[17] INTRODUCTION

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The Journal which follows has recently come to light and is here for the first time made available to the student, and for the pleasure of all who delight in the charm of a well-told travel story. The Journal was written by that cultured and observant man, the Right Reverend Henry Lascelles Jenner, 1st Bishop of Dunedin. It is the story of how he went to New Zealand to claim his See, how his claim was refused, and the manner of his return. The event was unique in Anglican history and, while the story is told with restraint and good humour, it has inherently many of the ingredients of high drama.

Henry Lascelles Jenner was born at Chislehurst in Kent, in 1820, and was the seventh of the eight sons of Herbert Jenner, later Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, one of the best-known and most influential Anglican layman in modern times. It may help in understanding Bishop Jenner to refresh memories about the background against which he grew up.

First, a word about his father. Herbert Jenner was born in 1777, was a Doctor, or Advocate, of Doctors' Commons becoming King's Advocate in 1828; he was knighted, sworn of the Privy Council, and appointed Vicar-General of the Province of Canterbury. In 1834 he became Dean of Arches and Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. In 1843 he was appointed Master of his old college, Trinity Hall, Cambridge. This speaks a most successful life. He was clearly a man of great and dominating character, who used to the full the privileges which waited generally on his class and on his own family in particular. The Jenners had a corner, a most lucrative corner, in Doctors' Commons, which was almost a close corporation for certain families. Jenner, Dyke and Jenner were a well known firm of proctors. The legal profession in general regarded the institution with envy, and the liberal reformers with a virulent and bitter hatred. Its work was carried on, with a fine contempt for outside opinion, in a series of buildings of seventeenth century date, near the south west corner of St. Paul's Churchyard. Both were swept away in 1857. The testamentary, matrimonial and Admiralty functions were taken elsewhere and, even in the ecclesiastical remnant, privilege was removed. Had it not been for Charles Dickens, who practised there for reporting later in the House of Commons, the memory of it would have perished. He, loathing it beyond reasonable measure, gives us some colourful peeps. Mr Weller, senior, had four hundred pounds left him and went to Doctors' [17/18] Commons 'to see the lawyer and draw the blunt' and it was there that he got trapped into buying a marriage licence. Clients did not go to Proctors direct but only through their own solicitors, the slip shows the mystery in which Doctors' Commons was shrouded. David Copperfield was articled to Spenlow and Jorkins a firm of proctors; and his friend Steerforth has a remark which helps to perpetuate their memory: 'they plume themselves on their gentility in the Commons'. Of greater interest to us is the account Dickens gives in his Sketches by Boz, of his visit to the principal ecclesiastical court, The Court of Arches. The name derives from the fact that, at one time, the Court functioned at St. Mary de Arcubus or St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside. There he found a dozen gentlemen in crimson (by which he meant scarlet) gowns, and wigs. These were the Advocates, or Doctors, who sat on a semi-circular platform at the upper end of the court. And now for Herbert Jenner. 'At a more elevated desk in the centre sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the Judge.' After a description of the proctors' attire; neck cloths, black gowns, and fur collars (by which he meant small hoods lined with fur) we read: 'The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles was having all the talk to himself and very well he was doing it too, only he spoke very fast, but that was habit, and rather thick, but that was good living'. At Chislehurst, Herbert Jenner had Francatelli for his chef and Barnes--a famous head-gardener who later went to Lady Rolle's famous garden at Bicton. His town house was at the corner of Chesterfield Street and Curzon Street and he had the Master's Lodge at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He never lived at his Manor of Hill in Gloucestershire. His family said that he was quite satisfied with his three houses and envied no man. Since it was the mark of a gentleman to be satisfied with the circumstances in which he had been divinely placed, this modesty must have been a great satisfaction to them. One is almost relieved that he was not burdened with a promised peerage in May, but taken in an apoplexy in February, 1852. Despite what that nasty leveller Dickens might have thought, his family knew that his gout and his demise had been brought on by hard work. Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust, as he became in 1842 as a condition of inheriting the Manor of Hill Court in Gloucestershire, was the greatest English authority of his day on international law. In this way he made a considerable contribution to the Admiralty Court. He was, despite his masterful manner, a man of considerable piety. Every morning, before he left his house for Court, he read the Psalms and the lessons proper for the day. His family stood in affectionate awe of him. By his own exertions plus a certain amount of privilege, in those unregenerate days considered quite proper, he gained a large professional income. He spent his income freely. It is a tribute to his memory that Bishop [18/19] Jenner, so records his son, could never to the end of his life speak of his father without a break in his voice. Reverently he adopted his father's immortalised tortoise shell spectacles! When the Dean of Arches died he left eight sons and three daughters, and eighty-three grandchildren--a patriarch! His sons lived less well but, on the whole, longer. Their average life span was 81½ but this figure had been brought down by the accidental death of the Naval Captain at the age of 60.

Henry Lascelles Jenner was called after his God-father, the second Earl of Harewood, who was his mother's first cousin. He went to preparatory schools at Blackheath and Sunbury and then on to Harrow. His brothers went to Eton and it is not known why he was sent to Harrow. There he was under the headmastership, firstly of Charles Thomas Longley, who was to become Archbishop of Canterbury and secondly of Christopher Wordsworth, later Bishop of Lincoln. When Longley left Harrow to become the first Bishop of Ripon he presented Jenner with a pocket Horace, Henrico L. Jenner d.d. Carolus T. Longley xii Kal.Ap.A.S.MDCCCXXXVI, in his own handwriting on the fly leaf. Spared, both of them, a thought of the coming tragedy in which they were to be principal actors and Jenner's career was to be wrecked. Jenner loved his school dearly and for the last decades of his life never missed a Speech Day. What filial love that school inspires!

As might be expected Jenner went up to Trinity Hall and read law. He took a second-class honours degree with 'a first class compliment on his "Act"' which he composed, read and defended in Latin. The subject, a family one it might be said, 'The Inviolability of Ambassadors', from the field of international law. It was his father's intention that he should go into Doctors' Commons, but he chose to take Holy Orders and left Cambridge a Bachelor of Law.

Herbert Jenner had no objection to his son's choice of profession. His family had in earlier generations given more than one luminary to the English Church, and an older son, Charles Herbert Jenner, had already taken Holy Orders. But there was a significant difference in the churchmanship of the father and sons. The Dean of Arches was an old-fashioned high churchman, well versed in the Fathers and the English divines of the seventeenth century. He had also a certain theoretical sympathy for the non-juring divines of the eighteenth century. He was a great authority on ecclesiastical history. His churchmanship ran parallel with much that was beginning to be taught by the Oxford apostles, but he belonged to an older generation. He shared with them a great respect for the law of the Church and of the State. They had this in common also that they could not see, once doctrine was pure and on the model of the sub-apostolic church, and dogma was catholic but free from Tridentine error, that it much mattered [19/20] where the minister stood or how he was clad. It would have been well for the career of Henry Lascelles if he had perpetuated his father's nonchalance in the matter of ecclesiastical arrayal. His Journal in that event might have recorded only his outward voyage to Dunedin and the Church of New Zealand possibly would have been spared the opprobrium of the English Bench of Bishops.

But in the fateful year 1839 that young freshman Henry Lascelles Jenner, threw in his lot with John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb, who were busy founding the Cambridge Camden Society.

The founders of the Cambridge Movement were clearly young men deeply impressed by the tracts which had been issuing from Oxford, the first dated 9 September 1833. This was a little four-paged thing by Newman: Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission respectfully addressed to the Clergy and containing a defence of the Apostolic Succession. They saw a need not only for an erudite appeal from the sister university, by scholars to scholars, but they felt that this should be complemented by an aesthetic witness. So they studied gothic architecture and ecclesiology. Their society was called the Cambridge Camden Society; Camden after the celebrated Elizabethan antiquary, John Camden, and Cambridge to distinguish it from the Camden Society of London founded the year before, in 1838. Their interest was not merely passive and antiquarian. They were men of action and they aimed to restore mediaeval churches to their pristine purity. To do so was to sweep away the perversions, as they regarded them, of the Renaissance and later movements of bad taste. Nor were ancient churches only to be dealt with. New churches must rise on the ancient pattern, for the words Gothic and Christian were synonyms. Their motto--Donec templa refeceris. Horace was more widely known to them than to us and there would be no doubt in the minds of educated men that the founders had Ode VI Book III in mind, in its entirety. Later events would seem to bear this out. So began Ritual as it came to be called. Oxford revived the faith and Cambridge the ceremonial.* [Footnote: * The Oxford leaders did not themselves adopt advanced ceremonial but Pusey, at least, came to see the logic of its development--'We, the clergy, taught the truth: the people said, "Set it before our eyes". I do think that it is scarcely philosophical to regard this so-called ritualistic movement otherwise than eminently a lay movement.' Appendix to Sermon--'Will ye also go away.'] H. L. Jenner was in the society as an ordinary member and when it was reformed and changed its name to the Ecclesiological Society, he was to be, for many years, one of its honorary secretaries. His own contribution was largely in the field of Church Music. Where there was so much youthful exuberance there was sure to be some indiscretion, but they were for the most part a jolly crowd with a sense of fun and a great ability to laugh at themselves. The Oxford men were older, more [20/21] solemn in demeanour as became their positions as dons. One does not picture Dr. Pusey cracking jokes. The Bishop, later in life, recalled the fun they had enjoyed at Cambridge. There was, for example, the occasion when Benjamin Webb intervened in a debate in the Society. Someone had said that he could not see why the Low Church men should arrogate to themselves the name 'Evangelicals'--Squeaked Webb, 'I don't see why not. Scipio was called "Africanus" because he devastated Africa.'

Henry Lascelles Jenner was ordained Deacon by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 11 June, 1843, and Priest by the Bishop of Ely on 9 June, 1844. He took his title at Chevening, near Sevenoaks in Kent. One of his congregation was Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope, whose son succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Rosebury, and was to have so distinguished a political and literary career. Lady Wilhelmina was a great beauty and a keen churchwoman. When she bowed at the Holy Name, in the Church, her action was so graceful that people came from miles around to see it. But this old-fashioned bit of high-churchism was not enough for Jenner and his fellow-curate, and the Anglican revival began at Chevening by the introduction of the neglected rubrics of the Prayer Book. They made a start by proposing to restore the four occasional services--Gunpowder Treason by 5 November, King Charles the Martyr on 30 January, Restoration of the Royal Family on 29 May, and the Queen's Accession on 21 June. A start was to be made on Guy Fawkes Day, which fortunately was a week-day. The curates took up their positions at opposite ends of the altar--the Eastward Position was still in the future--and began. Presently Gordon whispered, 'I cannot read this next prayer it gives thanks for a rebellion.' 'Neither can I', said Jenner, who would be the last man to give thanks for the landing of the Prince of Orange. So they cut it out. The way of the restorer is hard! Jenner had loyalty to the reigning monarch of course, but it was only a hundred years since the forty-five, and the Chevalier had been dead less than sixty. There was a good deal of theoretical Jacobitism among the early figures in the Oxford and Cambridge revivals--John Keble was himself of non-juring Scottish Episcopalian* [Footnote: * Until the death of Cardinal York in 1807 the Scottish Episcopalian Church refused to pray for the reigning sovereign by name. The last of the non-juring clergy of that Church died as late as 10 June, 1869, The Revd. Patrick Cushnie, in his 90th year and the 69th of his ministry.] descent or so the Cambridge Camden people believed. Whatever acceptance there was of the present establishment those caught up in the Romantic Movement had a liking for the House of Stuart, and the Revolution of 1688 did not commend itself to their affections. It was in the parish of Chevening that Jenner met his future bride.

In 1846 Jenner left Chevening and became Curate to the Revd. S. E. [21/22] Walker, D.D., Rector of St. Columb Major in Cornwall. Walker was the only son of a wealthy London barrister, and when he came down from Trinity College, Cambridge, his father purchased the advowson of St. Columb, the wealthiest living in Cornwall, for him. He took up his living on 11 March, 1841 and forthwith set his hand to reform. He restored the ancient Rectory at a cost to himself of £7,000. With the arrival of his Trinity curate he restored the church according to the rules of the Cambridge Camden Society. There was much to be done. In 1676 there was a good deal of gun-powder stored in the rood loft. Some boys maliciously exploded it, blew down the east wall of the chancel and that of its south aisle* [Footnote: * 'The Ecclesiologist' New Series Vol.iv, 1847, pp107/8.] and destroyed the ancient screens and a great amount of old painted glass. They paid for their irreverence with their lives. Walker was an eccentric man in many ways, and it is still whispered in the Parish that he married one of his maids! He was anxious, as many were, for the restoration of the Cornish See, after a lapse of a thousand years, and he offered his great restored Rectory and his Church together with a large sum of money for a Cathedral foundation. His offer might well have been accepted had he not speculated heavily in building projects at Gravesend and Notting Hill. At Notting Hill he built the Church of St. Columba, now known as All Saints, and intended to live as a kind of urban squarson upon his building estate, and to enjoy an income of £60,000 a year. By the dishonesty of his partner the business venture failed disastrously, the St. Columb living was sequestrated, and Walker went abroad. The St. Columb scheme for a Bishopric was at an end. Eventually Truro was fixed upon as the ecclesiastical centre of the new See, and there John Loughborough Pearson built his masterpiece. The only regret in this course of events is that the title Bishop of the Cornish was not revived instead of Bishop of Truro. Had a territorial title been required, then Bodmin and St. Germans had an historical claim, and Truro no claim at all. A belated bit of the Saxon conquest! But this belongs to another story. Jenner was married at St. Columb on the 11 August, 1847.+ [Footnote: + While at St. Columb Jenner wrote Of Flowers as employed in the Adornment of Churches which contained lists of flowers of the liturgically correct colour for all the festivals of the Book of Common Prayer. 'June 29 S. Peter RED / Flowers--Roses, Poppies, Scarlet Lychnis, Geranium, Verbena, Kalma, Potentilla, Mallow, Red Valerian, Antirrhinium, Salvia, Heath, Phlox Drummondi.' again 'Flowers of the proper colours might be forced on purpose at almost any time in the hothouses of a rich parishioner.' Query--Where would one find such a splendid guide today.]  He was a popular Curate and occasionally he drove home to Chislehurst in a two-wheeled gig! When his son, Henry Jenner, was born on the 8 [22/23] August, 1848 at eight o'clock, Jenner marked the occasion by presenting a pair of wrought iron standard gospel lights, still in use in the church. It should not pass unnoticed that when the old stone mensa was discovered in 1846, and replaced in the High Altar with such jubilation, that it was done in defiance of Jenner's father's ruling of the year before. In 1845 one of the prominent members of the Cambridge Camden Society, and with their approval, restored the Church of St. Sepulchre at Cambridge and erected therein a stone altar. Mr. Faulkner took the case to the Ely Consistory Court and won it. The Society appealed to the Court of Arches and the Dean ruled that the Communion table in the English Church was movable, as witness the rubric in the Prayer Book. A stone altar was illegal. The case was made the better known by the Revd. R. H. Barham, Minor Canon of St. Paul's, in the Ingoldsby Legends. In The Blasphemer's Warning; a Lay of St. Romwald he speaks of

'Adorning the building with carving and gilding
And stone altars fixed to the chantries and filled in,
Papistic in substance and form, and on this count
 With Judge Herbert Jenner-Fust justly at discount.

What Sir Herbert thought of the mensa at St. Columb is not known. He did not always put his judgments into private practice for Bishop Jenner recalled that when his father arrived home from the Court in the case of Breeks v. Woolfrey in 1839, in which he ruled that prayers for the departed were legal in the Church of England, he said, 'Well, I have given my judgment in favour of prayer for the dead, but it won't make me pray for them.'

In May, 1849, Jenner became Curate of the Rev. John Francis Kitson at Antony. Kitson was of the new movement and so was the squire, Mr. W. H. Pole-Carew, father of the future General Sir Reginald Pole-Carew, said to have been the best-looking and the most loved officer in the British Army. Mr Pole-Carew had built an L-shaped building in Maryfield. One wing served as a house for the Curate, its bedrooms having open roofs and dark stained rafters in the best gothic-revival manner; the other as a church and, with a curtain drawn across the sanctuary, as a school on weekdays. The building still stands although a gothic church was erected at Maryfield in 1870. Jenner, although nominally a curate of Kitson's, was given a free hand in his 'district'. He [23/24] could be as advanced as he pleased. Accordingly he adopted the wearing of stoles--stoles, not scarves he pointed out; he monotoned his prayers--it was a mark of ignorance to call it 'intoning'. He placed a cross and candles on his altar, and he stood before it in the Eastward Position. There was a daily service. Jenner was a born teacher and a faithful pastor and, although backed by squire and parson in his innovations, he introduced them only after careful public instruction from his pulpit and private tuition in the peoples' houses, every one of which he visited for the purpose. There was universal consent for the revival at Maryfield.

Jenner was immensely popular at Maryfield, not only in church and private home but among the youth and men of the parish. The Jenners were, after all, first class cricketers; their professions apart, they lived for cricket. Sir Herbert himself was an outstanding cricketer and a founder of the West Kent Cricket Club whose ground was on Chislehurst Common. It makes him a little more human to us to recollect a verse from the doggerel ballad scribbled by Benjamin Aislabie, for many years honorary secretary of the M.C.C., after one of Jenner's famous cricket dinners:

'There is a man at Chislehurst, whose whole is the tenor
Of Kindness and benevolence. Who's that? Sir Herbert Jenner,
He such a hearty welcome gives, and such a wondrous dinner,
That even if I lose the match, I still shall be a winner.'

Sir Herbert was also reckoned to be the second best tennis player in England in his day; second only to Lord Frederick Beauclere--and real tennis of course, not the degenerate lawn variety! The curate at Maryfield was not the equal of his oldest brother Herbert who captained the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford under Charles Wordsworth, later Bishop of St. Andrews, in the first inter-University match ever played, and found a place in the Dictionary of National Biography. But he was as good a coach as performer and his lessons were greatly in demand in the neighbourhood. He was very good with boats also, but it was as a horseman that he excelled. It was said that no man in England knew better how to judge a horse and his advice was often sought by a generation who rode of necessity, as well as for sport and pleasure. Jenner and his wife felt that no offer would tempt them to leave Maryfield. They became close friends of the Pole-Carews who took them to London now and then in their own lugger. On one occasion, off the Eddystone, a dreadful storm blew up and the lugger had to limp into Weymouth where its passengers caught a German steamer and landed at Portsmouth. This family were and are outstanding in popularity among all classes. The only complaint one has about them is that having learnt painfully as a small child, living at the other [24/25] extremity of the county, to say Pool-Carey, the family promptly changed their name to Carew-Pole and pronounced it as written!

There were a number of intelligent young men in the parish whose adult education was taken up by Jenner. One of them, who cleaned the boots and knives at Antony House, was sent, one of the first men, to St. Augustine's College at Canterbury, and became a valued Archdeacon in India. St. Augustine's College had been founded by A. J. Beresford Hope, a Trinity man and most generous provider of funds for the Cambridge Camden people,--the link is clear. One reflects that this kind of thing went on for centuries in the country parishes. Who can ever assess the value in the English countryside of the educational work of the country parson, before an enthusiasm for education made way for a madness for examinations.

It was about this time that the neighbouring church of Sheviock was restored in memory of the late Rector, the Revd. Gerald Pole-Carew. This was an early day for church restorations and Jenner was concerned with two of them in Cornwall. It was remarkable how quickly the principles of the Oxford and the Cambridge movements were spreading. Now, however, came the sad news that Sir Herbert's health was rapidly declining and he asked his son to be near him. The Curate did not hesitate to resign his curacy. He did it with a breaking heart--perhaps he had a premonition of the troubled days ahead.

Jenner and his young family now moved to Leigh, near Southend, in Essex. The Rector, Dr. Eden, had been consecrated Bishop of Moray and Ross but did not resign the Essex living for some time. Instead he appointed Henry Lascelles Jenner Curate-in-Charge, and placed him in the spacious and pleasant Rectory. During his last illness, Sir Herbert was living at his house in Chesterfield Street and it was a fairly convenient journey for his son to take a steamer from Southend and go up to Town. Jenner's little boy was a great favourite with his grandfather who took it upon him to lay a sound foundation for a proper taste in port of which he was so well known a connoisseur. Boys in those days were little men, and although young Jenner was not yet four years of age he could repeat a good deal of Longfellow by heart, could compare the fairy tales of Anderson and Grimm, which were just coming out, where they overlapped, and mirabile dicto could repeat an ode of Anacreon, θελψ λεγειν Ατρειδας in Greek without knowing what a word meant!

There was a whole literature produced at this time for the benefit of the children of Anglo-Catholics. It was very well written, and suited for its times, i.e., rather high tory and 'historical'. The authors were of Jenner's circle and most of them close personal friends of his--F. E. Paget, Rector of Elford, in Staffordshire, and author, among other works, of The Hope of the Katzckoffs; J. M. Neale, scholar great as he [25/26] was in so many fields, wrote some good stories, Crested, and Heygate too, whose parents lived in the parish and were particularly kind to the Jenner family, taking them as their own children.

Jenner stayed at Leigh for only six months. Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust having died, there was nothing to keep him there.

Early in 1852 the Revd. Dr. William Hodge Mill invited him to take the curacy at Brasted, near Sevenoaks. St. Martin's had recently been restored. Its walls had been 'very successfully cleared of whitewash by means of Manchester-card and its cumbrous and unsightly western gallery removed.* [Footnote: * The Ecclesiologist New Series vol.iv, 1847, p.156.] One finds surprisingly little written about Dr. Mill, who was a profound scholar and used his great learning to keep the young men at Cambridge on sound lines. He was greatly respected by the members of the Cambridge Camden Society. He was Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge and a Canon of Ely Cathedral. Suitably enough, so Jenner later thought, his memorial was placed by the Camden Society he had moulded and guided under what they considered to be the finest piece of First Pointed or, as we might say--Early English architecture, in existence--the wonderful choir triforium, at Ely. The memorial is a fine bronze monument with a recumbent figure giving an excellent portrait of Dr. Mill. It was a memorial certainly, but it was also intended by that Society, who were so irritatingly anxious to educate everybody, to serve as a standard and model of what such things should be.

Nothing escaped the ecclesiological eye, the minutest detail must be tried as by fire. Jenner's son recollected it all in old age and could describe it at first hand. He had, after all, the distinction of being the son of the first Ritualist Bishop. The notes he made, in his eighty-fourth year are worth preserving:

'Those who were brought up in the principles of the combined Oxford and Cambridge Movement were carefully taught a number of harmless and sometimes pleasing affectations of pronunciation, phraseology and practice, some of which are now not at all peculiar. It was a point of honour always to say ahmen not aymen, even if the word occurred in ordinary conversation. Curiously enough the tradition among Englishmen of the Roman Rite is to say aymen at the end of English prayers, though not, of course, at the end of Latin. The musical settings of the responses to the Commandments in the Communion Service used "in quires and places where they sing" had come to be called kei-ries, being, though identified with the Kyrie of the Latin Mass, pronounced all anyhow. We were instructed to say, Kirreeay, as near as we could get to the proper Greek pronunciation. That, I believe, is quite usual now. In those days, and perhaps still, well-bred English people were very shy of expressing themselves about religious matters. It was really due to reverence. They left plain and familiar language to low people like dissenters [26/27] and (so-called) Evangelicals. It was among other things distasteful to them to speak of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion by His Holy Name. That Name was never used except in prayers, though you might say Christ, if you said it reverently. But the current expression in use among gentle-people was Our Saviour--and a very good expression too, when you come to think about it spoken rather shyly, as much as to say "you know whom I mean, but we don't venture to talk about Him". But we were always taught to say Our Lord and that has now become the usual expression, almost to the exclusion of the other. Similarly it had been the practice to call Our Lord's Mother the Virgin, or The Virgin Mary, and to speak of her also seldom and reverentially. If Italian pictures were discussed, it was allowable to say Madonna, but that was different. We were taught always to prefix Blessed to Virgin. The good old English expression Our Lady was revived later, for the early Anglo-Catholics appear not to have noticed at first that it is found in the Prayer-book, and rather objected to the usual Lady Day for 25th March, insisting upon calling it the Annunciation. The names of these days were corrected. We said Epiphany not Twelfth Day, St. Michael's Day, not Michaelmas, the Purification, not Candlemas, and most carefully we were instructed to say Whitsun Day, not Whit Sunday, Whitsun Monday, not Whit Monday. This last originated in a curious fancy, not in the least warranted by facts, of which J. M. Neale was the inventor. The liturgical colour for Pentecost was known to be red, therefore it could not possibly be the White Sunday, and besides, there was already a Dominica in Albis in the Sunday after Easter. So Neale started a hopelessly impossible philological theory that Whitsun was a derivative of Pentecost, analogous to the German Pfingsten. If he had known any Welsh he would have been puzzled, for in the language the day is Sul Gwyn, which can mean nothing else but White Sunday, and he ought to have remembered that in northern climates Pentecost took the place of Easter for the great public baptisms and that the white robes of the newly baptized were just the things that would cause a popular name for the day. The only apparent justification for this strange fancy is that the Prayer-book talks of Whitsunweek. One other correction had to be dropped, for it was the cause of too many unfortunate collocations, to say nothing of unprintable stories, and there the saving sense of humour came in. The attempt to substitute its liturgical name for New Year's Day, on the argument that the Church's year began on Advent Sunday, was not a success. The name of the central act of Christian worship was another name that was corrected. Of the usual terms, Lord's Supper had rather a Low Church flavour, but it was commonly called the Sacrament, and the days on which it was celebrated were Sacrament Sundays. This, of course, was not as it should be. There were at least two, if not seven sacraments, so it had to be called Holy Communion or still better, but perhaps a little extreme, the Holy Eucharist and the service was often called in shortened form a celebration of the Holy Eucharist being understood. If Sacrament was used, Blessed was prefixed. The name "Mass" came in later. Of course we must never say Table or Communion Table but always Altar, but that was not uncommon among ordinary people. No one, for instance, ever talked of leading his bride to the communion table. And the rails which enclosed the sanctuary must be called altar rails, and not by the really more [27/28] correct and usual term communion rails. People must no longer take the sacrament, they must communicate, or "receive Holy Communion", or for short, receive. In communicating we were instructed to cross the right hand over the left and receive in the palm of the right hand. This was strongly opposed by the Evangelical clergy who tried to insist on the consecrated piece of bread being taken between finger and thumb. Sometimes this incident was the cause of unseemly scenes. It was usual to speak of the Apostles' Creed as the Belief. I have not heard that expression for half a century or more, but it was once common enough, and as late as the eighteen-sixties Trollope puts it into the mouth of the Rev. Josiah Crawley of Hogglestock. Anglo-Catholics always called it the Creed and that name has now become universal. Family prayers had always been said in respectable houses--I don't think they are so common now. One not unusual form was a chapter of the Bible, often one of the lessons for the day, followed by collects from the Prayer-book and ending with the Lord's Prayer. But more usual instead of the collects was a long-winded and rather rambling prayer from some Book of Family Prayers, which at its end introduced the Lord's Prayer in a phrase distinctly reminiscent of the Preceptis salutaribus moniti in the Romish Mass. How horrified the good people who used it would have been if they had known that! These functions took place before breakfast and when it was nearly bedtime, and the servants all trooped in and ranged themselves on chairs in the background. During the lesson all sat, and at the prayers they all turned round and knelt with their elbows on the seats of their chairs. But in well-regulated Anglo-Catholic households it was otherwise. If the house was large enough, there was a room set apart for prayers with a prie-dieu of Gothic design and a colourable imitation of an altar at one end. This was called an oratory. The prayers usually consisted of shortened adaptations of the Offices of Prime and Compline* [Footnote: * There was a lighter side to the revival. An Archdeacon had dined at a gentleman's mansion and announced his intention of returning to Oxford. 'Do wait a little,' pressingly pleaded his hostess, 'we shall have compline in about half an hour. Do stay for compline, Mr. Archdeacon.' 'Oh no! thank you,' was his reply, 'I never take anything after dinner'. The Guardian, 25 August 1869, p.950] from the Sarum, not the Roman, Breviary. (It was not thought necessary to explain that the differences between the two were negligible). These were recited by the master (or mistress) of the house, the rest joining in the responses. Of course if there was a clergyman present, he took the leading part. If there was no oratory, the master's study did well enough. It was, however, not the Anglo-Catholic custom to speak of a clergyman, and still less of a minister, and even the good old English word parson was discredited and looked upon as rather vulgar slang. You should always say priest. That, I think, never caught on, and most people still understand by priest an ecclesiastic of the Roman Rite. Parson, which was good enough for so good a Catholic as Chaucer, has rather come into its own again, but it ought properly to be used only of a beneficed clergyman--the Persona Ecclesiae--as it is to this day in Breton, Aotrou Person being Monsieur le Cure. Another bit of phraseology was that it was de rigueur to call a crozier a "pastoral staff. This arose from a mistaken idea that "crozier" meant an Archbishop's cross--which it doesn't. Baculus Pastoralis is certainly the official Latin.

[29] There were various other observances. It had been always the custom to bow rather markedly at the Holy Name in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, but not to bow at other items of its occurrence. We were taught to bow whenever the Name was mentioned, in church or out of church, and even, as an extreme case, at the mention of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge which bear it! As it occurs at least a dozen times, without counting lessons from the New Testament, in both Morning and Evening Prayer which, by the way, we always called Mattins and Evensong,--it was a good test of whether a child was attending, and things were apt to be said afterwards if the gesture was omitted. But there was a catch even there, and you had to look out sharp that you didn't bow when the same name, meaning someone else, occurred in Acts VII. 45, which was a strain on the attention for you had to be sure to bow ten verses later on. Bowing at the Gloria Patri was also introduced and some adopted a practice of bowing at the words And holy is His Name in the Magnificat. If you were not already facing that way, you were expected to turn to the east at the Creed and in some churches at the Gloria Patri and to kneel or make a deep bow at the Et incarnatus est clause of the Nicene Creed. I do not know how soon these practices caught on, but I think they are common enough now. When the movement began it had been the usual custom for a man after he entered his pew to stand up, place his tall hat--you always wore a top hat on Sundays, even in the country--before his face and say a short prayer. Rarely a man knelt down for this, but the hat ceremony was apparently de rigueur, though in Quires and places where they sing and the choir wore surplices, they usually knelt and covered their faces with their voluminous surplice-sleeves. The officiating clergyman did the same in ordinary churches. But we were instructed to kneel and place our hands in front of our faces and the prayer which we were taught to recite was an English version of Aperi, Domine os meum, which is given in Breviaries as the prayer to be said before the Divine Office. I do not know whether anyone ever performs the hat ceremony now, but it was quite usual in the fifties and sixties though even then it was the cause of not too amusing but rather derisory jokes. In most churches, where the services were not choral, there was a duet between parson and parish clerk, no one else ever venturing to join in the responses or in the alternate verses of psalms and canticles, though it was a common practice with people who were at all religious to follow in a whisper the whole service, priest's part and all. This last was kept up by old people for a long time, and, when they began to get a little deaf, the whisper was not always as inaudible as it was meant to be. The custom of the responses being made by the parish-clerk only certainly goes back to pre-Reformation times and to this day at a low Mass of the Latin Rite, except where, chiefly in Belgium, the Missa Recitata has been introduced, no one except the server ever thinks of making the responses.* [Footnote: * This was written in 1934. On 3 September, 1958, a month before the demise of Pius XII the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued an instruction for the participation of the congregation in Low Mass.] The Oxford and Cambridge Movement people evidently did not realise this but thought it only a bit of Protestant slackness and encouraged the congregation to respond, and to speak up too. Anglo-Catholics as long [29/30] ago as the fifties began to use the sign of the cross, but perhaps at first rather unobtrusively and, if one may say so, shamefacedly. It was associated with Popery in the ordinary mind more than almost any other observance. It might be made freely enough in connection with private devotions, as at the Invocation of the Trinity at the beginning of night and morning prayers and there was a pretty practice of crossing oneself the last thing before getting into bed. Such is the force of association habits that to this day it is a slight and almost unconscious effort to avoid doing that when I blow out a candle, even when lighted to seal a letter in broad daylight. It was made unobtrusively when grace was said at meals, and at the end of the Creeds in church. Now, of course, it is made openly enough and nobody minds in the least. There were various other innovations, the wearing of stoles by the clergy, the Eastward position, the practice of what was contemptuously called by its opponents Auricular confession, and the introduction of hymns instead of the metrical Psalms. Chasubles came in later--I saw a Church of England clergyman in one for the first time early in 1858* [Footnote: * By 1865 a tradesman at Oxford was saying that 'he had within the last few weeks sold no less than thirty sets of Eucharistic vestments, and that in the majority of instances the purchasers were laymen . . .' ]--and incense was later still. But the germ of the future Ritualism was there as long ago as the forties and the Ecclesiological Society may be held largely responsible for the idea. I don't think the Oxford people would have thought of it.'+ [Footnote: + Quoted from the Church Times--The Guardian, Feb. 1865, p.98.]

Henry Lascelles Jenner was possessed of a singularly fine tenor voice, and he had great taste in music which he read with ease at sight. He was accomplished in making music by keyboard and by reed and was a reasonably good performer in the brass world. Since there was a vacancy for a minor canon at Canterbury in the fall of 1852, he applied for the appointment and got it. There is no doubt that he deserved it and that his own merits more than justified the Dean and Chapter in taking him. At the same time the fact that his father had been the senior lay official in the Diocese, and had a world wide reputation in church circles would have done his candidature no disservice. They were never to regret the choice for he was, during his appointment and afterwards, to render great services to music in the Cathedral, in the Diocese and in the Church at large. What should we, who perhaps have never heard Jenner's name, do at patronal festivals and funerals if we had not Quam Dilecta to rely upon? One of the examining canons was Francis Dawson who, as Rector of Chislehurst, had baptised him and had known him all his life. He could rely on Dawson. But the first canon he tackled was Roger Moore. He was the son of Archbishop John Moore (1783-1805) and a dig into The Dictionary of National Biography will reveal the mild suggestion that the Archbishop had paid more attention to his own family, in his distribution of patronage, [30/31] than was usual in that day! What worlds that speaks! The Canon was very solemn. There must be no hint of favouritism. The Dean and Chapter were in honour bound to give the appointment to the most suitably qualified applicant without favour for name or status. Later The Star did a little arithmetic about Canon Moore when he went to give in his own account in a better world--

'The rectory of Hollingbourne, with the salary of £787, was enjoyed by Mr. Moore for sixty-three years. Excluding all calculations of compound interest, and merely multiplying the annual income by the number of years for which it was held, we find that this reverend gentleman drew from the country, £49,581 on this account alone. The rectory of Hunton, with an income of £1,057 was enjoyed for sixty-three years also, or £67,901. The rectory of Eynesford, at £600 a year for sixty-three years, amounts to £37,800. The rectory of Latchingdon, at an income of £955 for sixty-one years, amounts to £58,255. The Canonry of Canterbury Cathedral, at £1,000 a year for sixty-one years, amounts to £61,000. The registrarship of Wills at £8,000 a year for fifty-three years to 1858, yields £424,000 and the compensation allowance of £7,990 for seven years amounts to £5,930. In all, this gentleman, according to the simplest kind of computation, has drawn £753,647 . . . . Personally, Mr Moore was, doubtless, a most estimable man.'* [Footnote: * Quoted in The Guardian, 13 Sept 1865, p.926.]

Canon Croft, whose conscience was perhaps less tender, said 'Of course, my dear boy, we shall give it you, if only for your father's sake.' So it was all settled and the Jenners moved into the precincts in October 1852. They lived in a house in the north east corner of the Green Court opposite the Dark Entry, of Ingoldsby fame.

English society was then divided into sets. The dividing lines were more rigid then--we have the word of social historians for it--than they are now. However, at Canterbury there were two sets that counted. First there were the Cathedral dignitaries, the officers of the Calvary Depot, the neighbouring county gentry and a few professional men. Jenner was in this set. Below him he saw another set, clergy, doctors and solicitors for the most part. He suspected that below them there was another set made up chiefly of tradespeople. Beyond that limit his mind did not range. He had not the eye of Mr. Jingle, at Chatham. In the fifties this seemed right and proper and there was no snobbishness on the one side or jealousy on the other--all that was to come in later and more democratic days. Jenner was popular among his fellow minor canons, in part because they felt that he had raised their status. The Archbishop, in those days, had no place of residence at Canterbury and was only in his metropolitan cathedral for official occasions. He was either at Lambeth or at his country estate at Addington. Usually ordinations were at Lambeth and consecrations at Westminster Abbey. The Dean reigned at Canterbury--Bully for the Dean.

[32] On 28 June 1854, George Augustus Selwyn came and preached an impressive sermon on Ezekial XLVII, 3-5. Dr. Selwyn had been appointed bishop of New Zealand in 1841 and was home on his first leave. An Apostolic warrior, his sermon was noted in the Minor Canon's diary.

Jenner now took the architectural education of his little boy in hand. What better teacher could there be and where might a finer text book be found? He was startled, he tells us, on the correct lines of nomenclature as laid down by the Cambridge Camden Society. Transition, might be used, 'it was a common term of course,' but ... . What could not be used was Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular--in their place one said Romanesque, First Pointed, Middle Pointed, and Third Pointed. It was all a part of the society's mission to tidy up the Church of England.

Mr Stanley was about to leave his canonry,--the canons were all called Mr in those days, but he remained a close friend of Jenner's, no less when Dean of Westminster, despite the divergence of their theological views.

Another activity of Jenner's was to found and conduct the Canterbury Amateur Musical Society. Dean Alford joined it on coming to Canterbury and since it met chiefly in private houses, and called itself the C.A.M.S., the Dean promptly labelled it the Cake and Muffin Society! However, it served its day and provided a good deal of entertainment for vocalists and instrumentalists in the district. Among them was Sidney Cooper who painted those moony looking cows standing, so water-logged, in the Stour. The concerts had the effect, though unintentional perhaps, of bringing a wider public into touch with the Cathedral. Unintentional, because in those palmy days you took the Church of England or you didn't, and if you didn't, you didn't count.

Presently, in 1854, the Chapter living of Preston-next-Wingham fell vacant. Jenner was thirty-four years of age and felt it time he had a living of his own. As the senior minor canon he stated his claim to the parish. He was duly instituted and he held this tiny isolated parish, with its population of 500 persons and gross income of £450, for the remaining forty-four years of his life. It was the only preferment this gifted man enjoyed.

Jenner entered upon his charge with great joy. He had, in the previous year, been on a tour of Portugal with his closest friend John Mason Neale and some others of the Cambridge Camden Society. His health had always been good and he was physically buoyant. A master at learning languages he had in great haste acquired enough Portugese to see the party through the Tour. Now he was back, full of enthusiasm, and as at Maryfield with an unimpeded opportunity to restore and reform. Donec templa refeceris, no longer, for him, an under-[32/33]graduate motto but a practical command. But Jenner was sensitive of the feelings of others. Whatever some contemporaries of his own school might do, and they did a number of stupid and irritating things, Jenner was a thoughtful, cultivated, gentleman. In the Dunedin controversy his friends would say that his virtue leaned to failing's side. 'Whoever came back from New Zealand it would not have been I', said Bishop Wilberforce to him in conversation. He could not change his nature and the reforming measures he took at Preston, as at Maryfield, were taken slowly and after the most careful teaching and preparation.

It took two years' hard work to educate the parishioners to the acceptance of the proper Camden principles for the restoration of their church. But at the end of the period they had raised the necessary money and they were with him all the way. The restoration began in September 1856. The church was of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in origin, beautified in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jenner did away with the three-decker pulpit, the reading desk and the clerk's desk, the square box pews in chancel and nave and the west gallery. Perhaps the greatest enhancement came from his unbricking of the original windows in the aisles. These consisted of two lights each and had been blocked up earlier in the century on account of the draught. Dormer windows had been cut in the roofs to supply the light thus lost below! The altar was enlarged and raised on steps, oak choir stalls were introduced, a light screen with a cross on it divided the chancel from the nave, and a carved oak eagle was introduced as a lectern. The nave and aisles were reseated, and the parishioners were not sure whether they or the parson had thought of all these things. Dr. Mill's successor at Brasted having no use for popish furniture, the churchwardens presented Jenner with a very fine pair of altar candlesticks of Cambridge Camden Society design and a set of choir surplices. The single objection to all that was done came from a gentleman farmer who, seeing the surplices for the first time, picked up his top hat and walked out. The only result of this protest was that other leading members of the congregation called on him the next day to ask after his health, and wish him a speedy recovery!

It is important to know exactly what constituted the ideal that Jenner held before him. It reflected the stage of development of the Catholic Revival at that time. Again it enables us to judge him in the events which followed. He started, on arrival, with daily services. These were at nine in the mornings, and on Saints' Days and their Eves there would be evensong at seven. A choir was started of boys and girls largely drawn from the village school. Very soon men joined the choir and the girls were dropped. There were ten men and ten boys. The Vicar was infinitely patient as a choir master and soon their voices, which were rather rough at first, improved under his guidance. They [33/34] were taught plainsong chants for the psalms and canticles, and some simple anthems for festivals. The chants were taken from The Psalter Noted arranged by Thomas Helmore, a great friend of the Vicar and a considerable contributor to the improvement of English church music in his time. The Collection of hymns The Hymnal Noted was produced by the Society. The words were mostly translations by the Revd. J. M. Neale and the tunes came largely from Sarum sources. Just occasionally the Roman as well as the Sarum variant of the tune was given but it would be called another version of the same melody. Rome was a word the Society, despite popular opinion to the contrary, could never bring itself to use. At first there was a barrel organ but Jenner had the barrel removed and keyboards added to the instrument. The instrument was new, and it says a lot for the Vicar's powers of persuasion that the improvement was accepted in good faith. A little later a splendid organ was given to the Church by the Revd. Samuel Stephenson Greatheed, another member of the Trinity set, third Wrangler, an early editor of the Cambridge Mathematical Journal; and a composer of sacred music. This organ, splendid as it was, had no swell, for the Society variously described the device as mechanica or meretricious. Greatheed designed the organ himself and insisted that the pipes should be arranged in their proper order. So it nearly filled the large chancel aisle--the Society seemed not to mind that, so anxious were they to be correct, and so relieved to get rid of serpents and west galleries.

On Sundays there was mattins, litany, and Holy Communion with sermon at 10.30. Evensong was at 3 in the winter months and at 6.30 in the summer. After the second lesson at evensong there was catechising of the school children at first, and later a sermon was preached instead. If there was a baptism it was taken before the sermon in strict accordance with the rubrics. The canticles, and at evensong the Psalms, were sung by the choir to plainsong, but at mattins the Psalms were said, alternate verses by the Vicar and congregation, and the glorias sung. The congregation liked it that way and in deference to their wishes it always remained the practice until Jenner's death in 1898. A celebration of Holy Communion was introduced at 8 o'clock on Sundays, except the first Sunday in the month, on Saints Days and on the greater festivals at 8 o'clock and also after mattins. Coloured stoles, with altar frontals and pulpit hangings to match, were used towards the end of the fifties. Jenner's son has told us that he first saw a chasuble worn in 1858, but not by his father. Many years later he adopted the use of a white linen vestment, made by his wife with a Y cross, cross-stitched in red. From the nave it was hard to distinguish from a surplice. In the meantime Jenner was writing hymn tunes, three of which were to be accepted for Hymns Ancient and Modern. He was a close friend of Dr. Monk and of Sir Henry Baker. One might sum up [34/35] Jenner's position in the movement by saying that, while he followed the Society's guidance in architecture and furnishings in a very mild way, his chief interest and his principal contribution was in the field of Church Music. At Preston all was very restrained and inoffensive. There was a large congregation of regular worshippers, and the roll of communicants was, for those times, unusually high. Lecturing at Stafford on Church Music in 1864 Jenner said that he was distressed at the standard of singing and the irreverent behaviour of the men and boys in the choir of Lichfield Cathedral. Both were far inferior to the choir of his own little parish with a population of only 500 souls.* [Footnote: * The Guardian 6 Jan 1864 p.6.]

The Rev. W. E. Heygate tells us that Jenner had run his village school for six months himself when unable to get a master and this had made him very popular with the children. Above all his practice, after the evening service, of gathering the lads and young men round him on the lawn and telling them stories and drawing morals for their edification completely won all hearts. His worst enemies always said that he was a warm-hearted, sensitive man, and that he had all the pastoral gifts in large measure.

On 14 October 1865 Archbishop Longley summoned Jenner to Addington Palace. He said that he had received a letter from the Metropolitan of New Zealand asking him to nominate a Bishop for Dunedin. Dr. G. A. Selwyn had asked for 'a clergyman able and willing to undertake the work of hewing a statue out of a very rough block of stone; a vigorous man, with some power of speech, and real earnestness of purpose, able to walk and ride, and not afraid of weather!' No record of the interview appears to have been preserved but at a later date his Grace wrote 'I knew all the while perfectly well that you were a great advocate for Choral Services and surpliced choirs; but all this did not weigh with me in prevention of your appointment to that See'. An interesting side-light on the Archbishop's attitude to the work of one who had founded the first choral union in the Province and given a good deal of encouragement to similar developments elsewhere. However nothing of this was discussed at the interview. The Archbishop had known Jenner at Harrow and he now knew him to be one of the most successful parish priests in his diocese. He could not only walk and ride but he could swim powerfully, and he was a wizard with a boat. He was exceptionally strong and robust.

Mr. Jenner accepted the offer on October 17 and the Archbishop wrote to the Metropolitan by the Mail leaving via Marseilles on the 26th notifying him that Jenner had accepted the nomination. He also sent him the declaration of adherence to the Constitution of the New Zealand Church, duly signed. He wrote Jenner thanking him on the [35/36] 18th 'May it please God to prosper your work, and bless your labours in spreading the Tidings of the Gospel among the Heathen'. Since the majority of the population were Scottish Presbyterians and there were scarcely any Maoris, it seems his Grace must have nodded a little!

In January 1866 Dr. Selwyn wrote to Jenner expressing his satisfaction at the nomination and accepting it. On 13 February Dr. Harper, Bishop of Christchurch wrote, 'I am most thankful to hear by a letter from your sister, Mrs. Dyke, that you have expressed your willingness to undertake the office.' The new diocese was to be taken out of his See and to comprise its rural deaneries of Otago and Southland. The Bishop was a little cautious about raising the necessary endowment. '. . .we have at present towards the £6,000 which is needed for the endowment of the See about £4,200, and I shall be much disappointed if the remaining £1,800 be not speedily raised. At the same time it is right that I should add, that I am not very sanguine about this. The gold fields which formed the chief source of wealth in that part of my Diocese are now comparatively deserted and the sheep and cattle station Holders are suffering with the rest of the Province in the prevailing monetary depression.' He goes on to say that the knowledge 'that there is a Clergyman highly recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury willing to undertake the office of a Bishop amongst them, will stir up their zeal and liberality'. Bishop Harper knew the Jenner family fairly well, and had been at Eton with several of the brothers.

Since Jenner had no private means he was a little concerned about the financing of the new See but felt satisfied when he got a letter from the Metropolitan on 16 April--

'My dear Bishop of Dunedin,

I thus address you in the hope that my letter to the Archbishop will have removed all doubts, and that you and Dr. Suter are already consecrated. (The letter is torn, with pieces missing, but one can get a picture of the situation as the good Bishop relates it).

I write to give you the latest information after a tour of six weeks through the Province of Otago.

1. I found on my arrival that the Rural Deanery Board had taken fright at the promptness with which the (torn) . . . and therefore took them by surprise. I attended a meeting of the Board, and endeavoured to convince them that there was no cause for apprehension.'

A list of the endowments for the Bishopric follows.

'I find an unanimous desire for the speedy arrival of their Bishop.'

On May 2nd, Bishop Selwyn expresses his impatience:

'My dear Bishop of Dunedin,

On my return from the South I found your letter of 25 January which had not been forwarded to me, as I was expected at home a month earlier than I [36/37] actually returned. It is very gratifying to me to find that you have so heartily given yourself to our work: and I hope that you will not be disappointed. My late tour through the Province of Otago has convinced me that you have a very hopeful field of work before you. May an abundant blessing be granted to you.

I very much regret the delay in your Consecration; because you might have made good use of your time in England in raising funds and engaging Clergymen. We shall not expect you much before the end of the year.

You seem to have been told that your subscription to the New Zealand Church constitution was premature if not unnecessary. On the contrary the General Synod expressly requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to place our Constitution in the hands of any Clergyman whom he might select, and obtain his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate.'

Jenner was not so lacking in faith as to delay longer, to hesitate on a simple matter of a little fund-raising, when the Metropolitan, the Bishop of Christchurch and a number of clergy and laity were urging him to come to New Zealand and exercise his holy office.

Henry Lascelles Jenner was consecrated Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in the colony of New Zealand on St. Bartholomew's Day, 24 August, 1866, in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Canterbury. The certificate of Consecration records that the Archbishop had obtained 'Her Majesty's Licence by Warrant under the Royal Sign Manual and Signet,' and records that he had called to his assistance C. J. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and A. C. Tait, Bishop of London.

There are two points of interest here. Consecrations usually took place at Westminster Abbey, for the convenience of the Archbishop, but the Dean of Canterbury had to give his consent for this to be done. Jenner had been connected with the Cathedral as priest-vicar, he loved it dearly and had an intimate knowledge of the building, he had greatly improved its music, and now he held a chapter living. Dean Alford was a great friend of his and he was persuaded to withhold his consent for the consecration to take place elsewhere. The second matter was that the Church of New Zealand had recently disestablished itself and so there were no Letters Patent from the Crown appointing him to a specific See, but a Queen's Mandate or Licence without which the consecration could not have taken place. Bishop Suter was also consecrated, having been elected Bishop of the existing and vacant See of Nelson, also in New Zealand. The cathedral congregation was very large, there were a great many communicants, and the service was very long.

Six of Bishop Jenner's brothers were present--Arthur was in Canada--and all were over six feet and particularly broad and hand-[37/38]some. They were doing well in their chosen professions--the Law, the Navy, the Army and the Civil Service. His sister Charlotte was there with her husband Francis Hart Dyke, Queen's Proctor and Registrar of the Province. He it was who read the Licence. Anne was also present with her husband Evan Nepean, Canon of Westminster. The family party divided for luncheon between the Deanery and Minor-Canon Hirst's house, but all met later at the Fountain Hotel.

The party was a jolly one. All the Jenners had a great sense of fun and their brother-in-law, Evan Nepean, was a popular raconteur in the high circles in which he moved. He was the incumbent of the Grosvenor Chapel, a fashionable Mayfair church which, being a proprietary chapel, existed on its pew rents. Nepean was a good preacher and gathered a distinguished congregation including the Duke of Cambridge, son of George III. He enlivened the party by telling two stories about him. The Duke was old, he was very deaf, and he was inclined to think aloud. 'Praying for rain, is he? What's the good of praying for rain with the wind in the North East'--the new Bishop had been in the Chapel at the time. There was another occasion at Evensong when the Cantate Domino was said in place of the Magnificat. The old Duke in a loud voice interrupted, 'With trumpets and shawms, Shawms? Shawms? What's a shawm, Mr. Nepean?' 'A musical instrument, Sir' replied the courtly Nepean. 'Thank you, thank you, Mr. Nepean. Please go on.'

It was a great occasion for the Jenner family, and triumphant for Bishop Jenner. The Cambridge Camden Society felt it had been honoured and had commissioned Burgess, one of their favourite architects, to design a crozier in silver and coloured ivory and richly jewelled. The most expensive crozier ever made, they said. The Bishop of London, so soon to succeed to Canterbury, took a great liking to the Bishop's young son, Henry Jenner, then aged seventeen, and there sprang up a friendship between them which was to last until Tail's death.* [Footnote: * In July 1870 Archbishop Tait would nominate him to the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. In 1879 he transferred to the Department of Printed Books where he rendered distinguished and memorable service until his resignation at 61 in 1909.] Tait may have been a little odd ecclesiologically-wise but he was a gentleman! It was to this friendship that, in ensuing events, we owe some peeps behind the scenes.

The events at Canterbury were a glorious overture to a work never to be performed. Jenner took Burgess's barbarous bauble to New Zealand; but brought it back again, the veriest simulacrum of a dream. Unique in Anglican history, he never became a diocesan, suffragan or assistant bishop. Samuel Wilberforce tried to soap him over [38/39] by telling him that he was in the position of a retired Colonial Bishop; galling to be so comforted by a close friend and the greatest of the English bishops! Bishop Patterson [Patteson], a friend and supporter, would be murdered in Melanesia--a glorious martyrdom for him; some of his English friends would go to gaol, and gaol-courting was at least exciting; but he was first inhibited and then rejected. To be rejected, and rejected by Colonials, was that the hell of it?

Jenner's private correspondence reveals that the rejection by the colonials was not the greatest indignity he had to bear. Where he was concerned, the Primate of All England sat lightly to the 9th commandment. This insignificant figure, too lacking in courage to bear false witness himself, allowed others to bear it on his behalf. Longley may not have lied, that would have required some mettle, but he remained silent and, thereby, he kept back part of the truth.

For those who cannot bear to read of Bishops who broke their bonds, and priests who posed and prattled, it would be best to omit this section and go straight to the Journal. But for those who are prepared to hear a squalid story, there is a tale of perfidy and treachery to tell.

There is so much in nineteenth-century Anglicanism that stirs the imagination; so many signs of reviving life at home and unparalleled missionary activity overseas. But there was a dark side to it all. It was the century of Party. As the Catholic Revival progressed, Protestant opposition increased. The founding of the English Church Union in 1859--for the first year it was called the Church of England Protection Society was countered by the formation of the Church Association in 1865. Protestant Bishops dealt hysterically with Catholic priests who were often unnecessarily provocative. The Reformation was good: the Reformation was bad--it was a Party matter, and you took your choice. The surplice and later the chasuble were the badge of the Catholic party. In our day an emphasis on biblical theology and the growth of a study of comparative religion has created an entirely different situation. The Victorian interpretation of the issues of the Reformation seem irrelevant and misbegotten. The insignia can no longer be trusted, for the surplice is universal, vestments are commonplace, and Bishops, in all traditions, go resplendent in pectoral cross and mitre. We can never fully savour the wormwood of our grandsires, but if we crave a flavour of the gall we cannot do better than go to the Dunedin Bishopric Controversy.

George Augustus Selwyn went out to New Zealand as its first Anglican bishop in 1842. He faced an almost superhuman task, for unfortunately it was not virgin soil. Samuel Marsden, the blacksmith's son, had first preached the gospel in New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814. A Mission was launched by the Church Missionary Society but no ordained ministers were prepared to volunteer. This was agreeable to [39/40] Marsden who believed that the first missionaries should be mechanics. And so it was--a carpenter, a shoe-maker, and a schoolteacher. The European crafts should be taught at the same time as its religion. 'The early missionaries bickered incessantly and bitterly among themselves. Within twenty years three had to be dismissed, one for adultery, one for drunkenness, and one for a crime worse than either.'* [Footnote: * A History of New Zealand (Penguin) p. 37--Keith Sinclair.] The Anglican clergy had been supported by the Church Missionary Society until the country was annexed as a colony in 1840. Then there was the New Zealand Company founded in 1839 to possess the soil of New Zealand and sell it to English settlers--their behaviour was known all too tragically. Nor were their victims, the Maoris, an easy people to fold. The rakings of Newgate had been their teachers, their lands had been sold, their country had been annexed. In all this morass; moral, spiritual, political, Selwyn worked his miracle. He was but 33 years of age when he landed. He was tough of fibre and firm in resolve. The colonials often felt that he moved too quickly, but it is abundantly clear that without his inspired and dynamic leadership there might have been very little movement at all.

George Augustus Selwyn, according to the Letters Patent of 1841, was appointed Bishop of New Zealand subject to the Archbishop and Metropolitan See of Canterbury. In 1847 Bishop Broughton was appointed to the See of Sydney and made Metropolitan of Australasia, himself subject to the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury. This had the effect, as Bishop Selwyn said, of giving him two Metropolitans, and it was rightly regarded in New Zealand as a slight on his position. Bishop Broughton died in 1853 and his successor was made Metropolitan of Australia but not of Australasia, so Selwyn was once more directly under Canterbury. In 1856, When Dr. Harper was appointed the first Bishop of Christchurch, the Letters Patent made him subject not to Selwyn but to the Metropolitan See of Sydney. The Church in New Zealand wrote to the Crown pointing out that by the arrangement then in force all future bishoprics would also be subject to Sydney. They were righteously indignant that Selwyn should be so slighted and cut off from his Episcopal colleagues. The matter was righted in 1858 when the Gazette of 5 October gave notice that:

'The Queen has been pleased to direct that letters patent be issued under the great seal for reconstituting the Bishopric of New Zealand and for appointing the Right Rev. George Augustus Selwyn, D.D. to be Bishop of the said See and Metropolitan of New Zealand: for erecting the Bishopric of Wellington and for appointing the Venerable Charles John Abraham Archdeacon of Waitemata to be Bishop of the said See; for erecting the Bishopric of Waiapu and for appointing the Venerable William Williams Archdeacon of Waiapu [40/41] to be Bishop of the said See; for erecting the Bishopric of Nelson and for appointing the Rev. Edmund Hobhouse to be Bishop of the said See, and for placing under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of New Zealand the See of Christchurch now under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Australia.'

But in future negotiations with Canterbury the Church in New Zealand would not forget the vacillations and would work for 'sturdy independence'.

Selwyn now decided that the time was ripe for the division of the great diocese of Christchurch, by elevating the Rural Deanery of Otago and Southland into a separate see with its Cathedral in Dunedin. He was widely criticised for hastening a request to Dr. Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to consecrate a Bishop for Dunedin. He felt he had moral justification for his action, but he later confessed to Longley's successor, Archbishop Tait, that he had no written authority. It is difficult in this controversy to see where most of the principal actors stood--their letters are self-contradictory, and their private remarks are often at variance both with their public utterances and with their correspondence.

Selwyn towered above them all, but even he is of little help in telling a simple straight-forward story. When Bishop Selwyn wanted to clarify a problem he made a habit of displaying it. It might be well to borrow his technique and to display extracts of his letters to Jenner to illustrate his own confusion about a crucial issue.

16 April, 1866 'My dear Bishop of Dunedin, I thus address you in the hope that my letter to the Archbishop will have removed all doubts and that you and Dr. Suter are already consecrated ... I found on my arrival that the Rural Deanery Board had taken fright at the promptness with which the Archbishop acted upon my request that he would select a Bishop for Dunedin.' 2 May, 1866 My dear Bishop of Dunedin, I much regret the delay in your Consecration . . .'

1 July, 1870 'I do not know what is meant by your words; "The admitted fact that your Lordship is alone responsible for my nomination and consecration for the Bishopric of Dunedin" I must remind you that I had no personal knowledge of you--that I took no part in the nomination or in the Consecration, that I was astonished at the haste with which the appointment was made in England and that all I did was to hasten to Dunedin on receipt of the news of the appointment too raise funds for the endowment.'

[42] 22 Oct, 1866 '. . . that Dr. Jenner was nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury at by the Archbishop of Canterbury at my request'.

[42] 8 July, 1872 'You therefore are the first Bishop of Dunedin in one admissible sense; and the New Zealand Synod may perhaps be able to prove and certainly will assert that Bishop Neville is the first Bishop of Dunedin in another sense. I do not agree with them, but I do not think their assumption worth disputing about.'

We know, of course, that he was in New Zealand and could not possibly have taken part in the consecration, and the record says that on receipt of the news of the appointment he waited two months before visiting Dunedin! We are not here examining evidence at second-hand, or accepting irresponsible or mistaken reporting by a third person; the letters from which the extracts are quoted lie before the writer in the Bishop's own hand! No one would for one moment question the motives of Selwyn, and Jenner certainly never did. While he grieved at the muddle, be it said to his credit, in all the acrimonious disputes which followed he uttered no word of public criticism of Bishop Selwyn whom he greatly admired. But if Bishop Selwyn could slip so fatally, what are we to expect from the little men he left behind him in New Zealand?

Because of the confusion in the evidence it is possible to take more than one course through the maze of it, although one point is clear--and even the General Synod of the Church of New Zealand officially recorded its opinion on it--Bishop Jenner was ill-used and placed in a distressing position by the actions of others.

When Bishop Jenner's appointment was announced some of the English newspapers seized on the fact that he was closely associated with the Cambridge Movement. He was labelled Ritualist. This was a term difficult to define. There was a general acceptance among men in the party of a certain theological position, but when it came to ceremonial which is what the general public, and oddly enough the Ecclesiologists themselves, meant by ritual, there was an individual variation in practice. There was some truth in the allegations of the Low and the Broad that these men were congregationalists. What was said in the English papers was copied into the papers in New Zealand, and occasioned a good deal of heart-searching there.

The first settlers in Otago had come in two parties, in 1848. In contrast to Canterbury, which was an Anglican Settlement, Otago was fostered by the New Zealand Company as a Scottish Presbyterian Settlement. The great upheaval in the Church of Scotland which resulted in the emergence of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 was [42/43] largely caused by a dispute about establishment. When the 396 ministers and professors signed the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission they voluntarily surrendered an income amounting to over £100,000 a year. These men were in earnest. 'The Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of the church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate'. In such a community anything that savours of state control, and particularly of English control, in religious matters, anything which suggested episcopacy or priestcraft would be viewed with the gravest suspicion. The church itself is spelt with a small 'c'. When men care enough about their own form of religion to settle in colonies where liberty of worship is to be upheld, it is their own form of liberty they usually have in mind. In Otago the early colonists created an atmosphere which coloured the life of the whole community.

The nature of the colony was changed in 1861 when Gabriel Read discovered a gold-field at Lawrence. Diggers poured in from America and from Australia, and the population soared. These people belonged to many nations, but despite their great numbers they had little effect on the religious atmosphere.

Anglicans were small in numbers. They shared with the majority of the early settlers a tendency to be easily stirred up against what they regarded as threats to their spiritual and civil liberties. They feared the pride that goes with prelacy; they succumbed to the demagoguery that attends on democracy.

Perhaps it might be best to begin at the beginning, risking the tedium, in order to clarify the situation.

As early as 1861 the Rural Deanery Board of Otago and Southland passed the following resolution:

'The Board, on the recommendation of its President and the Diocesan Synod, (Dr. H. J. C. Harper, Bishop of Christchurch), has taken into consideration the great importance of Endowing a Bishopric for Otago and Southland, but no plan of action has yet been decided on'.

At the following Annual Meeting, in January 1863, the Board passed another resolution which read:

'That this Board, endorsing the views expressed by the Primate, the Bishop of Christchurch, the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch, and the late Rural Deanery Board, is of opinion that the time has arrived when it is desirable that there should be a Bishop of Dunedin, who should have the spiritual superintendence of the Church of England in the Provinces of Otago and Southland'.

In this year there was another resolution, that an attempt should be made to find 'a hundred contributors' willing to guarantee the collection of £50 each within two years.

[44] The Bishop of the Diocese subsequently wrote the Rural Deanery Board:

'Every visit which I have paid to the Southern Provinces since the discovery of the gold fields, has convinced me more and more that the spiritual wants of the members of our communion, who are now spreading themselves in rapidly increasing numbers throughout the Provinces cannot be effectually supplied except by efforts which require more personal and unremitting direction than can be given by a Bishop resident at Christchurch. It must be borne in mind that the duty of a Bishop in these Provinces is not limited to the oversight of already formed Parishes or Churches. He must follow the population into the Agricultural, Pastoral, and Gold Mining Districts, and ascertain by personal observation where congregations are to be gathered, Churches built, and Ministers sent, and by his repeated visits and exhortations, stir up the people to make the necessary provision for their spiritual wants; and such duties it is evident, cannot be fully discharged during the visitation of a few weeks once a year; nor, if due time and attention be given to the parts of the Diocese situated in Canterbury, can such visits be prolonged or made more frequently'.

In 1864 the Board passed a further resolution:

'That this Board, recognising the desirability of completing the subscription to the Bishopric Fund for the proposed Diocese of Otago and Southland, recommends his Lordship to receive guarantees of sums of £20 and upwards'.

In 1865, on 26 May, the Bishop of Christchurch presided over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Rural Deanery Board. The Metropolitan of New Zealand was present and suggested that at the next meeting of the Board he should be asked to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him to name a suitable person for the proposed Bishopric.

The meeting of the Board was held on 14 June 1865, and the Rural Dean, the Revd. E. G. Edwards, proposed and Mr. H. Wayne seconded the following resolution:

'That whereas £1,000 has been set apart from the Colonial Bishopric's Fund towards the Endowment of the Bishopric of Otago and Southland, on the condition that £5,000 be raised from other sources, and whereas £1,000 has been given by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in Aid of the Endowment, and 75 acres of land (value £1,000) situated in the province of Canterbury, have been allocated to the same object, and whereas subscriptions to the amount of £1,000 had been promised in the Rural Deanery, and it is expected that the sum now required to complete the Endowment of £6,000 will, in the course of another year, be contributed'.

'Resolved--That the Primate of New Zealand be asked to communicate the above facts to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to request that his Grace will be pleased to recommend a clergyman whom he may deem fit to be consecrated for the proposed See'.

[45] In the light of following events it is interesting to note that Mr. James Smith, who was to become the chief New Zealand advocate of Dr. Jenner's claim, at this time proposed an amendment, and the resolution was lost. So far the situation is clear. The majority of people on the Board thought that for financial reasons it was premature to make an approach to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but they did not raise an objection to the approach to the Archbishop in due time, as a proper procedure. There were some who did not see the necessity for a Bishop, and some who regarded Episcopacy as of the bene esse but not the esse of the Church. The Revd. Frank Simmons wrote to a Scottish Bishop to say:

The Bishop of New Zealand, when he comes here, carries all before him--from that or for other reasons he generalises too rapidly, I think, and insists upon Bishops: Bishops by all means if they are Selwyns--This is exactly what it is--we want men'.* [Footnote:  *John Bull, 15 Jan 1867, p.425.]

The situation is clear. The Rural Deanery Board on 14 June 1865 declines to allow the Primate to write to the Archbishop asking for a nomination for the proposed Bishopric. How, then, does it come about that Dr. Selwyn actually writes the Archbishop, in the very terms which the Board refuses to accept, and does so within a matter of weeks?

The Third General Synod of the New Zealand Church was held at Christchurch on the 27 April 1865. The previous General Synod, in 1862 at Nelson, had pressed Dr. Selwyn to take steps to find a Bishop for Dunedin and now they did so again, but verbally. It was resolved that the next Synod should be held in 1868, at Dunedin, provided a Bishop had been appointed by that date. Bishop Abraham said that if the Rural Deanery Board did not show a greater interest in the founding of a Bishopric in the next three years than it had in the previous three years, then the Synod had better decide on an alternative venue. Accordingly Auckland was named as a second choice.+ [Footnote: + The Guardian, 7 June 1871, pp.624-27.] But Dr. Selwyn had not built up the Church in New Zealand on democratic principles or by allowing events to take their natural course. Following the Synod Bishop Selwyn wrote the fatal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the Rural Deanery Board to the course of events. Dr. Selwyn wrote them:

Auckland, Jan 5, 1866

By this mail I have received a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, informing me that he had selected the Rev. Henry Lascelles Jenner, Vicar of Preston, Kent, to occupy the new see of Dunedin. His Grace gives a very high character of Mr. Jenner. The promptitude with which the Archbishop has [45/46] acted upon my request that he would recommend some Clergyman for the office makes it necessary to take immediate steps for raising the Endowment Fund, and also for ascertaining that the Diocese of Christchurch is satisfied with the Archbishop's choice.

On the subject of the Bishopric, Resolutions of the Otago and Southland Rural Deanery Board have already been passed, but our constitution provides no mode of election or nomination of a Bishop for a newly constituted Diocese. In all former instances I have suggested the person, and the Church members in the district proposed for the new Diocese have given their formal consent, without which I should not have proceeded further. In this instance having exhausted my stock of personal friends, I applied to the Archbishop, and through his kindness, I am now enabled to mention the name of Rev. H. L. Jenner, and to certify that he has formally accepted the Church Constitution, by an instrument in writing and will be ready to come out as Bishop of Dunedin, if he is assured of the willingness of the members of the Church to welcome him as their chief pastor. I have written to request him to put himself in communication with Mr. Quick.

May I request you to take immediate steps for bringing this subject before the Rural Deanery Board. I will lay the Archbishop's letter before the Standing Commission and procure, if possible, a circular letter from that body, urging the immediate collection of the Endowment Fund.

I am, etc.
G.A. New Zealand.

Several points of interest are raised in this letter. It will be noted that Selwyn does not here suggest that the Archbishop acted precipitately, as he was later to do when under fire from the opposition. Why did not Dr. Selwyn feel that the very worthy Rural Dean might be a possible occupant of the see when his Rural Deanery was elevated into a Bishopric? To Mr. Edward's credit, be it said, he was one of Dr. Jenner's supporters, and most zealous in his cause. And were there, in fact, no other possible New Zealand candidates? It was said later that Dr. Harper, the Bishop of Christchurch, was anxious for the office for his son, the Archdeacon. Jenner did not himself allege this, it would have been outside his ethical code to have questioned motives.

The Rural Deanery Board met on 22 February 1866, and passed two resolutions; on the proposal of Mr. James Smith, seconded by Mr. R. B. Martin:

'That as a sufficient provision has not yet been made for the support of a Bishop, it is not expedient to take any action at present with a view to confirming the conditional appointment of the Rev. H. L. Jenner, more especially as that appointment has been made without the authority or concurrence of the Board'.

and moved by the Rev. E. H. Granger, seconded by the Rev. R. L. Stanford:

[47] 'That this Board is desirous to record its extreme regret that through misconception the Rev. H. L. Jenner should have been led to suppose that the time has arrived for the appointment of a Bishop of Otago and Southland, there being at present no sufficient endowment raised, and that this Board continues to be decidedly opposed to the appointment of a Bishop without a sufficient endowment having been provided, and that the Honorary Secretary be requested to forward this resolution, together with the Minutes of the last Meeting of the Rural Deanery Board, to the Rev. H. L. Jenner, through the President of the Board'.

The Rev. H. L. Jenner was never officially informed of these resolutions because the President of the Board, the Bishop of Christchurch, vetoed them. In fact he first learned of the meeting and its resolutions four months after his consecration. In his letter of welcome to Jenner, dated 13 February 1866, the Bishop had added a postscript 'I will write again by the next mail if I have anything fresh to communicate'. He does not, however, write Jenner again until 14 May, when he gives details of the improvement in the prospects of the endowment since he last wrote, but makes no mention of the adverse resolutions. A somewhat sinister proceeding.

We have now seen in some detail what had been happening in New Zealand, but we must remember that Jenner knew nothing of all this when he was consecrated Bishop, nor for some considerable time later. The offer had been made by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 14 October 1865; but the Archbishop did not apply to Lord Carnarvon for the Queen's Mandate until 8 August 1866* [Footnote: * Letter given in Constitutional Church Government--Clarke, p. 185] and the consecration took place on 24 August 1866. There had been ample time for protest, despite the distance of New Zealand. None had been communicated to the Archbishop nor to Jenner, indeed the very reasonable protests made in New Zealand had been deliberately and deceptively withheld. Both the Metropolitan of New Zealand and the Bishop of Christchurch continued repeatedly to cry peace, peace when there was no peace.+ [Footnote: +'Had I been allowed to receive these resolutions, you may be very sure I should not have presented myself for consecration, and thus I should have escaped the tremendous injury, which, to the eternal disgrace of the New Zealand Church, has been inflicted upon me'. Letter of Bishop Jenner to Bishop of Christchurch, 2 July 1873.] Jenner was a man perhaps over-sensitive of others' opinions about him. We have seen how, even in trifling matters of ceremonial, he consulted his flocks and would only move by their unanimous consent. He would have withdrawn as a Nominee, but once he was consecrated he felt he could not resign; the matter was not in his hands. All the Catholic centuries told him that he was a Bishop of the Church of God and the machinations of semi-democratic assemblies must take second place to that supreme and sacred fact.

[48] Having been consecrated, many individuals began writing him kind letters from his proposed new see. Among them many expressed enthusiasm for his early arrival among them, and particularly the Rural Dean, Mr. Edwards, the Revd. W. F. Oldham of Riverton and the Revd. W. P. Tanner of Invercargill.

The next annual meeting of the Rural Deanery Board was held on the 21 February 1867, the Bishop of Christchurch presiding, and he thus addresses them (ignoring completely the annual meeting of 1866, at which he was not present, and its resolutions):

'Since the last Meeting of the Rural Deanery Board, a step has been taken which has an important bearing on the welfare of our Church in these parts. It may be remembered that in 1863 an address was presented me in which the Board strongly expressed its opinion that the Rural Deanery of Otago and Southland should be formed into a separate Diocese, and I was requested to bring this matter before the different Parishes and districts of the Deanery, and to urge upon the members of the Church the exercise of an abundant liberality in contributing the endowment of the proposed Bishopric.

The opinion of the Board was so entirely in accordance with my own views, that I did not hesitate to act upon it, and the effort which I made for this proposal was responded to by the offer of subscriptions to the amount of £950. This was at a time when the resources of the Province of Otago appeared to be daily increasing, and we had every reason to hope that the amount required would be speedily raised. A check, however, in the prosperity of the Province occurred, and the efforts to obtain additional subscriptions were attended with little success. In the meanwhile, a clergyman in England was nominated to the Bishopric of Dunedin by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and in the prospect of this consecration the Bishop of New Zealand visited the Rural Deanery, and by his personal exertions added considerably to the contributions for the endowment; and he also announced his intention of appropriating to the same purpose the several sections near Invercargill, originally purchased for Church purposes from funds at his disposal.

It must be obvious that the necessities of the Church have not diminished since the resolution of the Board in 1863.* [Footnote: * In 1854 the European population of New Zealand was 32,500 of whom almost 12,000 were in Auckland. In 1863 'during the Otago gold-rush, 35,000 immigrants arrived, mostly from Australia, in an unpremeditated mob'. Keith Sinclair--A History of New Zealand (Pelican) p.97.] The number of Church members since then has been steadily increasing in this City and its suburbs; extensive portions of the Agricultural districts of the Provinces of Otago and Southland have been permanently occupied, and large townships have been established in the immediate neighbourhood of the older goldfields, and though something has been done in these districts by the zeal and activity of ordained clergymen and laymen, yet much more is needed, and can scarcely be adequately and efficiently supplied except under the superintendence of a resident Bishop. If a Bishop were needed in 1862, it must be admitted that he is still more needed at the present moment. This I am persuaded is well understood, by those who are [48/49] acquainted with the real state of the Provinces of Otago and Southland, and who desire to maintain for themselves and others the blessings to which they have been called as members of the Church of England. And thereby, perhaps, we hardly expected so speedy a fulfilment of our wishes, and our preparations for the reception of a Bishop are still very incomplete, yet we cannot but recognise in his consecration to his office the hand of God working for our good and think that no exertion on our parts will be wanting to show that we are truly grateful for this.

On hearing of the Consecration of Dr. Jenner, I lost no time in communicating with the Church Societies in England, whose aid had been promised for the endowment of the Bishopric.'

The Bishop went on to give a figure of £4,336.7.10 as available, leaving a gap of £700 to make up the necessary £5,000, and urged the local people to do more.

'He is prepared, no doubt, to serve in his office with a very limited income, but, still the Church should provide a sufficiency for his support, and for those unavoidable expenses which are incidental to his office.'

A resolution was moved by Mr. W. Carr Young, seconded by Rev. E. G. Edwards:

'The Rev. H. Jenner having been nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and consecrated under Royal Mandate, Bishop of the See of Dunedin, this Board recognises the duty of making preparations for his reception by providing a suitable residence, and completing the requisite endowment.'

The Rev. R. L. Stanford, now moved an amendment which was seconded by the Rev. E. H. Granger, Vicar of All Saints, Dunedin.

(It seems a little odd to follow so quickly on the letter he had just written to Jenner!)

'That in the opinion of this Board it is inexpedient, under all circumstances, that Bishop Jenner should enter on the duties of his office in this Province for a considerable time.'

This amendment was withdrawn in favour of another proposed by Mr. James Smith, and seconded by the Rev. R. L. Stanford:

'That, in the opinion of this Board, a sufficient income not having been yet provided for the suitable maintenance of a Bishop of the Church of England, in this Rural Deanery, it is not expedient that this Board should undertake the responsibility of encouraging Dr. Jenner to leave England for the purpose of entering on the duties of the Bishopric of Dunedin, to which his Lordship has been appointed without the concurrence of the Rural Deanery Board.'

Six people voted for the amendment, eleven voted against it and so Mr. Carr Young's Resolution was carried.

Although nothing is said about Dr. Jenner's Ritualism in the reported discussion or resolution Mr. Carr Young later informs us that at the Meeting [49/50] 'the chief, if not the only serious, objection was purely on personal grounds; for with the news of the appointment we received public and private reports of Bishop Jenner's High Church views and ritualistic practices, to which I am happy to believe the Church in New Zealand is firmly and unanimously opposed. Indeed, had it not been for the expectation of his Lordship's early arrival, I am satisfied there would have been, even upon the strength of these vague rumours, a unanimous protest against the appointment, and measures would then have been taken to get it rescinded if possible . . . For myself, I was disinclined to believe these reports.'* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 30 Oct. 1869, p.1170.]

The first public intimations in England that all was not well was the appearance in The Guardian of 11 September 1867 of the principal portions of a memorial said to have been signed by 'A large number of members of the Church of England, residing in the new diocese of Dunedin'. It was addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and complained that an appointment had been made in direct opposition to their wishes, and that Dr. Jenner, having identified himself publicly with the Ritualistic Party, 'the peace and harmony of the proposed new diocese would be destroyed, and great numbers of most earnest members alienated from the Church by the presence of such a chief pastor, and that the work of the Church in these provinces would be hindered if not utterly brought to a standstill'.

The Memorial was the work of the Revd. W. F. Oldham, the Incumbent of Riverton, New Zealand. We have seen the actions he took, unsuccessfully, at the meeting of the Rural Deanery Board on the 21 February 1867. On 27 February he wrote Bishop Jenner thus--making friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness one supposes--

'I am anxious, if possible, to express to you the pleasure with which I, in common with all the clergy, I think, look forward to your arrival among us. I look upon it as likely to be an era in the history of our Church out here, and I hope to work with you for many years, with all my energies, in her much loved service'.

His memorial was ready for dispatch by the 10 July, and ten days later he wrote to The Guardian,+ [Footnote: + The Guardian, 2 Oct 1867, p. 1047.] as follows:

THE DIOCESE OF DUNEDIN

Sir--Allow me to draw attention, through your columns to a memorial to the Archbishop of Canterbury from Churchmen in the province of Southland, New Zealand, part of the proposed new diocese of Dunedin. Its object, you will see, is to pray his Grace to represent to Dr. Jenner, the Bishop consecrated with a view to his taking charge of this southern portion of the colony, the strong feeling of Church-people against the new developments of doctrine and ritual. We are a set of very good moderate Churchmen, and are anxious for the future peace and welfare of the Church of England in New Zealand. A [50/51] few remarks only need be made upon the petition to render it clear to those ignorant of all the circumstances of the case.

The Bishop of New Zealand, without any authority to do so at that time, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to nominate a clergyman suitable for a new see he was anxious to have formed. The Archbishop nominated Dr. Jenner, who wrote out to learn the feelings of the members of the Church, whether they would receive him as their chief pastor. Their representatives were summoned to meet in Dunedin, and passed the strongest resolutions condemning the whole business, and also declaring it premature. This was the prompt and decided answer of the Church out here. These resolutions, however, were never sent officially to Dr. Jenner, having been afterwards vetoed by the Bishop of Christchurch.

We much wish the opinion of our brother Churchmen at home upon the way of doing things out here. The result was that, whether Dr. Jenner received this reply of members of the Church to his question or not, we very shortly afterwards heard that he was consecrated.* [Footnote: *See page 47.]

The Board met again in February, 1867, and the impression then was that Dr. Jenner was at that time very probably on his way, or would be before communications could reach him; and very naturally resolutions were allowed to pass that he should be welcomed on his arrival. Since then we have heard, but only lately, that he was likely to remain in England for the Lambeth Conference, and steps were immediately taken to make known to him the dissatisfaction felt in the colony, and above all, at his making himself conspicuous among the leaders of the extreme party, which has more and more continually shaken confidence in him. For his own sake, and for the peace of the Church in the future, we would urge upon him the inexpediency of coming out to New Zealand under any circumstances.

By finding room for this dispatch you will oblige a large number of Churchmen, and also

Your obedient servant, W. F. Oldham
Incumbent of Riverton.

It will be guessed what bombshells the memorial and the letter were to Jenner's wide circle of friends and acquaintances. He was urged, and not by ritualists only to reply to the letter. He wrote as follows:

THE BISHOP OF DUNEDIN

Sir--Mr. Oldham's letter in your impression of this week requires some notice from me. I beg, therefore, that you will be good enough to insert the following observations in your next number.

Mr. Oldham is a hard-working clergyman in Southland. All I have heard of him is most favourable, and all has been told me by an intimate lay friend and neighbour of his in the colony. Yet it is from this very friend and neighbour that I have received a letter, dated July 18th two days before Mr. Oldham's--which contains the following passages:

"There is a movement on foot which, should this find you still in England, may cause you much annoyance, although I trust you will not see in it [51/52] anything to deter you from entering upon your duties, but rather an incentive to exertion. Let me explain my meaning. I enclose a copy of a memorial, originated, I grieve to say, by my friend Mr. Oldham, to obtain signatures to which the most discreditable means have been resorted to garbled extracts from home papers have been industriously circulated, also all sorts of misrepresentations of your words, actions, etc. Every name on the list has thus been obtained by personal canvass. But this is not all. I have positively ascertained that the names of known and professed Non-Conformists have been appended, among the members and office-bearers of the Church. Unless from this class, I do not believe a single person in Invercargill (the metropolis of Southland) has signed, for the Invercargill vestry very properly prohibited Mr. Oldham from introducing the memorial among the congregation, and passed a resolution requesting him not to interfere in that parish. I also send you a letter from Mr. Oldham, which appeared in last Monday's paper. I cannot express strongly enough my disgust at the discourtesy and uncharitableness both of the letter and the memorial. Long ago I warned you that my father and I, in common with most Churchmen down here (Southland), were averse to the new bishopric, but assured you that, now the step has been taken, you might rely on our support. I now repeat the assurance; and, to show you that we are in earnest, I may tell you that my father, as churchwarden and lay reader, has this very day written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of New Zealand, and the Bishop of Christchurch, warning them of the true character of the memorial."

My object in giving these extracts from my correspondent's letter is assuredly not to cause pain or mortification to Mr. Oldham, to whom I cannot for a moment impute complicity with the "discreditable" measures above described, but only to show my friends in England that the opposition to my appointment, formidable as it seems to be, is by no means universal.

As to the future, I have only to say that nothing that has as yet been advanced perhaps I ought to say that can be advanced will prevent, though it will no doubt delay, my proceeding to my diocese, and giving myself to the work to which I have been set apart, and to which I humbly trust God has called me.

With Mr. Oldham, and my other opponents, I hope to be associated in many a labour of love, having for its object the glory of God and the building up of his Church. They may be assured that wherever I see real worth, wherever real zeal and earnestness are displayed in the service of our common Lord, thither, whatever differences of opinion there may be, will my warm sympathies extend. For myself, I propose God helping me, to work as hard as my strength enables me; so that in one thing at least I shall have a bond of union with all true and hearty labourers in the Lord's vineyard.

Is it too much to ask my present enemies, but as I trust future friends, not to judge me, unseen and unheard, on mere vague rumours or unfriendly newspaper reports, or to impute to me views and intentions that I disclaim? I appeal to those who have known me longest, and have had the best opportunities of observing my career as a parish priest, whether, amidst many shortcomings, I have ever been chargeable with disturbing the peace of the [52/53] Church, or of particular parishes; or of attempting to force or drive people into an acceptance of my opinions. And I repeat here what I declared at York last year, that if anyone expects that on my arrival in New Zealand, I am going to set up advanced ritual, or any ritual beyond what the Colonial Churchmen are prepared for and desire, he will find himself very much mistaken.

H. L. Dunedin.

No mention, it will be observed, of the unctuous letter which Oldham had written to him a few months before. But this kind of thing happens continually throughout the controversy 'who, when he was reviled, reviled not again'. The letter produced a good effect in England whatever the cunning colonists may have thought of it. The same paper carried a letter from Francis Slater of the Grammar School, Sudbury, in which he bore testimony to the wise and faithful work of Jenner for thirteen years in his parish of Preston. There had never been one 'aggrieved parishioner' and universal regret was expressed by the whole parish at his proposed departure.

But worse was to come for on 30 October appeared a letter from Mr. William Carr Young.* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 30 Oct. 1869, p. 1170.]

THE DIOCESE OF DUNEDIN

Sir--My attention has been directed, in a recent number of your Journal, to a letter from the Bishop of Dunedin, in reply to one from the Rev. W. H. Oldham, incumbent of Riverton, New Zealand.

Having taken an active part in church matters in Dunedin, as churchwarden and lay reader, since I first landed there in 1854, and having also been present, as a member, of the February meeting of the Rural Deanery Board to which Mr. Oldham refers, I beg permission to make known through your columns certain proceedings initiated by myself in reference to the Bishop of Dunedin, prior to your receipt of Mr. Oldham's communication, which may throw some light on the subject of the letters in question.

First of all, it is necessary to refer to the deliberations of the Rural Deanery Board in February. The appointment of a bishop was then condemned by all as premature and was totally rejected by some as unauthorised. But there is no doubt that the chief, if not the only serious, objection was purely on personal grounds, for with the news of the appointment we received public and private reports of Bishop Jenner's High Church views and ritualistic practices, to which I am happy to believe the Church in New Zealand is firmly and unanimously opposed. Indeed, had it not been for the expectation of his lordship's early arrival, I am satisfied there would have been, even upon the strength of these vague rumours, a unanimous protest against the appointment, and measures would then have been taken to get it rescinded if possible. For myself, I was disinclined to believe these reports, but soon after my arrival in England at the end of last May I saw enough at the "Feast of Dedication" of St. Mathias, Stoke Newington, in the celebration of which the [53/54] Bishop of Dunedin took a most conspicuous part, to prove that the reports were in no way exaggerated, and to convince me that we may well be alarmed for the safety of our Colonial Church if the doctrines and practices inculcated at St. Mathias be ever introduced into New Zealand, especially if introduced under the auspices of a Bishop selected for the colony by the Primate of England.

I am so convinced of the sympathy of all my fellow colonists on this most important question, that I represented the facts to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, when his Grace expressed his entire disapproval of Bishop Jenner's practices since the appointment was made, and sanctioned the cause which I proposed to adopt with a view to the Bishop's resignation--viz. to obtain a decided expression of opinion from Church-members in the diocese in regard to that appointment.

I accordingly dispatched by the June mail a full report of the proceedings which I witnessed at St. Mathias', together with the result of my interview with his Grace, and have no doubt that the reply, which may be expected shortly, will satisfy Bishop Jenner that the opposition is not only formidable but universal.

Meanwhile, the "Memorial" referred to was set on foot in the diocese before my arrival in England was reported, and although said to be not altogether genuine, it is at least, on the part of all Church-members who signed it, a confirmation of my own feelings against the introduction of ritualism into the Colonial Church.

With regard to the Bishop disclaiming in his letter any intentions of "setting up advanced ritual or any ritual beyond what the colonists are prepared for and desire" we can only judge of the tree by its fruits, and since his lordship has exhibited not only at St. Mathias, but in other so-called Protestant churches, unmistakeable evidences of faith in advanced ritualism, I cannot understand how with his "real earnestness and zeal", he can do otherwise than both preach 'and practise it, as opportunities may occur, in the Colonial diocese. I therefore consider it to be the duty of all true Churchmen in the colony to unite in protecting the Colonial Church against the admission of ritual innovations, which, as police reports too frequently show, are productive of scandal and riot in many sacred edifices,* [Footnote: Mr. Brian Findlay tells me that 'advanced' ritual was already in use in a few New Zealand churches at this time; i.e. St. John Baptist, Philipstown, Christchurch, from the early 1850s.] and are assumedly undermining the constitution of the Church generally in the mother country.

I have only to add that I did not fail to acquaint Bishop Jenner with every step in the course which I have pursued in opposition to him, and urged the expediency of delaying his departure from England until he could satisfy himself as to the views entertained in the diocese of his appointment, and the reception he was likely to get in the colony.

The Bishop, no doubt, ranks me among the number of those whom he calls his "enemies". I can assure his lordship that, as I entertain every feeling of respect for his high office, so I disclaim any idea of emnity [sic] against himself personally, but I am most thoroughly opposed to his extreme views and prac-[54/55]tices, which I conscientiously believe to be un-Protestant, and fatal in the unity of the Church of England.

William Carr Young
8 Albion St, Hyde Park, W.1. October 23rd, 1867

The correspondence was a gift for the staid old Guardian. The Revd. Charles Le Geyt buckled on his sword and entered the fray.* [Footnote: * The Guardian, 18 November 1867, 'Fair Play for the Bishop of Dunedin', p. 1215.] He makes great capital from Mr. Young's words 'even upon the strength of the vague rumours',--the Bishop is to be judged before he can act or speak for himself. Then for the allegation that the Bishop had become a High Churchman only after his appointment (a statement Mr. Young got from the Archbishop of Canterbury as we shall later see) but Mr. Young's letter indirectly proves the falsity of the charge: for it sets forth that "With the news of the appointment" came the public and private reports of the Bishop's High Church views and ritualistic practices. It was perfectly well known both long before and at the time of his appointment that the Bishop was a High Churchman. And it is not that since his appointment he has manifested his true views; but that he has not felt himself able, since, and because of his appointment, to disguise his views, to adopt a "trimming" policy, and to turn his back upon his old friends and fellow-workers in the Church's cause. This is, in truth, the head and point of his offending; had he, during his stay in England, scrupulously abstained from associating with these old friends, and from seeking help from them for his future work, giving them at the same time his support and "God-speed" in theirs at home, the opposition at Dunedin might perhaps have been calmed down.+ [Footnote: + This is interestingly corroborated by Dean Jacobs in his New Zealand, S.P.C.K. 1889, p. 313. 'Had the Bishop been in a position to come out at once to the colony, he might by the force of hard work, combined with tact and discretion, have lived down all opposition; but he was prevented by difficulties of a financial nature from taking this course, and being too honest to disguise his principles, and his new position having made his name more conspicuous than of old, he became more and more an object of dread and suspicion'--Jacobs was an opposer of Jenner, but confessedly and consistently so.] A further point is made, and a point of considerable interest:

'But is it fair, I ask, to expect such a policy of any true hearted and honest man? Such conduct has not been required of other High Church Colonial Bishops while in England, several of whom have taken a more "conspicuous part" in similar services and have adopted more ritualistic practices than the Bishop of Dunedin. I have reason to know this, and further, that he has been especially scrupulous on this head, fully realising the difficulties and impossibilities of his position in the present condition of the Church of England'.

Mr. Le Geyt to our surprise, for he was a most meek and quiet and refined man, now descends to Mr. Young's own level and calls him a [55/56] spy. Mr. Young had come to the service; had stayed to lunch making himself most agreeable to all present and questioning his neighbour, a young lady, about her spiritual practices and especially about the Confessional; had gone back with the Churchwarden, Mr. Porter, and played croquet on the lawn with the Bishop. What a nice kind man they thought him! How they had opened their hearts and loosened their tongues, and so on.

Mr. Young replied to all this and denied spying and that he had questioned the girl. One wonders what other expression Mr. Young felt would have more fitly described his conduct. As to the girl, we shall never know for certain, but the report which he sent to New Zealand and the verbal report which he made to the Diocesan Synod after his return to New Zealand contained such outrageous lies, that we may have our suspicions.

Mr. Young was no doubt shocked by the service at St. Mathias's Church. In the previous month Bishop Jenner had taken a confirmation there at the express request of Dr. A. L. Tait, the Bishop of London. It may be that Dr. Tait was thereby avoiding the embarrassment of seeming to give countenance to Ritualism, for Tait was as cunning as Jenner was naive, and there were other instances of English Diocesans encouraging him to undertake services they were wise enough, themselves, to avoid.

Dr. Tait would not have been very welcome at St. Mathias's. He had commanded the previous incumbent to cease from the use of lights on the altar at the celebration of Holy Communion. The sacristan continued to light them and one Sunday morning the Revd. S. W. Mangin extinguished them whereupon the congregation refused to communicate and challenged what they regarded as a craven obedience to episcopal command. The Revd. S. W. Mangin resigned and the Revd. Charles Le Geyt, curate of John Keble at Hursley, was appointed by Lord Derby.* [Footnote: * Charles Le Geyt took his title at St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, whose vicar was the Revd. Edmund Hobhouse, Bishop of Nelson, 1858-65. Bishop Hobhouse was now Rector of Reach Hill, near Reading and anxious to find platforms among his friends for Bishop Jenner to use on behalf of money-raising for his new diocese.] At first the services were very simple but gradually the very large and powerful congregation succeeded in making Le Geyt adopt an advanced ceremonial and incense and vestments were introduced. Lord Westneath made a speech about it in the House of Lords and less scrupulous members of his party paid ruffians to interfere with the services--a common enough practice at the time.+ [Footnote: + See following paragraph.] A large proportion of the congregation being male the hirelings' attempts were abortive and they earned their pieces of silver by breaking all the windows[.]

[Footnote: + It was the reprehensible practice of the ultra protestants to 'encourage' men to object to advanced services by importing them by legal twist into parishes where no parishioner, properly so regarded, could be found to object. When this failed resort [56n/57n] was had to brawling and violence by men who had no semblance of claim to be connected with the parish. Ugly scenes were witnessed, and the persons who were responsible were with superb hypocrisy greatly shocked at the effect that the ritualists (whom they always pretended were the 'priests') were having on the Church.

At Northmoore Green Church, Bridgwater, the celebrant having given communion to the server 'A boat-man, named Goodband, here walked up the steps leading to the communion-table and knelt down, and while in this kneeling posture, the clergyman gave him the wafer-bread in silence. (A Voice: "What's he going to have, Dick--some pickled cockles?"). A cup containing the wine was then handed to the man, upon which a voice exclaimed, "Have a gutsfull, Dick," and Dick, nothing loth, at once emptied the cup.' Bridgwater Mercury, quoted in The Guardian, 12 September 1866, p.943.]

[57] In fairness to Mr. Young he did write to Bishop Jenner on 18 June and tell him what he had done:

'I should be neglecting my duty if I left it open to your Lordship to put a wrong construction on the fact of my being present at the "Feast of Dedication", celebrated at St. Mathias's, on the 13th inst. Your Lordship might naturally infer that I sympathised with the ceremony, at which I was present, on that occasion; and the inference would be strengthened by the fact of my having urged no objection when I met you afterwards at the house of Mr. Porter. But your Lordship may understand the reasons which induced me to reserve the expression of my feelings for a more fitting opportunity. It is now my duty to state that so far from approving of the ceremonies at St. Mathias's, I was shocked to find a so-called Protestant Church degraded by the Popish doctrines and ceremonies there preached and practised.

I think it right to add that I have written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, respecting the facts here referred to, and submitted to His Grace the expediency and propriety of rescinding your appointment as a Colonial Bishop.'

It was now the Bishop's turn to be shocked. How ungentlemanly of Mr. Young, and how coarse and ill-informed he was. This was the trouble with the Anglo Catholics. With certain exceptions, they were too refined and rarified. They practised their fal-de-lals on orphanages and workhouses, on the outcast and the fallen women. These, like the people in the slums, knew their places. Privilege was still secure. But if they barely held their own in England what did they expect from the Colonies? What sort of people did they imagine them to be. When they talked about New Zealand being closest to the Mother Country and New Zealand Society being English Society transferred to the antipodes they were very far off the mark. New Zealand did not attract the aristocrat, the country gentleman, the artist or the intellectual nor could those below the poverty line afford to go there. We are left therefore with 'the less well-to-do and the less "intellectual" sections of the middle classes, the better paid and better housed sections of the working classes . . . New Zealand has not been, as some observers thought it, the paradise of the working man but rather the paradise of the petit [57/58] bourgeois.' How did they suppose the colonies were won and run? 'Fair Play for the Bi