Queen Anne and King George I. Ir may seem strange at first sight that an apparently slight change from one rather insignificant sovereign to another should produce so great and immediate an alteration in the condition of the Church as the change from Queen Anne to King George I. undoubtedly did. Neither Queen Anne nor King George can in any sense be called great monarchs, though poets might sing and preachers might speak of "great Anne," and men like Toland write of George I. that "never before did Britain possess a king endowed with so many glorious qualities," and a dissenter (and therefore, of course, a Whig and Anti-Jacobite) say of him that he was born a hero, “the choice both of God and the people, and the very darling of heaven." Neither of them had the hereditary right to the crown, and there was not much difference between their respective claims, for both were descended from one common ancestor of three generations back. It did not make much matter whether there was only one, as in the case of Anne, or many, as in the case of George, who had a prior claim, for the title of both was in reality a parliamentary title. The personality, moreover, of neither of them was of such a character as to impress itself deeply upon any community. But when we penetrate a little below the surface, it is not Differences of "title" the throne. The difficult to find reasons sufficiently strong to account for the change which so rapidly followed. For in the first to place, the two sovereigns, though not of much account in themselves, represented, each of them, an idea. By some peculiar process which it is hard to explain logically, many people had undoubtedly persuaded themselves that Queen Anne had “the Divine right,” was not only a parliamentary, but an hereditary sovereign. Jacobite regarded her as a sort of regent for her brother, who was a mere boy at her accession, and the most ardent advocates for the Stewarts deprecated the pressing of his claim during his sister's lifetime. The revival on her accession of the superstition of the royal touch, the publication of her grandfather Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, the preaching of innumerable sermons on the Divine right, the utter failure of the attempt to punish Dr. Sacheverell for advocating that doctrine in its most extreme form, all tended to show that Queen Anne was regarded as the lawful sovereign, whom churchmen of the most marked type, who held what was called "the peculiar doctrine of the Church of England," as distinguished from "papists" on the one hand and "plebists" on the other hand, might consistently obey. But this could not, by the very utmost stretch of reasoning, be said of George I. He was a parliamentary king or he was nothing. So the Church, which had, most unwisely, committed itself up to the hilt to the hereditary as opposed to the parliamentary principle, found itself placed in a strangely false position. High churchmen must either eat their own words or must stand aloof from the new dynasty. A large number of laymen and the vast majority of the inferior clergy gave only a sullen acquiescence with a doubting conscience to the Government. This was in itself demoralising and tended to paralyse all active efforts. Then, again, Queen Anne, according to her lights, had certainly been a conscientious churchwoman from conviction, whereas the new king had not the least conception George's churchman- either of what the Church of England was, or the faintest interest in it, except as a powerful institution in his new country which had to be reckoned with. In a country like England the influence of the Throne must ship. II INFLUENCE OF WALPOLE 13 always be great, and it would hardly be too much to say that in the Queen's time that influence was generally exerted for, in the King's against the Church. the Church. But far more powerful than the influence of the Crown was that of the minister who, during nearly the whole of the years embraced by this period, was paramount Sir Robert in every department, and especially in that depart- Walpole and ment with which we here are now concerned. It would be difficult to imagine any policy which would be more disastrous to the true interests of the Church than that of Sir Robert Walpole. If he had shown no interest in the Church at all, and simply allowed it to take its own course in its own proper sphere, things would have been better. The Church was strong enough to stand by itself without being propped up by State aid and State patronage. If he had even shown his hostility to it by mulcting it of its revenues, so far as he could, and by showing all the favour in his power towards its rivals, the Church would not in the end have been seriously damaged. If he had swept away Test Acts, Corporation Acts, Uniformity Acts, in fact, all those artificial supports which were no supports at all, the Church, as a spiritual society, would have been the stronger for their loss. But he did none of these things. He looked upon the Church as a useful State engine, and he did his best, and with only too much success, to degrade it to that level. His policy simply and directly tended to stop the progress of good work. Happily for the Church, Walpole was for some time greatly under the influence of Bishop Gibson in Church matters, and that influence told in another and better direction. But the immediate results of his policy were sufficiently disastrous. Church A full stop was put to the scheme of building fifty-two new churches within the Bills of Mortality, which hitherto had been going on prosperously. Only the following were actually built under the Act of Queen building Anne-St. Alphege, Greenwich; St. Anne, Lime- stopped. house; Christ Church, Spitalfields; St. George-in-the-East; St. Mary, Stratford-le-Bow (probably a restoration); St. James, Bermondsey; St. John, Horsley Down; St. John, Westminster; St. George, Bloomsbury; St. George, Queen's Square; St. George, Hanover Square; St. Martin-in-theFields; St. Luke, Old Street; St. Mary-le-Strand. St. Mary Woolnoth, and the beautiful tower of St. Michael, Cornhill, were completed from the same fund. And even of those named, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, though built under the authority of the Commissioners appointed under the Act, was paid for by the parishioners, an Act being obtained in 1702 according to which four-fifths of the cost, which amounted in all to £36,891, was to be contributed by the landlords, and the remaining fifth by the tenants. But other and deeper things were due, more or less directly, to the sinister Church policy of Walpole. Men now saw the utter hopelessness of the attempt to procure the consecration of even one bishop for America, which before had seemed to be on the eve of accomplishment. Silence had fallen upon Convocation. There was a widening of the breach between the higher and the lower clergy through the persistent appointment of men to the highest offices who would obviously be unacceptable to the working clergy. Latitudinarianism, which was frequently divided from scepticism by a very thin line, was encouraged, and there was a general lowering of the whole tone of the Church and of its moral and spiritual standard. Let us enter a little more into detail. Bishop Hoadly. It was not a good omen for the future when almost the first bishop consecrated under the new dynasty was Benjamin Hoadly (1676-1761). He was the man whom "the king delighted to honour." For in 1715 he was made Bishop of Bangor, in 1721 was translated to Hereford, in 1723 to Salisbury, and finally in 1734 to Winchester, then one of the richest prizes in the Church. So far as abilities went, Hoadly was fully equal to his position, in fact, he was one of the ablest in an age of able writers, but it was alleged against him that he employed those abilities not for but against that very Church in which he held high office; and that his writings were quite as objectionable after, as they were before his elevation to the Bench. So far from earning promotion by his active work, he hardly even set his foot in his first diocese; and it is a curious illustration of the lax views which prevailed on such matters, that in the books, pamphlets, and sermons which II HOADLY'S REPLY TO HICKES 15 were written against him, and their name was legion, this obvious objection was never even raised. Bangorian Hickes's attack. The name of Bishop Hoadly introduces us to the famous Bangorian Controversy, which arose as follows. In 1716 was published a collection of posthumous papers written by Dr. Hickes, who died in December 1715. The "publisher," or, as we should now call him, the editor, was no doubt Dr. Brett, a very distinguished Non-Juror. The volume was entitled The Constitution of the Christian Church Controversy. and the Nature and Consequences of Schism, set forth in a Collection of Papers written by the late R. [Right] Reverend George Hickes, D.D. This, we may note in passing, is probably the only instance in which a Non-Juring bishop of the 'New Consecration1 is described by his title of Right Reverend. He was titular Bishop of Thetford. Hickes's statements startled some who had been on friendly terms with him during his lifetime. He unchurched in the strongest and most uncompromising language all who did not join the "Faithful remnant" of which before his death he had been the recognised head. "Detestable usurpers, breakers of the bond of peace, unity, subordination, and all charity in the City of God. very Corahs," etc., illustrate the style of the writer. The book created both surprise and indignation, and Hoadly, who had just been raised to the see of Bangor, saw his opportunity, with his usual keenness, and made the most of it. Within a few months he had published his Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Non-Jurors both in Church and State-a marvellously able work, considering the short time. he must have taken to write it. In this he took occasion to recommend his own ecclesiastical position, which was purely Erastian. To strike at the root of the theory of a visible Church altogether, it proposed sincerity as the only test of truth, and thus caused dismay among many who would have been as much opposed to the Non-Jurors as he was himself. He tried to place all, who like himself had accepted the new dynasty, in this dilemma: "You must either adopt my view of the situation, or else you must, if you are consistent, Hoadly's reply. 1 For the New Consecration, see the previous volume of this history by the Rev. W. H. Hutton, p. 240. |