Another Foray into UK History

If you read the last post and were thinking “What the heck is all this about the 1689 Proposed BCP/Alterations; I though we were in the late 1700s,” there’s a reason and I really did mean 1689.

Here’s a quick reminder exactly where 1689 falls in the course of Great Britain’s history:

Charles I made a series of poor choices—including the attempt to foist a quite catholic prayer book returning to the 1549 structure—upon the Scottish church. These choices led to a series of English Civil Wars that pitted the (caricatures ahead!) French-leaning, hierarchally-minded, ritual-loving Cavaliers of the court against the Calvinist-leaning Roundheads of the Parliamentary forces. Charles I was imprisoned and ultimately executed, leading to the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The prayer book and episcopacy were banned and the puritan/congregational Directory for the Public Worship of God became the official worship resource of the Church of England.

The French-raised Charles II, son of Charles I, was restored to the throne in 1661, and—over the objection of a Puritan delegation—reimposed both bishops and the Book of Common Prayer on the Church of England, but protestant “Dissenters” now became a recognized ecclesial identity apart from the Church. Note: This is the first time we can actually talk about “Anglican” identity and “dissenters”; before this there was simply the Church of England and parties within it. Now, “Anglican” is a choice and a particular identity rather than a legal requirement.

Charles II (like his father) was seen by many as a crypto-Catholic; his brother, James II, was just a straight-up Roman Catholic! When he came to the throne in 1686, the suspicious-minded feared that he would follow in the footsteps of Mary I and force the Church of England under the Roman yoke once again.

At this point, a group of leading Churchmen decided that a liturgical bulwark needed to be erected against a potential wave of Romanism. Their strategy was to create a prayer book that would be acceptable to the majority of protestants in England, Churchmen and Dissenters alike. This was the movement that began the effort to create the prayer book alterations of 1689. This book was very protestant (removing many manual actions like signs of the cross and rooting the Apocrypha out of the lectionaries), and also rationalist (chiefly in deciding which parts of Scripture and the Psalms in particular were “unworthy” of public worship).

However, the work was never completed, the alterations never blossomed into a complete book, and it was never sent to Parliament. Rather, James’ sister Mary and her husband, William of Orange, conducted a protestant coup—also known as the Glorious Revolution—that toppled James from the throne of England and put away fears of popish perfidy.

But, James II was still theoretically King of Scotland…

Although the throne of Scotland was linked with that of England, a certain percentage of Scots—especially those in the Highlands—upheld the Stuart claim to the throne. But there was another problem too, an ecclesiastical one.

The ordination and consecration rites of the 1662 BCP require an oath to the king; the coup of William & Mary created a technical violation of that oath. While most bishops did not feel compelled to support a Catholic sovereign and parliament passed a law absolving clergy of their oaths to the deposed King James, a very small group of bishops—largely in the North of England and the bishops of Scotland—remained loyal to their oaths. It was, they decided, not a matter of law but honor. These became known as the non-juring bishops; Parliament dealt with this situation in 1691 by appointing 6 new bishops to replace the English ones (as the other 3 had died before then). The Church of Scotland was re-established as Presbyterian to punish the non-juring Scots. Many of the Scottish bishops, though, remained Jacobites (supporters of James & the Stuart line) and, no longer bound to the text of the authorized prayer book, began a series of liturgical reforms to bring the liturgy back into conformity with Antiquity.

Ok—here’s where this all gets real. The Jacobite problem did not go away nearly as easily as everyone hoped. Between 1745-1748 a series of laws to excise the Jacobites from any power at all, led to a non-recognition of Scottish orders. That is, as far as the Church of England was concerned, Scottish clergy and bishops—or anyone else ordained or consecrated by Scottish bishops–were not recognized as such within the Church of England.

On the Other Side of the Pond…

As we saw previously—Americans wanted bishops. Accordingly, John Talbot, an English missionary to New Jersey, returned to London and, along with his colleague Robert Welton, were consecrated as bishops by Ralph Taylor, one of the Non-juring bishops. They then came to America, to St. Mary’s in Burlington, New Jersey and Christ Church, Philadelphia respectively, and clandestinely began their episcopal duties. “Clandestinely,” because their consecration had been in 1722, and the British were still in control of the State in the New World. The bishop of London quickly suppressed them, in part out of concern for Jacobite sympathies as well as their unauthorized consecrations; Talbot was dismissed from his missionary post and Talbot was summoned back to England by George I in 1726 (he fled to Portugal instead).

Now—remember again the state-by-state character of the Church after the Revolution. States, and the church bodies within them, tended to work independently unless compelled to work together for a larger purpose. Additionally, the letters between state church leaders and state convention notes reveal a split in emphasis between (broadly) the northern and southern states. The southern states preferred to bind themselves together into a unity with a constitution and shared liturgy, then work together on the problem of the episcopacy: this was the work that Dr. William White had been about, discussed in the previous post. The northern states preferred to address the issue of episcopacy head-on as the bishop would play a large role in determining the constitution and the liturgy; they felt that the southern states and Dr. White’s conventions were going about things in the entirely wrong way.

Some of the clergy of New York and those of Connecticut (the state with the most clergy of any in America) decided in 1783 to send Dr. Samuel Seabury to London for consecration as the Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut. (I had always assumed that Seabury was the first bishop of the Episcopal Church—but he wasn’t! He has consecrated before “the Episcopal Church” was a thing!) Upon reaching London, he was met with a variety of excuses. If he was to be the Bishop of Connecticut had the civil authorities of the state sent along documentation to that effect? Well, no, because Connecticut’s State Church was Congregationalist. Had he been provided lands or a living by the state or some other means? The Archbishop of Canterbury informed Seabury that without a formal requisition from the State, there was no way he could put a bill before the House of Commons to allow the consecration of American bishops. Various judges and crown lawyers consulted by Seabury suggested that this would not be the case; he was being put off, it seemed.

(In fact, there were concerns on the British side that consecrating bishops might be seen as a breach of the truce, and the Ministry refused to allow bishops to be consecrated without the consent of the American Congress.)

As a result, Seabury says, “I turned my attention to the the remains of the old Scots Episcopal Church, whose consecrations I knew derived from England, and their authority in an ecclesiastical sense, fully equal to the English Bps” (Hist Notes & Docs, 76). There had been earlier correspondence between Seabury and the Scottish bishops, indicating that they would be willing to consecrate him; this correspondence had lapsed as Seabury and others in Connecticut had appealed to both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. It’s noteworthy that on re-establishing that correspondence and hearing a positive reply from the Scots, Seabury communicated his thanks, told them he’d be arriving around the 10 of November and—furthermore:

As far as I am concerned, or my influence shall extend, nothing shall be omitted to establish the most liberal intercourse and union between the Episcopal Church in Scotland and in Connecticut, so that the Members of both may freely communicate together in all the offices of Religion, on Catholic and Primitive principles.

Hist. Notes & Docs, 231

The end of that last line is particularly significant. I’m ignorant of the prior communication, but it sounds like Seabury here understood that a pre-condition of his consecration was the use of a Eucharistic Prayer based on “Catholic and Primitive principles” which was the language used by the non-jurors and Scots for the liturgical alterations they had been making since their separation from the Church of England.

Dr. Seabury accordingly became Bishop Seabury on Saturday, the 13th of November, 1784 in Aberdeen, receiving consecration from Primus Robert Kilgour, Bishop John Skinner, and Bishop Arthur Petrie. On Monday the 15th of November, a Concordat was signed between the Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Episcopal Church in Connecticut that was agreed to and signed by the assembled bishops of Scotland and Connecticut. Article III declares the two churches to be “in full communion,” Article IV calls for “a conformity in worship and discipline…as is consistent with the different circumstances and customs of nations,” and then there’s Article V which states in part;

…the Scottish Bishops are very far from proscribing to their brethren in this matter, they cannot help ardently wishing that Bishop Seabury would endeavour all he can, consistently with peace and prudence, to make the celebration of this venerable mystery conformable to the most primitive doctrine and practice in that respect, which is the pattern the Church of Scotland has copied after in her Communion office, and which it has been the wish of some of the most eminent divines of the Church of England, that she also had more closely followed than she seems to have done since she gave up her first reformed Liturgy used in the reign of Edward VI. [i.e., the 1549 BCP], between which, and the form used in the Church of Scotland, there is no difference in any point, which the primitive Church reckoned essential to the right ministration of the Holy Eucharist.

Hist. Notes & Docs., 237

Thus—a key part of the transfer of the episcopacy between Scotland and Connecticut was a return to the pattern of Cranmer’s initial 1549 Book of Common Prayer. This is exactly what Bishop Seabury did and here’s how his Communion Office lines up with the previous prayer books:

Sure enough, Seabury’s office follows the 1549 with the exception of the repositioned Invocation. Note the colors now—blue represents the “Catholic and Primitive” pattern while yellow represents the Protestant pattern.

This Communion Office represents a profound change in terms of what the experience of the Eucharistic liturgy would be from its protestant precursors.

However, this came from a Scottish-consecrated American bishop. And therefore one not legally recognized by the Church of England…