_A Universal History of Party; with the Origin of Party Names_[1] would
form an acceptable addition to literary history: "N. & Q." has contributed
towards such a work some disquisitions on our party names _Whig_ and
_Tory_, and _The Good Old Cause_. Such names as _Puritan_, _Malignant_,
_Evangelical_[2], can be traced up to their first commencement, but some
obscurity hangs on the mintage-date of the names we are about to consider.
As a matter of fact, the distinction of _High Church_ and _Low Church_
always existed in the Reformed English Church, and the history of these
parties would be her history. But the _names_ were not coined till the
close of the seventeenth century, and were not stamped in full relief as
party-names till the first year of Queen Anne's reign.
In October, 1702, Anne's first Parliament and Convocation assembled:
"From the deputies in Convocation at this period, the appellations
_High Church_ and _Low Church_ originated, and they were afterwards
used to distinguish the clergy. It is singular that the bishops[3] were
ranked among {118} the Low Churchmen (see Burnet, v. 138.; Calamy, i.
643.; Tindal's _Cont._, iv. 591.)"--Lathbury's _Hist. of the
Convocation_, Lond. 1842, p. 319.
Mr. Lathbury is a very respectable authority in matters of this kind, but
if he use "originated" in its strict sense, I am inclined to think he is
mistaken; as I am tolerably certain that I have met with the words several
years before 1702. At the moment, however, I cannot lay my hands on a
passage to support this assertion.
The disputes in Convocation gave rise to a number of pamphlets, such as _A
Caveat against High Church_, Lond. 1702, and _The Low Churchmen vindicated
from the unjust Imputation of being No Churchmen, in Answer to a Pamphlet
called "The Distinction of High and Low Church considered:_" Lond. 1706,
8vo. Dr. Sacheverell's trial gave additional zest to the _dudgeon
ecclesiastick_, and produced a shower of pamphlets. I give the title of one
of them: _Pulpit War, or Dr. S----l, the High Church Trumpet, and Mr.
H----ly, the Low Church Drum, engaged by way of Dialogue_, Lond. 1710, 8vo.
To understand the cause of the exceeding bitterness and virulence which
animated the parties denominated _High Church_ and _Low Church_, we must
remember that until the time of William of Orange, the Church of England,
_as a body_--her sovereigns and bishops, her clergy and laity--comes under
the _former_ designation; while those who sympathised with the Dissenters
were comparatively few and weak. As soon as William was head of the Church,
he opened the floodgates of Puritanism, and admitted into the church what
previously had been more or less external to it. This element, thus made
part and parcel of the Anglican Church, was denominated _Low Church_.
William supplanted the bishops and clergy who refused to take oaths of
allegiance to him as king _de jure_; and by putting Puritans in their
place, made the latter the dominant party. Add to this the feelings of
exasperation produced by the murder of Charles I., and the expulsion of the
Stuarts, and we have sufficient grounds, political and religious, for an
irreconcilable feud. Add, again, the reaction resulting from the overthrow
of the tyrannous hot-bed and forcing-system, where a sham conformity was
maintained by coercion; and the _Church-Papist_, as well as the
_Church-Puritans_, with ill-concealed hankering after the mass and the
preaching-house, by penal statutes were forced to do what their souls
abhorred, and play the painful farce of attending the services of "The
Establishment."
A writer in a _High Church_ periodical of 1717 (prefacing his article with
the passage from Proverbs vi. 27.) proceeds:
"The old way of attacking the Church of England was by mobs and
bullies, and hard sounds; by calling _Whore_, and _Babylon_, upon our
worship and liturgy, and kicking out our clergy as _dumb dogs_: but now
they have other irons in the fire; a new engine is set up under the
cloak and disguise of _temper, unity, comprehension, and the Protestant
religion_. Their business now is not to storm the Church, but to _lull
it to sleep_: to make us relax our care, quit our defences, and neglect
our safety.... These are the politics of their Popish fathers: when
_they_ had tried all other artifices, they at last resolved to sow
schism and division in the Church: and from thence sprang up this very
generation, who by a fine stratagem endeavoured to set us one against
the other, and they gather up the stakes. _Hence the distinction of
High and Low Church._"--_The Scourge_, p. 251.
In another periodical of the same date, in the Dedication "To the most
famous University of Oxford," the writer says:
"These enemies of our religious and civil establishment have
represented you as instillers of _slavish doctrines and principles_ ...
if to give to God and Cæsar his due be such tow'ring, and _High Church_
principles, I am sure St. Peter and St. Paul will scarce escape being
censured for _Tories_ and _Highflyers_."--_The Entertainer_, Lond.
1717.
"If those who have kept their first love, and whose robes have not been
defiled, endeavour to stop these innovations and corruptions that their
enemies would introduce, they are blackened for _High Church Papists_,
favourers of I know not who, and fall under the public
resentment."--_Ib._ p. 301.
I shall now give a few extracts from _Low Church_ writers (quoted in _The
Scourge_), who thus designate their opponents:
"A pack or party of scandalous, wicked, and profane men, who
appropriate to themselves the name of _High Church_ (but may more
properly be said to be Jesuits or Papists in masquerade), do take
liberty to teach, preach, and print, publickly and privately, sedition,
contentions, and divisions among the Protestants of this
kingdom."--_Motives to Union_, p. 1.
"These men glory in their being members of the _High Church_ (Popish
appellation, and therefore they are the more fond of that); but these
pretended sons are become her persecutors, and they exercise their
spite and lies both on the living and the dead."--_The Snake in the
Grass brought to Light_, p. 8.
{119}
"Our common people of the _High Church_ are as ignorant in matters of
religion as the bigotted Papists, which gives great advantage to our
Jacobite and Tory priests to lead them where they please, or to mould
them into what shapes they please."--_Reasons for an Union_, p. 39.
"The minds of the populace are too much debauched already from their
loyalty by seditious arts of the _High Church faction_."--_Convocation
Craft_, p. 34.
"We may see how closely our present _Highflyers_ pursue the steps of
their Popish predecessors, in reckoning those who dispute the usurped
power of the Church to be hereticks, schismaticks, or what else they
please."--_Ib._ p. 30.
"All the blood that has been spilt in the late unnatural rebellion, may
be very justly laid at the doors of the _High Church
clergy_."--_Christianity no Creature of the State_, p. 16.
"We see what the _Tory Priesthood_ were made of in Queen Elizabeth's
time, that they were ignorant, lewd, and seditious: and it must be said
of 'em that they are true to the stuff still."--_Toryism the Worst of
the Two_, p. 21.
"_The Tories_ and _High Church_, notwithstanding their pretences to
loyalty, will be found by their actions to be the greatest rebels in
nature."--_Reasons for an Union_, p. 20.