Anglican Clergyman Research Articles

Robert Browning's Evangelical Heritage

When, in an episode in the long courtship by mail between Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, Elizabeth “confessed” that she was to be numbered, in religion, among “those schismatiques of Amsterdam” Donne talks of, Browning, always the opportunist in the affair, fired back: “Can it be you, my own you past putting away, you are a schismatic and frequenter of Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to me—whose father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel where they took me, all these years back, to be baptized—and where they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who officiated on that other occasion!” The Independent Chapel in question was, of course, the Locks Fields Chapel, or, as it came to be called, the York Street Congregational Church, at Walworth, about a mile from the Brownings' Camberwell home, south of London; and the minister was a George Clayton. Browning's credentials as a schismatic were, however, less obvious than he implies. On his father's side Browning's people, in fact, were members of the Church of England (his grandmother was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman), and in the 1830's he and his sister also attended evening services at Camden Chapel, a separate offshoot from the parish church of St. Giles, in order to hear the more “eloquent and earnest” sermons of Henry Melvill, “Melvill of the Golden Mouth,” whose sermons were also highly approved by John Ruskin. If Clayton's Independent Chapel was nonetheless the family church, there can be no doubt that this was because of the influence of Browning's mother, already a member there before marriage. About 1820, her husband, raised in the Church of England, followed her and officially joined the York Street Congregation.

John Rogers: A Disillusioned Fifth Monarchy Man

In a letter to Oliver Cromwell in April 1653, John Rogers wrote that his soul was “boiling over into earnest prayers to the Great Jehovah for wisdom, counsel, and courage for you … the great deliverer of His people. …” Rogers perceived in the person of Cromwell another Moses, charged with the duty of liberating the saints of “the Commonwealth of Israel.” Yet in a face-to-face confrontation with Cromwell in February 1655, Rogers warned him, “in the name of the Lord Jehovah,” that his condition was “very desperate,” and that “the next Vial which is to be poured out … the scorching hot one … must fall upon him … [for having] forsaken and betrayed the Cause of Christ.” In less than two years, Rogers had gradually slipped from a summit of hopeful expectation into an abyss of bitter disillusionment, as he watched the man in whom he had placed all trust take for himself the crown that had been reserved for the Lord Jesus.Born in 1627 at Messing, Essex, John Rogers was the second son of Nehemiah and Margaret Rogers. Nehemiah Rogers, an Anglican clergyman and a firm advocate of the policies of Archbishop William Laud, endeavored to educate his son in a manner that would fit him for service in the Church of England. Early in life, under the tutelage first of his father and later of two Puritan clergymen — William Fenner and Stephen Marshall, John Rogers became acutely aware of contemporary theological controversies and intensely preoccupied with his own religious condition. Later as a minister in Ireland, Rogers recounted various childhood experiences in his quest for some assurance of salvation: … when I was a schoolboy at Maldon, in Essex, I began to be roused up by two men, viz. Mr. Fenner and Mr. Marshall … hearing Mr. William Fenner full of zeal, stirring about, and thundering, and beating the pulpit, I was amazed and thought he was mad … “Oh”, says he, “you knotty! rugged! proud piece of flesh! you stony, rocky, flinty, hard heart, what wilt thou do when thou art roaring in hell amongst the damned!” … I began now to be troubled, being scared and frighted, and out of fear of hell I fell to duties, hear sermons, read the scriptures … and learned to pray. …

The role of the Anglican clergyman

Les problèmes posés par le rôle du pasteur anglican en Angleterre sont analysés en fonction des changements qui se sont manifestés à tous les niveaux de la société. L'article se réfère en particulier à l'application des sciences sociales au service social et au rôle de conseiller social. Il applique les critères d'instrumentalité d'une action sociale de la société globale actuelle au rôle du pasteur. En second lieu, ce rôle est analysé en fonction des pro blèmes qui se posent à l'Eglise d'Angleterre du fait de son manque rclatif d'unanimité en ce qui concerne la nature théo logique de l'Eglise, la place du sacerdoce ou du ministère et du fait qu'il s'agit d'une Eglise d'Etat. Enfin, en troisième lieu, l'auteur analyse les attentes des personnes de la communauté locale concernant le rôle du prêtre dans la paroisse, attentes qui peuvent être en conflit avec la définition du rôle qu'en a le pasteur ou qu'il a en fait intériorisée.

GLADSTONE'S REVIEW OF ROBERT ELSMERE: SOME UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE

' RS. HUM P H RY WARD deserves the hearty congratulations of the whole Liberal party', began a leader in the Pall Mall Gazette on 7 April i888, 'For her new novel has done that which all other books and all other events have failed to effect. From December 1885, to March i888, Mr. Gladstone has been able to think of nothing but Ireland and Home Rule. But Mrs. Ward has changed all that.' What finally distracted Gladstone's attention from the Irish Question (which had led to the downfall of his government in 1886) was the publication of Mrs. Ward's novel Robert Elsmere in February of 1888. This story of a young Anglican clergyman who renounces his faith because of intellectual doubts had set English literary circles buzzing with astonishment; though a three-volume novel filled with weighty theological discussions, it met with extraordinary success, and within a few months of its publication it was being soberly analysed in the best quarterlies and denounced from countless pulpits. Gladstone, in other words, was not the only reader to experience excitement or alarm upon encountering Robert Elsmere; it quickly became one of the most celebrated novels of the Victorian era. But the preoccupation of an ex-Prime Minister with a popular novel had a curious, not to say amusing, aspect to it, and when Gladstone reviewed Elsmere in the May, 1888, issue of the Nineteenth Century, the book's sales increased even more, and thereafter other reviewers were afforded the unusual pleasure of treating both Gladstone and Elsmere (or 'Weg on Bobbie', as one woman put it) together. During the spring of 1888 an interesting correspondence ensued between Mrs. Ward and Gladstone, which I have reproduced below in its entirety. Of the nine letters which passed between them, substantial extracts of only three (Nos. 8, 9, and io), and very brief excerpts from two others (Nos. 6 and 14), have appeared in print before; another letter (No. 7) was quoted by Mrs. Ward in a different form in her autobiography; and a slightly revised version of Mrs. Ward's notes of her conversation with Gladstone (No. 3) was published as an appendix to the Westmoreland Edition of Robert Elsmere.' I have also included two unpublished letters I Mrs. Ward, A Writer's Recollections (London, 1918), pp. 237-40, 245; Janet P. Trevelyan, The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward (New York, 1923), pp. 60-4; Robert Elsmere, Westmoreland Edition (London, 190o), ii. 563-6. Research for this article was done under a grant-in-aid from the American Council of

Charles Halliley Kellaway, 1889 - 1952

Charles Kellaway was born on 16 January 1889, in the parsonage attached to the pro-Cathedral of St James, Melbourne (Victoria), where his father was then curate to the Dean, Hussey Burgh Macartney. The father, Alfred Charles Kellaway, had been born at Swanage, Dorset, in 1856, of parents who came from Lulworth; but on his seventh birthday, 23 September 1863, his mother had embarked with him for Australia, whither his father had apparently preceded them, to start anew as a farmer in Victoria. The venture cannot have prospered greatly, since Alfred Kellaway, the father of Charles, became a teacher in the State Education Department and thus supported himself through his University course, graduating with honours in history and political economy, before he was ordained and entered upon his main career in the Church. After holding the curacy above mentioned he became Vicar of All Saints Church, Northcote—a parish in the Melbourne suburbs. His wife, Anne Carrick Roberts, Charles Kellaway’s mother, had been born at Longford, Tasmania, in 1854. Her parents had emigrated first to New Zealand, from there to Tasmania, where her father’s elder brother was a well-known solicitor in Hobart, and finally, in 1870, to Melbourne. Her father, Richard Roberts, was the younger son of a Welsh anglican clergyman, and had married Frances Halliley, from whom Charles inherited not only his second name, but also his only ancestral link with the natural sciences; for she was the daughter of a north-country manufacturer who had had an interest in chemistry, and had been a friend of John Dalton. Schooling and University in Melbourne Charles Kellaway was the eldest son and second child in a family of five— three sons and two daughters. He spoke in after years with affectionate gratitude of the puritan atmosphere of his upbringing in the parsonage, and of the self-sacrifice accepted by his parents for the education of their family—secondary schooling for all five, followed by a university course for four of them; an heroic achievement, indeed, even in those days, on a clerical stipend of never much more than £300 a year!

Arthur Holt, Anglican Clergyman, Reports on Barbados, 1725-1733

Arthur Holt, Anglican Clergyman, Reports on Barbados, 1725-1733

Obituary notice of William Pengelly F.R.S., Associate

When I read, three months ago, my paper on Kent's Cavern, I little thought I should so soon have to chronicle the death of its famous explorer, William Pengelly. That sad event occurred at Torquay on 17th March last. The son of a Cornish fisherman, William Pengelly was born at East Looe, a village in Cornwall, on 12th January 1812, so that he died at the ripe age of eighty-two. He began life as a sailor, but his scientific leanings made him become a teacher at Torquay, where he established a school. To the end of his life he continued giving lectures on Science at schools and institutes, possessing, as he did, in a rare degree, the art of presenting Science to the public in a lucid and attractive way. But he was not merely an admirable speaker, he was also a man of action. He established the Torquay Mechanics' Institute in 1837. He founded the Torquay Natural History Society in 1844, and the Devonshire Association in 1862. It was in 1841, when twenty-nine years old, that Pengelly attended the sale of the effects of the Rev. John MacEnery, who had just died. MacEnery had from the year 1825 made continuous researches into a then little known cave near Torquay, popularly called “Kent's Hole.” Himself a Roman Catholic priest, MacEnery called in the assistance of an eminent Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Dr Buckland, author of “ Reliquiae Diluvianae,” who was at that time the great authority on ossiferous caves in