The Charity Organisation Society is conventionally assumed to have emerged as a natural response to chronic problems of urban poverty relief which, by 1869, had become acute. While accepting that such an approach identifies a necessary dimension of explanation, the argument presented here contends that no sufficient explanation of the emergence of the COS can be given without taking into account the ecclesiastical dimension of events, in particular, the key role played by Whig Broad Churchmen determined to ‘hold the line’ against ideals of religious voluntarism in the aftermath of the shock of Gladstone's 1868 disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.