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The Journal which follows has recently come to light and is here for the first time made available to the student, and for the pleasure of all who delight in the charm of a well-told travel story. The Journal was written by that cultured and observant man, the Right Reverend Henry Lascelles Jenner, 1st Bishop of Dunedin. It is the story of how he went to New Zealand to claim his See, how his claim was refused, and the manner of his return. The event was unique in Anglican history and, while the story is told with restraint and good humour, it has inherently many of the ingredients of high drama.
Henry Lascelles Jenner was born at Chislehurst in Kent, in 1820, and was the seventh of the eight sons of Herbert Jenner, later Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, one of the best-known and most influential Anglican layman in modern times. It may help in understanding Bishop Jenner to refresh memories about the background against which he grew up.
First, a word about his father. Herbert Jenner was born in 1777, was a Doctor, or Advocate, of Doctors' Commons becoming King's Advocate in 1828; he was knighted, sworn of the Privy Council, and appointed Vicar-General of the Province of Canterbury. In 1834 he became Dean of Arches and Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. In 1843 he was appointed Master of his old college, Trinity Hall, Cambridge. This speaks a most successful life. He was clearly a man of great and dominating character, who used to the full the privileges which waited generally on his class and on his own family in particular. The Jenners had a corner, a most lucrative corner, in Doctors' Commons, which was almost a close corporation for certain families. Jenner, Dyke and Jenner were a well known firm of proctors. The legal profession in general regarded the institution with envy, and the liberal reformers with a virulent and bitter hatred. Its work was carried on, with a fine contempt for outside opinion, in a series of buildings of seventeenth century date, near the south west corner of St. Paul's Churchyard. Both were swept away in 1857. The testamentary, matrimonial and Admiralty functions were taken elsewhere and, even in the ecclesiastical remnant, privilege was removed. Had it not been for Charles Dickens, who practised there for reporting later in the House of Commons, the memory of it would have perished. He, loathing it beyond reasonable measure, gives us some colourful peeps. Mr Weller, senior, had four hundred pounds left him and went to Doctors' [17/18] Commons 'to see the lawyer and draw the blunt' and it was there that he got trapped into buying a marriage licence. Clients did not go to Proctors direct but only through their own solicitors, the slip shows the mystery in which Doctors' Commons was shrouded. David Copperfield was articled to Spenlow and Jorkins a firm of proctors; and his friend Steerforth has a remark which helps to perpetuate their memory: 'they plume themselves on their gentility in the Commons'. Of greater interest to us is the account Dickens gives in his Sketches by Boz, of his visit to the principal ecclesiastical court, The Court of Arches. The name derives from the fact that, at one time, the Court functioned at St. Mary de Arcubus or St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside. There he found a dozen gentlemen in crimson (by which he meant scarlet) gowns, and wigs. These were the Advocates, or Doctors, who sat on a semi-circular platform at the upper end of the court. And now for Herbert Jenner. 'At a more elevated desk in the centre sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the Judge.' After a description of the proctors' attire; neck cloths, black gowns, and fur collars (by which he meant small hoods lined with fur) we read: 'The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles was having all the talk to himself and very well he was doing it too, only he spoke very fast, but that was habit, and rather thick, but that was good living'. At Chislehurst, Herbert Jenner had Francatelli for his chef and Barnes--a famous head-gardener who later went to Lady Rolle's famous garden at Bicton. His town house was at the corner of Chesterfield Street and Curzon Street and he had the Master's Lodge at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He never lived at his Manor of Hill in Gloucestershire. His family said that he was quite satisfied with his three houses and envied no man. Since it was the mark of a gentleman to be satisfied with the circumstances in which he had been divinely placed, this modesty must have been a great satisfaction to them. One is almost relieved that he was not burdened with a promised peerage in May, but taken in an apoplexy in February, 1852. Despite what that nasty leveller Dickens might have thought, his family knew that his gout and his demise had been brought on by hard work. Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, as he became in 1842 as a condition of inheriting the Manor of Hill Court in Gloucestershire, was the greatest English authority of his day on international law. In this way he made a considerable contribution to the Admiralty Court. He was, despite his masterful manner, a man of considerable piety. Every morning, before he left his house for Court, he read the Psalms and the lessons proper for the day. His family stood in affectionate awe of him. By his own exertions plus a certain amount of privilege, in those unregenerate days considered quite proper, he gained a large professional income. He spent his income freely. It is a tribute to his memory that Bishop [18/19] Jenner, so records his son, could never to the end of his life speak of his father without a break in his voice. Reverently he adopted his father's immortalised tortoise shell spectacles! When the Dean of Arches died he left eight sons and three daughters, and eighty-three grandchildren--a patriarch! His sons lived less well but, on the whole, longer. Their average life span was 81½ but this figure had been brought down by the accidental death of the Naval Captain at the age of 60.
Henry Lascelles Jenner was called after his God-father, the second Earl of Harewood, who was his mother's first cousin. He went to preparatory schools at Blackheath and Sunbury and then on to Harrow. His brothers went to Eton and it is not known why he was sent to Harrow. There he was under the headmastership, firstly of Charles Thomas Longley, who was to become Archbishop of Canterbury and secondly of Christopher Wordsworth, later Bishop of Lincoln. When Longley left Harrow to become the first Bishop of Ripon he presented Jenner with a pocket Horace, Henrico L. Jenner d.d. Carolus T. Longley xii Kal.Ap.A.S.MDCCCXXXVI, in his own handwriting on the fly leaf. Spared, both of them, a thought of the coming tragedy in which they were to be principal actors and Jenner's career was to be wrecked. Jenner loved his school dearly and for the last decades of his life never missed a Speech Day. What filial love that school inspires!
As might be expected Jenner went up to Trinity Hall and read law. He took a second-class honours degree with 'a first class compliment on his "Act"' which he composed, read and defended in Latin. The subject, a family one it might be said, 'The Inviolability of Ambassadors', from the field of international law. It was his father's intention that he should go into Doctors' Commons, but he chose to take Holy Orders and left Cambridge a Bachelor of Law.
Herbert Jenner had no objection to his son's choice of profession. His family had in earlier generations given more than one luminary to the English Church, and an older son, Charles Herbert Jenner, had already taken Holy Orders. But there was a significant difference in the churchmanship of the father and sons. The Dean of Arches was an old-fashioned high churchman, well versed in the Fathers and the English divines of the seventeenth century. He had also a certain theoretical sympathy for the non-juring divines of the eighteenth century. He was a great authority on ecclesiastical history. His churchmanship ran parallel with much that was beginning to be taught by the Oxford apostles, but he belonged to an older generation. He shared with them a great respect for the law of the Church and of the State. They had this in common also that they could not see, once doctrine was pure and on the model of the sub-apostolic church, and dogma was catholic but free from Tridentine error, that it much mattered [19/20] where the minister stood or how he was clad. It would have been well for the career of Henry Lascelles if he had perpetuated his father's nonchalance in the matter of ecclesiastical arrayal. His Journal in that event might have recorded only his outward voyage to Dunedin and the Church of New Zealand possibly would have been spared the opprobrium of the English Bench of Bishops.
But in the fateful year 1839 that young freshman Henry Lascelles Jenner, threw in his lot with John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb, who were busy founding the Cambridge Camden Society.
The founders of the Cambridge Movement were clearly young men deeply impressed by the tracts which had been issuing from Oxford, the first dated 9 September 1833. This was a little four-paged thing by Newman: Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission respectfully addressed to the Clergy and containing a defence of the Apostolic Succession. They saw a need not only for an erudite appeal from the sister university, by scholars to scholars, but they felt that this should be complemented by an aesthetic witness. So they studied gothic architecture and ecclesiology. Their society was called the Cambridge Camden Society; Camden after the celebrated Elizabethan antiquary, John Camden, and Cambridge to distinguish it from the Camden Society of London founded the year before, in 1838. Their interest was not merely passive and antiquarian. They were men of action and they aimed to restore mediaeval churches to their pristine purity. To do so was to sweep away the perversions, as they regarded them, of the Renaissance and later movements of bad taste. Nor were ancient churches only to be dealt with. New churches must rise on the ancient pattern, for the words Gothic and Christian were synonyms. Their motto--Donec templa refeceris. Horace was more widely known to them than to us and there would be no doubt in the minds of educated men that the founders had Ode VI Book III in mind, in its entirety. Later events would seem to bear this out. So began Ritual as it came to be called. Oxford revived the faith and Cambridge the ceremonial.* [Footnote: * The Oxford leaders did not themselves adopt advanced ceremonial but Pusey, at least, came to see the logic of its development--'We, the clergy, taught the truth: the people said, "Set it before our eyes". I do think that it is scarcely philosophical to regard this so-called ritualistic movement otherwise than eminently a lay movement.' Appendix to Sermon--'Will ye also go away.'] H. L. Jenner was in the society as an ordinary member and when it was reformed and changed its name to the Ecclesiological Society, he was to be, for many years, one of its honorary secretaries. His own contribution was largely in the field of Church Music. Where there was so much youthful exuberance there was sure to be some indiscretion, but they were for the most part a jolly crowd with a sense of fun and a great ability to laugh at themselves. The Oxford men were older, more [20/21] solemn in demeanour as became their positions as dons. One does not picture Dr. Pusey cracking jokes. The Bishop, later in life, recalled the fun they had enjoyed at Cambridge. There was, for example, the occasion when Benjamin Webb intervened in a debate in the Society. Someone had said that he could not see why the Low Church men should arrogate to themselves the name 'Evangelicals'--Squeaked Webb, 'I don't see why not. Scipio was called "Africanus" because he devastated Africa.'
Henry Lascelles Jenner was ordained Deacon by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 11 June, 1843, and Priest by the Bishop of Ely on 9 June, 1844. He took his title at Chevening, near Sevenoaks in Kent. One of his congregation was Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope, whose son succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Rosebury, and was to have so distinguished a political and literary career. Lady Wilhelmina was a great beauty and a keen churchwoman. When she bowed at the Holy Name, in the Church, her action was so graceful that people came from miles around to see it. But this old-fashioned bit of high-churchism was not enough for Jenner and his fellow-curate, and the Anglican revival began at Chevening by the introduction of the neglected rubrics of the Prayer Book. They made a start by proposing to restore the four occasional services--Gunpowder Treason by 5 November, King Charles the Martyr on 30 January, Restoration of the Royal Family on 29 May, and the Queen's Accession on 21 June. A start was to be made on Guy Fawkes Day, which fortunately was a week-day. The curates took up their positions at opposite ends of the altar--the Eastward Position was still in the future--and began. Presently Gordon whispered, 'I cannot read this next prayer it gives thanks for a rebellion.' 'Neither can I', said Jenner, who would be the last man to give thanks for the landing of the Prince of Orange. So they cut it out. The way of the restorer is hard! Jenner had loyalty to the reigning monarch of course, but it was only a hundred years since the forty-five, and the Chevalier had been dead less than sixty. There was a good deal of theoretical Jacobitism among the early figures in the Oxford and Cambridge revivals--John Keble was himself of non-juring Scottish Episcopalian* [Footnote: * Until the death of Cardinal York in 1807 the Scottish Episcopalian Church refused to pray for the reigning sovereign by name. The last of the non-juring clergy of that Church died as late as 10 June, 1869, The Revd. Patrick Cushnie, in his 90th year and the 69th of his ministry.] descent or so the Cambridge Camden people believed. Whatever acceptance there was of the present establishment those caught up in the Romantic Movement had a liking for the House of Stuart, and the Revolution of 1688 did not commend itself to their affections. It was in the parish of Chevening that Jenner met his future bride.
In 1846 Jenner left Chevening and became Curate to the Revd. S. E. [21/22] Walker, D.D., Rector of St. Columb Major in Cornwall. Walker was the only son of a wealthy London barrister, and when he came down from Trinity College, Cambridge, his father purchased the advowson of St. Columb, the wealthiest living in Cornwall, for him. He took up his living on 11 March, 1841 and forthwith set his hand to reform. He restored the ancient Rectory at a cost to himself of £7,000. With the arrival of his Trinity curate he restored the church according to the rules of the Cambridge Camden Society. There was much to be done. In 1676 there was a good deal of gun-powder stored in the rood loft. Some boys maliciously exploded it, blew down the east wall of the chancel and that of its south aisle* [Footnote: * 'The Ecclesiologist' New Series Vol.iv, 1847, pp107/8.] and destroyed the ancient screens and a great amount of old painted glass. They paid for their irreverence with their lives. Walker was an eccentric man in many ways, and it is still whispered in the Parish that he married one of his maids! He was anxious, as many were, for the restoration of the Cornish See, after a lapse of a thousand years, and he offered his great restored Rectory and his Church together with a large sum of money for a Cathedral foundation. His offer might well have been accepted had he not speculated heavily in building projects at Gravesend and Notting Hill. At Notting Hill he built the Church of St. Columba, now known as All Saints, and intended to live as a kind of urban squarson upon his building estate, and to enjoy an income of £60,000 a year. By the dishonesty of his partner the business venture failed disastrously, the St. Columb living was sequestrated, and Walker went abroad. The St. Columb scheme for a Bishopric was at an end. Eventually Truro was fixed upon as the ecclesiastical centre of the new See, and there John Loughborough Pearson built his masterpiece. The only regret in this course of events is that the title Bishop of the Cornish was not revived instead of Bishop of Truro. Had a territorial title been required, then Bodmin and St. Germans had an historical claim, and Truro no claim at all. A belated bit of the Saxon conquest! But this belongs to another story. Jenner was married at St. Columb on the 11 August, 1847.+ [Footnote: + While at St. Columb Jenner wrote Of Flowers as employed in the Adornment of Churches which contained lists of flowers of the liturgically correct colour for all the festivals of the Book of Common Prayer. 'June 29 S. Peter RED / Flowers--Roses, Poppies, Scarlet Lychnis, Geranium, Verbena, Kalma, Potentilla, Mallow, Red Valerian, Antirrhinium, Salvia, Heath, Phlox Drummondi.' again 'Flowers of the proper colours might be forced on purpose at almost any time in the hothouses of a rich parishioner.' Query--Where would one find such a splendid guide today.] He was a popular Curate and occasionally he drove home to Chislehurst in a two-wheeled gig! When his son, Henry Jenner, was born on the 8 [22/23] August, 1848 at eight o'clock, Jenner marked the occasion by presenting a pair of wrought iron standard gospel lights, still in use in the church. It should not pass unnoticed that when the old stone mensa was discovered in 1846, and replaced in the High Altar with such jubilation, that it was done in defiance of Jenner's father's ruling of the year before. In 1845 one of the prominent members of the Cambridge Camden Society, and with their approval, restored the Church of St. Sepulchre at Cambridge and erected therein a stone altar. Mr. Faulkner took the case to the Ely Consistory Court and won it. The Society appealed to the Court of Arches and the Dean ruled that the Communion table in the English Church was movable, as witness the rubric in the Prayer Book. A stone altar was illegal. The case was made the better known by the Revd. R. H. Barham, Minor Canon of St. Paul's, in the Ingoldsby Legends. In The Blasphemer's Warning; a Lay of St. Romwald he speaks of
'Adorning the building with carving and gilding
And stone altars fixed to the chantries and filled in,
Papistic in substance and form, and on this count
With Judge Herbert Jenner-Fust justly at discount.
What Sir Herbert thought of the mensa at St. Columb is not known. He did not always put his judgments into private practice for Bishop Jenner recalled that when his father arrived home from the Court in the case of Breeks v. Woolfrey in 1839, in which he ruled that prayers for the departed were legal in the Church of England, he said, 'Well, I have given my judgment in favour of prayer for the dead, but it won't make me pray for them.'
In May, 1849, Jenner became Curate of the Rev. John Francis Kitson at Antony. Kitson was of the new movement and so was the squire, Mr. W. H. Pole-Carew, father of the future General Sir Reginald Pole-Carew, said to have been the best-looking and the most loved officer in the British Army. Mr Pole-Carew had built an L-shaped building in Maryfield. One wing served as a house for the Curate, its bedrooms having open roofs and dark stained rafters in the best gothic-revival manner; the other as a church and, with a curtain drawn across the sanctuary, as a school on weekdays. The building still stands although a gothic church was erected at Maryfield in 1870. Jenner, although nominally a curate of Kitson's, was given a free hand in his 'district'. He [23/24] could be as advanced as he pleased. Accordingly he adopted the wearing of stoles--stoles, not scarves he pointed out; he monotoned his prayers--it was a mark of ignorance to call it 'intoning'. He placed a cross and candles on his altar, and he stood before it in the Eastward Position. There was a daily service. Jenner was a born teacher and a faithful pastor and, although backed by squire and parson in his innovations, he introduced them only after careful public instruction from his pulpit and private tuition in the peoples' houses, every one of which he visited for the purpose. There was universal consent for the revival at Maryfield.
Jenner was immensely popular at Maryfield, not only in church and private home but among the youth and men of the parish. The Jenners were, after all, first class cricketers; their professions apart, they lived for cricket. Sir Herbert himself was an outstanding cricketer and a founder of the West Kent Cricket Club whose ground was on Chislehurst Common. It makes him a little more human to us to recollect a verse from the doggerel ballad scribbled by Benjamin Aislabie, for many years honorary secretary of the M.C.C., after one of Jenner's famous cricket dinners:
'There is a man at Chislehurst, whose whole is the tenor
Of Kindness and benevolence. Who's that? Sir Herbert Jenner,
He such a hearty welcome gives, and such a wondrous dinner,
That even if I lose the match, I still shall be a winner.'
Sir Herbert was also reckoned to be the second best tennis player in England in his day; second only to Lord Frederick Beauclere--and real tennis of course, not the degenerate lawn variety! The curate at Maryfield was not the equal of his oldest brother Herbert who captained the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford under Charles Wordsworth, later Bishop of St. Andrews, in the first inter-University match ever played, and found a place in the Dictionary of National Biography. But he was as good a coach as performer and his lessons were greatly in demand in the neighbourhood. He was very good with boats also, but it was as a horseman that he excelled. It was said that no man in England knew better how to judge a horse and his advice was often sought by a generation who rode of necessity, as well as for sport and pleasure. Jenner and his wife felt that no offer would tempt them to leave Maryfield. They became close friends of the Pole-Carews who took them to London now and then in their own lugger. On one occasion, off the Eddystone, a dreadful storm blew up and the lugger had to limp into Weymouth where its passengers caught a German steamer and landed at Portsmouth. This family were and are outstanding in popularity among all classes. The only complaint one has about them is that having learnt painfully as a small child, living at the other [24/25] extremity of the county, to say Pool-Carey, the family promptly changed their name to Carew-Pole and pronounced it as written!
There were a number of intelligent young men in the parish whose adult education was taken up by Jenner. One of them, who cleaned the boots and knives at Antony House, was sent, one of the first men, to St. Augustine's College at Canterbury, and became a valued Archdeacon in India. St. Augustine's College had been founded by A. J. Beresford Hope, a Trinity man and most generous provider of funds for the Cambridge Camden people,--the link is clear. One reflects that this kind of thing went on for centuries in the country parishes. Who can ever assess the value in the English countryside of the educational work of the country parson, before an enthusiasm for education made way for a madness for examinations.
It was about this time that the neighbouring church of Sheviock was restored in memory of the late Rector, the Revd. Gerald Pole-Carew. This was an early day for church restorations and Jenner was concerned with two of them in Cornwall. It was remarkable how quickly the principles of the Oxford and the Cambridge movements were spreading. Now, however, came the sad news that Sir Herbert's health was rapidly declining and he asked his son to be near him. The Curate did not hesitate to resign his curacy. He did it with a breaking heart--perhaps he had a premonition of the troubled days ahead.
Jenner and his young family now moved to Leigh, near Southend, in Essex. The Rector, Dr. Eden, had been consecrated Bishop of Moray and Ross but did not resign the Essex living for some time. Instead he appointed Henry Lascelles Jenner Curate-in-Charge, and placed him in the spacious and pleasant Rectory. During his last illness, Sir Herbert was living at his house in Chesterfield Street and it was a fairly convenient journey for his son to take a steamer from Southend and go up to Town. Jenner's little boy was a great favourite with his grandfather who took it upon him to lay a sound foundation for a proper taste in port of which he was so well known a connoisseur. Boys in those days were little men, and although young Jenner was not yet four years of age he could repeat a good deal of Longfellow by heart, could compare the fairy tales of Anderson and Grimm, which were just coming out, where they overlapped, and mirabile dicto could repeat an ode of Anacreon, θελψ λεγειν Ατρειδας in Greek without knowing what a word meant!
There was a whole literature produced at this time for the benefit of the children of Anglo-Catholics. It was very well written, and suited for its times, i.e., rather high tory and 'historical'. The authors were of Jenner's circle and most of them close personal friends of his--F. E. Paget, Rector of Elford, in Staffordshire, and author, among other works, of The Hope of the Katzckoffs; J. M. Neale, scholar great as he [25/26] was in so many fields, wrote some good stories, Crested, and Heygate too, whose parents lived in the parish and were particularly kind to the Jenner family, taking them as their own children.
Jenner stayed at Leigh for only six months. Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust having died, there was nothing to keep him there.
Early in 1852 the Revd. Dr. William Hodge Mill invited him to take the curacy at Brasted, near Sevenoaks. St. Martin's had recently been restored. Its walls had been 'very successfully cleared of whitewash by means of Manchester-card and its cumbrous and unsightly western gallery removed.* [Footnote: * The Ecclesiologist New Series vol.iv, 1847, p.156.] One finds surprisingly little written about Dr. Mill, who was a profound scholar and used his great learning to keep the young men at Cambridge on sound lines. He was greatly respected by the members of the Cambridge Camden Society. He was Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge and a Canon of Ely Cathedral. Suitably enough, so Jenner later thought, his memorial was placed by the Camden Society he had moulded and guided under what they considered to be the finest piece of First Pointed or, as we might say--Early English architecture, in existence--the wonderful choir triforium, at Ely. The memorial is a fine bronze monument with a recumbent figure giving an excellent portrait of Dr. Mill. It was a memorial certainly, but it was also intended by that Society, who were so irritatingly anxious to educate everybody, to serve as a standard and model of what such things should be.
Nothing escaped the ecclesiological eye, the minutest detail must be tried as by fire. Jenner's son recollected it all in old age and could describe it at first hand. He had, after all, the distinction of being the son of the first Ritualist Bishop. The notes he made, in his eighty-fourth year are worth preserving:
'Those who were brought up in the principles of the combined Oxford and Cambridge Movement were carefully taught a number of harmless and sometimes pleasing affectations of pronunciation, phraseology and practice, some of which are now not at all peculiar. It was a point of honour always to say ahmen not aymen, even if the word occurred in ordinary conversation. Curiously enough the tradition among Englishmen of the Roman Rite is to say aymen at the end of English prayers, though not, of course, at the end of Latin. The musical settings of the responses to the Commandments in the Communion Service used "in quires and places where they sing" had come to be called kei-ries, being, though identified with the Kyrie of the Latin Mass, pronounced all anyhow. We were instructed to say, Kirreeay, as near as we could get to the proper Greek pronunciation. That, I believe, is quite usual now. In those days, and perhaps still, well-bred English people were very shy of expressing themselves about religious matters. It was really due to reverence. They left plain and familiar language to low people like dissenters [26/27] and (so-called) Evangelicals. It was among other things distasteful to them to speak of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion by His Holy Name. That Name was never used except in prayers, though you might say Christ, if you said it reverently. But the current expression in use among gentle-people was Our Saviour--and a very good expression too, when you come to think about it spoken rather shyly, as much as to say "you know whom I mean, but we don't venture to talk about Him". But we were always taught to say Our Lord and that has now become the usual expression, almost to the exclusion of the other. Similarly it had been the practice to call Our Lord's Mother the Virgin, or The Virgin Mary, and to speak of her also seldom and reverentially. If Italian pictures were discussed, it was allowable to say Madonna, but that was different. We were taught always to prefix Blessed to Virgin. The good old English expression Our Lady was revived later, for the early Anglo-Catholics appear not to have noticed at first that it is found in the Prayer-book, and rather objected to the usual Lady Day for 25th March, insisting upon calling it the Annunciation. The names of these days were corrected. We said Epiphany not Twelfth Day, St. Michael's Day, not Michaelmas, the Purification, not Candlemas, and most carefully we were instructed to say Whitsun Day, not Whit Sunday, Whitsun Monday, not Whit Monday. This last originated in a curious fancy, not in the least warranted by facts, of which J. M. Neale was the inventor. The liturgical colour for Pentecost was known to be red, therefore it could not possibly be the White Sunday, and besides, there was already a Dominica in Albis in the Sunday after Easter. So Neale started a hopelessly impossible philological theory that Whitsun was a derivative of Pentecost, analogous to the German Pfingsten. If he had known any Welsh he would have been puzzled, for in the language the day is Sul Gwyn, which can mean nothing else but White Sunday, and he ought to have remembered that in northern climates Pentecost took the place of Easter for the great public baptisms and that the white robes of the newly baptized were just the things that would cause a popular name for the day. The only apparent justification for this strange fancy is that the Prayer-book talks of Whitsunweek. One other correction had to be dropped, for it was the cause of too many unfortunate collocations, to say nothing of unprintable stories, and there the saving sense of humour came in. The attempt to substitute its liturgical name for New Year's Day, on the argument that the Church's year began on Advent Sunday, was not a success. The name of the central act of Christian worship was another name that was corrected. Of the usual terms, Lord's Supper had rather a Low Church flavour, but it was commonly called the Sacrament, and the days on which it was celebrated were Sacrament Sundays. This, of course, was not as it should be. There were at least two, if not seven sacraments, so it had to be called Holy Communion or still better, but perhaps a little extreme, the Holy Eucharist and the service was often called in shortened form a celebration of the Holy Eucharist being understood. If Sacrament was used, Blessed was prefixed. The name "Mass" came in later. Of course we must never say Table or Communion Table but always Altar, but that was not uncommon among ordinary people. No one, for instance, ever talked of leading his bride to the communion table. And the rails which enclosed the sanctuary must be called altar rails, and not by the really more [27/28] correct and usual term communion rails. People must no longer take the sacrament, they must communicate, or "receive Holy Communion", or for short, receive. In communicating we were instructed to cross the right hand over the left and receive in the palm of the right hand. This was strongly opposed by the Evangelical clergy who tried to insist on the consecrated piece of bread being taken between finger and thumb. Sometimes this incident was the cause of unseemly scenes. It was usual to speak of the Apostles' Creed as the Belief. I have not heard that expression for half a century or more, but it was once common enough, and as late as the eighteen-sixties Trollope puts it into the mouth of the Rev. Josiah Crawley of Hogglestock. Anglo-Catholics always called it the Creed and that name has now become universal. Family prayers had always been said in respectable houses--I don't think they are so common now. One not unusual form was a chapter of the Bible, often one of the lessons for the day, followed by collects from the Prayer-book and ending with the Lord's Prayer. But more usual instead of the collects was a long-winded and rather rambling prayer from some Book of Family Prayers, which at its end introduced the Lord's Prayer in a phrase distinctly reminiscent of the Preceptis salutaribus moniti in the Romish Mass. How horrified the good people who used it would have been if they had known that! These functions took place before breakfast and when it was nearly bedtime, and the servants all trooped in and ranged themselves on chairs in the background. During the lesson all sat, and at the prayers they all turned round and knelt with their elbows on the seats of their chairs. But in well-regulated Anglo-Catholic households it was otherwise. If the house was large enough, there was a room set apart for prayers with a prie-dieu of Gothic design and a colourable imitation of an altar at one end. This was called an oratory. The prayers usually consisted of shortened adaptations of the Offices of Prime and Compline* [Footnote: * There was a lighter side to the revival. An Archdeacon had dined at a gentleman's mansion and announced his intention of returning to Oxford. 'Do wait a little,' pressingly pleaded his hostess, 'we shall have compline in about half an hour. Do stay for compline, Mr. Archdeacon.' 'Oh no! thank you,' was his reply, 'I never take anything after dinner'. The Guardian, 25 August 1869, p.950] from the Sarum, not the Roman, Breviary. (It was not thought necessary to explain that the differences between the two were negligible). These were recited by the master (or mistress) of the house, the rest joining in the responses. Of course if there was a clergyman present, he took the leading part. If there was no oratory, the master's study did well enough. It was, however, not the Anglo-Catholic custom to speak of a clergyman, and still less of a minister, and even the good old English word parson was discredited and looked upon as rather vulgar slang. You should always say priest. That, I think, never caught on, and most people still understand by priest an ecclesiastic of the Roman Rite. Parson, which was good enough for so good a Catholic as Chaucer, has rather come into its own again, but it ought properly to be used only of a beneficed clergyman--the Persona Ecclesiae--as it is to this day in Breton, Aotrou Person being Monsieur le Cure. Another bit of phraseology was that it was de rigueur to call a crozier a "pastoral staff. This arose from a mistaken idea that "crozier" meant an Archbishop's cross--which it doesn't. Baculus Pastoralis is certainly the official Latin.
[29] There were various other observances. It had been always the custom to bow rather markedly at the Holy Name in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, but not to bow at other items of its occurrence. We were taught to bow whenever the Name was mentioned, in church or out of church, and even, as an extreme case, at the mention of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge which bear it! As it occurs at least a dozen times, without counting lessons from the New Testament, in both Morning and Evening Prayer which, by the way, we always called Mattins and Evensong,--it was a good test of whether a child was attending, and things were apt to be said afterwards if the gesture was omitted. But there was a catch even there, and you had to look out sharp that you didn't bow when the same name, meaning someone else, occurred in Acts VII. 45, which was a strain on the attention for you had to be sure to bow ten verses later on. Bowing at the Gloria Patri was also introduced and some adopted a practice of bowing at the words And holy is His Name in the Magnificat. If you were not already facing that way, you were expected to turn to the east at the Creed and in some churches at the Gloria Patri and to kneel or make a deep bow at the Et incarnatus est clause of the Nicene Creed. I do not know how soon these practices caught on, but I think they are common enough now. When the movement began it had been the usual custom for a man after he entered his pew to stand up, place his tall hat--you always wore a top hat on Sundays, even in the country--before his face and say a short prayer. Rarely a man knelt down for this, but the hat ceremony was apparently de rigueur, though in Quires and places where they sing and the choir wore surplices, they usually knelt and covered their faces with their voluminous surplice-sleeves. The officiating clergyman did the same in ordinary churches. But we were instructed to kneel and place our hands in front of our faces and the prayer which we were taught to recite was an English version of Aperi, Domine os meum, which is given in Breviaries as the prayer to be said before the Divine Office. I do not know whether anyone ever performs the hat ceremony now, but it was quite usual in the fifties and sixties though even then it was the cause of not too amusing but rather derisory jokes. In most churches, where the services were not choral, there was a duet between parson and parish clerk, no one else ever venturing to join in the responses or in the alternate verses of psalms and canticles, though it was a common practice with people who were at all religious to follow in a whisper the whole service, priest's part and all. This last was kept up by old people for a long time, and, when they began to get a little deaf, the whisper was not always as inaudible as it was meant to be. The custom of the responses being made by the parish-clerk only certainly goes back to pre-Reformation times and to this day at a low Mass of the Latin Rite, except where, chiefly in Belgium, the Missa Recitata has been introduced, no one except the server ever thinks of making the responses.* [Footnote: * This was written in 1934. On 3 September, 1958, a month before the demise of Pius XII the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued an instruction for the participation of the congregation in Low Mass.] The Oxford and Cambridge Movement people evidently did not realise this but thought it only a bit of Protestant slackness and encouraged the congregation to respond, and to speak up too. Anglo-Catholics as long [29/30] ago as the fifties began to use the sign of the cross, but perhaps at first rather unobtrusively and, if one may say so, shamefacedly. It was associated with Popery in the ordinary mind more than almost any other observance. It might be made freely enough in connection with private devotions, as at the Invocation of the Trinity at the beginning of night and morning prayers and there was a pretty practice of crossing oneself the last thing before getting into bed. Such is the force of association habits that to this day it is a slight and almost unconscious effort to avoid doing that when I blow out a candle, even when lighted to seal a letter in broad daylight. It was made unobtrusively when grace was said at meals, and at the end of the Creeds in church. Now, of course, it is made openly enough and nobody minds in the least. There were various other innovations, the wearing of stoles by the clergy, the Eastward position, the practice of what was contemptuously called by its opponents Auricular confession, and the introduction of hymns instead of the metrical Psalms. Chasubles came in later--I saw a Church of England clergyman in one for the first time early in 1858* [Footnote: * By 1865 a tradesman at Oxford was saying that 'he had within the last few weeks sold no less than thirty sets of Eucharistic vestments, and that in the majority of instances the purchasers were laymen . . .' ]--and incense was later still. But the germ of the future Ritualism was there as long ago as the forties and the Ecclesiological Society may be held largely responsible for the idea. I don't think the Oxford people would have thought of it.'+ [Footnote: + Quoted from the Church Times--The Guardian, Feb. 1865, p.98.]
Henry Lascelles Jenner was possessed of a singularly fine tenor voice, and he had great taste in music which he read with ease at sight. He was accomplished in making music by keyboard and by reed and was a reasonably good performer in the brass world. Since there was a vacancy for a minor canon at Canterbury in the fall of 1852, he applied for the appointment and got it. There is no doubt that he deserved it and that his own merits more than justified the Dean and Chapter in taking him. At the same time the fact that his father had been the senior lay official in the Diocese, and had a world wide reputation in church circles would have done his candidature no disservice. They were never to regret the choice for he was, during his appointment and afterwards, to render great services to music in the Cathedral, in the Diocese and in the Church at large. What should we, who perhaps have never heard Jenner's name, do at patronal festivals and funerals if we had not Quam Dilecta to rely upon? One of the examining canons was Francis Dawson who, as Rector of Chislehurst, had baptised him and had known him all his life. He could rely on Dawson. But the first canon he tackled was Roger Moore. He was the son of Archbishop John Moore (1783-1805) and a dig into The Dictionary of National Biography will reveal the mild suggestion that the Archbishop had paid more attention to his own family, in his distribution of patronage, [30/31] than was usual in that day! What worlds that speaks! The Canon was very solemn. There must be no hint of favouritism. The Dean and Chapter were in honour bound to give the appointment to the most suitably qualified applicant without favour for name or status. Later The Star did a little arithmetic about Canon Moore when he went to give in his own account in a better world--
'The rectory of Hollingbourne, with the salary of £787, was enjoyed by Mr. Moore for sixty-three years. Excluding all calculations of compound interest, and merely multiplying the annual income by the number of years for which it was held, we find that this reverend gentleman drew from the country, £49,581 on this account alone. The rectory of Hunton, with an income of £1,057 was enjoyed for sixty-three years also, or £67,901. The rectory of Eynesford, at £600 a year for sixty-three years, amounts to £37,800. The rectory of Latchingdon, at an income of £955 for sixty-one years, amounts to £58,255. The Canonry of Canterbury Cathedral, at £1,000 a year for sixty-one years, amounts to £61,000. The registrarship of Wills at £8,000 a year for fifty-three years to 1858, yields £424,000 and the compensation allowance of £7,990 for seven years amounts to £5,930. In all, this gentleman, according to the simplest kind of computation, has drawn £753,647 . . . . Personally, Mr Moore was, doubtless, a most estimable man.'* [Footnote: * Quoted in The Guardian, 13 Sept 1865, p.926.]
Canon Croft, whose conscience was perhaps less tender, said 'Of course, my dear boy, we shall give it you, if only for your father's sake.' So it was all settled and the Jenners moved into the precincts in October 1852. They lived in a house in the north east corner of the Green Court opposite the Dark Entry, of Ingoldsby fame.
English society was then divided into sets. The dividing lines were more rigid then--we have the word of social historians for it--than they are now. However, at Canterbury there were two sets that counted. First there were the Cathedral dignitaries, the officers of the Calvary Depot, the neighbouring county gentry and a few professional men. Jenner was in this set. Below him he saw another set, clergy, doctors and solicitors for the most part. He suspected that below them there was another set made up chiefly of tradespeople. Beyond that limit his mind did not range. He had not the eye of Mr. Jingle, at Chatham. In the fifties this seemed right and proper and there was no snobbishness on the one side or jealousy on the other--all that was to come in later and more democratic days. Jenner was popular among his fellow minor canons, in part because they felt that he had raised their status. The Archbishop, in those days, had no place of residence at Canterbury and was only in his metropolitan cathedral for official occasions. He was either at Lambeth or at his country estate at Addington. Usually ordinations were at Lambeth and consecrations at Westminster Abbey. The Dean reigned at Canterbury--Bully for the Dean.
[32] On 28 June 1854, George Augustus Selwyn came and preached an impressive sermon on Ezekial XLVII, 3-5. Dr. Selwyn had been appointed bishop of New Zealand in 1841 and was home on his first leave. An Apostolic warrior, his sermon was noted in the Minor Canon's diary.
Jenner now took the architectural education of his little boy in hand. What better teacher could there be and where might a finer text book be found? He was startled, he tells us, on the correct lines of nomenclature as laid down by the Cambridge Camden Society. Transition, might be used, 'it was a common term of course,' but ... . What could not be used was Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular--in their place one said Romanesque, First Pointed, Middle Pointed, and Third Pointed. It was all a part of the society's mission to tidy up the Church of England.
Mr Stanley was about to leave his canonry,--the canons were all called Mr in those days, but he remained a close friend of Jenner's, no less when Dean of Westminster, despite the divergence of their theological views.
Another activity of Jenner's was to found and conduct the Canterbury Amateur Musical Society. Dean Alford joined it on coming to Canterbury and since it met chiefly in private houses, and called itself the C.A.M.S., the Dean promptly labelled it the Cake and Muffin Society! However, it served its day and provided a good deal of entertainment for vocalists and instrumentalists in the district. Among them was Sidney Cooper who painted those moony looking cows standing, so water-logged, in the Stour. The concerts had the effect, though unintentional perhaps, of bringing a wider public into touch with the Cathedral. Unintentional, because in those palmy days you took the Church of England or you didn't, and if you didn't, you didn't count.
Presently, in 1854, the Chapter living of Preston-next-Wingham fell vacant. Jenner was thirty-four years of age and felt it time he had a living of his own. As the senior minor canon he stated his claim to the parish. He was duly instituted and he held this tiny isolated parish, with its population of 500 persons and gross income of £450, for the remaining forty-four years of his life. It was the only preferment this gifted man enjoyed.
Jenner entered upon his charge with great joy. He had, in the previous year, been on a tour of Portugal with his closest friend John Mason Neale and some others of the Cambridge Camden Society. His health had always been good and he was physically buoyant. A master at learning languages he had in great haste acquired enough Portugese to see the party through the Tour. Now he was back, full of enthusiasm, and as at Maryfield with an unimpeded opportunity to restore and reform. Donec templa refeceris, no longer, for him, an under-[32/33]graduate motto but a practical command. But Jenner was sensitive of the feelings of others. Whatever some contemporaries of his own school might do, and they did a number of stupid and irritating things, Jenner was a thoughtful, cultivated, gentleman. In the Dunedin controversy his friends would say that his virtue leaned to failing's side. 'Whoever came back from New Zealand it would not have been I', said Bishop Wilberforce to him in conversation. He could not change his nature and the reforming measures he took at Preston, as at Maryfield, were taken slowly and after the most careful teaching and preparation.
It took two years' hard work to educate the parishioners to the acceptance of the proper Camden principles for the restoration of their church. But at the end of the period they had raised the necessary money and they were with him all the way. The restoration began in September 1856. The church was of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in origin, beautified in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jenner did away with the three-decker pulpit, the reading desk and the clerk's desk, the square box pews in chancel and nave and the west gallery. Perhaps the greatest enhancement came from his unbricking of the original windows in the aisles. These consisted of two lights each and had been blocked up earlier in the century on account of the draught. Dormer windows had been cut in the roofs to supply the light thus lost below! The altar was enlarged and raised on steps, oak choir stalls were introduced, a light screen with a cross on it divided the chancel from the nave, and a carved oak eagle was introduced as a lectern. The nave and aisles were reseated, and the parishioners were not sure whether they or the parson had thought of all these things. Dr. Mill's successor at Brasted having no use for popish furniture, the churchwardens presented Jenner with a very fine pair of altar candlesticks of Cambridge Camden Society design and a set of choir surplices. The single objection to all that was done came from a gentleman farmer who, seeing the surplices for the first time, picked up his top hat and walked out. The only result of this protest was that other leading members of the congregation called on him the next day to ask after his health, and wish him a speedy recovery!
It is important to know exactly what constituted the ideal that Jenner held before him. It reflected the stage of development of the Catholic Revival at that time. Again it enables us to judge him in the events which followed. He started, on arrival, with daily services. These were at nine in the mornings, and on Saints' Days and their Eves there would be evensong at seven. A choir was started of boys and girls largely drawn from the village school. Very soon men joined the choir and the girls were dropped. There were ten men and ten boys. The Vicar was infinitely patient as a choir master and soon their voices, which were rather rough at first, improved under his guidance. They [33/34] were taught plainsong chants for the psalms and canticles, and some simple anthems for festivals. The chants were taken from The Psalter Noted arranged by Thomas Helmore, a great friend of the Vicar and a considerable contributor to the improvement of English church music in his time. The Collection of hymns The Hymnal Noted was produced by the Society. The words were mostly translations by the Revd. J. M. Neale and the tunes came largely from Sarum sources. Just occasionally the Roman as well as the Sarum variant of the tune was given but it would be called another version of the same melody. Rome was a word the Society, despite popular opinion to the contrary, could never bring itself to use. At first there was a barrel organ but Jenner had the barrel removed and keyboards added to the instrument. The instrument was new, and it says a lot for the Vicar's powers of persuasion that the improvement was accepted in good faith. A little later a splendid organ was given to the Church by the Revd. Samuel Stephenson Greatheed, another member of the Trinity set, third Wrangler, an early editor of the Cambridge Mathematical Journal; and a composer of sacred music. This organ, splendid as it was, had no swell, for the Society variously described the device as mechanica or meretricious. Greatheed designed the organ himself and insisted that the pipes should be arranged in their proper order. So it nearly filled the large chancel aisle--the Society seemed not to mind that, so anxious were they to be correct, and so relieved to get rid of serpents and west galleries.
On Sundays there was mattins, litany, and Holy Communion with sermon at 10.30. Evensong was at 3 in the winter months and at 6.30 in the summer. After the second lesson at evensong there was catechising of the school children at first, and later a sermon was preached instead. If there was a baptism it was taken before the sermon in strict accordance with the rubrics. The canticles, and at evensong the Psalms, were sung by the choir to plainsong, but at mattins the Psalms were said, alternate verses by the Vicar and congregation, and the glorias sung. The congregation liked it that way and in deference to their wishes it always remained the practice until Jenner's death in 1898. A celebration of Holy Communion was introduced at 8 o'clock on Sundays, except the first Sunday in the month, on Saints Days and on the greater festivals at 8 o'clock and also after mattins. Coloured stoles, with altar frontals and pulpit hangings to match, were used towards the end of the fifties. Jenner's son has told us that he first saw a chasuble worn in 1858, but not by his father. Many years later he adopted the use of a white linen vestment, made by his wife with a Y cross, cross-stitched in red. From the nave it was hard to distinguish from a surplice. In the meantime Jenner was writing hymn tunes, three of which were to be accepted for Hymns Ancient and Modern. He was a close friend of Dr. Monk and of Sir Henry Baker. One might sum up [34/35] Jenner's position in the movement by saying that, while he followed the Society's guidance in architecture and furnishings in a very mild way, his chief interest and his principal contribution was in the field of Church Music. At Preston all was very restrained and inoffensive. There was a large congregation of regular worshippers, and the roll of communicants was, for those times, unusually high. Lecturing at Stafford on Church Music in 1864 Jenner said that he was distressed at the standard of singing and the irreverent behaviour of the men and boys in the choir of Lichfield Cathedral. Both were far inferior to the choir of his own little parish with a population of only 500 souls.* [Footnote: * The Guardian 6 Jan 1864 p.6.]
The Rev. W. E. Heygate tells us that Jenner had run his village school for six months himself when unable to get a master and this had made him very popular with the children. Above all his practice, after the evening service, of gathering the lads and young men round him on the lawn and telling them stories and drawing morals for their edification completely won all hearts. His worst enemies always said that he was a warm-hearted, sensitive man, and that he had all the pastoral gifts in large measure.
On 14 October 1865 Archbishop Longley summoned Jenner to Addington Palace. He said that he had received a letter from the Metropolitan of New Zealand asking him to nominate a Bishop for Dunedin. Dr. G. A. Selwyn had asked for 'a clergyman able and willing to undertake the work of hewing a statue out of a very rough block of stone; a vigorous man, with some power of speech, and real earnestness of purpose, able to walk and ride, and not afraid of weather!' No record of the interview appears to have been preserved but at a later date his Grace wrote 'I knew all the while perfectly well that you were a great advocate for Choral Services and surpliced choirs; but all this did not weigh with me in prevention of your appointment to that See'. An interesting side-light on the Archbishop's attitude to the work of one who had founded the first choral union in the Province and given a good deal of encouragement to similar developments elsewhere. However nothing of this was discussed at the interview. The Archbishop had known Jenner at Harrow and he now knew him to be one of the most successful parish priests in his diocese. He could not only walk and ride but he could swim powerfully, and he was a wizard with a boat. He was exceptionally strong and robust.
Mr. Jenner accepted the offer on October 17 and the Archbishop wrote to the Metropolitan by the Mail leaving via Marseilles on the 26th notifying him that Jenner had accepted the nomination. He also sent him the declaration of adherence to the Constitution of the New Zealand Church, duly signed. He wrote Jenner thanking him on the [35/36] 18th 'May it please God to prosper your work, and bless your labours in spreading the Tidings of the Gospel among the Heathen'. Since the majority of the population were Scottish Presbyterians and there were scarcely any Maoris, it seems his Grace must have nodded a little!
In January 1866 Dr. Selwyn wrote to Jenner expressing his satisfaction at the nomination and accepting it. On 13 February Dr. Harper, Bishop of Christchurch wrote, 'I am most thankful to hear by a letter from your sister, Mrs. Dyke, that you have expressed your willingness to undertake the office.' The new diocese was to be taken out of his See and to comprise its rural deaneries of Otago and Southland. The Bishop was a little cautious about raising the necessary endowment. '. . .we have at present towards the £6,000 which is needed for the endowment of the See about £4,200, and I shall be much disappointed if the remaining £1,800 be not speedily raised. At the same time it is right that I should add, that I am not very sanguine about this. The gold fields which formed the chief source of wealth in that part of my Diocese are now comparatively deserted and the sheep and cattle station Holders are suffering with the rest of the Province in the prevailing monetary depression.' He goes on to say that the knowledge 'that there is a Clergyman highly recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury willing to undertake the office of a Bishop amongst them, will stir up their zeal and liberality'. Bishop Harper knew the Jenner family fairly well, and had been at Eton with several of the brothers.
Since Jenner had no private means he was a little concerned about the financing of the new See but felt satisfied when he got a letter from the Metropolitan on 16 April--
'My dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I thus address you in the hope that my letter to the Archbishop will have removed all doubts, and that you and Dr. Suter are already consecrated. (The letter is torn, with pieces missing, but one can get a picture of the situation as the good Bishop relates it).
I write to give you the latest information after a tour of six weeks through the Province of Otago.
1. I found on my arrival that the Rural Deanery Board had taken fright at the promptness with which the (torn) . . . and therefore took them by surprise. I attended a meeting of the Board, and endeavoured to convince them that there was no cause for apprehension.'
A list of the endowments for the Bishopric follows.
'I find an unanimous desire for the speedy arrival of their Bishop.'
On May 2nd, Bishop Selwyn expresses his impatience:
'My dear Bishop of Dunedin,
On my return from the South I found your letter of 25 January which had not been forwarded to me, as I was expected at home a month earlier than I [36/37] actually returned. It is very gratifying to me to find that you have so heartily given yourself to our work: and I hope that you will not be disappointed. My late tour through the Province of Otago has convinced me that you have a very hopeful field of work before you. May an abundant blessing be granted to you.
I very much regret the delay in your Consecration; because you might have made good use of your time in England in raising funds and engaging Clergymen. We shall not expect you much before the end of the year.
You seem to have been told that your subscription to the New Zealand Church constitution was premature if not unnecessary. On the contrary the General Synod expressly requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to place our Constitution in the hands of any Clergyman whom he might select, and obtain his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate.'
Jenner was not so lacking in faith as to delay longer, to hesitate on a simple matter of a little fund-raising, when the Metropolitan, the Bishop of Christchurch and a number of clergy and laity were urging him to come to New Zealand and exercise his holy office.
Henry Lascelles Jenner was consecrated Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in the colony of New Zealand on St. Bartholomew's Day, 24 August, 1866, in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Canterbury. The certificate of Consecration records that the Archbishop had obtained 'Her Majesty's Licence by Warrant under the Royal Sign Manual and Signet,' and records that he had called to his assistance C. J. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and A. C. Tait, Bishop of London.
There are two points of interest here. Consecrations usually took place at Westminster Abbey, for the convenience of the Archbishop, but the Dean of Canterbury had to give his consent for this to be done. Jenner had been connected with the Cathedral as priest-vicar, he loved it dearly and had an intimate knowledge of the building, he had greatly improved its music, and now he held a chapter living. Dean Alford was a great friend of his and he was persuaded to withhold his consent for the consecration to take place elsewhere. The second matter was that the Church of New Zealand had recently disestablished itself and so there were no Letters Patent from the Crown appointing him to a specific See, but a Queen's Mandate or Licence without which the consecration could not have taken place. Bishop Suter was also consecrated, having been elected Bishop of the existing and vacant See of Nelson, also in New Zealand. The cathedral congregation was very large, there were a great many communicants, and the service was very long.
Six of Bishop Jenner's brothers were present--Arthur was in Canada--and all were over six feet and particularly broad and hand-[37/38]some. They were doing well in their chosen professions--the Law, the Navy, the Army and the Civil Service. His sister Charlotte was there with her husband Francis Hart Dyke, Queen's Proctor and Registrar of the Province. He it was who read the Licence. Anne was also present with her husband Evan Nepean, Canon of Westminster. The family party divided for luncheon between the Deanery and Minor-Canon Hirst's house, but all met later at the Fountain Hotel.
The party was a jolly one. All the Jenners had a great sense of fun and their brother-in-law, Evan Nepean, was a popular raconteur in the high circles in which he moved. He was the incumbent of the Grosvenor Chapel, a fashionable Mayfair church which, being a proprietary chapel, existed on its pew rents. Nepean was a good preacher and gathered a distinguished congregation including the Duke of Cambridge, son of George III. He enlivened the party by telling two stories about him. The Duke was old, he was very deaf, and he was inclined to think aloud. 'Praying for rain, is he? What's the good of praying for rain with the wind in the North East'--the new Bishop had been in the Chapel at the time. There was another occasion at Evensong when the Cantate Domino was said in place of the Magnificat. The old Duke in a loud voice interrupted, 'With trumpets and shawms, Shawms? Shawms? What's a shawm, Mr. Nepean?' 'A musical instrument, Sir' replied the courtly Nepean. 'Thank you, thank you, Mr. Nepean. Please go on.'
It was a great occasion for the Jenner family, and triumphant for Bishop Jenner. The Cambridge Camden Society felt it had been honoured and had commissioned Burgess, one of their favourite architects, to design a crozier in silver and coloured ivory and richly jewelled. The most expensive crozier ever made, they said. The Bishop of London, so soon to succeed to Canterbury, took a great liking to the Bishop's young son, Henry Jenner, then aged seventeen, and there sprang up a friendship between them which was to last until Tail's death.* [Footnote: * In July 1870 Archbishop Tait would nominate him to the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. In 1879 he transferred to the Department of Printed Books where he rendered distinguished and memorable service until his resignation at 61 in 1909.] Tait may have been a little odd ecclesiologically-wise but he was a gentleman! It was to this friendship that, in ensuing events, we owe some peeps behind the scenes.
The events at Canterbury were a glorious overture to a work never to be performed. Jenner took Burgess's barbarous bauble to New Zealand; but brought it back again, the veriest simulacrum of a dream. Unique in Anglican history, he never became a diocesan, suffragan or assistant bishop. Samuel Wilberforce tried to soap him over [38/39] by telling him that he was in the position of a retired Colonial Bishop; galling to be so comforted by a close friend and the greatest of the English bishops! Bishop Patterson [Patteson], a friend and supporter, would be murdered in Melanesia--a glorious martyrdom for him; some of his English friends would go to gaol, and gaol-courting was at least exciting; but he was first inhibited and then rejected. To be rejected, and rejected by Colonials, was that the hell of it?
Jenner's private correspondence reveals that the rejection by the colonials was not the greatest indignity he had to bear. Where he was concerned, the Primate of All England sat lightly to the 9th commandment. This insignificant figure, too lacking in courage to bear false witness himself, allowed others to bear it on his behalf. Longley may not have lied, that would have required some mettle, but he remained silent and, thereby, he kept back part of the truth.
For those who cannot bear to read of Bishops who broke their bonds, and priests who posed and prattled, it would be best to omit this section and go straight to the Journal. But for those who are prepared to hear a squalid story, there is a tale of perfidy and treachery to tell.
There is so much in nineteenth-century Anglicanism that stirs the imagination; so many signs of reviving life at home and unparalleled missionary activity overseas. But there was a dark side to it all. It was the century of Party. As the Catholic Revival progressed, Protestant opposition increased. The founding of the English Church Union in 1859--for the first year it was called the Church of England Protection Society was countered by the formation of the Church Association in 1865. Protestant Bishops dealt hysterically with Catholic priests who were often unnecessarily provocative. The Reformation was good: the Reformation was bad--it was a Party matter, and you took your choice. The surplice and later the chasuble were the badge of the Catholic party. In our day an emphasis on biblical theology and the growth of a study of comparative religion has created an entirely different situation. The Victorian interpretation of the issues of the Reformation seem irrelevant and misbegotten. The insignia can no longer be trusted, for the surplice is universal, vestments are commonplace, and Bishops, in all traditions, go resplendent in pectoral cross and mitre. We can never fully savour the wormwood of our grandsires, but if we crave a flavour of the gall we cannot do better than go to the Dunedin Bishopric Controversy.
George Augustus Selwyn went out to New Zealand as its first Anglican bishop in 1842. He faced an almost superhuman task, for unfortunately it was not virgin soil. Samuel Marsden, the blacksmith's son, had first preached the gospel in New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814. A Mission was launched by the Church Missionary Society but no ordained ministers were prepared to volunteer. This was agreeable to [39/40] Marsden who believed that the first missionaries should be mechanics. And so it was--a carpenter, a shoe-maker, and a schoolteacher. The European crafts should be taught at the same time as its religion. 'The early missionaries bickered incessantly and bitterly among themselves. Within twenty years three had to be dismissed, one for adultery, one for drunkenness, and one for a crime worse than either.'* [Footnote: * A History of New Zealand (Penguin) p. 37--Keith Sinclair.] The Anglican clergy had been supported by the Church Missionary Society until the country was annexed as a colony in 1840. Then there was the New Zealand Company founded in 1839 to possess the soil of New Zealand and sell it to English settlers--their behaviour was known all too tragically. Nor were their victims, the Maoris, an easy people to fold. The rakings of Newgate had been their teachers, their lands had been sold, their country had been annexed. In all this morass; moral, spiritual, political, Selwyn worked his miracle. He was but 33 years of age when he landed. He was tough of fibre and firm in resolve. The colonials often felt that he moved too quickly, but it is abundantly clear that without his inspired and dynamic leadership there might have been very little movement at all.
George Augustus Selwyn, according to the Letters Patent of 1841, was appointed Bishop of New Zealand subject to the Archbishop and Metropolitan See of Canterbury. In 1847 Bishop Broughton was appointed to the See of Sydney and made Metropolitan of Australasia, himself subject to the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury. This had the effect, as Bishop Selwyn said, of giving him two Metropolitans, and it was rightly regarded in New Zealand as a slight on his position. Bishop Broughton died in 1853 and his successor was made Metropolitan of Australia but not of Australasia, so Selwyn was once more directly under Canterbury. In 1856, When Dr. Harper was appointed the first Bishop of Christchurch, the Letters Patent made him subject not to Selwyn but to the Metropolitan See of Sydney. The Church in New Zealand wrote to the Crown pointing out that by the arrangement then in force all future bishoprics would also be subject to Sydney. They were righteously indignant that Selwyn should be so slighted and cut off from his Episcopal colleagues. The matter was righted in 1858 when the Gazette of 5 October gave notice that:
'The Queen has been pleased to direct that letters patent be issued under the great seal for reconstituting the Bishopric of New Zealand and for appointing the Right Rev. George Augustus Selwyn, D.D. to be Bishop of the said See and Metropolitan of New Zealand: for erecting the Bishopric of Wellington and for appointing the Venerable Charles John Abraham Archdeacon of Waitemata to be Bishop of the said See; for erecting the Bishopric of Waiapu and for appointing the Venerable William Williams Archdeacon of Waiapu [40/41] to be Bishop of the said See; for erecting the Bishopric of Nelson and for appointing the Rev. Edmund Hobhouse to be Bishop of the said See, and for placing under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of New Zealand the See of Christchurch now under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Australia.'
But in future negotiations with Canterbury the Church in New Zealand would not forget the vacillations and would work for 'sturdy independence'.
Selwyn now decided that the time was ripe for the division of the great diocese of Christchurch, by elevating the Rural Deanery of Otago and Southland into a separate see with its Cathedral in Dunedin. He was widely criticised for hastening a request to Dr. Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to consecrate a Bishop for Dunedin. He felt he had moral justification for his action, but he later confessed to Longley's successor, Archbishop Tait, that he had no written authority. It is difficult in this controversy to see where most of the principal actors stood--their letters are self-contradictory, and their private remarks are often at variance both with their public utterances and with their correspondence.
Selwyn towered above them all, but even he is of little help in telling a simple straight-forward story. When Bishop Selwyn wanted to clarify a problem he made a habit of displaying it. It might be well to borrow his technique and to display extracts of his letters to Jenner to illustrate his own confusion about a crucial issue.
16 April, 1866
'My dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I thus address you in the hope that my letter to the Archbishop will have removed all doubts and that you and Dr. Suter are already consecrated ... I found on my arrival that the Rural Deanery Board had taken fright at the promptness with which the Archbishop acted upon my request that he would select a Bishop for Dunedin.'
2 May, 1866
My dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I much regret the delay in your Consecration . . .'
1 July, 1870
'I do not know what is meant by your words; "The admitted fact that your Lordship is alone responsible for my nomination and consecration for the Bishopric of Dunedin" I must remind you that I had no personal knowledge of you--that I took no part in the nomination or in the Consecration, that I was astonished at the haste with which the appointment was made in England and that all I did was to hasten to Dunedin on receipt of the news of the appointment too raise funds for the endowment.'
[42] 22 Oct, 1866
'. . . that Dr. Jenner was nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury at by the Archbishop of Canterbury at my request'.
[42] 8 July, 1872
'You therefore are the first Bishop of Dunedin in one admissible sense; and the New Zealand Synod may perhaps be able to prove and certainly will assert that Bishop Neville is the first Bishop of Dunedin in another sense. I do not agree with them, but I do not think their assumption worth disputing about.'
We know, of course, that he was in New Zealand and could not possibly have taken part in the consecration, and the record says that on receipt of the news of the appointment he waited two months before visiting Dunedin! We are not here examining evidence at second-hand, or accepting irresponsible or mistaken reporting by a third person; the letters from which the extracts are quoted lie before the writer in the Bishop's own hand! No one would for one moment question the motives of Selwyn, and Jenner certainly never did. While he grieved at the muddle, be it said to his credit, in all the acrimonious disputes which followed he uttered no word of public criticism of Bishop Selwyn whom he greatly admired. But if Bishop Selwyn could slip so fatally, what are we to expect from the little men he left behind him in New Zealand?
Because of the confusion in the evidence it is possible to take more than one course through the maze of it, although one point is clear--and even the General Synod of the Church of New Zealand officially recorded its opinion on it--Bishop Jenner was ill-used and placed in a distressing position by the actions of others.
When Bishop Jenner's appointment was announced some of the English newspapers seized on the fact that he was closely associated with the Cambridge Movement. He was labelled Ritualist. This was a term difficult to define. There was a general acceptance among men in the party of a certain theological position, but when it came to ceremonial which is what the general public, and oddly enough the Ecclesiologists themselves, meant by ritual, there was an individual variation in practice. There was some truth in the allegations of the Low and the Broad that these men were congregationalists. What was said in the English papers was copied into the papers in New Zealand, and occasioned a good deal of heart-searching there.
The first settlers in Otago had come in two parties, in 1848. In contrast to Canterbury, which was an Anglican Settlement, Otago was fostered by the New Zealand Company as a Scottish Presbyterian Settlement. The great upheaval in the Church of Scotland which resulted in the emergence of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 was [42/43] largely caused by a dispute about establishment. When the 396 ministers and professors signed the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission they voluntarily surrendered an income amounting to over £100,000 a year. These men were in earnest. 'The Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of the church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate'. In such a community anything that savours of state control, and particularly of English control, in religious matters, anything which suggested episcopacy or priestcraft would be viewed with the gravest suspicion. The church itself is spelt with a small 'c'. When men care enough about their own form of religion to settle in colonies where liberty of worship is to be upheld, it is their own form of liberty they usually have in mind. In Otago the early colonists created an atmosphere which coloured the life of the whole community.
The nature of the colony was changed in 1861 when Gabriel Read discovered a gold-field at Lawrence. Diggers poured in from America and from Australia, and the population soared. These people belonged to many nations, but despite their great numbers they had little effect on the religious atmosphere.
Anglicans were small in numbers. They shared with the majority of the early settlers a tendency to be easily stirred up against what they regarded as threats to their spiritual and civil liberties. They feared the pride that goes with prelacy; they succumbed to the demagoguery that attends on democracy.
Perhaps it might be best to begin at the beginning, risking the tedium, in order to clarify the situation.
As early as 1861 the Rural Deanery Board of Otago and Southland passed the following resolution:
'The Board, on the recommendation of its President and the Diocesan Synod, (Dr. H. J. C. Harper, Bishop of Christchurch), has taken into consideration the great importance of Endowing a Bishopric for Otago and Southland, but no plan of action has yet been decided on'.
At the following Annual Meeting, in January 1863, the Board passed another resolution which read:
'That this Board, endorsing the views expressed by the Primate, the Bishop of Christchurch, the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch, and the late Rural Deanery Board, is of opinion that the time has arrived when it is desirable that there should be a Bishop of Dunedin, who should have the spiritual superintendence of the Church of England in the Provinces of Otago and Southland'.
In this year there was another resolution, that an attempt should be made to find 'a hundred contributors' willing to guarantee the collection of £50 each within two years.
[44] The Bishop of the Diocese subsequently wrote the Rural Deanery Board:
'Every visit which I have paid to the Southern Provinces since the discovery of the gold fields, has convinced me more and more that the spiritual wants of the members of our communion, who are now spreading themselves in rapidly increasing numbers throughout the Provinces cannot be effectually supplied except by efforts which require more personal and unremitting direction than can be given by a Bishop resident at Christchurch. It must be borne in mind that the duty of a Bishop in these Provinces is not limited to the oversight of already formed Parishes or Churches. He must follow the population into the Agricultural, Pastoral, and Gold Mining Districts, and ascertain by personal observation where congregations are to be gathered, Churches built, and Ministers sent, and by his repeated visits and exhortations, stir up the people to make the necessary provision for their spiritual wants; and such duties it is evident, cannot be fully discharged during the visitation of a few weeks once a year; nor, if due time and attention be given to the parts of the Diocese situated in Canterbury, can such visits be prolonged or made more frequently'.
In 1864 the Board passed a further resolution:
'That this Board, recognising the desirability of completing the subscription to the Bishopric Fund for the proposed Diocese of Otago and Southland, recommends his Lordship to receive guarantees of sums of £20 and upwards'.
In 1865, on 26 May, the Bishop of Christchurch presided over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Rural Deanery Board. The Metropolitan of New Zealand was present and suggested that at the next meeting of the Board he should be asked to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him to name a suitable person for the proposed Bishopric.
The meeting of the Board was held on 14 June 1865, and the Rural Dean, the Revd. E. G. Edwards, proposed and Mr. H. Wayne seconded the following resolution:
'That whereas £1,000 has been set apart from the Colonial Bishopric's Fund towards the Endowment of the Bishopric of Otago and Southland, on the condition that £5,000 be raised from other sources, and whereas £1,000 has been given by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in Aid of the Endowment, and 75 acres of land (value £1,000) situated in the province of Canterbury, have been allocated to the same object, and whereas subscriptions to the amount of £1,000 had been promised in the Rural Deanery, and it is expected that the sum now required to complete the Endowment of £6,000 will, in the course of another year, be contributed'.
'Resolved--That the Primate of New Zealand be asked to communicate the above facts to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to request that his Grace will be pleased to recommend a clergyman whom he may deem fit to be consecrated for the proposed See'.
[45] In the light of following events it is interesting to note that Mr. James Smith, who was to become the chief New Zealand advocate of Dr. Jenner's claim, at this time proposed an amendment, and the resolution was lost. So far the situation is clear. The majority of people on the Board thought that for financial reasons it was premature to make an approach to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but they did not raise an objection to the approach to the Archbishop in due time, as a proper procedure. There were some who did not see the necessity for a Bishop, and some who regarded Episcopacy as of the bene esse but not the esse of the Church. The Revd. Frank Simmons wrote to a Scottish Bishop to say:
The Bishop of New Zealand, when he comes here, carries all before him--from that or for other reasons he generalises too rapidly, I think, and insists upon Bishops: Bishops by all means if they are Selwyns--This is exactly what it is--we want men'.* [Footnote: *John Bull, 15 Jan 1867, p.425.]
The situation is clear. The Rural Deanery Board on 14 June 1865 declines to allow the Primate to write to the Archbishop asking for a nomination for the proposed Bishopric. How, then, does it come about that Dr. Selwyn actually writes the Archbishop, in the very terms which the Board refuses to accept, and does so within a matter of weeks?
The Third General Synod of the New Zealand Church was held at Christchurch on the 27 April 1865. The previous General Synod, in 1862 at Nelson, had pressed Dr. Selwyn to take steps to find a Bishop for Dunedin and now they did so again, but verbally. It was resolved that the next Synod should be held in 1868, at Dunedin, provided a Bishop had been appointed by that date. Bishop Abraham said that if the Rural Deanery Board did not show a greater interest in the founding of a Bishopric in the next three years than it had in the previous three years, then the Synod had better decide on an alternative venue. Accordingly Auckland was named as a second choice.+ [Footnote: + The Guardian, 7 June 1871, pp.624-27.] But Dr. Selwyn had not built up the Church in New Zealand on democratic principles or by allowing events to take their natural course. Following the Synod Bishop Selwyn wrote the fatal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the Rural Deanery Board to the course of events. Dr. Selwyn wrote them:
Auckland, Jan 5, 1866
By this mail I have received a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, informing me that he had selected the Rev. Henry Lascelles Jenner, Vicar of Preston, Kent, to occupy the new see of Dunedin. His Grace gives a very high character of Mr. Jenner. The promptitude with which the Archbishop has [45/46] acted upon my request that he would recommend some Clergyman for the office makes it necessary to take immediate steps for raising the Endowment Fund, and also for ascertaining that the Diocese of Christchurch is satisfied with the Archbishop's choice.
On the subject of the Bishopric, Resolutions of the Otago and Southland Rural Deanery Board have already been passed, but our constitution provides no mode of election or nomination of a Bishop for a newly constituted Diocese. In all former instances I have suggested the person, and the Church members in the district proposed for the new Diocese have given their formal consent, without which I should not have proceeded further. In this instance having exhausted my stock of personal friends, I applied to the Archbishop, and through his kindness, I am now enabled to mention the name of Rev. H. L. Jenner, and to certify that he has formally accepted the Church Constitution, by an instrument in writing and will be ready to come out as Bishop of Dunedin, if he is assured of the willingness of the members of the Church to welcome him as their chief pastor. I have written to request him to put himself in communication with Mr. Quick.
May I request you to take immediate steps for bringing this subject before the Rural Deanery Board. I will lay the Archbishop's letter before the Standing Commission and procure, if possible, a circular letter from that body, urging the immediate collection of the Endowment Fund.
I am, etc.
G.A. New Zealand.
Several points of interest are raised in this letter. It will be noted that Selwyn does not here suggest that the Archbishop acted precipitately, as he was later to do when under fire from the opposition. Why did not Dr. Selwyn feel that the very worthy Rural Dean might be a possible occupant of the see when his Rural Deanery was elevated into a Bishopric? To Mr. Edward's credit, be it said, he was one of Dr. Jenner's supporters, and most zealous in his cause. And were there, in fact, no other possible New Zealand candidates? It was said later that Dr. Harper, the Bishop of Christchurch, was anxious for the office for his son, the Archdeacon. Jenner did not himself allege this, it would have been outside his ethical code to have questioned motives.
The Rural Deanery Board met on 22 February 1866, and passed two resolutions; on the proposal of Mr. James Smith, seconded by Mr. R. B. Martin:
'That as a sufficient provision has not yet been made for the support of a Bishop, it is not expedient to take any action at present with a view to confirming the conditional appointment of the Rev. H. L. Jenner, more especially as that appointment has been made without the authority or concurrence of the Board'.
and moved by the Rev. E. H. Granger, seconded by the Rev. R. L. Stanford:
[47] 'That this Board is desirous to record its extreme regret that through misconception the Rev. H. L. Jenner should have been led to suppose that the time has arrived for the appointment of a Bishop of Otago and Southland, there being at present no sufficient endowment raised, and that this Board continues to be decidedly opposed to the appointment of a Bishop without a sufficient endowment having been provided, and that the Honorary Secretary be requested to forward this resolution, together with the Minutes of the last Meeting of the Rural Deanery Board, to the Rev. H. L. Jenner, through the President of the Board'.
The Rev. H. L. Jenner was never officially informed of these resolutions because the President of the Board, the Bishop of Christchurch, vetoed them. In fact he first learned of the meeting and its resolutions four months after his consecration. In his letter of welcome to Jenner, dated 13 February 1866, the Bishop had added a postscript 'I will write again by the next mail if I have anything fresh to communicate'. He does not, however, write Jenner again until 14 May, when he gives details of the improvement in the prospects of the endowment since he last wrote, but makes no mention of the adverse resolutions. A somewhat sinister proceeding.
We have now seen in some detail what had been happening in New Zealand, but we must remember that Jenner knew nothing of all this when he was consecrated Bishop, nor for some considerable time later. The offer had been made by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 14 October 1865; but the Archbishop did not apply to Lord Carnarvon for the Queen's Mandate until 8 August 1866* [Footnote: * Letter given in Constitutional Church Government--Clarke, p. 185] and the consecration took place on 24 August 1866. There had been ample time for protest, despite the distance of New Zealand. None had been communicated to the Archbishop nor to Jenner, indeed the very reasonable protests made in New Zealand had been deliberately and deceptively withheld. Both the Metropolitan of New Zealand and the Bishop of Christchurch continued repeatedly to cry peace, peace when there was no peace.+ [Footnote: +'Had I been allowed to receive these resolutions, you may be very sure I should not have presented myself for consecration, and thus I should have escaped the tremendous injury, which, to the eternal disgrace of the New Zealand Church, has been inflicted upon me'. Letter of Bishop Jenner to Bishop of Christchurch, 2 July 1873.] Jenner was a man perhaps over-sensitive of others' opinions about him. We have seen how, even in trifling matters of ceremonial, he consulted his flocks and would only move by their unanimous consent. He would have withdrawn as a Nominee, but once he was consecrated he felt he could not resign; the matter was not in his hands. All the Catholic centuries told him that he was a Bishop of the Church of God and the machinations of semi-democratic assemblies must take second place to that supreme and sacred fact.
[48] Having been consecrated, many individuals began writing him kind letters from his proposed new see. Among them many expressed enthusiasm for his early arrival among them, and particularly the Rural Dean, Mr. Edwards, the Revd. W. F. Oldham of Riverton and the Revd. W. P. Tanner of Invercargill.
The next annual meeting of the Rural Deanery Board was held on the 21 February 1867, the Bishop of Christchurch presiding, and he thus addresses them (ignoring completely the annual meeting of 1866, at which he was not present, and its resolutions):
'Since the last Meeting of the Rural Deanery Board, a step has been taken which has an important bearing on the welfare of our Church in these parts. It may be remembered that in 1863 an address was presented me in which the Board strongly expressed its opinion that the Rural Deanery of Otago and Southland should be formed into a separate Diocese, and I was requested to bring this matter before the different Parishes and districts of the Deanery, and to urge upon the members of the Church the exercise of an abundant liberality in contributing the endowment of the proposed Bishopric.
The opinion of the Board was so entirely in accordance with my own views, that I did not hesitate to act upon it, and the effort which I made for this proposal was responded to by the offer of subscriptions to the amount of £950. This was at a time when the resources of the Province of Otago appeared to be daily increasing, and we had every reason to hope that the amount required would be speedily raised. A check, however, in the prosperity of the Province occurred, and the efforts to obtain additional subscriptions were attended with little success. In the meanwhile, a clergyman in England was nominated to the Bishopric of Dunedin by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and in the prospect of this consecration the Bishop of New Zealand visited the Rural Deanery, and by his personal exertions added considerably to the contributions for the endowment; and he also announced his intention of appropriating to the same purpose the several sections near Invercargill, originally purchased for Church purposes from funds at his disposal.
It must be obvious that the necessities of the Church have not diminished since the resolution of the Board in 1863.* [Footnote: * In 1854 the European population of New Zealand was 32,500 of whom almost 12,000 were in Auckland. In 1863 'during the Otago gold-rush, 35,000 immigrants arrived, mostly from Australia, in an unpremeditated mob'. Keith Sinclair--A History of New Zealand (Pelican) p.97.] The number of Church members since then has been steadily increasing in this City and its suburbs; extensive portions of the Agricultural districts of the Provinces of Otago and Southland have been permanently occupied, and large townships have been established in the immediate neighbourhood of the older goldfields, and though something has been done in these districts by the zeal and activity of ordained clergymen and laymen, yet much more is needed, and can scarcely be adequately and efficiently supplied except under the superintendence of a resident Bishop. If a Bishop were needed in 1862, it must be admitted that he is still more needed at the present moment. This I am persuaded is well understood, by those who are [48/49] acquainted with the real state of the Provinces of Otago and Southland, and who desire to maintain for themselves and others the blessings to which they have been called as members of the Church of England. And thereby, perhaps, we hardly expected so speedy a fulfilment of our wishes, and our preparations for the reception of a Bishop are still very incomplete, yet we cannot but recognise in his consecration to his office the hand of God working for our good and think that no exertion on our parts will be wanting to show that we are truly grateful for this.
On hearing of the Consecration of Dr. Jenner, I lost no time in communicating with the Church Societies in England, whose aid had been promised for the endowment of the Bishopric.'
The Bishop went on to give a figure of £4,336.7.10 as available, leaving a gap of £700 to make up the necessary £5,000, and urged the local people to do more.
'He is prepared, no doubt, to serve in his office with a very limited income, but, still the Church should provide a sufficiency for his support, and for those unavoidable expenses which are incidental to his office.'
A resolution was moved by Mr. W. Carr Young, seconded by Rev. E. G. Edwards:
'The Rev. H. Jenner having been nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and consecrated under Royal Mandate, Bishop of the See of Dunedin, this Board recognises the duty of making preparations for his reception by providing a suitable residence, and completing the requisite endowment.'
The Rev. R. L. Stanford, now moved an amendment which was seconded by the Rev. E. H. Granger, Vicar of All Saints, Dunedin.
(It seems a little odd to follow so quickly on the letter he had just written to Jenner!)
'That in the opinion of this Board it is inexpedient, under all circumstances, that Bishop Jenner should enter on the duties of his office in this Province for a considerable time.'
This amendment was withdrawn in favour of another proposed by Mr. James Smith, and seconded by the Rev. R. L. Stanford:
'That, in the opinion of this Board, a sufficient income not having been yet provided for the suitable maintenance of a Bishop of the Church of England, in this Rural Deanery, it is not expedient that this Board should undertake the responsibility of encouraging Dr. Jenner to leave England for the purpose of entering on the duties of the Bishopric of Dunedin, to which his Lordship has been appointed without the concurrence of the Rural Deanery Board.'
Six people voted for the amendment, eleven voted against it and so Mr. Carr Young's Resolution was carried.
Although nothing is said about Dr. Jenner's Ritualism in the reported discussion or resolution Mr. Carr Young later informs us that at the Meeting [49/50] 'the chief, if not the only serious, objection was purely on personal grounds; for with the news of the appointment we received public and private reports of Bishop Jenner's High Church views and ritualistic practices, to which I am happy to believe the Church in New Zealand is firmly and unanimously opposed. Indeed, had it not been for the expectation of his Lordship's early arrival, I am satisfied there would have been, even upon the strength of these vague rumours, a unanimous protest against the appointment, and measures would then have been taken to get it rescinded if possible . . . For myself, I was disinclined to believe these reports.'* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 30 Oct. 1869, p.1170.]
The first public intimations in England that all was not well was the appearance in The Guardian of 11 September 1867 of the principal portions of a memorial said to have been signed by 'A large number of members of the Church of England, residing in the new diocese of Dunedin'. It was addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and complained that an appointment had been made in direct opposition to their wishes, and that Dr. Jenner, having identified himself publicly with the Ritualistic Party, 'the peace and harmony of the proposed new diocese would be destroyed, and great numbers of most earnest members alienated from the Church by the presence of such a chief pastor, and that the work of the Church in these provinces would be hindered if not utterly brought to a standstill'.
The Memorial was the work of the Revd. W. F. Oldham, the Incumbent of Riverton, New Zealand. We have seen the actions he took, unsuccessfully, at the meeting of the Rural Deanery Board on the 21 February 1867. On 27 February he wrote Bishop Jenner thus--making friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness one supposes--
'I am anxious, if possible, to express to you the pleasure with which I, in common with all the clergy, I think, look forward to your arrival among us. I look upon it as likely to be an era in the history of our Church out here, and I hope to work with you for many years, with all my energies, in her much loved service'.
His memorial was ready for dispatch by the 10 July, and ten days later he wrote to The Guardian,+ [Footnote: + The Guardian, 2 Oct 1867, p. 1047.] as follows:
Sir--Allow me to draw attention, through your columns to a memorial to the Archbishop of Canterbury from Churchmen in the province of Southland, New Zealand, part of the proposed new diocese of Dunedin. Its object, you will see, is to pray his Grace to represent to Dr. Jenner, the Bishop consecrated with a view to his taking charge of this southern portion of the colony, the strong feeling of Church-people against the new developments of doctrine and ritual. We are a set of very good moderate Churchmen, and are anxious for the future peace and welfare of the Church of England in New Zealand. A [50/51] few remarks only need be made upon the petition to render it clear to those ignorant of all the circumstances of the case.
The Bishop of New Zealand, without any authority to do so at that time, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to nominate a clergyman suitable for a new see he was anxious to have formed. The Archbishop nominated Dr. Jenner, who wrote out to learn the feelings of the members of the Church, whether they would receive him as their chief pastor. Their representatives were summoned to meet in Dunedin, and passed the strongest resolutions condemning the whole business, and also declaring it premature. This was the prompt and decided answer of the Church out here. These resolutions, however, were never sent officially to Dr. Jenner, having been afterwards vetoed by the Bishop of Christchurch.
We much wish the opinion of our brother Churchmen at home upon the way of doing things out here. The result was that, whether Dr. Jenner received this reply of members of the Church to his question or not, we very shortly afterwards heard that he was consecrated.* [Footnote: *See page 47.]
The Board met again in February, 1867, and the impression then was that Dr. Jenner was at that time very probably on his way, or would be before communications could reach him; and very naturally resolutions were allowed to pass that he should be welcomed on his arrival. Since then we have heard, but only lately, that he was likely to remain in England for the Lambeth Conference, and steps were immediately taken to make known to him the dissatisfaction felt in the colony, and above all, at his making himself conspicuous among the leaders of the extreme party, which has more and more continually shaken confidence in him. For his own sake, and for the peace of the Church in the future, we would urge upon him the inexpediency of coming out to New Zealand under any circumstances.
By finding room for this dispatch you will oblige a large number of Churchmen, and also
Your obedient servant, W. F. Oldham
Incumbent of Riverton.
It will be guessed what bombshells the memorial and the letter were to Jenner's wide circle of friends and acquaintances. He was urged, and not by ritualists only to reply to the letter. He wrote as follows:
Sir--Mr. Oldham's letter in your impression of this week requires some notice from me. I beg, therefore, that you will be good enough to insert the following observations in your next number.
Mr. Oldham is a hard-working clergyman in Southland. All I have heard of him is most favourable, and all has been told me by an intimate lay friend and neighbour of his in the colony. Yet it is from this very friend and neighbour that I have received a letter, dated July 18th two days before Mr. Oldham's--which contains the following passages:
"There is a movement on foot which, should this find you still in England, may cause you much annoyance, although I trust you will not see in it [51/52] anything to deter you from entering upon your duties, but rather an incentive to exertion. Let me explain my meaning. I enclose a copy of a memorial, originated, I grieve to say, by my friend Mr. Oldham, to obtain signatures to which the most discreditable means have been resorted to garbled extracts from home papers have been industriously circulated, also all sorts of misrepresentations of your words, actions, etc. Every name on the list has thus been obtained by personal canvass. But this is not all. I have positively ascertained that the names of known and professed Non-Conformists have been appended, among the members and office-bearers of the Church. Unless from this class, I do not believe a single person in Invercargill (the metropolis of Southland) has signed, for the Invercargill vestry very properly prohibited Mr. Oldham from introducing the memorial among the congregation, and passed a resolution requesting him not to interfere in that parish. I also send you a letter from Mr. Oldham, which appeared in last Monday's paper. I cannot express strongly enough my disgust at the discourtesy and uncharitableness both of the letter and the memorial. Long ago I warned you that my father and I, in common with most Churchmen down here (Southland), were averse to the new bishopric, but assured you that, now the step has been taken, you might rely on our support. I now repeat the assurance; and, to show you that we are in earnest, I may tell you that my father, as churchwarden and lay reader, has this very day written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of New Zealand, and the Bishop of Christchurch, warning them of the true character of the memorial."
My object in giving these extracts from my correspondent's letter is assuredly not to cause pain or mortification to Mr. Oldham, to whom I cannot for a moment impute complicity with the "discreditable" measures above described, but only to show my friends in England that the opposition to my appointment, formidable as it seems to be, is by no means universal.
As to the future, I have only to say that nothing that has as yet been advanced perhaps I ought to say that can be advanced will prevent, though it will no doubt delay, my proceeding to my diocese, and giving myself to the work to which I have been set apart, and to which I humbly trust God has called me.
With Mr. Oldham, and my other opponents, I hope to be associated in many a labour of love, having for its object the glory of God and the building up of his Church. They may be assured that wherever I see real worth, wherever real zeal and earnestness are displayed in the service of our common Lord, thither, whatever differences of opinion there may be, will my warm sympathies extend. For myself, I propose God helping me, to work as hard as my strength enables me; so that in one thing at least I shall have a bond of union with all true and hearty labourers in the Lord's vineyard.
Is it too much to ask my present enemies, but as I trust future friends, not to judge me, unseen and unheard, on mere vague rumours or unfriendly newspaper reports, or to impute to me views and intentions that I disclaim? I appeal to those who have known me longest, and have had the best opportunities of observing my career as a parish priest, whether, amidst many shortcomings, I have ever been chargeable with disturbing the peace of the [52/53] Church, or of particular parishes; or of attempting to force or drive people into an acceptance of my opinions. And I repeat here what I declared at York last year, that if anyone expects that on my arrival in New Zealand, I am going to set up advanced ritual, or any ritual beyond what the Colonial Churchmen are prepared for and desire, he will find himself very much mistaken.
H. L. Dunedin.
No mention, it will be observed, of the unctuous letter which Oldham had written to him a few months before. But this kind of thing happens continually throughout the controversy 'who, when he was reviled, reviled not again'. The letter produced a good effect in England whatever the cunning colonists may have thought of it. The same paper carried a letter from Francis Slater of the Grammar School, Sudbury, in which he bore testimony to the wise and faithful work of Jenner for thirteen years in his parish of Preston. There had never been one 'aggrieved parishioner' and universal regret was expressed by the whole parish at his proposed departure.
But worse was to come for on 30 October appeared a letter from Mr. William Carr Young.* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 30 Oct. 1869, p. 1170.]
Sir--My attention has been directed, in a recent number of your Journal, to a letter from the Bishop of Dunedin, in reply to one from the Rev. W. H. Oldham, incumbent of Riverton, New Zealand.
Having taken an active part in church matters in Dunedin, as churchwarden and lay reader, since I first landed there in 1854, and having also been present, as a member, of the February meeting of the Rural Deanery Board to which Mr. Oldham refers, I beg permission to make known through your columns certain proceedings initiated by myself in reference to the Bishop of Dunedin, prior to your receipt of Mr. Oldham's communication, which may throw some light on the subject of the letters in question.
First of all, it is necessary to refer to the deliberations of the Rural Deanery Board in February. The appointment of a bishop was then condemned by all as premature and was totally rejected by some as unauthorised. But there is no doubt that the chief, if not the only serious, objection was purely on personal grounds, for with the news of the appointment we received public and private reports of Bishop Jenner's High Church views and ritualistic practices, to which I am happy to believe the Church in New Zealand is firmly and unanimously opposed. Indeed, had it not been for the expectation of his lordship's early arrival, I am satisfied there would have been, even upon the strength of these vague rumours, a unanimous protest against the appointment, and measures would then have been taken to get it rescinded if possible. For myself, I was disinclined to believe these reports, but soon after my arrival in England at the end of last May I saw enough at the "Feast of Dedication" of St. Mathias, Stoke Newington, in the celebration of which the [53/54] Bishop of Dunedin took a most conspicuous part, to prove that the reports were in no way exaggerated, and to convince me that we may well be alarmed for the safety of our Colonial Church if the doctrines and practices inculcated at St. Mathias be ever introduced into New Zealand, especially if introduced under the auspices of a Bishop selected for the colony by the Primate of England.
I am so convinced of the sympathy of all my fellow colonists on this most important question, that I represented the facts to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, when his Grace expressed his entire disapproval of Bishop Jenner's practices since the appointment was made, and sanctioned the cause which I proposed to adopt with a view to the Bishop's resignation--viz. to obtain a decided expression of opinion from Church-members in the diocese in regard to that appointment.
I accordingly dispatched by the June mail a full report of the proceedings which I witnessed at St. Mathias', together with the result of my interview with his Grace, and have no doubt that the reply, which may be expected shortly, will satisfy Bishop Jenner that the opposition is not only formidable but universal.
Meanwhile, the "Memorial" referred to was set on foot in the diocese before my arrival in England was reported, and although said to be not altogether genuine, it is at least, on the part of all Church-members who signed it, a confirmation of my own feelings against the introduction of ritualism into the Colonial Church.
With regard to the Bishop disclaiming in his letter any intentions of "setting up advanced ritual or any ritual beyond what the colonists are prepared for and desire" we can only judge of the tree by its fruits, and since his lordship has exhibited not only at St. Mathias, but in other so-called Protestant churches, unmistakeable evidences of faith in advanced ritualism, I cannot understand how with his "real earnestness and zeal", he can do otherwise than both preach 'and practise it, as opportunities may occur, in the Colonial diocese. I therefore consider it to be the duty of all true Churchmen in the colony to unite in protecting the Colonial Church against the admission of ritual innovations, which, as police reports too frequently show, are productive of scandal and riot in many sacred edifices,* [Footnote: Mr. Brian Findlay tells me that 'advanced' ritual was already in use in a few New Zealand churches at this time; i.e. St. John Baptist, Philipstown, Christchurch, from the early 1850s.] and are assumedly undermining the constitution of the Church generally in the mother country.
I have only to add that I did not fail to acquaint Bishop Jenner with every step in the course which I have pursued in opposition to him, and urged the expediency of delaying his departure from England until he could satisfy himself as to the views entertained in the diocese of his appointment, and the reception he was likely to get in the colony.
The Bishop, no doubt, ranks me among the number of those whom he calls his "enemies". I can assure his lordship that, as I entertain every feeling of respect for his high office, so I disclaim any idea of emnity [sic] against himself personally, but I am most thoroughly opposed to his extreme views and prac-[54/55]tices, which I conscientiously believe to be un-Protestant, and fatal in the unity of the Church of England.
William Carr Young
8 Albion St, Hyde Park, W.1. October 23rd, 1867
The correspondence was a gift for the staid old Guardian. The Revd. Charles Le Geyt buckled on his sword and entered the fray.* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 18 November 1867, 'Fair Play for the Bishop of Dunedin', p. 1215.] He makes great capital from Mr. Young's words 'even upon the strength of the vague rumours',--the Bishop is to be judged before he can act or speak for himself. Then for the allegation that the Bishop had become a High Churchman only after his appointment (a statement Mr. Young got from the Archbishop of Canterbury as we shall later see) but Mr. Young's letter indirectly proves the falsity of the charge: for it sets forth that "With the news of the appointment" came the public and private reports of the Bishop's High Church views and ritualistic practices. It was perfectly well known both long before and at the time of his appointment that the Bishop was a High Churchman. And it is not that since his appointment he has manifested his true views; but that he has not felt himself able, since, and because of his appointment, to disguise his views, to adopt a "trimming" policy, and to turn his back upon his old friends and fellow-workers in the Church's cause. This is, in truth, the head and point of his offending; had he, during his stay in England, scrupulously abstained from associating with these old friends, and from seeking help from them for his future work, giving them at the same time his support and "God-speed" in theirs at home, the opposition at Dunedin might perhaps have been calmed down.+ [Footnote: + This is interestingly corroborated by Dean Jacobs in his New Zealand, S.P.C.K. 1889, p. 313. 'Had the Bishop been in a position to come out at once to the colony, he might by the force of hard work, combined with tact and discretion, have lived down all opposition; but he was prevented by difficulties of a financial nature from taking this course, and being too honest to disguise his principles, and his new position having made his name more conspicuous than of old, he became more and more an object of dread and suspicion'--Jacobs was an opposer of Jenner, but confessedly and consistently so.] A further point is made, and a point of considerable interest:
'But is it fair, I ask, to expect such a policy of any true hearted and honest man? Such conduct has not been required of other High Church Colonial Bishops while in England, several of whom have taken a more "conspicuous part" in similar services and have adopted more ritualistic practices than the Bishop of Dunedin. I have reason to know this, and further, that he has been especially scrupulous on this head, fully realising the difficulties and impossibilities of his position in the present condition of the Church of England'.
Mr. Le Geyt to our surprise, for he was a most meek and quiet and refined man, now descends to Mr. Young's own level and calls him a [55/56] spy. Mr. Young had come to the service; had stayed to lunch making himself most agreeable to all present and questioning his neighbour, a young lady, about her spiritual practices and especially about the Confessional; had gone back with the Churchwarden, Mr. Porter, and played croquet on the lawn with the Bishop. What a nice kind man they thought him! How they had opened their hearts and loosened their tongues, and so on.
Mr. Young replied to all this and denied spying and that he had questioned the girl. One wonders what other expression Mr. Young felt would have more fitly described his conduct. As to the girl, we shall never know for certain, but the report which he sent to New Zealand and the verbal report which he made to the Diocesan Synod after his return to New Zealand contained such outrageous lies, that we may have our suspicions.
Mr. Young was no doubt shocked by the service at St. Mathias's Church. In the previous month Bishop Jenner had taken a confirmation there at the express request of Dr. A. L. Tait, the Bishop of London. It may be that Dr. Tait was thereby avoiding the embarrassment of seeming to give countenance to Ritualism, for Tait was as cunning as Jenner was naive, and there were other instances of English Diocesans encouraging him to undertake services they were wise enough, themselves, to avoid.
Dr. Tait would not have been very welcome at St. Mathias's. He had commanded the previous incumbent to cease from the use of lights on the altar at the celebration of Holy Communion. The sacristan continued to light them and one Sunday morning the Revd. S. W. Mangin extinguished them whereupon the congregation refused to communicate and challenged what they regarded as a craven obedience to episcopal command. The Revd. S. W. Mangin resigned and the Revd. Charles Le Geyt, curate of John Keble at Hursley, was appointed by Lord Derby.* [Footnote: * Charles Le Geyt took his title at St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, whose vicar was the Revd. Edmund Hobhouse, Bishop of Nelson, 1858-65. Bishop Hobhouse was now Rector of Reach Hill, near Reading and anxious to find platforms among his friends for Bishop Jenner to use on behalf of money-raising for his new diocese.] At first the services were very simple but gradually the very large and powerful congregation succeeded in making Le Geyt adopt an advanced ceremonial and incense and vestments were introduced. Lord Westneath made a speech about it in the House of Lords and less scrupulous members of his party paid ruffians to interfere with the services--a common enough practice at the time.+ [Footnote: + See following paragraph.] A large proportion of the congregation being male the hirelings' attempts were abortive and they earned their pieces of silver by breaking all the windows[.]
[Footnote: + It was the reprehensible practice of the ultra protestants to 'encourage' men to object to advanced services by importing them by legal twist into parishes where no parishioner, properly so regarded, could be found to object. When this failed resort [56n/57n] was had to brawling and violence by men who had no semblance of claim to be connected with the parish. Ugly scenes were witnessed, and the persons who were responsible were with superb hypocrisy greatly shocked at the effect that the ritualists (whom they always pretended were the 'priests') were having on the Church.
At Northmoore Green Church, Bridgwater, the celebrant having given communion to the server 'A boat-man, named Goodband, here walked up the steps leading to the communion-table and knelt down, and while in this kneeling posture, the clergyman gave him the wafer-bread in silence. (A Voice: "What's he going to have, Dick--some pickled cockles?"). A cup containing the wine was then handed to the man, upon which a voice exclaimed, "Have a gutsfull, Dick," and Dick, nothing loth, at once emptied the cup.' Bridgwater Mercury, quoted in The Guardian, 12 September 1866, p.943.]
[57] In fairness to Mr. Young he did write to Bishop Jenner on 18 June and tell him what he had done:
'I should be neglecting my duty if I left it open to your Lordship to put a wrong construction on the fact of my being present at the "Feast of Dedication", celebrated at St. Mathias's, on the 13th inst. Your Lordship might naturally infer that I sympathised with the ceremony, at which I was present, on that occasion; and the inference would be strengthened by the fact of my having urged no objection when I met you afterwards at the house of Mr. Porter. But your Lordship may understand the reasons which induced me to reserve the expression of my feelings for a more fitting opportunity. It is now my duty to state that so far from approving of the ceremonies at St. Mathias's, I was shocked to find a so-called Protestant Church degraded by the Popish doctrines and ceremonies there preached and practised.
I think it right to add that I have written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, respecting the facts here referred to, and submitted to His Grace the expediency and propriety of rescinding your appointment as a Colonial Bishop.'
It was now the Bishop's turn to be shocked. How ungentlemanly of Mr. Young, and how coarse and ill-informed he was. This was the trouble with the Anglo Catholics. With certain exceptions, they were too refined and rarified. They practised their fal-de-lals on orphanages and workhouses, on the outcast and the fallen women. These, like the people in the slums, knew their places. Privilege was still secure. But if they barely held their own in England what did they expect from the Colonies? What sort of people did they imagine them to be. When they talked about New Zealand being closest to the Mother Country and New Zealand Society being English Society transferred to the antipodes they were very far off the mark. New Zealand did not attract the aristocrat, the country gentleman, the artist or the intellectual nor could those below the poverty line afford to go there. We are left therefore with 'the less well-to-do and the less "intellectual" sections of the middle classes, the better paid and better housed sections of the working classes . . . New Zealand has not been, as some observers thought it, the paradise of the working man but rather the paradise of the petit [57/58] bourgeois.' How did they suppose the colonies were won and run? 'Fair Play for the Bishop of Dunedin' indeed! Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton but it took considerably more than that to eliminate and despoil native populations. And in New Zealand, where they boasted that Jack was better than his master, one had to be tough and crafty. It was all right for the Bishops who took privilege with them in the form of Letters Patent. Nothing could shift them in the Colonies as nothing could shift them at home. But poor Bishop Jenner, who had only his virtues to commend him, was at a serious disadvantage. It would be pleaded, by Mr. Young, that Jenner was a gentleman and therefore a proper object for suspicion and obloquy, nor was he the only one who saw it so.
Bishop Jenner's friends were expecting a public statement of refutation by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but already the Archbishop had written him privately. Knowing his feelings about Ritualism and remembering how he behaved about St. Saviour's, Leeds, nothing need surprise us--
Addington Park,
August 10th, 1867.
My dear Lord,
You may believe that I read with very great pain, but I confess with no great surprise, the letter which I enclose. As soon as ever I witnessed the most unexpected development of your views, which showed you as the encourager of the most extreme Ritualists, such as Mr. Le Geyt, I foresaw what must be the consequences in a colony such as that of Dunedin.
I feel myself very much compromised in having recommended you for that see.
In an interview which I had with you at Lambeth, I was painfully struck with a remark you made to the disparagement of 'Common Sense'* [Footnote: * The so-called Evangelicals, the salt of the Church in earlier days had by this time lost much of their savour. Against the enthusiasm which now marked the Oxford and Cambridge men they took a stand on 'common sense'. Thus Dean Stanley, preaching at Christ Church, Marylebone and reviewing the progress of the Oxford Movement says 'those ordinary qualities of common sense and calm judgment which were highly valued at the beginning of this century are now often set at nought as the most useless of all things'. . . The Guardian, 12 May, 1875, p.931.], and I confess I apprehended the result which has followed.
The Bishop of New Zealand will be very soon in England, and I shall then be able to confer with him as to the course which it is best to adopt under existing circumstances. If no endowment is raised, I do not see how you can go forth to take the oversight of the Diocese.
Believe me, my dear Lord,
Very truly yours,
C. T. Cantuar.
[59] What undertones are here! Bishop Jenner was no fool and the implications and innuendoes were not lost on him. Unfortunately, his letters to Longley have not been preserved at Lambeth, but the replies of the Archbishop give a very good indication of his argument. They follow:
Addington Park, Croydon,
August 31, 1867.
My dear Lord,
In answering your letter of the 17th let me first do myself the justice to point out that it is not right to say that I ignore all your former labours in blaming you for the countenance you have given to those who have adopted the Vestments. If I had ignored all your former work in the Church, I certainly should never have selected you as the future Bishop of Dunedin. I knew all the while perfectly well that you were a great advocate for Choral Services and surpliced Choirs;* [Footnote: * It was typical of the Evangelicals who accepted the surplice, which was mediaeval in origin and associated with monastic choir offices, and rejected the chasuble which was lay in origin, primitive in age and acknowledged throughout Christendom.] but all this did not weigh with me in prevention of your appointment to that See. Nor are you correct in arguing as if my views of your subsequent conduct, which I have called "a development" was derived solely or principally from Mr. Young's statement respecting your officiating in Mr. Le Geyt's Church. That statement confirmed my previously formed opinion but was by no means the foundation of my impressions respecting your recent conduct. I was well aware, before I ever heard of Mr. Young, that you went into different parts of the country, by your presence and by taking part in the services gave encouragement to practices which the Bishops of our Church were, I believe without a single exception, most anxious to discontinue. The Bishop of one Diocese in particular, who was never supposed to belong to what is called the Low Church, but has always been considered to lean the other way, mentioned to me in a tone of complaint that you have been doing so in his Diocese. Surely you could not expect me to sanction with my approval such proceedings as these. I volunteered no statement to your disadvantage, but I was compelled to deliver my honest opinion when called upon by Mr. Young. It was then from this ex parte statement of Mr. Young's that I expressed my regret at your proceedings.
I say it with great regret, but I really think it most kind to tell you the truth, that in my opinion you have made a great mistake. Remember, the Declaration of the Bishops in the Upper House of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury; the emphatic statement they made of the . . . [letter incomplete].
At last the truth is out. The Archbishop expected trouble from Dunedin because a diocesan bishop had complained of Jenner's behaviour. None of this ever got into the press. In all the great mass of correspondence in the English papers and those of New Zealand and Australia, it is never mentioned. Jenner was too great a gentleman and too good a Catholic to criticise openly the Archbishop of Canterbury [59/60] and to hold up for public censure and derision the gossip in which he engaged. The allegation of the 'diocesan bishop' consisted of a single complaint, and that entirely without foundation. There was malice in it. In Mr. Young's case his report on St. Matthias was full of misunderstandings--he was out of his depth, but where he lied, he lied openly and in the grand manner. 'The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword'.
We shall return to both complaints, and examine them in detail.
In the meantime there are two further letters from the Archbishop:
Addington Park,
December 9, 1867.
My dear Lord,
I return your letter to your Father which expresses sentiments that I believed you to hold when I selected you for the See of Dunedin. But the circumstances of the Church are vastly altered since that letter was written; and the line of action you have adopted since your consecration produces a widely different effect from what followed from your holding those sentiments during the years after it was written. I shall not reply to the main topics of your letter till I have seen a copy of Mr. Young's statements of what passed between us, which I hope you will be able to send me.
Believe me, Yours truly,
C. T. Cantuar.
It would appear that his Grace, like Sheridan, made it a rule never to look into a newspaper, for the religious papers were full of Mr. Young's statements, and of Mr. Le Geyt's denials.
In vain did clergy of varying schools say that Jenner had not altered his opinions or his ways after his consecration.* [Footnote: * See letter of Francis Slater, Headmaster of Sudbury Grammar School, The Guardian 9 Oct 1867, p. 1070.] The Archbishop could not admit that he had consecrated a Ritualist, and from his own Diocese too, and he stuck to his story to the end.
Addington Park, Croydon.
December 2, 1867.
My dear Lord,
Under the circumstances you mention, I shall not object to give you a licence of Non-residence for six months, in order that your children may have a home until you send for them. This however on the understanding that you resign your living at the end of six months, and that you appoint a Curate to take charge of the Parish. I will thank you to let me know who he is to be; as I cannot order the licence to be prepared until I know this. And now as to the statement made by Mr. Young of what passed between us in his interview with me last summer. I know not what representation he has made of what passed for my thoughts have been too much absorbed of late by thoughts of a very different character. All I can do is in justice to myself to state my clear recollection of it.
[61] Mr. Young called on me to state the painful impression which had been produced upon his mind, by observing the public encouragement which you were giving to extreme ritualists, that he was sure that the effect in the colony would be disastrous, and very detrimental to your usefulness there. I answered that I had been very much distressed by your conduct as I had observed it in this respect; that I had no idea that you would have manifested such tendencies or have acted in a manner, to say the least of it, so indiscreet. I originated, be it observed, No advice under the circumstances but on being asked whether I would undertake to dissuade you from going out as Bishop of Dunedin, I declined to do so. I was then asked whether I should approve of the Colonists themselves taking a step in this direction. My reply was, that if they conceived that the tendencies which you have shown would be fatal to your influence for good in the Colony, they ought to represent to you their feelings and impressions, that if they were not to do so but to leave you in ignorance of the state of feeling there, it would be unjust to yourself and injurious to the Church. This was the sum and substance of the conversation with Mr. Young; I am not at all aware how he has represented the matter.
What there is in this my conduct which deserved the unmeasured censure which you pass upon it, I am at a loss to discover. Did you expect that I should have expressed my entire approval of your conduct? Any such expression would have been belied by those earnest and repeated efforts that I had publicly made to discourage extreme Ritualism. Was I to say that the Colonists had better hold their tongues, and let the anticipated injury befall the Church in Dunedin, without an effort to avert the blow?
I think you would be somewhat singular in such an opinion, if you really entertained it. And now a word or two in conclusion. You have animadverted on my conduct towards you in terms of no very . . . [half-sheet of notepaper missing] . . . these excuses. Such conduct was felt to be unbecoming and offensive. You once asked me what Bishop had complained to me of your conduct in this respect. I have the leave of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol to tell you it was himself. I send you a letter on the subject which I received a few days since from another quarter.
As to the expression attributed to me of having recommended Mr. Young and his friends to adopt such a line of proceeding as would force you to resign, I simply disdain having used such an expression. I certainly acquiesced, as I have told you before in the course suggested by Mr. Young: viz. that you should be plainly told what were the feelings of a large number of your future flock on the subject of the countenance you were giving to the Ritualistic movement and that if you attempted to introduce any such system in your future Diocese, it would be fatal to the welfare of the Church there, and in that case you had better not go at all.
Happily you have disclaimed all intention of introducing that system to which you have so prominently been giving your countenance in England: and it is well that you have done so.
As to the third point viz. that "I thoroughly disapproved of your proceedings" (in reference to your encouragement of the Extreme Ritualists) it is impossible for me to retract that expression: for I should tell a falsehood if I were to do so.
[62] In conclusion, I wish it may be understood that I claim no right to control your actions; but I do claim a right, and I hold it to be my bounden duty to myself and to the Church, to express my opinion of your actions when I consider that they are calculated to compromise my character for consistency, or injurious to affect the interests of the Church.
[Subscription missing]
It will raise an eyebrow to know that Jenner had given the Archbishop a solemn undertaking never to introduce practices in his new See of which the great majority would not approve. He made no secret of his personal preferences but hoped that his word would be taken and his statement had wide publicity in the newspapers:
'Whereas my own taste lies to a great extent in the aesthetics of divine worship; I think I am bound to be very watchful, lest by indulging this taste to the disregard of the prejudices of others, I should fatally offend those among whom I am appointed to minister. On this principle I should feel it my duty to abstain from many things which I should otherwise think it desirable to introduce, so that no vital doctrines were involved.'
First let us look at the complaint of Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. It was that Bishop Jenner had preached at the Sailor's Chapel, St. Raphael's, Bristol, and thereby encouraged Mr. Ward, the Incumbent to flout episcopal authority. Bishop Jenner wrote Dr. Ellicott on Christmas Eve, 1867, and the following extraordinary correspondence took place.
Preston Vicarage,
Christmas Eve.
My dear Lord,
In a letter which I received some time ago from the Archbishop of Canterbury the following words occur:
"The Bishop of one Diocese in particular mentioned to me in a tone of complaint, that you had been (doing so in his diocese i.e.) by your presence and by taking part in the services, giving encouragement to practices, which the Bishops of our Church are most anxious to discountenance."
And, in a subsequent letter, His Grace says that you are the Bishop alluded to.
Now, not to dwell upon the obvious consideration, that it would have been kinder, and more fraternal, (if I may use the expression) to have communicated with me on the subject before complaining to the Primate; I must submit that, unless you are in a position to disprove the following assertions; I am entitled to an unqualified withdrawal of the accusation.
I assert then
1. that since my consecration I have taken part in one service only within your diocese at the Church of St. Raphael, Bristol, in November 1866. Mr Ward, an old acquaintance having allowed me at my own request to preach for my diocesan needs as I was passing through Bristol on my return from Wales.
[63] 2. That that service was an ordinary weekday Choral evensong, with no unusual ceremonial or practices, with considerably less, indeed, in the way of procession etc. than e.g. at the Wolverhampton Congress the other day.
I feel sure that you will be glad of the opportunity of retracting, what I must call, an unfounded Charge against a brother.
Believe me, my dear Lord,
Very faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
The Rt. Revd.,
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Gloucester Palace
December, 26, 1867.
Dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I hasten to acknowledge your polite note. Some little time since I mentioned to the Archbishop of Canterbury that you had officiated in my diocese, without any reference to me, at a church where a debatable usage had been adopted after I had formally stated that I deemed the same undesirable; and I added that I considered such action on the part of a Bishop tended to weaken the authority of the Bishop of the Diocese, and that I regretted it.
I am sorry that I cannot alter this opinion,--so must sign myself with all Christian courtesy,
Very faithfully yours,
C. J. Gloucester and Bristol.
The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Dunedin.
Preston Vicarage,
Dec. 28, 1867.
My dear Lord,
I am very sorry to trouble you with another letter, but I don't think we quite understand one another.
The question is, not whether a certain line of conduct is or is not calculated to weaken the authority of the Bishop of the Diocese, but whether I am justly chargeable with such conduct, on account of having preached a sermon at S. Raphael's Bristol.
I presume you have satisfied yourself that I was aware of your having formally condemned the "debatable usage". Yet how you could have arrived at that conclusion, I do not quite see.
All I can say is that I knew nothing whatever of the matter. I do not even know what the usage in question was. Nothing unusual, I repeat, occurred at the service at which I was present.
What then was my offence of which you thought it worth while to speak "in a tone of complaint" to the Primate? I do think, my dear Lord, that I have some ground of complaint that you so hastily took for granted a knowledge on my part which had no existence in fact; without which knowledge I could not even from your own point of view be worthy of blame for officiating at S. Raphael's.
[64] I am confident that when you take this into consideration you will free me from the censure you have cast upon me.
Believe me, my dear Lord,
Very faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Dec. 30, 1867.
Dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I hasten to acknowledge your polite note.
If you were not aware that any unusual practices, whether in reference to vestments or ceremonial, were adopted at S. Raphael's, I will at once state the same to the Archbishop, and withdraw the complaint.
If the contrary, I fear I must, with all courtesy retain the opinion that for a Bishop to officiate under such circumstances, without reference to the Bishop of the Diocese, is to weaken the authority of the Diocesan Bishop, unless he be known publicly to approve of such practices.
Very faithfully yours,
C. J. Glouc: and Bristol.
The Right Rev.
The Lord Bishop of Dunedin.
Preston Vicarage,
Jan 2, 1868.
My dear Lord,
In order to bring the matter between us to an issue, I am compelled to adopt a tone which I had much rather not employ.
1. The Archbishop distinctly charged me, on your authority, with having encouraged "ultra ritualism" in your Diocese, by being present, and taking part in services, in which certain practices, condemned by the English Bishops were in use. I distinctly denied the charge. Do you still maintain it? If so, I call upon you to substantiate it by something like proof.
2. In your last letter you say that you will withdraw your complaint, if I was not aware of any unusual practices being in vogue at S. Raphael's. I call upon you to prove that I knew anything whatever of the details of the S. Raphael's ceremonial before I preached there.
In either case the burden of proof lies with you, since it was on your authority that the accusation was made.
I cannot help observing that this correspondence, together with other disagreements, affecting myself personally, that have resulted from the line of conduct you have followed, would have been prevented, had you resorted to the very obvious and natural courtesy of writing to me in the first instance, instead of proceeding at once to accuse me to the Primate, behind my back.
I remain,
Very faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
[65] The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Jan. 4, 1868.
Dear Bishop of Dunedin,
I stated in conversation to the Archbishop that you had officiated in a Church in my Diocese, where what are called ritualistic practices prevailed, without any reference to the Bishop, and that in doing so, I considered you had tended to weaken my authority.
I added that if the Archbishop deemed it necessary to mention this to you, his Grace was quite at liberty to do so.* [Footnote: * (Note in Bishop Jenner's hand) It was in a letter dated Aug. 30 that the Archbishop told me that a bishop had complained of me. I immediately wrote to beg that his Grace would tell me what Bishop it was. But it was not till Dec. 19 that he wrote to say that he had obtained "leave from the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol to tell me that it was himself." Yet, according to the latter, the permission was given immediately after the complaint was made. H.L.D.]
I really have nothing to add to this very simple statement than my frank permission (as far as I am concerned in the matter) if you feel yourself aggrieved by the course I have taken, to publish our letters.
I am sorry to have caused you any disagreement, whether in this or any other way.
Very faithfully yours,
C. J. Glouc. & Bristol.
The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Dunedin.
Preston Vicarage,
Feb. 1, 1868.
My dear Lord,
Your last letter so completely astounded me, that I was unable to answer it without first consulting as many of my friends as I could get access to; being unwilling to believe that my own unsupported view of your attitude towards me could be a just one. Hence the delay.
All my friends, without exception, to whom I have shown our correspondence, are of the opinion, viz. that since "the very simple statement"--to use your own words which you made to the Archbishop involved a serious charge against me, which was based on a false, or, at any rate, an unproved, assumption, it was incumbent on you either to substantiate, or to withdraw it. I confess I do not see how any other conclusion could have been arrived at.
I cannot adopt your suggestion that I should publish our letters. I should gain nothing by such a course, and the Church would suffer. I agree with one of my friends, a priest of great ability and experience, who writes as follows: "I should tell the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol that I should not wish to weaken the dignity of the Episcopate by publishing letters which proved that a (65/66) Bishop, so generally trusted and respected, had so totally lost his refinement of moral perception, as not to know how to apologise for a slander, which he had made, perhaps, inadvertently, but which he confirmed wilfully, by changing his position, yet refusing to retract the old one."
As this is the last communication I shall trouble you with, I beg to make the following statements in justification of myself, with slender hopes, however, of convincing you of your injustice towards me.
1. Before my visit to S. Raphael's, I knew absolutely nothing of how the services there were conducted, except that I had heard of the excellence of the Choir.
2. I did not, and do not consider (and I never heard of anyone who did) that a Bishop on going into another Diocese is bound to require the clergy in whose churches he may minister, to produce a clean bill of health from their Diocesan, before he consents to have any dealings with them.
3. At the time I preached at St. Raphael's, there was a feeling among Churchmen that you were one of the few English Bishops who would deal fairly, and justly, and generously with those who were pointed at as "Ritualists". This consideration above would have prevented me from looking on Mr. Ward as "taboo", even if I had known of his ritualistic excesses. It would certainly never have entered my head that I was committing any sort of offence against your authority, by advocating the claims of my new diocese in his pulpit.
4. By the "disagreements" of which I spoke in a former letter as having resulted from your complaint to the Primate, I mean the conviction in his Grace's mind that everything charged against me by ultra Protestant partisans is true, because even 'a Bishop not supposed to belong to the Low Church, but rather to lean the other way" (his own words) had accused me; and the consequent injustice I have had to encounter; extending even to the encouragement of reluctant members of my flock; one of whom his Grace authorized, without having spoken a word to me on the subject, to promulgate in my diocese, his entire disapprobation of my proceedings. You complain of my weakening your authority. What can be said or thought of this?
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
H. L. Dunedin.
The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Feb. 3, 1868.
Dear Bishop of Dunedin,
As you now at length state what would have seemed antecedently in the highest degree improbable, viz. that "you knew absolutely nothing of how the services (at the Church in question) were conducted"--it becomes my duty at once to place your letter before his Grace, and readily to express my regret that my statement to the Archbishop (that you had weakened the authority of the Bishop of the Diocese by preaching in the church in question) was not ac-[66/67]companied with the expression of the opinion that though the church had been specified in Parliament, alluded to in Convocation, and otherwise publicly noticed previous to the date of your preaching there--it was still possible that you might know nothing about what was thus generally known.
Very faithfully yours,
C. J. Glouc. and Bristol.
The Right Revd.
The Lord Bishop of Dunedin.
P.S. Should the vindication of my character ever seem to require it, I shall hold myself at liberty to publish the whole correspondence.
Bishop Jenner now wrote to Mr. Ward as follows:
Preston Vicarage,
Feb. 5, 1868.
My dear Mr. Ward,
In November 1866, you were kind enough to allow me to preach for my diocese in your Church on a week-day evening. This, (as it appeared to me) very innocent act on my part, has led to a correspondence with your Diocesan, the purport of which I think it right that you should know. I send therefore a rough precis of the letters. If you can point out any errors in fact, I should be obliged.
Your Bishop evidently disbelieves in my previous ignorance of the details of your services. Yet nothing can be more certain than that, before I saw some embroidered chasubles etc. in your vestry, I did not know that you even wore the vestments. I knew of course that you were a High Churchman, and that you were duly abused as such. But so was the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol at that time. As to how far you went, and what you did, in or out of Church, I was completely in the dark.
It is quite possible that reports of denunciations of your Church and services by such men as (e.g.) Lord Westmeath or Mr. Whalley, may have met my eye. But if they did, they left no impression on my mind. I am certain I never saw or heard of any allusion to you or your Church in Convocation.
It is not agreeable to have one's word doubted, but this Ritualistic Controversy seems to be frightening certain Bishops, not only out of their wits, but what is perhaps worse, out of their sense of justice, and of the requirements of their position as English gentlemen.
Believe me, dear Mr Ward,
Most faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
The Revd. A. Ward,
S. Raphael's, Bristol.
Unfortunately Mr. Ward's reply is not to be found among Jenner's papers. The correspondence is an example of the kind of thing that [67/68] was happening in the attempt to put down ritualism. In this connection it is interesting to note that in 1877, the Bishop having said not a word to Ward about his practices, suddenly imposed conditions which Mr. Ward could not accept and the Church was closed. 'When I had the pleasure of speaking with you--now several years since--the law had not been declared, and everything said had necessary reference to the then existing state of things.' But sometimes these men got caught up in their own hysteria and he must be sober indeed who, in the same year (1877) that St. Raphael's controversy began, is not amused to find a great attack in the Rock on Dr. Ellicott. The Bishop had laid the foundation stone of a new church in Cheltenham and had worn his convocation robes. 'The mark of the beast' and 'a ritualistic garb', were among the expressions used, while the Editor wrote 'such a cockatoo dress as that in which Dr. Ellicott disported himself in the discharge of his most solemn episcopal functions', and offered to contribute towards the cost of his prosecution!
And now for Mr. Young. The report he sent home left a good deal to be desired in the matter of accuracy. The Archbishop of Canterbury did nothing, it will be observed, to contradict in public what he claimed in private were inaccuracies in Mr. Young's report of their interview. He had ample opportunity in his letter to the Rural Dean of Otago dated 1 Nov, 1867 but did not take it:
Addington Park,
Nov. 1 1867.
Rev. and dear Sir,
I certainly think that if Dr. Jenner were to carry out in the Diocese of Dunedin those Ritualistic tendencies which his conduct since his consecration led me to believe influenced him, his presidency over the Diocese would not be beneficial to its interests. But he so solemnly assures me that he has no intention whatever to obtrude them upon his flock, and so resolved is he to give no offence in this direction, that I cannot but believe he may safely be trusted. He has many qualities which will make him a valuable chief pastor, and I hope the clergy and laity of your Rural Deanery may be induced to accept him on the condition he offers, viz. that if two-thirds of the communicants of the Diocese shall, at the end of three years, call for his resignation of the See, he will yield to the call; and in order to carry out this arrangement, he will engage that his resignation shall be placed in the hands of the Metropolitan, should the decision, at the close of that term, be adverse to him.
Hoping that this suggestion may approve itself to those with whom you are acting,
I remain, etc.
C. T. Cantuar.
That a man of the ability of Archbishop Longley should have written such a letter is astonishing. What play Jenner's enemies made of the words 'I cannot but believe he may safely be trusted'!
[69] It seems odd that Mr. Young did not go to Jenner's church in order to see how he conducted his services. He was questioned about this later in New Zealand but seems to have had no answer. He travelled as far as Frome, so he reported on his return to the colony, and in that notorious Ritualistic church he saw Bp. Jenner listening to a sermon. This was a sheer invention on his part for we have Bp. Jenner's assurance that he was never at Frome in his life. 'There was a lady there, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, who was permitted by her priest to attend the service, and she declared to him [Mr. Young] that everything was ready for the Roman Catholic body when the church came into its hands'.* [*Footnote: * It is only fair to say that when this statement was made in the Diocesan Synod it produced laughter, loud laughter at Mr. James Smith's rejoinder, 'A very old lady, I should think, that'. (Newspaper report).] Frome was the church of Mr. Bennett, who had preached the sermon at St. Matthias wherein he had 'almost advocated the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and the Infallibility of the Church' whatever that statement may mean. It was a singularly unfortunate choice. It is true that Mr. Bennett had adopted the use of vestments there at Christmas 1866. He had been very loathe to adopt them at that time but since they had been provided by the Churchwardens--'chasuble, dalmatic, and tunic for celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon'--he obeyed the 'Bishop of Exeter's dictum that a clergyman was bound to use the "vestment" if it was provided by the Churchwardens on behalf of the parish'. So much for the Archbishop's statement that the Bishops were unanimous--Henry of Exeter was no Ritualist, nor was he of the Oxford Movement; but he was not called the Athanasias [sic] of the West for nothing. What did little Goody Two Shoes at Canterbury think of him one wonders?
The damage in New Zealand was not what was the private opinion of Mr. Young but what he boasted to convey as the opinions of the Primate of All England. Supporters of Jenner were to say that Mr. Young's verbiage was intended to cover up the lack of his success in his mission on behalf of the Government of New Zealand, but they had to accept what he told them about his visit to Addington.
'A procession, composed of clergy, choristers, and the Bishop, all more or less gorgeously arrayed, was formed outside the church, and was met by other officials at the porch. It proceeded down the middle aisle in the following order--Boy carrying on high a large gold cross; choir chanting; boy carrying scarlet and white banner, which was afterwards affixed to the pulpit; remainder of choir; boys carrying blue, scarlet and white banners; two boys, each waving censers of burning incense; the clergy, I think eight in number, then the Bishop; lastly a boy, bearing a large purple banner with medallion on gold ground. All took their appointed places, the candles on the altar were lighted, and the full service of the Church commenced. A sermon was preached [69/70] by Mr. Bennett, vicar of Frome, of Ritualistic notoriety, when he extolled Ritualism, and almost advocated the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and the Infallibility of the Church. The Bishop pronounced the usual blessing, holding a crozier in his left hand, while describing in the air with his right, what appeared to be very like the sign of the cross. I noticed one young clergyman in the congregation, kneeling down on the pavement in the aisle before the altar, bowing and crossing himself, before he took his seat. Another gentleman in front of me was dressed in gown and cowl, with girdle round his waist, said to be a Brother of the Institution connected with St. Matthias. Altogether the decorations of the church and on the altar, the genuflexions and the signs of the cross, the lighted candles and incense offerings, were as complete as could be in a Roman Catholic Chapel; and yet all this took place in a professed Protestant Church, in the centre of England. Moreover, the Bishop-elect, not only took a conspicuous part in the ceremonies, but also afterwards, at the luncheon which I attended, expressed his "admiration of the services as conducted at St. Matthias".'
Thus Mr. Young begins his letter to the Rural Dean, the Rev. E. G. Edwards. There were so many errors in it. Bishop Jenner's part was to give the absolution and the blessing. In another letter Mr. Young says 'these are the very things allotted to a Bishop in the Romish mass'. The Roman Bishop in fact would only so act if he were 'assisting pontifi-cally' in his own diocese, but the Anglican Prayer-Book lays down that a Bishop shall say them 'if he be present'. He was attired in his black satin chimere with the hood of his degree, presumably scarlet, pink and violet. Later Mr. Young denied that he had ever said the Bishop was gorgeously attired.* [Footnote: * 'With regard to vestments, it had been frequently said that he [Mr. Young] had stated that the Bishop was gorgeously arrayed. But he had never so much, even so insinuated that, because he knew perfectly well, that in the ceremonies that he had described Bishops were not gorgeously arrayed.' Report of Mr. Young's speech at the Diocesan Synod, 1869.] The Bishop had proposed the health of the choir, and praised it highly. Not a word had been said about the service in general which all knew would have been considered by him to be very advanced indeed.
Mr. Young's letter provided a good deal of ammunition for Bishop Jenner's opposers in New Zealand but the reply of the Rural Deanery Board must have amazed him.+ [Footnote: + I accordingly despatched by the June mail a full report of the proceedings which I witnessed at St. Matthias, together with the result of my interview with his Grace, and have no doubt that the reply, which may be expected shortly, will satisfy Bishop Jenner that the opposition is not only formidable but universal.' The Guardian 30 October 1869.] Mr. James Smith who had consistently opposed the appointment of a Bishop now proposed, and the Rev. A. Gifford seconded, a resolution:
[71] 'That the Secretary be instructed to write to Mr. William Carr Young, conveying the thanks of this Board for his letter to the Rural Dean, dated 26th July last; but informing him that, while fully concurring in his opinion that any attempt on the part of the Bishop of Dunedin to introduce against the will of the members of the Church in this Diocese, such practices as those described in Mr. Young's letter, or any change of ritual, or obsolete observance distasteful to the laity, would meet with general opposition, and, if persisted in, would lead to most unhappy results, yet, having read the Bishop of Dunedin's letter to the Rural Dean, dated 1st July last, which, in effect, emphatically disavows any such intention, this Board does not feel justified, in the fact of that assurance, in endeavouring to dissuade the Bishop from undertaking the charge of his See.'
The Rev. W. P. Tanner and the Rev F. C. Simmons suggested an amendment:
'That this Board desires to express its thanks to Mr. Young for the zeal he has shown in the interests of the Church, and for the information contained in his letter. That, although the formation of the new See, to the extent of the appointment of a Bishop, was carried on against the wishes of many members of the Church and without the sanction of the Board, still, the Board does not consider that it would be an honourable thing for it to ask Bishop Jenner to resign an appointment which he has already received, but is anxious to welcome him, if he is ready to have an active sympathy with those who are working in the Church as it has already been established.'
The opposition, represented by Mr. R. B. Martin and Mr. Drewe also had an amendment:
'That this Board, after considering the correspondence of Mr. W. C. Young relative to Dr. Jenner, views with considerable alarm the possibility of Ritualistic practices being introduced into the Church in Otago and Southland, since the introduction of such practices could not but result in the most unhappy divisions.
That, seeing that as far as the Church here is concerned, the entire responsibility of causing the appointment rests with the Bishop of New Zealand, copies of Mr. Young's correspondence be forwarded by the next mail to the Bishop of New Zealand with a request to him to consult with the Bishop of Christchurch, and with the Archbishop of Canterbury--on whom the responsibility of the present appointment directly rests--and urging such steps as they may think fit to be taken to prevent the deplorable results which this Board thinks likely to ensue from the appointment of a Bishop of extreme views.'* [Footnote: * The members of the Rural Deanery Board, whatever their private opinion of Mr. Young's interference in the matter, were hardly free to rebuke him even if they had wished to. It appears that the Dunedin Parish Vestry was heavily indebted to Young; in 1864 they paid him the exceedingly large sum of £66.19.0d. as interest; the nature of the loan is not specified+ [Footnote within footnote: The Report of 1862 mentions that £1600 remained to be paid for the new St. Paul's church; possibly Young's loan was intended to wipe out this debt.] (Report of the Otago and Southland Rural Deanery Board for the year 1864, (Dunedin 1865), p. 14). Young was also Treasurer to the R.D. Board in 1862, but had relinquished the position to Mr. R. B. Martin by 1864. Obviously, it would have been impolitic to offend so valuable a friend of the Diocese.]
[72] Both amendments were lost, and the resolution was adopted--Ayes 12, Noes 9.
Both the Metropolitan and the Bishop of Christchurch were in England at this time, attending the first Lambeth Conference. That in itself was regarded by many as a Party occasion. His Grace the Archbishop asked the Dean of Westminster if there might be a closing service, on 18 September. To this the Dean replied, in a long letter, regretfully refusing the request:
You will kindly allow me to state the difficulty which I feel in the present instance. I have endeavoured to act in such matters on the rule of granting the use of the Abbey to such purposes, and such only as are inter-co extensive with the Church of England, or have a definite object of usefulness or charity, apart from party or polemical considerations.
Your Grace will, I am sure, see that however much your Grace's intentions would have brought the proposed Conference at Lambeth within this sphere, in fact it can hardly be so considered. The absence of the Primate and the larger part of the Bishops of the Northern Province, not to speak of the Bishops of India and Australia and of other important colonial or missionary sees, must ever irrespectively of other indications, cause it to present a partial aspect of the English Church, whilst the appearance of other prelates not belonging to our Church places it on a different footing from the institutions which are confined to the Church of England . . .* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 9 Oct. 1867.]
It was so difficult not to be trapped into Party! Well might the harrassed Archbishop write Jenner that 'my thoughts have been too much absorbed of late by thoughts of a very different character'.
The Bishop of Christchurch now wrote from Oxford on 30 November 1867:
My dear Edwards,
I have duly received the resolutions of the Rural Deanery Board, and have talked them over with the Metropolitan and we have come to the conclusion that they must be accepted as expressing the mind of the Church of Otago and Southland, and that Bishop Jenner must now decide for himself whether he will go out or otherwise. They are more favourable than I expected, and I must confess that Bishop Jenner's straightforward, manly, and Christian-like letter has also favourably impressed me, as it seems to have impressed the Board. I cannot help hoping and believing, that if he goes out he will throw himself heartily into his work, without troubling the Diocese with any eccentricities of teaching or practice. I will write more fully by the Suez mail, when I shall probably have learnt what decision he has arrived at. In the meantime one cannot but hope that the Church may not suffer, either from the scandal it would certainly incur by the consecration of a Bishop who should be found unfit for his office, or be rejected by those over whom he was intended to be [72/73] set, or by any action on his part which might weaken or impair the working of that part of the Church to which he might be sent.
Yours in haste,
H. J. C. Christchurch.
The Bishop was writing in haste, be it noted, and perhaps that is why he did not tell the Rural Dean that he had that very morning taken part in a Celebration at Clewer--with two candles lighted on the altar, a mixed chalice, the chapel full of the sisters in their habits, and the Warden, T. T. Carter present--what a blessing that Mr. Young had not seen him!
On 9 January 1868, Bishop Selwyn was enthroned at Lichfield, holding two sees, 15,000 miles apart for more than a year. The news of the appointment was received with just sorrow in New Zealand, where rumours of an impending resignation do not seem to have been published. Bishop Harper had written Bishop Jenner before leaving for England.* [Footnote: * Life of Bishop Selwyn, Tucker Vol. ii., p.246.]
There is no truth in the report of Bishop Selwyn's resignation. He may have made himself unpopular with the Maories by his active exertions for the spiritual welfare of the soldiers and by his accompanying them to some of their fields of action and the assistance that he gave General Cameron through his knowledge of the country, but the . . . [paper missing] and boldest friend, ready to do all he can for their welfare, though not disposed to overlook their faults. Besides this he is not a man to resign from unpopularity of which he has had a large share in his day among his own people. He will die at his post if he finds he can fulfil the duties of it to the last.+ [Footnote: + Fragment of letter in Bishop Harper's hand.]
And so 1868 was wearing on, and still Bishop Jenner remained in England. He did so on the advice of Bishop Selwyn and Bishop Harper who, while expressing the greatest feelings of personal support for him, thought that the opposition was still too strong. Other stories had reached him from New Zealand. Mr. Stanford who had consistently tried to stop him and had done his best as lately as the meeting of the Board on 20 Jan. (Ayes 5, Noes 8), had now changed his mind. The Bishop of Christchurch begged Jenner to keep it a secret 'I question much whether Mr. Stanford would like this his honest confession to be published abroad.'# [Footnote: # MS Letter of Bishop Harper to Bishop Jenner 27 April, 1868.]
The Rural Dean writes:
'I gather from what your Lordship says that Bishops Selwyn and Harper advised you to remain in England because the opposition was "increasing", I have written to tell them that they are altogether mistaken.'
[74] On 12 June 1868, the Bishop of Christchurch wrote Jenner from Castle Hill Englefield Green:
My dear Bishop,
It is not unlikely that my Diocesan Synod may meet shortly after my return to New Zealand and previous to the General Synod at Auckland, and that among other matters a proposition for the division of my Diocese may come before it for consideration and consent. A further question on the nomination of a bishop to the separated portion may be also raised, on the ground that the Deed of Constitution, Clause 23, gives to the Diocesan Synod the right of nomination. That clause probably contemplates the nomination to a Diocese formed and vacated. But it has been asserted, and with some reason, that the same power of nomination rests with the Diocesan Synod for the portion separated, in so much as that portion has as yet no synod of its own but is virtually represented by the Synod which has consented to the Separation. The answer to this may be that the Rural Deanery Board is for such a purpose equivalent to a synod, and if it asserts for itself the power of nomination, and adheres to the resolution respecting yourself, which it has hitherto arrived at, cadit questio. At least I do not think the Diocesan Synod will take up the question. But if the Board, for reasons of its own, because of a divided state of opinion in reference to yourself, and of an unwillingness in the face of that division of opinion to take any responsibility upon itself, should relegate the nomination to the Synod, then the battle must be fought out in the Diocesan Synod: and it may be a tough one if the representatives of Otago and Southland, who form part of our Synod, and are opposed to the nomination of yourself, should attend in any number. I should prefer, certainly if there is any wavering in the Rural Deanery Board, or any organised opposition on the part of the clergy and laity of the Deanery, that the question should come before our Synod; because, on the whole, there is a larger amount of sound Church feeling likely to prevail there than in the General Synod, and if the Diocesan Synod either makes or confirms the nomination of yourself, there can be no further questioning. But it is as well to be prepared for what may take place in my Diocesan Synod, and it has occurred to me that a short statement from yourself, setting forth that the call to the office of Bishop of Dunedin emanates from those who, you have every reason to believe, were fully authorised to act in this matter, and that you had accepted the call, and had been consecrated in the belief that it was a good and valid one, would have great weight with our Synods, whether Diocesan or General. I would willingly take charge of such a statement, and present it as from yourself. Whatever objections might be made to your nomination on other grounds, great consideration must be given to the fact that you have been placed in the position of a candidate for the See of Dunedin, by the acts of others, and not of your own.
Yours very faithfully,
H. J. C. Christchurch.
I have heard nothing fresh from Otago. Mr. Selfe, when at Canterbury, with Lord Lyttleton, spoke out plainly in your favour.
[75] One can imagine that there was much in this letter to cause Bishop Jenner uneasiness. It was being suggested officially to him that he was a suppliant for the See of Dunedin, and not its Diocesan by appointment and consecration. More important for the first time the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch is to be a further hurdle to be jumped. In order to clarify the position he put his case in a reply to Bishop Harper:* [Footnote: * Bishop Harper was elected Primate of New Zealand at the General Synod held at Auckland in October, 1868.]
Preston Vicarage, Sandwich
June 19, 1868.
My dear Bishop,
I had always intended to write to you, or to see you before your return to New Zealand, in order that you should be in full possession of my views in regard to the Bishopric of Dunedin.
Pray judge me leniently if, in what I have now to say, I appear to speak intemperately or presumptuously, or to be over pertinacious in claiming what I consider to be my just rights. For I must maintain, with all respect and deference, that the question at issue is neither more nor less than this: Am I to receive common justice, or flagrant injustice, at the hands of the New Zealand Church?
This, then, is my case. In October, 1865, the Archbishop of Canterbury, acting at the request of the Metropolitan of New Zealand, offers me the Bishopric of Dunedin, which I accept. Bishop Selwyn writes to urge the Archbishop to consecrate me without delay. In April 1866, he addresses me as Bishop of Dunedin "in the hope that his letter to the Archbishop has removed all doubts, and that I am already consecrated". In the same letter he tells me that "there is an unanimous desire on the part of the runholders for my immediate arrival".
In August, 1866, I am consecrated, and I assume the title of Bishop of Dunedin, on the strength of Bishop Selwyn's letters, and of others from the clergy and laity of Otago and Southland. Up to April, 1867, letters continue to be sent from the colony, expressive of satisfaction at my consecration. About this time two discoveries appear to have been made: 1st: that my nomination was irregular; 2nd: that I had "Ritualistic tendencies". It is determined to make use of the first of these objections to save the Diocese from the fatal effects of the last. To this end, agitation is resorted to, and somewhat questionable means employed. The Rural Deanery Board, convened again and again for the purpose of repudiating my claims, steadily refuses to take any such action. By degrees the opposition wavers; I receive assurances from all the parts of the new Diocese that a reaction has set in, and that my coming is anxiously looked for, even by my sometime opponents. I, myself, wish to go out to meet friends and foes alike with cordiality. I am, however, detained by yourself and the Metropolitan, on the ground that the General Synod must adjudicate on my claims to the See, while- as it appears now for the first time there is a probability of the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch taking the matter into its hands, and insisting on its right to nominate a Bishop for Dunedin.
This brief resume seems to represent accurately the history of the case, brought down to the present moment. The few observations I have to make [75/76] upon it will, I hope, put you in possession of my views in regard to my own position; and will be an answer to the suggestion in your letter of the 12th inst., respecting the statement that you wish me to make to be presented to your Diocesan Synod.
As at present advised, I do not at present see my way to send such a statement as you propose; because I can by no means consent to assume any attitude approaching or resembling that of a suppliant for what I maintain to be my RIGHT. You say that, in your Synod, there is likely to be a greater amount of sound Church feeling than in the General Synod. But surely this is not a question of sound or unsound Church feeling. The only possible issue--certainly the only issue that with my concurrence can be submitted to the Synod, whether General or Diocesan is this: whether, in the interests of the New Zealand Church, faith is to be kept with me or not? As far as I have any voice in the matter, I distinctly object to be judged (more especially in my absence) for any presumed "tendencies" whatever. And I contend that the time is past for advancing "irregularities" on the part of others as a reason for my rejection. You say that "great consideration must be given to the fact that I have been placed in the position of a candidate (?) for the See of Dunedin by the acts of others, and not by my own". I say that this is the very point on which the whole question turns. By the act of others, I was offered the See, by the act of others I was consecrated. As for myself, I was entirely passive, after I had accepted the Archbishop's offer. Not the least hint was given me, before my consecration, that it was possible, after all, that I might be repudiated by the New Zealand Church. You said nothing about such a chance in your letters, and the Metropolitan was equally silent until the irrevocable step had been taken and the indelible "character" impressed upon me. Yet surely it was, and must have been somebody's business to see that I was not left in the dark in a matter of such vast importance. I have a right to ask by whose fault it is that I find myself in so ambiguous a position. It may be said--it has been said that Bishop Selwyn was too rapid in his movements in that he wrote to the Archbishop before the Otago and Southland churchmen were prepared to receive a Bishop. Or, again, that his Grace was too precipitate in proceeding to consecrate me, and that in so doing he took Bishop Selwyn and everybody else by surprise. To this last statement the letter from Bishop Selwyn of April, 1866, already referred to, is a sufficient answer; to say nothing of the fact that nearly a year was allowed to elapse between my acceptance of the Archbishop's offer and my consecration. But whoever may be to blame, nobody, I believe, has ever hinted that the least responsibility can attach to me. And yet, I am the one person on whom it is proposed to visit the fault. How can it be expected that I shall acquiese in such an obvious injustice? As to the claim which you say may be made by your Synod to nominate a Bishop for Otago and Southland, it is surely too late to press it--I mean, after calmly looking on all this time, while the Rural Deanery Board exercised the functions of a Synod, in nominating and accepting a Bishop. If this does not amount to a tacit consent to the proceedings of the Rural Deanery Board, it is difficult to say what could be so interpreted. This is all I have to say on the subject.
[77] In conclusion, I may mention that the only reason why I have not before assumed the tone here employed is, that I was, and am still, unwilling to engage in anything approaching a contest with persons for whom I entertain a profound respect and admiration. I had much rather sit at the feet of yourself and Bishop Selwyn, and submit implicitly to your judgement. Nor can I think that judgement would differ materially from the views I have now expressed.
I have laid the case before several friends, entreating them to point out any weak places in the positions assumed, but the only answer I can get is, that there cannot be two opinions on the question.
Believe me, most faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
To this letter the Bishop of Christchurch sent a reassuring reply:
Castlehill, June 23 1868
My dear Bishop,
I must have expressed myself very badly, or you must have misunderstood what I wrote, if, as your letter of the 19th leads me to suppose, you conceive that the statement which I recommended your forwarding to New Zealand had any direct reference to the Ritualistic charges which some have brought against you. I do not see how it is possible that any such charges can be entertained by either General or Diocesan Synod, though it is possible that they may influence the votes of some of the members on such questions as the division of my diocese, or the confirmation of your nomination. The statement which I suggested, you have in part given in the first portion of your letter. It recounts the acts of others through which you were consecrated a Bishop in New Zealand. And, as you say, it is a matter of simple justice that you should not suffer through any haste or undue exercise of authority of others. What I should like to have, is this statement in a separate form, somewhat enlarged upon, and supported by extracts from such letters and documents as may be within your reach, with exact dates. Such a statement I could put into the hands of the more sober-minded members either of the Diocesan or General Synod. If it can be shown, as I think it easily can, that the New Zealand Church is bound in justice and duty to accept you as one of its Bishops, an interest may be created in your favour, which may not only neutralise the prejudice against you, which some have allowed themselves to entertain, but call out an amount of energy and activity in collecting what is yet needed for the completion of the endowment.
Yours very faithfully,
H. J. C. Christchurch
Bishop Jenner was immensely relieved. It was now clear that Dr. Harper was still firmly on his side, and he wrote in reply:
Preston, June 24, 1868
My dear Bishop,
You certainly did not suggest in your letter of the 12th that I should include the "Ritualistic" charges in the statement which you proposed I should send to the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch. But I cannot think I was wrong in assuming that this was implied, because in your former letters you so distinctly [77/78] represented such charges as likely to be the most formidable difficulties I should have to contend with. I learn now for the first time that, in your opinion, such charges cannot be entertained by the Synods either General or Diocesan. Let me remind you that in your letter of February 7th you wrote thus:
Your opponents (in the General Synod) must, I think, abandon this ground of opposition (the irregularities), and take up that which is really their ground of opposition--your supposed "ritualistic tendencies?"
I must also refer to the Bishop of Lichfield's speech in Convocation (of which I sent you a report) wherein he said that "when Bishop Jenner's Ritualistic practices were called in question, the parties concerned agreed to defer the matter to the General Synod, for its decision", on which I observed that I for one had never agreed to any such reference, unless, indeed, a definite charge should be brought which I should have proper opportunity of meeting. But no explanation or qualification of Bishop Selwyn's words having ever reached me, I think I was justified in concluding that it was still intended to press "Ritualistic charges" against me at the Synod. I am very glad to find that I was in error.
It is also a great satisfaction to me to find that your opinion coincides with mine as to what is the real question at issue. But please remember that this is another matter, of which I had not hitherto been apprised. I never knew before that you admitted that the New Zealand Church is bound in justice and DUTY to accept me as one of its Bishops.
It appears then, that no charge against me of "Ritualism", or, I suppose, anything else, can be entertained by the Synods, and that the question will resolve itself into one of bona or mala fides towards me. If this issue be fairly submitted to the Synods I have not the least fear of the result--only I do wish that I had not been kept all these months on a false scent.
I will draw up a statement to be presented to your Synod. It will be one, however, in which I shall plainly, though, I hope temperately, assert my RIGHTS and it will be understood that I send it simply in order that I may help the New Zealand Church out of the dilemma in which it has been placed, and not in order to obtain any favour at its hands. I do not ask favour, I demand justice.
Believe me--Very faithfully yours,
H. L. Dunedin.
Bishop Jenner was now convinced that once he was among his own people they would gladly receive him. Many of his English friends dwelt on his usefulness to the Church in England where he was well-known and respected, and begged him not to abandon this for New Zealand where he was not known at all, and where there was an opposition party, whatever its size or influence. But he felt called by God to his Diocese of Dunedin, and all other considerations, including the education of his family which must and did suffer, should not stand in his way. He would sail for New Zealand.
Though at the beginning wary of making a statement to be submitted to the first Diocesan Synod when it should be appointed he now [78/79] had been persuaded to do so by the Bishop of Christchurch. It was a most serious error on his part since the Bishop of Christchurch had already invested the Rural Deanery Board with the authority of a Diocesan Synod for the purpose of nomination, and the Board had accepted him. At least the new Synod could only confirm the action of its predecessor at worst and influenced by virulent and unscrupulous agitation it could, despite the Bishop of Christchurch's assurances to the contrary, damn his appointment. It was Bishop Jenner's first big mistake to put himself in a position where nothing could be gained and all might be lost. It was a deliberate trap by the Bishop of Christchurch and Jenner, poor fool, walked into it. He was so certain that he was right, and that the Bishop of Christchurch would see him through the Diocesan Synod and the following General Synod over both of which he would preside. On the 30th of June he notified the Bishop that he would sail for New Zealand as soon as he conveniently could. The Bishop of Christchurch now had a statement on which Jenner could be judged in his absence, he had a supplication from a Bishop who had been accepted by the Rural Deanery Board and confirmed by the Standing Committee of the General Synod whose function it was to act for that Synod between its triennial sittings. One thing more was necessary. Bishop Jenner had a genial personality and a great gift of persuasive oratory, he must at all costs be silenced until after the Diocesan Synod had met. The Bishop of Christchurch played his trump card. He inhibited Bishop Jenner on his arrival.
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