without the Prayer Book were naturally even more anxious that it should not be taught to children under other auspices than those of the Church; and Marsh's attack on the Bible Society was no doubt prompted by the fact that he and his friends were then engaged in an attempt to counteract its principles in education. On October 21, 1811, a week or two before the Bible meeting at Cambridge, a society had been formed on the principle that the "national religion" must be "the first and chief thing taught to the poor.' The Evangelicals assented heartily enough to this scheme; but the "National Society" originated with Watson and two other High Churchmen who met at his house; he himself became its treasurer; Marsh was its most active promoter; all the bishops were ex officio members of committee; and the object was to combat the undenominational instruction provided by the British and Foreign Schools Society, which its opponents regarded as little better, if not worse, than secular. Joseph Lancaster, the founder of this system, had been at work for more than ten years; but he had recently begun to itinerate as an educationist, and the annual subscriptions, which in 1808 were only £248, had now increased to nearly £3000.1 But Evangelicalism, however it may have been discouraged as a means of education, was now forging ahead. When Marsh attacked the Bible Society in 1812, it had been joined by twenty English and Irish bishops, and he himself declared that its progress up to this point was a phenomenon "to which we have had nothing similar since Peter the Hermit went preaching the Crusade." In 1815 Lord Harrowby, a Cabinet Minister, succeeded, after much opposition, in procuring for his brother the see of Gloucester; and Dr. Ryder was the first prelate 1 Bartley's Schools for the People, p. 64. EVANGELICALISM SPREADING 15 whom the Evangelicals could regard, not as a patron, but as one of themselves. The Church Missionary Society, founded under another name in 1801, was so markedly Evangelical that to join it had long been a test of courage; but in 1817 its income had risen from £900 to £20,000, and about 1823 there were as many as 1600 clerical members.1 Meanwhile Marsh in 1819 had become Bishop of Peterborough, and was trying to hamper the enemy's advance by laying a " trap to catch Calvinists." This consisted of a list of eighty-seven questions which he was in the habit of putting to candidates for ordination or licence, apparently with a corrective rather than a punitive purpose; for the episcopal argument and expostulation" are said to have been successful in all but two cases. It is more difficult to account for the rapid progress of Evangelicalism than for its long depression; but the middle classes were the stronghold of its power, and it must necessarily have participated in the growth of their influence throughout the pre-reform decade. In 1828 Keble referred to "the amazing rate at which Puritanism seems to be getting on all over the kingdom 2 and in the same year another High Church divine lamented that clergymen of his own school were "rapidly losing ground"; that there were few districts into which the rival system had not made its way; and, in short, that it was "creeping like a mist over the whole surface of the country and bearing with it all the properties of a noxious fog.” 3 1 Memoirs of Jerram, p. 295. • Coleridge's Memoir of Keble, p. 176. CHAPTER I THE PRE-REFORM CHURCH, 1815-1832 THE Church of England had triumphed over Puritanism in 1660 and over Popery, professing to befriend Puritanism, in 1688; and throughout the eighteenth century it retained its popularity as a compromise between these two extremes. Popery lost some of its terror after the suppression in 1746 of the last Jacobite revolt; but Methodists as a common target for clerical and popular abuse were no bad substitute for Papists, with whom, indeed, they were frequently confounded; the substitution of a native for a foreign-bred king in 1760 evoked an enthusiasm for throne and altar not unlike that which under similar conditions had signalised the accession of Queen Anne; and this spirit, after barely surviving the disasters of the American War, was recalled to full vigour by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. A democratic movement had been in progress in England for twenty-one years, having been started by John Wilkes in 1768, and its leaders at once responded to the summons from Paris; but the alien character now assumed by the agitation, and the fact that it was supported almost exclusively by Dissenters, made it extremely unpopular. The multitude which had once shouted "Wilkes and Liberty" was now shouting "Church and King "; the riot of 1791 at Birmingham, provoked by a meeting to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, was directed mainly against the chapels and houses of CHURCHLESS MASSES 17 Dissenters; and Priestley, "a sort of Metropolitan of the Unitarians," 1 and the principal victim of this outrage, was justified in his assertion that "the same bad spirit pervaded the whole kingdom." Burke noted with natural satisfaction that the democratic societies in all parts of the country were with difficulty protected from the mob. Of the Sedition and Treason Acts passed in 1795, Francis Place said that "infamous as these laws were, they were popular measures ; and at a great meeting of the Yorkshire electors, though it had been called to protest against them, they were enthusiastically approved. "I remember when the word 'Church' would have raised a mob whenever it was used; but now, thank God, it would as soon raise a ghost." 2 These words had some temporary justification when they were uttered in the House of Lords about the middle of the eighteenth century; but they were far more applicable to the temper of the masses at the close of the great war with France. The enthusiasm for the Church which was conspicuous in 1791 had given place in 1815 to a spirit rather hostile than indifferent; and this revulsion of feeling can be no mystery to those who are acquainted with the conditions of the time. At the outbreak of hostilities water-power as the mainspring of industry was just beginning to be supplanted by steam; and the parochial system, within the area of this process, was soon overwhelmed by the growth and fluidity of population to which it gave rise. Villages sprang into towns, towns into cities; and districts almost uninhabited-" wild heaths and barren moors ". became densely peopled. Manchester and Salford, comprising thirty townships and a population of 136,000, were one immense parish";3 and both in Lancashire 1 Abbey and Overton's English Church, ii. 403. Ibid., p. 401. In 1812 the Bishop of Chester confirmed 8000 children at Manchester in one day between eight in the morning and half-past eight in the evening.-Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 97. C and Middlesex the deficiency of church accommodation was estimated at a million seats. In the rural parishes within a radius of a hundred miles from London the average number of inhabitants was about 640; but the urban parishes within eight miles of St. Paul's—exclusive of the City, which even then was over-churched-had a population of 1,162,300, whilst the churches and Anglican chapels could accommodate only 220,000. Marylebone had 75,000 inhabitants, and St. Pancras came next with 46,000; but in each of these parishes there was room for only 6000 worshippers. "The mind shrinks," says the compiler of these figures, "from the contemplation of such a concentrated mass of exclusion, separation, and necessary disaffection to the Established Church." 1 Nor was the availability of the churches less limited than their space. Most of the area was occupied by seatholders, who were usually more anxious to secure than to use their proprietary rights; and from the strength of the Establishment as a popular institution must be deducted a considerable number of chapels, built as a commercial speculation and consequently closed to the poor. The first attempt to recover for the Church its influence over the masses was made towards the end of the war. For the eleven years beginning in 1809 Parliament voted £100,000 annually towards endowing and augmenting benefices in populous districts; and we are told that but for this assistance the Forest of Dean "would have continued in a state little removed from heathenism." Perceval, at the time of his assassination in 1812, was contemplating "some active step" in the direction of church-building, and the project was renewed in 1813; but nothing of any consequence was accomplished till a society to raise funds for this purpose was 1 Yates, The Church in Danger, 1815, PP. 36-77; The Basis of National Welfare, 1817, p. 354. • Bishop Monk's Charge, 1838, p. 32. |