Ritualism Riots

This page has many links to transcriptions of documents from the time, from newspapers and journals.

In these days of liturgical diversity, with the general public largely indifferent about what goes on in churches, it's strange to think that 150 years ago, because of changes to the style of worship, thousands of people stormed a church Sunday by Sunday for several months, bringing in their dogs, lighting their pipes and attempting to set fire to the furniture, throwing their caps in the air, heckling and jeering and catcalling throughout the sermon and singing rival songs during the hymns. (Rule Britannia and God save the Queen were the favourites, though 'nigger ditties' were also sung. Dean Stanley is said to have attended on one occasion and, having no ear for music, nor eye for what was going on, pronounced the hymn-singing to be 'most hearty'.) There were riots outside the church too, so that the Rector needed a police escort to escape from a side door back into the Rectory.

All this is what happened at St George-in-the-East between May 1859 and July 1860. Questions were asked in both Houses of Parliament, where there was little support for the Rector and his pleas for more effective protection. Indeed, because of the actions of the Vestry it was members of the clergy and their friends, rather than the rioters, who were prosecuted.

Bryan King (1811-95) had been a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford, where after initial suspicion of Tractarian teachers he was won over by their dignified response in the face of hostility; Dr Pusey's sermons made a profound impression on him. In 1837 he was appointed by Bishop Blomfield to the perpetual curacy of St John, Bethnal Green, where he was also joint secretary of the Bethnal Green Churches Fund. Unlike his absentee cousin Joshua King, Rector of the neighbouring parish of St Matthew, who left his parish in the care of his curate (Blomfield tried in vain for twenty years to get rid of him), Bryan King was a dedicated and energetic parish priest, and in 1842 his college appointed him to St George-in-the-East. Before he began his work, he took an extended holiday with a friend, travelling to Norway on a lobster smack, and then got married!

He found much to be done at St George's after the inactivity of Dr Farington, and struggled with the Vestry, who appointed dissenters and non-churchmen as wardens. He spurned the decanters of port and sherry in the 'Rector's cupboard' with which they expected to be plied before and after service. Some members of the congregation welcomed his ministry, but others regarded him with suspicion. Conflict erupted in 1845 with a 'Requisition' from the wardens and vestry, and exchange of correspondence, and a series of resolutions calling for a return to the previous style of worship or his resignation [click images to enlarge pages 1-4]. The stress caused him to take a six month-break in 1847. 

In due course he resolved to make enhancements to the plain style of worship, with the support of colleagues who had come, at his initiative, to staff the mission. They were generally more 'extreme' in their views: correspondence between Charles Lowder and Bryan King shows the former writing at great length, making high-handed and pernickety demands, to which the latter replied in a measured and gentlemanly way, conceding on personal matters but being firm on ecclesiastical principles. 

The features that he introduced were all things things that are regarded as quite normal in most parish churches today: having lighted candles on a vested altar, a robed choir singing psalms and responses, and preaching in a surplice rather than a black gown. The latter was, he believed, in obedience to the Bishop Blomfield's own charge to his clergy to observe the rubrics of the Prayer Book more carefully! (This had led to the so-called 'surplice riots' elsewhere.) He scrupulously followed the services of that book – it was to be some years before 'advanced' clergy began to incorporate Roman Catholic texts. In 1857 he was given white and green silk chasubles for the Holy Communion, and after some initial hesitation he wore them, until stopped by the bishop. (These and other of his vestments were later taken for use in New Zealand - see below.) Pictured is the interior as shown in the Illustrated London News of 3 March 1860. The commentary, having declared the church a gloomy old-fashioned piece of architecture, and its windows very indifferently painted, draws attention to the decoration so much complained of lately, and which is certainly quite at variance with the character of the architecture of the church  - namely, the large plain cross which King hung behind the altar during Lent, with drapery around the apse.

But there were several factors that inflamed passions, drawing churchmen to protest out of conviction and non-churchmen to join in for a piece of the action. Some of these have been explored in Own Chadwick's classic two-volume work The Victorian Church (A & C Black) and more recently by David Kent of the University of New England, Armidale NSW in High Church Rituals and Rituals of Protest: the 'Riots' at St George-in-the-East, 1859-60 (The London Journal vol.32.3, July 2007, pages 145-166).

• Pope Pius IX had restored the English Roman Catholic hierarchy in 1850, which continued to arouse strong opposition from Protestant groups; 'no Popery' was a potent cry, and remained so for many years.
• Struggles for control of metropolitan life were heightened by the divisions of social class. East Enders (how local, in fact, were the protesters?) may well have resented the 'fancy' practices of the incoming middle classes, though in the coming decades Ritualists consistently argued that the use of colourful and elaborate ceremonial in otherwise drab and depressing working class areas was the key to winning converts. The spectacular success of our mission church of St Peter London Docks, among others, might seem to confirm this, though the total, sacrificial dedication of priests and others to the local people may have been a more powerful factor.   
• Within the church, conflict between Tractarians and Evangelicals was raging, each group able to mobilise support through their various Associations.
• The other emerging centres of 'advanced' worship were new, district churches which gathered like-minded congregations; St George-in-the-East was unusual at the time in being a long-established parish church with a more miscellaneous congregation - a point made by Harry Jones, Bryan King's successor, with which Owen Chadwick broadly concurs; it should also be remembered that within the parish were two places of worship that in King's time represented rather different traditions - Trinity Episcopal Chapel and St Matthew Pell Street). 
• As explained above, Bryan King did not have the support of the churchwardens and Vestry.

The flashpoint was the nomination in 1859 of the Rev Hugh Allen [pictured, right] as Afternoon Lecturer, by Blomfield's successor Bishop Archibald Campbell Tait. Was this provocative, or blindness to the sensitivities (Tait was a Scots Presbyterian who dismissed ritual as 'tomfoolery')? King protested, but the Vestry confirmed the appointment on 31 March and Allen was licensed on 17 May. He was a noted Protestant preacher, a supporter of Spurgeon and the building of his Tabernacle, and had been working in the adjacent parish of Whitechapel. 

His great-great-great-nephew, the Australian tennis writer Alan Trengove, includes a chapter about Hugh Allen and other family members in Saints and Sinners - and how they made me (2008).

According to the Act creating the post, as Lecturer he should be admitted by the Rector to have the use of the pulpit from time to time. The stage was set for conflict.

This is the sequence of events as recorded by King himself, in the Book of Minister's Signatures kept in church (with additional comments and other events in green italic). See here for a sequence of contemporary press cuttings for this period, mostly from the Illustrated London News.

King left at the end of July (early in the morning, to avoid a brass band the opposition had hired to accompany him to the station), and he went to Bruges to recuperate. He and Mary stayed at 33 Places des Orientales, and at the English Chapel there on St Andrew's Day 1860 he baptized their daughter Beatrice Henrietta Pierrepoint (later recording the details in St George's baptismal register).

Although undertakings had been made not to make alterations to the services, the Bishop failed to honour these, and as a result Mr Hansard left. Bryan King refused to have anything to do with the appointment of another curate-in-charge - see here for more details.

It was not until 1863, when his health had recovered, that a new post was found for him. He exchanged livings with John Lockhart Ross, a college friend of Bishop Tait, and became Vicar of Avebury in Wiltshire, retiring in 1894 (by which time he was almost totally deaf - his curate son conducted the services) and dying the following year [pictured here in his later years].

Much has been written about the role of Bishop Tait [pictured right - he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1868, until his death in 1882; Tait Street, where there was a parish mission house, was named after him, in recognition of his visit during the cholera epidemic.] Could he, and should he, have done more despite his instinctive disapproval?  And why the police were not able to act more decisively? The short answer is that the public mood was against Bryan King. As one Protestant commentator put it, He might save himself a deal of trouble and vexation by sitting down, as others do, to eat his pudding in peace (P.W. Parfitt, in The Pathfinder 3 December 1859) - but that was not his way. He persisted, responding to his adversaries with remarkable charity. For this, he received much positive support - some of it from surprising quarters.

The local, national and church press were almost universally hostile to King. The Church Times, which was to give stauch support to the ritualist and high church cause, had not yet been established; but its founder G.J. Palmer was actively involved in the riots. As his great-grandson Bernard Palmer wrote in Gadfly for God (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), At various periods he was to attend regularly at other budding centres of Anglo-Catholic worship. . . George was prepared to be as militant a churchman as any opponent. He won his spurs, in fact, as one of the band of young laymen who, Sunday by Sunday, stood round the altar of St George's-in-the-East, Whitechapel, to protect it from profanation by Protestant-inspired mobs during the anti-ritual riots of 1859-60. The Church Times obituary of 1895, describing him as a man to whom the English Church owes a deep debt of gratitude, is here.

Some years later, King's son-in-law William Crouch wrote a full, and sympathetic, account of King's life: Bryan King and the Riots at St George's in the East (Methuen 1904), which you can read online here. A more recent scholarly work is Dominic Janes Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840-1860 (OUP 2009). The most judicious, and enjoyable, brief account remains that of the late great Owen Chadwick in The Victorian Church (OUP 1966, & subsequent editions), vol 1 pages 495-501], which you can read here. Based on the work of his research students, and with many magisterial touches, he sets the complex tale in its wider ecclesiastical and social context rather than taking sides.

As for St George-in-the-East: although some of King's 'innovations' continued under his successors, particularly Harry Jones, they fairly soon became less controversial, and the parish played little part in the next phase of ritualism controversies, which concerned fresh matters such as the 'eastward position' for the celebration of holy communion, the use of vestments, wafer bread, the 'mixed chalice' (the ceremonial adding of water to the wine), incense and processional lights and other similar details. By 1871, 5,000 clergy - including many from the East End were to sign a Remonstrance [right] to the Archbishops and Bishops protesting against the involvement of the Privy Council in pronouncing on such matters in the case of Hebbert v. Purchas, overturning aspects of the judgement of a lower court in Elphinstone v. Purchas. Copies of this document are pinned into the registers of several of our and other local churches. In the 1880s, mosaics which would have undoubtedly fuelled the protests in King's time were installed without fuss in the church - see here for details, including King's comments.

The only two remaining visual reminders of this extraordinary period are the metal cladding and iron bar on the inside of the Rectory door, to protect him from the mob, and the 'Bryan King gate' (re-created in 2007) into what was then the Rectory garden, on the north-west side of the church, which was his escape route from the church.