Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: The Church and Anglicanism in the ‘long’ eighteenth century
- Part I The pastoral work of the Church
- Part II Crisis and reform
- 5 The Church, the societies and the moral revolution of 1688
- 6 John Locke, Jonas Proast and religious toleration 1688–1692
- 7 The origins and ideals of the SPCK 1699–1716
- 8 Cultural patronage and the Anglican crisis: Bristol c. 1689–1775
- 9 Latitudinarianism at the parting of the ways: a suggestion
- 10 Ecclesiastical policy under Lord North
- 11 The foundation of the Church Missionary Society: the Anglican missionary impulse
- 12 A Hanoverian legacy? Diocesan reform in the Church of England c. 1800–1833
- Part III Identities and perceptions
- Index
12 - A Hanoverian legacy? Diocesan reform in the Church of England c. 1800–1833
R. Arthur Burns
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: The Church and Anglicanism in the ‘long’ eighteenth century
- Part I The pastoral work of the Church
- Part II Crisis and reform
- 5 The Church, the societies and the moral revolution of 1688
- 6 John Locke, Jonas Proast and religious toleration 1688–1692
- 7 The origins and ideals of the SPCK 1699–1716
- 8 Cultural patronage and the Anglican crisis: Bristol c. 1689–1775
- 9 Latitudinarianism at the parting of the ways: a suggestion
- 10 Ecclesiastical policy under Lord North
- 11 The foundation of the Church Missionary Society: the Anglican missionary impulse
- 12 A Hanoverian legacy? Diocesan reform in the Church of England c. 1800–1833
- Part III Identities and perceptions
- Index
Summary
Historians of the nineteenth century most frequently encounter the Hanoverian Church as at best a decadent and more often a corrupt institution, ripe for energetic Victorian reform. However, not only was the relationship between well-established ‘abuses’ and pastoral efficiency more complex than is usually assumed, but there are also instances where it can be argued that the late Hanoverian Church bequeathed a positive legacy to the Victorians. As an illustration this essay considers a neglected aspect of early nineteenth-century church reform, that which occurred in diocesan structures. It argues that through ‘diocesan reform’ the Hanoverian Church offered its own response to the challenges it faced, and that the period 1800– 33 saw the commencement of an enduring ‘diocesan revival’ which derived its coherence and legitimation from the then prevalent Orthodox High Church theology.
Before proceeding to describe this reform and its implications for our view of the nineteenth-century Church, the term ‘diocesan reform’ requires clarification. Peter Virgin recently called for a study of the administrative reforms of the ‘ “new breed” of bishop, who emerged after the Napoleonic Wars’. Certainly, case-studies of bishops of the years c. 1825–50 suffer from the absence of a wider context in which to assess their individual significance. Any challenge they might offer to the long-standing orthodoxy that Samuel Wilberforce was ‘The Remodeller of the Episcopate’ is undercut by the consequent tendency to identify a series of ‘proto-Wilberforces’.
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- The Church of England c.1689–c.1833From Toleration to Tractarianism, pp. 265 - 282Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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