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been thirty-three, and in the reign of James I as low as eighteen, and that half of the unions now proposed had previously been in force. Tories, High Churchmen, and ultra-Protestants were, however, a formidable combination, and most of them appealed to that venerable and often-demolished bogey-the Coronation Oath. Archbishop Howley insisted that the principle of appropriation was still embodied in the Bill, the tax on the clergy and the sale of “see-lands" at the option and for the benefit of the tenant being both invasions of Church property; and Bishop Van Mildert said that, if the object of the scheme was to suppress Protestantism and promote Popery, no better means could have been adopted. The Government had, however, a powerful ally in the Bishop of London, who was now entering on his long and distinguished career as an ecclesiastical reformer. Blomfield declared that the payment of tithes in Ireland had been "absolutely extinct " for two years, and that these were the least unfavourable conditions under which it could be revived. There were some things in the Bill which he disliked, and he would have opposed it altogether in its original shape; but, even if it could be proved to encroach in some degree on the jurisdiction of the bishops, the House would not be justified in rejecting a measure which was all that stood between the Irish Church and "immediate ruin"; and in reply to the Duke of Newcastle, who had referred to him as having "lately been collated to the situation of priest in the temple of expediency," he said that no statesman could accept the Duke's advice to vote on this or any other question "without looking to consequences." Wellington vigorously enforced this appeal, asserting that, if expediency were not to be considered, the Church of Ireland must go"; and the second reading was carried by the handsome majority of 157 to 98. The Primate had recently been rebuked by William IV for having voted against the Government

on a purely political question; but on this occasion his Toryism and his Churchmanship were no doubt at one. He and fourteen other bishops voted against the Bill, which was supported by eleven bishops, including Whately, Harcourt, Copleston, Ryder, and the two Sumners.1

Having thus reviewed the various schemes of ecclesiastical reform which had been suggested by individuals in England or carried out by the legislature in Ireland, we have now to consider what was being done or projected by those who opposed all concessions to the liberal spirit. It appears that as early as February and March 1832 resolutions for the forming of a General Church Association were adopted by some of the clergy in Cheshire; and their efforts, though unsuccessful, may have facilitated another but similar design. The most prominent of the younger High Churchmen at this period was Hugh James Rose, a man of great energy, talent, and personal charm, but already struggling with the disease which was to cut short his career. In 1825 Rose had made his mark as a theologian with a work on German Biblical criticism which involved him in a controversy with Pusey. The two disputants, who had both lived in Germany, were at one in denouncing this science, their dissension being confined to the causes of its growth; but some concessions to liberalism, made and subsequently recanted by Pusey, added lustre to the unblemished orthodoxy of Rose. Reference has been made to a sermon preached by the latter in 1826, in which he condemned the irreligious tendency of scientific as opposed to literary studies, and

1 Hansard, xix. 720, 736, 766, 915, 924, 945; Greville Memoirs, 4th edition, ii. 383. An amendment to secure church-building where there were no Protestants was carried in the Lords.

• Palmer's Narrative of Events connected with the Tracts for the Times, p. 101. This work was published in 1843. It was republished by the author, with introduction, notes, and supplement, in 1883; and this is the edition here used. Additional information is contained in his article in the Contemporary Review for May of that year.

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declared himself no believer in modern enlightenment and progress; and, such being his attitude to the trend of opinion in those pre-reform days, we may be sure that he agreed with one who wrote in 1833: “The universal spread of intelligence amongst all ranks is a favourite cant phrase of the day; and rightly enough, by the way, is it called a spread, confined as it is to a surface."

The British Magazine, from which these words are quoted, had begun its career, with Rose as its founder and editor, in March 1832. This monthly journal was not intended, however obvious its bias, to be an organ. of the High Church party-an imputation which, when challenged, it angrily disclaimed. The editor declared in his opening address that his object was to draw Churchmen together in defence of "a great establishment,” that he wished as far as possible to avoid controversial questions, and to give Churchmen "a point of union on matters where they agree"; and he appealed unmistakably, though not explicitly, for Evangelical support. What chiefly concerns us is the definition of his attitude to ecclesiastical reform. "Communications written in a spirit of acrimony and abuse" would not be accepted; and "he will not allow, as he has seen with equal surprise and regret, very lately, in a very unexpected quarter, undeserved censure and complaint of the existing state of things, resting on grounds falsely alleged." This was a manifest allusion to the article in the British Critic for January 1832, which has been quoted; 1 and the editor did not hesitate to avow his personal opinion that no suggestion for improvement could be unexceptionable which did not emanate from the bishops.

It was not till October 1832, the eighth month of its publication, that the new journal presented the first of a long series of articles on Church reform; and it then became notorious for its defence or extenuation of almost

1 See p. 67.

every ecclesiastical abuse-a task in which it frequently exposed itself to the charge which it was never tired of bringing against the reformers, that they sacrificed principle to expediency. It had of course conscientious objections to a revision of the Liturgy; but we find it defending plurality and non-residence, whilst of course admitting them to be evils, on the purely utilitarian ground that, if every benefice was to be filled by a resident incumbent as soon as it became vacant, the son of a patron might have to wait twenty or thirty years before he could avail himself of the presentation,1 and during all that time might be contracting idle, if not dissipated, habits owing to the reduced demand for curates.2 This was the application of a general argument which was sarcastically summarised by the Christian Observer, that without "the attraction of golden sinecures and a constellation of pluralities" brilliant or well-born youths could not be "inveigled into the service of the Church. It is a curious fact that High Churchmen who magnified the "apostolical commission" of the clergy were far more tolerant than the Evangelicals of those who were too indolent or indifferent to exercise it in person,3 and that, whilst acutely alive to any attempt on the part of the State to secularise ecclesiastical property, they could see nothing actually "sinful "4 in an incumbent devoting to uses not only secular but private the greater part of his tithes. Archbishop Howley had

1 The practice of a presentee giving a bond to resign his benefice when required to do so by the patron was disallowed by the House of Lords on appeal in 1827; but it was legalised next year, and such bonds are said to be now common. Without this resource, the patron might be tempted to put in a succession of aged and infirm men.— Reform in the Church of England, edited by Douglas Eyre, 1915, p. 193. 2 British Magazine, ii. 289. Hurrell Froude lamented that Rose

clung to this “ gentlemanly heresy."-Miss Guiney's Froude, p. 118.

3 According to the returns of 1827, less than half the non-residents ' resident on other benefices"-that is, did parochial duty.

were

4 Perceval's Letter to Lord Henley, p. 7. Plurality, being a rural grievance, was also underrated by Dr. Arnold, whose interest lay in the towns.

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a truer perception of the case when he declared in his charge of 1833 that a clergyman who lived "in selfish indulgence or ostentatious luxury on his official income was guilty of "gross desecration, amounting almost to sacrilege."

The British Magazine, whatever may have been the value of its services to Church defence, was a means of bringing together for this purpose the five clergymen who now come before us as originators of the Oxford Movement. Two of these may require a word of introduction-William Palmer, a thoroughly equipped theologian and scholar, and a member of Dublin as well as of Oxford University, who had just published a treatise on the sources of the Liturgy; and Arthur Philip Perceval, Rector of East Horsley in Surrey, and a royal chaplain, who as a pamphleteer had replied to Lord Henley and twice assailed Lord Grey. Keble, Newman and Hurrell Froude were Fellows of Oriel College, which under their influence was to lose the reputation it had long enjoyed as a focus of liberalism; 1 and the first of these, though resident as a parish clergyman in Gloucestershire, was Professor of Poetry. They all contributed to the British Magazine; and Palmer led the way in June and July 1832 with two articles on the Dissenters, in which he came to the comfortable conclusion that they were becoming disillusioned, and that "the Church will ultimately afford them a refuge from despair." Unfortunately, these short-sighted sectaries were quite unconscious of their doom, and, far from seeking to preserve their future city of refuge, were bent on pulling it down; and Churchmen were naturally preoccupied with the coming assault. “I have been considering as well as I could," wrote Keble in October 1832, “what line it becomes the clergy to take with a view to the possible proceedings of the first revolutionary Parliament when it assembles, and I have made up my mind that 1 Mark Pattison's Memoirs, pp. 98, 99.