apostolic ancestors. Inasmuch as the Church of England was, and remains, essentially a parochial church this lamentable state of affairs was much less significant than it would have been in a more centralized institution. The parishes relied on their bishops only for the ordination of a sufficient supply of clergymen and possibly for an occasional Confirmation, though even this was often regarded as an optional extra.
The congregations attending church were still large. Attendance at worship was no longer enforced legally, but the social pressure to conform remained strong and the parish church had the central place in a closely knit community life. It was ‘natural’ to share in the worship on Sundays and the church’s teaching was regarded as an infallible guide to daily living. The clergy were, as always, of mixed ability and conscientiousness. There were far too many absentees from parishes, as many as three-fifths were said to be elsewhere. Pluralism, caused sometimes by sheer avarice, but more often by the need to combine several parishes in order to produce a reasonable income for one priest, was a serious problem. But by and large the clergy, many of them poorly paid curates, were diligent in carrying out their duties – in the conducting of worship, albeit it often slovenly, careful preparation of sermons, teaching of children, pastoral care of every soul in the parish and administering a mini-welfare state for the benefit of the poor and needy.
There was, however, a major deficiency almost everywhere, the existence of which can hardly be denied. The parish churches and cathedrals were places of formal conformity to a prescribed religion rather than centres of corporate holiness in which the mystery of the divine could be frequently experienced by the individual believer. Much of this was due to the prevailing theology which for the previous 100 years had been predominantly rationalist and ethical. But even more was due to lack of awareness of the true nature of the church as a worshipping community caused by slavish conformity to the Book of Common Prayer which had been demanded by Act of Parliament in 1662, and become a lifeless routine in which congregations had only a passive part with little to excite the religious imagination.
In 1843 Joseph Leech, the owner and editor of the Bristol Times began a series of weekly visits to the parish churches of the city and its surrounding districts, and later extended this to the villages of South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. Candid reports of what he found in these churches appeared week by week under the pseudonym ‘The Churchgoer’ and for some time he went undetected at the Sunday morning services. Eventually however he was identified in many places and, although some of the clergy welcomed a visit, many lived in dread of his appearances and what might be published the following week.
Unsurprisingly, he encountered some variations in the style of the worship and its setting, but these were quite limited. Most of the churches were crowded with box pews and galleries and, as a visitor, he normally sat in one of the four free benches allocated to the poor. At the east end of the nave, sometimes forming a barrier to the chancel, was a three-deck pulpit – the lower desk of which was allocated to the parish clerk, the next desk to the minister responsible for conducting the service and, above both, the pulpit for the preacher. A simple, unadorned table served as the altar but was given no prominence and sometimes used for mundane non-sacramental purposes such as a place for hats and coats. In a gallery at the west end there was, by this time, often a small organ, which had replaced an earlier band, and also a group of singers of varied accomplishments.
The service itself was Morning Prayer followed by the Litany, the Ante-Communion, and a sermon lasting at least 30 minutes and often much longer. Holy Communion was celebrated only infrequently and after due notice had been given the previous Sunday. The congregation played little vocal part in the worship – many of its members were unable to read – and were content to leave everything, except perhaps a metrical psalm, to the minister and the parish clerk, and, if there was one, the choir. In those parishes where the priest was negligent, or possibly depressed, the worship was a long way from edifying – as it can be today. At Bleadon, a small village not far from Weston-super-Mare, Leech found:
The worshippers were few, and the worship was cold. The priest delivered his part in a tone of apathy, and the replies of the people were faint and languid; the reading of the clergyman was not good, that of the poor clerk barbarous; the pews were dusty and yellow damp-stains disfigured the walls of the chancel; there was no altar screen or reredos of any kind, and a rude railing enclosed a ruder communion table; some windows in the chancel had been roughly stopped up and in fact nothing was wanting to make an originally good parish Church, a poor, wretched desolate structure. It has a fair tower and a very fair specimen of a stone pulpit; the former was struck, some twelve or fourteen years ago, by lightning, but I question if the stroke of neglect has not since proved more ruinous to the edifice at large.
On the other hand he was much more impressed by what he discovered at Lympsham, another village near Weston:
I do not know when I have been in a country church with so large a congregation: it was not merely the pews that were filled, but the forms placed in the aisles were closely occupied also. I could not help thinking it was some special occasion. Indeed, several, I could see, were strangers like myself, for they looked about, uncertain where to go, and more than that, when they got a place they seemed uncertain what to do. The Rector is one of the most active men I have ever seen in the reading-desk or pulpit, and, from what I learn, out of it too: he not only read the service and preached, but he led the singing and chanting, both of which they did, and did well, without an organ: indeed, I never before heard such hearty general congregational singing – everyone took their share, and a man with a bass voice somewhat more than his share.
Most churches fell somewhere between these extremes and this was as true of the city churches as of those in rural areas. Leech, himself a well-informed churchman, did not hesitate to suggest improvements. There were nevertheless signs of a new spirit showing here and there. Methodists, who often attended their parish church, might well leave before the end of the service to share in more lively worship, with loud hymn singing, in a nearby room. There were rumours of suspicious forms of doctrine and a special emphasis on the Eucharist being promoted by a Dr Pusey and a Dr Newman in Oxford.
John Keble’s Assize Sermon in the University Church on 14 July 1833 marked the beginning of what became known as the Oxford Movement. This would transform the Church of England’s life. It sought to get behind the arid, rationalist, Erastian religious thought that, in spite of the small-scale Evangelical revival, was still in vogue, to the High Church theology and worship of the early seventeenth century when Archbishop Laud was at Canterbury. This involved the revival of the doctrines concerning the nature of the church and of the sacraments that characterized Laud’s Primacy and went back to the earliest Christian centuries. The Oxford reformers did not however require a revision of the Book of Common Prayer. On the contrary they emphasized the importance of retaining it, and recovering the use of some neglected parts of it as a defence against those who were pressing for modifications in what today would be described as a liberal direction.
John Henry Newman, one of the Movement’s founding fathers, who later caused a national sensation by becoming a Roman Catholic and eventually a cardinal, urged the clergy to petition their bishops to resist any moves in the direction of Prayer Book revision. After a decade of influential preaching and writing it soon became apparent, however, that the new emphasis of the Tractarians, particularly their high doctrine of the Eucharist, would require some changes in the way in which this central sacrament of the church was celebrated. What this might involve was demonstrated at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, in 1846 where the vicar had introduced a weekly celebration of Holy Communion, following Sunday Morning Prayer, with a surpliced choir, two lit candles on the Holy Table, separated readings of the Epistle and Gospel and a few small parts of the service sung – all conducted with precise dignity, and with the entire congregation receiving communion. At the end of the following year a visitor to the Margaret Street Chapel, later replaced by All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, in London’s West End, reported what he described as ‘a complete musical Mass’ in which substantial parts of the service were sung. He added, ‘I venture to assert that there has been nothing so solemn since the Reformation.’ The reporter
