Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:48:11.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Parish to Palace: Working-Class Influences on Anglican Temperance Movements, 1835–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Gerald Wayne Olsen
Gerald Wayne Olsen
Affiliation:
Nipissing University College, Box 5002, Gormanvillc Road, North Bay, Ontario, P1B 8L7 Canada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The history of Anglican temperance movements before the First World War reveals working-class influences on English vicarages (not yet recognised by historians) and a corresponding influence of the lower clergy on the Anglican establishment. A study of Anglican initiatives against drink may help provide missing links between the Biblethumping evangelicalism of wine-drinking William Wilberforce's time and the social gospel era of his grandsons, the clerical teetotallers, Basil and Ernest. After 1855, a significant minority of Anglican clergymen, obsessed with the estrangement of the lower orders from organised religion, accepted teetotalism, often at the urging of labourers. In so doing, they reversed somewhat the proposition enshrined in the evangelical tradition that true moral reform depended on the leadership of the privileged classes and the compliance of their social inferiors. Working-class teetotallers continued to exercise influence in parochial temperance organisations; more ambitiously, low-placed teetotal clergymen attempted, through the Church's teetotal society, to convert the highest Anglican dignitaries to total abstinence.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 239 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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

CETC = Church of England Temperance Chronicle; CETM = Church of England Temperance Magazine; LPL = Lambet h Palace Library; CCL = Canterbury Cathedral Library; Gazelle = Blue Ribbon Official Gazette and Gospel Temperance Herald

1 For the more theoretical implications of this topic, see Olscn, Gerald Wayne, ‘Anglikanische Massigkeits- und Enrtialtsamkeitsvereine, 1835–1914: ein Uberblick’, in Zur Sozialgeschichle des Alkohols in der JVcuzeit Europas, Drogalkohol, Lausanne 1986, 228–36Google Scholar. In addition to works mentioned below, see Bowen, Desmond, The Idea of the Victorian Church. A study of the Church of England 1833–1889, Montreal 1968Google Scholar; Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols, London 1966Google Scholar, 1972; Clark, G. Kitson, Churchmen and the Condition of England 1832–1885, London 1973Google Scholar; Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England, 1832–1885, London 1976Google Scholar; Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, London 1963Google Scholar; Macleod, Hugh, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City, London 1974Google Scholar; Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850, London 1972Google Scholar; and Wickham, E. R., Church and People in an Industrial City, London 1957Google Scholar.

2 Winskill, P. T., The Comprehensive History of the Rise and Progress of the Temperance Reformation, Warrington 1881, 28–9Google Scholar. Brian Harrison, ‘The temperance question in England, 1829–1869’, unpubl. DPhil diss., Oxford 1965, 140.

3 The official names of the organisation referred to here as the Church's teetotal society were, from 1862 to 1864, the Church of England Total Abstinence Society and, from 1864 to 1873, the Church of England and Ireland Temperance Reformation Society.

4 Maguire, Robert, ‘Parochial Temperance Societies. Their formation and management. Paper read at Church Congress, Plymouth, 1876’, in CETC iv (1876), 177Google Scholar.

5 For a discussion of these organisations, see Heasman, Kathleen, Evangelicals in Action. An appraisal of their social work in the Victorian era, London 1962Google Scholar.

6 H. W. Lett's letter to the editor, 9 Dec. 1865, in CETM, NS iii (Jan. 1866), 26.

7 Couling, Samuel, History of the Temperance Movement in Great Britain and Ireland; From the Earliest Date to the Present Time, London 1862, 316Google Scholar.

8 Henry Moule, in Rooke, Thomas (ed.), Clerical Experiences of Total Abstinence, London 1867, 91Google Scholar; and Caine, William (cd.), A Biographical Key to the Picture Containing One Hundred and Twenty Portraits of Temperance Reformers, Manchester 1860, 17–20Google Scholar.

9 Liddon, H. P., Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, London 1894, iiiGoogle Scholar.

10 Charles Kingsley's letter to the editor of the Christian Socialist, in Letters and Memoirs of His Life, i, edited by his wife, London 1877, 272.

11 See Thomas Hughes's open letter to the bishop of Chester, 22 Nov. 1893, in LPL, Papers of E. W. Benson, 1893, c. 8; and CETC i (March 1873), 41–2.

12 Corr. William Wilberforcc to Sam Wilberforce, 18 Nov. 1820, 23 Oct. 1822 and 14 Oct. 1823, in Wilberforce, A. M. (ed.), Private Papers of William Wilberforce, London 1897, 212–20Google Scholar.

13 Sherlock, Frederick, Henry J. Ellison, Founder of the Church of England Temperance Society London 1910, 16Google Scholar.

14 See Vicar R. Walter to F. W. Farrar, 10 Nov. 1877, in CCL, F. W. Farrar Papers,‘Sermons 1860–1902’.

15 See e.g. Bishop James Fraser of Manchester, CETC i (Nov. 1873), 179.

16 See e.g. G. M. Plan; letter to the CETM, NS iv (Oct. 1867), 315–16.

17 Ibid.; and McCree, George Wilson, Old Friends and New Faces, London 1883, 20Google Scholar.

18 See Walter to Farrar, 10 Nov. 1877, in CCL, Farrar Papers.

19 Religion and the Working Class in Nineteenth-century Britain, London 1984, 11.

20 In ‘Parochial temperance societies’, in idem, The Temperance Reformation in the Church of England, London 1878, 33Google Scholar.

21 John B. Gough to Farrar, 2 Feb. 1880, in CCL, Farrar Papers, bundle marked ‘Temperance’.

22 See e.g. Lovett, William, The Life and Struggles of William Lovett in his Pursuit of Bread, Knowledge and Freedom, London 1876, 57Google Scholar, 58, 92.

23 These changes are discussed in detail and documented in the author's Pub and Parish: the beginnings of temperance reform in the Church of England, 1835–1875, unpub. PhD diss., London, Ontario 1972, 81–99.

24 H.J. Ellison, ‘Why I became an abstainer’, in Rooke, op. cit. 16.

25 S.J. Ram, in CETM ii (Oct. 1863), 206; Fletcher, J. M. J., Mrs. Wighlman of Shrewsbury, The Story of a Pioneer in Temperance Work, London 1906, 93Google Scholar; Thomas Rooke, Clerical Experiences, 1–2, 16–17, 84, 89.

26 Ram, in Rooke, op. cit. 112–13.

27 S.v. ‘Francis Close’, DNB.

28 See Fletcher, op. cit. 51–7.

29 In Rooke, Clerical Experiences, 13.

30 Robert Maguire, ‘Church Congress, Plymouth, 1876’, CETC'iv (1 Nov. 1876), 177.

31 See ‘Appendix C, Distribution of teetotal clerics in 1864 as compared with strength of Anglican Church in proportion to other denominations and to total population, as well as with rate of population increase’, in Olsen, Pub and Parish, 427–42. The statistics are from government census records and those of the Church's teetotal society. The general problem of church membership and decline is discussed in Currie, Robert, Gilbert, Alan and Horsley, Lee, Churches and Churchgoers. Patterns of church growth in the British Isles since 1700 Oxford 1977Google Scholar; and Cox, Jeffrey, The English Churches in a Secular Society, Oxford 1982Google Scholar.

32 1,342 localities in southern England and 154 in Wales, Convocation of Canterbury, House, Lower, Report of the Committee on Intemperance, London 1869, 37, 183–91Google Scholar; and of England and Ireland Temperance Reformation Society, Second Annual Report, 1864, 32–15.

33 Ibid. 15.

34 See e.g. Rooke, Clerical Experiences, 129–31.

35 See e.g. Maguire, Robert, cited in ‘Rev. R. Maguire’, Gazette iv (27 May 1885), 161Google Scholar.

36 See Francis Close, ‘On Scripture question’, CETM ii (Feb. 1863), 138–9; and Ellison, Henry, The Temperance Reformation in the Church of England, London 1878Google Scholar.

37 In July 1862, in idem, Sermons and Addresses on Church Temperance Subjects, London 1894, 27Google Scholar.

38 ‘Thomas Bouffler’, Gazelle iv (20 Ma y 1885), 145; and Henry Ellison, ‘Brands plucked out of the fire’, CETC ii (2 Mar. 1874), 46.

39 Wightman, J. B., Haste to the Rescue, or Work While it is Day, London 1860, 103Google Scholar, 131.

40 Ellison, op. cit. 46.

41 Robert Maguire, CETC iv (1 Nov. 1876), 178.

42 Julia Wightman, cited in Fletcher, Mrs. Wightman, 215.

43 Wightman, cited in ibid. 193.

44 Wightman, cited in ibid. 127.

45 Ibid. 129, 138–9.

46 Ibid. 129–30, 139–40; and CETM, NS i (Feb. 1864), 401.

47 CETM ii (Aug. 1863), 152. Th e clergyman was from the Isle of Man.

48 Ibid..53.

49 See ibid, i (Nov. 1862), 35–6.

50 Sec Robert Maguire in ibid, NS ii (Nov. 1865), 331.

51 For the relationship of the Anglican clergy with other Christians in the temperance movement, see Olscn, Gerald Wayne, ‘Anglican temperance movements, 1859–1873: an example of practical ecumenism’, Canadian Catholic Historical Association, Study Sessions xl (1973). 41–51Google Scholar.

52 Convocation Report (1869). CETC i (Apr. 1873), 50.

53 CETM, 3rd ser. i (Nov. 1869), 219–20.

54 See correspondence of Sandford, John, Sandford, Charles, Ellison, Henry and Tait, A. C., LPL, Papers of A. C. Tail, 1872, no. 145Google Scholar.

55 CETM, 3rd ser. i (Feb. 1869), 38.

56 See ibid. 3rd ser. iii (Jan. 1871), 2; and CETC iii (Feb. 1875), ‘7-

57 CETM, 3rd ser. iv (June 1872), 102.

58 For membership figures, see Church of England and Ireland Temperance Reformation Society, Second Annual Report, 1864, 3–15; and Fourth Annual Report, 1866, 29–40; CETM, 3rd ser. iv (Oct.-Dec. 1872), 187–93, 206–13 222–8. The number of teetotal clergy declined in Durham, Sodor and Man, Winchester, Norwich, Peterborough, Chichester, Bangor, Llandaff and St Asaph.

59 CETC 1 (Dec. 1873), 193–4.

60 See Robert Maguire, CETM, NS V (Sept. 1868), 284.

61 Ibid. 3rd ser. ii (June, Sept. Dec. 1870), 102, 164, 222.

62 See LPL, Papers of A. C. Tail, 187a, no. 79.

63 Ibid. no. 145.

64 The Times, 12 Aug. 1872, 9.

65 CETC i (Jan. 1873). For the activities of the CETS, see Shiman, Lilian L., ‘The Church of England Temperance Society in the nineteenth century’, Historical Magazine of the Episcopal Church xli (1972), 179–95Google Scholar; and idem, Crusade against Drink in Victorian England, New York 1988Google Scholar.

66 CETC ii (Dec. 1874), 212.

67 Ibid, iii (Oct. 1875), ‘57.

68 Ibid., Dec. 1875), 188–9.

69 See ibid, iv (1 Nov. 1876), 174–81.

70 Atlay, J. B., The Life of the Reverend Ernest Roland Wilberforce First Bishop of Newcastle-on-Tyne and Afterward Bishop of Chichester, London 1912, 40Google Scholar.

71 The Times, 26 Dec. 1899, 7.

72 Basil Wilberforce to Tait, 20 Aug. 1877, in LPL, Papers of A.C. Tait, 1878. no. 146; and Wilberforce, Basil, The Established Church and the Liquor Traffic: Being a Letter Addressed to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, London 1882Google Scholar.

73 Russell, G. W. E., Basil Wilberforce, A Memoir, London 1917, 51Google Scholar.

74 CETC iii (1 Dec. 1875), 205; and Basil Wilberforce, in The Times, 23 July 1895, 11.

75 Atlay, Life, 39–40.

78 Ellison to Ernest Wilberforce (1896), in ibid. 302–3.

77 See Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: the temperance question in England 1815–1872, London 1971, 184Google Scholar.

78 CETS, Nineteenth Annual Report, 1881, n.p.; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1885, 6; Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1886, n.p.

79 Ibid.

80 CETS, Executive Minutes, June, July 1904, 77, 80.

81 Maguire, Robert, Temperance Landmarks, A Narrative of the Work and Workers, 1829–1879, London 1879, 81Google Scholar.

82 CETS, Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1887, 46.

83 Official Tear Book of the Church of England, 1883, London 1883, 158–9Google Scholar.

84 CETS, Forty-seventh Annual Report, 1908, 7–8, 21–2.

85 Ibid. 22–77.

86 See Official Year Book of the Church of England, London 1883, 158–60Google Scholar.

97 CETS, Executive Minutes, 6 Jan. 1880, n.p.; and Thirteenth Annual Report, 1891, 200.

89 CETS, Forty-seventh Annual Report, 1908, 29–35.

89 CETS, Forty-sixth Annual Report, 1907, 22–3 ; CETS, Executive Minutes, Apr., Oct. 1906, 120, 129. 90 CETCiv (1 Nov. 1876), 185.