THE THREE DEFEATS:
ISAAC WILLIAMS, MACMULLEN, PUSEY
The year 1841, though it had begun in storm, and though signs were not
wanting of further disturbance, was at Oxford, outwardly at least, a
peaceable one. A great change had happened; but, when the first burst of
excitement was over, men settled down to their usual work, their
lectures, or their reading, or their parishes, and by Easter things
seemed to go on as before. The ordinary habits of University life
resumed their course with a curious quietness. There was, no doubt, much
trouble brooding underneath. Mr. Ward and others continued a war of
pamphlets; and in June Mr. Ward was dismissed from his Mathematical
Lectureship at Balliol. But faith in the great leader was still strong.
No. 90, if it had shocked or disquieted some, had elicited equally
remarkable expressions of confidence and sympathy from others who might
have been, at least, silent. The events of the spring had made men
conscious of what their leader was, and called forth warm and
enthusiastic affection. It was not in vain that, whatever might be
thought of the wisdom or the reasonings of No. 90, he had shown the
height of his character and the purity and greatness of his religious
purpose; and that being what he was, in the eyes of all Oxford, he had
been treated with contumely, and had borne it with patience and loyal
submission. There were keen observers, to whom that patience told of
future dangers; they would have liked him to show more fight. But he
gave no signs of defeat, nor, outwardly, of disquiet; he forbore to
retaliate at Oxford: and the sermons at St. Mary's continued,
penetrating and searching as ever, perhaps with something more pathetic
and anxious in their undertone than before.
But if he forbore at Oxford, he did not let things pass outside. Sir
Robert Peel, in opening a reading-room at Tamworth, had spoken loosely,
in the conventional and pompous way then fashionable, of the
all-sufficing and exclusive blessings of knowledge. While Mr. Newman was
correcting the proofs of No. 90, he was also writing to the _Times_ the
famous letters of _Catholicus_; a warning to eminent public men of the
danger of declaiming on popular commonplaces without due examination of
their worth. But all seemed quiet. "In the summer of 1841," we read in
the _Apologia_, "I found myself at Littlemore without any harass or
anxiety on my mind. I had determined to put aside all controversy, and
set myself down to my translation of St. Athanasius." Outside of Oxford
there was a gathering of friends in the summer at the consecration of
one of Mr. Keble's district churches, Ampfield--an occasion less common
and more noticeable then than now. Again, what was a new thought then, a
little band of young Oxford men, ten or twelve, taxed themselves to
build a new church, which was ultimately placed at Bussage, in Mr.
Thomas Keble's parish. One of Mr. Keble's curates, Mr. Peter Young, had
been refused Priest's orders by the Bishop of Winchester, for alleged
unsoundness on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Mr. Selwyn, not without
misgivings on the part of the Whig powers, had been appointed Bishop of
New Zealand. Dr. Arnold had been appointed to the Chair of Modern
History at Oxford. In the course of the year there passed away one who
had had a very real though unacknowledged influence on much that had
happened--Mr. Blanco White. And at the end of the year, 29th October,
Mr. Keble gave his last lecture on Poetry, and finished a course the
most original and memorable ever delivered from his chair.
Towards the end of the year two incidents, besides some roughly-worded
Episcopal charges, disturbed this quiet. They were only indirectly
connected with theological controversy at Oxford; but they had great
ultimate influence on it, and they helped to marshal parties and
consolidate animosities. One was the beginning of the contest for the
Poetry Professorship which Mr. Keble had vacated. There was no one of
equal eminence to succeed him; but there was in Oxford a man of
undoubted poetical genius, of refined taste and subtle thought, though
of unequal power, who had devoted his gifts to the same great purpose
for which Mr. Keble had written the _Christian Year._ No one who has
looked into the _Baptistery_, whatever his feeling towards the writer,
can doubt whether Mr. Isaac Williams was a poet and knew what poetry
meant. He was an intimate friend of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman, and so he
was styled a Tractarian; but no name offered itself so obviously to the
electors as his, and in due time his friends announced their intention
of bringing him forward. His competitor was Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon)
Garbett of Brasenose, the college of Heber and Milman, an accomplished
gentleman of high culture, believed to have an acquaintance, not common
then in Oxford, with foreign literature, whose qualifications stood high
in the opinion of his University friends, but who had given no evidence
to the public of his claims to the office. It was inevitable, it was no
one's special fault, that the question of theological opinions should
intrude itself; but at first it was only in private that objections were
raised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds. But rumours
were abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing their
college on these grounds: and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr.
Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment of
Mr. Newman, thought it well to send forth a circular in Christ Church
first, but soon with wider publicity, asking support for Mr. Williams as
a person whose known religious views would ensure his making his office
minister to religious truth. Nothing could be more innocently meant. It
was the highest purpose to which that office could be devoted. But the
mistake was seen on all sides as soon as made. The Principal of Mr.
Garbett's college. Dr. Gilbert, like a general jumping on his antagonist
whom he has caught in the act of a false move, put forth a dignified
counter-appeal, alleging that he had not raised this issue, but adding
that as it had been raised and avowed on the other side, he was quite
willing that it should be taken into account, and the dangers duly
considered of that teaching with which Dr. Pusey's letter had identified
Mr. Williams. No one from that moment could prevent the contest from
becoming almost entirely a theological one, which was to try the
strength of the party of the movement. Attempts were made, but in vain,
to divest it of this character. The war of pamphlets and leaflets
dispersed in the common-rooms, which usually accompanied these contests,
began, and the year closed with preparations for a severe struggle when
the University met in the following January.
The other matter was the establishment of the Anglo-Prussian bishopric
at Jerusalem. It was the object of the ambition of M. Bunsen to pave the
way for a recognition, by the English Church, of the new State Church
of Prussia, and ultimately for some closer alliance between the two
bodies; and the plan of a Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, nominated
alternately by England and Prussia, consecrated by English Bishops, and
exercising jurisdiction over English and German Protestants in
Palestine, was proposed by him to Archbishop Howley and Bishop
Blomfield, and somewhat hastily and incautiously accepted by them. To
Mr. Newman, fighting a hard battle, as he felt it, for the historical
and constitutional catholicity of the English Church, this step on their
part came as a practical and even ostentatious contradiction of his
arguments. England, it seemed, which was out of communion with the East
and with Rome, could lightly enter into close communion with Lutherans
and Calvinists against them both. He recorded an indignant and even
bitter protest; and though the scheme had its warm apologists, such as
Dr. Hook and Mr. F. Maurice, it had its keen-sighted critics, and it was
never received with favour by the Church at large. And, indeed, it was
only active for mischief. It created irritation, suspicion, discord in
England, while no German cared a straw about it. Never was an ambitious
scheme so marked by impotence and failure from its first steps to its
last. But it was one, as the _Apologia_ informs us,[101] in the chain of
events which destroyed Mr. Newman's belief in the English Church. "It
was one of the blows," he writes, "which broke me."
The next year, 1842, opened with war; war between the University
authorities and the party of the movement, which was to continue in
various forms and with little intermission till the strange and pathetic
events of 1845 suspended the righting and stunned the fighters, and for
a time hushed even anger in feelings of amazement, sorrow, and fear.
Those events imposed stillness on all who had taken part in the strife,
like the blowing up of the _Orient_ at the battle of the Nile.
As soon as the University met in January 1842, the contest for the
Poetry Professorship was settled. There was no meeting of Convocation,
but a comparison of votes gave a majority of three to two to Mr.
Garbett,[102] and Mr. Williams withdrew. The Tractarians had been
distinctly beaten; it was their first defeat as a party. It seems as if
this encouraged the Hebdomadal Board to a move, which would be felt as a
blow against the Tractarians, and which, as an act of reparation to Dr.
Hampden, would give satisfaction to the ablest section of their own
supporters, the theological Liberals. They proposed to repeal the
disqualification which had been imposed on Dr. Hampden in 1836. But they
had miscalculated. It was too evidently a move to take advantage of the
recent Tractarian discomfiture to whitewash Dr. Hampden's Liberalism.
The proposal, and the way in which it was made, roused a strong feeling
among the residents; a request to withdraw it received the signatures
not only of moderate Anglicans and independent men, like Mr. Francis
Faber of Magdalen, Mr. Sewell, the Greswells, and Mr. W. Palmer of
Worcester, but of Mr. Tait of Balliol, and Mr. Golightly. Dr. Hampden's
own attitude did not help it. There was great want of dignity in his
ostentatious profession of orthodoxy and attachment to the Articles, in
his emphatic adoption of Evangelical phraseology, and in his unmeasured
denunciation of his opponents, and especially of those whom he viewed as
most responsible for the censure of 1836--the "Tractarians" or
"Romanisers." And the difficulty with those who had passed and who now
proposed to withdraw the censure, was that Dr. Hampden persistently and
loudly declared that he had nothing to retract, and retracted nothing;
and if it was right to pass it in 1836, it would not be right to
withdraw it in 1842. At the last moment, Mr. Tait and Mr. Piers
Claughton of University made an attempt to get something from Dr.
Hampden which might pass as a withdrawal of what was supposed to be
dangerous in his Bampton Lectures; and there were some even among Mr.
Newman's friends, who, disliking from the first the form of the censure,
might have found in such a withdrawal a reason for voting for its
repeal. But Dr. Hampden was obdurate. The measure was pressed, and in
June it was thrown out in Convocation by a majority of three to
two[103]--the same proportion, though in smaller numbers, as in the vote
against Mr. Williams. The measure was not an honest one on the part of
the Hebdomadal Board, and deserved to be defeated. Among the pamphlets
which the discussion produced, two by Mr. James Mozley gave early
evidence, by their force of statement and their trenchant logic, of the
power with which he was to take part in the questions which agitated the
University.
Dr. Hampden took his revenge, and it was not a noble one. The fellows of
certain colleges were obliged to proceed to the B.D. degree on pain of
forfeiting their fellowships. The exercises for the degree, which, by
the Statutes, took the old-fashioned shape of formal Latin disputations
between Opponents and Respondents on given theses in the Divinity
School, had by an arrangement introduced by Dr. Burton, with no
authority from the Statutes, come to consist of two English essays on
subjects chosen by the candidate and approved by the Divinity Professor.
The exercises for the degree had long ceased to be looked upon as very
serious matters, and certainly were never regarded as tests of the
soundness of the candidate's faith. They were usually on well-worn
commonplaces, of which the Regius Professor kept a stock, and about
which no one troubled himself but the person who wanted the degree. It
was not a creditable system, but it was of a piece with the prevalent
absence of any serious examination for the superior degrees. It would
have been quite befitting his position, if Dr. Hampden had called the
attention of the authorities to the evil of sham exercises for degrees
in his own important Faculty. It would have been quite right to make a
vigorous effort on public grounds to turn these sham trials into
realities; to use them, like the examination for the B.A. degree, as
tests of knowledge and competent ability. Such a move on his part would
have been in harmony with the legislation which had recently added two
theological Professors to the Faculty, and had sketched out, however
imperfectly, the outlines of a revived theological school.
This is what, with good reason, Dr. Hampden might have attempted on
general grounds, and had he been successful (though this in the
suspicious state of University feeling was not very likely) he would
have gained in a regular and lawful way that power of embarrassing his
opponents which he was resolved to use in defiance of all existing
custom. But such was not the course which he chose. Mr. Macmullen of
Corpus, who, in pursuance of the College Statutes, had to proceed to the
B.D. degree, applied, as the custom was, for theses to the Professor.
Mr. Macmullen was known to hold the opinions of the movement school; of
course he was called a Tractarian; he had put his name to some of the
many papers which expressed the sentiments of his friends on current
events. Dr. Hampden sent him two propositions, which the candidate was
to support, framed so as to commit him to assertions which Mr.
Macmullen, whose high Anglican opinions were well known, could not
consistently make. It was a novel and unexampled act on the part of the
Professor, to turn what had been a mere formal exercise into a sharp and
sweeping test of doctrine, which would place all future Divinity degrees
in the University at his mercy; and the case was made more serious, when
the very form of exercise which the Professor used as an instrument of
such formidable power was itself without question unstatutable and
illegal, and had been simply connived at by the authorities. To
introduce by his own authority a new feature into a system which he had
no business to use at all, and to do this for the first time with the
manifest purpose of annoying an obnoxious individual, was, on Dr.
Hampden's part, to do more to discredit his chair and himself, than the
censure of the University could do; and it was as unwise as it was
unworthy. The strength of his own case before the public was that he
could be made to appear as the victim of a personal and partisan attack;
yet on the first opportunity he acts in the spirit of an inquisitor, and
that not in fair conflict with some one worthy of his hostility, but to
wreak an injury, in a matter of private interest, on an individual, in
no way known to him or opposed to him, except as holding certain
unpopular opinions.
Mr. Macmullen was not the person to take such treatment quietly. The
right was substantially on his side, and the Professor, and the
University authorities who more or less played into the hands of the
Professor in defence of his illegal and ultimately untenable claims,
appeared before the University, the one as a persecutor, the others as
rulers who were afraid to do justice on behalf of an ill-used man
because he was a Tractarian. The right course was perfectly clear. It
was to put an end to these unauthorised exercises, and to recall both
candidates and Professor to the statutable system which imposed
disputations conducted under the moderatorship of the Professor, but
which gave him no veto, at the time, on the theological sufficiency of
the disputations, leaving him to state his objections, if he was not
satisfied, when the candidate's degree was asked for in the House of
Congregation. This course, after some hesitation, was followed, but only
partially; and without allowing or disallowing the Professor's claim to
a veto, the Vice-Chancellor on his own responsibility stopped the
degree. A vexatious dispute lingered on for two or three years, with
actions in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, and distinguished lawyers to
plead for each side, and appeals to the University Court of Delegates,
who reversed the decision of the Vice-Chancellor's assessor. Somehow or
other, Mr. Macmullen at last got his degree, but at the cost of a great
deal of ill-blood in Oxford, for which Dr. Hampden, by his unwarranted
interference, and the University authorities, by their questionable
devices to save the credit and claims of one of their own body, must be
held mainly responsible.
Before the matter was ended, they were made to feel, in rather a
startling way, how greatly they had lost the confidence of the
University. One of the attempts to find a way out of the tangle of the
dispute was the introduction, in February 1844, of a Statute which
should give to the Professor the power which was now contested, and
practically place all the Divinity degrees under the control of a Board
in conjunction with the Vice-Chancellor.[104] The proposed legislation
raised such indignation in the University, that the Hebdomadal Board
took back their scheme for further revision, and introduced it again in
a modified shape, which still however gave new powers to the Professor
and the Vice-Chancellor. But the University would have none of it. No
one could say that the defeat of the altered Statute by 341 to 21 was
the work merely of a party.[105] It was the most decisive vote given in
the course of these conflicts. And it was observed that on the same day
Mr. Macmullen's degree was vetoed by the Vice-Chancellor at the instance
of Dr. Hampden at 10 o'clock in Congregation, and the Hebdomadal Board,
which had supported him, received the vote of want of confidence at noon
in Convocation.
Nothing could show more decisively that the authorities in the
Hebdomadal Board were out of touch with the feeling of the University,
or, at all events, of that part of it which was resident. The residents
were not, as a body, identified with the Tractarians; it would be more
true to say that the residents, as a body, looked on this marked school
with misgiving and apprehension; but they saw what manner of men these
Tractarians were; they lived with them in college and common-room; their
behaviour was before their brethren as a whole, with its strength and
its weakness, its moral elevation and its hazardous excitement, its
sincerity of purpose and its one-sidedness of judgment and sympathy, its
unfairness to what was English, its over-value for what was foreign.
Types of those who looked at things more or less independently were Mr.
Hussey of Christ Church, Mr. C.P. Eden of Oriel, Mr. Sewell of Exeter,
Mr. Francis Faber of Magdalen, Dr. Greenhill of Trinity, Mr. Wall of
Balliol, Mr. Hobhouse of Merton, with some of the more consistent
Liberals, like Mr. Stanley of University, and latterly Mr. Tait. Men of
this kind, men of high character and weight in Oxford, found much to
dislike and regret in the Tractarians. But they could also see that the
leaders of the Hebdomadal Board laboured under a fatal incapacity to
recognise what these unpopular Tractarians were doing for the cause of
true and deep religion; they could see that the judgment of the Heads of
Houses, living as they did apart, in a kind of superior state, was
narrow, ill-informed, and harsh, and that the warfare which they waged
was petty, irritating, and profitless; while they also saw with great
clearness that under cover of suppressing "Puseyism," the policy of the
Board was, in fact, tending to increase and strengthen the power of an
irresponsible and incompetent oligarchy, not only over a troublesome
party, but over the whole body of residents. To the great honour of
Oxford it must be said, that throughout these trying times, on to the
very end, there was in the body of Masters a spirit of fairness, a
recognition of the force both of argument and character, a dislike of
high-handedness and shabbiness, which was in strong and painful contrast
to the short-sighted violence in which the Hebdomadal Board was
unhappily induced to put their trust, and which proved at last the main
cause of the overthrow of their power. When changes began to threaten
Oxford, there was no one to say a word for them.
But, for the moment, in spite of this defeat in Convocation, they had no
misgivings as to the wisdom of their course or the force of their
authority. There was, no doubt, much urging from outside, both on
political and theological grounds, to make them use their power to stay
the plague of Tractarianism; and they were led by three able and
resolute men, unfortunately unable to understand the moral or the
intellectual character of the movement, and having the highest dislike
and disdain for it in both aspects--Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, the
last remaining disciple of Whately's school, a man of rigid
conscientiousness, and very genuine though undemonstrative piety, of
great kindliness in private life, of keen and alert intellect, but not
of breadth and knowledge proportionate to his intellectual power; Dr.
Symons, Warden of Wadham, a courageous witness for Evangelical divinity
in the days when Evangelicals were not in fashion in Oxford, a man of
ponderous and pedantic learning and considerable practical acuteness;
and Dr. Cardwell, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, more a man of the world
than his colleagues, with considerable knowledge of portions of English
Church history. Under the inspiration of these chiefs, the authorities
had adopted, as far as they could, the policy of combat; and the
Vice-Chancellor of the time, Dr. Wynter of St. John's, a kind-hearted
man, but quite unfit to moderate among the strong wills and fierce
tempers round him, was induced to single out for the severest blow yet
struck, the most distinguished person in the ranks of the movement, Dr.
Pusey himself.
Dr. Pusey was a person with whom it was not wise to meddle, unless his
assailants could make out a case without a flaw. He was without question
the most venerated person in Oxford. Without an equal, in Oxford at
least, in the depth and range of his learning, he stood out yet more
impressively among his fellows in the lofty moral elevation and
simplicity of his life, the blamelessness of his youth, and the profound
devotion of his manhood, to which the family sorrows of his later years,
and the habits which grew out of them, added a kind of pathetic and
solemn interest. Stern and severe in his teaching at one time,--at least
as he was understood,--beyond even the severity of Puritanism, he was
yet overflowing with affection, tender and sympathetic to all who came
near him, and, in the midst of continual controversy, he endeavoured,
with deep conscientiousness, to avoid the bitternesses of controversy.
He was the last man to attack; much more the last man to be unfair to.
The men who ruled in Oxford contrived, in attacking him, to make almost
every mistake which it was possible to make.
On the 24th of May 1843 Dr. Pusey, intending to balance and complement
the severer, and, to many, the disquieting aspects of doctrine in his
work on Baptism, preached on the Holy Eucharist as a comfort to the
penitent. He spoke of it as a disciple of Andrewes and Bramhall would
speak of it; it was a high Anglican sermon, full, after the example of
the Homilies, Jeremy Taylor, and devotional writers like George Herbert
and Bishop Ken, of the fervid language of the Fathers; and that was all.
Beyond this it did not go; its phraseology was strictly within Anglican
limits. In the course of the week that followed, the University was
surprised by the announcement that Dr. Faussett, the Margaret Professor
of Divinity, had "_delated_" the sermon to the Vice-Chancellor as
teaching heresy; and even more surprised at the news that the
Vice-Chancellor had commenced proceedings. The Statutes provided that
when a sermon was complained of, or _delated_ to the Vice-Chancellor,
the Vice-Chancellor should demand a copy of the sermon, and summoning to
him as his assessors Six Doctors of Divinity, should examine the
language complained of, and, if necessary, condemn and punish the
preacher. The Statute is thus drawn up in general terms, and prescribes
nothing as to the mode in which the examination into the alleged offence
is to be carried on; that is, it leaves it to the Vice-Chancellor's
discretion. What happened was this. The sermon was asked for, but the
name of the accuser was not given; the Statute did not enjoin it. The
sermon was sent, with a request from Dr. Pusey that he might have a
hearing. The Six Doctors were appointed, five of them being Dr. Hawkins,
Dr. Symons, Dr. Jenkyns, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Jelf; the Statute said the
Regius Professor was, if possible, to be one of the number; as he was
under the ban of a special Statute, he was spared the task, and his
place was taken by the next Divinity Professor, Dr. Faussett, the person
who had preferred the charge, and who was thus, from having been
accuser, promoted to be a judge. To Dr. Pusey's request for a hearing,
no answer was returned; the Statute, no doubt, said nothing of a
hearing. But after the deliberations of the judges were concluded, and
after the decision to condemn the sermon had been reached, one of them,
Dr. Pusey's old friend, Dr. Jelf, was privately charged with certain
communications from the Vice-Chancellor, on which the seal of absolute
secrecy was imposed, and which, in fact, we believe, have never been
divulged from that _day_ to this. Whatever passed between the
Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Jelf, and Dr. Pusey, it had no effect in arresting
the sentence; and it came out, in informal ways, and through Dr. Pusey
himself, that on the 2d of June Dr. Pusey had been accused and condemned
for having taught doctrine contrary to that of the Church of England,
and that by the authority of the Vice-Chancellor he was suspended from
preaching within the University for two years. But no formal
notification of the transaction was ever made to the University.
The summary suppression of erroneous and dangerous teaching had long
been a recognised part of the University discipline; and with the ideas
then accepted of the religious character of the University, it was
natural that some such power as that given in the Statutes should be
provided. The power, even after all the changes in Oxford, exists still,
and has been recently appealed to. Dr. Pusey, as a member of the
University, had no more right than any other preacher to complain of his
doctrine being thus solemnly called in question. But it is strange that
it should not have occurred to the authorities that, under the
conditions of modern times, and against a man like Dr. Pusey, such power
should be warily used. For it was not only arbitrary power, such as was
exerted in the condemnation of No. 90, but it was arbitrary power acting
under the semblance of a judicial inquiry, with accusers, examination,
trial, judges, and a heavy penalty. The act of a court of justice which
sets at defiance the rules of justice is a very different thing from a
straightforward act of arbitrary power, because it pretends to be what
it is not. The information against Dr. Pusey, if accepted, involved a
trial--that was the fixed condition and point of departure from which
there was no escaping--and if a trial be held, then, if it be not a fair
trial, the proceeding becomes, according to English notions, a flagrant
and cowardly wrong. All this, all the intrinsic injustice, all the
scandal and discredit in the eyes of honest men, was forgotten in the
obstinate and blind confidence in the letter of a vague Statute. The
accused was not allowed to defend or explain himself; he was refused the
knowledge of the definite charges against him; he was refused, in spite
of his earnest entreaties, a hearing, even an appearance in the presence
of his judges. The Statute, it was said, enjoined none of these things.
The name of his accuser was not told him; he was left to learn it by
report To the end of the business all was wrought in secrecy; no one
knows to this day how the examination of the sermon was conducted, or
what were the opinions of the judges. The Statute, it was said, neither
enjoined nor implied publicity. To this day no one knows what were the
definite passages, what was the express or necessarily involved heresy
or contradiction of the formularies, on which the condemnation was
based; nor--except on the supposition of gross ignorance of English
divinity on the part of the judges--is it easy for a reader to put his
finger on the probably incriminated passages. To make the proceedings
still more unlike ordinary public justice, informal and private
communications were carried on between the judge and the accused, in
which the accused was bound to absolute silence, and forbidden to
consult his nearest friends.
And of the judges what can be said but that they were, with one
exception, the foremost and sternest opponents of all that was
identified with Dr. Pusey's name; and that one of them was the colleague
who had volunteered to accuse him? Dr. Faussett's share in the matter is
intelligible; hating the movement in all its parts, he struck with the
vehemence of a mediaeval zealot. But that men like Dr. Hawkins and Dr.
Ogilvie, one of them reputed to be a theologian, the other one of the
shrewdest and most cautious of men, and in ordinary matters one of the
most conscientious and fairest, should not have seen what justice, or at
least the show of justice, demanded, and what the refusal of that demand
would look like, and that they should have persuaded the Vice-Chancellor
to accept the entire responsibility of haughtily refusing it, is, even
to those who remember the excitement of those days, a subject of wonder.
The plea was actually put forth that such opportunities of defence of
his language and teaching as Dr. Pusey asked for would have led to the
"inconvenience" of an interminable debate, and confronting of texts and
authorities.[106] The fact, with Dr. Pusey as the accused person, is
likely enough; but in a criminal charge with a heavy penalty, it would
have been better for the reputation of the judges to have submitted to
the inconvenience.
It was a great injustice and a great blunder--a blunder, because the
gratuitous defiance of accepted rules of fairness neutralised whatever
there might seem to be of boldness and strength in the blow. They were
afraid to meet Dr. Pusey face to face. They were afraid to publish the
reasons of their condemnation. The effect on the University, both on
resident and non-resident members, was not to be misunderstood. The
Protestantism of the Vice-Chancellor and the Six Doctors was, of course,
extolled by partisans in the press with reckless ignorance and reckless
contempt at once for common justice and their own consistency. One
person of some distinction at Oxford ventured to make himself the
mouthpiece of those who were bold enough to defend the proceeding--the
recently-elected Professor of Poetry, Mr. Garbett. But deep offence was
given among the wiser and more reasonable men who had a regard for the
character of the University. A request to know the grounds of the
sentence from men who were certainly of no party was curtly refused by
the Vice-Chancellor, with a suggestion that it did not concern them. A
more important memorial was sent from London, showing how persons at a
distance were shocked by the unaccountable indifference to the
appearance of justice in the proceeding. It was signed among others by
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Justice Coleridge. The Vice-Chancellor lost his
temper. He sent back the memorial to London "by the hands of his bedel,"
as if that in some way stamped his official disapprobation more than if
it had been returned through the post. And he proceeded, in language
wonderful even for that moment, as "Resident Governor" of the
University, to reprimand statesmen and lawyers of eminence and high
character, not merely for presuming to interfere with his own duties,
but for forgetting the oaths on the strength of which they had received
their degrees, and for coming very near to that high, almost highest,
academical crime, the crime of being _perturbatores pacis_--breaking the
peace of the University.
Such foolishness, affecting dignity, only made more to talk of. If the
men who ruled the University had wished to disgust and alienate the
Masters of Arts, and especially the younger ones who were coming forward
into power and influence, they could not have done better. The chronic
jealousy and distrust of the time were deepened. And all this was
aggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage,
whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the
most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over
Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent
or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and
their tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as to
their opinions and their associates. Men applying for testimonials were
cross-questioned on No. 90, as to the infallibility of general councils,
purgatory, the worship of images, the _Ora pro nobis_ and the
intercession of the saints: the real critical questions upon which men's
minds were working being absolutely uncomprehended and ignored. It was a
miserable state of misunderstanding and distrust, and none of the
University leaders had the temper and the manliness to endeavour with
justice and knowledge to get to the bottom of it. It was enough to
suppose that a Popish Conspiracy was being carried on.
FOOTNOTES:
[101] Pp. 243, 253.
[102] Garbett, 921. Williams, 623.
[103] The numbers were 334 to 219.
[104] _Christian Remembrancer_, vol. ix. p. 175.
[105] Ibid. pp. 177-179.
[106] Cf. _British Critic_, No. xlvii. pp. 221-223.