Newman's secession could not surprise any one, but it affected many people very deeply. Even in the last days of Newman's sojourn at Littlemore Pusey's tender heart had clung to the hope that he would not desert the cause. His departure shook the whole High Church party; it sundered a company of friends who had worked together from the beginning of the movement which they created. The authors of the via media theory and the 'non-natural sense theory proclaimed their own theories to be unsound, and submitted them to the only Church which claims to know with certainty. The enemy triumphed openly, whether Roman or Anglican or Evangelical or Liberal. They had all foretold it, and they were not wrong. It was an hour of deep

humiliation.

AUTHORITIES.-As before, for Chaps. XI.-XIII. Tracts for the Times, Nos. 85, 87, 90; Pusey, The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent, 1843; W. G. Ward, A few Words, etc., and A few Words More, etc., 1841, The Ideal of a Christian Church, etc., 1844; Wilfrid Ward, W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement; J. H. Newman, Essay on the Development of Doctrine.

!

CHAPTER XV

LIBERAL REACTION

Dr.

1836-1846.

SCARCELY had Newman and his friends left the scene when the attention of the Church was called once more to Hampden. Between the attack made upon him in 1836 and his appointment to the See of Hereford, which took place in 1847, much had happened. He had not recanted; he maintained that he had nothing to recant, and that the declarations of orthodoxy which he was always ready to make were in harmony with the passages which enemies extracted from his books. It is impossible to recant confusion of thought and obscurity of style. Hampden's Hampden knew more about his subject than his progress, adversaries did; those who read him carefully found that he needed elucidation less than they had supposed; but his subject was obscure in itself and little known, and he did not make its terminology sufficiently clear. Since his double condemnation by the University of Oxford in 1836 and in 1842, he had been appointed chairman of the Board of Theological Studies in 1842, and also examiner in the theological examination founded in the same year. Though his sentence remained unreversed, his position as Regius Professor and Canon of Christ Church, and his reputation as an active opponent of the Tractarians made him a prominent personage: and no one was surprised when in 1842 he objected to giving the Regius Professor of Hebrew the office of Examiner in Theology, avowedly because the then Professor was Pusey, the reputed leader of the Tractarians. Prophecies about the tendency of tractarian teaching had been fulfilled

in the recent secession to Rome of Newman and many of his disciples. Keble and The Christian Year remained, the movement of 1833 had not spent itself; but Puseyism was unpopular, and the English fear of Rome and dislike of system and ceremony was awake.

Lord John Russell, who became Prime Minister in July 1846, had Whig notions of Church policy, robust Protestant prejudices, and a full share of that contempt for clerical ways of thinking and acting which is not uncommon among statesmen. The See of Hereford became vacant in the following year by the promotion of Bishop Musgrave to York; and Russell looked for a sound Protestant to recommend to the Queen in his place.

Lord John

recommends

Divinity professors stand in the line of promotion, and Hampden was a Liberal as well as an anti-Tractarian. Lord John 'felt no doubt that the Archbishop had Russell become reconciled to Hampden's promotion by Hampden as the orthodox and Christian character of his subBishop of Hereford, sequent writings'; he considered the precedents, 1847. and saw in Hampden's zeal for the Protestant religion a reason for his promotion. He recommended Hampden to the Queen, and Her Majesty accepted him; and having so recommended him he could not go back without discrediting both himself and his nominee. Lord John probably thought that Hampden's unpopularity had died out, and that no objection would be raised to his appointment as Bishop of Hereford. He showed a want of sagacity if he thought so. The vote of 1836 was irregular, tumultuary, and unjust, but it represented a formidable body of public opinion; the vote of 1842 showed a change but not a reversal of opinion; if he wanted to make a protest against the Romanising party he could easily have found a better champion than Hampden, who had little personal ascendency, and whose orthodoxy was suspected by Churchmen of all parties. Hampden belonged to no definite party, but though he denied it, he was more of a Latitudinarian than anything else, and the latitudinarian school was looked upon as dangerous.

There were reasons enough for objecting to Hampden's promotion; and they were expressed by Julius Hare, a

301

Protest of the

XV THE BISHOPS AND LORD JOHN RUSSELL Liberal of middle views, who, whilst arguing that the clamour which had arisen against Hampden was founded in party spite rather than in truth, and that he was innocent of the charges brought against him, nevertheless thought the appointment 'a very unfortunate, nay, disastrous measure.' Thirteen bishops addressed the Prime Minister in the same sense. Among them were Blomfield bishops. of London, Sumner of Winchester, Phillpotts of Exeter, Denison of Salisbury, Bagot of Bath and Wells, Wilberforce of Oxford; but not Thirlwall of St. David's, Stanley of Norwich, nor Copleston of Llandaff. Some said the fiery and impetuous Bishop of Exeter was at the bottom of it, some, the Bishop of Oxford. If it was the Bishop of Oxford, he found out his mistake, and wrote to Hampden that he had trusted to extracts from the Bampton Lectures, and formed his opinion of the book without having read it, and that having read it he could find no heresy in it. The very awkwardness of the retractation is evidence of its sincerity, though Charles Greville surmised that his conscience had been awakened by cold looks at Windsor. The bishops' protest was made on the ground that the University of Oxford had solemnly affirmed its want of confidence in the soundness of Hampden's doctrine; that a deep and general feeling prevailed on this subject, and that his appointment would interrupt the peace of the Church, and diminish the confidence which it was desirable that the clergy and laity should feel in any exercise of the Royal supremacy.

Russell's

answer.

Lord John answered courteously, if not logically, pointing out that the thirteen bishops did not express their own doubt of Hampden's orthodoxy, but only referred to a decree of the University of Oxford eleven years old; that since that time Hampden had received the approbation of several bishops; that the Archbishop when consulted had given 'no discouragement'; that to withdraw the nomination after the Queen's sanction had been given would be tantamount to saying that the Royal supremacy was transferred to one of the universities; and that many of Hampden's opponents in 1836 had since that time joined the Church of Rome. The main point of the petitioners,

the distress and disapproval which attended the appointment, was ignored.

The Oxford

The Bishop of Exeter also addressed a pompous and clamorous letter to the Prime Minister, which contained, however, one practical suggestion, that Hampden's writings should be subjected to a fitting and adequate tribunal.’ Meanwhile no less than fifteen out of twenty-three Heads of Houses at Oxford addressed a letter of confidence Heads of to Hampden, which was signed amongst others Houses. by Symons of Wadham, Vice-Chancellor, Hawkins of Oriel, Wynter of St. John's, Gaisford of Christ Church, Thomson of St. Edmund Hall (afterwards Archbishop of York), and was, it is said, approved by Dr. Routh of Magdalen, the respect for whose character was based not only upon his theological learning and his venerable age, but also upon his reputation for wisdom and courage.

Congé d'élire issued.

as for

It would have been as difficult for Russell now Melbourne on the former occasion to withdraw his recommendation. The congé délire was accordingly issued to the Dean and Chapter of Hereford, and then followed the strange series of occurrences which has preserved the memory of the incident. According to Charles Greville, Dr. Merewether, the Dean of Hereford, was sulky; he had expected to be made Bishop

Merewether.

of Hereford himself, trusting to an alleged promise Dean or 'deathbed injunction' of William IV., to which, with questionable taste, he referred in his correspondence with the Prime Minister, and so was disposed to make difficulties. His conduct of the proceedings does not lead to the conclusion that he would have made a good bishop, but there can be no question as to his sincerity. He wrote a letter to the Queen, in which he laid stress on the words 'a person meet thereunto' in the congé d'élire, as acknowledging some liberty of action residing in the Chapter with respect to the person recommended to them for election; he recited the Oxford Statute of censure, still unrepealed, and begged that the Chapter might be allowed not to proceed to election till Hampden's published writings should be submitted to the two Houses of Convocation, or some other competent tribunal. The receipt of the Dean's