Anglo-Catholic Sources 1: The Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline of 1906

In 1904 the main evangelical Anglican pressure group, the Church Association, managed to get a Royal Commission established to examine Anglo-Catholic ritualist naughtiness, or, more technically, ‘breaches or neglect of the law relating to the conduct of divine service’. Over the two years before the Commission finally reported, it heard accounts of what was actually happening liturgically in nearly 560 churches across England and, for some reason, the diocese of Llandaff in Wales. It used to be claimed that all the witnesses were bigoted evangelicals with axes to grind who, occasionally, didn’t know what they were looking at when they attended a ritualist service. Opinion on this is starting to shift and certainly some of the reporters were perfectly au fait with the details of Anglo-Catholic worship of different brands and varieties, and just didn’t like it. Some ritualist incumbents replied to the enquiries of the Commission that they had not done the things, or some of the things, they were accused of, while others responded, in what was clearly an organised standard letter, that they did not dispute the accuracy of the reports but ‘the colour put upon the facts’.

The 560 churches whose worship was reported to the Commission (out of something under 15,000 across the country) were not the only ones who were worshipping in a ritualist way; many evaded the reporters’ attentions. But they were perhaps representative. In the whole of non-metropolitan Surrey, for instance, only two churches were deemed worthy of attention, Holy Trinity Bramley and St Nicolas Guildford.

At an 8am Sunday eucharist at Bramley in August 1904, the Revd Mr Green wore vestments (which, he later insisted, were of plain linen), absolutely denied the statement that he kissed the Gospel Book, and thought a ‘slight raising’ of the elements after consecration could not fairly be described as ‘elevation’. From Bramley the reporter went on the same day to a Choral Eucharist at St Nic’s where he saw the incumbent, Mr Dandridge, also vested, conduct what sounds like a relatively modest and low-key service, but one in which, in accordance with contemporary Roman and Anglo-Catholic rules on fasting, only four people took communion. In his reply the priest disputed some aspects of the report, the most serious, perhaps, being the accusation that he had made confession to the servers at the foot of the altar before the service began in the Roman fashion; the witness had clearly observed some interaction take place, but Mr Dandridge would not confirm exactly what it was if it was not the priest’s confession. Times for confession were also being advertised in the parish newsletter, but Mr Dandridge claimed this had been the practice at the church for some time preceding his arrival and rather than the ritual ‘steadily going up’ at St Nic’s as the witness averred, he was only following his predecessor’s lead.

These two services were hardly all that elaborate even for 1904 and that probably indicates that ritualism in Surrey had advanced only very modestly by that stage. I was a bit disappointed to see that there were only two reports relevant to my current work, but that itself tells you something. There must have been other Surrey churches worshipping in a similar way – Woodham, for instance, established specifically to do so – but not very many. In this, as in so many other aspects of its history, the county was a bit of a backwater.