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The Papal Aggression of 1850: A Study in Victorian Anti-Catholicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Walter Ralls
Affiliation:
professor ofhistory in Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York

Extract

For those wishing to generalize about the Victorians the Great Exhibition of 1851 usually proves irresistable. But it does seem an obvious omission that so little is said about the disorders which kept the country upended during the preceding six months, that is, during the episode of the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the “Papal Aggression”. Christopher Dawson has urged that the one needs the other to symbolize properly the Victorian frame of mind. Here I wish to outline the underlying causes of this last great outburst of No-Popery feeling in an effort to trace the paradox of the aroused, angry, bigoted Guy Fawkes Day-men of November appearing the next summer as the staid, curious and progressive-minded citizens sunning themselves in the glory of all that glittering machinery so carefully displayed beneath the vaulted glass dome of their Crystal Palace.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1974

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References

1. Unfortunately, Christopher Dawson did not himself undertake such a study, but see his comments, “The Victorian Background”, The Tablet, 23 09 1950, p. 245.Google Scholar For a satisfactory narrative account of the Papal Aggression, see eh. 4, “Lord John Russell”, in Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (London, 1966), 1.Google Scholar The centennial volume, The English Catholics, 1850–1950, ed. G. A. Beck (London, 1950)Google Scholar, has several pertinent articles, including Gordon Albion, “The Restoration of the Hierarchy”, pp. 86–116. More monographic is Norman, E. R., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), pp. 5279Google Scholar, and Joyce, Thomas P., “The Restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Wales, 1850: A Study of Certain Public Reactions” (Ph. D. diss. Gregorian University, Rome, 1966).Google Scholar The recent literature on Victorian Catholicism is summarized by Altholz, Josef L., “Writings on Victorian Catholicism, 1945–1970”, The British Studies Monitor 2, no. 3 (Spring 1972): 2330.Google Scholar Altholz argues that while much is being published it remains excessively pietistic, favors biography (with studies of Newman, Acton and Manning still dominant) and, though much is scholarly, remains largely uncritical. For a broader coverage of recent Victorian religious history which includes some instructive comments on English Catholicism, see Richard Soloway, A., “Church and Society: Recent Trends in Nineteenth Century Religious History”, The Journal of British Studies 11 (1972): 142159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A comprehensive study of Victorian anti-Catholicism has yet to appear; Norman's brilliant essay only points the way, as does Best, G. F. A., “Popular Protestantism in Victorian England”, in Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark, ed. Robson, Robert (London, 1967), pp. 115142.Google Scholar Prior to these was Gilbert Cahill, A., Irish Catholicism and English Toryism, 1832–1848: A Study in Ideology (Ann Arbor, Mich.; University Microfilms, 1954).Google Scholar For the roles played by various leading individuals, see Fothergill, Brian, Nicholas Wiseman (London, 1963)Google Scholar; New-some, David, The Parting of Friends, The Wilberforces and Henry Manning (London, 1966)Google Scholar: Meriol, Trevor's massive Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter (London, 1962)Google Scholar. A more critical view of Newman during the crisis of the Papal Aggression is Ronald Chapman, Father Faber (London, 1961).Google Scholar Newsome's study is the model for what is required.

2. Debates (Commons), 72 (13 February 1844). col. 699; 17 (23 March 1827) coL 14.

3. The Times, 7 November 1840. This most famous of all Victorian assaults on English Catholicism is reprinted in English Historical Documents, ed. G. M. Young and W. D. Handcoek (New York, 1956), 12 pt. 1:367369.Google Scholar The bishop of Durham, Dr. Maltby, had publicly complained to Russell about the “insolent and insidious” nature of the restoration of the hierarchy. Disraeli, assuming an amused attitude toward all parties, said, “I am bound to state that…I never knew a proceeding more free from the appearance of sublety and covin”. Debates (Commons), 114 (4 February 1851), col 132.

4. But see below for the ambivalence felt by many dissenters in thus supporting the claims of the national church.

5. Hales, E.E.Y., The Catholic Church in the Modern World (New York, 1958), p. 108.Google ScholarCensus of Great Britain, 1851; Religious Worship: England and Wales (London 1853), pp. cii, cxlvi, cxlviii, xlvi.Google ScholarClark, G. Kitson, The Making of Victorian England (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 165ff.Google Scholar A cautionary note on the use of the Religious Census of 1851 is in Pickering, W.S.F., “The 1851 Religious Census—A Useless Experiment”, British Journal of Sociology 18 (1967): 382407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This should be compared with David Thompson's earlier article, “The 1851 Religious Census: Problems and Possibilities” Victorian Studies 2 (1957): 8797.Google Scholar

6. Carlyle, Thomas, “Chartism”, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (London, 1907), 4: 138.Google Scholar For a study of the Irish immigration in depth in one city (Cardiff) see Hickey, John, Urban Catholics: Urban Catholicism in England and Wales from 1829 to the Present Day (London, 1967).Google Scholar A broader scope is attempted in Lewis Curtis, P., Anglo-Sazons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudices en Victorian England (Bridgeport, Conn., 1968).Google Scholar For a review of other recent studies in local social-religious history, see Soloway, pp. 151ff.

7. Cahill has been most enterprising on this theme in his Irish Catholicism and English Toryism, 1832–1848: A Study in Ideology.

8. Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1965), p. 106.Google Scholar

9. Anon., Dublin Review 8 (02 1840): 610.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 57. Protestant antagonism towards Catholicism extended as everyone knows far beyond the classical doctrinal differences. Best has been illuminating and amusing about the intense alarm Victorians experienced when confronted with the world of convents, monasteries and the confessional. Still, as he himself urges, these are important matters and as yet await extended treatment. No one, for instance, has explored the social meaning of that great body of early Victorian literature (popular and scholarly) on the prophetic interpretation of Daniel and the Revelation with their master symbols supposedly pointing to “the mystery of iniciuity” and the “anti-Christ”. Even more neglected are the controversies over Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) whose works were translated into English during this time. A major influence throughout nineteenth-century Catholic theology, Liguori is credited with shaping the definition of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the infallibility of the pope. His Theologia moralis (9th ed., 1785) was fiercely attacked by Protestants for its handling of such sins as lying and theft. Even more disturbing to an age traumatized by any hint of sexual symbolism was his graphic devotional study (Le glorie di Maria, 1750) on the relation to the Virgin to Christ and the Father. The Dublin Review repeatedly comes to the defense of the great Redemptorist theologian. There was also considerable public interest (see almost any issue of the Annual Register) in the numerous law suits charging that property had been granted to the Catholic bishops (indirectly for the law forbade direct gifts) because of undue influence in the confessional. This, clearly, hardly begins the subject of Victorian anti-Catholicism.

11. Gwynn, Denis R., The Second Spring: 1818–1853 (London, 1942)Google Scholar; and by the same author, Father Dominic Barberi (London, 1947)Google Scholar; Ambrose Phillipps (later de Lisle), “Supplement: Letters of Father Dominic of Mother of God”, The Life of the Blessed Paul of the Cross (London, 1853), 3Google Scholar; Urban Young. Dominic Barberi in England (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Purcell, E. S., Life and Letters of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle (London, 1900)Google Scholar; Ward, Bernard, The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation (London, 1915)Google Scholar; Leetham, Claude R., Luigi Gentili: A Sower for the Second Spring (London, 1965).Google Scholar

12. Protestants were not the only ones to take exception to this flowering of Italian Catholicism. The hereditary English Catholics (the “Old Catholics”) deeply resented these (to them) un-English and unnecessary innovations. See especially B. Ward and Leetham.

13. MacCaffrey, James, History of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (2nd ed., Dublin, 1910), 2: 49ff.Google Scholar, is an extended review of Vatican-English Catholic relations in the generations before 1850.

14. Apologia Pro Vita Sua (New York, 1956), p. 218.Google Scholar

15. For depth of presentation Ward, Wilfred, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1897), 2 vols.Google Scholar, is richer than the recent work by Fothergill.

16. Thus Faud Effendi put to Aberdeen, at the Foreign Office, a series of questions which closely parallel those put to Rome by the British ten years later: Did not the British government concede that the Jerusalem bishopric was unduly ambitious, including as claimed, all of Syria, Palestine, Chaldea, Egypt and Abyssiniaf “And since he exercised this ‘jurisdiction’ under the metropolitan control of a foreign pontiff”, one question read, “was not this violation of the sovereignty of the sultan in his dominions, a derogation, so to say, of the sultan's royal supremacy?” Greaves, R. W., “The Jerusalem Bishopric, 1841”, The English Historical Review 64 (07 1949): 350.Google Scholar

17. Arnold, Thomas. “The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden”, The Edinburgh Review 63 (04 1836): 235.Google Scholar For the Wordsworth quotation, Webster, A. B., Joshua Watson: the Story of a Layman, 1771–1885 (London, 1954), p. 108.Google Scholar

18. Young and Handcock, 12, 1: 368.

19. Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (New York, 1903), 1: 166,Google ScholarYoung, G. M., Victorian England (New York, 1954), p. 114.Google Scholar See Forbes, Duncan, The Liberal Anglican Idea of History (Cambridge. Mass., 1952).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the early recognition of German textual criticism, see Christensen, Merton A., “Taylor of Norwich and the Higher Criticism”, The Journal of the History of Tdeas 20 (04 1959): 183.Google Scholar See also Cockshut, A.O.J., The Unbelievers: English Agnostic Thought. 1850–1890 (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Symondson, Anthony, The Victorian Crisis of Faith (London, 1970).Google Scholar

20. The Morning Chronicle, 4 November 1850.

21. Clark, p. 158.

22. Ibid., especially ch. 6, “The Religion of the People” See also Halévy, Elie, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 4: Victorian Years, 1841–1895 (London, 1961): 337414.Google ScholarEdwards, Maldwyn, After Wesley (London, 1943)Google Scholar. Taylor, E. R., Methodism and Politics, 1791–1851 (Cambridge, 1935)Google Scholar. Wilkinson, John T., 1662 and After: Three Centuries of English Nonconformity (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Kent, John, The Age of Disunity (London, 1966)Google Scholar is excellent on Methodism.

23. Trevelyan, George Macaulay, The Life of John Bright (New York, 1913), p. 193.Google Scholar

24. Halévy, p. 376.

25. Ibid., p. 317.

26. In Vatican usage the document was referred to as a rescript or brief, but never a bull, which of course has a higher order of authority. These niceties were lost in the heat of the moment: “Papal Bull” certainly sounded more threatening, and the homonymic possibilities of such a word proved widely irresistable. Punch for weeks carried endless puns and cartoons about strayed, lost, charging and wounded bulls. The most famous cartoon, perhaps is a scene at a cattle show of an enormous bull with the face of Pius IX and the English public contemptuously walking away. The caption read, ‘Great Cattle Show: The Roman Bull that Didn't Get the Prize”. Equally abounding were the puns on “Wise-man” and “New-man”. Punch threw itself with such vehemence into the uproar that their most distinguished artist, Dieky Dole, felt called upon to resign. Gwynn, Denis R., A Hundred Years of Catholic Emancipation: 1829–1929 (London, 1929), p. 107.Google Scholar

27. Halévy, p. 305.

28. Walpole, Spencer, The Life of Lord. John Russell (London, 1889), 2: 116.Google Scholar

29. Though sonic ritualists joined in the general No-Popery cry (for reasons that may be imagined), many felt that they were the true point of attack and there began a general retreat from the time-honored policy of appealing to the secular power for support in sustaining the church. Gladstone who was frequently ranked with them said he voted against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill on its second reading “for the purpose of entering my protest against all attempts to meet the spiritual dangers of the Church by temporal legislation of a penal character’ This is certainly an important by-product of the Papal Aggression. Debates (Commons), 115 (23 May 1851), col. 566.

30. Bennett, Frederick, The Story of W.J.E. Bennett (London, 1909)Google Scholar. For a suceinet account, see Chadwick, 1: 301ff.

31. Suibhne, Peadar Mac, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries, with their letters from 1820–1920 (Kildare, 1962), 2: 56.Google Scholar

32. Debtes (Commons), 80 (9 May 1845), col. 378.

33. McGrath, Fergal, Newman's University: Idea and Reality (London, 1951), p. 74.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., pp. 80, 81.

35. Debates (Commons), 114 (7 February 1851), col. 187–190.

36. Times, 27 November 1850. A careful account of the “godless colleges” is in McGrath, pp. 1–83. See also Whyte, J. H., The independent Irish Party, 1850–9 (London, 1958).Google Scholar

37. The Times, 21 October 1850.

38. 25 October 1850.

39. Quoted in the Morning Chronicle, 23 October 1850.

40. The Tablet, 26 October 1850.

41. Ward, Wilfred, Life of Newman (London, 1912), 1: 168.Google Scholar Apparently no one has ever successfully answered Newman's question; the good saint was found questionable ia the early 1960s and removed from the roster.

42. The Times, 29 October 1850, printed Wiseman's Pastoral “Out of the Flaminian Gate”, issued October 7, 1850; it appears in Young and Handcock, 12, 1: 364–367.

43. The Times, 29 October 1850. See also 4 November 1850; The Morning Chronicle, October 29; see also November 3, 4, 1850.

44. Ullathorne, William Bernard, An Autobiography (London, 1891), 2: 296.Google Scholar The old Oatholics were especially dismayed. Their most prominent lay figures, the Duke of Norfolk and his son, gave up the faith, and the Duchess of Norfolk wrote a letter of embarrassed indignation to the Queen. See Benson, Arthur C., Letters to Queen Victoria, 1837–1861 (New York, 1907), 2: 325.Google Scholar The papal secretary, Mgr. Talbot, writing to Nassau William Senior said, “If we had had the slightest suspicion of the storm which we were about to excite, it would have been easy to avoid” See Hales, E. E. Y., Pio Nono: A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1954), p. 142.Google Scholar As for the Old Catholic dream, and partly Wiseman's too, of finding acceptance without bigotry within the structure of English culture, that too was lost as the alienation so dramatically intensified by the Papal Aggression continued, Ghristopher Hollis has observed that 1850 “killed Roman Catholicism politically. It was all but impossible for a Catholic to get an English constituency to elect him.” See his “Catholics in English Politics: 1850–1950”, The Tablet, 23 09 1950, pp. 252253.Google Scholar

45. This is hardly the place to detail these ragged events; Guy Fawkes Day came at a most awkward moment, for the newspapers and various ecclesiastical meetings and charges had already begun to fill the air by then with the old No-Popery passions—Russell's Durham letter, however, though dated November 4, did not reach the press until after the Guy Fawkes riots had occurred, though it was blamed then, and in many subsequent accounts, for having set fire, as it were, to that waiting tender box: the annual celebration of the ancient victory over the Gun-Powder Plot.

46. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, “Francis Bacon”, Critical and Historical Essays (London, 1961), 2: 371.Google Scholar

47. Letters and Memories, 1:239, 240; quoted in Houghton, Walter, The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven, 1957), p. 44.Google Scholar

48. Yeast (New York: 1851), ch. 4 pp. 79, 80.Google Scholar

49. Pugin's virtually unique effort at the exhibition to preserve a Gothic unity and chase- ness of style—his “Medieval Court” was set apart from the other displays, so full of Victorian bulges and curves and gutta-percha affronts to taste—has occasioned a modern authority to muse: “Gothic gloom or Crystal Palace, 1851 had two faces. Gandles and gaslight and dreams of electricity; medieval armor and Birmingham hardware; pyramids of soap and cries of ‘No-Popery’—all these were part of 1851”. Briggs, Asa, Victorian Poeple: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851–67 (Chicago, 1955), p. 37.Google Scholar At one point John Bright came upon Sir James Graham looking bemused. He explained that as he walked through the displays dedicated to the twin themes of “peace and civilization” his mind kept reverting to the previous autumn and the storm of the Papal Aggression. It must have been a reflection common to many thoughtful Victorians.

50. Woodward, Ernest Llewellyn, “1851 and the Visibility of Progress”, in B.B.C. Third Program, Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, An Historical Revaluation of the Victorian Age (London, 1949), p. 62.Google Scholar