IV. Gladstone and the Composition of the Final Court in Ecclesiastical Causes, 1850–73

Abstract

The ‘Final Court’ of Appeal in causes ecclesiastical in this period was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as amended by 3 and 4 Viet. c. 86, s. 16, whereby every archbishop or bishop who was a Privy Councillor was made a full member of the Committee for Ecclesiastical Appeals, and one at least of them had to sit. The function of the Judicial Committee as the final arbiter of legal questions which might involve Anglican doctrine and usage was much criticized by churchmen throughout the nineteenth century. Criticism was directed mainly along two channels. It was argued that the Church's freedom to mould her own spiritual life could not be absolute while the Crown, through the Judicial Committee, might, by accident or intention, interfere in questions of doctrine. This argument aimed at removing the Church from all external judicial supervision and implied the eventual dis-solution of the constitutional bond between Church and State—a prospect which a few extreme High Churchmen regarded with equanimity. The other main criticism was that the Judicial Committee, as amended by 3 and 4 Viet, c. 86, was neither a truly civil nor a truly ecclesiastical court, but merely, as Gladstone described it in 1850, ‘pseudo-ecclesiastical’. Of this point of view, Bishop Wilberforce was the most consistent and the most powerful representative.