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The Chancellors’ Dilemma: The Impact of the First World War on Faculty Jurisdiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
Abstract
The Church of England successfully resisted proposals to bring decisions about alterations to its churches within the provisions of the Ancient Monuments Act (1913). However, the quid pro quo for the continuation of that ecclesiastical exemption was a strengthening of the operation of the faculty jurisdiction of diocesan chancellors. The First World War brought more urgent concerns for dioceses, but what no-one had foreseen was the huge death toll that war would bring, and the consequent pressure for communal and individual memorials to be created in churches and churchyards. In addition to the greatly increased volume of faculty applications, and the problem of some churches going ahead with commemorative projects without seeking the necessary faculties, some war memorial plans involving crucifixes began to raise the spectre of Ritualistic illegality.
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References
1 Wakefield Diocesan Gazette (hereafter: WDG) 26/7 (December 1920), 111–12, reporting the consistory court judgment.
2 An entry point to the extensive literature is King, Alex, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar. For the broader context, see Winter, Jay M., Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar.
3 After 1938 they became statutory bodies but remained advisory in function: Last, Kathryn V., ‘The Privileged Position of the Church of England in the Control of Works to Historic Buildings: The Provenance of the Ecclesiastical Exemption from Listed Building Control’, Common Law World Review 31 (2002), 205–35Google Scholar.
4 WDG 26/9 (February 1921), 136.
5 WDG 21/19 (January 1916), 159.
6 WDG 22/1 (May 1916), 4–5.
7 ‘Archbishop on War Memorials’, Huddersfield Examiner, 16 June 1919, 4, quoting from a letter the archbishop had circulated in the diocese of York.
8 The church concerned has yet to be identified: WDG 22/1 (May 1916), 4.
9 ‘The Quick and the Dead: Honour for those who died and those who lived: Church Memorial Point: Interesting Decision by Chancellor Dowdall’, Liverpool Echo, 3 May 1921, 8; ‘“In Everlasting Remembrance”: Premature Praise in War Memorials’, Huddersfield Examiner, 4 May 1921, 1. The chancellor did grant a faculty for a memorial naming only the fallen, and suggested that the parish, St Bartholomew, Roby, should seek a separate faculty for a simple list of those who had served, to be displayed in the porch as a permanent record.
10 Wakefield, West Yorkshire Archive Service (hereafter: WYAS(W)), WD100/109, Diocese of Wakefield, Faculty Books, vols 2 (1908–22), 3 (1922–30); there appears to be no consolidated record of numbers of applications.
11 For the period covered by this article, the Wakefield registrar was William Henry Coles (1877–1963).
12 London Gazette, 8 January 1919, 449; Who Was Who, s.n. ‘Charles, Sir Ernest Bruce’, online at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U223693>, accessed 12 September 2018; obituary, The Times, 4 May 1950, 7. He was probably appointed director in 1917, although it has not been possible to verify this. He was mentioned in dispatches in 1917, created a Knight of the Order of St John in April 1918 and appointed CBE in 1919.
13 WYAS(W), St John's, Clifton, WDP27/34, Charles R. Roberts, ‘A Compilation of Historical Facts of the Church of St John the Evangelist, Clifton, Brighouse and of the Church School on the Occasion of the Centenary of the Church, 1860–1960’, undated typescript; WDP27/40, faculty papers, August 1920 – October 1922; WDP27/54, PCC minute book, 1920–4.
14 ‘Crucifix as War Shrine: A Faculty refused’, The Times, 12 January 1920, 15.
15 WD100/109, Faculty Book, vol. 2, 10 December 1920.
16 WYAS(W), St Thomas, Huddersfield, WDP115/11, Church Council, 21 January, 11 May 1921. The architect was Sir Charles Nicholson, Wakefield's diocesan architect.
17 Earl of Halsbury, The Laws of England, being a Complete Statement of the Law of England, 31 vols (London, 1910), 11: §§1330–41.
18 For a fuller discussion, see, in this volume, Dan D. Cruickshank, ‘Debating the Legal Status of the Ornaments Rubric: Ritualism and Royal Commissions in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England’, 434–54.
19 The rubric is described as a ‘puzzling instruction’ which ‘[n]o one has ever satisfactorily explained’: MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Thomas Cranmer, rev. edn (New Haven, CT, 2016), 621Google Scholar; for the texts, see Cummings, Brian, ed., The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar.
20 Until the latter part of the twentieth century, the interpretative tools available to judges when considering the impact of legislation on individual cases were narrowly defined: Catherine Elliott and Frances Quinn, The English Legal System, 17th edn (Harlow, 2016), 55–60, 64–7. My thanks to W. Brian Thompson for advice on this point.
21 Bentley, James, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Attempt to Legislate for Belief (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Yates, Nigel, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830–1910 (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar. Martin Wellings, Evangelicals Embattled: Responses of Evangelicals in the Church of England to Ritualism, Darwinism and Theological Liberalism 1890–1930 (Carlisle, 2003), 9–72, usefully explores the interplay between Ritualism and anti-Catholicism.
22 The details of the story can be tracked through WYAS(W), St Peter, Huddersfield, WDP32/94, Church Council Minute Book, 1914–24; WDP32/14, parish magazines, 1914–25; WD100/Box 111, Diocese of Wakefield, faculty applications; WD100/109, Faculty Book, vol. 2, 12 January 1924; WDG 29/10 (February 1924), 181. Comper's attitude to diocesan advisory committees and to regulation of the architectural profession more generally is noted in Betjeman, John, ‘A Note on J. N. Comper: Heir to Butterfield and Bodley’, Architectural Review 85 (1939), 79–82Google Scholar. See also Lang, Cosmo Gordon, Tupper (Canon A. D. Tupper-Carey): A Memoir of the Life and Work of a very human Parish Priest, by his Friend (London, 1945)Google Scholar.
23 ‘A Crucifix in a Window’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 28 August 1918, 8; ‘Chancellor Prescott and a Crucifixion Window’, ibid., 20 November 1918, 7.
24 ‘Crucifix as War Memorial: Judgement in Guildford Case: Legality upheld’, The Times, 7 June 1920, 7.
25 ‘Crucifix as War Memorial: Removal ordered: Parish Action against Vicar’, The Times, 11 April 1921, 7.
26 ‘Churchyard Crucifixes: Chancellor Campbell's Judgment’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 27 April 1921, 9; Robert Phillimore, The Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London, 1895), 1: 735.
27 Cripps, Henry William, The Law relating to the Church and Clergy, 7th edn (London, 1921), 408Google Scholar.
28 D. G. Hogg, ed., Halsbury's Laws of England, 2nd edn, 37 vols (London, 1931–42), 11 (1933): §1442 n. One of the commission's conclusions had been that ‘the law of public worship in the Church of England is too narrow for the religious life of the present generation’: Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, Cd.3040 (London, 1906), §399.
29 Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1921.
30 The final diocesan bills were £13 15s 2d: WYAS(W), WDP27/40, St John, Clifton, Faculty: Statement of Fees and Charges; and £13 4s 8d: WDP115, St Thomas, Huddersfield, Church Council, 21 January 1921. These included the chancellor's travel costs, postage and ‘sundries’.
31 WYAS(W), Christ Church, Woodhouse, WDP42/5/1/1, Vestry minute book, 1898–1920; WDP42/5/3/2, Church Council minute book, 1903–20; WDP42/5/4/1/1, PCC minute book, 1920–7; WDP42/9/1/5, Parish magazines, 1918–24. At least two other parish churches in the borough had war memorials for which no approval appears to have been sought: St Paul, Armitage Bridge and St John, Newsome.
32 WDG 30/7 (November 1924), 88.
33 WDG 30/2 (June 1924), 26.
34 Now increasingly available through the British Library's digitization project, online at: <http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk>.