Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T11:48:08.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Victorian Nonconformity and the memory of the ejected ministers: the impact of the bicentennial commemorations of 1862

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Timothy Larsen*
Affiliation:
Covenant College, Coventry

Extract

In the providence of God, St Bartholomew’s Day, 1862, fell on a Sunday, just as it had two hundred years before. On that earlier Sabbath, some 2,000 ministers were ejected from their livings because they could not conscientiously swear their ‘unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed’ in the new Prayer Book, or meet some of the other requirements of the new Act of Uniformity. Rejected by the Established Church, many of these men continued to fulfil their callings outside her pale and thereby gave a major, new impetus to Dissent. As the bicentenary of ‘Black Bartholomew’s Day’ approached, Victorian Nonconformists resolved to make the most of’the opportunity which God’s providence has brought round to them’. In this retrospective year, historical claims became powerful weapons in the struggle between Church and Dissent; and the past became contested territory which both sides sought to appropriate in order to add legitimacy to their present positions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997

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 Objects and Plans of the Central United St. Bartholomew Committee of Evangelical Nonconformists (London, 1862), p. 5.

2 Roberts, M.J.D., ‘Pressure-group politics and the Church of England: the Church Defence Institution, 1859–1896’, JEH, 35 (1984), pp. 56082.Google Scholar

3 Ellens, J. P., Religious Routes to Gladslonian Liberalism (University Park, Penn., 1994), pp. 167203.Google Scholar

4 London, Greater London Record Office, Liberation Society, Minutes of the Executive Committee, A/LIB/2, 13 April 1860, minute 1058.

5 Hansard, 3rd Series, CLXII, 1024 (24 April 1861).

6 London, Greater London Record Office, Liberation Society Minutes, A/LIB/2, 27 Sept. 1861, minute 1206.

7 Joshua Wilson, The Second Centenary of the Ejectment of the Nonconformist Ministers from the Established Church (London, nd).

8 Objects and Plans; The Congregational Yearbook (London) for 1862, p. [x], and for 1863, p. [x]; Supplement to the Liberator, June 1862, p. 111.

9 Miall, Arthur, Life of Edward Miall (London, 1884), pp. 2401.Google Scholar

10 Venables, George, How Did They Get There? (London, 1862).Google Scholar

11 Lathbury, T., Facts and Fictions of the Bicentenary (Bristol, 1861).Google Scholar

12 DNB, Edmund Calamy, D.D. (1671-1732); John Walker (1647-1747).

13 J. B. Clifford, The Bicentenary (Bristol, nd), pp. 32, 15. I am grateful to the Principal and Chapter, Pusey House, Oxford, for access to this source.

14 Quarterly Review, 112 (1862), pp. 236–70.

15 Miller, John, Churchmen and Dissenters, 2nd edn (Birmingham, 1862), p. 11.Google Scholar

16 Central United Bartholomew Committee, The Willis’s Rooms Lectures (London, [1862]), p. 69.

17 Rogers, J. G., Puritans, Nonconformists, and Dissenters (Manchester, [1862]), p. 31.Google Scholar

18 United Methodist Free Churches’ Magazine (May, 1862), p. 276.

19 British Quarterly Review, 37 (1863), p. 241.

20 Kidd, G. B., Are Nonconformists of the Present Day the Valid Successors of the Ejected of 1662? (London, 1862), pp. 46.Google Scholar

21 Vaughan, Robert, et al., St James’s Hall Addresses (London, 1862), preface and pp. 357.Google Scholar

22 Objects and Plans, p. 4.

23 Baptist Magazine, ns 6 (1862), p. 79.

24 Central United Bartholomew Committee, On Clerical Subscription (London, [1862]).

25 Record, 27 Jan. 1862, p. 4.

26 Miller, Churchmen and Dissenters, p. 3.

27 Dale, R. W., Churchmen and Dissenters (Birmingham, 1862), pp. 1920.Google Scholar

28 Supplement to the Record, 26 March 1862, p. [1].

29 Record, 11 April 1862, p. 2.

30 Watchman, 14 May 1862, p. 157.

31 A Priest of the Church of England, A Letter to the Rev. R. W. Dale (Birmingham, 1862), p. 5.

32 Hansard, 3rd series, CLXVII, 2–29 (27 May 1862).

33 Girdlestone, Charles, How Shall We Commemorate on August 24, 1862, the Bi-Centenary of the Act of Uniformity? (London, [1862]), p. 7.Google Scholar

34 Wilberforce, R. G., Life of Samuel Wilberforce, 3 vols (London, 1882), 3, pp. 45.Google Scholar

35 Nonconformist, 30 July 1862, pp. 648–9.

36 Supplement to the Liberator, June 1862, p. 111.

37 Venables, How Did They Cet There?, pp. 7–8, 17–19.

38 Vaughan, Robert, I’ll Tell You (London, 1862).Google Scholar

39 Nonconformist, 16 Oct. 1861, pp. 827–9.

40 Vaughan, Robert, English Nonconformity (London, 1862), pp. iiiiv.Google Scholar

41 British Quarterly Review, 35, 70 (April, 1862), p. 323.

42 Wilson, Joshua, Calumnies Confuted (London, 1863).Google Scholar

43 Record, 25 Aug. 1862, p. 2.

44 Supplement to the Nonconformist, 14 May 1862, pp. 437–40.

45 Inquirer, 7 Feb. 1857, p. 81.

46 Inquirer, 29 Nov. 1862, p. 834.

47 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, Aug. 1862, pp. 732–6.

48 Fund to Aid the Erection of Memorial Chapels in Lancashire and Cheshire: First Annual Report of the Committee (Manchester, 1863).

49 Hodder, Edwin, Life of Samuel Morley, 3rd edn (London, 1887), p. 366 Google Scholar; Peel, Albert, These Hundred Years (London, 1931), pp. 23941.Google Scholar

50 Miall, Charle, Henry Richard, M.P. (London, 1889), p. 166.Google Scholar

51 Supplement to the Record, 26 Feb. 1862, p. [2]; Watchman, 7 May 1862, p. 147.

52 Spurgeon, Susannah, C. H. Spurgeon, Autobiography, rev. edn, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1973), 2, pp. 557.Google Scholar

53 Dale, A. W. W., Life of R. W. Dale (London, 1898), p. 175.Google Scholar

54 Congregational Yearbook for 1863, p. 392.

55 Allen, James, The Bicentenary Question (Shepton Mallet, [1862])Google Scholar.