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

If the Scottish Episcopal Church was over-fearful of the Qualified chapels in the period before 1804 and their gradual acceptance of the Scottish bishops, it was equally over-fearful of the handful of "English Episcopal" chapels which arose in the nineteenth century. And yet the "English Episcopal", who were under no bishop, as their enemies delighted to note, and were not supported by the Church of England, might have been a threat. There may have been very few of them, for there were never more than ten chapels, and they were very divided amongst themselves. But had history been different their imaginary world might have become real. And there was a time when they looked as though they might well be a danger; in 1849 six clergy were listed as having left the Scottish Episcopal Church to join their ranks, while nine more had entered Scotland to join them, and in that year there were only a hundred Scottish Episcopal clergy altogether. (1)

It depended upon the extent to which anglicisation might go; would it mean that Presbyterianism would be supplanted by the Scottish Episcopal Church, or would both be supplanted by forms of Christianity which were even more English ? And in an era when the Oxford Movement was alarming many, and with the Scottish Episcopal Church accused of being allied to the Oxford men, was it not safer for the English in Scotland to worship in chapels free from the Scottish bishops ? And to worship in chapels uncontaminated by the Scottish Liturgy which still lingered on in Aberdeenshire ? Finally, there were many in England who felt that a bishop could only exist by right of Parliament, and the Scottish bishops were without recognition in law. The "English Episcopal" cause was associated with the Evangelical party, but its strongest claims were for parliamentary authority. Of course it was itself backed by no parliamentary or other authority, but it held that the Toleration Act of 1712, which gave some freedom to Episcopalians with English or Irish ordained clergy and using nothing but the Book of Common Prayer, applied to themselves, while specifically excluding the Scottish Episcopal Church. With many in the Church of England up in arms over the threat of the Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 1840s, and with the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, reacting violently over the Roman Catholic hierarchy established for England and Wales in 1850, and asserting that the Oxford Movement was part of this, the cautious might well prefer to be in safely English chapels with English clergy and worship. (2)

Of course the Scottish Episcopal Church fought back. It clothed itself in English respectability, electing well-connected Englishmen to be its bishops, though it would probably have done this anyway. It encouraged those well-connected Englishmen to put Forbes, the Oxford enthusiast, in his place, since he endangered the whole church by proving the assertions of the "English Episcopal" faction. It gave primacy to the English Prayer Book and put the Scottish Liturgy in a secondary position, while arguing that the Scottish Liturgy guarded against Roman error more effectively than did the English. For a while it even called itself the "Protestant Episcopal Church", the semi-official "Reformed Catholic" title having confused everyone. And it lived to see the "English Episcopal" element reduced to irrelevance, as were similar groups in England and America and South Africa. But this could not have been predicted with any degree of certainty at the time.

It all began at Aberdeen. St.Paul's had been a Qualified chapel with a long and honourable history when it entered the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1841 with the usual guarantees of only the English Prayer Book being used. But two years later Bishop William Skinner, grandson of old Tullochgorum and son of Bishop John Skinner, took a confirmation with some St.Paul's candidates, though apparently in St.Andrew's chapel, and used a few prayers from the American Prayer Book. St.Paul's withdrew; there seem to have been elements who had never wanted to join, and now they had their chance. The minister, Sir John Dunbar, one of the Dunbars of Mochrum, was apparently an innocent victim in all this. But Skinner, who had been sent to Oxford as a lad, and who had returned full of Oxford bombast, which later shaded into Oxford Movement bombast, deposed Dunbar, writing to bishops at home and overseas that his actions were "performed apart from Christ's mystical body", and it was said by others, if not Skinner himself, that this deposition had effect in the unseen world. The result was that Evangelical notables from England made the long journey on bad roads to preach in Dunbar's pulpit; he was the only one of the group to receive such support. Eventually Dunbar and Skinner were reconciled on terms acceptable to both, and Dunbar went to a parish in London. (3)

But all this excited C.P.Miles, a former East India Company deck officer, who was minister of St.Jude's in Glasgow. That chapel began when the Rev. George Almond of St.Mary's went on holiday in 1838 and arranged for the Rev. Robert Montgomery to preach in his absence. The congregation were so delighted with Montgomery that some of them did not want Almond back, and Bishop Russell arranged for St.Jude's to be built for them and Montgomery. Miles was his successor, and Miles wanted to show his support for Dunbar by going to Aberdeen, and he withdrew from the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1844 when Russell forbade this - - though what Russell could have or would have done had Miles not withdrawn is not clear. How far the people of St.Jude's sympathised is not clear either, but the managers soon followed Miles, who began publishing open letters. He lectured Russell, who was a distinguished biblical scholar, as if he were an ordinary seaman, and pointed out that he, Miles, was a clergyman of the Church of England while Russell, who had been brought up in the Church of Scotland, was a former dissenter. He spoke of the "dark ages", of "trafficing with the souls of men", and after dire talk of bishops who were not recognised by Parliament, added, "I tremble for England", though his main concern was the Scottish Liturgy. Russell had pointed out that he knew of that liturgy when he agreed to accept the canons and swore obedience to his bishop, and had no difficulty refuting Miles when the latter claimed that Russell had given him to understand the Scottish Liturgy would soon be abandoned even in Aberdeenshire. But in one matter he did have Russell at a disadvantage. Russell was clearly trying to distance himself from Skinner, of whom the charitable historian William Walker was to say that he had "a good heart and a fairly good head", while not abandoning him completely. But Miles soon had a new cause of complaint; Russell had consecrated a chapel at Jedburgh where they were to use the Scottish Liturgy, never previously used in the diocese. As Russell remarked, "I did not expect an application for it from the edge of the Cheviot Hills and backed by natives of England." But those natives of England were aristocratic and touched by the Oxford Movement. Miles complained that clergy of a particular party, by which he meant the leaders from Oxford, were at the service. Russell said he had not expected them, though he was rather impressed when he spoke with them. And Miles said the service was not Protestant as the clergy entered the chapel in procession; Russell replied that it was not a procession as it was raining and they carried umbrellas. Yet Miles could rejoice in the ultimate outcome; the Marchioness of Lothian, the main figure behind the new venture, soon turned Roman Catholic. (4)

The later story of St.Jude's was tumultuous. Confirmations were taken by the Anglo-Prussian bishop from Jerusalem on one occasion, and by a Bishop Beccles who had retired from Sierra Leone on another. When the Scottish bishops complained of this to the Bishop of London in which diocese Beccles had a minor charge, the Bishop of London replied that he could not more stop Beccles confirming in his holidays than he could stop him salmon-fishing. In 1863 the more upwardly-mobile members of St.Jude's founded a new chapel further west, St.Silas', which adopted a positive Evangelical position instead of mere fulminations about the Scottish Liturgy and parliamentary authority. In 1906 St.Silas' came to an agreement with the Bishop of Glasgow, and later united with the Scottish Episcopal Church. (5)

By 1875 St.Jude's had veered back towards the Scottish Episcopal Church and its candidates were being confirmed at St. Mary's, with its minister, the Rev. F. Courtney, taking part in the service. And an offshoot of St.Jude's called St. Paul's had placed itself under the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1871 as its rector, Dr.McCann, met with a serious accident, but in fact St. Paul's was past saving and disappeared soon after. And then St.Jude's drifted into insolvency from which it was temporarily saved by selling bonds to English Evangelicals. Unfortunately there was no way to pay the interest, and the bond-holders took possession of the building, which they tried to sell in 1884, and eventually rented to the newly-formed Free Presbyterians in 1893, and sold to them in 1909. The relics of St.Jude's congregation divided themselves between various chapels of the Scottish Episcopal Church. And when the Free Presbyterians moved further west in 1975, they took the name with them, but left the building to be used for offices and, from 1994, as the Restaurant Malmaison. It still bears a Greek inscription over the door, "Christ is the Head of the Church", which was Free Presbyterian rather than "English Episcopal" with the latter's concern for state connection. Unhappily, there is an error in the inscription. (6)

But the centre of this movement was at Edinburgh, and it revolved around the character of D.K.T.Drummond. Brought up in Edinburgh where he was a boy at St. George's while Ramsay was assistant minister, Drummond graduated from Oxford and was ordained in the Church of England before returning to Edinburgh as minister of Trinity Chapel. And, as he himself put it, he "retired from his charge" when pressed by Bishop Terrot over taking prayer-meetings in a hired room. That this was a crime may astonish us all, but a canon passed by the General Synod of 1838 had forbidden use of worship other than the Prayer Book, even outside church buildings, though why this should have been necessary is still unclear. It may have been intended to protest the Scottish Episcopal Church from charges of Romanism, though it was a bit early for that, or it may have been intended against the likes of Drummond taking mission services in the Diocese of Aberdeen which, by his own account, he had done, and that without consulting the local clergy. That is probably at the root of the matter; none of the bishops save Skinner was likely to want a rule over such a trivial affair, and none of the bishops save Skinner had been threatened by Drummond's activities. If Skinner was responsible for elevating the Dunbar affair into a major scandal, he was probably responsible for elevating Drummond's intrusions, which clearly left Drummond with no local following, into another major scandal. Without Skinner, there might have been no "English Episcopal" faction. Be that as it may, Drummond and his supporters then built St.Thomas, an impressive building almost diagonally round the corner from Dean Ramsay's church, St.John's, their opposition also being somewhat diagonal or at least not straightforward. (7)

Drummond's arguments were many and varied. He wrote that Bishop John Skinner had made conditions before accepting the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England in 1804, so Scottish Episcopalians and the Church of England were not sister bodies. He argued that Scottish Episcopalians could only have territorial jurisdiction through the Church of England, so did not have it. He denied that Scottish bishops were in the apostolic succession as Bishop Gadderer had not been consecrated to a particular diocese by the English Non-jurors, which "vitiated the legitimacy of those who sprang from him". He had much to say about the Invocation of the Spirit in eighteenth-centuries liturgies. He went on about Miles wanting to go to Aberdeen as a "test" to see if his bishop would forbid it. Yet Russell had only warned his clergy to "avoid professional communion" with Miles, and this was so much milder than the deposition of Dunbar by Skinner that Drummond had a hard time deciding whether to damn Russell for tyranny, or use his mildness as a reason for blaming Skinner for his greater ferocity. (8)

When the great excitement over Bishop Forbes burst on the Episcopal Church in 1858, this appeared to be Drummond's opportunity and he published an open letter to Ramsay. He suggested that Ramsay would resign his charge rather than compromise what he believed to be truth, and then quoted the three bishops who had repudiated Forbes. As he noted, they held a high view of the sacrament, and he implied that they were thus being underhand in not being as open as Forbes. He then went on to note that Ramsay had declined to discuss the Scottish Liturgy as it was not his concern. "Hence I gather that you are prepared to most strenuously resist all efforts to introduce the Scottish Liturgy into your congregation...", which efforts did not exist. (9)

In 1875 Drummond's chosen successor and most of the vestry resigned, but even after Drummond's death the tumult continued. Various rectors tried to bring St.Thomas' nearer to the Scottish Episcopal Church, and were struck down accordingly. A form of agreement was reached in 1906, but in the following year the trustees and the vestry were at law in "a dispute which had no substance", according to Lord Guthrie, and in 1931 the rector resigned and took a large part of the congregation to a hall in the West Port. But gradually the older element died out, and in 1940 a new St.Thomas' was built on Corstorphine Road as a private chapel in the Episcopal Church. The old building became a communal feeding station, a tourist office, and eventually a casino. As at St.Silas' in Glasgow, it was possible to maintain an Evangelical witness in Scottish Episcopalianism provided that it was not hampered by sterile arguments about parliamentary authority and attacks on the Scottish bishops. And, as at St.Silas' in Glasgow, the main support came from English Evangelicals who had moved to Scotland. Few of these would have attached themselves to churches which were hostile to the only form of Anglicanism which the Church of England recognised in Scotland. (10)

But this raises a question about the Scottish Episcopal Church. By and large it has lacked an Evangelical wing, and it may be argued that the "English Episcopal" element made it impossible for ordinary Evangelicals to exist. Probably this was not the case. Evangelicals were almost unknown because incoming English Evangelicals found their way into Presbyterian churches, though if there had been Evangelical Episcopal churches that might never have happened. The Free Church of England, an English break-away roughly parallel to "English Episcopal" in Scotland, did try to fill that gap with two missions in Glasgow, but had no great success. The probable answer to this question is that the Scottish Episcopal Church was a tradition in a wider body, whether that wider body was Scottish Christianity or Anglicanism, and thus did not have the full range of types of churchmanship which might otherwise have developed. But even if that is admitted, there were Evangelical clergy and Evangelical laity in the Scottish Episcopal Church right through the nineteenth century. They may not have been prominent, but they were there.