I wish that I had discovered this book before I attempted to write the first draft of my essay on church and state in the reign of Queen Victoria for the symposium of the Church Law History Consortium at Cambridge. It would have been enormously helpful as I navigated the labyrinthine and multitudinous paths along which the relationship between church, state and people wound its meandering way through the Victorian age. For in this elegant and eminently readable volume G R Evans tells the story of the nineteenth century changes, debates and episodes which, though they fell short of formal or legal disestablishment, fundamentally changed the dynamics of the relationship between the Church of England, the state, and the people. It has been quite some time since anyone has attempted to tell this story in the round, but that is not this book's only claim to our attention. This volume has the added attraction of making explicit links between historical developments and contemporary debates – bringing the story told into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In her introduction, Evans begins by introducing us to the Anglican clergy of the period. She explores their character, their education, and their relationship with their bishops. Having introduced the lower clergy in this way, she passes on to a consideration of the bishops, including their role, powers and emoluments, as well as their relationship with their cathedrals and cathedral chapters. Bringing the incipient role of the ecclesiastical commissioners onto the stage, she examines both the problems caused by the huge variations in episcopal income and reactions to attempts to address them. The introduction then concludes with a description of the relationship between the Church and the people, with an exploration of the conviction that there was a link between the moral character and conduct of the people and their levels of religious observance and of their engagement with religious teaching. The resulting attitudes and anxieties of the state around religious provision are then traced through a discussion of church building, pews, dissent, and the general role of the state in ensuring religious provision. In this way, the stage is set for what follows.
The first substantive chapter addresses what Evans refers to as the ‘disputed boundary between Church and State’, discussing the blurred nature of that boundary, and the difficulties to which it gave rise in the nineteenth century – tracing the consequences for nineteenth century Churchmen of the sixteenth century religious settlement. She explores, in particular, how the composition of Parliament changed incrementally but decisively over the period to accommodate and comprehend non-Anglicans, while also considering the continuing and significant role played in Parliament by the Church of England's bishops and its ecclesiastical lawyers. This leads into an examination of the revival of Convocations and the enduring difficulties encountered in attempts to determine the location of the proper jurisdictional boundaries between a reformed/reforming Parliament and the revived Convocations.
The next three chapters shift the attention of the narrative somewhat away from Parliament and onto the ecclesiastical courts. So, chapter 2 introduces the reader to those courts, and to the lawyers who made their living and careers there. It considers the character, composition and temperament of the ecclesiastical bar, the nature of the work that they did, and the processes by which they did that work, before passing on to an examination of the courts’ proponents and critics, and to the broad sweep of reform which impacted them as the nineteenth century progressed. In doing so, Evans navigates her readers through the tale of the ecclesiastical courts being stripped of secular jurisdiction, the rise and fall of the clerical magistrate, and the disappearance of such venerable institutions as the High Court of Delegates and Doctors Commons.
Chapter 3 then turns its attention to the courts’ dealings with Church of England clergy, passing from a discussion of the idea of a ‘solemn contract with the nation’ (p 126) to teach the doctrines of the Church, to the link between that and the desire of some to treat church endowments as a species of national property, and to the idea that the law provided a fundamental guarantee of the Church's doctrine and teaching. Here too, though, the difficulties caused by blurred boundaries between the spiritual and the temporal are in play as the author sets out the main parliamentary initiatives aimed at reforming clergy discipline, and many of the theological controversies and cases which formed a backdrop to, or underpinned, such legislative endeavours.
Chapter 4, the final chapter focused on the ecclesiastical courts, shifts the focus of the reader from the ecclesiastical courts’ jurisdiction over matters of clergy discipline, to their now (almost entirely) vanished jurisdiction over the laity. It begins with an exploration of marriage litigation, and debates about the validity of marriages, jurisdiction over wills and legal rights in respect of burials, and the offences of brawling and blasphemy, before concluding with a consideration of the issues of costs and contumacy. In doing so it charts a shift from the expectation of religious conformity, to toleration, and ultimately to freedom of expression, freedom of belief, and the embracing of religious diversity. These themes, and their consequences, are picked up again in the final substantive chapter of the book, which once again turns the attention of the reader back to a wider stage. It analyses the shifting relationships between the churches, different ideas of church, and the desire for ecumenism, before exploring the evolving position of Roman Catholics in England, and the progressive dismantling of the plethora of religious disabilities which had hindered the lives of dissenters and non-conformists – Protestant, Catholic and non-Christian. The chapter then concludes with a discussion of the debates about who, in these changed social and legal circumstances, should pay for the upkeep of Anglican churches and the salaries of their ministers. Thus, at the last, the great debates about church rate and tithe hold centre stage.
Continuing trends and themes seen in earlier chapters, the conclusion brings the story right up to the current day in its consideration of the confusions and anomalies incident upon Establishment, and of the consequences of reliance upon Parliament to legislate for the Church. Leaving behind the confines of the nineteenth century, it tells the story of some of the great debates and controversies of the twentieth century, including the Prayer Book controversy, debates about lay agency and the birth of modern synodical government, the passing into history of the last vestiges of church rate and tithe, and continuing efforts to reform the ecclesiastical courts and clergy discipline. In concluding, the author poses the question whether the developments of the last two hundred years have in fact resulted in ‘quiet disestablishment’, or the reality of a Church which is disestablished in all but name. I wonder, in passing, whether our answer to her question might look slightly different now than it did before recent events.
Even in this brief overview of the contents of this book, it is easy to see that its scope and coverage is nothing if not ambitious. There is, in a book of this nature, inevitably much ground to cover, and there are many difficult decisions to be made about what is included and what is omitted. It is unsurprising, then, that I might perhaps have felt that some things were included that might well have been left out, and that other topics, which I would have delighted in discussing, were skated over or ignored. But to complain to this effect would be not only both churlish and ungrateful, but would also fail to give due credit to the endeavour undertaken by the author.
It is nigh on impossible to craft a narrative of this breadth and scope, comprehending so many facets of life over such a period of sustained and seismic change, in a way which is both engaging and accurate, and which does not lose the particular to the morass and blandness of the general. Yet this is precisely what the author has achieved here. There may be two secrets to her success, and there are certainly, to my mind, two great strengths to her narrative. The first rests in her habit of shifting from the broad narrative to tales of the activities and experiences of individuals within that – bringing nuance and a warmth and reality to the story told. Thus, the figures of Henry Phillpotts, of William Haslam, and Robert Phillimore, amongst others, rise from the page. The second, rests in the author's use of contemporary literature to explore key themes, ideas and controversies – so the words of Trollope, Dickens, Hardy and Gaskell are woven through the text to great effect.
