John William Colenso: a Fresh Appraisal1

Peter Hinchliff

doi:10.1017/S0022046900068342

John William Colenso: a Fresh Appraisal1

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

Peter Hinchliff

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Peter Hinchliff: Affiliation:
Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Rhodes University, Grahamstown

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It is probably no one's fault that general histories of the Church in the nineteenth century are so misleading about bishop Colenso. Unless one gets down to the primary source material, which is almost all in South Africa, there is no way of escaping from the distortions of controversy. Almost all the books about Colenso are unreliable. His own biography was written by an ardent admirer who hoped to succeed him as bishop of Natal. The lives of his principal opponents, Robert Gray and James Green, are just as unsatisfactory. Gray's life was written by his son. Green's was written by Dr. Wirgman, a frank and open controversialist. Histories of the Province of South Africa are either missionary propaganda, or else become so immersed in the constitutional and legal issues connected with Colenso, that the character of the man himself is lost. In consequence, the bishop of Natal appears in history as a kind of religious schizophrenic—on the one hand a great missionary who loved the Zulu people with an infinite tenderness and, on the other, a wilful and spiteful heretic for whom no action was too base and mean. Or, worse still, he is represented as a brilliant but misunderstood fore-runner of modern biblical scholars who was also by accident a South African missionary.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1962 , pp. 203 - 216

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900068342 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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^{page 203 note 2} See, e.g., Classified Digest of the Records of S.P.G., London 1893, 330, 331Google Scholar; Lewis, C. and Edwards, G. E., Historical Records of the Church of the Province of South Africa, London 1934. 161, 317Google Scholar.

^{page 203 note 3} See, e.g., Cockshutt, A. O. J., Anglican Attitudes, London 1959, 88 ffGoogle Scholar.

^{page 203 note 4} Rees, W., Colenso Letters from Natal, Pietermartizburg 1958, 377 ffGoogle Scholar., cf. 374: ‘Two or three weeks after our dear Lord left us …’, i.e. two or three weeks after her husband died.

^{page 204 note 1} Rees, op. cit., 36.

^{page 204 note 2} Campbell Library, Durban, Colenso Folios, I. 5–14.

^{page 204 note 3} Cox, G. W., Life of Bishop Colenso, London 1888, i. 119 fGoogle Scholar.

^{page 204 note 4} Ibid., 47 ff.

^{page 205 note 1} See, e.g., Smith, E. W. (ed.), African Ideas of God, London 1950, 34 ff.Google Scholar, 99, 101 ff.

^{page 206 note 1} Cox, op. cit., i. 63 ff., esp. 67.

^{page 206 note 2} Colenso drew a parallel between polygamy and slavery, showing that Christians had only gradually come to regard the latter as immoral.

^{page 206 note 3} E.g., J. W. Colenso, Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Proper Treatment of Polygamy; H. Callaway, Polygamy: a Bar to Admission to the Christian Church.

^{page 206 note 4} Burnett, B. B., Anglican in Natal, Durban 1953, 57Google Scholar.

^{page 207 note 1} Wirgman, A. T., James Green, London 1909, i. 16Google Scholar.

^{page 207 note 2} Gray, C. N., Life of Robert Gray, London 1876, i. 395Google Scholar.

^{page 207 note 3} See Goodwin, H., Memoir of Bishop Mackenzie, Cambridge 1870, 112Google Scholar. The letters from which the extracts are taken are in the archives of the U.M.C.A. The letter quoted by Goodwin (loc. cit.) goes on to imply that Colenso had written offertory sentences and a Prayer for the Church for use at an evening service. A letter from Mackenzie, dated 7 April 1856, shows that pew-rents (i.e., the financial control exercised by the laity) were the chief bone of contention.

^{page 207 note 4} For information on Colenso's missionary work I am indebted to an unpublished thesis by B. B. Burnett, ‘The Missionary Work of the First Anglican Bishop of Natal’ (University of South Africa, M.A.).

^{page 208 note 1} A. T. Wirgman, op. cit, 14, 27.

^{page 208 note 2} Ibid., 36.

^{page 208 note 3} For the eucharistic controversy see Wirgman, op. cit., 39 ff. and G. W. Cox, op. cit., 97 ff. Cf. also W. Rees, Colenso Letters From Natal, 60—but the author is under the impression that this was a controversy about baptism.

^{page 208 note 4} A. T. Wirgman, op. cit., 45.

^{page 209 note 1} A. T. Wirgman, op. cit., 61 f. Wirgman takes a consistently anti-Colenso line, even though this means censuring both Green and Gray for being modest in their initial opposition to the bishop of Natal.

^{page 209 note 2} W. O. Chadwick, Mackenzie's Grave, London 1959.

^{page 210 note 1} For the formal protest by the clergy see Wirgman, op. cit., 75 f.

^{page 210 note 2} Colenso, J. W., Romans, Ekukanyeni 1861Google Scholar, 96 ff., 102 ff.

^{page 210 note 3} Ibid., 113 f., 117 f., cf. 75, 156.

^{page 210 note 4} Colenso, J. W., Pentateuch and Joshua, London 1862, i. 154Google Scholar; cf., Cox, op. cit., 215 ff.

^{page 211 note 1} C. N. Gray, op. cit., 423.

^{page 211 note 2} See Campbell Library, Durban, Colenso Folios, A. 152: Colenso to W. Bleek, 29 July 1861.

^{page 211 note 3} The charges are printed in full in an appendix to C. N. Gray, op. cit., ii.

^{page 211 note 4} C. N. Gray, op. cit., ii. 75 ff.

^{page 211 note 5} Cf. Natal Archives, Colenso Collection, 136: a letter dated 11 February 1863, in which Colenso maintains that every subject of the queen, whatever his views, has a right to belong to the national Church.

^{page 211 note 6} Cox, op. cit., i. 375 ff.; C. N. Gray, op. cit., ii. 240 ff.

^{page 212 note 1} III Moore P.C.N.S., 115 and the appendix to C. N. Gray, op. cit.

^{page 212 note 2} Keble College, Oxford, Keble Letters: Robert Gray to John Keble, 17 September 1864.

^{page 212 note 3} The Election of a Bishop, reprinted from the Natal Mercury, 1866, 60 f.

^{page 212 note 4} 3 Eq. 1.

^{page 212 note 5} Cf. Cox, op. cit., ii. 643 ff.

^{page 212 note 6} See Rees, op. cit., 159 ff.

^{page 213 note 1} Bloemfontein Chapter Library, Diocesan Archives, Unbound Papers, 1850–1871: B. 13. Gray to Webb, 21 August 1871.

^{page 213 note 2} The vestments are displayed in a glass case in the cathedral in Maritzburg, with an account of their origin posted alongside. See also Ollard, S. L., Short History of the Oxford Movement, 2nd. ed., London 1932, 172Google Scholar.

^{page 213 note 3} See Hooker, M. A., ‘The Place of Bishop Colenso in South African History’, unpublished thesis (University of the Witwatersrand, Ph.D.)Google Scholar, which devotes a whole chapter to ‘Colenso's Clergy’.

^{page 213 note 4} Natal Archives, Colenso Collection, 136: Colenso to Goodliffe, 5 October 1865.

^{page 213 note 5} An undated draft of Colenso's pathetic letter to Gray is in Natal Archives, Colenso Collection, 136.

^{page 214 note 1} The story of these somewhat controversial epidodes is told, from Colenso's point of view, in Cox, op. cit., ii. 313 ff., and Rees, op. cit., 258 ff., 290 ff., 325 ff.; but see also Walker, E. A., History of SouSiern Africa, London 1957, 353 fGoogle Scholar.

^{page 214 note 2} S.P.G. Archives, Macrorie Papers, Letters to F. Pott: Letter dated 17 January 1875.

^{page 215 note 1} Campbell Library Durban, Colenso Folios, Z (3 folios)—letters to F. W. Chesson.

^{page 215 note 2} Campbell Library Durban, ‘Bishop Colenso's Commentary on Frere's Zulu Policy’.

^{page 216 note 1} Cox, op. cit., 637.

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