locomotives and exciting the ardour of furnaces in ironworks. By its
means he extinguished the fire of a burning coal-mine at Astley, in
Lancashire, and in 1849 another at Clackmannan, where the bed of coal
had been burning for over thirty years. He also employed it for
expelling noxious gases from sewers, and planned and superintended in
1849 the ventilation by this means of the pestilential sewer in Friar
Street, London, which resisted all other efforts to cleanse it; and he
suggested to the metropolitan commissioner of sewers that a steam-jet
apparatus should be placed at the mouth of every sewer emptying into
the great main sewer by the Thames river-side.
He was employed on the lighting, heating, and ventilation of the old
House of Commons, and he held the appointment of superintendent of
these functions from 1854 to 1863.
He had remarked that the flame of hydrogen gas caused vibrations that
produced musical tones, and in 1823 wrote on "the analogy between
chemical and musical combinations." He suggested "an improved
finger-keyed musical instrument, in the use of which a performer is
enabled to hold or prolong the notes, and to increase or modify the tone
at pleasure." In 1825 and 1833 he proposed "certain improvements in
musical instruments." He invented a stove, and saw and advocated the
advantage of the employment of circulation of hot water for the heating
of a building. He advocated the employment of concrete for foundations
where there was no rock, and to show that it was possible to build a
house upon the sand, he reared the castle at Bude upon concrete floated
into the shifting sand above high-water mark. He again was the first to
point out and insist on the necessity for there being two shafts to
every colliery, so as to maintain a circulation of air.
For several years Mr. Gurney resided at Hanacott Manor, near Launceston,
but he had also a house at Reeds, in Poughill by Bude, and the castle
at the latter place, which is usually let. He was knighted in 1863--a
tardy acknowledgment of his great services and extraordinary ability.
The honour came too late to really advantage him. That same year he was
stricken with paralysis, and therefore could do nothing in the way of
scientific research and invention. He was attended till his death by his
only child, a daughter, Miss Anna D. Gurney. He expired at Reeds on the
28th February, 1875, and was buried at Launcells in the graveyard just
under the south wall of the nave.
Like Henry Trengrouse, so with Sir Goldsworthy Gurney--a man of genius
and perseverance, and one who benefited mankind, received no adequate
recognition in his lifetime. May posterity do for him, as for
Trengrouse, what his contemporaries denied him. Mr. Smiles vainly
endeavoured to refuse to credit him with the invention of the
steam-blast; but the writer of his life in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ afforded him tardy justice. "One soweth and another reapeth"
is true of all inventors with few exceptions. How much do we owe to Sir
Goldsworthy! He was the pioneer of locomotion by motors on our roads,
the salvation of many lives by the ventilation of coal-mines; he
invented the system of heating mansions by hot water, the flash-light
for lighthouses, the steam-blast revolutionizing locomotion by steam; he
showed that houses could be built on concrete foundations; he discovered
the limelight, the oxyhydrogen blow-pipe: and he was repaid with a
barren knighthood when about to be struck down by paralysis.
For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas,
That grew the more by reaping.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, v. 2.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] Smiles (S.), _Lives of the Engineers_, Vol. III, p. 100. London,
1862.
THE JANES
The family of Jane, descended from the ancient family of Janes of
Worcestershire, was settled in Cornwall at an early date. It bore as its
arms, arg. a lion rampant az. between 3 escallops gules. It was settled
in S. Winnow early in the sixteenth century, and at the beginning of the
following century was at Lanhydrock and at Liskeard, at which latter
place Thomas Jane was mayor in 1621. His son Joseph Jane was M.P. for
Liskeard in 1625 and 1640, and was mayor in 1631, 1635, and 1636. He
married Loveday, daughter of William Kekewich, in 1633. He was a
whole-hearted Royalist, and when the King was at Oxford, in 1643, he
attended him there. In the following year he was one of the Royal
Commissioners in Cornwall, and when Charles I came to Cornwall, in 1644,
he entertained him in August in his house at Liskeard.
During 1645 and 1646 he carried on a correspondence with Edward Hyde,
afterwards Earl of Clarendon, on the condition of the Royalist cause in
Cornwall. Liskeard had fallen into the hands of the Parliamentarians,
but Sir Ralph Hopton defeated Ruthven on Braddock Down on January 19th,
1643, and recovered Liskeard for the King. Ruthven fled to Saltash,
which he fortified with much expedition.
When the Royal cause was lost the vengeance of the Parliament fell on
Joseph Jane, and he was nearly ruined by the heavy composition he was
forced to pay. In 1650, and again in 1654, he was named Clerk of the
Royal Council, but it was an empty honour; Charles II could pay
nothing, and the Council could only grumble and plot.
Jane attempted to answer Milton's Εικονοκλαστης in a work, Εικων
ακλαστος the Unbroken Image, but it was a poor performance. It was
published in 1651; Hyde says, however, in a letter to Secretary
Nicholas, "the King hath a singular good esteem both of Joseph Jane
and of his book."
He had a son, William Jane, baptized at Liskeard, 22nd October, 1645,
who was educated at Westminster School, elected student of Christ
Church, Oxford, 1660, and graduated B.A. in 1664, and M.A. in 1667,
and D.D. in 1674. After his ordination he was appointed lecturer at
Carfax. He attracted the attention of Henry Compton, who became Canon
of Christ Church in 1669, by his sturdy loyalty and orthodoxy; and
when Compton became Bishop of Oxford, he chose Jane to preach the
sermon at his consecration, and he appointed him one of his chaplains.
In 1670 he became Canon of Christ Church, and was given the living of
Winnington in Essex. In 1679 he received a prebendal stall in S. Paul's
Cathedral and the archdeaconry of Middlesex. In May, 1680, he was
appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. This rapid promotion
was due in part to the staunch loyalty of his father and the losses of
his family on that account, but also to his cool, businesslike
abilities, and to his learning, which though not profound was good.
In July, 1683, he framed the Oxford declaration in favour of Passive
Obedience, and committed the University to an opinion which subsequent
events were calculated to stultify.
As Green says: "The Cavaliers who had shouted for the King's return,
had shouted also for the return of a free Parliament. The very Chief
Justice who asserted at the trial of the Regicides, the general
freedom of the King from any responsibility to the Nation, asserted
just as strongly that doctrine of ministerial responsibility, against
which Charles the First had struggled. It was the desire of every
royalist to blot out the very memory of the troubles in which monarchy
and freedom had alike disappeared, to take up again, as if it had
never been broken, the thread of our political history. But the point
at which even royalists took it up was not at the moment of the
Tyranny, but at the moment of the Long Parliament's first triumph,
when that Tyranny had been utterly undone. In his wish to revive this
older claim of the Crown, which the Long Parliament had for ever set
aside, the young King found himself alone. His closest adherents, his
warmest friends, were constitutional royalists of the temper of
Falkland and Culpepper. Partisans of an absolute monarchy, of such a
monarchy as his grandfather had dreamed of and his father had for a
few years carried into practice, there now were none."
The clergy in advocating passive obedience were actuated by the sense
of the miseries through which England had passed during the Great
Rebellion--better to submit under protest than to fly to arms again,
better certainly to submit even to what was deemed an injustice or
inexpedient, when the Crown was hedged about with restrictions, and
when the ministers of the Crown were responsible to the nation. There
was, however, a noisy and vehement party that went much beyond this,
and one Filmer had worked the theory of Divine Right of the Sovereign
into a system, that was accepted by the more crazy and immoderate of
the old Tory party, mainly among the clergy; and the Oxford
declaration went a long way in this direction. Men were beating about
for a theory on which to base Government by a King, they had not
grasped the truth that the King represents the people, just as does a
President in a Republic, but with the superaddition of Divine
ratification and imparted grace for the task of ruling, by unction and
coronation. That the Kings of England had ever been elected, and that
coronation was the confirmation by God, through the Church, of the
choice of the people, had been forgotten through the prevalence of
feudal ideas in the Middle Ages. Filmer propounded his doctrine that
the Divine Right rested in primogeniture, and the rabid Tories,
looking out for a theory, snatched at this for want of a better.
On the very day on which Russell was put to death, the University of
Oxford adopted by a solemn public act, drawn up by Jane, this strange
doctrine, and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and
Baxter to be publicly burned in the court of the schools.
James II, in hopes of winning the Earl of Rochester to join the Papal
Church, desired a disputation between some Roman divines and some of
the Church of England, making no doubt that the former would be able
to confound the latter. The King bade Rochester to choose English
divines, excluding two only, Tillotson and Stillingfleet, dreading the
latter as a consummate master of all controversial weapons. Rochester
selected Simon Patrick and Jane. The conference took place at
Whitehall on November 13th, 1686, but no auditor was suffered to be
present save the King.
"The subject discussed," says Macaulay, "was the Real Presence. The
Roman Catholic divines took on themselves the burden of the proof.
Patrick and Jane said little, nor was it necessary that they should
say much; for the Earl himself undertook to defend the doctrine of his
Church, and, as was his habit, soon warmed with the conflict, lost his
temper, and asked with great vehemence whether it was expected that he
should change his religion on such frivolous grounds."
In 1685 Jane had been appointed to the deanery of Gloucester. He
resigned the archdeaconry of Middlesex in 1686, but retained the
canonries of Christ Church and S. Paul's till his death.
In 1688 James II had fled the kingdom, and the English nation and
Parliament had accepted William and Mary as King and Queen of England.
The whole fabric of Divine Right had crumbled to the ground. James had
reduced the theory to a _reductio ad impossibile_. This even the lay
cavaliers had recognized. "A man convinced against his will is of the
same opinion still," and it was so with the more fanatical Tories
among the clergy. They refused to take the oath of allegiance to
William and Mary, and were thrust out of their cathedral thrones and
stalls and livings, and joined the sect of the Nonjurors.
But Jane was not one of them. He had the good sense to acknowledge
that the theory he had taken up with some ardour was as impracticable
as it was absurd. It was cast in his teeth that he changed his opinion
because he desired to retain his benefices. One need not take this
view of his conduct. He sought William of Orange at Hungerford, and
assured him of the adhesion of the University of Oxford. His enemies
said that he hinted at the same time his readiness to accept the
vacant bishopric in return for his services in securing this sign of
devotion. But nothing is more easy than to make such an accusation,
and there is no proof that he did this. However, the fact that the
framer of the Oxford declaration should have thrown over the
principles advocated therein, laid him open to attack, and a shower of
epigrams fell on him. His name Jane gave good opportunity to the wits
to liken him to Janus, who looked two ways at once. But he showed no
further desire to court the favour of William, and he opposed the
projects for Comprehension favoured by the latitudinarians, Tillotson
and Burnet. In 1689 two Bills had been introduced into Parliament, a
Toleration and a Comprehension Bill. The former was to grant
facilities of worship to the Puritans and other Dissenters; the other
was a Bill for altering the creed and the formulas and ceremonies of
the Church, removing from them whatever might be distasteful to the
Dissenters, so that all excuse might be taken from them for separating
themselves from the Church. Both the King and Tillotson, who all knew
was destined by the King to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and Burnet,
Bishop of Salisbury, were eager to get both passed. Tillotson was so
latitudinarian that his churchmanship was nebulous. Burnet was the son
of a Covenanter who had been hanged, had been brought up in
Presbyterianism, had found satisfaction in the ministry of Calvanist
pastors in Holland, and had not the faintest conception of the
principles of the Church or of its true organization.
The Earl of Nottingham advocated the Comprehension Bill and drafted
both. The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. But it
was otherwise with the Comprehension Bill. The first clause in this
dispensed all the ministers in the Church from the necessity of
subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. Then it was provided that any
minister who had been ordained after the Presbyterian fashion might be
eligible to any benefice in the Church without ordination by the bishop.
Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might wear the
surplice or not as he thought fit; it left the sign of the cross
optional in baptism; and provided that the Eucharist need not be
received kneeling. The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a
petition; it was proposed that the two Houses should request the King
and the Queen to issue a commission empowering thirty divines of the
Church of England to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the
constitution of the ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such
alterations as might seem to them desirable.
But this Bill roused serious opposition. It was felt by all who had any
respect and feeling for the Church, as one in all times from the
Apostolic period, who regarded her claim to maintain the same faith, the
same Apostolic constitution and the same sacraments, as from the
earliest age of the Church, that this Comprehension Bill if it became
law must of necessity alienate them from such a body--drenched with
Protestantism, till scarcely a tinge of the old wine of Catholicism
remained in her; and would leave them no other course open than to shake
off the dust of their feet against her and join the Church of Rome, or
the Church of the Nonjurors. Most of the bishops who had taken the oaths
to William and Mary were placed on the Commission; and with them were
joined twenty priests of note. Of these twenty, Tillotson was the most
important as expressing the mind and wishes of the King. He was a
latitudinarian, without a spark of feeling for historic Christianity.
With him went Stillingfleet, Dean of S. Paul's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich,
Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Rector of S. Martin's, and
Fowler. But conspicuous on the other side were Aldrich, Dean of Christ
Church, and Jane, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.
Early in October, 1689, the commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem
Chamber. But hardly had they met before Sprat, Bishop of Rochester,
started up and denied that the Commission was legal. There was a sharp
altercation, violent words were flung about, and Sprat, Jane, and
Aldrich withdrew. The strength of the Catholic party was broken, and
the rest agreed to sanction nearly all the changes advocated by those
who desired to entirely alter the character of the Church.
"They had before them," Burnet tells us, "all the exceptions that
either the Puritans before the war, or the Nonconformists since the
Restoration, had made to any part of the Church service; they had also
many propositions and advices that had been offered, at several times,
by many of our bishops and divines upon those heads; matters were well
considered and freely and calmly debated; and all digested into an
entire correction of everything that seemed liable to any just
objection." To guide them, as Burnet admits in his Triennial
Visitation Charge of 1704, they were furnished with a great collection
of the books and papers in which the Dissenters had at different times
set forth their demands. The Commission was prepared to surrender
everything. The chanting of psalms, even in cathedrals, was to be done
away with. The lessons from the Apocrypha were to be abolished. The
Saints' days omitted from the Calendar, the form of absolution
altered, remission of sins to be removed from it "as not very
intelligible." The cross in baptism, the use of god-parents, the
wearing of the surplice were to be optional. Episcopal ordination was
not to be required of the Ministry. Kneeling to receive the Holy
Communion was left to the choice of the Communicant; the collects, as
too concise, were to be blown out with pious bombast.
It is possible that, as Calamy asserts, such alterations as these
would have brought over two-thirds of the English Dissenters to the
Established Church; but it is certain that it would have driven
two-thirds of the members of the Church, lay and clerical, out of her,
as having forfeited her claim to be a branch of the Catholic Church,
and they would probably have swelled the ranks of the Nonjurors, and
made of that communion a body that would have really represented the
Church in England.
Owing to the secession of the Nonjurors, sees and benefices had been
filled with men who were in sympathy with the views of Tillotson and
Burnet, or who were only solicitous to live in the smiles of William.
Little resistance, if any, was to be expected from the episcopal bench.
When the Commission had concluded its labours, writs were issued
summoning the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. The clergy
were in a ferment throughout England. They thought that the heritage
of faith was going to be taken from them. The Toleration Act had
removed the disabilities of the Dissenters; they might build their
conventicles and preach what and when they liked; why, then, open the
doors of the Church to admit them as a flood to swamp the faithful?
When the Declaration of Toleration had been issued by James II, in
1687, removing all disabilities from the Dissenters, on the sole
understanding that they should abstain from attacking the Churches of
Rome and England, their preachers found that they had nothing to say.
They preferred to be under disabilities rather than give up assaults
on the Scarlet Woman, Babylon, the Beast, and Prelacy, its shadow.
When Convocation was elected, it became evident to all that the bulk of
the priests were against all watering down of the formulas of the
Church, her faith, her ritual. The most important office in Convocation
was that of Prolocutor of the Lower House. The Prolocutor was to be
chosen by the members; Tillotson was proposed by the Protestant party as
one whom the King delighted to honour, and who it was well known would
be appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury when vacant.
On November 20th, Convocation met in Henry VII's Chapel at
Westminster. "Compton was in the chair. On the right and left those
suffragans of Canterbury who had taken the oath were ranged in
gorgeous vestments of scarlet and miniver. Below the table was
assembled the crowd of presbyters. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon,
in which he warmly eulogized the existing system, and yet declared
himself favourable to a moderate reform." In a word, he blew hot and
cold with the same breath.
The Lower House listened, unstirred, cold and resolute. Dean Shays,
put forward by the members favourable to Comprehension, proposed
Tillotson; Jane was proposed on the other side. After an animated
discussion, Jane was elected by fifty-five votes to twenty-eight.
The Prolocutor was then formally presented to the Bishop of London,
and made, according to ancient usage, a Latin oration, in which he
eulogized the Church in England as maintaining the faith as delivered
to the saints, and as preserving all the marks of the Catholic Church
throughout all ages and all the world; and he very plainly declared
that no alteration in a downward direction would be tolerated; and he
concluded with the significant and well-known words, "Nolumus leges
Angliæ mutari."
It soon became evident that the Lower House was absolutely determined
not to have the proposed alterations made; but the plan they adopted
was to shun the discussion of the recommendations made by the
Commissioners, so as not directly to reject what they knew lay very
near to the King's heart. With this object they adopted a system of
tactics that in the end answered their purpose.
"The law," says Macaulay, "as it had been interpreted during a long
course of years, prohibited Convocation from even deliberating on any
ecclesiastical ordinance without a previous warrant from the Crown.
Such a warrant, sealed with the Great Seal, was brought in form to
Henry the Seventh's Chapel by Nottingham. He at the same time
delivered a message from the King. His Majesty exhorted the assembly
to consider calmly and without prejudice the recommendations of the
Commission, and declared that he had nothing in view but the honour
and advantage of the Protestant religion in general and of the Church
of England in particular.
"The bishops speedily agreed on an address of thanks for the royal
message, and requested the concurrence of the Lower House. Jane and
his adherents raised objection after objection. First they claimed the
privilege of presenting a separate address. When they were forced to
waive this claim, they refused to agree to any expressions which
implied that the Church of England had any fellowship with any other
Protestant community. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and
forward. Conferences were held at which Burnet on one side and Jane
on the other were the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty,
a compromise was made; and an address, cold and ungracious compared
with that which the bishops had framed, was presented to the King in
the Banqueting House. He dissembled his vexation, returned a kind
answer, and intimated a hope that the assembly would now at length
proceed to consider the great question of Comprehension." But this was
precisely what they were resolute not to consider. They had made up
their minds on the subject already, but they were unwilling to fly too
openly in the face of the King. As for trusting the bishops to stand
firm on any principle, the Lower House knew that this was not to be
expected. When had the bishops of the Established Church, since the
Reformation, ever shown firmness and united action on any principle,
except once, and that was to oppose general Toleration?
So soon as the clergy were again assembled, a fresh difficulty was
started. It was mooted that the Nonjuring bishops had not been
summoned, and they were to be regarded as bishops of the Catholic
Church quite as certainly as were those nominees of the King who had
been intruded into their vacated thrones.
Then it was complained that scurrilous pamphlets were hawked about the
streets, and the people were being worked into a temper of opposition
to Convocation. It was asked why Convocation should be called together
to emasculate the Church, if it was to be suffered to be jeered at by
pamphleteers.
Thus passed week after week. Christmas drew nigh. The bishops
proposed, during the recess, to have a committee to sit and prepare
business. The Lower House rejected the proposal; and it became plain
to every one that it was determined not to consider one of the
suggested concessions to Protestant prejudice.