Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T18:22:14.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘This Romish business’ - Ritual Innovation and Parish Life in Later Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. W. Ambler
R. W. Ambler*
Affiliation:
University of Hull
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In February 1889 Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, appeared before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury charged with illegal practices in worship. The immediate occasion for these proceedings was the manner in which he celebrated Holy Communion at the Lincoln parish church of St Peter at Gowts on Sunday 4 December 1887. He was cited on six specific charges: the use of lighted candles on the altar; mixing water with the communion wine; adopting an eastward-facing position with his back to the congregation during the consecration; permitting the Agnus Dei to be sung after the consecration; making the sign of the cross at the absolution and benediction, and taking part in ablution by pouring water and wine into the chalice and paten after communion. Two Sundays later King had repeated some of these acts during a service at Lincoln Cathedral. As well as its intrinsic importance in defining the legality of the acts with which he was charged, the Bishop’s trial raised issues of considerable importance relating to the nature and exercise of authority within the Church of England and its relationship with the state. The acts for which King was tried had a further significance since the ways in which these and other innovations in worship were perceived, as well as the spirit in which they were ventured, also reflected the fundamental shifts which were taking place in the role of the Church of England at parish level in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their study in a local context such as Lincolnshire, part of King’s diocese, provides the opportunity to examine the relationship between changes in worship and developments in parish life in the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 384 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In the Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Read and Others v. the Lord Bishop of Lincoln, Judgment, 21 Nov. 1890 (London, 1891), pp. 1-2; E. S. Roscoe, The Bishop of Lincoln’s Case. A Report of the Proceedings in the Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Case of Read and Others v. the Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1889), pp. 48-50.

2 Rowell, Geoffrey, The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism (Oxford, 1983), pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

3 Wolffe, J., The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain 1829-1860 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 2, 9, 15, 21, 51, 145–6, 151, 153, 193–4, 318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mrs Glitch and Mabel Peacock, Examples of Printed Folk- Lore Concerning Lincolnshire, County Folk-Lorc, 5 (London 1908, rcpr. Lichtenstcin, 1967), pp. 210-11; Mabel Peacock, ‘Fifth of November Customs’, Folklore, 14 (1903), p. 89.

4 Lincolnshire Returns of the Census of Religious Worship 1851, ed. R. W. Ambler (Lincoln, 1979), pp. lxi-lxii; R. J. Olney, Lincolnshire Politics, 1832-1885 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 61, 65, 131; Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 224, 293.

5 Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury [hereafter LRSM], 21 and 28 Feb. 1868.

6 Ibid., 6 Jan. 1871.

7 Ibid., 8 July 1870.

8 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 285; Rowell, Vision Glorious, pp. 71, 182; Frances Knight, The influence of the Oxford Movement in the parishes c.1833-1860: a reassessment’, in Paul Vaiss, ed., From Oxford to the People; Reconsidering Newman and the Oxford Movement (Leominster, 1996), pp. 131-2.

9 LRSM, 21 June 1867; G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1869 to 1921 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 4-5.

10 Clarke, C. P. S., The Oxford Movement and After (London, 1932), p. 166 Google Scholar; Herring, G. W., ‘Tractarianism to Ritualism: a study of some aspects of Tractarianism outside Oxford from the time of Newman’s conversion in 1845, until the First Ritual Commission in 1867’, 2 vols (University of Oxford D. Phil, thesis, 1984)Google Scholar, 2, passim.

11 LRSM, 26 Sept. 1898.

12 Ibid., 21 June 1867.

13 Yates, W. N., ‘“Bells and Smells”: London, Brighton and South Coast religion reconsidered’, Southern History, 5 (1983), p. 123.Google Scholar

14 Waram, J. Carne, ed., Tourist’s Church Guide 1874 (London [1874]), pp. 18–79 Google Scholar; Tourist’s Church Guide 1881 (London [1881]), pp. 24-137.

15 Herring, ‘Tractarianism to Ritualism’, 2, passim; White, James F., The Cambridge Movement the Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 26–7 Google Scholar; Crockford’s Clerical Directory (1875, 1881), passim.

16 White, Cambridge Movement, pp. 19, 35, 37, 44, 67-8, 146, 225;James Bentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain: the Attempt to Legislate for Belief (Oxford, 1978), p. 27; Terence R. Leach, ‘Edward Trollopc and the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society’, in Christopher Sturman, ed., Some Historians of Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1992), pp. 18-19; Sir Francis Hill, ‘Early days of a society’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 1 (1966), pp. 58, 59, 62; The Thirty- Eighth Report of the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society’, Associated Architectural and Archaeological Societies Reports and Papers, 16 (1881), pp. i-vi.

17 Tourist’s Church Guide 1874, pp. 18-79; Tourist’s Church Guide 1881, pp. 24-137; Yates, Nigel, Buildings, Faith and Worship: the Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches 1600-1900 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

18 Obclkevich, James, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825-1875 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 122–3 Google Scholar; Overton, John Henry and Wordsworth, Elizabeth, Christopher Wordsworth. Bishop of Lincoln 1807-1885 (London, 1888), pp. 260–2.Google Scholar

19 Machin, Politics and the Churches, pp. 6, 7, 21.

20 LRSM, 8 July 1870; Machin, Politics and the Churches, p. 49.

21 Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols (London, 1970), 2, pp. 193–9, 205–7, 322 Google Scholar; Haig, Alan, The Victorian Clergy (London, 1984), p. 15 Google Scholar; Ensor, R. C. K., England 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1960 edn), p. 141 Google Scholar; Russell, Anthony, The Clerical Profession (London, 1980), pp. 108–9 Google Scholar; Knight, Frances, The Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 70–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 LRSM, 16 May, 12 Sept., 17 April, 24 April 1891.

23 Pickering, W. S. F., Anglo-Catholicism: a Study in Religious Ambiguity (London, 1989), pp. 98–103 Google Scholar; Beckwith, Ian, ‘Religion in a working men’s parish 1843-1893’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 5 (1970), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

24 Knight, ‘Influence of the Oxford Movement’, p. 138.

25 The Clergy List 1886, p. 46; Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantahrigienses, Part II: 1752-1900, 6 vols (Cambridge, 1940-54), 4, p. 278 Google Scholar; Stephens, W. R. W., The Life and Letters of Walter Farquar Hook, 6th edn (London, 1881), pp. 114, 193 Google Scholar; The Lincoln Diocesan Magazine, 1, 6 (Oct. 1886), p. 77; Crockford’s Clerical Directory (1878), pp. 173, 509; (1907), p. 1507.

26 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp. 21, 51, 151, 153, 318.

27 Henthorn, Frank, A History of 19th Century Brigg (Stamford, 1987), p. 40 Google Scholar; LRSM, 11 Aug. 1876.

28 LRSM, 24 Sept. 1870.

29 The Church Association Annual Report, 186S (London [1868]), p. 14; LRSM, 10 and 21 Oct. 1867; Henthorn, 19th Century Brigg, pp. 43-4.

30 Cleethorpes Gazette, 5 May 1886.

31 Cleethorpes Gazette, 24 May 1887.

32 LRSM, 31 Dec. 1886; Sir Francis Hill, Victorian Lincoln (Cambridge, 1974), p. 246.

33 Jeremy Morris, ‘The regional growth of Tractarianism: some reflections’, in Vaiss, From Oxford to the People, pp. 150-1; Knight, Nineteenth-Century Church, pp. 198-200.

34 Roberts, M. J. D., ‘Private patronage and the Church of England 1800-1900’, JEH, 32 (1981), p. 211 Google Scholar; Russell, George W. E., Edward King, Sixtieth Bishop of Lincoln, a Memoir, 3rd edn (London, 1912), p. 146 Google Scholar; Nevilley, Graham, ‘Right heart, wrong head’, The Modern Churchman, 28 (1986), pp. 15–16, 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; I owe the point on the significance of solicitors to Dr D. M. Thompson.

35 Hill, Victorian Lincoln, p. 245; Randolph, B. W. and Townroe, J. W., The Mind and Work of Bishop King (London, 1981), p. 176 Google Scholar; Russell, Edward King, p. 147; Roscoe, The Bishop of Lincoln’s Case, p. 47; Finch, Mary, A Great Parish Priest: Andrew Chrysostom Ramsay, Vicar of St. Botolphs, Lincoln, 1876-91 (Lincoln, 1995), pp. 20–4.Google Scholar