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Bishop Lightfoot and the Northern church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
IT is always a surprise to discover one’s prejudices. Some time ago while attending a meeting at Ushaw College, Durham, I was surprised to see the extent to which the College and its chapel reflected the sense of being in continuity with the Church of Bede and Cuthbert. But why was I surprised? Because I had always associated that continuity with the Church of England and the magnificent cathedral church of Durham. I have no hesitation in regarding the Presbyterianism of Northumberland as part of that continuing tradition, because I regard the pre-Reformation Church as part of all our traditions. So the only reason to be surprised to find the same sense at Ushaw is an underlying prejudice that Roman Christianity represented an alien intrusion into the indigenous Church - a proposition that only has to be articulated for its incoherence to become apparent, for where did the indigenous Church come from, except originally from Rome?
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 12: Life and Thought in the Northern Church , 1999 , pp. 549 - 561
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999
References
1 Lightfoot, J.B., Leaders in the Northern Church: Sermons Preached in the Diocese of Durham, 2nd edn (London, 1891)Google Scholar.
2 Eden, G. R. and MacDonald, F. C., Lightfoot of Durham (Cambridge, 1933), p. 10Google Scholar; cf.Holland’s, Scott comments in Church, M. C., Life and Letters of Dean Church (London, 1897), p. 262Google Scholar.
3 Eden and MacDonald, Lightfoot of Durham, p. 111.
4 Westcott, B.F., From Strength to Strength (London, 1890), pp. 4–6Google Scholar. This sermon also uses the term ‘social gospel’ four years before the earliest use of it that I had previously discovered in Westcott’s writings.
5 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. ixGoogle Scholar. This list was as follows: (1) the Celtic Mission of Iona and Lindisfarne; (2) St Columba; (3) St Oswald; (4) St Aidan; (5) St Hilda; (6) St Cuthbert; (7) the Life of Bede; (8) the Death of Bede; (9) Benedict Biscop; (10) Antony Bek; (11) Richard de Bury; (12) Bernard Gilpin; (13) John Cosin; and (14) Joseph Butler. The sermons on Columba, the Life of Bede, Benedict Biscop, and Antony Bek were never written - though the 2nd edn of 1891 included a sermon on St Columba by Lightfoot’s successor, Bishop Westcott.
6 Westcott, From Strength to Strength, p. 49; cf. Thompson, D. M., ‘Lightfoot as Victorian Churchman’, Durham University Journal, complimentary no. (Jan. 1992), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.
7 Eden and MacDonald, Lightfoot of Durham, pp. 72-3.
8 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 3Google Scholar.
9 DNB, 8, p. 26.
10 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, pp. 105, 106Google Scholar.
11 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 113Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., pp. 114-15.
13 DNB, 8, p. 27.
14 Ligktfoot, , Northern Church, p. 116Google Scholar.
15 Ibid, p. 128. There has been confusion about the date. The relevant footnote in Lightfoot’s Northern Church, compiled by Harmer, says 4 March 1583 (p. 214), following the statement by Bishop Carleton in the earliest life, written in 1629: see English tr. in Wordsworth, C., Ecclesiastical Biography (London, 1818), 4, p. 157Google Scholar; and this is repeated in the DNB. But this is clearly an old style date, as is pointed out by Collingwood, C. S. in his Memoirs of Bernard Gilpin (London, 1884), p. 270Google Scholar, by reference to the Houghton parish register. This is why the tercentenary commemoration sermon was preached in 1884. A modern attempt to demythologize Gilpin is to be found in Marcombe, D., ‘Bernard Gilpin: anatomy of an Elizabethan legend’, NH, 16 (1980), pp. 20–39Google Scholar.
16 Thompson, ‘Lightfoot’, pp. 9, 15.
17 Thompson, ‘Lightfoot’, p.129.
18 Carleton, Life of Bernard Gilpin, in Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Biography, p. 87; Gilpin, W., Life of Bernard Gilpin, ed. Carlyon, C. (London, 1854), pp. 3–4Google Scholar; Collingwood, , Memoirs of Gilpin, pp. 12–15Google Scholar.
19 Wordsworth, , Ecclesiastical Biography, pp. 89–92, 135–6Google Scholar; Collingwood, , Memoirs of Gilpin, pp. 25–36Google Scholar.
20 Wordsworth, , Ecclesiastical Biography, pp. 91–2Google Scholar; cf.Tanner, N.P., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London, 1990), 2, pp. 663–4Google Scholar.
21 There is some doubt about the precise sequence of events. Carleton says that Tunstall gave Gilpin a living before he left England: Wordsworth, , Ecclesiastical Biography, p. 95Google Scholar, but does not identify it William Gilpin identifies the living as Norton, says that it was a royal presentation, dated November 1552, and that this was why Gilpin was invited to preach at Greenwich: Gilpin, , Life ofCilpin, p. 19Google Scholar. Collingwood amplifies this by saying that Gilpin spent several months at Norton before going abroad, and that he handed over the proceeds of the living to a neighbour, Robert Dalton (who was not formally collated until 1556): Collingwood, Memoirs of Gilpin, pp. 44-59. Marcombe says that Gilpin was not collated until 1554, on the basis of Tunstall’s register, but does not refer to a royal presentation; he is less inclined to accept Gilpin’s concern over pluralities and non-residence at face value: Marcombe, ‘Bernard Gilpin’, pp. 28-9.
22 Wordsworth, , Ecclesiastical Biography, pp. 123–4Google Scholar.
23 Collingwood - following Gilpin’s Life, pp. 46-8, but not necessarily Wordsworth, Carleton, Ecclesiastical Biography, p. 106Google Scholar - advances a detailed argument to show that Gilpin did not hold the archdeaconry, Easington, and Houghton all in plurality: Collingwood, , Memoirs of Gilpin, pp. 97–101Google Scholar; but Marcombe, ‘Bernard Gilpin’, p. 30, takes a harder view.
24 The traditional histories emphasize Gilpin’s underlying pastoral concern; Marcombe, ‘Bernard Gilpin’, p. 30, notes that Houghton was the richest living in the diocese and states categorically that he refused preferment ‘because none offered the same degree of wealth, security and tranquillity as did his rich rural parish’.
25 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 131Google Scholar.
26 Ibid, pp. 132, 133. The letter quoted is not given a footnote or source by Harmer. It is not in Carleton’s Life, though it is at the end of Gilpin’s Life (p. 138) and also in Collingwood’s Memoir (p. 229). My guess, however, is that Lightfoot took it from Hone, R. B., Lives of Eminent Christians, 2, 5th edn (London, 1850), p. 57Google Scholar, because Lightfoot echoes Hone’s use of the word ‘resign’ in the preceding paragraph, and he would probably have been attracted by Gilpin’s defence of episcopacy (against Cartwright), which Hone discusses at the beginning of the same chapter.
27 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 133Google Scholar; Wordsworth, cf., Ecclesiastical Biography, pp. 151–5, 116–17Google Scholar.
28 Ibid., p. 134, cf.Gilpin, W., Life of Bernard Gilpin, ed. Irving, E. (Glasgow, 1824), p. liiiGoogle Scholar; Collingwood, , Memoirs of Gilpin, p. 284Google Scholar.
29 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, pp. 131, 132Google Scholar.
30 Gilpin, , Life of Gilpin, p. 109Google Scholar; Collingwood, , Memoirs of Gilpin, pp. 139, 141Google Scholar.
31 Hone, , Lives, p. 74Google Scholar.
32 Marcombe, ‘Bernard Gilpin’, pp. 38, 39.
33 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 130Google Scholar.
34 Ross-Lewin, G. H., Father Gilpin: the Most Conscientious Priest in the North (London, n.d. [c.1891]), pp. 51, 52Google Scholar.
35 Ibid, p. 145. The same image of the Church bringing forth out of her treasures things new and old was cited by Gore, Charles in the Preface to Lux Mundi (London, 1889), p. ixGoogle Scholar.
36 Ibid, p. 146.
37 The Six Lambeth Conferences, 1867-1920 (London, 1920), p. 159. Lightfoot, Stubbs, and Davidson were the main drafters of the encyclical letter of 1888: Hutton, W. H., Letters of William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 1825-1901 (London, 1904), p. 276Google Scholar.
38 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p.146Google Scholar.
39 Ibid., p. 147.
40 Ibid, p. 148.
41 Ibid., p. 149, cf. Osmond, P. H., A Life of John Cosin (London, 1813), pp. 270–1Google Scholar.
42 ‘Last Will of J. Cosin, Lord Bishop of Durham’, in Cosin, J., Work, 4 (Oxford, 1851), p. 527Google Scholar, cf. Osmond, Life of Cosin, p. 356; Cosin, J., A Collection of Private Devotions, ed. Stanwood, P.G. and O’Connor, D. (Oxford, 1967), p. xxiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Cuming, G., The Anglicanism of John Cosin (Durham, 1975), pp. 14, 15Google Scholar.
44 Osmond, , Life of Cosin, pp. 316–17Google Scholar. Lightfoot does not refer to this.
45 Ibid., p. 154.
46 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, pp. 52–3Google Scholar.
47 Osmond noted that, as a book-lover, Cosin recalled Richard de Bury: Life of Cosin, p. 284.
48 Cross, C., Church and People, 1450-1660: the Triumph of the Laity in the English Church (London, 1976)Google Scholar.
49 Eden and MacDonald, Lightfoot of Durham, p. 37 - a comment by the Revd R. W. Barbour of the Free Church of Scotland in 1882.
50 Lightfoot, , Northern Church, p. 171Google Scholar.