BADGERED BY BISHOPS
Gavin Stamp remembers an
Anglo-Catholic priest hounded to death by the establishment
AFTER the High Mass at St Alban's, Holborn, on the Sunday before Christmas the congregation celebrated the 90th birth- day of one of the regulars. She had lived in the area all her life and remembered the great funeral procession in 1913 for Father Stanton, the Victorian slum priest and hero of the Anglo-Catholic movement. But she was not, of course, old enough to have seen the funeral of Stanton's chief, the first vicar of St Alban's, the Revd Alexander Heriot Mackonochie, when a huge proces- sion moved from High Holborn to Water- loo Station, headed by a large silver crucifix. This was on 22 December 1887.
The fact that the sudden death of Canon Gareth Bennett occurred almost exactly a century later led 'Peterborough' in the Daily Telegraph to draw comparisons be- tween the two Anglican priests. Both were, indeed, Anglo-Catholics who fell foul of the Anglican establishment and were, in different ways, persecuted for their beliefs. As far as Mackonochie's successor at St Alban's, John Gaskell, is concerned, however, the connection between the two `Cows are vegetarian, aren't they?' men is 'exiguous'. Bennett was a don of whom few had heard before his suicide, while Mackonochie was a great campaig- ner who stood up publicly for his beliefs.
Men like Mackonochie, Stanton, Low- der and Dolling are worth remembering, for their lives make the preoccupations of the modern Church seem feeble and tri- vial. They were men who, at great personal cost, devoted their lives to working-class parishes. Sustained by their commitment to the Catholic legacy within the Church of England and by deep faith, they fought against poverty, ignorance and degrada- tion and emerged as heroes in an age not short of noble, selfless individuals. Mack- onochie was born in 1825. He was first tested at the mission attached to St George's-in-the-East, the great Hawks- moor church in what is now labelled Docklands and was then an area of desper- ate poverty. He was there during the disgraceful St George's Riots in 1859 when, as a result of opposition to the Tractarian rector, church services were disrupted and the building desecrated by blaspheming mobs organised both by Pro- testant societies and by local traders who disliked the missionary social work of the priests. Because of his dislike of Anglo- Catholic practices — 'ritualism' — the Bishop of London, Archibald Tait, did nothing to stop this profane lawlessness.
In 1863 Bishop Tait instituted Mack- onochie as the perpetual curate of St Alban's, the new and remarkable Gothic Revival church by William Butterfield built in the slums off Holborn east of the Gray's Inn Road. Here over the following 20 years, Mackonochie built up the life of what is still one of the most famous and important Anglo-Catholic churches in London. Helped by his curates and assis- tants — like Stanton — and by sisters from the East Grinstead convent established by John Mason Neale, he worked among the poor and children of the parish, estab- lishing day- and night-schools, caring for the sick, campaigning against injustices and for better conditions. But the centre of life was always the church: to bring people in to worship God at the celebration of the Mass.
What is extraordinary, therefore, is that much of Mackonochie's time and energy should have been taken up in litigation. The novel ceremonial at St Alban's, with eucharistic vestments, incense, candles and so on, provoked widespread curiosity and condemnation. Any hint of Popery, like confession, caused Protestant hysteria in Victorian England. The brief press harass- ment of Canon Bennett was nothing com- pared with what Mackonochie endured. Of all the preposterous accusations and de- scriptions, perhaps the best was the men- tion of curates who 'practised celibacy in the open street'. But worse was to come. In 1865 the Church Association — 'Persecu- tion Ltd' or the `Church Ass' to its oppo- nents — was founded to combat ritualism by legal means. Two years later a case was brought against Mackonochie with the approval and connivance of Bishop Tait.
Martin v Mackonochie dragged on and on for the next 17 years through the complex anachronism of ecclesiastical courts, with endless appeals and counter- appeals. The Protestants' vindictiveness was strengthened by Lord Shaftesbury's and Disraeli's Public Worship Act of 1874 under which some clergymen were actually imprisoned. Mackonochie would not give in. He refused to accept the authority of secular courts in spiritual matters. Tait could not understand the ritualists' adher- ence to certain Catholic practices. But Mackonochie was no aesthete. He did not use vestments and bells and smells for frivolous reasons but because of what they symbolised sacramentally and meant his- torically. Finally, however, in 1883 Mack- onochie resigned under unfair moral press- ure from a deathbed appeal by Tait — by now Archbishop of Canterbury. He then became vicar of St Peter's, London Docks, another celebrated slum church. But the persecution continued. Mackonochie was deprived of his living and, so that the small endowment — vital in Wapping — was not sequestrated, he resigned again. Broken in health, physical and mental, Mackonochie died of exposure, having lost his way at night on the moors near Ballachulish. Mackonochie was widely regarded as a martyr. This can scarcely be said of Ben- nett, especially as he committed the sin of taking his own life. But there are useful comparisons to be made. Mackonochie fell foul of Bishop Tait just as Bennett did of Archbishop Habgood. And, as Bennett stated in his offending Crockford's preface, clergymen who do not conform to the establishment view do not enjoy prefer- ment. Stanton was warned by Tait, 'If you go to Mackonochie's of St Alban's you must never expect any Church prefer- ment.' Also, then, as now, the Church seemed preoccupied with trivia. When there was desperate poverty and increasing ignorance of Christianity, the Church Association chose to persecute dedicated Anglican priests doing positive work be- cause of the way in which they conducted services. Today, causes like the ordination of women are relentlessly pursued even though they may split the Church of England.
In 1829 the Church was in such a parlous state that Thomas Arnold thought that no human power could save it. The Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic movement of which Mackonochie was a conspicuous part did much to revitalise the Church of England but, paradoxically, by both abandoning and reviving traditions it introduced a fundamental division causing tensions which, as Canon Bennett feared, may pull the Church apart. Bennett loved the estab- lished Church. Mackonochie, in fact, would have welcomed disestablishment 'Let the State send forth the Church roofless, and penniless, but free, and I will say "Thank you".' Today it would seem to be the liberals in the Church rather than the conservative Anglo-Catholics who would welcome disestablishment although progressive bishops would be unlikely to enjoy being penniless. Times have changed. The bishops who persecuted Mackonochie were establishment figures who supported the Conservative govern- ment; today many bishops do their best to oppose the government of the day.
A Mackonochie chapel in St Alban's survived the bombing that gutted the rest of the church in 1941. As rebuilt by Adrian Gilbert Scott, St Alban's is still magnificent and the services are as solemn, as digni- fied, as beautiful and as Catholic as the first incumbent would wish. But in Mack- onochie's day the Anglo-Catholics were in the ascendant: ritualism eventually trium- phed. Today they are not. The only con- tinuity seems to be the complacent and hypocritical attitude of the Anglican estab- lishment when faced with decent and sin- cere priests who do not conform.
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