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The Protestant Constitution and its Supporters, 1800–1829

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

G. F. A. Best
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Extract

The many non-theological controversies which ranged about the Church of England in the first three decades of the nineteenth century fell into two classes, the one inspired by the deficiencies in the church's physical equipment for performing its allotted functions as the state's religious establishment, the other by the superiorities and advantages enjoyed only by its members. The controversies in the latter class went the deeper. In discussing ‘church reform’, the fact of establishment could be taken for granted: but in discussing the legal disabilities and social inferiorities under which both Protestant and Roman Catholic nonconformists suffered, the establishment's superiorities had to be defended against liberals who maintained that an established church could do without them, and its very existence as an establishment had to be justified against the charges of those Protestant dissenters and secularists who maintained that established churches were iniquitous, oppressive, and absurd. The discussion thus ranged freely between the poles of political practice and political philosophy, and joined the immediate problems of the hour to the most serious philosophical and theological problems with which thoughtful statesmen could be concerned.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 8 , January 1958 , pp. 105 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1958

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References

page 106 note 1 See especially Warburton's Alliance Between Church and State, book i, ch. 3: Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, book 4, ch. 4: and Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, book i, ch. 3, where the divine rewards and penalties were only not fully dealt with because they were ‘the foundation upon which the whole fabric rests’, and had to be taken for granted. Burke's insistence on these truths is too well known to need comment.

page 106 note 2 The important divisions in the Commons showed minorities 160, 173, and 142 strong—the last being in a thinner house (Hansard, new series, xx. 892, 1290, and 1633). The minorities on the 2nd and 3rd readings in the Lords numbered 112 and 109 respectively (ibid., xxi. 394 and 694).

page 107 note 1 Letter of 15 January 1828 in the British Museum Additional Manuscripts [henceforth referred to as Add. MSS.] 40343, fos. 104–5. To do the Protestant Tories justice it should be added that Peel did not say they were the only blockheads in politics.

page 107 note 2 Greville's, CharlesMemoirs, 1814–1860, ed. Strachey, and Fulford, (London, 1938), i. 254Google Scholar.

page 107 note 3 ‘The Character of Sir Robert Peel’ (written in 1856) in Biographical Studies (London 1881), p. 1Google Scholar.

page 107 note 4 The History of England during the Thirty Years Peace (London, 1849), i. 383Google Scholar.

page 107 note 5 Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians (London, 1900), ii. 58Google Scholar; Davis's, H. W. C. chapter in the original Cambridge Modern History, vol. xGoogle Scholar; Laski, Harold, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New Haven, 1917), pp. 121–37Google Scholar; Brinton, Crane, English Political Thinkers in the 19th Century (London, 1949), p. 74Google Scholar; Halévy, Elie, History of the English People in the 19th Century (London, 1949), ii. 219, 274Google Scholar.

page 108 note 1 Inglis attracted peculiarly to himself the odium and contempt in which his party generally was held. It began with the Oxford University election. After he had defeated Peel (who was not quite yet a baronet) this couplet came into circulation among the whigs:

Then up spoke all the doctors, in the divinity school,

‘Not this man, but Sir Robert!’—Now, Sir Robert was a fool.

Evidence is abundant to show that Sir Robert was an able, intelligent, civilized and humane man of strict principles, who began public life as a moderate evangelical and gravitated into high churchmanship during the years 1828–33: yet the old story has retained its vigour, and in the definitive edition of his friend Wordsworth's letters he appears as ‘an old-fashioned Tory of rather limited intelligence’.

Letters of Wiliam and Dorothy Wordsworth … 1821–1850, ed. de Selincourt, E. (Oxford, 1939), i. 208Google Scholar. Forster, E. M. has done much to restore Inglis's good name in Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887 (London, 1956)Google Scholar.

page 108 note 2 Several of these responsible individuals were just as prepared as their more headstrong colleagues to risk civil war rather than forsake their principles: e.g. Wordsworth, , op. cit., i. 356Google Scholar; Southey, , in his son Southey's, C. C. edition of his Life and Correspondence (London, 1849–1850), vi. 26 fGoogle Scholar.; and Inglis himself, whose sentiments, when Gladstone recalled them, made his blood run cold, in Morley's Life of Gladstone, book 2, ch. 9.

page 108 note 3 E.g. Bishop Sumner's, C. R.Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Winchester, 1845Google Scholar; Whately's, R.Remains of Edward Copleston (London, 1854), 33Google Scholar; and Hanna, W., Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers (Edinburgh, 1851), iii. 259nGoogle Scholar.

page 109 note 1 Henry Goulburn, for example. On 5 March 1826 he wrote to his wife, ‘This morning I am looking over Catholic proceedings in the hope of devising something to say on the Catholic Question this evening. When one has spoken several times on a subject it is no easy matter to find anything new to say especially when the subject has been matter for debate for above 25 years’: the Goulburn Papers, box III/8, in the Surrey County Record Office. (I am much indebted to the courtesy of the County Archivist and her department.)

page 109 note 2 In fact they rather prided themselves on it, because it enabled them to stand in sharp contrast to their enemies of the Brougham-Birkbeck school, and to signify their disbelief in the ‘outstanding progress of intelligence’.

page 109 note 3 These constitutional arguments were of course in practice complicated by the facts that the Roman Catholic question was so largely an Irish question, and that the established church was the United Church of England and Ireland. The paternal imperialism with which the sensible Protestant Tories viewed Ireland led them to connect the movement for ‘emancipation’ with Irish nationalism, Irish national characteristics, and a dangerous social movement threatening the landed gentry and their just influence. The Irish movement has recently been studied by Reynolds, James A., The Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland, 1823–1829 (New Haven, 1954)Google Scholar.

page 110 note 1 John Morley, Life of Gladstone, book 1, ch. 3. ‘No Popery’ found its way into the home also through the medium of cheap popular Staffordshire pottery. The Willett collection at Brighton contains a group showing the burning of Larimer and Ridley, and a pair of figures of ‘Protestantism’ and ‘Popery’, all attributed to 1829. I may add that I have seen in an antique shop a large sampler, well over two feet square, worked with the Duke of York's famous speech against concession, and dated 1826, which must have taken months to complete.

page 110 note 2 Eldon in the Lords, 17 May 1819, Hansard, xl. 407.

page 110 note 3 Letters of 1825 in Twiss, H., Life of Eldon (London, 1844), ii. 537 f., 554Google Scholar.

page 110 note 4 Speech of 23 February 1829 (Hansard, new series, xx. 478 f.) and in the speech referred to in note 2 above.

page 111 note 1 Charge to the clergy of the diocese of Lincoln, 1812.

page 111 note 2 D. M. Perceval to Peel, 16 March 1829, Add. MS. 40399, fo. 56.

page 111 note 3 This example is taken from an Address to the Duke of York from the Protestant Union, 1826, in Watkins, J., Biographical Memoir of the Duke of York (London, 1827), pp. 524 fGoogle Scholar.

page 111 note 4 British Magazine, March 1832, pp. 40 f.

page 111 note 5 I am sorry to say that I have lost track of the source of this remark. I think it was Van Mildert's.

page 112 note 1 Mildert, Van, Charge to the clergy of the diocese of Durham, 1827Google Scholar.

page 112 note 2 Bishop Jebb to Sir Robert Inglis (for transmission to Peel), 16 July 1828, Add. MS. 40397, fo. 166. His letter began: ‘My dear Friend, You mention Mr. Peel's wish to know my Opinion of the State of Ireland at present…’

page 112 note 3 DrClarke, Adam to Sidmouth, , circa 04 1821Google Scholar, Pellew, G., Life and Correspondence of Sidmouth (London, 1847), iii. 348 fGoogle Scholar.

page 112 note 4 Letter to Wynn, April 1807, Life and Correspondence of Southey, ed. Southey, C. C., iii. 76Google Scholar.

page 112 note 5 Particularly prominent in this connexion was the belief that papists in general and Jesuits in particular held that the end justifies the means. See, for instance, The Quarterly Review (1822), xxviii. 147Google Scholar; Stephens, W. R. W., Life and Letters of W. F. Hook (London, 1878), i. 112Google Scholar; and, perhaps most significant of all, the popular novelist G. P. R. James, Castle of Ehrenstein, book 2, ch. 12, where he censures the mild and virtuous priest Fr. George.

page 113 note 1 Letter to Wellington, 26 February 1829, in Wellington's, Despatches, new series (London, 1867–1880), v. 509 fGoogle Scholar.

page 113 note 2 Speech of 21 April 1812, Hansard, xxii. 599 f.

page 113 note 3 Letter mentioned in note 1 above.

page 113 note 4 Charge to the clergy of the diocese of Salisbury, 1829.

page 114 note 1 Substance of a speech delivered in the House of Lords on ly May 1825 by William Lord Bishop of Llandaff [i.e. Van Mildert, ], pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

page 114 note 2 This was not a favour, as might at first sight appear. It was hoped that the priesthood would thus be rendered more amenable to government influence. See, e.g., the Duke of Richmond, in Parker, C. S., Sir Robert Peel from his private papers (London, 1891–1899), i. 73Google Scholar.

page 115 note 1 The reasonableness of this last security was admitted by no less ardent a ‘Catholic’ than Smith, Sydney; see The Letters of Sydney Smith, ed. Smith, N. C. (Oxford, 1953), i. 463 fGoogle Scholar. Professor Burton said a few years later that he had ever been an advocate of relief, but had never dreamt that Roman Catholics would vote on church affairs. Thoughts on the Separation of Church and State (London, 1834), p. 59Google Scholar.

page 116 note 1 Letter to Liverpool, in Yonge, C. D., Life and Administration of Liverpool (London, 1868), iii. 378Google Scholar.

page 116 note 2 The question put to the monarch by the Coronation Oath Act, I W. & M. c. 6, ran, ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the protestant reformed religion established by law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm and to the churches committed to their charge all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them?’

page 116 note 3 Letter to an English Layman on the Coronation Oath … (1828). After enunciating the king's absolute right to refuse his consent to whatever seemed to him ‘to be at variance with one of the great and expressed objects of the oath’ (p. 52) he spoke of the King as ‘not, in strictness of speech, a branch of the legislature, but rather he is the legislator, limited indeed, and restrained by … not the nation's, but the King's great council, the nation assembled to be his council by their representatives in Parliament’ (p. 83).

page 117 note 1 9 May 1828, Hansard, new series, xix. 504, or Mirror of Parliament, 1828, ii. 1393.

page 117 note 2 Ellenborough's, Political Diary 1828–1830, ed. Colchester, Lord (London, 1881), i. 395Google Scholar, entry for 16 March 1829.

page 117 note 3 See his letter to Liverpool in Wellington's, Despatches, new series, ii. 418Google Scholar; and his letters to Peel, 19 November 1824, in Parker, , op. cit., i. 349Google Scholar, and 1 February 1825, Add. MS. 40300, fos. 33–4.

page 117 note 4 The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot, 1820–1832, ed. Bamford, F. and the Duke, of Wellington, (London, 1950), ii. 246Google Scholar and 248 (March 1829).

page 117 note 5 Second Letter to Canning on the Catholic Question (May 1827).

page 118 note 1 26 February 1829, Hansard, new series, xx. 584 f., and Mirror, 1829, i. 294–5. He concluded his oration with the couplet,

Whilst I can handle stick or stone,

I will defend the Church and Throne,

and was apparently about to repeat them when the Speaker cut in.

page 118 note 2 See Aspinall, A., Letters of George IV (Cambridge, 1938), iii. 123Google Scholar. Other instances of the same doubt are given in Twiss's, Eldon, ii. 545Google Scholar, and Colchester's, Diary and Correspondence, ed. by his son (London, 1861), iii. 510Google Scholar.

page 118 note 3 See Pares, Richard, George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), ch. 5 in general and p. 181Google Scholar. It is not surprising that this convention was challenged by the Protestant Tories, since it went clean contrary to the still widely used Blackstonian account of the constitution, according to which ‘the king, as a branch of the legislature, can know nothing of any resolution of parliament, till it has passed both houses of the legislature’; see Park's, J. J. shrewd book, The Dogmas of the Constitution (London, 1832), pp. 11, 126–7Google Scholar.

page 119 note 1 MrsArbuthnot's, Journal, ii. 248Google Scholar, entry for 4 March 1829.

page 119 note 2 16 March 1829, Hansard, new series, xx. 1074 f., or Mirror, 1829, i. 585. In 1807 the Tories justified the king's objections to the Talents on the ground that he had not been informed of the full terms of their small relief bill; while the ministers insisted that he had. Michael Roberts concludes that the ministers were not quite telling the truth, in his article ‘The Fall of the Talents’, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1 (1935), 61 fGoogle Scholar.

page 119 note 3 4 April 1829, Hansard, new series, xxi. 355–6, or Mirror, 1829, ii. 1055.

page 119 note 4 2 March 1829, Hansard, new series, xx. 646, or Mirror, 1829, i. 336.

page 119 note 5 Colchester's, Diary and Corresp., iii. 607Google Scholar, entry for 14 March 1829.

page 120 note 1 MrsArbuthnot's, Journal, ii. 243Google Scholar.

page 120 note 2 Aspinall, A., ‘The Cabinet Council 1783–1835’, in Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxviii (1952), p. 238Google Scholar.

page 120 note 3 For instance, the petitioners described by Cooper, C. H., Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1852), iv. 560Google Scholar, or those of whom Peel complained to Hobhouse in early April 1829, Add. MS. 40399, fos. 134–7.

page 120 note 4 His second letter to Wellington, 16 March 1829, in Wellington's, Despatches, new series, v. 528 fGoogle Scholar.

page 120 note 5 Letter of 8 February 1829, in Peel's, Memoir of the Roman Catholic Question (London, 1856), p. 325Google Scholar.

page 120 note 6 The act itself contained clauses prohibiting Roman Catholic bishops from using the titles of the ancient sees, prohibiting religious celebrations except in churches and private houses, and intending the eventual suppression of the Jesuits: see Ward, B., The Eve of Catholic Emancipation (London, 1911–1912), iii. 258–9Google Scholar. It also imposed a very long oath upon Roman Catholic members of both houses, binding them not to harm the Protestant establishments; excluded Roman Catholics from the offices of Regent, Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and High Commissioner to the General Assembly; and most carefully debarred Roman Catholics from themselves exercising, or advising the crown on the exercise of, church patronage.

page 122 note 1 The most recent writer on the subject of fundamental law, Gough, J. W., Fundamental Law in English Constitutional History (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar, notices its appearance at this juncture only in connexion with George III's difficulties over his coronation oath in 1800.

page 122 note 2 10 Geo. IV, c. 8.

page 123 note 1 10 June 1819, Hansard, xl. 1056.

page 123 note 2 Election advertisement in support of Lord Manners, Charles, in the Cambridge Chronicle, 23 07 1830Google Scholar.

page 123 note 3 Ellenborough's, Political Diary, ii. 4Google Scholar, entry for 4 April 1829.

page 123 note 4 The persistence of Protestantism as an element in conservative politics, which was briefly noticed by Hill, R. L., Toryism and the People (London, 1929), pp. 59–61Google Scholar, has been studied by Dr. Gilbert Aloysius Cahill, who has kindly allowed me to read his doctoral thesis, ‘Irish Catholicism and English Toryism, 1832–1848’, in the library of the State University of Iowa. His conclusions are summarized in his article of the same title in the Review of Politics, xix (1957), 62–76Google Scholar.

page 125 note 1 The State in its Relations with the Church, 1st ed., 1838, 4th and much enlarged ed. in 2 vols., 1841Google Scholar. Its principles are those repeatedly expressed, but never put into order as parts of a complete political philosophy, by such eminent spokesmen of the old order as Southey, Van Mildert, and, in his own way, Coleridge. See especially the passage on pp. 244–6 of the 4th edition.

page 125 note 2 Clark, G. Kitson, ‘The Repeal of the Corn Laws and the Politics of the Forties’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, iv (1951), 10Google Scholar.

page 125 note 3 Letter of 11 April 1829, Add. MS. 40399, fo. 150.

page 125 note 4 ‘English Reform and French Revolution in the General Election of 1830’, in Essays presented to Sir Lewis Namier, ed. Pares, Richard and Taylor, A. J. P. (London, 1956), p. 267Google Scholar.

page 125 note 5 See, e.g., Durham's letter to Prince Leopold, 3 November 1828, in Reid, S. J., Life and Letters of Durham (London, 1906), i. 195 fGoogle Scholar., and le Marchant, Denis, Memoir of Althorp (London, 1876), p. 318Google Scholar. Much more needs to be known about local political organizations before the reform bill, and particularly about the varieties of Church-and-King clubs, under their many titles.

page 126 note 1 A few verses from ‘The Warning Voice’ which made itself heard in the Leicester Herald, 18 March 1829.

page 126 note 2 Ellenborough's, Political Diary, i. 333 fGoogle Scholar., entry for 2 February 1829.

page 127 note 1 Letter of February 1829 in Pellew's, Sidmouth, iii. 425Google Scholar.

page 127 note 2 Elizabeth Lady Holland to her Son, 1821–1845, ed. Ilchester, Lord (London, 1946), p. 96Google Scholar, letter of 14 February 1829. For other kind opinions of Winchilsea see Palmer, Roundell, Memorials Family and Personal, 1766–1865 (London, 1896), i. 158Google Scholar, and Benjamin Harrison, letter of 1 November 1832, Add. MS. 44204, fo. 10.