Anglicans and the Atlantic World: High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection 9780773571044

Citation preview

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Anglicans and the Atlantic World

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mcgill-queen’s studies in the history of religion Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. series two In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor 1

Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640–1665 Patricia Simpson

2

Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience G.A. Rawlyk, editor

3

4

Infinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk, editors

5

Labour, Love, and Prayer Female Piety in Ulster Religious Literature, 1850–1914 Andrea Ebel Brozyna

6

The Waning of the Green Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 Mark G. McGowan

7

Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 John-Paul Himka

8

Good Citizens British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870–1918 James G. Greenlee and Charles M. Johnston, editors

9

The Theology of the Oral Torah Revealing the Justice of God Jacob Neusner

10 Gentle Eminence A Life of George Bernard Cardinal Flahiff P. Wallace Platt 11 Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behaviour Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750–1870 Kevin McQuillan 12 Between Damnation and Starvation Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855 John P. Greene 13 Martin Luther, German Saviour German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 James M. Stayer 14 Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William Katerberg 15 The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896–1914 George Emery 16 Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, 1948–2000 Paul Charles Merkley 17 A Social History of the Cloister Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime Elizabeth Rapley 18 Households of Faith Family, Religion, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 Nancy Christie, editor

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19 Blood Ground Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity inn the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853 Elizabeth Elbourne 20 A History of Canadian Catholics Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism Terence J. Fay 21 Archbishop Stagni’s Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question, 1915 John Zucchi, translator and editor 22 The Founding Moment Church, Society, and the Construction of Trinity College William Westfall 23 The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches Haim Genizi 24 Governing Charities Church and State in Toronto’s Catholic Archdiocese, 1850s–1950s Paula Maurutto 25 Anglicans and the Atlantic World High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection Richard W. Vaudry

series one G.A. Rawlyk, Editor 1 Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815–1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson 2 Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario William Westfall

3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839–1918 Marguerite Van Die 4 The Dévotes Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France Elizabeth Rapley 5 The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau 6 The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer 7 A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for an New International Order, 1918–1939 Robert Wright 8 Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart 9 A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881–1925 Rosemary R. Gagan 10 God’s Peoples Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson 11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750–1930 Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, editors

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12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 Brian P. Clarke

20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844–1994 Brian J. Fraser

13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll, editors

21 The Lord’s Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple

14 Children of Peace W. John McIntyre

22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau

15 A Solitary Pillar Montreal’s Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution John Marshall

23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen

16 Padres in No Man’s Land Canadian Chaplains and the Great War Duff Crerar

24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827 to 1905 Eldon Hay

17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Canadian Approaches P. Travis Kroeker 18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917–1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw 19 Through Sunshine and Shadow The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 Sharon Cook

25 Methodists and Women’s Education in Ontario, 1836–1925 Johanna M. Selles 26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lamont

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Anglicans and the Atlantic World High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection r i c h a r d w. vau d ry

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2003 isbn 0-7735-2541-6 Legal deposit second quarter 2003 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Research Committee of the King’s University college. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Vaudry, Richard W. (Richard William), 1955– Anglicans and the Atlantic world: high churchmen, evangelicals, and the Quebec connection / Richard W. Vaudry. (McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion; 25) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-7735-2541-6 1. Anglican Church of Canada – Quebec (Province) – History –19th century. 2. Quebec (Province) – Church history – 19th century. 1. Title. II. Series. bx5612.q8v39 2003

283′.714′09034

c2002-905396-x

This book was typeset by Dynagram Inc. in 10/12 Baskerville.

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For Wendy, James, Eric, Eleanor, and Edward

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Contents

Preface

xi

Illustrations

xiv

Introduction

3

1 Communication, Commerce, and Culture 2 A Protestant Identity

13

39

3 The Structure of Ecclesiastical Politics

70

4 George Mountain, Henry Roe, and the Making of a High Church Tradition 97 5 Transatlantic Evangelicalism 6 The Synodical Controversy of 1857–1859 168 7 The Church in Danger 198 Epilogue Notes

219

225

Bibliography Index

309

275

134

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Preface

This book represents a homecoming of sorts. Growing up in Lennoxville, Quebec, and attending Bishop’s University as an undergraduate, I constantly encountered physical reminders of its Anglican past: the Gothic splendour of McGreer Hall, the English collegiate style of St Mark’s Chapel, and the names of Mountain and Nicolls, which still adorn its buildings. As one walks through the campuses of either Bishop’s University or Bishop’s College School, it does not take much imagination to conjure up images of a British imperial heritage transferred to the rural landscape of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. And yet little appears to remain of the spiritual vision that sustained the founders of these schools. It is my hope that this study has succeeded in recapturing the essence not only of their High Churchmanship but also of their opponents’ Evangelicalism. My scholarly work over the past twenty years has attempted to explore various facets of Anglo-American religious culture. My historical mentors, Hereward Senior and the late W. Stanford Reid, were at ease in both Britain and British America, and they instilled in me a desire to see the connections that suffused this Atlantic world. In bringing this work to completion, I have benefited enormously from the advice and encouragement of a number of historians. I shall always remember with fondness the many stimulating conversations discussing British history that I had over coffee with the late Philip Lawson. In inviting me to participate in the Queen’s Conference on Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience, the late George Rawlyk gave encouragement to the present project. He and David Priestley commented

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xii

Preface

on that paper before it was delivered. Parts of it now appear as chapter 6. Much of chapter 7 was previously published as “The Lennoxville Magazine, the University of Bishop’s College and Transatlantic Anglicanism in Victorian Canada,” in Journal of Eastern Townships Studies/ Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est in Fall 1997. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Eastern Townships Studies, the Aid to Scholarly Publication Programme of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and McGill-Queen’s University Press, who challenged and helped refine my thinking at numerous points throughout this study. Don Lewis shared with me his index to the London Record and thus saved me countless hours of slogging through that newspaper. I am especially indebted to Ian Rennie and Jack Little. In the final stages of the preparation of the manuscript, both of them gave it a very close reading. They brought to bear on it their considerable knowledge of British Evangelicalism and Quebec history. I am grateful for their meticulous attention to detail and penetrating insights. They may not agree with all that I have written, but it would have been a poorer effort without their help. Various archivists and librarians have made it possible for a historian living in Alberta to undertake Quebec and British colonial history with only a modicum of disruption. Among these, I should like to thank in particular Anna Grant of the Bishop’s University Archives and James Sweeny of the Quebec Diocesan Archives. Anna Grant also provided some of the illustrations reproduced here. As well, the staffs of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, the National Archives of Canada, the Archives Nationales du Québec, the Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Diocese of Huron Archives, the McCord Museum, the Montreal Diocesan Archives, the General Synod Archives of the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Suffolk Record Office have made my task considerably easier by their gracious reproduction of documents in their collections and their granting of permission to quote from these. I am especially grateful to Mrs Mark Bence-Jones for graciously giving me permission to quote from the George Pretyman Tomline Papers in the Suffolk Record Office. The interlibrary loans office at the University of Alberta and the reference librarians at Taylor University College helped locate a number of elusive newspapers, articles, and books. In particular, Patrick Burr, Selvah Suppiah, and Anne Poulton were always cheerful and accommodating in helping find sources. Two of my siblings, may elder brother, John, and, in particular, my sister Janice, graciously retrieved a number of documents from archives in Lennoxville.

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I acknowledge with gratitude the work of the staff at McGillQueen’s University Press – John Zucchi, Joanne Pisano, and Joan McGilvray – in guiding this book through the various stages on the road to publication. John Zucchi’s initial enthusiasm for the project never waned, and his sustained, well-tempered advice along the way was always most appreciated. Elizabeth Hulse, as copy editor, was meticulous in her attention to detail. She and John rescued me from myself on more than one occasion. Though the temptation among some historians is to live as though only the past mattered, I am grateful to my family for keeping me firmly grounded in the present. The unfailing love and support of my wife, Wendy, makes the present far more enjoyable than the past will ever be. I trust that my children, James, Eric, Eleanor, and Edward, have not been too aware that these old Anglicans have kept me from giving them my undivided attention.

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George Jehoshaphat Mountain, third lord bishop of Quebec (Bishop’s University Art Collection)

Bishop’ College, Lennoxville, Canada East, in 1865 (Illustrated London News, 4 March 1865)

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Jasper Hume Nicolls, first principal, University of Bishop’s College (Bishop’s University Art Collection)

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Archdeacon Henry Roe (Bishop’s University Archives)

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Jeffery Hale (photograph by Whipple, Boston, Mass., courtesy of Archives nationales du Québec à Québec)

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Anglicans and the Atlantic World

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Introduction When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion but the Church of England. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749)

Whatever affects England, – the heart of the Empire, – affects us, its extremities … we shudder at the phantoms which the imagination conjures up, in the event of England dropping the Colonial sceptre from her grasp, and thus wilfully parting with the locks of her strength; and we mourn, with a prophetic sorrow, over the reflex of barbarism, infidelity, and the despotism which will deluge the whole world, if the sun of Protestant England should suffer a partial eclipse, as it did in the bygone times at which we have rapidly glanced. The Church, 1 June, 1839, in an editorial commemorating the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles ii in 1660

On 23 April l847 George Jehoshaphat Mountain, second Anglican bishop of Quebec, preached a sermon in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Quebec City, before the members of the St George’s Society, entitled “The Responsibilities of Englishmen in the Colonies of the British Empire.” Englishmen, he declared, had a natural desire “to cherish those recollections of the land of their fathers.” Ever the Englishman ignoring Ireland, despite his position as a bishop in a church that, at least on paper, had united the church establishments of England and Ireland, Mountain went so far as to suggest: “there are English feelings, English principles, English institutions, English energies, which Englishmen, impelled by the very action within them of a general philanthropy, desire to carry over the world, and it is the part assigned to them by Providence to plant these happy productions of their native soil in all those vast and widely severed regions of the globe, which own the sway of their empire and bow to the sceptre of their Queen.” The spread of English civilization was both a Christian and a national duty. “We unfurl, as it were,” Mountain asserted, “the standard of England, and in all humility and thankfulness of heart, we stamp upon it the sacred emblem of the cross.”1 Given the venue and the audience, these were not sentiments likely to arouse controversy or invite criticism. They do, however, serve as a reminder that Mountain was a colonial bishop residing in an imperial

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4 Anglicans and the Atlantic World

city. Moreover, the cultural imperatives and political sensibilities of a High Churchman are embodied in the juxtaposition of a cluster of symbols – cross, flag, and sceptre – which, in turn, are linked to the ideas of philanthropy, Providence, and empire. Mountain was merely giving voice, in a fairly conventional way, to a number of assumptions about the place of the Protestant religion in the life of a national culture that radiated outward from England to the far reaches of the early Victorian empire. Some fourteen years later, Isaac Hellmuth, a newly appointed archdeacon in the Diocese of Huron, was in England canvassing his Evangelical friends for “funds for the establishment of a sound Evangelical College from which men may be sent forth to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all godly simplicity and fullness.”2 Hellmuth was perhaps one of the best connected Evangelicals in British North America. A Polish Jew who had converted to Christianity under the instrumentality of a missionary from the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, an Evangelical organization, he became an Anglican in Liverpool under the influence of Hugh McNeile. An enormously talented preacher and controversialist, McNeile was the rising star in a new generation of Evangelical Anglicans associated with the Record newspaper in London. As rector of St Jude’s, Liverpool, he exercised enormous influence over the developing religious and political life of that city.3 It was, then, as something of a protégé of McNeile’s that Hellmuth emigrated in 1844 to Lower Canada, where he was ordained by Bishop Mountain two years later. He taught Hebrew and rabbinical literature in the University of Bishop’s College until l853 and subsequently served as secretary to the Colonial Church and School Society. Hellmuth was an influential person in Quebec Evangelical circles and was instrumental in helping to transfer an Irish Evangelical tradition into the province. In the early l860s he left Quebec for London, Canada West, where he found a congenial home among the Irish Evangelicals whom Benjamin Cronyn had assembled in the Diocese of Huron.4 Hellmuth’s trips were a resounding financial success, but they emboiled him in controversy. In January l862 he had addressed the annual gathering of Evangelical Anglicans at Islington, in north London, on the state of the Church of England in British North America. With typical forthrightness, Hellmuth had pointed to the scarcity of Evangelical clergy and had gone so far as to suggest that “several of the Canadian dioceses are deeply tainted with the leaven of Tractarianism; and that the local Colleges, at which the Canadian clergy receive their training, are almost wholely under this baneful influence.”5 His remarks were reprinted in the London Record and subsequently drew fire from Mon-

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5 Introduction

treal’s High Church bishop, Francis Fulford. Fulford excoriated Hellmuth, calling into question his honesty and integrity and the Evangelicalism he represented. “I would ask whether the Archdeacon is himself the type of what is to be considered as an Evangelical man?” Fulford wrote; “if he is, I believe, and certainly hope he is right in stating, that they are not numerous; I confess men of such a stamp here have never had any encouragement from me.”6 These two vignettes point in the direction of a larger historical reality; namely, that Quebec, though on the margins of empire, must be seen in terms of what Bernard Bailyn has called “the unitary character of the entire Atlantic world.”7 Arising out of this historiographical tradition, of which Bailyn is himself such a distinguished representative, is an emphasis on the Anglo-American Atlantic world as a singular and integrated culture. Thus J.G.A. Pocock has written that there existed a “constellation of cultures constituting the Atlantic region, between which boundaries were so far permeable that we need not pay too much attention to their existence.”8 Pocock and many of the other participants in a recent American Historical Review forum, “New British History in Atlantic Perspective,” have called on historians of Canada to participate more fully in this Atlantic history enterprise. As Pocock himself expressed it, historians of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa need to take up the task of writing “their own British history.”9 The recent work of Linda Colley and J.C.D. Clark, and of their critics and defenders, has breathed new life into the study of religious identity in the British and Anglo-American world.10 In her 1992 tour de force, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, Colley argued that Protestantism was central to the creation of a British identity in the long eighteenth century. Though differing in substantial ways from Jonathan Clark’s characterization of England during this same period as a confessional state, the end result of her work has been to thrust religion onto centre stage in recent discussions of eighteenth-century British society and national identity.11 It is unfortunate that much of this recent debate has almost entirely ignored Canada.12 Yet perhaps Canadian historians have only themselves to blame for this neglect, for writing within a framework that stresses the importance of the Atlantic world has seldom found a receptive audience among Canadian historians. Indeed, one of the monumental failures of Canadian historiography has been its neglect of the transatlantic nature of much of its religious and political history. Almost a decade ago, Phillip Buckner, in his presidential address to the Canadian Historical Association, entitled “Whatever Happened to the British Empire?” mounted a trenchant critique of the insularity and whiggishness of Canadian historians. He argued that

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“Canadian historians have locked themselves into a teleological framework which is obsessed with the evolution of Canadian autonomy,” and in so doing, they had excised the Canadian experience from that of the larger Atlantic world.13 Yet as Buckner and others have argued, it was precisely this Atlantic and imperial context that gave shape and direction to events in British North America. Indeed, the Atlantic was not an impenetrable barrier to communication but a conduit to transmit people, news, ideas, and money back and forth between Britain and British North America. Emigration was not a terminal point in this process; it was but one link in an entire chain of ongoing cultural diffusion and communication. People in the English-speaking Atlantic world, moreover, spoke a common language of political and religious discourse and operated within a shared framework of ideas. When in l849, for example, Armine W. Mountain, son of the third bishop of Quebec, wrote to his sister, Harriet, wife of Principal Jasper Hume Nicolls of Bishop’s College, “I am afraid Nicolls will not escape the charge of Puseyism if he has permitted chanting the service,” he was writing in a language of common religious discourse and controversy that made as much sense in Lennoxville as it did in Oxford.14 In short, Britons on both sides of the Atlantic were linked by a series of formal and informal ideas and networks that continued throughout the nineteenth century. The Atlantic could, however, serve as a filter, making it imperative to study both the British and the North American contexts with a view to determining the complexities of their interactions.15 Viewing George Mountain alongside Isaac Hellmuth draws attention to the great divide between Evangelicals and High Churchmen within the ranks of the nineteenth-century Church of England.16 Each represented distinct traditions within Anglicanism that, with justification, could trace their lineages back to the formative days of the Elizabethan Settlement and to the theological and political ferment of the seventeenth century. There was considerable hostility and mutual suspicion between these two parties in the church, which manifested itself personally, politically, and culturally. At one level, this is merely to take seriously the way in which Victorian contemporaries viewed the Church of England. Lord Aberdeen commented to his son in the l850s that “your friend is right who says the Church of England is two churches only held together by external forces.”17 W.J. Conybeare, in his celebrated treatment of “Church Parties” in the Church of England, published in 1853, argued that there were “three great parties which divide the Church of England.” He went on to suggest that “these parties have always existed, under different phases, and with more or less of life. But they have been brought into sharper contrast,

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7 Introduction

and have learned better to understand themselves and one another, during the controversies which have agitated the last twenty years.”18 Demonstrating that this phenomon was as true in colonies such as Quebec as it was in Ireland and England is one of the principal objects of this study. Treating the church as a political structure brings into clearer focus the ideological clash between Evangelicals and High Churchmen and their fight for supremacy. As Professor John Kent has commented, “historians need a conflict model of the Victorian Established Church.”19 Earlier generations of Canadian Anglican historians produced what can best be described as a consensus view of its history. From the late nineteenth century until the 1960s, historians of Anglicanism in Canada, such as J. Langtry, William Bertal Heeney, T.R. Millman, T.C.B. Boon, and Philip Carrington, shared a preoccupation with national church building as the religious expression of nation building. Carrington, for example, suggested that one of the principal themes of The Anglican Church in Canada was the way in which “local traditions have grown together into a national Church, with a character of its own and a contribution which it can make to the national life of our great country and to the development of the Anglican Communion as a whole.”20 Indeed, at times, writing about Anglicanism in Canada began to look like the colony-to-nation school in lawn sleeves. Theological, ethnic, and political cracks in the church’s edifice, which seemed so evident to Victorian contemporaries, were papered over, giving a false impresssion of the state of the church. Accordingly, conflicts between Evangelicals and High Churchmen, though not entirely ignored, were downplayed. The consensus view has, to a large extent, collapsed under the sheer weight of local studies of dioceses and parishes.21 Yet while the deep divisions that existed between Evangelicals and High Churchmen are almost everywhere recognized, a number of significant misrepresentations remain. Many of these can be traced to the reluctance of Canadian historians to study in depth the Irish and English background to these movements. Moreover, it must be recognized that the lion’s share of attention has been devoted to Anglican dioceses in what would become the provinces of Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Quebec Anglicanism, with only a couple of exceptions, has largely been neglected.22 In nineteenth-century Quebec the division between Evangelicals and High Churchmen was nowhere more evident than in the conflict engendered by the introduction of synodical government in the l850s. Rather than just making “curious reading today,”23 this conflict brought to the surface all the ideological differences and hostility between Evangelicals and High Churchmen that had largely lain dormant

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for the previous half-century. Such differences had been readily apparent long before the Oxford Movement, but the Tractarian revolution had significantly raised the theological temperature in British North America. The political stakes were high, and the surface calm of colonial Anglicanism was shattered. British North American Evangelical Anglicans, more than their High Church opponents, have suffered at the hands of Canadian historians. In particular, they seem to have been the victims of a largely High Church bias in writing about British North American Anglicanism. They have generally been neglected and, when noticed, misunderstood. Part of the reason is their continued misrepresentation as “Low Churchmen.” A century and a half ago, Conybeare recognized that the term “Low Church” was used “by its adversaries” to describe the Evangelical party in the Church of England.24 To so describe Evangelicals, however, is to fundamentally misrepresent and misunderstand their standing and tradition within the history of Anglicanism.25 Simply put, Low Churchmen were those Whig members of the Church of England who had been foremost in support of both the Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian succession and who valued toleration of Dissenters as the price to be paid for securing their allegiance to the new regime in church and state. They were, moreover, children of the English Enlightenment, eschewing doctrinal precision and holy living as inimical to the spirit of the age. Both High Churchmen and Evangelicals repudiated this type of Christianity and churchmanship as lacking in seriousness and genuine spirituality. Despite the tendency of British North American High Church bishops such as George Mountain of Quebec to tar their Evangelical opponents with the Low Church brush, this characterization should not be taken at face value. Evangelicals represented an entirely different tradition within Anglicanism from that of Low Churchmen. At the same time, High Churchmen and Evangelicals were highly suspicious of each other. In the view of High Churchmen, the Evangelical emphasis on justification by faith alone might well lead at the very least to complacency about “the necessity of good works” and in the extreme to antinomianism. Their conversionist theology diminished or was even antithetical to a High Church understanding of sacramental grace and was far too individualistic. Moreover, to High Chuchmen, Evangelicals appeared soft in their churchmanship. They did not place sufficient emphasis on the doctrine of apostolic succession, and they were prepared to cooperate with Dissenters in a wide range of evangelistic and philanthropic activities.26 In short, for High Churchmen, Evangelicals were not really true members of the Church of England. At the same time, Evangelicals were suspicious that High Churchmen were only

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9 Introduction

barely Protestant. Too much emphasis on participation in the life and sacraments of the visible church as contributing to one’s salvation seemed to suggest a type of semi-Pelagian works-righteousness that could only serve to undermine the central truths of the Gospel; namely, that sinners were justified solely on the basis of the finished work of Christ on the cross. These suspicions could only become heightened after the Oxford Movement had done its work and after John Henry Newman had proved decisively by his defection to Rome where such principles led. Here, then, were exhibited profound theological differences concerning the nature of the church and the content of the Christian faith. Given the nature of the diocese and the sorts of issues at stake, it is not in the least surprising that the two parties could degenerate into warring camps. Professor V.H.H. Green once observed that it was difficult to describe evangelicalism without caricaturing it.27 The temptation to either lionize or excoriate its principles and personalities has been too much present in historical, literary, and theological writing since the early nineteenth century. For some, evangelicalism’s legacy to the Victorians entailed cant, hypocrisy, repressed sexuality, excessive individualism, patriarchalism, and an uncritical acceptance of the worst features of industrial capitalism.28 The tendency to caricature evangelicals is evident in the work of Robert Merrill Black. Both in his Toronto doctoral dissertation and in two published articles, he has provided one of the most detailed studies of Anglican Evangelical missions to French Canada in the second third of the nineteenth century. While Black’s work sheds considerable light on various aspects of the history of Anglicanism in the Montreal region, at various points he does betray his High Church bias. He tends to define Evangelicalism by a series of negative attitudes, suggesting that “the natural sympathy of Evangelicalism was with whig latitudinarianism and democracy.” On the other hand, his hero is Bishop Francis Fulford. Thus the bane of Montreal-area Evangelicals is “a man of balance, tact and reserve who led by example and appeals to rationality.” Fulford’s leadership was important in keeping in check the Evangelical “proselytizing” mission to French Canadians in Lower Canada/Canada East. By effectively emasculating this mission, Fulford prevented a “radical polarization” of Lower Canadian society between evangelical Protestants and ultramontane Roman Catholics. The failure of this Evangelical mission was “an important force for social peace,” and critical to the developing “Canadian” community and sense of identity. In many respects this treatment represents a revival of the old whignationalist school, and it fails to appreciate the dynamics of evangelicalism.29 Evangelicals believed that Protestantism was a great civilizing

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force. As moderate Tories they did not seek to rupture the bonds of social harmony, but as Evangelicals, they were committed to the necessity of evangelization, which in the Quebec context included Roman Catholics. A more sympathetic approach to evangelicalism might well regard it as representing the recovery of the robust Protestant theology of the English and Continental Reformers, combined with a vibrant, heart-felt Christian spirituality. It was, moreover, a humanizing and civilizing force; its leading individuals constituted the conscience of the nation, and its philanthropy, humanitarianism at its very best. The present study seeks to provide a comprehensive and nuanced picture of Anglicanism in Quebec by bringing the frequently neglected Evangelicals into clearer focus and by setting them alongside their High Church rivals. The divisions and debates between Evangelicals and High Churchmen can too readily be dismissed as being about “churchmanship” narrowly defined. Yet identification as High Church or Evangelical was not just a matter of differing positions on a narrow range of obscure theological issues; it was the centre of a person’s religious identity. Nor was this religiosity confined to some privatized sphere of the spiritual; rather, it was the foundation of an all-encompassing view of the world. Professor Donald Akenson has recently argued that “the Anglican Church has been grossly misunderstood in Canadian historical writing, at least as it operated on the parish level, and the misunderstanding has its roots in a failure of historians to study its transatlantic background.”30 Of particular concern to Akenson has been the tendency to write the history of Anglicanism in British North America as if it were the history of an exclusively English church, and not the English and Irish church that it was in reality. If the church is taken as a whole, it does seem clear that the single largest and most enduring group of Evangelical Anglicans in British North America were not English but Irish, and the implication of this fact politically, theologically, and culturally is deserving of further study. But Akenson’s admonitions about the failure of Canadian historians to study the transatlantic background is evident not only with regard to the Irish; it is also applicable, somewhat surprisingly, in the case of the English as well. One primary example will have to suffice for the moment. Even as accomplished and astute a historian as T.R. Millman, whose work drew on both English and Canadian sources, paid insufficient attention to how George Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Lincoln, former Cambridge tutor to (later prime minister) William Pitt, and reportedly Pitt’s principal adviser on clerical appointments, fit into the English ecclesiastical landscape.31 Thus, while rightly pointing to the importance of

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Pretyman Tomline’s patronage in securing Jacob Mountain the appointment as first bishop of Quebec, he failed to notice how opposed Pretyman Tomline was to Evangelicals making any headway in the English church.32 How this attitude might have affected embryonic Anglicanism in Quebec has never been considered. While previous historians of the British North American Anglican experience could not help but notice that they were dealing with a colonial church, seldom has the transatlantic connection been employed as the organizing principle for a study. This study is an exploration of what now appears to be the very alien world of Protestant, anglophone culture in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Quebec. Particularly these days, such a group is more likely to be held up to derision than treated sympathetically. The dominance of secular and materialist perspectives in Quebec historical writing since the Quiet Revolution has meant that the importance of religion to the cultural matrix of the province has often been ignored.33 This situation has been exacerbated by a nationalist political agenda that has a hard time viewing anglophones as authentic Quebecers. Perhaps they represent the ultimate lost cause in Canadian history and have thus been consigned to that proverbial dustbin of history. And yet the AngloProtestant community of nineteenth-century Quebec constituted one of the most self-confident and dynamic groups ever seen in the history of this country. Those who came to Quebec after the Conquest of 1759–63 found themselves in the middle of a numerically superior French Roman Catholic culture. Soon, however, they dominated much of Quebec’s political and economic life, and were well on their way to developing a network of cultural institutions and structures (legal, political, educational, and religious) designed to preserve and perpetuate their cultural identity. Quebec Anglicans were an important part of this anglophone Protestant culture, which maintained links to the wider transatlantic world. Yet as this study seeks to demonstrate, even a group as narrowly conceived as that of Quebec Anglicans did not present a unified public face. Some issues bitterly divided them; for that, they are all the more interesting. The present study is intended as a contribution both to Atlantic history and to the debate on religious identity. It takes up the theme of transatlantic Anglicanism from the appointment of Jacob Mountain as first bishop of Quebec in 1793 and carries it down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The earlier date can be said to have represented a new departure in English thinking about the role of the Church of England (soon to be the United Church of England and Ireland) in the colony of Quebec. The later dates are more arbitrary. The transatlantic connections certainly did not end in the 1880s, nor

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did party division and conflict. And yet the 1860s and 1870s, taken as a whole, represent a convenient terminus ad quem. Many of the principal actors had either died or left the diocese. George Mountain died in 1863, and Jeffery Hale in 1864. Isaac Hellmuth had left for the diocese of Huron in 1861. Gilbert Percy disappeared from the scene sometime in the l860s.34 Jasper Nicolls died in 1877. Of the mid-century antagonists, only the doughty Henry Roe remained. Nor is this study intended to serve as a complete narrative history of the dioceses of either Montreal or Quebec. The earlier work of Cooper and Reisner had endeavoured to do just that. Rather, this study represents an attempt to advance our understanding of various aspects of nineteenth century Quebec anglophone Protestant culture through an examination of the Anglican church in its transatlantic setting.

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1 Communication, Commerce, and Culture “A Canadian newspaper is a strange mélange of politics, religion, abuse and general information. It contains … in a condensed form, all the news of the Old and the New World, and informs its readers of what is passing on the great globe, from the North Pole to the gold mines of Australia and California.” Susanna Moodie, Introduction to Mark Hurdlestone (1853)

On All Saints’ Day 1793 the Ranger, carrying Jacob Mountain and twelve members of his family, docked at Quebec City after a voyage of nearly three months. Mountain was the first appointee to the See of Quebec, having been consecrated in the chapel of Lambeth Palace on 7 July 1793 by Archbishop Moore of Canterbury, with the assistance of Bishops Porteus of London, Warren of Bangor, and Horsley of St David’s. Jacob Mountain had not been the preferred choice of the governor general, Lord Dorchester; that had been Philip Toosey, rector of Quebec and sometime tutor to Dorchester’s children. Yet Mountain clearly had better connections to the corridors of power at Westminster. While at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1769 to 1783, first as pensioner and later as junior fellow, he became acquainted both with William Pitt and, more importantly, with Sir George Pretyman (1750–1827), later bishop of Lincoln (1787– 1820) and Winchester (1820–27). Pretyman Tomline (he changed his name from Pretyman to Tomline in 1803 after he inherited an estate) had been Pitt’s tutor at Cambridge and later (1784–87) served as his private secretary. Until 1806 he was Pitt’s most important adviser in the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage, and this was clearly a relationship that Mountain did well to cultivate. After going down from Cambridge, Mountain held a series of appointments in Norwich, London, and Lincoln, culminating in his 1790 appointment as examining chaplain to the bishop of Lincoln.1 Accompanying Jacob Mountain aboard the Ranger were his wife, Elizabeth (Eliza), and their four children – Jacob, George, Robert, and

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Eliza – his two sisters, his sister-in-law, and his brother Jehoshaphat and his wife and three children – Salter, Mary, and Sarah.2 Such an example of group migration at once established a significant family network in Quebec, one that was to dominate its ecclesiastical structures down to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The Mountains, like all such imperial families, operated within transatlantic networks of church, education, and the military, and within the patronage network that cemented these together. This linkage is evident through a brief glance at some of the Mountains who travelled with the first bishop and with those who were subsequently born in Lower Canada. Jacob Henry Brooke Mountain (1788–1872), Jacob’s eldest son and namesake, received his early education at Quebec and was later tutored at Little Easton, Essex, along with his brother George Jehoshaphat, before the two of them went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. Jacob entered holy orders, and Bishop Pretyman Tomline’s patronage was important in his early ecclesiastical appointments. George Robert, Jacob’s third son, joined the British army and fought with the 75th Regiment in the Peninsular War, before resigning his commission and taking holy orders. He served as a vicar in Lincolnshire and Hampshire. Neither Jacob Henry Brooke nor George Robert returned to British North America. The son with the most significant imperial connections (and the longest entry in the dnb) was Armine Simcoe Henry Mountain (1797–1854). He was born at Quebec on 4 February 1797 and educated in England and later in Canada, before being commissioned ensign in the 96th Regiment. His tours of duty with the British army, as well as his private travels, took him, in the first instance, to Ireland, continental Europe, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Jersey. From 1830 until his death in Futtyghur, India, in 1854, A.S.H. Mountain alternated between India, China, England, and Ireland. He was made a cb for his gallantry during the Anglo-Chinese war of 1838–42. He served as military secretary to Lord Dalhousie, then governor general of India, and as a brigadier-general, he commanded his regiment in the Second Sikh War (1848–49) and was mentioned in dispatches.3 Not only did A.S.H. Mountain have a distinguished military career, but he illustrates in microcosm the imperial military connections that linked Britain, British North America, India, and China. Jacob Mountain’s brother Jehoshaphat and his nephew Salter held a variety of appointments in the diocese, including the rectorships of Three Rivers, Montreal, and Quebec. The most important member of the second generation of Mountains in Lower Canada was George Jehoshaphat Mountain, who succeeded his cousin as rector of Quebec and ultimately became the third bishop of Quebec on the death of Charles James Stewart in 1837. George’s son Armine Wale

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(1823–1885) also followed his father into holy orders, serving as rector of St Michael’s Chapel, Quebec City, in the 1860s and posing as a serious candidate to succeed his father as bishop in 1863. Apart from Bishop George Mountain, the most important member of the Mountain family connection was Jasper Hume Nicolls, who became first principal of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Canada East, in 1845. Two years later Nicolls married his first cousin, Harriet Mountain, the daughter of Bishop George Mountain. Nicolls stamped his mark on the fledgling college throughout three decades as principal and was an important ally of the Mountains in diocesan affairs. Generational and personal attitudes, interests, and predilictions notwithstanding, the Mountains and Nicolls were part of a unitary transatlantic, English, High Church Anglican culture. They were all university educated – Cambridge for the Mountains, Oxford for Nicolls – and thus part of a literate culture that was at once English, Christian, and classical. More narrowly, they were all committed to an establishmentarian ideal of the Church of England, most forcefully articulated by Jacob and somewhat tempered and modified under George and Jasper. Yet some sense of the political, social, and cultural position and mandate of such an established, national church was never very far from their thinking. This Mountain-Nicolls connection dominated the Diocese of Quebec from 1793 down to the 1860s and 1870s. By the latter decades it had begun to exhibit signs of entropy. Two events of these later years symbolize the change. The first was the failure of Armine Mountain to gain enough votes in the synod of 1863 to enable him to succeed his recently deceased father as bishop. The second was the death of Jasper Hume Nicolls in 1877, thus ending the formative period in the establishment of Bishop’s College. By the time Nicolls died, the college over which he had presided for more than forty years had been established as the chief training ground for Anglican clergy in the diocese and had provided a sprinkling of Bishop’s graduates for other dioceses in British North America. The emigration of the Mountain family in the late eighteenth century, then, illustrates important dimensions of the imperial culture of the Atlantic world. Emigrating from settled and genteel circumstances, and motivated by desires for ecclesiastical preferment, the Mountains brought to Lower Canada the cultural values of an England resplendent in its imperial majesty, resonant with the literature of the classical world, and cognizant of its Christian duty to spread the light of the Gospel among the settlers of British North America. Within one decade either side of the immigration of the Mountains, two other prominent imperial families, the Sewells and the Hales, settled at Quebec. Both were destined to exert a profound effect on the

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character and history of Anglicanism in that province. The scion of the Quebec branch of the Sewell (or Sewall) family was Jonathan junior. Born 1766 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of the attorney general of the colony, he spent his childhood in the glaring light of the revolutionary events of that decade. The family retreated to England in 1775, eventually settling in Bristol, where Jonathan senior began to selfdestruct financially and psychologically.4 The son attended the University of Oxford for a brief period of time before being despatched to New Brunswick to study law under the tutelage of Ward Chipman, a prominent Loyalist and politician who was then the solicitor general of the province. In 1789 Jonathan junior relocated to Quebec, where his obvious legal and administrative talents might better be served. In his newly adopted province Sewell quickly scaled the heights of the legal and political establishment. By 1795 he had been appointed attorney general and advocate general for Quebec, and the following year he was elevated to the bench in the Vice-Admiralty Court. He also sat in the Legislative Assemby as a member for William Henry and was an influential member of the so-called English Party. In 1808 he was appointed chief justice of Lower Canada, a position that carried with it membership in the governor’s Executive Council. He also served on the Legislative Council. The multiplicity of offices occupied by Sewell has led his biographers to conclude that he was “easily the most powerful official in the colony after the governor.”5 Sewell’s political career was not without controversy, but it is his involvement in the affairs of the church that concerns us most here, particularly his establishment in 1825 of Trinity Chapel, Quebec City, as a proprietary chapel along clearly delineated Evangelical lines. The founding of Trinity was instrumental in securing an Evangelical voice and presence in the diocese. The first Hale to set foot at Quebec was Colonel John Hale, one of James Wolfe’s regimental commanders in the campaign of 1759, but his association with the province was short-lived. His son and namesake, however, after a military career in England, emigrated to Quebec in 1799 as deputy paymaster to the British troops. Over the next four decades he filled a number of public offices at Quebec, including that of receiver general and member of both the Legislative and Executive Councils. He also played a prominent role in the city’s mercantile affairs as an officer of the Quebec Savings Bank.6 John Hale was related by marriage to one of the most prominent British military and diplomatic families of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At London in 1799, he had married Elizabeth Frances Amherst, daughter of William Amherst and Elizabeth Paterson. William Amherst was the brother of Jeffery Amherst, later

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first Baron Amherst, who was renowned for his command of the British forces in North America during the Seven Years War.7 Elizabeth Hale’s brother, William Pitt Amherst, was perhaps the most distinguished member of the family, serving as envoy to both Sicily and Peking before assuming the post of governor general of India in 1823.8 Two of John and Elizabeth Hale’s children were active in Quebec mercantile and political circles. Edward Hale was an important officeholder, member of the Legislative Assembly of the United Province of the Canadas, and businessman in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. His brother Jeffery, a former naval officer, philanthropist, and businessman in the Quebec City region, was the single most important Evangelical Anglican in Quebec in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century.9 The point here is to draw attention to one of the singular facts about Anglo-Quebec society in the early nineteenth century; namely, that many of its most important families operated within transatlantic networks of politics, diplomacy, commerce, the church, and the military. Religious and political attitudes and assumptions, to say nothing of aesthetic sensibilities, which had been acquired during their formative years in England were part of the cultural inheritance that they transported across the Atlantic and deposited at Quebec. Emigration to British North America did not sever the transatlantic connection. Personal correspondence and the transatlantic press helped keep family members on both sides of the Atlantic apprised of one anothers’ comings and goings. As time and financial resources permitted, trips were made back across the Atlantic. Often such trips combined personal visiting with official business. Office-holders needed to consult those in authority in Westminster and Whitehall, and churchmen sought additional funds and personnel for their dioceses. Children were often sent to England to receive their education. The educational shortcomings of Lower Canada necessitated sending the two oldest Mountain boys to England for the final years of preparation before they went up to Cambridge. Both Edward and Jeffery Hale also were educated in England. Thus emigration and travel constituted important bonds establishing and reinforcing the British Atlantic world. Moreover, massive emigration, particularly to Upper Canada and the Maritimes, stamped an indelible British mark on the colonies. Thus Buckner has argued that “it was this sense of being an extension of the British nation that bound Anglophone Canadians together in the nineteenth century and gave them a pool of British myths and images upon which they could draw – admittedly in a selective fashion.”10 Though the number of English, Scots, and Irish immigrants to Quebec never threatened the numerical hegemony of French-speaking Roman Catholics, it is clear that parts of the province, particularly the

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Upper Town of Quebec, central-west Montreal, the Ottawa Valley, the Eastern Townships, and some villages on the Gaspé Peninsula, presented a British public face by mid-century.11 Informed and reflective Anglicans in mid-nineteenth-century Quebec would have been acutely aware that theirs was a minority faith. The general trends are clear enough. Numerically, the Roman Catholic population was never in any danger from the Protestant minorities. In 1831, the first year of the decennial census, Roman Catholics numbered 412,717. This figure represented 74.6 per cent of the total population. Within twenty years, those numbers had risen to 746,854 and 83.8 per cent respectively. In 1861 they reached a century-high level of 94.8 per cent before settling out in the period 1871–1911 at between 85 and 86 per cent of the population. In absolute terms, the number of Roman Catholics in Quebec grew from 412,717 in 1831 to 2,002,712 in 1911.12 There were three predominant Protestant denominations in nineteenth century Quebec: Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Of the three, the Anglicans remained the largest single group in the province, growing from 34,620 in 1831 to 75,472 in 1891 and 103,812 in 1911. In relative terms these figures represented a fluctuating proportion of between 5 and 6 per cent of the total population. Presbyterians remained in second place throughout the nineteenth century, and Methodists a reasonably close third. Numerically, Baptists were never a significant force. Anglicans outnumbered Baptists 16 to 1 in 1831 and 11 to 1 in 1911.13 There also existed a significant pocket of French Protestants. Roberto Perin has estimated that at its peak around 1900 its numbers approximated 20,000, Presbyterians constituting the single largest group.14 That there existed, however, certain pockets of Anglican and, indeed, general Protestant strength is undeniable. The census of 1861, for example, reveals the existence of numerically signifiant Protestant minorities in the major cities of Montreal and Quebec and in the town of Sherbrooke. In Montreal Protestants made up slightly more than 20 per cent of the total population. In Quebec City they comprised approximately 17 per cent of the total population, and in Sherbrooke they outnumbered Roman Catholics by a slight majority. In all three major cities and towns, Anglicans constituted the largest of the Protestant bodies.15 A similar pattern can be discerned in rural Quebec. The 1861 census listed a total of sixty counties for Canada East. The Church of England was the single largest Protestant body in all but four. In no county did Anglicans outnumber Roman Catholics, but in five counties the total number of Protestants exceeded that of Roman Catholics.16 All the counties where the Anglican population surpassed 950 persons were located in the five regions of historic

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English-speaking settlement: Montreal, Quebec City, the Eastern Townships, Gaspé, and the Ottawa Valley.17 The confluence of two streams, one Irish and the other English, created the Anglican church in nineteenth-century Quebec. It is perhaps impossible to establish with any certainty a correlation between religious affiliation and ethnic origin in the province at this time.18 The decennial censuses did not enumerate Irish Protestants as a separate group from Irish Roman Catholics.19 With some certainty, however, the historian can establish both the total numbers for various denominations represented in nineteenth-century Quebec and the total numbers of those claiming Irish ancestry.20 In 1871 slightly more than 10 per cent of the population of Quebec claimed Irish ancestry. Twenty per cent of these lived in Montreal, 10 per cent in Quebec City, and the rest in rural parts of the province. Irish were particularly heavily represented in western sections of the province along the Ottawa Valley and to the south of the St Lawrence River in two or three of the Eastern Townships.21 Despite suggestions to the contrary, such a spatial distribution of Irish immigrants in Quebec would suggest that many of them were undoubtedly Protestants. Protestant pockets of settlement in many of these locations were well known. The residual difficulty is that even if we knew how many of the Irish were Protestant, we still would not know how many were Anglicans and how many Presbyterians. The detailed study of the manuscript census returns for 1871 by Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein allow this analysis to be done for Canada as a whole. According to their figures correlating religion and ethnicity, 22.6 per cent of all Irish were Anglicans, while 34.3 per cent of all English were Anglicans. Using their figures to answer the questions What percentage of Anglicans in 1871 were English and what percentage were Irish? reveals the following statistics. Their sample indicates that of 24,694 respondents, 3,704 were Anglican. Of these, 1,393 were Irish, 1,813 were English, 208 were Scots, and 197 were German. This breakdown reveals the following percentanges: 49 per cent of all Anglicans were English, and 37 per cent of all Anglicans were Irish. Scots and Germans made up the bulk of the remainder.22 Darroch and Ornstein also correlated religion, ethnicity, and occupational structure and status. They found that, in general, English Anglicans were of a “higher” occupational status than Irish Anglicans and that, in terms of the general population, they “formed something like an ‘establishment’ status group in nineteenth-century Canada as a whole.” English Anglicans were significantly underrepresentated in farming and overrepresented in trade and the professions, though Darroch and Ornstein are quick to point out that they were “not underrepresented in the plain labouring and the semi-skilled occupations.”23

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Although the evidence is much more impressionistic, a number of Irish Anglicans were prominent in Quebec circles, including Benjamin and Andrew Fernando Holmes. We know that of eighty-nine clergy in the Diocese of Quebec in the 1870s, at least eleven were born in Ireland and at least three were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin.24 There were well-known cohorts of Irish Anglicans in Montreal at St Ann’s Chapel in Griffintown, which migrated uptown to become St Stephen’s Church, at St George’s under Edward Sullivan and James Carmichael, and even at Christ Church Cathedral under Maurice Scollard Baldwin and J.G. Norton.25

quebec and the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century The same ship that carried the Mountains from England to Quebec in 1793 unloaded a large supply of consumer goods at the wharves of Lower Town. A week after the Ranger docked, an advertisement appeared in the Quebec Gazette, placed there by the firm of Macnider and Mitchell. This firm “beg leave to inform their Friends and the Public, they have imported in the Ship Ranger, from London a general Assortment of Marchandize [sic], which they will dispose of, on very moderate terms for Cash or short credit.”26 The array of goods offered for sale included Chinese tea, spices, chocolate, coffee, Gloucester and Cheshire cheese, Jamaican spirits, Leeward Island rum, and Irish linens. This range of goods represented, at least in part, the contours of Atlantic trade, which flowed through the great entrepôt of London to the far reaches of the British Empire. The Ranger was but one of 114 vessels that arrived at Quebec during that shipping season. Most sailed from London, but ports of departure included Greenock, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cork, Bristol, Newcastle, Kingston (Jamaica), Madeira, and Gibraltar.27 Such advertisements were hardly unusual. Within a few years of Montcalm’s disastrous defeat on the Plains of Abraham, advertisements appeared in the Gazette, Quebec’s only paper, in both English and French, offering for sale a wide range of luxury and commonplace items.28 Nor was this a Quebec City peculiarity. The Montreal papers of the 1790s were replete with similar advertisements. It is worth noting that merchants advertising their wares were careful to point out that these goods originated in London.29 This desire to obtain and possess British goods was as much a cultural as an economic matter.30 As late as 1868 a tailor in Lennoxville, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, made a point of advertising himself as “Late of West End, London.”31 Thus advertising, as Neil McKendrick has pointed out, serves as a useful barometer of both commerce and consumption.32

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The importance of transatlantic trade to the port of Quebec is certainly indicated by the early nineteenth-century presence there of a newspaper entitled The Quebec Morning Chronicle and Commercial Shipping Gazette. From an economic point of view, Quebec’s participation in British Atlantic trade was enormous. In many ways, this was merely a continuation of trade patterns that had become firmly entrenched during the French regime.33 But in post-Conquest Quebec, for obvious reasons, trade turned on a British imperial, rather than a French, axis.34 London-based merchants, with ready access to large pools of capital, increasingly dominated the various staples exports, displacing their French counterparts, the merchants of Rouen and Bordeaux.35 Indeed, Fernand Ouellet has remarked on “the growing supremacy of Great Britain as a channel and source for imports for the St. Lawrence valley.” In the years immediately after the Conquest, 70 per cent of all imports into the St Lawrence valley were British, and this number rose to more than 90 per cent in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.36 Clearly, British control of the St Lawrence trade was on an increasingly upward trajectory from the Conquest to the end of the period under consideration. The increasing value of British trade parallels the growing tide of British immigration, especially after 1815, into all British North American colonies. Thus Philip Buckner has argued that nineteenthcentury “Canada” was becoming more British by the decade. He has written that “if British North America was an embryonic multicultural society in 1815, by 1860 the baby had died and been replaced by a thoroughly British lad.”37 For many, the industrial transformation of British society meant increased prosperity and the ability to participate in the world’s first “consumer revolution.” No less than their American counterparts in the decades before the American Revolutionary War, Anglo-Quebecers were increasingly integrated into a British empire of trade and consumption. After the events of 1759–63, they were indeed a part of that “empire of goods” that linked North Atlantic economies and cultures.38

a r t h u r d av i d s o n a n d the atlantic world The Quebec and Montreal lawyer and judge Arthur Davidson was an active participant in the transatlantic world of trade, patronage, politics, and consumption. Though it might be a stretch to suggest that he was a typical Anglo-Montrealer, his life and his spending habits do serve to put a face on the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Born in Scotland in 1743, Davidson emigrated to Quebec in

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1766. He had been educated at King’s College, Aberdeen, and immediately after arriving in Quebec was apprenticed to study law under Henry Kneller, a future attorney general of the province. Davidson was admitted to the Bar in 1771. In October 1780 he relocated to Montreal, where he built up what was, for a time, a prosperous legal practice. Davidson was appointed to the Court of King’s Bench for the District of Montreal in 1800.39 He administered the seigneury of Saint Giles, a gift to his son, Walter, from his father-in-law, Alexander Fraser. Arthur Davidson’s correspondence offers an interesting window on imperial politics and patronage networks, and his habits of consumption illustrate the manner in which Anglo-Quebecers participated in the transatlantic economy. Though a Scot, Davidson attempted to fashion himself into a proper Englishman in various ways, not the least of which was consumption. His brother, Walter, a divinity student in Aberdeen in the years leading up to the French Revolution, was ostensibly set on a pastorate in the Church of Scotland. Arthur’s advice to Walter, however, was to seek preferment in the Church of England, where, “if a man can get any thing above that of being a poor, common curate, the livings are infinitely superior to those in Scotland.” He went on to say that doctrinally the established churches of the two countries were very similar: “since, there are essential errors which are suffered to prevail in both, it is, in my opinion, of but little consequence whether a Clergyman follows them in the one or the other church.”40 Davidson had even more disparaging comments to make about his homeland in a subsequent letter. Scotland, he said, was “a country where misery, oppression and injustice prevail, and which therefore every one that can (until the constitution and times mend much from what they are) should, in my opinion, leave.”41 Walter was all too aware of the need for patrons if he were to advance in either established church, and many of the letters exchanged between the brothers in the years 1788–96 were particularly keen to address such needs. Though an anglophile of the first order, Arthur Davidson was not unaware of the cultural surroundings of his new home. He made it quite clear to a relative who was contemplating emigration to Quebec that “there is no such thing as doing business in Canada without understanding French.“42 But it is Davidson’s participation in the transatlantic culture of consumption that is of immediate concern. His clothing needs were supplied by a tailor in Covent Garden, London, one John Chalmers, who also seems to have acted as a purchasing agent for Davidson, obtaining various requested items and arranging to have them shipped to Quebec. In October 1778, for example, Davidson placed a large order for clothing with Chalmers – a frock coat, breeches, waistcoat,

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suit, and great coat. He sent detailed instructions as to sizes and styles, adding the comment “the yankeys having been so friendly as to ease me of the burden of a good part of the clothes you made for me last winter on their way to this place.”43 His occupational requirements – both his legal practice and his holding of various government posts – necessitated the importation of law books, wigs, stationery, copies of parliamentary debates, law reports, and various periodicals, including the Monthly Review and the Political Magazine.44 He was also an avid reader of the English newspapers. More personal needs were met with various imports. In November 1790 he wrote to Chalmers requesting two pounds of “the soda phosphorata (a sort of Physic) lately invented by Dr. Pearson of Leicester Square, and prepared by Mr. Willis Chemist, according to Doctor Pearson’s Instruction; and be so good as to enquire and write me how much is a proper dose of it.”45 Davidson also imported books to help in the education of his young daughters. His first wife had died in 1790 soon after giving birth to their son, Walter. A number of letters to Chalmers discuss the propriety and expense involved in sending his daughters to a school in England. “I wish them to have only a plain education and the more domestick the better,” he wrote, “The greatest care to be taken both of their health and morals, and their education to be such as to enable them to behave themselves with propriety in company and to gain their bread by their hands, if necessary.”46 At the same time Davidson requested that Chalmers obtain from a bookseller in Charing Cross a copy of A New Edition of Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, addressed to a Young Lady, by Mrs Chapone. He also imported various luxury items for his household, for example, placing an order with Joseph Brasbridge, a silversmith in Fleet Street, for a teapot, cream ewer, tankard, hand-waiters, and candlesticks.47 Davidson was well aware of the logistics of trade between London and Quebec. In a 1790 letter to one Charles Mitchell of Lincoln’s Inn, he wrote: I would with the greatest pleasure recommend you to my friends here in the mercantile way for Hats, as you desire, could my recommendation have any effect. But the fact is, few or none of them are their own Shippers, but have their Goods shipped for them by London Merchants, who again have certain tradesmen in all the different branches they are in habits of dealing with, and whom, I believe, they seldom find it convenient to change, unless they have some particular reason for so doing. The names of all the shippers for this country you can, however, easily find out at the Quebec Coffee-house, close by the Royal Exchange; and it is with them most properly that interest should be made for any thing of this kind.48

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Davidson’s comments are a useful window into the logistics of trade between England and Quebec, particularly his reference to the “Quebec Coffee-house,” which served as the London nerve centre of the Quebec trade. American historians have argued that the world and language of consumption had far-reaching implications for the everyday lives of colonial women and men. For women in particular, it introduced them to the new concept and reality of economic choice. For all Americans, it meant that consumption established common cultural and, indeed, national bonds.49 A number of historians of the American colonial religious experience have drawn out a connection between participation in the consumer revolution and religious identity and practice. Harry Stout, for example, in his biography of the Great Awakening revivalist preacher George Whitefield, has argued that Whitefield’s “greatness lay in integrating religious discourse into this emerging language of consumption.”50 Put crudely, Whitefield sold religion and the new birth as a consumer item in the public marketplaces of colonial America. Writing in a similar vein to T.H. Breen’s emphasis on consumer choice, Boyd Schlenther has argued for an intimate connection between religion, the empire, and the consumer and commercial revolutions. He has contended that any Anglican designs to establish a religious hegemony in eighteenth-century colonial America were inexorably underminded by the “free trade in religious ideas and practices.”51 Quebec’s situation differed markedly from that in the Thirteen Colonies. There Anglican hegemony was compromised not just by religious free trade but by the conscious designs of imperial policy. And yet it is clear that the commercial bonds of empire had important implications for the religious culture of colonial British North America. Trade and consumption were important linkages helping to mediate various aspects of British culture to Quebec in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Participation in the transatlantic economy was an important means of remaining British; that is, of reinforcing British cultural, religious, and aesthetic values. At the same time, non-participation in aspects of the transatlantic economy could have important political and religious implications. For example, Philip Lawson and T.H. Breen have pointed to the symbolic and ritualistic importance of tea, not only for forging an important bond between Britain and America in the eighteenth century but as the focus for political protest in the 1770s.52 Seen in this light, the refusal to participate in the world of consumption via a boycott could be of enormous symbolic significance. One telling example from the life of Charles James Stewart, a future bishop of Quebec, illustrates the manner in which a boycott could stand as a religious and moral

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symbol. While up at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the 1790s, Stewart resolved to forgo the use of cane sugar as a protest against the Atlantic slave trade.53

networks A whole series of networks operated within the Atlantic world in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. People, money, trade goods, news, gossip, and political and religious ideas circulated within this world. There also existed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries a transatlantic religious network (or, more accurately, series of networks) linking, in varying degrees, England, Scotland, Ireland, the Thirteen Colonies, and British North America. Susan O’Brien, for example, has argued that between 1640 and 1730 there existed “a Puritan transatlantic network”, quoting Cotton Mather that “when the distance of the huge Atlantic separates Brethren from one another, one Method unto which we must resort for Maintaining the communion of saints is the epistolary.”54 Extending her treatment further into the eighteenth century, O’Brien has argued for the existence of a transatlantic “evangelical community” and that “a transatlantic revival was created from a web of personal correspondence that was rapidly transformed into a large-scale media through the establishment of evangelical magazines and newspapers whose main diet was reprinted letters and revival narratives.”55 These publishing networks, moreover, created a “common fund of reading that spanned the Atlantic and led to the reprinting and reading of the same works on both sides.”56 David Cressy has thus written of “a transatlantic community of information,”57 and Andrew Porter has argued that British evangelicals “had a powerful sense of belonging to a community that was universal or international, one which included like-minded Christians in continental Europe and North America as well as those in Yorkshire or Norfolk.”58 This shared sense of community was not, of course, limited to evangelicals. As will be seen, High Church Anglicans had their own perception of shared identity and their own set of networks, which provided the substantive linkages between centre and periphery. Until the laying of the first transatlantic cable in 1858, which connected Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, with Valencia, Ireland, this was a communications network dependent on wind, currents, sails, and eventually steam. The material basis of communication may have changed from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, but not the matrix in which it operated. One of the most important vehicles for communication within this Atlantic empire was literary – magazines, pamphlets, books, and, above all, the weekly and eventually the daily

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newspaper press. From modest beginnings in Halifax in the 1750s, the number, frequency, and size of newspapers in British North America grew steadily. By 1814 there were about twenty papers with a combined estimated circulation of 20,000.59 After the great newspaper explosion of the 1840s and 1850s, there were almost fifty daily newspapers in Canada by 1872; this number almost doubled by 1892.60 Although the specific contents of any newspaper varied according to time, place, government contract as king’s or queen’s printer, party alignments, and technological sophistication, one matter seems to have remained constant – British North American and early Canadian newspapers contained a significant proportion of British, imperial, and foreign news coverage. Some newspapers, such as the British Colonist, even had a correspondent based in London, England, to facilitate coverage of British and European events. Similarly, some British papers, such as the Evangelical Record of London and the Guardian, employed colonial-based correspondents who helped facilitate the movement of information across the Atlantic.61 A content analysis of the two leading Toronto papers, the Globe and the British Colonist, as they appeared in 1849 reveals that in the case of the British Colonist, almost one-half of its “news” pertained to the world outside British North America. In the case of the Globe, the proportion was 39 per cent. At this point, news from Britain predominated.62 Twenty years later, in three leading English-language Montreal papers, nonCanadian news coverage still surpassed that of Canadian coverage, though by this point, news from the United States had outstripped that from Britain.63 It thus seems clear that British North Americans remained avid consumers of British, Continental, and United States news and opinion, and this at a time when literacy rates were steadily increasing and when the nation was being transformed from an “oral culture” to a “print culture.”64 It would be inaccurate to draw too fine a line between the so-called secular and religious presses in the Victorian era. Admittedly, some papers had an orientation in one direction or another. For example, in the 1840s few would deny that the Globe was more “political” and the Banner more “religious” in orientation, and yet this distinction must not be too carefully drawn out, given that these categories of political and religious, sacred and secular, were not necessarily accepted by the Victorians. Political questions such as temperance, slavery, Sabbath keeping or breaking, honesty, and corruption were not regarded as separate from ultimate religious and moral questions. Were issues of public education, clergy reserves, rectories, and papal aggression religious or political questions? Clearly, they were both at the same time. It is evidently a function of modernity to delimit religion to the private

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sphere and not to acknowledge that for most of the medieval and early modern periods in Western history, there was no private sphere to which religion was to be limited. The nineteenth century was the great age of the religious press. In 1838 Anna Brownall Jameson observed about newspapers, “In the absence or scarcity of books, they are the principal medium of knowledge and communication in Upper Canada.”65 Every major Protestant denomination and Catholic group had its own newspapers and periodicals. Trans-denominational religious societies such as the British and Foreign Bible Society or the French-Canadian Missionary Society published newletters, tracts, and annual reports. Special-interest groups had their own publications, such as the temperance lobby’s Canada Temperance Advocate. The daily press gave extensive coverage to both North American and European religious news and, through its editorials and reportage, often took sides in contentious issues. During the intense fight over synodical government in the Diocese of Quebec, the two major Quebec City papers, the Mercury and the Morning Chronicle, could be found on opposite sides of the issue. Non-denominational papers such as John Dougall’s Montreal Witness might appeal to a broad consensus of evangelical Protestant opinion – Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, or Anglican. Papers and magazines aimed exclusively at children began to appear, reflecting not only rising literacy rates but a new awareness about childhood. Printers and publishers competed with one an other for a share of the burgeoning communications market, whether in newspapers and periodicals, specialized journals, or books. In Montreal at mid-century, for example, the English-language market was dominated by three printer-publishers: John C. Becket, John Lovell, and Henry Rose. Becket published the Canada Temperance Advocate, the Missionary Record, and the Montreal Witness; Lovell the Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, the Canadian Presbyter, the Juvenile Presbyterian, the Lower Canada Jurist, the Presbyterian, and the Medical Chronicle; and Rose the Canadian Railroad and Steamboat Guide, the Liberal Christian, and the Life Boat.”66 Many of these editors, printers, and publishers also served prominent roles in the various voluntary religious societies that were such a prominent feature of Victorian Protestant life. Dougall and Beckett played active roles in both the Canada Sunday School Union and the French-Canadian Missionary Society.67 Some of this religious press was forthrightly denominational. In 1827 a Church of England periodical appeared in Montreal entitled the Christian Sentinel and Anglo-Canadian Churchman’s Magazine. Edited by the Reverend Brooke Bridges Stevens, evening lecturer at Christ Church Cathedral,68 this journal declared as its purpose “to circulate

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throughout this extensive Diocese the genuine principles of the Catholic Church of Christ” and “especially to defend the Apostolic Constitution, Orthodox-Doctrines, and Scriptural Ritual of the national Church of England, by argument, and by appeal to the authorities of Sacred Scripture, of the ancient Fathers, and of Ecclesiastical History.”69 Waving such a red flag of Anglican exclusivity produced a predictable response from other Protestants. Within a couple of months a prospectus for a rival journal, the Christian Reporter, appeared in the Lower Canadian press. As its publisher, Nathan Mower, put it, the appearance of the Christian Sentinel and Anglo-Canadian Churchman’s Magazine suggested the necessity “of a Journal to be conducted on such principles as may embrace the views, and deserve the support of the Ministers and Members of the other Protestant denominations in these Provinces.” The proposed contents of this new journal included “theological essays, religious biography, biblical criticism, religious and moral poetry, and a narrative of revivals of religion in various parts of the world.”70 Although it is not known for certain if the Christian Reporter ever appeared, such a proposal does reflect the competition among denominations for the hearts and minds of the reading public. At the same time there also existed in British North America a category of papers and journals whose specific orientation was towards church affairs and religious questions more narrowly defined. Another feature of the religious press that needs to be recognized is that it reflected political and theological divisions within the churches themselves. In the 1840s in Toronto, for example, Hugh Scobie’s British Colonist was clearly a Church of Scotland paper, whereas Peter Brown’s Banner was vociferously a Free Church Presbyterian paper.71 In the case of the Church of England, it is clear that party divisions between High Churchmen and Evangelicals were reflected in the press over a long period of time. This was a phenomenon not usually seen in other Protestant denominations, and it reflected a number of Anglican peculiarities. Among Scots and Irish Presbyterians, conflicts were usually short, intense affairs and resulted in either resolution or schism. In the 1840s, for example, Brown’s Banner and Scobie’s British Colonist did much to fan the flames of controversy in Canada West and East. The eventual outcome was not coexistence but a split in the ranks of colonial Presbyterians and the creation of a new denomination. Anglicans, on the other hand, though they have been no less confrontational, seldom resorted to schism as a means of resolving their conflicts. Evangelicals and High Churchmen were usually able to create enough space for themselves within a single church, establishing alternative institutions if necessary, without feeling compelled to

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leave the church in order to retain their distinctives. Presbyterian practice seldom allows this solution, usually forcing the ultimate step of separation. This difference, however, can hardly be seen as reflective of a more active religious conscience; more likely it is a combination of historical tradition, denominational structures, and political exigencies. Once the Restoration of 1660 and the Revolution Settlement of 1688–90 had cooled the theological and political temperatures of seventeenth century England, the religious and political phenomenon of dissent by mass secession or excision was relatively uncommon. The Nonjurors whose consciences would not allow them to accept the Revolution Settlement or the Hanoverian succession in their entireties were a relatively small, albeit influential, group. In the eighteenth century the rise and growth of the Methodist movement cannot be explained by reference to secessions from the Church of England. There were no significant en masse secessions from the established church in that era. The same pattern was repeated in British North America. By its very nature, the planting of the Church of England in overseas colonies reflected a truncated version of the various strands of the Anglican tradition. In this way, time and geography acted as a filter, so that only certain aspects of that tradition would be mediated to the colonies – thus the absence of Nonjuring and Latitudinarian, or Broad Church, traditions within British North American Anglicanism. The creation of alternative institutions – theological colleges and private schools, newspapers and periodicals – was the most expedient way of allowing for some measure of pluralism within the structures of Anglicanism. These were reflective of the political exigencies of party divisions. The failure of one party to mould a diocese or institution to suit itself necessitated the creation of an alternative if schism was to be avoided. The episcopal election in the Diocese of Huron in 1857 and the establishment of Huron College in 1863 are cases in point. Had the Evangelicals in Huron been unsuccessful in electing Benjamin Cronyn and instead had had to endure the anti-Evangelical Alexander Neil Bethune (as Toronto Evangelicals had to later in the century), perhaps they would have been forced to take more drastic steps. Moreover, the failure of Evangelicals such as Cronyn to topple the High Church establishment at Trinity College, Toronto, and thereby create a “safe” environment for evangelical theology, necessitated the establishment of a theological college that could be shaped to reflect these ideological concerns. In this way, the creation of a new institution or structure sometimes represents a political failure on the part of one party. In effect, it was an internal schism without the external manifestations of a secession.

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These divisions within the culture of colonial Anglicanism were also reflected in the press. The most important Anglican paper in the first half of the nineteenth century was the Church, which largely reflected the High Church and often anti-Evangelical sentiments of its long-time editor, A.N. Bethune. Evangelical Anglicans established their own newspapers, first the Berean and then the Echo and Protestant Episcopal Recorder. Later in the century Anglican party divisions were reflected in the competition between the High Church Dominion Churchman and the Evangelical Churchman. Mid-nineteenth-century British North American religious culture was both oral and written. The emphasis on Bible reading that is characteristic of most Protestant cultures presupposes a certain level of literacy. At the same time, the characteristic Protestant emphasis on preaching and listening to sermons is a function of oral culture. Worship and liturgy are by their very nature visual, oral, and literate. While emphasizing the importance of books, newspapers, pamphlets, and tracts to the formation of religious culture, we must not lose sight of the importance of face-to-face meetings and public gatherings in this religious culture. In 1843 and 1844, for example, it was not sufficient for members of the Free Church of Scotland to rely entirely on sources such as Peter Brown and the Toronto Banner to get the message across to British North Americans. It was necesssary to send deputies, who had already established contacts in the colonies, to encourage British North American Presbyterians to break with the Church of Scotland. Such events also serve to indicate that British Protestants (in this case Scots Presbyterians) cared deeply about the colonial response to British events, and in many cases cared about colonial events themselves. Public speeches such as those given by the former Italian priest Alessandro Gavazzi in Quebec City and Montreal in 1853 and the riots they engendered form part of an oral religious culture situated at the breaking point between the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities.72 Sunday or mid-week sermons in churches might constitute the bulk of this oral religious culture, but popular, public addresses were themselves an important vehicle for the transmission of ideas and emotions in what was otherwise a literate culture.

the epistolary connection Letter writing and receiving were important in creating a British Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Armine W. Mountain confided to his sister, Harriet Nicolls, in a letter of September 1853, “I do not know whether it is that distance lends enchantment to the view or makes the heart fonder or any thing of that sort

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that causes us to write to one another across the Atlantic when we don’t do it at home.” He went on to remark, “I could not help feeling a comfort one night as I looked upon the sea, to think that it was the same sea that was washing the shores of England. It takes very little to stir up a feeling of communion.”73 Letters tied together families and friends across the Atlantic. Feelings of separation could be acute, and thus for many, letters were what David Cressy has termed “an emotional lifeline, a cord of communication, that stretched across the wide ocean.”74 Nowhere is this clearer than in a remarkable correspondence that Eliza Mountain, wife of Jacob, the first bishop of Quebec, kept up with Elizabeth Pretyman Tomline, wife of the bishop of Lincoln, in the period from the Mountain emigration to Quebec in 1793 down to 1812. The interminable delays between the time of writing and receiving letters could weigh heavily on the correspondents. Shipping conditions kept Quebec cut off from England for much of the winter. Even under more favourable conditions, travel back and forth across the Atlantic was difficult, making epistolary connections all the more important as social bonds. Often a full year or more might pass between letters from Mrs Pretyman Tomline. Eliza Mountain’s letters are full of woeful and anxious comments occasioned by the lack of news from England. In a letter of January 1794 she complained that “the delay of letters really affects my spirits.”75 On another occasion she wrote: “The Fleet arrived on the 10th & brings us no intelligence of you, my dear madam! Not one line from the Bishop, on board any ship, or included in any of the Governors despatches yet arrived! One source of hope remains – the June mail is coming soon from Halifax & we still cherish an expectation that it will bring some tidings of you – our anxiety is more than I can express.”76 Eliza Mountain’s letters to Elizabeth Pretyman Tomline encompass a wide range of subjects. Not surprisingly, she devoted considerable attention to family and health matters, though she also offered frequent observations on the state of Quebec society. As she once put it, “though our hearts are more interested about private news, we cannot be indifferent respecting public intelligence.”77 All too frequently, her letters are full of anxious thoughts about the health and well-being of her family and friends. But occasionally they offer insights into the mind of the English elite at Quebec. One of Eliza Mountain’s most revealing letters was written to Mrs Pretyman Tomline in the late summer of 1798, in which she remarked on the French threat to England. On that occasion she wrote: Little authentic intelligence has reached us since this kind of acceptable letter. We know indeed that in May the French had not the temerity to invade

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England. If the alarm has had a proper effect on all ranks of people, we shall have no reason to regret the sacrifices which had been made. Some of my friends lament them, but I think the comforts of life, & life itself, should be given if necessary, to defend us from French principles. I will hope that Providence yet protects us, & that by effectual reformation of manners we may deserve the continuance of this protection … should infidelity & anarchy as but overwhelm our country, happy even amidst all their sufferings will it be for them, who by example & exhortation have resisted their influence. They will in the end be rewarded. Of this number are the Bishop of Lincoln & my dear Mrs Pretyman. I can conceive them looking back upon the storm with peaceful resignation even from a long-house in Canada. I trust however never to see them in such a situation & indeed should England fall, protection will not be long found in this country from the friends of her religion & government. At present, thank God, we are perfectly quiet. The people seem well content with the government & the proceedings of the French, as far as they are understood, seem to excite very general abhorence. The War which is breaking out between the States of France will give additional security to this Province. In the mean time it may make the passage of our ships to England more dangerous & consequently correspondence still more uncertain than it has hitherto been.78

Initial feelings of affection for their newly chosen colony gave way to a sense of exile and abandonment. In early 1794 Eliza Mountain could write, “I like this country much better than I expected.” By 1809 she referred to herself and Bishop Mountain as “your banished Friends.”79 Quebec society she found barely tolerable. One aspect of the imperial connection that she deplored was the ubiquitous presence of the British military. She complained of Quebec being “particularly disagreeable at this time, having besides the usual number of the military, all the idle officers belonging to three regiments,” adding, “I hope they will soon be some where they may be of some use to the public & in the mean time I rejoice that my children do not witness any of the various means … by which they are said to get rid of their time.”80 On another occasion she commented to Mrs Pretyman Tomline, “My dear Madam, you have never lived in a garrison town – you have never seen Ladies, even the wives of colonels, exposed to situations of inconceivable inconvenience.”81 Both Eliza Mountain and her husband remained firmly attached to England, longed for an opportunity to return should a suitable position open up for Jacob, and felt acutely the separation from their sons when the latter were sent to England to continue their schooling. On one of their visits to England she confided to Mrs Pretyman Tomline that “the idea of having the Atlantic between us & them is hardly to be

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endured, & if the Bishop returns, he sometimes thinks of returning alone, & leaving me with the children in England.”82 Political and health considerations extended their stay in England, as what might have been a brief visit lengthened into a two-year absence. Only with the greatest reluctance did the Mountains return to Quebec. “No one left England with more reluctance” or “more regret,” wrote Eliza. And in another letter written at about the same time, she lamented that “this day which I am to see my sons for the last time perhaps is to me a more awful one.”83 Yet what the Mountains regarded as the obvious deficiencies of Quebec society necessitated their sons continuing their education in England. “Nothing desirable appears to open for them here – yet there is something not easily supportable in thinking of their settling on one side of the ocean & our being fixed for the remainder of life on the other.”84 Jacob Mountain’s increasing frustration at being rebuffed by successive British ministries is reflected in his wife’s letters. The death of Pitt in 1806 was a crushing blow to their hopes of either preferment to an English bishopric or a significant improvement in their situation at Quebec. An extended visit to England in 1806–8, during which Jacob Mountain did his utmost to press the claims of the Church of England in Quebec upon His Majecty’s ministers, produced little beyond exasperation. The realization that what the Mountains regarded as in the best interests of Quebec was not always uppermost in the minds of His Majesty’s ministers was becoming painfully obvious and an increasing source of frustration, which was reflected in Eliza Mountain’s letters. For example, after a recent interview with Lord Bathurst, from which Jacob Mountain received no assurances that his situation at Quebec would be improved, Mrs Mountain exasperatedly complained to Mrs Pretyman Tomline that “they all allow the justness & importance of his statements – hear him with much consideration & do nothing.”85 On another occasion she again complained of the manner in which Jacob had been rebuffed by both the king’s ministers and his bishops, even “a Bishop of Mr Pitt’s appointment.”86 Eliza Mountain’s correspondence with Elizabeth Pretyman Tomline, sustained over nearly two decades, illustrates a facet of the transatlantic connection that is in danger of being overlooked because it appears to be so commonplace. To regard it as such, however, would be to gravely misrepresent it. To be certain, letter writing took on various forms and performed a myriad of functions. This was an age in which, apart from face-to-face meetings, the letter was the chief means of communication. Letters were of course but one of the means by which official diplomatic, political, and religious business was conducted across the Atlantic. What is revealed in the letters of Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth

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Pretyman Tomline is not only the feeling of being exiled in Quebec and a longing for England but also the view that there existed an essential identity of interests between Quebec and England, that the Atlantic, for those on either side, was mare nostrum.

religious societies Another important component of this transatlantic culture was the religious society.87 The earliest were what George Mountain called the “venerable” Church of England societies – the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (spck, founded 1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (spg, founded 1701).88 The spck was founded “to promote and encourage the erection of charity schools in all parts of England and Wales; to disperse, both at home and abroad, Bibles and tracts of religion; and in general to advance the honour of God and the good of mankind, by promoting Christian knowledge both at home and in the other parts of the world by the best methods that should offer.”89 Three years later the spg was founded to assist the spck. The leading figure behind both was Thomas Bray (1656–1730), a Church of England clergyman who in 1696 had been appointed the bishop of London’s commissary for Maryland. The early work of what became the spck was the establishment of libraries throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Whereas the spck tended to concentrate on education, the distribution of religious literature, and publishing, the spg was more strictly speaking a church-planting and evangelistic agency.90 It saw this mission as twofold: ministering to Anglicans in the colonies and evangelizing non-Christian peoples in various parts of the empire. As Sydney Ahlstrom has argued, the founding of the spg was “a watershed in the American history of Anglicanism,” since the society became “the chief means of extending the Church of England beyond the seas, and for the next eighty years, America was its almost exclusive concern.”91 Enjoying the official sanction and patronage of both church and state,92 it recruited and placed missionaries in the colonies and supported already resident clergy.93 It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the spg kept the fires of Anglicanism burning in America throughout the eighteenth century, and that without it, they probably would have been extinguished. The entire spg enterprise was linked by a print empire of official records and missionary reports. The Thirteen Colonies, British North America, and the West Indies were the focus of its attention in the eighteenth century, while in the Victorian era it expanded into India, Africa, Australia, and the Far East.94

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The spg’s first entrance into the British colonies north of New England was not in Nova Scotia or Quebec, but in Newfoundland, where it made a grant to one clergyman. But it was in Nova Scotia and the Canadas that the spg was to have the greatest impact. The appointment of a former spg missionary such as Charles Inglis as bishop of Nova Scotia (which included at the time of his consecration in 1787 all the territory we now think of as British North America) certainly strengthened its hand. As William Westfall has noted with reference to Upper Canada, “the hegemony of the spg was virtually unchallenged.”95 Without the society’s generous financial support, the Church of England in the Canadas and the Maritimes would have withered and might have died.96 Because of the financial links in this missionary empire, the spg exercised considerable influence over colonial church policy, its actions in the 1840s being credited for moving the Church of England in the colonies towards financial voluntaryism and thus helping to dissolve “the alliance of church and state.”97 As in the Thirteen Colonies, there were important literary aspects to the society’s empire. Letters and reports were carried back and forth across the Atlantic and served as cultural linkages. Though clergy were under the direction of their local bishops, they also had to report to the spg in London on an annual basis.98 The spg and the spck, then, like their later Evangelical counterparts, were important in establishing and maintaining the religious culture of Atlantic Anglicanism. One of the singular manifestations of the Evangelical revival in lateeighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain was the establishment of voluntary religious societies – foreign and domestic, philanthropic and missionary. By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, nearly five hundred such societies had been founded, prompting Sir James Stephen’s observation “Ours is an age of societies.”99 Usually based in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin, these societies were a testament to the organizational genius of their founders, who created a national and imperial network of local auxiliaries that facilitated the dispersal of money, missionaries, and religious literature. A common feature of these evangelical voluntary societies was that they were not exclusively denominational. Indeed, one of the marks of an evangelical Protestant in midVictorian Canada was that she or he was prepared to cooperate with other evangelicals in such missionary or philanthropic activities. As David Bebbington has pointed out, it was evangelical pragmatism that fostered an “interdenominational temper [which] led to the establishment of a variety of organizations for joint endeavour.”100 Conversely, High Church Anglicans seldom if ever participated in such joint Protestant ventures. The earliest of such voluntary societies were the Bible and tract societies. The British and Foreign Bible Society (bfbs), what Bebbington has

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called “an enduring monument to the possibilities of co-operation,”101 was founded in 1804 “to undertake the circulation of the Scriptures, and of the Scriptures only, without note or comment.”102 It soon became “the largest evangelistic organization in England” and by the 1820s had distributed Bibles worth upwards of £1,000,000 in 130 languages.103 The bfbs was the first such group to establish an elaborate network of auxiliary societies operating at every level of British society, collecting donations, and distributing Bibles. In this, it created the pattern copied by other organizations such as the Church Missionary Society and the Religious Tract Society.104 The bfbs had to contend with two threats from fellow Protestants. High Church Anglicans were always suspicious of its failure to distribute prayer books alongside Bibles. This was certainly Jacob Mountain’s attitude. In a letter to George Pretyman Tomline of June 1812, he asserted that “among the hydra head that threaten us, I reckon Mr Lancaster’s Schools & the British and Foreign Bible Society.”105 The latter he regarded as giving aid and comfort to dissenters in the province. Moreover, many Scots Presbyterians and many Evangelical Anglicans were outraged by the bfbs policy of distributing Bibles with attached Apocryphas so as not to offend Continental Roman Catholic sensibilities.106 Despite the rancor caused by the Apocrypha controversy of the 1820s, the bfbs survived and thrived as one of the leading evangelical societies of the nineteenth century. Within a year of its establishment in England, a Bible society was formed at Quebec City, to be followed by auxiliaries in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Upper Canada, and Montreal. By 1854 there were reportedly 17 auxiliaries and 285 branches in British North America.107 In that same year, as part of its jubilee celebrations, the Reverend P. Kent visited British North America. By 1869 the Upper Canada Bible Society had 253 branches, employed three travelling agents and four colporteurs, and distributed 42,000 Bibles annually.108 It also published a series of magazines, including the Bible Society Reporter, the Monthly Reporter, and Gleanings for the Young. Typically, the Bible societies enjoyed the patronage of high-placed government and church figures, including Robert Baldwin, Sir Edmund Walker Head, Lord Dufferin, and Bishops Cronyn and Hellmuth.109 The list of directors for Bible society auxiliaries in most major cities included the leading clergy of evangelical Protestant churches and many of the most prominent members of the business, legal, medical, and clerical establishments. At mid-century, Dr A.F. Holmes of McGill University served as president of the Montreal Auxiliary Bible Society. Other committee members included Principal John William Dawson and the leading Protestant clergy of the city.110 The cultivation and use of such high-placed patronage not only was, as Ian Bradley has argued for the

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British situation, a safe guarantee of repectability but itself reflected the increasing prominence and influence of evangelicals within British society.111 Often, many of the same names can be found on the lists of directors for other societies, illustrating a common feature of British evangelical societies, that of interlocking directorships.112 In May of every year the members of these societies gathered in London’s Exeter Hall to carry out the annual business of their society and to listen to prominent evangelical speakers, in what Bradley has called “an annual Evangelical jamboree in the capital with meetings and other activities from early morning to late at night throughout the week.”113 Victorian Canada had nothing that could approach these May meetings, but St Lawrence Hall in Toronto did function on occasion as a miniature Exeter Hall.114 Not all such societies were inter-denominational or pan-evangelical. Some had more narrowly denominational concerns. Yet whether more broadly evangelical or narrowly denominational, most of these societies had an imperial dimension. This can be seen by reference to one of the more important Evangelical Anglican societies that operated in British North America, the Colonial Church and School Society (ccss). The ccss originated in an 1851 merger between the Colonial Church Society and the Newfoundland and British North American School Society (nbass). The Society for Educating the Poor of Newfoundland (the original name for the nbass) had been established in 1823 with considerable support from English port towns involved in the Newfoundland trade. The Colonial Church Society had been founded in 1835 by Captain Irwin as the Australian Church Missionary Society (acms), when he had failed in his bid to get either Church Missionary Society or spg support for a mission to British colonists in the Antipodes. Both societies soon extended their spheres of influence – the Newfoundland society expanded its work to include the Canadas, and the acms brought all of the British colonies within its purview. In 1851 the newly formed ccss had two principal aims, one strictly missionary and the other educational. It was based in London and enjoyed the patronage of Queen Victoria, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and such prominent Evangelical laymen as Lord Shaftesbury, the second Lord Teignmouth, and Sir Robert Harry Inglis. By 1851 the ccss employed over seventy missionaries and agents throughout British North America and had established a French mission at Sabrevois in the Richelieu valley of Lower Canada and a mission to the “Free Coloured Population” in western Upper Canada, the latter supported by Benjamin Cronyn and the congregation of St Paul’s, London. The ccss was forthrightly Evangelical in character, declaring its allegiance to the theological principles of “the total

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corruption of our nature, justification by grace through faith alone, and the necessity of a vital change of heart in all who show by their conversation in the world, that they have not ‘passed from death unto life.›115 While this study is in large part concerned with what divided families such as the Mountains from the Sewells and the Hales, we should not let this focus blind us to their shared characteristics, particularly their sense of being Protestant and British. Linda Colley has recently argued that between 1707 and 1815 there emerged in Great Britain “a sense of British national identity” existing “alongside of, and not necessarily in competition with older, more organic attachments to England, Wales or Scotland, or to county or village.” The key factor in cementing these elements together was a common Protestantism. “Protestantism”, she writes, “was the dominant component of British religious life. Protestantism coloured the way that Britons approached and interpreted their material life. Protestantism determined how most Britons viewed their politics. And an uncompromising Protestantism was the foundation on which their state was explicitly and unapologetically based.”116 British Protestants, however much they may have been divided among themselves, nonetheless, shared a sense of God’s providential rule over their country and a sense of divine national mission that provided them with a lens through which to filter their national past. Yet this study is as much about differences as similarities. It is about Anglicans who operated within the common framework of the Atlantic world, but it recognizes that this was an Atlantic that was complex enough to mediate two very different religious cultures – one Evangelical and one High Church – in nineteenth-century Quebec.

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2 A Protestant Identity We are assembled to render our public thanks as a Church and as a Community to Almighty God for His blessings bestowed upon our beloved Queen during the fifty years of her reign which have now closed, and for many and signal benefits we have received from Him through her ministry. As we look back and review the history of the British Empire during those fifty years, our hearts may well swell and overflow with gratitude. We cannot forget that we stand here to-day as members of the greatest Empire of the world – yes, the mightiest Empire the world has ever seen … Henry Roe, 18871

On 17 November 1878, in St Peter’s Church, Sherbrooke, Quebec, on the 320th anniversary of the accession of Elizabeth i to the English throne, the rector, Isaac Brock, preached a sermon entitled “The English Reformation; its Principles and Blessings.” Brock built his address on two Old Testament texts: “The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad” (Ps. 123:3 kjv) and “they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in” (Isa. 58:12 kjv). The application of Old Testament texts to the history of the English nation was not merely a rhetorical device, as effective as that might be. On one level, it represented a serious attempt to view England’s history providentially, to discern the ways of God’s preserving, protecting, and nurturing of the English people and nation.2 At another level, it was a conscious attempt to view that national history through the lens of God’s dealings with the people of Israel. Thus Elizabeth i, despite her obvious defects as a sovereign, was “the chosen instrument in God’s hands for restoring, consolidating, and establishing in our Motherland, our english reformation.”3 This was standard fare in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenthcentury English religious and national polemics and helped to reinforce in the minds of English men and women that theirs was a chosen nation. As Linda Colley puts it, “An apocalyptic interpretation of history, in which Britain stood in for Israel and its opponents were represented as Satan’s accomplices, did not fade away in the face of

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rationalism in the late seventeenth century, but remained part of the thinking of many devout Protestants long after” and could be seen most forcefully in the musical compositions of George Frederick Handel.4 This is not to suggest that each and every Protestant immigrant to Quebec in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had such a well-developed and articulate consciousness of England as a light to the nations, but it is clear that such sentiments made up an important part of immigrants’ symbolic and cultural worlds. Brock was a relative newcomer to Quebec’s Eastern Townships when he preached that sermon. His career is further illustration of the transatlantic Anglican community in action. It is notable that, as an Evangelical, he could move with relative ease from England to Ireland, back to England, and then to British North America. Born near Winchester, England, he was educated at Clifton School and Queen’s College, Oxford, and was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland in 1853 by the bishop of Tuam, Killala, and Achronry.5 His first appointments were in the Church of Ireland in Connemara and at Ballyconree, County Galway. He served as secretary to the Islington Protestant Institute in London and was subsequently rector of the Jews’ Episcopal Chapel, Bethnal Green, and of a chapel of ease in Lower Holloway, London.6 Brock was nominated by Benjamin Cronyn and Alfred Peache to succeed William Wickes as principal of Huron College, a position he assumed in the summer of 1868. He continued at Huron until 1872, when he was transferred to the parish of Galt. There he remained for only a year before moving to St Peter’s, Sherbrooke.7 Brock’s consideration of the English Reformation was unremarkable with respect to both its historical assertions and its theological conclusions. Its importance lies in the fact of its appropriation of an English historical tradition for a Quebec audience. His consideration of the importance of the Reformation for the English church and nation provided for his listeners a historical and theological reference point connecting their lives in Quebec with a tradition (or traditions) that stretched back from Elizabeth i’s consolidation of the English Reformation to Henry viii’s first break with Rome and even beyond that to John Wycliffe’s critique of ecclesiae anglicanae in the fourteenth century. Their history was grafted onto England’s history and became part of the same fabric. England’s history became part of their “national memory.” Brock’s central assertion was that the English Reformation was a “restoration” and “not an act of schism.” This was a central tenet in Anglican anti-Roman polemics and was reminiscent of the “Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae” that John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury under Elizabeth i, had offered for the Church of England. As Brock put it,

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the English Reformation “was not to institute anything new, but to restore that which was most ancient and edifying in the form and order of the Church of Christ: that which was Apostolical, that which was Primitive, that which was Catholic.” It stripped away the merely Roman and medieval accretions and restored to the ancient Church of England its pristine position as an authentic church of Christ.8 After a brief historical introduction, Brock delineates six principal “blessings” that flowed from the English Reformation. It delivered England from the legal, financial, and political “tyranny” of papal power. It freed the English people from the tyranny of the Roman confessional, which in both overt and subtle ways attacked the English family. It “emancipated our people from mental thraldom.” The Protestant principle that admonishes believer to “prove all things,” in contrast with the Roman concept of magisterial authority, was the fountainhead of contemporary freedom of worship, of education, and of the press. It purified worship; ancient and catholic elements were retained and Roman innovations were rejected. It restored “the full, free and pure Gospel of the Grace of God.” “It swept away the host of mediators which Rome had placed between us and Our Lord; it brought the sinner and the Saviour into direct and personal contact. It bid us all go direct to Him.” Finally, the English Reformation was responsible for the production of the English Bible and its place as the supreme authority and “only Divine Rule of Faith.”9 However much preachers such as Isaac Brock might work at appropriating English ecclesiastical tradition, in fact Anglicanism in British North America was the product of two independent but convergent histories and traditions, one English, the other Irish. This simple fact has often been ignored in Canadian historical writing. In particular, the tradition flowing out of the history of the Church of Ireland into British North America has been neglected.10 It is therefore necessary to attempt a survey, however cursory, of the position of the Irish and English church establishments and their roles within the lives of their respective “nations.” Structures, ideas, and cultural traditions were transplanted from England and Ireland into Atlantic colonies such as Quebec. Of necessity, however, this was a selective process. To state the case in its simplest terms, the colonial church was not a carbon copy of either of its parent churches but a new creation. It could not help but be so. Quebec’s social, economic, and political situation was not identical to that of either Ireland or England. English and Irish immigrants to Quebec were not representative of all stripes within either the English or the Irish church. The Church of England that Jacob Mountain left in 1793, despite its still apparent signs of cultural authority, was in the throes of a crisis.

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The religious monopoly that it had maintained since the Elizabethan Settlement had been eroded by the evangelical revival, which in its first generation in England had awakened a somnolent Nonconformity and drawn increasing numbers of English men and women to Methodism. Indeed, so significant was the failure of the national church to keep pace with a rapidly expanding population that Alan Gilbert has called the century between 1740 and 1830 “an era of disaster” for the Church of England. Its popular support had declined to such an extent that, on the eve of the passage of the Great Reform Bill, it was in serious danger of being eclipsed by Nonconformity. Yet by the middle of the nineteenth century the Church of England could still command the loyalty of about 60 per cent of all English men and women, while Nonconformists comprised about 30 per cent of the population and Roman Catholics a mere 4 to 5 per cent.11 Thus Gilbert writes that, “whereas the Church of England had controlled something approaching a monopoly of English practice only ninety years earlier, in 1830 it was on the point of becoming a minority religious Establishment.”12 The Victorian Church of England witnessed a remarkable period of sustained growth between the Great Reform Bill and the eve of the First World War, which saw the substantial recovery of much of the previously lost ground.13 However much the Church of England may have suffered a numerical and spiritual decline in the eighteenth century,14 it was still very much part of the political, legal, and constitutional fabric of English society.15 Moreover, as the established church, it still possessed a cultural authority in the nation second to none.16 Any consideration of colonial Anglicanism must begin with a survey, however brief, of the English church and constitution since the Elizabethan Settlement of 1558–62.17 Elizabeth’s first enactment after ascending the throne was the re-establishment of royal supremacy over church and nation. At one stroke, Mary’s legislative counterReformation was repealed and her father’s Reformation reinstated. The tie between England and Rome was once again severed, “that all usurped and foreign power and authority, spiritual and temporal, may for ever be clearly extinguished and never to be used nor obeyed within this realm or any other your Majesty’s dominions or countries.”18 Elizabeth was proclaimed the supreme governor over the Church of England, and all clergy, officers of state, members of Parliament, lawyers, and schoolmasters were obligated to swear to uphold her position; failure to do so was made treasonous by an act of 1563.19 The impressive bench of Marian bishops refused and were deprived of their offices and livings, thus opening the door to their replacement by a cohort of committed Protestants, many of whom had fled the Marian persecution to the Continent and who now

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returned to assume positions of great influence within the Elizabethan church. The religious changes of the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, the royal injunctions, and the visitations, did not institute as thoroughgoing an ecclesiastical or liturgical revolution as some had hoped for. The Act of Uniformity adopted the second Edwardian Prayer Book, with a few changes concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist and the use of “ornaments” (i.e., vestments and “liturgical furniture”).20 Although it was clearly Protestant, some historians have suggested that there was such latitude in liturgical practice as to comfort conservatives and infuriate more advanced Protestants.21 Convocation adopted the Thirty-nine Articles of 1563 as the theological foundation for the English church. Based on Cranmer’s Forty-two Articles (1553), they were clearly Protestant, repudiating Roman Catholic understandings at key points, including the central matter of justification. But not until 1571 were they given the force of statute law and were clergy obligated to uphold them. The English Reformation church retained virtually the entire administrative apparatus of the medieval church: its hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and sundry lesser offices, its territorial divisions of provinces, dioceses, and parishes. Its archbishops and bishops continued to sit in the House of Lords and were counted among the great men of the realm.22 At the parish level, it is clear that the bulk of the clergy did not follow their prelatical overseers and abandon their livings; rather, the majority conformed, “even if their attachment to the new order was at best superficial and often reluctant.”23 Elizabeth’s acts might have made a Protestant state; they did not, at least immediately, make a Protestant nation.24 An English Protestantism had begun to take root at the popular level as early as the 1520s, and despite Mary’s best efforts, it had not been completely extirpated. Yet it was Elizabeth’s reign that witnessed a confluence of state and popular Protestantism which was to shape the English church and nation for the next four centuries. Through the widespread use of preaching, catechisms, tracts, ballads, and the like, a popular form of Protestantism put down firmer roots among the English people. Three further developments in Elizabeth’s reign did much to solidify the identification of Protestantism with loyalty to the English crown and nation: the papal bull Regnans in excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth i and releasing all English Catholics from their responsibilities to obey the English sovereign;25 war with Catholic Spain; and the activities of Jesuit priests in the 1570s and 1580s. The publication of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) kept alive the memory of those Protestants who had died at Mary’s hand rather than renounce their

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faith, and it served to solidify the identification of Rome with political and spiritual tyranny and oppression. The identification between political disaffection and even rebellion and Roman Catholicism was cemented after Guy Fawkes’s abortive attempt in 1605 to blow up the Palace of Westminster during the state opening of Parliament. His failure has been ceremonially commemorated each 5 November since then, becoming firmly entrenched in the popular Protestant consciousness.26 Apologists for the English Protestant establishment, such as John Jewel and Richard Hooker, and more popular writers, such as John Foxe, sought to establish a theological and historical identity and lineage for the new church.27 At a more popular level, through preaching and lecturing, Bible reading, and the distribution of catechisms, tracts, and ballads, Protestantism was rooted in the very consciousness of Englishmen and Englishwomen as English men and women.28 The progress of Protestantization under Elizabeth is a matter of considerable dispute among historians.29 While it is clear that there were many regional variations, the progress of Reformation was firmly entrenched in many quarters by the end of her reign, in statute law, among the senior clergy of the realm, in the universities, among many of the gentry and nobility, and even among many members of the lower orders.30 The history of the English church and nation between the accession of James i in 1603 and the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 is one of bewildering complexity and not at all amenable to tidy generalizations.31 It is impossible in such a short space to even begin to do justice to such major themes and events as the rise and ultimate failure of Puritanism to transform the very fabric of church and nation into a “godly commonwealth,” the rise of Arminianism, Archbishop Laud’s disastrous attempt to remake the Church of England in a more “catholic” direction, the dismantling of many well-known features of the national church by Parliament in the 1640s, and the descent into civil war and regicide.32 Not much of the Church of England that James had inherited in 1603 was still in place above the parish level by 1649.33 Admittedly, Quebec Anglicans drew only selectively on this history, but draw on it they did. In one of the early addresses to his diocesan clergy, Jacob Mountain held up “the real excellence of the Church of England, happily placed, in the true medium, between extravagant, and dangerous extremes.”34 He admonished the clergy to be on their guard against those who would seek to undermine both the English church and the Christian religion. He was particularly alive to the threat arising from seventeenth-century Puritanism, seeing it as the

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fountainhead of all kinds of religious, political, and social mischief. To his mind, Puritan excesses were at the root of Latitudinarian lassitude and theological declension. Reacting against “the repulsive doctrines, and the rigid discipline of the Puritans,” many clergy had abandoned the preaching of sermons on the grand doctrinal themes of the Christian faith and instead embraced “purely argumentative disquisitions.” Anxious not to be seen as upholding “the sour severity, and unbending stiffness, which distinguished the Puritans, they, in fact, gradually deserted to the ranks of the world.”35 Mountain then drew a parallel between the insidious influence of Puritanism on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English church with “the violent, and erring zeal of modern Enthusiasts; and the extravagant, and outrageous mode of declamation, which they have dignified with the name of Evangelical Preaching.”36 Another example can be found in the midst of the debate over the introduction of synodical government to the Diocese of Quebec in 1857–59: the Quebec Mercury referred to one of the combatants as “a ‘worthy supporter’ of High Church principles … having been brought up in England, as a high churchman, and his father’s family having been, from the reign of Charles the First down to their Canadian descendants, Cavaliers, Tories and High Churchmen.”37 Perhaps, above all else, it was the continued use of the Book of Common Prayer that gave a seamless quality to transatlantic Anglicanism. Its calendar and lectionary, its collects, epistles, and gospels, and its “Order of the Ministration of the Holy Communion” gave form and substance to parish worship. Its forms for baptism, confirmation, the solemnization of matrimony, and the burial of the dead marked out the rites of passage for countless tens of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. The Edwardian and Elizabethan calendars, setting forth a list of official holy days and feasts, marked out the parameters of the Christian year, what David Cressy has termed “a national devotional framework for the passage of the year.”38 Leaving aside local peculiarities and slight variations, worship according to the Book of Common Prayer would have appeared remarkably the same whether conducted in Norfolk, England, or Shefford, Quebec. As Henry Roe expressed it in a sermon preached in St Matthew’s Chapel, Quebec City, in 1862, “That precious book, and the holy and blessed English Bible, which is inseparable from it, and which is read, by its directions, in the ears of the people, through and through in their mother tongue, day by day every year; – that book, under God’s blessing, has made the English nation what it is at this day – the salt of the earth and the hope of the world. Thank God for our Book of Common Prayer!”39 The Restoration of 1660 re-established the Church of England with a vengeance. Taken together, the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Test

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and Corporation Acts, and the Licensing Act combined to ensure not only that the Church of England would be restored to a position of privilege primus inter pares but that it would form a religious and cultural monopoly in which dissent could be emasculated. Under the terms of the Test and Corporation Acts, only full communicant members of the Church of England could hold office under the crown. The Act of Uniformity imposed a new prayer book on all the clergy in the national church. By its terms, all ministers who had not received episcopal ordination (principally the English Presbyterians) were to be deprived of their livings, and in Bishop Stephen Neill’s memorable phrase, they “went out into poverty and hardship.”40 The enforcement of this penal legislation, collectively referred to as the Clarendon Code, was inconsistent and almost entirely dependant upon the predilections of local enforcement agents, though in many instances the penalties were real. Excommunication could be socially as well as religiously punitive.41 The calendrical commemoration of the martyrdom of Charles i and the restoration of Charles ii, as set down in the revised Prayer Book of 1662, were part of a new culture of loyalty, deference, and submission that characterized the Restoration church. In the Tory–High Church view, sectarian dissent was synonymous with political disloyalty and disaffection.42 This position of exclusivity and privilege was modified in substantial ways by the terms of the Revolution Settlement. The Toleration Act granted to all trinitarian Protestants the right to meet for worship. The Test and Corporation Acts were undermined by the practice of occasional conformity, in which holders of public office took communion in a Church of England once a year in order to fulfill the letter of the law. In 1695 the Licensing Act, which down to that time had allowed senior clergy to exercise control over printing and publication, was not renewed. These breaches in the bulwark of Anglican exclusivity frightened many High Churchmen, who longed for a return to the golden age of the early seventeenth century or the first years of the Restoration.43 The High Church–Tory alliance in the reign of Queen Anne tried repeatedly to get occasional conformity outlawed but saw defeat at the hands of the Low Church, Whig bishops in the Lords.44 Though the High Church Tories succeeded in getting an occasional conformity bill passed in 1711 and a Schism Act passed in 1714, these turned out to be pyrrhic victories. Both acts were repealed in 1719, and although the Test and Corporation Acts remained in force, Robert Walpole effectively disarmed them by issuing “annual indemnity acts.”45 However much this legislation may have been modified by exception and loose administration, the fact remains that all the pillars of

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establishment – parliament, law, and the two ancient universities – were in the hands of members of the Church of England.46 In England the great cultural divide in religious terms was between church and chapel – members of the Church of England and so-called Dissenters or Nonconformists. Those, like the Mountains, who had been nurtured within the walls of the English church establishment never abandoned their sense of the great cultural divide between church and chapel.47 Irish Protestant immigrants to British North America brought with them a different cultural and historical experience of “Anglicanism” and its place within the life of the nation from their English coreligionists. Although providing more than a cursory sketch of the history of Protestantism in Ireland is impossible here, it is necessary to attempt to delineate those aspects of the Irish Protestant mind and culture that were transported across the Atlantic by immigrants in the early nineteenth century. Though they brought with them an Irish mind that had been shaped by three centuries of Protestant rule in Ireland, the real place to begin is with Ireland in the age of the revolution of the late eighteenth century, the Union of Ireland and England in 1800–1, and the era that would result in Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The bulk of the Irish who helped shape British North American Anglicanism were post-Union immigrants. To be sure, there were some, such as the McCords of Montreal, whose emigration to the Canadas spanned the years 1760–1800, but they were exceptional. In England, Protestantism had become quite securely entrenched among the elite and was well on the way to gaining the allegiance of the bulk of the English nation by the end of Elizabeth i’s reign. In Ireland this was not the case. There the progess of the Protestant Reformation stumbled forward by fits and starts, unable to surmount the serious obstacles – cultural, political, and religious – to its ever gaining acceptance among the Irish people and failing to overcome its sense of being an alien importation identified with “conquest and consolidation.”48 Moreover, a reformed and renewed counter-Reformation Catholicism in late-sixteenth-century Ireland had succeeded in erecting a formidable bulwark against Protestant incursions.49 By the end of Charles i’s reign, “two separate societies were developing in Ireland and … religious rather than cultural factors … now distinguished them.”50 The tortuous history of seventeenth-century Ireland – plantations, Anglicization, the risings of the 1640s, dispossession, confiscation, and penal legislation – meant that by the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1690, the great divide between Catholic and Protestant in Ireland was firmly entrenched. As Roy Foster has aptly put it, “to be a Protestant or a Catholic in eighteenth-century Ireland indicated more than

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mere religious allegiance; it represented opposing political cultures, and conflicting views of history.”51 The social and political elite of Ireland were Protestant. Indeed, J.C. Beckett once characterized this Irish Protestant elite as “an exclusive ruling class.”52 Most were members of the Church of Ireland except in parts of Presbyterian Ulster. The majority of the native Gaelic Irish remained as Roman Catholics and nurtured a sense of dispossession and alienation. Thus Ireland in the long eighteenth century has been characterized by the phrase “the Protestant Ascendancy.” The religious landscape of Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was dominated by three groups: Roman Catholics, the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland, and the Presbyterians. A census conducted in 1831 revealed that Catholics comprised 80.9 per cent of the population, Anglicans 10.7 per cent, and Presbyterians 8.1 per cent. Especially after the famine of the 1840s, the Roman Catholic population declined both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the whole, while both Anglicans and Presbyterians increased. Adherents of the Roman church continued to decline as a percentage of the entire population throughout the nineteenth century, while Anglicans and Presbyterians saw their proportions increase.53

1831 1861 1901

Roman Catholic

Church of Ireland

Presbyterians

80.9 77.7 74.2

10.7 12 13

8.1 9 9.9

The Church of Ireland was always the church of a minority of the Irish population. Connolly has estimated that in 1732, 73 per cent of all Irish households were Roman Catholic. The proportions were highest in Connaught, where they reached 91 per cent and not surprisingly lowest in Ulster, where they comprised only 38 per cent of the population.54 Protestants were especially well represented in the towns of Ireland. Dublin itself presented a Protestant public face. Estimates of the size of the Protestant population there ranged from two-thirds to onehalf. As Connolly put it, “When a gentleman left his town house or an mp the parliament building on College Green, he stepped out onto the streets of what could still, if only just, be considered a Protestant city.”55 The public iconography of central Dublin, from the parliament buildings to the Georgian splendour of Trinity College, at once rein-

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forced the images of an Anglo-Irish Ascendancy.56 As late as 1871, the Church of Ireland could count only 667,900 adherents among a total Irish population of 5,412,000, or 12.35 per cent of the population. However small the church’s numbers, its members constituted the social elite of Ireland and were significantly overrepresented among landowners, justices of the peace, the professions, and the commercial establishment.57 At the same time, one needs to be cautious about such an identification of the Church of Ireland and the social elite. While it is undoubtedly true that most members of the Ascendancy were Anglicans, it does not follow of necessity that all Anglicans were members of the Ascendancy. In Ulster, members of the Church of Ireland “appear to have been represented at different levels of society – apart from the landed class – roughly in proportion to their total numbers.”58 And yet while not all Irish Protestants were members of the social elite, there was a sense that pervaded the entire Protestant community from top to bottom that, as Protestants, they possessed an inherent “right to a position of ascendancy in Ireland.”59 Administratively, there were differences between the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. England and Wales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were divided into two ecclesiastical provinces – Canterbury and York – and twenty-seven dioceses. Ireland was divided into four ecclesiastical provinces – Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam – and thirty-five dioceses (though there were only eighteen bishops). In England there were approximately 10,000 parishes; in Ireland there were 2,436.60 Akenson has argued that archdeacons and rural deans were underutilized in the eighteenth-century Church of Ireland. This meant that communication between bishops and parish clergy was difficult.61 Paradoxically, the Church of Ireland’s status as an established church was not only its greatest strength but also its greatest weakness. As the established church, it was firmly ensconced as an important part of both the structures and the mentality of Ascendancy culture. The members of its hierarchy were linked by family connections to the Irish aristocracy. Senior ecclesiastical appointments were firmly “enmeshed in the web of patronage and interest which extended through all areas of public life.”62 Connolly, for example, estimates that ten of twelve episcopal appointments between 1801 and 1806 were intended to settle outstanding political debts on account of the recent union.63 The twin problems of non-residence and pluralism were rife at all levels of the church, from bishops down to the lowest ranks of parish clergy. Some parishes lacked churches; others had buildings that had been severely neglected. There were also notorious cases of immorality among men at the top echelons of the church.64 But such a situation

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as often as not reflects a much deeper spiritual malaise which the Evangelical revival did much to challenge and correct. Recent characterizations of the eighteenth-century Church of Ireland are less than flattering. Akenson calls it “a supinely Erastian body.” “Its chief offices were appointed by politicians, advancement depended upon political patronage, and the policies of the church were in every way manipulated to serve the ends of the state.”65 Moreover, he argues that there were three significant factors which kept the bulk of the Irish population antagonistic to the Church of Ireland. In the first place, the church was used as “a tool of the English state.” It became a refuge for the incompetent and ambitious. Appointments to ecclesiastical office followed Johnsonian lines; political patronage networks and family ties were all-important in determining ecclesiastical preferment.66 The Church of Ireland kept its place of privilege via penal laws, and its hierarchy was identified with the avaricious English landlord class. “The all-too-visible partnership of landlord and bishop, and of estate agent and vicar, made the church an accessory to the economic oppression of the peasantry.”67 Akenson’s unflattering portrait is consistent with Sheridan Gilley’s recent assessment of the Church of Ireland on the eve of the Oxford Movement as an “ecclesiastical slum.”68 The financial position of the church was also enhanced by its legal right to collect a tithe on agricultural produce. This became a particularly contentious issue in the 1830s. The O’Connellite call for Catholic Emancipation, coupled with the Catholic demand for the outright abolition of tithes, represented not only a new confrontational style of mass popular politics, but also an unwillingness on the part of the Catholic majority to acquiece in favour of the privileges of establishment.69 The Church of Ireland’s privileged status was significantly eroded in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The Church Temporalities Act of 1833 reduced the number of archbishops from four to two and the number of bishops by ten. It also placed the church’s finances under more severe restraints. In many respects, this legislation marked the beginning of the end for the Church of Ireland as an establishment, though it was not until 1869 that Gladstone’s Liberal government took the final step towards disestablishing the church.70 Connolly regards these changes as involving a redefinition of the role of the Church of Ireland. “From being the religious embodiment of civil society, it had become the church of a socially advantaged but numerically weak minority.”71 There are some striking parallels as well as some significant differences between the established churches of England and Ireland. The patterns of reformation, recusancy, and settlement produced some sig-

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nificant differences in the two ecclesiastical establishments. The Church of England was the church of the majority of English men and women; the Church of Ireland, though established, was the church of a minority, and what was viewed by many as an alien minority at that. Adding colonial Quebec/Lower Canada as the third side in a comparative triangle brings into sharper focus the nature of transatlantic Anglicanism. In demographic terms, Quebec more nearly resembles Ireland than it does England. The temptation to characterize Quebec as possessing an ascendancy, however, should be resisted. It was neither Ireland nor England, nor could it ever realistically hope to become either. Under the terms of the Quebec Act of 1774 (confirmed by the Constitutional, or Canada, Act of 1791), the terms of the Test and Corporation Acts would not apply in the colony. In many respects this was a remarkable piece of legislation, affording to colonial Roman Catholics, rights and privileges, such as that of holding office under the crown, which their English co-religionists would not enjoy until after 1828–29. Even if one were to grant that the Colonial Office intended to establish the United Church of England and Ireland in Quebec under the terms of Bishop Mountain’s appointment as first diocesan, this was a paper establishment with no real coercive teeth. Penal legislation of either the English or the Irish variety simply did not exist. Nor did the social and political convulsions thrown up by the tithe question. Tithes were collected in Quebec, but they were collected by the Roman Catholic Church for its own support. The coercive power of the Anglican establishment in Quebec was minimal at best, in contrast to the situations in both England and Ireland. In England, church courts had been retained at the Reformation, abolished during the Civil War and Interregnum, and reestablished as part of the Restoration. In the eighteenth century they “continued to have an important role in hearing testamentary and marriage cases throughout the century, but their disciplinary power had been in decline since the Reformation.”72 Yet church courts attempted, with varying degrees of success, to mete out discipline and function as “guardians of the nation’s morality.”73 Mary Kinnear’s study of the Diocese of Carlisle has shown a fully functioning church court in the first half of the eighteenth century, presided over by churchwardens. The variety of matters addressed was impressive, ranging from attendance at worship and desecration of the Sabbath to marriage questions and issues of sexual morality.74 Sean Connolly’s study of the interrelationship between religion, law, and power in Ireland has delineated the powers accorded to church courts in the century from 1660 to 1760. He found that while Irish church courts possessed wide-ranging powers, in practice “the courts seem to have largely

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confined themselves to dealing with the enforcement of the church’s financial claims and the harassment of its religious rivals,”75 though they did attempt to regulate sexual behaviour and non-attendance at worship. Connolly argues that excommunication was “the main weapon available to the church courts to back up their judgements.”76 Not only did excommunication entail a barring from church services and functions, but others in the parish were to cease dealings with the excommunicant. When directed against either Roman Catholics or non-Anglicans, such a threat carried little weight, but when applied to full communicant members of the Church of Ireland, it could be socially and spiritually punitive. Article 5 of the terms of the 1800–1 Union of Great Britain and Ireland united the two national churches, henceforth to be known as the United Church of England and Ireland. The provision that this united church be maintained as the established church of England and Ireland was regarded as “an essential and fundamental part of the union.”77 Administratively, this union was of “little practical significance.”78 It altered neither the existing ecclesiastical structures of either church nor the operation of ecclesiastical law. Irish ecclesiastical cases were not appealed to the Court of Arches, the highest church court, but to their own delegates in Chancery. However, at levels other than administration, the union did have a material effect. Brian Jenkins, for example, has argued that it strengthened the cause of Evangelicalism in the Church of Ireland by bringing Irish Evangelicals more into the orbit of English Evangelicals.79

sacred space: building the anglican church Historical tradition and cultural memory were important threads woven into the fabric of Protestant identity in nineteenth-century Quebec. As much as the experience of growing up “Anglican” would have differed from Ireland to England, the fact remains that in both nations the established churches were equated with power, privilege, and cultural authority. One of the ways in which immigrants to Quebec expressed this identity was through the construction and placement of churches. Churches were not just buildings where people gathered to worship God. They were cultural artifacts that conveyed a myriad of social, political, and religious symbols. That they had been so from the earliest days of post-Constantinian Christianity cannot be gainsaid. Thus the classical historian Robert Markus has written of “the Christianization of space” in the late Roman period, arguing that “the shrines of martyrs and saints came to define a sacred topography of

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holy places within and around a town.”80 And historians of medieval Europe can speak of the social and economic meaning of the cathedral, referring to “the cathedral and its power [as] a serious force that shaped both individual and social life in the town.”81 To move from the late Roman Empire to the High Gothic to early nineteenth-century Quebec may strike some as fanciful.82 Yet there are some important similarities as well as some striking differences. In the countryside of rural Quebec the Roman Catholic church dominated the landscape – its towering spire seemed to point the parishioners upwards to the heavenly city, its construction out of the finest and most elaborate materials and its dominance of the rural landscape proclaimed its solidity and permanence, its bells marked the daily and yearly passages of time, thus overlaying religious time upon “natural” seasonal time. In many parts of rural Quebec this sense of unequalled and unchallenged religious power remained a feature of the cultural landscape well into the twentieth century. In areas of historic English settlement such as the Eastern Townships, there was little chance of any one Protestant church dominating. Depictions of the towns along the southern counties of the Eastern Townships invariably show a number of churches, usually two or three Protestant and one Roman Catholic, competing for space. Because the settlement patterns tended to be determined by proximity to the rivers, there was not necessarily a centre to the town as in parts of New England, where towns were often built around a central square.83 Though there were a few communities such as Hatley that followed the pattern of the New England town square, most settlements in the Eastern Townships tended to consist of an elongated central street with other streets radiating off from it. In such towns the churches were usually located along the main street. The connection between architecture and cultural authority can be seen clearly in Sherbrooke, the largest town in the region. A woodcut from the 1860s by J.H. Walker reveals a landscape completely dominated by churches. Atop the highest point in the town was the Roman Catholic basilica. While the political and economic power in mid-nineteenth-century Sherbrooke was clearly in the hands of the anglophone elite, the positioning of the Roman Catholic church served as a reminder of its cultural power.84 The British elite in late-eighteenth-century Lower Canada sought to assert cultural authority over the province by self-consciously building in a neo-classical Georgian style. The design and construction of such public buildings as churches and courthouses and even of private residences announced their arrival at the pinnacle of the province’s social and economic pyramid.85 This process was clearly evident in Bishop

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Jacob Mountain’s plans for a cathedral at Quebec City. Modelled after James Gibbs’s design for St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, it was designed by two Royal Artillery officers on tour of duty at Quebec. It incorporated modified Georgian, Palladian, and neo-classical elements and served as a model for other churches in both Lower and Upper Canada. It is instructive to examine Jacob Mountain’s plans for a cathedral at Quebec. Anglicans there had met in various borrowed venues for divine worship, but as early as 1794 Mountain intimated to the colonial secretary, Henry Dundas, “Nothing, I believe, would tend more effectually to give weight & consequence to the Establishment than a proper Church at Quebec, exclusively appropriated to our Worship.”86 If an Anglican cathedral at Quebec was meant to symbolize the British imperial and cultural presence in the new province, this was a consideration that seems to have been lost on the colonial officials in London. Mountain continued to press the need for a separate Anglican place of worship for five years, to a succession of colonial officials, until the Duke of Portland acceeded to his request in 1799. The construction and upkeep of the cathedral were paid out of the public purse. According to Mountain, the people of Quebec were extremely reluctant to contribute their own money to such causes. It was in these terms that he wrote to Governor Sherbrooke in 1816, that “The Protestants of this Country have always been accustomed to look up, and have been encouraged to do so, to their Sovereign & the British Parliament for all the Expenses attending the Establishment.” Noting the financial support that had been forthcoming from the British government and the spg, Mountain commented, “The people have ever considered themselves as being completely exonerated in this matter.”87 Jean-Claude Marsan argues that in Lower Canada “the British espoused a kind of colonial classicism, healthy, conscious, and rather heavy, extolling the virtues of strength, confidence, and superiority in which the colonizers believed at the time. Architecture was envisaged as a symbol.”88 Such a view of the meaning of Lower Canadian architecture was earlier expressed by Alan Gowans, who argued that the adoption of Georgian styles was symbolically more important in Quebec than in England itself. Thus he regards the building of Holy Trinity Cathedral as a self-consciously anti-American act.89 Clearly, Mountain’s construction of a cathedral at Quebec was not just a monument to British Protestantism in some generic sense; it was an icon of English Anglicanism. Its location in the central section of Quebec’s Upper Town marked it as the winner in the contest for cultural power. For this project, Mountain could secure the active support of Jonathan Sewell, the province’s attorney general and a prominent member of the Anglo-Quebec establishment.

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An interesting sidelight on the cultural and political meaning and function of architecture is found in Jacob Mountain’s memorandum to Sir James Craig of 8 March 1810. In that document the bishop went to great lengths to catalogue the deficiencies of the Anglican establishment at Quebec and to recommend the steps that needed to be taken to rectify this state of affairs. Alive as he was to the power and dignity that attended the Roman Catholic bishop at Quebec, Mountain, among other things, put forth a request for a set of bells to be installed in the Anglican cathedral in Quebec City. At first glance this appears to have been an innocent-enough request. Mountain’s intentions, however, were not merely aesthetic. On that occasion he wrote to Craig: “A set of Bells is a favourite object with the people. It would have some advantages certainly: & among these I should not reckon it the least, that it would give Us some check upon those unsparing peals of our Catholic neighbours, by which our Service is now frequently interrupted. To possess, though we did not exercise, equal, power of annoyance, would probably produce the effect of forebearance and accommodation” (italics added).90 Also built in the Georgian neo-classical style was the Cathedral church at Montreal, Christ Church, designed by William Berczy. Construction began in 1805, and the building was completed in 1821. Both its exterior deportment and its location served as symbols of the British presence at Montreal. It was located close enough to the Roman Catholic parish church of Notre-Dame to invite comparisons. As Harold Kalman argues, “the old parish church of Notre-Dame – and by extension the French-speaking Catholic community of Montreal – had been eclipsed by this architectural upstart.” The Anglican cathedrals of Montreal and Quebec “instantly made the French vernacular building traditions seem tired and old-fashioned.” They also elicited an architectural response from the Roman Catholic community of Montreal, which built a new Notre-Dame in the Gothic style. The first Christ Church cathedral burned in 1856 and was replaced “with a new and more correctly Gothic church.”91 Both Marsan and Kalman see the building and rebuilding of Christ Church Cathedral and the parish church of Notre-Dame as an architectural manifestation of cultural and religious warfare. Notre-Dame’s churchwardens rejected a plan for a new Notre-Dame to be built along French classical lines and instead opted for the new Gothic style. Marsan comments that “Demers and Baillarge’s French classicism must have seemed both too bare and too timid; upholding the superiority of Catholicism over Protestantism demanded a style altogether more convincing and more symbolic of the ongoing struggle for the protection of existing values.”92

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He further argues that the first Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, “as a monument, was intended to symbolize self-confidence.” 93 Clearly, religious architecture reflected the deep cultural divisions within Montreal. Christ Church Cathedral was not just a place of worship; it was intended to serve as a cultural challenge to Montreal Roman Catholics.94 The new Christ Church Cathedral was built in the corrected Gothic style dictated by the Cambridge Camden Society.95 Too much attention to the external aspects of church architecture can oftentimes obscure more profound changes. Diarmid MacCulloch has argued recently that one of the most significant legacies of the Oxford Movement was its attempt to revolutionize the internal organization of sacred space.96 The positioning of items of church furniture displays vital understandings of a church’s theology and can be either an invitation or a barrier to congregational participation in worship. Tucked away in the parish records of Trinity Chapel, Quebec, is a document that sheds considerable light on the subject of church architecture and, in particular, the Evangelical response to the neo-Gothic revival of the nineteenth century. Although the document was not signed, speculation is that it was written by Edmund Willoughby Sewell, the rector of Trinity. Dated 4 February 1851, it is couched in the form of a pastoral letter from the bishop of the fictitious Diocese of Chicoutimi to his subordinate clergy. At the top of the first page there is a pen sketch of a bishop’s mitre sitting on top of a closed book. Beneath this is the inscription “Hurrah. the Bible kept shut by the Mitre.” The letter takes the form of a running parody of a genuine pastoral letter by Bishop George Mountain on the subject of church architecture. The printed version of this pastoral letter is attached along the bottom of each page. A series of numbers in the text link the printed letter with their corresponding sections in the parody. Sewell’s long poem should be regarded as a species of anti-Tractarian and, by implication, anti-Roman polemics. His fictitious prelate, the bishop of Chicoutimi, is clearly intended to associate Mountain with the Roman church. Before we consider in some detail Sewell’s rejoinder, it would be useful to review in outline Mountain’s guidelines for the construction and furnishing of churches. The bishop was careful to declare that his instructions should not be misconstrued as exalting “the material to the prejudice of the spiritual edifice.” He began by noting that the church societies of both his own diocese of Quebec and that of Toronto had been grappling with the issues and principles surrounding such questions. The guiding principles were that,

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however lowly may be the edifice, it ought to be stamped to the eye, within and without, with its appropriate character, marking it, at once as the House of God. This object is not to be attained by an ambition of false and fantastic ornament, or an introduction of some peculiar features of what is commonly called Gothic architecture, which conflict glaringly with the style of the building in other respects. If we affect Gothic at all (which is incomparably the preferable style for Church-architecture) we ought to know a little what we are doing, and to be consistent throughout.97

It is abundantly apparent that Mountain had been profoundly influenced by the contemporary English Gothic revival. Here was a forthright declaration that Gothic was the preferred style for church architecture. The church should be positioned in such a way that it stood east and west, with the “holy table” placed in the east end of the church. Mountain was altogether aware that many parishes could not afford to build according to the correct Gothic style, and so he tempered his remarks accordingly. At the same time, however, he declared his clear preferences: stone or at least brick were supremely preferable to wood (indeed, he suggested that donations from English building societies were more likely to be forthcoming as an aid to constructing a building out of such enduring materials); a tower and spire or, barring these, a “bell-gable … surmounted by a cross” was desirable, if not always affordable. He admitted that “Gothic tracery in stone-work” was probably too expensive and therefore he recommended lancet windows such as those found in St Matthew’s Chapel, Quebec City, and in the Church at Pointe-Lévis. He gave lengthy and detailed instructions concerning the “passage up the middle of the church.” It was imperative, he declared that churches have a central aisle with an unobstructed view of the communion table (knowing which term to use to describe this element is problematical – Mountain never used the term “altar,” but neither did used “communion table”; it is always the “holy table”). Mountain was adamant that he did not want pews in the centre of the church, nor did he want a desk and pulpit obscuring the view of the holy table. The table should be surrounded by rails, and there should be ample room both within the rails for officiating clergy and between the rails and the first rows of pews or benches. There should be a lectern on either side of the rails. He held up for commendation James Pyke’s church at Vaudreuil in the Diocese of Montreal. The preferred location for the entrance to the church was on the south side. The entrance should have a porch with a pointed arch, as well as doors, also with pointed arches. His desire was for a proper chancel, but he realized that constraints of size and expense had prevented the

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Opening page of “The Bible of Kept Shut by the Mitre” (Quebec Diocesan Archives)

construction of any in all of Canada. He wanted a stone font in every church “of a size sufficient to make it at least possible to follow the rubric which provides for the case of dipping in the child.” It should be placed as near to the entrance to the church as possible. To his mind, “there are two of our Churches in Quebec, which exhibit fair, specimens of fonts, – the Cathedral in which the font harmonizes with the Grecian and St. Matthew’s Chapel in which it is in keeping with the Gothic character of the building.” A vestry was a necessity in every church, as “it will be felt by all persons that nothing can be more awkward and unbecoming than that the Clergyman should put on or change his vestments in the view of the congregation.” Mountain was adamant in condemning pews, referring to them as “of all the innovations of modern times which have tended to disfigure our Churches and to give them an unpleasing and un-church-like aspect, there is scarcely any which has been worse.” He was also opposed

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to rented or proprietary pews, but admitted that they were currently acceptable under the laws of the land. His preference was for seats. Again, St Matthew’s, Quebec, and the Church at Pointe-Lévis, while not perfect examples, were held up as approximating the desired effect. Mountain recommended application of what he understood to be “the Apostolic rule, as applied to the appearance and arrangement of material things within the Church, Let all things be done decently and in order.” He went on to admonish his readers to take care of the fabric and arrangement of churches. Anything that detracted from the overall aesthetic of the building, and thus the sense of solemnity and reverence, was to be avoided. Carelessness in these matters served to “convey the idea of a low and cold estimate of the sanctity of christian worship and the value of religious privileges.”98 In his poem, “The Bible Kept Shut by the Mitre,”E.W. Sewell parodied every item in Mountain’s list of architectural correctness. The poem is much too long to be reprinted in its entirety. A few selections will convey something of its flavour, Sewell’s lack of poetic talent notwithstanding. It is quite apparent that he regarded the Gothic revival as exalting architectural style and ecclesiastical furniture at the expense of preaching and theology: But success comes so sure on the heal of yr preaching Very little it boots, I shd add to your teaching and yet Revd Sir It is right I should say that your doctrine shd smack of some light of day For the thought, I regret has crept in unawares that Doctrine is almost as useful as stairs or altars of flow’rs or lecterns or copes or academical hats, so much like the Pope’s or things quite as Holy, whose names I can’t tell – as useful in fact as the Rope to yr Bell – First let me premise you shd Blose and procure A cheap little work which will keep you demure For Gothic’s the go – the religious dim light Well accords with the sermonst were wont to indite For I need not explain how very precise you shd be to fulfill the fame council of Vice East & West ah thats the true magical line That will health to the soul with its safety combine And scare away demons & ev’ry wil beast if a neat Holy Table is placed in the East – In all Roman Churches you’ll find this the place

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And we must be like them – as like as we can – But let us be careful not to raise up suspicion It would unmitre me – & you’l loose too yr mission So whatever you do pray do it with caution Or all our long watchings may end in abortion I must now close my letter my various vocations and so great I can scarcely address my relations Some letters I have by the mail to write home For I’ve not yet rec’d my instructions from Rome Tis very perplexing & where can the ——— be Their want will be felt thro’ the whole of my own see Tho tis very consoling to think that the Pope Can’t possibly err – so I live on in hope I had almost forgotten – I must tell you quite – That no church’s ceiling should every be flat And I may likewise say that the butter nut tree Is a very good wood – & works up very free It looks very well in the minor details and the birch will be found to be “first-rate” for rails If your travelling this way pray call in & see me Your old friend & Bishop Bill Chicoutimi

Mountain’s concern for the architectural correctness of Anglican churches must be placed in the context of the ecclesiological changes transforming contemporary churches in England. Horton Davies has written that “the most remarkable external evidence of the impact of Tractarianism (whether of the Oxford Movement or the Cambridge Ecclesiological Society) was to be seen in the proliferation of NeoGothic church architecture.”99 For many Tractarians, the neo-Gothic style represented a break with the overly rational classicism of Augustan England and a desire to recover the form and substance of a simpler, golden age of high medieval spirituality which was able to evoke the mysteries of worship and holiness.100 Tractarian worship also exalted the role of the clergy at the expense of lay participation. Raised chancels and rood screens served to separate clergy and choir from the rest of the congregation, and Tractarian worship was always in danger of lapsing into a performance by priest and choir, with the assembled congregations acting the part of audience.101 Tracterians’ use of symbolism in architecture and worship, coupled with their sacramentalism, was heavily flavoured by popular Romanticism.

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The one person mentioned by name in Mountain’s strictures on church architecture was Bloxam. This was undoubtedly J.R. Bloxam, one of the founding members of the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture (established 1839). Other principals included F.A. Faber, J.B. Mozley, and I. Williams. This group was less well known that its Cambridge counterpart, the Cambridge Camden Society, and reportedly pursued its objects with an sense of academic detachment. As James F. White put it, “evidently gothic was an antiquarian pastime for Oxonians rather than the religious crusade which it became in Cambridge.”102 By the time of Mountain’s comments on architecture, the work of the Cambridge Camden Society (organized May 1839; renamed the Ecclesiological Society in 1846) and its journal, the Ecclesiologist, were well known in British North America. His counterpart in neighbouring New Brunswick, John Medley of Fredericton, was undoubtedly the most determined of all the British North American bishops in applying Gothic principles in his diocese.103 Tractarians such as Medley had been deeply influenced by the new cultural mood of Romanticism. In large part a reaction against neo-classicism, the Enlightenment world view, and industrial capitalism (Blake’s “dark satanic mills”), Romanticism emphasized feeling and emotion over and against reason, rationality, order, balance, and symmetry. Individuals touched by Romanticism were invariably responsive to popular medievalism and, in particular, the neo-Gothic revival. The latter evoked a bygone golden age of faith and beauty in contast to the contemporary soul-destroying rationalism and the ugliness of the industrial landscape. The Cambridge Camden Society and the Ecclesiologist set about combining a scholarly and antiquarian interest in medieval architecture with a desire to see correct Gothic principles applied to the building and rebuilding of contemporary churches. In the minds of society members, there was a direct link between the physical and the spiritual, between the architectural setting for worship and the spiritual experience of worship.104 The ecclesiological revivial of the Victorian period, as concerned as it was to construct churches that resembled those of the fourteenth century, did not stop with making alterations to the external appearance and design. Just as the towering spires might symbolically point the observer heavenward to God, so the internal arrangement of space carried with it enormous symbolical meaning. The positioning of the baptismal font near the entrance to the church symbolized the sacrament of baptism as an entry into the Christian community. The wide, uncluttered central aisle, unobstructed by pews or pew boxes, allowed the eye to continue on through the church until it rested upon the raised altar. While

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even the most advanced Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic would resist the notion of the Eucharist as a transubstantiary sacrifice, a raised and railed altar did serve to mark out this sacrament as central to the spiritual life of the congregation. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century the neo-Gothic style was in full force in Lower Canada. Indeed, the first collegiate buildings in British North America to adopt the Gothic style were those of Bishop’s College in Lennoxville, an institution whose foundation owed much to Bishop George Mountain’s patronage.105 At the same time one needs to be careful not to overstate the influence of neo-Gothic. Alongside such majestic examples of mid-Victorian Gothic in Montreal as Christ Church Cathedral (1857–60) were the neo-classical buildings of McGill College, such as the Redpath Museum. Indeed, the two styles can be seen side by side on the McGill campus: the Redpath Museum, with its classical forms, less than twenty or thirty yards away from the old Presbyterian College building or the Redpath Library. It is interesting to note that the church most often held up by George Mountain as worthy of imitation was Henry Roe’s St Matthew’s Chapel. Without a doubt, it was the most conspicuously Gothic building in the diocese and formed a study in contrasts with Mountain’s own Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Ironically, Mountain does not seem to have done much to reconstruct his cathedral according to his views on church architecture. Most of the changes consistent with Anglo-Catholicism seemed to have been made under the bishopric of Lennox Waldron Williams. When Williams became bishop of Quebec, he admitted that he “found the Cathedral and its environs in a serious state of disrepair.” He set about conducting wholesale renovations. Some changes were clearly innovations: “A proper and dignified altar replaced the old square communion table. Altar frontals for the different seasons were procured from the work-rooms of The Sisters of St. John the Divine, Toronto. The font was removed from the east end to the present position, and parts of some of the pews were cut away in order to make something of a Baptistery.”106 Henry Roe’s church of St Matthew’s (new building erected in 1848) in the Quebec suburbs was of the most daring examples of Gothic architecture in the Diocese of Quebec, soon followed by Trinity Church in Lévis and St Michael’s Chapel in Sillery.107 St Matthew’s was enlarged and rebuilt in several stages between 1875 and 1894 according to the dictates of the Ecclesiological Society. It has been noted that by 1900 St Matthew’s resembled Augustus Welby Pugin’s church of St Oswald in Liverpool.108

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By contrast, Trinity Chapel, Quebec, reflected the Augustan values of its principal benefactor, Chief Justice Jonathan Sewell. It was designed by George Blaiklock, younger brother of Henry Musgrave Blaiklock, regarded as the premier neo-classical architect in Quebec.109 The chapel is regarded as one of the finest examples of the neo-classical style in Quebec City. Its architectural style and its location, on St Stanislas Street in Upper Town, exude the confidence redolent of British imperial splendour. But its interior design is also of concern. An 1859 sketch of the interior reveals a combination of the austere elegance of the neo-classical with a very Protestant arrangement of space. Indeed, the chapel included many of the features that George Mountain was to repudiate. The space occupied by the congregation is divided into three banks of pews, with two relatively narrow aisles running from back to front. A central raised pulpit occupies the visual centre of the church, indicating in a very Protestant manner the centrality of the preaching of the Word, as opposed to that of the sacraments. A later photograph indicates that the pulpit has been moved to the left side at the front of the church. In both sketch and photograph the communion table is at the back of the choir.110 The iconography within the sanctuary is sparse. A monument to Jonathan Sewell was placed there by his wife Harriet.111 On the wall behind the pulpit, in a recessed choir, is inscribed in large letters “The Lord is in His Holy Temple.” Beneath this were the words of the Ten Commandments are inscribed on two tablets. The Gothic style was clearly not the preserve of High Church Anglicans. So common did it become in nineteenth-century British North America that it has oftentimes been dubbed the “Canadian style.” Nor were self-consciously Evangelical Anglicans averse to building in the gothic style, as evidence by the construction of Trinity Church, Montreal, in the 1840s. Still, Evangelical Anglicans objected to the theological meaning accorded to the design and arrangement of many High Church places of woship. A comment in Quebec City’s Evangelical Anglican paper, the Berean, rather acidly commented that for High Church Anglicans “a Church building is … a place where people may sit, stand, kneel, and gaze; whether they hear, and what they hear – unless it were the sounds of music – that is quite a subordinate matter to them.” The paper went on to declare that, for High Churchmen, A screen must be fixed to separate the Priest and the sacrifice which he offers, from the people; and there must be an Altar to suit; and so the New Testament ministry is perverted back again into a sacrificership, the honest table for the commemoration of the Saviour’s sacrifice once offered, full, perfect,

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and sufficient, has changed its character, we go to church to see tableaux, instead of going to worship God in the privilege of prayer and hearing his blessed word. Instead of looking to the Holy Spirit for an influence upon our hearts, we are taught to look to “the air of quiet dignity and chaste beauty” which the architect has contrived to give to the building in which we assemble for worship. And this falls in with the natural bent of the mind. It suits men well to keep off the sharp edge of the sword which cuts to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and to substitute for it a form which makes no demand upon the inward man, but satisfies him with the interest he has secured in the petrifaction of christianity, to which he professes adherence, and in which he performs a sufficiency of duties to make his standing creditable.112

Clearly, Evangelicals were well aware of the changes wrought in the wake of the ecclesiological revolution of the mid-Victorian period, but they regarded many of the changes as in fact perversions of the simplicity of the Gospel and, indeed, as barriers to its understanding and acceptance.

protestant time/catholic time How a society conceives and contructs time is an important element in its culture. Thus David Cressy has argued, “Every society has its calendar. Whether shaped and paced by the circling of the heavens or the seasons of the soil, or structured and punctuated by anniversaries of religious or secular significance, every human community finds regularity and periodicity in the unbroken passages of time.”113 When Protestants first arrived in Quebec, they encountered a Roman Catholic calendar that not only ordered life in terms of major rites of passage but also structured daily and yearly life. The seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church functioned in this social sense of marking out key transitions or rites of passage in a Christian’s life. In addition to the sacramental system, the Roman Catholic Church mandated various holy days and fast days that were to be observed by the faithful. From 1694 to 1745 the church calendar for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Quebec set down thirty-seven days; such days were to be devoted to prayers, attendance at mass, and charitable works, with some provisions for “games & diversions that are honest & beneficial to themselves.”114 Sundays were also considered holy days, so that as A.J.B. Johnston points out, “theoretically there was one-quarter of the year given over to devotion rather than to work and other temporal pursuits.”115 In addition, there were various “fasting vigils” and days of abstinence. Departures from a strict observance of the church calen-

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dar (and ultimately, a reduction in the number of holy days in 1749– 58) were allowed at Louisbourg because of the demands of fishing and construction, but Johnston argues that observance of the festivities of the church calendar was enmeshed in popular culture even if (or because) excessive drinking and rowdyness were more the order of the day than strict devotion.116 Cornelius Jaenen’s study of the church in New France has shown that there was often a wide gap between the official pronouncements and directives from members of the hierarchy such as Bishop Saint-Vallier and popular practice, with clerical officials finding it impossible to completely circumscribe surviving folk customs.117 The British Conquest did not upset the ongoing observance of the church calendar, though the pronouncements of bishops such as Briand waxed and waned over whether the flock were truly committed or indifferent to the demands of their religion.118 Of fundamental importance to the character of Roman Catholicism in nineteenth-century French-speaking Canada was the ultramontane revival.119 Among the liturgical innovations that “brought religion into the streets” were public processions. Chief among these were the Corpus Christi parades held every year on the Sunday following Pentecost. As a British military officer stationed at Quebec City, James Patterson Cockburn sketched one such Corpus Christi procession held in 1831. It began at the Roman Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame and wound its way through the streets of Upper Town, stopping at various other churches along the way until it came to a halt at the Hôtel-Dieu. This was probably the most public display of Catholic devotion witnessed by the populace of Quebec.120 Popular spectacles meant to affirm the community of faith, such events afforded French Canadians the opportunity to appropriate spaces dominated either demographically (as in Montreal in the l840s) or economically (as in Quebec City and Trois-Rivières) by the British, and were regarded as “a visible sign of the order and authority of the Catholic church.”121 Nor was the importance of such public symbolism lost on Protestant observers. Jacob Mountain, ever vigilant about the public and private authority exercised by the Roman Catholic bishop at Quebec, wrote to Sir James Craig in 1810 complaining of Roman Catholic processions: And contrary to any thing which is permitted in the United Kingdom, both he, & his coadjutor, constantly appear in the world in the distinguishing habiliments of Prelates of the Church of Rome. In the streets of Quebec, the Seat of the Government of a Protestant King, & the See of his Bishop, they make solemn processions, & elevate the Host, with increasing pomp &

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parade, emulous of that which is observed in countries where the Roman Catholic Religion is established by Law.122

Protestant processions functioned in the same political and cultural way. The most notorious of these were the 12 July Orange parades designed to commemorate the victory of King William of Orange over the Catholic Irish at the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July 1690. Orange parades were a recurrent and highly visible cultural symbol for the Irish Protestant community and were often the occasion for sectarian violence in various British North Amecrica communities.123 Parades were thus inextricably bound up with particular conceptions of calendar time and public ceremony. Overlaid on this religious calendar was a national calendar. But whose national calendar? While the British Conquest did not alter the observance by the Catholic community of its own religious calendar, it did effect a fundamental reorientation of the national, patriotic calendar. Though Carman Miller has argued that a full-blown “patriotic calendar” was not in place until the 1890s towards the height of the new imperialism, with its commemoration of Dominion Day, Queen Victoria’s birthday (Empire Day after 1890), and even Queenston Heights Day,124 there is evidence that the materials out of which a late Victorian pariotic calendar could be constructed were in place much earlier in the century. When Lovell’s Canada Directory was published for 1857–58, it listed the following “Holidays Observed by the Public Offices”: Circumcism – January 1 Epiphany – January 6 Annunciation – March 25 Good Friday – April 2 Ascension Day – May 13 Queen’s Birthday – May 24 Corpus Christi – June 3 St. Peter and St. Paul – June 29 All Saints’ Day – November 1 Conception B. V. M. – December 8 Christmas Day – December 25

With the exception of Queen Victoria’s birthday, this entire list is composed of religious holy days. Moreover, the holy days observed would have been more congenial to a Catholic than a Protestant frame of mind. Lovell’s calendar for 1858 also provided a list of notable events corresponding to each month. That for August was as follows:

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A Protestant Identity

9th Sunday after Trinity

Shelley born, 1792

Queen Caroline died, 1821 10th Sunday after Trinity Louis Philippe dec. King, 1830

George iv. born, 1762 Printing Invented, 1437 11th Sunday after Trinity Ben Johnson died, 1637 Steamboats invented, 1807 Royal George sunk, 1782 Isaac Walton born, 1593 12th Sunday after Trinity St Bartholomew Herschel died, 1822 Prince Albert born, 1819 St Augustine 13th Sunday after Trinity John Bunyan died, 1688

A survey of the other significant events cited indicates that this was a very imperial British calendar. Only passing attention is given to events outside of the orbit of British culture. The death of Napoleon is noted, as are the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The birth or death dates of notable figures in European science (Galileo, Linnaeus) and culture (Haydn, Mozart) are given, but the vast majority of individuals singled out are British-born (Wolfe, Watt, Garrick, Pitt, Wesley, Wilberforce, Whitefield, Bishop Heber, Byron, Fielding, Burns, Bunyan, Pope, et al.). Significant dates tend to be those associated with the expansion of British imperial power: Botany Bay discovered; Canada discovered; Kirk took Quebec; Canada ceded to Britain, 1763; seige of Quebec

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raised, 1776; Battle of Culloden, 1746; Dutch fleet defeated, 1797; Canton taken by British, 1841; Battle of Salamanca, 1812; Battle of Navarino, 1827; Sebastopol taken, 1855; East India Company incorporated, 1700. A few notable Roman Catholic dates are mentioned (the founding of the Jesuit order and the opening of the Council of Trent). The terms of selection are curious. Henry vii and viii are the first monarchs mentioned, but the calendar then skips to Elizabeth i, Mary and Edward vi being omitted. The dethronement and beheading of Charles i are both noted, but James i and ii and Charles ii are all passed over. The death of William iii is mentioned, but then the calendar passes over the first two Georges.125 Such public celebrations whether “national” or “religious” functioned as cultural boundary markers. They divided communities or sub-cultures from each other.126 The confluence of British religious and political identity is clearly seen with respect to the official calendar. Fast days, days of humiliation, and days of thanksgiving were proclaimed by officials in both church and state. One notable General Thanksgiving was proclaimed by the Governor of Quebec for 10 January 1799, to commemorate Nelson’s victory over the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. Bishops and governors cooperated in observing public fasts and days of thanksgiving, notably during periods of war.127 English and Irish Anglican immigrants to British North America brought with them a rich cultural tapestry. Their Protestantism constituted the central pillar in their world view, and this fact should not be lost sight of. As Linda Colley has reminded us, “Protestantism, broadly understood, provided the majority of Britons with a framework for their lives. It shaped their interpretation of the past and enabled them to make sense of the present. It helped them identify and confront their enemies. It gave them confidence and even hope.”128 Quebec Protestants, both Anglican and non-Anglican, shared many of these characteristics. They brought with them a Protestant sense of time and a Protestant calendar, a Protestant version of their own national histories and a desire to transplant and nurture these cultural imperatives in their new homeland. Only the most self-deceptive among their numbers would have been blind to the fact that, in terms of sheer numbers, they constituted a tiny minority of the population and that, in terms of language and religion, large sections of Quebec were alien and even hostile territory. Yet they drew on their Protestant inheritance to stamp their mark on the province.

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Title page to A Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving (1759) (CIHM 20267; courtesy of Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions)

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3 The Structure of Ecclesiastical Politics No man can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety, his only chance for promotion is his being connected with somebody who has parliamentary interest. Samuel Johnson, 17751

I always deluded myself with the thought that the Bishop had not power enough & perhaps he has not with regard to the trial and punishment of delinquents, but he is all in all with respect to every thing else. He can remove the Clergy at his pleasure, diminish or raise the Salaries as he chooses, and is responsible to no one. Such things cannot be done in England where every thing must be regulated by Law. Here the Bishop is the Law and the Judge. James Reid of Frelighsburg, 11 January 1850

O God, our refuge and strength, who hast exalted us among the nations, and distinguished us by marvellous successes, grant … that the great prosperity with which Thou hast blest us, may deeply impress our hearts with gratitude to Thee; and with an humble sense of our dependance upon Thee; that the happiness which as a people we enjoy, may encreate in us a loyal attachment to our Sovereign; a love of our Constitution, in Church and State; a love of good Order, and good Government; and, above all, a love our Religion, and of our God! From the Form of Prayer for the General Thanksgiving, 1799

Writing to the Duke of Portland in 1799, Jacob Mountain, the lord bishop of Quebec since 1793, gave vent to his frustrations about the limited powers and dignity that attended his office, especially when contrasted with those of the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec. “There is no Bishop in the world who enjoys such privileges, & exercises such powers as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec,” he wrote. “Not only is the whole patronage of his Diocese, which is very valuable, at his sole disposal, but he removes his Clergy from one Cure to another, arbitrarily – as his own judgment or caprice, may dictate.”3 An unfavourable contrast with the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec must have been particularly irksome to Mountain. Having spent the formative years of his ecclesiastical career under George Pretyman Tomline’s4 tutelage in the Diocese of Lincoln, Mountain would have taken for granted a set of assumptions about the place of the Church

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of England within the political, legal, and constitutional framework of Great Britain. However, Quebec was not England, and imperial ecclesiastical ideals had to be tempered by the social, cultural, and political realities of colonies. The entire structure of the English church establishment was not (and arguably could not be) transferred in toto to the colonies of the Atlantic world. Though voices could be heard on both sides of the Atlantic clamouring for a fuller establishment of the Church of England in various colonies, imperial policy and colonial realities dictated the contours of ecclesiastical policy. Nowhere was this compromise seen more clearly than in the American colonies of the Atlantic seaboard. From particular counties of New York through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the Church of England revelled in its position as the established church. Both in this Anglican heartland and in areas traditionally settled by Puritan Congregationalists, the Church of England was going from strength to strength, not least because of the indefatigable work of the spg and the spck.5 Yet no American colony had its own bishop, and each was thus severely limited not only in its ability to conduct its affairs but also in advancing its mission as a civilizing and Christianizing cultural force. The absence of bishops meant that ordination, confirmation, and the consecration of churches could not take place. The colonial churches were under the supervision of the bishop of London, a less-than-ideal arrangement. As one bishop of London confided in 1751, “for a bishop to live at one end of the world, and his Church at the other, must make the office very uncomfortable to the Bishop and in a great measure useless to the people.”6 As an expedient to help rectify this state of affairs, the office of bishop’s commissary was created. These resident clergymen had particular powers vested in them by the bishop of London. They could conduct visitations and exercise some measure of disciplinary oversight, but they could not ordain, confirm, or consecrate churches. In addition to these commissaries, royal governors played an important role in stabilizing and encouraging the growth of colonial Anglicanism. If the lack of a colonial bishop frustrated many on both sides of the Atlantic, the prospect that one might be appointed for the colonies evoked strong opposition. Although the idea of a colonial bishop had been broached early in the century, it was the 1764 proposal put forth by Thomas Secker, archbishop of Canterbury, that sparked a decadelong controversy about a colonial bishop, imperial policy, and royal power. For many Americans, a colonial bishop embodied both the image and the reality of royal authority and imperial control, and this at a time when both were subject to widespread criticism. As Frederick Mills put it, “to have acquiesced in the settlement of a resident bishop

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between 1763 and 1776 would have been a contradiction to the argument used by the colonists to opposed the emerging imperial policy.”7 The end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783 made possible the appointment of a colonial bishop in British North America. Nova Scotia would finally have that which had been so long denied Virginia or Georgia. However, this bishop would not enjoy all the rights and privileges of, nor would be exercise powers identical to those of, an English bishop. That the establishment of the diocese of Nova Scotia was a departure from contemporary policy and practice is not a matter of dispute. Peter Doll has called it “one of the most remarkable and unlikely of the changes in British colonial policy which resulted from the American Revolution.”8 The driving force behind this change in policy, as Doll has convincingly argued, was the argument of American High Churchmen from the northern colonies that identified religious dissent with political disaffection and disloyalty, coupled with the northward migration of a substantial body of Loyalists. The ministry of William Pitt began to view the governance of its remaining North American empire in a new light. What had failed in the Thirteen Colonies was not to be allowed to repeat itself in British North America.9 The individual largely credited with drafting the terms of reference for this new colonial bishop was William Knox, undersecretary of state in the American department.10 Knox was utterly convinced of the need for a colonial bishop, but one whose powers should be limited to spiritual and ecclesiastical matters, what Judith Fingard has called “an experiment in limited episcopacy.”11 Under the terms of his appointment, Charles Inglis, the first incumbent, could ordain and supervise clergy, confirm laity, license curates, “institute” to benefices, and appoint ecclesiastical commissaries. However, he possessed no patronage rights to present to benefices. The real powers of patronage were in the hands of the spg, the lieutenant-governor, and local congregations. As Fingard puts it, the bishop “was required to work closely with the civil authorities in England and the colony, as well as with the spg, and was therefore of necessity the partner of government, not an ecclesiastical potentate.”12 Moreover, the lieutenant-governor retained the rights to grant marriage licences and probate wills. The Diocese of Nova Scotia was included in the province of Canterbury, and appeals against the bishop’s judgment could be made to the High Court of Chancery.13 The ecclesiastical situation in Quebec developed in a very different way from that in Nova Scotia. In the immediate aftermath of the Peace of Paris (1763), the British government gave instructions to General James Murray that he promote the establishment of the Church of England “both in Principles and Practice.” He was further instructed “to

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take especial care, that God Almighty be devoutly and duly served throughout your Government, the Book of Common Prayer, as by Law established, read each Sunday and Holyday, and the blessed Sacrament administered according to the Rites of the Church of England.”14 In the years immediately following the conclusion of the Seven Years War, all of British North America was under the jurisdiction of the bishop of London, with all the limitations which that status had imposed on their co-religionists in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. Matters that in England would have been part of the jurisdiction of a bishop and his ecclesiastical courts, such as control of benefices, issuing of marriage licences, and the probate of wills, resided with the governor.15 The erection of the See of Nova Scotia involved substantial changes in this situation. From 1787 until the creation of the Diocese of Quebec in 1793, the territory of Quebec fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Nova Scotia, but an absentee bishop in Halifax was only marginally better than one in London, though during his tenure Inglis did appoint two commissaries for the Quebec territory, Philip Toosey for the Eastern District and John Stuart for the Western.16 The terms of reference, however, for the bishop of Quebec were substantially different from those for Nova Scotia. As Doll and others have observed, when the British government created the bishopric of Quebec, “it did so on the English model, chose an English priest for the job, called him ‘Lord Bishop’ and gave him temporal power commensurate with that of his English brethren.”17 Yet despite such good intentions, it became readily apparent to Jacob Mountain that the power, authority, and dignity accorded to the bishop of Quebec compared unfavourably with those exercised by English bishops. The contrast is worth exploring in some detail.

jacob mountain, george pretyman tomline, and the anglican establishment in quebec As we have seen, Jacob Mountain probably owed his appointment as bishop of Quebec to the influence of his mentor, George Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Lincoln, former Cambridge tutor to Prime Minister William Pitt, and apparently the latter chief adviser on ecclesiastical appointments, and there is no reason to doubt the standard explanation at this point. Almost invariably, ecclesiastical appointments in the eighteenth-century church, especially at the highest levels, were made along Johnsonian lines.18 In order for an individual to be advanced within the ranks of the church’s hierarchy, it was necessary for him to have both the right views and the right connections.

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In the appointment of the first bishop of Quebec, such patronage considerations must be borne in mind. The decision having been made to create the Diocese of Quebec, many of the important players on both sides of the Atlantic began to advance their preferred candidates. Lord Dorchester’s candidate was Philip Toosey, the resident Church of England clergyman at Quebec. Dorchester wrote to Lord Sydney, the colonial secretary, advancing Toosey’s candidacy with the commendation “The exemplary manners, discretion, and abilities of Mr. Toosey cannot be passed in silence; he is recommended to notice.”19 Toosey was urged by his friends to go to England to press his case. While there, he established a network of friends and supporters, apparently including the bishop of Lincoln and the archbishop of Canterbury.20 John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, had been pressing the government to appoint an Anglican bishop for the upper province and was advancing the candidacy of Samuel Peters for the position. In a letter to Henry Dundas in 1791, Simcoe had argued that an established church and a resident bishop were necessary for the social and political stability of the province. “The State Propriety of some form of public Worship, politically considered, arises from the necessity there is of preventing enthusiastick & fanatick Teachers from acquiring that superstitious hold of the minds of the multitude.” Without a bishop, “The Levelling Spirit would infect the very teachers of the Episcopal Church.”21 Any appointment of Peters, however, was sure to run into severe opposition from Charles Inglis, for it was Peters who had done his best to advance his own candidacy for the episcopate of Nova Scotia by attacking Inglis.22 Inglis’s choice was Jonathan Boucher. Mountain himself was in London in 1793 making the rounds and attempting to secure audiences with both Dundas and Prime Minister Pitt. At this time he also had dinner with two Mr Davidsons, both of whom had extensive connections to Quebec.23 The Davidsons made mention of Toosey’s candidacy for the vacancy at Quebec and remarked that he “had the Marquis of Lansdown’s [sic] interest which they considered as equivalent to none at all.”24 For whatever reason, Toosey was passed over, though he did return to Quebec the following year, prompting Eliza Mountain to remark that “we shall be anxious for the arrival of Mr Toosy … for he is universally & it appears to justly disliked him, that I wish he was not coming.”25 In the course of that 1793 conversation in London between Jacob Mountain and the Davidsons, the latter had offered as their considered opinion the view that the bishop of Quebec needed to be “entirely independent of the Governor” and thus possess the powers of

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patronage over livings within the diocese. According to Mountain, “they both appeared to be perfectly convinced that without that the Bishop would be a useless Pageant, of little consideration in the country, & still less regarded by the clergy.” Moreover, it was their view that an Anglican establishment with real teeth would be attractive to many who were currently within the Roman Catholic fold. To this observation, Mountain added the comment that “these sentiments, so much in conformity with my own, you will easily believe have strengthened my objection to accepting the appointment, without a considerable independent share of the Patronage – on all other points I think I am satisfied.”26 This lack of complete control over clerical appointments would be a source of continual frustration to Mountain. It is quite apparent that he wanted his brother to succeed David Charbrand Delisle at Montreal, but that Lord Dorchester had already promised the church along with a chaplaincy to James Marmaduke Tunstall, of whom Mountain held a very low opinion, characterizing him as “a young man of no bad character.”27 The following year Mountain wrote to Pretyman Tomline, again complaining of Tunstall’s appointment to Montreal and imploring Pretyman Tomline to use his influence with Pitt, to place the power of preferment directly in the hands of the bishop. Not only did Mountain not possess the requisite power to appoint to the churches of his diocese, but he questioned how much power of discipline he had over clergy such as Tunstall, whose behaviour Mountain regarded as scandalous.28 The bishop was not long in Quebec before he began to feel frustrated with both the defects of its church establishment and the roles he was expected to play. In October 1798 he intimated to Pretyman Tomline that the recent actions of the governor had caused a serious breach with the Executive Council and that Mountain had been thrust into the role of peacemaker. “I dare not whisper to you how much I should like to sneak back to my old Vicarage,” he wrote, “& be once more Chaplain to the Bishop of Lincoln. Here I am quite neglected & forgotten by hm ministers & can do, & I fear shall do nothing, except in Civil affairs, which I had a thousand times rather avoid.”29 Just over a year later Mountain again expressed his frustrations about the Quebec situation in a letter to Pretyman Tomline. On that occasion he complained of the burdens of holding civil office in the Executive Council of Lower Canada and contrasted his situation at Quebec with that of even the least effective bishop in England. “I have difficulties & obstacles of a very different kind to encounter & people of a very different description to manage – I have to do with Ministers of State, Governors, Chief Justices, Attorneys-General, Houses of Assembly, & Legislative Councils, before I can bring to a conclusion many of the

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objects which it is my duty to pursue.”30 He had become acutely aware that unless he took an active part in fulfilling his civil role, he risked diminishing any influence he might have when it came to ecclesiastical affairs proper. Throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, Mountain continued to lobby men of influence in England on two different fronts: first, to correct what he perceived to be the defects of church establishment in Quebec, including augmentation of his salary; and second, to secure a translation from Quebec to an English bishopric. This effort involved not just the usual epistolary pleadings but also extended trips to England to plead his case. His success with respect to both issues was minimal and thus an ongoing source of frustration to him. On one occasion, for example, he had presented his case for an increse in salary to George Canning but was told that it was “impossible in these times.” In response to this rebuff, Mountain exclaimed to Pretyman Tomline, “Impossible! What if I had noble connections, or Parliamentary Interest? Other points he trusts will be accomplished and above all he charges Mrs L to ‘soothe & comfort Mrs M &c for he feels for us.’ Really he had better help us.”31 However insightful the remarks that passed between Mountain and Pretyman Tomline on the trials and tribulations of a colonial bishop in what increasingly seemed to Mountain to be a forgotten outpost of empire, the clearest statement of the bishop of Quebec’s vision for his diocese is contained in a memorandum which he sent to Sir James Craig, governor since October 1807, on 10 March 1810 and which he copied to Pretyman Tomline. In this document Mountain set forth in considerable detail what he regarded as the myriad defects of the Church of England’s establishment in Quebec, and he proposed a number of corrections. Mountain brought to this task not only a fully formed image of the Church of England’s establishment as he had experienced it in the Diocese of Lincoln but also nearly two decades of frustration with governmental indifference and inactivity and with his own inability to make the system work in Quebec. It is not at all surprising that he would pour out his heart to Craig, in whom he believed he had a governor sympathetic to his program. Mountain first took aim at what he considered to be the legal and statutory defects of the establishment. The Church of England’s clergy, he asserted, “are entirely unknown to the Laws, & in truth enjoy no rights, or privileges, that distinguish them from dissenting Teachers, beyond the distant provision made for them by Parliament.” The province’s legal framework provided for neither Protestant parishes nor rectories. The Anglican bishop of Quebec had no real standing in law. He could not constitute an ecclesiastical court “for the reformation of

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abuses, or the correction of offences among the Clergy.” His subordinate clergy were not legally bound to obey him. In short, the bishop “is indeed crippled as to every exercise of his Episcopal functions.” The Church of England had no real endowed property or any method by which it could raise funds for either the erection of new buildings or the repair and upkeep of existing ones. Mountain had spent considerable time and effort attempting to clarify and rectify this state of affairs. The law officers of the crown determined that under the terms of his appointment the bishop of Quebec did not have the right to prove wills or issue marriage licences, though he might obtain the latter. He did not have the right to establish an ecclesiastical court, nor was it deemed expedient for him to do so. It was determined that the moneys received from the clergy reserves and from government grants should be sufficient to endow churches so that they could be consecrated. The bishop also had the power to induct clergy into benefices, but the Constitutional Act of 1791 had given the governor the right of presentation to benefices. The bishop could not translate a clergyman from one charge to another without the permission of the governor. He had no powers over churchwardens and therefore no control over congregational property.32 All things considered, the episopate of Quebec was but a pale immitation of an English diocese. Mountain also expressed grave concerns that the number of clergy available to serve in Quebec was inadequate to meet the needs of an expanding Protestant population. Moreover, it was his considered view that the current defects of the church as an establishment – “where there is no hope of advancement” – meant that it was severely crippled with respect to attracting “men of ability & worth.” Clearly, Mountain viewed the situation in Quebec through the eyes of one raised on the assumptions that undergirded the eighteenth-century church. He took it for granted that men entered the clerical profession not merely to fulfill the highest of spiritual ideals but also because they sought position, dignity, and respectability. “Respectable & useful ministers of our Church,” he wrote to Craig, “will not easily be induced to fix themselves in the wilds of this Country, without hope of emerging to such more convenient & more honourable stations, as their labours & their merits may be found to deserve.”33 Had not such inducements played more than a little part in Mountain’s own decision to leave Lincoln for Quebec? And did not such considerations, particularly as regards his children, weigh heavily upon his mind as he sought translation to an English diocese. As he had intimated to Pretyman Tomline as early as July 1802, “It is with respect to my children that we shall feel the greatest difficulty, if it is to be our fate to stay here.” Mountain went on to suggest that “the situation

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of the Church is not such as can make us entertain any thought of fixing them here as clergymen. Neither they, nor I, are disposed to the Army or Navy. No other profession is open to them but the Law, which offers rather the hope of a decent maintenance.”34 These were thoughts echoed by Eliza Mountain, Jacob’s wife. About the same time as Mountain had written his memorandum to Craig, their son George, himself a future bishop of Quebec, had failed in his attempt to win a fellowship to Downing College, Cambridge. This disappointment held out the prospect of his returning to Quebec, to act as tutor to his younger brother Armine, while studying divinity with his father. The happy prospect of reunion with her son was offset by a more realistic appraisal of the situation at Quebec. “George might in various ways be useful to his Father,” she wrote to Mrs Pretyman Tomline, “& his high spirits do us all good – but I cannot wish his establishment in this country – It is every day a less eligible & desireable residence.”35 In his memorandum to Sir James Craig, Jacob Mountain reserved his most acerbic comments for the position of the Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec. He objected to his counterpart’s use of the title “bishop of Quebec” and was offended by the public display of his position and power. Mountain’s desire was to curb “the growing encroachments of the Church of Rome.” In one of his more notable declarations, he argued: The authorized Jurisdiction & acknowledged rank, of two Bishops of the same Diocese, of different Religious Communities, would be a solecism in Ecclesiastical polity, which, I believe, never yet took place in the Christian world: the attempt to unite two Churches (one of them strongly opposed in principle & practice to the other) with the State, would be, as I humbly conceive, an experiment in the Science of Government, no less dangerous, than novel.36

To Mountain’s mind, there were political dangers inherent in allowing the Roman bishop much latitude in the exercise of his office. “Will it be presumption in me to remark,” he asked, “that since the profession of the Roman Catholic Religion has a necessary & manifest tendency to render men disaffected to a Protestant Government, it cannot be consistent with Political wisdom, to give to that Religion unlimited indulgence, & undisturbed ascendency.”37 Here was a clear expression of the High Churchman’s implacable opposition to Roman Catholicism. This was a church that, to his mind, bred ignorance and superstition while at the same time undermining those very civil and social principles which were at the foundation of political liberty and loyalty. Mountain’s views on the connection between church establishment and political loyalty were given classic expression in his

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1799 sermon commemorating Nelson’s victory over the French at the Battle of the Nile.

jacob mountain and anglican political culture On 10 January 1799 Bishop Jacob Mountain preached a “General Thanksgiving” sermon at Quebec occasioned by one of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s recent victories over the French fleet. Using the text “If God be for us, who can be against us” (Rom. 8:31), Mountain explored the doctrine of Providence as it related to “the affairs of nations” and “the rise and fall of empires.”38 Such public religious occasions were standard fare in the eighteenth century. It was an essay on “the moral Government of God,” in which Mountain explored the themes of the rise and fall of nations in conjunction with the blessings and judgments of God. “We find the nations,” he declared, “constantly raised or depressed, rewarded or punished, in the present life, in proportion to their respective integrity, or iniquity.”39 If there existed an iron law of Providence, this it was: God judges nations who flaunt his will and continue in licentiousness and irreligion, and he blesses those nations whose actions are moral, upright, and honouring to God. Like many Britons, Mountain was shaken by contemporary events, and he turned to biblical prophecies to help make sense of them. While cautioning against any rush to judgment about recent events, he cited various commentators who foresaw the current age “as the beginnning of a period of great trouble and suffering to the Nations, and of much danger to the general faith of Christians.”40 This use of the apocalyptic was common among a number of English High Church bishops, including Pretyman Tomline, Porteus, and Horsley.41 The very fabric of society would be shaken to its foundations, and irreligion would bring destruction in its wake. Mountain even asked whether, despite their own wickedness and impiety, Providence had assigned the French revolutionaries a role as the “instruments of punishment; acting with fearful severity upon the more abandoned of mankind: and purifying, like a refiner’s fire, the hearts of those, who continue to hold fast the Profession of Faith, as it was once delivered to the Saints.”42 In attempting to discern the hand of Providence in the affairs of both Britain and France, Mountain seemed to move between two poles. Britain had been made the instument of Providence in “chastizing the arrogance, and of humbling the power of France.” At the same time, France’s national decline served as a cautionary tale to the British. He detected in Britain a “growing spirit of Irreligion,” which needed to be resisted firmly. France had begun on a course of decline

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in its “original perversion, the subsequent neglect, and the final rejection of the Christian Religion.”43 What happened in France should not be allowed to occur in Britain. “If we neglect the Gospel,” Mountain wrote, “and with a puerile vanity, and gratuitous assumption of superior wisdom, adopt the despicable and impious cant of the Philosophy of the day, we shall, in our turn, share the just chastisement which is prepared for those, who fall off from their allegiance to their God and Saviour.”44 Mountain saw a general correspondence between political stability, economic prosperity, and the public moral integrity of the nation. He wrote that “the stability of public happiness, must depend on the integrity of public manners – that virtue and piety are to every people the surest road to honour and security, while loose morals, and sinful practices, certainly, though imperceptibly, led to infamy, and ruin – Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”45 Britain had been singularly blessed by Providence and enjoyed particular advantages in its law, constitution, economy, literature, and above all else, religion. The Church of England, as by law established, was “equally remote from Superstition, and Fanaticism; which encourages the sober use of reason, without violating the sacred authority of Scripture.” It was “sound in its Doctrine; correct, yet liberal in its Discipline; simple, yet dignified in its Ceremonies; it may boast, even in these days, among its members, many who are venerable for their piety, and more who are conspicuous for their charity.”46 Turning his attention from Britain to Quebec, Mountain declared: Let not us of this Province, think ourselves exempted, by our situation, from our share of responsibility, with respect to the effect that private conduct may have upon public events. We form an integral part of the Empire, and with it we must stand or fall. In all Empires, the sum of public virtue, can consist only, of the aggregate virtue of the individuals that compose them; and it is only by the endeavour of private persons to reform and improve themselves, that the collective body of the state can be reformed and improved.47

Mountain’s sermon came at the end of a remarkable decade. The initial enthusiasm of many Britons for France’s constitutional revolution of 1789–91 gave way to horror as the institutions of that country’s ancien régime were swept away, the king and the royal family were executed, and the increasingly revolutionary frenzy threatened the very existence of the state. As the decade wore on, the Reign of Terror burned itself out, the Committee of Public Safety imploded and began to execute its favourite sons such as Maximilien Robespierre, and France’s constitutional arrangements eventually settled out on a direc-

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tory behind which lurked the ever-increasing power of Napoleon Bonaparte. At home, the pillars of establishment in church and state worried lest this revolutionary contagion spread to Great Britain, and they sought to stamp out political and religious subversion through legal and constitutional means, including the suspension of habeas corpus, the use of spies and agents provocateurs to infiltrate suspected English Jacobin groups such as the London Corresponding Society, and a very effective anti-radical propaganda campaign.48 But members of official society were not the only ones to set their teeth against revolution, and force majeur is not the only explanation for the failure of English radicals. Many freeborn English men and women carried the banner of loyalty to Britain’s ancient constitution and were not about to relinquish their hard-won liberties to the despotic forces of the revolutionary mob, and groups such as the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers were effective counterweights to English radicals.49 As in the state, so too in the church. For many in England, the established Church of England, as part of the legal and constitutional fabric of the nation, was one of the chief pillars “of political and social stability.”50 High-churchmen who had cut their milk teeth on Hooker or Warburton well recognized that a state church was essential to the well-being of the political commonwealth. however much they might differ among themselves on the practical application of this political doctrine.51 Ironically, Evangelicals such as Wilberforce, who were assailed by the political left for having capitulated to the forces of reaction, were at the same time seen by the political right as dangerous Jacobins. Had they not backed the suspect anti-slavery crusade? Did they not advocate a brand of enthusiastic methodistical religion, which threatened to subvert the established Church of England?52 Jacob Mountain had emigrated to Quebec at a time when the French Revolution was entering its most violent phase and thus he missed a significant part of the tumultuous 1790s. While Quebec was only on the periphery of empire, it was not immune from revolutionary or counterrevolutionary influences. The various reactions in English-speaking Lower Canada to the French revolutionary tide paralleled those of British loyalists. Some welcomed the events of 1789–91 as heralding an end to French royal absolutism and the advent of consitutional monarchy. For these, France in 1789 had merely caught up to what England had achieved a century earlier in its own revolution of 1688–90.53 Among members of the francophone middle classes, there had been an almost universal condemnation since the very beginning. For almost all aristocratic and middle-class Lower Canadians, francophone and anglophone

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alike, the execution of Louis xvi turned the tide from cautious sympathy to wholesale condemnation.54 As Ouellet puts it, “the leading classes of Lower Canada drew together in ideological and emotional unanimity, becoming extraordinarily sensitive to anything liable to jeopardize peace and order in the society.”55 Fears of the revolutionary contagion were heightened by the actions of both the French government and certain American sympathizers. Agents of the French government were at work in the northern American states and in some of the southern counties of Lower Canada. Fears about the French fleet and a possible invasion of Lower Canada kept tensions high throughout the period 1793–99. Adding to what Ouellet has called “a climate of anxiety and suspicion” were a number of instances of popular unrest.56 But Ouellet characterizes them as “spontaneous, localized, and short-lived” and discounts the idea that there existed any serious threat of popular revolt in French Canada.57 The French-speaking Roman Catholic clergy were particularly concerned about the spread of Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas, which they regarded as inimical to a Christian society. Bishop JeanFrançois Hubert, in a paroxysm of loyalty to the British crown, declared in a circular to his clergy that “it was their duty ‘to drive the French from this Province.›58 Abbé Joseph-Octave Plessis wrote in 1799: “Judge of it, by those among our fellow citizens who have had the misfortune to fall into the trap of those monstrous principles preached by Diderot, Voltaire, Mercier, Rousseau, Volney, Raynal, D’Alembert, and other deists of the century.”59 The clergy’s political philosophy was grounded in the ideas of hierarchy, subordination, and obedience, and they were horrified to watch events in France unfold in the first half of the 1790s. Plessis was fulsome in his praise for Great Britain “as the staunch defender of throne and altar,” declaring in a 1799 sermon that if Britain “should triumph her glory will be your salvation and assure you peace. But if she be overpowered, then will your tranquillity and your government be at an end. In the midst of your cities the deadly tree of liberty will be planted and the rights of man will be proclaimed.60 It is abundantly clear that the entire Roman Catholic hierarchy were inimical to events in France and revelled in their position as new subjects of His Britannic Majesty.61 We know little of Jacob Mountain’s response to the early phases of the Revolution. But soon after he arrived in Quebec, we find him firmly ensconced in its artistocratic compact, known popularly as the “Château Clique.” This “English Party,” to give it its other name, was a group of councillors, jurists, and administrators grouped around Governors Sir Alured Clark (1790–93), Sir Robert Shore Milnes (1799–1805), and Sir James Craig (1807–11), which included Jonathan Sewell, the

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attorney general, Herman Witsius Ryland, the civil secretary, Henry Caldwell, the receiver general, Sir James Monk, and assemblymen and merchants John Richardson and John Young.62 This was a group that Mason Wade has acidly described as a “party of placemen and merchants – most of them up to their ears in speculation in the public lands.”63 Their political program (in the broadest sense of that term) “was characterized by a large-scale offensive designed to make the colony British in every respect: political, economic, social, cultural, and religious.”64 The policies of Jonathan Sewell. in particular, have been seen as “a complete repudiation of the policy of 1791 and a return to that of 1763.”65 The foundation of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in 1801 was a key element in the English Party’s program of Anglicization or Protestantization. Another part of its religious program was a reduction in the power, prestige, and authority of the Roman Catholic bishop. Governor Craig, in particular, expressed great concern over the position and influence of the bishop and his clergy. In a memorandum to Lord Liverpool, he complained of the bishop’s powers of patronage and his independence of the British authorities: His Patronage is at least equal to that of the Government, & it is so perfectly at his pleasure, that Government has no other notice of it, than that he usually once a year delivers to every power which was then the Governor a list of such changes as have taken place during the preceeding twelve months … In truth, the Catholic Bishop tho’ unacknowledged as such, exercises now a much greater degree of authority than he did in the time of the French Government, because he has arrogated to himself every power which was there possessed by the Crown.66

Craig’s views undoubtedly reflected those of Bishop Mountain. To Mountain’s mind, any increase in the power and authority of the lord bishop of Quebec of necessity entailed a reduction in the position of the Roman Catholic bishop. And yet he worried lest London allow, in effect, two established churches to exist in Quebec.67 Mountain had a sympathetic ear in both Milnes and Craig, but ultimately London would not accede to his wishes. To official London, as Ouellet points out, “the Catholic Church still looked like the province’s staunchest defender of the established order.”68 Mountain, Ryland, and Craig all tried on various occasions to press their case on London officials but were rebuffed. The appointment of Sir George Prevost as governor and the loyal position that Roman Catholics assumed during the War of 1812 put that church and its clergy out of danger.69

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Jacob Mountain’s life and ministry form a bridge between the cultural worlds of Augustan and Victorian England. But all things considered, he belongs to the Age of Aristocracy rather than the Age of Reform. Educated at Cambridge in the 1770s, he spent his formative years in the diocese of Lincoln under the tutelage of Bishop George Pretyman Tomline, to whom he owed his advancement within the ranks of the Church of England.70 A man of refined taste and manners, Mountain had a patrician bearing and cut an impressive figure both in England and at Quebec.71 In many respects, Jacob Mountain’s churchmanship represents a combination of an eighteenth-century emphasis on the role of the established church in the life of the English nation with a revitalized spirituality that was High but not entirely dry. The latter charasterictic may be conveniently illustrated by reference to his 1803 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec. In that charge Mountain was careful to distance himself from the extremes of both Puritanism and Latitudinarianism.72 With the latter in particular, “doctrinal preaching fell almost into disuse … and learned, and logical, and purely argumentative, moral disquisitions, generally succeeded. A corresponding error took place in manners.” Latitudinarians were “eager to retreat from the sour severity, and unbending stillness, which distinguished the Puritans.” Consequently, “they, in fact, deserted to the ranks of the world.”73 At the same time, Mountain was severe in his criticism of “the distortion which has been given to the simple graces of Gospel Truth by the violent, and erring zeal of modern Enthusiasts; and the extravagant, and outragious mode of declamation, which they have dignified with the name of Evangelical Preaching; their pretentions to superior sanctity, to exclusive illumination, to electing grace, in some cases to immediate inspiration.” As a consequence of these excesses, they “have created disgust, in men of sober minds, and sound understandings, of genuine humility, and unaffected piety, which has too often driven them unawares, to the contrary extreme.”74 This Evangelical extremism, Mountain argued, had had the effect of encouraging a revival of “cold, and dry, and lifeless” Low Churchmanship, marked by a style of preaching that was “neither calculated to exite attention, nor to impress conviction on the heart.” Such Latitudinarian sermons, while “correct in language, clear in arrangement, conclusive in argument, have yet been but too often little more than ingenious Essays upon the nature of virtue, and the true character of morals, overlooking in great measure, the nature of Religion and the peculiar and characteristic Doctrines of Christianity.”75 Moreover, asserted Mountain, to preach virtue and morality to a sinful and corrupt humanity was a worthless exercise. This was at once a calculated rejection of

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the eighteenth century’s appropriation of the classical emphasis on virtue and of its Lockean view of human nature. Instead, Mountain emphasized the need to preach “the welcome Doctrines of the Grace of God, which leadeth to repentance.” These he identified as “the Atonement made for the sins of the penitent, by the Blood of Christ; of the assistance of the Holy Ghost, to guide us into all truth, and sanctify us in heart and life; to support us under difficulties, to purify us by trials, [and] to raise us, after lapses and errors.” He admonished his listeners not to be so off put “by the wretched cant of illiterate Enthusiasts, and the wild ravings of designing hypocrites” that they shrunk from preaching the essential doctrines of Christianity and instead lapsed into preaching a cold, dry morality. Yet true to his High Church theology, Mountain emphasized “the necessity of good works” as “essential to salvation,” while insisting that such good works be inextricably intertwined with the great doctrinal foundations of Christianity.76 As suggested earlier, George Pretyman Tomline’s place in the ecclesiastical party structure of the Church of England and the possible implications of this for the character of Anglicanism in Lower Canada are deserving of further consideration. What is evident from studies of the late-eighteenth-century Church of England is that he is to be associated with a particular brand of High Churchmanship. Pretyman Tomline, though educated in a Cambridge tradition of “moderate latitudinarianism,” “increasingly assumed a rigidly ‹Orthodox’ position.”77 A “high and dry” churchman, he used his influence to advance several members of the “Hackney Phalanx.”78 It is quite apparent from Pretyman Tomline’s behaviour in England that he was a determined opponent of evangelicalism, both inside and outside of the Church of England. Thus Ford K. Brown has described him as “a bitter enemy of the Evangelical cause, noted for acting as severely as he could against Evangelicals in his diocese.”79 He was one of the leading proponents of legislation that would have outlawed itineracy in Britain, an issue on which he and William Wilberforce clashed.80 Pretyman Tomline took a leading part in the Calvinist controversy of 1798–1812, seen by historians such as Brown as part of a High Church assault on the growing strength of Evangelicalism in the Church of England. The bishop’s 1811 Refutation of Calvinism called forth the able reply of Thomas Scott, who was able to expose the deficiencies of his supposed scholarship.81 Pretyman Tomline’s mantle as the hammerer of Evangelicals was to be assumed by Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough. “In continuing relentless warfare on the Evangelicals,” writes Brown, Marsh’s “chief weapon was a famous series of eighty-seven questions designed with learned and subtle malice to detect Evangelical candidates for ordination.” Moreover, in Marsh’s diocese of Peterborough

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“no candidate for Orders who held the necessity of a personal rebirth could be ordained.”82 Pretyman Tomline’s opposition to Evangelicals was matched by their antipathy to him. William Wilberforce, in particular, lamented the influence that Pretyman Tomline had with Pitt.83 What Wilberforce found particularly reprehensible was the bishop’s preventing Wilberforce from having serious spiritual talks with Pitt when the latter was on his deathbed. Wilberforce wrote that “I never could forgive his never proposing prayer to our poor old friend Pitt … till within about six hours before his dissolution.”84 That Jacob Mountain attempted to follow in George Pretyman Tomline’s footsteps seems apparent. When the latter’s two-volume work Elements of Christian Theology appeared in 1799, Mountain wrote to Pretyman Tomline that he would “require of my Candidates for orders, whenever I have any … that they shall be well acquainted with this book.”85 Mrs Mountain also claimed to have read it “with the highest degree of satisfaction,” and she related to Mrs Pretyman Tomline that copies of the work were circulating at both Quebec and Montreal.86 As has already been indicated, Mountain and Pretyman Tomline shared an antipathy towards evangelicalism. In a letter of June 1812, Mountain paused from his lament over the way he had been treatly of late by His Majesty’s ministers to suggest that, among the “hydra head that threaten us, I reckon Mr Lancaster’s Schools & the British and Foreign Bible Society. The latter will create a very extensive influence for the Dissenters & I am afraid that is part of the plan: Else why are Methodist Teachers applied to, to become agents of the Society, where there are Clergy of the Established Church? This is the case at Quebec.”87 Given the long and close association between Jacob Mountain and George Pretyman Tomline, it would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that from its inception the Diocese of Quebec was not the most congenial place for Evangelicals. And yet care must be taken not to overstate the case and the opposition to Evangelicals. In 1793 there were no Evangelical bishops in the Church of England; nor were there any reasonable expectations that any would be raised to the episcopal bench in the near future.88 Furthermore, the number of Evangelical parish clergy in England, though growing, remained small, and it was unlikely that many would find their way to the colonies of British North America at this early date. At the same time, there were at least some in the diocese with Evangelical connections and sympathies, the most important of whom was Charles James Stewart. Admittedly his churchmanship is somewhat difficult to classify. Born in London on 13 April 1775, Stewart was the third son of the seventh Earl of Galloway. He was edu-

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cated at Oxford, ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1799, and appointed to Orton Longueville in Huntingdonshire. He was recommended for service in British North America by Bishop Pretyman Tomline.89 In 1807 Stewart emigrated to Lower Canada as an spg missionary, and he spent the next dozen years planting churches and ministering to the people of the Eastern Townships. He was appointed a travelling missionary for the diocese in 1819 and succeeded Jacob Mountain as bishop of Quebec in 1826. The irenic Stewart seems to have avoided both controversy and party labels, though Evangelical influences in his life can be traced to his childhood tutor in Scotland, the Reverend Eliezar Williams, and through his sister, Lady Catherine Graham, who had associations with both William Wilberforce and Isaac Milner.90 Stewart’s writings are warmly pastoral and evince sentiments that could be affirmed by both Evangelicals and High Churchmen.91

e c c l e s i a s t i c a l pa t r o n a g e In some ways, the pattern of ecclesiastical patronage presents a far less complicated picture in Quebec than in either England or Ireland. In legal and ecclesiastical terms, Quebec was a relatively new society when Jacob Mountain assumed his position in 1793. The complexities of the English system were simply absent. While the English church had inherited the vast structure and apparatus of the medieval church virtually intact at the time of the Reformation, the Quebec apparatus was built up slowly and incrementally. Livings could not be bought or sold in British North America. Advowsons were not vested in cathedrals or colleges. This meant, for example, that Evangelicals could not use expedients such as the Simeon Trust to advance their cause by buying up influential livings and ensuring an Evangelical succession within the church. Bishops were also heavily dependent upon the munificence of private benefactors. There were three particularly noteworthy examples of the exercise of private patronage in Quebec City: Trinity Chapel, Quebec City, Trinity Church, Montreal, and St Thomas’s Church, Montreal. All were built by wealthy and powerful members of the anglophone establishment who identified with the Evangelical cause, and all were effectively placed outside the control of the bishops of Quebec and Montreal. This was one of the most effective ways of securing an Evangelical succession in particular congregations. In the case of the two Trinities, Quebec City and Montreal, they became the institutional centres of Anglican Evangelicalism in the province.92 That a congregation or parish and a movement would be so closely identified is not at all surprising to anyone acquainted with

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the history of modern Christianity. From the parish church of Clapham to that of South Hackney to Bethesda Chapel, Dublin, the history of Evangelicalism and High Churchmanship in both England and Ireland is replete with examples of congregations whose identity was intertwined with particular theological and ecclesiastical practices. Indeed, because of the nature of the case relative to size, location, constitution, and history, it is generally far easier (though still an arduous task) to maintain a tradition and perspective within a single congregation than within an entire diocese. Congregations have a tendency to attract and hold people of similar views. This is not to say that there are no tensions within such parishes or that there exists a homogeneity of theological, social, or political positions, but simply that in a mid-nineteenth-century atmosphere of heightened theological and ecclesiastical distinctions, people tended to gravitate to a congregation where their particular views were maintained and proclaimed. In short, to state what may be obvious and self-evident: Evangelical congregations attract Evangelicals, and High Church congregations attract the High Church. Trinity Chapel, on St Stanislas Street in Quebec City’s Upper Town, opened in November 1825. The cost of £3,500–4,00093 was paid by the chief justice of Lower Canada, Jonathan Sewell, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in British North America.94 Sewell and Bishop Mountain worked out the terms of this arrangement. The apparent reason behind Trinity’s foundation was that the Anglican population of Quebec had increased substantially and the cathedral was becoming too crowded.95 According to the arrangements proposed by Sewell to Mountain, “The incumbents shall from time to time be named by me, my heir and assigns being proprietors of the chapel and he shall in all things be subject to the government of the Lord Bishop of Quebec for the time being.”96 Sewell further discussed the financial arrangements with Lord Dalhousie. The chapel’s incumbent would receive £200 per annum as a base stipend until the pew rents reached £300. At that point the government’s contribution would fall to £100. When the pew rents reached £400, the government’s contribution would cease altogether. The government of the day agreed to this arrangement in December 1826.97 The incumbent whom Jonathan Sewell placed at Trinity Chapel was his son Edmund Willoughby Sewell. A.R. Beverley, a congregational historian of Trinity Chapel, maintains that, in the first instance, E.W. Sewell’s government income was derived from the confiscated Jesuit Estates in Lower Canada, but that after 1830 the stipend was paid out “the ecclesiastical establishment of the province.”98 Sewell remained at Trinity Chapel from its opening until 1868. After his father’s death in 1839, he seems to have personally held the patron-

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age, because in 1868 he decided to lease the chapel to the Quebec garrison for a period of ten years. The British troops were withdrawn from Canada in 1871, and Trinity Chapel remained closed from 1871 to 1877. In 1881 the congregation was incorporated with a view to buying the property from E.W. Sewell. In their congregational bylaws it was stated that Trinity Chapel shall forever remain as a free, Evangelical Church of the Church of England, and that the services therein shall always be conducted with Christian simplicity; avoiding all those unjustifiable practices, calculated in their symbolism or otherwise to teach errors discarded by the Reformers; and which are either in the spirit or the letter, opposed alike to Holy Scripture and the principles of the Church of England as explicitly declared in the 39 articles.99

These conditions were designed to ensure the identity of Trinity Chapel as an Evangelical congregation. Interestingly, the framers of these bylaws recognized the power of religious symbolism to convey theological meaning. All the congregational property remained in the hands of the congregation, and they retained “the right to elect their own Rector.”100 Trinity Chapel was also home to Jeffery Hale, the single most important Anglican Evangelical in Quebec in the first half of the nineteenth century.101 Proprietary chapels such as Trinity, Quebec, remained an anomaly, not only within the Diocese of Quebec but in all of British North America.102 However, they were not unusual in England or Ireland, where they served to strengthen the Evangelical presence in the national churches in the second half of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. They were often built by wealthy and influential persons who used their positions to secure episcopal recognition. They were not parish churches but gathered churches, and thus they remained to a considerable extent outside the legal apparatus of the English parish structure.103 Perhaps the most prominent of such chapels in London was St John’s, Bedford Road, the meeting place of the enormously influential Evangelical Eclectic Society.104 In Dublin it was another proprietary chapel, Bethesda, founded 1786, that was to play such a critical role in the growth of Irish Evangelicalism.105 What Trinity Chapel was to Quebec City Evangelicals, so Trinity Church, Montreal, was to Montreal Evangelicals. The man behind Trinity Church was William Plenderleath Christie.106 Christie had inherited his father’s seigneuries in the Richelieu valley and as a result had become a very wealthy man. A considerable part of that wealth he devoted to evangelistic and philanthropic activities. In 1840 he built

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Trinity Church on St Paul Street and named the Reverend Mark Willoughby as its first incumbent. Three years later Christie gave the building and the land to Bishop George Mountain and his successors, but with one important caveat: “That the said donors and his heirs shall have the right of presentation to the said chapel as an advowson in fee presentative, according to the Rules and Canons of the said United Church of England and Ireland.”107 Christie and his heir reserved to themselves a number of pews within the church and the vault under the chapel as a burial place. He also stipulated that £50 Halifax currency from the annual pew rents was to be appropriated to Trinity Church in Christieville, on his seigneurial grounds.108 Under Willoughby’s ministrations, Trinity Church became a powerhouse of Montreal Evangelicals and included such prominent men as A.F. Holmes, first dean of medicine at McGill, Samuel Gale, Charles Dewey Day, and Christopher Dunkin.109 When Christie died in Ireland in 1845, the rights of presentation to Trinity Church were vested in a committee of three, consisting of Colonel Edward Paston Wilgress, Jeffery Hale, and Christie’s nephew, William McGinnis.110 Another prominent and very wealthy Montrealer who build his own church and refused to let it be ruled by the bishop was Thomas Molson. In the early 1840s he erected a church on his property at the corner of St Mary’s (Notre-Dame) and Voltigeur Streets. He refused to let Bishop George Mountain consecrate it because he did not want him exercising any control over the church.111 The first incumbent was an Evangelical, William Thompson, who eventually died at Quebec ministering to typhus sufferers. The history of what became known as St Thomas’s Church was intricately caught up with Montreal diocesan and transatlantic religious politics. Molson’s Evangelicalism and Fulford’s High Churchism were almost constant sources of friction. By the mid-1850s Molson had joined the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion and had imported one of its ministers, Alfred Stone, from England.112 He also established a college in connection with his chapel. According to Molson, Stone “uses the Episcopal Prayer Book with a few omissions, the Church will increase very much as the Bishops and the Clergy of the Church of England are too High Church and domineering.”113 Because of certain legalities, Molson had to obtain special legislation allowing ministers of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion to perform marriages, baptisms, and burials.114 Both chapel and college fell on hard times in the 1860s; the college closed, the chapel was vacated until it became a garrison church, and Molson left the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. However, in his will he made provisions for St Thomas’s to return to the Church of England

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“as an evangelical church.”115 Also under the terms of the will, Thomas Molson’s descendents retained the right to appoint the rector. The foregoing are all examples of Evangelical successes in keeping the power of a High Church bishop at arm’s length. But Evangelicals were not always so successful, as an example from George Mountain’s episcopate clearly illustrates. Early in 1849 three Evangelical laymen in Quebec City, H.J. Noad, Christian Wurtele, and Jeffery Hale, attempted without success to establish another proprietary chapel in the city. To this end they had purchased the former Wesleyan Chapel on St Anne Street. As proprietors, they would name the incumbent clergyman, who would be paid out of the revenues generated by pew rents. The recent actions of Major Christie in establishing Trinity Church, Montreal, seem not to have been far from their thinking in this matter. A proposal went forward to Bishop Mountain in March 1849 that this chapel be accepted by the diocese and consecrated by the bishop.116 Mountain apparently agonized over what course of action to take in the matter, in the end refusing the request, though it caused no little division with Quebec City’s anglophone society.117 The bishop’s wife was clear in her own mind that the bishop should refuse the request to consecrate “the Hale Church.” The bishop, however, seems to have possessed a greater awareness of the potential divisiveness of the issue.118 One of Mountain’s principal objections was that the proprietors would appoint a clergyman “known [for his] opposition to the views of the Bishop and his determination to go to the extremist verge in the manifestation of dissenting predilections which is possible for him while remaining in the communion of the Church at all.”119 The issues surrounding this proposal became the subject of some rather intense discussions and negotiations, both private and public, throughout March, April, and May 1849. The proposal by Hale to establish another proprietary chapel in Quebec City also became entangled with the issue of consecrating Trinity Chapel, an action that would have placed it directly under episcopal control. While it is not entirely clear why the two issues were connected, it is abundantly clear that E.W. Sewell, as proprietor of Trinity Chapel, would not allow the bishop to consecrate it.120 Mountain’s refusal to allow another proprietary chapel in Quebec City stood in marked contrast to the actions of his father a quartercentury before. How then do we explain the son’s actions? It seems clear that both political and ideological considerations must be taken into account. Hale and Wurtele, despite being men of some importance in Quebec City, were no match for someone of the stature of Jonathan Sewell. It is also apparent that Jacob Mountain needed to maintain cordial relations with Sewell if his plans to enhance the

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power and dignity of his episcopal office and of the Church of England in Quebec were to come to fruition. Simply stated, Jacob Mountain needed Jonathan Sewell much more than George Mountain needed Jeffery Hale or Christian Wurtele. The timing of the requests would also seem of some importance. Jonathan Sewell’s request came at a time of relative calm in the Church of England. By the time of Jeffery Hale’s request, the heightened tensions thrown up by the Oxford Movement were making themselves felt. Tensions were running high, and it is apparent that George Mountain was never really convinced that Evangelicals were true Church of England men. The significance of this incident should not be underrated. This was the first major public breach between Quebec Evangelicals and Bishop George Mountain. Relations had been strained and suspicions raised. As it turned out, this proved to be but the beginning of a tumultuous decade that would result in open warfare between Evangelicals and High Churchmen.

t h e spg a n d q u e b e c : pa t r o n a g e a n d f i n a n c e s The importance of the spg to the Anglican church in Quebec cannot be underestimated. It is not too much of an exaggeration to suggest that without the financial backing of the society, the Church of England would hardly have existed in Lower Canada. As Charles James Stewart, second bishop of Quebec, once remarked, “Our chief earthly resource is the fostering benevolence and friendly interposition of the [Venerable] Society.”121 Down to 1815 the British government, in conjunction with the spg, had paid all the stipends of the Montreal clergy. In 1815 a decision was made by the government to grant a lump sum to the spg. But in 1831 it decided to stop these grants, and over the next four years it reduced them according to a diminishing scale, with the result that in 1835 the grants stopped altogether. The government would continue to meet any outstanding obligations to individual clergy, but these would cease on the death of the recipients. The loss of government money meant that the spg had to make up the shortfall.122 In addition to supporting individual missionaries, the spg provided scholarships for theological education and gave money for the support of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville.123 In 1841 the society established the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, the purpose of which was to endow missionary dioceses. The linkages between the spg and a political culture of loyalty have been explored by British historians, but virtually ignored by Canadian historians.124 G.M. Ditchfield, in his study “Ecclesiastical Policy under

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Lord North,” has argued that in the Thirteen Colonies “the clergy most likely to be loyalist … were those sponsored by the spg … These clergy tended not only to be the most loyal, but also the most likely to have been born in England, to have the best connexions in English clerical circles and to be best able to present their case effectively to an English audience.” Ditchfield also points out that its annual anniversary sermons provided the spg with “opportunities for the Episcopalian case to be heard and read. From the 1760s this occasion grew in importance, to join other sermon days as a demonstration of official attitudes.”125 That such views were shared by spg missionaries in Quebec is clearly evident from a pamphlet that Charles James Stewart, then minister in St Armand, published in London in 1817. This was part of an effort to influence both public opinion and the government of the day to pay greater attention to that section of the province which lay closest to the border with the United States. Stewart lamented the scarcity of both schoolteachers and ministers of the Gospel. “It is desirable,” he wrote, “that the first principles of religion, morality, and loyalty to the King, should be early instilled into the rising generation; and this might be accomplished in a great degree by the appointment of proper school-masters.”126 The experiences of another spg missionary, James Reid, rector at Trinity Church, Frelighsburg, sheds considerable light on the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage in the Diocese of Quebec by Bishop George Mountain. Some of Reid’s criticisms of Bishop Mountain were occasioned by his frustrations with the bishop’s handling of his (Reid’s) son’s appointment. Charles Peter Reid (1811–88) had been ordained by Bishop Stewart in 1836 and appointed successively to Rawdon, La Prairie, and in 1840, Compton, where he stayed until 1853.127 While C.P. Reid was at Compton, there was talk of the bishop moving him to Shefford and appointing S.C. Sewell to Compton.128 The ostensible reason for moving Reid was the lack of growth in the mission at Compton. James Reid was convinced, however, that this proposal to translate his son was animated by crass political motives. He suggested (with some justification) that Sewell was unqualified for the position and that he only wanted it for pecuniary reasons. “Is this any thing but a job?” he intimated to his diary. “But,” he continued, “Dr. Sewell is of a high family, the son of the late Stephen Sewell, and nephew of the late chief Justice Sewell, and therefore the son of a poor man must be turned out to make room for him.”129 The bitter, often caustic tone of this diary entry may say as much about Reid’s own personality and ministerial frustrations as about Mountain’s episcopal leadership, but it does get us below the level of official pronouncements and reveals something of the dynamic of ecclesiastical politics.

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Reid proceeded to criticize the way in which information from Quebec was filtered through the bishop for consumption in England. He argued that “the Church history of Canada cannot be written in England because it must be compiled from the Reports of the Bishop,” and “the Bishop’s opportunities of obtaining correct information are the very worst.”130 He referred to the pretenses surrounding the bishop’s triennial visitations and confirmations – how the numbers were artificially inflated and how deficient were the bishop’s methods of obtaining information. Bishop Mountain, he asserted, “knows perfectly well that it will be best that the Society [spg] should know no more than it will please him to tell, and the result of his wisdom and prudence is Mr. Hawkins’ Book.”131 Reid then offered some trenchant comments concerning the bishop, the spg, and the society’s missionaries. He asserted that the history of the Church of England in Canada cannot be written in Canada by any one of the Society’s Missionaries. They are all dependent on the Society, or in other words, on the Bishop; and on him alone. As far as the Missionaries are concerned the Bishop is the Society. His word is to the Society all in all. He has the power of the purse, and this power is a rod in his hand. By that rod he can remove one and set up another, pluck out and put in, make a good reputation out of an indifferent one, provided, the person be of an Aristocratic taint or from an English University. With such a rod over our heads there is no missionary in Canada that will dare to write the history of the Church, and relate matters are they are. But the time is coming when restraints will be taken out and then truth will be unfettered, and every one will get his due, Mountains, hills and vallies.132

Reid returned to this theme on 6 January 1850, when he commented further on the issue of how colonial bishops reported on the state of affairs in their dioceses to their English supporters and audiences. He regarded much of this process as a sham. In his view, bishops were largely insulated and isolated from the realities of parish life. Their triennial visitations were often stage-managed in such a way as to give the illusion that services were well attended and the people singleminded in their devotion. This he suggested was done with the crass motivation of extracting from a gullible English public additional funds for the support of the colonial church. The parish clergyman, however, “knows how false had the appearance of devotion been, and when he reads from the English press of the large and pious congregation he has to minister to, he is amazed, and only wishes that the narrative was true.”133 Reid’s personal experience in the neighbouring village of Stanbridge had convinced him that his earlier impressions were indeed sound. There the missionary had “palmed off his Mission,

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and his labours and his success as if nothing could be found to equal them.” Reports of this supposed success then found their way into the “Bishop’s journal set before the people of England, and from that Journal copied into Mr Hawkins’s Annals, now endorsed as authentic though far worse than a romance, indeed a shameful pious fraud.”134 Moreover, reports of the bishops to the spg suffered from the same unreliability. What seemed most insidious about this state of inflated reportage was that it derived ultimately from the colonial missionaries’ fear of episcopal retribution. Their dependence upon the bishop was complete.135 Such comments undoubtedly reflected Reid’s attachment to George Mountain’s predecessor, Bishop Charles James Stewart. Reid and Stewart had been long-standing associates in the Church of England’s mission to the Eastern Townships, particularly while serving the mission at Frelighsburg and St Armand in the area around Mississquoi Bay. They remained on close terms even after Stewart moved east to Hatley. When Stewart was away in England on business, Reid looked after his financial affairs. In one of Stewart’s letters to Reid, there is a reference to “The Rev. Official Mountain,” suggesting a dislike of apparent pretentiousness.136 If there existed any animosity between Stewart and Mountain, it was undoubtedly shared by Reid. Such a view of colonial bishops was shared by an anonymous Quebec correspondent to the London Record, who went to great lengths in describing the powers accorded to them by the spg. Such authority included selecting the missionaries, assigning them their fields, and fixing their stipends. “It need hardly be pointed out to your English readers,” he wrote, “that all this places both clergy and laity in a state of dependence upon the Bishop, in which the clergy and laity of the mother country would be very loath to find themselves.”137 These comments were made in response to proposals by Gladstone to regulate colonial church affairs, but which was regarded as further augmenting the power of the colonial episcopate, to the detriment of the interests of the laity.138 The comments need to be understood as foreshadowing the controversy that would erupt some five years later over the introduction of synodical government into the colonies. Even at this early date, concern was being expressed in the Diocese of Quebec over the enormous power that would be wielded in synod by a bishop possessing a veto. “For the Bishop’s veto,” this correspondent wrote in the Record, “nobody is responsible but himself; and he may surround himself with the high claims of prereogative inherent in the Episcopacy, and say nay against the yea of a whole diocese, except a servile coterie whose purposes are answered by letting him look at nothing but through their spectacles.”139

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While not all of Reid’s comments should be taken at face value, they do point to the reality of political considerations in the makeup and functioning of any diocese. No diocese in British North America can be considered apolitical. Nor should one regard the exercise of politics as in itself detrimental to the life and spiritual health of the diocese. Neither Evangelicals nor High Churchmen were above party considerations or party politics. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that ecclesiastical political structures in Lower Canada presented a far less complicated picture that those in England. In his 1799 sermon commemorating Nelson’s victory, Jacob Mountain asserted that “we form an integral part of the Empire, and with it we must stand or fall.”140 Such was the world view of a man who spent the last years of his life on the periphery of the British Empire. As is evidenced by his repeated attempts to secure ecclesiastical preferment in England, he must have felt acutely disappointed by his failure to win for the Church of England in Quebec the rights of full establishment. And yet his appointment and subsequent career serve as further reminders of the reality of the Atlantic world. Ecclesiastical politics were as much a reality in Quebec as they were in England and never more so than in the era of the Oxford Movement.

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4 George Mountain, Henry Roe, and the Making of a High Church Tradition I trust … that there is a large body of our clergy who are neither Tractarian nor low Churchmen, and who are equally prepared to make their stand against the insinuating advances of popery, and the disorganizing proceedings of schismatics and their abettors. George J. Mountain, April l8421 Yes, holy martyr of thy Lord, and true, – The Church, to Him who bids her people pray, And Him alone, yet in her service due, And offering pure, remembers thee this day: And I, in these vast solitudes away From all observance, will not thee forget. O that my cup to drink, my life to pay, (If needful so,) as thine this heart were set! That wish, at least, it owns; and we are met So far: but hope from living guides I gain, By many a step, to mount the ladder yet. Ah! One most dear across th’Atlantic main. Remember’d on this day which gave thee birth, All but thyself believe thee saint on earth. George J. Mountain, “On a Saint’s Day”2

The Church of England in the Diocese of Quebec, from Jacob’s consecration in 1793 until George’s death in 1863, was dominated by the Mountain family. For two lengthy periods of time they controlled the episcopal bench and many of the parishes of Lower Canada. They planted churches, established a college, fought for the rights of the Church of England as the established church, recruited deacons and priests, ministered to the disadvantaged, the suffering, and the dying, encouraged the faithful, admonished the lax, and in general, did much to set the tone, theological, political, and ecclesiological, in the diocese. George J. Mountain, in particular, was preoccupied with the problems of ministering to the scattered population of a diocese that initially stretched from the Labrador coast to the Rocky Mountains. He

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was the first Anglican bishop to visit the Red River Settlement, and later in his episcopate he visited the Labrador coast, Anticosti, and the Magdalen Islands. It was thus with considerable justification that D.C. Masters characterized him as “a great missionary bishop.”3 But despite his importance, Mountain has been largely overshadowed by his more famous contemporary, John Strachan, bishop of Toronto from 1839.4 Mountain’s episcopate coincided with a period of great upheaval and theological ferment in the Church of England. John Keble preached his Assize sermon in the University Church, Oxford, 14 July 1833, an event heralded by some, including John Henry Newman, as marking the beginning of the Oxford, or Tractarian, Movement – a sermon in which the Whig government of Earl Grey was derided for its spoilation of the Irish Church, and the national church condemned for its loss of nerve in acquiescing to such a situation. The first of the Tracts for the Times appeared later that same year. R.D. Hampden, an alleged Low Churchman, was appointed to the Regius Professorship in Divinity in the University of Oxford after a prolonged controversy that saw Evangelical and High Churchman united against him. Newman seceded to Rome in 1845. He was soon followed by a group of young members of the Church of England from prominent families, including Robert Isaac Wilberforce and his close friend Henry Manning. The Tractarian movement spawned a major controversy over the meaning and efficacy of baptism, which threatened to rend asunder the Church of England. An Evangelical rector, George Cornelius Gorham, called down upon himself the wrath of his ecclesiastical superior, Bishop Henry Phillpotts of Exeter, with his denial of a High Church understanding of baptismal regeneration. Accordingly, Phillpotts refused to institute Gorham to a living near Exeter to which he had been presented by Lord Chancellor Cottenham. Gorham appealed his case to the Court of Arches, which upheld Phillpotts’s position; a decision that was subsequently reversed in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. For many Evangelicals, this was a critical test of whether they could truly be considered members of the Church of England, and the reversal of the Court of Arches’ decision in the Privy Council probably prevented a mass exodus.5 It was also a critical factor in the decision of Henry Manning and Robert Wilberforce to leave the Church of England for the Church of Rome.6 Higher critical biblical scholarship hit the church with great force in 1860 with the publication of Essays and Reviews, a situation worsened two years later by the appearance of The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, a work written by John William Colenso, bishop of Natal. These great movements of men and ideas forced a re-examination of many of the cherished beliefs and ideals of thoughtful churchmen – from the place of the church in soci-

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ety and its relationship to the state to the meaning of baptism and the authority of Scripture. It is against this backdrop that colonial Anglicanism must be viewed. These were issues and controversies that involved the very identity of the United Church of England and Ireland, whether in Britain, New South Wales, Cape Colony, or Quebec. Though few colonial Anglicans had participated directly in these events, they were involved with them nonetheless. Indeed, in a few cases, some who later rose to positions of importance within the Anglican churches of British North America had had a direct involvement. Mountain’s son-in-law, Jasper Hume Nicolls, first principal of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, had been a student at Oriel College, Oxford, in the 1830s and had come under the influence of the Oxford Movement. As a fellow of Queen’s College, Nicolls was in attendance at Oxford Convocation in 1845 when W.G. Ward’s Tractarian views were under attack, and he cast his vote against censuring them.7 As well, Bishop John Medley of Fredericton, as Eugene Fairweather has pointed out, “was the first active participant in the Oxford Movement to be entrusted with the pastoral care of a diocese, and from the time of his contribution to the great Tractarian project of the Library of the Fathers, to the end of his life he was generally known as a capable and forthright spokesman for Tractarian views.”8 A number of clergy who had received their education at Tractarian St Augustine’s College, Canterbury, ministered in British North American dioceses, including at least eight in Quebec and three in Montreal.9 George Mountain’s son and biographer Armine, who tried unsuccessfully to succeed his father as lord bishop of Quebec in the episcopal election of 1863, was a known Tractarian, having been at Oxford in the early 1840s.10

the high church tradition The response of George Mountain to the two great early nineteenthcentury movements within the Church of England – Evangelicalism and Tractarianism – was informed by his upbringing in and commitment to High Chuchmanship within Anglicanism.11 By some accounts this tradition stretched back nearly three centuries to Richard Hooker (who had set out his defence of the Anglican establishment in his Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in the later years of Elizabeth i’s reign) and at the very least to William Laud, Lancelot Andrewes, and Caroline divines such as George Bull and Jeremy Taylor. This tradition espoused a number of doctrinal propositions about the nature of the Church of England, its ministry, and the sacraments. Its particular brand of churchmanship carried with it distinctive attitudes towards

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both Dissent and Evangelical Anglicans. To view Mountain aright, then, it would seem necessary to sketch, albeit briefly, the main contours of High Church thought and his place within this tradition. A contemporary of George Mountain, W.J. Conybeare, in a frequently cited article on “Church Parties” published in the Edinburgh Review, noted the existence of three parties that divided the nineteenthcentury Church of England: High Church, Evangelical, and Broad Church. “These parties have always existed, under different phases, and with more or less of life,” he wrote. He went on to note that “they have been brought into sharper contrast, and have learned better to understand themselves and one another, during the controversies which have agitated the last twenty years.”12 Conybeare was writing at a time when the full force of the Oxford Movement had been felt and when party identities and alignments were firmly entrenched in the ecclesiastical landscape of England. The terms “High” and “Low” derive from the politico-religious debates surrounding the Revolution Settlement of 1688–90. High Churchmen (ironically, the bulk of the “lower” clergy) were lukewarm in their enthusiasm for the new sovereigns, William and Mary, though their consciences did not force them out of the Establishment like their Nonjuring brethren.13 They zealously defended the traditional rights of the established church and were implacably hostile to “Dissent” and “Nonconformity.” They dubbed their opponents in the Church of England “Low Churchmen” because of their rather anemic defence of the Establishment and their willingness to offer concessions to Nonconformists in an attempt to secure their allegiance to the church. Although these were largely political designations, they came to connote theological divisions as well. While a strict reading of the history of the Church of England would have to distinguish between Low Churchmen and Latitudinarians, in practice by the end of the eighteenth century the two were virtually indistinguishable. Both Latitudinarians and Low Churchmen exhibited the tolerant, undogmatic spirit of the Age of the Enlightenment and seemed prepared to soften the more unpalatable features of theological orthodoxy as contrary to reason and good taste. By contrast, High Churchmen, while firmly set against the Latitudinarians, had worked out their theology and churchmanship in response to Puritanism. Thus they attempted to steer a middle course between Puritanism and Rome.14 While remaining firmly within the Protestant camp, they softened many of the characteristically Reformed theological positions and, in terms of church order and worship, were prepared to embrace or at least accommodate many of the “Catholic” elements the Puritans had rejected. They stressed episcopacy as the divinely ordained order for the church and maintained that the ministry of the church

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derived its authority from its lineal descent from Christ’s apostles. Their understanding of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist were central to their theology. The Puritan minister became the High Church priest, celebrating the sacrificial Eucharist in which Christ was present in a real (though not transubstantiary) sense. The language of baptismal regeneration conveyed their understanding of how grace was imparted to the recipient of water baptism.15 In support of their theological convictions and their ecclesiology, High Churchmen did not look to the Continental Protestant theologians but, rather, drew on the rediscovered legacy of Greek patristic thought, which was seen as supporting many of the “traditional” elements within the doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England. An important part of their polity was their understanding of adiaphora as applied to worship and church order. Rejecting the regulative principle of Puritans and Scots Presbyterians (which insisted that only those things that are positively commanded in Scripture may be allowed in worship), the High Churchmen argued that practices not specifically excluded by Scripture might be appropriated by the church and employed in the “due ordering of decent worship.” Accordingly, “Catholic” practices such as wearing the surplice and using the sign of the cross in baptism were not necessarily rejected out of hand. Theologically and ecclesiologically, the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century High Churchmen were implacably hostile to Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, and Dissent. Confrontation with the Puritans and the Sectaries of the mid-seventeenth century coloured their developing soteriology. Owen Chadwick points out that the Restoration theologians regarded the apparent antinomianism of the Civil War Sectaries as one of the chief threats to true religion, and they therefore “attempted to frame their doctrine of justification in language which allowed more to the necessity of good works and human endeavour than had been common among Protestant divines.” While thus in theory upholding the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they tended to soften the angularity of its expression and spoke frequently of “the necessity of good works.”16 Indeed, Alister McGrath has argued that theologians such as Jeremy Taylor and George Bull propounded a new understanding of the doctrine of justification. These later Caroline divines were so preoccupied with the idea of “holy living” that they framed their doctrine of justification in terms that made it increasingly difficult to distinguish it from sanctification.17 Thus they opened themselves to the charge that they had abandoned the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone.18 Moreover, McGrath goes on to note that this new understanding of justification was “emphasised by the ‘High Churchmen’ of the later eighteenth century in their

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polemic against the possibility that their Evangelical counterparts might cause the faithful to become complacent or negligent of good works through their preaching of the doctrine of justification sola fide.”19 The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century High Churchmen, or “Orthodox,” as they preferred to be called – were as concerned with “practical spirituality” and holiness as their Evangelical brethren, though they emphasized a different path to this end, especially participation in the sacraments and “acts of self-denial.”20 Their spiritual theology attempted to occupy the middle ground between “Counter-Reformation Catholicism and … Continental Protestantism.”21 Indeed, Restoration Anglicans “found it increasingly difficult to disguise their conviction that the church and her sacraments were the surest, and possibly the only, path to salvation.”22 A definite and defining conversion experience was not part of their theological system.23 Recent portraits of the Church of England in the long eighteenth century have downplayed conflict and emphasized consensus. Thus Peter Nockles has argued that “the pre-Tractarian Church of England, while encompassing different parties, was not riddled with the ‘mutual suspicion, and an apartheid of personalities, theological colleges, journals and publishing imprints’ which chacterized the post-Tractarian Church.”24 He contends that before 1833 most High Churchmen and Evangelicals were united in their attachment to the existing Protestant constitution, which he characterizes “as a ballast and guarantor of a certain internal cohesion within the Church of England.”25 John Walsh and Stephen Taylor paint a picture of the Georgian Church of England in similar hues and brush strokes. They recognize that “different devotional schools have also existed in the Church of England,” and that “those who identified themselves with particular subgroupings in the eighteenth-century Church often ascribed themselves a pedigree and located themselves within a tradition.”26 But Walsh and Taylor also reject the conflict model as applicable to the eighteenthcentury Church of England, drawing a contrast between the broad consensus of the eighteenth century and the full-blown party situation of the Victorian era, in which church parties were “well-organized, possessed of a keen sense of group identity and more or less permanently mobilized for combat.”27 It is nearly impossible to do justice, in such a brief compass, to the subtle and nuanced meanings accorded the terms “High Church” and “Orthodox” in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Church of England. Peter Nockles has recently drawn a portrait of the pre-Tractarian Church of England which suggests that High Churchmanship was marked by a certain degree of fluidity. He even

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argues that despite some latent hostilities, given the right cause, Evangelicals and High Churchmen could present a common front. This he contrasts with the heavily politicized situation after the Oxford Movement had done its work in wrecking whatever theological and ecclesiastical consensus the Church of England had once possessed.28 At the same time, he recognizes that “relations between the Orthodox and Evangelicals had begun to sour long before the rise of Tractarianism.”29 Still deeply conservative, clinging to traditional ways, hostile to Dissent, politically very Tory, such pre-Tractarian High Churchmanship was deeply suspicious of emotionalism and enthusiasm. As Owen Chadwick has remarked, “its piety tended to be sober, earnest, dutiful, austere, or even prosaic in expression.”30 Though perhaps the open party warfare that was characteristic of the Tractarian era was not as much in evidence, relations between Evangelicals and High Churchmen were severely strained in the 1810s and 1820s. The latter’s loyalty to the Church of England was often suspect in the former’s eyes, and their theological emphases were seen as giving rise to dangerous tendencies. Evangelicals’ talk of conversion was seen as deprecating the idea of baptismal regeneration; “their language about justification might minimize the growth of the soul in sanctification,” as might their doctrine of assurance. Too much emphasis on the individual and his or her Bible downplayed the importance of “the historic community of Christians.”31 As will be seen later, many of these issues were thrown into bold relief by the Oxford Movement. There was also a continuing High Church tradition within the Victorian Church of England that remained separate from Tractarianism. Alan Stephenson, in his study of the emergence of synodical government and the origins of the Lambeth Conferences, calls this group “moderate High Churchmen” and distinguishes their theology and churchmanship from both Evangelicals and Tractarians. According to his definition, these moderate High Churchmen were far more concerned with tradition than were Evangelicals. Episcopacy and apostolic succession were emphasized, as were the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. The Book of Common Prayer was stressed more than the Thirty-nine Articles. These individuals were not hostile to the Reformers (as were many Tractarians such as Richard Hurrell Froude, who regarded the Reformation as a mistake). They were less touched by the revival of popular medievalism than the Tractarians and were less open on questions of ritual. They also tended to be attached to the principle of church establishment. Their missionary interest and activity was channelled through the spg and the spck, not through the cms.

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Locating the Mountains within these various strands of High Church tradition is not a straightforward task. We have already noted the connections between Jacob Mountain and the anti-Evangelical George Pretyman Tomline. It remains to be seen how George Mountain, third Bishop of Quebec, fits the pattern.

mountain and the contours of high church thought George Jehoshaphat Mountain was born on 27 July 1789 in Norwich, England. At age five he emigrated to Lower Canada with his father and eleven other family members and settled at Quebec. He was educated privately at home by the Reverend Matthew Feilde, a Cambridge graduate. At age sixteen he and his elder brother were sent to England to continue their education under the tutelage of the Reverend T. Munro of Little Easton, Essex. From there Mountain went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. He matriculated in 1810, though without honours, and unsuccessfully tried to obtain a fellowship at Downing College. The following year he returned to Canada, where he studied theology under his father’s care while also acting as his personal secretary. Ordained deacon in 1812, George assisted his cousin Salter Mountain in the Cathdral of the Holy Trinity, Quebec. He was ordained priest in 1814 and appointed evening lecturer at Quebec at an annual stipend of £150. He held this position for less than a year because of his appointment to the parish of Fredericton. There he remained for upwards of three years; whereupon he moved back to Quebec. Mountain was appointed “official” of Lower Canada in 1818, received a Lambeth dd the following year, and was subsequently appointed to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning (later McGill University). In 1821 he was appointed first archdeacon of Quebec, and later that year he became the rector of the newly created parish of Quebec. He was named principal and professor of divinity in McGill College, a position he held until 1835. The college, however, was embroiled in a number of bitter conflicts and did not begin teaching until 1843. Mountain’s position was thus purely honorific. In 1836 he was consecrated at Lambeth as suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Quebec, with the title of bishop of Montreal. The following year he formally succeeded Charles James Stewart as bishop of Quebec, but he retained the title of bishop of Montreal down to 1850, when the Diocese of Montreal was created. At the time of his consecration, his diocese stretched from the New Brunswick border to western Upper Canada and contained some 117 clergy – 73 in Upper Canada and 44 in Lower Canada. During his lifetime his diocese was subdi-

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vided twice: once in 1839, when Toronto was created, and again in 1850 with the creation of Montreal.32 Mountain was a diligent bishop but not a theologian of any note. He had not been a brilliant student, though he had received a soundenough education. He never wrote a work of academic theology, nor did he ever hold an active teaching position. He was, nonetheless, actively involved in the promotion of educational ideals and the creation of a college that existed to train future Church of England clergy. He is best thought of as an activist and missionary bishop, not as a scholar. Still, his theology is worth examining if for no other reason that it set the tone for the Diocese of Quebec. Because Mountain wrote no formal theology, his views must be gleaned from a variety of sources: episcopal charges, letters to family members, and published sermons. The nature of these sources obviously varies. Of the three, his episcopal charges are the most likely to reveal his views on the issues of the day. His sermons, collected and published posthumously under the direction of his son Armine, are, as one would expect, largely pastoral in tone, having all been preached in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Quebec City. It seems quite clear that in both his theology and his ecclesiology, Mountain attempted to stear a middle course between Oxford and Rome, on the one side, and the Evangelicals and Methodists, on the other. In his 1848 charge to the clergy of his diocese, he wrote that he had tried “to keep out of sight, as far as possible, the existence and the name of party, and neither to allow in myself, nor to encourage in others, a tendency on either side, to extremes. I conceive it to be our duty in this behalf, to follow, not any particular school in the Church, – but the Church herself.”33 This search for balance, the avoidance of extremes, and the clinging to a sort of golden mean in theology and churchmanship were hallmarks of Mountain’s thought and practice.34 It is necessary, however, to inquire more closely into the way in which he worked out this program. Because of the tendency of some contemporary evangelical critics to lump together High Churchmen and Tractarians and then to accuse them of “Romanizing tendencies,” it is important to note that High Churchmen such as Mountain were careful to distance themselves from Roman Catholicism. On the fundamental question of justification, Mountain asserted: “Money can purchanse no exemptions; the Church has no market in indulgences, no deposit of unappropriated saintly merits, which (however they may pass current in this world) can be turned to account in the other for those who have forfeited their interest in Christ. Souls are ransomed, we are told by an apostle ‘not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.›35 Sin, death,

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judgment, resurrection – these were all, for Mountain, realities with which men and women must grapple. On the question of authority he was fully Protestant – the Bible is the inspired Word of God. “The Bible,” he asserted, “proceeds from the Holy Ghost. When the Bible speaks, the Holy Ghost speaks.”36 He thus criticized what he called “the unreformed position of the [Roman Catholic] Church” for adding sacraments and various observances “which rest simply upon ecclesiastical authority, and too many of which are irreconcilable with the Word of God, are placed upon a level with divine institutions.”37 At the same time, however, he held a high view of the church and asserted its authority to regulate those matters that are not specifically dealt with in Scripture. Probably the most consistently emphasized theme in Mountain’s sermons was holiness. As noted previously, this was a characteristic feature of the “holy living” school of late seventeenth-century Anglican divines. Mountain did affirm the doctrine of justification by faith, speaking repeatedly of “salvation through the blood of Christ alone,” or again, “let us have recourse to Christ that he may cover us, let us practically learn what it means to be justified by faith, and so have peace with God by Jesus Christ – peace through the blood of His cross.”38 Still, he placed such an emphasis on sanctification that at times it seemed to obscure his treatment of justification. Although it is not at all clear that he was so fusing the two as to make sanctification part of the ground for justification, his treatment of this doctrine might have made some Evangelicals, used to a more forceful exposition and presentation, somewhat uncomfortable. Moreover, his sermons contain repeated admonitions against worldliness and exhortations to godly living and good works. There is also in his sermons a tremendous emphasis on the Christian persevering in his or her faith. Here he seems to have been warning against the error of antinomianism, which High Churchmen saw Evangelicals repeatedly falling into. Thus in reference to Christ he declared: “It is precisely as to sinners that He stands in the relation to us as a Saviour, and is the sinless High Priest, and the spotless self-offered sacrifice which our case requires. But woe be to us if, in a false and perverted reliance upon this wonderful provision of Divine mercy, we throw the reins loose to our sinful inclinations, or relax in our resistance of temptation.”39 Holiness, then, was the mark of true faith, and Christians’ perseverance was regarded as “the evidence of their being heirs of glory in Christ.”40 In his emphasis on holiness, Mountain fashioned a critique of both rough and respectable society in which he dwelt on the “evil of sin” and “the evidences of a vitiated nature in man.” He chastised the

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drunkard, the swearer, the Sabbath breaker, and the “fraudulant dealer,” as well as “the refined, and, in the eyes of the world, correct circles of society.” “Look at them,” he declared, as made up of professed Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, redeemed by the purchase of His blood out of a corrupted world, possessed with the high aspirations which ought to belong to the believer, and, as they ought to be seen, in full training for the inheritance of glory, – what inconsistency, what worldliness, what frequent and palpable violation of the Christian temper of humility and love, what devotion to the vanities of life, what specious disguises of self-interest, what languor and backwardness in religion, what alienation from spiritual views, what a disposition to start aside, like a broken bow, from the demands of a holy and elevated faith, what a desire to accommodate the Gospel and the whole system and observances of the Church to the ways of the world!41

As might be expected, Mountain’s theology placed considerable emphasis on the cultivation of a deep piety. He stressed the need for constancy in prayer – “To keep alive that clear fire of inward piety which, if it once die, it is hard to rekindle.” Prayer and devotion needed to be practised. “The more we draw near to God,” he wrote, “the more we feel that He draws near to us; we acquire in time a devotional habit of mind, a propensity to our religious duties, and a sanctification in the performance of them.”42 While Mountain’s was clearly a religion of the heart, he seems to have been suspicious of certain types of enthusiasm. He warned against imitating a manner of praying which, he suggested, “has more to do than we suspect with a fervid temperament, or even with, a meretricious excitement of the imagination.” He went on to say, “Prayer, although it should be earnest and reverent, prompted by a sense of our wants before God, springing from fixed principles of faith and love, and flowing immediately forth from the depths of the heart, yet may be acceptably offered in the form of a calm, solemn and composed address.”43 Tradition, or what Mountain called “the ascertained usage of pure ecclesiastical antiquity,”44 was an important part of his ecclesiology. He rejected both the Roman Catholic view of tradition, in which practices inconsistent with Scripture are retained solely on the basis on the church’s authority, and the Puritan regulatory principle, in which nothing was lawful in worship or church order unless it was based on the explicit command of Scripture. Instead, Mountain distinguished among three types of ordinances or observances, all of which were legitimate, though based on different foundations. The first consisted of “those which are of distinct, express, and positive institution by the authority of

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God.” In this category he placed both baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The second group included the practice of baptizing infants, the observance of Sunday as a day of worship, and the practice of confirmation. These had been passed down to the modern church by “Apostolic tradition.” Though they lacked the authority of the “positive institution” of scripture, they were “so far noticed in Scripture, … as to satisfy us, when such notice is compared with the early, universal, and continued practice of Christians, that they were delivered down by the Apostles of the Lord.” The final class included “those which are based purely upon ecclesiastical authority,” which Article 34 of the Thirty-nine Articles identifies as the church’s various traditions and ceremonies that are open to change depending on the circumstances.45 As one might expect, there is in Mountain’s thinking a strong emphasis on the role of the visible and institutional church, both in bringing a person into the fold of Christian believers and in keeping him or her there in a nurturing and sustaining relationship, in what he called “the practice of an intelligently spiritual devotion, and the exercise of a sound belief.”46 The initiatory rite by which a person was brought into the fold was, of course, the sacrament of baptism. But what did baptism signify, and wherein lay its efficacy? What was its relationship to saving faith? On these questions, Evangelicals and High Churchmen disagreed. Indeed, Peter Toon has asserted that even among Evangelicals in the Church of England, there was no common agreement on the doctrine of infant baptism.47 While they were agreed that the children of believers were the right and proper subjects for baptism, on virtually all other points at issue they gave different answers. Their different answers had been at the heart of the notorious Gorham controversy.48 Mountain’s first published thoughts on the subject of baptism were made before the Gorham case had erupted, but they illustrate a largely conventional High Church position on the subject. In all his public declarations Mountain freely and unashamedly employed the term “regeneration” when speaking of baptism. He insisted that this use of language was fully consonant with the doctrine and practice of the early church, all of the Church of England’s formularies, and even (so he insisted) the position of John Calvin, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and John Wesley. He was also careful to distance himself from a Roman Catholic view. Thus he emphasized the mistake of supposing that, by maintaining the views of the Reformation upon this point, we are endangering vital and spiritual Religion and teaching men blindly to rely on the opus operatum of the Sacrament, as if the business of their salvation were done once for all. The prayer of the Church that the baptized child may ever remain in the number of God’s faithful and elect children,

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and the charge to the Sponsors respecting its training, may, of themselves, suffice for an answer to such a supposition. It is indeed a sad although a very common error, in running away from formalism and superstititon and the ascription of merit to ceremonial works, to run into the opposite extreme and to hold it for an evidence of spirituality to depreciate the ordinances of the Faith, as well as the stated observances of the Church.49

Baptism as so understood was the first step in the process of becoming a child of God; it was “the first act of this affiliation, introductory to all which follows.” Moreover, Mountain argued that baptism was essential to the process. “We have no warrant,” he asserted, “except under extraordinary circumstances, to look for the ulterior work of the grace of God without the use of baptism.” At the same time he admitted that many baptized persons had fallen away “from all their baptismal engagements” and had forfeited “their birthright of blessing.” Nevertheless, “they are not beyond the reach of renovating grace.”50 Baptism, then, constituted the foundational building block for the Christian life. Mountain thus asserted that there is “a sense in which a new birth is conveyed in baptism.”51 Like the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, it was a vehicle of God’s grace. Baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, the preaching of the Word – these were all Christ’s approved means for uniting Christians “in the bonds of brotherhood, and vehicles, by His own express stipulation, for conveying grace and refreshment to their souls.”52 So understood, baptism was a beginning and a stimulus to godly living. Mountain thus argued against those who would suggest that such a view of baptism “militates against a correct estimate of vital religion by inspiring men with a dangerous reliance upon outward forms, and, prompting them to build upon these as sufficient for their salvation, draws them off from looking directly to Christ, and lulls in a blinded security those who ought to be awakened to earnest strivings of the soul, in order to a saving process to be wrought in their spiritual man.”53 On the contrary, he argued, a correct view of baptism would have the opposite effect. It would be an aid to perseverance in the Christian life and a stimulus to holy living as the baptized person reflected on how, in this sacrament, he or she had been made a recipient of the “free mercy of God.” In another sermon Mountain spoke of the water of baptism “as a sensible representation of the process which, by the grace of the gospel, takes effect upon the soul, and moreover, as a sacrament, it seals and ratifies our admission to the privileges of the faith.” Being baptized “in devout and humble faith … must open the way for the sanctifying influences which are to be poured in upon the soul, from above, and which renew the inner man day by day.”54

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Mountain, in his emphasis on the regenerating work of grace in the recipient of baptism and the ordinary operation of the Holy Spirit in the Christian, downplayed the importance of the conversion experience. Indeed, he was uncomfortable with the term “regeneration” as applied to conversion, as likely to set up “certain tests of conversion.”55 In one of his sermons he described conversion experiences in this way: “A crisis full of marked incident – a sudden excitement at one particular instant of our lives – a vehement struggle, partaking of the character of animal sensation, which comes and goes off like a fit – an electrical effect and a sort of dramatic exhibition of transported feeling, produced by the unsparing application of certain stimulants in religious pharmacy.”56 This he contrasted with what he saw as the normal work of the Holy Spirit – in bringing a person to repentance and faith and in that person’s growth in knowledge, holiness, and good works. Yet lest he be misunderstood as downplaying the importance of personal faith, in another sermon Mountain admonished his listeners that “if you are not in a state of reconciliation with God through Christ, you are lost, and that is enough – turn as they turned and you will be saved.”57 Because Mountain no where dealt with the question in a completely systematic manner, he leaves many questions unanswered.

the oxford movement As part of a transatlantic community, Anglicans in the colonies both naturally and inevitably participated in the debate and controversy surrounding the Oxford Movement. Indeed, in many ways, the events of 1833–45 constituted the great watershed for the Church of England in the modern period. They cast in bold relief the most important theological and ecclesiastical questions confronting the church – the very nature of that church itself, its ministry, the meaning and validity of its sacraments, the means of salvation, the nature of faith and holiness, and the relationship of the church to the state. As thoughful churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic sought answers to these questions, they looked for help not only in Scripture but in the church fathers, the Reformers, the traditional Anglican formularies of the sixteenth century, and the writings of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century divines. In a sermon preached on 1 July 1864 in St George’s Church, Lennoxville, before the convocation of the University of Bishop’s College, J.H. Thompson, formerly Harold Professor of Divinity and Hebrew, paid tribute to the two movements that had awakened the Church of England from its spiritual torpor:

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Sixty years ago she was buried in formalism and a barren outward morality. The Evangelical party first aroused us from our slumbers … They preached and taught and wrote till the whole Church was awakened. But their teaching was mainly subjective. The work needed to be fixed and established. Then came the great Oxford movement, to which we are indebted for the revival of the true spirit of Churchmanship, for the great extension of the Episcopate, for the consolidation of the Church on its true principles of Evangelical truth and Apostolic order.58

Thompson was clearly correct in identifying the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford Movement as the twin pillars that transformed the Victorian Church, not only in England and Ireland but in British North America, New South Wales, New Zealand, and Cape Colony. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued, “the nineteenth-century growth of Anglo-Catholicism amounted to nothing less than an ideological revolution in the Church of England and in the worldwide Anglican communion with which it is associated.”59 It is the purpose of the following section to outline, albeit briefly, the origins and nature of the Oxford Movement before examing in some detail the initial Quebec response. When the Oxford Movement began is a matter of some dispute. John Henry Newman, only recently returned from an extended trip to southern Europe, recorded having arrived back in England in early July 1833. “The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the assize sermon in the University pulpit. It was published under the title of ‘National Apostasy.’ I have ever considered and kept the day as the start of the religious movement of 1833.”60 Keble, sometime fellow of Oriel College, author of The Christian Year, and now rector of Hursley in Hampshire, had taken aim at proposals by the Whig government of Earl Grey to reform the Church of Ireland by, among other things, abolishing ten bishoprics. Keble’s was a good voice in defence of a bad cause.61 The Church of Ireland contained four archbishops and eighteen bishops to rule over an established church that could claim as adherents only about a tenth of the Irish population and was supported by tithes collected largely from the majority Roman Catholic population. The Irish Church Bills were part of the age of reform that began with the constitutional revolution of 1828–32 and continued through Peel’s establishment of the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1835. A halfdecade of constitutional reform was seen as, in Norman Gash’s words, “a fatal surrender which had merely put power into the hand of [the United, Church of England and Ireland’s] enemies.” The proposals to reform the Church of Ireland “seemed the start of a general despoiling of the establishment at the hands of a secular

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parliament that had ceased officially to be either Anglican or even Protestant.”62 As R.W. Church put it, “what is called the Oxford or Tractarian movement began, without doubt, in a vigorous effort for the immediate defence of the Church against serious dangers, arising from the violent threatening temper of the days of the Reform Bill.”63 Resounding with echoes of Henry Sacheverell’s cry of a century earlier, Keble had raised the spectre of “the church in danger.”64 Thus the Oxford Movement began as an assault on the unholy alliance of church and state in England and Ireland. Many of the early Tractarians were outspoken in their rejection of the easy, accommodating Erastianism of an older High Churchmanship which had lost sight of the church’s divine origins and spiritual character and instead had begun to regard it as a mere department of state.65 By September 1833 the first of the Tracts for the Times had appeared. This was a brief exposition and defence of the doctrine of apostolic succession written by Newman. In all, ninety tracts were published between 1833 and 1841, the year in which Newman’s infamous Tract 90 appeared. The majority of the Tracts were written by a handful of Oxford men. Newman himself wrote more than a quarter of the total. Apart from the reprinted writings of earlier High Church divines, the remainder were written by Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Richard Hurrell Froude, Isaac Williams, and one or two others.66 Despite their characterization as “tracts”, in reality these were theological treatises of the highest order. Their intended audiences included not only the parish clergy of the Church of England but the rising generation of ecclesiastical leadership then in training in the University of Oxford.67 It was this latter group that would help to carry the Oxford Movement to the colonies of the British Empire. In the opening decade of the Oxford Movement, Newman was the acknowledged leader. His influence among Oxford undergraduates who were destined to enter the ministry of the Church of England was enormous. For many, it must have been difficult to have been in Oxford in the 1830s and not to have come under the spell of Newman. He attracted to the movement some of the finest minds of his generation, but also some of the most eccentric and erratic of its personalities. The publication of the Tracts served to widen the circle of those influenced by the new Oxford divinity, and many rural clergy were caught up in the revolutionary spiritual fervour and vitality that it seemed to exhibit. The early Tractarians repudiated the shallow religiosity of the English church and people, and they sought to stem the rising tide of secularism in the nation. They endeavoured to recapture both the beauty and the spiritual legacy of the ancient catholic church. Their movement dovetailed with both Romanticism and popular medievalism.

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In much of their social and cultural outlook, Evangelicals and Tractarians, it must be recognized, had a good deal in common.68 Not only did churchmen such as Newman, Henry Manning, and Robert Wilberforce cross from one camp to another, but they were able to do so with relative ease because of a similarity of social and cultural vision.69 Both shared the moral earnestness, antipathetical attitudes to “the world,” and missionary zeal that have come to be regarded as hallmarks of Victorianism. Though they followed different routes to a similar goal, each was committed to cultivating godliness, holiness, and piety. As William Wilberforce’s son Robert Isaac put it in 1851: “these movements, [Evangelical and Tractarian] though distinct, were not repugnant. On the contrary, persons who had been most influenced by the one, often entered most readily upon the other … So then the second movement was a sort of consequence of the first.”70 Indeed, David Bebbington has recently argued that “the radical Evangelicals were not just similar to the Tractarians but were actually an earlier phase of the same movement that in the 1830s proliferated into many strands.”71 And Sheridan Gilley has stated that Newman “combined the dogmatic conviction and deepest feeling of the Evangelical movement with the doctrines of the older High Churchmanship to revolutionize the character of the Church of England.”72 At the same time, caution must be exercised lest the differences between the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford Movement be seen as merely incidental or idiosyncratic. Though they were animated by some of the same cultural forces and sought spiritual renewal within the church and nation, substantial differences remained.73 That Evangelicals and Tractarians had much in common theologically is readily apparent with the hindsight of one hundred and fifty years. Both worked from within the framework of Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy as set forth in the Nicene and Chalcedon formulas. However, the two parted company over critical theological issues ranging from justification and sanctification to the rule of faith and their understanding of the church’s ministry and sacraments. The central point to keep in view is that Evangelicals regarded Tractarians as either softening or abandoning altogether the classical Reformation understanding of these doctrines.74 Evangelicals argued “that the Holy Scriptures alone are a revelation from God: and that they contain all things necessary to salvation.”75 They refused to regard Scripture and church tradition as joint rules of faith.76 They considered any affirmation of the latter “the cause of those ‘deplorable apostacies› exhibited by the Oxford apostles. The cautious approval of some Evangelicals towards the early Tracts soon gave way to a hardened opposition. The publication in 1838–39

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of Richard Hurrell Froude’s Remains, which included not just his occasional writings but his private diary and letters, revealed him to be an austere, anxious, and troubled young man who sought spiritual solace in extreme acts of mortification.77 Above all else, they revealed a Froude whose antipathy to the Protestant Reformation bordered on the pathological.78 Their publication also threatened to undo the entire Oxford Movement. The movement had become, in a manner hitherto unknown, the subject of intense and heated public debate. It seems that everyone had taken sides, both in Oxford and in the nation at large. A series of further crises, including the publication of Newman’s Tract 90 in 1841 and William George Ward’s The Ideal of a Christian Church in 1844 and, ultimately, Newman’s 1845 reception into the Church of Rome, all served to confirm in the popular mind that the Oxford Movement was inimical to the Protestant character of the Church of England. Yet even before these events shook the movement to its very foundations, Anglican Evangelicals of all stripes regarded it as the Trojan horse of Romanism within the English church establishment. Because of their serious differences with Tractarians over fundamental questions of theology, Evangelicals believed that they were leading the fight to preserve the very Protestant character of the Church of England, as the title of Daniel Wilson’s 1850 book Our Protestant Faith in Danger would suggest.79 While much of the devotional practice of the Tractarians was repudiated by Evangelicals, their opposition hinged on the doctrine of justification. Evangelicals believed that Tractarians had abandoned a fully Protestant understanding of justification by faith alone. Like the later Caroline divines, the Tractarians had so fused the discrete doctrines of justification and sanctification that they had made “good works” the grounds of a sinner’s standing in a right relationship to God.80 Though Newman had been careful to frame his view of justification in such a way as to position it between classical Protestant and Roman Catholic understandings of this doctrine, even some of the most careful observers saw his view as much closer to Rome than to Wittenberg or Geneva.81 Given that this doctrine was at the very heart of Protestant self-identity, Evangelicals regarded Tractarians as having compromised the very essence of the Gospel.82 Tractarians did not speak of sola fide, and they rejected the Evangelical emphasis on forensic justification or imputed righteousness.83 The visible church “as the Body wherein we are made and continue to be members of Christ”84 occupied a central place in Tractarian theology. The Tractarian was more likely to see this divine life as implanted at the time of baptism and nurtured by participating in the sacraments of the church. Evangelicals were more likely to draw a classic Reformation dis-

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tinction between the visible and invisible churches, regarding the invisible church as the true church, in the sense that it was composed of true believers. However, this did not mean that they deprecated the visible church. As Ian Rennie points out, “the visible church was true when the Word of God was faithfully preached and the sacraments rightly administered.”85 This interpretation made it theoretically possible to regard non-Anglican Dissenters as members of the true church and allow for cooperation with them in voluntary societies where matters of church order were kept from view. Episcopacy might be a superior form of church government, but it was not the only legitimate form and certainly was not of the “essence” of the Gospel.86 The Tractarians also made a theological appeal over the heads of the sixteenth-century Reformers to the fathers of the early church87 – as Pusey put it in answer to the question “What is Puseyism?”: “Reverence for and deference to the ancient Church, of which our own Church is looked upon as the representative to us, and by whose views and doctrines we interpret our Church when her meaning is questioned or doubtful; in a word, reference to the ancient Church, instead of the Reformers, as the ultimate expounder of the meaning of our Church.”88 Just as Tractarians were seen as undermining the Protestant foundation of the national church, so Evangelicals and many High Churchmen rallied to its defence. A battle for the hearts, minds, and souls of English men and women took many forms, not the least of which was a great literary war in the three decades between 1833 and 1863. The press took sides on all the issues. The publication of the Tracts for the Times was met by Evangelical tracts by writers such as William Goode. Most of the Evangelical Anglican responses to Tractarianism were published by either Seeley and Burnside or Hatchard.89 The two great Tractarian publishing ventures, the Library of the Fathers and the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, were countered principally by the formation of the Parker Society, whose purpose was “to make known those works by which the Fathers of the Reformed English Church sought to diffuse Scriptural Truth … [and which] their descendants are now called upon to manifest the same principles with firmness and decision.”90 By the mid-1850s, when it disbanded, the Parker Society had published more than fifty volumes of the writings of the English Reformers.91 While it was clear to most English contemporaries that the Parker Society and the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology were on a theological collision course, this was a point lost on the Torontobased High Church paper the Church, which regarded the two as essentially complementary.92 This great contest between Evangelical and Tractarian was not confined to pulpit and press; it saw one major statement in stone, that of

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the Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford. This was a visible response to the assault on the Reformation contained in Froude’s Remains.93 It was erected in 1841 as a commemoration of the deaths of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer in Oxford in 1555 in the cause of Protestant truth against Roman error. As Rosemary O’Day has argued, “it was as if, once a solid and imposing monument had been built, no one would again dare to assail the Protestant character of the English church.”94 As Peter Toon has pointed out, it would be a mistake to see these debates in stark terms as simply a contest between Evangelicals and Tractarians. Instead, moderate Evangelicals and moderate High Churchmen established a series of alliances in defence of the Protestant character and theology of the Church of England. Indeed, beginning in 1840, under the new editorial direction of Henry Christmas, the Church of England Quarterly Review coined the label “Evangelical High Churchmen” and began to refer to “the full possibility of preaching a doctrine gloriously Evangelical whilst holding a discipline nobly apostolic.”95 Although the Record denied the existence “of such a heterogeneous race as Evangelical High-Churchmen,”96 some moderate Evangelicals were able to make common cause with some moderate High Churchmen in both the revamped Churchman and the Parker Society. Deciding when the Oxford Movement leaves off and Anglo-Catholicism begins is a contentious issue. Some, such as Desmond Bowen, see significant differences between the early Oxford reformers and the later AngloCatholic ritualists. Others, such as Nigel Yates, have argued against dividing the theology of the early Tractarians from later ritualist practices. “Liturgical experiment,” he asserts, “however advanced, was the logical outcome of Tractarian teaching.”97 Taking this longer view of the Oxford Movement, rather than the truncated one that sees Newman’s conversion to Rome in 1845 as the terminus ad queum, seems to make better sense of the entire nineteenth-century experience. It certainly renders more intelligible British North American/Canadian Anglicanism, which continued to experience the effects of the Oxford Movment at least down to the end of the nineteenth century. The Oxford Movement also dovetailed with the Gothic revival, with significant implications for church architecture and the organization of the internal space of churches – what MacCulloch has called “sermons in stone: a transformation in the layout of the church’s buildings.”98 Members of the Camden Society (later the Ecclesiological Society), which was founded in Cambridge in 1839 by John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb and inspired by the work of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, sought to build and rebuild churches in accordance with what they regarded as “correct Gothic architecture.”99 They worked profound changes on the interior architecture of

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churches and helped effect an ideological revolution. In short, the Camdenians advocated “a return, according to their own interpretations, to what English churches might have looked like in the fourteenth century before late medieval corruptions had set in.”100 English churches thus began to look much more “Catholic” and less Protestant – a visual expression of the theological change from an emphasis on preaching to that of sacramentalism. So widespread were these architectural changes that Sheridan Gilley has noted that “by 1900 there was hardly a church in the country unaffected by the change.”101 Liturgical innovation flowed logically and necessarily from these architectural alterations. Changes in worship were introduced in varying degrees over time. The first involved chanting the service, using lighted altar candles, and preaching in the surplice. By the 1860s, Anglo-Catholic worship embraced six liturgical practices that reflected its high sacramental theology. Not surprisingly, most of the innovations revolved around the Eucharist, which under Tractarian influence had become the centrepiece of public worship, replacing an earlier emphasis on preaching.102 Thus the celebrant Tractarian priest appeared before the congregation in full vestments. He celebrated the Eucharist with his back to the congregtion, facing a raised stone altar that was positioned against the east wall of the church and lit with candles (thus assuming what was referred to as the “eastward position”). He mixed water with wine in the chalice and distributed unleavened wafer bread to his kneeling communicants, in a church filled with the pungent aroma of incense.103 Extreme Tractarians also attempted to introduce auricular confession and absolution as an ordinary part of their pastoral work.104 Such practices were designed to emphasize the sacrificial character of the Eucharist and the priestly function of the celebrant, whose consecration of the elements changed their very character. To many English men and women these practices represented the introduction of a Roman liturgy and theology. Liturgical change thus often became the flashpoint of local opposition to Tractarianism. This is not at all surprising. Ordinary churchgoers might not understand the subtleties and nuances of the differing theological understandings of infused versus imputed righteousness, but they could see, hear, and smell the difference between Anglo-Catholic and traditional Evangelical or moderate High Church worship. Both in their reinterpretation of the Church of England’s doctrinal formularies and in their liturgical practice, Tractarians believed that they were recovering the authentic Catholic tradition of ecclesiae anglicanae. To many English men and women, both within and without the national church, this was undiluted popery rearing its ugly head. The spectre of a revived Roman Catholicism could be seen as originating

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from many quarters. Since the 1840s Nicholas Wiseman, then coadjutor bishop to the vicar apostolic of the Midlands, had been urging Rome to re-establish its hierarchy in England. In 1850 Pope Pius ix, acting on Wiseman’s advice, created a separate ecclesiastical province for England under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Westminster, something that had not been done since the Reformation.105 Wiseman was named cardinal and first English Roman Catholic primate.106 The actions of Pius ix, coupled with the indiscreet public comments of Wiseman, touched off a papal aggression controversy, which convulsed the English nation in the early 1850s and served to intensify an anti-Catholicism that was deeply ingrained in the English psyche and popular culture. Such anti-Catholic feeling assumes a pre-existing commitment to Protestantism and to England as a Protestant nation. As Linda Colley has recently shown, the commitment of Britons to Protestant ideals and images “underpined [their] national identity.”107 The connections between the general phenomena of anti-Catholicism and the emergence of the Oxford Movement should be clear enough. Thus E.R. Norman has argued that “the ’No Popery’ cry expressed feelings as easily aroused by imitations of Catholicism as by the real thing.” He further contends that, “although educated opinion towards the end of the century may have become more tolerant of Rome, it was still unprepared to put up with Romanism in the national Church.”108 These feelings frequently erupted into violence as popular Protestantism lashed out against both Roman Catholics and ritualists in the Church of England.109 As should be evident, anti-Catholicism and antiTractarianism were not exclusively “religious attitudes” narrowly defined, but made up part of the popular political culture of both Britain and the British colonies. Tractarians also established theological colleges, perhaps the most prominent being St Augustine’s, Canterbury. It was founded as a missionary college by Pusey, Charles Marriott, Edward Coleridge, and others, with a view to spreading their ideas to the colonies. Though its success was limited for a variety of social and political reasons, a number of St Augustine men could be found in various dioceses in British North America.110

mountain and the oxford movement While John Keble was preaching his Assize sermon in the University Church, Oxford, Archdeacon George Mountain was labouring diligently in the Diocese of Quebec under the leadership of Bishop Charles James Stewart.111 Stewart’s failing health led to Mountain’s consecration as suffragan in February 1836, assuming reponsibility for

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diocesan administration from September 1836 onwards, and finally succeeding Stewart upon the latter’s death in 1837. Mountain’s enormous pastoral, educational, and missionary responsibilities kept his eyes firmly focused on diocesan problems, but he could not have been unaware of contemporary events in England. Nevertheless, he did not make his views public. His first response to the Tractarians was cautiously sympathetic but not uncritical. In a letter of April 1842 he suggested that the Tractarians “up to a certain point, rendered admirable service to the Church, corrected many loose and low notions which widely prevailed, and kept in check many irregular tendencies.” Unfortunately, he went on, they “have pushed their principles so far beyond the line of truth as not only to propagate mischief, but to undo to a great extent the good which they had themselves done.” By being so precipitate, they had furnished the church’s critics (“the avowed dissenters” and “the half-dissenting party within her”) with sufficient ammunition to allow them “plausibly to represent all maintenance of ancient order and discipline, reverence in the solemnities of worship, and adherence to primitive views of the Christian ministry, as tending towards popery. In itself, there can be no greater mistake in this world; for the relaxation which is seen among protestants of some of these points, and their abandonment of others, constitute the very strength of the cause of Rome.”112 Mountain maintained a consistent approach to these questions throughout the 1840s. As he articulated his “church principles,” he studiously avoided falling into the deep pits on either side of the middle road of High Churchmanship. On the one side lay popery and Tractarianism; on the other, Evangelicalism and Dissent. Thus in his 1845 charge to the clergy of his diocese, he referred to “men exhibiting the extreme of both parties in the Church.” He regarded both groups as having forfeited the right to remain in the Church of England. “[We] must pray God to hasten the day,” he wrote, “when anomalies so fraught with reproach and mischief shall no longer be permissable within her bosom.”113 The dates when he expressed these sentiments are significant. Like most High Churchmen and indeed many Evangelicals, Mountain rejoiced at the early emphases and principles of the Oxford Movement. By 1841, however, events had taken a different turn. In February of that year John Henry Newman published Tract 90, in which he sought a rapprochement between the Thirtynine Articles and traditional Roman Catholic doctrine. It was this form of extreme Tractarianism that Mountain condemned.114 The final crisis occurred in 1845 when Newman left the Church of England and entered the Church of Rome. What Mountain called “the Romeward leanings” of some of the Tractarians continued to vex him for much of

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the 1840s. In 1846, in a letter to his son-in-law, Jasper Nicolls, he expressed his “hope that Mr Williams’ theology is not intended to be imported for the benefit of the students.”115 The recent secessions of Newman, Ward, and Faber to Rome he regarded as the logical conclusion to extreme Tractarianism. Their leaving he saw as preferable to the actions of Pusey in staying in the national church and “under the colours of the Church of England … deliberately, doing the more effectively the work of the Papistical cause.”116 Reverberations from the Oxford Movement were also felt more immediately in Mountain’s diocese. One instance concerned a Mr Ellis, who was seeking admission. Although Mountain had reservations about his suitability, he was not unaware of the consequences that might follow his rejection, not least because Ellis seems to have had Evangelical sympathies and supporters. “I have reason to know, from different sources,” wrote Mountain, “that the notion infused into the mind of the English public of Puseyitical leanings in the Church of the N.A. Colonies and the spg who supplies them with missionaries, has very extensively crippled the resources of that body, and the rejection of such men as Mr Ellis will be so coloured as to support this imputation.”117 Indeed, while it is abundantly clear that Mountain frequently disparaged Evangelicals as crypto-dissenters, he was able to tolerate individual Evangelicals in his diocese. Isaac Hellmuth is a case in point. He had spent some time at the Cobourg Theological Institute, then under the control of Alexander Neil Bethune, but had left, being unable to stomach Bethune’s theology. He turned up in the Diocese of Quebec and was accorded a cautiously warm welcome from Mountain. The bishop was all too aware of Hellmuth’s formative Evangelical experiences in Liverpool and his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs at Cobourg. Accordingly, he wrote to Jasper Nicolls of the “satisfaction which I feel in placing him under your direction,” particularly because of “certain notions & phrases” that Hellmuth had acquired from both those who were “the instruments of his happy conversion from Judaism” and those, such as McNeile in Liverpool, who subsequently mentored him.118 Mountain was also not prepared to be hasty in ordaining Hellmuth, largely in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety in the relationship between the dioceses of Toronto and Quebec and between the colleges at Cobourg and Lennoxville. 119 Later that spring, in another letter to Nicolls, Mountain wrote of Hellmuth that “he seems to be an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.”120 The bishop subsequently ordained Hellmuth, and the latter went on to play an important role in Quebec Evangelicalism. It is also quite clear that Mountain’s views were not identical to those of Jasper Nicolls, but that these differences in no way prevented the

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two from fostering a close professional and personal relationship. In a letter to his wife, Mary, in January 1847, Mountain wrote that “although he may have some leanings in Religion, upon particular points, acquired at Oxford, which are not in perfect accordance with my own views upon those points – we can hardly find in the present times any two people who in all points think perfectly alike, & he and I can always cordially work to further: in fact, I think he is closer to me upon the points in question than he was. Certainly he is a sound believer & a thoroughly & entirely conscientious & high-principled man, & uncompromising Churchman.”121 These were important considerations, and all the more so, because Jasper Nicolls was seeking the hand of the bishop’s daughter, Harriet, in marriage.122 In light of events in England, Mountain found himself having to defend his church principles against the imputation of being Tractarian. In his 1848 charge to his clergy he complained: Men who are uninformed upon the subject with which they undertake to deal, charge us with Popery or Tractarianism, by which they mean a modification of Popery, if we uphold the essential difference between our Church and any form of Dissent, the Apostolical succession of our Bishops, the legitimate application of the term Regeneration to the performance of baptism, the efficacy of the Sacraments, if rightly received, as vehicles of grace, the expediency of the frequent iteration, – the daily iteration if it can be fairly established and maintained, – of divine service, – the solicitous provision made for reverential and solemn and touching effect in the worship of God, in the points of Architecture, Church-music, the whole conduct of our liturgical performances, the whole spirit of our regulations established for the work of the service in the house of the Lord.123

Here in succinct summary was an outline of Mountain’s principles and concerns. Moreover, his outline of “church principles” contained an explicit criticism of Evangelicals within the Church of England. Those who rejected the foregoing list as teaching “what is distinctly and prominently, plainly and undeniably characteristic” of the Church of England could not, in his view, claim to be “Church of England men.” “The very most that can be said,” he argued, “is that they are only partially Dissenters, but certainly Dissenters to a sufficient extent to fall within the category of Dissent.”124 Three years earlier Mountain had held up for particular criticism a Church of England clergyman (probably Gorham himself) “who holds the views of Protestant dissent … especially in reference to the effect of the sacrament of baptism.” In his view, a person holding such a position, which he regarded as clearly incompatible with the Anglican formularies, should not be

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allowed to remain in the Church of England.125 Moreover, his opposition to Dissent prevented Mountain from allowing a Wesleyan congregation in Montreal to worship in an Anglican church after the former’s building had burned down. In essence, he reasoned from the principle that groups which did not have a claim to apostolic, episcopal succession, and which rejected such claims as unimportant, should not be accommodated within a Church of England building. In particular, consistency would prohibit allowing a Methodist group (which stood in a position of actual dissent from the Church of England) to use an Anglican building.126

henry roe: high church priest In 1858 the young rector of St Matthew’s, in the Quebec City suburbs, was thrust into the centre of controversy when his alleged Tractarianism was made the subject of public debate in a sermon that Gilbert Percy preached at the annual meeting of the Quebec branch of the Colonial Church and School Society. Henry Roe’s involvement in the synodical controversy of the late 1850s is of the utmost importance to understanding the nature of diocesan politics in Quebec at midcentury and is given extensive treatment elsewhere in this study. The Roe who most often appeared in public was irascible and belligerent. Much of his career from the late 1850s onwards was marked by controversy.127 Even a contemporary portrait, typically marked by effusive encomiums to the subject’s great and manifest virtues, had to admit, “His extensive knowledge and strong grasp of what he believes to be truth may sometimes make him appear, and perhaps may really render him, a little dogmatic in expression.”128 Roe has a well-deserved reputation as a polemicist of the first rank. Indeed, a contemporary said of him that “one would not suspect him of being an Irishman from occasional contact with him. But he was certainly Irish in his love of a fight,” adding that “his pugnacity expressed itself at synods and gatherings of clerical and lay forces of the Church.”129 As professor of divinity at Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Roe became embroiled in a controversy over the college’s relationship to its grammar school, complaining that while Bishop’s had proved useful as a theological college, its wider mandate to “provide a University education to the English-speaking people of Lower Canada” was being serious undermined by its structural connection to the grammar school, with valuable financial resources being siphoned off to support a school that existed largely to benefit the anglophone elite of central Canada and the eastern United States.130 He was a frequent contributor to the newspaper press in the Atlantic world. He served as Quebec

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correspondent for the New York Church Journal and the London Guardian. His editorial writing for the Lennoxville Magazine is given extensive analysis elsewhere in this study. Roe crossed swords with the Montreal barrister R.D. McGibbon on the legal, theological, and ethical implications of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister.131 He also published a number of sermons and addresses. Among these were a few notable ones attacking various Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, most notably purgatory, transubstantiation, and the Mass.132 He took umbrage at the attack on the validity of the Church of England claims to apostolicity contained in Leo xiii’s encyclical Apostolicae curae.133 Henry Roe was born in Henryville, Lower Canada, on 22 February 1829. His father, John Hill Roe, was a medical graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and his mother, Jane Ardagh, had been born and raised in County Tipperary.134 Though the early spiritual influences in his life tended towards Evangelicalism, he gradually drifted towards a more High Church understanding of the church, the sacraments, and the Christian life. It was as a student of Jasper Nicolls at Bishop’s in the 1840s and 1850s that Roe undoubtedly solidified, if not acquired, his High Church outlook.135 Looking back on his early days at Bishop’s, he commented on what he regarded as one of Nicolls’s most telling characteristics, “a certain air of dignified reserve.” “This air of reserve, which we soon discovered had its foundation in a very deep spirit of religious reverence, formed a sort of fence round our young Principal, which no one of us ever ventured or indeed desired to break through.”136 Roe went on to say of Nicolls that “we learned, some of us at least, what real religion was from seeing it in him.”137 Roe’s use of the term “reserve” in describing Nicolls may be of particular significance. It is one of those cryptic comments that ring bells of association and suggest that something deeper is being communicated than would appear at first glance. It may be that Roe was merely commenting on what he perceived to be a certain reticence in Nicolls when speaking of matters spiritual. At the same time, however, many of the Tractarians had a more fully developed doctrine of reserve, which became, as Peter Nockles has pointed out, “a distinctive element” of their “spiritual ethos.”138 It came to denote an aspect of spiritual temperament grounded in a theological principle which suggested that “true piety lies too deep to be always in the tongue, and is too sublime to be talked about.”139 Or as John Henry Newman put it, “the mysteries of divine truth, instead of being exposed to the gaze of the profane and uninstructed, are kept hidden in the bosom of the Church far more faithfully than is otherwise possible; and reserved by a private teaching, through the channel of her ministers, as rewards in due measure and season, for those who are prepared to profit by them;

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i.e., who are diligently passing through the successive states of faith and obedience.”140 This Tractarian emphasis was often consciously expressed in opposition to what Tractarians regarded as the wordy and showy tone of popular Evangelicalism.141 It was given classic expression in Tracts 80 and 87, written by Isaac Williams, in which he presented the idea “On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge.” In that work Williams derided what he regarded as the unbalanced way in which Evangelicals made the doctrine of the atonement the centrepiece of their system, and did so in such a way as to detach it “from the future judgment, repentance, humility, self-denial, motification, in fact all practical obedience.”142 Morover, Williams repudiated the manner in which Evangelicals preached the doctrine of the Atonement, “urging it alike on the repentant and impenitent – the buised reed and hardened rock – the religiously-disposed and worldly-minded,” without ever considering the preparatory work that was needed prior to their receiving the Gospel.143 Williams’s tracts were perhaps the most notorious, apart from Tract 90 itself, and called down upon the Oxford apostles the wrath of the British public. This work’s reception, in R.W. Church’s memorable phrase, “was like the explosion of a mine,” and “it furnished for some years the material for the most savage attacks and the bitterest sneers to the opponents of the movement.”144 Evangelicals at once denounced it, seeing it as representative of the entire spirit of the Oxford Movement in repudiating the central doctrines of the Reformation and approaching, at times, a Victorian version of gnosticism.145 Roe was called upon to teach divinity at Bishop’s in 1866–67, when the sudden death of G.C. Irving, rector of the grammar school, necessitated a shuffling of administrative and teaching responsibilities among Principal Nicolls, A.C. Scarth, and C.P. Mulvaney.146 He returned to Bishop’s as professor of divinity in 1873, a position he held until 1891. Firmly ensconced in the southern Eastern Townships, after his time in Quebec City, he was the driving force behind the establishment of twelve new churches in the area.147 Roe was not an ambitious man in any conventional sense. On a number of occasions he rejected more prestigious and public appointments in order to fulfill the call of duty. In 1852 he was offered a curacy at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, but instead chose to go to New Ireland (also known as Upper Ireland)148 in Megantic County, in the northern section of the Eastern Township.149. The following year Lucius Doolittle and Edward Chapman tried to tempt him with an offer to move to Lennoxville, but he refused, considering it his duty to stay at New Ireland.150 Too much attention to his controversies is in danger of obscuring Roe’s pastoral side. A close examination of

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the journal he kept while ministering in New Ireland provides a valuable window into the ministrations of a young High Churchman in his first pastoral charge. Rather than the utterly self-confident, even arrogant, polemicist of his later years, Roe’s journal from the 1850s reveals a young men full of self-doubt as he undertook his first cure of souls. He began his journal on Saturday night, 3 July 1852, the eve of his ordination to the diaconate, a necessary preliminary to ordination as priest. That day, he confided to his journal, was a “point so long and lovingly looked forward to.” And now that it is come it fills me with fear & trembling. Alas! How many reasons have I for this! The sins of my youth & the iniquities of my riper years press heavily upon me. They are very many and very great. Oh Holy Jesus to whom shall I fly for succour in this hour but to Thee? Though for my sins Thou be most justly displeased, yet pardon my many sins – intercede for me – obtain for me true, deep, abiding repentance – … living faith in thine only & all sufficient sacrifice – obtain for me grace … and especially for this time. Oh! Holy Saviour, if thou have – as I trust & think called me by Thy Holy Spirit to this office & work.151

As is readily apparent from the foregoing passage, Roe was accutely conscious of the weighty and awe-inspiring responsibility that ordination to this office entailed. At the same time, or perhaps because of that realization, he was all too aware of his spiritual deficiencies and of his need for the outpourings of God’s grace in order to enable him to perform his duties. In the early pages of his journal he repeatedly expressed his hope that he had been truly called by God to this office. He was fearful lest he be considered “a sacrilegious intruder into Thy courts.” And then, as if to steel himself for the task at hand and convince himself of his true calling, he cried out to God: I will hope & trust & believe that Thou hast heard my prayers, and hast indeed called me to this office & ministry. I freely confess – & I think feel my entire unworthiness for it – But I hope & trust I have entered upon it with pure motives – and I have devoted & desire again to devote to Thy service herein my whole self – my body, soul & spirit, and all the energies of such – Sanctify them by thy most Holy Spirit – & fit them for Thy Service.152

Allan Hayes’s brief portrait of Roe in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography suggests that while his churchmanship was High, he utilized a number of Evangelical practices in his ministry.153 Certainly, his diary indicates that preaching occupied a central place in his ministry, as did

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Bible classes, practices that were more characteristic of Evangelicals than Tractarians.154 At the same time, there are echoes of a more Anglo-Catholic understanding in his private devotional practice and his public ministry. Some of the practices that he tried to introduce at New Ireland were regarded as questionable and met some resistance. On the second Sunday in Advent 1852, he preached from Romans 13:11,12, taught Sunday school, and met with his confirmation class, “whom I was obliged to reprove and threaten to reject.” He then spent the evening at home reading Whilby and Porteous and singing. But then he added that he “spoke at some length about kneeling, responding, standing up at the ascription of glory &c – the people stood up after the sermon – O Lord, let the words read and spoken by thine unworthy servant this day be not utterly in vain.”155 On another occasion, this time St Thomas’ Day 1852 in Inverness Church, he recorded that he had stayed into the evening in the church to decorate it for Christmas but added that he “found to my surprise, that the 1st Inverness Church people found ‘popery’ in the Christmas (proposed) decorations and therefore, as urged by Mr Ward, gave it up for this time.”156 Yet at this stage in his pastoral ministry, perhaps indicative of his lack of confidence because of the fact that this was his first pastoral charge and that he was a mere deacon of twenty-three years of age, Roe was hesitant about introducing elements that might give offence. On 19 August 1852 he recorded in his journal that “this is Friday but did not observe it, being afraid of exciting remarks. Have I done right? Lord guide me – I am weak and sinful.”157 There are echoes of Tractarian practice, notably those of John Keble at Hursley, in the emphasis that Roe placed on catechizing the children of the parish and leading them on to confirmation.158 On the Friday before Christmas 1852, he gave an evening lecture on the subject of confirmation in which he “urged the duty strongly & spoke of the preparation.” However, he encountered objections from at least one of his listeners who “said he had heard it said I did not believe anyone could be saved out of ‘the Church’ – this of course I disavowed swiftly.”159 This emphasis on confirmation certainly echoed one of Roe’s theological mentors, namely, Jasper Hume Nicolls. In a confirmation sermon that he preached in the chapel of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Nicolls provided an able exposition of the place of confirmation in the life of the young Christian.160 Taking as his text the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Corinthian church – “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity” (1 Cor. 16:13, 14) – he began by linking confirmation with baptism, describing the former as a renewal “in their own persons [of] the covenant made for them in days when reason had not yet begun to dawn in

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them.” He went on to speak of “the reality of the change in your condition which will be caused by your confirmation.” Emphasizing the public nature of the profession of faith that accompanies confirmation, Nicolls boldly declared that “you are going openly to enlist in Christ’s army.” Just as the candidates’ godmothers and godfathers had taken vows on behalf of the infant, so now children, having reached the age of reason, would take those vows for themselves: And you are about to promise for yourselves all that may be summed up under these two heads, repentance whereby you forsake sin, and faith whereby you steadfastly believe the promises of God. And this promise which you are about to make is to you of the very highest importance. If you keep it, you will live a life – it may be, of outward toil, it may be, of suffering and of hardship, but a life – of inward peace, of contentment, of joy even in the midst of troubles. If you keep it, you will then live so that you will ‘dread the grave as little as your bed,’ and you will then so live that you will rise glorious at the awful day of judgment. If you keep it not, O who shall say then what will be the depth of your eternal sorrow?161

Nicolls went on to describe how God works in and through this act of confirmation, distinguishing between the visible and invisible actions of God. “There is inward grace given – really given, really received. This is invisible. The outward sign is the act of His authorized agent. The gift of inward grace is His own act.”162 While the outward evidence of such a spiritual transformation might not be immediately apparent, it is nonetheless real. “By and by, if you be sincere, you will feel it, and become conscious of its reality. The evidence of it will then become visible, not merely consciously felt by yourselves, but visible to others in your lives.”163 Then he admonished his listeners to “stand fast in the faith,” especially because they were living in dangerous times for believers, with people all around them mocking religious belief and practice and sneering at things sacred. Rather, as members of the the visible Church of Christ they were to (1) read your Bible; read it to learn from it how you ought to live. (2) Listen to the instructions of those who are set over you to teach you and to guide you in your religious duties. And (3) never forget to pray that God will cleanse your heart, and guard it from the attacks of the devil and his followers from without, and from that spirit of pride and self-sufficiency within, which loves to say, I will do as I like and think for myself.164

Nicolls admonished and encouraged them to lives of holiness, emphasizing that faith and obedience were often hard and necessitated vigilance and extreme effort. And he closed with a call to action that their

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lives, both individually and collectively, might influence their society for good as they renounced ‘the devil and all his works. Roe’s journal reveals his daily routine, or at least what he resolved to make his daily routine, though he frequently upbraided himself for sloth. In November 1852 he set down a daily schedule that he resolved to keep: To rise at 6½ am – to offer up a short prayer 7–7½ – Private prayer 7½–8½ – Holy Bible 8½–9 – Family prayers and breakfast 9–10 – Greek Testament critically when at home 10–12 – theological reading – except on mail days when correspondence 12–1½ – devotional reading & prayer afternoon visiting – evening writing pm 6½–7½ Holy Bible, after short prayer Immediately after F.P, self examination & P.P.

There was nothing in this schedule that was pecularly Anglo-Catholic. Prayer, study, and self-examination were as characteristic of Evangelicalism as of Anglo-Catholicism. What mattered was the specific content of each of these activities, and his journal is not always as revealing as one might hope. It does, however, indicate something of the scope of his reading. Not surprisingly, Anglican writers predominate. He seems to have been particularly fond of the writings of Beilby Porteus, bishop of London, and Robert Leighton (1611–84), archbishop of Glasgow and principal of Edinburgh University, referring to the latter as “always pious & devout, and always Calvinistic.”165 Roe seems to have used Calvin quite extensively in his sermon preparation. He had read the commentary by Thomas Scott (1747–1821) on the Gospel of John, and he had read some of the classics of Puritan devotion such as Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, as well as the life of David Brainerd. Of contemporary evangelical writers, he commended Hannah More’s Practical Piety as “altogether above praise. A most beautiful style – & the highest, purest, most sober piety – indeed practical.”166 He had also read William Wilberforce’s Family Prayers, and having completed William Hanna’s memoirs of the Scots Presbyterian leader Thomas Chalmers, referred to him as a “character I greatly love & venerate.”167 The emphasis on Roe’s reading habits is not cavalier or arbitrary. He himself regarded theological reading as the very wellspring of a pastor’s life. In a paper that he presented to the clergy of the Diocese of

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Quebec, assembled in Lennoxville for the lord bishop’s visitation in 1864, he boldly declared “that without systematic reading our ministry must prove a failure.”168 Roe took as his starting point the pastor’s responsibility to feed his flock, arguing that this entailed “teaching the Faith, and expounding Scripture.”169 While not discounting the need to cultivate prayer, holiness, and “communion with Christ” in the lives of his parishioners, Roe insisted that the Christian faith was first and foremostly about truth – about communicating the content of Christian theology.170 “If our people are to grow spiritually, they must be fed with Christian knowledge, and led on in it from stage to stage.”171 Of necessity, this meant that ministers themselves, if they were to have anything to pass on, must be systematic and diligent students of Scripture and theology. Roe cautioned, however, against the “danger of forgetting that religion is not a matter of the intellect; that spiritual things are not intellectually but spiritually discerned; that it is our spirit not our intellect which holds communion with God.”172 He also admonished his fellow clergy to employ an expository method of preaching so as to dig deeply into the meaning of scripture and allow it to speak to their congregations. He noted that “for the last half century the Word of God has been the object of attack to the infidel faction. Its genuineness, its authenticity, its inspiration, have been all called in question, and assailed with a prodigality of learning, of acuteness, and of power.”173 He cautioned his listeners not to be put off by this onslaught, but to acquaint themselves with the finest of contemporary biblical commentaries, which had served not only to answer the critics but also to expound the Scriptures in all their richness and depth. Despite the references in his journal to a number of Evangelical writers, Roe’s published reflections on reading dismissed most Evangelicals and almost exclusively commended writers who might be considered somewhat High. In particular, he held up for commendation the works of Richard Chenevix Trench, archbishop of Dublin, Charles John Ellicott, bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Christopher Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and Isaac Williams.174 Of Williams, Roe remarked that on occasion he did push “the mystical interpretation of Scripture to unwarrantable lengths.”175 By contrast, in work of Scott, Henry, Patrick, D’Oyly, Mant, and Horne “you are wearied to death with pious meditations upon obvious truths, all the real difficulties being conveniently passed over in silence, so that one has no remedy but to cast them all to the moles and to the bats in utter disgust and vexation.”176 Roe, though he assumed a chair in theology later in his career, ever remained a parish priest at heart.177 Though his love of reading for its

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own sake is clearly evident, the ideal that he held up for his audience was that of the well-read minister of Christ, immersed in Scripture and theology and thus able to present the truths of the Christian faith in a manner that was engaging, vivid, and practical. At the same time, his ideal parish minister, while fully apprised of the controversies of the day, possessed an apologetic arsenal that was sufficient to meet the skepticism of the age. “We live in a reading age,” he declared; “we live also in a sceptical age,” and the controversies of the day are not now confined to a small circle of learned writers who communicate with one another in the learned language, which is a dead letter to the multitude; they are read of, and inquired into by all, by mechanics and tradesmen, by the working as well as the wealthy classes. To these classes indeed the controversialists of the day, and especially the sceptics address themselves, appealing to them as judges. No one who has paid any considerable attention to the Essays and Reviews controversy, and to the Colenso controversy, can have helped noticing this alarming feature of modern scepticism … If on coming to us with their difficulties … the more intelligent of our people perceive that we have neither read nor thought upon these subjects at all … what must the effect be? … If we wish to continue the spiritual guides of the people, we must take the trouble to fit ourselves to deserve their confidence.178

Roe’s journal also provides valuable glimpses into his piety. One extensive, but not altogether atypical example is the entry for 18 December 1853. He commented that the size of the congregation at morning service was quite small and many had arrived late. A larger congregation attended service later in the day. Despite this encouragement, Roe found himself “a good deal unsettled in my mind, almost overpowered by intellectual sloth.” He then poured out his heart in prayerful selfexamination: My prayers forced and full of wanderings my mind earthly and sensual – my thought more intent on things below than on things above … have resolved to strive more this week yea, I am resolved to give myself up entirely to God. But so often have I made this resolution and so often do I fall away from it, that I am almost in despair … O give me an infeigned repentance for all my sins. How shall I even confess them to thee? They are more than I could state, they are more than I could remember … my grievous neglect of my duties, and the careless coldness with which I have performed them … O God of love & truth! O look upon the blood of the Everlasting Covenant – Look on Jesus at Thy right hand. Listen to his intercession … Give me a true faith in thee – O Lord increase my faith – Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief! Purify my conscience from dead works & sprinkle my heart from an evil conscience by Thine

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own blood. O Saviour of all be Thou my Saviour too. Save me from myself … O impute not bloodguiltiness unto me, … but forgive and wash out the purple stains of neglect of duty & unfaithfulness.179

Here we catch a glimpse of a Henry Roe beset with all of the self-doubt and waverings of the young pastor in his first cure of souls, ministering to his first pastoral charges in Megantic County. Evangelical influences are still evident both in his ministerial style and in his reading habits. At the same time, an undercurrent of Anglo-Catholicism can also be discerned, though Roe carefully draws back from instituting any unwelcome change. Though indications of the abrasiveness of his personality are evident, there are few signs of the accomplished controversialist he would become. Roe’s farewell sermon to his parishioners in St. Stephen’s Church, Megantic, assumed a different tack. Here were his parting rebukes and admonitions to a community of people among whom he had ministered for some two years. He took as his text the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Philippian church to think on “whatsoever things” are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of “good report.” Much of this sermon could easily have been preached by a churchman of either the Evangelical or the High Church party. There was a great emphasis on instruction in the Christian faith, enjoining parents to teach their children “religiously every day.”180 The content of this faith was subjoined under the doctrines of the Fall, alienation from a holy, righteous God, and redemption in Christ. “I have endeavoured to set forth to you ‘Jesus Christ and Him Crucified’ in all his fulness; as being truly and really God and so able to merit our salvation by his precious blood; – as being truly and really Man also, and so able to suffer for us and sympathize with us.”181 There was also a great emphasis on the historic continuity of the church catholic throughout the ages, as embodied in the ecumenical creeds. At the same time, there was a firm declaration that the Church of England embodied the purest form of Protestant doctrine and worship, which ought not to be despised. There was an admonition against “running about after preachers,” a practice which, he suggested “will tend to produce a flimsy superficial religion; a religion of loud talk and many fine sounding words; but of little solid, deep, sincere, single-minded piety of heart.”182 Roe also commended a life of holiness to his congregation, enjoining them to forsake all manner of dishonesty, whether in business transactions or in personal dealings. In holding up for them an ideal of piety and Christian deportment, he took aim at various practices that he regarded as inconsistent with a Christian profession, including “noisy, excessive festivity, or parties of pleasure, which are, in short, not

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restrained within the bounds of Christian temperance and moderation.”183 He advocated total abstinence from alcohol, enjoining his listeners to “go to no meeting – whether it be called a Lodge, or by any other name, – no bee, no party, where liquor is used; for you know well it always leads to evil.”184 He denounced the “buying and selling” of alcohol “as shameful, sinful, frightfully demoralizing and destructive to the community and utterly antichristian.”185 He enjoined conscientious obedience to the laws of the land as a Christian duty, in particular holding up smuggling and unlicensed selling for reproach.186 And he admonished his parishioners to conduct themselves in a pure and upright manner with regard to sexuality and profane speech. In short, Roe set before them a standard of behaviour which was exacting and which demanded a wholehearted commitment to following Christ in every aspect of their lives. “Seek, in your whole lives, to ‘let your light so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father which is in Heaven.›187 As well, Roe rebuked his listeners for their laxness in participating in the sacraments. He was grieved both by the number who held back from participation in Holy Communion altogether and by the irregular attendance of many others. He had stern warnings for both classes of people. To those who never came to the Lord’s table, he warned that their non-participation was an indication that they had turned their backs on Christ himself. It grieves me to leave you so – to leave you still turning away from Christ, still without God, and every moment in danger of dropping down into hell, there to be without a friend, without a hope, without a drop of water to mitigate your woe for ever, and for ever! O, how unspeakably foolish and unwise you are! O, think of Eternity! It grieves me to the heart to leave you so; so I know that till a great change passes over you, you are in danger of being lost and undone for ever. Once more, in Christ’s stead, I intreat you to be reconciled to God – while you have time – before the door is shut.188

He also admonished those whose attendance at Holy Communion was irregular. To them he declared that “this Holy Sacrament is intended and instituted to give you grace – to strengthen and refresh the soul after and for its contests with sin and Satan. You must therefore communicate regularly, if you would profit by it – yes, every Lord’s Day, if you had the opportunity.”189 There is much in Roe’s sermon that would have resonated with both Evangelicals and High Churchmen in the diocese: a high-minded ethical seriousness and standard of public and private conduct, coupled with a firm commitment to the historic, orthodox Christian faith as

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transmitted through the ecumenical creeds and the Church of England’s articles and prayer book. But a theme that echoed throughout the life and work of both Mountain and Roe was the place of the visible church. As Roe put it in a sermon of 1862, Christ sent his apostles “to plant, not an idea but a Church in the world – a visible, organized Society, with laws and rules and officers – to admit men into that Church or Society or Kingdom by baptism; and after they were admitted, to train them up in it as fellow members, by its holy discipline, into fitness for eternal glory.”190 Henry Roe left New Ireland, in Megantic County, in 1855 to assume parochial duties at St Matthew’s in Quebec City. From that position he would emerge as the doughty Tractarian street fighter of the 1850s, in his controversy with Gilbert Percy and in his defence of Bishop George Mountain in the ensuing controversy over the introduction of synodical government. While Mountain remained remarkably consistent in his attempt to steer the Church of England in the Diocese of Quebec between the Scylla of Tractarianism and the Charybdis of Protestant Dissent, he could not keep his diocese cosily insulated from events in England. Like it or not, the reverberations from the Oxford Movement served to further polarize and politicize the religious culture of British North America. Moreover, the rising tide of Evangelicalism, which began to wash over the shores of Quebec in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, would draw both George Mountain and Henry Roe into a contest that they believed to be for the very heart and soul of their beloved church.

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5 Transatlantic Evangelicalism

By the time of Jacob Mountain’s ordination as priest by the bishop of Peterborough in 1780, the Evangelical Revival was entering its sixth decade and was a recognizable religious and cultural force in the Atlantic world. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century its impact was beginning to be felt in the established churches of both England and Ireland. The Church of England, for example, which contained only a handful of Evangelicals by mid-century, had seen their numbers increase at such a fast pace that by the 1830s they constituted “a formidable phalanx” within the church, one estimate suggesting that Evangelicals could command the allegiance of some 3,000 clergy by that date and some 6,500 by about 1850.1 Certainly, one barometer of the movement’s effect upon English society is the number of works by serious writers, from Charlotte Brontë to Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill, which sought to discredit it.2 Evangelicalism was also growing in strength and self-confidence in the Church of Ireland in the early decades of the nineteenth century.3 Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evangelicalism was a resolutely transatlantic phenomenon, and thus an understanding of Evangelical Anglicans in Quebec necessitates viewing them not only against the backdrop of events in England and Ireland but as colonial participants in those very events.

eva ng el i c al i s m i n t h e c hu rc h of england The evangelical revivals oftentimes present a bewildering array of manifestations to modern historians. To move from the effect of John

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Wesley’s preaching of the free offer of grace upon Cornish tin miners to the elegant and high culture of Henry Thornton’s drawing-room in Clapham is at once to move not only hundred of miles but across several cultural divides. And yet while I do not wish to minimize such geographical and class differences, the experience of conversion was a bond that drew people together.4 In a study such as this, it is sometimes instructive to notice what did not happen as important in determining the course of events. Like Sherlock Holmes’s “curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” the fact that both Jacob and George Mountain attended Cambridge but remained untouched by Cambridge Evangelicalism would appear to be of enormous significance. When Jacob left Cambridge in 1783, Evangelicalism was only an embryonic religious force in both town and university. Though the Church of England enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the universities of both Oxford and Cambridge and received a disproportionate number of their graduates into clerical orders, the religious and spiritual (to say nothing of the educational) life of unreformed Cambridge and Oxford was at a low ebb by any standard.5 While entering students at Oxford and graduating students at Cambridge had to subscribe to the Church of England’s Thirtynine Articles of Religion, this requirement could very easily become a mere formality.6 Jacob Mountain, then, could have passed his entire time in Cambridge without encountering significant numbers of Evangelicals. George Mountain’s experience of Cambridge Evangelicalism must have been substantially different from his father’s, though he is silent on the matter. He went up to Trinity College in 1808, took his degree in 1810, and left the following year, having failed in his bid for a fellowship at Downing College.7 By that time Evangelicalism was a growing force in both town and university. Its shining light was Charles Simeon, fellow of King’s and rector since 1782 of Holy Trinity Church. Simeon was the single most important Evangelical clergyman in the Church of England8 and the most prominent of a growing contingent of Cambridge Evangelicals that included Isaac Milner, the provost of Queens’, and groups at both Trinity and Magdalene.9 Simeon’s spiritual development and ministry at Cambridge are paradigmatic of a prominent stream of English evangelicalism. At the heart of evangelicalism was the spiritual drama of conversion.10 It might be sudden and dramatic, like John Wesley’s 1738 Aldersgate experience, or quiet and gradual, like Wilberforce’s spiritual journey of 1784–85. The length of time involved was not the point at issue, but rather the experience of conviction of sin, repentance, and wholehearted commitment to Christ. This drama in three acts can be seen clearly in the experience of Simeon. Though the details of his conversion have been

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delineated innumerable times, they warrant reviewing as conforming to a classic evangelical pattern.11 When Simeon went up to Cambridge as an undergraduate in 1779, spiritual concerns were far from his thoughts. Only the need to fulfill the statutary obligation to take Holy Communion turned his thoughts towards God and the state of his soul. Though it is clear that he was coming under a profound conviction of his own sinfulness and alienation from a holy, righteous God, his fear of condemnation had not yet turned to faith. In preparation for receiving the sacrament, he read two devotional classics – The Whole Duty of Man and, but most importantly, Thomas Wilson’s Instruction for the Lord’s Supper. This is his own description of the events of April 1779: I met with an expression to this effect, “that the Jews knew what they did when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering.” The thought rushed into my mind, “What? May I transfer all my guilt to Another? Has God provided an offering for me that I may lay my sins on his head? Then, God willing, I will not bear them on my soul one moment longer.” Accordingly I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus: and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of mercy: on the Thursday that hope increased: on the Friday and Saturday it became more strong: and on the Sunday morning, Easter Day, April 4th I awoke early with those words upon my heart and lips, “Jesus Christ is risen today! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance unto my soul, and at the Lord’s Table in our Chapel I had the sweet access to God through my blessed Saviour.12

As is seen clearly in the foregoing passage, the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ lay at the heart of evangelicalism. The great transaction in which sinners laid their guilt and sin at the cross and appropriated Christ’s righteousness to themselves by faith was regarded as the first step in the believer’s life. A sermon of Simeon’s entitled “Evangelical Religion,” which he preached before the University of Cambridge in March 1811, further illustrates this point. His text was from the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the church at Corinth: “I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” This, Simeon asserted, was “the truth which ministers of the gospel are bound to teach and which their people should be anxious to hear.” The death of Christ was “the ground of our hope” and “the motive for our obedience.” He went on to declare that “the death of Christ was the appointed means of effecting our reconciliation with God.”13 According to Simeon, an evangelical was one who continually brought before his listeners the crucified Christ “as the only founda-

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tion for a sinner’s hope.” “Thus an evangelical,” he declared, “is one who preaches and lives, personally and in his ministry, in the light of the apostle’s message. To be indifferent to this doctrine or to corrupt it by a self-righteous or antinomian mixture is only a denial of what we mean to be evangelical.”14 This, Simeon asserted, was the sum and substance of the Gospel as preached by the Apostle Paul. This doctrine “contained all that is conducive to the blessing of man. Many things may amuse man, but there is nothing else that can contribute to man’s true blessing. Put him in a position of deep distress. Let him be weighed down by a sense of sin. Let him be oppressed with great calamity. Let him become so ill that he borders on death. In all of these circumstances, nothing will satisfy his mind but a view of this glorious subject.“15 Simeon’s comments echo those of Wilberforce’s Practical View, particularly his assertion that “because many are born and educated in a Christian country, they are ready to take for granted that they are instructed in this wonderful subject. But there is almost as much ignorance of it prevailing among Christians as among the heathen themselves.”16 The Evangelicalism that men such as Simeon embraced was not (at least initially) welcomed in Cambridge, as it had not been in Oxford a decade before.17 There, in a notorious case that even elicited a predictable, but often-quoted comment from Dr Samuel Johnson, a group of six Evangelicals at St Edmund Hall were harassed for their views and ultimately expelled from the university.18 Simeon’s views were even so unwelcome in his early days at Holy Trinity that many members of his congregation kept their pews locked so that listeners had to stand in the aisles to hear the preacher. Yet under the influence of Simeon and those like him, Evangelicalism was going from strength to strength in the Church of England. Simeonites were noted for their abilities as preachers and as devoted pastors. They also maintained a firm attachment to the Church of England. There is perhaps no better introduction to the general character of Anglican Evangelicalism than William Wilberforce’s 1797 book, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. More than any other single individual, Wilberforce came to personify the public face of Evangelicalism, with its piety, high-minded seriousness, and crusading spirit. It should at once be recognized that Wilberforce’s Practical View was, like the celebrated work of the Puritan Richard Baxter before him, “A Call to the Unconverted.” This is not a fanciful comparison. It is clear that Wilberforce admired Baxter and regarded him as one of the shining lights of an earlier generation of English Christians.19 Despite his publisher’s pessimism about its popular

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appeal, A Practical View sold 7,500 copies in its first six months and eventually saw fifty editions appear on both sides of the Atlantic. At the time of its writing, Wilberforce was a rising star in the political firmament with an attachment to the Tory interest of his friend William Pitt the Younger. He had been one of the darlings of polite, fashionable London society, known for his quick wit, melodious singing voice, and skills at mimicry.20 However, it had now been more than a decade since his conversion, and he had largely turned his back on the values of Augustan England. Wilberforce’s Practical View is a serious work of popular theology. It was not, however, designed to make him popular. At its core was a message that few among the gentry and aristocracy wanted to hear: that their understanding of Christianity was not just defective in some small parts and thus in need of minor adjustment, but was based on fundamental misunderstandings. Moreover, all of their self-confident striving after virtue was religiously worthless. In short, they were spiritually bankrupt. In the preface to the first edition, Wilberforce wrote that his goal was not to convince scoffers, skeptics, or radicals of the truth of Christianity, “but to point out the scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author believes to be real Christianity.”21 Though the timing of its publication might suggest that it owed something to contemporary events in France, A Practical View makes only the occasional passing reference to contemporary social and political events. It is not, however, lacking in political content. This is most apparent in the sixth chaper – “Brief Inquiry into the Present State of Christianity in This Country, with Some of the Causes Which Have Led to Its Critical Circumstances – Its Importance to Us as a Political Community, and Practical Hints from Which the Foregoing Considerations Give Occasion.”22 Wilberforce’s diagnosis of the problems besetting England as a social and political community is entirely spiritual and forms a study in contrasts to both Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Evangelicals such as Wilberforce did not worship at the temple to the goddess of reason. While they did not renounce reason, they found themselves in opposition to the more rationalistic tendencies of the Enlightenment. Wilberforce completely rejected the prevailing optimistic Lockean view of human nature. His starting point was the radical corruption and sinfulness of human nature. This, he insisted, “lies at the root of all true religion, and still more, it is eminently the basis and groundwork of Christianity.”23 Building on this foundation, he dealt sequentially with the great themes of classical Protestantism –

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alienation from God, redemption through Christ’s death on the cross, and a life dedicated to the pursuit of holiness. For Evangelicals such as Wilberforce, humanity’s great divide was between the saved and the lost, the converted and the unconverted; between nominal and real Christianity. It was Wilberforce’s contention that the bulk of the English population, while professing to be Christian, had little understanding of real Christianity. Laxity, indifference, and lukewarmness – these were the most apt descriptors of contemporary English Christianity. “In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds,” he asked, “do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the principles of the faith which they profess and to furnish them with arguments for the defense of it?”24 Although recent historical writing has attempted to rehabilitate the Georgian Church of England,25 Evangelicals such as Wilberforce regarded England as in the throes of a national crisis whose base cause was spiritual. This was an echo of George Whitefield’s 1739 declaration: “The Christian world is in a deep sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can waken them out of it.”26 When Wilberforce set about to survey the “present state of Christianity in this country” in the penultimate section of his book, he found much cause for alarm. He observed a serious declension in his contemporaries’understanding and practice of Christianity: But when there is not this open and shameless disavowal of Religion, few traces of it are to be found. Improving in almost every other branch of knowledge, we have become less and less acquainted with Christianity. The preceding chapters have pointed out, among those who believe themselves to be orthodox Christians, a deplorable ignorance of the Religion they profess, an utter forgetfulness of the peculiar doctrines by which it is characterized, a disposition to regard it as a mere system of ethics, and, what might seem an inconsistency, at the same time a most inadequate idea of the nature and strictness of its practical principles.27

Apart from its formal doctrinal affirmations, evangelicalism was characterized by a cluster of practices and attitudes. Its stress on the believer’s growth in holiness resulted in an emphasis on prayer, scripture reading and study, spiritual self-examination, and the private and public worship of God. Its strong individualism was tempered by an emphasis on families. The evangelical social vision can with considerable justification be characterized as a “War against Vice.”28 Evangelicals worked from the premise that both moral persuasion and legislation could be utilized

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to suppress vice and promote virtue. Wilberforce’s parliamentary campaign for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade was the high-water mark in the early nineteenth century. Bradley has emphasized the evangelical influence that lay behind George iii’s 1787 proclamation against “all manner of vice, profaneness and immorality, in all persons of whatsoever degree or quality, within this our realm.”29 Evangelicals were instrumental in establishing the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It is fairly easy to construct a list of all those contemporary practices that evangelicals were against: adultery, prostitition, profane literature, obscenity, blasphemy, gambling, drunkenness, Sunday races, and cruel sports.30 At the same time, they were among the foremost promoters of concern for slaves, the poor, the orphaned, and the outcast. David Bebbington has rejected the argument that evangelical humanitarianism was a disguised “attempt at social control.” He asserts that their program for the reformation of morals “was an expression of Evangelical hostility to sin coupled with a pragmatic preparedness to employ state power, as much as private exhortation or pulpit admonition to do battle with it.” He argues that humanitarianism gave “rise to an empire of philanthropy in the nineteenth century.”31 Though evangelicalism can be defined by a cluster of ideas, affirmations, and practices, it was neither homogonous nor static. Evangelical leadership within the Church of England from the 1780s to the 1820s is invariably identified with the Clapham Sect: William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, Thomas Babbington, John Venn, Zachary Macaulay, Isaac Milner, Charles Grant, Hannah More, and James Stephen.32 In keeping with their social status, this was a world of polite, educated, cultured Evangelicalism. With a growing cohort of like-minded “Saints” in Parliament and with the Christian Observer as their voice, they wielded social and religious influence second to none. Though they were prepared to work with evangelical Nonconformists in various voluntary societies, they remained firmly attached to the Church of England and were fearful lest any association with Dissent compromise their plans for the reform of the church and nation.33 The English church establishment was regarded as a bulwark against revolutionary Jacobinism. The Evangelicals’ most conspicuous moral victory was the campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Their moral vision, however, was not obscured by single issues. Their humanitarian and philanthropic impulse resulted in the establishment of a plethora of voluntary societies designed to combat vice and spread the Gospel. They gave conspicuous leadership to such organizations as the Church Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society, and the British and Foreign Bible Society and to campaigns in Parliament against lotteries, rough sports, cruelty to animals, and the preservation of the Sabbath.34

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By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a new generation of young Evangelical leaders, associated with the London paper the Record, was making its presence felt within the Church of England. The Record began publication in January 1828 as a biweekly.35 Within a few months of its foundation, it experienced financial difficulties and had to be rescued by a group of laymen. The most important of this group was a young Scot, Alexander Haldane. He was born into a prominent Scottish evangelical family. His father and uncle, James Alexander Haldane and Robert Haldane, had used their considerable fortune to promote itinerant lay evangelism both in Scotland and in Continental Europe.36 As a schoolboy, young Alexander was brought within the pale of the Church of England, and after study at the University of Edinburgh and Inner Temple, he married into a prominent Dissenting family with close ties to Claphamite Evangelicals. Haldane settled in England and increasingly moved in Anglican Evangelical circles.37 He dominated the Record for fifty-four years and stamped his brand of uncompromising, confrontational Evangelicalism on what became the single most widely circulated religious newspaper in Britain.38 As Haldane was the leading Recordite layman, so Hugh McNeile of Liverpool was its leading clergyman. The Recordites were chacterized by an unwavering attachment to the Protestant constitution of Great Britain and a political, social, and religious policy that pitted them against Roman Catholicism, Tractarianism, the rationalism of the Broad Church movement, and political radicalism. They were staunch Calvinists who espoused a more pessimistic, historicist, or futurist premillennial eschatology that stressed the dramatic, imminent return ot Christ.39 Ian Rennie has characterized this group as “profoundly influenced by popular Romanticism, thus frequently turning to golden ages of the past for direction, envisioning reality in cataclysmic polarities and presenting their ideas with quasi-prophetic arrogance, intolerance and fire.”40 Eschewing what they regarded as the cold, mechanistic rationalism of the Enlightenment, these young Evangelicals, while never lapsing into the cruder forms of nature worship and pantheism of some of the Lake Poets, derived from the Romantic temperament a stress on emotion and feeling, an exalted sense of the supernatural, and a renewed interest in the premillennial return of Christ.41 It never entirely eclipsed the older, dominant eschatological view of postmillennialism, which posited a steady growth of the kingdom of Christ, as the truth of the Gospel was more widely diffused, as a preparation for Christ’s return after the millennium. Premillennialists stressed the imminent return of Christ to earth in dramatic, supernatural fashion to set up his millennial kingdom. Allied

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to this emphasis on the imminent return of Christ was a renewed interest in Jewish evangelism. Publications such as the Morning Watch and prophetic conferences such as those held at the Albury Park estate of Henry Drummond in Surrey served to advance this view. Bebbington argues that this “advent hope” was a major “part of the Romantic inflow into Evangelicalism.” “Christ the coming king could readily be pictured by poetic imaginations fascinated by the strange, the awesome and the supernatural.”42 With their particular theological emphases and confrontational style, the Recordites sought to break with the Claphamite tradition of Church of England Evangelicalism. They regarded many of the methods employed by contemporary religious societies as having capitulated to worldliness. It has also been suggested recently that Saints and Recordites disagreed on the issue of political involvement. According to John Wolffe, while Saints “saw political activity as a means of bringing Christian influence to bear in improving morals and the condition of society, the ‘Recordites’ saw involvement in Parliament rather as a vehicle for making uncompromising public testimony to the sinfulness of the nation and the impending judgment of God. Political activity was only justified in so far as it served this purpose and was thus confined to ‘religious’ issues.”43 Yet it needs to be recognized that Recordites believed that uncompromising Evangelical preaching and activism might yet bring Britain to its knees in an act of national repentance and usher in a golden age of godliness.

eva ng el i c al i s m i n t h e c hu rc h of ireland By almost all accounts, Evangelicalism had a transforming effect on the nineteenth-century Church of Ireland. Donald Akenson has termed it “an animating force.”44 He argues that its effect on the Church of Ireland moved on an upward trajectory from the late eighteenth century to well beyond disestablishment in 1868–69, suggesting that by mid-century “the church could safely be described as predominantly evangelical.”45 J.C. Beckett argued that the Evangelical Revival served “to transform the life of the church and give it a new sense of unity and purpose.”46 On the other hand, Desmond Bowen suggests that Evangelicals were always a minority in the Church of Ireland, though he sees them as exerting an influence out of all proportion to their numbers.47 Edward Brynn calls Evangelicalism “the most importart expression of spiritual vitality in the Church of Ireland during the nineteenth century.”48 David Hempton and Myrtle Hill argue that it “was a force to be reckoned with in the Church of Ireland.”49

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One of the most important of the early nineteenth-century Evangelicals was Peter Roe (1778–1842) of Kilkenny.50 Born in County Wexford and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Roe was ordained as curate of St Mary’s, Kilkenny, in 1798. At the time of his ordination, he was part of a small but growing cohort of Evangelical parish ministers in the Church of Ireland. He was one of the founders in 1800 of the Ossory Clerical Association, described as “an Irish equivalent to the Clapham sect,”51 in which like-minded Evangelicals “encouraged one another in ministry, clarified their priorities in parish evangelism and pastoral care, and evolved parochial welfare agencies.”52 The saintly Roe has been described as a “quintessential Anglican,” firmly committed to the articles and liturgy of the Church of Ireland.53 He was also one of the most irenic Evangelicals, magnanimous in his attitude towards Roman Catholics.54 A comment that Roe made in 1826 illustrates this attitude: I say, that there are in the Church of Rome in the present day, as there have been in the days that are past, many truly devoted servants of God, who will shine as stars in the Redeemer’s crown forever; whilst, on the other hand, there are multitudes in the different Protestant churches whose pure creed has no salutary effect on their practice; who are altogether ignorant of the truth; or grossly prejudiced against it; or living in a state of such negligence of their souls, perhaps open immorality, as to prove that they have neither part nor lot in the great salvation of Jesus Christ.55

Roe’s parish ministry at Kilkenny radiated circles of influence that stretched into British North America.56 The powerhouse of Dublin Evangelicalism was Bethesda Chapel under the leadership of Benjamin Williams Mathias, chaplain for more than thirty years. When Mathias assumed the chaplaincy of Bethesda in 1805, it was the only Evangelical Anglican place of worship in Dublin. It had been founded in 1786, and its existence and the principles for which it stood were long opposed by the Church of Ireland’s hierarchy. As a result, it remained unlicensed until 1825, and the provost of Trinity College forbade his students from attending.57 Given such attitudes, it is ironic that Trinity College was to play such an important role in solidifying Evangelicalism’s place within the Church of Ireland. Despite official opposition glimpses of Evangelical influence could be seen at Trinity in the late eighteenth century, though it was only in the early decades of the nineteenth that a full flowering would occur. Three fellows of Trinity – Henry Maturin, Joseph Stopford, and John Walker – did much to effect the fortunes of Evangelicalism within the established church when the movement was just finding its feet.58 The

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growing influence of Church of Ireland Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century owes much to the work of another fellow of Trinity, Joseph Singer, who after spending most of his adult life at Trinity, was appointed bishop of Meath in 1852.59 Bethesda’s influence was deep, widespread, and long-lasting. Perhaps no other single congregation did more to move the Evangelical Revival forward in the Church of Ireland. During his thirty-year ministry there, Mathias built the chapel into what one historian has called “one of the most influential [congregations] ever assembled in Ireland, with the castle and the army, the legal and medical professions, Trinity College, Dublin, and commerce, all strongly represented.“60 Men who sat under Mathias’s ministry, such as John Gregg, later became bishops in the Church of Ireland.61 It also maintained close connections with organizations such as the Hibernian Bible Society (hbs) and the Church Missionary Society. Irish-based voluntary missionary societies, in particular, have been seen as providing opportunities for both lay and clerical leadership and functioning as a “safety valve,” allowing young Evangelicals to remain within the established church and yet still pursue their own goals.62 The hbs, like some other societies, for awhile managed to combine Anglican and dissenting Protestants until a conflict in 1821 threatened to break it apart. By the late 1810s or early 1820s, Evangelicalism was becoming more firmly rooted in the Church of Ireland. Power Trench, archbishop of Tuam, had abandoned his earlier opposition to Evangelical distinctives, had embraced their understanding of justification by faith alone, and had assumed the mantle of public leadership for Church of Ireland Evangelicals.63 Evangelicalism had been making significant inroads among the Irish aristocracy, including Trench’s own Clancarty family but also among the Earls of Gosford and Roden and Viscounts Lorton and Powerscourt.64 Gosford, of course, had a significant British North American connection, serving as governor during the latter half of the tumultuous 1830s.65 One of the singular manifestations of the revival in Ireland was a renewed emphasis on the evangelization of Roman Catholics. Dubbed the “Second Reformation,” this missionary effort took various forms, including itinerant preachers, the distribution of Bibles and tracts, and the provision of free elementary schooling aimed directly at Roman Catholic children.66 Such efforts undoubtedly heightened tensions between the two religious communities in Ireland, though it seems clear that they were not the only cause of sectarian conflict.67 This Second Reformation, while inspired by religious concerns, was not devoid of political and social content. Many members of the Church of Ireland had come to regard their position at the top of Irish

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society as a birthright under seige.68 The Rebellion of 1798, the rise and increasing influence of Daniel O’Connell, the debate over Catholic emancipation, an increasingly violent opposition to the payment of tithes, and a revived and advancing Roman Catholic Church did nothing to allay their fears.69 Thus while Roman Catholicism was regarded as leading to the subversion of the social and political order, Protestant evangelism could be couched in terms of a civilizing mission.70 As David Hempton points out, “Irish evangelicals of all denominations and social classes, supported by the majority of their English coreligionists, held a fundamentally religious view of Ireland’s problems. These could not be solved by liberal concessions to Roman Catholicism because Roman Catholicism was itself the root of the problem.”71 Despite many obvious differences determined by the native soils in which it took root, Evangelicalism in Ireland and England displayed remarkably similar characteristics: a shared theological emphasis on justification by faith alone and the necessity of conversion; a heart-felt piety manifested in prayer, Bible study, and holy activism, and a conviction that Protestantism, properly understood, lay at the heart of the social and political stability and well-being of the national community.72 The Church of Ireland of the 1820s and 1830s, then, was feeling the effects of the transformative power of Evangelicalism. While in many respects embattled, Evangelicalism was on the march, solidifying its gains within the church, asserting its position within the nation, and attempting to make inroads into the Catholic community. This Irish Evangelical tradition was transplanted into Quebec in the nineteenth century.73 While never as large or as influential a group as the better-known contingent in Upper Canada associated with the Cronyns and the Blakes, many Irish Anglicans found a congenial home in Quebec. Their most prominent clerical representatives were Gilbert Percy and Isaac Hellmuth. Hellmuth, as has already been noted, brought to Quebec an experience of Evangelicalism that was rooted in the Anglican mission to the Jews of Continental Europe and nurtured in the Recordite tradition of Hugh McNeile of Liverpool. Percy, a young Trinity College, Dublin, graduate of the 1830s, brought directly to Quebec an Irish Evangelicalism that was self-confident and growing in influence in the Church of Ireland.74 It was also beginning to exhibit the marks of an increasingly confrontational style. This, of course, was not an exclusively Evangelical characteristic, as evidenced by the career of Henry Roe in Quebec, but in the increasingly heated atmosphere of the mid-Victorian Atlantic world, as often as not, the Irish clergy and laity took the lead in public confrontations. Within the transatlantic world of newsprint, Quebec Evangelicals were kept abreast of Irish religious news through papers such as the

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Berean and the Echo. Emissaries from Second Reformation groups such as the Society for Irish Church Missions went on tour in British North America and succeeded in establishing auxiliary societies in Quebec and Montreal. Thus the Echo in July 1859 reported that the visit to the Province of the Canadas of the Reverend A.P. Hanlon as deputy for the “Irish Society” was drawing to an end and invited “the friends of Evangelical truth” to attend one of its meetings in order to learn of “the nature and working of that inestimable Society, and what the Lord is doing, through its means, from Waterford round to Donegal.”75 Yet it also seems increasingly apparent that ethnicity did not create a great divide for Quebec Protestants. Cross’s argument that Irish Protestants in Montreal “did not have their own newspaper, schools and churches as did their Catholic compatriots, and they tended to merge imperceptibly with the English and Scottish with whom they associated socially and in business” is judicious.76 The division between Evangelical and High Church, and not that between Irish and English, would appear to be the fundamental line of demarcation. This would appear to be entirely in keeping with the increasing number of connections along the Evangelical nexus between England and Ireland.77 As the effects of the Evangelical Revival were felt increasingly in both Ireland and England, those two communions were brought closer together. In the colonies of British North America, Irish and English Evangelicals showed common cause in their attempt to erect a bulwark against any thing that would undermine the church’s robustly Protestant character.

j e f f e ry h a le : a s a i n t at q u eb ec If there is one person who stands above all others in his importance to Anglican Evangelicalism in early nineteenth-century Quebec, it is Jeffery Hale. Born into a prominent English family with important connections to both Quebec and India, Jeffery was educated in England and served ten years in the Royal Navy before retiring at the rank of lieutenant and returning to Quebec. He then acted as assistant to his father, John, the receiver general of Lower Canada. Plans to succeed his father did not materialize, however, and Jeffery spent the rest of his life involved in religious and philanthropic activities. One of his chief interests was education. He established the first Sunday school at Quebec in 1833 and was a prominent supporter of the British and Canadian School Society. He was instrumental in the founding of the Quebec Provident and Savings Bank and in his will left money to establish a hospital for Protestants at Quebec, which still bears his name. Hale was a warm supporter of a number of Anglican and pan-evangelical societies, including the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Reli-

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gious Tract Society, and the Quebec Mission Society. He was also one of the leaders of the Evangelical Church of England Lay Association, which in 1858–59 tried unsuccessfully to limit the powers of the bishop over the newly founded Synod of the Diocese of Quebec.78 The wealth of surviving correspondence between Jeffery Hale and family members makes it is possible to trace aspects of his spiritual development as he grew from adolescence into adulthood in the years 1817 to 1826, a period spent in the British Navy. He provides a rare window into the deepening spirituality and maturity of a young Evangelical. Jeffery was born at Quebec 19 April 1803 and went to sea at about age twelve and a half.79 Even at this young age he exhibited a heightened spiritual sensitivity. He was also growing into a very serious young man during this period. He urged his brother Edward, more than two years his senior, to let piety “take the precedence in your mind” over “politicks,” a rather prescient comment given their future lives.80 Jeffery’s correspondence is full of comments about expenses, rates of pay, prospects of promotion, and the comings and goings of British naval vessels, along with news of family and friends in England. His father seems to have been particularly interested in the amateur theatricals and other amusements conducted on board ship, and Jeffery dutifully supplied him with a narrative of such events.81 He offered various comments on the difficulties attendant upon being religious on board a British naval vessel. For example, in acknowledging the Christmas letter he received from his father, he observed: “We had a grand dinner amongst outselves on Xmas day, which is generally the case in the Navy – although some people consider getting drunk better than any dinner they could wish for. The rejoicings on that blessed day ought to be of a different sort to what they commonly are in this wicked world and I think that that day as Well as Good Friday &c are more shamefully and disgracefully spent with or among seamen than any other class of people.“82 When not at sea, young Jeffery spent considerable amounts of time with family friends and relatives in England. He stayed with the Amhersts at their estate, “Montreal” on various occasions.83 A comment made to his father in a letter of 6 November 1818 suggests that both Jeffery and Edward had received their early education in England with one Dr Thompson. In January 1819 Jeffery again commented on the trials and tribulations of attempting to live consistently as a Christian in the Navy. In a long letter to his father at Quebec, he conveyed his appeciation to his mother for her role in inculcating in him sound moral principles that could weather the scorn and derision of his shipmates. The Navy was, he admitted, “the most likely place in the world, (in my humble opinion) in which a boy’s morals may be corrupted; and be unknowingly led into

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the paths of vice, but, those who are well acquainted with the principles of religion, and are truly religious, may with little resolution withstand the temptations which lie in his way on board ship, and remain so (for as sure as they see, that your religious principles are not to be shaken, they will esteem you and court your friendship).”84 Occasionially, Jeffery commented on political events in England. For example, in February 1820 he related to his father the events surrounding Arthur Thistlewood’s failed attempt at murdering the entire British cabinet while they dined together.85 That Jeffery and his father would have discussed contemporary politics in this way runs counter to Colin Coates’s suggestion that the Hales’ Sainte-Anne seigneury “allowed the Hales to ignore present troubles” and his additional comment that it provided an “escape … from the tribulations of contemporary England, such as the Peterloo massacre.”86 This failed “Cato Street conspiracy” provided Jeffery with an opportunity to reflect on the providential rule of God, a theme he returned to repeatedly: how thankful we ought to be to that Providence who does not even let a sparrow fall to the ground without His knowledge, for having saved so providentially and almost miraculously, those lives which if once lost would have left the country in a most deplorable state: how seldom do we think or reflect on the goodness and mercy of God, longer than we fancy we have any need of His assistance; so soon as we are in safety and peace again, we entirely forget the great dangers we have escaped, and the still greater goodness of our Maker in having delivered us from them.87

Jeffery often wrote with great affection, and not a little moralizing advice, to his younger siblings, as when he wrote to his mother asking her to relate to his younger brother Barny “that even if lawyers are dishonest as he seems to conceive them generally to be, that is the very reason he ought to enter that profession in hopes of working reforms amongst them: he should rather trust that his endeavours may improve them, than fear being corrupted by them.”88 It is clear that Jeffery Hale’s Christianity did not compel him to withdraw from the world and its attendant problems but to be active in it. The superintending providence of God was a theme to which Jeffery returned repeatedly. A letter to his mother in 1821 spoke of his “submit[ting] patiently to the direction of an all-wise Providence Who knows far better than we do what is most conducive to our happiness.” Jeffery went on to provide a lengthy commentary on the importance of the incarnation and sacrifical death of Christ: Only conceive, what the great and glorious, the Almighty and Eternal God, should have assumed our weak and finite nature into His infinite and incom-

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prehensible person; why the Creator of all things sld [should] Himself have become a creature and be made into a world, whose glory the Heaven of Heavens is not able to contain, should have clothed Himself with flesh and become man, that glory should have been wrapped up in misery, and the Son of God have assumed the nature of a clod on earth, and all this for the salvation of rebellious mankind. Oh glorious yet mysterious truth – all this was done, my dear Parent, for you and me and all of us. Oh then let us not neglect this loving Redeemer, let us come to Him and we shall in no wise be cast out, in no wise, nothing shall induce Him to despise the humble and contrite hearts, here is encouragement, here is hope set before us with an earnest and faithful desire to find in it a sure and steadfast anchor to our souls.89

Coming at the beginning of a very long letter to his mother, this is a marvellous window into the mind and spirit of Jeffery Hale. The main contours of his thinking are readily apparent, but a few aspects are deserving of comment. He openly expresses his anxiety over the state of his mother’s relationship to Christ. He refers somewhat self-deprecatingly to his “dry methodistical style,” but he is quick to argue that his mother knows better and should not dismiss it on this account. Even at this late date (or because of it), it was necessary for Anglican Evangelicals to distance themselves from what were oftentimes seen as the socially low and politically subversive ideas of Methodism. Yet the tone and content of this letter are high-minded and extremely serious. Thoughts of eternity were clearly before him, and his conscience and love for his mother compelled him to press upon her the need for saving faith. Hale had a sharp mind and an observant eye. His thoughts had turned to Ireland and the state of the country, which he described as “truly melancholy.” However, instead of placing the blame on the Irish people or their Roman Catholicism, as many of his contemporaries would have been tempted to do, he laid the blame squarely at the feet of “the absentee Lords and Gentlemen whose estates are falling fast to ruin, whilst they, in order to keep up their establishments in the more fashionable yet not most creditable part of Britain, draw the money out of this poor deserted, most to be pitied Isle, and thoughtlessly throw it away on their equipages &c, whilst their poor countrymen are literally in a state of nakedness and starvation; how truly Cowper exclaims ‘Man’s inhumanity to man, Makes many thousands mourn.›90 By April 1823 Jeffery, now twenty, had served some eight or nine years before the mast and was having serious thoughts about leaving the British Navy. A swirl of conflicts, concerns, and worries pressed heavily upon him. He wrestled with the question of the propriety of a Christian serving under arms.91 Later that same year he declared to his father: “what is Warfare but legalized murder? strange contradiction!!

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Oh that that glorious season may not be far distant when ‘nation shall no more lift up sword against nation,’ and when they shall learn war no more; when our ‘officers shall be made Peace and our exactions righteousness’; when ‘swords shall be turned into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks,’ and when it may be recorded not only of our own blest kingdom, but of the whole world that ’the land rested from war.›92 Hale’s thoughts also turned to family obligations and future career prospects. He even considered entering the church.93 Hale felt accutely the tension between being in and of the world. “We must beware notwithstanding all this cheerfulness which it is our duty to promote to a certain degree,” he wrote to his mother in the spring of 1822, “of too strict conformity to the world, by this non-conformity to ‘the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.› He went on to assert, I am far from advising a monastic exclusion from all society (for that would be in direct opposition to our Saviour’s command in desiring us to let our light so shine before men, that they may glorify our Father which is in Heaven) but let us walk as if (which it does) the Eye of Omniscience beheld our most secret thoughts, and with the glory of God continually in view – Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God, says the inspired Apostle. The Christian should ever bear in mind that he is everywhere in the presence of his Creator, and should never allow that occupation to be his on which he cannot conscientiously ask a blessing.94

By temperament and upbringing, Jeffery Hale would appear to belong to the cultural world of the Clapham Saints. He shared their fiercely anti-slavery sentiments and often quoted Cowper against “the traffic in human flesh.” For example, a letter to his father from aboard the hms Briton, then docked at Rio de Janiero, commented on the Brazilian slave trade and prompted him to reflect: “What extremes human nature is capable of reaching – How high it may soar, when guided by that ‘Lamp of Truth’ … and again how low it may sink when self is foremost in its thoughts and conspicuous in all its actions,” Hale then relates a shameful instance of an Englishman striking a Black for little apparent reason – “Can this be an Englishman? Can this be one of those who even ‘call themselves Christians›? Later in that same letter he comments, “May a Wilberforce be never wanting to plead the Negro’s cause, and may He Who led captivity captive, be ever near to crown his efforts with success.”95 Hale was a frequent commentator on the mysteries of the doctrine of God’s superintending providence. In a letter to his mother from aboard hms Briton at Montevideo in the autumn of 1824, his thoughts

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turned to a reflection on the themes of riches, poverty, and contentment. He refered to both the just and the unjust receiving good things in this life and observed that “the place Providence has allotted for us is the right place. We may use the lawful means we possess to change it, but when these fail, it is the Christian’s duty, nay his privilege, to rest contented.”96 It is apparent that he had recently sought promotion to lieutenant and that this had been the subject of some discussion between Lord Harewood and “Lord A.”97 However, Hale admitted, I have since had reason to believe the Admiralty List a bit of a cheat, which, though it will eventually bestow what it promises, is not proof against interlopers. I am content however to let the tide take its course, and this contentment is more than philosophy arising from necessity. When we have done all we are to be still – not because we can do no more, but because an undue anxiety for the things of this world results from an underrating of the better things of the next, and betrays a distrust of Him Whose mercies are over all His works.98

Hale’s anticipated promotion was forthcoming, enabling him to retire on the half pay of a full lieutenant. “I have said adieu to the Navy,” he wrote to his father, “and I hope necessity will never compel me to renew my acquaintance.”99 The timing, however, was bittersweet. He had just recently learned of the unexpected death of his mother, and while his retirement meant a long anticipated homecoming to Quebec, he poignantly reflected that only one parent would be there to greet him. “I do most firmly believe that in His every providence there is mercy,” he wrote to his father. “One of His numerous intentions in sending afflictions of the nature of that under which we mourn – is to deter us from, and reprove us for, valuing it too highly, and to remind us that he who loveth father or mother, or house or lands more that Him is not worthy of Him.” Moreover, his memories of his mother “led me into a long strain of seriousness.”100 Jeffery Hale’s return to Quebec was perhaps the single most important event in the history of nineteenth-century Quebec Evangelicalism. Life in the British Navy had matured him, but had not hardened him to the painful vicissitudes of life. For his entire life he exhibited the deep personal piety and philanthropic activism that were hallmarks of British Evangelicalism. He helped establish local auxiliaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. He was one of the founders of the Quebec City Mission and a firm supporter of the Ladies’ Protestant Home. When he died in England in 1864, he was eulogized at Quebec as having “consecrated his living, active powers, to the service of his fellowmen” and as having been “ever ready to aid in any undertaking which was truly charitable and philanthopic.”101 Hale

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was a man of considerable influence in Quebec society, moving easily in the most exalted social circles and yet possessed of a compassionate heart for Quebec City’s poor and outcast. The considerable fortune that his family had amassed he put to good use in advancing his charitable mission to the people of Quebec. His Evangelical convictions turned him towards active involvement in diocesan affairs, often putting him on a collision course with Bishop George Mountain.

t h e p r e s s a n d tr a n s a t l a n t i c eva ng el i c al i s m John Walsh and Stephen Taylor have emphasized the importance of societies and connections in creating “something like an embryonic party organization, whose nation-wide networks gave them the attributes of a confederacy.”102 In England both Evangelicals and High Churchmen had their own denominational societies and their own periodicals by the early nineteenth century. The most important High Church papers and journals were the Orthodox Churchman’s Magazine (1801), the British Critic (1793), and the Christian Remembrancer (1818). The most important Evangelical publications were the Christian Observer (1802), the Christian Guardian (1809), and the Record (1828). Such papers were of particular importance in defining and promoting party positions and feeling. As Walsh and Taylor argue, “through their reviews, articles and hagiography they helped to disseminate a particular Anglican viewpoint, moulding group opinion as well as reflecting it: they provided a centre for cohesion and collective loyalty, giving a sense of kinship to readers scattered across the country.”103 Such a state of affairs was as true in mid-Victorian Quebec as in England or Ireland. Reference has been made above to the divided state of the religious press in British North America and to the position occupied by the premier High Church paper in the Canadas, the Church. The Evangelical Anglican press remains to be examined. In particular, two Evangelical Anglican papers published in the Canadas had significant Quebec connections – the Berean, published at Quebec City from 1844 to 1849 and then at Christieville, Canada East, for upwards of a year; and the Protestant Echo and Episcopal Recorder, which began publication at Port Hope in 1851 and moved in 1854 to Toronto and in 1862, to Montreal, where it ultimately ceased publication. The Berean For upwards of two years the editor of the Berean remained anonymous, but on 12 March 1846 C.L.F. Haensel was identified as its edi-

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tor. Charles Lewis Frederick Haensel was born in Bavaria in 1796. Little is known about his early life and formative influences, but as a young man he made his way to England, determined to pursue a commercial career, but instead he responded to an inner call to become a missionary. Towards this end he studied at the Basel Missionary Institute. Although he had been raised a Lutheran, his time in England had brought him into contact with the Evangelical Anglican Church Missionary Society, and during his time at Basel he determined to proceed to Sierra Leone under the auspices of the cms. After further studies at the cms college at Islington, Haensel was ordained deacon and priest by the bishop of London in 1826. Early the next year he set sail for Freetown in West Africa. In Sierra Leone he served as a schoolmaster at Fourah Bay. One of his assistants there was Samuel Crowther, later the first native African Anglican bishop.104 After about seven years in Sierra Leone, Haensel relocated to Jamaica, where he served as a schoolmaster under cms auspices. His time in Jamaica was cut short by recurrent ill health and by what Millman characterizes as “a difference of opinion about the constitution of the Society’s corresponding committee,” which led to his official departure from the cms.105 Yet if Haensel’s resignation from the cms “displays an underlying sense of injury and disappointment,” as Millman suggests, the pages of the Berean show no evidence of this. Indeed, they indicate a deep and ongoing attachment to the cms. After leaving Jamaica, Haensel surfaced in the Diocese of Ohio, then under the leadership of a staunch Evangelical, Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine, probably the most prominent anti-Tractarian in the United States Episcopal Church and a friend of Bishop Benjamin Cronyn of Huron.106 In 1839 Haensel relocated to Quebec, where at first he taught school in Shefford County in the Eastern Townships, probably under the auspices of the Newfoundland and British North American School Society.107 In addition to his teaching, he served as an assistant to Andrew Balfour, a local missionary, and stood in for S.S. Wood in the parish of Three Rivers, when the latter was in England. From the point of view of the future of Anglican Evangelicalism in the diocese, Haensel’s most significant move occurred in 1840 when he took up residence in Quebec City. This was not only the administrative centre of the diocese, but was still a thriving commercial and port city, though soon to be eclipsed by Montreal. At Quebec Haensel became involved with the most significant group of Evangelicals in the diocese, those associated with Trinity Chapel, where he established a boys’ school and later served as evening lecturer from 1846 from 1855.108 Millman asserts that the idea for a paper was first proposed at a meeting of Quebec Evangelicals “in Haensel’s school room at Trinity

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Chapel in the summer of 1842.” He further relates that “under pressure,” Haensel “was persuaded to be the editor.” Millman notes Bishop George Mountain’s reluctance to lend his support to the Berean, arguing that Mountain “felt that if he gave official approval he would have to bear responsibility for a publication not exclusively Anglican.”109 However, Millman fails to point out that the Berean was at certain critical points deeply opposed to Bishop Mountain.110 The Berean promoted itself as “a weekly paper for the diffusion of religious, commercial, and poltical intelligence, and the promotion of all the best interests of a christian community.”111 A scan of the inaugural issue serves to indicate how far it fulfilled this ambitious, albeit eclectic, goal. The lead article – “Justification by Faith” – was reprinted from a leading English Evangelical, Edward Bickersteth. Such reprints were a conspicuous feature of this and, indeed, all British North American papers in the nineteenth century. Reprinting a sermon, lecture, or part of a tract by a leading English or even American Anglican Evangelical was a recurrent feature.112 Items organized under the headings of “Missionary Intelligence” or “Political Intelligence” picked up and reprinted news gathered from a variety of British and American papers. As well, there was a “Youth Corner” with articles aimed at younger readers. In keeping with its stated objectives, the Berean also gave extensive coverage to commercial news. As a newspaper of British North America’s leading port city, it kept abreast of the comings and goings of ships, as well as publishing such trade information as “Liverpool Timber Prices.” In its opening issue the Berean declared its forthright avowal of Church of England principles, but also made clear its commitment to ecumenical evangelicalism – “an affectionate regard towards those members of other religious persuasions who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.” In its reportage of religious news it was firmly ensconced in the transatlantic world of Anglican Evangelicalism. It culled missionary information from a selection of English and American Evangelical magazines and papers, including the Church Missionary Record, the London Record, the Episcopal Protestant, and the Christian Observer. It kept readers abreast of contemporary events in England and America. As would be expected, it adopted a strongly anti-Tractarian stand. The paper was firmly committed to the formularies of the Church of England, but eschewed any form of narrow exclusivism. For example, it defended the notion of apostolic succession, but refused to accept the position that the Church of England had a monopoly on such authority. “We look upon the Presbyterian Church with great veneration,” it declared in an early issue; “she holds an apostolical succession in the line of Presbyters as truly as the Church of England does in the

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line of Bishops.”113 Unlike contemporary High Churchmen, the Berean declared its support for the idea that non-Episcopalians be allowed to partake of the Eucharist in Anglican churches – “the admission of nonepiscopalians as guests at the Sacrament in our Church is a very common and, we must say, a very commendable practice.”114 It further argued that this practice was common in the Episcopal Church in the United States. It unwaveringly believed that the formularies of the Church of England condemned Tractarianism and upheld Evangelicalism. “That we are ruined by the fall, redeemed by Christ the only Mediator, saved by faith, sanctified by the Spirit, these are truths constantly held before us in our liturgy, catechism, and articles of religion.”115 The paper also disliked the terms “High” and “Low” Churchmen, regarding them as ill-defined and vague. “We cannot help calling the term ‘High-Churchism’ an offensive one. It would naturally stand opposed to ‘Low-Churchism’ and that expression would be no more grateful to men holding the contrary opinions to what are generally understood to be High-Church views, than the word before mentioned would seem proper to those who entertain the latter.”116 In many instances, the Berean seems to have preferred the practices adopted by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to those common in the Church of England. For example, it preferred the U.S. church’s canons against suffragan bishops and concerning deacons.117 Not only did the Berean report on religious news from England, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, and the Continent, but men such as its editor, Haensel, were participants in various transatlantic Evangelical networks. For example, Haensel had in 1842 founded the Quebec Juvenile Church Missionary Society. Among other things, this junior auxiliary to the cms collected money at Quebec which was forwarded to the parent society at London before its May meeting. The Berean gave full coverage to the meetings of the various evangelical societies held in London every May.118 Each week Haensel wrote an editorial commenting on contemporary ecclesiastical and political issues and events. The Berean was ever vigilant to report on the progress of the Oxford Movement. It noted with satisfaction the dissolution of the Cambridge Camden Society and the condemnation of Tractarianism by the University of Oxford, but asserted that its role as watchman was not yet finished. “We are very far from concluding that the danger to the Protestant character of our Church from a romanizing party in her is over.”119 It would be difficult to identify the Berean with the political and religious policy of the Record. The Berean would appear to have been far less exclusive on the question of Anglican establishment and its relations

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with Nonconformists. It was hesitant to claim unequivocal divine authority for an episcopal form of church government, asserting that “we think it a wide departure from the mind of Christ to condemn men for having embraced a view of Church government different from that of our Church; – and we think it suicidal too.”120 The Berean was certainly aware of the Record, and while it did not feel compelled to defend all of the London paper’s views, it did assert that “we readily give to the Conductors of it credit for zeal for the simple truth of God, and no small share of ability in defending it.”121 In light of the Tractarian emphasis on apostolic succession and sacramental order as defining the true church, papers such as the Berean went out of their way to advance a Protestant evangelical ecumenism. “We are entirely persuaded that the danger to the Church at the present day is not from Protestant dissent without, but from romanizing tendencies within her.”122 It also sat lightly with regard to the accoutrements of establishment. Rather, it argued that if the members of the Church of England spent less time worrying about “her right of predominance” and instead concentrated upon the pursuit of holiness, spirituality, and biblical truth, then the church would become “so attractive to those without, and prove so retentive of those within her pale that dissent will enfold few beyond those whom it would be scarcely desirable to have while they remain unchanged in disposition.”123 The Berean argued that many dissenters were on the verge of returning to the Church of England until “the rise of Tractarianism undid the good work which evangelical preaching, impressive performance of Church services, and diligent pastoral labours had done.”124 Indeed, in an intelligent reading of English church history, the paper cited with approval the view of the bishop of London, who argued that the sin of schism lay with those who made the separation necessary. The 1662 Act of Uniformity, it asserted, “thrust into Non-Conformity hundreds of the most valuable preachers of the Gospel – while numbers whose consciences only just accommodated themselves to the demands of private interest, were retained within the Church.”125 The Berean was published during one of the most tumultuous decades in the history of the Church of England. Even a cursory reading of its pages would indicate its clear and determined opposition to everything associated with Tractarianism. It was always on the lookout for evidence of “romanizing tendencies” within the Church of England. It preferred this term to “popery” because it argued that those who advanced such positions had little or no desire to submit to papal authority. Rather, they repudiated the doctrine of justification by faith alone, while disingenuously concealing their true position. Such men “artfully contrive to disguise their mischievous efforts under a pretence of

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zeal for usages – observances – rules of the Church, facilitating the delusion which man loves to practice upon himself, by substituting outward conformity for inward renewal.”126 Haensel very perceptively linked liturgical and architectural innovation with theological change. Such practices as using altars instead of communion tables and chanting the service with one’s back to the congregation all pointed towards an understanding of Holy Communion as a sacrificial mass.127 What is clear from even a cursory reading of papers such as the Berean is that much of their editorial policy was preoccupied with the Oxford Movement. There was little that was novel about the Berean’s approach to these matters. Its importance lay in providing a colonial Evangelical voice to the debates engendered by the Oxford Movement. The fact that the Church seemed to have the field to itself and, moreover, was a consistent supporter of the early Tracts necessitated the establishment of an Evangelical counterweight. Clearly, both the Berean’s editor and its supporters perceived that Tractarianism was a serious threat to the Protestant character of the Church of England and that this needed to be resisted firmly. The Protestant Echo and Episcopal Recorder The second Evangelical Anglican paper that appeared in the Canadas in the middle of the nineteenth century was the Protestant Echo and Episcopal Recorder.128 It began publication in 1851 and for more than a decade and a half served as an important voice for Evangelical Anglicans in the Canadas. Its last and perhaps most important publisher was Thomas Sellar. His association with the paper began in 1858 when he purchased a partial interest in it. He brought to it considerable journalistic experience. A native of Elgin, Scotland, Sellar had emigrated to British North America in 1853 at the age of twenty-five. Almost immediately he began a lifelong journalistic and political association with George Brown and the Toronto Globe, rising to be sub-editor on what was then the leading newspaper in the province, if not all of British North America. By the time he acquired an interest in the Echo, Sellar had already bought and then sold the Brampton Weekly Times. In January 1858 he purchased a partial interest in the Echo; by 1860 he owned it outright. The following year its offices were moved from Toronto to Montreal. Sellar’s untimely death in 1867 spelled the end for the Echo.129 The Echo served the interests of Evangelicals in the Church of England in the United Province of the Canadas. By the early 1860s Canadian Anglicans were arranged administratively in five dioceses – Quebec, Montreal, Ontario, Toronto, and Huron. In 1862 the Echo could make the claim to be “the oldest Church Paper in Canada, and

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is recognized as the Provincial organ, being circulated in all the Canadian Dioceses, the Ecclesiastical Intelligence of which, with that of Great Britain, Ireland, Europe, United States &c., &c. is given at the earliest possible dates.”130 According to a notice issued in 1866 by its publisher, the Echo had a subscription list of nearly 1,200, about a quarter of whom were resident in Quebec.131 At that point the Echo was in financial difficulties, and these figures accompanied an appeal by Sellar for more subscribers in order to prevent the collapse of the paper.132 In making this appeal, he asserted that the Echo “has already done good service to the Evangelical cause, and, in common with many others, he is of opinion that a crisis is at hand in Canada, when such an organ may be of incalculable advantage in exposing, and thereby keeping in check the Ritualistic innovations, which are fast creeping into the different Dioceses of British North America.”133 The Echo had a succession of editors: the Reverend Jonathan Shortt, H.C. Cooper, the Reverend John Irwin of St Luke’s, Montreal, the Reverend Canon Bancroft of Trinity Church, Montreal, the Reverend N.V. Fenn, principal of Sabrevois College, and the Reverend F.B. Tate.134 On 13 October 1853 a meeting of the “Friends of the Echo,” held in St James Parochial School House, Toronto, established a committee of trustees (half clergy, half laity) to superintend the Echo: the Reverend R.V. Rogers, the Reverend B. Cronyn, rhe Reverend A. Sanson, the Reverend S.B. Ardagh, Neil McLeod, Hugh C. Baker, T.S. Shortt, and J.S. Howard.135 In many respects, the Echo assumed the mantle of Evangelical journalism established by the Berean. Indeed, the former editor of the Berean, Haensel, acted as Quebec agent for the Echo in the 1850s. He also maintained links with Maritime Evangelicals, acting as Quebec agent for the Church Witness of Saint John, New Brunswick. The lines of continuity between the Berean and the Echo are not difficult to discern. Indeed, in 1852 the Echo could claim “that we have not rudely thrust ourselves forward to occupy a position already filled, but rather have attempted to supply, in some measure, a vacancy in our Church periodical literature.”136 Scanning the pages of the Echo, one can readily discern the lines of interconnection binding Evangelicals within the province to each other and to their counterparts in the Atlantic world. The Reverend R.V. Rogers of Kingston acted as local agent for the Echo, as he had previously done for the Berean.137 Rogers was also the local agent for the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics. Charles Bancroft of Montreal (later Canon Bancroft) had served as a Montreal agent, along with Mark Willoughby, for the Berean. He later served as

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an editor of the Echo. Dr A.F. Holmes, dean of the McGill medical faculty and a leading Montreal Evangelical, was a supporter of both the Berean and the Echo.138 The Echo was a particularly warm supporter of Evangelical Anglican societies such as the Colonial Church and School Society. It was also particularly diligent in reporting on Irish church news.148 It even maintained a correspondent in Dublin who kept it abreast of Irish news. As noted earlier, it was common practice for British North American newspapers to fill their pages with reprinted articles from Britain, Irish, American, or Continental papers and journals. One of the favourite sources of items for the Echo was the London Record, the voice of the ultra-Protestant Evangelicals in the Church of England.139 The Echo maintained a staunchly anti-Roman, anti-Tractarian stand. Indeed, it appears to have been more strident in its advocacy than the Berean had been. It once referred to Alessandro Gavazzi as “an instrument specially raised up by Providence for the destruction of Popery; or at least for warning and thoroughly awakening every Protestant, and preparing them for the contest which must be one unto death.”140 The paper was opposed to any movement that would make diocesan synods look or function like a revival of Convocation in England.141 If there was any doubt in the minds of undiscerning readers about its decidedly antiTractarian stand, an editorial of 20 October 1854 should have removed all doubts. “Why Tell the World about the Misdoings of the Tractarians in the Church of England?” it asked, answering that their views must be exposed and refuted by true members of the Church of England. Tractarian views were not only incompatible with the received doctrinal standards of the church but were “injurious to the soul of those who embrace them; turning them from the ‘simplicity of Christ’ to fables of men’s devising.” In a refrain that could be heard across the Protestant denominational spectrum, the Echo maintained that Tractarianism was simply cleverly disguised Roman Catholicism. Yet it was confident that, once exposed to the “christian light and common sense in our Protestant nation,” Tractarian views would be rejected out of hand.142 One of the issues on which the Echo took a decided stand concerned the constitution of the diocesan synods then in the process of formation. It was adamant that the laity should play an integral role in nominating to the office of bishop.143 It seems clear that one of the reasons for the paper’s strong advocacy of the rights of the laity in the governance of parishes and dioceses was that lay members could be more securely counted on to maintain the Protestant character of the church. That Irish Evangelicalism was a important force in the colonial church was recognized by the Echo. An editorial of 1 December 1852 declared: “The Irish Evangelicals are as good as the English Evangelicals;

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we gratefully acknowledge it and this is the highest praise that can be given to man, for than our own Evangelical clergy no better class of religious teachers has existed since the apostolical ages, if so good, which we much doubt.”144 Despite its decidedly anti-Tractarian stand, the Echo did on occasion hold up Bishop John Strachan for praise. In particular, it commended him for his chairmanship over the first meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Toronto.145 But whatever irenic comments it may have on occasion made about the bishop of Toronto, it was an implacable foe of both the Church and Alexander Neil Bethune, making particularly excoriating comments about the latter’s conduct with reference to the three Evangelical students who were forced out of the theological college at Cobourg.146 Its war of words with the Church was particularly heated in the winter of 1855. At one point in this exchange it expressed its utter exasperation with its journalistic opponent: “Now, what is the use of wasting time and space arguing with such an opponent as the Church?” it asked. “Unless we subscribe to his interpretation of the Apostolical Succession and Baptismal Regeneration, he will persist in regarding us as schismatical and heretical; and unless we adopt his reading and interpretation of ancient and modern writers, he will not refrain from charging us with ‘lying.’ Until his manners, at least, improve, we shall be compelled to leave the Church aside.”147 Like the Berean before it, the Echo, while supporting episcopacy “as being most in accordance with Scripture and ancient writers,” would not “assert that our Church is alone scriptural; … we have not the arrogance and presumption to say that our own Church is the only duly authorized channel of divine grace.”148 The paper argued for the congruence of the term “Evangelical Churchmanship.” It contended that the true principles of the Church of England were Evangelical, the pillars of which were salvation by grace alone and a life of holiness lived out to the glory of God. This position it contrasted with “churchmanship,” which it characterized as “a certain lifeless conformity to the church’s system, producing little else than some party shibboleth, uninfluential, except to produce an ignorant bigotry; and a practical abhorence of all besides itself.”149 The Echo’s oppositon to the theology behind High Churchmanship was nowhere made plainer that in an editorial of 10 September 1863, “How shall the Church be best sustained?”: High Church [men] affirm, that, where there is the Church, there only is salvation: Evangelical or Low Churchmen say, that where there is salvation, there only is the Church: the first make “the Church,” according to their ideal, necessary, or almost necessary, for salvation; the second make salvation, as only to be pro-

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cured according to God’s plan proposed in Scripture, necessary to make a Church; and further argue that, where this is, no matter what the form of Church government, there is the Church of God. This admission, we know will furnish an argument against us, as showing that we are not strict Churchmen: we shall see how far such argument is correct: but, for the present, we may remark that the admissions of our High Church brethren in an opposite direction bear equally hard upon them … It may be well to observe here, that a man may be a genuine High Churchman without desiring the introduction of things offensive to what we must call the Protestant mind, and that a man may be a Low Churchman while conscientiously preferring his own Church to every other, and believing that she is the best and purest of all. We are too ready with sweeping denunciations to be quite just in our mutual differences … Are our principles true or false? If they are true, then she must stand on them, or, as a true Church, fall. If they are false, then she must rest on others, or be in danger of ruin.

The Echo asserted that the only true test of principle was a scriptural one and that tradition constituted an inadequate basis for the church’s belief and practice. the continual exalting of our Church in pulpit addresses, and a corresponding depreciation of the Protestant bodies who differ from us in government and forms of worship, is repugnant to the feelings of the majority in a congregation of Churchmen, amongst whom there are not a few who would defend their own Communion to the death; but yet think it no sign of Christianity to exalt our own Ecclesiastical polity so much as to bring contempt upon others. Such men will not willingly be partakers in what they consider to be the sin of bigotry to forms of any kind … men want salvation more than they want the Church – i.e. our Ecclesiastical system; salvation first; then the Church as it faithfully sets it forth to them.150

an t i - c at h ol i c i s m Any consideration of anti-Catholicism in British North America must view it against the backdrop of contemporary events and attitudes in England and Ireland. Although anti-Catholicism was central to the cultural identity of Protestant Britons, popular manifestations tended to wax and wane according to contemporary circumstances. The entire spirit of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, eschewing dogmatic stands and espousing toleration, along with the decline in political threats occasioned by the collapse of the Jacobite rebellions, might be thought to have cooled the ardour of all but the most pronounced anti-Catholics, but this would be an overreading of the evidence. There is substantial evidence that throughout the eighteenth century,

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celebrations of England’s Protestant heritage and character were extensive, even while legal restrictions on Catholic civil rights were being eased.151 Moreover, the legacy of the Enlightenment is now regarded as more ambiguous and at least potentially as opposed to Roman Catholic obscurantism as any contemporary Protestant viewpoint. Nor was anti-Catholicism the exclusive preserve of the British lower classes. “Anti-Catholicism was thus not sole, or even primarily, the property of the mob, but was also an aspect of the world-view of those who in other respects held advanced political and religious opinions.”152 The intensity of popular anti-Catholicism tended to wax and wane throughtout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, according to a multiplicity of social, economic, and religious factors. Clearly, the high-water mark was the Gordon Riots of 1780. Thereafter the temperature of anti-Catholicism seemed to cool somewhat as Britons turned their attention to a myriad of other concerns, not the least of which was the threat from revolutionary France.153 Anti-Catholicism among members of the Church of England was by no means the exclusive preserve of Evangelicals. Indeed, “in the days before the Oxford Movement, High Churchmen were among the strongest opponents of Rome.”154 Both High Churchmen and Evangelicals of this era, while remaining implacably opposed to Roman Catholicism, tended not to make much of a public issue of it. By the 1820s, however, there was an upsurge of anti-Catholicism within the evangelical community. This was caused by the confluence of a series of social, political, and religious events. Massive Irish immigration into especially the northwest of England brought the two cultures face to face in a manner hitherto unknown. The debate surrounding Catholic Emancipation focused attention on the nature of Britain’s constitution and political culture and, ironically, accentuated “active anti-Catholicism.”155 Because most Britons regarded themselves as living in a Protestant country with a Protestant heritage to uphold, these contemporary debates and trends could galvanize the attention of even the most nominal of Protestants. Anti-Catholicism was built into the very fabric of English popular culture, from a calendar that celebrated Guy Fawkes’ Day every 5 November156 to popular literature such as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Structural changes within Evangelicalism (discussed elsewhere) fomented anti-Catholicism. Older and more moderate Evangelicals of Simeon’s and Wilberforce’s generation were less vociferous in their opposition to Roman Catholicism. Not so the new generation of Evangelicals influenced by Edward Irving and led by clergymen such as Hugh McNeile, and expressed in the pages of the London Record. They tended to be ardent premillennialists who easily identified Rome with

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the Antichrist and who would brook no compromises. For a significant section of the Evangelical community, a commitment to a premillennial prophetic scheme of biblical interpretation intensified antiCatholic feelings. These “historicist” premillennialists believed that the fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation were to be sought in contemporary events. “The great majority had embraced a version of prophetic interpretation that drove them to scan their newspapers for indications of ‘the signs of the times.›157 Many Evangelicals identified Rome with the Antichrist. Anti-Catholicism was fuelled by the actions of both contemporary politicians and the Roman Catholic hierarchy and by ideological commitments inherent in Protestantism. Peel’s much publicized and excoriated continuation of the grant to St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland, and the establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 inflamed popular response. By mid-century, English anti-Catholicism had been institutionalized via the establishment of numerous Reformation Societies and Protestant Associations througout the country.158 Protestants in British North America shared many of these attitudes and sentiments. J.R. Miller has analyzed the many facets of Victorian anti-Catholicism – theological, social, and political.159 Roman Catholicism was regarded as hindering “the social well-being and material progress of any state, including Canada.“160 Various Roman Catholic practices, particularly auricular confession, were considered to degrade the moral purity of women. Among the objects of theological objections were Roman Catholicism’s view of the magisterial authority of the church, its doctrine of salvation, and its exaltation of Mary.161 Evangelical Anglicans shared in this general antipathy towards Roman Catholic doctrine, practice, and social influence. Two documents illustrate this attitude clearly. The first was a poem, written by J.S.S. and published in the Echo: Address to the Protestants of England Ye Protestant christians arise! England summons you now to her aid; Protect and defend me, she cries, Ere freedom and liberty fade. Arise! for the trumpet has sounded, The Protestant banner’s unfurled; Rome trembles, abashed and confounded That Protestant truth’s in the world.

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Yes, Britons, the time is at hand That Principles now will be tried; for Popery stalks through the land With a haughty and terrible stride. The Beast proclaims war with the lamb, Come then, ye true Protestants all, In the strength of the mighty I AM For Babylon surely must fall. Ye freemen of Britain, be strong, Put on the whole armour of God: The struggle and war may be long, But the crown is the gift of the Lord. He planted His cross in our land, And freely He gave us His word In a tongue we can all understand, That souls might be brought to the Lord The mechanic, as free as our Queen, This soul-cheering blessing enjoy; But Rome, full of envy and spleen, Is striving them both to destroy. Shall we rally then nobly, and stand With the band that protects and defends Our Bibles, our Queen, and our Land, Our children, our Parents, our Friends. Or wait till in Smithfield again Are the martyr’s red faggot and torch, And levelled down, low as the plain, Is our noble, our Protestant Church. Now; firm as a rock be the trust Of our loyal and Protestant bands, Rome never shall crush to the dust, Our Protestant free artizans.162

The second was an address that a group of twenty-nine members of Trinity Chapel, Quebec, many of whom were prominent in the Quebec City business, legal, and military establishments, presented to their

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minister, the Reverend E.W. Sewell, on 16 December 1856. “Reverend and Dear Sir,” they began, “There are junctures in Ecclesiastical affairs when silence or reserve involves a dereliction of sacred duty both to God and His Church.” The signatories went on to commend Sewell for a recent sermon in which he had exposed the cancer of Tractarianism that was growing within the Church of England, which had sought to force “a Romish Construction upon her Articles and of assimilating her Sacraments to the falsities and Superstitions against which her Reformers and Martyrs protested even at the stake.”163 This petition is significant for a number of reasons. It illustrates quite clearly how anti-Tractarianism was part of the popular religious culture of an Evangelical congregation, taking us “below” the clerical level in the contested ground over the authentic character of the Church of England. Like the poem reprinted above, this petition alludes to the sacred hagiography of the Protestant Church of England. Repeated references to the Marian persecutions – “Reformers and Martyrs,” “Smithfield,” “the martyr’s red faggot and torch” – would not be lost on any readers or listeners who had even a passing acquaintance with the history of the English Reformation. Protestants in British North America were all too aware that a renewed and revived Roman Catholic Church was on the march by mid-century. The ultramontane revival, which had had such profound effects on Continental Europe, was being transplanted into Lower Canada. The work of the Roman Catholic evangelist Bishop ForbinJanson and the aggressive stands of Bishops Laflèche and Bourget not only had a profound effect on the Roman communion but were deeply worrying to many Lower Canadian Protestants. By the 1840s, ultramontanism was becoming identified with the very idea of FrenchCanadian nationality.164 Such an identification was particularly evident in the annual events surrounding 24 June, Saint Jean-Baptiste Day. The public events of this day became a celebration of both FrenchCanadian nationality and ultramontane Catholicism.165 The critical turning point for the fortunes of the Roman Catholic Church was the appointment of Ignace Bourget as bishop of Montreal in 1840. The urgency of spreading the gospel of ultramontanism in Lower Canada could not have been lost on Bishop Bourget. Among other things, the Durham Report had called for the systematic assimilation of Lower Canada’s Roman Catholic population. Partly in response to this challenge, the interdenominational Protestant French-Canadian Missionary Society had been established to evangelize among Lower Canadian Roman Catholics. Soon after ascending the episcopal throne, Bourget extended an invitation to one of France’s best-known Catholic apologists, Bishop Forbin-Janson of Nancy. Forbin-Janson arrived in

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Lower Canada in September 1840 and did not leave until December of the following year. He preached up and down the countryside, sometimes to crowds estimated at upwards of 10,000.166 Here in Canada East was the ultramontane equivalent of Hugh McNeile. From this point onward, Lower Canadian Catholicism exuded a selfconfident aggressiveness. New religious orders were established and others reintroduced into the province. Popular devotion became more marked, and public celebrations of Roman Catholicism were more in evidence, as, for example, in November 1846, when an enormous public demonstration was held to celebrate the transfer to Canada East of a set of Roman relics.167 Bourget, in particular, was enamoured with all things Roman. He travelled to Rome eight times during his tenure as bishop and succeeded in introducing all the colour, pomp, and pageantry of a more correct Roman liturgy into his diocese.168 The ultramontane revival also had a profound effect on church building and architectural styles. Ultramontanes such as Bourget had been profoundly affected by Romanticism. In the hands of such Romantics, the Roman Catholic Church in French Canada became the instrument chosen by Providence “to promote true religion and civilization in North America.”169 The celebrated Montreal war of the spires between the designers of the new Christ Church Cathedral and the rebuilt Notre-Dame is but one example of this. In short, the ultramontane revival had a transformative effect on Quebec Catholicism.170 The ultramontane vision for Quebec led to direct political involvement. As Desmond Bowen has argued, Bourget’s version of ultramontanism resulted in “a direct link … being forged between Ultamontane Catholic theology, conservative philosophy, and overt political action.”171 This association became particularly evident in two public debates, one over schooling and the other concerning the Jesuit Estates. Both ultimately turned on the question of authority and control. While ultramontanists asserted the spiritual independence of the church from the state, they frequently clashed with civil authority over the question of which matters properly belonged in the province of the church and which in the province of the state. Above all else, ultramontanists stood in direct opposition to any attempt to create a liberal, secular society in nineteenth-century Quebec. As late as 1878, John William Dawson, principal of McGill College and a recognized leader of the Canadian evangelical community, declined a joint offer from Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary because he regarded aggressive ultramontanism as a more serious threat to the interests of the Protestant world than even naturalistic Darwinism. Dawson declined the Princeton offer on 15 April 1878, writing to Charles Hodge that the threat from ultramontanism would keep him in Mon-

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treal, “for unless the gospel and the light of Modern Civilization can overcome popery in French Canada our whole system will break up.”172 By the 1850s, Evangelical Anglicanism was a recognizable force in the religious and cultural landscape of Canada East. In the diocese of Quebec the numbers of Evangelicals had always remained small, but included some striking clerical and lay leaders, such as Isaac Hellmuth and Jeffrey Hale. Their congregational centre was Trinity Chapel, Quebec City. But on the whole they were shut out from the real power centres in the cathedral and at Bishop’s College, both long dominated by the Mountain-Nicolls phalanx. In Montreal they were numerically a more formidable force and by 1869 would have a fellow-traveller in the person of Ashton Oxenden, the newly appointed bishop. Among the substantial gains of Quebec Evangelicals was the establishment of two denominational papers, first the Berean and then the Echo. Both of these helped to mould and solidify their corporate identity. The two papers also kept them firmly within the orbit of transatlantic Evangelicalism, in both its Irish and its English expressions. Nineteenth-century British North American Evangelical Anglicanism was firmly rooted in the religious culture of the Atlantic world. Although its theological and ecclesiastical position had been defined well before the 1830s, as the Oxford Movement progressed and began to reveal its true colours, Evangelical Anglicans went on the offensive. The spectre of Tractarianism intensified the hostility and suspicion that had long existed between Evangelicals and High Churchmen and set the stage for a political fight in the Diocese of Quebec over the intertwined issues of Tractarianism, the role of Evangelical voluntary societies, and the nature of synodical government.

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6 The Synodical Controversy of 1857–1859 In the latter days of July in the year 185–, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways – Who was to be the new Bishop? Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

In an editorial of 14 July 1859, the Quebec Morning Chronicle, commenting on the recently completed first meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Quebec, noted: “It would be cowardly and sycophantic to conceal the fact, that the Synod betrayed open evidence that it partook too much of a packed character, and was swamped by an aggregation of lay delegates, the nominees of clerical members from multiplied missionary stations.”1 What the Morning Chronicle was describing was the culmination of an intense political struggle for power and control that had convulsed the diocese since 1857. Bishop George J. Mountain, a central player in this struggle, described it as “a great crisis” for the Diocese “in which her permanent interests and her distinctive principles are deeply involved.”2 Mountain was not much given to hyperbole, and his 1858 letter to the clergy and laity of the diocese did not exaggerate the importance of this controversy. Indeed, Henry Roe, in his history of the Diocese of Quebec, went so far as to suggest that “the revival of the Synodical organization of the church, was, in many respects, the most important movement of the century.”3 For two years it dominated public and private discussions in the diocese. It was, moreover, a political fight par excellence: competing parties were established and mobilized; positions were staked out, attacked, and defended in a lively pamphlet war. The daily press, particularly the Quebec Mercury and the Quebec Gazette, took sides on the issues and attacked each other’s coverage. Bills were introduced into the Legislative Assembly and Council, and their members were lobbied by both sides. The election of delegates to the first meeting of the synod was

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hotly contested in some parishes. It engaged the attention of both the clergy of the diocese and its most prominent laity. Indeed, at a number of points in this controversy the list of lay antagonists reads like a who’s who of the Quebec City business and legal establishment: James Bell Forsyth, William Price, Frederick Andrews, Jeffery Hale, George Okill Stuart, Andrew Stuart, and George Benson Hall. Although there was a particular Quebec City focus about this dispute, to draw too fine a line between it and the rest of the diocese would be unnatural and arbitrary. The Diocese of Quebec, then as now, included both the Quebec City region and the Eastern Townships, and important questions for the diocese had obvious implications for both. Clergymen such as James Reid of Frelighsburgh watched with interest as the controversy began to intensify in the summer of 1858.4 The controversy of 1857–59 must be seen as a struggle by competing interests for power and influence within the structures of the church.5 It was not a naked contest for power per se, but one that was based on fundamentally different visions of the nature of the church and its theology. It also draws attention to a hitherto neglected side of the usually irenic George Mountain, namely, the bishop as politician.6 Contemporary events in both Britain and Quebec gave to this controversy a particular shape, direction, and intensity.

percy and roe Although the controversy surrounding the introduction of synodical government may be regarded as a discrete matter, in reality it became intertwined with two other disputes, both of which coloured its character and propelled it forward. One involved a clash of personalities and principles between the Reverend Gilbert Percy and the Reverend Henry Roe, and the other involved a dispute between Bishop Mountain and the Colonial Church and School Society. Both Percy and Roe were men of some standing in the diocese. Percy, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and thus part of a strong Irish Evangelical contingent in British North America, was evening lecturer in the cathedral and secretary of the Diocesan Church Society.7 A graduate of both McGill and Bishop’s, Henry Roe, as we have seen, served the parish of St Matthew’s, Quebec City, rose to prominence within the diocese, and was eventually appointed Harold Professor of Divinity at Bishop’s in 1873.8 It was Percy who fired the first salvos. In a speech of 25 February 1858, given under the auspices of the Colonial Church and School Society, Percy charged that Roe and four other clergymen in the diocese had refused to support the society because it was Evangelical and

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accordingly would not tolerate “Romanisms”. He furthered these charges in an open letter to Bishop George Mountain dated 24 April 1858, in which he claimed “that Tractarian tendencies are stealthily, but steadily, developing themselves in our midst.”9 Percy was troubled by a series of recent events in England: the case of the idiosyncratic eucharistic views of George Anthony Denison, which convulsed the English legal system – both lay and ecclesiastical – from 1852 to 1858; the ornaments controversy at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, and St Barnabas, Pimlico; and the controversy over the revival of nunneries within the Church of England occasioned by the Miss Scobell case.10 In Percy’s view, most of the clergy in the diocese were above reproach and “the laity are thoroughly sound, and to a man opposed either to the introduction of Oxford novelties or to the revival of exploded superstitions.” Still, there existed some who were trying to “insinuate between the goodly hewn stones of our Protestant Church the narrow extremity of the Tractarian wedge.”11 The grounds for Percy’s charges were, perhaps, rather slight: an spck tract that allegedly propounded unsound views on penitence, confirmation, absolution, fasting, and the priesthood, and the use in some parts of the diocese of a catechism written by one Mr Beaven. Though he never mentioned Roe by name in his letter, Percy’s reference to the St John’s and St Lewis suburbs (where Roe ministered) was sufficient to prompt Roe, in his reply, to characterize Percy’s letter as “an open, violent and unprovoked attack” on himself.12 Percy’s frequent references to Oxford and Tractarianism would not have been lost on either the bishop or any other readers, and would have raised alarm bells throughout the diocese. By the time his letter had been published, the effects of the Oxford Movement had been felt for upwards of twenty-five years. Thus when Percy raised the spectre of Tractarianism within the diocese, he not only assured himself of a ready audience, but could capitalize on many of the anti-Catholic fears of the Protestant community. Percy did not shrink from controversy, as was typical of many “Recordites.” That he should be regarded as such is clear from a letter he wrote to the Quebec Gazette in May 1858. There he reviewed his dispute with Henry Roe and declared: “Mr Roe might with as much propriety and truth have brought his accusation against the Reverend Dr M’Neile of Liverpool; whose language at a meeting of the Auxiliary of the Colonial Church and School Society … so clearly resembles that employed by me.” Percy went on to say, “I am proud that I should have approached … to the expressions and the sentiments of Hugh M’Neile, the bold, the true-hearted champion of the Church of England, Reformed and Protestant!”13

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Title page to A Letter to the Congregation of St. Matthew’s Chapel, Quebec, … by Henry Roe (Quebec Diocesan Archives)

In reply to Percy, Roe dismissed the idea that the five ministers were Tractarian, defended the spck pamphlet, and asserted that Beaven’s Help to Catechising was in fact used by a number of Evangelicals in the American Episcopal Church. Defending his own “honest or even moderate churchmanship,” Roe argued that he was as much opposed to “a superstitious fondness for excessive ritualism and multiplied and gaudy ceremonies” as was Percy. His final countercharge referred to “the perfect concord this whole Diocese has always enjoyed (with the exception of the troubles created here in Quebec from time immemorial by a little but busy party).”14

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The most serious reply to Percy’s accusations came from Bishop Mountain himself. While the content of his response is instructive in itself, not least because of its defence of moderate High Church principles, the occasion of its issuance is equally important. Mountain clearly saw a connection between the Percy-Roe clash, the controversy surrounding the ccss, and the dispute concerning synodical government. In a letter to Jasper Nicolls in May 1859, he chided his son-in-law for his rather phlegmatic attitude to the events of the past year, referring to “the amount of evil condensed into the last fifteen months or so.” In his mind, it had all begun with Percy’s “explosion” in connection with the anniversary of the Colonial Church and School Society and had culminated in the “slanders, the iniquities & violences of the Lay Association partizans.” Mountain even went so far as to suggest that much of this was the work of “Irish Orangemen,” characterizing “the disorders in the church” as an “aggregation of mischief” that would not easily be compensated for by “any benefits proceeding from the Synod.”15 Mountain began his letter to the clergy and laity of diocese with the assertion that of all the British North American dioceses, it was that of Quebec which had “been exempt from the mischief of certain indiscreet prodeedings relative to the minutiae of ritual observances and of certain exaggerated and unsafe views upon doctrinal points, which have characterized an extreme party in the Church at home,” the latter a clear reference to the English Tractarians.16 The bishop of Quebec also used the occasion of Percy’s attack to undertake a careful defence of his ministry and episcopate and of the work of the ancient societies of the spg and spck, and to condemn those in his diocese “who must, at whatever cost, provide themselves with the stimulus of party-contention and the excitement, the amusement, as it were, of party diplomacy.”17 The heart of Mountain’s argument, however, was a defence against alleged “Romanizing” tendencies within the diocese. He appealed to a group of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century High Church Anglican divines such as Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor who were distinguished for their vigorous defence of Protestantism. These were the traditional architects of a High Church polity, theology, and spirituality – men who tried to forge an Anglicanism that occupied the middle ground between Roman Catholicism and Puritanism. “Were these,” asked Mountain, men “of Romanizing tendencies, by anticipation Tractarians or Puseyites?”18 He went on to assert that “any reverential care in public worship, any strict attention to venerable rules, any solicitude whatever for that decorous ecclesiastical effect in the varied ministrations of the Church, which is eminently characteristic of the work of our Reformers, creates an alarm in some quarters, and calls forth

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Title page to A Letter to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec … by George J. Mountain (Quebec Diocesan Archives)

from others a torrent of unmeasured abuse or of ungodly ridicule.”19 In this way Mountain tried to distance himself from the extreme of Tractarianism while not falling prey to the opposite extreme of what he called “low and latitudinarian views,” by which he meant Evangelicalism (or, to his mind, Puritanism in nineteenth-century garb). By their rejection of the importance of externals in public worship, the latter encouraged laxity, coldness, and carelessness, all of which provoked extreme opposite tendencies such as Tractarianism.20 Jasper Hume Nicolls, principal of Bishop’s College, also joined the fray. He was responding to an article in the Echo which had suggested

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that the controversy in Quebec was caused by “a party of comparatively young men who are anxious to promote those peculiarities which everywhere make such trouble under the assumed name of ‘Church Principles.›21 The Echo had gone on to blame Bishop’s College for “fostering this state of things.” Almost as an aside, it took a swipe at Bishop Mountain, quoting an unidentified writer who had asserted that Mountain “labors under two great deficiencies: he has no administrative talent, and his power is despotic. In England, deans and chapters and the laws of the land are salutary checks upon the power of bishops.”22 Nicolls, of course, denied all this. He asserted that Bishop’s College was careful “to guard its pupils from that narrowness of party view.” He argued that “the Church in Canada East and especially in the Diocese of Quebec, is so weak … that it ought to be treated with more than ordinary carefulness, and tenderness from abroad.” It was buffeted on all sides from “Popery,” “unbelief and false belief.” Nicolls went on to caution the Echo against contributing to its destruction.23

the colonial church and school society Mountain’s defence of the “venerable” Anglican societies – the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (spck, founded 1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (spg, founded 1701) – must be read in light of his controversy with the Colonial Church and School Society (ccss). This controversy was important for a number of reasons. In the first place, Mountain regarded the establishment of the ccss in his diocese as inaugurating and fomenting the controversy over alleged Tractarian teaching. As he wrote in June 1859, in the midst of the synodical controversy, “the new troubles which have arisen in this hitherto peaceful Diocese, are seen to synchronize very remarkably with the establishment upon its present footing of the Colonial Church and School Society. And what direction its sympathies may appear to take in the present crisis and struggle of the Church in the Diocese, is a matter which consistent Churchmen may be pardoned for watching with a not ungodly jealousy.”24 Moreover, the controversy between Mountain and the ccss reflected a sharp difference of opinion between High Churchmen and Evangelicals over missionary strategy and the role of a colonial episcopate. The controversy that erupted between Bishop Mountain and the ccss in 1858–59 was not entirely new, but can be seen as part of a long-standing uneasiness that his brother bishops of Montreal (Francis Fulford) and Toronto (John Strachan) also felt towards the society. As early as 1852, the three had issued a joint address to the archbishop of

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Canterbury, complaining of the ccss’s work in British North America. In more specific terms, they regarded the society both as a rival to the spg and as subversive of “ecclesiastical order and discipline,” and they called upon the archbishop to withdraw his support. This he refused to do. In a stinging reply of 3 March 1852, the Evanglical archbishop, John Bird Sumner (1780–1862), dismissed the colonial bishops’ accusations and added the comment, “I earnestly hope that in the end, experience of its blameless & useful course may vindicate its founders and supporters; & that instead of being suspected as an enemy it may be welcomed as an ally by the overseers of the church in Canada.”25 The London Record rushed to the defence of the ccss, charging that Fulford’s opposition was but another example of the aggrandizing and despotic power grasped at by many colonial bishops.26 Mountain’s own misgivings about the ccss were exacerbated by the February 1858 speech of Percy at a meeting of the society, in which he launched his attack on Henry Roe. Writing to Jasper Nicolls, Mountain intimated that recent events “have most strongly disposed me to have nothing more to do with that institution.” He went on to say that he would not stand in the way of clergy adopting its schools and would maintain cordial relations with Dr Hellmuth and the two ccss missionaries already in the field. His choicest comments were, however, reserved for Percy and his attack on Roe. The latter “does more work in a day in the cure of souls than Percy in a week & … does it incomparably better.”27 Here then was the heart of Mountain’s objections to the ccss – not only was the society Evangelical, but it was also seen as undermining episcopal authority within the diocese. “I could not … overcome certain misgivings,” the bishop wrote in 1859, “as to its claim to be regarded as a thorough and genuine Church of England Society, free from any marked party character.” The society was contrasted with the “noble and ancient” spg, which in his eyes was entirely free of the ccss’s party spirit.28 Mountain’s comment was, however, either disingenuous or naive, for as Ruth Teale has pointed out, “High Churchmen of the old school had long dominated the spg.”29 Moreover, it was Mountain’s assertion that the ccss undermined episcopal authority by its practice (also followed by the cms and similar societies) of vesting in its central committee the power to appoint, relocate, or remove its missionaries. Not surprisingly, the ccss denied all these allegations – of being antagonistic to the spg, of siphoning funds away from the Diocesan Church Society, and of being subversive of the bishop’s authority. Indeed, the society asserted that while it could not say that the ccss “exclusively afforded the means for relieving the spiritual destitution

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in the Diocese of Quebec, it may yet be confidently affirmed that the ccss is the more prominent Society to which to apply for such aid.” It further denied the connection between the ccss and the “new troubles” in the diocese, asserting that they had merely “the appearance of a synchonism between them.”30 Yet some in the diocese saw a clear connection between Mountain’s attitude to the ccss and the issues surrounding episcopal authority occasioned by the synodical controversy. For example, in 1859 the writer of the anonymous pamphlet A Word in Season cited Bishop Mountain’s attitude to the society as furnishing an example of episcopal power and an argument in favour of restricting episcopal prerogatives. The ccss, this writer claimed, enjoyed the support of the majority of the people in the diocese and yet “is virtually excluded from working in this diocese.”31

t h e l ay a s s o c i a t i o n In the spring of 1857, after a long and oftentimes tortuous process, royal assent was given to “An Act to Enable the Members of the United Church of England and Ireland to meet in Synod” (19 & 20 Vict. c.141 Canada). This enabling legislation allowed for synods to be established in various British North American dioceses over the next five years.32 In Quebec the first movements towards establishing a synod came in June and September 1857, but it was not until a meeting held on 24 June 1858 in the National School House, Quebec City, that the movement was fully engaged. This meeting was perhaps the single most important in the entire controversy: it gave rise to an Evangelical party in the form of a Lay Association, and it clearly drew the lines of demarcation between this group and the “High Church party.”33 It also elicited a pamphlet war among interested parties in the diocese, which is instructive, not least of all, for the clash of principles, both theological and political, that it manifested. J.H. Thompson, Harold Professor of Divinity in Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, preached the opening sermon at that June meeting, in which he called for caution, conservatism, unity, and devotion. With a less-than-prescient sense of what was to come (or perhaps as an early attempt to circumvent controversy), he asserted that the “wellinstructed Churchman … believes that such assemblies are of eminent importance in promoting peace, in breaking down differences, in removing prejudices, in conveying right ideas of the constitution, doctrine, and discipline of the Church.”34 George Mountain, as bishop of Quebec, was in the chair for this meeting. Most of the clergy of the diocese were in attendance, as were about 150 laymen, most of whom were apparently from the immediate vicinity of Quebec City. This was

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the first face-to-face confrontation on this issue between what might be styled the “High Church party” of Mountain, Roe, and Nicolls and the “Evangelical party,” led by Jeffery Hale. The Hale-Mountain confrontation turned on the question of how to interpret the law that had allowed for the establishment of synods. Mountain considered this 24 June meeting to be a synod and wanted it to adopt a constitution. Hale argued that a strict reading of the act of Parliament did not give to a synod the right to draft its own constitution, but that the act gave that power only to the “bishop, clergy and laity of the Church of England.” He went on to propose an amendment that this meeting elect by ballot a committee of twelve to draft a constitution, which would in turn be submitted to another meeting of the diocese at a future date. In short, Mountain’s plan would have allowed the bishop and the clergy to adopt the constitution for the synod, and would have permitted them to establish the principles of lay participation. Hale’s plan necessitated the full participation of all the laity of the diocese right from the beginning. His interpretation of the act of Parliament was supported by some of the lawyers in attendance, and it ultimately forced Bishop Mountain and his supporters to get a second act passed through Parliament explaining the first. It also set in train a group in opposition to the bishop, later styled the “Church of England Lay Association.” Moreover, with the prospect of a vote on the Hale amendment, the issue of voting by “orders” was raised. This encountered much opposition from the laity (who clearly outnumbered the clergy). According to the Quebec Mercury, from this point on, “the discussion became irregular and our reporter was unable to note the proceedings with any thing like accuracy.”35 The ensuing discussion continued to revolve around the questions of whether this meeting was a synod, whether the clergy and laity ought to vote by orders, and whether the Hale interpretation of the act was in fact correct. The discussion was apparently lively. The Quebec Mercury reported that the laity frequently taunted the clergy and showed manifest disrespect for the bishop. The meeting broke up without any resolution of these issues and was adjourned to the first week of September 1858. The following week a letter appeared in the Quebec Mercury from a writer identifying himself only as “A Spectator” but who clearly sided with Bishop Mountain and the High Church party. “Spectator” claimed that a number of Methodists had attended and actively participated in the meeting of 24 June. He went on to suggest that “those present of the Church were the persons, self-styled Evangelicals, who are nominal Episcopalians, but not one of whom have made a simple avowal of faith in Church teaching when examined on the Articles and Creeds.”36 The

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speeches by Jeffery Hale and Richard Pope, with their frequent references to liberty and freedom, were seen as revolutionary. Thus “Spectator” asserted that “a revolutionary church must prove the same forerunner of a subverted monarchy, and that if they teach their children to despise Episcopal ordination and seek to overturn the framework of that Church of which the Queen is the head, they must expect a falling off in their earthly no less than in their spiritual allegiance.”37 “Spectator” then commented on a speech of one Lieutenant Ashe, who “wanted the laity to take church matters into their hands, in order to control Tractarianism.” “What would Lt. Ashe think of allowing the crew of a man of war,” “Spectator” asked, “to cashier the officers and dictate the course of the vessel?” He then acidly commented that “the same men would have applauded Keble or Froude, if they had but altered some trite platitude against avowed Romanists, and given some quotations from Pinnock’s abridgment of Goldsmith’s History of England, a work which some ingenious persons seem to think can only be understood by one who has read it at a government charity school in Ireland.”38 In this letter, “Spectator” had rather condescendingly attempted to trot out all the usual slurs against Evangelicals. They were not true Church of England men, but cleverly disguised Dissenters. They were revolutionaries and republicans whose ideas, if adopted, would subvert both the monarchy and the constitution. Moreover, they were poor, ignorant, and Irish.39 Both at the time of the meeting on 24 June and afterwards, charges were put forth that the opponents of Bishop Mountain had come to the meeting well prepared – in effect, organized as a party. For example, at the end of the meeting the Reverend Mr Parkin claimed to have in his possession “a paper … containing the printed names of twelve persons, as the ballot ticket of a party,” which to his mind supported his assertion that this group came with a “deliberate intent to overrule the will of the meeting.”40 Bishop Mountain called this “the carefully prepared arrangements of an opposing party,” which he contrasted with his own supporters’ lack of preparation in anticipation of trouble at the meeting. “No necessity was urged upon the conservatives of the Church,” he wrote, “for affording their attendance and no such necessity appears generally to have been felt.”41 Henry Roe went even further, seeing in the meeting on 24 June evidence of a grand and wellplanned conspiracy. “Their plans,” he argued, “had certainly been admirably laid under the guidance of some master mind. All, from the highest to the lowest, had been well drilled in the parts they were severally to act, – some to argue lucidly and learnedly, and some to shout lustily and to abuse vociferously.”42 He also referred to the printed bal-

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lot that allegedly circulated at that meeting, containing the names of the eight nominees – “most of them extreme party men.”43 It is instructive to note the names proposed on this ballot, for it does lend some credence to Roe’s assertion that they were a group of known Evangelicals. Those proposed on the clerical side (after the bishop himself – a necessity and a courtesy) were Percy, who had already clashed with Roe and the bishop, Isaac Hellmuth, formerly professor of Hebrew at Bishop’s but now secretary of the ccss, E.W. Sewell, rector of Trinity Chapel, Quebec; W.D. Thompson, rector of Stanstead; and James Reid of Frelighsburg. The lay side was led by Jeffery Hale, but also included Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzgerald, a half-pay officer with the Royal Artillery; Christian Wurtele, a general commission merchant; Andrew Stuart, of Stuart and Vannovous, advocates; a Mr Buchanan; and a Mr Scott.44 If elected, this committee would have reported to a subsequent meeting in Quebec, which would have adopted its constitution. Roe notes that “every man with the least reflection must have seen, by a glance at that meeting, that a large majority of any adjourned meeting in Quebec would be composed of the blind and excited adherents of that party. The Clergy saw this.”45 The legal ambiguities surrounding the first synod bill prompted a move to get an additional act passed through the legislature. Accordingly, a bill was introduced into the Legislative Council and passed easily, guided by P.B. de Blaquière. It had reached the house by 23 July 1858, was finally passed on 11 August by a vote of 72 to 7, and received royal assent on 16 August (22 Vict., c.139).46 While the matter was before the legislature, it was the subject of lobbying on the part of both parties in the Diocese of Quebec. The Lay Association petitioned against the bill, and on learning of this, Mountain and his supporters hurried to get up a counter petition. As the bishop himself put it, “the signatures were obtained in a few hours, for it was apprehended at that time, that not one moment in forwarding this counter-petition was to be lost.”47 As well, Thomas Smith Kennedy, secretary to the Church Society of Toronto,48 was in place to keep both Bishop Mountain and Bishop Strachan apprised of the proceedings and to lobby on their behalf for the bill’s passage. Kennedy spoke to a number of mpps on behalf of the bishops and also spoke in the Committee on Private Bills. This committee proposed changing the bill to allow for not more than five delegates to the synod from each parish. Kennedy fought this change, and although the change was later rejected, it is instructive to note his comments to Mountain at the time. They illustrate the types of strategies they anticipated having to employ. Thus Kennedy wrote, “I thought it best to yield as if opposed too much they would have

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looked closer into the matter, and as it is only for the first meeting. Means can be raised to bring five from every sound parish and thus I think the constitution can be arranged as you desire.”49 Following the passage of the new explanatory bill through both houses, John Strachan wrote to George Mountain with his own comments on the Quebec situation and offered suggestions on how to order future events. “You seem to have very extraordinary people at Quebec to deal with,” he wrote, “and not withstanding our success at present, there is great need for caution as well [as] stern determination in your Lordship’s future proceedings.” He went on to advise that “care should be taken to have all your strength collected and made available at your next Synod” and to suggest that the number of lay delegates be limited to one per congregation, as too many lay delegates had “a moral effect on the Clergy, indirectly which is not a little pernicious under certain circumstances.” Strachan also noted that “we look for the Provincial or General Synod as our safety valve against hasty or improper legislation on the part of the Diocesan Synods.”50 As noted earlier, the 24 June 1858 conflagration also prompted the formation of a group calling itself the Church of England Lay Association. The movement towards its establishment seems to have begun at a public meeting held in the courthouse in Quebec City on 26 July. This meeting drafted a petition to the legislature against the new synod bill and also established a committee to petition the legislature and to proceed to Toronto to lobby against any bill that would undermine the principle of full representative synodical government.51 This committee reported to a meeting held on 2 September, at which time the Lay Association was formally established.52 That many of these laymen were actively lobbying against the synodical bill throughout the summer of 1858 is clear from the timing of Mountain’s letter, dated 31 August 1858. The bishop was obviously trying to keep the faithful in his diocese from being swayed by the activities of the Lay Association. The fall of 1858 and the winter and spring of 1859 witnessed a minor pamphlet war on the subject of the government and constitution of the church. This was not merely a theoretical discussion. Both the Lay Association and the High Church party had as their immediate political goals the influencing of lay opinion in anticipation of the elections of delegates to the forthcoming synod of 1859.53 As the anonymous writer of A Word in Season put it, “The design of both the clerical party and of the Lay Association, is the same; both undoubtedly wish to influence the Easter election of delegates to the synod; both know that much will depend upon the men who will constitute that body.”54 At the same time, the positions they articulated and defended, the type of arguments they employed, and the language of

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their political and theological discourse provides an instructive window into both the High Church and the Evangelical minds. In its Address to the Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, the Lay Association put forward its own proposals for a synodical constitution that would have placed significant powers in the hands of the laity. These proposals probably need to be read in light of recent changes in the British political framework brought about by such measures as the Great Reform Bill of 1832. Thus the Lay Association saw in contemporary events “a voluntary transition from the autocratic to a constitutional form of govenment” and characterized an episcopal veto as characteristic of the former. It put forward a professed desire “to see the foundations of the Church in this Diocese laid in the liberty of the Laity, the independence of the Clergy, and the constitutional prerogratives of the Bishop.”55 As for specific constitutional proposals, the Lay Association wanted to see each constituency send three delegates to the synod. With regard to the qualifications of these representatives, there should be wide latitude; being a communicant of the Church of England should not be a test of fitness to serve.56 Moreover, in challenging the High Church party’s insistence that synod delegates be communicants, the Lay Association made a fascinating declaration in which it linked this provision with the political constitution of Britain and the old Tory High Church view of the Protestant constitution. Thus it asserted that “the odious and demoralizing provisions of the Test and Corporation Acts have long been erased from the statutebook of the mother country. The Assocation have no desire to see them revived in the Constitution of a Colonial Church.”57 One of the thorniest constitutional issues in the debate revolved around the issue of the so-called bishop’s veto, which to the Lay Association meant that the bishop would “possess the power of an absolute negative upon any measure of the Synod, carried by whatever separate majorities of both its orders.”58 It is noteworthy that the Lay Association in its constitutional proposals looked closely to the example of its “sister-church” in the United States, a point that the other side in the debate attempted to make much of. Indeed, the Lay Association asked the question Why have a synod at all “and at the same time [invest] … its presiding officer with the power of nullifying its proceedings”? This was seen as particularly inconsistent with the idea of an “elective Episcopate” – over which, the association was quick to point out, there could be no episcopal veto.59 Thus it asked: by what reasoning can it be shewn that the Synod, which, proceeding to the choice of a Bishop, and therefore without a Bishop presiding in it, is competent to sit in judgment upon a matter of the weightiest import, must forfeit,

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the moment the new Bishop is elected, its competency to legislate in the smallest matters, and remain thus paralyzed, until his death resuscitate its dormant competency to perform anew the waking act of a fresh election, and then to fall again into a trance?60

This attitude was not unique to Quebec. Most Evangelicals in other British North American dioceses (and many in England) were suspicious of synods in general, regarding them as closely associated with a Tractarian view of episcopacy, and were fearful of the bishop possessing a veto. The one exception in the British North American context would appear to have been of the Diocese of Huron. Here Evangelicals were in the majority, and the bishop was an Evangelical. Thus in Huron it was the High Church minority that was fearful of a bishop’s veto.61 The ablest reply to the Lay Association’s Address came from the Reverend Henry Roe.62 His pamphlet was addressed to the laity of the diocese and must be seen as a part of the ongoing effort by both parties to influence the election of delegates to the synod of 1859. Significantly, his address was subtitled a “Letter from a Churchman in Town to a Churchman in the Country.” Roe made the assertion, echoed by others, that the Lay Association represented a minority party, based in Quebec City, that was attempting to deprive the country clergy of their rights, and that the clergy were attempting to preserve “the rights of the whole body of the Laity.”63 He also ascribed to the Lay Association less than the purest of motives; but if one reads between the lines, it becomes quite clear that he regarded the leaders of the association as Evangelicals: “There are men, the leaders among them at least, to some of whom certain peculiar views in religion are dearer than life, and these they will have adopted at all costs and hazards; others of them seek gratification of their own private or family piques; and others again the aggrandizement of their own personal consequence.”64 Roe proceeded to defend the High Church party’s principal contentions. In the first place, he asserted that lay delegates to the synod must be communicants.65 He also defended the idea of voting by orders and cited the Elizabethan divine Richard Hooker on the necessity of both clergy and laity consenting to the making of ecclesiastical law. In Roe’s view, the most important section of the Lay Association’s Address concerned the role of the bishop and his “right to a voice in the decisions of the Synod.”66 Indeed, for Roe, to give in to the demands of the Lay Association would be “simply to abandon Episcopacy.” Thus he argued: it is plain that if the Bishops do not retain the right of having a voice in the decisions of the Synods, – if they consent to give up their right of concurrence in what is done, – then, so far as the Synod is concerned and can effect it, they

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cease to be Bishops and become mere Chairmen of Presbyterian Assemblies. It is not, my dear friend, it is not a question of increasing or diminishing the Bishop’s power. The true issue is, Bishops or no Bishops: shall we cease to be Episcopalians?67

It was imperative, to Roe’s mind, that the bishop retain the right to consent to all legislation and that he not be forced to consent to law made by the clergy and laity alone. This, he argued, “is the true issue between the Church and the Lay Association.”68 In concluding his argument, Roe characterized his own position and that of his supporters as those of a “true member of the Church of England” or “the true people of the Church” or “the faithful laity.” Such people, he argued, “will come to see that this is a question between responsible and irresponsible headship; and that when the Bishops and Clergy are put under the feet of the people, – the truth is, that Bishop, Clergy and people, are put under the feet of two or three laymen of wealth, influence and ambition.” By contrast, bishops, “when free and independent, have ever been true, as they are the natural guardians, the defenders unto death, of the liberties and rights of the Christian people.”69 One of the final pamphlets to come before the public appeared on the eve of the Easter elections to synod. A group of prominent laymen who opposed the Lay Association, had met on 7 May 1859 in Quebec City and formed a committee of seven men, who were to report on how best to oppose the “views and opinions disseminated by an association of persons styling itself ‘The Church of England Lay Association›70 The seven were James Bell Forsyth, a Quebec City merchant; Frederick Andrews, of Andrews, Campbell and Andrews, advocates, Quebec City; Horatio Nelson Jones; Thomas Glover, of Glover and Fry, dry-goods importers; George Irvine, of Holt and Irvine, advocates, Quebec City; and George Okill Stuart, mpp and advocate.71 Of the seven, Stuart was the one with the longest and deepest associations with the Church of England in British North America. The Stuarts were an old Loyalist family, George’s grandfather, the Reverend John Stuart, having moved from New York to Montreal in 1781. George’s father and namesake (1776–1862) followed his father into the ministry and was ordained priest by Jacob Mountain. George junior was an important Quebec City lawyer, sat in the provincial legislature, and later served as mayor of Quebec City and as a judge in the Vice-Admiralty Court.72 A second meeting had been held on 17 June 1859, at which time an address to the members of the diocese was issued. Affixed to this address was a list of fifty-four men, many prominent in the Quebec City region, who identified themselves with this group of laymen against

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the Lay Association.73 Clearly, the publication of this address and the names associated with it had a polemical and political intent, which both sides in the dispute attempted to use to their advantage. Both attempted to win synod delegates to their side, not only by principled argument but by soliciting and publishing the names of prominent supporters, thus adding respectability to their cause. Both sides thus endeavoured to influence church opinion. At the same time, the presence of large groups of lay supporters on both sides of the question raises questions concerning their involvement. There is certainly some evidence for suggesting that this was a straightforward Evangelical/High Church split within the ranks of the laity. Clearly, Jeffery Hale, on the one side, and George Okill Stuart, on the other, would seem to fit this pattern. Ideology, not class, seems to have been the determining factor. The laity who assumed leadership in the conflict were all members of what might be reasonably be called the British business establishment of Quebec City.74 In many respects this latest address was an echo of the earlier pamphlet by Henry Roe. At its heart lay a defence of the prerogative rights of the bishop, but bound up with that was a less-than-subtle effort to cast the Lay Association’s proposals as an insidious attempt to undermine the British connection and substitute for it an American model.75 The address went on to argue: “Episcopacy is of the very essence of that Church, and if the power appertaining to it be taken away and vested in the clergy and laity, or either of them, it loses at once its Episcopalian character in the persons who regulate it, and they, virtually, become either Presbyterian or Congregationalist, or, most probably, a compound of each.”76 The concept of episcopal rule espoused by Roe and the framers of this address was condemned by the anonymous writer of A Word in Season.77 It is also worth noting that one of the common threads running through such exchanges was an explicit identification of the “clerical party” with the Laudian party of the seventeenth century and, conversely, the tendency for its opponents to identify the Lay Association with the Puritans. This was more than a rhetorical device (though it functioned like one as well). While some High Churchmen might willingly have applied such labels to themselves (for example, in the midst of the synod elections of spring 1859, the Quebec-Mercury referred to one individual as “a ‘worthy supporter’ of High Church principles … having been brought up in England, as a high churchman, and his father’s family having been, from the reign of Charles the First down to their Canadian descendant, Cavaliers, Tories and High Churchmen”),78 most often these were terms of abuse. They also encapsulated two differing conceptions of what constituted authentic tradition within the Church of England.

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Throughout the spring of 1859, then, a battle for the hearts and minds of the laity of the diocese was in full force. Both sides used whatever resources and influence they possessed in an attempt to influence the election of delegates to the synod. Though he was clearly not a disinterested observer, the writer of A Word in Season polemically contrasted the political influence available to the Lay Association and the “clerical party”: The Lay Association has only the press, or an occasional visit of a member, when invited to a country mission. The clerical party has a spiritual police which pervades the country, which enjoys a personal and pastoral influence which, with some honorable exceptions, warns from the pulpit and freely distributes both pamphlets and prejudice. And if it be true that most of the clerical planets revolve compliantly round an ecclesiastical centre, that orders from head-quarters are performed promptly and without hesitation; then every exertion ought to be made that the high responsibility of framing the constitution under which churchmen are to live, should not devolve as regards the lay element, upon uninformed or obsequious delegates.79

The writer was undoubtedly correct in identifying the parish level as where the battle would be particularly intense. A glimpse into this behind-the-scenes politicking can be gained both from contemporary newspaper accounts and from material in the private correspondence of Bishop Mountain. In the latter can be found a letter sent to Mountain from one E.G.W. Ross of Rivière-du-Loup in April 1859, in which Ross relates the efforts of George Hall, president of the Lay Association, to get his candidates elected from that particular congregation. Hall had apparently written to Messrs Jarvis and Orkney “requesting them, as a particular favour, to use all their influence to get Mr H.S. Scott and Judge Stewart elected Delegates for this congregation.” Ross went on to say, “I objected ‘in toto’ to this proceeding on the part of Messr Jarvis and Orkney but without effect – they do not like to disoblige Mr Hall.”80 Jarvis and Orkney had also circulated a petition in favour of Scott and Stewart, though Ross was doing his “utmost to oppose them.” It seems clear that a number of things were happening at the parish level. Not only were both sides using all their influence to see that their candidates were elected as delegates to the synod, but candidates who did not normally reside in a parish were apparently being “parachuted” in as possible delegates. This politicking was evident to the Quebec City press. In an editorial of 23 April 1859, the Quebec Mercury, a consistent supporter of Bishop Mountain and the High Church party, declared: Every conceivable effort is being made by the “Lay Association” to secure the return of the candidates they favour. The spirit which animates the more

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prominent of these gentlemen appears to be precisely that which has disgraced Canada in elections for parliamentary representation. The employment of the Dissenter’s organ in the press, to fan the flame of discord, and stir up rebellion against constituted authority, is not the only proof these friends of the Church have given of their false and fatal zeal … the friends of Episcopal Church Government, and the enemies of annexation to the Union, whether in Church or State, must be “up and doing.” Orthodox Churchmen cannot afford to be lukewarm and indifferent at this crisis.81

In the mind of the Mercury’s editorial writers, there existed a clear and unmistakable connection between the “friends of Episcopal Church Government and the enemies of annexation to the Union.” Once again, the charge was that Evangelicals, by advocating greater representative government within the church, were endangering the British connection. However intense the politicking in those parts of the diocese outside of Quebec City, nothing seems to have compared with the confrontations reported to have occurred in a number of city churches.82 On 26 April 1859, in its lead news item, the Quebec Mercury’s headline screamed, “Synodical Action – Disgraceful Riots in the Established Churches! – Ministers Violently Assaulted!!” The news report was of a meeting held the previous day, in the National School House, for the purpose of electing three delegates to synod from the cathedral. The report recounted how “A large number of ‘roughs’ who, it is said, had received their day’s pay from influential enemies of Episcopacy, and who certainly ‘looked like it’ were in attendance. Controlled, however, by the greater number of respectable persons present; the mob, who went en masse to the Cathedral meeting, confined their interference to words and yells.” The Mercury went on to complain of the behaviour of Richard Pope, Jeffery Hale, A. Campbell junior and especially George Hall, the pro-mayor – in effect, the leadership of the Lay Association. The result of this meeting was that two of the three “most eligible candidates” were defeated. The article further related the events that had occurred at St Matthew’s Chapel, where Henry Roe ministered. There the nomination meeting was attended by Jeffery Hale, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzgerald, A. Campbell, “and some hundreds of the vilest scum of the whole city, many of whom it appears, were covert[ly] armed with sling shots, steel knuckles and other secreted bludgeons, and who apparently boasted they had come for a row.” This account went on to describe a series of assaults and threats that punctuated the meeting. At 8:30 pm Henry Roe was rushed by the mob, “dragged from his seat and for some moments his life appeared to be in immediate danger.” Campbell was ac-

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cused of inciting the mob. Eventually the police were called in, though the Mercury account sarcastically noted: “A large force of police were led in by Mr Hall and posted in double ranks along the aisle of the Church. The police would obey none but their chief, Mr Bureau; Mr Bureau would obey none but Mr Hall; and Mr Hall seemingly none but Mr Jeffery Hale.” According to this account, Roe’s assailant was not arrested because Hall, as magistrate, refused to order his arrest. The “riot” apparently lasted for some six hours and resulted in the elections being “abruptly closed.”83 Another meeting was never held, and so St Matthew’s sent no lay delegates to the synod of 1859.84 The reports in the Quebec Gazette were far more phlegmatic about these events. A consistent supporter of the Lay Association, the Gazette charged the Mercury with being “the acknowledged organ of the clerical or High Church party.”85 In commenting on the events at St Matthew’s, the Gazette declared that “there was violence, but it was provoked, and therefore, not surprising. Men will not humbly submit to be tricked out of their rights, either by the clergy or by a set of men who desire to overshadow their fellows by an assumed and false respectability.”86 The Gazette repeatedly charged that the clergy continually meddled in the parish elections, acting on the bishop’s instructions. For example, the paper expressed its suspicions that the cathedral elections exhibited evidence of “a pre-arranged plan.” In particular, it condemned the actions of the chairman: “caprice and a leaning to his Episcopal chief were the leading features in his conduct of the proceedings.”87 The Gazette also singled out Henry Roe and Armine Mountain for condemnation for having actively canvassed voters in the parishes of St Matthew’s and St Michael’s.88 On the other hand, the meeting for the election of delegates from Trinity Chapel, under the chairmanship of Mr Sewell, “was the most orderly and peaceful election we have ever witnessed.”89 In an interesting twist on these confrontations between the “veto” and the “anti-veto” parties, the Montreal Herald, while siding with the “anti-veto” side, condemned the extreme actions of both groups in bringing Protestantism into disrepute, especially “in the midst of a Catholic population.”90 What are we to make of these events? The phenomenon of “religious riots” has received some attention from British social historians, most particularly in their study of “popular disturbances” in the general context of popular or plebian culture. Thus John Stevenson has noted several instances of religious riots in eighteenth-century England, noting in particular the attacks on Roman Catholics and Dissenters, and suggesting that “religious violence in the eighteenth century seemed to fluctuate far more with the political climate than anything else.” He goes on to argue that “in some freemen boroughs, an added bitterness could be added to electioneering where urban

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politics were divided along religious lines.”91 But what of the midVictorian period, about which this particular study is concerned? Was the phenomenon of religious riots or popular religious disturbances a common feature, and what are we to make of it? Of particular relevance to the Quebec situation were the myriad anti-Catholic disturbances that punctuated British and British North American political and social life from the granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 through the “Papal Aggression” controversies of the 1850s. The connection between the general phenomena of anti-Catholicism and the emergence of the Oxford Movement should be clear enough. John Stevenson has noted that “the fears of a neo-Catholic movement in the Church of England, brought into sharp focus by the tractarian controversy, led to a series of disturbances in Anglican churches against ‘ritualism.› Thus so-called surplice riots occurred in Bishop Henry Phillpotts’s bailiwick of southwest England and in a number of London parishes, most notably St George’s-in-the-East, “where in spring and early summer 1859, members of the congregation howled down the curates conducting the service.”92 Earlier in the decade, during the so-called Papal Aggression crisis of 1850–51, ritualists in the Church of England were on the receiving end of anti-Catholic feelings. E.R. Norman has thus related how, in response to Lord John Russell’s “Durham Letter” (in which he made the connection between Rome and Oxford very explicitly), “mobs of London Protestants, having tired of the blows for truth inherent in pelting Catholic priests and smashing the windows of their chapels, now turned their iconoclastic fury against the ‘mummeries of superstition’ in the State Church.” Norman goes on to note that many of these disturbances occurred at two of the more advanced ritualistic London churches, St Barnabas, Pimlico, and St Paul’s, Knightsbridge.93 Contemporary Victorians, whether in England or Quebec, regarded Puseyism, ritualism, and Roman Catholicism as part of the same general phenomenon.94

the synod of 1859 The electioneering over, the long-anticipated synod of 1859 opened in the National School House, Quebec City, on Wednesday, 6 July. Fortyfour clergy and 158 lay delegates were in attendance. The leadership of both the Lay Association and the laymen against the Lay Association were all present: Jeffery Hale, Richard Pope, George Hall, LieutenantColonel Fitzgerald, Christian Wurtele, and Lieutenant Ashe for the former; James Bell Forsyth, Frederick Andrews, and George Okill Stuart for the latter. It is also interesting to note that many of the men associated with the Quebec City business and legal establishment, on both sides of the question, were in attendance as delegates for rural

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parishes. Clearly, the six Quebec City parishes (Cathedral, Trinity Chapel, St Michael’s, St Peter’s, St Paul’s and St Matthew’s) would not accommodate all those who wished to act as delegates to the synod. Consequently, both sides ensured that their support was at full strength by having their allies elected for “safe” rural parishes. Thus, for example, George Hall and Judge Stuart sat for Rivière-du-Loup (en bas); George Irvine, Octavius E. Rooke, and F.W. Andrews sat for Lingwick, in the Eastern Townships; Jeffery Hale and Richard Pope sat for Portneuf; and William Price represented Spooner’s Pond.95 The bishop of Quebec then addressed the synod. Mountain attempted to adopt an irenic tone, laying stress upon the spiritual purposes for which the synod was assembled and the spiritual qualifications of its members – “if we do not come here as religious men, as men who having assumed an active part in the promotion of objects just above enumerated, are seeking guidance, in the discharge of their duty, from above, we cannot properly be considered as qualified for taking part in these deliberations at all.” He went on to argue against drawing too close an analogy between the synod and a political parliament, the methods and strategies of the one being inappropriate for the other. In short, he was arguing against party tactics having any place in such church assemblies: there are certain Parliamentary tactics, certain stratagems of party, certain engines of policy adroitly wielded by practised hands, certain appeals also ad captandum to popular prejudice and passion, certain artifices in getting up an agitation, certain catchwords scattered abroad to produce an effect … In an assembly convened for carrying on the work of the Church, any approach to such manoeuvres as these, as well as any disposition to find matter for minute cavil and to produce embarrassment by ingenious niceties of law, are totally out of character and out of place.96

While not wanting to stifle “the utmost freedom of discussion” or “the unrestrained expression of opinion” (“within the bounds imposed by pure religion and consistent orthodoxy”), still, Mountain was insistent (in a passage remarkable for its paternalism) that “the Synod is to be regarded not in the light of a Parliament, or a political organization, but in the light of a family assembled under their earthly father, to deliberate in love upon the interests of the house.”97 An attempt to undermine the power of the bishop’s office was, moreover, tantamount “to an endeavour made in a family, who else would be harmoniously and happily bound together, to set the children, in the same way, upon the watch against their father.”98 Mountain went on to suggest that the current controversy would soon be over, “leaving it only a subject for wonder that any such agitations

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should have existed at all.” It would also be seen as unnecessary, in the sense that “no plea has been afforded either in the administration of the Diocese, or the teaching, the proceedings or the practices of its Clergy, for any alarm to be sounded, for any agitation to be put in train, for any movement liable to be regarded as having any revolutionary aspect.”99 Mountain then proceeded to a review of some of the major points at issue in the controversy: first, the necessity for maintaining the principles of episcopacy. This involved the recognition that there are three distinct orders in the church – bishop, clergy, and laity – the concurrence of each being necessary to the passage of legislation. He then spent a considerable amount of time defending the principle that the bishop’s concurrence was necessary to the passage of any legislation. To give it up would not only undermine episcopacy as it was commonly understood, but would fly in the face of all British precedents and would seem to be opting for a misconstrued American example. Then, in a fascinating argument, Mountain suggested that, in fact, the British North American colonies were less ready to experiment with ecclesiastical constitutions than their American counterparts, precisely because of the nature of the two societies. He thus asserted that in the United States, “the class of mind in that country which has a love for order, reverence and stability, and which encounters a shock in the religious fluctuations and distractions,” naturally gravitates to the Episcopal Church and maintains within that body a substantial conservative leaven. By contrast, many members of the Church of England in various parts of the Empire “are Churchmen, not properly from holding episcopal principles, but simply from an inherited and too often an unexamined conformity to the received institutions of their Country; and having so many loose adherents, we are as a body, less prepared than our neighbours to admit with safety any sudden removal of checks of standing authority in the Church.” Having thus expounded what he regarded as “the real principles of the Church”, Mountain concluded his address with a maxim drawn from the Old Testament – “Remove not the Ancient Land-Mark which thy Fathers have set.”100 A motion was then put from the floor of the meeting declaring that the candidates present would constitute a synod for the Diocese of Quebec, and that they were ready to proceed to the adoption of a constitution. Yet also contained in this opening motion was a provision that “no rule, canon, law or regulation to be in force in this Diocese as the act of this Synod, unless it shall have received the concurrent assent of the Bishop, the Clergy, and the Lay Delegates,” and providing for voting by orders. An amendment was put forward making it necessary that any synodical legislation be “adopted by a majority of the Clergy and of the Lay Delegates” and providing that if the bishop ob-

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jected to legislation so passed, he could reserve it for consideration at the next meeting of Synod, but “if again in like manner adopted at the next session of the Synod the same shall become law.” The amendment lost on a division of 142 to 37. Another amendment, which would have limited the so-called bishop’s veto to the present bishop (and thus allowed the issue to resurface at some point in the future), was also lost. Thus was lost the main point for which the Lay Association and its clerical supporters had fought for the past two years. The synod then proceeded to adopt a series of articles having to do with the election and representation of both clerical and lay delegates to the synod. Various amendments were proposed by members of the Lay Association, but they all lost by substantial majorities. The synod of 1859, then, ended as a substantial victory for Bishop George Mountain and his “High Church party”. Mountain was correct in perceiving that the synodical controversy of 1857–59 was “a great crisis in which [the Church of England’s] … distinctive principles are deeply involved.”101 The issues raised during this controversy ranged from the constitutional prerogatives of the bishop to the role of the laity and, indeed, to the very nature of episcopacy itself. Overlaid on these was another set of issues; wich arose out of both the transatlantic setting of this debate and the makeup of the colonial church. The Diocese of Quebec clearly illustrates the divided nature of the Church of England in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the High Church party had long dominated its structures and institutions, there coexisted in this diocese a large and vocal minority of Evangelicals. Never powerful enough (unlike their counterparts in Huron, Toronto, or Montreal) either to dominate the diocese or to establish enduring alternative structures that they could control, members of this group were vocal and confrontational. Onto this latently explosive situation was poured fuel from the continuing legacy of the Oxford Movement. Whether fully justified or not, there were suspicions in the minds of some Quebec Evangelicals that Tractarianism was making headway in the diocese, and that this trend needed to be resisted firmly. It is in this light that Gilbert Percy’s attack on Henry Roe must be seen. Moreover, Bishop Mountain’s perceived reluctance to support the Colonial Church and School Society was taken as further proof that the diocese was not as congenial a place for Evangelicals as might be hoped. Given the nature of the diocese and the sorts of issues at stake, it is not surprising that when the right issue arose, political temperatures and instincts were heightened, and that these parties would use every available means – press, pamphlets, pressure, electioneering, even the occasional riot – in an attempt to seize power and effect

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change. The introduction of synodical government, and with it the drafting of a constitution that would set the tone in the diocese for the foreseeable future, was one such occasion, and the passions it unleashed should come as no surprise. From this perspective, the Lay Association’s assault on the structures of the church can be seen as a failed coup d’état. Stripping away the veneer of unity, peace, and respectability thus reveals a church profoundly divided by competing ideological visions and containing groups prepared to use all the political savvy they could muster in pursuit of those ends.

the episcopal election of 1863 The events of the synod of 1859 represented a political failure for the Evangelicals in the diocese. The bishop’s veto would remain, and with it what many of them regarded as unchecked episcopal power. Yet another opportunity to stamp their imprimatur on the diocese arose sooner than they might have expected. On Christmas Day 1862, after officiating at Holy Communion in the cathedral in Quebec City, George Mountain took sick, developed pneumonia, and twelve days later, on the Feast of the Epiphany, died at the age of seventy-three.102 Mountain could not have anticipated his own sudden demise, but he did go on record during the synod of 1861 expressing what Henry Roe called Mountain’s “anxiety” about a future episcopal election in the diocese. On that occasion the bishop declared: In our own case the principle of elective Bishops has been introduced, and the day cannot be very remote when occasion will be given to put this principle in exercise within the Diocese of Quebec. I hope the clergy and laity will be prepared, when that day shall come, to act with a single eye to the glory of God, to the salvation of souls, and to the progress and consolidation of the church, – with an inviolate spirit of charity and forbearance; with an utter repudiation of all worldly intrigue and partizanship, all recourse to the arts of canvassing and caballing, – everything in short which is described by the word electioneering in the transaction of popular government in the world.103

This was a remarkable declaration, designed to forestall any such political confrontations, and must be read in light of Mountain’s experiences of the previous three years. Given the conspicuously political nature of those events, he was right to be anxious about a future election. Henry Roe’s brief narrative of this election is disingenuous, to say the least. “Never was there an Episcopal election more purely, more Christianly conducted,” he wrote in 1893.104 Mary Reisner’s assertion that this election was “hotly-contested” is a much more judicious conclusion.105 It took the better part of two days and eleven

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ballots for the synod to finally elect James William Williams as the fourth bishop of Quebec. The three leading candidates in this election represented the divided state of transatlantic Anglicanism. Armine W. Mountain, son of Bishop George Mountain, was the early favoured candidate of almost two-thirds of the clerical delegates and almost one-half of the lay delegates. The bishop of Rupert’s Land, David Anderson, was the favoured candidate in the early balloting of about one-quarter of the clerical delegates and about one-half of the lay delegates. James William Williams was the dark-horse candidate, garnering only slight support in the early balloting but gaining momentum as the process continued and eventually emerging as the winner on the eleventh ballot. All three were Oxford men. Mountain and Williams had strong connections to English Tractarianism; Anderson to English Evangelicalism. David Anderson was born in London and attended Exeter College, Oxford, during the tumultuous decade of the 1830s. He came under the influence of John Bird Sumner, then the bishop of Chester but eventually to be appointed the first Evangelical archbishop of Canterbury in 1848.106 Ordained priest in 1838, Anderson served churches in Liverpool and Everton before assuming the position of vice-principal of St Bees’ College in Cumberland. He remained at St Bees’ for about five years and subsequently served charges in London and Derby.107 When Sumner become archbishop of Canterbury, he used his influence to have Anderson appointed as the first bishop of Rupert’s Land. Anderson’s tenure at Red River was “marked by religious and social controversy, resulting largely from the tensions which plagued the community.”108 However, from the point of view of this study, the most important fact about Anderson was his clearly identifiable Evangelicalism.109 His wiews must surely have been known to many in the Diocese of Quebec. Indeed, Bishop George Mountain, whose undivided diocese of Quebec had at one time included Rupert’s Land and who had undertaken a trip to Red River in 1844, had been outspoken in his desire to see a bishop appointed for this vast territory. Mountain had also been alive to the fact that the Anglican missionaries in Rupert’s Land were associated with the Evangelical Church Missionary Society. As he put it in a letter to Ernest Hawkins, secretary to the spg “it appears to me that (since unhappily it cannot be concealed that there are parties within the Church) it would be a matter of prudence to provide in the selection of the Bishop against the probability of any untoward collision – clergymen – exemplary, devoted, much loved, fruitful in their ministry but who may be presumed to hold views characteristic of the Society which supports them.”110 It is not at all certain that Anderson was even aware

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that he had been nominated in the Quebec election, though it is clear that the recent difficulties in Rupert’s Land would have probably disposed him to consider the position seriously had he been elected.111 Armine Wale Mountain was the enfant terrible of the High Church party in the diocese. He had been born in 1823, the third of five children to George J. Mountain, third bishop of Quebec, and his wife, Mary Thomson. He went up to University College, Oxford, in 1841 and graduated ba in 1845, before returning to Quebec.112 He was ordained deacon in 1846 and priest the following year. The plague year of 1847 saw him ministering to victims of the typhus epidemic at Grosse-Île. In 1856 he married his cousin Kate Cochran, and they had four children. His only publication of note was a memoir of his father, which was commissioned by the Synod of the Diocese of Quebec and published in 1866.113 At the time of its publication, Armine Mountain was the incumbent of St Michael’s Chapel, Quebec City. He returned to England in 1872 to become vicar of St Mary’s, Wolverton End. There he remained until his death on 31 January 1885.114 Before Armine Mountain had left Quebec for England in 1840 in order, as he put it, “to prepare for Oxford,”115 his father had drawn up a list of twenty-one “maxims and monitions” to guide his son as he left home. (We can only speculate as to why Armine chose Oxford over Cambridge, the traditional university for Mountains.) George Mountain’s list of admonitions to his son combined practical religious instruction with a High Church colouring. He counselled his son to be constant in prayer, Bible reading, and self-examination, particularly in preparation for receiving the Lord’s Supper. He wanted Armine to cultivate habits of graciousness and cheerfulness, to always act the part of a Christian gentleman, and to be no respecter of persons. At the same time Armine was to remain mindful of his membership in the Church of England: “Make yourself fully master of the distinctive principles of the Church, and you will not compromise them. While you would tremble at the idea of priding yourself upon your privileges as a Churchman, and while you cultivate the utmost charity of judgment and of feeling towards all the members of irregular bodies in religion, you will understand at the same time the inconsistency and ill-consequence of mixing the Church with those bodies in religious proceedings.” George Mountain, ever mindful of the temper of the times, also admonished young Armine to “Avoid in religion all approach to exhibition or obtrusiveness, and repudiate all party-phraseology or party distinctions in things indifferent; but take heed that you do not, under this plea, appear to belong to the world than to God. Never dare to be ashamed of Christ.”116 This was practical divinity at its best. Many of the admonitions made reference to specific passages of Scripture that enunciated the princi-

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ples to be followed. “In perplexity and difficulty, especially if conscience be concerned, go straight to God and try the question first of all by His Word; but take counsel also, and that with all humility, from those upon whose advice you can wisely lean.” Mountain also advised his son to be an early riser, to be frugal with money and not be caught up in the spending habits of those with greater wealth, and to take care not to become addicted to “works of imagination,” as they only serve to “engender a distaste for studies practically useful.” James William Williams emerged as the compromise candidate in the election of 1863. But this outcome can only be explained by reference to his lower profile within the diocese in 1863. Armine Mountain’s Tractarian sympathies were well known; Williams’s connections to the Oxford Movement much less so. Williams had been born and raised in Hampshire, England, where his father was rector of a small parish. He had gone up to Pembroke College, Oxford, in the late 1840s, at a time when the Tractarian movement was increasingly under fire from within the official ranks of the university. James Williams had strong family associations with the Tractarians. His godparents were his father’s cousin, Isaac Williams, and Sir George Prevost. Both Williams and Prevost have been described as “moderate” Tractarians and second-rank lights of the Oxford Movement.117 By the time young James went up to Pembroke, Isaac Williams had already left the university, having been at the centre of a storm over his publication of Tract 80, “On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge,” and having been unsuccessful in his bid for the professorship of poetry, recently held by Keble; he was settled in a Gloucestershire parish.118 It is far from certain how much James Williams had been influenced by his godfathers, but it seems fair to surmise that, given the Evangelical predilection for guilt by association, these connections to Tractarianism could not have been unknown. At the time of the episcopal election of 1863, Williams had been in the province only five or six years and was resident in Lennoxville as rector of the grammar school and professor of belle lettres at Bishop’s College.119 Before coming to British North America, he had served as curate in two parishes in the dioceses of Bath and Wells and Oxford, as well as a three-year tenure as assistant master of Leamington College in the Diocese of Worcester. The Synod of the Diocese of Quebec opened its special session on Wednesday, 4 March 1863, in the Lecture Hall, Anne Street, Quebec. The rules governing election had been established as part of the synod’s constitution, and they stipulated that, in order for an election to be held, three-fourths of all clerical and lay representatives must be in attendance in order to constitute a quorum. Moreover, no candidate would be declared elected unless he secured the support of “not less than two-thirds of each order present.”120 The business meeting of

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the synod had been preceded by a worship service held in the cathedral. Morning prayer was said, Armine Mountain read the Epistle, James Williams preached the sermon, and S.S. Wood presided over the celebration of Holy Communion. Much has been made post hoc of Williams’s sermon. The text he chose came from the prophet Jeremiah: “Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths” (Jer. 6:16). Mockridge comments, “His sermon was a masterly exposition of the episcopal office,” adding that “it was no doubt this sermon which specially called the attention of the Synod to him, and led it, when the friends of Rev. A.W. Mountain and Bishop Anderson could not secure the end they had in view, to fix its choice on him.”121 Fortyone clergy and sixty-three or sixty-four lay delegates cast votes in the election.122 Divisions in the ranks of both the clergy and the laity quickly appeared over questions of certification of delegates and procedures. It was finally determined that voting would be done “silently,” that is, without an open debate on the merits of candidates proposed. Rejected was a proposal from E.J. Hemming and James B. Forsyth that, in order for “a contested election” to be avoided, a committee of twelve “fairly representing the different opinions held by the various members of this Synod” be struck to bring forth a unanimous choice for election to the vacant office of bishop. The names of the twelve are instructive. The committee so proposed would have consisted of six clergymen, including E.W Sewell of Trinity Chapel and Henry Roe of St Matthew’s, and six laymen, including the Honourable Edward Hale, lay representative for St Peter’s Church, Sherbrooke, Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly, and brother of Jeffery Hale. It took eleven ballots to select a bishop. Armine Mountain was the clear favourite of the clergy and of almost half the laity in the early going. David Anderson had a significant minority of support from the clergy, as well as a solid block of nearly half of the laity. Other names put forward included James Williams, Jasper Nicolls, and Bishop Williams of Connecticut, who had one supporter throughout the first three ballots. By the fourth ballot his name had dropped off the list, but on the fifth ballot the name of Dr Mahan of New Jersey appeared. James Williams was nominated by both clergy and laity on the first ballot, but not by any clergy on the second. By the fourth ballot, two of the clergy were calling for a reference to the archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishop of London. By the seventh ballot, ten of the clergy wanted the matter referred to England, though they appear to have been a bit fuzzy about the legalities of such a move. Four wanted it referred to Canterbury; three to Canterbury and York; two to Canterbury, York, and London, and one just to England. Interestingly, at no point in the balloting did any lay delegate vote to refer the matter to the English authorities.

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It was not until the sixth ballot that James Williams began to gain substantial support among the laity. By the seventh ballot, the synod appeared to be at a total impasse. Among clerical delegates, thirteen supported Williams and twelve Mountain; ten wanted the matter referred to England, and five proposed other candidates. No support remained for Anderson. Among the lay delegates, twenty-three supported Anderson, twenty Mountain, and nineteen Williams. By the eighth ballot, the question of referring the matter to England was dead. Lay support now began to swung away from Anderson and over to Williams, and by the ninth ballot, it had effectively disappeared. It seems apparent that many laity realized that electing Anderson was a lost cause and that Williams was preferable to Mountain. With the election of James William Williams as fourth bishop of Quebec, the Mountain era in the diocese of Quebec all but ended. Admittedly, Armine Mountain did not leave the diocese until 1872 and Jasper Nicolls remained as principal of Bishop’s until his death in 1877, but their effective control over the episcopal seat had come to a resounding finale. Like the Pretymans in Lincoln, the Mountains in Quebec had left their mark. No other diocese in British North America was as closely identified with one family as Quebec had been with the Mountains. Yet too much can be made of 1863 as a watershed date. Though the synod had rejected a Mountain, it had elected a man who would keep the tone in the diocese High. Pockets of Evangelical strength would remain, but these would be scattered and would never provide as effective a counterweight to the prevailing High Church ethos as they had in the 1840s and 1850s.

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7 The Church in Danger

In a sermon preached on 1 July 1864, in St George’s Church, Lennoxville, before Convocation of the University of Bishop’s College, J.H. Thompson, formerly Harold Professor of Divinity and Hebrew, sounded a warning note about “the intellectual dangers” to which students were “at the present time most exposed.”1 Entitled “Revelation and Science,” his address juxtaposed a defence of the “harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds” and “the peculiar inspiration of scripture” with an attack on “Rationalism,” which he characterized as “a new and subtle infidelity” in which “Christianity is denied or explained away, [and] the light of Human Reason … is exalted as a judge over all that God has declared or revealed.”2 The timing, content, and audience for Thompson’s sermon are telling. It was delivered at almost the mid-point of what Professor George Kitson Clark has described as “the crisis of the nineteenth-century attack on religion.”3 A torrent of books published in England between 1859 and 1871 represented the most serious assault upon orthodox Christian belief that had ever appeared in a single decade. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, followed by the liberal-leaning Anglican Essays and Reviews (1860), the first part of Bishop John William Colenso’s The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862), the English translation of Joseph Ernest Renan’s La vie de Jésus (1863), and J.R. Seeley’s Ecce Homo (1865), and culminating in Darwin’s Descent of Man in 1871. “Orthodox religion received,” argues Kitson Clark, “a series of body blows, which seemed to be aimed at its existence.”4 These works, while originating in Britain, France, and South Africa, were avail-

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able throughout the Anglo-American world.5 Canadian historians of late have emphasized the evangelical Methodist and Presbyterian responses to these intellectual cross-currents, while largely ignoring the Anglican.6 The note of urgency contained in Thompson’s sermon serves as a reminder about High Church Anglican reaction. Moreover, his declaration that “the Church also looks to this place for instruction and guidance in the impending conflict between Faith and Scepticism”7 indicates that he saw Bishop’s College as having a role in this transatlantic debate. Of these works, perhaps the most disturbing to the Anglican mind at mid-century was Essays and Reviews.

e s s ay s a n d r e v i e w s Essays and Reviews represented a new departure in English theology. Never before on English soil had German liberal theology and biblical criticism been embraced in so open a manner. Down to that point in time, nineteenth-century English theological controversies had largely taken place within a framework of Christian orthodoxy. However much they might disagree with one another on justification or the sacraments, High Churchmen, Tractarians, and Evangelicals occupied much common theological ground, including a high view of the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture.8 Essays and Reviews began to change all that, for it shifted the locus of debate onto questions about the very nature of Scripture and the relationship of Christian belief to modern thought. The book was the product of what in England came to known as the Broad Church movement, whose best-known early representative was Frederick Denison Maurice. While its intellectual roots can be traced to eighteenth-century Enlightenment rationalism, recent cross-currents of thought in geology, biology, philosophy, and history had led many of the essayists to abandon earlier “conservative” positions. They believed that the results of modern scientific and historical inquiry had made many traditional Christian beliefs untenable. A number of the essayists had been heavily influenced by the rationalistic presuppositions of German biblical scholars such as F.C. Baur and others of the Tübingen school. Moreover, they sought freedom from what they regarded as the intellectual obscurantism of Christian traditionalists, whether Evangelical or High Church. Typical of many nineteenth-century liberal Protestant theologians, the essayists believed that the best way to preserve the essence of Christianity was to marry it to the spirit of the age, accepting whatever insights history, science, and philosophy had to offer, even if this meant discarding those aspects of the faith that were uncongenial to the temper of the modern mind, in particular the Genesis account of

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Creation and the gospel miracles.9 They desired a more stripped-down Christianity that stressed ethics and was devoid of at least some of its supernatural content. At the same time, the immediate impact of their publication should not be overdrawn. Although many writers employ the word “panic” in describing the reaction of the English public to the publication, Professor Kitson Clark’s reminder that for many Britons the 1860s were years of religious revival, not religious doubt, “among people who were probably little troubled by Darwinism and had certainly never read Essays and Reviews” is salutary.10 Essays and Reviews was the first major public declaration by English theological liberals. It consisted of seven essays. Six of the essayists were ordained clergymen in the Church of England. The only layman was Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, a noted legal scholar and Egyptologist who had been forced to decline a fellowship at St Catharine’s Hall, Cambridge, because he refused to proceed to ordination.11 The other essayists were variously known in England, though a few would rise to great heights in church or university. The rising star in the ecclesiastical firmament was Frederick Temple, who at the time of writing was headmaster at Rugby School. He went on to occupy the sees of Exeter and London before his appointment as archbishop of Canterbury in 1897. His involvement with Essays and Reviews almost scuppered his appointment to Exeter, calling forth as it did the determined opposition of both Lord Shaftesbury and Dr Pusey.12 Benjamin Jowett was fellow of Balliol College and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. His controversial views on various theological subjects, including the Atonement, were already a matter of public record.13 His essay “The Interpretation of Scripture” was one of the more controversial contributions.14 Among the other contributors, Rowland Williams, sometime fellow of King’s, Cambridge, was vice-principal and professor of Hebrew at St David’s Theological College, Lampeter, Wales. His views on the inspiration of Scripture had already drawn fire from many Welsh Evangelicals, and he was increasingly attracted to German biblical scholarship. Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, had written extensively on theological and philosophical subjects. His The Order of Nature (1859) had rejected the biblical account of miracles as unacceptable to a modern critical mind.15 Henry Bristow Wilson, sometime fellow of St John’s and Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, was at the time of publication vicar of the parish of Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire.16 Mark Pattison contributed what was regarded by many as the most original and scholarly of the essays, with the innocuous title of “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England,

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1688–1750.” He had been raised in an Evangelical vicarage in the North Riding of Yorkshire. As a student at Oriel in the 1830s, he became what he himself described as “a pronounced Puseyite,”17 but in subsequent decades he drifted from his Tractarian moorings and seems to have abandoned all substantial theological commitments.18 A man of great ambition, in 1861 he finally secured the long-soughtafter position of rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.19 It is not accidental that Essays and Reviews emerged from the University of Oxford. A number of the essayists, including Pattison, Jowett, and Temple, had been in Oxford during the height of the Oxford Movement, but had come to the conclusion that the controversies surrounding Newman and Ward had had a stultifying effect on theological debate and intellectual freedom. Jowett went so far as to describe it as “this abominable system of terrorism, which prevents the statement of the plainest facts, and makes true theology or theological education impossible.20 Essays and Reviews attracted little public notice until a lengthly review article appeared in the Westminster Review in October 1860, written by the leading English positivist, Frederic Harrison. Harrison welcomed the appearance of Essays and Reviews but suggested that the authors should follow their views to their logical conclusion and abandon Christianity altogether for rationalism and positivism.21 The article in the Westminster Review threw down the gauntlet. Evangelicals, High Churchmen, and Tractarians showed common cause in denouncing the essays and defending traditional orthodoxy. John William Burgon, a High Churchman, sometime fellow of Oriel, and later Gresham Professor of Divinity, preached a series of seven sermons in the university church attacking each essay in turn, which later appeared as Inspiration and Interpretation.22 The seven essayists were dubbed “septem contra Christum.”23 Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, led the episcopal assault, editing a volume entitled Replies to Essays and Reviews.24 Two of the essayists, Rowland Williams and Henry Bristow Wilson, were prosecuted for heresy before the church courts, and both were found guilty in the Court of Arches. Both, however, appealed this decision to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which overturned the earlier decisions and declared that their views were not inconsistent with the Church of England’s formularies.25 Over the next four years, Essays and Reviews prompted a torrent of critical responses from concerned parties throughout the Atlantic world and across a broad spectrum of Protestant orthodoxy, Nonconformist and Anglican, Evangelical and High Church. It was ultimately condemned by Convocation, and 11,000 clergy of the Church of England went on record as affirming their belief in the historical and scientific accuracy of Scripture and its

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full inspiration.26 The statement was drafted by E.B. Pusey, one of the original leaders of the Oxford Movement, and himself an accomplished biblical scholar, who stood steadfastly against the views propounded by Essays and Reviews.27 Joseph Altholz has observed that “historians have tended to study this controversy from the standpoint of the Essayists,” noting that this focus has led to a lionization of the authors as defenders of intellectual freedom against conservative obscurantism. Instead, he has drawn attention to the other side in the debate, “those who denounced Essays and Reviews from the standpoint of orthodoxy within the Church of England.” He goes on to remark that “they may well have been less attractive; they may even have been wrong; but they were certainly more numerous and more representative of the mind of the church.”28 In his investigation of the “mind of Victorian orthodoxy,” Altholz has discerned a common consensus among the opponents of the essays. Commentators attacked the inconsistency of ordained clergy questioning and even repudiating the central doctrines of Christianity. This behaviour was regarded as morally repugnant. They noted the origin of many of the essayists’ views in the rationalism of German historical and biblical criticism. They regarded any questioning of the veracity of the biblical record as religiously and socially dangerous. The essayists’ rejection of the plenary inspiration of Scripture also came under attack. Their claim to be able to sift religious truth from historical and scientific error was regarded as spurious and tendentious. Their attack on the traditional eighteenth-century Anglican evidentialist apologetics was also commonly noted and rejected by critics, as was their repudiation of miracles, their questioning of the historical accuracy of the Bible, and their rejection of predictive prophecy, all of which was regarded as undermining the very basis of the Christian faith. It was thus the essayists’ rejection of Paley’s system of reasoning for the truth of Christianity that many found profoundly disturbing.29 The reactions in British North America did not differ greatly from those current in Britain. The one substantive difference between the two contexts is that there does not appear to have been much, if any, of a Broad Church movement in British North America. In a series of editorials published in April and May 1861, the Echo subjected Essays and Reviews to a searching criticism. It first responded to Rowland Williams’s essay on “Bunsen’s Biblical Researches.” It noted that Bunsen was a German rationalist who used reason to dispense with revelation, all the while holding onto “a mere sentiment of piety.” “Such a system, however, professing a sort of pietism without any basis of revelation and of Scripture teaching, must, if generally adopted, be productive of widespread practical infidelity.” The paper

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regarded “reason and conscience … independently of divine revelation” as inadequate to form the basis for an ethical system.30 On 18 April 1861 the Echo reviewed Baden Powell’s essay on the “Study of the Evidences of Christianity.” Powell had rejected miracles as impossible in a closed natural system of cause and effect. In reply, the Echo argued that belief in biblical miracles was not contrary to reason. Not only had their historical veracity been established “by the strongest chain of evidence,” but it was not unreasonable to think that the God of nature could suspend the laws by which He governed the universe. The editor was correct in singling out Baden Powell’s defence of Darwin’s Origin of Species as worthy of comment, for of all the essayists, he was the most convinced Darwinian and the only one to even mention Darwin by name.31 Stressing the argument from design, the editor dismissed Darwin’s views as demanding more “credulity” than belief in a creator God.32 In that same issue the Echo responded to H.B. Wilson’s attack on “The National Church.” Wilson had resurrected the old charge that the Christian church had been responsible for much of the evil in the history of the world and that it was not essential to the future wellbeing of humanity. Against the argument that Christianity had acted as a break upon progress, the Echo asserted that there existed a general correspondence between “the general profession of true religion” and “the great civil interest of mankind” – “that the supremacy in civilization, with all its kindred arts and sciences, has attached itself to those nations who have professed, and have preserved unimpaired, a knowledge of true Christianity, – and that the state of religion among any people is the surest and most generally admitted criterion of the wisdom, healthfulness, and stability of their secular institutions, as well as the best gauge of their national position.”33 The essays by C.W. Goodwin, Mark Pattison, and Benjamin Jowett were reviewed in subseqent issues of the Echo. It took issue with Goodwin’s theological method, particularly with his assertion that it was a spurious enterprise to seek an accommodation between the Genesis account of creation and the findings of modern geology.34 The paper lamented the fact that Goodwin had made no attempt “to ascertain what theory of geology best agrees with the language of scripture,” but had rejected the Old Testament account as irreconcilable with a modern scientific view of the origins of the cosmos. Mark Pattison’s essay on “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England” the Echo found to be the least objectionable of any in the volume, though “its tendency is still of that insidious character which would undermine and shake our belief.” The paper rejected the overriding rationalism of Pattison and his idea that human reason could

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act as a judge of the truthfulness of biblical revelation. The last essay to be discussed was Benjamin Jowett’s “On the Inspiration of Scripture,” with its wholehearted embracing of German higher criticism. The Echo did not at this point attempt a refutation of Jowett’s essay; it merely reviewed the outlines of his argument. Regarding the contributors to the volume, the Echo pointed out “the glaring and shameful inconsistency of the views they advocate with their office as with one exception ministers of the Church.” It went on to say that “the work may do some harm, but not so much as might at first be feared. It brings out in its true colours the leaven of German rationalism, which has been working for some time back … and being thus seen it will be better known and, as a necessary consequence, the more thoroughly rejected.” The Echo concluded its review by challenging the intellectual integrity of those who would seek to retain Christian ethical and moral principles, while at the same time undermining the truthfulness of Christianity itself. Rejecting “the great facts and truths of revelation, they would fain retain the hopes and consolations which it alone affords, the virtues it inculcates, the happiness it insures. They would possess its blessings, while repudiating the truths on which the power of the Gospel rests.”35 As newspaper reviews written by a clergyman-editor, these commentaries made no claim to scholarship. They were undoubtedly designed to offer some basic criticisms of Essays and Reviews in such a manner as to encourage the faithful. As a basic apologetic, the Echo’s views were not far wide of the mark, but no one would have mistaken them for works of sophisticated scholarship. Indeed, the painstaking, meticulous work of constructive biblical criticism seemed inimical to the activist Evangelical temperament at mid-century. It fell to a later generation, particularly the Cambridge trio of B.F. Westcott, J.B. Lightfoot, and F.J.A. Hort, to mark out the path for orthodox critical scholarship in such a way that the German critics might be answered on their own terms.36 The Echo’s attack on the views set forth in Essays and Reviews was not untypical of the response of many in British North America to what were regarded as dangerous and unsound ideas. The Presbyterian Free Church Record argued: “Several most important doctrines are discussed with ability and earnestness, but at the same time with such perversion of the truth, and departures from the old orthodox faith, that the publication of such a work, and by such authors, cannot but be regarded with feelings of alarm and apprehension. Inspiration and several other vital doctrines are either entirely rejected, or are so attentuated as to be simply what each individual, in the exercise of his own fancy, may choose to make them.”37 Echoes of this critisicm could be found in the Methodist Christian Guardian, which declared that Essays

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and Reviews “is decidedly infidel, to an extent that must be entirely satisfactory to the most extreme class of unbelievers.”38 Indeed, it has been suggested that the views set forth in Essays and Reviews were more disturbing to British North American evangelicals than Darwin’s evolutionary theories because they called into question the historical accuracy of Scripture and thus “its validity as revelation.”39 But what is abundantly clear about the British North American response to Essays and Reviews is that, as in England itself, opposition came not from evangelicals alone but from right across the spectrum of orthodox Protestantism.40 High Church Anglicans, like their English Counterparts, attacked the publication.41 Bishop George Mountain “denounced its authors because they were ‘busy suggesting, more than suggesting, busy in recommending – the rejection, piece by piece, of all which constitutes the value of the Bible.›42 Though they parted company on many substantive theological issues, particularly as regards ecclesiology, the sacraments, and salvation, Evangelicals and High Churchmen were one in their high regard for the Bible as the inspired Word of God.43 John Strachan, bishop of Toronto, denounced both the essayists and Colenso in his 1863 and 1866 pastoral addresses. In 1864, in a show of solidarity between Evangelicals and High Churchmen, the bishops and clergy of the United Province of the Canadas issued the “Oxford Declaration,” in which they avoued their “firm belief that the Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church, maintains, without reserve or qualification, the inspiration and Divine authority of the whole canonical scriptures, as not only containing, but being the Word of God.”44 This closing of the ranks against rationalistic biblical criticism kept the higher critics out of Anglican colleges throughout the nineteenth century.45

the lennoxville magazine Three years after Thompson’s call to arms, a short-lived Anglican literary and theological magazine appeared in the Eastern Townships. The Student Monthly began publication in January 1867. Described by D.C. Masters as “an austere and ably-written literary and religious review,”46 it was published for a year under its original name, but in January 1868 the title was changed to the Lennoxville Magazine. Only eleven issues under the latter name ever appeared. The magazine ceased publication in November 1868 – “probably too much of a strain on the resources of an overworked faculty.”47 It has all but been ignored, even by historians of the university.48 This is unfortunate, as the magazine provides an important window into the High Church Anglican culture of the Bishop’s faculty in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

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Not until the appearance of the Mitre in June 1893 did the university have another publication. The Lennoxville Magazine appeared at a time when an increasing number of periodicals were being published in Canada. In addition to the burgeoning newspaper press of the mid-nineteenth century, there had also appeared by the second half of the century an increasing number of literary magazines. Some were clearly orientated towards a popular mass market, hence the rise of the illustrated magazine. Alongside these popular magazines were others devoted to specialized interests, whether politics, history, religion, or science. It has been suggested that “such diversification clarified (and narrowed) the role of the literary periodical, leaving it to concentrate on the cultivation of polite letters and the dissemination of informed opinion on social, political and cultural issues.”49 The Lennoxville Magazine, while conforming in some respects to this trend towards specialized literary magazines, also had roots that can be found earlier in the century. Journals such as the Christian Sentinel and Anglo-Canadian Churchman’s Magazine of the late 1820s and early 1830s and the Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Record of the 1840s were clearly theological and religious in orientation and devoted to strengthening, informing, and educating the Anglican constituency. The Lennoxville Magazine was more eclectic, though its orientation towards a literate, Anglican, and British culture was evident. The first issue of January 1868, for example, contained the first two chapters of a rather tedious novel entitled A Lord of the Creation; a poem by C. Pelham Mulvany, “Don Almansor’s Baptism”; part one of a history of “The Church in Britain to the Time of Augustin[e]”; a short story, “A Terrible Night,” by Benedict de Revoil, in translation from the French; another poem, this one by “O.M.” – “On the Receipt of Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam›; an essay on the neglected art of reading aloud; a poem by F.B. Crofton, “Sub Noctem Susurri” (in English despite its Latin title); and the account of a trip to the Gaspé by “Viator.” Three regular features closed the first issue. The first was a column entitled “The Church,” in which the writer commented on events in the United Church of England and Ireland. The second was a section – “Essays in Translation” – which was accompanied by the comment that “Under the above head we purpose to give each month a small space to poetical translations from various languages, – especially from the Latin and Greek. We would respecfully invite the attention of Canadian scholars to this feature of our Magazine.” Lastly, the magazine contained advertisements for local businesses in Lennoxville. Subsequent issues of the magazine continued to reflect this eclectic tone: serialized forms of novels, poetry, history, travelogues (of the

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Hudson Bay region), essays and poems in translation, biographical sketches (Talleyrand, Thomas D’Arcy McGee), obituaries (e.g., Rev. S.S. Wood of Three Rivers), and essays on such diverse topics as “Martyrs of the Seventeenth Century” and “Alcohol: Its Use and Abuse.” The magazine’s parochial advertising is in marked contrast with the rest of its national and international focus. Apart from the occasional article on “Education and the Lennoxville School” or the “Public Schools of the Eastern Townships,” the Lennoxville Magazine had a world view that encompassed province, nation, and empire. Nowhere is this more evident than in the column entitled “The Church,” which brought a colonial High Church perspective to imperial religious issues. While much about the origins, conduct, and demise of this magazine remains obscure, some light can be shed on its readership through the examination of two published subscription lists. Other information can be inferred from its contents. Certainly not all of the subscribers can be traced, and therefore any collective profile must remain incomplete. Nevertheless, a few observations are warranted. The first concerns transatlantic and international connections. Of the eighty-two people listed as subscribers, sixty-six were located in Canada, eleven were in England, and five were in the United States. A number of women were subscribers, including five of the eleven from England. Not surprisingly, the subscribers included thirteen clergymen: all except one were connected to the Diocese of Quebec; most were based in the Eastern Townships.50 Thus Beaulieu and Hamelin’s suggestion that “ce périodique litteraire s’adressait non plus aux étudiants et aux professeurs de Bishop, mais au public lettré des Cantons de l’Est”51 is accurate but incomplete. It also seems clear that the magazine would have been limited in its appeal. Unlike contemporary newspapers, there was nothing specifically aimed at children or addressed to women or women’s issues (as the Victorians might have defined them), despite a number of women as subscribers. The inclusion of a column entitled “The Church” exclusively devoted to discussing issues concerning Anglicanism did not represent astute marketing strategies, but it did reflect a High Church Anglican view of the Church of England’s claims to legitimacy and exclusivity.52 Most of the articles were unsigned. However, the identity of its editor is known. In the November issue, under the heading of “Ordination,” there is a notice that “John F. Carr, B.A., editor of the ‘Lennoxville,› was ordained deacon by the lord bishop of Quebec, and that Mr Carr was being appointed to the charge of Durham. We also know from D.C. Masters’s work on the early history of Bishop’s that Carr received his ba in 1867 and his ma in 1870.53 After graduation in 1867, he must have remained in Lennoxville, perhaps beginning the work

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towards his ma while awaiting ordination. This is fairly clear evidence that the magazine had remained under student editorship, albeit now by a graduate rather than an undergraduate. It might also help to explain the magazine’s change of title if indeed Carr had edited it as the Student Monthly. However, it says very little about how much influence (if any) the principal and faculty exerted over the magazine’s contents, nor does it get us any nearer to determining who wrote the column “The Church.” As far as the latter is concerned, the range of topics considered, along with the sophistication with which they were dealt, would suggest that “The Church” was written either by Principal Nicolls himself or by another member of the faculty. There certainly was a considerable pool of educated talent among the faculty, including two graduates of the University of Oxford (in addition to Nicolls himself), one of Trinity College, Dublin, and at least three graduates of Bishop’s.54 From the point of view of his position in the college and his obvious literary abilities, Nicolls might have been a natural candidate to comment on the state of the imperial church. However, in light of the constraints on his time and his responsibilities and the always precarious college finances, 1868 would not have been an auspicious time for him to have written a monthly column. Nicolls was struggling under the heavy weight of administration in addition to teaching almost the entire arts and divinity curriculum, and it was only through the assistance of interim professors such as Henry Roe and A.C. Scarth that he seems to have survived the period 1866–68.55 Moreover, he had been coming under increasing attacks from Evangelicals in Montreal during this time. Internecine warfare between Evangelicals and High Churchmen continued well into this period. Nicolls’s associations would quite naturally have brought him under Evangelical scrutiny and suspicion.56 The college’s financial problems, its low enrolment, and questions about Nicolls’s leadership raised in Corporation meant that between 1868 and 1871 he found himself labouring in increasingly difficult circumstances.57 Taken together, the circumstantial evidence would suggest that Nicolls was far too busy and under too much strain to write “The Church.” Henry Roe, on the other hand, is a likely candidate.58 By the 1860s he was one of the more prominent clergy in the diocese. He had been a student at Bishop’s under Nicolls in the mid-1840s, had been ordained priest by Bishop George Mountain in 1853 and had served two charges in the diocese: New Ireland from 1852 to 1855 and St Matthew’s, Quebec City, from 1855 to 1868. As we have already seen, he had emerged as a leader of the High Church party during the synodical controversy of the late 1850s. In 1868 Roe was in Lennoxville to help Principal Nicolls teach divinity, and in 1873 he was

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appointed to the chair of divinity at Bishop’s.59 He also had considerable journalistic experience and established transatlantic connections. He had served as correspondent for both the New York Church Journal and the London Guardian.60 Roe would have brought to “The Church” an awareness of imperial religious issues as viewed through the lens of colonial High Church Anglicanism. Indeed, the range of issues discussed is rather narrow: ritualism; the first-ever meeting of the Lambeth Conference; the case of John William Colenso, bishop of Natal in the Province of South Africa; Irish Church disestablishment; and the secularization of the University of Oxford.61 Each of these had a relevance to the experience of the Anglican church in Canada. Questions of doctrine, biblical authority, ritual, liturgy, and secularization are not limited by geography; they were lively issues in all parts of the British Empire. In its first issue the Lennoxville Magazine took up the subject of the recently completed first Lambeth Conference. Interestingly enough, the initiative for these conferences came from bishops in the British North American church. At the third meeting of the Provincial Synod for Canada, held in 1865, John Travers Lewis, bishop of Ontario, who was concerned at the inroads being made into the various branches of the Anglican communion by “ritualism and rationalism,” put forth the idea of “a world-conference of Anglican bishops.”62 Accordingly, some seventy-six bishops met in London in September 1867. The writer of “The Church” was warmly supportive of this pan-Anglican initiative, seeing it as further evidence that the Church of Christ was progressing in its fight against “the Spirit of the world, and the power of the Ruler of this world.” Whatever its shortcomings, the first Lambeth Conference succeeded by the mere fact of its meeting. “Herein lies the great step forward that has been made, that the bishops of the English, Scotch, Canadian, American, African, and New Zealand Churches have met and proclaimed to the world, that they, and the churches they represent, are in real visible communion one with another.”63 Perhaps the thorniest issues addressed at Lambeth was the case of John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal. Colenso (1814–83) had been embroiled in controversy almost since the beginning of his appointment as the first bishop of Natal. A native of Cornwall, he had been educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, and had served as vicar of Forncett St Mary’s in Norfolk for seven years prior to his appointment to Natal. He had offended many of his missionaries by suggesting that native polygamists need not divorce their wives on receiving baptism, arguing that doing so caused unnecessary pain and suffering to both wives and children. He quarrelled with the dean of Pietermaritzburg

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over their respective eucharistic theologies. He had already alienated most of his diocesan clergy over the consitution of a proposed diocesan synod. In 1861 Colenso ventured into the field of biblical criticism by publishing a commentary, St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Newly Translated, and Explained from a Missionary Point of View. As his modern biographer, Peter Hinchliff, has put it, this “was an attempt to set out the essentials of the gospel he preached, and to show how he interpreted St Paul to the heathen who had never heard the gospel before.”64 In Colenso’s view, the Atonement was “an entirely objective event. Christ’s saving work needed no personal application to the individual. Both conversion and baptism were in the last resort meaningless. The work of the missionary in preaching the gospel is to show the heathen the pattern of Christ, the example of his love, and to assure him that he is already redeemed.”65 Such universalistic views, which rejected the High Church–Tractarian emphasis on the efficacy of the sacraments as means of grace and the Evangelical emphasis on conversion, were bound to provoke the wrath of Colenso’s contemporaries. His commentary on Romans was followed by the publication of the first part of his The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined in 1862. Colenso’s views produced what Andrew Porter has called “an Empire-wide controversy.”66 Colenso had been influenced by his reading of Essays and Reviews and by his study of contemporary German biblical critics.67 He suggested that parts of the Pentateuch were not historical, that Moses could not have been its author, that Christ was ignorant of its real authorship, that the Bible was not God’s self-revelation, and that contemporary views of its inspiration were spurious.68 Whatever the long-term significance of Colenso’s views for biblical criticism, his case was to have immediate constitutional and theological implications. Robert Gray, bishop of Cape Town and metropolitan of the Province of South Africa, and theologically “a moderate Tractarian,”69 was upset by Colenso’s views, as expressed in both the Romans commentary and his work on the Pentateuch. Accordingly, he convened a synod of South African bishops in November 1863 to consider Colenso’s position. Of the nine charges brought against Colenso, eight could have been subscribed to by Evangelicals, High Churchmen, or Tractarians alike.70 He was charged with holding heterodox views on the atonement, justification, future punishment, and the inspiration, historical trustworthiness, and authority of Holy Scripture.71 In December, Gray (pending a full retraction by Colenso) deposed him as bishop of Natal and declared that he could no longer serve as a Church of England clergyman in the Province of South Africa. As well, fearing the Erastian interference of the English courts, the church in South Africa declared itself to be independent of English jurisdiction.

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Colenso, espousing heterodox theological views and seeing himself as a defender of individual over against corporate rights, appealed against the metropolitan court’s decision to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, sitting in its civil, not its ecclesiastical, capacity.72 On 20 March 20 1865 the Privy Council rendered its judgment, not only declaring the proceedings of Gray’s court to be null and void, but also calling into question the validity of his letters patent (which had “made” him bishop of Cape Town and then metropolitan of South Africa) and the jurisdiction of his synodical and metropolitan courts. This was merely the beginning of a long and tortuous legal battle (civil and ecclesiastical) over Colenso’s claim to remain bishop of Natal, the obligations of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund to continue to pay his stipend, and the rights to the church property in Natal.73 The Lennoxville Magazine first approached the Colenso case in the context of the convening of the first Lambeth Conference. Colenso’s theological position drew fire as “pernicious heresy”. The magazine continued to keep abreast of the legal and constitutional questions arising from the various cases tried in both the ecclesiastical and the civil courts of South Africa and Great Britain. Throughout these proceedings, it was a consistent supporter of Bishop Gray.74 Moreover, it expressed its dismay at the support that Colenso received from the Archbishop of York and the bishop of London, and regarded this as precipitating a further exodus from the Anglican communion for the Church of Rome. “Those who thus turn their backs in the hour of danger,” it declared, “show that they have no power of endurance in the cause of religion, when they leave the city that is most hardly beset; in our Church the battle of Christianity and the world is being fought, and in our Church, by God’s aid, the battle shall be won.”75 The writer went on to say: We have treasured the Bible as the Word of God even in our darkest days, and we will not let it go now, though the clouds gather round us, and the storm threatens. But it certainly is a keen blow that this attack upon the Bible springs from England; where the Book has been printed most extensively, criticised most reverently, and circulated most freely, that thence should spring this deadly attack upon it; that Bishops of our communion should, the one openly deny the Divinity of our Blessed Lord, and the Inspiration of those Scriptures to which He set his seal, and the other proclaim to the world that he uphold the heretical bishop, because he is not deposed by the Civil Courts.76

Such remarks serve as a reminder that High Church Anglicans were just as disturbed by the new cross-currents in science, theology, and historical criticism as their Evangelical colleagues.77

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This refrain of the church and Christianity in danger was a recurrent one in the pages of the Lennoxville Magazine. As it was expressed in May 1868, “men, who have nothing else in common, are calmly plotting to overthrow that faith in a Divine Ruler of the universe, in whom, from primeval times we have believed, and the working of whose Hand we have been accustomed to trace in all the social, political, and moral changes that the world has yet seen.”78 It was in this same light that the magazine read the proposals to secularize the University of Oxford. “The revolutionary spirit of this century,” it declared, “purposes now to hand over the revenues and the entire government of the university to men who may be Christians or infidels, members of the Church of England or the Church of Rome, Presbyterians or Dissenters.” To permit such a secularization would have grave effects on the rising generation of students. The magazine asserted that young men, at the age at which they came up to university, were highly impressionable and easily swayed by the influence of their professors. Dire consequences, then, would result from teaching positions in the universities being thrown open to those who disavowed the Christian faith.79 These remarks were echoes of what Owen Chadwick has described as “two ideals of a university struggl[ing] for the mastery.”80 The older ideal viewed the university as an institution devoted to educating and nurturing students in an atmosphere of piety and virtue. The newer ideal saw it as a research institution, with intellectual achievement being the highest priority. As Chadwick put it, “for the new men the rules of celibacy and religious profession merely hampered Oxford and Cambridge in their proper endeavour to encourage the advancement of knowledge.”81 This debate, which in some ways had been proceeding since the 1850s, when the universities’ commission issued its report and recommended changes to both ancient English universities, resounded throughout the Anglo-American world in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the United States educational reformers such as Andrew Dickinson White of Cornell and Charles Eliot of Harvard were undertaking a restructuring of the American university to reflect the new research values, and in so doing were leaving behind the more explicitly Christian values that had animated higher education since the seventeenth century.82 In many respects the ideals on which Bishop’s had been founded mirrored the older vision of piety and virtue that had sustained higher education in Britain and America down to the 1870s. Now, however, much of this vision was under attack, and the Lennoxville Magazine expressed a sense of urgency about the issue. Amidst all the darkness and gloom, however, it saw “a noble act of faith” shining through – the foundation of Keble College, Oxford. This foundation rhe author regarded as “a proof that the conflict

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is not yet lost, or rather is a good augury that it shall be ultimately won.”83 To his mind, Keble College would stand as a bulwark of truth against unbelief and against those forces which threatened to undermine all that was good and virtuous and Christian about English institutions. It would ultimately serve as good leaven, influencing the entire University of Oxford. Another critical issue that the Lennoxville Magazine broached was the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, what it called “one of the most important questions of the day, as regards the interests of the Church Catholic.”84 It will be remembered that it was the issue of the reform of the Church of Ireland which had prompted John Keble to issue his call to arms of “the church in danger” in his Assize sermon of 1833, which some have seen as the beginning of the Oxford Movement. By the 1860s there were discussions in earnest about proceeding to the entire disestablishment of the Anglican church in Ireland, and it was left to the Liberal administration of William Ewart Gladstone to propose and ultimately carry legislation to that effect in 1869–71.85 The Lennoxville Magazine took up the issue in the year previous to the main parliamentary debate. It approached the Irish church question from the perspective of an individual who had been nurtured and educated in the High Church and Tractarian traditions, but also from the perspective of one who had spend the bulk of his adult life ministering in a colonial church that did not enjoy all the perquisites of establishment. In the first instance it argued that the proposals concerning the Irish church “confuse[d] the question of establishment and the power of holding property.” Thus, “unless a voluntary body has power in its corporate capacity to hold property, we can have no societies, colleges, churches at all. The question of establishment or non-establishment, though a grave one, yet involves no wide principle, extending beyond itself; whereas the question of the claim of the Government of a country to confiscate all property, which they may choose to consider to be badly administered, involves a fundamental principle of social and national life.”86 This was a question of political philosophy that went beyond the issue of “the utility and value of the Irish Church, or upon her vitality: the disendowment of an endowed body is neither more nor less than the transference of property from the hands of one person to those of another.” Having stated that the principal question was irrespective of the issue of the state of the Irish church, the magazine was not prepared to grant that the church was in fact moribund: “her disendowment will remove from Ireland thousands of her best inhabitants, both clerical and lay; it will alter the state of religion in Ireland in an abrupt way, which may reasonably, on mere social grounds, cause alarm, depriving

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seven hundred thousand members of our communion of those means of grace, which at present, the Irish Church affords them.” Disendowment, moreover, meant that these Irish Anglicans would be thrown into the arms of the Roman Catholic church. “We must, at least, believe that members of Parliament are prepared to assert deliberately, that the Roman communion offers higher means of grace to the population of that island, and therefore, that there is nothing unreasonable in handing over to them so large a number of souls.”87 The Lennoxville Magazine had first broached the Irish church question in May 1868. In July of that year it devoted almost all of its “The Church” column to this issue. It again took up the theme that the Irish church question was not well understood by members of the House of Commons, who continued to confuse establishment with endowment and the true and spiritual nature of the Church with its political and economic benefits. The magazine thus asserted: “The Irish Church, continuous in history and succession from the earliest days of the Church, and in full spiritual communion with the Established Church of England, will not cease to exist, however ruthlessly its temporal rights be torn away from it. It may be feeble in organization, deficient in zeal, earnestness and faith, yet, no Act of Parliament can make a Church other than its Divine Founder made it.”88 Such principles, the journal contended, had been ignored in the quest for power by members of Parliament. They were also an ominous portent, prefiguring the disendowment of the Church of England. But the argument did not end there. Raising the whole issue of the connection of church and state, the author cited a work entitled Letters on the Church, which had apparently influenced John Henry Newman’s thinking on these issues. Letters on the Church, he suggested, claims for the Church of England a distinct corporate character, a spiritual sovereignty independent of the State, whose golden chains have been too closely fastened about the Church in England. Very strongly does the writer protest against what he terms the double usurpation, viz., the interference of the State in spirituals, and of the Church in temporals. On the one hand this state of things involves the Ministers of the Church in duties and offices which do not properly pertain to them; and on the other hand it prevents the Church from exercising that discipline within its own body, which, in the early ages of Christianity, it always did exercise, and with so beneficial an effect.89

Indeed, the writer went so far as to suggest that the disestablishment of the church, if this did not involve its disendowment, might be the best thing for its spiritual health. In a telling point, he asserted that “the Church of Christ, the cause of truth, has ever suffered less from

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persecution than from prosperity; the favour of princes and states was more fatal to it than their animosity.”90 Finally, the fiery trials that the churches in Britain were undergoing gave the magazine occasion to reflect on the different situation occupied by the colonial church. Thus the colonial churches were a demonstration to the churches in Britain of “that which appears so very hard to realize to the minds of many at home: the possibility of having a church without an establishment; Bishops, without the imposing externals, which surround them at home, clergy poorer than they are at home, and pastoral work without distinct parochial limits. The inherent vitality and indestructability of the Church, which so many seem unable to believe, is attested by the living testimony of actual fact.”91 The last major issue confronted by the Lennoxville Magazine was that of ritualism. Again, this was an issue that went back to the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s. Tractarian teaching and ritualistic practice resulted in a series of prosecutions from the 1850s down to the 1880s (four of the six practices were ruled illegal), the establishment of a Royal Commission on Ritual (which was quite critical of ritualism), and ultimately, various attempts to regulate liturgical practice through legislation in the British Parliament, culminating in the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874.92 Ritualists had founded the Society of the Holy Cross in 1855 and the English Church Union in 1859–60 to defend ritualism and ritualists. The Evangelicals had responded in 1865 with the establishment of the Church Association to defend against Romanizing trends in the Church of England. Much of the public Evangelical opposition to both Tractarianism and ritualism was led by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury, the great social reformer, represented what James Bentley has called “the conscience of Victorian England.” He was implacably hostile to both Tractarian teaching and ritualistic practice. Like most Evangelicals, he regarded them as an attempt to return the Church of England to the Roman fold, in belief and practice if not in name. Between 1865 and 1872 Shaftesbury took the lead in introducing anti-ritualist bills into the House of Lords.93 It was against this backdrop of litigation, royal commissions, legislation, and armed camps of ritualists and anti-ritualists that the observations of the Lennoxville Magazine need to be viewed. It took up the issue in January 1868 with reference to the first recommendations of the royal commission, Shaftesbury’s Vestment Bill, and a memorial to the commission by a meeting of High Churchmen. The views expressed at this meeting were characterized by “moderation and charity.” The magazine’s plea was that “the comprehensiveness of the Church of England be not destroyed by hasty legislation.” “There

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seems, indeed,” it observed, “no sufficient ground for attempting to exclude from that communion its High Church members, who form well nigh half the whole body.” To do so would be to irreparably weaken it, making it unable to withstand the threats from Roman Catholicism. Thus the writer went on to say that “Lord Shaftesbury might live to regret that he had destroyed the only organization, which he has openly declared that he believes to be the only one capable of resisting Papal encroachments.”94 In April the magazine returned to this issue of ritualism, criticizing a recent resolution by the bishops in the Upper House of Convocation. It argued that the bishops’ actions had settled none of the issues, but also suggested that “nor can any good be effected by a rule, which, while it limits ritual observances on the side of excess, does nothing to touch the case of clergy who are too indolent to do their proper work, and, while living upon the temporalities of a parish, allow the parishioners to starve spiritually.” Moreover, to let Parliament decide such issues was very dangerous indeed: “The attempt to effect this might effect too much, and Parliament, acting as mediator to the two Church parties, might destroy both instead of repressing one.”95 In June 1868 the Lennoxville Magazine again broached the subject of ritualism, this time with a glance at the judgment made by Sir R. Phillimore in the Court of Arches.96 What had been hoped for was a decision that would set the matter of ritualism to rest, at least for a while, and so “permit members of that Church to unite in meeting the terrible attacks which are being made against her, both from within and without.”97 Of primary concern was that this interminable strife and litigation over matters of ritual were dissipating the Church of England’s energies to such an extent that “the day may be past when the English Church has strength to resist the attacks made upon her doctrine by the inroads of heresy, and upon her position by the attacks of secularists.”98 While the heretics were not identified, this was probably a reference to both the contributors to Essays and Reviews and Bishop Colenso. Given the repeated calls for unity and the fact that much of the anti-ritualist litigation originated in the Evangelical camp, it is unlikely that the magazine was referring to the Evangelicals as heretics. Describing the Lennoxville Magazine’s precise position on matters of ritual is more problematic. Commenting on a paper on “Public Worship” delivered at the biennial visitation of the lord bishop of Quebec, James Williams, held at Bishop’s College, the magazine remarked that “nothing could be more cheering that the unanimous, hearty assent of the Clergy to the obligation of daily Common Prayer, the weekly celebration of the Holy Communion, and to the distinctive position of this blessed Sacrament as the Church’s perpetual sacrifice of praise and

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thanksgiving. We were not less pleased with the generous tone of the Clergy with what is popularly known as Ritualism.”99 In September 1868 it returned once again to the subject of ritualism, this time in reference to perhaps the most notorious of the extreme ritualists in England, Alexander Heriot Mackonochie.100 The Lennoxville Magazine characterized Mackonochie as an extreme Evangelical who had become an extreme ritualist. His actions at St Alban’s, Holborn, in London’s east end, were seen as having outrun the intentions of its founder and patron, Mr Hubbard.101 Hubbard’s recently published correspondence in the Times was noted, and Mackonochie was criticized for “imprudence and indiscretion” and “breech of obligation in carrying on the services in a manner which has caused difficulties, not only in the Church at large, but with his own friends and supporters.” In this affair the magazine expressed sympathy with Hubbard’s views over against those of Mackonochie, especially in the former’s attempt “to restrain such usages and practices as seemed, not only to himself, but also to many sincere friends of the Church, incompatible both with the law of the English Church and the spirit of our Liturgy.”102 In 1868 the Upper House (of Bishops) of the Provincial Synod in Canada passed a series of resolutions upholding the recent decision of the Court of Arches in England in its condemnation of ritualistic practice, namely, the elevation of the elements in celebrating Holy Communion, the use of incense during services, the mixing of water with wine, and the use of wafer bread. The matters still sub judice in England – the use of altar lights and vestments – were disapproved of, pending final legal decisions. The resolutions of the Upper House were conveyed to the Lower House, and after considerable discussion, which was “unfortunately made to hinge upon party faction,” they were subsequently adopted by the Lower House. The Lennoxville Magazine congratulated the Provincial Synod in steering a “moderate” course through dangerous waters: “No members of the Canadian Church uses extreme ritual; nor can its sincerest friend, or those who heartily join in the prayer that the kingdom of Christ should be extended in this realm, seek its introduction.”103 Thompson’s convocation sermon of 1864 suggested that the church looked to the University of Bishop’s College “for instruction and guidance in the impending conflict between Faith and Scepticism – if not for the actual solution of difficulties, at all events for the spirit in which they are to be met.”104 The sense of threat and urgency that characterized his address resonated in the Lennoxville Magazine. The cry of the church in danger had been a recurrent one in the history of Anglicanism since the early days of Queen Anne’s reign (1702–14). Echoes had been heard more recently in John Keble’s 1833 sermon on “National

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Apostasy,” an important benchmark in the early history of the Oxford Movement. Then the threats were from Erastian governments that had failed to preserve and protect the national church; now they came from a rogue bishop in South Africa, liberal churchmen in the University of Oxford, and over, zealous Evangelicals bent on eradicating ritualism and what they perceived as the trojan horse of Tractarianism. As active participants in these debates, the Lennoxville Magazine and the University of Bishop’s College continued to sustain a vision of church and university that was rooted in an Anglican High Church tradition and borne by an Anglo-American Atlantic culture.

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Epilogue

On 8 January 1863, two days after the death of George Mountain, a writer in the Quebec Mercury undertook a review of the life and ministry of the third bishop of Quebec, drawing attention to some of the highlights of a rich life whose involvement in diocesan affairs spanned some fifty years. He commented on Mountain’s indefatigable missionary energy, noting his philanthropic involvement with both the Quebec orphan asylum and the Finlay Asylum “for the aged and friendless poor” and his untiring ministrations to the dying victims of the cholera and typhus epidemics. Mountain’s concern for the financial stability of the diocese had resulted in the establishment of a Church Society. As important as these activities were, the writer took particular note of two of Bishop Mountain’s accomplishments. The establishment and nurturing of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, was the project that Mountain “always considered as the most important work of his life.” However, what this anonymous writer regarded as Mountain’s most significant monument was the establishment of a diocesan synod. Indeed, he went so far as to suggest that “we may say with truth that synodical action in the Colonial Church owes its existence, under God, to him.”1 Jeffery Hale died at Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England, on 13 November 1864. As with many Evangelicals of his generation, his life had been characterized by “activism.”2 A death notice in the Quebec Mercury described Hale as “in an eminent degree the poor man’s friend.” It went on to state that, eminently religious, always cheerful, he made it his business in life to visit the families of the humbler classes, to erect and maintain schools for the religious

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education of the young in every class in society, to show to the world that protestantism is something more than a mere name, that there could be protestant homes and protestant hospitals, as well as protestant schools and protestant churches, and that … there is a broader base in protestantism than mere churchism.3

Hale was involved in most of Quebec City’s philanthropic activities.4 He helped establish local auxiliaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. He was one of the founders of the Quebec City Mission and a firm supporter of the Ladies’ Protestant Home. In a memorial address to the Free Chapel Sunday School at Quebec, the Reverend D. Marsh likened Jeffery Hale’s life to that of David. “He, like David, lived not for himself, but served his generation. Not as some, who think to compensate an indolent and selfish life by charitable bequests, he consecrated his living, active powers, to the service of his fellowmen. Piety was the grand feature of his character.”5 According to Marsh, Hale “was ever ready to aid in any undertaking which was truly charitable and philanthropic,” though “those public and united efforts which are decidedly religious in their character, and whose direct aim is the salvation of men, held the first place in his esteem.”6 Above all of his other philanthropic activities, Marsh suggested that it was the Free Chapel Sunday School which would stand as Hale’s most important legacy.7 He also pointed out that while Hale was “unwavering in his attachment to the Church of England,” he did not possess a sectarian spirit. “One name was above every name to him, and whoever worthily confessed and bore that name, he loved and honoured; and earnestly longed for the unity of all who are in Christ Jesus.”8 Hale’s life was also characterized by a warm-hearted evangelical piety. He was “a man of prayer, which he carried into everything that he deemed worthy to be pursued.”9 The deaths of George Mountain in 1863 and Jeffery Hale in 1864 marked the end of a significant era in the history of Anglicanism in Quebec. In their own particular ways, they illustrate important aspects of cultural transmission and diffusion within the Atlantic world. Both came from important imperial families. Each represented a distinct and vibrant intellectual and theological tradition within Anglicanism. At the same time, Mountain and Hale shared a much prized British Protestant heritage. Both were high-minded and serious. They shared a desire to pursue personal holiness and public integrity. In a different time and place they might have been able to stand united against those cultural forces which threatened to undo all that they held dear. The Mountains had dominated the diocese of Quebec since its creation in 1793, and this dominance might well have continued for an-

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other quarter-century had George’s son Armine been successful in his bid to replace his father as bishop at the synod of 1863. From the very beginning they had attempted, with considerable success, to stamp a particular brand of English High Churchmanship on the diocese. Jeffery Hale, on the other hand, represented the very best face of English Evangelicalism: deep personal piety, a commitment to domestic evangelism and foreign missions, and a warm-hearted philanthropic impulse that sought to improve the material and spiritual condition of those around him. When he died in 1864, Quebec Anglican Evangelicalism lost its acknowledged leader. No one immediately emerged to replace him. While he lived, Hale had stood at the centre of a remarkable group of Quebec Evangelicals that included C.L.F. Haensel, Isaac Hellmuth, Gilbert Percy, and Edmund Willoughby Sewell. Together with Hale, these four men represented a striking cross-section of transatlantic Evangelicalism: Haensel, the German Lutheran who had cast his lot with the Church of England and served as a cms missionary in Sierra Leone and Jamaica before his arrival at Quebec; Hellmuth, the Polish Jew who had sat at the feet of Hugh McNeile in Liverpool and who brought to Quebec a Recordite tradition with a confrontational style suited the temper of the times; Percy, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, representing the dynamics of resurgent Evangelicalism in the Church of Ireland; and Sewell, who for more than forty years kept the Evangelical fires burning at Trinity Chapel, Quebec. Perhaps never before or since had such a group of Evangelicals been together at Quebec. But within a few years the brilliance of their light had begun to fade. The Berean ceased publication in 1850, and Haensel moved to the Church of the Ascension in Hamilton in 1856. Isaac Hellmuth left the Diocese of Quebec for Huron, where he succeeded Benjamin Cronyn as bishop and was instrumental in the founding of the University of Western Ontario. For decades Trinity Chapel, Quebec City, was the centre of Evangelicalism in the diocese. Its constitution as a proprietary chapel had kept it free from High Church influence for the first two-thirds of the century. Although in 1868 it became a chapel of the garrison at Quebec and it closed its doors for six years after the last of the British troops were withdrawn in 1871,10 it reopened in 1877 and continued as one of the few clearly identifiable Evangelical churches in the diocese for the next century. Gilbert Percy left the diocese and returned to Dublin, where he seems to have entered the law.11 Since the earliest days of French settlement, Quebec had been part of a North European Atlantic world. The British Conquest of 1759–63 had altered perceptively the axis on which this world tilted, but had also strengthened the transatlantic connection in measurable ways. No longer would Quebec be merely a clearing house for furs, a missionary

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experiment, or a strategic counter to be played against the Thirteen Colonies. It would become an integrated part of an expanding British Empire and global presence. The establishment and refinement of British institutions and structures of governance during the period between Wolfe’s victory and the Constitutional Act of 1791 meant that the public face of Quebec would be stamped with an indelible British mark. Just as the initial trickle of British emigrants gave way to waves of settlers in the decades following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, so too the British image and character of the province was extended and deepened. Britons on both sides of the Atlantic maintained extensive political, commercial, and religious networks. Thus was the attachment of Quebec to London, Westminster, and Canterbury sustained over the entire century covered by this study. English or Irish identity was not simply a matter of national origin; it was a question of remaining British. It was an identity that was nurtured and sustained through ongoing contact between the imperial centre and the colonial periphery. Religious identity was of the very essence of the matter. This was not a secular age, but one in which religion did not just animate private conduct but framed virtually all public debates.12 Even for those whose participation in the everyday life of the church was minimal at best, religion was an inescapable part of the culture in which they lived. The built environment pointed to the reality of two religious communities – one Protestant, the other Roman Catholic – struggling for cultural authority over the same public space. The pealing of church bells, the street drama of a corpus christi parade, and the calendrical celebrations that marked out the passage of time were audible and visible reminders of the spiritual realities animating the everyday lives of Quebec’s two religious solitudes. Anglicans were a conspicuous part of Quebec’s Protestant culture. As the single largest Protestant group in nineteenth-century Quebec, they by their numbers alone would have been assured a visible place in both town and countryside. Moreover, their historical connections to the English state and the privileges they enjoyed in the early part of the century helped shape their self-identity as the Protestant elite of the province. It was especially the view of High Church Anglicans that they stood apart from the rest of the Protestant rabble. The language of Church and Dissent was easily transported to British North America, despite the failure of succeeding generations of British imperial officials to make image comport with constitutional reality. The Mountain family had, from the earliest days, stamped the cultural and social imperatives of this English High Churchmanship on the diocese. In his 1847 address, with which we began this study, George Mountain had drawn attention to the feelings, principles, and institutions

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that Englishmen carried with them to the farthest reaches of the globe. He might have added a comment concerning the migration of English controversies as well. By virtue of its geographical location, Quebec had always been an important part of the Atlantic world. Religious principles and controversies were an integral aspect of this Atlantic empire, and never more so than in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Two visions of the character of Anglicanism and, indeed, of the Christian faith itself were locked in a struggle for the hearts and minds of Anglo-Protestant Quebecers. The 1830s were the defining decade for imperial Anglicans. The attempts by Newman, Keble, Pusey, and Froude to remake the Church of England in a more Catholic direction politicized that communion in ways hitherto unknown and unwelcomed. The Oxford Movement opened up deep wounds in church, nation, and empire that were not easily closed. The reverberations from the Oxford Movement were felt in every diocese in British North America. Suspicions between Evangelicals and High Churchmen were deepened and intensified. In Quebec these controversies became intertwined with the issues surrounding the role of voluntary religious societies and the constitutional form of episcopal government. The introduction of synodical government in the late 1850s brought Evangelicals and High Churchmen into open warfare with each other. Yet to state the case so runs the risk of giving the impression that these disputes were about power as an end in itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both sides operated from the high ground of principle and were convinced that their understanding of doctrine and liturgy was a more faithful representation of what it meant to be Anglican. High Churchmen were convinced that Evangelicals’ attachment to the Church of England was lukewarm, while Evangelicals saw those High Churchmen who had been influenced by Tractarianism as occupying a way station on the road to Rome. These were battles to preserve the authentic tradition of Anglicanism. In the 1860s, Evangelicals and High Churchmen were united in their opposition to Broad Church rationalism. Essays and Reviews and the theological pronouncements of John William Colenso drew fire from both quarters. However, by the nature of the case, this proved to be a short-lived tactical alliance. The two groups might have fought shoulder to shoulder in defence of Trinitarian orthodoxy and the plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture, but there simply were not enough Broad Churchmen around in the colonies to make this a long-term threat and force a truce between the two great parties in the church. In July 1802, while Britain enjoyed a temporary hiatus in the struggle against its implacable foe, France, Jacob Mountain wrote another

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of his interminable letters to George Pretyman Tomline, the bishop of Lincoln, seeking translation to an English bishopric. Expressing his concern for the future prospects of his sons George and Jacob, he intimated to Pretyman Tomline that “the situation of the Church is not such as can make us entertain any thought of fixing them here as Clergymen.”13 Jacob’s political connections may have got him into Quebec, but they could not get him out. He never did get the translation he had so long sought after, and while his eldest son obtained a parish in England after going down from Cambridge, George returned to Quebec. George Mountain never seems to have felt as abandoned at Quebec as his father had. Living through one of the most dynamic periods in the history of Anglicanism, he sought to remain faithful to the High Church tradition in which he had been raised and to stamp this brand of churchmanship on the diocese. The Mountains ultimately succeeded, but not without a fight.

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Notes

a b b r e v i at i o n s u s e d i n t h e n o t e s bua dca dcb deb dnb gsa mda qda sro tfrbl

Bishop’s University Archives Reid et al., Dictionary of Christianity in America Dictionary of Canadian Biography Lewis, Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography Dictionary of National Biography General Synod Archives Montreal Diocesan Archives Quebec Diocesan Archives Suffolk Record Office Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto

introduction 1 G.J. Mountain, Responsibilities of Englishmen in the Colonies, 5. 2 Huron Synod Journal, 1863; quoted in Crowfoot, This Dreamer, 26. 3 For a convenient sketch of the life of McNeile, on which the foregoing is dependant, see Ian S. Rennie, “Hugh McNeile,” deb, 2: 731–2. 4 For a convenient sketch of Hellmuth’s life, see Richard W. Vaudry, “Isaac Hellmuth,” deb, 1: 542. 5 Hellmuth, Reply to a Letter of the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Montreal, 4. 6 Ibid., 9. Fulford later claimed “that in my own diocese, the clergy as a body are faithfully Evangelical, several of them accepted by me from the Committee of the Colonial Church and School Society, – but not acting as

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226 Notes to pages 5–7

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15

16

17 18 19

members of a party …” Quoted in Hellmuth, Reply to a Third Letter of the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Montreal. Bailyn, “The Idea of Atlantic History,” 32. Pocock, “The New British History in Atlantic Perspective,” 497. Ibid., 492. A recent attempt to put empire back into the history of British North America/Canada is Mancke, “Another British America.” For a good introduction to this literature, see Connors and Falconer, “Cornering the Cheshire Cat.” An interesting exploration of this issue can be found in Jeremy Black, “Confessional State or Elect Nation? Religion and Identity in EighteenthCentury England,” in Clayton and McBride, Protestantism and National Identity, 53–74. For example, the recent collection edited by Claydon and McBride, Protestantism and National Identity, leaves British North America/Canada out of the picture. Buckner, “Whatever Happened to the British Empire?” bua, Jasper Nicolls Papers, Armine Mountain to Harriet Nicolls, n.d. This letter is also quoted in Masters and Masters, Ten Rings on the Oak, 99. On this idea of the Atlantic as a filter, see Ted A. Campbell’s article, “Evangelical Institutionalization and Evangelical Sectarianism in Early Nineteeth-Century Britain and America.” See especially his comment that “the Atlantic Ocean served as a kind of cultural filter through which institutionalized forms of evangelicalism passed much more readily than evangelicalism’s more radical forms” (121). I find John Brewer’s use of the term “alternative structure of politics” particularly apposite in any discussion of church structures and conflict. See his Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George iii. Quoted in Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 1: 319. Conybeare, “Church Parties,” 273. Kent, “Anglican Evangelicalism in the West of England, 1858–1900,” 191. English historian Frances Knight has argued recently for jettisoning this conflict paradigm as irrelevant for studying Anglicanism as the parish level. She declares in the introduction to her study of popular Anglicanism that “there is a deliberate avoidance of an interpretation based on the rise of party … this approach arises from the conviction that labels of churchmanship do not always offer much assistance in the quest to uncover the concerns of lay members of the Church of England” (Nineteenth-Century Church and English Society, 19). Despite the obvious merits of such an approach, which takes popular religion seriously, I would suggest that in some respects it overstates the case. To cite but one example, the young Henry Roe, ensconced in his first pastoral charge in Megantic County, Canada East, recorded in his journal for 1 September 1852 that he had “had [a]long chat with Mr Radford about ‘Puseyism› (gsa, Mountain-Hale-Jarvis Collection, Journal of Henry Roe).

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227 Notes to pages 7–9

20

21

22

23 24 25

26

27 28

William Westfall has recently argued that the Evangelical versus High Church paradigm has outlived its utility. See his “Constructing Public Religions at Private Sites: The Anglican Church in the Shadow of Disestablishment,” in Van Die, Religion and Public Life in Canada, 43. I would argue, however, that he has not been entirely able to break free of these categories. While I agree that the High Church/Evangelical taxonomy can sometimes serve to obscure other issues and movements, it can never be completely abandoned in studies of (at least) the nineteenth-century Anglican experience. Carrington, Anglican Church in Canada, 13. Cf. Christopher Headon’s comment about J. Langtry that he was a typical High Churchman, “loathing the extreme low churchmen of Quebec (“Influence of the Oxford Movement,” x–xi). Three fairly recent studies, set alongside the work of the past twenty years by Fahey, Westfall, Hayes, Headon, Turner, and others, would suggest this shift. See Roper, “Evangelical-Tractarian Conflict over Divinity Education at the University of King’s College”; Faught, “John Charles Roper and the Oxford Movement in Toronto”; Marks, “William S. Rainsford.” Hayes, By Grace Co-Workers, and Fahey, In His Name, do much to advance our understanding of Anglicanism in Upper Canada/Ontario. M.E. Reisner’s recent study of the Diocese of Quebec, Strangers and Pilgrims, while not completely ignoring the Evangelical/High Church split, does not give it as much prominence as I believe it deserves. Millman, “Beginnings of the Synodical Movement,” 14. Conybeare, “Church Parties,” 274. This tendency to treat Evangelical Anglicans as Low Churchmen is so widespread as to defy a simple citation. Convenient examples will be found in Kenyon, “Influence of the Oxford Movement upon the Church of England in Upper Canada,” and in the index to Fahey, In His Name: “Evangelicals. See Low Church,” 341. See A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 250, for Mountain’s comments concerning Low Churchmen. It should be noted that this was the terminology employed by noted Oxford apologists such as Thomas Mozley; see his Reminiscences Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, 1: 183. Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge, 223. The caricatures and misrepresentations are beginning to crumble on both sides of the Atlantic. The best introduction to evangelicalism in Britain is David Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. A work that advances our understanding of evangelicalism in British North America/Canada is Rawlyk, ed., Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience. One of the few Canadian historians who understood and wrote sensitively on both Anglican Evangelicals and High Churchmen was D.C. Masters. Masters was himself an Evangelical Anglican who wrote a number of valuable articles on

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228 Notes to pages 10–14

29

30 31

32 33

34

Bishop George Mountain and Principal Jasper Nicolls in Quebec and on Toronto Evangelical Anglicans. The passages cited can be found in Black’s dissertation, “Crippled Crusade,” xxiii, 40–1, 64n61, 248, 395, 407. Black’s equation of Evangelicalism with Whig politics is curious, given that in other places he sees Evangelicals as Tories. Black also sees Evangelicalism as the midwife to emerging industrial capitalism. Cf. “Anglicans and French-Canadian Evangelism, 1839–1848,” and “Different Visions.” Black’s work has influenced that of Noel in Christie Seigneuries, especially chapter 5, “A Troubled Inheritance.” Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 264. See “Tomline, George Pretyman,” in dnb; Millman, Jacob Mountain, 293. Reisner, Stranger and Pilgrims, fails to make this connection as well. Despite my disagreement with the late Dr Millman on many points, my indebtedness to his pioneering work on Quebec Anglicans should be obvious. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, 210. The failure to analyze Quebec’s religious culture in general and its Protestant culture in particular is evident in two recent books: Young and Dickinson, Short History of Quebec, and Linteau, Durocher, and Robert, Quebec: A History, 1867–1929. Of all the main protagonists, Percy has proved the most elusive.

chapter one 1 These details are taken from Millman, Jacob Mountain, 4–19. The Quebec Gazette of 22 August 1793 reprinted a comment from a London paper that Mountain’s “appointment to the new See of Quebec he owes to the friendly offices of his patron the Bishop of Lincoln” (quoted Millman, Jacob Mountain, 6). Cf. the comment in the Dictionary of National Biography: “These preferments he owed to the friendship of William Pitt who also, on Dr. Tomline’s recommendation, procured for him the appointment of the first Anglican bishop of Quebec.” 2 T.R. Millman, “Jacob Mountain,” dcb, 6: 523–9. The importance of such family migrations to the religious history of British North America can also be illustrated by reference to the Cronyns and the Blakes, who emigrated from Ireland to Upper Canada in the early 1830s. Benjamin Cronyn and Dominic Blake had been students together at Trinity College, Dublin, and both had been ordained in the Church of Ireland. They were part of the new wave of Evangelicalism that had begun to wash over that branch of the Anglican communion. Cronyn would become the single most important Evangelical Anglican in Upper Canada in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Blakes would become not only important to Upper Canadian and later Ontarian Anglicanism but also leaders in poli-

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229 Notes to pages 14–18

3 4 5

6 7

8 9 10

11

tics and the law. Dominic Blake’s brother, William Hume Blake, became an important jurist and politician in Upper Canada in the union period of the 1840s and 1850s, serving as solicitor general in the BaldwinLafontaine administration and later as both chancellor of Upper Canada and a judge in the Court of Error and Appeal. His sons, Edward and Samuel Hume, were also important members of the legal and political establishments in Ontario. Edward held a number of portfolios in Alexander Mackenzie’s government of 1873–78, including that of minister of justice, and later became leader of the Liberal Party. Samuel Hume Blake was probably the most important Evangelical Anglican layman in latenineteenth-century Ontario. Like the Mountains and Nicolls, the Blakes and Cronyns formed a single family entity. All of Benjamin Cronyn’s children married children of William Hume Blake: Margaret Cronyn married Edward Blake, Vershoyle Cronyn married Sophia Blake, and Rebecca Cronyn married Samuel Hume Blake. See Crowfoot, Benjamin Cronyn; Richard W. Vaudry, “Benjamin Cronyn,” deb, 1: 271; James J. Talman, “Benjamin Cronyn,” dcb. 10: 205–10. Robert Hamilton Vetch, “Armine Simcoe Henry Mountain, dnb, 13: 1102–4. On this subject, see Berkin, Jonathan Sewall. F. Murray Greenwood and, James H. Lambert, “Jonathan Sewell,” dcb, 7: 782–92. This brief sketch of Sewell’s life draws on Greenwood and Lambert’s article. Christine Veilleux, “John Hale,” dcb, 7: 372–3. Pierre B. Landry, “Elizabeth Frances Amherst,” dcb, 6: 9; C.P. Stacey, “Jeffery Amherst,” dcb, 4: 20–6; Concise Dictionary of National Biography, 1: 47–8; Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 26. Concise Dictionary of National Biography, 1: 47–8; Louis-Philippe Audet, “Edward Hale,” dcb, 10: 326–7. Audet, “Edward Hale,” dcb, 10: 326–7; Robert Garon, “Jeffery Hale,” dcb, 9: 347–8; Vaudry, “Jeffery Hale,” deb, 1: 503. As Phillip Buckner has recently argued,“as travel back and forth became relatively easy there was an ever larger flow of visitors in both directions and communications between the colonies (especially the North American colonies) and Britain became ever quicker and more reliable” (“Whatever Happened to the British Empire?” 22). Rudin, Foregotten Quebecers. The English-speaking population was concentrated in the five regions of historic English settlement: Quebec City, Montreal, the Ottawa Valley, the Eastern Townships, and the Gaspé. English speakers comprised significant percentages of the populations of these regions for much of the nineteenth century, though their numbers declined significantly in the last third of the century. Ronald Rudin has estimated that in 1861, 44 per cent of the Quebec City population was English-

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230 Notes to pages 18–21

12

13 14 15 16 17

18

19 20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33

speaking, as was over 50 per cent of that of Montreal, the Ottawa Valley, and the Eastern Townships, while one-quarter of the population of the Gaspé was English-speaking. These figures are derived from those cited in Phyllis Airhart, “Ordering a New Nation and Reordering Protestantism, 1867–1914,” in Rawlyk, Canadian Protestant Experience, 1760–1990, 102–4. Ibid. Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840,” 193. Census of Canada, 1861. The five were Argenteuil, Brome, Compton, Huntingdon, and Missisquoi. The counties were Argenteuil, Bonaventure, Chateauguay, Compton, Drummond, Gaspé and Magdalen Islands, Huntingdon, Megantic, Missisquoi, Montcalm, Ottawa, Pontiac, Quebec, Richmond, Shefford, St John’s, and Stanstead. Cooper concluded as much in his “Irish Immigration and the Canadian Church before the Middle of the 19th Century,” 13. For the Irish in Quebec generally, see Grace, Irish in Quebec; Cross, “Irish in Montreal.” Cross, “Irish in Montreal,” 10. With the caveat, as Robert Grace points out, that “the census defined ancestry through the father [and thus] a Canadian with an Irish mother and a French Canadian father would not be listed as Irish” (Irish in Quebec). Grace, Irish in Quebec; Houston and Smyth note an Irish Protestant settlement in villages of the Eastern Townships such as Kinnear’s Mills, Broughton, and Leed (Irish Immigration and Canadian Settlement, 215). Darroch and Ornstein, “Ethnicity and Occupational Structure in Canada in 1871.” Ibid., 314–15. Bliss, Clerical Guide. Cross, “Irish in Montreal,” 111–17. Quebec Gazette, November 7, 1793. Sewell, Account of Vessels Arrived at Quebec in the Year 1793. See Quebec Gazette, 28 June 1764, 4. See Montreal Gazette, 27 August 1793, 30 July 1798. Many Canadian historians, enmeshed for generations in staples theory, with its emphasis on the exportation of natural products, have largely ignored the demand side of the economic equation and have accordingly paid scant attention to consumer demand and the cultural meanings attached to possessions. For some good comments on staples theory from an American historian, see Breen, “Empire of Goods,” 475. Lennoxville Magazine, January 1868, 49. McKendrick, “Consumer Revolution of Eighteenth-Century England,” 11. On this subject see Miquelon, New France, 1701–1744, especially chapter 7, “Quebec and the Atlantic”; Ouellet, “Colonial Economy and the World

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231 Notes to pages 21–5

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57

Market,” 211; Bosher, Canada Merchants, 1713–1763; Bosher, Business and Religion in the Age of New France. Cf. the comment by Harris and Warkentin: “For French Canadians, France was a totally inaccessible and, especially after the Revolution, an increasingly alien land” (Canada before Confederation, 66). Taylor and Baskerville, Concise History of Business in Canada, 77; Norrie and Owram, Economic History of Canada, 134. Ouellet, “Colonial Economy and the World Market,” 219–20. Philip Buckner, “Making British North America British, 1815–1860,” in Eldridge, Kith and Kin, 25. McKendrick, “Consumer Revolution of eighteenth-Century England,” 9; Breen, “Empire of Goods”; cf. Breen, ‹Baubles of Britain.› G.P. Browne, “Arthur Davidson,” dcb, 5: 224–6; McCord Museum McCord Family Papers, 1766–1945, 1: Inventory. McCord Museum, Arthur Davidson Papers, Arthur Davidson to Walter Davidson, 20 October 1788. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to Walter Davidson, 6 August 1789. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to John Davidson, 25 March 1780. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to John Chalmers, October 1778. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to Messrs, Whieldon & Butterworth, 7 December 1791; Arthur Davidson to J. Butterworth, 22 July 1799. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to John Chalmers, 8 November 1790. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to John Chalmers, 25 June 1791. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to Joseph Brasbridge, 17 October 1787. Ibid., Arthur Davidson to Charles Mitchell, 18 October 1790. On the Quebec Coffee House, see Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses, 461. Breen, “Empire of Goods,” 489–97. Stout, Divine Dramatist, xviii. Schlenther, “Religious Faith and Commercial Empire,” 128. Cf. Breen’s comment that “Parliament managed to politicize these consumer goods, and when it did so, manufactured items suddenly took on a radical new symbolic function” (‹Baubles of Britain,› 76). Lawson observes, “From the 1720s on tea became a vehicle of writers, satirists and artists to convey messages and codes about common cultural values in the Anglo-American world” (“Sources, Schools and Separation: The Many Faces of Parliament’s Role in Anglo-American History to 1783,” in Lawson, Parliament and the Atlantic Empire, 23). Hawkins, Annals of the Diocese of Quebec, 104; Millman, Life of … Charles James Stewart, 41n1. O’Brien, “Transatlantic Community of Saints,” 814. O’Brien, “Eighteenth-Century Publishing Networks,” 41. Ibid., 44. Cressy, Coming Over, 235.

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232 Notes to pages 25–33 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83

Porter, “Religion and Empire,” 379. Fetherling, Rise of the Canadian Newspaper, 7–11 Rutherford, Victorian Authority, 44. Don Lewis of Regent College, Vancouver, graciously supplied me with information about the Record. Henry Roe of Quebec acted as correspondent for both the London Guardian and the New York Church Journal (Allan Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 887–9). Rutherford, Victorian Authority, 39. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 26. Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, (London, 1838); quoted in Firth, Early Toronto Newspapers, 13. Canada Directory for 1857–58, 435. Ibid., 453–4. Millman, Jacob Mountain, 297. Quoted in Beaulieu and Hamelin, Presse québécoise, 1: 59. Ibid., 1: 62. On the Banner, see my “Peter Brown, the Toronto Banner, and the Evangelical Mind in Victorian Canada.” On the Gavazzi riots in Montreal, see Elinor Senior, British Regulars in Montreal. BUA, Jasper Nicolls Papers, Armine W. Mountain to Harriet Nicolls, 3 September 1853. Cressy, Coming Over, 213. sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Eliza Mountain to Elizabth Pretyman, 28 January 1794 (ha 119: 503/5/2). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 13 August 1797 (ha 119/ 540/1/25). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Tomline, 1795 [probably 25 January] (ha 119:540/4/2). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 11 August 1798 (ha 119: 540/4/3). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, February 1794; (ha 119: 503/5/3); Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 7 October 1809 (ha 119: 540/4/11a). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 5 August 1797. (ha 119: 540/1/25). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 14 November 1809 (ha 119: 540/4/12). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 26 September [probably 1806] (ha 119: 540/5/14). Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman [probably 1808] (ha 119: 540/5/18a); 23 April [probably 1808] (ha 119: 540/5/28b).

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233 Notes to pages 33–6 84 Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 27 May 1805 (ha 119: 540/ 4/8). 85 Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 28 July [probably 1808] (ha 119: 540/1/16). 86 Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, July [sometime between 1806 and 1808] (ha 119: 540/5/25). 87 On the role of women and children in such societies, see Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in 19th Century England. 88 Strictly speaking, there was an earlier society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, which was founded in 1649. See Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 219. 89 Quoted in Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., 1298. 90 One must not draw too fine a distinction here. The spck, for example, appointed its own missionaries to South India in the early eighteenth century. See Neill, Anglicanism, 211. 91 Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 220. 92 Neill, Anglicanism, 198. 93 Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 220. 94 Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., 1299. 95 Westfall, Two Worlds, 102. 96 For a detailed analysis of the spg’s financial arrangments with the British North American colonies and the implications of these for “the alliance of church and state,” see Westfall, Two Worlds, 102–5. It is Curtis Fahey’s judgment that the Church of England would probably have died without spg support (In His Name, 214). 97 Westfall, Two Worlds, 105. 98 Ibid., 104. 99 Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 138. 100 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 66. Cf Stunt, “Evangelical Cross-Currents in the Church of Ireland.” 101 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 66. 102 Quoted in Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 136. 103 Figures from Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 136. 104 Ibid., 137. 105 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Jacob Mountain to George Pretyman, 14 June 1812 (ha 119: 540/2/16a). 106 On this issue, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 87–8, where he argues that behind this controversy was another over the issue of biblical inspiration. 107 Figures from Woodley, Bible in Canada, 67. 108 Ibid., 84–5.

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234 Notes to pages 36–41 109 110 111 112

113 114

115

116

Ibid., 94. Canada Directory for 1857–58, 454. Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 138. Compare, for example, the list of committee members for the Colonial Church and School Society, the French-Canadian Missionary Society, and the Montreal Auxiliary Bible Society (Canada Directory for 1857–58, 453–4). Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 139. Cf. Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, 90–2. Careless, Toronto to 1918, 86. St Lawrence Hall was obviously not devoted entirely to religious purposes but functioned as “the civic forum of the bustling mid-Victorian community.” Carrington, Anglican Church in Canada, 95–6; Report of the First Public Meeting of the Montreal Association in Aid of the Colonial Church and School Society of London; Bollen, “English Christianity and the Austalian Colonies, 1788– 1860,” 379; Statement of the Constitution and Objects of the Colonial Church & School Society; Mission to the Free Colored Population in Canada. Colley, Britons, 18.

chapter two 1 Roe, Sermon Preached at St George’s Church, Lennoxville … for the Observance of the Queen’s Jubilee, 3. 2 See Professor Sharpe’s comment that “the concept of a providential God was central to English protestantism” (Early Modern England, 231). 3 Brock, English Reformation, 5. 4 Colley, Britons, 31. 5 By the terms of the Irish Church Temporalities Act, the united dioceses of Killala and Achonry were joined to that of Tuam in 1834. Tuam ceased to be an archdiocese in 1839 on the death of its incumbent. Power Le Poer Trench, See “Power (Le Poer) Trench,” dnb, 19: 1118. 6 Talman, Huron College, 1863–1963, 26–7; Bliss, Clerical Guide, 269–70. 7 Bliss, Clerical Guide, 269–70. Talman, Huron College, 28–33. Brock’s subsequent appointments included rector of Bishop’s College School, Lennoxville, 1882–83; president and professor of divinity at King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1885–88; and rector of Horton and Kentville, Nova Scotia, 1888–1911. 8 Brock, English Reformation, 8–10. Cf. Henry Roe’s comment that the English Reformation was not instituted by “violent revolution, but a calm and gradual reformation and restoration” (Bicentenary Sermons, 9). 9 Brock, English Reformation, 11–14. One of Brock’s principal historical sources is Strype. For Strype’s place in Reformation historiography, see O’Day, Debate on the English Reformation.

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235 Notes to pages 41–3 10 On this point, see Akenson, Irish in Ontario. Three of the most recent books on Anglicanism in British North America/Canada fail to take seriously enough the Irish dimension: Fahey, In His Name; Hayes, By Grace Co-Workers; and Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims. If Canadian religious historians have failed to understand Anglicanism by ignoring its important Irish dimension, historians of the Irish immigrant experience have misunderstood its religious dimension by uncritically associating religiosity with the Orange Order. Cf. Houston and Smyth, Irish Immigration and Canadian Settlement, especially chapter 6. For example, these authors argue, “All denominations transferred their churches, but for the transplanted communities the politico-religious identities were best summarized by the Catholic church and the Protestants’ Orange Order. The cultural division of Ireland was in essence transferred intact.” “To a large extent, the Protestant component of Irish emigration to British North America was Orange” (151, 186). 11 McLeod, Religion and Society in England, 11–12. 12 Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England, 27. 13 Ibid., 29. 14 The traditional picture of the eighteenth-century Church of England as moribund has undergone significant revision of late. See Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, Church of England c.1689–c.1833. 15 Historians disagree on whether eighteenth-century England ought to be characterized as a “confessional state.” On this issue, see the work of J.C.D. Clark and his critics. 16 On the hegemonic position of the Church of England in the eighteenthcentury, see the work of J.C.D. Clark, for example, Language of Liberty, chapter 2. 17 I am acutely conscious of being an interloper in what is proving to be, of late, a historiographical mindfield. It is, however, necessary to convey some sense of the English ecclesiastical tradition appropriated by Quebec Anglicans. The older views of the English Reformation are best represented by A.G. Dickens and G.R. Elton. The revisionist case is best stated by Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy. The case against revisionism is associated with Diarmaid MacCulloch. Perhaps the best recent survey of the period is found in Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds. 18 Act of Supremacy, 1559 (1 Eliz. i, c.1); quoted in Elton, Tudor Constitution, 373. 19 Williams, Later Tudors, 455; Guy, Tudor England, 298. 20 Williams, Later Tudors, 456–7. 21 Christopher Haigh emphasizes the essentially conservative nature of the Elizabethan Settlement, particularly the Prayer Book (English Reformations, 239–52). 22 With the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, heads of houses had ceased to sit in the House of Lords.

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236 Notes to pages 43–7 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49

Williams, Later Tudors, 457. On this question, see Guy, Tudor England, 290ff. Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship, 6. On this subject, see Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, chapter 9. Guy, Tudor England, 302–3. Ibid., 304. Haigh would emphasize how tentative and localized this process of Protestantization was; others, such as Diarmaid MacCulloch, argue for widespread Protestant success. Cf. MacCulloch, “New Spotlights on the English Reformation,” 319–24. A good summary of the issues can be found in Williams, Later Tudors, 487ff. Ibid., 490–6. The best recent survey of this period is Kishlansky, Monarchy Transformed. Convenient introductions to these and other subjects of this period can be found in Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship; Spurr, Restoration Church, Spurr, English Puritanism. Spurr, Restoration Church, chapter 1. On the failure of Parliament to remake the English church at the parish level, see John Morrill, “The Church of England, 1642–49,” in Nature of the English Revolution. J. Mountain, Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec, 10. Ibid., 25–7. Ibid., 27–8. Quebec Mercury, 3 May 1859. Book of Common Prayer; Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 8. Roe, Bicentenery Sermons, 4. Neill, Anglicanism, 165. Sharpe, Early Modern England, 244; Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 6–7. Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 5; Sykes, Church and State in England in the xviiith Century, 23. Speck, Stability and Strife, 92. Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 11–22. Speck, Stability and Strife, 92. Ibid., 102. Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 3–4. There is not the space here to enter into the recent debate over the character of England in the long eighteenth century as a confessional state. This view is identified most clearly with the work of Jonathan Clark. See Clark, “England’s Ancien Regime as a Confessional State.” Guy, Tudor England, 368; Canny, “Early Modern Ireland, c1500–1700.” Canny, “Early Modern Ireland,” 118. For a recent contribution to the debate on the Reformation in Ireland, see Brendan Bradshaw, “The English Reformation and identity formation in Ireland and Wales,” in Bradshaw and Roberts, British Consciousness and Identity, 43–111.

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237 Notes to pages 47–52 50 Canny, “Early Modern Ireland,” 143. Cf. the comments by Professor J.C. Beckett that in eighteenth-century Ireland there existed “a religious barrier between rulers and ruled, a barrier so deepened and intensified by the wars of the preceding century that it superseded all others” (Anglo-Irish Tradition, 44). 51 R.F. Foster, “Ascendancy and Union,” in Foster, Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, 163. 52 Beckett, Anglo-Irish Tradition, 37. 53 These numbers are derived from Connolly, Religion and Society, 3. 54 Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power, 146. 55 Ibid., 147. 56 On Dublin as a monument to the Protestant Ascendancy, see Beckett, Anglo-Irish Tradition, 67–8. 57 McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 2–4; Connolly, Religion and Society, 4. 58 Connolly, Religion and Society, 4. This is a point made by Akenson, who argues that Irish Anglican immigrants to British North America have been misrepresented because Canadian historians have misunderstood the position of the Church of Ireland in Irish society. He points to the 1861 census as demonstrating that the bulk of Irish Anglicans were from the middle and lower classes (Irish in Ontario, 266). 59 Beckett, Anglo-Irish Tradition, 81. 60 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 6–9. 61 Ibid., 8. 62 Connolly, Religion and Society, 7. 63 Ibid., 10. 64 Ibid., 8. 65 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 4. 66 Ibid., 11–17. 67 Ibid., 5. Beckett, however, cautions against any ready identification of the whole of the Ascendancy with a rapacious landlord class (Anglo-Irish Tradition, 88–9). 68 Gilley, “Church of England in the Nineteenth Century,” 293. 69 Connolly, Religion and Society, 28–9. 70 For a brief account of this process, see Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone, 146–50. 71 Connolly, Religion and Society, 32. 72 Walsh and Taylor, “Introduction: The Church and Anglicanism in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century,” in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, Church of England, c.1689–1833, 5. 73 Ibid., 6. 74 Kinnear, “Correction Court in the Diocese of Carlisle, 1704–1756.” 75 Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power, 177.

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238 Notes to pages 52–62 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87 88

89

90

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

Ibid., 177. Quoted in Beckett, Making of Modern Ireland, 281. McDowell, Church of Ireland, 1. Jenkins, Era of Emancipation, 30–1. Markus,”From Rome to the Barbarian Kingdoms,” in McManners, Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, 78. Cf. Cunningham and Reich, Culture and Values, 204–8. There is a growing literature on religious architecture and symbolism in British North America/Canada. Among recent historians, see the work of William Westfall, Brian Clarke, Roberto Perin, and Greg Finley. On the religious/cultural meaning of this difference, see Noll, History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. These images can be conveniently viewed in De Volpi and Scowen, Eastern Townships. Kalman, History of Canadian Architecture, 1: 184–91. Jacob Mountain to Henry Dundas, quoted in Millman, Jacob Mountain, 85. Quoted ibid., 90. Marsan, Montreal in Evolution, 131. Marsan’s and Kalman’s discussions of Lower Canadian architecture and their argument that it reflected British cultural values seems more convincing than Greg Finley’s argument that the Georgian style was a reflection of American cultural influences (“Stained Glass and Stone Tracery”). Gowans, Building Canada, 72–4. This argument can be contrasted with the view of Greg Finley, who regards the Georgian style as an American import (“Stained Glass and Stone Tracery”). sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Copy of Jacob Mountain’s memorandum to Sir James Craig, Quebec, 8 March 1810. (ha 119: 435 [T108/30/10]). Gowans, Building Canada, 191. Marsan, Montreal in Evolution, 133. Ibid., 154. Ibid., 157. Ibid., 203–4. MacCullough, “Myth of the English Reformation.” qda, Trinity Chapel, Quebec, “Bible Kept Shut by the Mitre”. Quoted in ibid. Davies, Worship and Theology in England, 2: 277. Ibid., 277–8. Ibid., 278. White, Cambridge Movement, 24. Finley, “Habits of Reverence and Awe.” Ibid., 8–11. Kalman, History of Canadian Architecture, 1: 272. Kalman’s use of the rubric “secular architecture” for his discussion of Bishop’s College and Trinity

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239 Notes to pages 62–70

106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

College, Toronto, is a misnomer. His chronology is also somewhat confusing. He discusses the building of Bishop’s (1846) and Trinity (1851–52) under the heading “The Early Gothic Revival” and the work of Bishop Medley in New Brunswick under “The Victorian Gothic Revival,” 272–87. Quoted in Noppen and Morisset, Présence anglicane à Québec, 147. Ibid., 158–61. Ibid., 162. Laberge, “Henry Musgrave Blaiklock,” dcb, 7: 80–1; Noppen and Morisset, Présence anglicane à Québec, 164, Kalman, History of Canadian Architecture, 1: incorrrectly identifies the architect as George Blakelock. Noppen and Morisset, Présence anglicane à Québec, 162–4. dcb, 7: 790. Berean, 29 June 1848. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 1. Quoted in Johnston, Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713–1758, 18. Ibid. Ibid., 16–18. Jaenen, Role of the Church in New France, chapter 6. Chaussé, “French Canada from the Conquest to 1840,” 64, 84. On this subject, see Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840”; Trofimenkoff, Dream of Nation. Cameron and Trudel, Drawings of James Cockburn, plate 99. Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840,” 200–1. sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Jacob Mountain’s Memorandum to Sir James Craig, 8 March 1810. On parades, see Goheen,”Symbols in the Streets.” Miller, Painting the Map Red, 6–7. Canada Directory for 1857–58. On this concept as applied to Second Temple Judaism, see Wright, New Testament and the People of God. Millman, Jacob Mountain, 72, 150; Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 170–3; Greenwood, Legacies of Fear, 171. Colley, Britons, 55.

chapter three 1 Boswell, Life of Johnson; quoted in Akenson, Church of Ireland, 16. 2 Strachan Letter Book, 1854–62; quoted in Henderson, John Strachan, 1778– 1867, 94. 3 Quoted in Millman, Jacob Mountain, 61. 4 As noted earlier, Sir George Pretyman assumed the name Tomline in 1803 when he inherited an estate. For the sake of clarity, I use both names throughout.

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240 Notes to pages 71–4 5 This section is based largely on Mills, “Bishops and Other Ecclesiastical Issues, to 1776”; Schlenther, “Religious Faith and Commercial Empire.” 6 Bishop of London to Philip Doddridge, 11 May 1751; quoted in Schlenther, “Religious Faith and Commercial Empire,” 133. 7 Mills, “Bishops and Other Ecclesiastical Issues,” 183. 8 Doll, “American High Churchmanship,” 35. 9 Ibid., 37. 10 Fingard emphasizes the role of Knox’s proposals to Lord Hawkesbury, whereas Brian Cuthbertson has argued that it was Inglis himself who was responsible for the limitations placed on the Nova Scotia episcopate. See Cuthbertson, First Bishop, 91–104. 11 Fingard, “Establishment of the First English Colonial Episcopate,” 488. See also her Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia. 12 Fingard, Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia, 26. 13 Fingard, “Establishment of the First English Colonial Episcopate,” 483. 14 Quoted in Talman, “Position of the Church of England in Upper Canada,” in Johnson, Historical Essays on Upper Canada, 58–9. 15 Cf., Millman, Jacob Mountain, 23f. 16 Ibid., 33–5. 17 Doll, “American High Churchmanship,” 53. 18 On the importance of patronage networks to securing appointments in the Church of England, see Sykes, Church and State in England in the xviiith Century, 147ff. 19 Dorchester to Lord Sydney, quoted in Stuart, Church of England in Canada, 58. 20 Stuart, Church of England, 104; Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 29. 21 Cruickshank, The Correspondence of Lieut. John Graves Simcoe, 1: 31–2; Young, ‹Bishop’ Peters,” 583–90. 22 Millman, Jacob Mountain, 14.; Fingard, “Establishment of the First English Colonial Episcopate,” 485–7; Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 29; Cutherbertson, First Bishop, 69. Fingard has examined in great detail the political machinations leading to the appointment of Charles Inglis as first bishop of Nova Scotia, and she concludes that “influential patronage undoubtedly determined the final choice” (“Establishment of the First English Colonial Episcopate,” 484). Doll spends far less time discussing the role of patronage in Inglis’s appointment, though his analysis suggests that it was Inglis’s growing friendship with Archbishop Moore that may have been decisive (“American High Churchmanship,” 55). 23 I have been unable to determine if one of these might well have been the Arthur Davidson discussed in chapter 1. 24 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Jacob Mountain to George Pretyman, [1793?] (ha 119: 503/2). For a consideration of the manner in which the Pretymans dispensed patronage in the diocese of Lincoln, see David M. Thompson, “Historical Survey, 1750–1949,” in Owen, History of Lincon Minster.

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241 Notes to pages 74–80 25 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, February 1794 (ha 119: 503/5/3). 26 Ibid., Jacob Mountain to George Pretyman, [1793?]. 27 Ibid., Jacob Mountain to George Pretyman, 10 July 1794 (ha 119/1/2 a &b). Mountain added that Tunstall was “to be found at every dance, every card party & every dinner in the City of Montreal & by no means the man I should have wished to seen incumbent of Montreal, if I had no relation in the country.” 28 Ibid., J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, 27 March 1795 (ha 119: 540/2/18a). On that occasion Mountain wrote that “Tunstall was the most improper person that could have been sent to Montreal. 1. He does duty in the most slovenly manner I ever heard. 2. He is a socinian. 3. He has lately married a daughter of General Christie, in opposition to the wish of her father in a clandestine manner, without licence or publication of Banns, – running away with her & she under age – the ceremony performed by a Clergyman from the State of Vermont, who came into the Province on purpose – They were married at St Johns, on the borders of Vermont. The matter is scandalous & calls for my animadversion. But many difficulties lie in the way from the unsettled state of the laws of the Country on this subject & the uncertainly how far my authority, on any subject is supported by them.” 29 Ibid., J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, 27 October 1798 (ha 119: 540/2/3a). 30 Ibid., J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, 29 January 1800 (ha 119: 540/1/12). 31 Ibid., J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, [n.d. but undoubtedly during Mountain’s extended stay in England in 1805–8] (ha 119: 540/3/3). 32 Millman, Jacob Mountain, 61. 33 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Copy of Jacob Mountain’s Memorandum to Sir James Craig, Quebec, 8 March 1810 (ha 119: 435 [T108/ 30/10]). 34 qda, Jacob Mountain Papers, series C, vol. 4, Jacob Mountain to Tomline, 15 July 1802. 35 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 5 July 1810 (ha 119: 540/4/14). 36 Ibid., Mountain’s, Memorandum to Craig. 37 Ibid. 38 J. Mountain, Sermon Preached at Quebec 1799, 4. 39 Ibid., 5–6. 40 Ibid., 12. 41 On this subject, see Mather, High Church Prophet, 261–3; Soloway, Prelates and People, 34–45. 42 J. Mountain, Sermon Preached at Quebec … 1799, 14. 43 Ibid., 21. 44 Ibid., 20. 45 Ibid., 18.

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242 Notes to pages 80–4 46 Ibid., 27. 47 Ibid., 32. 48 For differing perspectives on the nature, extent, and threat from British radicalism and the various governmental and societal responses, see Thompson, Making of the English Working Class; Dickinson, British Radicalism; Christie, Wars and Revolutions; Christie, Stress and Stability. 49 Dickinson, British Radicalism, 32–6. 50 Christie, Stress and Stability, 183. 51 Nockles argues that Hooker understood “church-state theory in terms of an organic union of two interrelated divinely-ordained powers rather than of the pragmatic Warburtonian theory of an alliance” (Oxford Movement in Context, 63). 52 On this subject, see Innes, “Politics and Morals,” 100–2. 53 Greenwood, Legacies of Fear, 58–9. 54 Ouellet, Lower Canada, 42–6. 55 Ibid., 44. 56 Ibid., 45. 57 Ibid., 45. Greenwood tends to emphasize the seriousness of these disturbances, though even he concludes that “if French forces had invaded the colony, they would probably not have received widespread support” (Legacies of Fear, 102). Gilles Chaussé suggests that French revolutionary ideas were fairly widespread in Lower Canada and argues that, “in fact, a revolution could have occurred in French Canada if leaders had come forward to carry it through” (“French Canada from the Conquest to 1840,” 77–80; quotation at 79). 58 Quoted in Wade, French Canadians, 99. 59 Quoted in Ouellet, Lower Canada, 43. 60 Quoted ibid., 43. Cf. Greenwood, Legacies of Fear, 64f; Chaussé, “French Canada from the Conquest to 1840”, 75–82. 61 Cf. Wade, French Canadians, 99–100. 62 Ibid., 106. Ryland had an evangelical background. His father, John Collett Ryland, was a prominent Northamptonshire Baptist clergyman, as was his older brother John. See dcb, 7: 766–72; deb, 2: 965–6. 63 Wade, French Canadians, 106. 64 Chaussé, “French Canada from the Conquest to 1840,” 81. 65 Wade, French Canadians, 108. 66 Quoted ibid., 109–10. 67 Quoted in both Wade, French Canadians, 105, and Ouellet, Lower Canada, 64. 68 Ouellet, Lower Canada, 64. 69 Wade, French Canadians, 114. 70 In 1812 Mountain wrote to Pretyman Tomline that “you have been greatly my benefactor” (sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, Jacob Mountain to Pretyman, 14 June 1812 [ha 119: 540/2/16a]).

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243 Notes to pages 84–7 71 John Strachan, in a comment that cannot be taken completely at face value, once remarked of Jacob Mountain: “In England, he was considered one of the most impressive and eloquent preachers that the Church could boast, and was earnestly solicited, when last in London, by the managers of charitable institutions, notwithstanding his advanced age, to preach their anniversary sermons” (Sermon Preached at York, 31). 72 Mountain does not actually use the term “Latitudinarianism,” but it quite apparent that this is what he is describing. 73 J. Mountain, Charge to the Clergy … 1803, 27. 74 Ibid., 29. 75 Ibid., 29–30. 76 Ibid., 32–4. 77 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 29. 78 Ibid., 29. Waterman locates Pretyman Tomline within “the intellectual party” at Cambridge, and while noting various positions within this group, refers to “the intransigent orthodoxy of the younger members of this ‘school’ such as Pitt’s tutor, Pretyman” (“A Cambridge ‘Via Media’ in Late Georgian Anglicanism,” 419). 79 Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, 210. 80 Elbourne, “Foundation of the Church Missionary Society,” 252, 258. 81 Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, 173–4. 82 Ibid., 310. 83 Ibid., 92. 84 Quoted in Pollock, Wilberforce, 194. 85 sro, George Pretyman Tomline Papers, J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, 29 January 1800 (ha 119: 540/1/12). 86 Ibid., Eliza Mountain to Elizabeth Pretyman, 14 april 1800. (ha 119: 503/5/5b). 87 Ibid., J. Mountain to G. Pretyman, 14 June 1812 (ha 119: 540/2/16a). 88 I am grateful to Dr Ian Rennie for pointing this situation out to me. He suggests, “The best Evangelicals might have expected in 1793 was an appointment that would not be too strenuously opposed to them.” 89 T.R. Millman, “Charles James Stewart,” dcb, 7: 825. 90 This sketch is largely from my article on Stewart in deb, 2: 1054; cf. Ian Rennie, “Charles James Stewart,” dca, 1133–4; dnb; Millman, “Charles James Stewart,” dcb, 7: 825–9; Millman, Life of … Charles James Stewart. 91 See Stewart, Charge to the Clergy … 1826, in which he exhorted his clergy “to preach Christ and him crucified, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” Admonishing his clergy to stay aloof from the cares of this world, he wrote, “Your care will be to win souls to Christ, to be watchful over them as one who must give an account; to preach Christ Jesus, the Lord, and yourselves their servants for Jesus’ sake.” At the same time, a glance at the works cited in his Two Sermons on Family Prayer reveals a preponderance of High Church (and even Nonjuror) writers such as Robert

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244 Notes to pages 87–9

92 93 94 95

96

97 98 99 100 101

102

Nelson (1656–1715), Bishop Thomas Wilson (1663–1755), and Sir James Stonhouse (1716–1795). See Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 943, 1467; Concise dnb; Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship, 72–91. Black recognizes this characteristic in the case of Trinity, Montreal; see “Crippled Crusade,” 169f. Beverley, Trinity Church, Quebec, 12; Millman, Jacob Mountain, 234. dcb, 7: 782–92. Beverley, Trinity Church, Quebec, 10. This explanation has been repeated by Greenwood and Lambert in their dcb article on Sewell (7: 88) and by Noppen and Morisset in Présence anglicane à Québec, 163. qda, Diocesan Papers, vol. 16, Trinity Church, Quebec, Jonathan Sewell to Jacob Mountain, May 1824 (copy). The meaning of the phrase “for the time being” is open to question. Pepperdene, in his Church Directory and a Brief Historical Sketch of Trinity Anglican Church, transcribes the letter from Sewell to Mountain as follows: “The incumbent shall from time to time be named by me, my heirs and assigns being proprietors of the chapel and he shall in all things be subject to the government of the Lord Bishop of Quebec. For the time being there shall be at least two services.” My reading of the document would give an entirely different meaning. I do not find a period after “Lord Bishop of Quebec” and would suggest that the phrase “for the time being” modifies “subject to the government of,” rather than the question of the frequency of divine service. Cf. Beverley, Trinity Church, Quebec, 10. Beverley, Trinity Church Quebec, 11. Ibid., 15. Quoted ibid., 19. Ibid., 20. Among the other members of Trinity Chapel at this time were C. Wurtele, J.H. Clint, W. Newton, Dr James Sewell, Lt Ache, Col. Fitzgerald, Sheriff Sewell, Major Temple, Major Tapp, J.C. Buchanan, Charles Pentland, Samuel Newton, and W.C. Scott (Beverley, Trinity Church, Quebec, 15). A comparison of this list with members of the Lay Association of 1857–59 reveals a close connection with Trinity Chapel. It is worth noting in this context that St George’s Church, Montreal, was a proprietary church but one whose constitution differed in substance from that of Trinity Chapel, Quebec City. St George’s did not have a single proprietor but was organized like a joint-stock company. There the proprietors were those who had contributed a particular sum of money towards the construction of one of its buildings, the purchase price of its organ, or the Church Debt Fund. The proprietors had the right to select a rector, though this decision was “subject to the approbation of the Bishop of the Diocese” (St George’s Church).

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245 Notes to pages 89–91 103 Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1114; Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England, 35, 106. I am grateful to Ian Rennie for sharing his knowledge of propritary chapels with me. 104 The Eclectic Society was the meeting place for London Evangelicals and played a formative role in the history of Anglican Evangelicalism. See Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England, 34, 83, 88, 106, 211– 12; Howse, Saints in Politics, 73–6; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 87,130; 105 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 15. 106 On Christie, see Noël, Christie Seigneuries, chapter 5, and Black, “Crippled Crusade,” from which Noël has derived much of her material concerning Christie’s Evangelicalism. 107 Quoted in Mott, Jubilee History of Trinity Church, Montreal. 108 Ibid.; Noël, Christie Seigneuries. 109 Mary Naylor, “Mark Willoughby,” dcb, 7: 914. 110 Mott, Jubilee History of Trinity Church, Montreal; Black, “Crippled Crusade,” 172; Glen Scorgie, “Edward Paston Wilgress,” deb, 2: 1189–90. On Wilgress’s missionary and philanthropic work, see Millman, Life of … Charles James Stewart, 130–2. After Christie’s death there was a split in the ranks at Trinity. A number of prominent members such as A.F. Holmes left for St George’s. See Black, “Crippled Crusade,” 222–3. For the ongoing dispute concerning the incumbency of Alexander Digby Campbell, who succeeded Willoughby and according to Black, “emptied the pews of Trinity within a few months,” see Black, “Crippled Crusade,” 222–3, and London Record, 13 May, 17 May, 21 June, 5 July 1852. 111 Woods and Cooper seem agreed on the point that Molson did not want the church consecrated because he did not fully trust the High Church Mountain. Robert Black asserts that Molson “could not secure its patronage and so resisted its consecration” (Robert Merrill Black, “Thomas Molson,” deb 2: 780). Cf. Woods, Molson Saga; Cooper, Blessed Communion, 38. 112 On the Countess of Huntington’s Connexion, see Rupp, Religion in England, 462f. 113 Thomas Molson to Robert Orr, February 1857; quoted in Woods, Molson Saga, 157. 114 Woods, Molson Saga, 157ff. Apparently Molson enlisted the legal expertise of John Rose, the solicitor general, and J.J.C. Abbott, dean of law at McGill, in securing this legislation. 115 Quoted in Cooper, Blessed Communion, 39. 116 Berean, 22 March 1849; Masters and Masters, Ten Rings, 97–102. 117 See Correspondence Relative to the Recent Offer of the Wesleyan Chapel for a list of the petitioners who backed the Hoad-Hale-Wurtele proposal, as well as for the published correspondence in the matter.

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246 Notes to pages 91–4 118 Mary Mountain to Harriet Nicolls, 24 March 1849, quoted in Masters and Masters, Ten Rings, 98. 119 George Mountain, as quoted in Masters and Masters, Ten Rings, 102. 120 The correspondence on this matter is difficult to untangle. See qda, g-10, Cathedral and Parish of Quebec, Letters from George Mountain to E.W. Sewell, March 1849. As far as I can determine, Mountain may have made the proposal to Sewell for the consecration of Trinity Chapel as a means of undercutting one of the purported reasons for a new chapel in Quebec City, namely, the lack of places of worship within the walls of the city “permanently secured for the service of the Church of England” (Correspondence Relative to the Recent Offer of the Wesleyan Chapel; see also qda, g-10, Sewell to Mountain, 27 March 1849). Sewell seems to have been altogether aware that he was caught in the middle, writing to the bishop that “the consecration of my chapel will result, in all probability, in preventing another Church from being offered for the preaching of the Gospel. What a handle would the enemies of the Gospel have to speak evil of my conduct in this matter.” Mountain seems to have suggested to Sewell that the latter’s right to a continuing government stipend might be made contingent upon the consecration of Trinity. Sewell regarded this suggestion as a violation of the original terms of agreement drawn up by his father, the chief justice of the province. See qda, g-10, Sewell to Mountain, 30 March 1849. 121 Quoted in Cooper, Blessed Communion, 33. 122 Ibid., 32–3; Millman, Jacob Mountain, 40–1, 147–8. 123 Cooper, Blessed Communion, 31; Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 16–38. The spck, private benefactors in England, and even the Quebec Legislative Assembly also contributed to the college. 124 Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 178, quotes from spg documents that one of the qualifications for missionaries was “affection to the present Government,” but she observes this requirement without comment. 125 Ditchfield, “Ecclesiastical Policy under Lord North,” in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, Church of England, c.1689–c.1833. 241. 126 Stewart, Short View of the Present State of the Eastern Townships, 16. 127 Reisner, “Diaries of James Reid,” 584. 128 Sewell had trained as a physician, had briefly taught chemistry at Bishop’s College, and was seeking ordination (Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 35). 129 mda Diary of James Reid, 31 December 1849; quoted in Reisner, “Diaries of James Reid,” 280; Reisner, Diary of a Country Clergyman, 65. 130 mda, Diary of James Reid, 31 December 1849; Reisner, Diary of a Country Clergyman, 65. 131 Reisner, Diary of a Country Clergyman, 65. 132 Ibid., 66. 133 mda, Diary of James Reid, 6 January 1850; Reisner, Diary of a Country Clergyman, 68.

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247 Notes to pages 95–100 134 Reisner, Diary of a Country Clergyman, 68. 135 Ibid., 69. 136 bua, Charles James Stewart Papers, Letters to James Reid 1815–29, Charles James Stewart to James Reid, Hatley, 11 March 1819. 137 Record, 17 February 1853. 138 Ibid. 139 Record, 24 February 1853; cf. 28 July 1853. The Record regarded the Colonial Churches Bill as an “insidious attempt to Romanize the Church of England in India and the colonies.” 140 J. Mountain, Sermon Preached at Quebec … 1799, 32.

chapter four 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11

12

Quoted in A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 250. G.J. Mountain, Songs of the Wilderness, 81. Masters, “G.J. Mountain: Frontier Bishop,” 89. Except, of course, in the work of D.C. Masters and Monica Marston. Hylson-Smith, Evangelicals in the Church of England, 124–5; Nigel Scotland, “George Cornelius Gorham,” deb, 1: 459. Scotland, “Gorham,”deb, 1: 459. D.C. Masters, “Jasper Hume Nicolls”, dcb, 10: 548; Headon, “Developments in Canadian Anglican Worship,” 27. Fairweather, “Tractarian Patriarch,” 15–16. Cf. on Medley, Fairweather, “John Medley as Defender of ‘Ritualism› 208–11; and “John Medley on Irish Church Disestablishment,” 198–200; Headon, “Unpublished Correspondence between John Medley and E.B. Pusey,” 72–4. Bliss, Clerical Guide; Headon, “Developments in Canadian Anglican Worship,” 27. Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 52, 88–9. Cf. Christopher Headon’s observation that “Canadian clergy with English Tractarian backgrounds were keen on reproducing the church of their youth in their new country” (“Developments in Canadian Anglican Worship,” 27). Nicholl’s characterization of George Mountain as “a devout and moderate churchman,” while pointing in the right direction, does not go far enough. Nicholl does recognize Mountain’s opposition to Tractarians and Evangelicals (Bishop’s University, 14). A writer in the Quebec Mercury characterized Mountain as “was what would be called in England an evangelical High Churchman – such as have been all the great lights of the English Church from the days of the Reformation” (8 January 1863). Conybeare, “Church Parties,” 273. Conybeare further subdivided the three into what he called “sections which exemplify respectively the exaggeration, the stagnation, and the normal development of the principles which they severally claim to represent” (273).

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248 Notes to pages 100–6 13 The following section on the High Church tradition is particularly indebted to Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 14–30, and Neill, Anglicanism. Full discussions of these matters can be found in Spurr, Restoration Church of England; Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context; HylsonSmith, High Churchmanship in the Church of England; Avis, Anglicanism and the Christian Church. 14 Rupp, Religion in England, 53–4. 15 Nockles, “Church Parties,” 335–6; Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 26. 16 Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 21, 22. 17 McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 110. 18 Ibid.; Spurr, Restoration Church of England, 393. Rack notes that in John Wesley’s era, “The evangelical charge was that the bulk of the clergy and laity had sunk into ‘Pelagianism,’ meaning that they trusted in their own efforts for salvation instead of the grace of God by faith alone.” He goes on to suggest that “at more sophisticated as well as less sophisticated levels, the old Reformation doctrine of justification by grace through faith had been eroded into a variable balance between grace and works” (Reasonable Enthusiast, 27–8). 19 McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 121. 20 Nockles, “Church Parties,” argues that late eighteenth-century High Churchmen preferred to call themselves “Orthodox.” 21 Rupp, Religion in England, 53. 22 Spurr, Restoration Church of England, 399. 23 Nockles, “Church Parties,” 335–6. 24 Ibid., 349. Nockles’s quotation is from Paul Avis. 25 Ibid., 351. 26 Walsh and Taylor, “Schools, Tendencies and Parties,” 30. 27 Ibid., 30–1. 28 Nockles, “Church Parties.” 29 Ibid., 355. 30 Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 26. 31 Ibid., 27. 32 The foregoing is based on Millman, Jacob Mountain; Monica Marston, “George Jehoshaphat Mountain”, dcb, 9: 578–81; Cf. “George Jehosphaphat Mountain,” in Leaders of the Canadian Church, 135–60. 33 G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1848. 34 Christopher Headon has argued that Mountain belonged “in spirit somewhat less to the old high church school and more to the men of the Oxford Movement who were deeply influenced by ideas connected with Romanticism.” In this he sees striking resemblances between Mountain and John Keble (“Influence of the Oxford Movement,” 11–12). 35 G.J. Mountain, Sermons, 13–14. 36 Ibid., 140. 37 Ibid., 59.

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249 Notes to pages 106–13 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68

69

Ibid., 14, 57. Ibid., 119–20. Ibid., 126. Ibid., 153, 155. Ibid., 165–7. Ibid., 170. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 59–60. Ibid., 63. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 189ff. Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 96–111. The quotation from the legal case is from page 98. G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1845, 34. G.J. Mountain, Sermons, 89. Ibid., 197. Ibid., 204. Ibid., 198–9. Ibid., 143–4. G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1845, 33. G.J. Mountain, Sermons, 90. Ibid., 241. Thompson, Revelation and Science, 5–6. MacCulloch, “Myth of the English Reformation,” 3–5. Cf. Nigel Yates’s conclusion: “The liturgical revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century was the most violent the Church of England had experienced since the Reformation, and far more drastic and controversial than the liturgical changes of the last thirty years” (Buildings, Faith, and Worship, 127). Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 56. Gilley, “Church of England in the Nineteenth Century,” 293. Gash, Aristocracy and People, 175; cf. Webb, Modern England, 230–3. Church, Oxford Movement, 9. The original cry of the “church in danger” had been raised by Tory Henry Sacheverell in a sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1709. See Edwards, Christian England, 2: 476. Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 43. Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Rituslism, 12–13. Ibid., 14. Cf. Yates’s comment: “Indeed at the beginning many of the Evangelicals welcomed a good deal of Tractarian teaching. It was only the liberal broad churchmen who were initially and constantly hostile” (Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 13). On this subject see Newsome, Parting of Friends.

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250 Notes to pages 113–15 70 Quoted in Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore, 109. 71 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 96; Geoffrey Best and others make similar points. See Best’s introduction to the reprinted edition of Church’s Oxford Movement, xxvii–xxix. 72 Gilley, “Church of England in the Nineteenth Century,” 297. 73 David Newsome reminds us that Evangelicalism “was essentially a religion of the home. Tractarianism, by contrast, was a religion of the Church. Its emphasis on the priestly function, respect for liturgy and the centrality of the sacraments seemed to invert the priorities of the Evangelicals” (Victorian World Picture. 193). 74 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 141, 156–7. 75 Benjamin Cronyn in a letter to the Church, 9 April 1847. 76 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 113–39. 77 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 1: 172–6. 78 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 97; Chadwick, Victorian Church, 1: 175; Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 17. Thus Nigel Yates has called their publication “catastrophic,” adding that “one can only be amazed at the naivety of the editors [Keble and Newman] in publishing such material.” 79 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 92. 80 On the technical questions, see Toon, Evangelical Theology, 156–86; Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 256–69. Cf. the following comments by Newman: “So that those who think they really believe, because they have in word and thought surrendered themselves to God, are much too hasty in their judgment. They have done something, indeed, but not at all the most difficult part of their duty, which is to surrender themselves to God in deed and act … justifying faith has no existence independent of its particular definite acts” (quoted in Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 110). 81 For a full discussion of Newman on justification, see Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 261–4. 82 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 141; Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 261. 83 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 266; Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 49 84 Pusey, “What Is Puseyism?”; quoted in Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 51. 85 In private correspondence with the author, 8 February 2000. 86 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 165–86. 87 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 1: 179–80. 88 Quoted in Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 51. 89 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 44. 90 Quoted in O’Day, Debate on the English Reformation, 88. 91 Toon says that fifty-four volumes had been published by 1855 (Evangelical Theology, 44). O’Day states that fifty-three volumes had been published by 1853 (Debate on the English Reformation, 88).

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251 Notes to pages 115–18 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

Church, 14 August 1841, 18 November 1842. Chadwick, Victorian Church, 1: 176. O’Day, Debate on the English Reformation, 87–8. Quoted in Toon, Evangelical Theology, 41. Quoted ibid., 42. Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 22. MacCulloch, “Myth of the English Reformation,” 3–5. David Newsome has commented that the Oxford Movement “prospered in the climate of Victorian medievalism.” For architects such as Pugin, it was necessary to break free from the paganism of the classical tradition and to embrace a more thoroughgoing Christian aesthetic, namely, that of medieval Gothic (Victorian World Picture, 183). Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 15. Ibid., 16; cf. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 47–8. Gilley,”Church of England in the Nineteenth Century,” 299. Yates, Buildings, Faith, and Worship, 132. See the entire chapter “The Liturgical Impact of the Oxford Movement” for an excellent discussion of the subject. Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 26. Ibid., 26. Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 36. On Wiseman, see C.T. McIntire “Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman,” in New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1055. Colley, Britons, especially chapter 1: “Protestants.” Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victoran England, 105. See both Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, and Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 29. Teale, “Dr. Pusey and the Church Overseas,” 201–2. Tracing the attitude of the Church to the publication of the Tracts for the Times is a fairly straightforward exercise. Determining to what extent the views of Quebec churchmen coincided with the editorial policy of the voice of Upper Canadian High Churchmanship is more problematical. The Tracts for the Times were first mentioned in June 1839. From then on, the paper began to pay increasing attention to the tracts and even to reprint some. While it distanced itself from some sentiments and injudicious comments made by the Tractarians, in general, the Church’s attitude was one of cautious approval, rejecting what it regarded as extreme positions, but commending their defence of High Church principles. In his early editorials, Bethune praised the tracts for steering a middle course between Rome and Geneva. The paper’s attitude began to shift with the publication of some of the later tracts. Not surprisingly, it took exception to Tract 90, which in its view had “made unwarrantable concessions in favour of Romanism, and endeavoured to wrest the Thirty-Nine Articles from their plain, legitimate meaning.” By the spring

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252 Notes to pages 119–22

112 113 114 115

116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

of 1843 the Church had completely distanced itself from John Henry Newman. Although its attitude towards Tractarianism shifted somewhat as the decade wore on, the paper’s opposition to Evangelicalism should not be lost sight of. While it was giving qualified praise to Tractarianism for the movement’s recovery of church principles, at the same time its attitude towards Evangelicalism within the Church of England seems to have been hardening. It regarded Evangelicals as virtual Dissenters and called the London Record “a Dissenting English newspaper, nominally in the interest of the Church of England” (10 March 1843). In the early 1850s, when the Echo and Protestant Episcopal Recorder first appeared, it came under attack from the Church, which clearly regarded it as a serious threat. The Echo did not shrink from such confrontations, adopting a more “Recordite” approach to the interests of the Evangelical Anglican community in the Canadas. See the Church, 15 June, 10, 24 August, 19 October 1839; 26 February 1842; 28 April, 10 March, 22 September, 20 October 1843; 17 May 1844; 10 January, 2 May, 22 August, 19 September, 10 October 1845; 17 July 1846; 5 March 1847; 4 April 1850; 20 July, 7 September 1854; 25 January, 10, 15, 22, 29 March 1855; 11 April, 23 May 1856. Quoted in A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 250. G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1845, 8. Ibid. bua, Jasper Nicolls Papers, G.J. Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 19 March 1846. This source is also cited in Masters, “G.J. Mountain,” 94. The Williams referred to is undoubtedly Isaac Williams, one of the more extreme Tractarians. Ibid. Ibid., G.J. Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 21 April 1846. Ibid., G.J. Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 16 October 1845. For Hellmuth’s involvement at Bishop’s College, see Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 35–7. bua, Jasper Nicolls Papers, G.J. Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 19 March 1846. Ibid., G.J. Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 5 May 1846. Ibid., G.J. Mountain to Mary Mountain, 22 January 1847. Masters, “Jasper Hume Nicolls,” dcb, 10: 547–8. G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1848, 32. Ibid., 32–3. G.J. Mountain, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec … 1845, 9–10. G.J. Mountain, Pastoral Letter … upon the Question of Affording the Use of Churches and Chapels of the Church of England.

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253 Notes to pages 122–4 127 Cf. Allan Hayes’s comment that “what distinguished Roe throughout his career was his penchant for controversy” (“Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 888). 128 An anonymous source quoted in Canadian Biographical Dictionary, (1881) 370. This sketch did, however, suggest that Roe was “eminently fair and considerate towards those who differ from him.” 129 F.G.V., “Venerable Archdeacon Henry Roe,” 13–14. This writer added that Roe “was hasty, sometimes in act as well as speech. These characteristics sometimes caused offence and possibly stood in his way as regards the highest office in the Church. In fact, one of the closest friends and admirers told the writer that the Archdeacon might have been bishop of any vacant See in Canada had not people been afraid of what he called his ‘bad temper.’ It was really not bad temper so much as irritability at what naturally seemed to him unreasonable opposition.” 130 Roe, To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Quebec, 4. The controversy is reviewed briefly in Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 84–6, and Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 888. 131 McGibbon, Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister. 132 Roe, Purgatory, Transubstantiation and the Mass. 133 Roe, Continuity of the Church of England; Reisner, Stangers and Pilgrims, 113. 134 Canadian Biographical Dictionary, 369; Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 887. 135 A letter of Armine Mountain to his sister, Harriet Nicolls, wife of Principal Jasper Nicolls of Bishop’s, referred to six young ministers in the diocese – Roe, Young, Carden, Lloyd, Cochran, and Magill – as “Jasper’s boys” (bua, Jasper Nicolls Papers, Armine Mountain to Harriet Nicolls, 4 March 1853). 136 Roe, “Reminiscences of the Earliest Lennoxville Days,” 58–9. Roe comments that “with all this reserve about personal religious experience he was a deeply religious man.” 137 Ibid. 138 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 198. 139 William Copeland as quoted ibid., 199. 140 John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, quoted in Chadwick, Mind of the Oxford Movement, 121. 141 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 199. 142 Isaac Williams, “On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge”; quoted in Fairweather, Oxford Movement, 261. 143 Ibid., 261. 144 Church, Oxford Movement, 180–1. 145 Toon, Evangelical Theology, 37–9, 133–5. Schlossberg has written recently that the Tractarian doctrine of reserve “was widely understood to advocate the withholding of the gospel message,” though he claims that this was an understanding that Williams rejected (Silent Revolution and the Making of Victorian England, 90). 146 Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 71.

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254 Notes to pages 124–6 147 Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 888. 148 Roe always referred to this location as Upper Ireland. Other writers call it New Ireland. See Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 887–9. 149 Ibid., 888. 150 The offer was first broached in April 1853. On 23 April Roe received letters from Mr Doolittle and Professor Chapman inquiring about a possible interest in a position in Lennoxville – “Commended the subject to God in prayer. May He vouchsafe to direct me aright.” On 24 April he decided to refuse the Lennoxville offer – “am convinced that it is my duty to stay here.” On St Mark’s Day he wrote to both Doolittle and Chapman refusing the [curacy?] of Lennoxville. He gave two reasons: he did not think he was qualified for the position, but mainly he felt it his duty to remain in New Ireland – “May God ratify my choice!” It is not entirely clear from Roe’s account if the offer might have also involved the college. It may be of significance that Chapman was embroiled in a controversy with Isaac Hellmuth at Bishop’s at this time. See gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, m74–5, Journal of Henry Roe; Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 36–7. 151 gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, m74–5, Journal of Henry Roe, 3 July 1852. The pages of the journal are not numbered and will be referred to by date. Any of Roe’s shorthand contractions will be given in full. Permission to quote from this journal was graciously granted by Terry Thompson, General Synod Archivist. 152 Ibid., 4 July 1852. 153 Reisner is more forthright in labelling Roe a Tractarian (Strangers and Pilgrims, 52). A writer in the Quebec Diocesan Gazette said of him that “he was a High Churchman and his opponents called him a Ritualist – much to his own amusement, for he was never that. It was the solid doctrine of the Tractarians which appealed to him so strongly and which he taught so faithfully” (F.G.V., “Venerable Archdeacon Henry Roe,” 13). 154 Cf. Georgina Battiscombe’s comments about John Keble’s ministry at Hursley that “great stress was laid on the duty of church-going, which was regarded literally as a ‘service’ due to God rather than as a means of man’s edification. For this reason comparatively little emphasis was laid on the sermon, which in Evangelical churches would be be the centre, and almost the raison d’etre of the service” (John Keble, 175). 155 gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, Journal of Henry Roe, 2nd Sunday in Advent, 1852. 156 Ibid., St Thomas’ Day, 1852. 157 Ibid., 19 August 1852. 158 Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship, 135–7. 159 gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, Journal of Henry Roe, Friday, December 1852. 160 Nicolls, Confirmation Sermon.

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255 Notes to pages 127–32 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176

177

178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

Ibid., 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8 gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, Journal of Henry Roe, 17 November 1852. Ibid., 13th Sunday in Trinity, 1853. Ibid., 25 February 1854. Roe, Advantages and Means, 3. Ibid., 5. Cf. Roe’s farewell sermon in St Stephen’s Church, Megantic, 1854: “The truth above all things is precious” (Farewell Sermon, 6). Roe, Advantages and Means, 5. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 7–9. Ibid., 9–10. Ibid., 11. Strictly speaking, not all these writers would be classified as Evangelicals, but enough clearly were to justify to foregoing judgment. Thomas Scott (1747–1821), as mentioned elsewhere in this study, crossed swords with Bishop Pretyman Tomline; Matthew Henry (1662–1714) was the author of an Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708–10); Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780–1862) was the author of an Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (3 vols., 1818); Richard Mant (1776–1848), bishop of Down, Conor, and Dromore, along with George D’Oyly (1778–1846), produced an annotated version of Holy Scripture popularly known as D’Oyly and Mant’s Bible (1st ed., 1814). I have been unable to discern which Patrick was referred to. See dnb, 5: 1324, 17: 1011–12; Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. One of the books that Roe particularly commended was Blunt’s Duties of the Parish Priest – “a book, by the way, which surely ought to be a text book in all our Theological Colleges” (Advantages and Means, 12). Ibid., 14–15. gsa, Mountain-Roe-Jarvis Collection, Journal of Henry Roe, 18 December 1853. Roe, Farewell Sermon, 9. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 33.

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256 Notes to pages 132–6 189 Ibid., 34. 190 Roe, Bicentenary Sermons, 24.

chapter five 1 Walsh and Taylor, “Schools, Tendencies, Parties,” 44. Hylson-Smith suggests that there were only forty to fifty Evangelical clergy in 1790, but within a decade that number had risen to approximately five hundred, and by 1830 between one-eighth and one-quarter of all Church of England clergy identified with Evangelicalism (Evangelicals in the Church of England, 68). 2 Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 14; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 106; Conybeare, “Church Parties,” 338ff. It is also worth noting that many such writers were distinctly hostile to Tractarianism as well. See Rhodes, Lion and the Cross, 308. 3 Brynn, Church of Ireland in the Age of Catholic Emancipation, 410–21; Stunt, “Evangelical Cross-Currents”; “Evangelicalism” and “Second Reformation” in Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History. 4 On this point, see Walsh, ‹Methodism’ and the Origins of English-Speaking Evangelicalism,” 19–37, to which I am indebted for the concept of “cultural divide.” 5 Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge, 231ff. 6 Yet it did serve as a barrier to non-Anglicans and reinforced Nonconformity’s sense of separateness from the established institutions of the national church. Separate acts for Oxford (1854) and Cambridge (1856) allowed Nonconformists to both attend and graduate. One of the final barriers to Nonconformity fell in 1871; the Universities Religious Tests Act dispensed with the requirement that fellows of colleges be ordained clergy of the Church of England. See Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England, 44–5. 7 dcb, 11: 578; A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 18–22. 8 Pollard comments that Simeon was “the most important figure in the history of Anglican evangelicalism” (deb, 2: 1015). 9 Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge, 237. 10 Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 15; Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade, chapter 7; Walsh, ‹Methodism’ and the Origins of English-Speaking Evangelicalism.” 11 Pollard in deb, 2: 1014; Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge, 27–31; John Stott, “Introduction” to Simeon, Evangelical Preaching, xxviii–xxx. All accounts are dependent upon William Carus, Memoir of Charles Simeon (2 vols., 1847). 12 Carus (1847), quoted in Stott, “Introduction” to Simeon, Evangelical Preaching, xxviii–xxix. Pollard quotes the last part of this account in his article on Simeon in the deb, 2: 1014.

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257 Notes to pages 136–41 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

Simeon, Evangelical Preaching, 48–9. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 56. Stott, “Introduction” ibid., xxx–xxxi. Green, Religion at Oxford and Cambridge, chapter 8. Wilberforce, Practical View the Prevailing Religious System (originally published, 1797; ed. Belmonte, 1996), 197. All page references are to this edition. On Wilberforce, see Pollock, Wilberforce. Wilberforce, Practical View, xxxi. Ibid., 190. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 2. See Mather, “Georgian Churchmanship Reconsidered”; Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, Church of England c.1689–c.1833; Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context. Paul Langford provides a balanced view of the mid-eighteenthcentury church while suggesting that some eighteenth-century churchmen were beyond rehabiliation (Polite and Commercial People, 258–64). Quoted in Dallimore, George Whitefield, 1: 18. Wilberforce, Practical View, 197. Bradley, Call to Seriousness, chapter 5. Ibid., 95. Of course, it needs to be recognized that churchmen in the early eighteenth century had attempted to reform the nation along similar lines. See Isaacs, “Anglican Hierarchy and the Reformation of Manners.” Bradley, Call to Seriousness, 94–118. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 69, 71. Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade, 157. On the work of the Clapham Sect in general, see Howse, Saints in Politics. I am grateful to Ian Rennie for his comments on this and other matters concerning Anglican Evangelicalism. Howse, Saints in Politics, chapter 6; Bradley, Call to Seriousness, chapter 5. Altholz, “Alexander Haldane, the Record, and Religious Journalism”; Altholz, Religious Press in Britain. Ian S. Rennie, “Alexander Haldane,”deb, 1: 500–3. Altholz, “Alexander Haldane, the Record, and Religious Journalism,” 25; Rennie, “Haldane,” deb, 1: 500–1. Rennie, “Haldane,” deb, 1: 500–1. Altholz, “Haldane, the Record,” and Religious Journalism. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain; Rennie, “Fundamentalism and the Varieties of North Atlantic Evangelicalism,” 333–5; Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, chapter 1. Rennie, “Haldane,” deb, 1: 500. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 79ff.

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258 Notes to pages 142–3 42 Ibid., 84. Not all these Romantic Evangelicals either were originally or remained members of the Church of England, but they influenced Evangelical Anglicanism nonetheless. 43 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 45. 44 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 132. 45 Ibid. 46 Beckett, Anglo-Irish Tradition, 104. 47 Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 62. 48 Brynn, Church of Ireland in the Age of Catholic Emancipation, 410. 49 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 15. 50 For a sketch of the life of Roe, see Alan Acheson’s in deb, 2: 951–2. 51 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 134. 52 Acheson, “Roe,” in deb, 2: 951. 53 Ibid., 952. 54 This is Bowen’s assessment, see Protestant Crusade, 70; History and Shaping of Irish Protestantism, 210. 55 Peter Roe (1826), quoted in Bowen, Protestant Crusade. 56 Benjamin Cronyn, first bishop of Huron and the leading Anglican Evangelical clergyman in Upper Canada, was born in Kilkenny and educated at Kilkenny College, before proceeding to Trinity College, Dublin. That he was well acquainted with Roe is beyond question. As is clear from a letter that Roe wrote to Cronyn on the eve of the latter’s departure from Ireland for British North America in 1832, Cronyn had been both a Sunday school scholar and a teacher in St Mary’s. Roe referred to him as one among others who had gone forth from “the Sunday School of St Mary’s to preach within the pale of our beloved established Church the unsearchable riches of Christ.” His prayer for Cronyn was that “wherever your lot is cast may you be blessed in your own soul, by enjoying constant communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ and may you be made a blessing to others by directing them for pardon & peace to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” Roe signed the letter, “Ever yours my dear Ben in the bonds which death cannot sever.” Emigration did not sever Cronyn’s connections with Irish Evangelicalism. While in Britain for his consecration as bishop of Huron in 1857, he made a side trip to Dublin, visiting Dr Fleury’s Bible class and recruiting three young men (all future bishops) for service in Canada. See Vershoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Diocese of Huron Archives, Benjamin Cronyn Papers, Peter Roe to Benjamin Cronyn, 20 July 1832; Carrington, Anglican Church, 118. 57 Bowen, Protestant Crusade, 68–71; Acheson, «Roe,» in deb, 753–4. dnb, 13: 46–7. 58 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 15; Alan Acheson, “Joseph Stopford,” Timothy Stunt,”John Walker,” and Myrtle Hill, “Henry Maturin,” deb, 2: 754, 1061, 1151. Walker’s secession from the Church of Ireland in 1804 caused a considerable stir within Dublin

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259 Notes to pages 144–7 Evangelicalism. A not very sympathetic assessment of the growing influence of Evangelicalism in Trinity College can be found in McDowell and Webb, Trinity College Dublin, 149–51. However, they do point out the enormous contribution of tcd men to English Evangelical hymnody (532n128). 59 Alan Acheson, “Joseph Singer,” deb, 2: 1019–20. dnb, 18: 312. 60 Acheson, “Benjamin Williams Mathias,” deb, 2: 753. 61 Gregg actually became the incumbent of Bethesda Chapel in 1836. Three years later he left Bethesda for the new Trinity Chapel, Dublin, which had been constructed for him. This congregation “became in his hands a chief centre of evangelical life in Dublin” (dnb, 8: 532). 62 Akenson, Church of Ireland, 134. 63 Alan Acheson, “Power (Le Poer) Trench,” deb, 1118–20. Bowen and Akenson differ on whether Trench was himself an Evangelical or merely influenced by them. Acheson’s portrait of Trench as an Evangelical seems incontrovertible. Cf. Acheson, History of the Church of Ireland, 127, 158–9. 64 Acheson, “Trench,” deb, 1119. 65 On Gosford’s connection to Irish Evangelicalism, see Acheson, History of the Church of Ireland, 134, 176. 66 Connolly, “Mass Politics and sectarian conflict, 1823–30,” 78–9, and “Second Reformation,” in Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History, 504–5. 67 Connolly, “Mass Politics,” in Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History, 80. Hempton argues that these itinerant evangelists “destabilized the old conventional boundaries between the Catholic and Protestant churches and introduced the arsenic of religious competition into Irish ecclesiastical life” (“Evangelicalism in English and Irish Society,” 167). 68 Cf. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972, 302–3. 69 Boyce, Ireland, 1828–1923, 8–17; Macdonagh, “The Economy and Society, 1830–45.” 70 Hempton, “Evangelicalism in English and Irish Society,” 156. 71 Ibid., 170. 72 Space does not permit a full treatment here, but it needs to be pointed out that English and Irish Evangelicals maintained various personal and societal connections with each other. See Acheson, History of the Church of Ireland, 126, 131–5. 73 Cf. Cooper, “Irish Immigration and the Canadian Church.” 74 Percy matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1831 (Burtchaell and Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses, 663). 75 Echo, 21 July 1859. 76 Cross, “Irish in Montreal,” 9. 77 On the confluence of English and Irish Evangelicalism, see Acheson, History of the Church of Ireland, 125–35, 176–7. 78 Robert Garon, “Jeffery Hale,” dcb, 9: 347–8; Louis-Philippe Audet, “Edward Hale,” dcb, 10: 326–7; Roy, Fils de Quebec, 3; This brief summary of Hale’s life is from my article in deb, 1: 503.

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260 Notes to pages 147–52 79 tfrbl, Hale Family Papers, Jeffery to John Hale, 4 January 1819. The Jeffery Hale correspondence in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto is a typescript version of the manuscripts found in the National Archives of Canada (John Hale and Family Papers, mg, 23, gii 18). All citations are from the copy in Fisher. 80 tfrbl, Hale Family papers, Jeffery to Edward Hale, 13 August 1817. 81 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 11 November 1817. 82 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 1 April 1818. 83 The Amherst estate in Kent was named “Montreal” in honour of Lord Amherst’s having received the capitulation of Montreal in 1760 (Coates, Like ‘the Thames towards Putney,› 323). 84 tfrbl, Hale Family Papers, Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 4 January 1819. 85 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 26 February 1820. Hale says they were dining at Lord Bathurst’s house; Webb says it was Lord Harrowby’s house (Modern England, 167). 86 Coates, Like ‘the Thames towards Putney,› 329. 87 tfrbl, Hale Family Papers, Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 17 June 1820. 88 Ibid., Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 25 July 1821. 89 Ibid., Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 26 October 1821. 90 Ibid. 91 See his comment that “can we who hope we lift an unpresumptuous heart to God when we say ‘Thy will be done’ rush into the contest – implore His blessing on our very violation of the command ‘Thou shalt do no murder’ and then return from the feast of Death (if, and Oh important if, we are suffered to escape His wrath and return at all) to raise the hands still dripping with the crimson stream of departed life in supplication that He will ‘forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’? Oh no – the very thought is revolting to the Christian mind, and if the thought, what is the reality?” (ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 1 April 1823). Given his family’s long and distinguished history in the British forces, one can only imagine how disturbing such thoughts were. 92 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 28 July 1823, 93 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 1 April 1823. 94 Ibid., Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 27 April 1822. 95 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 4 July 1823. 96 Ibid., Jeffery to Elizabeth Hale, 17 September 1824. 97 Presumably Lord Amherst. 98 tfrbl, Hale Family Papers, Jeffery to John Hale, 25 February 1825. 99 Ibid., Jeffery to John Hale, 5 September 1826. 100 Ibid. 101 Address Delivered to the Free Chapel Sunday School. 102 Walsh and Taylor, “Schools, Tendencies, Parties,” 50. 103 Ibid., 51.

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261 Notes to pages 153–8 104 The foregoing sketch is based on Millman, “Charles Lewis Frederick Haensel.” 105 Ibid., 119. 106 On McIlvaine, see Butler, Standing against the Whirlwind, passim. McIlvaine was part of the transatlantic Evangelical connection linking Ireland with the United States. On this subject, see Acheson, History of the Church of Ireland, 184. 107 Millman, “Charles Lewis Frederick Haensel,” 119. 108 Doughty, Quebec under Two Flags, 306–8. 109 Millman, “Charles Lewis Frederick Haensel,” 120. 110 Masters and Masters, Ten Rings on the Oak, 97. 111 Berean, 4 April 1844. 112 E.g. Rev. John Hambleton on “Regeneration” or Rev. C.P. McIlvaine’s address to the graduating class at Kenyon College. 113 Berean, 25 April 1844. 114 Berean, 26 September 1844. 115 Berean, 12 September 1844. 116 Berean, 17 October 1844. 117 Berean, 21 November 1844. 118 Berean, 19 June 1845. 119 Berean, 3 April 1845. 120 Berean, 15 May 1845. Cf. the comment “the true Anglican is far more separate from the Tractarian Churchman than he is from the great body of dissenting believers” (11 December 1845). 121 Berean, 5 March 1846. 122 Berean, 7 May 1846. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Berean, 17 December 1846. 126 Berean. 30 March 1848. 127 Ibid. 128 Beaulieu and Hamelin, Presse québécoise, 1: 185, incorrectly lists the dates of publication as 1853–65. 129 Robert Andrew Hill, “Thomas Sellar,” dcb, 9: 710–11. Hill points out that Sellar did not write the Echo’s religious articles but left this to various clergymen (Voice of the Vanishing Minority, 6). 130 Quoted in Beaulieu and Hamelin, Presse québécoise, 1: 186. 131 There were 65 subscribers in the Diocese of Quebec and 287 in the Diocese of Montreal. 132 Hill suggests that the paper was “often in financial straits, was no moneymaker, but it sufficed to establish Thomas Sellar in journalism” (Voice of the Vanishing Minority, 6). 133 Thomas Sellar, Montreal, Echo, 28 November 1866.

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262 Notes to pages 158–64 134 135 136 137

Beaulieu and Hamelin, Presse québécoise, 1: 185; Echo, 1862. Echo, 19 October 1853. Echo, 7 July 1854; 22 September, 3 November 1852. Rogers also acted as local agent for Seeley’s of Fleet Street in the sale and distribution of the Works of Edward Bickersteth. 138 Echo, 7 July 1854, 29 September, 3 March 1852; Berean, 22 October 1846. 139 The Record was also a keen observer of events in the colonies. It was paticularly critical of Bishop John Strachan’s actions towards Evangelicals in his diocese, likening him to Henry Phillpotts, bishop of Exeter (Record, 4 December 1845, 23 April, 28 May 1846, 13 July 1846, 3 December 1846, 10 February 1851, 13 February 1851). I am grateful to Don Lewis for sharing his index to the Record. 140 Echo, 8 June 1853. 141 Echo, 13 October 1852. 142 Echo, 20 October 1854. 143 Echo, 1 December 1854. 144 Echo, 1 December 1852. 145 Echo, 19 October 1853. 146 Echo, 29 December 1853. 147 Echo, 9 February 1855. 148 Ibid. 149 Echo, 6 February 1857. 150 Echo, 10 September 1863. 151 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, 9–10. 152 Ibid., 12–13. 153 Ibid., 15. 154 Ibid., 24. 155 Ibid., 1. 156 Fawkes was a Roman Catholic who was hanged for his part in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the English Parliament Buildings. For a study of the importance of Guy Fawkes’ Day celebrations to English popular culture, see Storch, ‘Please to Remember the Fifth of November.’ 157 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 85; Hempton, “Evangelicals and Eschatology.” 158 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, especially chapter 2. 159 Miller, “Anti-Catholic Thought in Victorian Canada”; “Anti-Catholicism in Canada”; and “Bigotry in the North Atlantic Triangle.” There is, of course, another side to this picture, which has been little studied, namely, anti-Protestantism among Roman Catholics. 160 Miller, “Anti-Catholic Thought,” 478. 161 Ibid., 482; Miller, “Bigotry in the North Atlantic Trianle.” 162 Echo, 22 March 1860. This poem was signed “J.S.S.” According to an editorial note, “The following was written about 20 years ago for a Protestant

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263 Notes to pages 165–9 publication in England, by a clergyman now in the Diocese of Montreal.” Could this possibly be Jonathan Shortt? 163 qda, Diocesan Papers, vol. 16, Trinity Chapel, Quebec. 164 Monet, “French-Canadian Nationalism.” 165 Ibid., 42–3; Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840,” 198. For a fascinating account of the cultural and political meaning of this celebration in modern Quebec, see Hebert, “Je me souviens.” 166 Monet, “French-Canadian Nationalism,” 43. Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840,” 198–9. 167 Monet, “French-Canadian Nationalism,” 4; Perin,”French-Speaking Canada from 1840,” 197–203. 168 Bowen, “Ultramontanism in Quebec,” 300. 169 Ibid., 297. This is an important article showing both the Ireland-Quebec connection and the consternation with which many in Rome viewed some of Bourget’s activities. 170 Lougheed, “Anti-Catholicism among French Canadian Protestants,” 164. For differing perspectives on this issue, see Hardy, “À propos du réveil religieux dans le Québec du xix e siècle,” and Perin, “French-Speaking Canada from 1840.” 171 Bowen, “Ultramontanism in Quebec,” 299. 172 Quoted in Frost, McGill University, 1: 225. This incident is related in a number of places. For my own consideration of it, see “Canadian Presbyterians and Princeton Seminary, 1850–1900,” in Klempa, The Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow, 219–37.

chapter six 1 Quebec Morning Chronicle, 14 July 1859. The Chronicle blamed Mountain’s supporters for this state of affairs because they had rejected the principles and practice of the British constitution [by insisting] … upon the vain attempt of summoning an assemblage of all the members of the church, instead of initiating representatives. 2 G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 3. 3 Roe, Story of the First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec, 40. 4 qda, g-16, Correspondence re: Synodical Controversy, James Reid to George J. Mountain, 12 July 1858. Reid intimated to Mountain his opposition to Hale’s party: “It seems to me that Mr. Hale and the lawyers were not free of being intentionally mischievous … As the act reads the opposition have the advantange of the letter, but at the expense of common sense and of discarding the intention of Parliament.” Reid went on to complain that “all is to bear on the poor Clergy. The Laity are

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264 Notes to pages 169–75 exempted from the laws which they are, jointly with the Bishop & Clergy, to enact. They are to bind burdens on the necks of the Clergy, while they are not themselves to touch with their little finger; and so, by law, are constituted tyrants … thank God, we may take courage, the Laity cannot make a Synod, if the Bishop and Clergy refuse their concurrence.” 5 This interpretation is based on the idea that the church could and often did function as an “alternative structure of politics,” a phrase borrowed from Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics. 6 For a portrait of Mountain that sees him as a British North American John Keble, detached from church controversy, see Headon, “Influence of the Oxford Movement,” 11. 7 Canada Directory for 1857–58, 624, 629. 8 Bliss, Clerical Guide; Doughty, Quebec under Two Flags, 302–3. 9 Percy, A Letter to the … Lord Bishop of Quebec, 3. 10 Ibid. The details of the English cases can be found in Chadwick, Victorian Church, 1: 491–6, 507. 11 Percy, Letter to … the Lord Bishop of Quebec, 4. 12 Roe, Letter to the Congregation of St. Matthew’s Chapel. 13 Quebec Gazette, 17 May 1858. For the Record’s outspoken support of the ccss and its attack on the bishop of Montreal’s misgivings about the society see 5 January 1852, 22 January 1852, 4 March 1852. 14 Roe, Letter to the Congregation of St. Matthew’s Chapel, 20, 22. 15 bua, Mountain-Nicolls Papers, George Mountain to Jasper Nicolls, 20 May 1859. 16 G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 19. 17 Ibid., 24. 18 Ibid., 46. 19 Ibid., 48. Cf. Masters on this point in “G.J. Mountain: Frontier Bishop,” 93. 20 G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 48. 21 Echo, 8 July 1858. 22 Ibid. 23 Echo, 5 August 1858. 24 G.J. Mountain, Short Explanation of Circumstances, 11. 25 qda, Archbishop of Canterbury to the Bishops of Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto, March 1852. 26 Record, 4 March 1852. The paper noted, for example, the existence of many colonial bishops and clergy “whose minds are deeply imbued with Ultra-High-Church principles; and that, owing to the condition of ecclesiastical custom – for of law there is little or none – those prelates and pastors who are thus minded have a power of mischief, and can exercise a

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265 Notes to pages 175–80

27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

measure of autocratical jurisdiction which would be intolerable in his country, and is there highly detrimental to the progress of God’s truth.” bua, Jasper Nicolls Papers, G.J. Mountain to Jasper H. Nicolls, 1 March 1858. G.J. Mountain, Short Explanation of Circumstances, 10. Teale, “Dr. Pusey and the Church Overseas,” 196. Statement … Constitution and Objects of the Colonial Church & School Society, 17–19. Word in Season, 14. Bentley Hicks has also noted that in the Diocese of Montreal, Bishop Francis Fulford remonstrated against the operations of the ccss as undermining the “’distinctive principle› of the episcopate (“Synodical Government within Canadian Anglicanism,” 127). Millman, “Beginning of the Synodical Movement in Colonial Anglican Churches,” 13. To use the designation of the New York Protestant Churchman, 6 August 1858 (Copy in qda, G.J. Mountain Papers). Thompson, Conditions of Christ’s Presence, 6–7. Quebec Mercury, 26 June 1858. Quebec Mercury, 31 July 1858. Ibid. Ibid. On Irish charity schools, see Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History, 84. Report of the Meeting … 24th July, 1858, 12. G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 9. [Roe], Review of the “Address of the Lay Association, 9 (copy in gda hand annotation identifies the author as Rev. H. Roe). Ibid. (It should be noted that whenever a High Churchman calls another a party man, he is usually identifying that person as an Evangelical.) Ibid. Occupational details are from Canada Directory for 1857–58, 562, 617, 610. [Roe], Review of the “Address of the Lay Association,” 9. Journal of the Legislative Council, 1858, 395, 404; Journal of the Legislative Assembly, 1858, 902, 934, 967–8, 988, 999, 1040. G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 11. Canada Directory for 1857–58, 799. qda, g-16. Thomas Smith Kennedy to G.J. Mountain, 11 August 1858. Cf. ibid., P.B. de Blanquière to G.J. Mountain, 12 August 1858. Ibid., John Strachan to G.J. Mountain, 16 August 16 1858. Quebec Gazette, 28 July 1858. Address … from the Church of England Lay Association; G.J. Mountain, Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 11. Cf. Address … from the Church of England Lay Association, 3–9.

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266 Notes to pages 180–7 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84

Word in Season, 8. Address … from the Church of england Lay Association, 5. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 17–18. Headon, “Influence of the Oxford Movement,” 196. Although the pamphlet was published anonymously, it has been established with some certainty that Henry Roe was its author, despite contemporary rumours that it had been written by six or seven clergy from Upper and Lower Canada. Cf. Word in Season, 5. Other anti-Lay Association pamphlets include Churchman’s Protest and Facts for the Consideration. Roe, Review of the «Address of the Lay Association,» 7; cf. 11–12; Facts for the Consideration, 1–4. Roe, Review of the “Address of the Lay Association,” 12. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 27–8. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 57–8. Address … from Delegates to the Synod, 3. Canada Directory for 1857–58, 563–610. A.J. Anderson, “George Okill Stuart,” dcb, 9: 770–1. Many of the fifty-four were also members of the Lay Committee of the Church Society (Canada Directory for, 1857–8, 629). Hamelin and Roby, Histoire économique du Québec, 210–11; Anderson, “Stuart”, dcb, 9: 638–43; 10: 329–30. Address … from the Delegates to the Synod, 5. Ibid., 10. Word in Season, 9. Quebec Mercury, 3 May 1859. Word in Season, 8. qda, George Mountain Papers, E.G.W. Ross to G.J. Mountain, 11 April 1859. Quebec Mercury, 23 April 1859. It was also suggested by the Quebec Mercury that George Hall, president of the Lay Association and a Quebec City alderman, had used his influence to get all twelve Church of England members of the police force to vote with the Lay Association, a charge that Hall hotly denied. See Quebec Mercury 23 April 1859. Quebec Mercury, 26 April 1859. Proceedings of the Synod, 8.

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267 Notes to pages 187–94 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109

110 111 112

Quebec Gazette, 27 May 1859. Quebec Gazette, 27 April 1859. Ibid. Quebec Gazette, 27 April 1859, 2 May 1859. Quebec Gazette, 29 April 1859. Quoted in Quebec Gazette, 6 May 1859. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances, 29. Ibid., 278–9. Cf. Norman, Anti-Catholicism, 105. Norman, Anti-Catholicism, 57–62. Nigel Yates has recently challenged the disconnection between early Tractarianism and ritualism. He argues, “There is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. Liturgical experiment, however advanced, was the logical outcome of Tractarian teaching” (Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 22). Proceedings of the Synod, 7–9. Ibid., 18. Mountain’s address to synod is also reproduced in A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 370–8. Proceedings of the Synod, 19. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 28–9. G.J. Mountain, Letter Adressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Quebec, 3. Roe, Story of the First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec, 49; Monica Marston, “George Jehoshaphat Mountain,” dcb, 9: 581. Quoted in Roe, Story of the First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec, 48. Ibid., 49. Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 89. For a convenient sketch of the life of Sumner, see deb, 2: 1071–2. Frank Peake has argued that David Anderson was introduced to the Clapham Sect through Charles Grant and the East India Company connection. Anderson’s father Archibald had served as a surgeon with the army of the East India company in Bengal province. See Peake, “David Anderson,” 3–5. Peake, “David Anderson,” 6–10. Frits Pannekoek, “David Anderson,” dcb, 11: 18. For more on Anderson in Rupert’s Land, see Ferguson, Anglican Church and the World of Western Canada, and Boon, Anglican Church from the Bay to the Rockies, especially chapter 5. Mountain to Hawkins, 5 January 1849, quoted in Boon, Anglican Church from the Bay to the Rockies, 60. Peake argues, “By 1864 Anderson was tired and disillusioned” (“David Anderson,” 40). Alumni Oxonienses, 3: 993.

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268 Notes to pages 194–8 113 Biographical information about Armine Mountain is elusive. Bits and pieces can be gleaned from Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 335, and Masters and Masters, Ten Rings on the Oak, x. There are some letters from him, chiefly to his sister, Harriet Nicolls, in the Bishop’s University Archives. 114 Alumni Oxonienses, 3: 993. 115 A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 225. 116 The entire list is reprinted ibid., 448–51. 117 See Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, for a description of the “Bisley school” of moderate Tractarianism, which “remained much closer in spirit to the older High Churchmen” (39). Roe, Story of the First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec, asserts that a three-year period spent in New Zealand between the ages of seventeen and twenty, during which he met Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, “made a deep impression upon him” (49–50). 118 Isaac Williams had been something of a protégé of both Keble and Froude and had briefly served as curate to Newman at St Mary’s, Oxford (Hylson-Smith, High Churchmanship, 147–8; Ollard, Short History of the Oxford Movement, 61–3; Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd 1487). 119 Biographical sketches of Williams can be found in Mockridge, Bishops of the Church of England, 195–208; Rowley, Anglican Episcopate, 42–3; Robin B. Burns, “James William Williams,” dcb, 12: 1100–1. 120 Quoted in Reisner, Strangers and Pilgrims, 87; see 87–9 for an account of the election of 1863. 121 Mockridge, Bishops of the Church of England, 199. 122 The following account of the election is based on Journal of the Synod … in the Diocese of Quebec, Special Session.

chapter seven 1 2 3 4

Thompson, Revelation and Science, 3. Ibid., 3–7. Kitson Clark, Expanding Society, 95. Ibid., 96. Professor Kitson Clark goes on to point out “one of the oddest facts in its intellectual and spiritual history,” namely, that a series of religious revivals swept over the British Isles from Ulster to Wales during this same ten-year period. Cf. James R. Moore’s reference to “a series of intellectual tremors which jarred large sectors of the British churches into militant defence of the faith once delivered to the saints. Beginning in 1857 each year for the greater part of a decade seemed to bring a new and deliberate assault on established religious truth” (Post-Darwinian Controversies, 52).

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269 Notes to pages 199–201 5 McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 143. 6 Cf. Gauvreau, Evangelical Century; Fraser, Social Uplifters; Van Die, Evangelical Mind; Marshall, Secularizing the Faith. 7 Thompson, Revelation and Science, 13. 8 Though I think Stephen Neill’s comment that “at that time almost all good Christians in England were what would now be called ‘fundamentalists› is anachronistic (Neil and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 33). 9 Leslie Houlden, “Liberalism: Britain,” in McGrath, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, 323. 10 Kitson Clark, Making of Victorian England, 146–7. Cf. Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 160, which quotes this passage. One historian who employs the term “panic” to describe the public reaction is Claude Welch in Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1: 167. 11 dnb, 8: 142. 12 dnb, Twentieth Century, January 1901–December 1911, 488–93; Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 1586. 13 dnb, 22: 921–8; Cross and Livingstone, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 904. 14 Perry Butler in Sykes and Booty, Study of Anglicanism, 37. 15 Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 165. 16 dnb, 21: 568. 17 Quoted in dnb, 15: 504; Cf. V.H.H. Green, “Introduction,” in Mark Pattison, Memoirs of an Oxford Don, 2–4. 18 See V.H.H. Green’s comment that Pattison “shed slowly the doctrines of a faith which he came more and more to regard as irrational and illiberal” (“Introduction,” in Pattison, Memoirs of an Oxford Don, 7). 19 dnb, 15: 506. Cf. Paul Avis’s comment that Pattison’s theological trajectory came to rest in “a sardonic critical agnosticism” (Anglicanism, 252). V.H.H. Green notes that within a few years of the publication of Essays and Reviews, Pattison’s religious belief had “faded to an amorphous agnosticism” (“Introduction,” in Pattison, Memoirs of an Oxford Don, 9). 20 Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age, 321–2, quoting Abbott and Campbell, Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett; Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 166. 21 Cashdollar, Transformation of Theology, 86–9. 22 Ibid., dnb, 22: 335–8. Burgon’s brother-in-law was Henry John Rose. His biographer acidly comments that as Gresham Professor, Burgon “was a leading champion of lost causes and impossible beliefs” (dnb, 22: 336). 23 Butler in Sykes and Booty, Study of Anglicanism, 37. 24 Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 170; McDonald, Theories of Revelation, 29. 25 dnb, 21: 450–3, 568. Stephen Neill is extremely critical of these attempts to quash the views of the essayists in the church courts. See Neill and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 33–4.

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270 Notes to pages 202–5 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39

40

41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

Neill, Anglicanism, 266–7. Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 171. Altholz, “Mind of Victorian Orthodoxy,” 187. Ibid., passim. Echo, 4 April 1861. On Powell’s admiration for Darwin, see Moore, Post-Darwinian Controversies, 89. Echo, 18 April 1861. Ibid. Echo, 2 May 1861. Ibid. Particularly on questions surrounding the dating of the New Testament writings. See Neill and Wright, Interpretation of the New Testament, 35–40; Noll, Between Faith & Criticism, 67–72. Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record, April 1861, 90. Christian Guardian, 24 April 1861, quoted in McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 118. Clarke, “English-Speaking Canada from 1854,” 319. John Moir has made the curious comment with regard to Essays and Reviews that “there is little evidence of awareness of the volume, much less of any influence on contemporary Canadian opinion” (History of Biblical Studies in Canada, 7). Cf. Mark Noll’s comment that “Nonconformists joined evangelical and high church Anglicans in denouncing Essays and Reviews” (Between Faith & Criticism, 65). Masters, “Bishop’s University and the Ecclesiastical Controversies,” 40. Ibid. A point made by Headon, “Influence of the Oxford Movement,” 155. Cf. the comment made by Principal Nicolls in an 1866 confirmation sermon, “Beware, then, how you listen to others speaking evil of religion, or jesting about sacred things, or cavilling or sneering at anything pertaining to God. Never forget to 1) read your Bible; read it to learn from it how you ought to live. 2) Listen to the instructions of those who are set over you to teach you and to guide you in your religious duties.” (Confirmation Sermon, 8). Quoted in Masters, “Patterns of Thought,” 65; Grant, Profusion of Spires, 131–2. Masters, “Patterns of Thought,” 65. Masters, Bishop’s University, 58. Ibid. Apart from the work cited above, the only references to the Lennoxville Magazine that I have discovered are contained in articles about the university by D.C. Masters. His “Patterns of Thought in Anglican Colleges in the Nineteenth Century,” 65, and”Bishop’s University and the Ecclesiastical

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271 Notes to pages 206–9

49 50

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

Controversies of the Nineteenth Century (1845–1878),” 40, both contain references to the magazine’s attack on Bishop Colenso’s views. Christopher Nicholl’s recent history of Bishop’s fails to mention either the Student’s Monthly or the Lennoxville Magazine. Francis, “Literary Magazines in English,” 457. The one exception was the Reverend Edmund Wood, a graduate of Durham University who served as an assistant at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, before becoming Rector of St John the Evangelist, Montreal. See Bliss, Clerical Guide, 244. Beaulieu and Hamelin, Presse québécoise, 3: 112. Compare, for example, the publication in Upper Canada/Canada West of the High Church paper the Church between 1837 and 1856. Masters, Bishop’s University, 165. R.H. Walker, ma, (late scholar of Wadham College, Oxford) was professor of mathematics, curator of the Museum, and rector of the Junior Department; A.C. Scarth, ma (Bishop’s), was professor of ecclesiastical history; C. Roux, ma, was professor of French. In the Junior Department (what became Bishop’s College School), the sub-rector was W. Richmond, ma (Trinity College, Dublin), and the masters were F. Prideaux, ma (late scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford); E.A. King, ba (Bishop’s); J.B. Hyndman, lt; and J. Hepburn, ba (Bishop’s). See Lennoxville Magazine, January 1868; Bliss, Clerical Guide. Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 71–2. D.C. Masters, “Jasper Hume Nicolls,” dcb, 10: 548; Headon, “Developments in Canadian Anglican Worship,” 27. Nicholl, Bishop’s University, 74–82. Parts of this chapter were published in slightly different form in the Journal of Eastern Townships Studies/Revue d’études des Cantons de l’Est. In an draft of that article I suggested that Principal Nicolls might have written “The Church.” I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for the jets for forcing me to rethink the issue of who edited and who wrote what and for suggesting that Henry Roe was a likely candidate as the author of “The Church.” I think that this suggestion has considerable merit, and I revised the article accordingly. At the same time, however, I believe that the views of Nicolls and Roe were so compatible that it may not matter who wrote the column – both were High Churchmen with Tractarian leanings. Alan L. Hayes, “Henry Roe,” dcb, 13: 887–9. Ibid., 888. Among the sources cited by “The Church” was the Guardian. The deaths of the Reverend S.S. Woods of Three Rivers and Bishop Fulford of Montreal also elicited a few comments. Carrington, Anglican Church in Canada, 135–6.

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272 Notes to pages 209–13 63 Lennoxville Magazine, January 1868, 44. 64 Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Africa, 84. See also Hinchliff, John William Colenso, 79ff. 65 Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Africa, 84. 66 Andrew Porter, “Religion, Missionary Enthusiasm and Empire,” in Porter, Oxford History of the British Empire, 241. 67 See Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century, chapter 16, for a full discussion of Colenso as an Old Testament critic. 68 Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Africa, 86–7. Though scholars disagree about Colenso’s credentials and erudition as an Old Testament critic, the most recent study of his work has assessed it as “the most remarkable achievement by a British scholar in the field of Old Testament in the nineteenth century” and has suggested that “Colenso’s significance may well lie in the way in which he broke up the hard soil in Britain, exhausted the credibility of the older defences of orthodoxy, and showed to a younger generation of scholars facts in the Bible that orthodox schemes could no longer explain. To Colenso more than to anyone else, may be due the fact that in scholarly circles, from the 1880s, the defenders of the old orthodoxy were hardly to be seen, and the field was dominated by a new critical, if critically conservative school of scholarship” (Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 234–6). 69 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 2: 91. See 90–7 for a succinct review of the Colenso case. 70 The language of the third charge – “that the holy sacraments are generally necessary to salvation, and that they convey … special grace, and that faith is the means whereby the body and blood of Christ are received” – would not have received general assent from Anglican Evangelicals. 71 Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Africa, 92–3. 72 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 2: 93; Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Africa, 90 73 See Hinchliff, Anglican Church in South Afria, 97–100. 74 Lennoxville Magazine, February 1868, 91. 75 Lennoxville Magazine, May 1868, 237. 76 Ibid. 77 Michael Gauvreau’s study, limited to Presbyterians and Methodists, does not explore Canadian Anglican opposition to Colenso. See Evangelical Century, 130. John Webster Grant discusses some of the Canadian responses in Profusion of Spires, 131–2. 78 Lennoxville Magazine, May 1868, 234. 79 Ibid., 236. 80 Chadwick, Victorian Church, 2: 439. 81 Ibid., 2: 441. 82 On this subject, see Noll, “University Arrives in America”; see also Marsden, Soul of the American University. 83 Lennoxville Magazine, June 1868, 283–4.

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273 Notes to pages 213–20 84 Ibid., July 1868, 331. 85 A convenient discussion of this process can be found in Bebbington, William Ewart Gladstone, 146–9. 86 Lennoxville Magazine, May 1868, 234–5. 87 Ibid., 235. 88 Lennoxville Magazine, July 1868, 332–3. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 333. 91 Ibid., 333–4. 92 Yates, Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism, 30–2. For a detailed examination of these issues, see Bentley, Ritualism and Politics. 93 Bowen, Idea of the Victorian Church, 119. 94 Lennoxville Magazine, January 1868, 45. 95 Lennoxville Magazine, April 1868, 189. 96 The Court of Arches was the highest ecclesiastical court in the Province of Canterbury. 97 Lennoxville Magazine, June 1868, 282. 98 Ibid., 283. 99 Ibid., August 1868, 376. 100 On Mackonochie, see Bentley, Ritualism and Politics, 17ff. 101 On this and other points, modern authorities such as Bentley disagree with the Lennoxville Magazine. Cf. Bentley’s comment that St Alban’s had been “built entirely according to ritualist principles” (Ritualism and Politics, 17). 102 Lennoxville Magazine, September 1868, 430. 103 Lennoxville Magazine, October 1868, 479. 104 Thompson, Revelation and Science, 13.

epilogue 1 Quebec Mercury, 8 January 1863. Also quoted in A.W. Mountain, Memoir of George J. Mountain, 438. 2 On “activism” as one of the defining characteristics of evangelicalism, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. 3 Quebec Mercury, 7 December 1864. 4 As the Quebec Gazette put it, “In every christian and philanthropic object connected with the city of Quebec, he took an active interest, and was ever ready to lend his aid” (13 January 1865). 5 Address Delivered to the Free Chapel Sunday School, 4–5. 6 Ibid., 10. 7 Marsh estimated that between twenty and thirty former pupils of this school went on to become ministers and missionaries or the wives of such.

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274 Notes to pages 220–4 8 Address Delivered to the Free Chapel Sunday School, 10–11. 9 Ibid. 10 Pepperdene, Church Directory and a Brief Historical Sketch of Trinity Anglican Church. 11 Percy is admittedly an elusive figure. Bartchaell and Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses, 663, list one Gilbert Percy who received his ba in 1831 and his llb and lld in 1862. 12 See Van Die’s introduction to Religion and Public Life in Canada. 13 qda Jacob Mountain Papers, series C, Jacob Mountain to Tomline, 15 July 1802.

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Act of Uniformity (1662), 45–6, 156 Ahlstrom, Sydney, 34 Akenson, Donald H., 10, 49, 50, 142, 237n58 Altholz, Joseph, 202 American Revolution, 72 Amherst family, 16–17, 147 Anderson, David (bishop of Rupert’s Land): and episcopal election of 1863, 193–7 Andrews, Frederick, 168, 183, 188 Anglo-Catholicism: and ritualism, 62, 116–17, 126, 128, 131, 158, 171, 188 anti-Catholicism, 161–7, 170, 188; and Protestant identity, 161–2 apostolic succession, doctrine of, 8, 28, 154–5, 160 architecture (church), 52– 64; Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, 55–6, 166; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Quebec City, 54–5; Notre-Dame Cathedral, Montreal, 55, 166;

St Matthew’s Chapel, Quebec City, 57–8, 62; Trinity Chapel, Quebec City, 63; and ultramontanism, 166 Ashe, Lt, 178, 188 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony. See Shaftesbury Bailyn, Bernard, 5 Bancroft, Charles, 158 baptism, baptismal regeneration, 98–9, 101, 103, 108–10, 121, 126–7, 160, 210 Bathurst, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl, 33 Baur, F.C., 199 Baxter, Richard, 128, 137 Bebbington, David, 35–6, 113, 140, 142 Becket, John C., 27 Beckett, J.C., 48, 142, 237n50, 238n67 Bentley, James, 215 Berczy, William, 58 Berean (newspaper), 30, 146, 152–7, 167, 221; on church architecture, 63–4

Bethesda Chapel, Dublin, 88, 89, 143–4 Bethune, Alexander Neil, 29–30, 120, 160 Bickersteth, Edward, 154 Bishop’s College, University of, 4, 62, 167, 176; and “the church in danger,” 199; Lennoxville Magazine, 205, 208–9, 212, 216–19; and Henry Roe, 122–4, 169; and spg, 92; and Tractarianism, 173–4; and James William Williams, 195. See also Nicholls, Jasper Hume Black, Robert Merrill, 9– 10, 228n29, 245nn100, 111 Blaiklock, George, 63 Blaiklock, Henry Musgrave, 63 Blake family, 228–9n2 Blaquière, P.B. de, 179 Bloxam, J.R., 61 Book of Common Prayer, 45, 73, 90, 103 Boucher, Jonathan, 74 Bourget, Ignace, 165–6

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Bowen, Desmond, 116, 166 Bradley, Ian, 36–7, 140 Breen, T.H., 24, 231n52 British and Foreign Bible Society, 35–6, 86, 140, 146, 151, 220 Broad Churchmen, 199, 202, 223. See also Essays and Reviews; Maurice, F.D. Brock, Isaac, 39–41 Brown, Ford K., 85 Brown, George, 157 Brown, Peter, 28 Brynn, Edward, 142 Buckner, Phillip, 5–6, 17, 21, 229n10 Burgon, John William, 201 calendars, 45–6, 53, 64–8 Cambridge Camden Society, 56, 61, 155 Campbell, A., 186–7 Canning, George, 76 Carr, John F., 207–8 Carrington, Philip, 7 Cato Street conspiracy, 148 Cavendish-Bentinck, William. See Portland Chadwick, Owen, 101, 103, 212 Chalmers, Thomas, 128 Chapman, Edward, 124, 254n150 Christie, William Plenderleath, 89–91 Chaussé, Gilles, 242n57 Church, R.W., 112, 124 Church (newspaper), 3, 30, 152, 160; attitude towards Evangelicals and comment on London Record, 252n111; and Tracts for the Times, 251– 2n111 churches: Holy Trinity Cathedral, Quebec City, 3; St George’s, Lennoxville, 110, 198; St Peter’s, Sherbrooke, 39 Church Missionary Society (cms), 36–7, 103, 140,

144, 175, 193, 221; and C.L.F. Haensel, 153–5 Clapham Sect, Claphamites, 88, 135, 140, 142, 143, 150 Clark, J.C.D., 5 Coates, Colin, 148 Cockburn, James Patterson, 65 Colenso, John William, 98, 198, 209–11, 216, 218, 223, 272n68; Henry Roe on, 130 Colley, Linda, 5, 38, 39–40, 68, 118 Colonial Church and School Society, 4, 37–8, 122, 153, 159, 169–70, 172, 174–6, 191, 225n6 confirmation, 126–7 Connolly, Sean, 48–52 Conybeare, W.J., 6, 8, 100 Constitutional Act (1791), 77 consumer revolution, 20–5 conversion, 8, 102–3, 110, 135–6, 210 Cooper, J.I., 12 Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, 90 courts (ecclesiastical), 51– 2, 76–7 Craig, Sir James, 55, 65, 83; Jacob Mountain’s memorandum to (1810), 76–8 Cressy, David, 25, 31, 45, 64 Cronyn, Benjamin, 4, 29, 36–7, 40, 145, 153, 158; and Peter Roe of Kilkenny, 258n56 Cronyn family, 228–9n2 Cross, Suzanne, 146 Crowther, Samuel, 153 cultural memory, 52 Dalhousie, George Ramsay, 9th Earl of, 88 Darwin, Charles, 198, 200, 203, 205 Davidson, Arthur, 21–5 Davidson brothers (unidentified), 74–5

Davies, Horton, 60 Dawson, John William, 36, 166–7 Delisle, David Charbrand, 75 Dichfield, G.M., 92–3 Dissent, Dissenters, 8, 36, 46, 47, 76, 86, 110, 115, 119, 121–2, 156, 178, 186–7, 194, 212, 222 Doll, Peter, 72 Doolittle, Lucius, 124, 254n150 Dorchester, Sir Guy Carleton, 1st Baron, 13, 74, 75 Dundas, Henry, 43, 54, 74 Echo and Protestant Episcopal Recorder (newspaper), 30, 146, 152, 157–61, 167, 173–4; editors and trustees, 158; on Essays and Reviews, 202–4 Elizabethan Settlement, 42–4 emigration to Quebec: and ongoing transatlantic connections, 17 English party at Quebec, 16, 82–3 Essays and Reviews, 199– 205, 216, 223; Henry Roe on, 130 Evangelicals in the Church of England, 86, 193; Jacob Mountain’s opposition to, 45; and Oxford Movement, 111, 113–16; theology and social vision, 134–42; in the University of Cambridge, 135–6 Evangelicals in the Church of Ireland, 142–5, 159– 60 Evangelicals in the Diocese of Montreal, 87–91 Evangelicals in the Diocese of Quebec, 197; and attempt to establish a proprietary chapel, 91–2; and synodical contro-

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versy, 177–9, 182, 184, 192. See also Hale, Jeffery; Lay Association; Sewell, Edmund Willoughby; Trinity Chapel, Quebec City Evangelicals in Quebec (province), 146, 208 Fahey, Curtis, 233n96 Fairweather, Eugene, 99 Fawkes, Guy, 44, 162 Fingard, Judith, 72, 240n22 Fitzgerald, Lt Col., 186, 188 Forbin-Janson, Bishop, 165–6 Forsyth, James Bell, 168, 183, 188, 196 Foster, Roy, 47–8 Foxe, John, 43–4 France, French, 31–2, 79– 82, 138, 223 French-Canadian Missionary Society, 165 French Canadians, 9 French Revolution, 80–1; reaction in Quebec, 81–3 Froude, Richard Hurrell, 103, 112, 178, 223; attitude to Reformation, 114, 116 Fulford, Francis, 5, 9, 174– 5, 225n6 Gash, Norman, 111 Gavazzi, Alessandro, 30, 159 Gazette (Quebec), 168, 170, 187 Gilbert, Alan, 42 Gilley, Sheridan, 50, 113, 117 Gladstone, William Ewart, 95, 213 Glorious Revolution, Revolution Settlement (1688–90), 8, 29, 46–7, 81, 100; and Ireland, 47–8 Goode, William, 115

Goodwin, Charles Wycliffe, 199–205 passim Gorham, George Cornelius, 98, 108, 121 Gothic revival, 56–64; and Oxford Movement, 116– 17 Gowans, Alan, 54 Grace, Robert, 230n20 Gray, Robert (bishop of Cape Town), 210–11 Green, V.H.H., 9 Greenwood, F. Murray, 242n57 Haensel, C.L.F., 152–8, 221 Haldane, Alexander, 141 Hale, Edward, 17, 147, 196 Hale, Jeffery, 12, 17, 89, 90, 146–52 passim, 167, 196, 219–21; attempt to establish a proprietary chapel in Quebec City, 91–2; and Lay Association, 177–88; and synod of 1859, 188–9 Hale family, 16–17, 38, 147 Hall, George Benson, 169, 185–9, 266n82 Hampden, R.D., 98 Harrison, Frederic, 201 Hawkins, Ernest, 94–5, 193 Hayes, Allan, 125 Headon, Christopher, 227n20, 247n10, 248n34 Hellmuth, Isaac, 3–4, 6, 12, 36, 120, 145, 167, 175, 179, 221 Hempton, David, 142, 145, 259n67 Herald (Montreal), 187 High Church, High Churchmanship, 85–6, 160–1, 167, 172, 199; George Mountain and, 104–10; overview of tradition, 99–104 High Church party: in synodical controversy, 177– 84 Hill, Myrtle, 142

Holmes, A.F., 36, 90, 159 Hooker, Richard, 44, 81, 172, 182 Hubert, Jean-François, 82 Huron, Diocese of, 29, 182 Huron College, 29, 40 Inglis, Charles, 35, 72, 73, 74 Ireland: Church of Ireland, 47–52; disestablishment discussed in Lennoxville Magazine, 209, 213–15; Evangelicalism in, 50; and Oxford Movement, 111–12; Protestant Ascendancy, 48–9, 51 Irish Protestants in Quebec, 17–18, 158–9, 169 Irving, Edward, 162 Jaenen, Cornelius, 65 Jameson, Anna Brownell, 27 Jenkins, Brian, 52 Jenkinson, Robert Banks. See Liverpool Jewel, John, 40, 44 Johnson, Samuel, 70, 73, 137 Johnston, A.J.B., 64–5 Jowett, Benjamin, 199–205 passim judgement (of God), 80 justification by faith, doctrine of, 8–9, 113, 154, 156, 210; High Church understanding of, 101– 3; George Mountain on, 105 Kalman, Harold, 55, 238– 9n105 Keble, John, 98, 111, 126, 178, 195, 213, 217, 223, 254n154 Keble College, Oxford, 212–13 Kennedy, Thomas Smith, 179–80 Kent, John, 7

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Kinnear, Mary, 51 Kitson Clark, George, 198, 200, 268n4 Knight, Frances, 226n19 Knox, William, 72 Lambeth Conferences, 209 Langtry, J., 7, 227n20 Latitudinarianism, Latitudinarians, 45, 84, 100 Laud, William, 44, 99, 184 Lawson, Philip, 24, 231n52 Lay Association, 176–88 Lennoxville, 6, 208 Lennoxville Magazine, 123, 205–18 passim letters (as transatlantic connections), 30–4 Lewis, John Travers, 209 Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of, 83 Lovell, John, 27; Canada Directory, 66–8 Low Church, Low Churchmen, 46, 84, 100, 161, 173; as misnomer for Evangelicals, 8 MacCulloch, Diarmaid, 56, 116 McGibbon, R.D., 122 McGill College, 62, 104, 169 McGrath, Alister, 101–2 McIlvaine, Charles P., 153 Mackonochie, Alexander Heriot, 217 McNeile, Hugh, 3, 120, 141, 145, 162, 166, 170, 221. See also Record, Recordites Manning, Henry, 98, 113 Markus, Robert, 52 Marsan, Jean-Claude, 54–6 Marsh, D., 220 Marsh, Herbert (bishop of Peterborough), 85–6 Masters, D.C., 98, 205, 207, 227–8n28 Mathias, Benjamin Williams, 143–4. See also Bethesda Chapel, Dublin

Maurice, F.D., 199 Medley, John, 61, 99 Mercury (newspaper), 27, 45, 168, 177, 184–6, 219 Miller, Carman, 66 Miller, J.R., 163 Millman, T.R., 7, 10–11, 153–4, 228n31 Mills, Frederick, 71–2 Mockridge, Charles H., 196 Molson, Thomas, 87, 90–1 Moodie, Susanna, 13 More, Hannah, 128, 140 Morning Chronicle (newspaper), 27, 168 Mountain, Armine Simcoe Henry, 14, 78 Mountain, Armine Wale, 6, 14–15, 30, 99, 187, 221; and episcopal election of 1863, 193–7 passim Mountain, Eliza (Mrs Jacob), 31–3, 78, 86 Mountain, George Jehoshaphat, 3–4, 6, 8, 12, 78, 90, 97–133 passim, 135, 152, 154, 167, 247n11; career and influence, 219–24; and church architecture, 56– 63 passim; and episcopal election of 1863, 192–5; fatherly admonitions to Armine W., 194–5; and High Church tradition, 104–10; and holiness, 106; opposition to Colonial Church and School Society, 174–6; opposition to Essays and Reviews, 205; opposition to Evangelicals, 91, 121; opposition to proprietary chapel at Quebec, 91–2, 246n120; and Oxford Movement, 118–22; and Percy-Roe clash, 168–70, 172; and James Reid, 93– 6; and synodical controversy, 176–88; and synod of 1859, 189–92; theology, 105–110

Mountain, Jacob, 11, 13– 14, 32, 36, 41, 70, 96, 135, 183, 223–4, 243n71; and Anglican political culture, 79–87; attitude towards Evangelicals, 84–6; attitude towards Latitudinarians, 84–5; attitude towards Puritans, 44–5, 84; and church architecture, 54–5; and establishment of Diocese of Quebec, 73–8; memorandum to Sir James Craig (1810), 76–8; and Roman Catholic Church in Quebec, 70, 78, 83; and Roman Catholic processions, 65–6; theology and churchmanship, 84–7 Mountain, Jacob Henry Brooke, 14, 224 Mountain, Jehoshaphat, 14 Mountain, Mary (Mrs George), 91, 121 Mountain, Salter, 14, 104 Mountain family: group migration of, 13–15, 220–1 Mozley, J.B., 61 Mulvaney, C.P., 124 Murray, James, 72–3 national memory, 40 Neill, Stephen, 46 Nelson, Horatio, Viscount Nelson, 79, 96 networks (communication), 25–30 Newman, John Henry, 8, 98, 111–14, 119, 123–4, 201, 214, 223; on justification, 250n80 Newsome, David, 250n73, 251n98 newspapers, 26–30; Banner, 26, 30; British Colonist, 26, 28; Christian Reporter, 28; Christian Sentinel and Anglo-Canadian Churchman’s Magazine, 27; Globe, 26

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Nicolls, Harriet (Mountain), 6, 30, 121 Nicolls, Jasper Hume, 6, 12, 120–1, 123, 167, 196–7, 208, 271n58; on confirmation, 126–7; and Oxford Movement, 99; and Percy-Roe clash, 172–7 passim Nockles, Peter, 102–3, 123 Nonjurors, 29, 100 Norman, E.R., 118, 188 O’Brien, Susan, 25 O’Day, Rosemary, 116 oral culture, 26, 30 Orange Order, 66, 172 Ouellet, Fernand, 21, 82–3 Oxenden, Ashton, 167 Oxford, University of, 137, 155, 193, 208, 212–13, 218 Oxford Movement, 8–9, 56, 92, 96, 98, 110–18, 133, 155, 157, 167, 170, 188, 191, 195, 201–2, 213, 223. See also Froude, Richard Hurrell; Keble, John; Newman, John Henry; Pusey, Edward Bouverie; Tractarianism Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture, 61 papal aggression controversy, 118, 163, 188 parades, 65–6 Parker Society, 115–16 patronage (ecclesiastical), 72–8, 83, 87–96 Pattison, Mark, 199–205 passim Percy, Gilbert, 122, 145, 169–74, 179, 191, 221 Peters, Samuel, 74 Phillpotts, Henry (bishop of Exeter), 98, 188 Pitt, William (the Younger), 10, 13, 33, 72, 73, 75, 86, 138 Plessis, Joseph-Octave, 82

Pocock, J.G.A., 5 Pope, Richard, 178, 186, 188 Porter, Andrew, 25, 210 Portland, William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of, 70 Powell, Baden, 199–205 premillennialism, 141–2; and anti-Catholicism, 162–3 Pretyman Tomline, Elizabeth, 31–4, 86 Pretyman Tomline, George, 10–11, 13–14, 32, 36, 70, 73–87, 197, 224; attitude towards Evangelicals, 85–7; and establishment of Diocese of Quebec and appointment of Jacob Mountain, 73–87 Prevost, Sir George, 83 Price, William, 168, 189 print culture, 26, 30, 34 Protestants in Quebec: distribution and demographic trends, 17–19 providence (of God), 3–4, 32, 38–9, 79–80, 147, 150–1, 159, 166, 212 Pugin, Augustus Welby, 62, 116 Puritans, Puritanism, 84, 107, 128, 172, 173, 184; High Church attitude towards, 100–1; Jacob Mountain’s opposition to, 44–5 Pusey, Edward Bouverie; Puseyism, 6, 112, 115, 120, 129, 188, 200–2, 223 Quebec, Diocese of: establishment of, 73–8 Quebec Act (1774), 51 Quebec City Mission, 151 Record (newspaper), Recordites, 4, 26, 152, 154– 6, 159, 162, 170, 175, 221; and Isaac Hellmuth,

145; origins and characteristics, 141–2; and spg in bna, 95. See also Haldane Alexander; McNeile, Hugh Reformation, 103, 113, Reformation (English), 39–41, 116, 124, 165, 172 reformation of manners, 32, 80 Reform Bill (1832), 181 Reid, Charles Peter, 93 Reid, James, 70, 93–6, 168, 179 Reisner, Mary Ellen, 12, 192, 227n22, 228n31 religious societies, 34–8 Religious Tract Society, 36, 151, 220 Rennie, Ian, 115, 141, 243n88 reserve, doctrine of, 123–4 Restoration (1660), 29, 44–6 Restoration theologians, 101–2 riots, religious, 186–8 ritualism: discussion in Lennoxville Magazine, 215–17 Roe, Henry, 12, 39, 45, 62, 122–33 passim, 145, 192, 196, 208–9, 226n19, 238n8, 271n58; clash with Gilbert Percy, 168–74; ministry at New Ireland, 125–6, 128–33; and synodical controversy, 177–87, 191. See also Lennoxville Magazine Roe, Peter, 143, 258n56 Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, 44, 53, 70, 75, 82, 83, 117–19, 121, 123, 145, 149, 159, 187, 214–16; calendars, 64–7; parades and public processions, 65–6 Roman Catholics in Quebec: and architecture, 53, 55–6; attitude towards French Revolution, 81–2; demographic

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profile, 18; and loyalty to Britain, 83; parades and public processions; 65–6 Romanticism: and Gothic architecture, 60–1; and Oxford Movement, 112; and Recordites, 141–2; and ultramontanism, 166 Rooke, Octavius E., 189 Rudin, Ronald, 229–30n11 Russell, Lord John, 188 Ryland, Herman Witsius, 83 Sacheverell, Henry, 112 St Augustine’s College, Canterbury, 99, 118 St George’s Church, Montreal, 244n102 St Mathew’s Church, Quebec City, 169, 186–7, 189 St Thomas’s Church, Montreal, 87, 90–1 Schlenther, Boyd, 24 Scobie, Hugh, 28 Scott, Thomas, 85, 129 Secker, Thomas, 71 Second Reformation (Ireland), 144–5 Sellar, Thomas, 157–8 Sewell, Edmund Willoughby, 56–60, 88–9, 91, 165, 179, 187, 196, 221, 246n120 Sewell, Jonathan, 16, 54, 63, 83, 88, 91–2 Sewell, S.C., 93 Sewell family, 38 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of, 37, 200, 215 Sherbrooke, Sir John Cope, 54 Sherbrooke (town), 53 Simcoe, John Graves, 74 Simeon, Charles, 135–7, 162 skepticism (philosophical and theological), 130 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

(spck), 34, 70, 103, 170–2, 174 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (spg), 34–5, 37, 54, 70, 72, 87, 103, 120, 172, 174–5, 193; patronage in the Diocese of Quebec, 92–5 Stephen, Sir James, 35 Stephenson, Alan, 103 Stevens, Brooke Bridges, 27 Stevenson, John, 187–8 Stewart, Charles James, 14, 24–5, 86–7, 92–3, 95, 104, 118, 243–4n91 Strachan, John, 98, 160, 174, 179–80, 205 Stuart, Andrew, 168, 179 Stuart, George Okill, 169, 183–4, 188 Sumner, John Bird, 175, 193 Sydney, Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount, 74 symbols (cultural), 40, 52, 68; parades as, 65–6 synodical controversy, 147, 168–97 passim; and Lay Association, 172, 176–88 synod of 1859, 188–92 Taylor, Jeremy, 101, 172 Taylor, Stephen, 102, 152 Teale, Ruth, 175 Temple, Frederick, 199– 205 passim Test Act, 45–6, 51, 181 Thirty-nine Articles, 89, 103, 108, 135 Thompson, J.H., 110, 176, 198–9, 205 Thompson, W.D., 179 Toon, Peter, 108, 116 Toosey, Philip, 73, 74 Tory, Tories, 10, 45–6, 103, 181, 184 Tractarianism, 4, 8, 133, 199, 210, 213, 215, 223; and anti-Catholicism, 159–67; Berean’s opposition to, 154–7; and doc-

trine of reserve, 123–4 (see also Williams, Isaac); Echo’s opposition to, 159–60; and episcopal election of 1863, 193–5; and Gothic revival, 60–2; and opposition to Colenso, 210–11; and opposition to Essays and Reviews, 199–205; and Percy-Roe clash, 170–4; and religious riots, 188; Henry Roe and, 122–4, 126; synodical controversy and, 178, 182, 191; theology, 113–18 Tracts for the Times, 112 Trinity Chapel, Quebec City, 87–9, 91, 153–4, 164–5, 167, 187, 189, 221, 244n96; design of, 63 Trinity Church, Montreal, 87, 89–90 Trinity College, Dublin, 143–5, 169, 208, 221 Trinity College, Toronto, 29 Trollope, Anthony, 168 Tübingen school (of biblical criticism). See Baur, F.C. Tunstall, James Marmaduke, 75, 241n27–8 ultramontanism, ultramontanes, 9, 65, 165–6 Wade, Mason, 83 Walsh, John, 102, 152 Ward, William George, 99, 114, 201 Waterman, A.M.C., 243n78 Westfall, William, 35, 226– 7n19 Whig, Whigs, Whig principles, 8, 46 Whig interpretation of history, 9 Whitefield, George, 139 Wilberforce, Robert Isaac, 98, 113 Wilberforce, Samuel, 201

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Wilberforce, William, 81, 128, 137–40, 162; Jeffery Hale on, 150; opposition to Pretyman Tomline, 86 Williams, Isaac, 61, 112, 120, 124, 129, 195 Williams, James William, 193, 195–7, 216

Williams, Lennox Waldron, 62 Williams, Rowland, 199– 205 passim Willoughby, Mark, 90, 158 Wilson, Daniel, 114 Wilson, Henry Bristow, 199–205 Wiseman, Nicholas, 118

Wolffe, John, 142 Wood, Samuel Simpson, 153, 196, 207 Wurtele, Christian, 91–2, 179, 188 Yates, Nigel, 116, 249nn59, 68, 250n78, 267n94

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