the scottish episcopal church

A New History, by gavin white

Preface

1
Tullochgorum

2
Eighteenth Century

3
Seabury

4
Worship

5
Edinburgh

6
Oxford Movement

7
Glasgow

8
Publications

9
Church or Province

10
'English Episcopal'

11
Schools

12
Social Service

13
Synods and Councils

14
Clergy Training

15
A Small Dog Barking

16
As Others See Us

17
Women

18
Society

19
Second World War and After

Selected bibliography

Links

William Ewart Gladstone was not quite an ordinary high churchman, and not quite English, but his attempts to promote the Scottish Episcopal Church were English. Yet he used instruments of an Englishness so attenuated that, like a strain of vaccine, they would not damage a Scottish host. In fact, they did nothing very much at all.

Gladstone was the key figure in the Colonial Bishoprics' Fund, and he dated from a Church of England in which cathedrals were centres of evangelism and schools came next. He was behind Glenalmond, and behind St. Ninian's Cathedral in Perth, and behind the brothers A.P.Forbes and G.H.Forbes who have passed into legend. Though it must be said that it is impossible to read them to-day without being reminded of that well-known phenomenon of the Victorian nursery, children playing at church.

The Forbes family had lost their estates in the Jacobite cause, but had clawed their way back through banking. And they were not Scottish Episcopal, but "qualified" - Sir William Forbes who bought back the old family estate at Pitsligo in Aberdeenshire was a shareholder, some were to say the dominant shareholder, in setting up the Cowgate Chapel. His son was the leading contributor to the building of St. John's, Prince's Street. And A.P.Forbes was drawn back to Scotland by Bishop Terrot, an Englishman, and Dean Ramsay, an angliciser. He had been brought up at St. Paul's, York Place, was invalided home from India, was ordained to an Oxford curacy, served at Stonehaven, and then at the high church stronghold of St. Saviour's, Leeds. He was consecrated Bishop of Brechin, centred on Dundee, in 1847, apparently on Gladstone's urging. He lived next to St. Paul's, which was later pulled down to build what is now the cathedral, and if he was not actually in a slum, he did work in the slums. He had St. Mary Magdalene's built for the poor, mostly Irish, who were excluded from St.Paul's by pew-rents. His own congregation were well-to-do English. St. Mary Magdalene's later became the largest congregation in the entire Episcopal Church, with five thousand adherents in the early years of this century. This was achieved under the Rev. F. Burdon who was rector from 1880 until 1908, but he built new halls and a rectory and wore himself out with the debt. As Rowan Strong remarks, "Alexander Forbes shared these views in which wealth and social position were part of the natural order of things, but these privileges brought with them an obligation towards the poor." And he did not inflict Oxford ritual on his congregation, keeping to the English rather than the Scottish Liturgy, and wearing the old black gown rather than the surplice when he entered the pulpit. (1)

What made him famous was a "Primary Charge" delivered to his clergy at Brechin in 1857. In that year the high church leader John Keble had published in support of G.A.Denison who was being prosecuted for preaching the "real presence" in the Eucharist, and Forbes' charge was all about that, and all about England. In fact it was so much about England that Forbes' did not actually read it to his clergy, but spoke of its contents and promised them copies once it was printed. The contents were scarcely profound. Forbes had the habit of contrasting his own view with an extreme opposite, triumphantly showing that opposite to be unacceptable, and then believing that he had proved his own. And much of his argument concerned philosophy rather than religion. But one idea was interesting, "Politically, we find that in the Providence of God one dominant race from time to time leaves its mark on history, the present imperial race in the whole world is the one which holds the faith of the Church of England in its widest sense...". But if Forbes, the first bishop of the Oxford Movement, had used his Scottish bishopric as a flag-of-convenience for Oxford doctrine, this was infuriating to middle-of-the-road men and also to Scottish high churchmen of an older style. (2)

Forbes's doctrine of an objective presence in the elements of the Eucharist sat ill with Scottish high churchmen who held the receptionist view that the elements were truly the Body and Blood of Christ to those who received them. But they were not likely to publish about it. Those who did publish were the English-based in the Episcopal Church who were aware that Forbes was making a point in an English conflict, and who may well have believed, with some justification, that he had been put into his bishopric for just that purpose. And they re-acted with language which was not based on what Forbes had written, but on what other Oxford Movement figures had written. In short, this was not a controversy of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It was all of a part with Lord John Russell's frantic condemnation of "Papal Aggression". Forbes was duly tried by the College of Bishops, and rebuked; his actual accusers were old-fashioned northern clergy, and his strongest supporters were the English zealots of St. Ninian's, Perth. It has been noted by Dr. Strong that both Forbes and Wordsworth, his accuser, used the voluminous sources in their respective documents simply as proof-texts. The three bishops who did produce a counter-blast to Forbes, Trower, Wordsworth, and Ewing, were quite Catholic in their doctrine which they expressed more clearly than Forbes did his. And Dean Ramsay preached a sermon. (3)

As usual, Ramsay described two extremes and rejected both; the Eucharist (his word) was neither a mere commemoration, nor "the only channel of grace and mercy". But his doctrine was receptionist, "The elements of bread and wine, by being consecrated and offered to God in the Eucharist, are thus constituted holy symbols and emblems of the very body and blood of Christ, which are 'verily and indeed taken by the faithful'...". And while he did not want too close an enquiry into means, "That there is a real presence of Christ in his own ordinances I firmly believe." But he would not go all the way with Forbes by saying that Christ must be adored in the elements; this he associated with Transubstantiation which he evidently did not understand. On the sacrifice of the Eucharist, he considered the one sacrifice on the cross could be celebrated through "participation in the Holy Communion", and the benefits of it conferred in the sacrament. It was a moving account, far more thoughtful than anything that came from Forbes or his accusers. And it brought down upon Ramsay an attack from D.K.T. Drummond, always ready to unmask his rival and replace him. (4)

The attack was skilful. It argued that the three bishops had accepted a supernatural presence and thus were not much better than Forbes. As for Ramsay, to whom the letter was addressed, he had refused to comment on the Scottish Liturgy as it did not concern his congregation, and Drummond went on, "Hence, I gather that you are prepared most strenuously to resist all efforts to introduce the Scotch Office into your congregation...". Of course there were no efforts for Ramsay to resist, but Drummond had managed to change the issue. (5)

Bruised by his theological battles, Forbes sought solace in Italy, apparently tottered on the brink, stepped back, and resumed his ministry in Dundee. But Dr. Strong concludes that Forbes' precritical theological stance could not have benefited the church, and "it is the example of Forbes' work among Dundee's poor which most endures." This is probably true, and yet he was far from unique in such work. And its extent has been exaggerated. A.L.Drummond and J.Bulloch, in The Church in Victorian Scotland, note that Forbes' work amongst immigrants had little effect on "the average Scot". It is hard to deny this. Much of the belief about Forbes' influence derives from Canon Liddon's account of a visit to Dundee where almost every second person took off his hat to Forbes, so that "it was almost impossible for me to believe that I was in a Presbyterian city." But would not it have been normal courtesy in Scotland to greet any clergyman in this way ? And if Forbes should be praised for the three or four schools he established in Dundee, these should be put in perspective; the Free Church alone had thirty-nine schools in the town. (6)

And then there is the address in support of Forbes by 5,386 working-men when he was worn down by his battles with his fellow-bishops. Addresses signed by working-men were a familiar feature of Victorian times, and they were usually got up in pubs. Publicans were traditionally Tory as they linked the Whigs with temperance. Forbes was not only Tory in outlook but from a Tory family, and reliant on Gladstone who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Conservative administration. And Forbes' reply to the working-men was virtually a declaration of assent to Tory principles, "While I trust that I give honour to whom honour is due, and fully appreciate the claims of ancient descent, of the refinement of a cultivated mind, and of the different gradations in the social scale, which, I believe, are wisely arranged with a view to the general happiness..". As for his accusers, Ewing was vaguely liberal in outlook, but Trower and Wordsworth were both known to belong to the Whig ascendency, and it was the Whig government of Lord John Russell which had been so violent against "Papal Aggression" and the Oxford Movement. The whole Forbes imbroglio would be seen by many, if not by Forbes, as just one more skirmish in the long war of British party politics. And it certainly cannot be considered apart from party politics. Though it might be a bit cynical to suggest that Trower was rewarded for his loyalty with the Diocese of Gibralter, while poor Wordsworth was left to moulder in Scotland. (7)

But one last view of Forbes must be mentioned, and this is to be found in a book by William Humphrey, who was curate at St. Paul's and then briefly incumbent of St. Mary Magdalene's. Humphrey rejected Forbes' belief that teaching alone would bring Catholic worship at a later stage, and his attempts to catholicise the Orangemen of St. Mary Magdalene's led to a schism; it might have occurred anyway. But Humphrey, who was already author of a book on St. Thomas Aquinas, heard that a friend had gone over to Rome, took the night train to London, went over himself in mid-journey (though he never said why) and became a Jesuit. Since he described Forbes as "cynical", he has been the victim of brickbats from Forbes' admirers, and yet his book on those days rings true. The idea of Forbes consecrating altar-stones and oil of chrism for high churchmen all over England is faintly hilarious. But there is another story in Humphrey's book, and that concerns a visit from Dean Ramsay, who was trying to help Forbes to cope with the more obdurate critics in his diocese. Ramsay wrote a note thanking Forbes for his hospitality, but remarked that he had seen a curate, Humphrey, doing a bad job of carving a grouse for breakfast. On showing this to Humphrey, Forbes remarked that Ramsay regarded carving game as more essential for a clergyman than theological learning. This anecdote may be used to show the worldliness of Ramsay, the cattiness of Forbes, or even the cack-handedness of Humphrey, but did Forbes really have grouse for breakfast ? (8)

So much for A.P.Forbes, but his brother G.H.Forbes was even more remarkable. Crippled in infancy, probably by poliomyelitis, he was privately educated and deeply learned in unusual and perhaps unuseful ways. His writings were erudite to the point of impenetrability, and he was as irrepressibly "Scottish" as his brother was "English". Despite his handicap, he was made deacon by Bishop Torry in 1848 to work at Crieff where Alexander Lendrum wanted a cathedral, a girls' school, and the Scottish Liturgy. Then he went to Burntisland where he started a school and a chapel, and was ordained priest. He married in 1853, began building a great church of which only the baptistry (for total immersion) was ever completed, and, in the words of Dean Perry, "rather gloried in unpopularity". His scholarship was used by Wordswortth against A.P.Forbes, and by himself against the English Prayer Book, "such a medley of contradictions both in letter and in tone, that it is quite impossible for any school to endure long which builds itself upon it." And, like so many others, he quite misunderstood Transubstantiation, but his mind moved on niceties divorced from real life. He published incessantly, with the Pitsligo Press occupying most of his house and much of his time, and when the General Synod of 1862 made the English Communion Office primary, and only permitted the Scottish where it already existed, he began a legal action, Forbes vs Eden, which he pursued to the House of Lords. Vainly, for it was determined that he had no case as he did not suffer, and, secondarily, as Lord Cranforth noted, Forbes was thinking of the church in commercial terms, when "A religious body, whether connected with the State or not, forms an imperium in imperio, of which the Synod is the supreme body...". This was a useful argument against state interference with churches, but it is ironic that it was the Catholic-minded Forbes who had wanted the state to interfere. (9)

But A.P.Forbes was not the only one in Scotland to trail his coat in favour of Oxford Movement worthies. There seems to have been a meeting at Stonehaven to which clergy journeyed by night trains to avoid being seen, and Patrick Cheyne, the incumbent of St. John's, Aberdeen, preached six sermons on the Eucharist during Lent of 1857, and published them in 1858. Cheyne had been runner-up in the election which produced T.G.Suther as Bishop of Aberdeen earlier in 1857. Suther's main supporter was Gilbert Rorison from Peterhead, whose hymn, Three in one, and one in three, is still popular to-day, and Rorison brought a case against Cheyne which was heard by the bishop in synod. Cheyne's actual sermons, which have been described by G.N.Pennie as "ponderous and didactic in style", contained the word "substantially" about the presence of Christ, which was taken to mean Transubstantiation, though in fact it did not. The proceedings were ridiculous, with Rorison parading vast amounts of learning and no understanding. The bishop admonished clergy who refused to give a vote since they had earlier protested the legality of his proceedings. There were scuffles, there were complaints at ladies being present, the thing was appealed to the Episcopal Synod, and Cheyne was suspended from the priesthood. There was an address of sympathy 120 feet long, and Cheyne's portly and pince-nezed figure may now be seen in stained glass at St. Mary's, Wellingborough. Some years later Cheyne and Suther were reconciled and we are told they became friends. There is no record of Cheyne and Gilbert Rorison becoming friends, but Rorison's son Vincent is said to have sought Cheyne's blessing immediately after his own ordination. (10)

But one other venture must be mentioned, and that is St. Ninian's Cathedral in Perth. The Oxford Movement was obsessed with cathedrals. This was partly because the movement began when Whig reformers were treating cathedrals as sinks of iniquity and rotten boroughs, they not yet having justified themselves by their contribution to the tourist industry. But it was partly because cathedrals were associated with bishops, who were the key to everything in the new ideology. The result was a theory of cathedrals as missionary centres, in which the bishop is surrounded by his mission staff, and parishes derived from the cathedral, and not the other way round - - that being essentially Presbyterian. But the Scottish Episcopal Church resisted having cathedrals while it considered itself to be the ancient Church of Scotland, about to replace the temporary Presbyterian establishment, and repossess the old cathedrals, or their ruined shells. Episcopalians only started adapting churches to be cathedrals when the hope of replacing Presbyterians was shown to be vain. In the meantime Perth was a possibility, since the moving spirits were Oxford men and Oxford Movement men, and since the new cathedral would not overlook an ancient cathedral, Dunblane and Dunkeld and St. Andrews being far distant, and all then in ruins, as Dunkeld largely still is, and St. Andrews utterly so. Elsewhere there was a tendency to use the largest church in any diocese, but avoid overlapping - - Inverness instead of Dornoch or Fortrose or Elgin, for instance. At Oban a cathedral was created (though that word usually refers to making order out of chaos and not the other way round) by starting to build an east-west church out of a north-south one and running out of money. It looks as if the proverbial hurricane had passed through a builder's yard. (At a meeting there of the Representative Church Council a service was followed by a "Continental Breakfast" nearby, leading one participant to ask, looking at his meagre repast, "If this is a continental breakfast, is that a continental cathedral ?") (11)

But the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles has a second cathedral at Millport on an island in the Clyde Firth. This claims to be the smallest in the Anglican Communion, a title not much disputed, and was built by a nobleman won to Oxford Movement ways as a student in England. It was intended to be a new Iona or Lindesfarne, with a theological college from which clergy would go out to evangelise the mainland, and was firmly in the tradition of the cathedral being the ancient source of all missionary work. In fact the nobleman soon became Roman Catholic, the money ran out, and while a few clergy received training at Millport the college was largely restricted to reading parties of Oxford and Cambridge men, and eventually became a retreat house. But it was one of those fascinating possibilities - - that instead of clergy either trained at Coates Hall or imported fully-trained from England, there should be an Oxford Movement centre, insulated in the full sense of that word from other outlooks, and providing men to spread the Oxford doctrines. (12)

But, to return to St.Ninian's, Perth was in a traditionally Episcopalian area, though its main Episcopal chapel, St. John's, was formerly Qualified. The cathedral began as a mission of this church, with the Rev. J.C.Chambers gathering a congregation of the poor in the northern end of town from 1846. This prospered, a school opened in 1847, much of the present cathedral was begun in 1848, and the nave was consecrated by A.P.Forbes on behalf of Bishop Torry in 1850. But its Oxford Movement customs offended Bishop Wordsworth who had replaced Torry in 1853, and he fought a "thirty years war" against the cathedral and its clergy. From 1851 the provost was E.B.K.Fortescue and his ritual, considered Puseyite, aroused local derision; the children followed the cathedral clergy shouting "Pussy, Pussy", and mewing like cats. Fortescue resigned in 1871, and became a Roman Catholic. J. Burton was provost until 1885, when Vincent Rorison replaced him. Dean Farquhar has written that Rorison "at once filled the almost empty Cathedral", though Farquhar himself had much to do with it. The Earl of Glasgow had withdrawn his support, and the school building was condemned and mostly closed, but the Earl of Strathmore paid for a new building which had 213 pupils by 1893. (13)

As for the building itself, it is a reasonable example of Victorian Gothic, by Butterfield, then Pearson, then Pearson's son, and finally Comper whose rood-screen is totally out of sympathy with everything else but does give character to what would otherwise be rather dull. There is a memorial window to an Earl of Kinnoull which has that nobleman's features, complete with drooping moustache, applied to the face of Lazarus. But there are no towers; these were intended but a curate named Fred Smith who had once been a science master at Dollar Academy, "a little man with a long black beard, and dark eyes sparkling with merriment", discovered that the soil could not bear the weight. That was more than was discovered by those who built the tower of St. Andrew's Church, St. Andrew's, which was briefly allowed to call itself a "Cathedral Church" by Wordsworth who lived there, apparently on the theory that a diocese with three names could have three cathedrals. That tower had to be demolished in 1938, leading the Scottish Guardian to hint darkly, "It would be interesting to know what changes in the surrounding area have helped to weaken the foundations." And yet the most significant result of all these works may have been none of the above. Ex-Provost Fortescue married and had a son, Adrian, in 1873, and Adrian Fortescue wrote a famous book for Roman Catholic priests on how to say mass. It is gratifying to think that Scottish Episcopalians contributed, however indirectly, to such a cause. (14)

If this is the story of the Oxford Movement in Scotland, it is much as set forth by Dr. Nockles in the Scottish chapter of his doctoral thesis where he depicts the Oxford men as building on the work of an earlier generation of high churchmen, but then bringing down the whole structure by their impetuous self-assurance. And yet he does note that there was a basic difference between the two sets of men; the older generation had a "static frame of mind", and the Oxford men thought in terms of "movement". And in the 1840s the whole western world was moving from a static view of things to a view of development and change and progress, and something like the Oxford view was inevitable if the church was to exist in the Victorian age. The Oxford men may not have provided it in their invasion of Scotland, but in successive years it came through various channels and had it not done so the Episcopal Church would never have survived. (15)