footnote ⁵² In 1847, when the translations were complete, Tomlinson stated with evident satisfaction that portions of the Bible were ‘now, for the first time, presented to the people in their own language’.Footnote ⁵³ Furthermore, Tomlinson lent his support as visitor to a Protestant college established in Malta in 1846, declaring it to be ‘a Church of England institution’ and ‘a seminary of SOUND PROTESTANT INSTRUCTION . . . where the true principles of our Reformers are understood and taught’.Footnote ⁵⁴

In such a context, the building of ‘Queen Adelaide's Church’ had unavoidable missionary overtones. Apparently undeterred by its high church origins, evangelicals claimed Adelaide's enterprise as their own. In a book dedication, S. S. Wilson of the CMS congratulated Adelaide for building ‘a sacred fabric, which, in such a locality, may truly be styled a missionary church’.Footnote ⁵⁵ The evangelical poet Harriet Burton presented Adelaide's gift as a powerful antidote to Roman ritual and Marian devotion. Recalling King William IV's deathbed prayer for the Church of England, she wrote:

Such sentiments were repeated in evangelical periodicals. The Harlequin, printed in Valletta, welcomed the establishment of ‘a Christian Protestant Church against a system of religion the most detestable the world ever saw!’Footnote ⁵⁷ The Church of England Magazine exclaimed, ‘who can say . . . how many souls may have been saved from the awfully false doctrines of popery, by the preaching of the truth of God in the protestant church thus given to the people of Malta by a protestant queen!’Footnote ⁵⁸ The high church Colonial Church Chronicle took a more moderate line. Endorsing Bishop Tomlinson's avoidance of explicit missionary efforts, it expressed a hope that there would be a ‘gradual awakening of the Maltese to a sense of the superstitions and absurdities which now disfigure their religious system . . . leading them gently to such a self-reformation, as . . . might make their church “a praise in the earth”’.Footnote ⁵⁹

However, Roman Catholics in Malta displayed little appetite for such ‘self-reformation’. During her visit to the island, Adelaide had exhibited a cordial tolerance of Roman Catholicism, receiving and visiting Catholic clergy.Footnote ⁶⁰ When her barge passed a procession carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary in the harbour of Bormla, it is recorded that, as a compliment to Adelaide, the image ‘was brought to face Her Majesty . . . and she stopped to acknowledge this spontaneous expression by the waving of her hand’.Footnote ⁶¹ Yet Adelaide's plans for an Anglican church were highly concerning to the Catholic clergy. In February 1839, the papal secretary of state Cardinal Lambruschini told Archbishop Caruana of Malta that he could not be indifferent to the project, and advised him to take all necessary steps to impede its execution.Footnote ⁶² Maltese workmen had to receive papal dispensations to work on the building of St Paul's, and one local Catholic priest reportedly warned that an earthquake would result from the project.Footnote ⁶³ Louisianna Gibson, visiting Malta in 1842, recorded that when a comet appeared over Valletta, ‘[t]he Maltese declared that it hung over’ St Paul's and ‘foretold a judgement upon them for having allowed a Protestant Cathedral to be built’.Footnote ⁶⁴

After the completion, the building was viewed with suspicion and occasional hostility by the local population. In 1846, the square outside the church was the scene of disturbances after a sabbatarian governor, Sir Patrick Stuart, prohibited traditional carnival festivities from taking place on a Sunday. Some in the crowd masqueraded in the dress of Protestant clergy; others were heard to shout, ‘To the Protestant church! let us pull it down!’ Meanwhile, a service was in progress inside the church. The congregants, hearing an uproar, feared that the crowd would enter and attack them, but in the event the crowd moved on to the governor's palace.Footnote ⁶⁵ However, manifestations of ill-feeling continued to be evident. Two years later, John Cleugh and the churchwardens of St Paul's informed the government that ‘the walls and the premises of that Church are constantly defiled and defaced by evil disposed persons’ and suggested that erecting iron railings would be the only possible solution.Footnote ⁶⁶ State assistance in the face of such provocations was, however, not forthcoming, as Stuart's Roman Catholic successor as governor, Richard O'Ferrall, refused to use government revenues for this purpose.Footnote ⁶⁷ O'Ferrall's decision was overturned by a later governor, Sir John Le Marchant, who in 1861 agreed to finance the placing of railings around the church.Footnote ⁶⁸ Thus fenced off, the church reinforced its detachment from the Maltese population.

The subsequent history of ‘Queen Adelaide's Church’, in which it has served almost exclusively the English-speaking community in Malta, has concealed the circumstances attending its construction. St Paul's was intended by Adelaide, Nott and Tomlinson among others to be a focal point for the dissemination of Protestantism in Malta and across the Mediterranean. Disclaiming the overt proselytism practised by evangelical missionary societies, they nevertheless attempted subtly to influence the Maltese towards a greater sympathy for the Anglican tradition. This was manifested in the grandiose architecture of St Paul's, the concomitant establishment of the bishopric of Gibraltar and the translation of the Bible and Prayer Book into Maltese. Their effort reveals much about the nature of Anglicanism within an imperial context during the mid-nineteenth century. Firstly, it underlines the centrality of missionary impulses within the upper echelons of the Church, and demonstrates that their implementation was not restricted to non-Christian colonies. Furthermore, it demonstrates the ways in which high church missionary activity, assisted by episcopal structures, could rival evangelical missions such as the CMS from the 1830s onwards. Queen Adelaide's involvement also shows the degree to which royal patronage continued to exercise a strong influence over ecclesiastical affairs, one that could overcome the conflicting imperatives of a pragmatically irenic governmental policy. That her wider ambitions for the advancement of Anglicanism in a Roman Catholic land were not fulfilled should not blind us to that intriguing moment in 1844 when Anglican hopes were fixed upon Valletta.