What role did individuals play in Anglican church reform?

The Church could not resist the pressures for reform since it was not united in maintaining its authoritarian and conservative position. Critical opinion from evangelicals and from the laity led to concentration on the reform and reinvigoration of the parish. The Church of England and the Church of Ireland had been joined by the Act of Union. It became increasingly necessary to reform the gross abuses  and alter  the political position of the Church of Ireland and  this, by  extension,  raised  the  same  question in relation  to  the Anglican Church. Since it had no governing body of its own, the Church had to depend on Parliament and party politicians for support in its reactionary attitudes. The Church might claim to be aloof from public opinion, but after 1832 politicians could not afford to be.

Initially, reform of the Church was left to individuals. The Church of England still commanded considerable support among lay people who remained willing to donate large sums of their money and, in some cases their time and skill, to maintaining and extending its fabric. Charles Simeon, the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, sought to improve the quality of those entering the Church. [1]   There was little professional training for clergymen in the late eighteenth century and Simeon supplied the need in Cambridge with instruction to improve the quality and delivery of sermons. His example probably encouraged the establishment of the first specialist theological colleges at St Bees in 1816 and Lampeter in 1828. Simeon maintained that good evangelical clergymen were necessary but he also believed in the need to ensure that there was continuity of ‘gospel ministers’ in livings if the work of the Church was to be maintained.   The idea of a corporation or trust to secure advowsons had already been operated but in 1817, Simeon began his trust with the purchase of the patronage of Cheltenham. Simeon was perhaps more aware than many of his contemporaries of the need to secure a foothold in the growing industrial towns. His most important successes came as a result of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 that compelled corporations to give up their patronage. He and, after his death in  1836, his  successors secured  Bath,  Derby, Macclesfield, Bridlington, Beverley and two parishes in Liverpool. He was very conscious of the need to operate within the framework of the Church of England and disliked the insistence of evangelicals who believed that their commission to preach the gospels meant that they could override parochial boundaries.  He insisted on church order and this probably deterred many Anglican Evangelicals leaving the Church of England.

Lay influence on the Church of England was felt from the systematic nationwide penetration of the Anglican evangelicals associated loosely with William Wilberforce. The British and Foreign Bible Society [2] and the Church Missionary Society, [3] founded in 1803 and 1811, independently of the success they enjoyed abroad, played a major part in extending evangelical influence in Britain.   The Bible Society sought to disseminate copies of the Bible without note or comment; by 1825 it had issued over four million.   Many non-evangelical clergymen disliked this since they emphasised the importance of the Book of Common Prayer as well as the Bible and were suspicious of the co-operation with Dissenters that the Society encouraged. The Evangelical campaign sought to bring the working population within the orbit of the Established Church with the aim of keeping them in their place.  

Evangelicalism was seen as an antidote to revolution from the 1790s.   Hannah More (1745-1833) and her sister Martha played a considerable role in educating people for their place in society. [4] In 1795, she started the Cheap Repository Tracts in response to cheap radical literature especially Paine’s Rights of Man.  All 114 tracts had the same evangelical and conservative intention and an annual circulation of over two million copies. By 1830, the evangelicals had directed their attention at all sections of society. Wealth, social and political contacts, and the crisis occasioned by the French Revolution, helped them to spread their ideas among the aristocratic elite. The anti-slavery campaigns mobilised middle-class opinion and the Cheap Repository Tracts provided ‘proper’ reading for the working population.

Joshua Watson (1771-1855) was concerned to improve the ability of the Church to appeal to the growing urban population. [5] A wine merchant with wide commercial and financial interests, he retired from business in 1814 to devote himself to good works. He appealed to High Churchmen, in contrast to the Evangelicals, and the group that gathered at his house in Hackney became known as the Hackney Phalanx that publicise their activities through the British Critic. Watson was prominent in the formation of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in 1811.   Its purpose was to encourage parishes to start their own schools and within three years it had raised sufficient contributions to establish 360 schools in that there were 60,000 pupils and nearly a million twenty years later. It was not supported by the state until the government introduced grants in 1833. Though the 1839 Whig educational proposals were mangled by Anglican opposition, a committee of the Privy Council did take over the supervision of education and Watson’s resignation in 1842 coincided with the assertion of the authority of the State in education.

The  other  charitable  effort  that  Watson  led  was  the movement  to  build new churches.   There was little point in educating children into the Anglican faith if, when they grew up, they could not become regular churchgoers.   This was a very difficulty enterprise for private charity, even if money could be found.   Until 1818, a new parish had to be created by Parliament and to build a new church in an existing parish required the consent of the patron and the incumbent, either of whom might feel their rights were being infringed. In 1818, Watson formed an Incorporated Church Building Society and in the same year, the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool established an official commission with a grant of £1 million with a further £0.5 million added in 1824. [6]  Parliamentary grants were virtually used up by 1828 and were not renewed, but such was the stimulus given to private subscribers that the commission did not finish its work until 1857. By then it had built 612 new churches accommodating 600,000 people. This figure does not exhaust the total number of churches built as many were built or rebuilt by private means.

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[1] Carus, William, (ed.), Memoirs of the life of... Charles Simeon...with a selection from his writings and correspondence, (Hatchard and Son), 1847, is an essential if partial source. Moule, H. C. G., Charles Simeon, (Methuen), 1892, and Hopkins, H. E., Charles Simeon of Cambridge, (Hodder & Stoughton), 1977, remain good studies of his life. Piper, John, Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon and William Wilberforce, (Crossway Books), 2006, is a more recent study placing Simeon in his evangelical context.

[2] Canton, William, The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 5 Vols., (Murray), 1904-1910, Howsam, Leslie, Cheap bibles: nineteenth-century publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society, (Cambridge University Press), 1991, and Batalden, Stephen, Cann, Kathleen, and Dean, John, (eds.), Sowing the word: the cultural impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-2004, (Sheffield Phoenix), 2004.

[3] Elbourne, Elizabeth, ‘The foundation of the Church Missionary Society: the Anglican missionary impulse’, in ibid, Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen, (eds.), The Church of England, c.1689-c.1833: from toleration to Tractarianism, pp. 247-264, and Stock, Eugene, The History of the Church Missionary Society: its Environment, its Men and its Work, 4 Vols., (Church Missionary Society), 1899-1916.

[4] Stott, Anne, Hannah More: The First Victorian, (Oxford University Press), 2003, is an excellent biography; pp. 169-190, consider the Cheap Repository Tracts. See also, Pedersen, Susan, ‘Hannah More meets Simple Simon: tracts, chapbooks, and popular culture in late eighteenth-century England’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 25, (1986), pp. 84-113.

[5] Churton, Edward, Memoir of Joshua Watson, 2 Vols., (J. H. and J. Parker), 1861, and Webster, A. B., Joshua Watson: the story of a layman, 1771-1855, (SPCK), 1954.

[6] Port, M. H., 600 New Churches: the Church Building Commission, 1818-1856, 1961, rev. ed., (Spire Books), 2006.

Why was the Church of England under pressure in 1830?

The Church of England found itself in an uncomfortable position at the turn of the nineteenth century and was especially slow to recognise the significance of the changes taking place in the population structure of the country. [1] It had been fully integrated into the social environment of the eighteenth century with village and parish normally coterminous.  Its great strength lay in southern England as it was there the bulk of the population and wealth was located. [2]  Every settlement had its own church and so the population of each parish was of a manageable size.   The situation in northern England was less favourable and there was a long-term failure to retain the loyalty and affections of many men and women in the country’s industrialising areas.   Parishes were large, were badly endowed and consequently attracted few clergy and many livings were held in plurality or by non-resident incumbents. [3] For example, in 1831 Leeds, with a population of over 70,000 people, had only three places of Anglican worship. [4] The elaborate legal procedure for creating new parishes further hindered its ability to cope with the changing situation.  The church hierarchy had little comprehension of the nature of the city and of the 104 bishops of between 1783 and 1852, only 17 had ever held an urban living. The diocesan system of the north was equally inflexible and unable to meet the new situation.  Until 1836, the whole of Lancashire, large parts of Cumberland and Westmoreland and the north-west part of Yorkshire were all included in the unwieldy Diocese of Chester. [5] There was no bishop based in Lancashire and the West Riding until the dioceses of Ripon and Manchester were established in 1836 and 1847 and Liverpool and Newcastle did not gain episcopal status until 1880 and 1882. [6]

It was not just in the large towns that the Anglican Church’s position was serious.   Excessive emphasis has been placed on the alienation of urban society and this has tended to deflect attention away from the situation in the countryside. [7] The real tragedy for the Church was not the failure to meet the needs of people in the growing cities but rather its failure in the countryside where all its resources were concentrated. Among the lower clergy, the curates and the holders of small benefices, there remained a degree of poverty that continued to cause hardship, despite the various pieces of legislation that sought to regulate curates’ stipends. Many church buildings were in disrepair and pluralism and absenteeism were rife. Where Dissent established support in a village, competition from the Church was often limited.   Enclosure had reduced the hold of the Church since improvements in farming led to the commutation of tithes for land and many contemporaries believed that the increase in the clergy’s land was at the expense of the small tenant farmer. [8] An even worse reaction against the Church of England resulted from the collection of the tithe in kind, generally regarded as the ideal way of alienating the parson from his flock. [9]

An unresponsive and less than efficient pastoral system was exacerbated by a widespread belief that the Church must be defended at all costs. Like the unreformed Parliament, the unreformed Church had its own elaborate defence of the status quo. The French Revolution had deeply frightened the propertied classes and strengthened their belief that the society under their control must be defended as a divinely ordained hierarchy. [10] In this situation suggested reforms, including those of modest dimensions, could easily by identified with revolution and revolution with the destruction of Christianity. Even those who avoided the extremes of reaction felt it was their religious duty to preserve the constitution, the social order and the morality now under threat.   In 1834, a fifth of the magistrates in England were Anglican clergymen, embodying an enormous investment in social stability.

To critics like the journalist John Wade, whose polemic the Black Book appeared in 1820 and in a revised form as The Extraordinary Black Book in 1831, the abuses of the Church, its ineffective organisation and its conservative views were in need of reform. [11]   This was not the view of the Church: its property rights had to be defended; it was not accountable to the public; it had, as an established institution, a prescriptive right to authority. By a series of instinctive, but ill-judged actions, the Church identified itself with extreme Toryism and alienated opinion further in the 1820s and early 1830s. [12]

Abused by the radicals from outside Parliament, the events of 1828-1829 showed how little the Church could expect from its political friends. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and Catholic Emancipation ended the special relationship between the Church and Parliament establishing, in effect, free trade in religion. Dissenters and Catholics would now participate in legislation affecting the Church.   The attitude of the bishops during the reform agitation of 1830-1832 further tarnished the reputation of the Church and reinforced its identification in the eyes of the public with reaction.

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[1] On the Church of England see Smith, A., The Established Church and Popular Religion 1750-1850, (Longman), 1971, Norman, E. R., Church and Society in England 1770-1970, (Oxford University Press), 1976, and Knight, Frances, The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society, (Cambridge University Press), 1999. On social attitudes, see Soloway, R. A., Prelates and People:  Ecclesiastical Social Thought in England 1783-1852, (Routledge), 1969, Clark, G. Kitson, Churchmen and the Condition of England, (Methuen), 1973.

[2] Gregory, Jeremy, and Chamberlain, Jeffrey Scott, (eds.), The National Church in Local Perspective: the Church of England and the regions, 1660-1800, (Boydell), 2003, especially, pp. 1-28, illustrates the range of responses to a variety of problems and common themes.

[3] Gibson, William T., ‘Nepotism, family, and merit: the Church of England in the eighteenth century’, Journal of Family History, Vol. 18, (1993), pp. 179-190.

[4] Royle, Edward, ‘The Church of England and Methodism in Yorkshire, c.1750-1850: from monopoly to free market’, Northern History, Vol. 33, (1997), pp. 137-161.

[5] Early attempts at reform are considered in Burns, R. Arthur, ‘A Hanoverian legacy?: diocesan reform in the Church of England, c.1800-1833’, in Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen, (eds.), The Church of England, c.1689-c.1833: from toleration to Tractarianism, (Cambridge University Press), 1993, pp. 265-282.

[6] Jacob, W. M., The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1840, (Oxford University Press), 2007, examines the concept of ‘profession’ during the later-Stuart and Georgian period, with special reference to the clergy of the Church of England.

[7] See, for example, Brown, Callum G., ‘The mechanism of religious growth in urban society: British cities since the eighteenth century’, in McLeod, Hugh, European Religion in the Age of the Great Cities, 1830-1930, (Routledge), 1994, pp. 237-260, a synoptic overview. See also, Burns, Arthur, The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England c.1800-1870, (Oxford University Press), 1999.

[8] Lee, Robert, Rural society and the Anglican clergy, 1815-1914: encountering and managing the poor, (Boydell), 2006, considers the church in Norfolk.

[9] On this issue see Evans, E. J., The Contentious Tithe: The Tithe Problem and English Agriculture 1750-1830, (Routledge), 1976, pp. 16-41 and 94-114.

[10] See, Stafford, William, ‘Religion and the doctrine of nationalism in England at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars’, in Mews, Stuart, (ed.), Religion and national identity: papers read at the nineteenth summer meeting and twentieth winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, (Oxford University Press), 1982, pp. 381-395.

[11] Clayson, Jim, Frow, Edmund, and Frow, Ruth, ‘John Wade and The Black Book’, Labour History Review, Vol. 59, (2), (1994), pp. 55-57.

[12] Simon, W. G., ‘The bishops and reform’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 32, (1963), pp. 361-370, considers the period between 1820 and 1850.