CHAPTER II

REFORMERS AND ANTI-REFORMERS, 1832-1834

THE agitation against the Church which accompanied the Reform Bill was intensified rather than diminished when that measure had become law; but for four years the ecclesiastical constitution remained substantially intact; and the only change made was not a product of the crisis, being the result of an inquiry which had been instituted before it arose. We shall find at a later stage that this change took the form of a new court of appeal from the ordinary Church tribunals, and was adopted on the advice of a Royal Commission which had been appointed by the Duke of Wellington in 1830 and renewed by Lord Grey in 1831.

In the matter of an inquiry into the ecclesiastical courts the Whig Ministers had been ready enough to follow in the steps of their Tory predecessors; but they were less enamoured of a kindred proposal which emanated from the same source. The Church had two critics in Parliament who were never tired of exposing its abuses-Lord King in the Lords and Joseph Hume in the Commons; and, in order to forestall a motion which the latter was to bring forward in 1831, Joshua Watson proposed and outlined a Commission of Inquiry which, if possible, was to be obtained from the Crown. This body, in order that its formation should be looked upon as a voluntary concession on the part of the Church, was to consist wholly of ecclesiastics-one-third bishops, the rest deans, archdeacons, heads of colleges, and

parochial incumbents; its members were to be selected by the Prime Minister out of a list drawn up by the Primate; it was to be "strictly limited" in scope, and was to confine itself to the means of obviating frequent translations, commendams held by bishops, and "inconvenient pluralities "-these being "the spots most commonly seen.” That a Royal Commission thus manned and thus restricted would venture to deal drastically even with such "spots," conspicuous though they were, was probably neither expected nor desired ; and Watson's scheme, which naturally commended itself to the Duke of Wellington, was welcomed but soon put aside by the Government. There was a moment, indeed, when he believed it to have been adopted.1

Lord Grey was as anxious as the clergy themselves that they should succeed in averting " the coming storm "; but it was one thing to encourage their efforts and another thing to endorse them as adequate; and it was therefore agreed that the Primate on his own responsibility should introduce certain measures of reform. On February 14, 1831, when Lord King had moved for a return of resident and non-resident clergy, the Prime Minister complimented Archbishop Howley on his anxiety to remove abuses, referred to his views—rather incongruously-as "very moderate and liberal," and vouched for his intention to deal with tithes, plurality, and livings held in commendam by bishops. The last of these measures was not, however, one of the three which the Archbishop introduced on June 24. If clerical opinion was not yet ripe for a general commutation of tithes, it was at least advisable that they should cease to be levied in kind; and it was a serious obstacle to the abandonment of this practice, where it still survived, that an incumbent could not compound for a longer

1 Churton's Joshua Watson, ii. 3-7. Churton was quite mistaken, as we shall see, in his assumption that reforms were afterwards adopted without previous inquiry.”

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period than his life, and could not even do that if any of his parishioners objected. It was now proposed, with the cordial approbation of Brougham, to legalise compositions for a term of years and to nullify any hostile majority which fell short of two-thirds. There was also a Bill for enabling ecclesiastical corporations to augment their livings. Both Bills passed, and some of the bishops were commendably prompt in availing themselves of the latter.1 There is no report of a debate on the third Bill, which professed to restrain pluralities and was extinguished by the dissolution; but a Bill, apparently identical, was introduced and fully discussed in the following year.

This Bill, which passed the Lords but was abandoned in the Commons, prohibited plurality only where the livings held by one incumbent were over thirty miles apart. Within that distance the archbishop was empowered to sanction it at his discretion, if the living already occupied was not more than £400 a year,2 and in all cases if the incumbent was a Master of Arts or was recommended by a bishop on account of his attainments and character. The measure-though Lords Grey and Harrowby professed to be satisfied-met with little but criticism even from its friends; and Lord King denounced it as "nothing more than a mockery and a delusion." It was justly said that plurality should be tolerated only in the case of livings too poor to be held separately, and near enough to be served effectively by one pastor. Howley maintained that the thirty-mile limit would reduce plurality by two-thirds; but this distance was obviously too great for personal supervision; and though an ancient statute was to be repealed which allowed the sons and chaplains of peers to hold more than one living, the poorer clergy, who had seldom more

1 Hansard, 3rd Series, ii. 478; iv. 292, 1362; xi. 933.

2 So in Hansard, but the Christian Observer gives £400 as the total value of the two livings.

than a Bachelor's degree, were disqualified in this respect, to the advantage of their richer brethren. In vain was it contended that the standard ought to be value and not distance. Van Mildert thought this “ a dangerous principle" of boundless application; and Blomfield declared that the Church would lose much of its splendour if the upper classes should be deterred from choosing it as a profession. The Christian Observer had indeed good grounds for its remark: "It is not the smallest class of livings that keeps up the tenacity for pluralities; it is because what is called a tolerably good living is in reality a starving to the sons of our nobility and gentry." And the Bill was actually amended to meet a case stated hypothetically by Lord Wynford, but understood to be his own-that of a patron who, having only a small living to bestow on his son, had purchased another.1

The Plurality Bills of 1831 and 1832 showed clearly how little the Church could be trusted to reform itself; and meanwhile popular opinion was becoming more and more impatient of the abuses which were to have been so delicately pruned and circumscribed. In February 1831, just when Lord Grey was announcing the Primate's very moderate and liberal reforms," appeared “The Extraordinary Black Book." The original work, a reprint of periodical articles, and entitled "The Black Book," had been published in 1820. It had been frequently reprinted, and, despite the silence of respectable reviewers, more than 14,000 copies had been sold. John Wade, the anonymous author, was then occupied mainly with the "Borough Government," i.e. the rule of the borough-owners. Now his theme was "Church, State, Law, and Representation"; and the Church not only came first, but the sixty pages devoted to it in 1820 had expanded in 1831 to a hundred and fifty. Wade was credulous and prejudiced, but not dishonest, as is shown

1 Hansard, 3rd Series, x. 1108, 1110; xi. 315, 789, 795, 798, 800, 801; Christian Observer, 1832, pp. 195, 365, 728.

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by the fact that in 1820, whilst he vastly overvalued most of the sees, there were some which he correctly estimated and others which he much underrated. Had the clergy been alive to their own interests, they would long ago have insisted on an official inquiry into the amount and distribution of their funds. Such an inquiry was in fact instituted on June 23, 1832;1 but the Royal Commission which was then appointed did not report till June 16, 1834. The value of bishoprics was peculiarly liable to misrepresentation. Their income was derived largely from fines on the renewal of leases, which fell due at varying intervals and were frequently of large amount; and consequently there might in any one year be a great difference between the actual and the average value. Again, livings were notoriously held by bishops in commendam, but few people were in a position to distinguish between livings so held and livings which had been permanently annexed to the see. The whole benefices of the Church were indeed rated in the "King's Book," a valuation made in the reign of Henry VIII; and this obsolete standard was supposed to have been retained in the interest of pluralists, whose livings were there entered at a fraction of their present value. They would probably have done better to face the facts than to leave them to popular conjecture. There was no constant relation between the value of sees, dignities, and livings, as recorded in the "King's Book," and their value in 1832. Winchester was nominally four times richer, London thirteen times, St. Asaph twenty-five times; whilst Stanhope, the second richest rectory in England, was valued by the Commissioners at £4843, but stands in the "King's Book" at £67 6s. 8d. It was thus easy, by excluding all factors but the fall in the purchasing

"

1 After being mobbed at Canterbury in October 1831, Archbishop Howley is said to have at once intimated to the Government that 'he at any rate "' would not oppose this step.-Life of Charles Richard Sumner, p. 197. The schedule of thirty-two inquiries sent to all incumbents in August 1832 is printed in the British Magazine, ii. 80.