The Anglican Crisis

The Ecclesiological Society’s campaign to restore the beauty of liturgical practice in appropriate settings, aided by such works as Hierurgia Anglicana, was helped by clerics who began to rise to positions of eminence within the Anglican Church. William Maskell, Oxford-educated liturgical scholar, High Churchman, and mediævalist, was appointed (1842) Rector of Corscombe, Dorset, but shortly afterwards resigned his living to devote himself to detailed research into Anglican ritual. He made major contributions to liturgical studies with The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, according to the uses of Sarum, York, Hereford, and Bangor, and the Roman Liturgy arranged in parallel columns, with Preface and Notes (1844), followed by Monumenta ritualia ecclesiæ Anglicanæ; or, Occasional offices of the Church of England according to the ancient use of Salisbury (1846–7). Maskell’s works gave impetus to the revival of Anglican ceremonial based on mediæval precedents, but, perhaps even more importantly, helped the evolution of what became known as Ritualism, in which the Eucharist was placed once again at the centre of Anglican worship. These important, scholarly publications put Maskell in the front rank of English ecclesiastical antiquaries: he was appointed domestic chaplain to Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, and instituted (1847) Vicar of St Mary’s, Torquay, Devon.

One of his first duties was to assist Phillpotts in the celebrated Gorham case.