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The Church of England and the Legislative Reforms of 1828–32: Revolution or Adjustment?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
Abstract
Since the 1950s, historians of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Church of England have generally maintained that the Sacramental Test Act (1828), the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829) and the Reform Act (1832) amounted to a ‘constitutional revolution’, in which Anglican political hegemony was decisively displaced. This theory remains the dominant framework for understanding the effect of legislation on the relationship between church and state in pre-Victorian England. This article probes the validity of the theory. It is argued that the legislative reforms of 1828–32 did not drastically alter the religious composition of parliament, which was already multi-denominational, and that they incorporated clauses which preserved the political dominance of the Church of England. Additionally, it is suggested that Anglican apprehensions concerning the reforming measures of those years were derived from an unfounded belief that these reforms would ultimately result in changes to the Church of England's formularies or in disestablishment, rather than from the actual laws enacted. Accordingly, the post-1832 British parliamentary system did not in the short term militate against Anglican interests. In light of this reappraisal, these legislative reforms may be better understood as an exercise in ‘constitutional adjustment’ as opposed to a ‘constitutional revolution’.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020
Footnotes
The research upon which this article is based was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership studentship, grant no. 1653413, supported by Pembroke College, Cambridge. I am most grateful to Andrew Thompson for his comments and suggestions.
References
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18 Froude, Remains, 1: 196–207.
19 Gerald Bray, ed., Records of Convocation, 20 vols, CERS (Woodbridge, 2006), vols 11–12, 15.
20 Froude was aware of his theory's shortcomings and, according to Peter Nockles, his ‘appeal to Hooker had been an essentially rhetorical, tactical device to disarm the “Zs” [non-Tractarian high churchmen]’: Nockles, Oxford Movement, 80. He even admitted to Newman that the ‘facts’ employed in support of his case were ‘less satisfactory than I could wish – I find that the Test and Corporation Acts applied only indirectly to Members of Parliament’: The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 4: The Oxford Movement, July 1833 to December 1834, ed. Ian T. Ker and Thomas Gornall (Oxford, 1980), 38, Richard Hurrell Froude to John Henry Newman, [August 1833].
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22 13 Cha. II c.1.
23 25 Cha. II c.2.
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28 6 Anne c.11; 1707 c.7.
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30 R. G. Thorne, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790–1820, 5 vols (London, 1986), 1: 294.
31 39 & 40 Geo. III c.67; 40 Geo. III c.38. By an act of the Irish parliament that was passed in 1780, Dissenters, although not Catholics, could hold civil office in Ireland: 20 Geo. III c.6.
32 Alexander Lock, Catholicism, Identity and Politics in the Age of Enlightenment: The Life and Career of Sir Thomas Gascoigne, 1745–1810 (Woodbridge, 2016), 97.
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35 Lock, Thomas Gascoigne, 109.
36 Ibid.; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons 1754–1790, 3: 219, 222.
37 Kallistos Ware, ‘The Fifth Earl of Guilford and his Secret Conversion to the Orthodox Church’, in Peter M. Doll, ed., Anglicanism and Orthodoxy 300 Years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford (Oxford, 2006), 290–326.
38 9 Geo. IV c.17.
39 London, BL, Add. MS 40343, fol. 189v, Charles Lloyd to Robert Peel, 2 March 1828; fol. 247v, Lloyd to Peel, 23 March 1828.
40 Ibid., fol. 190v, Lloyd to Peel, 2 March 1828.
41 Ibid., fol. 203r, William Van Mildert to Lloyd, 3 March 1828.
42 Ibid., fol. 205, Peel to Lloyd, 4 March 1828; fol. 212r, Peel to Lloyd, 15 March 1828.
43 9 Geo. IV c.17.
44 BL, Add. MS 40343, fol. 252, Peel to Lloyd, 25 March 1828.
45 A. Blomfield, ed., A Memoir of Charles James Blomfield, D.D., Bishop of London, with Selections from his Correspondence, 2 vols (London, 1863), 1: 138, Charles Blomfield to James Henry Monk, 22 April 1828. On the bishops’ role in securing the act and declaration, see R. A. Gaunt, ‘Peel's other Repeal: The Test and Corporation Acts, 1828’, PH 33 (2014), 243–62, at 253–7.
46 Short, ‘English Indemnity Acts’, 376.
47 HL Deb (2nd series), 21 April 1828 (vol. 18, col. 1576).
48 Davis, House of Lords, 141.
49 G. I. T. Machin, ‘Resistance to Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts’, HistJ 22 (1979), 115–39, at 126–32.
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51 10 Geo. IV c.7.
52 Ibid., c.8. On this disenfranchisement, see David A. Bateman, Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France (Cambridge, 2018), 246–9.
53 T. Thistlethwayte, Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr H. Bathurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich (London, 1853), 352, Henry Bathurst to Thomas William Coke, 16 April 1829.
54 HL Deb (3rd series), 8 May 1838 (vol. 42, cols 967–8); Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I: 1829–1859, 3rd edn (London, 1971), 22.
55 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 22–3; John A. Stack, ‘Catholic Members of Parliament who represented British Constituencies, 1829–1885: A Prosopographical Analysis’, RH 24 (1999), 335–63, at 348.
56 2 & 3 Will. IV c.45. On the Reform Act, see M. G. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, 1973); Jonathan Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, 1993), 72–89.
57 James J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c.1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1993), 152–5; Clark, English Society, 536–7.
58 HC Deb (2nd series), 18 February 1830 (vol. 22, cols 692–3).
59 Arthur Aspinall, ed., Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries (London, 1952), 144, diary of Lord Ellenborough, 8 October 1831.
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77 3 & 4 Will. IV c.37; 5 & 6 Will. IV c.76; 6 & 7 Will. IV c.71; 6 & 7 Will. IV c.185; 1 & 2 Vict. c.109.
78 HL Deb (3rd Series), 1 August 1834 (vol. 25, col. 886); J. P. Ellens, ‘Lord John Russell and the Church Rate Conflict: The Struggle for a Broad Church, 1834–1868’, JBS 26 (1987), 232–57, at 238–42; Ian D. C. Newbould, ‘The Whigs, the Church, and Education, 1839’, JBS 26 (1987), 332–46. Before the 1850s, subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England was required for matriculation and graduation at the University of Oxford; the University of Cambridge did not require subscription for matriculation, but like Oxford enforced it for graduation: Gibson, Unity and Accord, 137–8.
79 Brose, Church and Parliament, 120–56; Best, Temporal Pillars, 296–347.
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81 See, for example, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire Archives, R89/82/90, ‘John Bull’, ‘Summons to Conservatives’, 5 January 1835; Essex Standard, 16 January 1835, 2; Warwick, Warwickshire RO, DR362/133, Evelyn Shirley, ‘To the Electors of the Southern Division of the County of Warwick’, 17 June 1836; Bolton, Bolton Archives, ZZ/130/3/12, Samuel Scowcroft, ‘To the Worthy Electors of the Borough of Bolton’, 19 July 1837.
82 17 & 18 Vict. c.81; 19 & 20 Vict. c.88; 21 & 22 Vict. c.48; 29 & 30 Vict. c.22; London Gazette, 18 January 1859, 161; 31 & 32 Vict. c.109; 32 & 33 Vict. c.42; 34 & 35 Vict. c.26.
83 BL, Add. MS 40343, fol. 330, Peel to Lloyd, 15 January 1829; cf. Add. MS 40415, fol. 137v, Peel to Van Mildert, 23 February 1835.
84 Machin calls Wellington's statement ‘wildly exaggerated’, but there is reason to think that the statement was not so much an exaggeration as a misrepresentation of the Reform Act's effects: Politics and the Churches, 26.