scholarly journals The Church of England and the Legislative Reforms of 1828–32: Revolution or Adjustment?

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 401-418
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Political Dominance ◽  
Legislative Reforms ◽  
Constitutional Revolution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Since the 1950s, historians of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Church of England have generally maintained that the Sacramental Test Act (1828), the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829) and the Reform Act (1832) amounted to a ‘constitutional revolution’, in which Anglican political hegemony was decisively displaced. This theory remains the dominant framework for understanding the effect of legislation on the relationship between church and state in pre-Victorian England. This article probes the validity of the theory. It is argued that the legislative reforms of 1828–32 did not drastically alter the religious composition of parliament, which was already multi-denominational, and that they incorporated clauses which preserved the political dominance of the Church of England. Additionally, it is suggested that Anglican apprehensions concerning the reforming measures of those years were derived from an unfounded belief that these reforms would ultimately result in changes to the Church of England's formularies or in disestablishment, rather than from the actual laws enacted. Accordingly, the post-1832 British parliamentary system did not in the short term militate against Anglican interests. In light of this reappraisal, these legislative reforms may be better understood as an exercise in ‘constitutional adjustment’ as opposed to a ‘constitutional revolution’.

The view from the devil’s mountain: Clarendon, Cressy and Hobbes, and the past, present and future of the Church of England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaward
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The lives, and political thought, of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Hobbes, were closely interwoven. In many ways opposed, their views on the relationship between Church and State have often been seen as less far apart, with Clarendon sharing Hobbes’s Erastianism and concerns about clerical assertiveness in the 1660s. But Clarendon’s writings on Church-State relations during the 1670s provide little evidence of concern about clerical involvement in politics, and demonstrate his vigorous adherence to a fairly conventional view among early seventeenth-century churchmen about the proper boundaries to royal interference in the Church; his worries about attempts to push further the implications of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs are evident in his writings against Hobbes, as are his even greater anxieties, exacerbated by the conversion of his daughter, the Duchess of York, about the dangers of Roman Catholic encroachment.

William Warburton and the Alliance of Church and State

1992 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

In January 1736 an anonymous pamphlet appeared under the title,The Alliance between Church and State, or the Necessity of an Established Religion, and a Test Law demonstrated. Its author was William Warburton, a well-to-do but still comparatively obscure country clergyman. Although this was only his second publication in the field of divinity, he was already revealing the taste for controversy which was to characterise his literary career. TheAllianceappeared at the height of the campaign by the Protestant dissenters to repeal the Test Act of 1673, and only weeks before the defeat, on 12 March 1736, of a motion for its repeal in the House of Commons. Clearly intending his work as a contribution to this debate Warburton was concerned less with giving an account of the relationship between Church and State than with providing a coherent and forceful justification both of the establishment of the Church of England and of the defence of that establishment by the Test Act. In the preface he claimed to treat the subject ‘abstractedly’.

Crown, Mitre and People in the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical Law ◽  
The People ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Throughout the nineteenth century the relationship between the State and the Established Church of England engaged Parliament, the Church, the courts and – to an increasing degree – the people. During this period, the spectre of Disestablishment periodically loomed over these debates, in the cause – as Trollope put it – of 'the renewal of inquiry as to the connection which exists between the Crown and the Mitre'. As our own twenty-first century gathers pace, Disestablishment has still not materialised: though a very different kind of dynamic between Church and State has anyway come into being in England. Professor Evans here tells the stories of the controversies which have made such change possible – including the revival of Convocation, the Church's own parliament – as well as the many memorable characters involved. The author's lively narrative includes much valuable material about key areas of ecclesiastical law that is of relevance to the future Church of England.

George IV and William IV in their Relations with the Church of England*

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (571) ◽  
pp. 1440-1470
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Actions ◽  
The Church

Abstract George IV and William IV have long been represented as fundamentally pleasure-seeking monarchs who had little or no interest in religion. However, this assumption has never been sustained by detailed evidence. This article comprehensively challenges the stereotype by presenting the regency and reign of George IV together with William IV’s reign as a distinct and significant period in the relationship between the British monarchy and the Church of England. Three main aspects of this relationship are considered: George IV and William IV’s private commitments as manifested in court religion, the political actions of these monarchs in relation to the established church and their encouragement of Anglican church building and educational projects. The article draws upon a wide range of neglected sources, and especially the private correspondence and memoirs of those closest to George IV and William IV. Most notably, it introduces into the discussion the extensive and revealing autobiography of George IV’s chaplain Hugh Pearson, which has received scant attention from historians until now. From such sources, there emerges a picture of royal interaction with Anglicanism that almost entirely overturns the conventional view. Not only were the two last Hanoverian kings interested in religion; their Anglican beliefs directed much of their public and private conduct. This reinterpretation has important implications for our understanding of monarchy, religion and political culture in pre-Victorian England.

England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Full Citizen ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This chapter reviews how the Church of England fared at the local, diocesan, and parochial levels in England during the long eighteenth century from 1662, when the Church was re-established as an episcopal and liturgically ordered Church, to 1828, when, with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (and Roman Catholic emancipation in 1829), members of other Churches gained full citizen rights. The chapter examines the response of clergy and laypeople at the local level to contemporary intellectual and socio-economic changes and organizational reforms and renewal in the Church, noting regional variations. It considers the pastoral and disciplinary roles of bishops and clergy, and explores the focal role of the Church in communal life in towns and villages and the active engagement of laypeople, including women, with the Church. The relationship with Dissenters from the Established Church is also discussed, as well as the evidence for anti-clericalism.

Bishop Perry and Lay Representation in Colonial Synods

1964 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. de Q. Robin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Lay Representation ◽  
The Church

The changing situation of the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth century raised numerous questions, not least of which was the proper place of the laity in Church government. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts followed closely by the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill were tacit admissions that no longer could Hooker's ideal of a co-terminous Church and State be regarded as a reality. But, whilst the majority within the Established Church was quite ready to acknowledge the justice of the 1828–9 parliamentary measures, they were not quite so ready to deal with the legal anomalies of Royal Supremacy over a Church of which not all the queen's subjects were members. If the question was asked before 1829, ‘Where are the laity of the Church represented in deliberations on its temporal welfare?’ it was theoretically possible to answer ‘in parliament, and in particular in the House of Commons’. After 1829 it was no longer possible to maintain this position, even from a theoretical point of view. The renewed and vigorous campaigns for the revival of Convocation which followed in the next thirty years sprang both from a recognition that no longer could parliament be regarded in any sense as a representative voice of the Church of England, and the recognition of the necessity to have a proper and representative expression of opinion on matters relating to the temporalities and spiritualities of the Church.

Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 11th July 1982

Moreana ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (Number 157- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
John McConica
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
International Commission ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

During the period in which these papers were given, there were great achievements on the ecumenical scene, as the quest to restore the Church’s unity was pursued enthusiastically by all the major Christiandenominations. The Papal visit of John Paul II to England in 1982 witnessed a warmth in relationships between the Church of England and the Catholic Church that had not been experienced since the early 16th century Reformation in England to which More fell victim. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was achieving considerable doctrinal consensus and revisionist scholarship was encouraging an historical review by which the faithful Catholic and the confessing Protestant could look upon each other respectfully and appreciatively. It is to this ecumenical theme that James McConica turns in his contribution.

Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

The Church of England and the Churches of Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Church

In the period 1662–1829 the Church of England saw itself simultaneously as a national Church for England, as a branch of the European Protestant Reformation, and as a part of a community of Churches across the continent. These identities caused tensions by suggesting different answers to the question of who were true Christians abroad. Anglicans might feel affinities both with Roman Catholic establishments and with the Protestant populations who challenged them. These tensions were managed in part by ambiguity and a determination not to press one identity too hard at the expense of others. This allowed the Church to maintain strong links with a wide variety of the faithful overseas. But tensions were also managed by an increasing spirit of accommodation. Both the Toleration Act of 1689 and the eventual emancipation of Dissenters and Catholics were aided by the struggles of the Church to contain its own internal diversity.

Grace and Nation: Coleridge's On the Constitution of Church and State

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Alan Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
National Life ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACTUnderstanding Coleridge's classic work On the Constitution of Church and State requires paying close attention to the system of distinctions and relations he sets up between the state, the ‘national church’, and the ‘Christian church’. The intelligibility of these relations depends finally on Coleridge's Trinitarianism, his doctrine of ‘divine ideas’, and the subtle analogy he draws between the Church of England as both an ‘established’ church of the nation and as a Christian church and the distinction and union of divinity and humanity in Christ. Church and State opens up, in these ‘saving’ distinctions and connections, important considerations for the integrity and role of the Christian church within a religiously plural national life.

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