The Canterbury Association (1848-1852): A Study of Its Members’ Connections By the Reverend Michael Blain Note: This is a revised edition prepared during 2019, of material included in the book published in 2000 by the archives committee of the Anglican diocese of Christchurch to mark the 150th anniversary of the Canterbury settlement. In 1850 the first Canterbury Association ships sailed into the new settlement of Lyttelton, New Zealand. From that fulcrum year I have examined the lives of the eighty-four members of the Canterbury Association. Backwards into their origins, and forwards in their subsequent careers. I looked for connections. The story of the Association’s plans and the settlement of colonial Canterbury has been told often enough. (For instance, see A History of Canterbury volume 1, pp135-233, edited James Hight and CR Straubel.) Names and titles of many of these men still feature in the Canterbury landscape as mountains, lakes, and rivers. But who were the people? What brought these eighty-four together between the initial meeting on 27 March 1848 and the close of their operations in September 1852? What were the connections between them? In November 1847 Edward Gibbon Wakefield had convinced an idealistic young Irishman John Robert Godley that in partnership they could put together the best of all emigration plans. Wakefield’s experience, and Godley’s contacts brought together an association to promote a special colony in New Zealand, an English society free of industrial slums and revolutionary spirit, an ideal English society sustained by an ideal church of England. Each member of these eighty-four members has his biographical entry. From the study of their lives emerge patterns of connection: family, friendship, political ambition, commercial interest, military and imperialist power, philanthropic idealism, Romantic fantasy, Christian commitment. Family Marriages across several generations laced these Canterbury Association members together in a close weave of traditional rural land-owners, mostly in western and southern England, with residences and business interests in the West End of London. For a vivid example, look at the entry for Henry Thynne Lascelles, the Earl of Harewood; here is a node of Association families including Mills, Herbert, Talbot, Montagu Douglas Scott, and Vernon. Like Lord Harewood, most were old-style High Tory, a class that inter-married within itself, accumulating and passing on fortunes and titles; heads of family were leaders in county life, as sheriffs, justices of the peace, magistrates, and ceremonial officials such as lord (or deputy) lieutenants of their counties. Friendship The public school and university system brought further contacts and friendships. Two dozen of the members had links with Eton College, half a dozen with Harrow School, which Godley himself had attended. Such boyish friendship grew to stronger commitment through the academic life of Christ Church Oxford (two dozen have links there), and the common room of Oriel College (eight), or at Cambridge University, notably Trinity College (over a dozen). Copyright Michael Blain 2000 and 2007 This file was downloaded from Project Canterbury http://anglicanhistory.org Some members were very clever men (notably George Henry Lyttelton, the real sustainer of the Canterbury Association). Others got to university on class prerogative rather than academic ability or application. (William Drogo Montagu—‘silly but not dull,’ remarked Disraeli.) Oriel College was the place for clever students, who were also often High church; S Edmund’s hall was the Evangelical centre and not admired. (See Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, by Thomas Mozley.) Political Ambition Politics was a common interest. Thirty-four members served in the House of Commons, though of these five were subsequent to their membership of the Canterbury Association. Most did serve as Tories (or Conservatives) but a number of these moved across the loose boundaries between emergent parties.A few were Whigs. Twenty-seven, at some period in their lives, had a seat in the House of Lords—seventeen as lords temporal, ten as lords spiritual (bishops of the established church of England, which then included Wales, or the established church of Ireland). Others like Godley himself had careers in the British civil service that kept them close to the political world. Two members FitzGerald and Sewell had astonishing careers in the incipient political world of New Zealand. The Duke of Buccleuch, Francis Charteris, Lord Hervey, Lord Brooke, and Sir Edward Cust, were courtiers; one had the honour of carrying the ‘gold stick’. Whether they were known as Liberals (Whig) or Tory, a high proportion was social reformist, and among them the most able and up-to-date politicians of their period. A proportion (including Goulburn, Herbert, William Baring) of the politicians were Tory reformers, who had risen with Sir Robert Peel, and had worked with him for free trade, and a careful extension of the franchise beyond their class (but not their gender). After Peel’s death in 1850 the Peelite Tories lost their already shaky coherence as a parliamentary force, and split. Gladstone rose as a lodestar for some, Disraeli picked up others, and political loyalties continued to cluster for or against such topics as free trade, extending the franchise, the civil rights and endowments of Roman Catholics, and the dis-establishment of the church of Ireland. Most members were aristocrats in an age where the aristocrat had power, sourced either in old money from old land holdings (see Cavendish, Francis Egerton, JH Cust), or increasingly new money (with new titles) from commerce in new empire (Goulburn, Wilberforces, Barings, the Duke of Buccleuch, the Duke of Manchester), some from slave plantations in the West Indies. Bankers (Thomas Somers-Cocks, Walter Farquhar, Baring), and lawyers (JD Coleridge, JT Coleridge, Forsyth) moved between them as family and friends, and administered their commercial interests. These Tories took up office, political and social, with a high commitment to social amelioration projects. Utopian idealists (for instance, John Manners, the leader of the Young England party); practical philanthropists (for instance Adderley, Courtenay, Lyttelton); lawyers (a score of these) and publicists; men with an interest in emigration schemes (Godley, Herbert, Hinds, Hutt) either to alleviate the overcrowding poverty of industrial Britain, or to relieve the rising pressure for democratic revolution (Godley, Lucas), or to find fertile soil for the Irish peasants after the failure of their potato crops (Whately, FitzGerald). The plan for a church of England colony attracted the philanthropic idealism of such church members. Romantic fantasy Romantic fantasy was the misty realm on the farther side of their generosity. The Duke of Rutland was a romantic feudalist— famous for lines artlessly penned in his youth, ‘Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die; but leave us still our old nobility’, an attitude which carried him in fictional disguise into the novels of his political muse Benjamin Disraeli. Many wrote; the titles of their works indicate the mode of their imaginations. A number were competent Classicists, rehearsing once more for a new imperial era the glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome (Blomfield, Hare, Thirlwall, Trench, Lyttelton). Books on chivalry, military tactics, the warriors of history (Edward Cust, Gleig), and Elizabethan pirates (Vaux) flood from their pens. Ultima Thule, the title of Thomas Cholmondeley’s report on the Canterbury settlement picks up the image of Canterbury as a faery land over the rainbow at the end of the world. Military and Imperialistic Power Educated in the expansive models of ancient Rome, stirred by the feudal adventures of medieval England, men marched for the progress of nations. Which they felt was best assured when British interests were best served. Several had been professional soldiers (like Colonel Archer, Sir Edward Cust, and Lord Harewood who fought at Waterloo), or were at least leaders of their county militia (including Lord Elcho, the Earl of Devon, Sidney Herbert, Sir Edward Hulse, Sir John Simeon). Two (Francis Egerton, Lord Herbert) were powerful in the war office itself, and four (Lord Ashley, Sir Francis Baring, Lord Ashburton, and Stafford) in the admiralty. Later, Lord Wodehouse was head of the colonial office. As chaplain general to the armed forces Gleig among the clergy members was unique, but in his interest in military heroes, similar to all the soldiers and sailors. Commercial Interests Straightforward commercial interests are visible in the family connections. The slave trade of the West Indies plantations lies behind the financial security of the Hinds family and other traders. The vast wealth of India gleams in the family influence of the Barings, Richard Cavendish, Maddock, Forsyth, and the Lyalls. The Wilberforce wealth came from trade with the Baltic countries. Philosophical Idealism Earlier colonisation schemes had attracted several Canterbury Association families, notably Hinds, the three Hutt brothers, the Barings. A principled concern shows in the campaigning of CB Adderley, Lord Lyttelton, FitzGerald, Godley, and Lord Wodehouse; they pleaded for the constitutional development of British colonies, that they might be free from the British imperialist machine. Perhaps one of the last vocal supporters of these migrant societies was Lord Shaftesbury—in 1880