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The Work of Some Recent English Church Historians with Special Reference to the Labors of the Late Henry Melville Gwatkin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2009
Extract
Even though in the field of Church History comparatively little has been done in England in the present century, I do not think that a catalogue of authors and their works would be particularly illuminating. I have decided therefore to limit my remarks by confining them to historians with whom I happen to have been personally acquainted, hoping thereby to give a little human interest to a topic which might otherwise be somewhat dull, unless treated at a length inordinate for a single paper.
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- Copyright © American Society for Church History 1917
References
page 105 note 1 Lightfoot published his commentaries as Hulsean Professor at Cambridge, Galatians (1865), Philippians (1868), Colossians (1875). He was made Lady Margaret Professor in 1875. His papers in answer to the anonymous publication of Supernatural Religion appeared in the Contemporary Review, 1874–1877. These articles came out in book form in 1889. He contributed to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible and to Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography. In the latter his article on “Eusebius of Caesarea” is, I think, especially valuable. His great work on the Ignatian Epistles in his editions of the Apostolic Fathers appeared in 1885, when he was Bishop of Durham. He died in 1889. For the wealth and power of the old Bishops of Durham see The County Palatine of Durham, Harvard Historical Studies, No. viii, by G. T. Lapsley. This author has long been a most successful teacher of History as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Stubbs, was Bishop of Chester, 1884–1889, when he was translated to Oxford. His great fame must always rest on his Constitutional History, but his lectures on Medieval and Modern History, which Archdeacon Hutton in his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica says “were thinly attended ” at Oxford, are also of the highest interest.—Google ScholarHutton, W. H. has edited the Letters of William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 1825–1901. (London, 1904.)Google Scholar
page 106 note 1 Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, by his wife (1904), ch. vii., p. 186. Creighton was able to publish only one article out of the mass of material. The idea that this was all that could be turned to account out of the life work of an industrious student made him resolve not to “wait to amass notes before he began to write, but that in his case writing and study should go side by side.”
page 107 note 1 Besides writing his History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation (1882–1897), and many other works, Creighton founded the English Historical Review and edited it for five years. As bishop of Peterborough he did not relax his literary activities and published his Cardinal Wolsey, a veritable masterpiece, and his Queen Elizabeth. The admirable way he discharged his episcopal duties is gratefully remembered; and is a proof that a modern bishop of a rural diocese can and ought to be occupied in other work than that of organization. His promotion to London in 1897, the labor of which killed him in less than four years in January, 1901, at the comparatively early age of fifty-seven, is deeply to be regretted. An article on Creighton and Stubbs appeared in the Church Quarterly Review (October, 1905).
page 108 note 1 Lectures on Modern History (1906); History of Freedom and other Essays and Historical Essays and Studies (1907). A Bibliography of the Works of Lord Acton, by Shaw, W. A., was published by the Royal Historical Society (1903).Google Scholar
page 109 note 1 Roman Canon Law in England (1898).
page 109 note 2 In the second volume of the Cambridge Modern History, ch. xvi., is a brilliant chapter by Maitland on “The Anglican Settlement and the Scottish Reformation.”
page 109 note 3 Italy and her Invaders, vol. i, chap. xi.Google Scholar
page 110 note 1 I have in mind a criticism by a dear friend of mine Cadwallader John Bates (†1902), an enthusiastic antiquary in Northumberland, an authority on the Border Strongholds, the Roman Wall, the Percy Family, and one of the chief promoters of the County History, through whom I first came to know Dr. Hodgkin. I never knew a scholar more distrustful of literary style in an historian than he was.
page 110 note 2 Italy and her Invaders, vol. ii., p. 612.Google Scholar “Will the great Democracies of the twentieth century resist the temptation to use political power as a means of material self-enrichment? With a higher ideal of public duty than has been shown by some of the governing classes which preceded them, will they refrain from robbing the Commonwealth? Warned by the experience of Rome, will they shrink from reproducing, directly or indirectly, the political heresy of Caius Gracchus, that he who votes in the Forum must be fed by the State? If they do, perhaps the world may see democracies as long lived as the dynasties of Egypt or China. If they do not, assuredly now as in the days of our Saxon forefathers, it will be found that he who is ‘giver of bread’ is also lord. The old weary round will recommence, democracy leading to anarchy, and anarchy to despotism, and the National Workshops of some future Gracchus will build palaces in which British or American despots … will guide mighty empires to ruin.”
page 111 note 1 The chief publications by Overton, Canon J. H. are: The English Church in the Eighteenth Century (1887),Google Scholarwith Abbey, C. J.; The Nonjurors (1902); Life in the English Church, 1660–1714 (1885); History of the English Church, 1714–1800 (with P. Relton) (1906). His book on Law is entitled William Law, Non-Juror and Mystic (1881).Google Scholar
page 111 note 2 Whitney, Dr. is chiefly an authority on the Reformation and the only work which appears after his name in the Crockford's Clerical Directory is The Reformation, 1503–1648 (1907).Google Scholar
page 111 note 3 See Life of William Edward Collins, Bishop of Gibraltar, by Mason, A. J. (1912).Google Scholar
page 112 note 1 DrMason's, contributions to church history besides his other works are: The Mission of St. Augustine (1897); Thomas Cranmer (1898); Historic Martyrs of the Primitive Church (1905); The Church of England and Episcopacy (1914); and his work as editor of the Cambridge Patristic Texts series which he inaugurated in an edition of some of the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzen.Google Scholar
page 112 note 2 Frere's, Dr. chief historical apart from his liturgical works are: English Church History under Elizabeth and James I (1904) and Visitation Documents, 3 vols. (1910).Google Scholar
page 112 note 3 DrFiggis, has written The Divine Right of Kings (1896); English History from Contemporary Sources (1902); From Gerson to Grotius (1907); The Gospel and Human Needs (1909); Civilization at the Cross Roads (1912); and Churches in the Modern State (1913).Google Scholar
page 112 note 4 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (1895).Google Scholar
page 112 note 5 History of the University of Cambridge from the Earliest Times to the Accession of Charles I. (1873–1912).
page 112 note 6 The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion (1898).
page 112 note 7 History of the English Church, 1625–1714 (1903); William Law (1895). See the article in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), “ England, Church of,” by Hutton, Archdeacon (with a copious bibliography).Google Scholar
page 113 note 1 I ought perhaps to have alluded in my paper to the works of MrGlover, T. R., Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (1901)Google Scholar and Conflict of Religion in the Early Roman Empire (1909); though these are literary rather than, distinctly historical.
page 113 note 2 See the Cambridge Review, Nov. 29, 1916: A notice of him “as a scientist” by , A. H. C. (probably the Mr. Cook alluded to in the text).Google Scholar
page 114 note 1 Letters of Charles Kingsley, etc. The Prince of Wales proposed Kingsley for an honorary degree; but the High Church party led by Dr. Pusey opposed it on the ground that Hypatia was an immoral book and Kingsley withdrew to avoid a vote in convocation.
page 115 note 1 Studies of Arianism (1882).
page 116 note 1 Studies of Arianism: “The Legend of Anthony.” Note B, pp. 98–103. Writing in the Cambridge Review, Nov. 29, 1916, Professor Whitney gives as an example of Gwatkin's “real tolerance of a scholar for a scholar's differences” that he chose Dom Butler to write on “Monasticism” in the Cambridge Medieval History.
page 117 note 1 The Knowledge of God and its Historical Development (1906).
page 118 note 1 This remarkable letter concludes with the following words: “By the perplexity and distress of nations we know that some glorious mystery is now revealing. God keep you, sir, and guide us all and cleanse our hearts to see and receive it. My own work must now be nearly done; but I believe and verily trust that our children and our children's children will see a better, a nobler, and a more Christian Europe rising from the ashes of the old.” The letter was written September 18th and the writer died November 14th.