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Bishop W. C. Magee, the Reverend F. W. Robinson and a New Late Victorian Parish in Leicester by Gerald T

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Bishop W. C. Magee, the Reverend F. W. Robinson and a New Late Victorian Parish in Leicester by Gerald T Bishop W. C. Magee, The Reverend F. W. Robinson and a New Late Victorian Parish in Leicester by Gerald T. Rimmington This is a study of an important aspect of the episcopate of W. C . Magee, Bishop of Peterborough from 1868 to 1891. At this time the Archdeaconry of Leicester lay within the jurisdiction of Peterborough: the town of Leicester was the largest and fastest-growing urban area in the diocese; and the problems of the Church in Leicester necessarily occupied much of Magee's attention. Within the town he was especially concerned with the growing-pains of St. Peter's parish which had recently been established in the populous, working-class district of Highfields. This paper traces the relationship between the Bishop and the Revd. F . W. Robinson, whom he had chosen to inaugurate the parish; and in the course of it light is thrown on the manifold problems of a working-class parish in the Late Victorian period and on the views of a bishop whose standing in the church was so high that in 1891 he was advanced to the Archbishopric of York. Dr. William Connor Magee became the Bishop of Peterborough at a critical time in the life of the Church of England. Born in 1821, the grandson of an Archbishop of Dublin, he graduated at Trinity College. Consecrated and enthroned in 1868, he exchanged the Deanship of Cork for a diocese that his predecessor Francis Jeune regarded as being shaped like a pear with the Bishop's Palace on the end of the stalk, 1 and which was divided into the two large archdeaconries of Leicester and Northampton, neither of which sat comfortably with the other. Foremost in Magee's mind was the condition of the Church in the cities and large towns of England. Only seventeen years had passed since Horace Mann's religious census of 1851, which showed that more than half of the population of the country had not attended a place of worship on 30th March, and that only twenty per cent had attended an Anglican church. There were people in the working-class districts of large urban centres who were hardly touched by the Church at all. Even if they had wanted to attend there was not enough accommodation for them anyway. 2 Fewer than one in ten attended any place of worship in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, and there were signs that small minorities of 'militant secularist working men' would grow in size and influence if counter measures were not adopted by the Churches.3 He would have been aware too of the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848, perhaps even of Marx's Zur Kri,tik der Politischen Oekonomie in 1859. He would G . Carnell, The Bishops of Peterborough 1541-1991 (Much Wenlock: Smith, 1993), p.77. Asa Briggs, Victorian People (London: Pelican, 1965), p.36. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Pelican, 1968), p.63. Trans. Leicestershire Archaeol. and Hist. Soc., 73 (I 999) BISHOP MAGEE AND A LATE VICTORIAN PARISH IN LEICESTER 57 Dr W. C. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough 1868- 1891. Published by permission of Northamptonshire Record Society. 58 certainly have shared in the sense of unease experienced by upper and middle-class people that these had produced, and the fear that there would be a revolution.4 Magee was certainly conscious that England was rapidly becoming urbanised. Between 1871 and 1901 Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham were each to grow to more than half a million people. The number of towns with more than 50,000 increased from 37 to 75. Leicester, Nottinghim~ Bull and Bradford had the fastest rates of growth.5 Leicester, with a population of 95,220 in 1871, was not only growing rapidly as the footwear industry gained a hold and hosiery began a new period of prosperity as a factory industry, but it experienced all the religious problems of the big cities. By 1870 five new Anglican parish churches, of substantial proportions, had been erected during the century. Five more were to be completed by 1880.6 In 1872, in his initial Charge, Magee stated that 'within the last ten years, during which the population of Leicester has increased from 69,000 to nearly 100,000, four new Churches have been built and districts attached to them ... The population of the new Parishes .. numbers 32,000'.7 Though the Nonconformists were still dominant - the new Victoria Road Church, a Baptist foundation, had been built only the year previous to the bishop's appointment - it was notable that a number of Baptist and Wesleyan chapels had fallen into disuse, and 'the hold of Dissent was already beginning to weaken'.8 It is true that Nonconformist accommodation for worship was still increasing. Andrew Mearns, in his The Statistics of Attendance at Public Worship 1882, indicated that out of 85 places of worship 61 were non-Anglican, with a total of 33,392 sittings out of a total of 49,800.9 It was well­ known, however, that about two-fifths of the seats remained unfilled in Nonconformist chapels compared with about one-fifth in parish churches. 10 Magee himself commented that 'it was ... fallacious to assume, with respect to Dissenting chapels, that an increase in sittings represented a corresponding number of Dissenters ... Dissent very largely increases by schism. It was important to ask the right question, which was not to ask how many sittings the Church of England had provided within the last ten years' , but 'how many endowed and settled ministers she had provided' , and then 'they would have an entirely different answer' . 11 Magee was, of course, not only concerned with Leicester. He took his membership of the House of Lords seriously; he campaigned vigorously against the passing of the Education Bill in 1870, and attempted to have legislation passed that would have reduced 'trafficking' in patronage. 12 He spent much time and energy in enabling his diocese to emulate the neighbouring dioceses of Ely and Lichfield in developing archidiaconal and diocesan conferences in which both clergy and laity worked together in decision-making. 13 He also concentrated much of his effort into acquiring wherever N . St. John-Stevas, 'The Victorian Conscience', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, January 1972, p.100. J. F. C . Harrison, Late Victorian Britain 1875-1901 (London: Fontana, 1990), p.15 . C. D. B. Ellis, History in Leicester (Leicester: City Publicity Department, 1948), p.115-116. W . C. Magee, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Diocese of Peterborough at his Primary Visitation, October 1872 (1872), p.8. J. Simmons, 'Mid-Victorian Leicester', TLAHS, 41 (1965-6), p .52. D . M. Thompson, 'The Churches and Society in Leicestershire 1851-1881', Ph.D., Cambridge, 1969, p.158. 10 J. Simmons, Leicester Past and Present (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), I, p.168. 11 Leicester Journal, 22.11 .1872. 12 M . J. D . Roberts, 'Private Patronage and the Church of England 1800-1900', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32:2 (1981), pp.215-221. 13 0 . Chadwick, The Victorian Church (London: A. & C . Black, Second Edition 1972), II, p .360; Peterborough Diocesan Kalendar (1891), p.68. BISHOP MAGEE AND A LATE VICTORIAN PARISH IN LEICESTER 59 possible, like many other bishops before him, the advowson or right to present incumbents to a living, so that he was able to develop a staffing policy, encouraging young able clergymen to take on the challenge of difficult town parishes, and transferring them in middle-age to less strenuous rural livings in which the emoluments were more substantial and secure. It was Leicester, however, that was to be the 'most satisfying setting for Magee to demonstrate his powers of leadership'. 14 There were two main reasons for this. The first was his conviction that it was absolutely vital to evangelise the new urban areas without delay, lest Nonconformity and secularism gain a hold. He stated that 'the population of the country was migrating into the towns, and ... more and more, politically, socially and ecclesiastiq1lly we are being governed by the great towns. It was, therefore, of vital importance that the Church should make good her footing in the towns'. 15 The second reason was the existence of a vigorous Leicester Archidiaconal Church Extension Association, founded by his predecessor in 1865, which was already giving priority to the opening of new churches in Leicester. Not only were a number of clergy involved, but also wealthy men like W . Perry Herrick, Esq., of Beaumanor Hall, Sir Arthur Hazlerigg, Bt., the Duke of Rutland and Earl Howe, who were major contributors to the cause. Magee was in time to help in planning for the laying of the foundation stones for St. Mark's and St. Paul's on 18th May 1870. It was St. Peter's though, where the stone was laid on 14th November 1872, which was to involve the bishop at all stages, and where the appointment of the incumbent most exemplified his aims in church development. One of Magee's strongest convictions was that the Church was not well-served by the practice of building a place of worship before there was a worshipping congregation, as had happened because of the way in which church extension had been organised. The bishop worked hard to persuade the aristocrats and businessmen who contributed their wealth that the human element was really more important than architectural creations. 16 Thinking particularly of the future St. Peter's he declared that it was appropriate to 'first set a minister to work, it might be in a small schoolroom, and afterwards, when he had gathered a congregation, think of building a church'.
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