§ LORD EBURYrose, in pursuance of a notice which he had given last week, for the purpose of laying before their Lordships a Petition emanating from the Vestry of St. George's-in-the East, complaining of certain ecclesiastical grievances, and of asking their Lordships' attention to it. The noble Lord said, that this petition differed but little from another petition, signed by between 4,000 and 5,000 of the inhabitants of the parish, to which he should have occasion to refer. Substantially they were one and the same petition. The petitioners stated that in the year 1843 Mr. Bryan King was appointed rector of the parish, which contained 48,000 souls. Fortunately, since that time, two districts had been separated from the parish; but still the parish contained a population of 30,000 persons. The petitioners said, that at the time of Mr. King's appointment, their spacious 908 and magnificent church was filled and duly attended by the great body of the parishioners; and the parish was remarkable, to use Mr. King's own words, for its dutiful attachment to the Church of England and its loyalty to the Throne; but that shortly after his appointment the rector began to make use of uncustomary practices in the performance of his ministrations. The parishioners remonstrated with Mr. King, but without effect; although the late Bishop of London told the reverend gentleman that he left the matter entirely to his own good sense and discretion. Notwithstanding Mr. King's obstinacy in carrying on the service in a manner offensive to the parishioners, they alleged their conduct had been continuously characterized by courtesy and kindness; that from Mr. King's perseverance in these objectionable practices, they were alienated now for seventeen years from their parish church, during which time the public charities were not duly advocated in the church, greatly to the detriment of the poor. About the year 1855 the Rev. Mr. King introduced a set of strange clergymen into the pariah, under the name of "The St. George's Mission," and from that period a marked development had taken place in the practices of which they complained. Dresses were worn such as were only seen in Roman Catholic churches; unusual appliances were resorted to; and doctrines were taught which, in their opinion, were not the doctrines of the Reformed Church of England. They went on to state, that by the 2nd of George II., chapter 3, they were empowered to nominate and elect a lecturer to their church. That in March last year they exercised their right, although the rector endeavoured to prevent their doing so, and compelled them to appeal to the Court of Chancery, which decided in their favour. But from that moment the Rev. Mr. King, by a course of petty annoyances, disturbed the lecturer in the performance of his duties. On application to their diocesan, they found, though he was quite willing, he had no power to grant them any relief; and they, therefore, prayed their Lordships and the Legislature to enact such measures as in their wisdom they should think fit, whereby a cheap and summary remedy might be afforded for the grievances of which they complained. The noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Derby) had last week described with so much truth and precision the feeling that existed all over 909 the country against these attempt to tamper with the simplicity of our services, that he (Lord Ebury) was quite sure it was unnecessary for him to dwell upon that subject. The parishioners complained, and with great truth, that their silence, under the circumstances he had described, had been misconstrued into acquiescence; while the expression of their present disapproval had been characterised as violence and outrage. He now came to the question what was to be done. To that question he did not think an answer was difficult. Their Lordships were aware that everything relating to public worship was regulated by law, by the directions of the Rubrics of the Prayer Book attached to the Act of Uniformity, and of the canons of the Church. If those directions were obsolete, incongruous, contradictory, and impossible to understand, every sensible man would say that the proper thing to do would be to alter the law. He knew the Rev. Mr. King, and he was bound to say that he was a mild and gentlemanly person, very unlikely to act such a part as he had done. The truth was, he was convinced he was acting legally. He (Lord Ebury) should now wish to ask their Lordships whether they had ever read the canons of the Church. If they had not, he would recommend them to do so, assuring them they were literary curiosities well worthy of perusal. But most of them were wholly inapplicable to the present day. With the permission of the House, he would read to them the 74th canon, which would give them some idea of the authority which regulated ecclesiastical questions of this nature. It deserves a little notice: —
It treats of the dress of the clergy, not during service, but at other times. Clergy are to walk abroad in their gowns and college caps. In their journeys they are to wear cloaks and sleeves without guards, welts, long buttons, or cuts. Further, they must wear no wrought nightcaps, but only plain nightcaps, of black silk, satin, or velvet. In their houses they must wear no dress, that is 'cut or pinckt' Especially they are directed to wear no light-coloured stockings. The canons altogether number 141, not 10 are observed by the clergy as a body, the rest are obsolete, impracticable, obscure. What reasonable objection can there be to the appointment of a Commission to correct and revise them? If a Commission composed of eminent divines and ecclesiastical lawyers were appointed by the Crown to draw up a few plain short rules or canons, regulating the furniture of our churches, the dress of our ministers, and other matters which must be regulated and settled, many of the dissensions which now agitate our Church would cease.In that view he (Lord Ebury) entirely 910 concurred. But were their Lordships entirely free from blame in this matter? He feared he must say not altogether, Two years ago he proposed to their Lordships to address the Crown, to appoint a Commission with the object of revising the Rubrics and Canons, and he believed that if it had then been granted, many of these complaints, now heard, would have been prevented. It was his intention to renew that Motion in the course of the present Session; but, as he had ascertained it would be inconvenient for the right rev. Prelates to attend before Easter, he should postpone his Motion until after the Easter recess. St. George's-in-the-East was unfortunately by no means the only church where these difficulties prevailed, and therefore it was highly necessary that some such step should be taken. He had intended in the meantime to bring in a short Bill to give a summary remedy, by leaving the matter in the hands of the Ordinary, but as he understood a Member of the other House was about to bring forward a measure, he should allow him to deal with it; but he did hope that some effectual remedy would be devised in the course of the present Session for putting a stop to the painful circumstances to which he bad referred.
THE BISHOP OF EXETERsaid, that if any complaint had been made to their Lordships that the ordinary expedients of justice had been resorted to in this case and had failed, then there might he some reason why some special remedy should be devised to meet the evil:—but he did not understand that to be the case here. The noble Lord had adverted to some things which he deemed objectionable in the services of St. George's-in-the-East; but it was very doubtful whether they were really offences against the law. On the contrary, he believed that the clergyman had distinctly acted according to the law, He had, no doubt, pursued a course that was contrary to the wishes of the parishioners, but it did not follow that he had offended in any point against the law. He had no acquaintance with Mr. King, having only met him on business before the Committee on Spiritual Destitution, where he showed great zeal in reference to the spiritual wants of the people; but he had been assured that in all he had done to provoke the vestry and the people he was only obeying the directions given in his charge of 1842 by the late Bishop. The noble Lord had talked about vestments; but as far as 911 he (the Bishop of Exeter) could learn, the vestments which had been referred to were distinctly according to law. They were vestments which he should be sorry to see generally adopted, but they were, nevertheless, strictly according to law. A clergyman was not bound to use such vestments till they were put before him by the officers of the parish; but when that was done he was only acting within the strict line of his duty when he did use them. It appeared that the rector of St. George's-in-the-East left off the vestments at the request of the parishioners. They had not been given to him by the officers of the parish, but by private individuals, and therefore he was not bound to use them. Had they been given to him by the officers of the vestry, he would have been bound to use them. As to the turnings round and genuflections resorted to at certain portions of the prayers, he must say he did not like these things; but it was to be observed that, at the suggestion of the diocesan, he had given up these things. He repeated, that it was a mistake to suppose that these things were not within reach of the existing law. If a clergyman chose to persist in anything that was improper he might be admonished by the Bishop, and if after such admonition he still persisted, he might be proceeded against under the Church Discipline Act. But had the Parliament shown any disposition to confer further powers on the Bishop? No such thing. What was asked for in the petition presented by the noble Lord was what had been asked for by the bench of Bishops for the last ten years— namely, a cheaper, more ready, and effectual mode of correcting irregularities of any kind in clergymen, whether relating to matters of doctrine or of manners. That had been asked for again and again, and the Bishops were still willing to receive the boon at the hands of Parliament. The noble Lord naturally laid great stress on the petition which had been entrusted to him to present; but he (the Bishop of Exeter) had seen another petition, which was carried about the parish for signature, addressed not to their Lordships, nor to the other House of Parliament, but directly to Her Gracious Majesty; and it prayed Her Majesty of her own Royal authority to issue a Commission, which should have power to inquire into the conduct of clergymen, and if need were to displace them from their benefices. He was almost ashamed to waste the time of their Lordships with any allusion to such trumpery but he would 912 remind them that, trumpery as these things were in themselves, they contained within them the seeds of great danger. Had they no experience on that point? Had history told them nothing? Had the history of their own country no instruction for them in these matters? He would remind their Lordships of what occurred eighty years ago, in the commotion that was raised in this country by the cry of "No Popery"—on even less apparent grounds than the commotion that was raised now. That commotion went on, just as now commotion went on in St. George's-in-the-East. Nothing was done, just as now nothing was done. The police did not interfere, the Secretaries of State of that day did not see need for interfering, and they all knew what was the consequence. And who were the persons who led those riots? We may fancy that all is safe, because they were mere boys, who are chiefly engaged in the present disorders. It was only the other day he was reading a book which all their Lordships had probably read with delight,—the last "Memoirs of Horace Walpole;" and he stated that of twenty-seven persons who were executed for fire raising and the other capital offences which grew out of that riot, seventeen were under eighteen years of age, three were under fifteen, and two were women. They could not, therefore, treat these events with scorn and contempt, for their Lordships might depend upon it that these matters had a tendency to extend; and if they were not put down at once they might prepare for a repetition of those incidents which took place in 1780. He understood that on a former occasion the noble and learned Lord (Lord Brougham) had half recommended that the church should be shut up. Why, he understood it had been shut up already, and they had seen with what effect. He understood, indeed, that the noble and learned Lord was in the first place for trying all that the law could do; and he (the Bishop of Exeter) said the same thing. Let them try anything rather than abandon the law. He ventured to say that the power to shut up a church did not reside in any authority known to the law of England. It was, in fact, to put the parish under an interdict; and though he believed even that strong step might be taken under certain circumstances, yet those circumstances were not likely to occur, and certainly nothing like them had yet occurred. He hoped Her Majesty's Government would be able 913 to lay before the House the petition to Her Majesty to which he had referred, and he intended to move for its production.
LORD BROUGHAMsaid, what he meant to have stated was, that at all events the law must be put in force, and that, at all hazards, this great scandal was to be put down; and he added that if there were no other way he would even shut up the church; but in saying so he clearly meant that it should be done by legal authority. There was great excitement on this subject both in the eastern and western parts of the metropolis, and if these proceedings were not put a stop to it would spread. There was nothing more to be deprecated than the introduction into this country of that which in the United States had not yet lasted long enough to have received the name of a domestic institution—he meant Lynch-law. He had the greatest horror of it, whether as applied to churchmen or laymen. There were instances of this excitement extending to the west-end of the town. He had received letters from Kensington and parts of Marylebone on the subject—some of them anonymous, but others bearing the signatures of respectable persons. One of these had been so led away by the heat of this lamentable controversy as to have charged him (Lord Brougham) with being a Romanist, and another with being no longer a friend of liberty, because he had happened to state that the genuflexions and turning about of the clergy at St. George's-in-the-East might be right or they might be wrong, but that he could not presume to blame any clergyman who conscientiously believed it to be his duty to perform those evolutions. He did not say those practices were right or they were wrong; it was no business of his to do so; he had no right to censure any person for having recourse to them: all he said was, that, whether the rector of St. George's-in-the-East was right or wrong was altogether immaterial; that a mob had no right to interfere, or to resort to physical force to settle the question.
THE BISHOP OF LONDONsaid, it would be satisfactory to their Lordships to know that the service at this unhappy church of St. George's-in-the-East yesterday evening passed off quietly. He was bound, however, to say that that result, at least partly, arose from sixty policemen having been stationed inside the church. It was certainly a sad state of things that the authorities should be driven to have recourse to 914 such a step. He said on a former occasion that he was unwilling to express an opinion as to who was to blame in this unfortunate matter, and he was nut going now to discuss that question; but, if he might do so from his place in that House, he would most earnestly put it to all clergymen who had any tendency to the use of those vestments to which reference had been made, as a matter of conscience, not to irritate the feelings of the Protestant congregations who were placed under their charge. It did seem strange that any person who was intrusted with the care of souls in a parish should, for the sake of gratifying his own peculiar tastes, or the tastes of any section of his congregation, have recourse to practices in conducting Divine service calculated to offend or alienate the great body of the parishioners. He believed his revered predecessor did express to the Rev. Bryan King that there was no obligation on him to persist in the practices in question, in consequence of what was stated in 1842 in the charge of the right rev. Prelate. He wished to add a few words upon the subject of vestments, and the state of the law as laid down by his right rev. Brother (the Bishop of Exeter), to whose experience he would willingly bow, but that he feared young clergymen might be misled by his statements, to take it for granted that those vestments, which he (the Bishop of London) could not help calling foolish vestments, were even within the letter of the law. His belief was that it was exceedingly doubtful whether those vestments as used at St. George's-in-the-East could be identified with the vestments named in the old law; and however that fact might be, those vestments had been set aside by one of the canons—those canons which the noble Lord (Lord Ebury) was so anxious to abolish—which prescribe those plain vestments which were now universally used by all the clergy of the Church of England, except an infinitessimal fraction. It was not necessary to issue any Commission to alter the canons. It was not the canons themselves, but the canons interpreted by, the Courts, together with a number of precedents, that constituted the law of the Church of England; and with respect to the dress of the clergy in their own homes, the canon respecting which had been cited by his noble friend (Lord Ebury), the interpretation of the Courts had long ago set that aside. If his noble Friend succeeded in procuring the abrogation of the canons, did he propose to ask Her Majesty to give 915 authority to Convocation to make new canons, as the old ones had been passed by that body? It would be well to consider the point before proceeding in so delicate a matter. He was anxious that the occurrences at St. George's-in-the-East should not be mixed up with other matters, and that an appeal should be made to the common sense of all parties concerned in those unhappy occurrences. He repeated that if the clergy would place in his hands the management of the affair, he felt confident that he could bring the church into the state which all must desire to see it in. He was bound to add that the clergy of that parish had made some changes in consequence of his remonstrances, and he was sure, if they would only act upon his advice, the unfortunate scandals now complained of would soon cease.
§ EARL GRANVILLEregretted to say that the evening service at St. George's last night was not quite so satisfactory as the right rev. Prelate had been informed. Although the presence of the police prevented violent disorders, yet there was hissing, simulated coughing, and other scandalous conduct. He sincerely hoped that all offenders would be brought to justice, and that those whose indiscreet zeal had given rise to those scenes would listen to the advice of the right rev. Prelate.
THE BISHOP OF EXETERsaid, he could not understand why the statutes quoted by his right rev. Brother on a former evening had not been put in force. One of those statutes prescribed a certain course to be taken by magistrates before whom persons offending were taken. Now, hissing in a church was an "outrage," notwithstanding the dictum of a high authority to the contrary, and if there were sixty policemen present while a number of persons were hissing and making noises he could only say that those policemen neglected their duty if they did not arrest the offenders.
§ EARL GRANVILLEobserved, that there were hundreds of persons making peculiar noises, but under such circumstances, that it was perfectly impossible for the police to fix upon any one offender.
§ Petition to lie on the table.