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Whiggery, religion and social reform: the case of Lord Morpeth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Boyd Hilton
Boyd Hilton
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Abstract

M.P.s who supported the Grey, Melbourne, Russell and Palmerston governments were all described as ‘Liberals’ in contemporary registers such as those by Dod and McCalmont. However, historians have recently attempted to differentiate intellectually among these M.P.s, and in particular to sort out the liberals from the whigs. A difficulty here is that, in a period which was almost equally dominated by religious and ecclesiastical issues on the one hand and social and economic issues on the other, it appears that those politicians who were most ‘liberal’ in one context were least ‘liberal’ in the other. The subject of this article, Lord Morpeth, conformed to a type of ‘whig–liberal’ politician whose social policies were ‘whig’ rather than ‘liberal’, but who exemplified that tolerant approach to religious politics which has been termed ‘liberal Anglican’. It is possible to infer Morpeth's theological views from his many comments on sermons and devotional texts, and it appears that the best way to understand his religion (and its impact on his politics) is in terms, not of liberal Anglicanism, but of incarnationalism combined with a type of joyous pre-millenarianism (or jolly apocalypticism) not uncharacteristic of the mid nineteenth century. Reacting against the evangelical and high church revivals, yet sharing their piety and rectitude, Morpeth's incarnational religion represented an attempt to reconcile a theory of individual personality with ideas of community and brotherhood – to soften the ‘spiritual capitalism’ implied by ‘moderate’ Anglican evangelicalism, while retaining its emphasis on individual responsibility. Its secular equivalent was the type of ‘half-way’ social reform espoused by many whig-liberals in the third quarter of the century.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 829 - 859
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 I am grateful to Lawrence Goldman, Eileen Groth, Colin Matthew, Jon Parry, David Thompson, and Alison Winter for their advice, to the Hon. Simon Howard for permission to quote from the Castle Howard MSS, and to Eeyan Hartley (Keeper of Archives) for his help in making these available.

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61 Olien, , Morpeth, p. 257Google Scholar, speculates briefly that, in his intimate talks with Prescott, Morpeth may have allowed himself to entertain hitherto suppressed doubts of a rationalist nature concerning orthodox doctrines.

62 Ibid. pp. 271–5.

63 Cowper to Morpeth, 20 Apr. 1848, Castle Howard Archives, J19/1/45/21.

64 However, it is noteworthy that some participants in mesmeric experiments were former Irvingites, who may have identified mesmeric trances with ‘speaking in tongues’. Alison, Winter, ‘“The island of mesmeria”: the politics of mesmerism in early Victorian Britain’ (Cambridge University Ph.D, 1993), pp. 50, 103Google Scholar and n. 135. I am grateful to Alison Winter for this and much other help and information.

65 In 1839 Morpeth had recommended Melvill's sermons to Cowper, who replied that Melvill was ‘the finest preacher’ he had ever heard. Cowper to Morpeth, 6 May 1839, Castle Howard Archives, J19/1/23/29.

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125 Morpeth, Journal, 23 Sept. 1844, Castle Howard Archives, J19/8/5/11.

126 Cowper to Morpeth, 14 Sept. 1843, Castle Howard Archives, J19/1/36/31.

127 Morpeth to Lady Holland, 20 Mar. 1844, loc. cit. Such sentiments may be thought to justify some contemporary perceptions that Morpeth was ‘good-tempered but perhaps too facile’. Quillinan, Edward to Robinson, H. C., 23 Mar. 1845, The correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Wordsworth circle, edited by Morley, E. J. (2 vols., Oxford, 1927), II, 593–4.Google Scholar

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135 Thirlwall to?, 17 Feb. 1865, Letters to a friend by Connop Thirlwall, edited by Stanley, A. P. (1881), p. 18Google Scholar. On conservation of energy see Hilton, , Age of atonement, pp. 309–14.Google Scholar

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138 Though Dr Bebbington urges, most plausibly, that incarnationalist thought resurfaced in public life via Tawney, Temple, and Beveridge, and that it provided an ideological underpinning for the welfare state (private communication). See Nicholls, David, Deity and domination: images of god and the state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1989), pp. 31–87Google Scholar; Harris, Jose, ‘Political ideas and the debate on state welfare, 1940–45’, War and social change in British society in the second world war, edited by Smith, Harold L. (Manchester, 1986), pp. 233–63.Google Scholar