A vignette of Victorian Anglicanism

In Victorian times, the Church of England was riven by battles between its different factions.

One notable skirmish in this conflict was the appointment of a liberal cleric, Dean Arthur Stanley, as one of the Select Preachers of Oxford University in December 1872. While almost entirely forgotten today, the controversy over this appointment was seen at the time as a major battle between conservative forces in Anglicanism and the rising Broad Church party.

In this period, any man who held an MA from Oxford – which essentially meant all graduates of the university – could vote on such things. When contentious votes were held, old Oxonians would flood into the city from London and elsewhere to try to sway the result to their preferred side.

Here is the account of the vote given in Rev. Charles Maurice Davies’ book Orthodox London (2nd ed., 1876). Davies was a liberal clergyman who became a somewhat successful journalist.

Davies’ narrative offers an interesting glimpse of a now-vanished world in which people were intensely interested in things that we no longer care about.

THE BATTLE OF CONVOCATION.

….From an early hour the station at Paddington gave one the idea of a sort of academical Derby day. By ten o’clock the platform was crowded with unmistakable M.A.s, with here and there a dignitary of the Church or higher graduate. The Establishment was represented in its every phase of thought. Here was a smooth-shaven Ritualist in cassock corded round the waist, priest’s cloak, and clerical wideawake; here an Evangelical clergyman, in voluminous white necktie; and here, again, a Broad Churchman, who, with a more or less correct clerical attire, combined the hirsute appendage of a Barbarossa, and other symptoms of the muscular Christian. Lawyers had impressed their brief bags into service for carrying their cap, gown, and hood; while young M.A.s, whom one knew about town, swaggered into smoking carriages, with the audibly announced intention of ‘giving Stanley a lift.’ Friend and foe faced each other in the narrow confines of a railway carriage, scarcely daring to utter a word either to the other, lest they should betray their tactics to the enemy. I can conscientiously say that the half-dozen men who filled my compartment never spoke to one another beyond the ordinary civility of passing the morning papers; and it was only by the titles of their journals I could guess the proclivities of my fellow-travellers. So we sped along the swollen Thames, and over the long backs of the Berkshire Downs, to the fair University city. At Reading we took in a large contingent of bucolic parsons, each of whom, as he sought to find a place in an already crowded train, bustled anxiously up and down as though he thought the whole Church Militant was in danger if his single vote should fail to be recorded….

….At half-past one o’clock the bell of St Mary’s [the university church in Oxford] gave notice to the combatants to prepare for the fray, and immediately the floor of the [Sheldonian] theatre was sprinkled with a few representative men of all the schools…. The gathering increased every moment, and soon the Doctors in their scarlet and black began to dot the seats around the Vice-Chancellor’s chair…. Before two o’clock every inch of the floor was full, the occupants standing in anticipation of the coming encounter…. [O]n the ‘placet’ side one descried the scholarly face of Professor Jowitt, the sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the well-known physiognomy of Professor Max Müller; while on the opposite side Mr Burgon was marshalling his forces, and Dean Goulburn, from the Doctors’ benches, looked out over the seething mass of M.A.s below him. At two o’clock, or a little after, the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith commenced proceedings in Latin, which must have been exceedingly edifying to the ladies, who, in some numbers, occupied the Strangers’ Gallery, backed by a narrowish fringe of undergraduates. The object of the Convocation was stated as being the appointment of Select Preachers, and the names were then submitted to the doctors and masters for approval. ‘Placetne igitur vobis huic nomini assentire?’ being the form in which the question was proposed. The name first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a faint buzz in the Assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, habituated to such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant voice nevertheless, he read out as ‘Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.’ Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the Placet side cheers and waving of trencher caps; on the Non-placet side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as graduate, mingled shouts of ‘Placet’ and ‘Non,’ with cheer and hiss à discrétion; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell breathed peace over the troubled waters by pronouncing the magic words, ‘Fiat scrutinium!’ Thereupon the two proctors proceeded first of all to take the votes of the doctors on their benches, and when this was done they took their station at the doors labelled ‘Placet’ and ‘Non-placet,’ the Vice-Chancellor directing the voters thus: ‘Vos quibus placet hoc propositum per fores ad dextram discedatis; vos quibus non placet per fores ad sinistram.’ During the process of polling, which was brief considering the numbers, one had an opportunity of criticizing the constituents of that truly exceptional gathering. It was certainly not true to say, as some did say, that only the younger Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite a fair proportion of white and bald heads on the ‘Placet’ side. The country contingent was not so numerous as one had expected, and I do not believe that all of these went out at the left-hand door. Evidently, however, parties were pretty evenly balanced; and when the Non-placets had all recorded their decision, there were about twenty-five left on Dean Stanley’s side, which probably would have nearly represented the actual majority, but at the last moment some stragglers, who had only arrived in Oxford by the 2.25 train, hurried in, and so swelled the numbers…. By and by it was over. The proctors presented their lists to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid breathless silence, pronounced the words, ‘Majori parti placet!’ Then there was indeed a cheer, which rang through the building from basement to upper gallery, and was taken up outside…. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly drowned. Oxford had given its approval to Dean Stanley…. The names of the other three Select Preachers were quite inaudible, but evidently approved. On leaving the theatre I ascertained that the majority in favour of Dean Stanley’s appointment was 62; the numbers voting being — Placet, 349; Non-placet, 287. Over 600 members, therefore — something like a full House of Commons — recorded their votes on this memorable occasion.

On the up platform, for the 4.10 train, gathered once more the high and the low, returning to their cures in town and country, crestfallen, sadder, and, we will hope, wiser men than when they set out in the morning, bent on stamping out independent thought and scholarship, as if alien ingredients in the National Church of England in the nineteenth century. I had the felicity of announcing the majority to the inquisitive guards and porters, whose interest told plainly that this question has a relevancy far beyond the walls of the University. One and all were ‘glad to hear Stanley was in.’….