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A Disputed Legacy: Anglican Historiographies of the Reformation from the Era of the Caroline Divines to That of the Oxford Movement

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A Disputed Legacy: Anglican Historiographies of the Reformation from the Era of the Caroline Divines to That of the Oxford Movement A disputed legacy: Anglican historiographies of the Reformation from the era of the Caroline divines to that of the Oxford Movement PETER B. NOCKLES The John Rylands University Library of Manchester The quest for historical legitimation has always characterized great religious movements within the Christian churches. The Oxford Movement, a movement of high church religious revival within the Church of England led by John Henry Newman, John Keble, Hurrell Froude and E.B. Pusey, which between 1833 and 1845 centred on the University of Oxford, involved an appeal firstly to the early church, and in its later phase, to the Middle Ages. The series of Tracts for the Times, inaugurated by the Movement's leaders in 1833 and from which its authors and followers were accorded the nickname 'Tractarians', appealed to the doctrine and practice of the primitive church as a source of imitation and example to a contemporary Church of England besieged by state interference in matters spiritual. 1 In order to strengthen an Anglicanism that was losing political ascendancy as a result of 1 The literature on the Oxford Movement is immense. See especially, D. Newsome, The parting of friends: a study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning (London, 1966); M.R. O' Connell, The Oxford conspirators: a history of the Oxford Movement, 1833-1845 (New York, 1969); R. Chapman, Faith and revolt: studies in the literary influence of the Oxford Movement (London, 1970); D.G. Rowell, The vision glorious: themes and personalities of the Catholic revival in Anglicanism (Oxford, 1983); P. Butler (ed.), Pusey rediscovered (London, 1983); J.R. Griffin, The Oxford Movement: a revision (Edinburgh, 1984); D.G. Rowell (ed.), Tradition renewed: the Oxford Movement conference papers, (Oxford, 1986); R. Imberg, In quest of authority: the 'Tracts for the Times' and the development of the Tractarian leaders, 1833-1841 (Lund, 1987); P.B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in context: Anglican high churchmanship 1760-1857 (Cambridge, 1994); P. Vaiss (ed.), From Oxford to the people: reconsidering Newman & the Oxford Movement (Leominster, 1996); V.A. McClelland (ed.). By whose authority? Newman, Manning, and the magisterium (Bath, 1996). 121 122 BULLETIN JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828) and Catholic Emancipation (1829), the Tractarians revived the spiritual basis of the established church's authority. The appeal to Antiquity was employed to uphold the constitution of the Christian Church, its jure divino episcopal order and apostolical succession against its contemporary detractors or the merely lukewarm. More broadly, the Tractarian appeal to the ancient church was used to underscore the classical Anglican claim to represent a via media between the churches of Rome and Geneva, or as Newman put it, Romanism and 'popular protestantism'.2 This article will consider a neglected component of the Oxford Movement's campaign of the 1830s and 1840s a selective use of earlier Anglican history by both the Tractarians and their opponents. It will reveal a Tractarian ambivalence about and eventual repudiation of the English Reformers, offset by an appeal for legitimation to primitive Antiquity in the first instance, and seconarily to seventeenth-century Anglican writers, the so-called 'Caroline divines'; divines who themselves had been exponents and mediators of an appeal to Antiquity and of patristic orthodoxy. The whole Tractarian project rested on the claim to be merely contributing towards 'the practical revival of doctrines' taught by 'our predecessors of the 17th century', which had become 'withdrawn from public view even by the more learned and orthodox few who still adhere to them'3 However, it also entailed a conscious marginalisation of the Reformation and most of the Elizabethan epoch from its vision of the foundations, identity and integrity of Anglicanism. It will be shown how far this Tractarian historiography represented a departure from that of not only both Anglican Evangelicalism and latitudinarism but also from mainstream Anglican high churchmanship, and had its own distinctive reading of Reformation history. The tension and divergence between the Tractarian and traditional high church as well as Anglican Evangelical and latitudinarian vision and version of the Reformation will form the focus of this study. Nineteenth- century Anglican readings of the Reformation can also be fruitfully compared to current historical revisionism on the subject. The very term 'Anglicanism' is an anachronism and quite misleading when applied to the first half century of the reformed Church of England's existence; the term 'magisterial Protestantism' being more appropriate. 'Anglicanism' might lay claim to being the faith of the undivided Christian Church prior 2 J.H. Newman, Lectures on the prophetical office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and popular Protestantism (London, 1837). 3 Tracts for the Times. By members of the University of Oxford. Vol. I. For 1833-4. 'Advertisement' (London, 1840), iii..
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