After all that they had done, they found that their staff of magistracy was swept away, to be succeeded by responsible officials returned by a genuine principle of election. The corrupt officeholders under the old system saw with dismay, that the church and charity funds, which had given them so much power and profit, were now to be publicly administered for the general good, and that borough property would be henceforth the property of the borough, and the police the servants of the public and not theirs. As Colonel Sibthorp expressed it, these exclusive privileges were gone "at one fell swoop," as O'Connell expressed it, "tag-rag and bobtail was swept away." The rejoicing among the honest and enlightened townsmen of the kingdom was naturally great. Yet, perhaps, there were few, even of the most joyous, who did not feel more or less regret at some of the adjuncts of the change; at the extinction, for instance, of antique municipal observances and shows. It was a great thing to see ancient charities renovated, schools and asylums rising again, and coffers filling with money restored to the purposes of the needy. It was a great thing to see our country planted over with little republics, where the citizens would henceforth be trained to political thought and public virtue; but it seemed a pity that the city feasts must go, the processions be seen no more, gorgeous dresses be laid by, the banners be folded up, the dragon be shelved, and St. George never allowed to wear his armor again; and the gay runners, in their pink and blue jerkins, their peaked shoes and rosettes, and their fearful wooden swords, turned into mere weavers, tinmen, and shoemakers. Already, some of us may find ourselves discoursing eagerly to children, as Englishmen used to do to wondering Americans, of the sights we once saw on great corporation days; and, when we are dead, a future generation may turn over the municipal wardrobes before their colors are faded, and cast a glance over the mayors' bills of fare, and ask whether such things could have belonged to common life in the nineteenth century. These things, from being once solemn and significant, may have become child's play, of which we of the nineteenth century ought to have been ashamed; yet there are perhaps few of us that were not sorry to see them go. For once, Lord Eldon was not without general sympathy.

the

CHAPTER IV.

the

AMIDST the existing state of feeling with regard to the Ecclesiastical Church, its wealth and its inefficiency for the religious commissions. instruction and guidance of the people, it was impossible for any government to feel or assume indifference to its condition. We find, therefore, both the administrations of 1835 issuing an ecclesiastical commission, for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the changes which might be effected in regard to church territory, income, and patronage, so as to render remuneration and labor more commensurate with each other, to enforce residence, and destroy the necessity of pluralities, by providing for all a sufficient revenue. Both commissions one issued by Sir R. Peel in February, and the other by Lord Melbourne in June were publicly objected to by parties within the Church, ranging from Dr. Pusey to Sydney Smith; while those outside the Church, constituting nearly half the population between the Land's End and John o' Groat's, regarded the matter with no great interest, because with little hope. Dr. Pusey and his High-Church party denied the right of the government to meddle with the distribution of church offices and funds; and Sydney Smith, in a series of published letters, complained of the commission being composed chiefly of the high dignitaries of the Church, whose judgment might, he thought, have been beneficially aided by information and suggestion from a lower order of clergy, more conversant with the minds and the needs of the people. Those outside the pale of the Establishment, knowing that the appropriation principle was not to be named, expected little from a mere redistribution of office and funds, made by the highest holders of office and income; and, to the people at large, the most interesting part of the whole matter was the conspicuous fact that the Church was at last compelled to undertake its own reform, —or what its dignitaries conceived to be so. Startling evidences of popular ignorance and the blindest fanaticism were forcing themselves on universal attention, just at the time when the publication of the revenues of the Church was prompting the question, how it was possible that an Establishment so rich in men and money could exist beside a population in a state

of such heathen blindness. The ecclesiastical commission of 1831 had declared the gross revenues of the Established Church in England and Wales to amount to 3,792,8857.; and the net revenue, to 3,490,4977. During the ensuing years of inquiry and legislation, men did not forget that the net revenue of the English Church amounted to three millions and a half; and, while they were waiting to see how these funds would be dealt with, events were continually occurring to show what ought to be done with them.

Without going over again the sickening record, found in the register of almost every year, of ignorance and fanati- Popular cism shown in disturbances requiring repression by ignorance. soldiery and punishment by the law, we may refer to one event which seemed to occur, as was said in Parliament, for the shaming of the Church. We find too much besides, we find a rector of Lockington tithing the wages of a poor laborer, named Dodsworth, and throwing him into jail for the sum of four shillings and fourpence. We find church-rate riots abounding,the panelling of pews broken in, and men exchanging blows in the church with fists and cudgels. We find revivals of religion taking place here and there,-scenes worthy only of a frantic heathenism, scenes of raving, of blasphemous prayer, of panicstruck egotism, followed by burial - processions to lay in the ground the victims of apoplexy or nervous exhaustion. We find men selling their wives in the market-places, with halters round their necks, none of the parties having the remotest conception of what marriage is in the eye of the law or of the Christian religion. We find crowds, in such a place as Sheffield, gutting, and repeatedly firing, the Medical School, through the old prejudices against dissection. But all these incidents, and many others of like nature with them, wrought less on the public mind, to the shame of the Church, than an event which happened in 1838, almost under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral. That in such a neighborhood a large body of the common Courtenay people should believe a lunatic to be the Messiah, and delusion. follow him to death through such a series of observances as only a lunatic could have imposed, was a shock to the clergy, it was believed; and was certainly a subject of painful amazement to the rest of the world, which was not at all solicitous to keep its opinion to itself. From the House of Commons to the wayside inn, men were asking what the Church was for, and what the clergy could be about, if the population of a district near Canter. bury could worship the wounds in the hands and side of a raving lunatic; see him fire a pistol at a star, and bring it down; believe him invulnerable, and themselves through him; expect

1 Polit. Dict. i. p. 853.

to see him sail away, as he declared he came, on clouds of glory through the heavens; and, when he was shot dead, be quite happy in the certainty that he would rise again in a month.

This poor wretch, named Thom, had been confined in a lunatic asylum for four years, and was then delivered over to his friends on the supposition of his being harmless. He then called himself Sir William Courtenay, fancying himself a man of high family, as well as large estates; in the same breath, claiming to be the Messiah, and threatening hell-fire against all who would not follow him to obtain his estates and get rich themselves. He did not want for followers; for, as the people said about his knowledge of the Scriptures, "no unlarned person could stand before Sir William.”1 He fired a pistol against himself, and was not wounded, there being no bullet; he put a lighted lucifermatch under a bean-stack, which did not burn: and these things were regarded as true miracles by his followers. They believed that nothing could hurt them while following him; and, when a mother could not refuse to recognize the wounds of her son, she comforted herself that he was "fighting for his Saviour." They kissed the madman's feet, and worshipped him. A woman followed him on the last day of his life, wherever he went, with a pail of water, because he had said that if he died, and if she put water between his lips, he would rise again in a month. He administered the sacrament to his followers in bread and water. As he lay dead, his blouse was torn up, that his followers might carry away the shreds as relics. The strongest rebuke to the Church, however, was at the funeral. From the fear of attack, and rescue of the body, there was a race to the churchyard, trial of speed between the funeral-van and the attendant gigs and carts; but, far worse, the clergyman felt it necessary to omit those parts of the burial-service which relate to the resurrection of the dead. Many stolid and miserable wretches were watching the interment from the railing, some ghastly from wounds received in the fight; and the clergyman feared that any promise of a resurrection would make them watch for the return of their prophet, to reign in the Powderham estates, float in the clouds, and give to each of his true followers a farm of forty acres. It was long before the clergy of Canterbury heard the last of this. In the affair of this madman and his pretensions, ten lives were lost in a few moments, and many persons were wounded. The party of fanatics had strolled about the country for four days, praying, obtaining recruits, and looking for the millennium. A farmer, whose men had been seduced from their work, gave information to the police. The first constable who presented himself was shot, by Thom himself, who then took his sword, and

1 Spectator, 1835, p. 530.

a

hacked the body, crying out, "Now am I not your Saviour?” A party of military was brought from Canterbury, whose officer, Lieutenant Bennett, was deliberately shot dead by the same hand. The lunatic himself was the next to fall, crying with his last breath, "I have Jesus in my heart." The local jails were filled with his followers, who were too ignorant to wonder at what they had done, even after the discovery that their leader and companions could be wounded and die. Some were transported for life, or for terms, and the rest imprisoned for different periods. They were now at last brought, under such circumstances as these, under the care of the Church, by which they should have been instructed and guided from their youth up; and, at the end of a year's imprisonment, some of them signed a paper declaratory of their shame and sorrow at their impious delusion, and at the acts to which it had led them.1 Some, who could not sign their names, declared the same among their old neighbors. Very few of the band could read and write.

It was not likely that such evils as were indicated by this event would be reached by a commission of church dignitaries inquiring into property and income, and unpractised in dealing with the popular mind; but, small as was the expectation of all parties, the result in eight years disappointed even that. The number of benefices and churches whose incomes had been augmented by the ecclesiastical commissioners for England, was, in that time, 469; and the augmentation amounted, in the whole, to the sum of 25,7791.2 The Church would certainly not save the people or itself in this way; and it was well that other measures were attempted.

The ecclesiastical commissioners were incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1836; their number then consisting of Results of the thirteen, and including several members of the gov- commission. ernment. One of their first operations was a re-arrangement of episcopal sees. Two new sees those of Ripon and Manchester

were created; and four of the old ones were consolidated into two, Gloucester being united to Bristol, and St. Asaph to Bangor. After this, the chief work of the commissioners was making the redistribution, whose result, after eight years, has been mentioned. It was felt by most reasonable people that the less they expected the better, after hearing that the commissioners did not find that any process of redistribution could render the income of the bishoprics sufficient for the wants of the bishops; the number of bishops being twenty-six, and the amount of income nearly 150,000l. per annum.3 Church reformers who made such a declaration as this were not the kind

1 Annual Register, 1839, Chron. 134.

8 Polit. Dict. i. 385.

2 Polit. Dict. i. 802.