A Nonconformist Conscience? Free Churchmen in Parliament in Nineteenth-Century England

T I M O T H Y L A R S E N

There are two, competing definitions of ‘nonconformist’ in nineteenth-century England, and there are also two, distinguishable ‘nonconforniist consciences’ - that is to say, clusters of related, orientating principles and sensibilities that informed and guided political behaviour - and these two duos are related. Firstly, which groups of people are to be included? There is no doubt that the old dissent is intended, namely, congregationalists, baptists, quakers, unitarians, and a smattering of Presbyterians. The question mark is over the new dissent and, most particularly, the wesleyans, as the other methodist denominations tended to align themselves with nonconformity to varying degrees. Moreover, as wesleyan methodism was the largest denomination in England beside the established Church, whether or not its great weight is placed on the scale has considerable import. In the mid-Victorian period, official wesleyan publications and leading wesleyan ministers routinely denied that their denomination could justly be subsumed under the general category of dissent. The Wesleyan Methodist Magaz ine instructed its constituency in 1854, ‘the Wesleyan is not committed to any opposition, and is never included under either of the terms Churchman and Dissenter, (as these terms are understood by those to whom they primarily belong)’. Two years later it reiterated this stance, ‘the Wesleyans generally disclaim the designation of Dissenters.’ When 1858 rolled around, it was once again time for the biennial reminder, ‘We do not disapprove of an Established Church, as such.. . We are not, therefore, Dissenters.” No doubt there were mid-Victorian wesleyans who thought of themselves as dissenters, but their perspective was not the one being proniinently presented on behalf of their community. Even in 1865, the anti-state church journal, the Liberutor, reported a speech by George Osborn, ex-president of the Wesleyan Conference, in which he said of himself and his co-religionists: ‘They were not strictly Dissenters - they never were, they never would be . . . They did not take their stand on the principle that a Church established by law was unlawful, or that the system of preferment was wrong, or that the system of that Church was defective or disorderly.” The Liberator knew that not all wesleyans would see it that way, but it is a telling commentary on the balance of power even in the mid-1860s that the paper’s call for a refutation of the view expressed by this very eminent denominational leader was answered only by ‘A Conference Wesleyan’ who did not care to be

’ Wesleyatr Methodist Mupziae, July 1854, p. 536; June 1856, p. 521; Nov. 1858, p. 1004 ’ Lib~rator , 1 Nov. 1865, p. 189. ’ Ihid., 1 Dec. 1865, p. 198.

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Toward the end of the century, however, the relative strength of these two views had switched dramatically. Those representing wesleyanism were generally remarkably willing to be lumped together as a part of the nonconformist community (inevitably deeming themselves to be the most important part), a perception and identity that was institutionalized in the free church council m ~ v e m e n t . ~ The first Free Church Congress, held in 1892, came into being in large measure through the efforts of the wesleyan leader Hugh Price Hughes and his journal the Methodist Times, and with the aid of another prominent wesleyan, Percy Bunting, whose formidable grandfather, Jabez Bunting, had seen the matter differently.

Not that the older tradition had died out altogether. Henry Hartley Fowler, M.P. for Wolverhampton from 1880, and eventually the first methodist to enter cabinet, can serve to represent the persistence of the original attitude. While being a strong, active, prominent and loyal wesleyan, Fowler also was married and buried and had his children baptized and confirmed in parish churches. His own wesleyan minister, I. E. Page, recollected:

Lord Wolverhampton [Fowler was created a viscount in 19081 is remembered as a loyal Methodist of advanced ideas, but in relation to the Church of England, belonging to the school ofhis father and his compeers. Ever loyal to his own Church he would have disowned the name ‘Dissenter,’ probably for two reasons -that he had grown up from the ground, so to speak, in Wesleyan Methodism, while on the other hand he had no objection to an Established Church.’

Nevertheless, to reiterate, although Fowler’s stance was more-or-less the official one a generation earlier, holding it as he did at the end of the century meant that he was out-of-step with the majority of his co-religonists on this point. In short, it would seem most appropriate to exclude mid-century wesleyans from the term ‘nonconformist’ and to include late Victorian ones, and therein lies a larger tale.

Secondly, there are the two nonconformist consciences. The term itself was coined in 1890 in response to the transmutation of the personal scandal that the Irish leader and M.P. Charles Stewart Parnell had been proven to be an adulterer in a court oflaw into the political scandal that the Liberals were in alliance with a party that was led by someone who was deenied to be morally unfit for such a position. This genesis has encoded the suspicion that the nonconformist conscience was primarily pre-occupied with issues of personal morality: sexual purity, gambling, drink, sabbath-keeping and the like. These concerns, however, were not a distinctively nonconformist conscience, but were rather an expression of an evangelical conscience, with evangelicalism itself being an identity shared by both most nonconformists and by evangelical churchmen.6

‘David Bebbington includes an entire chapter on this movement in his germane study, D. W. Bebbington, The Nonronfurmist Conscienrr. Chapeland Politics, 1870- 1914 (1982), ch. 4. Beside Bebbington’s work, for nonconformist politics in the last third of the nineteenth century, see also Stephen Koss, Nowconforrnify i t i Modem British Politics (1975), and G. I. T. Machin, Piilifirs atid the Ckurches in Grrat Britain, 1869 to 1Y21 (Oxford), 1987.

Edith Henrietta Fowler, The I i f i ofHenry Hartley Fowler, First Viscount Wiiluerkaniptori, G. C.S.I. (1912) p. 134. ‘ For evangelicalism, see D. W. Bebbington, Euangckdism in Modrun Britain. A Historyfrom the 1730s to

the 1980s (1989).

A Noncorzfovmist Conscietire 109

Moreover, to the extent that the ‘conscience’ concept is inherently politicized, then for most of the nineteenth century it was, in actuality, much more an anglican evangelical conscience than a nonconformist one, as the former generally had few qualms about using legislation to enforce moral codes while the latter often rejected such a course of action. In the mid-Victorian period, for example, the sabbatarian cause was led by the Lord’s Day Observance Society, an anglican organization that formally excluded dissenters from its committee. Therefore, it is particularly misleading (if not ironic) that Owen Chadwick should label this society’s work in the 1850s as ‘another wave in English politics of what later in the century was called the Nonconforniist conscience’.’ This evangelical conscience can be traced all the way back to the prominent evangelical anglicans of the Clapham Sect at the start of the century - under the leadership of that celebrated parliamentarian, Williani Wilberiorce - whose Society for the Suppression of Vice sought to use the power of the state to regulate people’s moral behaviour, down to the sexual purity campaigns at the end of the century led by the anglican evangelical Josephine Butler.’ This evangelical conscience is the first (so-called) nonconformist conscience.

The second nonconformist conscience is more distinctively dissenting and may therefore be fittingly labeled the true nonconforinist conscience. It is a political stance motivated and orientated by a commitment to religious equality, grounded in a concept of justice than includes equity and in a theological understanding of the nature of the church and its work that precludes the use of coercion.’ This conscience partially arose out of and was fueled by the discrimination that dissenters themselves received. It focused upon and secured a string of legislative successes in the area of their own grievances, issues such as marriages and burials without the use of anglican rites, obtaining degrees from Oxford and Cambridge universities without having to declare the truthfulness of the 39 articles, and the abolition of compulsory church rates.” The ultimate goal in this line of campaigning for dissenters who accepted the logic of religious equality was the disestablishment of the Church of England (a result, of course, that has still not been attained). This conscience transcended a mere special-interest-group shopping list, however, to include active, concerted support for the achievement of equality before the law for other people as well, including groups well beyond the pale of protestant dissent in spiritual or theological terms. This nonconformist conscience helped to blaze a trail of liberty and equality that included catholic emancipation in the first third of the century, and the right of atheists to sit in parliament in the last, with jewish emancipation as the glorious centre-piece. I have demonstrated elsewhere that this nonconfomiist conscience, this commitment to religious equality, was the dominant one in the mid-Victorian period within the

’Owen Chadwick, The Vicforian Chctrclz (2 vols,l966-70), I , 464. ’ For the former, see Erne$t Marshall Howse, Saints in Politics. Tlze ‘Clayham Sect’ and tht, G n ~ u ~ f h of

Freedom (1952); for the latter, see Helen Mathers, ‘The Evangelical Spirituality of a Victorian Feminist. Josephine Butler, 1828-1906’,Joimial CfEcciesiastiral History, LII (2001), 282-312. ’ For my treatment of this theme for the mid-Victorian period, see Timothy Larsen, Frietrds cfRrl[qioirs

Equality. Nonconfrwrisf Piilifirs in Mid- Victoriati England (Woodbndge), 1999. ’” Ib id . , ch. 2. A thorough study has been produced of the church rates campaign, J. P. Ellens, Religions

Routes tu Giadsfiviian Lihrraiism. Tkc, Cknrck Rat<, Coy‘lict in England and Wales, 1832- 1868, (University Park, PA, 1994).

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old dissent, while wesleyan methodism, in its official pronouncements and actions on matters political, was animated by the first conscience, the evangelical one.” These two consciences, moreover, were not always easily compatible: the religious equality conscience could support a measure as an expression ofjustice that might be rejected from the perspective of an evangelical conscience as an unrighteous promotion of infidelity or error; likewise what to an evangelical conscience might appear to be an act of moral reformation, might appear to a religous equality conscience as an unchristian attempt to coerce unbelievers or adherents of other faiths into adopting Christian practices. This article will focus upon exploring the political shifts that occurred within the wesleyan body during the second half of the nineteenth century, and the impact that they had on free church politics as a whole.

The first issue that needs to be addressed, however, is that of identities and loyalties in terms of party politics. It is well known that in the nineteenth century the old dissenters were almost never tories. In parliament, amidst a steady stream of congregationalist M.P.s returned as Liberals, the solitary anomaly is Edward Ball who served Cainbridgeshire as a Conservative in the 1850s. Amongst the good number of baptist, quaker and unitaiian M.P.s in the Victorian era, there does not appear to have been a single Conservative. l2 Moreover, this parlianientary representation was an accurate reflection of the loyalties of the old dissenters as a whole, who were also overwhelmingly aligned with the Whig-Liberal-radical side of the political divide. Wesleyaii methodism, as a body, had an official ‘no politics’ rule. Nevertheless, the most powerful wesleyan leader for a good portion of the first half of the nineteenth century, Jabez Bunting, was well known to be a loyal tory, and he and a like-minded group of leading wesleyans did much to exert the denomination’s strength with a Conservative bias. In a particularly flagrant couple of months in 1834, Bunting had ensured that the wesleyan minister, Joseph Rayner Stephens, had been censured by Conference for having broken the ‘no politics’ rule by publicly supporting the cause of disestablishment, while he himself had written a letter that had been published in a newspaper strongly endorsing the tory parliamentary candidate for the hotly contested borough of Finsbury.13 In the following year, Bunting’s clique launched the Watchman, a newspaper that went on to be a leading wesleyan publication with an unmistakable tory slant, and which was widely mistaken by non-methodists for an official publication. The perception grew, as the historian David Hempton has observed, that that the ‘no politics’ rule ‘had virtually become a “no Whig-Liberal politics” rule’.l4 I t has become increasingly clear over the last several decades, however, that rank-and-file wesleyans did not generally follow this lead even in the 1830s but, in fact, inclined toward the whig-Liberal side.I5 Still, there was a widespread perception at the time outside the wesleyan camp that the denomination

‘ I Larsen, Frietrds ofRel@orrs Equality; see also, Timothy Larsen. Coritest~d Cltristiarrity. Tlre Polirical arid

For cysteinatic documentation of this in the c a r of the baptists, see D. W. Bebbington, ‘Baptist M.P.s Sorial Conrexts of Victorian Theolqy (Waco, Tx, 2004), esp. ch. 10.

in the Niiietrenth Century’, Baptist Quarterly, XXIX (1981). l 3 Benjamin Gregory, Side Lights on thc Conflicts ofMethodism (1899), pp. 150-67.

l 5 I l d . , pp. 205-6. David Henipton, Methodism and Politics in Brifish Society, 1750- 1850 (1984), p. 183.

A Nuncunfiwniist Conscience 111

was predominantly Conservative, and wesleyans did support the tories to an extent that had no parallel in the old dissent.

I have argued elsewhere that the 1847 general election was the decisive one in terms of orthodox old dissent organizing to attain a parliamentary presence, a strategy that would produce an impressive harvest during the second half of the century.’” In that earlier research, however, I neglected altogether to mention the two wesleyans who were returned in 1847 -yet a study of them will go a considerable way toward illuminating the development of free church politics in the Victorian era. James Heald (1796-1873), a tory, secured a seat at Stockport, beating out the congregationalist and Liberal, James Kershaw, to share the representation of Stockport with the great Liberal crusader, Richard Cobden. (However, Cobden chose to sit for the West Riding of Yorkshire and thus, before the year was out, Kershaw was also representing Stockport after all.) No other methodist or dissenter was returned as a tory in that election. Heald’s co-religionist in parliament was J. P. B. Westhead (1807-1877), Liberal member for Knaresborough. Of these two, Heald, of course, was the one who received the attention of the foremost wesleyan leaders who were tories: they were delighted to now have their very own member. Bunting himself was so gratified that he informed the 1847 Wesleyan Conference that ‘I wish that business may be suspended, and that Mr. Heald, having been elected Member of Parliament, be admitted to the Conference.”’ Some prominent ministers objected to this - no doubt rightly discerning that it was meant as a way of tacitly underlining a connexion between wesleyanism and toryism - and when they were overruled, they suggested that, at the very least, a letter from the Conference offering good wishes be sent to Westhead, a suggestion that apparently went unheeded as well. In short, it was so arranged that the Conference appeared to endorse only the Conservative M.P.

In his speech to the Conference, Heald made clear his understanding of wesleyanism’s place in terms of wider polarities: ‘The battle has been between the Church and Methodism on the one side, and political Dissent on the other. The Church has done honour to Methodism. The Church could not carry a man, but they said if the Methodists could find a man they would support him. The victory was attained on great ecclesiastical principles.”’ Heald was committed to being guided by his evangelical conscience in parliament. He clearly viewed Lord Ashley (who is better known by his subsequent title, the seventh earl of Shaftesbury), as his political leader. Ashley, of course, was one of the most prominent and influential anglican evangelicals in England - and a tory. Heald wrote to Bunting from the house of comnions in February 1850 in regard to W . J. Fox’s Secular Education Bill: ‘the Government actually applauding Fox, and with great favour supporting a Unitarian in bringing in a bill whose special operation, if not object, will be to degrade religion and exalt above it what is secular. He [Ashley] says we must now prepare for a serious, solemn and conscientious deliverance of our sentiments upon the grave matter involved in

’‘ Larsen, Friends q f R d $ i o u s Equal i ty , pp. 1-3. ” Gregory, Sidc Liyhfs, p. 41 5. ’’ Ihid.

112 Timothy Lavsen

the measure.”” This letter reveals not only that Heald was following Ashley’s lead inside the House and reporting to Bunting outside, but also his tone deafness to the issues of religious equality involved in the education debate, as well as his disgust that anyone could work with a unitarian, even on a political matter.

The chief issue pricking the evangelical conscience of Heald and Ashley was sabbatarianism - an issue that continually pre-occupied the wesleyan body when it examined the work of parliament during the mid-Victorian era. In 3849, came Locke’s Bill for Sunday Travelling on Railways, a measure that would have required railway companies in Scotland that were already transporting goods by rail on Sundays to allow passengers to ride on these trains as well. (It was not successful.) As a confrontational measure led by anti-sabbatarians, this bill was not calculated to generate a neat divide between adherents of the evangelical and the nonconformist conscience. Nevertheless, most nonconformist M.P.s did feel free to support the measure. S. M. Peto, a baptist, actually spoke in favour of Locke’s bill. (It should also be pointed out that Peto, like the vast majority of Victorian nonconformists, was an evangelical. This article, to underline the point, is endeavouring to make a distinction between an ‘evangelical conscience’ as the politicized perspective that parliament ought to be used to proniote moral reform and protestant Christianity, and an evangelical spirituality which might be, and often was, combined with a nonconformist, religious equality conscience in the political sphere.) Other dissenting supporters of the bill were the quaker John Bright and the unitarians James Heywood and William Scholefield. The bill was opposed, however, by Heald’s colleagues in Stockport and wesleyanism respectively, James Kershaw and J. P. B. Westhead- as well as leading anglican evangelicals, Lord Ashley and K. H . Inglis. Heald himself not only opposed the measure, but also spoke against it in the debate:

Mr. Heald had listened with regret to some of the sentiments of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, who seemed to think that the duties of the Sabbath began and ended by going to church, and that after leaving it a man should go out on a pleasure-trip, by railway or steamboat, to enjoy himself for the rest of the day. That was a principle utterly at variance with the divine law, which required a man to make his pleasures subordinate to higher principles. The spirit of the Sabbath ought to pervade the whole day, and dominate over every other consideration . . . 2‘’

It would appear that there was a seamless continuity between Heald’s understanding of an individual’s spiritual duties before the Almighty and the kind of legislation he desired the country to have in place.

A more telling piece of legislation on the same theme was Lord Ashley’s bill to stop Sunday work in the post office. This measure was victorious in a not very well populated house of commons in May 1850 and passed into law. Heald had been there to wield his vote on Ashley’s side. Once implemented, the measure was immediately unpopular. Parliament quickly set to work undoing what it had done

“ I W. R. Ward, Early Victorian Methodisrir. 77rc Girrrspondenrr ?f Jabez Buntirig, 1830- 1858 (Oxford, 197h), p. 393: James Heald to Jabez Bunting, 27 Feb. 1850.

’(I Hansard, Par/. Debs, 3’‘’ ser., CIV, 844 (25 Apr. 1849).

A Nonconformist Conscierzce 113

only a couple months earlier. Heald sided with the unrepentant losers, who included that well-known faction of anglican evangelicals, Lord Ashley, R . H. Inglis, Richard Spooner and C. N. Newdegate. The dissenters, however, opted for the status quo ante: John Bright, James Kershaw, William Scholefield and, along with them, most tellingly, J. P. B. Westhead. Their position was influenced by the suspicion that the religious equality principle that it was not right to force people to conform to religious standards might be germane in this case. In his address to the 1847 wesleyan Conference, Heald had declared confidently that he would be thoroughly united ‘with my friend Westhead’ in the House, but it did not prove to be so: two different consciences were at work.

From the perspective of the religious equality conscience, the great issue of Heald and Westhead’s first parliament was jewish emancipation. The dividing line was clearly drawn on this question. When the House voted in favour of removing jewish disabilities in December 1847 and again in February 1848, all the old dissenters who voted were on the winning side - and so was Westhead - but the losing side included Heald and the anglican evangelicals.2’ The anglican evangelicals failed to have Heald’s vote added to theirs only once, and that was for a very strongly worded, defiant motion in April 1848, ‘That in the opinion of this House, that so long at least as the House of Commons exercises the authority which it at present does exercise over the Established Church, no Jew ought to possess the franchise, much less be allowed to sit in this House.’” Heald, who clearly was in the House as he voted in the amendment that immediately followed, chose to abstain on this occasion: either the retrograde attack on jews merely possessing the franchise or the explicit orientation toward the established Church or the combination thereof was enough to scare him 06 albeit merely momentarily. How wide the gap could be between the evangelical conscience and the nonconformist one can be measured by a speech that Lord Ashley, who was widely considered the leading evangelical humanitarian of the period, gave in the House in opposition to jewish emancipation: ‘Some years ago they stood out for a Protestant Parliament. They were perfectly right in doing so, but they were beaten. They now stood out for a Christian Parliament. They would next have to stand out for a white Parliament; and perhaps they would have a final struggle for a male

Westhead, on the other hand, gave his maiden speech in support of jewish emancipation. He was well aware that his vote might bewilder a wesleyan body so heavily influenced by the evangelical conscience: ‘I should, in all probability, have been content to give a silent vote on question, but for the conviction that a considerable number of persons, of estimable character and deep religious feeling, of the Wesleyan community, in which I am extensively known, may be anxious to learn the reasons which have actuated me, in determining to support the mea~ure . ”~ In an allusion that clearly, if not primarily, included Heald, he conceded that he felt compelled ‘to vote in opposition to many whom I greatly respect’. He candidly admitted that his own initial response had been a prejudice against allowing jews

21 Ibid., XCV, 1397-1400 (17 Ilec. 1847); XCVI, 536-40 (1 1 Feb. 1848) --Ibid., XCII, 1214-50 (3 Apr. 1848). 23 Ihid., XCV, 1278 (16 Dec. 1847). 24 Ib id . , XCIII, 617-31 (4 May 1848).

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114 Timothy Larsen

to enter parliament, but his careful consideration of the matter had led him to the opposite view. He cunningly quoted John Wesley’s good opinion of English jews, argued that oaths were a worthless instrument for securing a truly Christian nation, claimed it was an issue ofjustice, and ended with a biblical quotation much loved by friends of religious equality, ‘As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’

After Heald’s 1847 election, a wesleyan did not secure a seat in parliament as a tory again for more than three decades, and even in the late Victorian parliament wesleyans were overwhelmingly Liberal. Already in 1851, Heald lost his leader when Lord Ashley became the earl of Shaftesbury and took his place in the house oflords. In the 1852 general election, Heald ran as a pro-free trade Conservative and lost his Pro-free trade was a clue that wesleyans were going to find the Conservative party less congenial in the decade that followed. A few years later, the premiership of Lord Palmerston provided the needed opportunity for influential wesleyan leaders to allow their denomination to re-align itself on the Liberal side. Palmerston’s step-son-in-law and religious adviser was none other than Lord Shaftesbury, and under his influence the Church of England was perceived as being guided in a niore evangelical direction. When it came to the 1857 general election, even the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine was none-too-subtle in its hints that wesleyans ought to support Palnierston at the polls:

we cannot refrain from professing our approval of the foreign policy and home administration of the present Government. . . We gratefully remember the readiness with which Lord Palmerston lately relinquished an erroneous view in relation to the Lord’s day . . . The time has come for us to show that those who warmly acknowledged his appreciation of religious principle at that time, are not now the last to render him their confidence. . . there are none niore free [than wesleyans] to rejoice in the recent episcopal appointments, and desire that the Premier, although advanced in years, niay hold the reins of government long enough to fill every Anglican see with worthy occupants, and leave behind him a bench of Bishops unanimously opposed to the Ronianizing heresy to which he has gwen the most effectual check.2h

When Gladstone came to lead the Liberals, the party could count on the support of both wesleyans and the old dissenters: these two groups were now at one it terms of party politics - and the number of M.P.s from their ranks was growing.

It has already been observed that a parallel process was underway at that time in which wesleyans were becoming increasingly comfortable, not only with being identified with the Liberal party, but also with nonconformity. So what did all this mean in terms of the nonconformist conscience? Before moving into the last third of the century, however, it is worth tidying up the case ofJ. P. B. Westhead. In 1835, Westhead had joined eight other like-minded wesleyan laymen (including James Heald and T . Percival Bunting) to found the tory-flavoured Watchman ne~spaper .~’

25 See, W. R. Ward, ‘James Heald’, in The B l a t k u d Dicfioriary qfEoart@iral Biopzplry, 1730- 1860, ed. Donald M. Lewis ( 2 vols, Oxford, tYYS) , I, 539-40.

’‘’ Wedryarr Methodist h fapz ine , Apr. 1857, pp. 361-3. ”Ward, Early Victorian Mcthodism, p. 49 n. 1.

A Nonconformist Conrc-ience 1 I5

As we have seen, a little over a decade later he was a Liberal M.P. who was repenting of his former prejudice against jewish emancipation. Thereafter, he settled down to being solidly aligned with the old dissent politically, a true friend of 1-eligous equality. Moreover, while Heald lost his seat five years after the 1847 election, never to regain one, Westhead’s parliamentary career was not over until 1871. The pro-religious equality Lihcrutar carried an article evaluating the gains and losses after the 1865 general election. It judged that, ‘The Liberal losses in the boroughs, with one or two exceptions, are such as can well be borne.’ In the end, the paper decided that the truly regrettable exceptions amounted to three, and Westhead was named as one of them. The paper also rejoiced, however, that Isaac Holden, another Wesleyan who was a Liberal and a friend ofreligious equality, had secured a seat for the first time, representing Knaresborough.2x Westhead’s journey from Buntingite tory clique to Liberation Society darling was certainly complete, but was it representative?

The ideal test case for the nature and extent of the nonconformist conscience in the last third of the century in ternis of religious equality is the atheist Charles Bradlaugh’s efforts to sit in parliament, and the sequence of legislative attempts stretching across the 1880s that it generated. As Bradlaugh had spent a great deal of his energy actively endeavouring to undermine Christianity, support for his cause by earnest Christians was not apt to arise out of personal self-interest, but rather needed to be grounded in principle, in a point of conscience. John Morley, in his influential L$ of Gladstone (1903), roundly scolded nonconformists for abandoning the cause during this fight:

The relieving bill was cast out by a majority of three [in 18831. The Catholics in the main voted against it, and many nonconformists, hereditary champions of all the rights of private judgment, either voted against it or did not vote a t all. So soon in these affairs, as the world has long ago found out, do bodies of men forget in a day of power the maxims that they held sacred and inviolable in days when they were weak.2‘

Is this judgment fair? I t is in fact unjust for two reasons. Firstly, because dissenters and wesleyans in

parliament did give overwhelming (albeit not unanimous) support to the various efforts to open parliament to atheists, and, secondly, because most of the hedging and hesitancy came from the welseyans who, as has been shown, were not the ‘hereditary champions’ of religious equality. As Morley himself was an agnostic, he would have been particularly likely to fail to grasp or to be impatient with such internal graduations and distinctions as the difference between the old dissent and the new. The only M.P. from the old dissent whose name conies to mind when Morley’s description is read is the congregationalist Samuel Morley (no relation), member for Bristol. In the vote on a resolution to allow Bradlaugh to make an affirmation instead of the required oath on 22 June 1880, Samuel Morley did vote with the noes. He was apparently the only person from the old dissent to do so, and numerous dissenters voted on the other side, including fellow congregationalists such as W . E. Baxter and Henry

Liberator, 1 Aug. 1865, p. 139. 2y John Morley, 7he L!+ qf William Eiuarf Gladstone (3 vols, 1YO3), 111, 20.

116 Timothy LaneM

Richard. Samuel Morley had once been a prominent spokesperson for the religious equality nonconformist conscience, so in that sense he fits John Morley’s category quite well. The limits of the fit, however, can be seen once one realizes that the member for Bristol had publicly dissociated himself from the Liberation Society, the cause of disestablishment, and thus a doctrinaire religious equality position in general, over a decade earlier, and his ‘defection’ had been widely reported in the religious press.”) Samuel Morley may be accused of having secured the rights he wanted for himself and his own kind and then having scurried off the field to enjoy the spoils, despite having talked a lot of cant earlier about justice and equality for all, but the rights of atheists cannot be made into the occasion for this retreat, much less can his case be made into a representative one.

So on to the wesleyans. This denomination, as we have seen, had not spoken the language of religious equality in the middle decades of the century. Now, when the conversation had reached its most counter-intuitive conclusion for evangelicals, would the good number of wesleyans who were by then in parliament learn to speak their first halting words in this unfamiliar idiom? And would their co-religionists out-of-doors understand what they were saying if they did? An illuminating case is H. H. Fowler, who would go on to become unquestionably the most distinguished and respected wesleyan M.P. Fowler had been raised as a Liberal - it was said that his father had been denied the presidency of the Wesleyan Conference in 1849 because he was deemed to support the wrong political party. Nevertheless, Fowler’s was not the religious equality nonconformist conscience kind of Liberalism. He was first elected to parliament in 1880. Fowler refused to support even the cause of disestablishment during that election campaign, and how deeply uncomfortable he found that issue may be measured by the fact that his contorted answers on the question culminated in a promise that if a measure for the disestablishment of the Church of England came before parliament he would resign his seat!31 In his first year in parliament, however, Fowler was confronted not with disestablishment, but rather with the Bradlaugh case, and this put him, as one can well imagine, on a rather steep religious equality learning curve. In the 24 May 1880 division on ‘Parliamentary Oath (Mr. Bradlaugh)’, Fowler voted with those who wished to exclude atheists. No other methodist or dissenter appears to have joined him in this, and Heald-like he found himself in the same lobby as C. N. Newdegate. (As will be seen, a good number of dissenters and methodists voted on the other side, however, including three wesleyans.) A nionth later, in the 22 June 1880 division, he was content to abstain, and by the following month, the division of 1 July 1880, he was ready to cast his vote along with the friends of religious equality. By the time the issue had reached a head again in 1883 - the very vote that was lost by three that John Morley presented as a nonconformist betrayal - Fowler had reached the point where he could actually give leadership in the struggle, including speaking in the debate. It was a forceful speech that laid out resolutely the reasons why it was right to admit atheists. For our purposes, however, the most telling passage is the one in which he addressed the views of the wesleyan body on this matter. It is worth quoting at length:

”’Edwin Hodder, The Llfe ufSamud Miirley (1887), pp. 279-84. 31 Fowler, Fowler, pp. 108-9.

A Nonconformist Conscience 117

I wish to refer now to the denomination to which I have the honour to belong. Some Members who have taken part in this debate, and notably the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) and the hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir H. Drummond WolQ, have communicated to the House the views and feelings of the Wesleyan denomination. I wonder if it did not occur to the noble Lord, with his marvellous political intuition, that as there are, at least, 10 Members of this House who belong to the Wesleyan Body -

Lord Randolph Churchill: They are all Liberals. MY. H. H. Fowler: And who, echoing the views and feelings of the great majority

of the Wesleyan Body, belong to the Liberal Party. Did it not occur to him that a Body which is remarkable for the exclusiveness of its internal arrangements, and for the rigid and almost automatic action of its machinery, would not, if it willed to make any communication to this House, have selected two of the Members of the Fourth Party, but would have made the communication through one of its Kepresentatives? . . . I am not going to trouble the House with all the internal differences of the Wesleyan Body on this matter. I would simply say this - that the only Body that had the slightest scintilla of a claim officially to represent the Wesleyan Body has declined to take any action in this question. A very clever and astute Wesleyan Conservative [Sir George Hayter Chubb] has made use of, and I would almost say hoaxed, the noble Lord upon this question - a gentleman representing what everybody knows is a limited, an influential, but diminishing faction of the Wesleyan Body, the section which opposed Catholic Emancipation, which opposed Jewish Emancipation, which opposed the Disestablishment of the Irish Church . . . I have as much right to speak with confidence and authority as to the views of the Wesleyan Methodists as any Member of this House, except my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Waddy); and I give a most unqualified and absolute contradiction to the opinion that the majority of the Wesleyan Body are opposed to the present measure.”

A few other wesleyans did not have such an heroic trajectory however. The differ- ences between the May and June votes in 1880 are the most telling. In May, three wesleyans voted for Bradlaugh’s admission: D. J. Jenkins, Alexander McArthur and William McArthur. In the June vote, however, both McArthurs abstained and I>. J. Jenkms actually voted on other side. The most likely explanation is that these gentleman had blithely gone along with their Liberal friends and colleagues, not least the religious equality nonconformists among them, in May, only to feel the backlash in their home churches and religious networks immediately thereafter. The Wesleyan Conference of 1880, after all, actually passed a resolution against Bradlaugh’s admission. It is said of Alexander McArthur’s conduct at some point during the Bradlaugh case: ‘Asked to explain his failure to support Bradlaugh’s position during a highly significant division, he declared that, while he had never questioned Bradlaugh’s right to his seat, he had abstained “as a matter of expediency”.’33 These were not historic friends of religious equality who were deserting late in the day, but rather new acquaintances who were

” Hansard, Purl. Debs, 31d srr., CCLXXVIII, 1754-60 (3 May 1883). I3 Walter L. Amstein, The Brudlnu,qlt Case (Columbia, Missouri, 1983), p. 146

118 Timothy L a w n

reeling from having upset old friends. Moreover, the July 1880 vote was a complete victory for the religious equality conscience amongst methodists. Extraordinarily, on that occasion, every single M.P. at that time who has been identified as a wesleyan was both in the House and cast a vote in favour of allowing an affirmation instead of an oath, namely: W . S. Allen, Henry Broadhurst, H. H. Fowler, D. J. Jenkins, Alexander McArthur and William M~Ar thur . ’ ?~ In the May 1883 vote made so niuch of by John Morley as it was agonizingly lost by only three votes, no wesleyan voted against admis- sion, and only William McArthur was absent or abstained, while every other wesleyan M.P. that has been identified voted for religious equality for atheists: W. S. Allen, Henry Broadhurst, H. H. Fowler, Isaac Holden, D. J. Jenkins, Alexander McArthur and S. I). Waddy.‘?’ No wesleyans have been identified as voting against the victorious Oaths Bill that Bradlaugh himself brought forward in 1888, and votes were cast in its favour by the wesleyans H. H . Fowler, Isaac Holden, Isaac Hoyle and Alexander McArthur. Perhaps it is worth underlining briefly that as wesleyans were the most difficult test case on this matter, many dissenting M.P.s were, of course, quite prominent, vocal and influential in their support of Bradlaugh. The final bill was officially sponsored not only by Bradlaugh, but also by the congregationalists Alfred Illingworth and Henry Richard, and even the primitive methodist Thomas Burt, all three ofwhoni had consis- tently voted for the admission of atheists from the start.‘?‘ The quaker, Sir Joseph Pease, spoke in favour of admission in that debate, and he had also consistently supported Bradlaugh throughout as had, apparently, all the quaker members, most significantly, if also predictably, that eminent champion of freedom, John Bright. Henry Richard’s speech during the July 1880 debate, however, may best serve to represent the true nonconformist conscience in this matter: ‘I am voting for a great principle, for which the Nonconformists have been contending for 200 years; and if that be not the principle for which they have been contending, I do not know what it is - namely, this - that we have no right, as a condition of admitting a man to the enjoyment of his civil and political rights, to take into account his opinions on religion at all.’’?’

Meanwhile, the evangelical conscience was gaining a new lease of life as well: wesleyans were now swirling around in the nonconformist and Liberal pot, helping to imbue it more deeply with their distinctive flavour. Wider developments helped as, for example, the conventional wisdom was by then much more open to an interventionist government than it had been at mid-century, compulsory state education being an obvious example. The acceptability of intervention gave legislative moral reform a heightened credibility. Which brings us back to the Parnell case and the coining of the term the ‘nonconformist conscience’. John F. Glaser has demonstrated that the phrase was first used by a wesleyan minister in a letter to The Time5.‘?8 Wesleyan ministers 60 years earlier would also have desired to imposed their standards of personal morality upon the political sphere; far from being a new development it

34 I am very grateful to Colin Smith and David Bebbington for sharing with me the lists of methodist

’’ Hansard, Par/. Debs, 3rd ser., CCLXXVIII, 1821-5 (3 May 1883). ‘“Ib id . , CCCXXIII, 1182 (14 Mar. 1888). 37 hf., CCLIII, 1315 (1 July 1880). ”John F. Glaser, ‘Parnell’s Fall and the Nonconforniist Conscience’, Irish Histc~rital Smdies, XI1

M.P.s that they have (separately) compiled.

(1960), 135.

A Noriconfrmist Conrrience 119

was, in fact, the classic wesleyan evangelical conscience. What was new was that a wesleyan could now use ‘nonconformist’ as an apt label for a wesleyan position. A leading wesleyan minister, Hugh Price Hughes, was delighted with the term and made much of it in the newspaper he edited, the Methodist Times. It would be fair to say that the phrase the ‘nonconformist conscience’ is more associated with Hughes than any other single person. Parnell’s Victorian biographer put Hughes down, somewhat ironically, as ‘the English hero of the struggle’, by which he meant that the wesleyan minister was decisive in turning the Liberals against the Irish leader.3y Conversely, the initial instinct of some leading nonconformist M.P.s who were steeped in the logic of religious equality rather than that of the evangelical conscience, was to defend Parnell’s right to stay on. The quaker Jacob Bright, member for Manchester (South-West), wrote to the Munchester Grnuvdiun of Parnell that ‘I think it is his duty to remain at his post.’ Likewise, the congregationalist Alfred Illingworth, member for Bradford (West), argued in a public address that the passengers of a ship would not remove their captain from his command mid-voyage because they had discovered that he was guilty of a moral offence.“’ The point is not that the Parnell case neatly divides between wesleyans and the old dissenters. It does not; it scarcely divides at all. The point is that the free church political perspective was increasingly reflecting the values of the Wesleyan evangelical conscience as well those of the religious equality conconformist conscience so that by 1890 the two had been thoroughly jumbled together.

In conclusion, the last third of the nineteenth century saw a blending together of wesleyans and the old dissenters in a common identity both religiously, as nonconformists or free churchmen, and politically as Liberals. This created an opportunity for two religiously-motivated visions of politics to cross-pollinate. The result was a much more formidable, politically powerful nonconformist group than had existed at any time since the Commonwealth, but it was achieved by sacrificing something of the logical coherence that both the religious equality and the evangelical conscience previously had possessed. The nonconformist conscience at the end of the century was one that could still rally in support of religious equality, but which was also more open to using the law to shape the nation in a more Christian direction through, for example, measures of nioral reform and efforts to include bible teaching in the curriculum of state schools. Wesleyans had never accepted the application of the principle of religious equality to state education that led to a purely secular curriculum, and in the late Victorian period, as David Bebbington has shown, the old dissenters increasingly accepted this position as welL4’ Not only had wesleyan methodism joined nonconformity, and the leading wesleyans and the denomination as a whole had overwhelmingly joined the Liberals, but also the evangelical conscience had been married with the nonconformist conscience.

’‘ R. Barry O’Bnen, T h e Llfi if Charles Stcuwt Parnell (2 vols, 18YY), 11, 268.

4’ Bebbington, Nonmr$!f;,miist Ciinsciewce, ch. 7. 411 rhid., p. 246.