Bishops, Kings and Leviathan: Nationalism and Integralism in Light of High Church Anglican Political Thought

This article traces the political thought of high church Anglicans from 1580-1720. Beginning with Richard Hooker, Anglican political thought was shaped by the need to balance competing principles. For high church Anglicans, the monarchy was seen as the institution best positioned to defend this balance against what they saw as the twin threats of "Puritanism and popery." However, high churchmen also began to defend a high view of episcopacy even over against the power of the English government, introducing a tension between royal supremacy and high church Anglicanism with implications for both nationalist and integralist conceptions of the state. This culminated in the nonjurors—Anglican clergy and academics removed from their posts for refusing to swear oaths to William and Mary—defending episcopacy against both the new king and defenders of royal supremacy. The example of high church Anglicans demonstrates some perils of both nationalist and integralist approaches to politics for many religious forms of traditional conservatism.

A Polite Diogenes?

This first chapter upends the view that Shaftesbury's 1708 Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, the letter that earned him his notoriety for defending ridicule, targets religious fanatics, High Church clerics, and other deviants from the Whig common sense of his day. It reveals how Shaftesbury's project was far more ambitious in scope. The Earl did not limit his ridicule to enthusiasts or priests but instead, drawing on the ancient Stoics and Cynics, sought to shock his readers into revising their beliefs and adopting a sociable religious disposition more conducive to toleration. It was the first indication that Shaftesbury was elevating ridicule from a conversational art to a vehicle for enlightenment.

The Supreme Head

This chapter discusses Victoria’s deeply fractious relationship with the Church of England. She came to the throne determined not just to maintain but also to reform the Church by promoting the liberal clergy who could make it a more charitable and representative institution. Resistance to the royal promotion of liberalism from Tractarians and Ritualists who loathed Protestantism and Erastianism—state meddling in spiritual matters—made her increasingly aggressive in her determination to broaden the Church, as she pressed for legislation to stamp out liturgical experiments which hinted at a hankering after the spiritual authority of the Church of Rome. Victoria’s feeling that she could defend the Church by making it more representative of the Protestant nation not only set her against high church people, but blinded her to the principled objections that many Protestant Dissenters nursed to its establishment. Her alarmed response to their talk of disestablishment, especially in Wales, further narrowed Victoria’s understanding of liberalism.

Suitable Alliances

Girolamo marries off all five daughters to Friulian nobles—three to feudal lords, two to wealthy city dwellers—thus strengthening the family network of alliances. Alvise and Giovanni become priests, the latter destined to follow his uncle Michele into high church office. Girolamo’s oldest son, Sigismondo, seeks his fortune in service of the Hapsburgs. His first marriage brings him the feud of Spessa, complete with castle, in Gorizia, and a son and heir, Carlo, named after the archduke. A second marriage into a collateral Della Torre line based in imperial territory ties him ever more firmly to the Hapsburgs. Girolamo expands the castle at Villalta, grafting a seigneurial Renaissance country villa onto the medieval fortress, the complex becoming a metaphor for a feudal family that now embraces Venetian republican values. Michele is featured in Paolo Paruta’s Della perfezione della vita politica (1579), a treatise celebrating politics as civil discipline.

A Tory Marriage

Chapter 7 examines the Wesleys’ marriage as a deeply political and fraught relationship. Samuel and Susanna Wesley were both Tories and held High Church principles, but it seems that Susanna was a Jacobite, following the Revolution of 1688; whereas Samuel accepted the offer of the throne to William and Mary. In contrast to the usual accounts of the marriage, which suggest two moments of discord, this chapter suggests that their relationship was marked by sustained and enduring conflict. Starting in 1701–2 the couple separated over Susanna’s refusal to say ‘amen’ at prayers for the King. The breach was only superficially resolved in 1702. Thereafter the marriage remained a source of tension. In 1711 Susanna’s establishment of a prayer meeting in Epworth while Samuel was in London led to friction between them. A year later, Samuel reported his wife to the Bishop of Lincoln for her failure to accept the invalidity of her dissenting baptism.

Introduction

The introduction develops the idea of the ‘long Revolution’, suggesting that the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 was not simply an event, but a much longer process. This process began at the start of James II’s reign and continued until about 1720 when the Hanoverian regime was settled. For High Church Tories, like Samuel Wesley, this period presented problems and anxieties that had to be dealt with. Foremost among these was allegiance and loyalty, both in Church and State. However, after 1689 the issue was complicated by the Toleration Act and the decisions of the Church in how to respond to legal freedom for dissenters. A political complication was the division of the clergy into High and Low Churchmen, as well as attempts in Parliament and Convocation to proscribe Dissent. Samuel Wesley’s response to these circumstances was representative of many others who shared his views and his anxieties in this period were those which were more widely held.

The Wesleys’ Tory Ghost

Chapter 8 looks at the involvement of Samuel Wesley and his family in the supernatural. It argues that the supernatural was profoundly political in this period. The contemporary examples of witchcraft and apparitions were heavily influenced by the Tory-Whig divide and by the High-Low Church divisions. Often belief in supernatural phenomena was regarded as the preserve of the educated and those of High Church and Tory principles. Whigs and Low Churchmen tended to adopt a more rationalist approach. The central discussion of the chapter is of ‘Old Jeffrey’, the Epworth Rectory Ghost which haunted the house for three months in 1716. The hauntings took form of noises and apparitions. It was especially well-documented because John Wesley was at school in London and asked for detailed accounts of the episode. The disturbances of 1716–17 almost certainly reflect community, political, and family divisions which marked the Wesleys in Epworth. There is also evidence that ‘Old Jeffrey’ shared Susanna’s Jacobite politics.

Conclusion

The conclusion reviews the life of Samuel Wesley and judges whether he was a success or a failure as both a parish clergyman and as a High Church Tory. It also examines the degree to which Wesley was representative of other High Churchmen and Tories in the period 1685-1720. His children clearly idolised their father and in particular his oldest son, Samuel junior, who was ordained but never held a parish, preferring instead to be a schoolmaster at Blundells School in Devon, published a poem on his father’s death. The poem represented Samuel Wesley as tolerant towards dissenters, misunderstood in politics and an eirenic and even tempered man. The reality was somewhat different. Nevertheless, Samuel Wesley junior’s poem in some respects began the process of sanitising Wesley’s family and personality from the reality. In some respects, Wesley might have preferred to be known as a poet rather than a clergyman who lived a fractious life.

Wesley, Sacheverell, and Convocation

Chapter 6 explains the role that Wesley played in the events in Church and State between 1709 and 1714, the high point of Tory High Church ambition in Church and State. It suggests that Wesley probably did contribute to the defence of Henry Sacheverell, who was on trial in the House of Lords on the political charge of preaching a seditious sermon. Sacheverell and Wesley have so much in common that Wesley’s claim that he contributed to the defence seems entirely plausible. As a member of Convocation, between 1710 and 1713, Wesley emerged as an important figure in the period. In addition to much committee work and supporting the High Church Tory agenda, he also drafted a key report in 1713 which advanced the High Church clergy’s case against the Bishops and argued that the failure to pursue Church reform was the responsibility of the Latitudinarian Bishops. Also considered is Wesley’s response to the Peace of Utrecht, a major Tory victory against continuing a Whig war.