The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Vol. 1-4). Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ the removal of the phrase “on the faith of a Christian” from the Parliamentary Oath. Lord George Bentinck, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone, supported the Resolution. A Bill founded on it was carried in the Lower House, but rejected in the House of Lords.

      On the 20th of December Parliament adjourned.

      The Government were decidedly unfortunate during 1847 in their distribution of ecclesiastical patronage. They appointed the Rev. J. P. Lee, Head Master of King Edward’s School, at Birmingham, to the newly-constituted see of Manchester, after he had been publicly charged with drunkenness by a local surgeon, and had never met the accusation. It was inexplicable that Lord John Russell, when informed of the fact, should have refused to cancel or delay the appointment. Between his nomination and his consecration Mr. Lee, however, prosecuted his traducer for libel, and completely and triumphantly vindicated his character.

      When, the see of Hereford fell vacant Lord John Russell, as if in sheer defiance of the feelings of Churchmen, appointed Dr. Hampden as the new Bishop. Dr. Hampden had been censured for heresy by the academic authorities of Oxford, and deprived, as Regius Professor of Divinity, of authority to grant as a privilege certificates of attendance at his lectures to students for Holy Orders. To designate him as Bishop was taken as a direct insult by the clergy. Hence the Bishop of London, representing the High Churchmen, and the Bishop of Winchester, representing the Low Churchmen, along with thirteen Bishops, protested against the appointment. The Dean of Hereford. Dr. Merewether, threatened to vote against Dr. Hampden’s election by the Chapter. This threat drew from Lord John Russell a curt reply to the effect that he acknowledged receipt of the letter in which the Dean intimated he would violate the law. Dr. Merewether’s action also drew attention to the empty formality of the congé d’élire, whereby the Crown permits the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral to elect the nominee recommended by the Crown as Bishop. Should they refuse they incur the pains and penalties of præmunire—deprivation of benefices, confiscation of property, and imprisonment, during the Royal pleasure.

      Hampden was a rather dull man, with a ponderous, obscure style,77 whose offence lay, first, in advocating the admission of Dissenters into the University, and, secondly, in not only attributing, in his Bampton Lectures, the terminology and phraseology of Christian doctrine to the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, but in further describing that philosophy as “an atmosphere of mist!” He was supposed to be ambiguous on the Atonement, and it had been whispered that Blanco White had “crammed” him for his Bampton Lectures. White was one of the small group of Broad Churchmen at Oriel College, Oxford, whom Newman dreaded, and as he had since become a Socinian, suspicions of Dr. Hampden’s heterodoxy were intensified. The Bishop of Oxford, after joining in the hue and cry against Hampden, declined to send him up for trial, on the ground that there was no valid case against him. There is no doubt, however, that when he discovered the Queen had espoused Dr. Hampden’s cause, Wilberforce’s zeal cooled rapidly. As for Prince Albert, he bombarded Lord John Russell with letters urging him to prosecute Dr. Merewether, who seems to have been far from a disinterested defender of the faith, if it be true, as is asserted, that he memorialised the Queen and Lord Lansdowne to terminate the controversy by appointing him to the see of Hereford in the meantime, and then consoling Dr. Hampden with the promise of the next vacancy! Much importance attached to the opposition which the Bishop of Exeter offered to Hampden. But, according to Mr. Greville, the Bishop of Exeter had, a few years before this strife, called on Hampden at Oxford to express to him the pleasure with which he had read his Bampton Lectures.78 Archbishop Longley, who told Lord Aberdeen that he would go to the Tower rather than confirm Hampden’s nomination, subsequently begged the Bishop of Oxford to stay proceedings in the interests of the Church.

      Lord John Russell, it need hardly be said, obstinately refused to cancel Hampden’s nomination. After the Queen had sanctioned his appointment, to annul it would have virtually transferred to the Universities the supreme authority of the Crown over the Episcopate. Preparations were made to resist the confirmation of Dr. Hampden at Bow Church. The only question admitted to argument there was whether the Court was competent to hear objectors summoned by its own apparitor to state their objections before it. On the 11th of January the Vicar-General of Canterbury, Dr. Burnaby, with Sir John Dodson and Dr. Lushington as assessors, decided against the competence of the Court. An application for a mandamus to compel the Archbishop to hear objectors was refused by the Queen’s Bench—the judges being equally divided. On the 15th, in the House of Lords, Lord Denman defended the decision, and declared that “it was not to be supposed for a moment that the Crown would nominate to the high position of a Bishop an unfit person; and that the law would certainly be in a strange state if it should require an archbishop, before he proceeded to confirm or consecrate a party nominated by the Crown, to call upon all the world to throw scandal upon the nominee.” He further said that “the form in the proclamation was a mere form which was never used; that, if used, the prerogative of the Crown would be most seriously interfered with;” and he warned the House against “the fatal consequences of allowing objections to be made to the nominees of the Crown,” for “by checking every attempt at such interference the Church was protected from great danger and mischief.”

      CHAPTER XVII.

       THE COURT AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

       Table of Contents

      Lord George Bentinck’s Imprudence—French Intrigues in Portugal—England and the Junta—A Vulgar Suspicion—The Duke of Wellington and National Defences—The Duke’s Threatened Resignation—The Queen Soothes Him—Famine in the Queen’s Kitchen—Royal Hospitalities—The Queen’s Country Dance—A German Impostor—Discovery of Chloroform—The Royal Visit to Cambridge—Prince Albert’s Installation as Chancellor of the University—Awkward Dons—Anecdotes of the Queen at Cambridge—Royalty and Heraldry—The Visit to Scotland—Highland Loyalty—A Desolate Retreat—Politics and Sport at Ardverikie—A New Departure in Foreign Policy—Lord Minto’s Mission—The Queen’s Views—Prince Albert’s Caution to Lord John Russell—The Queen’s Amusements at Ardverikie—A Regretful Adieu—Home Again

      During 1847-48, Foreign Affairs chiefly occupied the attention of the Queen and Prince Albert. The annexation of Cracow, long meditated by Metternich, was rendered easy to Austria by the coolness which had sprung up between England and France. It was felt that French and English protests, though presented, must be unavailing, because every one knew neither Power would go to war for the sake of Poland. Mr. Hume brought the incident under the notice of the House of Commons, his proposal being to stop the payments to Russia by Great Britain on account of the Russo-Dutch Loan—in other words, to fine Russia for sanctioning Austria’s evil-doing. It was the subject of a debate which would have been tame but for Lord George Bentinck’s imprudent eulogium on the three despotic Powers—which vastly displeased his Party, and as Lord Palmerston, in a letter to Lord Normanby, said, extinguished him as a candidate for office.79 Hume’s motion was not pressed to a division.

      French influence had been at work in Portugal to estrange the Queen from her English alliance. The dynastic connection between the Houses of Coburg and Braganza rendered Portuguese affairs intensely interesting to Queen Victoria at this time. The King Consort of Portugal—Prince Ferdinand, son of the younger brother of the reigning Duke of Coburg—had, it was rumoured, quarrelled with the Queen, who was tempted to carry out in her dominions the arbitrary policy of the Bourbons. The people rebelled; and in view of a possible Franco-Spanish intervention, England, not uninfluenced by the views of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, stepped in between the Portuguese Sovereign and her people. English intervention was at the outset purely diplomatic. It was limited to the arrangement of a compromise between the contending parties. Ultimately our diplomacy was successful; but the proposals of the English Envoy were finally rejected by the Portuguese Junta, and a Protocol was drawn up with Portugal, Spain, and France, for the purpose of bringing the Junta to submission. The General Election was now impending in England, and it СКАЧАТЬ