not exclusively in support of the Opposition. At Oxford a petition against the Bill, drawn up mainly by Gladstone, was signed within forty-eight hours by about four-fifths of the resident bachelors and undergraduates, whilst the Oxford Union, which in 1829 had been two to one for Catholic relief, declared itself against reform by 94 to 38; and the University of Cambridge not only expressed the same opinion, but inconvenienced the Government by unseating a Cabinet Minister—Lord Palmerston. The Quarterly Review, whilst claiming as anti-reformers the great majority of the Bar, the three Universities, and "the educated youth of the country," said that the clergy were "unanimously hostile "; but this was a manifest exaggeration which can be disproved without referring to such well-known names as Arnold, Whately, and Sydney Smith. In February 1831, before the Bill was introduced, a number of Wiltshire clergymen concurred in two Whig petitions-one of them, signed by the Archdeacon, for "a full and efficient reform "; and later we find the vicar of Worksop heading a petition in favour of the Bill. The Durham clergy, reversing the precedent they had set in 1820, refrained from emulating the Toryism of their bishop,1 and some of them are said to have exerted themselves as reformers by attending meetings and promoting petitions.2

Apart, however, from such sporadic support, the Government had a powerful ally in the religious Press. The British Critic made no allusion to the crisis; but its Evangelical rival, the Christian Observer, warmly supported the Bill, not as a democratic, but as "an antioligarchical measure," declaring that the Church would

1 Bishops Van Mildert and Phillpotts, the latter of whom was a prebendary of Durham, signed a petition against the Bill, which was thus promoted by the agent of the Duke of Northumberland: "The Duke requires the names of tenants who do not sign, and hopes that they will not embark rashly in politics." Hansard, 3rd Series, iii. 1722.

a Hansard, 3rd Series, ii. 366, 487; iii. 1183; iv. 581, 583; vii. 1130; Bishop Wordsworth's Early Life, pp. 84, 86; Quarterly Review, xlv. 504.

UNPOPULARITY OF THE CHURCH

45 never be purged of its abuses so long as the boroughowners were dominant in Parliament. Patronage must necessarily be perverted under this malign influence; and "it was hard indeed if a man who could oblige Government could not provide for a clerical friend beyond the worth of a single benefice encumbered with residence." The odium of such abuses had "well-nigh ruined the Church"; and one such instance of rapacity as had just been brought home to Bishop Sparke1 did more to paralyse it as a spiritual force and "to prepare the way for the confiscation of its temporal revenues than the worst Parliamentary Reform Bill that its greatest enemy could devise." 2

An unreformed Church was the natural complement of an unreformed Parliament; and the former was unpopular enough even before it was identified with the latter. "If," said Bishop Marsh in his charge of July 1831, “we except the period which preceded the Church's overthrow in the time of Charles I., there never was a time when the clergy were assailed with so much calumny and so much violence as they are at present"; and a week or two later the Edinburgh Review said that never, with the same exception, had public opinion been so unfavourable to the Church. When these statements were made, the attitude of the Church to reform had not been officially defined; but there was one grade of the clergy, and that the highest, whose decision on this question could not be long delayed. The first Reform Bill obtained a second reading on March 22 by the bare majority of one, and on April 19 it was lost in committee. Parliament was dissolved; and, a general election having

1 See p. 65.

2 Christian Observer, 1831, pp. 245, 578. The school of Evangelicalism which found expression in the Christian Observer was that of Wilberforce and the " Clapham sect." As a pro-Catholic and a reformer, Sydney Smith might have found a better target for his jibes than" that patent Christianity which has been for some time manufacturing at Clapham."-Peter Plymley's Letters-Letter V.

more than fulfilled the anticipations of the Whigs, the second Bill suffered from nothing worse than obstruction in the Commons, and came up for second reading in the Lords on October 3. The Lords had thrown out the Catholic Relief Bill in July 1828, and accepted it, though it was by no means a popular measure, in the following spring; and on the morrow of the general election it seems to have been expected that, under conditions much less favourable, they would not venture to defeat reform. But this belief in their discretion or want of courage did not survive the summer; and the bishops as peacemakers by profession were adjured to avert a collision.1 They were told that it depended on their attitude at this crisis whether the impending reform of the Church should be moderate or drastic; and The Times warned themas also in more temperate language did the Edinburgh Review that if they should add to the votes against the Bill just enough to procure its defeat, the Church would be "driven from her moorings in the hearts of the people and exposed to a hurricane the like of which was never blown." It was not the fault of the bishops that the contingency thus indicated did not occur. Only two of them voted for the Bill and as many as twentyone 2 against it; but it was thrown out by 199 to 158— "a majority," wrote Lord Grey, "more than double of what I expected." The issue had thus been decided by the lay peers; but, though a majority of one in favour of the Bill would have been of no more practical use in the Lords than it had been in the Commons, it was naturally remarked that this result would have been attained if all the bishops who voted in person or by proxy had supported the Government.

With the exception of Maltby, who had been raised

1 The majority of the bishops were at one time disposed to vote in favour of committing the Bill.-Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 167. The King expected this "from what he has heard."-Correspondence of Earl Grey, June 8. 2 Including four Irish prelates.

3 Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey, ii. 287.

BISHOP BATHURST

47

to the see of Chichester a week or two before the division, all the bishops had been appointed by Tory administrations. Maltby was a zealous Whig, but was surpassed in this respect by one who in years, though not in office, was the father of his order. Henry Bathurst was over sixty years of age when in 1805 be became Bishop of Norwich. Though Locke and Hoadley, as he afterwards declared, had been the guides of his youth and were the solace of his age, he had not then dissociated himself from the Toryism of his family; but he declined to follow his relative, Earl Bathurst, in deserting Lord Grenville when that statesman took office with Fox; and from this point his liberalism rapidly developed. Fox referred to him in 1806 as the only tolerant bishop"; and two years later he received unstinted applause and abuse by rising from "the sacred bench" to support Catholic Emancipation. In 1819 we find him inciting his neighbours in Norfolk to protest against the "Manchester Massacre" and the Six Acts. A bishop who identified himself with the Whigs was frequently at a loss how to dispose of his proxy. On one occasion he offered it to Lord Lansdowne, who said he should be proud indeed of such a trust, "but I fear it must be held by one of your Lordship's bench, and it may not always be easy to find one agreeing sufficiently with your own just and enlightened views." Bathurst was as little of a courtier as Bishop Watson, but, instead of bewailing and resenting his lack of further preferment, as Watson did, he used playfully to allude to the great prizes that might have come his way, had he been a good boy." On two occasions, when the Whigs either were or expected to be in power, they offered him the see of Dublin on an assumption, which in both cases proved to be unfounded, that the Archbishop had died; 1

Bathurst himself

1 Such reports seem to have been common. was reported dead, and so was Bishop Charles Sumner.

1

and in 1830, when there really was a vacancy, the offer was renewed by Lord Grey, who could safely pay this tribute of respect to so aged a prelate.1 No man, indeed, stood higher in the esteem and affection of the Whigs, and Lord Wellesley expressed their unanimous opinion when he wrote: "To the last moment of my life I shall venerate your lordship's character and your constant and, I must add, glorious services in the cause of pure justice and rational freedom, civil and religious.'

"2

Though Bathurst and Maltby were the only bishops who voted in 1831 for the Reform Bill, one of the ablest of its opponents had intended to take the same course. For fourteen years before he became Bishop of Llandaff in 1828, Edward Copleston had been Provost of Oriel College, Oxford. It was under his influence that Oriel developed the intellectual activity which made it first a focus of liberalism and then of Tractarianism; and one of his most distinguished pupils and his lifelong friend was Whately, who traced to him “the main principles on which I have acted and speculated throughout life." About a month before the first Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell, Copleston wrote to a friend that a purely popular system of representation must be fatal to the Crown and the aristocracy, and probably also to the Church; but he soon convinced

1 This affair gave little satisfaction to the religious public-Bathurst, who refused the see, being a whist-player, and Whately, who accepted it, a non-sabbatarian.

2 Memoirs of Bishop Bathurst. By His Daughter, Mrs. Thistlethwayte, pp. 166–168, 171, 240-242, 327, 351, 374, 381-383. This is an excellent and charming work though it opens inauspiciously, the date of the Bishop's birth being given as 1774, instead of 1744. For his lax administration of his diocese, see Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley, p. 33. At the time of his death, confirmations were septennial; but as to non-residence, it should be remembered that the diocese of Norwich comprised an unusual number of small parishes, and that the Bishop on this account had been empowered to form small pluralities.”—Hansard, 3rd Series, xi. 315. Also in a large majority of the parishes there was no parsonage, or none that was habitable.

3 Overton's English Church, 1800-1833, p. 117, note.