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Mother Church and Colonial Daughters: New Scope for Tensions in Anglican Unity and Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Robert S. M. Withycombe
Robert S. M. Withycombe*
Affiliation:
St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra, A C T, Australia
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Extract

Nova Scotia and Quebec were the only two overseas Anglican bishoprics in 1800, besides the eleven in the USA. By 1900 there were ninety-three overseas Anglican bishops, as well as the seventy-two in the home and missionary dioceses of the USA Church. Rapidly expanding colonial and missionary work was an essential element in the life of all nineteenth-century British Churches. Each by 1900 supported denominational and interdenominational missionary societies and encouraged local congregational missionary activities. Here and in fostering emigration to colonies, each British Church willingly took its part in fulfilling British imperial ideals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 427 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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References

1 See Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 1900 and 1901.

2 Carpenter, S. C., Church and People, 1789-1889 (London, 1933)Google Scholar, refers briefly to Anglican colonial churches in Part 3, pp. 428-63; Chadwick, W. O., The Victorian Church, 2 vols (London, 1966–70)Google Scholar, recognizes the overseas dimension in his introduction to vol. 1 (p. 6), but chooses not to examine it; Roger Lloyd, The Church of England, 1900-1965 (London, 1966), refers to Anglican feats in missionary conferences and in their Church in South Africa (e.g., chs 20 and 24); and Adrian Hastings’s more recent A History of English Christianity, 1920-1985 (London, 1986) makes brief reference to ‘missionary enterprise’ (p. 714). They are more histories of the Christianity in England than of English Christianity. William L. Sachs’s recent The Transformation of Anglicanism (Cambridge, 1993) is a welcome advance in mapping this terrain.

3 Compare, e.g., Stock, Eugene, The History of the Church Missionary Society, 3 vols (London, 1899)Google Scholar, or Hewitt, Gordon, The Problems of Success: A History of the Church Missionary Society, 1910-1942 (London, 1971)Google Scholar, and Taylor, Mary Geraldine, The Story of the China Inland Mission, 2 vols (London, 1893-4).Google Scholar

4 For the experience of some early chaplains, see extracts from their letters in Occasional Papers from St Augustine’s College, Canterbury, especially nos 6 and 9; and in London. Lambeth Palace Library [hereafter ‘LPL’], Papers of Archbishop Howley [hereafter ‘Howley Papen’], 1, fols 705-19, 819-27, and LPL, Papers of Archbishop Tait [hereafter ‘Tait Papers’], 270, fols 217-355.

5 See, e.g., LPL, Tait Papers, vol. 160 passim, and below.

6 The Judicial Committee’s Colenso judgement, dated 20 March 1865, is quoted in Law Journal Reports for the Year 1867, 45, ns 36, Part 1, pp.9-10.

7 Law Reports: Equity Cases before the Master of the Rolls and the Vice Chancellors, 3, 1866-7 [30 Victoriae], pp. 33ff.

8 See letters in LPL. Tait Papers of Charles Perry. Bishop of Melbourne [1866|, 160, fols 55-8; of Frederick Barker. Metropolitan and Bishop of Sydney [1866], ibid., fols 20-1; (1868] 169, fols 5-6; and of William Macquarie Cowper, Dean of Sydney [1866], 160, fols 24-7.

9 For Gray’s initiatives, see Hinchliff, P., The One-Sided Reciprocity: a Study in the Modification of the Establishment (London, 1966), pp. 155–6 Google Scholar, and ch. 6, passim. Archbishop Longley supported Gray; Bishop Tait of London did not; see LPL, Tait Papers, 144, fols 322-6, Tait to Sir George Grey, 3 May 1866.

10 See opinions of G. A. Selwyn in 1866, LPL, Papers of Archbishop C. T. Longley [hereafter ‘Longley Papers’], 7, fols 199-202; of C. J. Abraham, Bishop of Wellington, and of his diocesan synod in July 1867, in ibid., 4, fols 322-3, 331-6, and in LPL, Tait Papers, 160, fols 151-2; of W. Williams, Bishop of Waiapu (1867), ibid., fols 160-1; H.J. C. Harper, Bishop of Christ church (1867), ibid., fols 138-41; and of Octavius Hadfield, Archdeacon of Otaki (1867), ibid., fols 153-4.

11 For Tyrrell see LPL. Tait Papers, 160, fols 28-9, and 170, fols 74-5; and for Bromby, LPL, Tait Papers, 160, fols 15-18.

12 See LPL, Longley Papers, 3, fol. 5, Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to E. Hawkins, Secretary, Colonial Bishoprics Council, 24 February 1863, and PRO, 30/6/138, fols 76-8, Earl of Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary, to Lord Derby, Prime Minister, 20 August 1866 (copy, among Carnarvon Papers).

13 For the content of Cardwell’s Bill, see UK Hansard, 3rd ser., 183, 1032-4 (15 May 1866), and for its fate, 187, 761-2 (20 May 1867). For colonial responses, see LPL, Tait Papers, 160, passim.

14 See LPL, Tait Papers, 144, fols 322-6.

15 At Bishop Barker’s suggestion, Longley nominated Mesac Thomas to the Colonial Secretary for appointment by the Crown as first Bishop of Goulbourn, NSW: LPL, Tait Papers, 129, fols 396-7. Similarly, Barker recommended S. E. Marsden for Tait to recommend to the Colonial Secretary for nomination to the Queen as first Bishop of Bathurst, NSW: LPL, Tait Papers, 171, fols 284-5. Nelson Diocese in 1864 delegated to Tait, as Bishop of London, the power to nominate Bishop Hobhouse’s successor to the Colonial Secretary: LPL, Tait Papers, 158, fols 42-4. On principle, Cardwell looked increasingly to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London for nominees for colonial bishoprics: see LPL, Tait Papers, 158, fols 91-2, Cardwell, CO, to Tait, 27 August 1865.

16 On Capetown see Hinchliff, The One-Sided Reciprocity; idem, The Anglican Church in South Africa (London, 1963), pp. 48fff 91ff., on the H. L. Jenner case, see LPL, Tait Papers, 170, fols 1-38; 178, fols 305-50; 195, fols 233-63; 201, fols 203-44; 214, fols 161-4.

17 See, e.g., LPL, Tait Papers, 194, fols 5-10, Charles Perry, Melbourne, to A. C. Tait, Lambeth, 19 April 1873, on colonial ecumenical relationships.

18 For correspondence on the Straits Settlements, see LPL, Tait Papers, 288, fols 206-32.

19 For J. B. Sumner’s Colonial Church Regulations Bill, see Colonial Church Chronicle, 6 (1853), p. 81; and for debates on it, see UK Hansard, 3rd ser., 129, 512-33 (21 July 1853), 1207-14 (2 August 1853). For the growth of colonial synodical self-government, see Clarke, H. L., Constitutional Church Government (London, 1924)Google Scholar. Australian issues are well discussed in Border, J. T. R., Church and State in Australia, 1788-1872 (London, 1962), pp. 190ff Google Scholar. On the later constitutional history of the Church of England in Tasmania and the Australian colonies, John Davis, Australian Anglicans and their Constitution (East Brunswick, 1993) is illuminating.

20 LPL, Tait Papers, 170, fols 411-16, F. Fulford, Bishop of Montreal, to Tait, Bishop of London, 31 July 1868.

21 ibid.

22 As with the new NSW dioceses of Goulbourn (1863), Bathurst (1869-70), and Grafton and Annidale (1868-70).

23 LPL, Tait Papers, 171, fols 29-31, G. A. Selwyn, Bishop of Lichfield, to Archbishop Tait, 12 December 1870.

24 LPL, Longley Papers, 7, fols 199-202, G. A. Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand, to C. T. Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury, 4 January 1866 (Abraham was consecrated [as Selwyn had been] at Lambeth, on 29 September 1858; Williams at Wellington, N.Z., on 3 April 1859.)

25 LPL, Tait Papers, 170, fols 59-60, F. Barker, Metropolitan and Bishop of Sydney, to H. E. the Earl of Belmore, Governor of NSW, 24 January 1868 (copy). Sawyer had been consecrated by Longley on 2 February 1867, by Royal Mandate but without Letters Patent.

26 See correspondence in LPL, Tait Papers, 170, fols 70-5, 84-5; 171, fols 282-316.

27 The Jenner case is well discussed in Morrell, W. P., The Anglican Church in New Zealand: a History (Dunedin, 1973), pp. 91–6 Google Scholar, more sympathetically to Jenner’s cause in John H. Evans, Southern See (Dunedin, 1968), esp. chs 1–3, and more recently in John Pearce, ed., Seeking a See: Journal of the Rt Revd Henry Lascelles Jenner, DD, of his Visit to Dunedin in 1868-69 (Dunedin, 1984).

28 LPL, Longley Papers, 4, fols 237-40, C. T. Longley, Archbishop, to H. L. Jenner, Bishop of Dunedin, 19 December 1867.

29 See correspondence in LPL, Tait Papers, 170, fols 2-38; 178, fols 305-50; 195, fols 233-63; 201, fols 203-44; 214, fols 161-4.

30 See, e.g., LPL, Tait Papers, 160, fols 38-53; 171, fols 302, M. Thomas, Bishop of Goulburn, to A. C. Tait, Bishop of London, 22 December 1866 and 19 May 1869; or 287, fols 32-3, A. Short, former Bishop of Adelaide, to Archbishop Tait, 7 July 1882.

31 See correspondence of 1905-6 in LPL, Davidson Papers, 115, fols 177-262.