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Gladstone and Nonconformity in the 1860s: The Formation of an Alliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. I. T. Machin
G. I. T. Machin
Affiliation:
University of Dundee
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Extract

It is well known that Gladstone's progress to the leadership of the Liberal party between 1859 and 1868 included the building of an alliance with Nonconformity which lasted, wim some interruptions, to the end of his life. This coalition was remarkable in view of the previous diversity of viewpoint between its participants. In the 1830s Nonconformists had already adopted a policy of disestablishment when Gladstone was airing a diametrically opposite opinion in The State in its relations with the Church; and Gladstone's High Churchmanship was disliked by the evangelical Nonconformists, one of whom wrote a pamphlet entitled The Ritualistic Movement in the Church of England, a reason for disestablishment. In view of these differences, how did there develop a firm and continually reviving political alliance, as intimate as that between Gladstone and Irish Home Rulers in the 1880s?

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 347 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 ByRogers, J. Guinness, London, 1869. The author, however, who became a political supporter of Gladstone, tended to exempt him from association with the ‘extreme school’ of ritualists.Google ScholarRogers, J. Guinness, An Autobiography (London), 1903, p. 237.Google Scholar

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3 Minutes of the executive committee of the Anti-State Church Association (later Liberation Society), County Hall, London; vol. n (29 Nov. 1852) and in, 341–7 (6 Apr. 1857); Vincent, J., The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–68 (London, 1966), pp. 70–74.Google Scholar

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5 Minutes of the executive committee of the Liberation Society, iv, 42 ff. (16 May 1862), 142 ff. (23 Oct. 1863); Parl. Debs., 3rd series, CLIV, 1183, CLVI, 682.

6 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXIII, 1322.

7 Ibid., CLXVI, 1727; CLXX, 974.

8 He was to sit again from 1869 to 1874.

9 Vincent, J., op. cit., pp. 68, 194–7.Google Scholar

10 Nonconformist impatience with the Liberal Party had become clear in the 1830s and had lasted ever since. It was particularly strong on account of the defeat of Church rate bills with Liberal help, and was manifested in a lengthy memorandum of 23 Oct. 1863 produced by the parliamentary sub-committee of the Liberation Society. This document threatened independent electoral action because of inadequate support by the current Liberal M.P.s. Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), iv, 150–65.

11 British Museum Add. MSS 44188 and 44095. Morley sketches the rudiments of the under standing (The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols., London, 1903, ii, 134–5),Google Scholar but refers only three times to this correspondence during the 1860s (ibid ii, 130, 134, 255). SirMagnus, P., Gladstone London, 1954)Google Scholar and Williams, W. E., The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1859–68 (Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar say very little about this subject. J. Vincent gives details of the growth of militant Dissent and comments on Gladstone's relations with it (Formation of the Liberal Party, pp. 65–76, 232–3).

12 This was by no means for the first time: Gladstone's Oxford supporters had been similarly disturbed when he began to support Jewish emancipation in 1847. E.g. Pusey to Gladstone, 13 Dec. 1847, Pusey Papers, Pusey House, Oxford (part of this letter is printed in Liddon, H. P., The Life of E. B. Pusey, 4 vols., London, 1894–1898, iii, 175–6);Google Scholar Rev. R. Greswell to Gladstone, 12 June 1848, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44181, fo. 27; Lathbury, D. C. (ed.), Correspondence on Church and Religion of W. E. Gladstone (2 vols., London, 1910), ii, 16–17.Google Scholar

13 Pusey to Gladstone, 27 Nov. 1863, Pusey Papers.

14 The bill, which was first introduced in 1861, was amended by a select committee on its reintroduction in 1862; it was brought in again in 1863, when it was defeated. Its object was eventually gained in 1880 (Manning, B.L., The Protestant Dissenting Deputies, ed. Greenwood, O., Cambridge, 1952, pp. 320 ff.).Google Scholar

15 Pusey to Gladstone, 10 June 1862, Pusey Papers. Cf. Speech by Sir William Heathcote, Glad stone's colleague in the representation of Oxford University, when the bill was first introduced in 1861: ‘Does anyone believe that, when the churchyards have been dealt with as is proposed in this Bill, the churches themselves will long remain free from a similar invasion?’ Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXII, 1031.

16 Pusey to Gladstone, 13 June 1862, Pusey Papers.

17 Pusey to Gladstone, 14 June 1862, ibid.

18 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CXLVII, 825–56; Lathbury, D. C., op. cit., i, 133–7.Google Scholar

19 Gladstone to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, 2 Oct. 1862 (Lathbury, 1, 196–8). The tenor of this letter was that Wilberforce was not, according to this consideration, entirely satisfactory for advancement to York: ‘I know of certain things which you have as I believe been ready to concede. But the question put to me … would be has he not in his place in Parliament … been in all (ecclesiastical) things obstructive?’ Ibid.

20 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXX, 153.

21 The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University to Gladstone, 17 Mar. 1863, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44400, fos. 114–16.

22 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXIX, 1047–50. This bill first passed the Commons in 1860, but was repeatedly defeated in the Lords and did not become law until 1866. Macintosh, W. H., ‘The agitation for disestablishment of the Church of England in the nineteenth century (excluding Wales), with special reference to the Minutes and papers of the Liberation Societ’ (unpubl. D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1955), pp. 202–4.Google Scholar

23 Gladstone to Samuel Wilberforce, 15 Mar. 1863. Ashwell, A. R. and Wilberforce, R. G., Life of the Rt. Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, D.D. (3 vols., London, 1880–1882), iii, 78.Google Scholar

24 Gladstone to Wilberforce, 21 Mar. 1863, Wilberforce Papers, d. 37, Bodleian Library. This long letter is printed, with some inaccuracy and omission, in Ashwell and Wilberforce, , op. cit., iii, 80–4.Google Scholar

25 Ibid. As examples of concessions which brought the desired advantages, Gladstone mentioned the abandonment of Church rates in many English parishes, which ‘has been for the relative advantage of the Church’; and the abolition of the similar Church Cess in Ireland, which ‘has… contributed very largely to the maintenance of the Established Church in that country’ (ibid.). By 1869, however, he was to argue that only disestablishment could adequately serve the interests of the Church of Ireland. In another letter to Wilberforce, he described the unyielding defenders of the Church in the Commons as being those who were ‘destroying, politically & … ecclesiastically, the cause of the Church’. 26 Apr. 1863, Wilberforce Papers, d. 37.

26 Gladstone to Wilberforce, 21 Mar. 1863 (see note 24).

27 Gladstone to Sir Stafford Northcote, 9 Aug. 1865 (Lathbury, 1, 142). He had expressed a similar view earlier in a long letter to his son W. H. Gladstone, 16 Apr. 1865 (Lathbury, 11, 170–72; Morley, , Life, ii, 159–60).Google Scholar

28 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXXXIII, 619 ff.

29 Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), iv, 276–86 (21 July 1865), 293 (15 Sept. 1865), 326–8 (17 Nov. 1865); Miall, A., Life of Edward Miall (London, 1884), pp. 252 ff.;Google ScholarVincent, J., op. cit., pp. 73–4.Google Scholar

30 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXXVIII, 420–34; Morley, ii, 141–2, 239–40; Gladstone, W. E., ‘A Chapter of Autobiography’, in Gleanings of Past Years (London, 1879), VII, 130–4;Google Scholar Palmerston to Gladstone, 27 Mar. 1865 (Guedalla, P., ed., Gladstone and Palmerston, 1851–65, London, 1928, pp. 326–7).Google Scholar Sir Stafford Northcote said of this speech, that Gladstone denounced the Irish Church in a way ‘which shows how, by-and-by, he will deal not only with it but with the Church of England too’. Williams, W. E., The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal Party (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 158–9.Google Scholar

31 e.g. for the prominence of Congregationalists in the opposition to the Maynooth bill in 1845, see Machin, G. I. T., ‘The Maynooth Grant, the Dissenters and Disestablishment, 1845–7’, English Historical Review, LXXXII (1967), 69.Google Scholar

32 D.N.B.

33 Hall, C. Newman, Autobiography (London, 1898), pp. 36, 203.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., pp. 130–31.

35 ibid.

36 Hall, C. Newman, Dissent and the Papal Bull – No Intolerance: A Response to the cry of ‘No Popery’ (London, 1850).Google Scholar See also Hall's, Autobiography, op. cit., pp. 93–4, for his view of this question. For Gladstone's speech, see Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., cxv, 565–97.Google Scholar

37 Allon to Gladstone, 30 June 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44095, fo. 302.

38 Hall, Newman, Autobiography, pp. 167 ff.Google Scholar

39 Gladstone to Hall, 14 May 1864, ibid., p. 265. This letter also has an interesting reference to Gladstone's famous declaration on Parliamentary Reform, and his dilemma following its reception. Ibid.; Morley, , ii, 130.Google Scholar

40 Hall to Gladstone, 10 Nov. 1864, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 20–2.

41 Hall to Gladstone, 15 Nov. 1864, ibid., fos. 24–9. The Wesleyan was William Bunting, son of Jabez Bunting, the Baptists were William Brock and William Landells, and the Congregationa–lists were Henry Allon, Thomas Binney, Baldwin Brown, John Godwin, Robert Halley, Samuel Martin, Henry Reynolds, James Spencer, Robert Vaughan and Edward White.

42 Hall to Gladstone, 26 Nov. 1864, ibid., fo. 30 ( ‘Wesleyans’ were meant instead of ‘Methodists’). Many Wesleyans were transferring their political support to the Liberals at this time, and confidence in Gladstone may well have hastened the process. Cf. Hanham, H. J., Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, 1959), p. 212.Google Scholar

43 Hall to Gladstone, 26 Nov. 1864, fos. 30–32. Part of this letter is summarized in Morley, ii, 134.

44 Machin, G. I. T., op. cit., pp. 65 ff. Sir Morton Peto, when first introducing his Burials bill in 1861, had been careful to distinguish himself from the Liberation Society, asking the House to ‘lay aside all feelings of irritation which might have been produced in their minds by any idea that this Bill emanated from the Liberation Society’. Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXII, 1024.Google Scholar

45 Hall to Gladstone, 26 Nov. 1864, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 31.

46 Gladstone to Newman Hall, 4 Feb. 1865. Hall, Newman, Autobiography, p. 266.Google Scholar

47 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CLXXX, 222.

48 17 June 1865, Gladstone Papers, Add, MSS 44188, fos. 46–7

49 Gladstone to Hall, 18 June 1865 (Hall, Newman, Autobiography, p. 267).Google Scholar Cf. Gladstone to Rev. Brown, Baldwin, 29 July 1865 (Lathbury, i, 219–20).Google Scholar

50 Gladstone to Hall, 26 Feb. 1866 (Hall, Newman, Autobiography, p. 268).Google Scholar

51 Hall to Gladstone, 24 Feb. 1865, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 38.

52 Hall to Gladstone, 17 June 1865, ibid., fo. 47.

53 Hall to Gladstone, 3 Mar. 1866, ibid., fo. 65.

54 SeeMorley, , ii, 313–14; Lathbury, i, 213;Google ScholarWard, W. R., Victorian Oxford (London, 1965), pp. 252–61.Google Scholar

55 Newman Hall to Gladstone, 25 Jan. 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 61–2. At a later meeting in 1875, even Newman Hall's dog benefited from Gladstone's visit: ‘I introduced him [Gladstone] to … a fine collie, who seemed to appreciate the honour of the Premier's (sic) pat’. Hall, , Autobiography, p. 272.Google Scholar

56 Hall to Gladstone, 19 Jan., 23 Mar. and 12 May 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 57, 67–8, 69–70. Rev. Henry Allon to Gladstone, 30 June 1866, 17 Apr. 1867, 22 May and 2 Oct. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44095, fos. 302–3, 308–9, 312–13, 315–16.

57 Allon to Gladstone, 6 July 1866, ibid., fos. 304–5.

58 Hall to Gladstone, 25 July 1865, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 49. In this letter Hall also made an interesting comment, in connection with Gladstone's defeat at Oxford, on the political relations of Nonconformists with Evangelicals in the Church of England: ‘I regret that the section of the Clergy with whom I have most sympathy in doctrine, manifest generally the most narrow prejudices’ (ibid., fo. 50). Cf. Newman Hall to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, 5 Nov. 1864: ‘I can testify that I have experienced greater courtesy from those Churchmen between whom and myself there is a marked and plainly announced difference than from those whose opinions have much more nearly coincided with my own’. Ashwell, and Wilberforce, , op. cit., iii, 153.Google Scholar

59 Hall to Gladstone, 21 Dec. 1865, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 56.

60 Hall to Gladstone, 16 May 1867, ibid., fos. 73–4.

61 Cowling, M., 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 166 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Prest, J., Lord John Russell (London, 1972), pp. 415–18.Google Scholar

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64 Smith, F. B., The Maying of the Second Reform Bill (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 225, 237–40;Google ScholarHanham, H. J., op. cit., pp. 117–18;Google ScholarClark, G. Kitson, The Maying of Victorian England (London, 1965 ed.), pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

65 A memorandum in the Gladstone Papers (Add. MSS 44612, fos. 138–9) gave fourteen Presbyterians (of different Churches, excluding the Church of Scotland), ten Congregationalists, nine Unitarians, seven Quakers, five Baptists, three Wesleyans and one Calvinistic Methodist as the Nonconformists returned in 1868, listing also four ‘doubtfuls’. Twenty of these fifty-three had also been returned in 1865, and there should be added at least six Dissenters who were in the 1865 Parliament but not in that of 1868. In the 1874 election the Protestant Nonconformists returned were estimated at sixty-two; Cowan, Charles, Reminiscences (printed for private circulation, n.p., 1878), P. 332.Google Scholar

66 Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), iv, 475 (30 Aug. 1867).

67 These measures are listed in Vincent, J., Formation of the Liberal Party, p. 74;Google Scholar Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), v, 78 (7 Aug. 1868). See also ibid., iv, 470–75 (30 Aug. 1867). In 1867 a Church rate abolition bill introduced by Joseph Hardcastle, M.P. for Bury St Edmunds, passed its second reading in the Commons by seventy–six votes, the largest majority which such a measure had obtained; but it was rejected by the Lords.

68 Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), v, 19–20 (7 Feb. 1868). Cf. Roundell Palmer to Gladstone, 21 Dec. 1867, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44296, fos. 100–103.

69 Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., exc, 959–60.

70 Ibid., 964. Viscount Cranborne, from an opposite political pole, expressed similar sentiments on this point (ibid., 970). In his desire to gain the maximum support for his bill, Gladstone was surprisingly inept in saying that, if the Irish Church cess (similar to Church rate) had not been abolished in 1833, ‘it is highly probable that the Irish Church Establishment would not be in existence at this moment’ (ibid., 963–4). C. N. Newdegate soon pointed out that those who most strongly desired the removal of Church rates, strongly desired the abolition of the Irish Church Establishment also (ibid., 971).

71 Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), v, 79 S. (7 Aug. and 11 Sept. 1868).

72 The Liberation Society's executive committee regarded the abolition of Church rates and university tests as ‘topics of subordinate importance’ compared with Irish disestablishment; Minutes, v, 62 (12 June 1868).

73 Hanham, H. J. says that this question ‘served to unite all but the most militant nonconformists behind Gladstone’; Elections and Party Management, p. 118.Google Scholar Certainly some militant Protestants amongst the Nonconformists disliked Irish disestablishment (see below, p. 362). For the understanding between the Liberation Society and Irish Catholics over this cause, see Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), in, 291–316 (8 Sept., 17 Nov. and 1 Dec. 1856), iv, 234–5 (6 Jan. 1865), 479–81, 485–6 (4 and 25 Oct. 1867); and Norman, E. R., The Catholic Church and Ireland in the Age of Rebellion, 1859–73 (London, 1965), pp. 177–81, 325–30, 363–4.Google Scholar

74 Hall to Gladstone, 1 Aug. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 83. For the ‘concurrent endowment’ issue, see Bell, P. M. H., Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales (London, 1969), pp. 63, 118–20, 151; and Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), iv, 454–5 (5 July 1867), 493 (13 Dec. 1867), v, 31–5 (20 and 27 Mar. 1868).Google Scholar

75 Allon to Gladstone, 5 May 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44095, fo. 311.

76 Ibid. Gladstone to Allon, 1868 (Morley, 11, 255).

77 Hall to Gladstone, 1 Aug. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, to. 82.

78 Hall to Gladstone, 25 Nov. 1868, ibid., fo. 88.

79 Hall to Gladstone, i Aug. 1868, ibid., fo. 83. Brewin Grant's pamphlet was entitled The Irish Church: an English Dissenter's view of it, or Mr. Gladstone's missing link (London, 1868).Google Scholar

80 Liberation Society Minutes, v, 103–10 (4 Dec. 1868). See also Macintosh, W. H., op. cit., p. 224 ff.;Google ScholarMiall, A., Life of Edward Miall (London, 1884), pp. 263–4.Google Scholar

81 Hall to Gladstone, 25 Nov. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 87–8.

82 Allon to Gladstone, 25 Nov. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44095, fo. 318.

83 Newman Hall to Gladstone, 2 Mar. and u May 1869, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 91–3.

84 2 Dec. 1869, Ibid.., fos. 95–6. See also Hall to Gladstone, 10 Dec. 1869, ibid., fos. 97–8.

85 Hall to Gladstone, 17 July 1879, Ibid., fos. 178–9. Hall obtained a divorce in 1879, being successful in defeating a counter-petition brought against him (for a summary of the proceedings, see Hall's entry in D.N.B.). In this matter Hall asked Gladstone to put in a word for him with his counsel, Sir Henry James (a former Liberal attorney-general who was known to Gladstone but not to Hall), and Gladstone promptly obliged. Hall to Gladstone, 17 and 19 July and 19 Aug. 1879, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fos. 178–82.

86 Shannon, R. T., Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876 (London, 1963), pp. 162–5.Google Scholar

87 Newman Hall disagreed with Gladstone over Home Rule, though he probably did not become a Liberal Unionist. Hall, , Autobiography, pp. 281–2.Google Scholar

88 A Chapter of Autobiography, in Gleanings of Past Years (London, 1879), VII, 150–1.Google Scholar

89 For a comparative estimate in the 1860s, a successor on a limited scale to the 1851 Religious Census, see the assessment of Established and non-established church accommodation in London, in British Quarterly Review, XLIII (01–04 1866), pp. 146–7 (taken from figures given in the Nonconformist, 15 Nov. and 13 Dec. 1865).Google Scholar

90 Hanham, H. J., op. cit., pp. 119–24;Google ScholarShannon, R. T., op. cit., pp. 170–71;Google ScholarMorley, , ii, 135.Google Scholar

91 Culture and Anarchy, ed. Super, R. H. (Ann Arbor, 1965), pp. 101 ff., 194 ff., 235 ff., 248 ff.Google Scholar While Arnold's comments are a salutary criticism of some of the narrower manifestations of religious single-mindedness, their general validity needs to be tested by a detailed study of the cultural interests and attainments of Dissenters. In this connection some remarks of Halévy are of interest; Hist. Eng. People, iv (London, 1951), p. 389. Arnold might have also considered the importance of political causes in producing the supposed cultural isolation – in particular how far it was the result of legal exclusion from the rwo main universities, whose value as cultural centres he so emphasized. In 1883, to Arnold's surprise and perhaps to that of Gladstonian Nonconformists, Gladstone gave him a civil list pension of £250 a year (D.N.B., Arnold's entry).Google Scholar

92 Newman Hall to Gladstone, 3 Mar. 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS 44188, fo. 65; Morley, , ii, 313.Google Scholar

93 See above, p. 357.

94 Liberation Society Minutes (executive committee), v, 111–12 (4 Dec. 1868); Hanham, , op. cit., p. 118.Google Scholar