Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN y) THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Maa^Cu^ Ctvw^UvvA^ Icioa. WILLIAM STUBBS ? ■//,/ /fri"//,>,- ,y //is- / '/■//■/■'■/ ///,- . /,/,■/,/■ WILLIAM STUBBS BISHOP OF OXFORD 1825-1901 (From the Letters of William Stubbs) BY WILLIAM HOLDEN HUTTON, B.D. Fellow and Tutor of S. John's College, Oxford; Examining Chaplain of the Bishop of Rochester LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO., LTD 1906 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. PREFACE. It was felt that later times might well have cause to complain if they should be able to learn as little about the life of the great English historian of the Nineteenth Century as we know of Bishop Butler. It was thought that the letters of Bishop Stubbs, and the letters to him, that have been preserved, would do something to show what he was and what part he played in the literary and ecclesias- tical history of his day. I was asked to collect them and to add such an account of his life as should make them intelligible to those who did not know him. Such was the origin of this book in its first form. Such work as I have had to do involves thanks at every stage of it. If I were to say now to whom I am grateful I should but give a list of all those to whom I owe letters, or reminiscences, or advice. I ask them all again to accept my sincere thanks for their kindness and help. Without the confidence of Mrs. Stubbs and the Bishop's children I should not have been able to undertake the work : without the assistance of Miss Hunter and Mr. Capes and his family I should not have been able to recover the facts of the Bishop's early life. To the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Oxford, the Dean of Chester, and Canon E. E. Holmes I have owed very much. But throughout I owe thanks to many who have helped me at every stage, and to those, and most of all to the representatives of the Bishop's oldest friends, who placed their letters in my hands, to the late Mrs. Freeman and to Mrs. J. R. Green, and happily to one survivor of the historic Oxford friendships, Mr. Bryce, who expressed the greatest interest in the work during its progress, and by the reminiscences he contributed has given it most valuable assistance, and whose com- mendation has been most generously given to the completed book. No one, however, of all those who have helped me, must be considered in any way responsible for any v PREFACE discretion, or indiscretion, I may have shown. The assist- ance of the Bishop's friends was everywhere generously given ; but the faults of the book were all my own. I undertook the task with very great hesitation and prose- cuted it with trepidation and uncertainty as to the result. I think I may say that the only thing which induced me to persevere in it was the desire to present as he really was a great and good man whom I deeply admired and loved. It has, therefore, been a great relief to me that the Bishop's oldest friends, and those who knew him best, have most cordially approved of the book — much more cordially than I could approve myself. I was obliged at times to go against the advice of those for whom I have the highest respect, in regard to what should be said ; but I could only do what mature consideration convinced me was right. It was therefore the greatest satisfaction to me, to be told by one who knew him better perhaps than any living man — " I believe that all you say of the Bishop is the plain unvar- nished truth, and you have understood and expressed his character in a way that his greatest intimates could defend and approve." That is all I wished to do, and I am very thankful if I may feel — as the kind testimony of some of the Bishop's brethren of the Episcopate as well as of those nearest to him induces me to believe — that I have succeeded. It is therefore with more confidence that, in response to a request which has reached me from many quarters, I have prepared this abridged edition of the book which was originally published in 1904. I have been obliged, in view of the form the book is now to take, to omit many of the letters. I have taken the opportunity to rectify some errors and to insert some new information. This is the last tribute I can pay to the memory of the great historian and good man from whom it is the high privilege of my life to have learned. W. H. HUTTON. St. John's College, Oxford, May 9, 1906. vi CONTENTS CHAP. p AGE I Youth. 1825-1850 1 II Manhood (1) Country Parson, 18 50- 1866 29 (2) Professor and Canon, 1 866-1 884 .... 59 III Age (1) Bishop of Chester, 1 884- 1 889 142 (2) Bishop of Oxford, 1889-1901 171 Appendix, Bibliography 251 Index 259 Vll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS William Stubbs, D.D., Bishop of Oxford, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, 1896 Frontispiece PAGE The House in which Bishop Stubbs was born, Knaresborough . 2 William Stubbs as a Schoolboy 7 Navestock Church 55 Kettel Hall, Oxford 100 Vlll I Youth WHEN the history of the intellectual movements of the Victorian Age in England comes to be written, one name will stand out in the science to which it belongs as the name of Butler stands out in the religious philosophy of an earlier day. iA great school arose in the middle of the nineteenth century which embodied and expressed the enthusiasm of the time for an ordered study of the past. Of the workers in that school, the greatest was William Stubbs, ! and his fame, if it be possible for the generation which knew him to predict it, should be beside that of Gibbon as the greatest historian of his country and his age. \But he was much more than a historian. If in the field of history the most enduring part of his work was done, the Church of England will not cease to remember him as a faithful ruler and a servant of the servants of God. On all his life was set the mark of steady, unselfish service. He was a strenuous worker from his earliest years, and he worked to the end. • William Stubbs was born on June 21, 1825. He was the eldest child of William Morley Stubbs, a solicitor practising at Knaresborough, whose descent could be traced back to the middle of the fourteenth century. The family was of the old yeoman stock, which was the silent strength of England in the Middle Ages. None of the members of it rose to fame, but all held a good position among the folk of the royal forest of Knaresborough. William Stubbs, of the township of Clint, is set down in the subsidy roll of 1377. His son John had property at Birstwith, and was a reeve of the forest. W.S. 1 B WILLIAM STUBBS A book in the Bishop's clear and beautiful handwriting, a monument of minute and accurate labour, records the HOUSE IN WHICH BISHOP STUBBS WAS BORN, KNARESBOROUGH. long line of his ancestry, with extracts from court rolls and registers, copies of wills, and pedigrees of families connected with his own. In his old age, in a lecture at Crewe, and again at Reading he sketched the historic 2 YOUTH memories of his youth. At Crewe, in 1886, he recom- mended the following up of local and personal history as leading to a connection with the greater streams and lines of social and political history that is full of direct interest, which a man can have all to himself, and then said : — " You do not mind my taking myself for an illustration. [ Where was I born ? Under the shadow of the great castle where the murderers of Thomas Becket took refuge in 1 170, and where Richard II was imprisoned in 1399. My grandfather's house stood on the site where Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner in 1322. My first visits were paid as a child to the scene where Stephen defeated the Scots, and where Cromwell defeated Prince Rupert ;J my great-grandfather had a farm in the town- ship where King Harold of England defeated Harold Hardrada ; and one of my remoter forefathers had a gift of land from John of Gaunt in the very same neighbourhood where I was born. What do I remember first ? Well, perhaps the first thing I do remember was the burning of York Minster — then the death of George IV, then the second French Revolution, then the election of Lord Brougham for Yorkshire, then the Reform Bill and the Emancipation of the West India Slaves. What sort of connection had I with soldiers and churchwardens, and such like ? Oh, my grandfather was out in Lord George Gordon's riots ; and all of my ancestors, so far as I can trace, served the office of churchwarden in their time. You may smile at this — perhaps I was lucky in the circumstances of birth and associations — but mind you, on every one of the points that I have mentioned hangs a lot of history to which my mind was drawn by the circum- stances that I have jotted down, and from which the studies began which, not to speak of smaller successes, have landed me in the dignified position to-night of having to advocate the study of history before an audience of the most intelligent people in England ! You like, I dare say, to be told so. As I am flattering myself as you see, I may 3 B 2 WILLIAM STUBBS give you a little of the overflow of my self-complacency ; and please to remember that I am just as much a work- ing man as any of you, every step of the life which is now drawing to an end having had, under God's blessing, to be worked out by my own exertions, so that to some extent I may put myself forward as a precedent for you." At Reading, three years later, he said — " I was born under the shadow of the great castle in which Becket's murderers found refuge during the year that followed his martyrdom, the year during which the dogs under the table declined to eat their crusts. There, too, as customary tenants of the Forest, my forefathers had done suit and service to Richard, King of the Romans, and after him to Queen Philippa and John of Gaunt, long before poor King Richard was kept a prisoner in the king's chamber. My grandfather's house stood on the ground on which Earl Thomas of Lancaster was taken prisoner by Edward II, on the very site of the battle of Boroughbridge ; he, too, was churchwarden of the chapel in which the earl was captured. The first drive that my father ever took me led us across Marston Moor ; one great-grandfather lived in an old manor-house of the monks of Fountains ; another had a farm in the village where Harold Hardrada fell before the son of Godwin. Then, Within a radius of ten miles, we returned ten members to Parliament from five boroughs, two lying in the same parish, and one or other and all together using every different franchise known to the law before the Reform Act. That Act, and the agitation that preceded it, are among my very earliest recollections, and the question of the franchise was made familiar by the fact that another grandfather was prosecuted by order of the House of Commons for a riotous attempt to defeat the right, exer- cised by the Duke of Devonshire, of returning two members for the town by the votes of forty of his tenants, not one of whom was resident or had any other qualifications than a deed of feoffment of a messuage, given him as he entered 4 YOUTH the polling-booth and returned when he left it. Nay, if I may boast of my own exploits, I could tell you how I myself, before the passing of the Act, was privileged to wave the true blue Tory flag in the face of Henry Brougham, one of the last representatives of the pocket borough." 1 Knaresborough is one of the most beautiful places in a beautiful district. The town climbs the steep sides of a sharp hill that overlooks the swift waters of the Nidd. The ruined castle, the church impressively situated on the ascent, the quaint streets of irregular houses, the market-place that boasts the oldest chemist's shop in England, have a distinction that befits the setting of wood and river around them. The castle of Hugh de Morville, of Richard of Almaine and John of Gaunt, dominates the town and seems to dictate its memories. That the clever child of a long line of Yorkshire yeomen should turn amid such surroundings to the study of the historic past seems natural and fitting. ^ William Morley Stubbs of Knaresborough was the son of Thomas Stubbs of Boroughbridge (1761-1838) and Jane Morley. He married in 1824 Mary Ann, daughter of William Henlock. They lived in a small house in the High Street, which is still standing, next but one to the Bank. The house is built over an archway through which there is access to the back and to a garden stretching some way behind the houses. It was in this house that William Stubbs was born. Of his grandmother Elizabeth Henlock, his mother's mother, who died when he was only six years old, he was extremely fond. He always remembered a walk she would often take him, and when he went to Knaresborough in later days would still say, " Let us go on the Dansby walk. I like to touch the stones I used to touch when I walked with her," and he would touch them again, with something of the quaint feeling of old-time 1 Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, 3rd edition, pp. 474—5- 5 WILLIAM STUBBS association, not superstition, that made Dr. Johnson touch the Fleet Street posts. Once the lad startled his grand- mother by declaring " I do not like the Prayer Book." " I am sorry for that," said she, " for I do ; but why do you say so?" He stoutly answered, "Because it says a man may not marry his grandmother, and I mean to marry you." His mother and grandmother were the dearest friends of his childhood. It used to be said in Oxford years later that Stubbs's mamma and grandmamma were well known, so often were they spoken of; and in his later life nothing did he love more than to hear tales of them and his early days. He was a quick boy, who learned early to read and to recite. It was told of him in later years that, while he was quite a child, when once the Bishop of Chester came to Knaresborough (then in his diocese) for a confirma- tion, he insisted on being taken to see him pass. The Bishop, after the old fashion, laid his hand on the child's head as he passed, and little William returned home vociferating that he would be a bishop. " You must be a curate first," said his mother. " No, I will not," said he ; and it is amusing to note that he never was. Other memories of his childhood that survive are that he went as a boy of nine to a dancing class and thirty years after remembered a little girl he danced with and the green dress she wore, that he had little habits, such as crumbling his bread, like his grandfather, and that he was a quiet child full of quaintness. He first went to school under a Mr. Cartwright, who lived in Gracious Street, a little house standing back from the line of houses beside it — about two hundred yards from the High Street, on the way to Low Bridge. It was the best school in the neighbourhood, and the boys of the upper classes from Harrogate as well as Knaresborough came to it. Among them was William Kay, a life-long friend of Stubbs, and sometime Principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta. It is remembered that Mr. Cartwright, 6 YOUTH before the two friends were famous, would hold them up to his boys as examples. He was a master of the " old school," which means, it would appear, that he caned freely ; but he was also a man of extraordinarily wide knowledge, who delighted to teach his pupils subjects far out of the range of ordinary schools, then or now. WILLIAM STUBBS AS A SCHOOLBOY. From Mr. Cartwright's school, William Stubbs passed in 1839 to the Grammar School at Ripon. Of the teaching at the two schools he dictated some remembrances within the last year or two of his life. They exist now only in an imperfect form, but they throw an interesting light upon the studies of the day. "When I was seven years old I was sent to a classical and commercial academy at Knaresborough, kept by an 7 WILLIAM STUBBS old man, Mr. Cartwright, and attended by the sons of the old middle class, that is, tradesmen and professional people. Mr. Cartwright taught us everything. Among my elder schoolfellows were Mr. Frith the famous artist, whose recollections of the school are not as exalted as mine, and Dr. Kay the late Principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta, who certainly laid the foundation under Mr. Cart- wright of his knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Hindustani, and French ; and there I was initiated before I was eight years old in Latin and Greek, working on until I was thirteen in French, German and Anglo- Saxon. The mornings were given to languages and the afternoons to writing and arithmetic. The classical books were Dr. Valpy's Grammars and Delectuses, and by their aid I was worked on by very short steps into Homer, Xenophon, Virgil, and Sallust. A grammar lesson, Latin • or Greek, was said every morning, and I certainly repeated Valpy's Grammars at least nine times over during those years. I think the grounding was sound. The discipline consisted in, first, a strong hand on the boys' heads, and a sharp cane on their hands, under neither of which it was my sorrow to suffer ; and second, a very rough and ready appreciation of industrious work which found a way to the heart of most of the boys who cared for their work. I don't know that I need enlarge on the comic side, as there can be few people alive now to whom a sketch of it would carry any meaning. It was a Yorkshire school of a class which is, I should think, utterly extinct." Besides the universal knowledge of secular matters which Mr. Cartwright instilled, young Stubbs was learning and thinking deeply of religious matters. Mrs. Stevens, a name deeply beloved in the town, gave Bible lessons in a little room off Kirkgate, near the station, and there he constantly attended. " I do not suppose any one was ever more beloved than she," he said in after years ; and when he preached in 1872 at the parish church after its restora- tion, he recalled the " most gracious presence, inseparable 8 YOUTH from the history of this place, not to be forgotten ; the commanding eye, and noble figure ; the sweet and most eloquent voice ; the wonderful hold on Scripture in the spirit and the letter ; the marvellous industry that poured forth book after book, illustration after illustration, all the time teaching continuously and continually ; nursing the sick, comforting the dying and the sinner, guiding the little ones, foremost in every good work ; all with a zeal, a power, an energy that made her a very exception to all the rules that bind the life of Englishwomen, and withal the most sympathetic, the most kindly, the wisest counsellor we ever knew." When he was an old man he showed to his cousin Miss Hunter all the letters Mrs. Stevens had written to him when he was a boy, neatly tied up with white ribbon ; and she tells me that he seldom came to Knaresborough without saying, " Let us go round by the old schoolroom," and he would stop and look long, and say, " There I first learnt my texts of Scripture." Mrs. Stevens was a relation of the Vicar, the Rev. Andrew Cheap, who was, in the same sermon in 1872, commemorated as "the most venerable form and kindly face, and gentlest, simplest heart we ever knew, from whose mouth first we heard the word of life, and in whom first we saw reflected the graces of the Gospel ; most honest, most straightforward, uncompromising, but most sympathizing, genial, most able in deep simplicity." The religious influences of Knaresborough in the first half of the nineteenth century were of the school which did so much for England in the eighteenth century. All the popular religion, indeed, as the Bishop said in the last years of his life, ran in that groove, and a noble if restricted influence it was. " I began life," he said in 1899, "in a centre of Evangelical energy ; a real school of life, narrow it may be, even slightly Calvinistic in its attitude of dogma, but most devoted, generous, studious ; too much self-con- tained to be uncharitable, and placidly recognising its 9 WILLIAM STUBBS position as a true and faithful guardian of souls, although not the only one ; on the whole in a minority of influence, but not ambitious, thoroughly pastoral, given to missionary and school work quite in advance of common opinion, and above all things devoted to the study of the Bible. I have often thought that, if I had had time to write a history of that time and neighbourhood, I could have drawn a picture that would put more modern pretensions to shame, both as to work and as to spirit." The influences of Ripon were not so gracious. The grammar school was then held in a small building below the cathedral churchyard at the south, where now the choir school is. Grim memories of savage discipline in a sort of Dotheboys Hall are preserved in the Phases of My Life, by Dr. Pigou, Dean of Bristol, who was a schoolfellow of Bishop Stubbs. The Dean says that his master told his father, " he does all I tells him " ; no doubt he would have said the same of Stubbs. But the religious associations, as the Dean remembers them, were not cheering : a dreary service in the cathedral church, rival schools glaring at each other — and " the day we dreaded most was Saturday, a day of preparation indeed for the Sabbath. On Satur- day we had to say and then parse the Gospel for the following Sunday. What associations some boys must all their life afterwards have had with the appointed Gospels ! and with some of the sayings of our Blessed Lord ! I have seen boys made to stand up on a high stool, where they could be better reached, and coat and trowsers cut to ribbons over the ' Gospels.' How little did masters of those days, gone like a dream of the past, realise the effect of such incongruous and painful associations! How inevitably certain portions of God's Book would cleave to the memory, not for their high and holy teaching, but because of the flogging which accompanied them ! " But now we may continue the Bishop's own reminis- cences. It was characteristic of him that he never dwelt in memory on the severer, sterner side of life. His remem- 10 YOUTH brances were kindly and numerous, even when they could not be wholly happy. " At fourteen, I went to the Grammar School at Ripon, then under the hand of the Rev. W. Plues, formerly scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, a favourite pupil of old Tate of Richmond, and a very able master. Under him, Ripon School had been a considerable boarding school, and with Durham, Richmond, Sedbergh, Giggleswick, and S. Peter's, York, he had educated the sons of the most important gentry and nobility of the North. When I went there in 1839, the boarding houses were closed, and it had become a simple town school, from which, however, boys went in their succession to the Universities. There, as might be expected, I had to begin my school life over again, and that through the classical curriculum only. The class in which I was placed was beginning Virgil and the Greek Testament, and the editions used were those which we had inherited : I at all events used the books which my father had used before me. For composition Bland's verses, and I think, Ellis's exercises were the manuals, from which we were led on through Kerchever Arnold's books and Ken- rick's exercises for three or four years. The regular Grammar was the Eton Latin Grammar and the Charter- house Greek Grammar supplemented by some laborious and very useful MS. commentaries of the Head Master's composition which each boy in the form had to transcribe, and which contained, I believe, a good deal of the gram- matical results of the old Richmond teaching. On Satur- days and Mondays we had Scripture lessons, and, as we advanced, some careful teaching in Roman and Greek History, starting from Goldsmith, and getting on gradually to Niebuhr. The Head Master worked from better editions of the classics than we were able, of course, to purchase, such as Heyne's Virgil, Mitscherlich's Horace. He also gave us the results of his reading Buttmann's Lexi- logus and Dammii's Lexicon. The discipline depended largely on the cane and the rule of fasting. School hours II WILLIAM STUBBS were rigid — 7 to 9 in summer, 8 to 9 in winter, — 10 to 12.30, 2 to 4, with two half-holidays in the week. Any boy who was late for prayers, or committed any offence below the discipline of the cane was kept in school during " Here there is a gap. The MS., in the writing of Mr. Holmes, from the Bishop's dictation, goes on : " Extra- ordinary blunder in my translation of Acts viii. 26, which caught the old Dean's eye and greatly amused him, that I made my first step towards Christ Church in Oxford. He prepared me for confirmation, 1 and as long as he lived showed me constant kindness. In these circumstances I went on until on Bishop Longley's recommendation I began on the higher classics. We had passed through Dalziel's Analecta and into Herodotus, Thucydides, Horace and Juvenal, Porson's four plays, five [books of] Homer and Virgil. I think we had to commit to memory from 50 to 100 lines of the poets every day, and so worked through the whole of Horace and Juvenal and very large portions of Homer and Virgil, as well as of the Gospels in Greek. The Composition probably was the weakest point, although immense pains were taken with it. We also worked at a rather difficult English Grammar, Arnold's, I think, Butler's Ancient Geography, which occasionally still gives me- the nightmare, with a little arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid. The home lessons were not heavy, and con- sequently, under the pressure of strong necessity and some ambition, I had been able out of school to work through the whole of Herodotus, a good deal of Thucydides, and several plays of Aeschylus. I was not introduced to Sophocles until I went to Oxford." A sturdy politician at sixteen, he retained his sacred Tory principles throughout life. He was learning, it would seem, at Ripon to base them on the history to which he was becoming more and more devoted. The picturesque 1 He was confirmed in 1840. 12 YOUTH old city of narrow streets, perched on the high hill over- looking the Ure, has a story that goes back to the seventh century. S. Wilfrid of Ripon is one of the most famous names in early English history. The cathedral church owes its rebuilding to Roger of Pont l'Eveque, Archbishop of York, who was the bitterest of Becket's foes. For long the archbishops of York had one of their chief residences in the city ; and when the new see was created in 1836 it did no more than revive in a new form an ecclesiastical organisation which had a continuous existence as long as any in the land. The old jurisdictions still survived, some of them still survive, and the archbishops of York still nominate justices. The town's old motto still meets one at every turn, — " Except the Lord keep the city, the Wakeman waketh but in vain " — and the horn, as in ancient days, sets for the people the hours of nightfall and sunrise. Born amid the romantic surroundings of the King's forest of Knaresborough, and receiving training of the years which are most fruitful in a city so famous in the history of England, there need be no wonder that young Stubbs soon began to study the history seriously for him- self. His earliest training in original work was found in the old courthouse within the enclosure of Knaresborough Castle, where the rolls were kept. Among these in his holidays he was constantly at work. He learned to find his way about medieval documents, and so laid the solid foundation on which he was afterwards to build so firmly. His neighbours came to look to the studious lad as one out of the common. As an old fellow-townsman of his said to me the other day, he was not " one o' them that writes for writing's saake." In 1842 William Morley Stubbs died, at the early age of forty-two. His widow was left with six young children, and she had a hard struggle with poverty. At Ripon the Rev. R. Poole, then Vicar, and his family, were constant friends. Through him the Bishop of Ripon, Dr. C, T. 13 WILLIAM STUBBS Longley, took up the fortunes of her promising son, and he remained a faithful friend to him through life. Within two months of the boy's father's death the Bishop obtained for him a nomination as a servitor of Christ Church, Oxford, from Dean Gaisford, for 1844. A fortnight later young Stubbs writes — "November 8, 1842. I went to call this day on the Bishop. He received me very kindly, and asked after ' my mother.' When I thanked him [for his interest in regard to Christ Church], he said that it was certainly a very good thing for me, and worldlily speaking the best thing that could happen to me, that I should have the same advantages as the first men in the kingdom, and with the Lord's blessing he hoped I should succeed. He then asked me what I had been reading. I gave him a paper on which I had set down the classical subjects for the last two years. He asked me if I had any taste for mathematics. I said ' Very little.' He recommended the first three books of Euclid, as ' either they or a treatise on Logic must necessarily be sent in for the Little go.' He said also that Herodotus would be one of the first books I should require, and that I must pay great attention to parsing and government especially, that quality was more requisite than quantity, and that men who read and sent in books for a first class often were put in the fourth or scarcely mentioned. He said that he would mention to Mr. Plues that I was going to Oxford and that he himself would examine me in about a year, that I must keep up the first twelve books of Homer as they would be necessary, and asked me what I was going on with next." In April, 1844, tne future Bishop of Oxford first entered Christ Church. He did not come into residence till the next year, on January 17. His first term's battels, it may be worth noting, were £2 ljs. yd., and the room rent was £2 2s. The table allowance came to £2 os. 6d. ; so he only had to pay £2 igs. id. He kept every term till the end of Lent term, 1848, and he took his B.A. degree on June y, 1848. 14 YOUTH The present Dean of Christ Church writes thus as to the position of servitors in general and Stubbs in parti- cular — " Servitors were at this time men who came up to the University in fornid pauperis, and they formed a class in a college as distinct as that of the noblemen. The servitorships were bestowed on persons who were unable to support themselves, with a view of smoothing their way into the ranks of some profession ; and candidates for them would have to satisfy the authorities that they were poor and deserving, but not necessarily that they were capable of high honours. Thus there was no presumption in those days of exceptional intellectual distinction in a servitor. It was, then, to a place of this sort that the future Bishop was admitted at the instance of Bishop Longley. " On his matriculation he became the pupil of the Reverend George Marshall, then Censor, whom the Bishop had afterwards the pleasure of nominating to an honorary canonry in Christ Church. His rooms were on the top floor of No. i staircase in Peckwater {Peck. I. viii.) — the staircase in the middle of the west side. They were not the most attractive rooms. The window of the sitting- room comes behind the triangular pediment at the top of the building, and the inhabitant can see nothing except the sky. But here Stubbs dwelt, as he expressed it to the present writer, ' in the strictest seclusion ' all his under- graduate time. 1 In those days there was nothing monstrous in abstaining from athletic exercises, and it is probable that the expense of such things was greater than a poor man could afford. We must therefore picture Stubbs living a rather lonely, but no doubt a keenly observant, life in College, and spending the most of his time in extending his knowledge. There are not wanting signs 1 Dr. W. D. Macray tells me " with regard to his rooms at Christ Church I can from my own familiarity with them correct the Dean. They were not attics but subterranean chambers downstairs in the first staircase on the right hand in Peckwater, dreary and dark.'' *5 WILLIAM STUBBS that he was well known to his contemporaries as a man of learning. It is on record that the Dean (Dr. Gaisford) recognised the fact and unbent so far as to Latinize or Grecize Stubbs's name to Stobaeus. In those days, Bachelors of Arts acted as Sub-Librarian ; they sat in the Library during the hours when it was open and assisted persons who came for books. It was an opportunity for a man who cared about reading and knowing books. Dean Liddell once told the present writer that he owed more to having had the freedom of a great Library than to any- thing else ; and we can well imagine the use Stubbs would have made of his time in the Library of Christ Church. It was on one of the occasions when he was in the Library pursuing his studies that the Dean saluted him, in sportive vein, as • our Stobaeus.' The Dean did not unbend far enough to make Stubbs a student — a position which the future Bishop greatly desired — for there was an unwritten law that no servitor was ever made a student. But it should be said that there was probably more in this than simple adhesion to immemorial custom : the studentships were of very small value, and would have been scarcely possible to a man whose circumstances justified his taking a servitorship. " Nor was it only the Dean who discovered his learning. There was a rule in Gaisford's time that all members of Christ Church should attend a course of lectures in Natural Science before they were presented for their degree. It embodied a great ideal, but was not always fully realised in practice. Stubbs was known to be regular and attentive at this course, and so messages were sent up to his secluded rooms, ' Mr. X's compliments, and would Mr. Stubbs oblige him with the loan of his notes ? ' ' Thus,' said the Bishop, describing this practice, ' my views on the steam-engine had quite a wide circulation in College.' " So far the Dean of Christ Church. On May 17, 1844, the Bishop of Ripon was able to report to Mrs. Stubbs a very favourable view of her son. 16 YOUTH " The Dean has already Latinized his name, and calls him ' STOBAEUS ' ; and as the said personage is zvery favourite author with Dean Gaisford, 1 I think it augurs well for the youth." He was, at once, it is clear, a favourite with his seniors. But it must not be thought that Stubbs was unknown to his contemporaries either in the House or outside it. The late Lord Salisbury told me that he was well acquainted with him as an undergraduate ; and the present Dean of Durham, Dr. Kitchin, wrote thus to me on April u, 1903— " I first made friends with the Bishop when we were undergraduates together at Christ Church in 1846. He and Spencer Stanhope and I formed a class of three, reading Differential Calculus with ' Dr.' (Rev. E.) Hill in College, and I said to myself, 'What a shame that we should work together, and that just because Stubbs is a servitor we should keep him at arms' length.' So I broke the ice, ' without being introduced ' (it shows how green I must have been !), and asked him some question, and from that moment an unbroken friendship began — though my 'views' were bitterness to his ancient Whiggism. In undergraduate days he kept his humour to himself. Never was so timid a soul, or so grateful. He felt his isolation, and did not dare to make advances, and the most striking quality in him was his amazing memory. I never knew any one," he adds, " more grateful for kindness." Undoubtedly the Dean nods when he talks of Stubbs's Whiggism. Never was a more convinced Tory, as his reminiscences have already shown ; but doubtless the superiority of a young Radical of '46 would make no nice distinction between Whig and Tory, both equally " obscurantist " — in more modern cant phrase. Besides Dr. Kitchin, two at least of those who in later years worked with him were among his undergraduate friends. 1 Stobaeus (J.) Florilegium, ad manuscriptorum fidem emendavit T. Gaisford, 4 vols. 8vo. Oxon. 1822. W.S. 17 C WILLIAM STUBBS Dr. W. D. Macray was one. He says, " we all anticipated his future eminence, and used to say that if he took orders he would be Archbishop of Canterbury, or if he went to the Bar would be Lord Chancellor. His one recreation was playing chess, and we not infrequently played in each others' rooms." Chancellor Espin, who came to be so close a fellow-worker of his from the time of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, and especially from 1884, when Stubbs became Bishop of Chester, remembers him as a somewhat retiring undergraduate, not to be seen on the river, " a young man of few words and somewhat reserved habits, much immersed in his books," well known for his ability and knowledge to a few close friends. He was certainly a keen observer. In a note-book which he began as an undergraduate, and which contains surely the strangest collection of memoranda, historical, theological, humorous, ever put together in one volume, he analyses the Oxford men of his day. There are fast men and reading men and slow men, and each of these classes contains gentlemen and cads. The fast are gentlemen who ride, who boat, who dress ; and cads who drink beer and shout, and who give " beers." The reading men are, if gentlemen (a), religious men, (/?) the classical school, and (y) infidels ; and here the pedigree becomes rather com- plicated, and no distinctions of extreme nicety are drawn, but the result seems to be that under a we have High Church and Low Church, under /3 men who get .£10 and men who don't, and under y "Rugby" and " Wadham." If cads, the reading men are " those who smoke and drink over their divinity." Thus early was the Bishop's life-long aversion from tobacco evident. Then come the slow men. Of these the cads are (1) those who wish to be thought fast, (2) those who wear dirty shirts, and (3) those who wear long hair, straps and shoes ; and the gentlemen are arranged in classes according as they are slow from ill health, or stinginess, or poverty, or music, or are dilettanti. Young Stubbs was no exception to the rule which makes 18 YOUTH Oxford a transforming influence in the lives of men of strong character who become her alumni. He told, more than half a century later, how in his first term he "looked on at the break-up of the Tractarian phalanx, as it was called;" he shared in all the excitement of the under- graduates on the famous " S. Valentine's Eve," when the Proctors — one of whom was to become his most revered and trusted friend — exercised their veto on the proposal to censure Tract XC, and well he remembered the shock to the Church and the dismay that followed. He was already, as an undergraduate, known to Dr. Pusey. " So I saw from the beginning," he said, " the working of the con- tinuous life of the faithful men of the movement, many of whom I learned to know and love." And as a Yorkshire- man he knew, and with admiration, the work of Dr. Hook at Leeds, and the parochial side of the Church revival in the North. Certainly there was no break in his religious development ; but amid the Oxford influences of his under- graduate days he came to realize, in its historical and spiritual majesty, the Catholic doctrine of the Church, and to look up to Dr. Pusey as " the Master." Side by side with its ecclesiastical interests, finding their richer setting in the awakened Church life of Oxford in the forties, now as always, his historical instincts were at work, and with them the literary interests which to him at least were an essential part of historical study. He belonged to the Architectural Society, which had rooms in Holywell Street, which, he said, " were possibly the school in which a taste for medieval history, at least, was insensibly acquired." He was for a time secretary of the Hermes, where Edwin Palmer, his life-long friend, and when he was Bishop of Oxford his Archdeacon, first came to know him — " a very small and earnest and affectionate literary brotherhood, well to be remembered as a seed-bed in the growing time, not only of germinating ideas that spring and die with or without fruit-bearing, but of high sympathies and dear friendships that grow stronger and immortal by age." But 19 C 2 WILLIAM STUBBS most especially in Christ Church Library, where he first made acquaintance with Hearne and Dugdale and Prynne, where Dean Gaisford took him unawares at his note-book with "amused and approving surprise," the foundation of the chief study of his life was laid. Of the course of his more strictly academic studies, of the collections " he had, and of the residence he kept, there is exact record in his own clear hand — a list which extends from the days of his matriculation to the day of his election as Fellow of Trinity, two days after the class list in Lit. Hum. came out. He attended the lectures of Marshall, Osborne, Gordon, Jelf, Liddell, Conybeare, and others, and his collections were never less well marked than "satis bene.''' Mr. Hill, afterwards Rector of Sheering, Essex, when he wrote a testimonial for him in later years, noted the diligence and painstaking perseverance with which he had devoted himself to the uncongenial subject of mathematics. The custom of reading for double Honours was then almost universal among those who studied at all seriously ; and Stubbs conscientiously worked at his mathematics, and got a third class. 1 For classics he had the private coaching of the Rev. J. R. T. Eaton, Fellow and Tutor of Merton, who wrote warmly of " the soundness of his judgment, remarkable care in mastering the details of the work before him, and his unusual breadth of information," observable when he was an undergraduate. Dean Liddell was a student when Stubbs matriculated, and remembered (in 1865) that he was " one of a number of persons who have since become distinguished — Lord Wodehouse, Mr. Dodson, M.P., Mr. Ward Hunt, M.P., etc.," who attended his Aristophanes lecture, and that " he 1 One of the Bishop's sons tells me that in later life he always used to speak as if he were very fond of mathematics, and adds, " when some misguided folk thought I was going to be a mathematician he rather urged me to take them up seriously, and told me it was an in- herited taste, and I have some recollection of his telling me that he would have got a First in Mathematics if he had had enough money to buy the books." 20 YOUTH gave full promise of the industrious and conscientious devotion which has since been so fully proved by his books." In 1848 he was placed by the examiners in the first class in classics {Literae Hiimaniores). In the same class were his life-long friend, Herbert W. Fisher, student of Christ Church, W. H. Karslake of Balliol, Richard Ogle of Lincoln, Edward Palin, Fellow of St. John's, Edward St. John Parry of Balliol, and William Stowe of Wadham ; while in the second were his friends John Collyns and George Ward Hunt, students of Christ Church ; in the third William Foxley Norris, scholar of Trinity, while the distinction of an honorary fourth was awarded to William Dunn Macray, Bible clerk of Magdalen, with both of whorr^ both as parish priests, and the second also as scholar, he was to have much association in later life. Macray " waited to take his testamur" to Stubbs "on the day he passed." While young Stubbs felt warmly what he owed to his first friends — " I never knew any one more grateful for kind- ness " (to quote again Dean Kitchin's words) : " it was almost a religion in him that the old Dean of Ripon had recom- mended him to Gaisford " — he never forgot that he owed most to his mother. In 1846 she had lost his only brother, Thomas, who had always been a delicate child. One of her daughters had gone out as a governess, partly to help in her brother's earlier education, and — as her niece, Miss Hunter, writes to me — the mother, " a good, brave woman, had passed through deep trials and reverses of fortune, but bravely she turned her powers of mind to account to work for her children." A very handsome woman she was, " quite a picture " she is described as being in the black dress open at the neck, with net kerchief, and tulle cap, which she always wore ; and photographs of her in her beautiful old age show a striking resemblance to her son. Her fondness for her clever boy was warmly returned. He always called her, after the fashion taught to children of his day, " Mamma " ; and when once she laughingly said " I think ' Mother ' would be better," he replied, " No, I 21 WILLIAM STUBBS could not say ' Mother ' ; you have always been ' Mamma.' " She lived to see him Bishop. One of his oldest friends, Canon Yates of Cottingham, writing to him in 1884 on her death, said — "The event carries my thoughts back many years to my schooldays, and the great kindness your mother always showed me rises up fresh again in my memory. I am glad she lived to witness your present elevation, often predicted in a joke that was yet felt to contain a possible truth in those days, when the ( learned Stobaeus' gave promise so well justified since." Two days before she died (she died at Aylesbury, where she had lived for some years, on June 8, 1884), at the first Embertide he had as Bishop, he travelled all night to see her again, and once more — his cousin tells — held her tenderly in his arms. She passed away on the evening of his first Ordination. His sisters were already gone. Eliza (Mrs. Gwynn), born in 1827, died in 1878, and Mary Anne (Mrs. Hills) in the same year; and the two who had not married, Isabella, born 1832, died 1852, and Frances, born 1836, died 1877. But to return. A letter of Bishop Longley's to Mrs. Stubbs suggests that her son sought a fellowship at Magdalen. It might naturally have been supposed that he would have been retained at his own College. Indeed, as Dean Liddell wrote, " he would (I believe) have been presented with a studentship, in acknowledgment of his industry and merit, but that a matter of form prevented it:" It was not till many years later that a servitor was first elected student of Christ Church. " An unhappy custom (which I endea- voured in vain to break through, and which has since ceased) prevented," wrote Dr. Pusey of Stubbs in 1865, " his being made a student of Christ Church, to the great regret of many of us." l It may, however, well be said 1 I ought to mention, as this statement has been questioned, that the words are quoted verbatim from a testimonial written, and printed, in 1865. 22 YOUTH here — as it will appear later on — that he never ceased to speak of his indebtedness to Christ Church, or lost an opportunity of expressing his affection. On June 19, 1848, he was elected probationer Fellow of Trinity. He became actual Fellow on June 25, 1849. The Bishop of Ripon wrote two letters of congratulation on the class and the fellowship, " the due reward of your unwearied industry." It has pleased God," he wrote on June 20, " in a very singular manner to bless your efforts, and I am sure you will feel that such signal marks of mercy should humble you and lead you to devote yourself with undivided love and obedience to the service of your God and Saviour. I shall continue to take a peculiar interest in your progress through life." As Fellow of Trinity, Stubbs filled the place made vacant by the marriage of Edward Augustus Freeman, who became his life-long friend. 1 At the Advent Ordination, 1848, he was ordained Deacon by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He spent the Easter vacation, with his friend William Ince (now Regius Professor of Divinity), and the Rev. J. R. T. Eaton, in a tour in Belgium. At S. Clement's, Oxford — Newman's church, profanely called " the boiled rabbit" — Dr. Ince thinks he preached his first sermon, on the startling text : " Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been." His note-book shows that he threw him. self ardently into two studies, the study of theology and the study of the past history of his College. Early Church history was analysed and digested by him with the minute accuracy which marked all his work. The English Prayer Books were epitomized in parallel columns ; the succession of English Bishops was investigated, the prelude to the first great study of his life ; and lists of Fellows and scholars were entered, the charter of Mabel, Abbess of Godstow, 1285, to the prior and convent of Durham was copied from 1 This often repeated statement is not strictly accurate. The Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston, Fellow of Trinity, writes to me that there were two Fellowships vacant at the time, to one of which Stubbs was elected. 23 WILLIAM STUBBS the Tanner MS. in the Bodleian, and the passage in the Valor Ecdesiasticus relating to Durham College was set down in the book. Though he held his fellowship at Trinity only two years, he made several life-long friend- ships while he was there. There are few still alive who can recall them, but one at least I have the privilege of printing here. It is part of the memories which the Rev. William Wood, D.D., now Rector of Rotherfield Greys, has been kind enough to give me. " I came up to Oxford in 1847 as a Scholar of Trinity, and Stubbs was elected Fellow in the following year. Freeman had just resigned his Fellowship on his marriage. In those days in most Colleges there was a certain proportion of the Fellows who were averse to any change, while others (among the Juniors generally) were anxious for Reform, but on the old lines of Church principles. The latter, it is needless to say, were mostly High Churchmen. Indeed, the division was less political than ecclesiastical. Stubbs cast in his lot with the Juniors. I saw a good deal of him at that time, but there is little that I can recall with clearness. One expedition I made with him to Boarstall on a Sunday. He was engaged to take the services there, and we drove in a little pony-carriage. When we had just left the town, he surprised me by quoting the first line of the Medea — " ' tiQ w$eY 'Apyovs p?) 8ia7rrao-#ai Dowt'm'e, et lux perpetua luceat ei." Year by year the brief record tells of good parish work done, often of more than a hundred sermons preached in his own church, of scanty holidays, some abroad — for the first time to Italy in 1858 — some in his old county. The tale of quiet parochial work is soon told. How careful and how deeply earnest it was, the Bishop's addresses on pastoral visitation would suffice to prove. But there was nothing save its extreme regularity and conscientiousness to differentiate it from the work of any other country parson. Daily the two services were said, though the church stood a mile from the vicarage. The usages were, says Dr. Wood, who often visited the Vicar of Navestock, " very simple and old-fashioned : no surpliced choir, no services after dark." The Rev. F. A. Friend, Vicar of Belper, who was at Navestock in those days, adds some words of remembrance of a happy friendship there of eight years. " He was a most diligent parish priest, a most diligent visitor, in his wide scattered parish, a most excel- lent preacher, and beloved by the people." Especially, he says, was Mr. Stubbs loved by the children ; and he observes that the literary work he did was carried on, with- out neglect of his duties, by routine — all the morning in his study ; all the afternoon visiting, " which was his constitutional walk " ; and evening, newspapers and reading. He left on his people the memory of a " thought- ful, kind, genial man," not too much above them to be a sharer in their life. It was at Navestock that he met his future wife, Catherine, daughter of John Dellar, who at the time taught in the village school and came with the children to the daily services. They were married on June 20, 1859. 30 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 The pedigree drawn out in the Bishop's beautiful hand- writing shows the birth and death as infants of a daughter and two sons, and the birth of those who survive,— /one daughter, Katharine Isabella, and five sons, William Walter, Launcelot Henlock Ascough, Lawrence Morley, Wilfrid Thomas, and Reginald Edward, the youngest who survives being born in 1876. /Parochial work was the first, the never-neglected duty ; but during the seventeen years of his incumbency the foundation of the historical study in which the chief fame of Stubbs consists, was laid. The first book was the result of early interests and of long research. It was begun, the author wrote in 1897, at least as early as 1848; the early note-book shows traces of preparation for it ; and the writing was definitely started in 1855. (The book was the Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum. Ot the origin of this, his first published work, its author thus spoke when he prepared the second edition for the press 1 — " I have, I believe, naturally that strong instinct for the investigation of continuities and coincidences which leads me to the study of chronology and genealogy for the pleasure of exercise, an instinct that was favoured by the circumstances of early home education and local associa- tion ; my first attempts in the direction of research were the collection and arrangement of dates and dynasties. This book is an illustration of the passion and something more. ... It was founded on the examination of the Records of the Church preserved in the Episcopal Registers of the several Dioceses, in the collections formed by Henry Wharton and Dr. Ducarel at Lambeth, in the manuscript Chronicles in the Bodleian, the British Museum, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and in the treasures of the Public Record Office." The diary shows how year by 1 In its obituary notice The Times spoke of Hymnale secundum usum Sarum, 1850, as Dr. Stubbs's first publication. Though there is no certain evidence, and the work is anonymous, Dr. W. Wood has enabled me to identify it as .Stubbs's, almost without doubt. 31 WILLIAM STUBBS year the study was conducted as occasional holidays could be taken; in 1855 for example — "May 8, first visit to Lambeth Library ; May 29, Chichester, for registers ; June 12, Rochester ; July 2, Canterbury ; 4th, Winchester ; 5th, Salisbury ; 6th, Wells ; 7th, Lichfield, and home on 9th." In 1856 the registers of York, Worcester, and Hereford were consulted. The book is " an attempt to exhibit the course of episcopal succession in England," and it " was offered as a contribution to Ecclesiastical History in the departments of Biography and exact Chronology." It may be said, briefly, that it has become an indispensable assistance to the student of English History. Its extraordinary accuracy, and the width of knowledge which is shown in the list of authorities, in print and manuscript, are the merits which are most conspicuous. Perhaps no other English book in the early, or middle, nineteenth century did so much to teach, and illustrate, the importance for sound historical study of exact chronological work. It would hardly be an exaggeration to call the labour involved in it immense ; and it was labour which there seemed no likelihood would receive reward. Another clergyman had written a laborious book : that was all the world knew about it. ^But it started its author on the path of medieval history with the equipment of a first-hand knowledge of very many of its original sources. In modern phrase, the scholar had trained himself not only in history but in palaeography and diplomatics. No one who read medieval history in the early Victorian period knew the ground as did the compiler of the Registrant Sacrum A nglicanum. Letters of compliment of course were received from persons of importance, more or less qualified to judge of the value of the work. Bishops generally sent thanks but said nothing of the book. Newspaper critics were a little puzzled by something unlike what they were accustomed to. Those who knew little of the subject did not always say nothing. One instance will suffice. Dr. Stanley, then 32 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, thus character- istically acknowledged the gift of the Registrant — " I have to thank you for your work on the English Episcopate which I find on my arrival, and which I have no doubt I shall find a useful work of reference. Are you correct in making a succession of Bishops at Ramsbury ? I have always understood that the old see at that time was Sonning." From the year 1859, when he married — and indeed from before that date — until 1866, the life of the Vicar of Nave- stock went on with little variation. What little there is to tell of it may be briefly told. Occasionally he took pupils. The most distinguished of these was Mr. Algernon Swinburne. He came at the end of 1859, to read Modern History especially, during the last part of his time as an undergraduate at Balliol. He was a pupil of Mr. Jowett — "who is not the tutor I had selected for him, and hoped he would have been with," wrote his father, Admiral Swinburne — and who described him as " in some respects the most singular young man I have ever known," and was apparently much distressed in the presence of genius to which he was unaccustomed. "He has extra- ordinary powers of imitation in writing," he declared, " and he composes (as I am told) Latin medieval hymns, French vaudevilles, as well as endless English poems, with the greatest facility." Mr. Jowett deplored the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and considered that no good — scholastically — could come of him " unless he can be hindered from writing poetry " ; and he, Mr. Jowett, con- cluded with the following "sentiment" — " I incline to believe that the greatest power that older persons have over the young is sympathy with them, especially as they grow up towards manhood. If we don't allow enough for the strange varieties of character, and often for their extreme, almost unintelligible unlikeness to ourselves, we lose influence over them, and they become alienated from fancying that they are not understood." I W.s. 33 D WILLIAM STUBBS ought to add that in later years there were, as the Times has reminded me, " cordial relations between the Master and the poet." In spite of the "extreme, almost unintelligible unlike- ness" between Algernon Swinburne and Benjamin Jowett, the young student was most warmly and appreciatively welcomed at Navestock, and the memory of the association was on both sides a most happy one. Stubbs always spoke of his pupil with kind and affectionate regard ; and the distinguished pupil has written to me (August 3rd, 1903) as follows — " I do not think I ever received a letter from Bishop Stubbs — indeed I am sure I never did. But it would be impossible for me to say with what cordial and grateful regard I shall always remember him. His kindness was as exceptional as his other great qualities. I am sure no young man who ever had the honour to be his pupil — how- ever little credit the pupil may have done him — can remember his name without affection as well as admiration." ^'Besides the parish and the pupils the Vicar of Navestock had many other interests. He was keenly alive to the ecclesiastical troubles of the day, and, as ever, would not let his friends or his opinions suffer without standing up for them. At the time of the " Papal Aggression " and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, he had been but a short time in Essex. As his old friend Dr. Wood says, many otherwise sensible people lost their wits : Lord John Russell, looking for a safer enemy to attack than the " Aggressor," suc- ceeded in turning the popular indignation against the High Church clergy. " Excited meetings were held in conse- quence to denounce the traitors, at one of which Stubbs stood up bravely in their defence, and (such was the madness of the moment) had to be pulled down by his friends." He had known Dr. Pusey when he was an undergradate, and through his friend Arthur Haddan, Fellow of Trinity, had hlill kept in touch with the University. In 1865 the 34 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 connection brought him into correspondence with the leader of the Tractarian party in Oxford. The first association of Stubbs with Dr. Pusey in later life seems to have arisen over the question of the Oxford University election of 1865. On May 21, 1852, The Times had published a declaration by members of Convocation expressing dissatisfaction with Mr. Gladstone's conduct as a burgess at^the University. A counter-declaration depre- cated the bringing forward of a third candidate, to oppose Mr. Gladstone, at that time : this was signed by Mr. Stubbs. At the general election in 1865, Mr. Gladstone stood again for his University, at a time when there was very strong feeling against him as a member of Lord Palmerston's Ministry. It was then that Dr. Pusey wrote to Mr. Stubbs the following letter. 1 It is undated, but the postmark is July 6, 1865. It is very similar to one written to the Rev. R. W. Randall, afterwards Dean of Chichester. The allusion to the canons refers doubtless " to the manner in which a proposed alteration in the canon about Sponsors was first submitted to the Convocation of Canterbury." Christ Church, Oxford. My dear Sir, — A friend of mine tells me that you would probably not be unwilling to hear from me about Gladstone's election. I see your name in a list supposed to be hitherto neutral. You will have seen, perhaps, that I was deeply interested in his election, and that on the ground of personal confi- dence, formed on a knowledge of him since his under- graduate days. We cannot, of course, expect that he or any other statesman will fight all the battles of the Church in our own way. Many of us would not fight them in the same way ourselves. But when we know that a person has himself a true personal, loyal faith, and a love for God, His Church, and His truth, one is sure that all will come right. 1 See Liddon's Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. iv. pp. 198 — 9. 35 d 2 WILLIAM STUBBS Lately, too, we had much reason to be grateful to him for gaining for Convocation the leave to debate on the canons, which, before his political weight was felt, would have been altered without consent of the Church. On the Court of Appeal, too, his plan seems to me the most spirited and most practical which I have seen. It would be an ill day for Oxford if it should snap the relation which has bound us with him these eighteen years. Yours faithfully, E. B. Pusey. This letter was the beginning of a connection which ripened into deep and affectionate regard when Stubbs returned to Oxford, in 1866, as Regius Professor of Modern History. In i860, in the country Stubbs stood forward in Church matters. The savagery of the Roman and Romanising dispute was felt in Essex, and the vicar of Navestock preached on June 10, i860, a sermon on 2 Kings x. 16: " And he said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord," " with the intention of strengthening the hands of the incumbent, who had expressed a wish to stand aloof from the bitter controversy." It was a strong appeal against identifying personal opinion with zeal for God. " Men take their opinions ready made," he said, " and stand up for them as if they loved them for the truth's sake, not from mere habit. Some are led by a newspaper, some by a friend, some by mere opposition ; very, very few care for truth. I need not caution you to be careful how you form opinions ; it would be of no use. No man knows that he has the duty or chance of forming an opinion till he has formed it. The only use of warning is as to the way in which you support them. Many a good principle is wrecked in bad hands, and many a rotten measure carried by the perseverance and temper of its supporters. May God direct you in all opinions, and teach you the good and right way in religious things, as well as 36 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 in all public and private matters ; but above all things to show love and charity one towards another." Remarks so charitable fell ill on the ears of excited partisans. The sermon was construed as a personal attack upon the " Committee of the Branch Protestant Reforma- tion Society " established in Brentwood. Stubbs published his sermon, and, like the chaplain in It is Never Too Late to Mend, was able to show that it was written and preached before the aggrieved persons were heard of. " I may add," he said — one may imagine, with that sort of " twinkle " which became so familiar to his friends as the years went on — " that I have such a horror of all committees as would effectually prevent me from consciously exposing myself to their irresponsible animadversions." Throughout the time he was busy as a Poor Law Guardian and in Diocesan matters, especially as a Diocesan Inspector of Schools, and he was much trusted by Bishop Wigram. [His historical studies were unbroken. He edited Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, and added a valuable Continuation of his own. In 1861 he edited from the Cotton MS. Julius D.6, collated with the Harleian MS. 3,776, the tract De Inventions Sancttz Cruris nostrae in Monte Acuto et de ductione ejusdem apud Waltham, with an account, showing his powers of close and exact investiga- tion, of the foundation of Waltham Abbey. In 1862 he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine a paper on the Bishops of Man and the Isles, based in the first place on Professor Munch's edition of the chronicle (Christiania, i860) ; in the same year a letter on a charter relating to the Canons of Waltham ; and in later years letters on Bishop Savaric of Wells, on Lambeth degrees, and on the founda- tion statute of the Provostry of Wells. In 1861 he read a paper on the foundation and early Fasti of Peterborough to the Archaeological Institute, which was afterwards published in their journal, and in 1862 a paper on the "Ecclesiastical History of Worcester in the Eighth Century " was read for the same body and published. 37 WILLIAM STUBBS In 1865 he wrote an extremely interesting and valuable letter to a Russian friend on the Apostolic Succession in the Church of England. This was published in 1866. All these papers ought certainly to be collected, with other writings, even less known, of their author, and placed in the hands of the public. 1 As a scholar — and perhaps of all his intellectual interests the historical was the keenest — Stubbs was always anxious for better opportunities of study than were possible at Navestock. When Archbishop Longley was moved in 1862 from York to Canterbury he applied to his old patron for the post of Librarian at Lambeth, made illustrious by a long line of distinguished men, among whom the last was Dr. S. R. Maitland. There was for some time a considerable difficulty as to the position of the Librarian, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners being apparently unwilling to make arrangements satisfactory to the Archbishop. Stubbs, however, received the appointment on October 15, 1862, and from that time he attended in the Library twice a week. There he was able to study subjects which he afterwards made fruitful ; for example, he no doubt laid the foundation of a masterly speech delivered in 1898, and of a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1887 on the same subject, when he was instructed by Archbishop Longley in 1863 to search in the Library for any documentary evidence bearing on the joint action of the Convocations of Canterbury and York. The few letters from Archbishop Longley that have been preserved are concerned chiefly with the Library, with the Archbishop's wish that Mr. Stubbs should continue Librarian, when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were called upon to make new arrangements (1866), and with the candidature of Mr. Stubbs for the post of Principal Librarian of the British Museum on the death of Panizzi. This was at the end of 1865, and though the candidature 1 For a list of these and similar writings see Bibliography at the end of this volume. 38 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 was unsuccessful, the testimonials from a number of eminent scholars showed how great a reputation as a scholar he had already acquired. In 1862 he had stood for the newly- founded Chichele Professorship of Modern History at Oxford, and the difference between the testimonials pre- sented then and three years later shows how much he had advanced in the knowledge of the prominent men of the day. Those who wrote in 1862 were generally, it would seem, not well acquainted with the subject to be professed or the man to profess it: in 1865 the man was recognised as among the first scholars of the day. Among the many witnesses it need hardly be said that the most enthusiastic was Freeman. From a testimonial which shows great knowledge and judgment, one sentence only shall be quoted. It is the most complete description of the man that could be given in a few words. " The same unvary- ing love of truth which distinguishes his intellectual, distinguishes also his moral nature." Though in 1862 and 1865 his wishes were disappointed, Stubbs had already embarked on what was to be really the most important work of his life, — the application to English medieval documents of the scientific methods of Continental scholars. A great service was rendered to all Englishmen who glory in the history of their country when in 1857 the / Master of the Rolls submitted to the Treasury his famous proposal for the editing and publishing of original materials for the history of the kingdoms from the invasion of the Romans to the reign of Henry VIII. Before this the sources of English History had been made accessible only through the labours of private individuals, scholars of devo- tion, but often of eccentricity, or societies not always well managed and generally of uncertain vitality. The recogni- tion of a national obligation gave a new inspiration to the study of English History. The strict limits that were laid down for the editors, the control generally, but not always, vigilant, that was exercised over their labours, secured 39 WILLIAM STUBBS good workers and good work. It is true that there was sometimes a " Twiss travesty " — as Stubbs wrote in a letter that reflected somewhat cleverly on one famous " hash " ; but the general level of achievement was high. Stubbs was an early applicant for work under this scheme. He was answered that editors had already been chosen for all the work that could be undertaken ; and it was not till 1863 that the ablest of all the editors was at last employed to prepare an edition for the Master of the Rolls. It is interesting to observe what such editing involved. In the first place, it required the treatment of the text of an author as scholars had long treated the text of an ancient classic. The collation of manuscripts, the careful investigation of origin, authenticity, possible corruption, recension, interpolation — these were the bases of the pre- paration of an edition. The Master of the Rolls proposed " that each chronicle or historical document " should be " treated in the same way as if the editor were engaged on an Editio Princepsr He suggested that the editor should in every case " give an account of the MSS. employed by him, of their age and their peculiarities " ; and a restriction at first imposed, as to the nature of the notes that might be appended, was gradually relaxed as editors established a customary method which exactly satisfied the needs of scholars. Many able men and sound scholars were num- bered among the editors of the volumes from the first. Freeman was himself — though but once, and that nearly twenty years later than his biographer, Dean Stephens, states — among them. Luard and Brewer and Shirley have left work that must remain indispensable to students : and among the survivors of those who first set so high the standard is Dr. Macray, active and vigorous as ever. But unquestionably the greatest of them all was Stubbs. He combined the qualities which are so rarely conjoined in such an undertaking. He had solid and extensive learning ; he had a sober judicial mind ; he was skilled in palaeo- graphy; he had a genuine enthusiasm for medieval studies, 40 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 theological as well as historical ; and he was unwearied in patience. In the result he was thoroughly at home among the early English ; and he might have lived, his readers felt, at the Court of Henry II. The first work undertaken by Stubbs was the Chronicles and Memorials of the reign of Richard I. The Itinerariutn appeared in 1864, the Epistolae Cantuarienses in 1865. 1 The long series of contributions to the work was not ended till 1889, but something as to the work now begun may well be said now by anticipation. Of the introductions themselves as Stubbs wrote them, briefly it may be said that they were the fine fruits of years of toil and of an extraordinary aptitude for medieval studies. The author had an absorbing passion for historical studies. While he delighted to trace the working out of great principles, he yet loved a fact as a fact — a genealogy, an obscure date, a complicated chain of cause and effect. He knew medieval theology and law. He saw the ways of courts and armies, of judges, bishops, merchants, as one who had lived among them. And his was no view derived from others' researches. He had read the manuscripts, fixed the readings, investigated difficult passages, for him- self. ' His conclusions, when he came to them, were based upon as thorough study as man ever gave to any subject that concerned the life of man. The introductions to the " Rolls Series " were the summing up of the work of years. They went near to being the final word on every subject with which they dealt. The rescue of the memory of the Great Archbishop Dunstan from the ignorant abuse of Protestant contro- versialists, and the equally unhistorical defence of Roman hagiologists, was one of the first and greatest services which Stubbs rendered to our national history. It was a service comparable to that performed by Professor Brewer to the reputation of Cardinal Wolsey. It was even better 1 For a full list of Stubbs's contributions to the M Rolls Series " see the Bibliography at the end of this volume. 41 WILLIAM STUBBS deserved, and it has been as widely accepted. It is only necessary to turn to a school history of some thirty years ago and compare it with one written recently to see the difference that has come over our view, and in some measure, at least, to estimate the service that was rendered to the cause of truth. Stubbs showed what was true by sharply criticising what was false, as well as by setting forth a plain tale from authentic sources. We have learnt what Dunstan was from passages such as these — " The early and more trustworthy writers connect the memory of Dunstan with no cruel or barbarous asceticism. The evidence of the laws does, I think, confirm the testimony of the Lives. Dunstan is a constructor, not a destroyer ; a consolidator, not a pedantic theorist ; a reformer, not an innovator ; a politician, not a bigot ; a statesman, not a zealot. His merits as a scholar, an artist, a musician, a cunning craftsman, are a part of the contemporary picture which ought not to be disregarded. His zeal for education is a far more authentic trait than his zeal for celibacy. His vindication of the law of marriage can never be regarded as a blot by those who know anything of the state of society, especially in the royal houses of his day ; or consider the strange way in which religion and courtly adulation could be combined when the uncorrupted body of a king like Edgar was believed to work miracles. Yet this has scarcely been fairly recognised. Dunstan's zeal for the purity of marriage is acknowledged as a matter of merit when it was exercised against the corrupt Papacy ; yet because by the command of the Witan of the kingdom he draws a wanton boy of fifteen from the dangerous society of a girl whom it is unlawful for him to marry, we are told that ' a young king was persecuted and dethroned by the insolence of mockery exciting a superstitious people against him.' There must be a sacredness, it would seem, about the very sins of kings." 42 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 There he was twitting Hallam, strangest of all pretenders to impartiality where any Churchman or Church question was concerned. A few pages later he turned to, or turned on, Milman, who, as a Churchman himself, might have been expected to know better. The passage is a long one, but we could hardly find another more characteristic. It was his summing up of a long investigation, very patiently conducted, very clear in its criticism, very exact in its collection and estimate of evidence, very generous in its acknowledgment of the good work of others. Thus he concluded — " I shall not attempt to draw a minute character of Dunstan, for the materials before us afford too small data to make it possible to do so with any definiteness. But I think we may, from the language of the first biographer, the letters of Abbo and the other writers included in this volume, get a glimpse of the man, truer if fainter than the fancy portraits drawn by later writers, who have seen no mean between indiscriminate adulation on the one hand and the most hateful detraction on the other. Dunstan has been represented by a very learned recent writer as a man whose life was ' a crusade, cruel, unrelenting, yet but partially successful, against the married clergy, which in truth comprehended the whole secular clergy of the Anglo- Saxon kingdom.' ' Dunstan was, as it were, in a narrower sphere, a prophetic type and harbinger of Hildebrand. Like Hildebrand, or rather like Damiani doing the work of Hildebrand, in the spirit not of a rival sovereign, but of an iron-hearted monk, he trampled the royal power under his feet. The scene at the coronation of King Edwy, excepting the horrible cruelties to which it was the prelude, and which belong to a more barbarous race, might seem to prepare mankind for the humiliation of the Emperor Henry at Canossa.' l For this invective there is not in the writings 1 Milman, Latin Christianity, vol. iv. p. 25 (ed. 1867). 43 WILLIAM STUBBS of contemporaries, or in any authentic remains of Dunstan's legislation, the shadow of a foundation. " What Dunstan did at Edwy's coronation he did by the order of the assembled Witan of the kingdom. The cruelties which are said to have followed are asserted on the authority of Osbern and Eadmer, the earlier of whom wrote nearly a century and a half after the death of Edwy, and depend on no other testimony. If they ever took place at all, they took place during Dunstan's exile, during the war that preceded the election of Edgar. Such at least is the statement of Osbern, who is the sole witness, Eadmer's additions in his Life of Odo resting on no evidence at all. The charge of persecuting the married clergy is as baseless. We have no means of judging what proportion of the secular clergy was married ; the secular clerks who held monastic property were married, and the same evidence which proves their marriages proves also how lightly the marriage tie sat upon them. But against these it was not Dunstan, but Oswald and Ethelwold, who took measures of reform which are represented as persecu- tion, and which were, no doubt, severe and undiscriminating. In this Dunstan, as I have already remarked, takes only a secondary part ; he does not remove the clerks from his own cathedral churches ; his sympathy with the monastic movement is only to be gathered by inference from the fact that he did not oppose it. " As to the married clergy in general there is absolutely no evidence whatever ; and here is the most astounding amount of assumption. It is scarcely to be believed that our canonists, in discussing the date of the little ecclesi- astical legislation that belongs to Edgar's reign, have determined that it does not belong to Dunstan's pontificate because it contains enactments against the married clergy. Yet Dunstan became Archbishop as soon as Edwy was dead, and beyond a doubt inspired whatever ecclesiastical law was made in that reign. In fact the only laws which can with any probability be ascribed to Dunstan are 44 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 altogether silent on the point. We know that when he was a young man in minor orders he intended to marry, and it was the taking of monastic vows that showed his renunciation of the design. It is the enforcement of monastic discipline, not the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, that is the object of the clerical reforms ; and in this Dunstan only partly sympathised. As for the charge of trampling on the royal authority, it may be dismissed in a word. Men's views of what constitutes vice may differ, but any rule that condemns Dunstan condemns John the Baptist also ; and if any error on the side of severity is pardonable, it is when the rebuke is addressed to the vices of princes : why is Dunstan to be blamed for that which is the glory of Ambrose and Anselm ? " But, in truth, the career of Dunstan was no anticipation of that of Hildebrand : it was the very counterpart of that of Gerbert, the student, the practical workman, the wise instructor of a royal pupil, the statesman, the reformer, and the patriot." It is a fine vindication ; but finer still are those magni- ficent pages in which, with the patient assurance of the scientific investigator and the sharp decisiveness of the judge, he weighs the character of the royal race of Plan- tagenet, and then brings to the bar of history the name of Henry Fitz-Empress, one of the greatest of them all. It was in the Chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough that he found the occasion for this brilliant analysis. Thus J. R. Green, in the Saturday Revictv, wrote of the editor's work — " Valuable as such a chronicle must necessarily be, the extracts we have already given prove how much Lord Romilly had added to the worth of his gift by his good sense in entrusting its editing to the one scholar in Eng- land who is pre-eminently fitted for the task. The terse, pregnant notes which some apparent relaxation of the older rule of the Series has allowed Professor Stubbs to add to the text, the bibliographical research of the first 45 WILLIAM STUBBS preface, and the elaborate picture of the character and policy of the Angevins which occupies the second, are all equally admirable. Such a note, for instance, as that in which the very puzzling chronology of the home transac- tions in 1 191 — transactions whose political importance has hitherto been unnoticed by our histories — is definitely cleared up, and indeed the whole of the brief comments with which Mr. Stubbs has accompanied the annals of the reign of Richard are of the highest value. It is, however, in his sketch of the character of Henry II that the editor has evidently put forth his fullest powers, and it was pre- cisely to such a character that his own intellectual temper enables him to do justice. His mind appears to be pre- eminently fair and judicial, and in the adulation and caricature of Peter of Blois, Gerald of Wales, and Ralph the Black, there is an admirable field for judgment and fairness." The character of Henry II is introduced by a sketch of the characteristics of the Plantagenets. As a study of heredity alone it is fascinating. As a moral judgment, based on fullest knowledge and widest charity, there are few worthy to be set beside it in all English historical writing. Thus it begins : — " A careful reading of the history of the three centuries of Angevin kings might almost tempt one to think that the legend of their diabolical origin and hereditary curse was not a mere fairy-tale, but the mythical expression of some political foresight or of a strong historical instinct. But, in truth, no such theory is needed : the vices of kings, like those of other men, carry with them their present punishment ; whilst with them, even more signally than with other men, the accumulation of subsequent misery is distinctly conspicuous, and is seen to fall with a weight more overwhelming the longer their strength or their position has kept it poised. "It was not that their wickedness was of a monstrous 46 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 kind ; such wickedness, indeed, was not a prominent feature in the character of the medieval devil ; nor was it mere capricious cruelty or wanton mischief. Neither were their misfortunes of the appalling sort wrought out by the Furies of Attic tragedy. Of such misery there were not wanting instances, but not enough to give more than an occasional luridness to the picture. Nor was it, as in the case of the Stewarts, that the momentum of inherited mis- fortune and misery had become a conscious influence, under which no knightly or kingly qualities could maintain hope, and a meaner nature sought a refuge in recklessness. All the Plantagenet kings were high-hearted men, rather rebellious against circumstances than subservient to them. But the long pageant shows us uniformly, under so great a variety of individual character, such signs of great gifts and opportunities thrown away, such unscrupulousness in action, such uncontrolled passion, such vast energy and strength wasted on unworthy aims, such constant failure and final disappointment, in spite of constant successes and brilliant achievements, as remind us of the conduct and luck of those unhappy spirits who, throughout the Middle Ages, were continually spending superhuman strength in build- ing in a night inaccessible bridges and uninhabitable castles, or purchasing with untold treasures souls that might have been had for nothing, and invariably cheated of their reward. " Only two in the whole list strike us as free from the hereditary sins : Edward I and Henry VI, the noblest and the unhappiest of the race ; and of these the former owes his real greatness in history, not to the success of his personal ambition, but to the brilliant qualities brought out by the exigencies of his affairs ; whilst on the latter, both as a man and as a king, fell the heaviest crash of accumu- lated misery. None of the others seem to have had a wish to carry out the true grand conception of kingship. And thus it is with the extinction of the male line of Plan- tagenet that the social happiness of the English people begins. Even Henry VII, though, perhaps, as selfish a 47 WILLIAM STUBBS man as any of his predecessors, and certainly less cared for or beloved, seems to open an era during which the vices of the monarchs have been less disastrous to their subjects than before, and the prosperity of the state has increased in no proportion to the ability of the kings. " And yet no two of these princes were alike in the con- stituent proportions of their temperament. The leading feature of one was falsehood, of another cruelty, of another licentiousness, of another unscrupulous ambition ; one was the slave of women, another of unworthy favourites, one a raiser of taxes, another a shedder of the blood of his people. Yet there was not one thoroughly contemptible person in the list. Many had redeeming qualities, some had great ones ; all had a certain lion-like nobility, some had a portion of the real elements of greatness. Some were wise; all were brave ; some were pure in life, some gentle as well as strong ; but is it too hard to say that all were thoroughly selfish, all were in the main unfortunate ? " In the character of Henry II are found all the charac- teristics of this race. Not the greatest, nor the wisest, nor the worst, nor the most unfortunate, he still unites all these in their greatest relative proportions. Not so impetuous as Richard, or Edward III, or Henry V; not so wise as Edward I ; not so luxurious as John or Edward IV ; not so false as Henry III, nor so greedy as Henry IV, nor so cruel as the princes of the house of York ; he was still eminently wise and brave, eminently cruel, lascivious, greedy, and false, and eminently unfortunate also, if the ruin of all the selfish aims of his sagacious plans, the disappointment of his affections, and the sense of having lost his soul for nothing, can be called misfortune." And this is but the introduction to a searching investiga- tion of the aims, the temper, the character of Henry II as it revealed itself in the tangled sorrows and crimes and successes of his masterful and unhappy life. The constitu- tional historian, the ecclesiastic, the moralist, have their judg- ments foreshadowed ; and then follows a minute collection 48 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 of all contemporary references to the character and the habits of the King, out of which the " rough, passionate, uneasy man " emerges, clearly set in the light of day ; and at last we reach the conclusion that, while there was in him not one of the elements of real greatness, the times and the man together gave to the world a figure of conspicuous importance, a link in the chain of men who made England what she came to be. " He was the man the time required. It was a critical time, and his action and policy determined the crisis in a favourable way. He stands with Alfred, Canute, William the Conqueror, and Edward I, one of the conscious creators of English greatness." When we examine masterly portraits such as these we might well think that he who drew them would hardly excel in work of other kinds. But the interest of these introductions to the Rolls Series Chronicles lies at least as much in their variety as in anything else. The way in which a long series of complicated events is summarised and made vivid, the analysis of interest and motive and personality, make the driest of decades live again in bright relief. Stubbs could not only describe a Dunstan, a Henry II, an Edward I, or a Richard Cceur de Lion, with that suppressed fire of intuitive sympathy that comes from an intimate understanding, but he could unravel the most perplexed point of archaeology, the most difficult problem of manuscript in origin or comparison, could summarise tendencies and elucidate systems of law, with as sure a touch as that with which he seemed to have dashed on the colours that painted a warrior or a saint. In truth it was the width of his knowledge and his sympathy which makes the past of England live in these pages as it had never lived in books before. " Was there ever such a man?" says Dr. Jessopp in a letter I read as I write down these words. Those who read and re-read what Dr. Stubbs wrote must echo what he says. Whether it was feudal law and the Assize of Jerusalem W.S. 49 E WILLIAM STUBBS or monastic exemptions and the struggles of archbishops and monks, the principles emphasised by Magna Carta or the foreign policy of a great king, the writer has equally examined the question in all its bearings, sifted the authorities, massed the evidence, looked before and after. And it is not only great issues that interest him : he is never more at home that when he is tracing out the history of some manuscript, the details of some family history, or the local peculiarities of some district, or corporation, or village. Years later he described his recreations as " making pedigrees and correcting proof sheets." No man ever more enjoyed the delights of a minute accuracy that was never self-assertion or pedantry. Typical of his work in this aspect are passages in which he illustrated the duties of a dean ofS. Paul's in the twelfth century. The survey of the chapter estates undertaken by Ralph de Diceto soon after he was installed gives oppor- tunity for the insertion of a matter of personal interest, for the parish referred to was one of which Stubbs was incumbent — " Of the character of the visitation the report on Nave- stock may serve as a specimen : ' Ecclesia de Nastocha est in dominio canonicorum et reddit eis lx. solidos per manum firmarii ; et solvit nomine sinodalium xxi. d. ; de denario beati Petri iii. solidos quos colligit sacerdos et solvit. Et habet in dominio de terra arabili xlvii. acras, in bosco xl. acras, et defendit eas versus regem pro quater viginti acris. Habet etiam decimas plenas totius villae et de dominio tertiam garbam.' The case of Navestock might be a good illustration of the wisdom of the dean's suggestion that the farm of the manor and the rectory should not be in the same hands. S. Paul's held the two together until the Reformation, when the two were finally divided ; but long before that, probably the eighty acres of glebe and wood which belonged to the 50 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 church had been lost among the lands of the manor; the vicar holds now about twenty acres, and the rectors possess no land in the parish." And there is a special appropriateness, too, in the details of Ralph's work in the domestic economy of his cathedral church, the regulations as to the servants or virgers (as Dr. Stubbs always spelled the word) or resi- dentiary canons, or festivals and festivities. Was he thinking of some canons whom he remembered, when he wrote that the canons of Ralph's day were " all great and rich men," and that they recognised the duty of hospitality as only second to that of Divine service ? He too was a canon of that great church, the successor to the " grand world-famed cathedral " of the twelfth century. Passages such as these, where present interests supplement and illustrate the past, were scattered through the volumes ; but always there was wise reticence. The writer knew well how serious effect may be marred by too free a use of wise saws and modern instances. But personal refer- ence, rarely employed, is a recognised instrument of the literary craft. In this, as well as in greater matters, the author of these introductions was a master of the art of letters. And there is again and again the trick of telling phrase, summing up in sharp distinction the end of a discussion, or an analysis, or a contrast — " Saladin was a good heathen, Richard a bad Christian ; set side by side there is not much to choose between them ; judged each by his own standard there is very much. Could they have changed faith and place, Saladin would have made a better Christian than Richard, and Richard, perhaps, no worse heathen than Saladin ; but Saladin's possible Christianity would have been as far above his actual heathenism as Richard's possible heathenism would have been above his actual Christianity." 51 E 2 WILLIAM STUBBS Or, again, in the character of John, whom he knew more intimately, one cannot but feel, as did Green, who called him not only the most ruthless but the ablest of the Plantagenets, or than Miss Norgate, who in her monumental life of him, will not depart from the words of the master whom she so loyally honours — " What marks out John personally from the long list of our sovereigns, good and bad, is this — that there is nothing in him which for a single moment calls out our better sentiments ; in his prosperity there is nothing that we can admire, and in his adversity nothing that we can pity. Many, most perhaps, of our other kings have had both sins and sorrows — sins for which they might allege temptations, and sorrows which are not less meet for sympathy because they were well deserved ; but for John no temptations are allowed to be pleaded in extenuation of his guilt, and there is not one moment, not one of the many crises of his reign, in which we feel the slightest movement towards sympathy. Edward III may have been as unprincipled, but he is a more graceful sinner ; William Rums as savage, but he is a more magnificent and stronger-willed villain ; Ethelred the Unready as weak, false, and worthless, but he sins for, and suffers with, his people. John has neither grace nor splendour, strength nor patriotism. His history stamps him as a worse man than many who have done much more harm, and that — for his reign was not a period of unparalleled or unmiti- gated misery to his subjects — chiefly on account of his own personal share in the producing of his own deep and desperate humiliation." Perhaps those who read for the first time this eminently characteristic work of the greatest of our historians since Gibbon are as much impressed by the literary skill of the writer as by his learning and the minuteness of his accuracy. It is, indeed, as a man of letters, no less $2 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 than as an historian, that Stubbs is revealed in his work for the Rolls Series, and no life of all those that have been told these last twenty years, from Chaucer to Browning or Arnold, bears more distinctly the mark- not only of the knowledge of books, but of the love of literature. The man who did this noble service to Eng- lish history must remain, in his wisdom and patience and sympathy, one of the greatest names in the record of English letters. Thus in the years at Navestock the foundation of a great work was being laid. At the same time one " historic friendship" was being cemented, and one begun. Of all the friends whom Stubbs drew around him the warmest and most enthusiastic was Freeman. In some points they were alike, in some conspicuously different. Both were certainly lovers of Truth rather than partisans. It was that which made their work so different from that of other writers of their day ; and no pains were too great, they felt, to discover it. Both had a deep attachment for the English Constitution as they understood it : it was not a theory or legalism to them, and they never wearied of jesting at philosophers' and lawyers' views of history. Both, too, had a deep attachment to the English Church as something more than the greatest of English institutions. The life of Freeman showed the happy mixture of humour and learning and force that won him the love and admira- tion of his friends. His bluff, gruff mannerisms of which people talked concealed from no one of intelligence his true and kindly heart. He seemed to those who knew him the incarnation of English doggedness and power and sincerity. With him the friendship had lasted since the days when the one succeeded the other at Trinity ; but with John Richard Green, the impulsive, warm-hearted, highly-strung Stepney priest, Stubbs's friendship was of later growth. How it began, and how the three men were linked together, it is only possible to tell in Stubbs's own words. 53 WILLIAM STUBBS Thus he told the story when he gave his farewell lecture at Oxford in 1884 — "I am tempted to modify the excessive dryness, as the Edinburgh Reviewer puts it, of my discourse, by telling the story of our first introduction to one another, chiefly because it has been made the subject of a myth which has made us both a little, or not a little, ridiculous. Some of you, I dare say, remember a paragraph which went the round of the September papers years ago, and told how two persons, a stout and pompous professor and a bright ascetic young divine, met in a railway carriage ; how the burly professor aired his erudition by a little history lecture on every subject of interest that was passed on the road, and how each of his assumptions and assertions was capped by an answer from the ascetic divine which showed that he knew it all and knew it better. The professor at last, exasperated by the rejoinders, broke into a parody of the famous address of Erasmus, ' aut Morus aut Diabolus,' substituting for ' Morus ' Johnny Green. Could this be true? It was in 1863 that we met: I was not yet a professor ; he had not begun to wear the air of an ascetic. We were invited to Wells, to a meeting of the Somerset Archaeological Society, to stay with a common friend whom you will have no difficulty in identifying. I was told, ' If you leave the station at two you will meet Green, and possibly Dimock, the biographer of S. Hugh, whom I knew already. I knew by description the sort of man I was to meet ; I recognised him as he got into the Wells carriage, holding in his hand a volume of Renan. I said to myself, * If I can hinder, he shall not read that book.' We sat opposite, and fell immediately into conversation. I dare say that I aired my erudition so far as to tell him that I was going to the Archaeological meeting and to stay at Somerleaze. ' Oh, then,' he said, ' you must be either Stubbs or Dimock.' I replied, ' I am not Dimock.' He came to me at Navestock afterwards, and that volume of 54 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 Renan found its way uncut into my waste-paper basket. That is all ; a matter of confusion and inversion ; and so, they say, history is written. Well, perhaps a friendship between two historical workers may be called a historic friendship, and, to be historical, should gather some of the mist of fable about its beginning : anyhow it was a NAVESTOCK CHURCH. friendship that lasted for his life, and the loss of which I shall never cease regretting." l We come now to the period when Stubbs was to return to the University. It was announced that Mr. Goldwin 1 Lectures, 3rd edition, pp. 432 — 33. 55 WILLIAM STUBBS Smith was about to resign the Regius Professorship of Modern History. On this Stubbs wrote to Freeman — Navestock, December 23 (1865). My dear Freeman, — I am sorry to hear that the righteous Man is going to resign ; I think he should hold on until he can secure a good successor, and that that will be you. It would be painful to have Froude and worse still to have anybody else. If you do not, I think that Owen should. I am not going to stand for any more things. If I am not worth looking up, I am not ambitious enough to like to be beaten. The reason why we got through the schools so soon was that the class men now come before the pass men and there are no honorary fourths. I am afraid I was unable to say a word for Bryce, as I really saw nobody but Digby and Boase who took any interest in the thing. I have no present idea of the answers to your questions. I fancy the History of Scotland is in the most admirable confusion and that Cornwall has no history at all — like the outlines of the Countesses in Mr. Mantilini's reminiscences. I am so busy that I have no time to say more than to wish you and yours a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I have not seen Earle's Chronicles. About the Picts I think it is of no use trying to come to a conclusion — the other points might possibly be decided. The Cornish kingdom probably came to a full end about 930, I think, but I do not know : 926 is given as the year of submission to the Church of England. See Chron. ann. 926. Mr. Pcdler says that Huwal or Huvel was the last king: he signs down to 949 and died about 950. Yours very sincerely, William Stubbs. 56 COUNTRY PARSON, 1850-1866 It was some time before the vacancy took effect ; there were no signs that Stubbs was to fill it. He seemed indeed to be settled at Navestock with no prospect of removal ; and his work there continued to be warmly recognised. On January 1st, i860, Bishop Wigram wrote to him thus — " Though the clean bill of health which I pronounced over Navestock needs no qualification, it may be satisfaction to you to have the same under my hand. I admire the system and devotednesss with which you work, and heartily bid you Godspeed through the New Year and many more to follow it." It appears that a number of names were formally sent in by candidates when the vacancy at Oxford was announced. On July 28th, 1866, Lord Derby wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to ask if Mr. Stubbs, though he " is not among the avowed candidates," would accept the post, and whether the acceptance would be with the Archbishop's concurrence. On August 2nd the Prime Minister wrote to Mr. Stubbs — " I have much pleasure in saying that though I have not the honour of your personal acquaintance, your high reputation is such as to assure me that in proposing to submit your name for the Queen's approval I am taking a step which cannot but be acceptable and advantageous to the University." The reply that Stubbs wrote shows with how undisguised a delight he accepted the offer. To Freeman he wrote first of all. Navestock, August 4 (1866). My dear Freeman, — I have a piece of news for you with which I trust you will be pleased. Lord Derby has offered me the Professor- ship and I have accepted it : of course I have to wait for the Queen's approval yet. I have only just heard of it, and I think you are the first person to be made to share in my pleasure. I had sent in no application, but last week had a letter 57 WILLIAM STUBBS from a man whom I know slightly to ask whether I would take it. On Saturday Lord Derby wrote to the Arch- bishop, whose note I got on Tuesday, and this morning has brought the offer. I did not like to write to you before I had something like probability to go upon, but it is only a week since the subject was mentioned to me. I had thought at first of standing, but knowing that Hook, Hardy, and Brewer considered themselves in a manner pledged to you I thought it better not. I know, my dear Freeman, that you will rejoice for me as I should have done for you, but I really wish I could have had my success without your being disappointed. How much the success (if it is to be one) will have been owing to you — to your kind encourage- ment, interest in my studies, and unstinting praise, I feel and shall always do most intimately. This must be a secret until I write to you about it again, but I could not bear not to tell you to-day. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. On October 17th the Stubbs family left for Oxford : on October 26th the Letters Patent were read in Convocation, and the new Professor took the oath. He adds in his diary a note which marks the beginning of a new connec- tion and the confirmation of an old friendship : " Provost of Oriel called : Haddan came to tea." On November 25 th, 1866, he preached his farewell sermons at Navestock, in the morning on Acts xx. 25, in the evening on Acts xx. 32. On the 27th he records — " Visited the whole parish and wished good-bye." 58 II. PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884. T?OR seventeen years Stubbs had been a country parson ; -*■ now for eighteen he was to be an Oxford Professor. In neither case did the post exhaust his activities. At Navestock, with all his earnest parochial work, he was able to lay deep foundations of learning, to show the first fruits of his historical study, and to actively fulfil the duties of Lambeth Librarian. At Oxford duties even more engrossing, if not wider, beset him ; and while he was still Professor he was also at one time a country vicar, and later he was Canon of S. Paul's. Before he had well settled down in Oxford the death of his friend Dr. Shirley, who had been a fellow contributor to the Rolls Series and shared his interests in medieval history, left vacant the chair of Ecclesiastical History. Many expected that Stubbs, the foremost ecclesiastical historian in the land, would be appointed to fill the post. But the Prime Minister took occasion to reward political service as well as conspicuous intellectual power, rather than special qualifications, by appointing Mr. H. L. Mansel, Waynflete Reader of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, to the Regius Professorship of Ecclesiastical History. The appointment was known on December 26, 1866. " I do not think, nor does Liddon," wrote William Bright on December 7, 1866, "that Lord Derby will appoint any one known as a thorough High Churchman " ; and when the appointment was made he said, " I think we may be thankful. . . . He is a very able man, a good Churchman, and a Conservative." 1 Mr. Sydney Hall produced an amusing cartoon to 1 See Letters of W. Bright (Medd & Kidd), pp. 268 and xxix. 59 WILLIAM STUBBS celebrate the rather unexpected appointment. The Pro- fessor-elect, whose rotundity of figure the artist has emphasised by rather tight-fitting garments, is represented as dancing with Oxonia, a tall and beautiful young lady. Her crinoline appears likely to hamper the movements of her partner. The college cap which Oxonia has presented to Mr. Mansel — not a good fit, be it said — has slipped to one side, giving him rather a rakish appearance, which forms a strong contrast to the expression of his face. His features portray a certain amount of anxiety, as if the learned Professor-elect foresaw difficulties in steering his young charge. In the background behind an umbrella — the emblem of Oxonia's rejection of him — Mr. Stubbs is hiding his head, presumably either through grief at Oxonia's preference for another or that he may not show his glee at witnessing the clumsy gambols of his successful rival. The artist's inscription runs as follows — " ' Nemo saltat nisi insanior.' This slide must be rattled through the camera at a ' round dance ' pace. In Oxford there is a figure in a cotillon where the lady sits holding a college cap and an umbrella. Her partner sets before her two gentlemen. To one she gives the cap and waltzes with him (Oxonia waltzes with Mr. Mansel, her chosen Pro- fesspr of Ecclesiastical History). The other (Mr. Stubbs — not chosen) follows their gyrations with the umbrella up. We don't know what Mr. Stubbs is like yet, never having heard a lecture from him, so he modestly holds the umbrella down. Sometimes the cap don't fit, which causes great glee to the bystanders." The University indeed " never heard a lecture " from the new Modern History Professor till February 7, 1867. It passed off at least as well as most of such perform- ances do. They are too often regarded as a sort of graduate prize essay, in which a certain number of fire- works are expected, and nothing is considered interesting that is not novel, or worth saying that is not extraneous to 60 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 the field on which the scholar is in the future to work. .'But Stubbs had definite views of the historian's functions, of the knowledge with which he should be equipped, and of the spirit in which he should work. The spirit which dominated all that he did he took no pains to conceal. The thought came last in the lecture, but the utterance was emphatic. " There is, I speak humbly, in common with Natural Science, in the Study of Living History, a gradual approximation to a conscious- ness that we are growing into a perception of the workings of the Almighty Ruler of the world ; that we are growing able to justify the Eternal Wisdom, and by that justifica- tion to approve ourselves His children ; that we are coming to see, not only in His ruling of His Church in her spiritual character, but in His overruling of the world, to which His act of redemption has given a new and all-interesting character to His own people, a hand of justice and mercy, a hand of progress and order, a kind and wise disposition, ever leading the world on to the better, but never forcing, and out of the evil of man's working bringing continually that which is good. I do not fear to put it before you in this shape ; I state my own belief, and it is well that you should know it from the first." x " Conceive the thoughts of Young Liberalism ! " wrote J. R. Green, commenting to Freeman on this "religious close." The lecture is to be read in the volume in which the author in later life collected some — too few — of his statut- able discourses. But we have the criticism of it by a man of genius who belonged to the same school of hard work, of original work, which it was Stubbs's aim to found in Oxford. Green went down from Stepney to hear the lecture, and wrote of it with genuine appreciation not un- mixed with criticism ; and he wrote also a criticism a few weeks later for the Saturday Review? when the lecture 1 Lectures oti Medieval and Modern History, p. 27. 2 March 2, 1867. Part of this has been republished (1903) in 61 WILLIAM STUBBS had been printed and sent to a few friends. The criticism, in its personal aspect, is worth rescuing from the limbo of old newspapers. "The choice of a successor to Mr. Goldwin Smith in the chair of Modern History at Oxford must have been a matter of no slight difficulty, but the hopes which were excited by the selection of Mr. Stubbs are more than justi- fied by the Inaugural Lecture which is now before us. It would be easy indeed to draw a sharp contrast between the late occupant of the chair and his successor. No two men could at first sight seem more unlike than the brilliant epigrammatic politician and the profound, but compara- tively obscure, historian who follows him ; but beneath this outer dissimilarity lie, in fact, strong points of resem- blance, both in temper of mind and in the mode in which either would view the subject he proposed to teach. Both are essentially idealists ; both are men of deep and earnest convictions ; both are of a temper which — ardent partisans as they are — raises them high above what passes for party feeling ; both have distinct moral theories ; and both are bold and frank enough to state their moral theory as the ground of their historic teaching. Above all, both are larger than the mere chair which they fill. Each is in different ways admirably fitted to combat and counteract that narrowness of view which is the especial bane of University life — whether, like the one, by linking its studies with the thoughts and hopes and struggles of the world without it, or, like the other, by grasping in its whole extent the study which he himself is pursuing, and by revealing to Oxford the position which she actually occupies in the general area, as it were, of intellectual inquiry. " This is perhaps the first point which strikes the reader in this Inaugural Lecture. It does not seem to occur to Professor Stubbs to view the study of history from a merely Oxford point of view. He speaks of it at once as Green's Stray Studies (Second Series) ; but most of what is here quoted is omitted in that reissue. 62 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 a part of European culture, as a field of research which is far from being limited to academic ground. He is, to use his own emphatic words, ' sensible of the greatness of the field, the variety of the instruments, the infinite multitude of the workers employed.' He reviews 'the immense treasures of historic lore which are now being poured liberally from the great storehouses of record throughout Europe.' He points out Germany as busy with the great collection of Pertz, as France was of old busy with those of Bouquet and Mabillon, Italy finding funds in her utmost need for historic inquiries, Rome unlocking slowly the jealously-guarded treasures of the Vatican, our own series of Rolls publications at last justifying the zeal of Lord Romilly, the Record Offices of England, Venice, and Spain revealing in letter and despatch buried intrigues whose very memory had passed away. Facilities of travel and communication render an easier matter than it was of old for scholars to labour at the arrangement of the vast mass of materials which has been spread before them by what Mr. Stubbs picturesquely enough calls ' this sudden break- ing up of the wells of historical refreshment.' The growth of new literary sympathies, and the extinction of old literary jealousies, are knitting together the historical scholars of Europe into a ' great republic of workers, able and willing to assist one another,' and in that republic Oxford must find its place. " ' I confess [ends the Professor] that it is towards this consummation that my dearest wishes as a student of history are directed, and that I anticipate with the greatest pleasure the prospect of being instrumental and able to assist in the founding an historical school in England, which shall join with the other workers of Europe in a common task, which shall build, not upon Hallam and Palgrave and Kemble and Froude and Macaulay, but on the abundant, collected, and arranged materials on which these writers tried to build while they were scanty and scattered and in disorder.' 63 WILLIAM STUBBS " It is just this broad survey of the world that is needed to give its due weight and dignity to any branch of study. Every place of education is necessarily tempted to estimate the importance of particular departments of learning rather by accidents peculiar to itself and to their relation to itself than by their general position in the minds and interests of man. That elevation above the local prepossessions of any particular University which the wanderings of students from Padua to Paris, and from Paris to Oxford, won for the Middle Ages, and which the conception of a Republic of Letters preserved, however vaguely, for the seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries, seems difficult to realise now, when Universities have shrunk into so much smaller parts of the world's education, and when within them seductive tests of value are constantly at hand in the different proportion of rewards, such as fellowships and professorships, which the institutions of the place attach to each different branch of intellectual inquiry. Mr. Stubbs will have done a real service to Oxford if only by remind- ing her that her work must ever be estimated by her relation to the world of letters and education of which she is but a part." Green then passed lightly and with some touches of humour over the Professor's commemoration of his prede- cessors, and he welcomed the emphatic recognition of the scope and dignity of History in the place where, as Dr. Shirley had said, " there are few who do really love and care for it." He could not deny himself a reference to the recent appointment. " It may be, indeed, that in face of the singular concep- tion which the powers that be seem to entertain as to what history is, the efforts even of such men as Dr. Shirley are ineffective in removing the impression made upon minds very open to impressions by the promotion of a popular novelist to the historical chair at Cambridge, or the eleva- tion of a leading metaphysician to the chair of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. The ground of such appointments is, 64 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 no doubt, some vague notion in the minds of those to whom we owe them, that history is no special or definite study, but a part of that general mass of things which ' every gentleman is expected to know.' While such an idea is propagated by such appointments, it is hopeless to expect that young men will work in earnest at such a study. It is the first merit in the appointment of an historian to the chair of History, in the case of Mr. Stubbs, that it is at any rate a confession that such a study as that of history exists. " In spite, however, of temporary discouragements such as these, we think that the very nature of the place itself, and of the subjects studied there, seem to point out Oxford as the fittest spot for the foundation of a sound school of historical inquiry." The historical school would find its best setting in a place so full of historical interest ; so thought the enthusi- astic Oxford citizen. And there — now he began to criticise — it should be free from the danger of splitting history into two, the distinction between Ancient and Modern History which Freeman always so vigorously protested against, but which Stubbs knew after all to have its root in fact and common sense. " But it is yet more in the nature of Oxford studies that we see ground for the rise of an historical school which shall avoid the one error on which all sound investigation must be wrecked — the error of parting history into Ancient and Modern at all. It is an error which we fear the lan- guage of the new Professor will tend rather to encourage than to dispel. Perhaps the most brilliant part of his lecture, in a literary sense, is the elaborate contrast which he draws between the worlds of classical and of mediaeval history. The study of the one, he says, as compared with the study of the other, ' is like the study of life compared with that of death ' — " ' The student of ancient history has his advantages : he can speculate on his skeleton, he can penetrate more W.S. 65 F WILLIAM STUBBS deeply into the framework of ancient society, so far as his materials allow him ; he can handle the different parts, and form his political hypothesis as it pleases him, accord- ing to the various ways in which his skeleton can be put together ; he is little troubled by the fear of new facts or new developments making their appearance suddenly to put to flight his calculations ; he has all the existing materials for his investigation before him or within easy reach ; he has for the geographical area of his work a portion of the earth and its peoples that has had, since the roll of its own historians was closed, little to do with the active work of the world. He can work out principles at his will, he can educate his taste, and analyse and experiment to the very ne plus ultra of critical subtlety. But the principles he works out, and the results of his criticisms, are alike — things that give the world no new knowledge, or exercise no direct influence on the interests of real life. ... In modern history, on the contrary, you are dealing with the living subject ; your field of examin- ation is the living, working, thinking, growing world of to-day ; as distinguished from the dead world of Greece and Rome by the life that is in it, as it is in geographical area, and in the embarassing abundance of the data from which only in their full integrity it is safe, or ever will be safe, to philosophise. England, France, Germany, the East — regions that have but a shadowy existence in the background of the pictures in which living Egypt, Rome, and Asia stand before us after thousands of years of death, in the bright colouring and lifelike grouping of yesterday — these are the area in which the modern historian seeks and finds the interest of his pursuit. Italy, the common ground of the sister studies, the strange borderland between light and darkness, in which alone the past seems to live, and the present, for the most part, to be a living death, has a double existence that fits and unfits her for the free handling of either. And in this new and modern and living world there has been, since the era began, such a 66 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 continuity of life and development that hardly one point in its earliest life can be touched without the awakening some chord in the present.' " With those words, quoted by Green to condemn them, we may pass away from the criticism. One more quotation may be sufficient to show the spirit of the new Professor — " I desire to introduce myself to you, not as a philoso- pher, nor as a politician, but as a worker at history. Not that I have not strong views on politics, nor short and concise opinions on philosophy, but because this is my work, and I have taken it up in all sincerity and desire of truth, and wish to keep to my work, and to the sort of truth that I can help on in the inquiry ; because you have plenty of politicians and plenty of scholars to whom, if they wish to have it, I certainly will not begrudge the name of philosophers. I suppose that it is truth they are all seek- ing, and that though the sorts of truth are distinct and the ways that we work in are very different, when we have found what we seek for we shall find all our discoveries combine in harmony ; and I trust and believe that the more sincerely, the more single-heartedly we work each of us, the nearer we consciously come to the state where we shall see the oneness and glory and beauty of the truth itself. So that the theologian, the naturalist, the historian, the philosopher, if he work honestly, is gaining each for his brother, and being worked for each by his brother, in the pursuit of the great end, the great consummation of all. We may all speak humbly, the theologian because of the excellence of his subject, the rest because of the vastness of our field of work, the length of our art, and the shortness of our life ; but we cannot afford to speak contemptuously of any sort of knowledge, and God forbid that we should speak contemptuously or hypercritically of any honest worker." Work undertaken in this spirit by a man of commanding ability could not fail to be great. First, a word as to his surroundings. 67 F 2 WILLIAM STUBBS He was welcomed back by old friends ; and new friends speedily claimed him. He soon found that he must confine himself to Oxford, at least for the first few years. On July 22, 1867, the Lambeth appointment came to an end. The circumstances in which the Library was placed by the folly of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners — it is possible to use the phrase, true though it be, after the lapse of nearly forty years — were tersely expressed by John Richard Green in an article in the Saturday Review of September 14, 1867, since reprinted in his Stray Studies (Second Series). A year and a half later a more satisfactory arrangement enabled Green himself to become the Archbishop's Librarian in succession to Stubbs. In October, Oriel College, with which the professorship was connected by statute, elected Stubbs to a fellowship ; it was an association which he deeply valued. On November 3, preaching before the University on Ephesians v. 16, he decidedly ranged him- self with his old friends, and spoke with all sad severity of the anti-Christian tendencies of the Press and the so-called Liberalism of the day. He found himself welcomed by the party of Conservative Churchmen which still held together in Oxford, and — perhaps most warmly and con- spicuously — by Dr. Pusey. The association of the two scholars became close and affectionate. Notes of ques- tions about a matter of historical or theological learning continually passed from Christ Church to Stubbs's house. In matters of University politics the two men were generally agreed, and they wrote freely. My dear Stubbs, — I hope that you will be able to take part to-morrow at two in congregation against the autocracy of Mill and the antitheistic philosophy. Yours affectionately, E. B. PUSEY. Or " Have you made up your mind as to whom you 68 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 would prefer for Bodley's Librarian ? " writes Dr. Pusey, expressing a strong belief in the value of the British Museum training, speaking of Scott and Neubauer among the candidates, and adding, "As to the qualifications of the rest whose names I have seen, Hatch, Kitchin, Bywater, I know absolutely nothing." In 1869 was published the Tractatus de veritate Conceptionis beatissimae Virginis of Turrecremata (1437), edited by Dr. Pusey, on the text of which Stubbs expended, as he said in 1900, "a good deal of mechanical labour." Then from the Ascot Hermit- age, Bracknell, Dr. Pusey wrote when the work was done — My dear Stubbs, — I have been very long in congratulating you as well as myself on the satisfactory termination of your labours, but they told me at first that you were gone I know not where. Then I suffered for a long time. ... I have not heard how it is received except the contempt which one knew The Month would bestow upon it. I have one letter also from a R.C. thinking it ill-timed. However, there are many things which one does in life, and indeed the most of them, which one does without knowing that any good would come of them except that they seem the right thing to do, and so one is not disappointed if nothing comes of them. I should have felt as if I had missed something if, when there was the opportunity of publishing Card, de Turr., it had not been done ; and I am equally grateful to you for doing it, whatever comes of it. Good may come still. Your labours are very satisfactory. It is a good work well done. The enclosed is but a little return for much labour, which you will accept for your little ones. The reward of all things is elsewhere. Believe me, Yours affectionately, E. B. Pusey. 69 WILLIAM STUBBS The influence exercised on the young Professor by the aged saint, who had for so many years lived in Oxford the life of simple devotion and of consecrated learning, was profound. It was summed up when, the day after his death, Stubbs commemorated his " Master " from the pulpit of S. Paul's. " Yesterday, beloved, it pleased God to call to His mercy an aged servant, of whom we may, with good confidence, say that he never halted in his Master's service. The name of Dr. Pusey has been for close upon fifty years daily on the lips, for praise or blame, of all Englishmen who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity. He was a man of noble birth, of good fortune, of high ambitions ; a man of large and most diversified learning, the most acute and best fur- nished of scholars ; of the most critical judgment, the most thorough and minute knowledge of business, the greatest insight into character, of the widest and kindest sympathy with every good cause. Unflinching in his advocacy of the right, the readiest and most vigilant champion of the faith against attack from every quarter, he was, as I need hardly say, throughout his life the mark for every kind of detrac- tion — detraction the most painful when he saw it fall on his friends, for whom for years and years the very note of his friendship was a ban in the opinion of the great world. He as a good soldier of Jesus Christ had more than his own hardships to endure, bearing the burden of many sorrows and the failings and disappointments of many men. And his influence, like the influence of all sound and sympathetic work, has entered into countless lives ; thou- sands to whom personally his name is but a name are rejoicing in the knowledge, delight and liberty that his labours won for them. " But by what shall we who have worked with him and loved and honoured him remember him best ? Neither by unbounded learning, nor his wonderful shrewdness, nor the curious versatility that concurred with the strength of his mind and the abundance of his resources to make him a 70 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 power in the Church ; nor yet by his many charities, the countless labours of his love, or his wide sympathies, pour- ing in wine and oil to the wounds of all distressed by sin and sorrow ; nor by his profound humility, nor his intense devotion in and out of the House of God. All these were but the expression of that which gave unity and strength and industry and consistency to the whole, his one single purpose to serve, in all things and at all times, and in all cases and in all quarters, for many years the Lord and Master whose cross he so gently and steadily bore, in much weakness of body, and in the loneliness of an almost desolate home. I have said we know not one in a thousand of whom it would be safe to say that he never tried to serve two masters ; here is the one in a thousand. God help us to tread in his steps, and as he has gone down to his grave full of years and labours, and with the assured blessing of his Lord on the fruits of them, having been faithful in all the few things, fitted to be a ruler over many things, entering into the joy of his Lord ; let us take courage and spirit to fulfil our task in the same hope : that having the eye single, the whole body may be full of light, a vessel in time fitted to do some little service, little indeed, but all for God. We thank God for the example." The memory of Dr. Pusey was closely linked to the affectionate friendship with his old friend and pupil Liddon, which Stubbs, now that he was a brother Professor, was able to resume. He was to be later his brother Canon ; but all these years he was his closest friend and fellow student, the strongest link that now bound him to his old College. Years later when Liddon's life was ended, Stubbs, then Bishop of Oxford, wrote of him — " He was so distinctly an Oxford man in all senses, that we can never cross the great quadrangle without thinking of him as still in spirit working on us and with us." At each crisis of his life Stubbs consulted his " closest friend." They thought together on all great questions that belonged to religion 71 WILLIAM STUBBS and the Church. It may be worth mentioning in this connection that when it was proposed in 1883 to send a memorial of congratulation from the University to the German Emperor on the occasion of the Luther Com- memoration, Stubbs opposed it in the Hebdomadal Council, and the proposal was eventually rejected in Con- gregation by 132 to 94. In returning to Oxford, Stubbs found the University greatly changed. There was still, in the last resort, a somewhat shallow clerical majority ; but the spirit of the place was — so it seemed to him — one of crude Liberalism. And Liberalism in religion — in the sense in which the Tractarians denounced it — was always for him anathema. When he first preached before the University, on Novem- ber 3, 1867, he emphasised the position which he had taken up in the inaugural lecture. The Divine govern- ment of the world — that was the clue to life ; and that it was which was being attacked on every side. " The days are evil " was his text ; and he said — " With a few notable exceptions, the whole of the popular press is ostentatiously and implacably set against religion." But the firmness of faith could meet the attack, though the attack was one to be truly feared. " We know in Whom we have believed, and that he He is able to keep that which we have committed unto him against that day. But we do fear and are dismayed for our children, our friends who have not yet realised our experience of the loving-kindness of the Lord, we do dread the loss of those without whom heaven itself would hardly be heaven to us." A survey of the world showed danger, but it showed the answer. " There is no danger to the Church from science, but there is great danger to men's souls from the mistakes and misrepresentations of scientific men.' From the study of History "the Church has everything to gain ; from the critical examination of every existing movement, from the cultivation of a critical habit in every thinking being, the ministers of religion have nothing 72 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 to fear, everything to hope. But from the exaggerations of imaginary discoveries, from the warped and narrow con- clusions of special investigations, from the same unhappy one-sidedness which is the overweening temptation of the scientific mind, much scandal does originate and many are led astray." The answer, the hope, is — more prayer, more intelligent prayer, more work, more devoted work. The sermon is one which might well be read again to-day. Here it is mentioned only to show how clearly the new History Professor took his stand, when he returned to Oxford, super antiquas vias. This was seen at once when he set to work in Oxford. His chair was not to make him forget that he was a clergyman. While he devoted himself mainly to his his- torical work Stubbs did not in any degree relax his eccle- siastical interests. He was still anxious, for example, to work more exclusively at Church History. Thus he applied, when Dr. Mansel was made Dean of S. Paul's, to Dr. Longley to help him to obtain the vacant chair. On October 12, 1868, the Archbishop wrote — " On hearing of Dr. Mansel's promotion, I had thought of your advancement to the professorship which he vacates, because I really know of no man so eminently qualified to adorn the chair of Ecclesiastical History. I shall be very much surprised if any Oxford man can be found so thoroughly versed in those studies which especially fit a man for that post. It is contrary to my general rule to make direct application to the Prime Minister in matters of preferment ; but I am always willing and glad to place in the hands of candidates for any post, who are deserving of the recommendation, an expression of my good opinion in their favour, and I have no hesitation in saying that I can most conscientiously and most strongly recom- mend you for the vacant chair; being persuaded that you will bring to it an amount of ability and learning which I do not expect will be equalled by any other candidate." Mr. Disraeli, however, recommended Mr. William Bright, 73 WILLIAM STUBBS Fellow of University College, whose knowledge of Eccle- siastical History was even then little if at all inferior to that of Mr. Stubbs, for the vacant chair. Stubbs, who was from that date, if not before — I cannot find traces of an earlier acquaintance — his warm friend, wrote to cordially congratulate him. This was the reply — University College, November 3, 1868. My dear Stubbs, — I thank you very specially for your kind note. I value it more than I can say. As yet, I have no official intima- tion of the Queen's pleasure, and I have not seen this morning's paper. One thing I must say, and I know you will believe, that I cannot receive congratulations from you on this occa- sion — supposing it to be a fait accompli — without a sense of pain. When the proposal was made to me, I con- sidered whether, if I declined it, your appointment could be secured. The one friend whom I consulted (I could not consult more than one) assured me that this could not be counted on. I suppose that the truth was, that to fill up the chair of Modern History would have been a difficult task for the Government. Ever yours sincerely, W. Bright. It may be well here to conclude the references to Stubbs's strictly clerical work. In the summer of 1872 he took a holiday in Yorkshire, and he preached two sermons which he afterwards printed. The first, on August 10, was on the anniversary of the consecration of Christ Church, Coatham, and the preacher spoke in pathetic words of the memories of sorrow and suffering which many brought with them when they came to the sea for new air or rest or change of scene, and of how with them they received new thoughts, and blessings at the 74 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 hand of God. Then, a vindication of elaboration and care in the service of the Church. "It is as an expression of love and devotion that ritual worship has its value. . . . It is not, beloved, believe me, to work on the minds of the ignorant, or excite the feelings of the sluggish, that the accessories of devout worship are multiplied. Something might be said on those points, and has often been said. But it is as an offering of worship ; an offering, in the several offices according to their solemnity, that this ought to be regarded. We bring to our Church, to our Lord, the best we have to bring ; it is of Thine own that we give Thee, not grudgingly or of necessity." On October 7 he preached at Knaresborough, after the reopening of the parish church. The law of change was his subject : the experience of change : yet " there is not one transitory thing that He puts away and it is changed, that He does not restore to us, making ever glorious and eternal in the gift of Himself." A touching commemora- tion of the holy souls who in that place had shown forth their love of God and had passed to His peace was the centre of the sermon, and then a thanksgiving for the love of the sanctuary as a token of love for God. Superstitious reverence for holy things was no danger, he said, of the day : the enemy of Christ once used idolatry and supersti- tion as snares : " Now he uses the pride of human intellect and the pride of human freedom to make the light yoke of the Gospel irksome, and the true freedom wherewith the Truth makes free a service of slavery." That was the danger which appealed most to the Oxford Professor who found himself returned to the University at the height of the " Liberal reaction " of the 'seventies. On October 10 he finished his holiday by reading a paper at the Church Congress at Leeds. During the succeeding two years he had no strictly clerical " duty " out of Oxford. He was one of the earliest examiners in the Honour School of Theology, when that examination was founded to encourage the scientific study 75 WILLIAM STUBBS of theology, in connection with the Church of England faculty in the University, as a counterpoise to the growing secularisation of Oxford. The examinerships were from the first restricted to those in priests' orders. But Stubbs was not satisfied to be wholly without pas- toral cares. In 1875 ne accepted the Oriel College living of Cholderton, Wilts, residing there chiefly in the Long Vacations. The Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Moberly, writing to him on February 22, 1875, expressed the greatest eager- ness to induce him to take the living, and assured him that he might legally count as residence on his benefice the whole of the term-times at Oxford, and would still be entitled to three months' leave without licence. Thus he only resided for three months during the summer. " A nice kind gentleman " is the people's memory of him. He was inducted on April 17 and "read himself in" the next day. He gave new hymn books, and a new organ was put in the church. These are the events of his incumbency. The book of Memoranda Parochialia thus records the conclusion of his occupancy of the living : "In 1879 m tne month of April I was gazetted to a canonry residentiary at S. Paul's and determined to resign Cholderton at the following Michaelmas. On the 9th of October I sent in my resignation to the Bishop of Salis- bury, and it was accepted on the 20th, when the living became vacant. I returned to Mr. Brown in consideration of his losses in harvest, etc., the sum of .£30 deducted from his rent and tithe-rent charge. "William Stubbs, D.D." We turn now to the work which he was most directly called to do. It was general as well as purely historical. A professor in Oxford must indeed be a recluse who would keep apart from the elaborate complications of University business. It was no wish of Stubbs to neglect any duty that was put before him : some were pleasanter than others, 76 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 but all were unselfishly undertaken. The record of them now has no special interest. As a Curator of the Bodleian Library — he was elected on November 20, 1869, by a majority of forty-two over Professor Rolleston — and a Delegate of the Press, he was doing work which no man in Oxford could do so well. As a member of the Hebdo- madal Council (the voting when he was elected was — Stubbs no, Bernard 100, Pusey 90, Jowett 85) he was dis- charging duties less congenial; as junior dean of Oriel (1875) he might seem to be even more out of place. On November 25, 1876, he was elected to an honorary fellow- ship of Balliol ; in the same year he undertook the duties of chaplain in that College. When in the summer of 1878 he was in doubt whether to take the living of S. Mary's, which is in the gift of Oriel, and which the College pressed upon him, the Master of Balliol wrote thus to him — My dear Professor Stubbs, — About the chaplaincy, let me say first of all that we shall always think it an honour to have you as chaplain as long as you are able to remain. I have thought over the subject of St. Mary's again and cannot see it in a different light. When a person is very distinguished in one line he had better not take another which is liable to distract him from it. It is a misery to lead a divided life. I do not see how the vicarage of St. Mary's in the centre of Oxford can be other than an arduous post. The chief good that can be done there is by preaching ; and to preach well you would have to with- draw your mind from History and devote it to writing sermons. As a clergyman it is natural that a person should wish sometimes to do good in the ordinary sense of the word, but you have been taken away from this to a higher sort of work which very few can do, though there are many good clergymen. I do not think that the wishes of the College, any more than the discouragement of the Bishop, should weigh with you in a matter seriously 77 WILLIAM STUBBS affecting your own future life and reputation. The argu- ments which you urge seem to show that you should give up Cholderton rather than that you should take what I think will be found if properly fulfilled a still more arduous duty. I have stated my reasons rather boldly, as they appear to the spectator ab extra. They would influence me if I were in your place. But I do not expect them to influence you. For many reasons I should like to see you Vicar of St. Mary's ; but it seems to me to be impossible that in such a position you should carry on your historical work with equal energy and success. Excuse haste, and believe me Ever yours, B. JOWETT. Oxford,/^ ii. The implied opinion of Mr. Jowett upon his sermons was one not uncommonly held. As in every other work, so in preaching, the powers of Dr. Stubbs seem to develop and win strength as he grows older. When he was at S. Paul's, the contrast between the congregation which heard him and that which heard Liddon was great : he would say, " I observe that the newspapers, when they mention a Sunday during my months of duty, will say, ' The sermons in the morning and evening were preached by Mr. A. and Mr. B. In the afternoon the pulpit was occupied by the Canon in residence.' " But those who heard him preach were impressed by the deep thought and earnestness of his sermons. He was emphatically a preacher who expected his hearers to follow him closely, and who rewarded them when they did. Severe he was, but you felt that below the severity lay a deep knowledge of human nature, and a sympathy as true and as deep. In Oxford Dr. Stubbs belonged to the History Tutors' Association from its institution, though he rarely if ever attended its dinners, and he was an honorary member of 78 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 the Law Club, which also mingles its learning with festivity. It may be added here that in 1897 he consented to join the (nameless, but also dining) Club of which the members then were — Dr. Austin, Fellow of S. John's, who had been in Paris all through the siege and the Commune as a Times correspondent ; Mr. Brodrick, Warden of Merton ; Mr. Bryce ; Mr. Daniel, now Provost of Worcester ; Dr. Fowler, President of Corpus ; Mr. Henry Furneaux ; Mr. Godley, of Magdalen; Sir E. M. Grant-Duff; Mr. Monro, Provost of Oriel ; Mr. E. Myers ; Mr. Pelham, now President of Trinity ; Mr. Raper, of Trinity ; Dr. Shadwell, of Oriel ; Mr. A. L. Smith, of Balliol ; Mr. Thorley, Warden of Wadham ; Mr. Albert Watson, formerly Principal of Brasenose ; and Mr. Willert, of Exeter. But, as he said in his farewell lecture, he was never able to reconcile himself with dinner parties, or smoking, or late hours, so that he was almost as rare an attendant at the meetings of those clubs as he was at Sunday breakfasts or University sermons. / His life in Oxford was one of hard, unstinted, and unselfish work, and it was lived on simple and unconven- tional lines. He abstained from " controversy, religious, political, or historical " : he helped other scholars constantly : he was always accessible to the humblest student. His diary shows the nature of his daily work. First, there were lectures, then books : of both of these, more anon. Then there were the duties piled upon the willing shoulders, which have already been very briefly touched on. Then there were brief foreign or Yorkshire holidays — in 1871 in Germany, Cologne, Mainz, Munich, Salzburg, Ischl, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg; in 1872, Yorkshire by the sea and in the forest ; in 1873, on ^y a four days' run to Arras and Paris to collate MSS. ; in 1874, to Yorkshire, for the Archaeological Society, and to read court rolls, and to S. Davids; in 1875, to Germany for a few days only; and thenceforth the holiday only at Cholderton. The diary records also the election as Honorary Student 79 WILLIAM STUBBS of Christ, Church 1878 ; the Examinerships in Theology, Law and History, and History ; the first and subsequent meetings with Gladstone ; the dinner with Prince Leopold, then a student at Oxford ; the preaching of University sermons ; and the like. Whatever he may have felt of other sides of his work, there can be little doubt that the Regius Professor of Modern History found in his Oxford historical work pure pleasure. His protests against the hampering restrictions of the pedantic University Commission of 1878 were perhaps not more than humorous. His early disappoint- ments in regard to attendance at his lectures — it had already in his day become an article of faith to the under- graduate not to attend professors' lectures (unless they had been college tutors and continued to deliver the same discourses as before), because he imagined that they did not " pay for the schools " — were more than compensated by the warm appreciation of a growing body of friends and disciples among the tutors. Professor Montagu Burrows, who had won the Chichele chair against him in 1862, and did not even know till afterwards that he had been a candidate, was most cordial in his welcome ; and the two professors, each taking his own line, worked together without an hour's disagreement for eighteen years. Thus humorously Stubbs summed up their connection, in lines written and passed along to Professor Burrows when both were sitting at the Hebdomadal Council on February 17, 1879- Stubbs burrows for historic treasures In dull original research ; Burrows stubs up the roots of measures That threaten to subvert the Church. Each to each a worthy brother, Neither can do without the other. No one can draw straighter furrows Than the good Professor Burrows ; None in Oxford deeper grubs Than the good Professor Stubbs. No wonder — it must be allowed, So many men are daily ploughed. 80 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Other names of friends, colleagues, pupils, can be picked out from old lectures and old letters, such as — and the list is far from being exhaustive — G. W. Kitchin, James Bryce, C. L. Shadwell, S. J. Owen, Laing (Cuthbert Shields), C. W. Boase, M. Creighton, A. L. Smith, A. H. Johnson. With the work of these men, through whom the study oi History and kindred studies were being reorganised and systematised in Oxford, Stubbs cordially co-operated. He was distinct from them, and — they would be the first to admit — above them, in his special line ; but he never lived or worked apart. He took his full share in the creation of that flourishing school of Modern History which in the number of its students now rivals that of Literae Humaniores itself. He helped the undergraduates themselves in their attempts at private study and combined work. One at least of those who came to know him in the latter years of his Oxford life may say that he owes whatever sense he has of the full seriousness and dignity of historical investiga- tion to his lectures, and to his personal suggestions and advice to a timid and ignorant undergraduate. For some years he took pupils from Balliol who were reading for honours in Modern History. They were usually Brackenbury scholars. Among them were Mr. J. Horace Round and Mr. T. F. Tout, now professor at the Owens College, Manchester. In the work of both he took the keenest interest, and he had the highest opinion of their powers. Another pupil in whom also he discerned the making of a true historical scholar was Mr. C. H. Firth. Now and then some of the abler among the Balliol commoners took their essays. Mr. R. L. Poole writes to me : " What he did as a tutor was mainly to impress one with the mass of learning which he possessed and to train one in judgment of affairs and criticism of authorities. He never attempted to supply gaps which we ought to have supplied for ourselves. This was the right plan ; a plan which has since been given up, to the ruin of historical teaching here." Professor Richard W.S. 81 G WILLIAM STUBBS Lodge, of Edinburgh, who was also one of his pupils " was the first Brackenbury scholar sent to him when he became chaplain of Balliol. I have often thought," he says, " that his relations with Balliol, and especially with Jowett, constituted a very odd and exceptional episode in his career." The lectures which he delivered — the public statutory lectures — some of which he afterwards collected into a volume, and the courses — on German History, on the legislation of the Norman kings, or on the documents of Henry II's reign, for example — were all of one piece. The same marks are on them all, accuracy, sympathy, profound judgment. Thus, while he was a man of strong convictions and loyalties, he was never a partisan. He could speak of Dr. Pusey as " the master," and the execution of Charles I as " the tragedy of the Royal Martyr, itself the sealing of the Crown of England to the faith of the Church," without departing from the rigid impartiality of the historic teacher. " It was not my work," he said, when he had held the chair of History at Oxford for ten years, speaking with the delightful humour and the sound sense which his audience came to look for in those very informal statutory lectures — " It was not my work to make men Whigs or Tories, but to do my best, having Whigs and Tories by nature as the matter I was to work upon, to make the Whigs good, wise, sensible Whigs, and the Tories good, wise, sensible Tories ; to teach them to choose their weapons and to use them fairly and honestly Well, I still adhere to that view, and every year what I see in public life around me confirms my belief in the truth and value of the principle. How far I have been successful in acting upon it I cannot, of course, say ; but I feel sure that the growth of sound historical teaching would have spared us such national humiliation as we have undergone, during the last few years, in the treat- ment of the Public Worship Act, the Judicature Act, and the Royal Titles Act. I am quite sure that both the speakers and writers on those subjects would have been 82 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 very much wiser and more modest men if they had, I will not say attended my lectures, but passed a stiff examina- tion in the History school ; if we could not have made them wiser, . we would at all events have made them sadder." Insensibly in writing of Dr. Stubbs we fall into quoting his own words. No others can fully explain him. He made what he was, what he thought, what he taught, trans- parently clear to those who had eyes to see, by the strangely elaborate but yet entirely natural complexities of his literary style. "Steeped in clerical and conservative principles" he called himself, and yet he rejoiced that he scarcely betrayed " ecclesiastical prejudice or political bias." In a fine passage he once described how he understood " the clerical spirit and mind " to be that " which regards truth and justice above all things, which believes what it believes firmly and intelligently, but with a belief that is fully con- vinced that truth and justice must in the end confirm the doctrine that it upholds ; with a belief that party statement and highly coloured pictures of friend and foe alike are dangerous enemies of truth and justice, and damage in the long run the cause that employs them ; that all sides have everything to gain and nothing to lose by full and fair knowledge of the truth. And a clerical view of professional responsibility I take to be the knowledge that I am working in God's sight and for His purposes." With this " clerical " outlook, the mind of Dr. Stubbs was yet essentially critical, quite as much as it was, or, perhaps, because it was, sympathetic. It was this which caused him, while he readily welcomed historical discoveries on par- ticular points, such as those of Professor Vinogradoff, to reiterate in the last edition of his Select Charters a caution as to the unsound methods which seemed to him to be coming into fashion. A theologian once said to me, " He has an essentially sceptical mind " : perhaps, if he had known it, the good man meant no more than that Stubbs was par excellence an historian. 83 G2 WILLIAM STUBBS Yet no one who knew anything of the Bishop's work doubted that one of its characteristic excellences was due to the fact that he was a theologian as well as an historian. Much that has been dark to other writers on medieval history was clear to him because he knew the theology of the Fathers and the philosophy of the schoolmen as well as the chronicles of the monks and the laws of the kings._ The extraordinary width of his reading in ancient and modern literature was another special feature which gave distinction to his work. It gave, too, it may be added, inimitable humour to his lectures. Those who heard him will not forget how he illustrated Robertson's view of Charles V by the Hunting of the Snark. It is easiest to remember, in the lectures, the indescribable " twinkle" with which he approached and finally enunciated a joke. He had not the smallest pretence of "dignity" in his style, or in his treatment of a subject, however dry it might be. "Henry VIII continued his high jinks with Anne Bullen," he would say ; or he would suddenly interpolate a distich — Oh ! give me a chisel, oh ! give me a saw — To cut off the leg of my mother-in-law. For the most part his head was bent over the high desk, in the room on the ground floor of the Taylorian building where he lectured ; and he read rather fast, and in a quiet unemotional tone. It was never rhetoric, it was rarely passion or feeling, but it was the extraordinary clearness, and force, and breadth of what he said which impressed the little band of his hearers. These were the qualities which marked also his books. Something has been said of his earlier work and of the famous contributions to the Rolls Series. The three volumes of Councils which he edited at first in conjunction with A. W. Haddan — his friend of nearly forty years — are an indispens- able adjunct, or introduction, to Wilkins and a permanent addition to knowledge. For several years he gave assistance 84 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 to the important work of the Dictionary of Christian Biography (1877-1887): at Dr. J. B. Lightfoot's earnest request he took almost all the early English saints and kings and churchmen, and some of his most valuable con- tributions to learning appeared in this modest form — the life of Bede, for example, is a very model of its kind. In 1870 he published a volume of Select Charters illustrative of English Constitutional History, which at once became a text-book for students, and speedily ran through several editions. It was a book, said Freeman, enthusiastically, "worthy of the unerring learning and critical power of the first living scholars." It was at least new work and illumi- native work, and it laid the foundation of almost all the later investigation of Constitutional origines by English scholars. But it was only the prelude to a much more famous book — the book on which, for the mass of readers, the fame of its author must always rest. The Constitu- tional History of England, published in 1874- 1878, showed that the editor of medieval texts was also a great original worker. Nothing on so great a scale had been attempted in England since Gibbon ; and the insight, the breadth, the extraordinary accuracy of the work recalled the memory of the greatest of English historians. " The history of institutions," wrote the author, in a Preface which has become classical among historical students, " cannot be mastered, can scarcely be approached without an effort. It affords little of the romantic incident or of the picturesque grouping which constitute the charm of history in general, and holds out small temptation to the mind that requires to be tempted to the study of truth. But it has a deep value and an abiding interest to those who have the courage to work upon it. It presents, in every branch, a regularly developed series of causes and consequences, and abounds in examples of that continuity of life the realisation of which is necessary to give the reader a personal hold on the past and a right judgment of the present. For the roots of the present lie deep in the past, 85 WILLIAM STUBBS and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is." The book which was introduced in these words was one which many people found could not be approached " without an effort " ; but it was one which left on its readers the in- effaceable impression that " nothing in the past is dead." Perhaps, when it is read again and again, it appeals even more than by its massive learning, its extraordinary patience of investigation, and its singular acuteness of insight, by its deep sympathy for human life, in its weakness as well as in its heroism, in its efforts as well as in its successes. The feature of the book which no doubt most struck those who studied it, and which still remains remarkable indeed, was its accuracy. English constitutional history in its earlier stages has, since Stubbs first wrote, it is hardly an exaggera- tion to say, been revolutionised ; but it is astonishing how little there is to alter in what he has said. He was eminently cautious as well as eminently accurate! But the accuracy of the book was only one of its many merits. It gave a con- spectus of English history up to the end of the Middle Ages such as no other book has ever given — exact, illuminative, vigorous, sympathetic. The mass of details, financial, ad- ministrative, military, as well as political, was marshalled with an extraordinary precision. The longest and most arid investigations, when they were accomplished, were seen to yield the clearest and most important results. With an entire absence of assumption, or strain, or unwarrantable picturesqueness, or hasty generalisation, the past was made to live truthfully before the reader, as few writers indeed have made it live. Dr. Stubbs's method was primarily one of exhaustive investigation and patient building up of conclusions. It was rare that he allowed himself the oppor- tunity for eloquence ; but when the opportunity came he showed that he could take it, and there are few more elo- quent passages in English prose than his character of Henry V. Thus, writing with a freer pen, and in a style more directly pictorial, he made a living study of The 86 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Early Plantagenets, a little book which he wrote between January 25 and March II, 1876, for a popular series, and which is perhaps the most vivid of all his works. OThe Constitutional History of England belongs to the literary history of Europe, j It is needless here to say any more of the most monumental work of English historical scholarship since Gibbon's Decline and Fall. From the first the work was rewarded by the applause of foreign nations. "Judging from the reception accorded to it," said its author in 1876, when two volumes only had been published, " I think I should say that it has met with more appreciative and intelligent reception in Germany than in England." l The University distinctions conferred upon him substantiate this view. He was not made D.D. by his own University till 1879, and Honorary D.C.L. (an inversion of old custom, by which the Doctor's degree in an inferior faculty was never conferred on one who held that in Divinity) till 1893, ne became Hon. LL.D. of Cambridge in 1879 and of Edinburgh in 1880, but he was made Corresponding Member of the Gesellschaft zu Wissenschaften of Gottingen in 1872, an Hon. Member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1876, a Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy in 1880. But the list of foreign and English honours is endless ; it may be sufficient to say that the distinguished English scholar became Doctor in utroque jure at Heidelberg, a member of the Court of the Victoria University, an Honorary Member of the Imperial University of S. Vladimir of Kiev, and of the Royal Bavarian, Prussian, and Danish Academies, Correspondent of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Academy of France, and finally, on January 24th, 1897, he received the rare distinction of election as a Foreign Knight of the Prussian Order, pour le merite, conferred upon him by the Emperor and King. Among other 1 Lectures (3rd edition), p. 32. 87 WILLIAM STUBBS offices that he held, it may be here noted, were those of President of the Surtees Society and President of the Chetham Society. The Constitutional History brought him at once into association with foreign scholars. \ Dr. Liebermann, to whose distinguished work Dr. Stubbs constantly referred with warm approbation, has sent me an interesting note on their association. I will here insert it, with some letters. They first met at Gottingen in the Library, when Dr. Stubbs in 1875 was visiting Dr. Waitz and Dr. Pauli ; and letters afterwards passed between them on points in which they were equally interested. In Oxford Dr. Liebermann found a warm welcome from his brother student. The deep respect which Dr. Liebermann expressed for the English scholar was thoroughly reciprocated. Some letters from Dr. Pauli, the first of modern German historians to study English history intimately, may best follow in their course among the other letters of this period. Dr. Libermann writes thus : November 17, 1902. Sir — In answer to your favour of the 31st October, I should esteem it a great honour if I could contribute in any way to make the literary monument of the greatest historian of medieval England as complete as possible. This would at the same time be the mere duty of personal gratitude, as this lamented scholar for more than a quarter of a century not only showed some interest in my work — nay, partly made it at all possible by introducing me to Libraries difficult of access — but repeatedly encouraged me by kind words or publicly in print. But the nine letters I beg to enclose — all I have — hardly possess any general interest. Treasures to me, or rather now precious relics, they may still be tokens of his unfailing helpfulness, kindness and courtesy. I was introduced to Stubbs by Pauli in 1874 (or 5 ?) in 88 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 the historical department of the Gottingen Library. I was then preparing a Doctor's thesis on the Dialogus de scaccario, and being asked by him, on this book I proposed some textual emendations which he approved, and dared to oppose his brilliant hypothesis on the identity of its author with the so-called Benedictus Abbas. Though I was a very young beginner — possibly somewhat forward too — this great historian freely admitted that he might have erred : a modesty that left a lasting impression on me. " He's a regular jurist," I heard him say to Pauli when, after a few minutes, he went away. Later on I visited him in his canonry at S. Paul's. He there told me, when I complained how few the readers of my researches were, that only 200 copies of his Councils had been sold. In Oxford he once brought me a heavy Oriel MS. under his gown to my seat in the Bodleian — this was before the lending arrangements with the Colleges — in order to save me the time of walking across. In stupid ignorance of his habits, I called on him after the nine o'clock closing of the RadclifTe Library. He was nearly going to bed, as he told me, but nevertheless was most amiable and vivacious. When the Monumenta Germaniae resolved to include the parts relating to Germany from English chroniclers, they engaged Pauli for this work. He or Waitz corresponded or conversed with Stubbs on the general plan. But it was only after the death of Pauli, who had for some years employed me as his assistant and fellow-worker, and when Waitz had engaged me to edit, complete, and continue Pauli's work, that I learned from the letter No. 2 that Stubbs had intended actively to share in the work. The conversation at Wiirzburg which Stubbs refers to must have been in French. And this probably gave rise to the misunderstanding. ***** When Stubbs had become a Bishop I did not dare to 89 WILLIAM STUBBS intrude upon his limited time, the more so as a friend from the Bodleian advised me that acquaintances must not be continued after this promotion without being asked. It therefore was a joyful surprise when the Bishop himself called on me at the Randolph in order to congratulate me on the Cambridge LL.D. His eyesight seemed weaker and his movements less agile, but, courteous as ever, he wanted to make it understood that only want of time, and not at all lack of interest, prevented him from studying the minute monographs of mine, of which I indeed never failed to send him the first copy out. When I learned from Oxford that it was not an English use to collect essays by the admirers of a great deceased as a memory of him, I dedicated my Uber Leges Henrici (1901) to his memory. If this my letter, as well as the few leaves enclosed, do not help Stubbs's biographer, they at least will, I trust, prove that the historian and the man has left a grateful remembrance with me. I beg to remain, Sir, Yours truly, F. LlEBERMANN. At this point I think I may best insert the letter of reminiscence, for which I am indebted to the kindness of the Right Hon. James Bryce, M.P. ^ Dear Mr. Hutton, — When one has become familiar with a distinguished writer through his books, one has usually a desire to know how far he was like his books, how far his character found its expression in them. In the case of Dr. Stubbs there was nothing of that discrepancy between the man and his work which is sometimes striking when one meets the author long known by fame. The qualities that appeared 90 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 in his historical treatises seemed to be natural to him, as one found him in the commerce of daily life. He was exact, definite, careful in speech as in writing. He never seemed to be carried away by any feeling, however strong you might know his feeling to be. His judgment was balanced, sane and definite, though he did not express it with that tentative caution of phrase which is so conspicuous in his writings, and which makes parts of his Constitutional History rather hard reading. There were no eccentricities about him, none of those little oddities or of that insistence upon the use of particular words which in his lifelong friend and devoted admirer, E. A. Freeman, were sometimes thought to savour of pedantry. He had, as any one would gather from his books, an extremely retentive memory, and a large part of his immense knowledge was at his command in an instant, though he never hesitated to say when he did not remember a fact. Needless to add that he was entirely free from ostentation, and never displayed his knowledge ; indeed, it was only by questioning him that one got to learn how vast the store was. The same conscientiousness which is shown in his historical work appeared in whatever else he had to do. I recollect, when I was once his colleague as examiner, to have been struck by the patient care he took in reading the papers of the candidates and weighing their merits. I have heard that he showed the same assiduity and mastery of detail in discharging his functions as a delegate of the University Press. The work interested him, for he loved books and everything about them. When he was Bishop of Oxford, and hard pressed by the labours of the diocese, he seldom failed to attend the Delegacy meetings, and always showed a thorough grasp of the business. In College meetings at Oriel he spoke very seldom, but always to the point. He became a fellow of the College in respect of his professorship, and felt himself at home there from the first. There were, however, other qualities characteristic of him which could hardly have been divined from his 9i WILLIAM STUBBS books. He was extremely fixed and persistent in his opinions. His doctrinal and ecclesiastical views were held very firmly, and never seemed to vary since he had formed them comparatively early in life. He seldom brought them out in talk ; and his tenacity did not make him harsh in referring to those whose opinions he disapproved. For instance, I never heard him speak unkindly of Noncon- formists. But there was an underlying rigidity. Once when I had asked him to come to meet an able and remarkably eloquent Unitarian minister, originally from his own county of Yorkshire, he declined very gently, but in a way which showed me that he did not wish to meet one from whose opinions he differed so profoundly. The same persistence appeared in his personal attachments, which were strong and deep. I remember his telling me of the grief which the departure to the Church of Rome of one whom he knew and valued had caused him ; but this severance did not diminish his affection or respect. He was indeed a very firm and steady friend, sensitive in some things, but not apt to take offence, one to whom you could always go with the sense that there was beneath his undemonstrative exterior a large fund of kindness and goodness to draw upon. His interest in human nature was inexhaustible, and his insight into character — as indeed any one who remembers the admirable historical portraits he has drawn will expect — was profound and subtle. Perhaps this was one of the causes of his fondness for novels, which he read with almost as much avidity and remembered with almost as much exactness as did Macaulay. Many a shrewd remark about the prominent figures in the University did one hear from him — but I can recall none in which there was any bitter- ness. For one thing, he had — or seemed to have — little desire for literary fame, and no literary jealousy. For some time after his arrival in Oxford as professor he received little of that sort of social attention which is usually given to new comers ; but there was no sign that 92 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 he noticed, much less resented, this neglect ; the friends who knew and prized him were enough for him, and he loved his regular and tranquil life at home so much that it was hard to induce him to go out to any social gatherings. He was pleased when German Universities recognised his services to history, and pleased when those services received a somewhat tardy recognition in the form of a canonry ; but no great student was ever less vain. He knew that his work was good — as how could he fail to know it ? — but he remained always modest and retiring, and has given expression — a humorous expression — in his farewell lecture to his dislike of all public functions and occasions for display. Learning was to him its own reward without any applause to follow. Of his inexhaustible helpfulness to younger students, many of his Oxford pupils can speak with more authority than I can do ; but I often experienced it, for when one wrote to him asking a question, he always replied at once, generally on a postcard, giving within that short compass exactly what one had wished to know, in the fewest and clearest words. He had a great interest in legal points, and a great capacity for mastering them, differing in this respect from his friends E. A. Freeman and J. R. Green, neither of whom seemed to care for that side of history. One quality there was of his which appeared most rarely in his books but constantly in his talk. He had both wit and humour in abundant measure. It was delightful to see by his quiet roguish smile, a smile more in the eyes than in the muscles of the face, how quickly he caught the ludicrous side of a situation or of the conduct of a person. This was a part of his keen insight, and of his power of putting himself into the position of another mind. The wit belonged to his remarkable faculty of literary expression, which ran things to a point in the deftest way, and found the happiest terms for stating a likeness or a contrast. This gift of humour, coupled with his geniality and sweetness, made him a charming companion, when he 93 WILLIAM STUBBS could be got to talk ; nor was it wanting in his letters. He was the last person of whom it could be thought that toil and learning tend to quench the spirit of merriment. Indeed, our enjoyment of his fun was heightened by the contrast between its brightness and lightness and the notion of his personality which we felt that his books might have given of him to those who knew his books only. Believe me, Sincerely yours, James Bryce. The Constitutional History was the occasion of the beginning of a correspondence with Mr. Gladstone, from which some letters may be here inserted. Hawarden, September 23, 1875. My dear Mr. Stubbs, — I received by the post this morning the copy of the First Volume of your Constitutional History which you have been so good as to present me ; and I think it a great honour to possess a work on such a subject as the gift of such a Student. I look with what I may venture to call an intense interest to the fortunes of historical study in Oxford, and I greatly rejoice to think that you are there to take a large part in directing them. The history of our Constitution, one of the most instruc- tive subjects in the entire field of national experience, has been too often regarded, like the history of the Church, as having died a natural death, or passed into Nirvana with the Revolution of 1688 ; whereas it has since undergone, I apprehend, several very important changes which were latent, as well as others which have been visible. It will 94 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 be most interesting to me to follow your handling of the many great topics involved. Meantime, with many thanks for your kindness, I remain, my dear Professor, Sincerely yours, W. E. Gladstone. Hawarden Castle, Chester, December 27, 1875. Dear Professor Stubbs, — The arrival of your Second Volume reminds me that I had already too long postponed thanking you for the first, in the hope that I might have finished it. I think it a great honour to receive from you this most valuable work, of which I hope not to leave a page unread. And I so far deserve that honour, though so far only, that no man watches with a deeper interest than I do the steady growth of a truly historical school in England, with Oxford apparently for its destined centre. I should waste your time, and spend much of my own were I to give all the reasons which awaken this interest in my mind. Of course I am convinced that the thorough, as opposed to the merely picturesque, study of history is a noble, invigorating, manly study, essentially political and judicial, fitted for and indispensable to a free country. But, rightly or wrongly, I go much farther than this ; and I believe that it is the truly historical treatment of Chris- tianity, and of all the religious experience of mankind, which, in conjunction with a rational philosophical method such as that of Butler, will supply under God effectual bulwarks against the rash and violent unbelief, under the honourable titles of physical and metaphysical science, rushing in upon us. I must not claim to be your colleague ; yet I too desire to lay a few bricks in building up the early history of mankind, and in January I hope to send you a small book now in the press, which aims at further defining, by the 95 WILLIAM STUBBS help of evidence from various sources, the historical position and claims of Homer. Believe me, With much respect, Sincerely yours, W. E. Gladstone. Hawarden Castle, Chester, August 4, 1876. Dear Professor Stubbs, Not one but two copies of your Lectures reached me through your kindness this morning. As to the second, I can say it is well bestowed : for I send it by this post to Dr. Dollinger. I have read the Lectures with even more interest than I had expected. My only regret is that the world at large, especially the English Academic world, should not be in possession of matter so important and satisfactory. If two or three sentences are more personal than public, need these operate as a reason for burying all the rest of what is so notable as a record for the past, and incentive for the future ? I am under a painful impression that the Oxford of our day has for the time damaged the great final examination in the Classical School, and that this damage will tell and is telling on the men whom she sends into the world. This impression, be it correct or be it not, only instances my desire for the fulfilment of your inspiring anticipations, and my pleasure in what has already been achieved, owing most of all, I believe, to you, for the foundation of an Oxford School of History. How I look for the legitimate counterpoise to the study of Natural Science, and the just and safe check on the exorbitant pretensions of some of its professors. Believe me, Sincerely yours, W, E, Gladstone. 9$ PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 We may now return to the " historic friendship " which continued and grew during these years of strenuous man- hood. The letters of these years best illustrate the fellow-work of the three Oxford historians. They show the closeness of friendship and sympathy between them. The friendship and sympathy carried with it enthusiastic admiration of each other's work. In the case of the Oxford Professor it was the Rolls Series editions which first and perhaps chiefly drew out this appreciation from the other two specialists. They remained hidden from the scrutiny of the ordinary reader by the very form and nature of their publication. It was the duty of those who knew, so felt the Oxford friends of the man who had done for that Series such fine work, to " blow the trumpet." Green, we have seen already, sang his praises loudly in the Saturday ; and Mr. Freeman, when he blew, was not content without a loud and prolonged blast. When he went to America, one of his greatest delights was to reveal to American scholars, who knew Dr. Stubbs through the Constitutional History and the Select Charters as a great historian, that he was a greater man than they knew. He delighted to nickname himself, after the old Puritan divine, " Knewstubbs." It was genuine enthusiasm, the tribute of a man who knew what true learning was. And it was returned. No man's judgment was better worth having in England on a point of historical scholarship than that of Stubbs, and he never hesitated to express his admiration for the work of Free- man. Those who carp at the work of the one are some- times inclined to forget that it has the sanction of the other. The union was satirised, with only a superficial ill-nature, by another Oxford man, whose ways were different from theirs, in this distich : — See, ladling butter from alternate tubs, Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs. It was not unnatural that the humorist or the outsider W.S. 97 H WILLIAM STUBBS should regard all this historic appreciation as so much " log-rolling " ; but Thorold Rogers, of course, was not serious. He thus wrote, after his epigram had been widely- circulated — My dear Stubbs, — I regret that a couplet intended to jest on a supposed identity of opinions entertained by two distinguished writers on history should have given you pain. You will observe that the passage does not assert anonymous writ- ing, though it must be admitted that the place in which it occurs might imply it. In case the lines are published in a collected form, the couplet shall certainly disappear. Yours faithfully, James E. Thorold Rogers. In truth, what to some appeared little more than the exultation of a " Mutual Admiration Society," was the appreciation, which at that time very few men in England were qualified to give, of excellence in a special field, by men who were specialists themselves. The history of literature affords many instances that such excellence has as often been received with jealousy as with admiration : but the three Oxford historians were true scholars and true men. Some letters to Stubbs's " historical " friends here follow. They illustrate the happy mirth of the three historians together. Oxford, March 5 (1867). My dear Freeman, — Since I wrote you on Saturday I have discovered that you had raised me to the literary Peerage in the introduc- tion of your Book, and am feeling overwhelmed with the honour. Thank you very much for your kind letter. I do not think that you and J. R. G. mean the same thing when you talk about the unity of modern and ancient History. Stated as you state it, I do not object to it — stated as he 98 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 states, I do. I hold a religious unity, he a philosophical, and you, I suppose, an actual continuity ; but he pro- bably would deny my religious unity although you might accept it as a fact ; whilst I can quite admit your con- tinuity, but deny in toto the Temple and Lessing Theory, which is what Green states, though it may not be what he holds. All I said, however, in the Lecture was that Modern History is the history of the Modern nations — the Christianised barbarians. I have read a good piece of your History. I like it very much, and do not understand the criticisms, which I return. I will give you one of my own. I believe Sir Francis Palgrave to have been utterly and hopelessly in the wrong about Henry II, and beg that you will not commit yourself to his view, as I am afraid you may be interpreted as doing. There is not a shadow of evidence for his Angevin conquest, which seems to be founded on an absolute misinterpretation of half a dozen words, nor was there ever any influx of Angevins or Angevin cus- toms into England. I believe he was wrong altogether as to the relations of Henry II to feudalism — which Henry certainly drove headlong out of the administra- tion of the country, whilst as a system of land tenure it had reached the same condition under Henry I that it did under Henry II. Sed de his hactenus — Do not commit yourself until you have read my B.P. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. On June 29, 1870, Stubbs moved from North Oxford to Kettel Hall, an interesting old house in Broad Street, belonging to Trinity College. The next letter is to Green. Oxford, March 15, 1871. My dear John, — Thanks very many for your nice letter. I am very glad to hear that you are so much better. You will come and 99 H 2 WILLIAM STUBBS I am also glad see us, I hope, as soon as you get home that you like the Select Charters. As to your pert criticism on it, allow me to say (i) that I have noticed the antagonism or rivalry of the baronial and de Montfort LJL KETTEL HALL, OXFORD. parties ; but that it was not necessary for my subject to go into any detail about that portion of the struggle that was not strictly constitutional, and (2) that my description of the ministerially-based noblesse that superseded the feudal ones of the Conquest is vindicated by the fact that they took 100 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 the popular side and were supported by the people and clergy. That their distinctive character had evaporated by the time of Edward II I fully allow, for I have remarked very strongly, I think, that it had become a selfish and not a patriotic policy in the reign of Edward I. On the other points you glance at, you know our ideas are at variance fundamentally. I just say these things to show my respect for you. The book has been very well reviewed in the Spectator, and some little notices in the Fortnightly and Daily News were kind. Of course Pauli's in the Academy is the most valuable recognition of the use of the thing. You shall see it when you come. The same post that brought your letter brought me one from Goldwin Smith also kind and appreciative. As for general news I have none. I have been so busy with Lectures and the IVth Vol. of Hoveden that I have been quite a recluse. How- ever, your friend Lee Warner is going to be a Proctor ; Sidney Owen is going into the Schools again ; Bryce's Inaugural was beautifully written and clever ; but I, and I suppose you, am not disposed to forget that the Civil Law, with all its exquisite perfection, has been one of the greatest obstacles to national development in Europe, and a most pliant tool of oppression. I suppose that no nation using the Civil Law has ever made its way to freedom ; whilst wherever it has been introduced the extinction of popular liberty has followed sooner or later. As an engine of legal Education it has its merits ; but I prefer in Historical training something more human and inconsistent. We have just completed the scheme for the new examination schools, which I suppose that Congregation will begin to pick to pieces next Term. I hear from Freeman occasionally about the Domesday Map, which I despair of his ever getting done to his satisfaction. Otherwise he does not say much. I suppose he is getting on nicely with Vol. IV. What wonderful things have come to pass since you were here last : and how long will it all last I wonder ? I was vexed at the Purchas judgment. How the Voysey 101 WILLIAM STUBBS one affects you I do not see. If I thought you believed what you pretend to me to do, I should not be writing to you. You are a funny dog, as Jacobson said to Stanley. I think that is all I have got to say, and will wish you good-bye. We are all well, I am thankful to say. I have never been so well as since we got down here, that is Kettel Hall : I hope it will last. Hoping soon to see you, believe me, Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. Kettel Hall, Oxford, December 17, 187 1. My dear Green, — Thanks many for your kind letter. The cause of con- gratulation did not last long, for our poor little boy died when he was three months old, very suddenly. So you miss, you see, some of the pains as well as of the joys of married life. I hope you are benefiting by the warmth, etc., of San Remo. Here we have had very cold weather, ice and snow, and still the air is very raw and heavy. I have not much to tell you, but I will wish you a happy Christmas and hope that the New Year will bring you new blessings and health of mind and body. I have not seen the E. A. F. since he came back. The fourth volume of the Conquest is now ready for publication, so I suppose the fifth is on the stocks. I see Ward occasionally. He seems exultingly happy. I hope and trust he will be so. I am hard at work on Walter of Coventry, who will tell the world nothing new. Otherwise all is much as usual. Haddan is at Hastings for the winter for a chance of living another year. Cox has been doing some more solar hum- bugs, and some one in the Dublin University Magazine has turned Max Miiller himself into one. I have made a hymn on Froude and Kingsley ; thus — Froude informs the Scottish youth That parsons do not care for truth. The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries, History is a pack of lies. I02 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 What cause for judgments so malign ? A brief reflexion solves the mystery — Froude believes Kingsley a divine, And Kingsley goes to Froude for History. I have been working hard three days at Cambridge. The third volume of the Councils is finished. I wish you were at home to review it. No review has yet noticed it at all, and I am sure it is a very nice book. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. (Post Card to J. R. Green.) Oxford, December 10, 1875. My dear John, — Thanks for your letter. I rejoice where we agree, grieve where we differ. Of course you see that wherever I have been writing about the Jews I have had the First Lord of the Treasury in my eye ; of whom it is written — " So and so would have liked to be a Dean, but Disr. aliter visum est." . . . Please in reviewing me to act like Aldrich's abstraction — withdraw your mind from the points on which we differ and concentrate them on those on which we agree. I do not like people (Dublin Rev.) to say " Here is a serious mistake" when it is a radical difference of view. Care not for Rowley ; — having a case {pace tun) he has so handled it as to gain you far more sympathy and I should think more readers even than before. Ever yours, W. S. [This, as the last letter, is about the criticisms on the Short History of the English People : see Letters of fohu Richard Green.'] 103 WILLIAM STUBBS Kettel Hall, Oxford, December \6, 1875. My dear Green, — Thanks for your note. I can only assure you that I fully sympathise with you in the worry and bore of this matter. Certainly Gardiner's "precious balms" are of a styptic nature. However, I would not mind, but try to take ad- vantage of Rowley's insolent criticism to make the book more perfect. I wish that our views were in this and in other more important matters more in unison, so that I might feel more "solidarity" with the little Book than I do, but if you will tread on my toes about Charles I and Laud, you cannot expect me to trust your views of George III implicitly. However, that does not matter. I am more angry than sorry. Here the book has not been damaged by Rowley. The structure of the book is un- touched by his attack, and the structure was (to my mind, which does not care about style so much) the strong point of it. However, I think you understand my feeling about it. I am in a great fix about Cholderton ; I cannot get a curate and very much fear that I shall not be able to hold on. It is a vexatious thing to see the money thrown away in this place that might endow one comfortably ; and then, I suppose, I may take the other thing as a proof that I am not to be helped on in the Church. Selfish Brute that I am, I remain, Yours faithfully, William Stubbs. As a comment on this letter I may add a story which, when I asked him, the Bishop told me. When Stubbs and Green were once examining together in the History Schools at Oxford, Stubbs said in viva voce to a candidate, "You say that George III had an invincible hatred of men 104 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 of genius. Where did you get that extraordinary state- ment from?" The man looked very uncomfortable, but said nothing. Green wrote on a piece of paper and passed it to Stubbs, " Verbatim from my Short History." Solvuntuv risu tabulae. Kettel Hall, Oxford, December 16, 1875. My dear Freeman, — Thank you for two or three kind missiles in the shape of card or letter. I should like very much to pay you a visit and also to time it so as to meet Horner or Lord Morley, but I am at present " hung up " for want of a curate at Cholderton, and dare not make any engagements before- hand. For the last year and a half I have wanted to pay a visit to Yorkshire, and it now seems likely that I shall not be able to compass even that. Do not imagine that I am heartbroken or even disappointed about Ripon. I have no reason to suppose that Disraeli ever heard my name in con- nection with it. But mortified I certainly was. There is nothing in the Church that I should have liked better than Ripon ; I am extremely fond of the place and would have made some sacrifice to go there, but that is not the point. I feel that to have been so completely passed over, when such a thing was actually going begging, is a sign that I am not to expect anything from these people. On two grounds I might have looked for a lift : either because I have been here as long as I am likely to do any good and have certainly not let down the party to which I belong ; wherefore I might have been thought of for a remove — or if it is desirable that I should stay here, it might have been thought that I might have enough given me to live upon. Cholderton will, I think, wear my life out. I mention these things to you because Johnny seems to have thought worse of me than need be ; but I was out of sorts when I saw 105 WILLIAM STUBBS him — I wish very much that I could find out whether they are determined not to help me. Do not think I am seriously hurt. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. Kettel Hall, Oxford, January 3 (1877). My dear Freeman, — I wish you all a happy New Year. Thank you very much for your letter and the two Articles. I will return the American as soon as I can raise the postage. How are you getting on with the Index ? I am hard at work on the Lancastrian History. I forget whether you are a Yorkist or not ; reading Gairdner on the Paston Letters makes me more Lancastrian than ever. Still, his work is wonderfully well done. I shall be glad when I have finished my book and can either rest or do something else. I heard from Pauli one day last week. He seems as flourishing as usual and sends me his paper on Durham. Otherwise my time has been a good deal taken up with reading the little books of divers authors on Simon de Montfort, etc. I think your Turks are in a baddish way. But I am glad to see that you keep up to the mark in letter writing. How beastly the Standard and Pall Mall are ! I have not anything particular to say, for I am quite smothered with the Wars of the Roses at present. . . . Ever yours, William Stubbs. Oxford, June 23 (1878). My dear Green, — You must kindly excuse me for not having answered your kind letter, but I have really been going through 106 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 oceans of trouble, and have had little time or heart to write. I hope that you are now feeling really stronger and better. At this moment I am in a deliberation whether or no I shall cut myself off from Cholderton and become Vicar of S. Mary's — it would have some advantages in the way of keeping close to Oxford, but I will not bore you with that. I shall call some day and see you and tell you about things. As for the Church History Manual — I think, that if you send me two or three of the set and scale that you want, I would whilst I am at Cholderton try what I can do. If I find that it will not do, then I will tell you and you must find some one else. I am going to Cholderton next Saturday, and if you write or send by book post the address is Cholderton, Salisbury. Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Green. Father Freeman has been at Trinity for a few days, looking not so well as I should like to see him, but on the whole in better form than I expected. Who is to succeed Sir T. Hardy ? It is an important matter to Editors like your humble servant. I do not think there is any news here. Yours ever, William Stubbs. Oxford, February 5 (1879?). My dearest John,— I knew I should have your sympathy and good wishes, but thank you very sincerely for the expression of it. Have you been writing in The Times this morning? I only suspect you because your own name did not occur in the article. I will bear in mind what you tell me about Cambridge, but except Lightfoot I know none of the Trinity Dons. About the Ch. Hist. Primer, — after giving it a good deal of thought, I finally despaired. I should not like to make 107 WILLIAM STUBBS it a mere table of facts, and yet it seemed impossible within such limits to convey anything like information combined with suggestion. I fear that I should only make a book which would be unintelligible except to people who knew as much on the subject as I did myself. But we can talk when we meet. Please kindly remember me to your "excellent" wife. I see that you're advertising a joint Geography. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. Oxford, April 2, 1879. My dear Freeman, — I went to the Union at once and read Froude in the Nineteenth Century. Bryce and Church will be better able to advise you (in the view of what people in London think of the quarrel) than I can pretend to be. But on the first look at the matter it seems to me that it would be as well to answer him on the Historical points which he has singled out, and on which he lays himself open to criticism, especi- ally the question when Thos. became Chancellor. Having done that, without any recrimination, I should say whether I was willing to soften down anything that I had said ; if not, then say so, but without iterating anything. If you like to say that other people are answerable for some of the sharp articles in the Saturday, you might, but I should not. Then leave it and let the matter drop. You have amply justified yourself for what you have said, in the judgment of the friends of R. H. Froude. (I do not speak for myself, for I never saw him or read his book.) The people who take their opinion on the matter from their admiration of Froude's conversational powers, and their dislike of you or of Truth generally, will not be convinced by anything that you or anybody else may say. Their minds are not " on 108 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 the same plane," to use the slang of the day, as those of either students or judges. I wish there was peace. Yours ever, William Stubbs. I do not come into " rule" before the end of this month. Kettel Hall, Oxford, November 14, 1882. My dear Freeman, — I am glad to hear that you are safe at home, although I wish we might have had your company on Thursday and Friday. I hope your gout will not keep you long in the house. The Commission is a great bore, for I cannot see that any good is to come of it ; every one has a psalm and a doctrine and no patience. As for our report, I do not know what to say at all, for I do not feel at all disposed to waste time on making a good historical statement for the basis of recommendations with which I do not agree ; or in fact to help to draw up a report which I cannot sign. As for the Delegates, of course such a Court of Delegates as heard appeals for 300 years might be restored for the hearing of such appeals as those Delegates heard. But the mere restoration of the name of a court, when the essence of its constitution is altered and the peculiar character of its work is gone, is simply a mockery. Our lawyers agree in nothing — and yet object to every- thing. Lord Coleridge reads the Reformation Acts as if he saw them for the first time, and then corrects those who have spent years in the study of them. Henry VIII was not a fool — why should he be treated like one ? And why, except to please the lawyers, should every protection given to the clergy be treated as obsolete, every weapon forged against them treated as absolutely necessary, useful, and to be kept in constant repair ? It is quite ludicrous, to see the men whose reading and training we know to be so merely 109 WILLIAM STUBBS empirical, as soon as they become wigged, secured from all risk of error — practise themselves, by hiring themselves out to confound right and wrong, to adjudicate on historical matters of which they know not the first elements, and then lift up their hands in pious horror because we do not see that what comes from their mouth is law. Yours ever, William Stubbs. [The following letter was written after the death of his friend.] Kettel Hall, Oxford, March 18, 1883. My dear Mrs. Green — I hear from Mrs. Ward that you have returned to Kensington, and write you a line to assure you of what I hope needs no assurance, how sincerely and sorrowfully I have felt with you in your great trouble. Now that the shock is over, for I suppose that it must have been a shock notwithstanding the long waiting, you will begin to feel what a changed life lies before you and to realise more fully every day the loss you have sustained. Still, it will be pleasant to you to be told how much he was loved and valued and by how many. He was very dear to me, not the less so although for so many years we had seen so little of one another and took life in such different ways, and I believe that he knew and felt that it was so. Mrs. Ward kindly sent me a letter with an account of the funeral, very pleasant, but also very sorrowful. I shall not presume to say a word of comfort to you, for I feel sure that it is need- less, and I hope that you know that my heart has been with you all these last days. I trust that we will meet some- times, and if ever I can be of any use to you in any way, I shall hope that you will let me. With kindest regards, Yours very sincerely, William Stubbs. no PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 [This letter is apparently an answer to that in Freeman's Life, ii. 270.] Kettel Hall, Oxford, March 21, 1883. My dear Freeman, — Thanks for your letter. I return the Bishop's, which is very nice and satisfactory. As to your main proposition, that Henry VIII intended to resort to the delegates for an extraordinary or special expedient, I do to a certain point agree. But it must also be remembered that it was intended as a substitute for appeal to papal delegations, which were very common, and, what is more important, that it was distinctly fashioned on the plan of Admiralty appeals (see the words of the Act), which were common enough too. I agree that it was permitted for lack of Justice; but we are met by Jeune and others with the statement that all appeals are for lack of Justice. I should be very glad if you can put in form such an objection so that I can sign it. But I think it possible that the Commission might agree to it, and I want something more. 1. I believe that Henry never intended the Court of Delegates to entertain appeals on doctrine or ritual. There never had been such appeals in papal times, and they were not contemplated then. 2. Nor were they contemplated under the Heresy Acts or Acts of Uniformity under which different processes were framed, but no recourse to the delegates, or proceeding on appeal. 3. I have said more than once at the Commission that the best thing would be to get a perfect final court ; if that is impossible, then to limit the matters that shall come before the final court. This might to some extent be done by restraining the right of appeal to the defendant. But I believe the right proceeding would be analogous to the old proceeding in making petition in Parliament — for an examiner or cognitor appellationum to determine whether the point of appeal is spiritual or temporal, and refer it to in WILLIAM STUBBS a spiritual or temporal court accordingly. If he refers it rightly, then the spiritual court must be obeyed by the clergy ; if he refers it wrongly (i.e. determines that a spiritual point is a civil point), and sends it to the secular court, the decision can only claim a civil validity and not bind spiritually. In my paper, submitted a year ago to the Commission, I sketched this ; but no one reads my papers. 4. In default of this I should maintain a reference of spiritual points to a spiritual court, the decisions to bind the final tribunal. But I doubt whether we shall have a chance of carrying this. 5. I cannot bear the Privy Council as a final court, and, if we accept it with a whole battery of safeguards, the lawyers will spike the safeguards and leave the foul thing as it was. Yours ever, William Stubbs. The letters already given have contained several allusions to two matters to which no other reference has yet been made. The first is Stubbs's promotion to a canonry of S. Paul's ; the second, his membership of the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts. On January 31, 1879, he received the following letter — io, Downing Street, Whitehall, January 30, 1879. Reverend Sir, — The election of Dr. Lightfoot to the See of Durham vacates a canonry of S. Paul's, and, if agreeable to yourself, I propose to have the honour of submitting your name to the Queen to be Dr. Lightfoot's successor. Believe me, With great consideration, Faithfully yours, Beaconsfield. 112 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 The offer was an appropriate one, for no English scholar was so famous as Dr. Lightfoot except the one whom the Prime Minister thus chose to succeed him. Dr. Stubbs was installed on May 3, and kept residence for May and September at the Deanery. On December 16 he began residence at 1, Amen Court. Of the friendships which the new positions began and consolidated it need only be said that they were perhaps the strongest influences on the later years of Dr. Stubbs's life. With Dean Church and his family and with Dr. Liddon the intimacy was particularly close and affectionate. How close, the following letters will show. Hardly, if at all, less close was the friendship with Dr. Gregory, the present Dean, who was then a canon, and with his family. Among the congratulations that reached Dr. Stubbs there is one that may well be quoted. Bishop Harold Browne of Winchester wrote — " May I venture to express my thankfulness that the Crown has seen fit to offer you the distinguished post about to be vacated by my friend the Bishop of Durham ? It is but a small recognition of the inestimable services which your pen has done to history, civil and ecclesiastical — services which, I hope, will long be given to the Church and country, and which cannot fail to be daily and hourly more highly valued and honoured." In London Dr. Stubbs continued, as far as possible, his quiet and studious life, and mixed little in general society. Now and then he would accept an invitation to meet some distinguished statesman or man of letters — there is a charming passage in the Letters of J. R. Green, describing how the two Oxford historians met Gladstone — " simple, natural, an equal among equals." x Mr. Bryce tells me that he well remembers Mr. Gladstone's enjoyment and " the deferential respect with which he treated Dr. Stubbs." But Stubbs still disliked "dinner-parties." In 1879 ne was elected to the Athenaeum, being pro- posed by Lord Cardwell, who told him afterwards of a 1 Morley's Life of Gladstone, ii. 561. w.s. 113 I WILLIAM STUBBS curious prejudice against the clergy which had once existed in the club and caused the rejection of Dr. Burton, some- time Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. " I am greatly rejoiced," wrote Dean Church, " for the sake of the Athenaeum, and I think you will find it a convenient and a pleasant place to belong to"; but Sir I. Brunei put his congratulations thus — " My dear ' Canon ' Stubbs (though surely this is premature), it is a great pleasure to me to see on a notice that under that designation you have to-day become a member of this club, in company with the inventor of a machine for making syllogisms and a believer in spiritualistic appearances of young females, though they have each of them better titles to fame." If the most important work which Dr. Stubbs did in the historical revival of the Victorian Age was his editions of the English Medieval Chronicles and his greatest literary achievement the Constitutional History, there can be no doubt that his most eminent public service, at least up to the time of his episcopate, was as a member of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts. The long " ritual troubles," complicated at different points by doctrinal questions, the incoherent and unsystematic treatment of doctrinal questions themselves, and the confusion of ecclesi- astical, semi-ecclesiastical, and secular jurisdiction, had, by the end of the 'seventies reached a point of impasse from which it was the duty of statesmen to find an exit for the State and for the Church established. In 1881, by Mr. Gladstone's advice, a Royal Commission was appointed to " inquire into the constitution and working of the Ecclesi- astical Courts as created or modified under the Reforma- tion Statutes of the 24th and 25th years of King Henry VIII, and any subsequent Acts." The Commis- sion consisted of Archbishops Tajt^ and Thomson, the Marquess of Bath, the Earls of Devon and Chichester, Bishops Harold Browne, Mackarness and Benson, Lord Penzance, Lord Blachford, Lord Coleridge, Sir Robert Phillimore, Sir Richard (now Lord) Cross, Sir Walter 114 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 18C6-1884 James, Dr. Lake, Dean of Durham, Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Perowne, Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Westcott, Dr. Stubbs, Sir James Parker Deane, Mr. E. A. Freeman, Dr. T. E. Espin, Archdeacon Ainslie, Mr. (now Sir) Arthur Charles, Mr. Jeune (the late Lord St. Holier^) and Mr. Samuel Whitbread. Thus views High Church and Low Church, legal, historical, spiritual, and Erastian, were represented ; and it soon became plain that if no substantial agree- ment could be arrived at, at least some sound historical information could be collected. Dr. Stubbs saw where his duty lay. It was to so clearly express the historical posi- tion of the Church inEngland in relation to the State that there should be no excuse in later days for the extraordinary blunders of which otherwise well-instructed men had in recent years been guilty. Dr. Stubbs was present at every one of the seventy-five sessions of the Commission, from May, 1881, to July, 1883. He gave evidence himself, he presented a special paper to the Commission, and he supplied five historical appendices to the Report, dealing with (1) the Courts which exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction up to 1832; (2) the Heresy trials up to 1533 ; (3) the formal acts by which the clergy recog- nised the Royal Supremacy ; (4) a collation of the Lords' Journals with the Convocation Records, 1529-47; (5) a list of occasions on which the Convocations were formally referred to in matters other than financial. Nothing in our generation has done more to impress upon the public the true position and claims of the Church of England than these lucid and exhaustive summaries. No one who has watched the growth of public opinion can doubt that, slowly indeed, but surely, their conclusions have passed into the common stock of knowledge, and have served to enlighten statesmen as well as ordinary folk as to the constitutional history of the oldest of our institutions. The criticism which they received at the time of the issue of the Report was considerable ; a learned pamphlet attacked them ; there was some correspondence also with 115 J 2 WILLIAM STUBBS a Mr. Lewis as to the King's power by Common Law to deal with heresy, as evidenced by the writ in Sawtre's case some days before 2 Hen. iv. c. 15 became law; but Dr. Stubbs's view was supported by Sir William Anson. Of late years, also, the main contention of the principal Appendix has been subject to severe criticism. Pro- fessor Maitland's book, Roman Canon Law in the English Churchy has been taken — much too hastily, I believe — to have settled the question against Dr. Stubbs's view and to have proved that the English Church in the Middle Ages was actually, and recognised both theoretically and prac- tically that it was, in bondage to the legal system of the Papacy. On this subject Dr. Stubbs said a few wise words in the third edition of his Lectures, which seem to me to state the case most accurately. They deserve very careful study, and I believe that they anticipate what will be the final decision of the learned world. I believe, with the author himself, that the Appendices were " true history and the result of hard work." l A detailed history of the work of the Commission, of which, as Freeman said, Dr. Stubbs was " the hero," is unnecessary. Its outlines may be read in the Blue book in two volumes published in 1883. 2 But the time has now come when the position of some of the most important members of it may be made clear. It is with this view that the following letters are given here. Kettel Hall, Oxford, July 15 (1881). My dear Westcott, — I am extremely sorry to find that I have not brought away your paper from the Commission. I think now that I must have put it away with my note-book in my box. 1 Lectures, 3rd edition, p. 435. 2 I have had the advantage of using the copy of the Report, etc., belonging to the late Lord Coleridge, with which are bound up the papers presented during the session of the Commission. Il6 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Anyhow, I cannot send it to you as I have not got it. If you have another to spare and could send it to me I would return it by Tuesday. The only thing, however, which I thought wanted guarding was your expression of content that under certain circumstances the work of interpretation properly belonged to lay lawyers. I should have rather said safely than properly, or modified the terms somehow in that sense. Indeed, I would not mind the lawyers extracting and defining the false doctrine contained in the statement of the impugned party, if they would leave the ascertaining of the true doctrine to the Church's own organs. But the lawyers would say that would make them a jury instead of a judge, or, at least, leave them only the question of fact to deal with. I am afraid that I must have made myself somewhat ridiculous yesterday, but I think I said only what it has long been on my mind as my duty to say, and I need not do it again. I suppose I am more excitable than I used to be, or else have been excitable all my life without knowing it. I am afraid that Lord Coleridge does not believe at all in the spiritual authorisation of the Ministry of the Church — and that therefore, with all his kind words, he is really Erastian. I suppose all that was done yesterday is to be overhauled on Thursday. It cannot be helped. I am wondering more and more how a report can be drawn. Pardon my loquacity — perhaps the strain has not yet gone off. Yours ever, William Stubbs. Kettel Hall, Oxford, November 27. My dear Dean, — I want to tell you what took place on Friday at the Commission : if you do talk at all about things with Lord Blachford, perhaps you would like to know why I had to 117 WILLIAM STUBBS say things as I did. But I am afraid of thinking too much about myself and so letting down the cause. The Archbishop of York made some propositions about the future conduct of business ; suggesting that we had heard a good deal of evidence, and that it was time to formulate some points on which it might be advisable to concentrate attention and to direct the future exam- ination of such witnesses as might be called. This was, of course, perfectly reasonable and straightforward, and was accepted by the Commission without any opposition. However, I said that in assenting to the vote I did not intend that the historical treatment of the subject should be shelved : to which both the Archbishops said that nothing was further from their intention. Mr. Whitbread then suggested that we should have an analysis of the evidence already given ; and then to my utter astonish- ment . . . said that we had a very admirable historical resume on the matter in the Report of 1832, and that it would be well to run through that and just add anything that we had to add. The Lord Chief Justice was just saying to me, " Do not you think, my dear Canon (for whom I have the highest respect and always buy and bind your books), that some of these inquiries you are making are rather beside the subject ? " Then I am afraid I was foolish, for I got up and spoke, repeating what I had said twice before, about our respecting the terms of our Commission, and insisting on our understanding the words of the Acts whose working we had to examine into ; that we must begin at the beginning ; that of the people we had examined about six had been important, that of the rest half had told us what we knew better than they did, and the other half things that were worthless as evi- dence for any purpose, and that they had been examined merely because it was thought that they ought to be examined ; that our real work had yet to begin, and that not one member of the Commission knew as yet what the procedure in Appeals as superseded by Henry VIII's 118 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Statute was. (N.B. — I had just found from Lord Cole- ridge that he had not the least idea of it.) The Arch- bishop of York then repeated that he had no intention of shelving the discussion ; to which I said that I had always found him favourable to the Historical treatment, but that when I found the line that things were taking I had thought it necessary to speak out again. So things ended. I asked the Bishop of Winchester and Dr. Deane whether I had behaved like a bear ; they said not ; but if I showed any fraction of the irritation that was in me, I fear I must have seemed cantankerous. This makes me unhappy, for I may lower the cause, and I know that my manner has not the repose that marks the caste of Archbishops — and nobody seems to speak out. After this it was determined that the several Com- missioners should send in notes of the points which they thought should be discussed, and the Archbishop particu- larly asked me to do so. You see, twice already I had urged the points that seem to me preliminary to anything like fair treatment of the question. (You know, I have told you that, to my mind, whatever report we may make, we ought to have a complete treatment [of] the subject, such as was impossible and likewise uncalled for in 1832.) The Bishop of Truro would have proposed to print the written paper which I showed you of my speech in July : but I thought it better, if it was to be printed, that I should do it privately and not as an order of the Commission. So now we are, as it seems to me, just where we were before ; and after Christmas we are to send in our hints. Now, if the time has not come for speaking out, I fear that I have done wrong. But unless I see distinctly that it is so, I cannot help feeling uncomfortable that no one else should speak out, especially when ] feel sure that the great majority of the Commissioners are anxious to do right and justice all round. The two Archbishops behave so well that I feel absolutely ill-conditioned when I speak and no one else does. 119 WILLIAM STUBBS Now I have always taken it for granted that it was on your suggestion that I was put on the Commission. Do you think that if you had not mentioned me to Gladstone, it is likely that I should have been on it ? I should like to know, for I think I see some indications of the A rchbishops* (plural) looking at us (i.e. you, Liddon, and me) as acting together. Perhaps you would not mind telling me. The other thing I want to ask is this — would you print the papers that I have sent in to the Commission — (i) the original bill of suggestions ; (2) the speech which I made in July ; and (3) the headings of the Memoranda that I have asked for ; or would you, if you were me, concoct a new paper containing the matter of those 'papers and adding fresh points — or would you simply formulate a set of minute questions, " What was Appeal ? " and " so on," and wait ? Ever yours, William Stubbs. {Private.) The Deanery, S. Paul's, December 1, 188 1. My dear Stubbs, — I am ashamed of myself for having left your letter so long unanswered. It was most important and interesting — may I say without impertinence, between you and me ? — very touching. For you are in a hard place. First, I heartily thank you for the stand you have made and which it was clearly time to make. I cannot talk as freely as of old with Blachford about these matters, because, though I am sure as of my own existence that all he wants is truth and justice and the interests of religion and the Church, we have somewhat drifted apart in our belief of what these interests are. He is very serious and very keen sighted ; but his want of reading and his eagerness, and impatience of a great deal that has been said and done in 120 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 recent times, make him, I think, overlook important con- siderations, and so, though he is most candid, there is a sense of disagreement, perhaps more than there really is, which inclines us to silence. He is one who undervalues the bearing of the Ante-Reformation system on that which succeeded it. First, he says some appeals, then all appeals, are given by Act of Parlt. to the King : you cannot go behind the words of the Act, which includes all ; and he does not care to inquire what the practice came to. But I can see that even he is moved by the picture presented in your paper of the activity of Convocation. He has never said a word, as if he thought you too warm ; and he certainly is not shocked at people speaking frankly to Archbishops. I am afraid that another struggle is coming — practically between the lawyers and legalists, on the one hand, and those, on the other, who look beyond mere statute law to history and theology. The only person I can think of who could be a kind of centre to the Church side is Lord Bath ; and one or two people are going to talk to him, when he has done with the Prince of Wales's visit. It would have been much better if it could have been a bishop like Ely. But clearly there ought to be some understanding between Church people acting together, The lawyers don't want it. They know their brief and trade too well. Now, as to your questions. Certainly I mentioned your name, when I had an opportunity ; but I don't suppose the least that this made any difference. Your name was in everyone's mouth, and, if I remember right, G. himself mentioned it to me first. I am sure you would have been on the Commission anyhow. But really I do not know whose advice G. took in framing it — certainly, in several points, not mine, though he did me the honour to let me talk about it. As to the second question, I have all the papers clearly before my mind ; but on general grounds, I should be 121 WILLIAM STUBBS disposed to incorporate all your former work into a fresh Memorandum, recapitulating what had passed, and making extracts, if you think well, from previous papers. But these people want to have " reading made easy " to them, and all that can be done in that way, without sacrificing substance, is worth doing. Form goes a long way. I think this better than mere questions. Thank you so much for your letter. Ever yours, R. W. Church. Cuddesdon Palace, St. Stephen, 1881. My dear Canon, — My brother-in-law tells me that you are rather troubled with the language of my first Proposition, understanding it as propounding the broadest Erastianism. I will not argue about the propriety of language which, as such a man as you has misunderstood it, must clearly be capable of being misunderstood. But I hasten to say that I wish the first proposition to be read by the light of the second, and that (right or wrong) I am only saying what I have said all my life in public and in private, without any change, that the English nation has always asserted its right to say on what lines property shall be held, and to what religious body State privileges shall belong ; and to change those lines from time to time. I cannot understand how a State could subsist with rights short of this. Defining religious truth as truth is quite another matter, with which I have always held, and now hold, the State has nothing whatever to do. My second proposition, if you will look at it, says so, and the two were at least not meant to contradict each other. I shall be quite ready to alter the terms of my first proposition if they seem to you open fairly to miscon- struction. I do not myself think they are — but I have no care whatever for particular expressions. 122 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Let me wish you everything good and happy for the season and for the New Year. Yours very sincerely, Coleridge. [Before answering this letter Dr. Stubbs consulted Dean Church.] The Deanery, S. Paul's, December 28, 1881. My dear Stubbs, — Coleridge's proposition is, on the face of it, dangerously ambiguous. It may be taken, equally fairly, to mean — (A) Authority over the creed and dogma of the Church ; or (B) Authority to see that teachers teach what they have bound themselves to Church and Realm to teach : i.e., that men bound to the Nicene Creed do not teach Arianism. (B) is, of course, the only tenable one, and one that, unguarded, would allow the State, if it thought fit, to use its authority to dispense with the obligation and allow some persons to teach Arianism. He ignores that the Church is a religious society, as much as any sect, and cannot lose its right to be treated with the justice due to any tolerated society, because it has been honoured and privileged above other religious bodies. The rights of the State to inquire into doctrine, and to see that terms of contract in teaching are observed, are of course undeniable ; but this is not a thing peculiar to the Church. The State has the same right, in principle if not in degree, over every religious society, which, under its permission (as in England) or recognition (as in France), organises itself and holds property. No doubt, in the course of history, the State has had indefinitely varied authority over doctrine allowed it by the Church, when the Church looked on the State as friendly or in close alliance with it — (the Greek Emperors, 123 WILLIAM STUBBS Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Henry VIII), but not to the State as the State, heathen as well as Christian — and always with the clearly understood reserve of falling back on the inherent rights of the Church (e.g. Arian emperors and kings). Now that the State has become so different from what it was at the Reformation, there is nothing for it but to arrange for concurrent, not mixed or one-sided, tribunals, Ever yours, R. W. C. [This is from Dr. Stubbs's draught of a reply to Lord Coleridge.] i, Amen Court, S. Paul's, December 28, 1881. Dear Lord Coleridge, — Thank you very much for your letter, and very much indeed for the kindness which led you to write to me. I confess that I was very much startled when I read your first proposition, and although I very soon found that it must be read with the second limiting and supplement- ing it, I must further confess to being a good deal dis- turbed by the consideration of it, and especially by the fact .that it shows from what different points of view we are approaching our problem. Of course I cannot deny, and have no wish to deny, that the State has the power and a right to endow and to dis- endow any religious body ; and to prescribe the terms under which endowments shall be held, and to provide and modify the machinery for securing that those terms shall be observed by the religious body so endowed ; and to withdraw the endowments, not only if the terms are not kept, but also if it seems to the State necessary or expe- dient to do so. In the contract between Church and State there is no appointment of a human umpire. The only security that the Church has for its endowments is its hold 124 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 upon the mind and conscience of the men who constitute the State, and the fact that it justifies its position by doing its duty. But on the other hand I claim for the Church that it is a religious body with distinct principles of belief and constitution, which it cannot alter or part with without forfeiting its essential character, and which the State, so long as it allows the quasi contract to subsist, recognises as essential, integral, and consistent with the contract. If the State becomes dissatisfied either with these principles or with this constitution, it ought to alter the terms of the contract, not to do violence to the principles or to interfere capriciously with the constitution recognised by the con- tract. Nor should it, under colour of securing the observ- ance of the terms, so infringe the liberty of the other contracting party as to make it unable to fulfil them of itself. I think that your general proposition about the State wants at least so much modification from the side of the Church. No doubt in one sense the Church represents the aggregate of grantees and the State the aggregate of grantors, but also the State to which in early days the right of enforcing doctrinal terms was recognised was a portion of the Church. It was not in the State as a hostile body, but as a part of itself, that the Church recognised the right. But indeed I do not altogether acquiesce in the theoretic way of looking at these things, or care about analogies which break down the moment we try to fit them to unforeseen applications. I very much prefer a historical investigation to a political speculation ; and as I know of no historical contract between Church and State, I must base my inquiries on the results of examination into the several steps by which things have become what they are. That is what I am trying to do now with such books as I have, and in trust in such direction as a really earnest desire for truth and peace may honestly expect. I cannot 125 WILLIAM STUBBS doubt, after reading your letter, that you are working, from however different a point of view, for the same end, and so I am very glad when I find among the later propo- sitions contained in your paper several with which I can heartily agree, and, indeed, with regard to those in which we do not agree, I am sure that you do not leave out of sight the fact that the Church of England has historical claims on the State which no mere temporary exigency could warrant the State in disregarding. If the time is coming when the nation can no longer conscientiously or conveniently maintain the old contract, it must be dis- solved ; but the Church ought not to be treated like a public office, to have its integrity tampered with, its con- stitution manipulated capriciously, and its very power of cohesion broken up, before it is disestablished. I think disestablishment would be the great possible misfortune for the nation ; but to have the Church disorganised and paralysed before it is disestablished would be destructive of Christianity in England, and would be a worse treat- ment of the Church of England than any national Church abroad has yet suffered from any State. I have written at this length because I have been dis- tressed a good deal by the thought of your first proposi- tion, and of the effect that it might, so propounded, have on other minds. Pray excuse me, and believe me Yours very faithfully, William Stubbs. {Draught of a letter^ Kettel Hall, Oxford, July 8, 1882. Dear Lord Coleridge, — I hope you will not mind my writing a few lines to you about what was said yesterday whilst it is fresh in my memory. I should very much indeed like to get you to see matters not indeed as I see them, but for you to see how I see them. 126 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 It is asserted that so long as temporal rights and pro- perty are held on conditions dependent on the acceptance of certain formularies it is impossible to avoid having those formularies interpreted by a lay or State tribunal. It is also said that the Judicial Committee does not attempt to define what is truth, but what is the lawful construction of the doctrine of the Church of England. It is also said that such judgments have not spiritual authority, but must be taken for what they are worth. I say it is said, because I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I mean that this is what your words convey to me. Let me just say a word on these three propositions. 1. Fully granting that the title to temporalities must be determined by a temporal tribunal, is it not fair that the Church should have a share in informing that tribunal and in interpreting her own formularies ? For it is not merely the right to temporalities but the right to teach that is really determined on. The claims of the Jud. Comm., as now working, affect the very form and matter of every scripture lesson, sermon, or service in Church and out of Church of every Churchman clerk or lay. If we allege anything at variance with the dicta of this tribunal we are liable to be called unfaithful and accused freely of unlawful teaching. Surely the temporality side is not all that is in question; and if not, it cannot be the exclusive consideration. 2. The judgments of the Jud. Comm. do not determine what is truth, but what is the doctrine of the Church of England, or rather by determining that such and such statements are or are not consistent with the doctrine of the Church they incidentally if not expressly define the doctrine. But then the doctrine of the Ch. of E. is to us the Truth ; that is, what we have to teach our children and our parishioners is the truth — the truth on which their eternal life depends and by which their moral con- duct must be guided. I cannot see how this can be met or extenuated. 127 WILLIAM STUBBS 3. That these decisions have no spiritual authority seems to me quite true. But then they have to act by the same binding effect that spiritual authority would have. They limit the area and development of spiritual teaching, they claim authority to interpret documents that have spiritual authority; and, as I have said, the non-acquiescence in them is made the ground of a charge of spiritual unfaithfulness. I want you to see the difficulties that I have arising from the present inextricable involution of temporal and spiritual concernments in accepting any clear and exclusive state- ment of one side of the contention, granting that, in the eyes of the Church and State law, the right to temporalities is the primary point. I seem to see that so much besides temporalities hangs upon the point that the utmost care should be taken to limit the operation of judgments that incidentally affect the greater and wider interests. [Dr. Stubbs presented a paper of suggestions generally and in regard to the Supreme Court of Appeal, and a list of historical questions to be considered.] The Deanery, S. Paul's, February 17, 1882. My dear Stubbs, — Your paper seems to me very good : what is more important, it seems so to Lord Blachford, who spoke of it as " very able and masterly." With the " Suggestions " he seemed ready to go along altogether. But he thought that the account you gave of the Privy Council was in its favour, and not against it, as a representative of the State. His idea seemed to be that the Church should, by its own proper organs (in this case, judicial ones), pronounce its decision. Then it is for the State to say whether this decision is one which it can accept ; and that to that question, the P.C., being not so much a judicial as a quasi political body, is well fitted to give an answer, yes or no, 128 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1 866-1 884 with or without reasons — these reasons being, it may be, much wider than matters which concern only the interests of Church doctrine or dicipline as such. But he is quite willing that the P.C. should not claim to speak as the mouth- piece of the Church. We owe you infinite thanks for this paper. If it does in the end tell on men like Blachford and Coleridge, something may come of it. I have at last had time to read Mr. . . . He is enamoured of his pet distinction between doctrine and discipline, which, except so far as the State is the source of all coercive jurisdiction, seems to me a very loose one. I almost think if I had read it earlier I should have been tempted to have my say about it ; but now it is not worth while. He makes, however, some admissions which all his side do not make about Church rights as to doctrine. It is disagreeably and impertinently written, but he tries to get at a working view. Ever yours, R. W. Church. The Deanery, S. Paul's, March 31, 1882. My dear Stubbs, — Thank you for your kind letter. I am very grateful to you for having so early and so forcibly put before the Commission what they ought to do. I do not doubt that it produced an effect, though I dare say it startled some of them not a little. I really don't know what they would have done without you. They will at least be obliged to be respectful ; and others besides them will, I hope, learn that all wisdom is not centered in their conclaves. Are you going for a holiday ? Your account of Green's funeral is very touching. Ever yours affec, R. W. Church. w.s. 129 K WILLIAM STUBBS The paper which follows relates to the critical question of the Court of Final Appeal. It was moved by Sir Richard Cross and seconded by Dr. Perowne — " That an appeal shall lie in all cases from the Court of the Arch- bishop to the Crown, and that the Crown shall appoint a permanent body of lay judges learned in the law to whom such appeal shall be referred." The concluding paragraph of the paper was moved as an amendment by Dr. Stubbs and seconded by Lord Bath. The paper itself is Dr. Stubbs's speech on the occasion. It was printed for private distribution, but has not till now been published : — It is headed, " 1883, April 5. In tlie Ecclesiastical Courts Commission.'" Thus it runs — " I propose with your Grace's permission to say a word or two on two points, and, if it is allowable, to end with two resolutions or notices of motion. " The stage of our work at which we are now arriving is surely far the most important part of the whole. If we are to retain or create a bad court of final appeal, all the improvements we may make in the lower courts will be aggravations of the evils under which we are struggling. " I cannot persuade myself to look on the point now before us merely in relation to the question of Establish- ment, to the conditions under which the clergy may possess lands or privileges, or to the question of interpretation of documents, or to the rights of the laity ; much less to the small controversies of the day. " To my mind it concerns the very essence of the truth that we are to preach to our people, and the determination of the problem how we are to retain the services of an intelligent and learned clergy. Is the Church to be served by men who realise what they teach, or by those who will content themselves with mechanical compliance with rules ? " I think the majority of the Commissioners have shown by their votes in former divisions that they regard the 130 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as a bad court of final appeal. I heartily agree — its constitution and working seem to me alike bad. I believe that it obtained its legal position, as regards the matters now before us, by a culpable oversight ; it has worked calamitously for the Church of England, having done more than anything else to promote the growth of Roman Catholic influence ; its composition and rules are incompatible with the securing of unbiassed, enlightened, and convincing decisions ; and the attitude which, since this Commission began to sit, the Judicial Committee has assumed towards the Church of England, its constitution and its standards of belief, is a defiance of history and common sense alike. " Our difficulty is to find a substitute — to find a substitute which shall be free from the evils of the present system and merit the confidence which a final court ought to deserve. " On the possibility of doing this there are several opinions. We are influenced not only by special views as to the rela- tions of Church and State, but by the question whether plans that we might wish to see are feasible in the present state of public opinion. "The differences which subsist between the views of the several Commissioners must issue either in the acceptance of a series of minimised recommendations, accepted with- out conviction or sympathy, or in the presentation, by those who are inclined to more decided lines, of separate reports of their own. I wish, however, to suggest that, by formu- lating and reporting alternative schemes, we may yet agree on a general report. I do not observe in the Commission as issued any very precise mention of practical recom- mendations ; and although I suppose it is, as a matter of course, within the scope of the Commission that we should make such recommendations, the first object of our labours is that we should make a report on facts. " It appears to me that there are three lines which might be taken. We might formulate an ideal plan that would recommend itself to all but practical men ; or we might 131 K 2 WILLIAM STUBBS accept an inferior scheme, fencing it with safeguards against misuse ; or we might (for I do not care to be very logical in my division) contrive a plan which, by defining the matters of appeal, would secure an adequate treatment of ecclesiastical causes by competent tribunals, and so make the remedy an integral part, not a mere outwork, of the scheme. " A first plan would be such as this : believing the compact or quasi compact to be between Church and State, and not as regards these questions between the particular clergyman and the State, we might propose to leave the settlement of the complaint or offence of the individual clergyman to the purely ecclesiastical courts, and, if there be a lack of justice, revise the compact or quasi compact. This I set aside as impracticable and therefore requiring no further elaboration. "A second plan is the one which we have hitherto followed — to content ourselves with recommending a supreme court with which no one can pretend to be satisfied, surrounding it with such safeguards as may pre- vent some of the practical evils of the present system : such as the bishop's veto in first instance ; trial of doctrinal points by certificate ; confining the operation of the final decision to the particular case adjudicated ; insisting on the delivery of separate judgments by the members of the court ; and restraint of the right of appeal to the defendant. The danger of confining our recommendations to this plan is, that almost every one of the safeguards proposed will call forth a separate opposition, one by one they will be swept away in the process of legislation, and we shall be left with the unsatisfactory court unfenced — that is, with the same thing under another name that we are proposing to displace ; but in so much the worse position, as we shall have shown ourselves unable to recommend a cure for its inherent evils. " A third plan is to propose such method and limitation of the matter of appeal as may secure substantial justice 132 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 at the hands of the Crown, by tribunals competent and qualified to adjudicate, with as little risk as possible of conflicting decisions. " This is the plan which I proposed to the Commission in my paper of suggestions presented last year ; and it is based on the ancient process used in Commissions of Review. It would provide for the reference of a petition of appeal to a responsible officer, whose duty it should be to determine (1) whether an appeal should be allowed, (2) on what points the appeal should be allowed, and (3) whether those points, being of spiritual import, should be determined by the proper spiritual tribunal, or, being of civil and temporal import, should be referred to the proper temporal tribunal. There are objections to this plan, both to the idea and to the possible working of it. There might be a wrong refer- ence of spiritual points to the civil tribunal ; but if the civil tribunal decided them wrongly, it would at once be clear that the decision was a civil decision only. It is not likely that the spiritual court would ever undertake to adjudicate on the civil points that might be wrongly referred to it. It may be objected that the risk of burdening the clergy with new definitions of doctrine would be quite as great if the adjudication on such points were in the hands of the spiritual judges as it is now in the hands of the Judicial Committee. That is possible ; but in the bishops the clergy have a body which they can trust, or which, if they are not convinced, they can obey in faith and patience, but which does not claim their obedience on a contested title and by precarious tenure, as the Judicial Committee does. " My first Resolution is — " That the Commission may recommend as possible alter- natives more than one scheme of reform for the Final Court of Appeal. " The second Resolution is that the following plan be sub- mitted by the Commission in their Report as an alternative scheme for the final adjudication on appeals — " That for lack of justice at or in any of the courts of the 3j WILLIAM STUBBS Archbishops of this realm, it shall be lawful to the parties grieved to appeal to the Queen's Majesty in Council ; and that, upon every such appeal, the petition of the appellant shall be referred to the Lord Chancellor to examine into the same and report his opinion thereon to her Majesty at that board ; and that, if the Lord Chancellor certify that, on consideration of the petition, and having heard parties by their counsel, he considers the points of law which arose on the proceedings so important that it is fit they should be heard and determined in the most solemn manner, he shall further report what those points are, and whether they are points concerning temporal rights or spiritual law: and thereupon it shall be ordered that the points defined to be of temporal or civil right be determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (or by the House of Lords, if her Majesty with the advice of the Privy Council shall so please) ; and the points defined to be of spiritual law by the Archbishops and Bishops of the two provinces, who shall for the purposes of these appeals be constituted and recognised as a court of doctrine." The following letters show how deeply the question of the spiritual position of the Church was affecting some of the .members of the Commission, and what danger Dr. Westcott, as well as Dr. Stubbs, saw from Erastianism. [Letter from Dr. WESTCOTT, December 10, 1883.] Cambridge. My dear Stubbs, — Your deeply interesting letter confirms the judgment which I had vaguely formed. Yet I do hope that inform- ally, and as occasions may arise, those who can may speak to Mr. Gladstone. Nothing is too late for Faith ; and the appointment of the Commission seems to involve an obligation to seek at least to give effect to its recom- mendations. The saddest sign of public life now is that 134 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 Governments are disinclined to govern. But what alarms me most is that strong efforts arc (I fancy) being made to induce the Archbishop to bring in a Bill independently. Surely this would be most unwise. The recommendations may at least have considerable force in teaching self- restraint. But they would lose all virtue if they were wrangled over and mutilated and rejected. Do you not agree with me ? I expect to see the Archbishop during Easter week, and I shall be glad to give him your counsel. The Warden of Keble will, I hope, be also at Addington. I think that the Dean of S. Paul's unduly distrusts his power. If leading Churchmen do not press their con- victions, how can Statesmen believe that they are in earnest after all ? Ever yrs. most sincerely, B. F. Westcott. 6, Scrope Terrace, Cambridge, December 12, 1883. My dear Stubbs, — It is a great pleasure to talk, as it were, again, and to find that our agreement is as close as it used to be. Have you ever thought out the problem of the reference to Convocation ? It will be very difficult, I fear, to find a precedent which would have weight, and yet it seems to be most desirable that Convocation should have this oppor- tunity of offering an opinion through the Upper House. Would it not be possible for the Archbishop to be empowered to communicate the Report to Convocation and to ask on his own part for remarks from the Lower House with a view to an opinion to be given by the Bishops? There could be no doubt that the Bishops would speak wisely in the end. I see no other way of proceeding; and it may be doubtful whether any Government would go as far as this. Yet a solemn judgment of the Bishops would 135 WILLIAM STUBBS both place them in their true position and carry great weight. What do you think ? Yrs. most sincerely, B. F. Westcott. On July 13 the Report was finally passed. Dr. Stubbs signed it without reservation. Next day he wrote thus : — Kettel Hall, Oxford, July 14, 1883. My dear Dean, — You will have heard from Lord Blachford that we signed the Commission Report yesterday afternoon. I tried hard to persuade Lord Devon and Freeman to sign without reservation, but I could not manage it. It seems rather to throw a slur on those of us who signed freely, but I am convinced that we were right, and that the one thing to do, after having fought our view fairly as we have done, was to strengthen the recommendation as a whole as much as we could and to weaken them as little as we could. It seemed to me the more easy to do this as the report nowhere pretends to lay down any principle or to say that the clergy ought to be content with what it proposes. So I feel that we have done what we could, and that the protests which the Archbishop of York and Lord Coleridge are to make, if they weaken the report in one point which after all is not a point of principle, may even have the effect of strengthening the agreement on the great point of diminishing the authority of the Judicial Committee. Be- yond this I think we can hardly expect to do direct good ; indeed, there are too many lawyers on the Commission to allow anything like a philosophical or even statesmanlike plan to be passed, and, that being impossible, it is as well that we offer no symmetrical or complete systematical scheme. But what we do offer we offer as a whole — that 136 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 is, it is not a complete regimen, but a prescription out of which, if any ingredient is taken away, the whole is vitiated and to be repudiated. Of course, this is very different from what I had hoped at first ; but, as you know, I soon found out that it would be impossible to get the body of the Commissioners either to work as hard as I wanted, or to stand up against the lawyers. I am afraid that what I have written will not be very clear until you see the report ; then I think you will see that I have acted for what seemed to be the best. The whole of the recommendations are a practical condemna- tion of the Judicial Committee ; but they are in very reserved language, and many people will read them without finding it out. Nevertheless it is so, and that they have received so large a share of assent is a thing to be glad of. I am hoping to run into Yorkshire on Mon- day, and possibly abroad next week. Yours ever, William Stubbs. Thus Mr. Gladstone wrote of the papers which Dr. Stubbs had presented to the Commission and sent to him after the publication of the Report — Hawarden Castle, Chester, September 2, 1883. My dear Dr. Stubbs, — I have read the papers so kindly sent me with much interest, and I think there is not anything of what you have said against the present Court of Appeal in which I do not concur. It was a great pleasure to me to find my Tract of 1850 commended by the first historical authority of the day, but as I did not come to the passage until I had made great progress in the perusal, I feel sure that my tribute is unbiassed. 137 WILLIAM STUBBS Very valuable suggestions appear to have been made by the Commission. For a great constructive work it is pro- bably too late. For a very long time I have felt more and more, first, that we have in the main only to look to moral forces for the government of the Church (I do not refer, of course, to questions of conduct) ; and, secondly, that the Church can afford in a very great degree to dispense with other aid. Believe me, Most faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone. These concluding letters still allude to the Commission ; but they also give a pleasant glimpse of an Oriel Gaudy and of the friendship between the Dean and the Canon, as well as a charming reference to the latter's sermons. The Deanery, S. Paul's, October 8, 1883. My dear Stubbs, — I wish I could get out of proposing anyone's health, as I should digest my dinner better. But in this case there is no choice, and I will do what I am told. I had hoped that we were going to enjoy ourselves without speeches. I was sorry to run away on your last Sunday, and I wanted to ask you if you would lend me your sermon. The people here were full of it. Marlborough was plea- sant, only it was so cold. There seemed to be a good working spirit, and, as far as I could judge from a flying visit, a good religious tone in the chapel. There were some 130 communicants from the boys. I am afraid there will be a long waiting before people settle down to the inevitable. The Commission has shown how tightly the Supremacy is fastened upon us. It has shown also that, within that, . there is a good deal of real liberty, which might be made more by ourselves. But 138 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1866-1884 that fatal Roman Controversy makes the mere theoretical supremacy so formidable. They all send you their love, and missed you very much yesterday. Gregory is back, jocund and robust, from the company of Earls and Bishops at Reading. Ever yours affect., R. W. Church. If you ever come across a book printed in Oxford, 1766, Proceedings and Debates in the Lozver House, would you snap it up for the Library ? It has the debates about Bacon in 1620-21. [To Miss Church.] Kettel Hall, Oxford, October 14, 1883. My Dear Friend, — As to the sermon on lying, it is now lying on a heap of sermons in a cupboard at Amen, and must continue there until you will have forgotten all about it. I am sorry if it made you unhappy : I thought you knew that in all my sermons the wicked man is myself, which accounts for a remark that one of my farmers once made to me, that in my sermons the wicked man generally had the better of it. Well, I wrote to Fred in sober terms the story of the Feast of Oriel, in which there was a mingling of funeral baked meats for the old Provost and wedding cake for the new ; but there was much decorum and solemnity and not much electric sympathy — but people had to learn to see one another, and applauded speeches not always in the right place. It was a very good dinner, but very long, and so hot that even the works of my watch got rusty with perspiration. As to speeches, the Provost preached on the Queen and the late Provost (some of it very good), but long without warmth, and so far unlike the dinner. Then Shadwell nervously proposed the M.P.'s of 139 WILLIAM STUBBS both Houses, to which Lord Cranbrook answered plea- santly and Goschen with dignity unmodified. Then I proposed the ex-Fellows, the Absent ones, as the Cardinal — the Archdeacon, oecumenical Hildebrand, champion of all things good, from Church government to Cheddar cheese — Burgon never to be forgotten — H. Coleridge, my first Oriel friend and inspirer of my first and last review, etc., etc. ; then the present ones as the Dean, the one man who unites the love of righteousness with the hatred of iniquity in due proportion, and the archpriest of the English Church 1 ; then Fraser, " as a truly delightful person of whom I could say much, only, as I was standing close to him, it was not quite safe " ; then T. Mozley, as founder of Cholderton, who had forged Jupiter's thunderbolts on Salisbury Plain ; then old tutors, etc. (N.B. — I did not flatter them, but said if they were not there I should have said so and so). Lastly, Lord Blachford, as my companion for three years in a hot room, and as inex- haustible in truth, honesty, and industry — founder of colonies, etc. That was my little squib. Lord Blachford returned thanks very merrily and to the point. Then all became serious. Fraser proposed the Fellows ; Chase returned thanks ; Butler proposed other people ; Tom Hughes answered. Froude proposed the Scholars, and was answered by Magrath (Pr. of Queens) and young Atlay, in formal, nice, decorous utterances. It was now towards the small hours — 1 1.30. The Dean (yours and mine) proposed the Provost shortly and to the point ; said what a good school Oriel had been of duty and devotion to work, and hoped it would be always — too short but all gold — and the Prov. returned thanks and sent round the Grace cup. I was tired and melted — and went off to bed at 12 : — other people sat up till 2.30. I saw no more of the Dean. He sat next but one to me : M. Pattison between us. I sat between Pattison and Fraser, so got good fun out of Pattison and talked Cholderton to the 1 Dean Church. 140 PROFESSOR AND CANON, 1 866-1884 successor of St. Prince Lee. I was the buffoon! and the banquet needed no skeleton — there were too many. Still, it was very pleasant altogether and very exhausting. I trust the Dean is no worse. My best love. Write me a critique on this. Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. 1, Amen Court, S. Paul's, January 23, 1884. My dear Westcott, — I have seen several of the Convocation people whilst I have been here, and have strongly impressed the solidarity of the six propositions. I find that only the very best of them have read the Minutes of the Evidence, and the strongest opinions come from those who have not read even the body of the Report. Their Committee has, how- ever, prepared some very satisfactory resolutions, so far as the reception of the Report goes. If all is well I shall come to Cambridge for some MSS. during Term, and shall look for you unless my time is very short. Yours ever, William Stubbs. With these pleasant words of fellow-work following the memories of happy friendship, the record of a long space in the life of William Stubbs may well close. Within three weeks of this last letter a great change in his work was to be thrust upon him. His knowledge, his patience, his tact, and the friendship of those who could speak of these qualities before those in high place, brought the inevitable recognition of good work for the Church — the call to more prominent service. 141 Ill o Age I. BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 N February 7, 1884, Dr. Stubbs received the following letter from the Prime Minister — 10, Downing Street, Whitehall, February 6, 1884. My dear Canon Stubbs, — I have the satisfaction of proposing to you, with the sanction of Her Majesty, that you should succeed Bishop Jacobson in the Diocese of Chester. I rely upon your accepting this greatly curtailed, but still weighty and important charge, and I cannot but anticipate great advantage from your accession to the Episcopal body at a time full of trial, but probably yet more full of hope and promise, to the Church. 1 Believe me, Most faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone. This was Dr. Stubbs's immediate answer — Kettel Hall, Oxford, February 7, 1884. My dear Mr. Gladstone, The proposal contained in your very kind letter has 1 Mr. Bryce writes to me (April 26, 1904) : "Mr. Gladstone stated that one of his reasons for offering a bishopric to Dr. Stubbs was the importance he attached to his knowledge of ecclesiastical law and custom, and the benefit he expected to the episcopal bench from the presence of so incomparably high an authority on that subject." 142 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 taken me so much by surprise, and the changes in work and prospects that it involves are so momentous, that I must ask you to allow me a few days for consideration. I am most grateful for your kindness and very anxious to do what is best ; and I will not leave the matter in suspense longer than is absolutely necessary. I am, Very faithfully yours, William Stubbs. He went to London immediately to consult his closest friends. The Dean of S. Paul's advised him that it was his duty to accept the bishopric ; so did Canon Gregory (the present Dean). Dr. Liddon, after an earnest conver- sation, wrote to him in the same sense. The advice was unanimous, and Dr. Stubbs accepted it. He wrote thus to Mr. Gladstone — Kettel Hall, Oxford, February 10, 1884. My dear Mr. Gladstone, — I now write to say that, if Her Majesty approves of your kind proposal that I should become Bishop of Chester, I am prepared to accept the nomination. I have ventured, in strict confidence, to ask the advice of the three men whose advice I value most, my dear brethren at S. Paul's, and they all agree in counselling me to that effect, and bidding me trust that I shall be strengthened to do my duty. I have not thought it necessary to ask for more time for deliberation ; for the change, and indeed the reversal, of all plans that I had marked out for myself, is so complete that no lengthy deliberation could at all familiarise me with the prospect ; and, that being so, there was no use in keeping the matter in suspense. As, most distinctly, your gracious offer comes to me without any courting or even wish of my H3 WILLIAM STUBBS own, I accept it in all humility and trust God to help me. I believe that you have a heart that will to some extent interpret my difficulties, and I would venture to ask that, as you share the responsibility of placing me where my new trials must come, you will think of me sometimes in prayers. Forgive my boldness in writing thus ; I could only do so in the firm belief that you are and know yourself to be, in a way, God's minister to me in this. I am, My dear Mr. Gladstone, Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. Three days later the appointment was announced in The Times, and letters of confidence and congratulation began to flow in. It is evidence of how little the future Bishop was still known outside his own circle of Churchmen and of historical scholars that he mentions the number he received as two hundred. He was never one who made friends widely, or who made acquaintance by correspondence ; and his full powers were not yet recognised. Even in Oxford, it was said that a Professor on the morning of the announce- ment said to him, " I haven't seen the paper ; have you ? I am told they have chosen the very last person one would think of to be Bishop of Chester ? Who is it ? " He went on lecturing as usual — the very day, I think, that the announcement was made. I remember the awe with which we looked at him that morning ; but we were too timid to say anything, nor did he. I felt too shy to walk home with him to Kettel Hall, as I usually did. It was not till some days after that I ventured to express the thankfulness of a humble student of history who had learnt so much that he held in Church matters as well as in history from him ; and he replied very simply. He still went on, all that Term and the next, lecturing to his small class. Another letter (February 13, 1884) from the Dean of 144 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 S. Paul's, two days later than the last given, discusses a possible successor, and adds : " Well, the world knows all about it now. I don't know what you said to Mr. Gladstone, but he was very warm about your 'perfectly admirable' letter. How strange the feeling is when the sense of the inevitable comes on ! " By some the work of a Bishop was still not regarded as unduly heavy : Archbishop Thomson, in sending " hearty good wishes for you in your new office," said " it is in many respects a desirable diocese, and it may, and I trust it will, leave you some leisure for your literary labours ; but a Bishop's business is rather engrossing." Among the letters of congratulation was one " of hearty and brotherly welcome " from the Bishop of Winchester, who said — " The deep respect which I have for your learning and wisdom, and my personal regard for yourself, are, I hope, well known to you. That learning and wisdom, united with sound doctrine and sincere piety, will adorn the high position to which God has called you, and well befit the chair of Pearson, and even raise it in honour and dignity." The northern Bishops welcomed him most warmly. "We need men like yourself," wrote Bishop Harvey Goodwin of Carlisle, " who by weight of metal can give us the support which numbers do not give us." Bishop Fraser of Manchester said characteristically, "not that, as you will find, the episcopal office is a thing to be coveted in these Kaipol xakcn-ot; but because you are a man, with the help of God, equal to most emergencies. I should think that on the whole, too, you will find that in Chester your lines have fallen, if not on pleasant, yet at least on tranquil, places ; for there have been most affectionate relations cherished and reciprocated between the bishop and the clergy." With Dr. Lightfoot, whom he succeeded as Canon of S. Paul's, he was already well acquainted. They had worked together in connection with the Dictionary of Christian Biography ; and, in 1872, on the foundation of the Lightfoot W.S. 145 L WILLIAM STUBBS scholarships in Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, Dr. Stubbs was, at the request of the founder, one of the first examiners, with Dr. Westcott for colleague. Their last association was to be in 1887, when as Bishops they sat on the Committee of the Lambeth Conference in regard to the treatment of the question of polygamy. In a letter after Bishop Lightfoot's death, Bishop Stubbs thus spoke of him — " He was a good and faithful friend, and so wise." Among the southern Bishops the Bishop of S. Albans (Claughton) wrote most cordially, " for your own sake and for the sake of old Trinity — we were both l faustis sub penetralibits enutriti'" — and told how the old Tractarian, Copeland, weakened though he was, rejoiced greatly in the appointment. The Bishop of London (Jackson) said — " I am only half content with the Premier's action, for I do regret sincerely that he takes you away from London to Chester ; but I am sure on the other hand that he has recognised on the Queen's behalf and his own the valuable work which you have done. You will allow one who knows well the burden and anxieties of the Episcopate to assure you of his prayers that God may lighten them and grant you the blessings which are never withheld from labour cheerfully given for Him." Lord Coleridge wrote thus — " I do wish you every happiness in your new sphere and long life to enjoy it. It is all ways a great thing for us that learning and history should have mounted the Bench. Few things happening to a man I have known only in late life have ever given me so much pleasure. Some day, perhaps, I may meet you in state and splendour in your cathedral. Till then you will observe that, after the example of Sydney Smith, I shall always crumble my bread when I meet you." Dean Liddell thus wrote to him — " I do not know whether you think designation to the Episcopate a subject for congratulation. But at all events I can safely con- gratulate the See of Chester on the prospect of being ruled by a wise, temperate, and learned Bishop, and can wish 146 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 you all health and strength for the due performance of your new duties." The letter from Freeman — a warm one it must have been — has perished, with all the letters of the brother historians which Dr. Stubbs destroyed within the last weeks of his life. The widow of his other " historic friend " received this reply from him — Kettel Hall, Oxford, February 19, 1884. My dear Mrs. Green, — Thank you very much for your kind letter. Humanly speaking, between you and me, my going to Chester seems now an act of rashness almost bordering on folly : (i.e. sup- posing that I could be capable of folly). I only hope that there is some faith involved in the rashness, and that it may be a change for the better even in the points which now seem a change for the worse. I shall have more work, and, I fear, more anxiety about ways and means, which have always until the last five years been a trouble to me ; especially for the prospects of my boys. However, I know that I have the prayers and good wishes of many kind friends ; and the way to the change has been unmistakably set before me. I trust that some- how this sort of difficulty may disappear when the real work begins. I do not intend to forsake my old studies, but, for some time at least, I shall have to set them on one side. If Bishops can write articles for magazines, Bishops can edit Chronicles at even less risk, and I will hope with more profit. You have been so kind to me, and we have really so much in common, that you will not mind my writing this much of reality to you. Yours ever, William Stubbs. But the most interesting of all the letters, perhaps, are 147 L 2 WILLIAM STUBBS those which passed between the two men, both priests of the Church of Christ, the keenest of whose intellectual interests was the study of the history of the past, both destined to leave a deep mark, as Bishops also, upon the history of their own time. Embleton Vicarage, Chathill, Northumberland, February 13, 1884. My dear Stubbs, — I dare not congratulate you on your elevation to the office of Bishop, because I know too well how much labour and responsibility it involves, and I know that in con- senting to take it you have not followed your own inclinations, but a sense of duty. Indeed, Lightfoot's example has left you no option. But I must say this — that for the sake of the Church I think it is the very best thing that has happened for many years. Frankly, I have been somewhat alarmed lately at the thought of the want of wisdom in the Bench. There is zeal, earnestness, practical ability, eloquence enough — but wisdom ! We might not agree with Tait's or Thirlwall's opinions or aims, but they command respect, and there was stuff in what they said. I think that your accession to the Bench will bring strength everywhere it is needed. Your large knowledge of everything concerned with the history, position, and principles of the Church will be of invaluable usefulness. Your statesmanlike views and your experience of affairs will secure universal attention. Now, I did not mean to say all this ; forgive me for saying what everybody will think. Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Stubbs and Miss Stubbs. Mrs. Creighton is from home, or she would have had many messages to send. Yours ever, M. Creighton. 148 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 Kettel Hall, Oxford, February 17, 1884. My dear Creighton, — Your kind letter, the kindest of the 200 kind ones that I have received, has warmed my heart very thoroughly. I am very grateful for it. I feel not at all sure that my rash- ness has in it the element of faith, but I trust that it has, and I am quite sure that any one who knows what I am leaving will acquit me, on this point, of self-seeking. I wish — and so does my dear Dean (of course this is private) that you could have been my immediate successor here, supposing that you were willing to come. But although that, I suppose, cannot be, it is probably only delayed until a time when you will have done more of your practical work in Northumberland, and other claims have passed out of sight. My successor will be an older man than myself, and I heartily wish that he may have as peaceful a time as I have had. As for the work that lies before me — I see some advan- tages and some rather exhausting demands on time and thought. What for seventeen years has been my work will have to become my relaxation, as it was at Navestock, and as yours is at Embleton. Quod Felicitcr vortat, as Bodley tells me daily. I want all my friends to have me in their heart in the most serious times and places. I feel no hesitation in asking this of you. If all is well I shall see you next Term, for my flitting will scarcely have been accomplished. With kindest regards to Mrs. Creighton, Believe me, Ever yours faithfully, William Stubbs. At Oxford he was succeeded by Mr. Freeman, whom he would himself have chosen had the choice lay with him. I remember how we speculated as to who the successor would be, and how the Bishop elect said to me — " You 149 WILLIAM STUBBS will be very pleased when you know." He said a few weeks later — " I am very glad to welcome him back to Oxford, to the home and the studies that he has loved so well, as the great champion and representative of that branch of historic literature on which, I believe, the success of the study here to depend." Freeman was warmly welcomed by those who had most loved and followed the great teacher they lost. The last statutory public lecture of Dr. Stubbs was not delivered till May 8, 1884. In it he hoped that he might complete " a fourth volume of Councils, an edition of William of Malmesbury, and possibly a sketch of the Constitutional History of the Reformation." Of these only William of Malmesbury was accomplished. The farewell lecture was a kindly and gracious record and acknowledgment, and a reiteration of the views enunciated eighteen years before. The only note of dissatisfaction was that which had often recurred, against the statute under which he had worked, and the necessity of public statutory lectures. But before this Dr. Stubbs had taken upon himself his new charge in earnest. On S. Mark's Day (April 25), he was consecrated in York Minster by Archhishop Thomson, Bishops Light- foot, Claughton, Goodwin, Fraser, Hill, Ryle, and Wilber- force. Freeman was present, and his account, to an old Trinity friend, was characteristic. " Florence saw him hallowed ; I don't profess to have seen more than Thomson a-hallowing him. But how feeble an English procession is, and how our Bishops want something more ! why, many of the doctors at Edinburgh 2 were finer." The new Bishop had the right to nominate the preacher at his con- secration. " I may mention," wrote Archbishop Thomson, " that the old tradition was to nominate some rising friend, who might be looked upon as a future Bishop. But I do 1 Mr. Freeman had just returned from Edinburgh, where he had received the Honorary LL.D. 150 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 not know why." Dr. Stubbs nominated his old school friend, the distinguished scholar and missionary, Dr. William Kay, sometime Principal of Bishop's College, Cal- cutta, whose knowledge of him went back to his childhood at Knarcsborough. Within a year, by Dr. Kay's death and by that of his mother, almost the last, certainly the closest, ties to the Knarcsborough of his boyhood were to be broken. On Tuesday, May 20, the Bishop of Chester did homage to the Queen, to whom, it may be said by anticipation, he always retained a chivalrous, almost romantic, devotion. No man, from historic knowledge, was better fitted to appreciate the difficulties of the Sovereign, and certainly no man more enthusiastically venerated the wisdom and goodness of Queen Victoria. On S. John Baptist's Day (June 24) he was enthroned in the cathedral church of Chester ; a few days' holiday were taken at the end of July in Yorkshire, and then he settled down in earnest to the work of his diocese. Early in the autumn the new work began. I have been favoured, by the kindness of Canon Arthur Gore, at one time one of his Archdeacons, with the following valuable account of the Bishop's work in the Diocese of Chester. "Bishop Stubbs came to Chester in the spring of 1884. His fame preceded him ; but a first acquaintance scarcely made an impression equal to his fame. There were many men in the man, or, rather, there were many depths and heights in the man, for indeed he was, through the whole range of his nature, one man at perfect unity with himself. ' But you did not all at once plumb the depths or scale the heights. It took time. Little by little you felt the great- ness; you did not exactly discover it. What you did discover was that there were still heights and depths to be discovered. At first, if it was a matter of mere personal intercourse, you found yourself speaking to a friend who stood on your own level, who entered into what interested you, and who took part in the survey, only adding some- thing more than you had seen. Your intellectual qualities, 151 WILLIAM STUBBS if you had any, were stimulated, and your infirmities were not exposed. You never felt inclined to depreciate yourself, only you willingly conceded that he was a little above you. It was only a little ; if it had been a great deal there would have been a breach of continuity between you and him which would have hampered intercourse. This never happened. Perhaps one of his greatnesses was the sim- plicity with which he took his place naturally at any level of men or things in which he found himself. In business it was the same. He was in things, like any average man. In committee or council, he did not speak as volubly as the clever men spoke ; but his words always helped, and they not seldom startled you by the unerring precision with which they touched the point. He was in everything with us all, but we knew, without being oppressed by the thought, that he was above us all. " Very soon came opportunities for discerning some of the secrets of his strength. He preached the sermon at his first Advent Ordination, December 21, 1884. It is, indeed, addressed to the people and to the candidates ; but it is, most of all, a revelation of the preacher himself, to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. It gives a per- ception of the marvellous vividness with which the Bishop looked into the life of the world and the Church, and of the awful itensity with which he felt, and suffered from, what he saw. He saw the ' parishes, crowded with men and women and children, each with a heart and soul, a lot and an experience of life peculiar to himself or herself ... a host of people who have grown up with ways and prejudices, and likings and dislikings, . . . and with sins and sorrows and stubbornnesses and waywardnesses that it may puzzle the wisest and most experienced of God's saints to meet and work on.' l And to these parishes ' we are sending young men, who have as yet hardly begun to tread for themselves the rougher path of personal trial . . . The 1 Ordination Sermon on 2 Timothy ii. 24, printed in the Chester Diocesan Gazette, July 17, 1886.— W. H. H. 152 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1S84-1889 odds are fearfully against us . . . so very much against us that we are almost tempted to think that it matters little whom we do send ; so little correspondence . . . between the agents . . . and the work . . . the wisest and most ancient utterly insufficient. Lord, what shall these young men do ? ' " What is suggested at once is that the Bishop saw and kept on looking at the great world of men and women and children, living — to him they never became items counted by hundreds or thousands — but living, sinning, suffering, sorrowing, struggling, crying out to be rescued, soothed, strengthened, enlightened, saved, for they were immortal souls ; and that he looked at them not in the gross but in the particular ; he actually saw them and heard their cry in every parish to which the young deacon or priest was going, and he was himself shaken to the deepest depths of his being ; and he could not send out these ministers at all only that they were authorised by our Lord Jesus Christ : ' The trust that we put in you to-day, we put really in Him ... It is not by your wisdom or your might or your power that you are to go ... as it is not by our wisdom or our might or our power that we send you ; but by His Spirit : awful responsibility for both of us ! ' Here was a world visible to him, in the inner spirituality, for good or evil, of its human thoughts and words and deeds, which we had not seen, and here was the agony of a great heart at these perpetual strivings of undying souls, lest they should fail of safe guiding into the grace of God. It was a sermon like this or a speech like this which gave us an abashed sense of the real splendour of the man. " But this intense glow and light could not always be maintained. He had the passion of his mission and work, but he had, also, the calm business faculty of guiding and ruling. When he arrived, he found a great work awaiting him. Far away from the centre of diocesan life, all by itself, in the north-east of Cheshire, lay a population of 153 WILLIAM STUBBS nearly 200,000, for whom it had always been difficult to make adequate provision. In 1841 Bishop Sumner had written ' Probably there is no district in England, even including the metropolis, in which the Church has so much to do as in that which is passed between Staley and Stock- port. The road winds through a continued forest of streets for nine miles, and we meet with but a single Church in existence — that of Hyde.' Sumner was a vigorous builder of churches. In his Episcopate six churches were added ; presently after, three ; and twelve more in the thirty years ending 1881. But the forest of trees had been widely extending, and there were now densely crowded parishes of 10,000, 12,000, one of certainly 20,000 ; and the clergy numbered only fifty-three, all told, among the 200,000.. The Bishop took instant action. He issued a commission of inquiry early in 1885. The report recommended the creation of nine new parishes, each with church, schools, and vicarage house ; the providing of vicarages in eight parishes where there were none ; and the building of fifteen mission-rooms. The estimated cost was .£84,000. The work was immense ; but the Bishop faced it with absolute resolution. There was no fluctuation of hope and fear. He issued his appeal ; he subscribed .£1,000; he attended meetings and preached sermons ; he stirred up the whole diocese to help the suffering member ; and he wisely fixed a period of five years for the completion of the effort. 1 And, by his tenacity and persistence, he succeeded. If all was not finished, all was assured by the end of the five years; and when the fund was finally closed in 1896, £72,000 had been raised in addition to grants from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, twelve churches and chapels of ease had been built, ten additional clergy provided, and a spiritual aid fund created for their support. " This is one, and a characteristic, instance of the impulse 1 I find, from the Bishop's letters, that the Duke of Westminster gave £1,000 a year to the scheme, and continued it to the work of the diocese. — W. H. H. 154 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 given by the Bishop to diocesan work. Where all cannot be recorded, an example must suffice. " An impulse of another kind was given by his determina- tion to have a teaching clergy — teachers especially of Church history. For this purpose, he addressed a weighty letter, dated December, 1885, to the Rural Deans. Only the heads can be given. The teaching, he wrote, must begin in church, further steps being taken in the school and by lectures. It must be constructive, not controversial. " 1. Its foundation must be the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church. " 2. Next, the Church of England as a portion of the same. " 3. The Church as the National Church. " 4. The relation to Rome before the Reformation. " 5. The origin of its endowments. "6. The ' Establishment' # " 7. The powers and rights of the State. " 8. The mischiefs of disendowment and disestablish- ment. The letter contains clear and wise counsel on the best methods of dealing with these important topics. " He had already given a delightful illustration of historic teaching in a sermon 1 preached February 10, 1885, at the consecration of the new Church of S. Werburgh, at War- burton. The church, a beautiful one, built by a famous Cheshire Churchman, R. E. Egerton Warburton, of Arley, did not quite supersede but, for main purposes, it replaced a most interesting structure pillared by rough hewn oak blackened by the centuries. In such surroundings we were breathing history, and there the Bishop flung the light across the ages of the Church, from the times of the Con- version, when there might have been ' a little wooden building with a well for baptism and an altar for the sacra- ment,' possibly ' a little altar-stone set up from day to day,' and where the scanty but ever-increasing number of proselytes answered ' the call of the missionary priest who 1 Sermon on Psalm xc. 1, privately printed at the Clarendon Press. — W. H. H. 155 WILLIAM STUBBS held his life in his hand.' A very few pages suffice to show us the triumphs, the strivings, the sorrows, the aspirations, the dangers, the deliverances of the Church — God's living Church — through the intervening times, and then comes the prayer that ' to a thousand generations of them that love Him, this new church maybe 'the place of parish gathering, where those whom God strengthens by sympathy and unity of heart gather strength by the sustenance which every joint supplieth.' "The Bishop allowed more than two years to elapse" before delivering his primary (and only) Charge. 1 He did not wish to speak as a stranger. He had striven ' to the utmost of his power ' to make himself acquainted with the diocese. If spared to hold another visitation he hoped to be able to say ' there is no parish that I have not visited and tried to understand.' The value of personal and living touch was always present to his mind. Of his own experi- ence as a parish priest he once said, ' I suppose I knew every toe on every baby in the parish.' And his Charge is full of intimate knowledge of his diocese. It expresses his obviously sincere and generous appreciation of the great work of his 'venerated predecessor,' William Jacobson ; and there is a graceful recognition of the healthy condition of the diocese and of the light and leading he derived from the men whom Jacobson had trained. From beginning to end this Charge is full of cheer and stimulus, as well as of gentle consideration for all follies and failings. He does not hesitate to use the surgeon's knife, but, without for one moment applying anaesthetics, he does not irritate. Now and then there may be a touch of irony. But though the laughter be against yourself, you cannot help joining in it. One of the Visitation questions had asked ' What are the chief hindrances to the success of your pastoral labours ? ' The question (an inherited one) was vague, and tempted 1 This Charge was published by Phillipson & Golder, Chester. Part of it has been re-issued, with other Charges, by Canon Holmes (1904).— W. H. H. I 5 6 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 men to pour forth a profusion of grievances, necessary and common to all men and all parishes, for which there was no help but in fighting them. The unhappy diocesan was oppressed : ' It is difficult to cull, from such a garden full of weeds, those which are capable of special treatment.' Perhaps the men felt happiest who had given shortest answers. " The Charge, as a whole, defies analysis. It consists of fifty-six closely printed large octavo pages in which there are no superfluous words. In it the historian of the Constitution discusses the burning questions of the day : discipline, Ecclesiastical Courts, patronage, Church reform ; and in it the elder and wiser brother stands beside his brethren teaching them how to shepherd their people. Conspicuously and above all, there is the breadth of soul and largeness of comprehension and calmness of judgment which gives rest to those who read, from the pettinesses of the life of the current day. " A history of the four years in Chester would show the Bishop's life woven richly into the life of his diocese. He often preached, particularly at his Ordinations, and usually with great intensity and purpose. He loved to meet the people themselves and to talk to them. They were part of the great story of life which was ever going on before his eyes. He would laugh with them and enjoy their merriment. They were never afraid of him. ' Don't you know us ? ' exclaimed a group of excursionists, who woke him suddenly out of a reverie in the Chapter Library, by insisting on shaking his hand : ' we're the Sunday School teachers from Stalybridge.' To the railway workers at Crewe 1 he gave a charming chapter of his own biography, excusing the egotism by the fact that 'among smaller successes ' he was now ' landed in the dignified position of having to advocate the study of history before an audience of the most intelligent people in England ' ! If there was 1 Printed in Diocesan Gazette, December, 1886, page 8. See above, pp. 4, 5.-W. H. H. 157 WILLIAM STUBBS banter in this, there was much more than banter, and there was all good-nature. " Whatever our thoughts of him when he came to Chester, we knew, when Bishop Stubbs was leaving, that one of the greatest of men had been with us, and we blessed God for him : a man in whom the genius of history saw and under- stood human life, saw the whole of it and every part of it in its true place and proportion ; a man whose heart drew us in fulness of sympathy into itself, and, much more than this, a man of profound, though for the most part hidden, piety and unswerving faith : a saint of God." It is as unnecessary as it would be difficult to add anything to this admirable record. The letters of those years show him to have thrown himself manfully into every side of his work, strange though much of it must have been to him. Most remarkable, I think, because most unexpected, was the way in which the man whom his contemporaries had never ceased to regard as the shy retiring student took up the position of a leader of men. To his mind, the Bishop must not hesitate to stand forward as guide ; and he did not hesitate. His old friend, the Ven. Edward Barber, whom he called in 1886 to be Archdeacon of Chester, speaks thus — " What struck me as much as anything in his work as a Bishop was the marvellous way in which he mastered details and fathomed the characters of men. His student life might have been supposed to have unfitted him for dealing with his fellows, but it was just the reverse ; and he grasped the situation and decided upon action with wonderful rapidity, and in doing so always seemed to exercise a wise and sound judgment. " His written sermons or addresses were masterpieces, so clear and well expressed, sometimes giving evidence of the playful humour which so often showed itself. Dr. Bright 1 on more than one occasion wrote to me and expressed his 1 William Bright, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. I 5 8 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1 884-1 889 admiration of the sermon he had preached himself when taking an Ordination, saying that he wished all his diocesan clergy could have heard it, so that they might see that there was something deeply religious and spiritual in him. At such times I used to write and borrow the sermon." It is clear that from the first he found relief, at times of hard work and anxiety, in the quaint humour which as years went on he cared less and less to repress. Chester remembers many stories of the kind. After a long service a Rector said to him — " I hope, my lord, you thought the hymns appropriate ? " Now, he abhorred many and long hymns, and he answered, " Oh, dear me ! yes, to be sure — " Yet saints their watch are keeping, Their cry goes up, ' How long ?' " " As it was some time past 8 p.m., and they had just sung this hymn, we who stood by knew how his patience had been exercised. I am happy to add that the Rector was not ruffled," says my informant. It is remembered — to give another example — that in his constant journeys by railway on diocesan work he would often meet a clergyman whose frequent absence from his parish was notorious. " Dear me, Mr. X.," he said one day, as they were both waiting for a train, " you are the most stationary clergyman in my diocese." He cultivated, too, the habit of amusing himself in verse. A High Church clergyman, guilty of elaborate ritual, was sent to prison because he would not obey a Court whose jurisdiction he would not recognise : a Low Church clergy- man inadvertently published as his own large portions of the sermons of a celebrated American preacher, a proceed- ing against which there was no law. The contrast diverted Bishop Stubbs, and he expressed his amusement in an epigram upon one " who prigs what isn't his'n," and another who " now he's cotched must go to prison," lines which I certainly cannot print here. 159 WILLIAM STUBBS When the autumn of 1884 set in he was hard at work. Thus, when Dean Howson asked him to preach in the cathedral church he replied — Chester, October 30, 1884. My dear Dean, — I am very sorry, but I am engaged both morning and evening every Sunday during the Advent season. I am engaged in a regular organised attempt to prove to the Clergy of the Diocese that I am not a good preacher. I think that I shall succeed. I wish that I could have come to you. Yours ever, W. CESTR. In 1886 the Lectures on Medieval and Modern His- tory (mentioned in the last letter to Mr. Freeman) were published. In the same year, the Bishop, at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, printed for private circulation among the members of the Upper House of Convocation an elaborate letter to his Grace on " the question of the possibility, and possible conditions, of a national Synod of the Church of England, to be constituted by a union or joint sitting of the Convocations of the two provinces," a paper of great historical value. It may be compared with the extremely careful constitutional statement made on a slightly different subject, the proposed reform of Con- vocation, of February 15, 1898, which is printed in the Chronicle of Convocation for that year (xiv. 6, pp. 18 sqq). In the Lambeth Conference of 1888 the Bishop of Chester played a prominent part ; and the present Arch- bishop tells me that " the wording of the Encyclical Letter was mainly the joint work of Bishop Lightfoot, Bishop Stubbs, and myself, and a large part of the actual docu- ment was written out in Bishop Stubbs's own clear hand. 160 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 We sat up two whole nights, or nearly so, in the Lollards' Tower doing the work." If it be needed to sum up the work which Bishop Stubbs did at Chester it might best be said that he led. He put aside all his old habits of seclusion, reticence, diffidence, and stood forward on every occasion to express, as a leader, his own personal opinion, and to direct the work that was to be done. He still retained the simple style of living to which he had always been accustomed : a Bishop who lives in a town, and whose diocese can easily be covered without excessively long journeys and contains no parishes far from a railway station, can dispense with any appearance of grandeur And appearance of grandeur, more than any- thing else, Bishop Stubbs abhorred. But when it came to action, so long as it could be apart from show, he was un- weariedly energetic. He ruthlessly cut away trivialities, he was not at all considerate of things which seemed to him trifles, but he avoided no labour, and above all he shrank from no responsibility. The course of his work, so clearly sketched by Canon Gore, can be followed in the Chester Diocesan Gazette. Sermons and speeches all take the tone not so much of advice as of instruction, not pedantic, not dictatorial, but distinctly the teaching of a leader. " I am placed," he seems again and again to be saying, " where I am by God, and what I think — as God teaches me — is what it is my bounden duty to make known to you : I am set here as your leader, and I mean to guide." So he powerfully exposed the dangers of class division, the increasing dangers, in a sermon at Chester on November 16, 1884; he painted the lesson of true reform at Witton ; he de- nounced the controversial spirit in one Ordination sermon, he taught the meaning of true edification in another ; he showed the true meaning of the consecration of beauty at the consecration of S. Mary-without-the-Walls ; of the vocation to be like Christ, in the life of Bishop Heber, at Malpas ; he denounced as an apostasy the idea of enlarging W.S. 161 m WILLIAM STUBBS the basis of the Church Communion "by waiving the principles of the Church of England to include sects and schools that will not waive theirs," at one time in a Diocesan Conference ; at another he emphasised the con- tinued, spiritual, organised life of the Church, and showed that what opponents hated was not the establishment but the very idea of the Church ; at another he insisted on the absolute need of religious education ; and then, once, when the first head of the German Empire was called to his rest, and his son lay in the grasp of a fatal sickness, he showed the sweep of his historical knowledge, the keenness of his spiritual vision of the world of his time, in a sermon of commemoration and intercession at the Chapel Royal, S. James's. He was first a Bishop of Chester, then a Bishop of Eng- land. Certainly the promise that his wise friends had seen in his call to the Episcopate was fulfilled. And, though he was not free from the sorrows that spare no man, his life at Chester as a whole was happy as it was strenuous. A word, a word only, must be added, of his generosity and of the strong sense of dedication that belonged to it. Once he had offered £500 to a plan for the diocese, which fell through : some one said, " Well, you can save that." The Bishop instantly answered, " Do y'ou think me an Ananias ? " It was pledged to God. He was anxious to give a difficult charge to a clergyman who was obliged to explain to him that he was too poor to take it. " Can you if I give you a hundred a year ? " said the Bishop. He could, and he undertook the work and received the £100 the first year. Then the Bishop went to Oxford, and the clergyman wondered how he should do when the year came round. Nothing was said, but when the day came round, and so onward, the .£100 came, without com- ment, from the Bishop of Oxford. Enough has been said in my words : I will now use those of two who knew him most intimately. Mr. John Gamon, the Bishop's legal secretary at Chester, thus writes 162 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 to me (Chester, July 28, 1903), " From my first acquaint- ance with the Bishop, on my visit to him at Kettel Hall in 1884 to the time of his death, he was good enough to trust me with that simple frankness, which his intimate friends valued as one of the most pleasing characteristics of his disposition, and the friendship he extended to me in our almost daily intercourse while he was at Chester grew on my part to one of most affectionate esteem and respect. " It was my privilege to discuss with him many questions other than those bearing on legal subjects, with which I was more intimately concerned, and I was invariably struck with the clear judgment and sure grasp with which his opinions were always formed. "A High Churchman in principle of the most uncom- promising views, any approach to Ritualism was distasteful to him, and ornate musical services were not only not appreciated, but proved even to be so wearisome to him as to be frequently deprecated on occasions when he neces- sarily took part in functions to which they were considered appropriate. How far this arose from associations with Church Services of an earlier period I am unable to judge, but opinions once formed by him never seemed to admit of any material modification or change. " In the more intimate knowledge of the Bishop in his home at Cuddesdon, amidst the abundance of jocose references and witty sayings about many things and many persons, the simplicity of his every-day life could not fail to disclose his deep personal piety and determination always to do his duty to the utmost of his power. " His great liberality is well known and was sustained by the practice of laying aside at the end of each year to a separate fund all the surplus of his episcopal income not spent on his immediate requirements. In this way I have known the Bishop to have given away in one year nearly half of his official income. " The Bishop was many times misunderstood, from a love he had of almost boyish mischief in shocking people 163 m 2 WILLIAM STUBBS very harmlessly, especially when any one approached him in a more than usually sanctimonious manner. Such utterances generally took place at bidding good-bye to his visitor, and after shutting the door he would burst into the merriest laughter at the astonished face of the caller, in which those present could not help but join. " To me personally and to very many of his friends here his removal to Oxford was the source of deep regret, as he had become more at home with and endeared to those who were most earnest in the Church work of the diocese the longer he remained with us. Indeed, I have reasons to think if he had followed his own personal inclinations he would have remained at Chester, but under the sense that it was his duty to obey the call to what seemed a higher sphere of service and usefulness, he accepted the appointment to the See of Oxford. " None who were present at the reception of the Bishop at Christ Church on his enthronisation and heard his simple and direct utterance in acknowledgment of Dean Liddell's welcome in Christ Church Hall could fail to be aware that the student of Christ Church had become her Bishop in fulfilment of the purpose of a laborious life under the sense of obligation to duty to which he had always bowed, and in obedience to Him who was the Guide and Sustainer of his early and later life-long activity. " No one who knew him well can look back with other feeling than that in Bishop Stubbs we lost the influence of a clear and powerful intellect, guided always by the strongest and soundest sense and knowledge, and a friend whose affection and whole-hearted loyalty to his God and his Church was a support as well as a call to us all collectively and individually to the highest aims and ends." And, lastly, this section may well end with the memories of his very intimate friend, Dr. J. L. Darby, first his Archdeacon at Chester, then, at his own earnest desire, the 164 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 Dean. Though some of these memories belong to another time, I will not separate them, but give them as the Dean — whose kind help in all I have had to do I cannot sufficiently acknowledge — has sent them to me : — " No one could have been with the late Bishop of Oxford without at once observing his accuracy, his com- pleteness in the various subjects with which he could deal, and the unassuming modesty with which he allowed others to share his knowledge. "One instance will suffice to illustrate this. In the common room after dinner at Exeter College in 1874 a question was asked about the value of a mark in a particular reign ; with one consent those present turned to the Professor of Modern History, as the Bishop then was, and in answer he gave a very interesting account of the mark, its value at different periods of history, and its relative value to the German mark of the present day. All was done with such readiness as to denote the inherent pleasure he had in letting others know what he knew, as well as the method with which his knowledge was stored. 'He never forgot anything, which was all the more remark- able from the rapidity with which he read. Two instances may be given. He read the whole of Salmon's Intro- duction to the New Testament in one afternoon and knew it well enough to examine in it ; he placed it in the list of books for examination for Holy Orders. Again, when completing the revision of his William of Malmesbury he went to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and asked for the manuscript there preserved. In less than five minutes he said, ' This MS. is far better than I expected to find it ; it will take me more than an hour to consult it' Immediately he put his quarto note-book on the desk, and in an hour and a quarter he had verified every word about which he had a doubt, and that from a MS. which it would have taken many men much time to read. He was somewhat impatient when those about him pleaded difficulty in reading charters : he would reply, 165 / WILLIAM STUBBS ' Five minutes would suffice for mastering the writing if you would only take the trouble to apply your minds to it.' He attributed his life's work to the fact that his father used to employ him to decipher and translate charters when he was a boy at Ripon. His handwriting, so beautifully clear, might not have led one to suppose that he wrote very rapidly ; but so it was : in an Ordination week he said, ' I must write the Address for this afternoon,' and in three- quarters of an hour he had completed the Address which took twenty minutes to deliver. It has been printed in the volume edited by Canon E. E. Holmes. He acted on the advice which he gave — ' Think out your subject well, and write rapidly.' " He did not always follow the advice which his life-long friend gave him when it was known that Mr. Gladstone had nominated him to the Bishopric of Chester. Canon Liddon, who had been his pupil in 1849, as one of a read- ing party at S. David's, said, ' Now that you are going to be a Bishop, you must not see the funny side of every- thing.' Sometimes those who did not know the man were tried by his playfulness, but no one could say that it was ever tainted by ill-nature. No doubt he sometimes dis- guised severity of judgment by a joke. If he detected any pretence, any symptom of sentimental piety, he was ready enough to acknowledge that he had a sense of the ridicu- lous ; but who would not have welcomed his reproving jest rather than have withered before the scorn which was in his heart ? His own genuine character, his striking honesty, and his utter abhorrence of parade made him recoil from anything approaching to insincerity. His sermons reveal what he really was : it is greatly to be wished that these may be given to the world, not only those which he preached as Bishop, but those preached before that time. One printed at the request of Dean Church entitled 'Clericalism' contains wholesome words for this time. Although his preaching could not be called popular, because it was so excellent, his sermons often 166 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 struck people very much, and those moreover whom f>rir/id facie one might not have expected to be moved by them. 'The people of Chester,' said an intellectual lady, ' do not like the Bishop's sermons because they require thought to understand them.' Although this may be too sweeping it expresses a truth. " His Charges have been given to the public, and they show his very conspicuous ability, and what was as certain, his firmness of principle. Once a principle was touched he was unbending. For instance, it was proposed in com- mittee of the Diocesan Conference that the subject of divorce should be discussed : the Bishop, with a little stamp of his foot, said, 'You shall never discuss a sub- ject which the Church has decided.' In writing an answer as to whether those who married a deceased wife's sister might be admitted to Holy Communion, he replied, 'You do it at the peril of your conscience' ; as he had said before with a deep sigh, ' If the Church is to go down in this country before her foes, let her go down fighting a moral question like this and not a mere ritual question.' Although he by no means despised a majestic worship, he looked on ritual as important only when expressing a truth which the Church had always held. He disliked the philosophic mode of thought when applied to revealed truth, and distrusted the abstruse refinements which had come into fashion. His criticism of a Christmas sermon was ' I like the old method of stating the truth better.' " He could not tolerate the arguments concerning the limitations supposed to be the conditions under which the Son of God lived while He was on earth. 1 He accepted 1 On this passage the Rev. W. T. Stubbs sends me the following note : " It may interest you to hear that there is a note at the end of my father's copy of Gore's Bamptons, and in his handwriting, viz. : " ' Can God alter His intention ? No ? Then there is something that He cannot do. Can He keep in His own power the coming of the day ? If He cannot, His freedom is limited— if He can, can knowledge in any sense in which we can understand the word be distinctly predicated ? " ' This is not a dilemma, only a proof of the impossibility of our 167 WILLIAM STUBBS with approbation a saying of his learned predecessor, ' When you begin to argue about that Personality, you find yourself very soon out of your depth.' Whilst he was keen to perceive any neglect of reverence or any approach to sacrilege in holy things, he was emphatic against horror about possible irreverence per accidens. ' If it is an accident, it is an accident.' " It is difficult to determine his appreciation of Art. He was more moved by sculpture than by painting. He wrote on the day when he first saw the reredos in S. Paul's, ' It is very beautiful.' This, coming from him, conveys a great deal, all the more as when the proposal was first made when he was a Canon of S. Paul's he was not in favour of it. " One reason why pictures did not seem to impress him so much was the rapidity with which he took in the subject. His conversations after a visit to a gallery showed that he had observed pictures before which he had not lingered. But he would spend a long time in examining historical pictures : there are such paintings in the gallery of Venice of naval battles ; before them he would stand and discuss all that led to them, all that came as a result from the victory ; he would discuss how far the painter knew any- thing about his subject, and how far the canvas conveyed any real impression of what happened. His quickness in gathering up any simple reference to history was shown by his seeing the name 'Cattryck' on a tombstone on the floor of Santa Croce in Florence. Instantly he gave all the inci- dents of Cattryck dying at Florence, having been conse- crated by John XXIII. at Bologna, being the Ambassador of his sovereign to negotiate a loan. 1 All about the limiting the action of God by our metaphysic definitions or even common language. " ' Is it that He put Himself so in our place as not to avail Himself of powers which we under the same circumstances could not avail ourselves ? " ' Difference between a single act of renunciation and a continuous effort of restraint.' " 1 I am indebted to the kindness of the Dean of Chester for the 1 68 BISHOP OF CHESTER, 1884-1889 consecration of Cattryck had been worked out for the Regis trum Sacrum, but the readiness with which the whole history was expounded could not fail to strike one. " His historic instinct was such as to enable him not only to judge of men and of the course of events, but made him capable of predicting with remarkable precision how a man would act in certain circumstances. He would say with a little chuckle and with a twinkle of his bright eye, ' Did not I tell you the fellow would do so ? ' " He was quite amusing about being managed : he would say with perfect good humour, but with equal determina- tion, 'I won't be organised.' His powers led him to depre- ciate the counsel of others. It was no conceit, no over- weening opinion of himself, that used to lead him to say, 1 Do you suppose that I do not know as well as all thirty of them what to do ? ' "His answer to Lord Salisbury when asked to undertake the charge of the Diocese of Oxford was truly charac- teristic : ' If he had asked me to do the easiest thing in the world I probably should have done it ; as he has asked me to do the hardest, I must.' After he had accepted and had visited Cuddesdon he wavered for a moment ; he said, 'I feel as if I had committed suicide'; but Dean Church, whom he consulted, said to him, ' Not now, not now ; you cannot draw back : go to see Liddon.' The Bishop went across to Amen Corner and had his interview with Liddon, and did not draw back. But it was a trial. He never was reconciled to the place at Cuddesdon ; he thought it entailed on him and on others a great waste of time. This to one who had never wasted a minute of his time was a continual burden. " To read his speech in Convocation on the Reform of inscription he refers to. It runs thus : " Hie jacet dominus Johannes Catryk Epus. quondam Exoniensis, ambasciator serenissimi dni regis Angliae, qui obiit 28 die Deer. A.D. MCCCCXIX. cujus aiae pro- pitietur Deus."— W. H. H. 169 WILLIAM STUBBS Convocation, and his letter to the Archbishop of Canter- bury about the joint action of the two Convocations of Canterbury and York, makes one wish that he might have been spared to guide the Church which he loved and served so well. But this wish is wrong : the strong and far-seeing Bishop is taken from us, and we seem about to fall into the ditch." 170 II. BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901. IN 1888 the health of Dr. Mackarness, Bishop of Oxford, became seriously impaired, and he decided to resign the work which he had carried on with such devotion since the translation of Bishop Wilberforce in 1870 to Winchester. Some one said to Dean Church, when the resignation was announced, that he hoped the new Bishop would be Mr. Paget (the present Bishop of Oxford). " No," said the Dean, " at least not yet ; the Bishop of Chester ought to go." And so it seemed to those in authority. Towards the end of July the Bishop received the following letter from the Prime Minister — {Private) July 23, 1888. My dear Lord, — I have the Queen's permission to ask you whether you will consent to be translated to the See of Oxford. I am aware that, in a secular sense, I am asking a great deal, for as long as Dr. Mackarness lives the income of the See of Oxford will be burdened with a pension from which your present See is free. I should not have made such a proposal if I were not convinced that there is no one else, whom I could recom- mend, who would be accepted by Oxford as equal in point of intellect and learning to this very peculiar Bishopric. I earnestly hope that you may see your way to undertake a work of the highest importance to the Church, which you are exceptionally qualified to discharge. Believe me, Yours very truly, Salisbury. 171 WILLIAM STUBBS This letter did not reach the Bishop, his diary shows, till July 30. Dr. Stubbs was not at all anxious to leave the work to which he was now accustomed. He felt the difficulties acutely. He consulted one or two friends, and when the Dean of S. Paul's telegraphed to him that he ought to accept the translation, he thus replied — Chester, July 31, 1888. My dear Lord Salisbury, — Your lordship's letter has given me occasion for very careful consideration, and I have sought the advice of two or three men whose opinion I felt that I could best trust, and who were the least likely to counsel me to desert my work here. I feel that I ought not to hesitate to accept your proposal that I should be translated to Oxford, and accordingly I do accept it. I will not trouble you with reasons — some of them are obvious. I feel, too, that if you had called me to work lighter than my present work I should have certainly accepted it, and as this is likely to be heavier I must accept, trusting in the same strength that has helped me hitherto. I do not know that the occasion is one which comports with an expression of gratitude, but your lordship will, I am sure, give me credit for being grateful for the kind feeling which led you to put the question to me in such kind words. I am, Very faithfully yours, W. Cestr. [This is printed from the Bishop's copy of his reply.] The translation was received everywhere, and most of all in Oxford, with the warmest satisfaction. Three letters which express the feeling may well be printed here. One 172 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 is from the present Archbishop of Canterbury, one from Dr. Liddon, and one from the Bishop of Lincoln. Deanery, Windsor Castle, August 6, 1888. My dear Lord, — I have for some days been wondering whether I might write to you, and this morning's Times releases me. I need not say to you how thankful I am for the out- come of what has been to so many a subject of anxiety and of earnest prayer. The whole Church, and most of all the diocese which " surrounds " us here, will now rejoice at seeing the University See occupied by one of the foremost of her alumni, and it is delightful to think how happy it will make the good man who is now laying down the charge of that great diocese. We shall look forward to the advantage of seeing you sometimes at the Deanery when Windsor and Eton and Clewer draw you hither for diocesan work, and I can assure you that you will find no lack of loyalty in this " exempted " islet. The Chancellor of our Order is always more than welcome in the Chapel, which is his as well as ours. It is seldom that an ecclesiastical appointment gives such unfeigned and general joy as this will give to all sorts and conditions of men. I am, Ever most truly and dutifully yours, Randall T. Davidson. P.S. — The Queen has expressed to me privately the very warmest satisfaction. Augusts, 1888. My dear Bishop, — Although I have now no connection with Oxford save that of occasional residence, I must w r rite one line to express 173 WILLIAM STUBBS my thankfulness and joy that you will succeed Bishop Mackarness, and will find yourself among so many friends who will welcome your rule. Your coming is a guarantee that Church interests will be cared for, and you will com- mand the respect of the University as no one else could. I pray God that you may have many years before you in your new home. With my best regards, I am affectionately yours, H. P. LlDDON. Thus wrote the Bishop of Lincoln, with the shadow already hanging over him of the Trial, in the troubles of which Bishop Stubbs too, it soon appeared, was to be involved — May 6, 1888. My dearest Bishop, — I am thankful ! for Cuddesdon and Oxford and for the Province of Canterbury — most thankful. You will love the poor people in the Parish, at Cuddesdon, and the College, and you will go in and talk to the undergraduates, and look after Oxford. Now I shall go to prison cheer- fully ! My love and best congratulations to Mrs. Stubbs, and best wishes for yourself. Ever your sincere and affec. E. Lincoln. Each of these letters must have been a support and comfort to one who hesitated so much to take on him the new charge ; but most touching of all was the welcome of the good man whose work he was to take up. Cuddesdon, August 6, 1888. My dear Brother, — I can write but little ; but I must write at once, partly 174 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 by another hand, to say how heartily I desire to bid you God-speed in your entrance on the work which it is a sore trial to me to lay down. The University will welcome one who knows its history, its needs, and its interests as you do — far better than I have ever pretended to know them. I fear that I have sometimes neglected them, in comparison with my pastoral work. . . . Your affec. brother, J. F. Oxon. When the news became known, Sir George Bowen, so long a friend of both Stubbs and Freeman, wrote — " ' Oh ! my prophetic soul ! ' Perhaps you may recollect that at the garden party at Lambeth I ventured to express the hope and belief (which I had high authority for entertain- ing) that you would be translated to Oxford. I beg per- mission to congratulate you most heartily and sincerely on the realization of my hope. I feel not only pleasure on my own account as a careful student of your works and an admirer of the vast services which you have rendered to Modern History, but also on account of the delight which your translation cannot fail to cause to our friend Free- man. I know, moreover, what satisfaction our friend Dean Liddell feels, for, in discussing probable appointments, he told me how glad he and the Chapter would be if you should return to Oxford. We need not fear there any such complications as those referred to by Edwin Palmer, who told me that when some American Bishops consulted certain English Bishops about founding Chapters in their dioceses, the English Bishops unanimously advised — ' Whatever you do, don't have Deans ! ' " But no sooner had the Bishop of Chester taken the inevitable step than the chief difficulty, as it appeared to him — the great difficulty of all his later years it came to be — appeared before him. It was — Cuddesdon. Dr. Stubbs had a horror of wasting time. His mass of 175 WILLIAM STUBBS knowledge had been acquired, his historical work accom- plished, he would have said, in the very first place by allowing no waste. When he took a holiday, which was not often, he took it. When he needed a thorough diver- sion from troubles too serious or thoughts too anxious, he read a novel — and that was very often, and oftener and oftener as the years went on. It used to be said that he read Monte Christo once a year before he was a Bishop, and twice afterwards ; and the statement was probably true, though it inadequately suggested his enormous capa- city for novel reading. He had also a great affection, which increased as he grew older, for plain living, absolute simplicity in household and personal habits. Cuddesdon, a country residence with a history going back to Bishop Bancroft, and intimately associated with Bishop Wilber- force, might be an intense relief to one who could give himself time to enjoy the country in his few hours of leisure. But it is a large country house, and it necessitates an " establishment " ; it is far away from an important railway station ; and as the Duke of Westminster said, it requires an " equipage." Bishop Stubbs, in his later years at least, did not enjoy the country : he abhorred the idea of an establishment and an equipage. But the Archbishop did not wholly sympathise with his dislike for either, and he had to think of future bishops, so thus he replied — August 1 8, i! My very dear Bishop, — You as Bishop of Oxford would be splendidly in your place at Oxford. The gratitude for your professorship, and the immense help you would be to every one in study and in thought, and the love of so many friends would make you as welcome as day. But of all the other Bishops you have known — or that even you knew as well as if you had known them in the flesh — which, beside yourself, would have had that with any peace or comfort to himself ? 176 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 You know that M., admirable as he has proved for that diocese, could not have lived there at first. Wilber- force was scarcely tolerated. Bagot, a nice country gentle- man. And it has been well hitherto through the whole line that they have lived sufficiently out of the way — and so it will be again. If with the proceeds of the sale of Cuddesdon another house were to be built, Oxford is not the place where it should be set down. And where else ? Didcot ? Once I spent half a day there ! The Bishop of Oxford is not wanted in that Cathedral. It would be impolitic and not for the good of the Univer- sity that he should eclipse the Dean in affairs, and worse more widely that the Dean should eclipse him. And though Mrs. Stubbs would be absolutely apart from all jealousies and rivalries, yet ordinarily Episcopa and Decana would be in most awkward relations to each other and to the orbis Oxoniensis. If any new sects, schisms, or isms ever arise, the position would be intolerable among the streets and colleges at such close quarters. And they will arise or Oxford will have ceased to be Oxford. Fancy the Bishop with (or without) his whole heart siding with either faction, or remaining an iSiwT^s between them. Nothing could be more impolitic than to arrange arrangements by which the Bishop should be tied to Oxford in the long future as a resident. Materially Cuddesdon would in these days fetch nothing — nothing without demesne, and rather less if it had demesne. It is not a country gentleman's place, and seriously I do not believe it would fetch enough money to build a new house with. Meantime, I think its disadvan- tages are exaggerated ; but, as this is such matter of taste, I will say no more on this head, though I could. But, again, there is no reason to fear " bother " with either garden or stables — one good head-gardener and one good head-coachman (and you wouldn't have bad ones) seem better altogether in comparison with any other arrange- ments. W.S. 177 N WILLIAM STUBBS I do not believe that the historical argument and senti- ment are to be neglected. I know historians despise them as confectioners dislike sugar. But other people do not. And the whole matter turns on what other people feel about it, not on what the personage who fills the historical posi- tion thinks. The only persons who would give a good price for Cuddesdon are the Roman Catholics. Considering that for some of the above reasons and for some not above, it is not desirable to move the Bishop of Oxford (the Corporation sole so called ci? atwvas) from Cuddesdon, and that it is very desirable that 6 fMtXXwv should live in Oxford, all things seem to favour this as the desirable solution. When you have £3,000 a year only from the See, why should you not take such a house in Oxford as would exactly suit the requirements and no more — say for three years, and let Bishop Mackarness live on, as he wishes, in your palace of Cuddesdon, paying you the rent of your Oxford house (you cannot let Cuddesdon, I suppose?), and then when the ^5,000 comes to you, some arrangement will be possible. I think, perhaps, you may find, as Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln did as to Riseholme (which he declared he would never inhabit) that it was a very suitable place. Anyhow, something must occur, which I hope may not be the sale of Cuddesdon, for in these days I do not think it well for Bishops to begin selling Church properties — which is de plus. You will forgive freedom and shortness, I know, and believe me always Your very affectionate Edw. Cantuar. Meanwhile the Bishop had taken a short holiday abroad. On the day the Archbishop's letter was written he was at Brussels, on the 20th at Aachen ; thence he went to Cologne, Coblenz, WUrzburg, Niirnberg, Munich, Salzburg, Konigsee, Ulm, Heidelberg, Mainz, Bonn, and so home on September 7. 178 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 He still did not despair of the Cuddesdon difficulty, or he might even yet have tried to draw back. The hopes he felt were doomed to disappointment : the Ecclesiastical Commissioners decided against the sale of Cuddesdon, and, very likely to the benefit of his succes- sors, Dr. Stubbs was obliged to accept what was to him from the first a distress and a burden. Some at least of those who had a right to judge thought with the new Bishop. The Marquess of Salisbury wrote to him, on June 3, 1889 — "I heard with dismay that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners refused to let you sell Cud- desdon. I almost wish that you had given the whole Commission a chance of voting." And, it may at once be said, the Bishop was never reconciled to Cuddesdon. He felt bitterly the delays, the waste of time as it seemed to him, that were caused by his position in the country. He was not young enough to win new strength by exercise, or free enough to find refreshment in the society of the young men in the Theological College placed at his doors, where Bishop Wilberforce had designed that it should be always under the Bishop's eye. He was too busy ; he was continually overworked in a way which he was not young enough successfully to fight against. The weariness of continual railway journeys, the constant and necessary absence from home, made a break in the whole course of his life, against which he struggled in vain. And the expense of even such simple " state " as he was forced to keep was a continual distress to him. " Have I three glass houses ? " he said when he had been a long time at Cud- desdon. He could not bear to see the things which seemed to him to cost so much. And the reason was that he was always thinking, thinking with acute distress, of the sad tales which reached him, and guessing at those which did not, of the poverty of the clergy in his large agricultural diocese. " It is for this, and this," he would say continually, " that I cannot help where I would." It may truly be said that he came to grudge every penny that he did not give 179 N 2 WILLIAM STUBBS away. And every sum he spent on long tours about the diocese, on horses and carriages, and menservants and maidservants, every journey that a poor clergyman had to make to see his Bishop in his distant dwelling-place, he felt as a personal trouble. His letters contain constant reference to this continual sorrow at his heart. It is a new note in what had seemed to be so happy a life. It brought into prominence features in his character which had been in the background, and which the illness which as time went on was developed through overstrain made more emphatic — a certain restlessness and impatience and sense of hurry, a dread of neglecting trivial letters, a disgust at trivial engagements, a continual fear of interruptions. And all this seemed to be exaggerated at Cuddesdon. He could not find distraction in minute work among documents, as he would have done at Oxford, or relief, as at Chester, in the support of a number of close friends and fellow-workers. Solitude, retirement, repose, these Cuddesdon might have offered to other men, but these his intense feeling of work that needed to be done, and of the obstacles that stood in the way of doing it, seemed to make useless to him. " Life gets very wearisome sometimes," he wrote from Cuddesdon to one of his oldest friends, — " here at all events where the shortest cessation from work means intolerable ennui." At first he tried to throw off the growing sense of depression and strain by indulging to the full the sense of humour and fun which were so deep set in his nature. Even Cuddesdon and its troubles should be turned into amuse- ment. Thus the Alexander Selkirk of the Oxfordshire desert island expressed his woes — Whitsuntide, 1889. 1. I am Bishop of all I survey, Dean and Chapter don't matter a fig, In the central demesne of the See I am master of Peacock and Pig. O Cuddesdon, where can be the charms The Commissioners see in thy face ? Kettel Hall had been better by far Than this most inaccessible place. 180 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 I am out of the reach of the rail, I must take all my journeys alone, There isn't a horse to be hired, I'm obliged to keep four of my own. The boys that look after the beasts My hat with indifference see, They don't seem to care in the least For my Gaiters, or Apron, or me. O Oxford, O Chester, and Town, Bodley, S. Paul's, and Roodee, Oh, had I the wings of a dove 1 know where I'd willingly be. My sorrows I then might assuage With a leisurely stroll in the Rows, I'd endure a Beethoven in " C," I'd wear unprofessional clothes. Though I do not complain of the work, And silence is good for a change, I like to be able to shirk The functions I feel to be strange. But the sound of the church-going bell Is the only sweet note that I hear ; I might like the tone very well Were it not so confoundedly near. 5- The winds that have borne me aloft Up here with the pigeons and rooks, Convey me a kindly review Of some of my lectures and books. My friends on the Council may send Me a vote of regret by decree, Or the men that were passed in the schools, Who might have been plucked but for me. 6. How slow is the Great Western train As it crawls up by Wycombe to Town ! It is hard work enough to get up, It is harder work still to get down. When the milk-cans are fairly on board For a moment I seem to be there, But they only are shunting the train, And I find that we are where we were. I8l WILLIAM STUBBS But the ring-dove has gone to its nest, The Peacock is up in his tree, I'm afraid that I can get no rest — They'll be cooing and squawking by three. But to cry over milk that is spilt Is a weakness I cannot endure, We must e'en make the best of a lot Which only Translation can cure. Often his thoughts would go back to his trouble, and he would pass it off with a joke. At Dinton he admired the clergyman's study; "so different," he said, "from my library at Cuddesdon ; but there ! what's the use of a study to a man who hasn't time to take a seidlitz powder?" There was a peculiar quality about his humour, which only long experience, perhaps, could make thoroughly understood. It was very closely akin to that sympathy which was, at the bottom, the most marked feature of his character. It was that which gave a special tone to his wide tolerance and to his episcopal prudence and judg- ment. And akin to the deeper qualities of his mind and heart was that delightful simplicity and freedom of humour. He always seemed a happy man as well as one who loved to make others happy. He had the 'joyful gladness to such as are true-hearted,' of which he spoke once in a memorable sermon. It was a relief to deeper feelings that he seemed in these later years so often to suffer the lighter thoughts to come uppermost. Stories of fun are as commonly told of him as of Archbishop Magee, though the fun has hardly the same tone. His mot on his transference to Oxford has been told without point. It was, of course, " Like Homer, I lose so much by translation" — Bishop Mackarness having a pension. Those who saw the becoming reverence and deepening solemnity with which a gathering of city notables listened to him when, at a prize-giving at the Oxford High School, he elaborated for nearly five minutes the constant resort that he made to the one book which he 182 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1 901 had ever at hand, night and day, the one book that a bishop must have always — " You know it well — it begins with B. — Bradshaw," will not forget the scene. " Could not this be done without all this organizing P" he once said in the vestry of a church where a particularly noisy clergy- man was fussing about the arrangements, while his organ, in which he took great pride, was playing its loudest. It is remembered how he astonished a porter at Oxford Station who was helping him and his parcels into the train and said, " How many articles, my lord ? " by replying, "Why, thirty-nine, of course." Mr. H. S. Holland, who succeeded him as Canon of S. Paul's, recalls him as taking up one hand after another of Lord Grimthorpe, who had cried to him, in pride over a Parliamentary enactment which he had introduced into a Bill of Lord Halifax's, " What do you think of my Clause ? " and saying, " I can't see them." Mr. Sidney Lee remembers that when the Bishop called on him the morning after a great dinner commemorative of Mr. George Smith's public spirited work in regard to the Dictionary of National Biography, and he inquired how the prelate had enjoyed the evening, he replied : " I walked back to Lambeth. I was quite well thank you, but my boots were tight." He often relieved the tedium of meetings which seemed to him to do no practical good, by the manufacture of epigrams. Here is one which he wrote down for me when we were once waiting for others to come before business could be begun — To the VEtat e'est moi of Louis le Roi A parallel case I afford. Something like it, you see, may be said about me : Am I not the Diocesan Boar e d? A few others out of a large stock may find place here. Here is an Acrostic — William and Martha having reckoned (He my third, and she my second), Unfortunately fail to see How very small my first will be. 183 WILLIAM STUBBS Determined still to do my last, They bind themselves together fast : My whole develops sadly soon ; They come before Sir Francis Jeune, And — failing reconciliation — End injudicial separation. You'll find my answer if you try : 'Tis incom-pati-bili-ty. Another, at the time of the beginning of troubles with the " peaceful Czar " — People wonder why the Czar Professing peace prepares for war. If they ask him, he will tell 'em Si vis pacem para be Hum. The proverb's true, let all misgivings cease, The Czar will have his war : you part in peace. The last line refers to " Sinful brother, part in peace," the euphemistic words when the sinner in Marmion is walled up. Another, when he was travelling in Germany — S. Peter, as the Pope believes, Lost his pastoral staff at Treves, But found his triple cap at Rome. Unlike him I, by sad mishap, Lost at Treves my travelling cap. I'd left my pastoral staff at home. Two of h'xsjeux cT esprit belong to his revived connection with Christ Church. He had been an Honorary Student since 1878, and his affection and loyalty towards the House had never wavered. Perhaps his greatest pleasure in coming back to Oxford as Bishop was the renewal of old links with the place where he had begun his life at the University. Old friends continued there, and new friends were made. To Dr. Liddon and Mr. Vere Bayne were added Dr. Paget, an intimate friend already at S. Paul's, Dr. Moberly, who returned to Christ Church in 1892, Mr. Strong (now the Dean), and many more. It was 184 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-190 1 when the last-named became Censor with the Rev. E. F. Sampson that he wrote these lines — Be Sampson strong as Strong can be, And Strong as strong as Sampson, And may they never want a rod To drive the idle scamps on. In another, the Dean thinks, some touch of annoyance may- mingle with the humour. He says — " It is probable that among the details which vexed him in the position as Bishop of Oxford, one was the peculiarity of his relation to his old College. A touch of this feeling appears in the following poem addressed to the then Senior Censor in 1895. The Bishop was a regular guest at the Censors' dinner, and the Censor of the day had asked him to return thanks for the toast of the Censors' Visitors. This meant the people who (resident in Oxford or elsewhere) were not in the Governing Body of the House. The Bishop declined to be described as a visitor as follows — Though to dinner, dear Censor, you kindly invite us, I cannot your Visitor be ; For incorporates, annexus, unitus, You can't make a stranger of me. The Chapter and Dean must go to the Queen If they would their Visitor see ; The Fidei Defensor might visit the Censor If he should invite her to tea. But I'm the old man of the See, dear Strong, You cannot eliminate me, In the House I'm at home, as the Pope is at Rome, How can you exist without me? However you treat me, you cannot unseat me, I am the old man of the See ; I'm W. Oxon, D.D., C.G., You cannot disintegrate me ; Yes, I am the old man of the See." Many more poems, no doubt, could be recaptured ; but the stories of witty attack or reply seem inexhaustible. Let two suffice. A friend of his asked him if he had read Mr. Purcell's Life of Manning, and " do you think Purcell was justified?" "By works; not by faith," he instantly 185 WILLIAM STUBBS replied. The same lady asked him, at a garden party at which the Prince of Wales (the present King) was present — " Have you seen the Prince ? " " No ; but my suffragan has." His humour, so easy and delightful, was the outward sign of a nature which was full of kindly thought. All classes of men liked him, because he seemed to understand and sympathize with all classes. He would " get on " as well with the clerk at a bookstall or a railway porter as with a college don. The only people who could not get on with him were those in whom there was a spice at least of the prig or the pretentious bore. The words in which he half seriously described himself in his last Oxford lecture may well sum up all that need here be said 1 — " I know that I have great faults ; I have a good deal of sympathy, but too little zeal ; sometimes I have feared that, in my lack of zeal, my fellow-workers have detected or suspected a lack of sympathy : somehow the adage melior est conditio prohibentis does come to be confused with or to be interpreted into the policy of ' How not to do it ' : perhaps I have tried to work too much in my own way and too little in theirs." These last words touch a sadder note, and they are not wholly without foundation. His earliest work had been so entirely his own, he had struck out so clearly a line for himself and never turned aside, whatever critics might say, that when he came to a position of authority it was especially difficult for him to adopt or follow others' methods. He saw so clearly in his own mind how things ought to be done, that he was not readily able to make allowance for ways that were not his own. And as the strain of work fell more hardly upon him he was less and less able to adapt himself to new schemes and new persons. Thus it came about, as his old friend Dr. Wood has 1 Lectures, 3rd edition, pp. 442-43. 186 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 expressed it, that " while his published works were so care- fully weighed and premeditated, his verbal utterances were often the reverse. And he seemed to take pleasure in startling people by his unconventionality. Religious affec- tation was his especial abhorrence." It was indeed. And he seemed to dread it in himself with a peculiar dread. He seemed, to some of his friends, almost to fly to an opposite extreme, in his fear of appearing to claim good- ness in himself. " He came to pretend not to be so good as he was," said one who knew him well. " It is my form of hypocrisy," he once said himself. And there is truth in what one of his old friends wrote to another some three years after he returned to Oxford — " The Bishop seems to me to be, in some very faint and distant way, like Swift, who would have family prayers regularly in the household, but so secretly that a guest of long standing had never discovered the fact. I do not pro- fess to understand him, though I love him : he is a bit of rather knotty Yorkshire oak. I think that contrariness in him is almost morbidly developed : ' the more you expect me to be responsive to your ecclesiastical questions, the more I won't be ; so there, now ! ' He has an intense dread of unreality. That, I think, is plain ; and he is also conscious that a good deal of the work now expected from a Bishop does not ' come natural ' to him, and that his clergy are aware of the fact. So, at least, I seem to see, or to ' guess.' The pity of it is, that the affection and confi- dence of the clergy have not been won by him, whether he cared to win them or not." It is true that the mass of the clergy in his great diocese never came to know him intimately. It was Cuddesdon, he would have said, which was chiefly to blame : still more it was his age, and the strain of his work. But there were not a few who felt his fatherly goodness as well as his com- manding power, and learned that he was to be loved as well as to be trusted and obeyed. 187 WILLIAM STUBBS To true insight, indeed, "his cynical humour," says Canon Holland again, " was as characteristic as it was excellent. But, then, it was characteristic because of the man behind it. It was characteristic because, behind it, was a man of intense emotional passion, who dared not let himself go, and who, through many circumstances in his life, had little field for any such emotional expression. Now and again it would become visible : the whole man would quiver with the heat of impulses which he could with difficulty control. Sometimes he would allow a sermon to become a vent for his own personal emotion ; and when he did he preached with singular unction and profound impressiveness. This often gave startling interest to those utterances in which he broke through his habitual reserve, as in the great Charge in which he told of his own personal relation to the Tractarian Movement. " Immersed as he was, through the great part of his life, in the dusty details of Charters and Rolls, of Inventories and Leases, he retained all his impetuous passions in full freshness. He could be very angry, almost with the vehemence of a child. He felt intensely the burning questions of the day, and had intimate concern with its immediate politics. "As an historian, his favourite foes were the lawyers. At them he was never tired of poking fun. He delighted in chaffing their determination to fix precisely things that were fluid, and to invent when they could not explain. He himself was keenly sensitive to the fact that life moves, and refuses to be branded by fixed outlines, and to be cut and dried and squared. A great-hearted man, with a soul as large as his brain. He could be wilful, and impulsive, and what the late Dean of S. Paul's would call 'naughty' — naughty in trying to shock, and in perversely concealing his best feelings. But he was a man of noble temper and of splendid force ; with something pathetic hanging about him, as over a man who had never quite got the world to understand him, or had ever found full expression for that 188 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1 901 emotional self which was so deep in him. This pathos drew to him the affection of those who were near enough to know what lay behind the incomparable master in History." There were times when, as the Bishop of Stepney ' wrote after his death, "he seemed just for a moment to let his real heart out : they were revelations of such deep simple faith and strong human sympathy, which the outer world must often have failed to recognize." Those revelations came most clearly, perhaps, in the charges which the Bishop gave to candidates for Ordina- tion and in the addresses which he gave at Confirmation. It was hardly, most men would have said, to be expected that so close a thinker, so deep a scholar, should adapt himself readily to the comprehension of children. There is indeed no more difficult part of a Bishop's duty than the speaking, day after day, and often twice or thrice daily, during many weeks of the year, to young lads and girls, and with them persons of mature years, of all classes, all stages of education, all circumstances of life and work. But no one, from the youngest boy who was timidly trust- ing to Divine strength in the midst of new and distractin temptation to the oldest priest who had taught generations to prepare for the holy rite, ever came away from a Con- firmation given by Bishop Stubbs without a deepened sense of the sinfulness of sin, and the reality of God's grace and mercy. No one else, it was often said as the people walked away, seemed to know human nature as he did ; no one seemed to be so secure in the sympathy, and knowledge, and power of God ; and he took intense pains — that was the secret of it — to impress all that he knew and all that he felt on those to whom he came as the minister of God. No work did he feel to be more solemn, none did he more carefully prepare for, than the apostolic ordinance of laying on of hands. 1 Then the Rev. C. G. Lang, Vicar of Portsea, who had been his examining chaplain. 189 WILLIAM STUBBS How deep were his thoughts at Embertide a volume of Ordination charges and sermons collected after his death abundantly shows. The addresses have " the mark of high seriousness born of absolute sincerity." They are intensely solemn, digni- fied, earnest, penetrating. At the same time they bear many marks of the Bishop's individuality in its freshness and quaintness, the reiterated North Country "well" at the beginning of a sentence, for example, and the modest and quite genuine self-depreciation. Under all is the intense reality of his personal religion. Whether he is talking of self-education or of the Real Presence — where we have only half of what he said, an address being appa- rently lost — of the obligation of the daily offices, of the paramount necessity of individual parish visitation, of the power and breadth of the collects, of the beauty of " that blessed book " the Imitatio Christi, or of the place of the Holy Scriptures in the life of the Church and the indivi- dual, he is always clear, earnest, powerful, uncompromising in the assertion of his beliefs. Again and again there are phrases which deeply impress and will linger in the minds of those who read them. The Bishop was never afraid of saying strong words because they ran counter to popular opinion. " The whole array of .modern philosophy, negative or positive, has not got nearer to the solution of the problem of existence than the schoolmen of the Middle Ages." " If He were incarnate once, is He not incarnate still ? how has His humanity come to the perfection of knowledge which those who believe and pray trust in and have trusted ever since S. Stephen saw the heavens opened ? If He ever could forget, may He forget us still ? " " Never rise from your knees until you have got into focus before the eye of your mind the thing, the person, the exigency about which you are speaking to God." " You may read and study books and men and women, methods and ideals, but the great ideal is to get heart to heart with your 190 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 people, and so find yourselves heart to heart with your Lord." But only a long quotation will show the style, the earnest sincerity, of these addresses — "You are not prepared to find the preaching of Christ crucified an easy work, or the proving in His accomplished work the fulness of the power or the wisdom. It is not likely that you should ; you are going with experience of your own to earn ! true, but however old you may grow, and however many experiences you may earn, you will not find it easy. Take one thought now and look it in the face. Picture it to yourself, realize it to yourself: you want to preach Christ crucified — the Saviour from sin and death — the Crucified drawing men by the need of salva- tion and the conviction of sin. How shall you begin — how shall you end it ? The need of the Saviour realized by the sense of sin, the first note of the calling. To the Jews and Greeks alike the call must begin with the appre- hension of the need. When and where in it shall the power and wisdom come in evidence — the sense of sin, the curse of sin, the infection, the unforgettable knowledge of the first breach with truth and purity, and the shame of conscience awakened ? We call this the sense of sin ; but it is much more than that, it is the sense of a present judge trying, and of a present friend and comforter grieving, and of a present crucified Lord offering forgiveness and strength to sin no more. There is forgiveness ; and the trust in the forgiveness is a part of the call which comes to those to whom the Crucified is the power and the wisdom. There is forgiveness and there is recognition, and the beginning of love. And then comes time and other temptation, and even easier failure and less appreciated pardon. And so in recurring and widening series, for one sin does not dominate the soul without parasites and satellites ; we cannot forget, we cannot feel forgiveness, we strive, and sometimes we conquer, sometimes we do not, and we wonder what was or is the experience of the saints. It 191 WILLIAM STUBBS is a short story, but it comes into most lives, modified by physical constitution, or by education, or by hard early struggles ; but lightly or heavily, strongly or weakly, it comes into them : each human soul that has a conscious- ness of being .a soul, having a memory or a conscience, goes through this much. As the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine : the soul that sinneth, it shall die ; the soul which sees the Crucified shall live. But of a surety and for ever for them that obey the call, will come the love that opens up the revelation of the glory and wisdom." On the practical side the addresses were full of weighty counsel. Individuality of faithfulness, without which the most faithful preaching of sermons, the most zealous con- duct of missions, the most splendid manifestation of admi- nistrative talent are in vain, is the dominant note of all the exhortation. Constant intimate visitation, constant prayer and intercession for individual souls, these are the necessi- ties of the pastoral life on which the Bishop dwelt with earnest reiteration. His addresses were, indeed, those of a true pastor. They will serve to preserve one of the most striking aspects of his many-sided character : and it is for that reason that they are named here, before the later years of his work are traced in the letters which he wrote. It is indeed in the light of his personal religion, as well as of his knowledge and his sympathy, that his life must be regarded if it is to be truly understood. This quotation at least from his diary may be allowed, because it is the true summing up of his earnest faith. The lines were written in 1897. O Lord, my God, I humbly pray, Give me Thy help throughout this day To speak Thy word, to know Thy will, Thy sovereign purpose to fulfil. And bless, O Lord, my work to me, And those through whom I work for Thee. Let not my fault Thy work betray, Uphold my goings in Thy way ; And when I have tried to do my best Give me Thy light and welcome rest. 192 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 It is time to turn to the work which Dr. Stubbs undertook when he became Bishop of Oxford. " Whatever you do," writes one of his clergy to me, " do not say that he was a great bishop" : perhaps it shows a mutual misunderstanding that I find the Bishop describing one of this clergyman's letters to him as " insolent." And yet there were few better Bishops or better priests than these two. But certainly, in the sense in which great- ness is to be predicated of modern Bishops, Bishop Stubbs was not, at Oxford, great. " The Bishops of England will soon be a name without a meaning," wrote Archbishop Benson, 1 in the year when Bishop Stubbs was called to Oxford : " they are Bishops of dioceses, and make an immense fuss about their busi- ness and their letters, so that people groan over their lamentations about the work — they are good Diocesan Bishops — not Bishops of England." Whoever may have been the exceptions to that judgment, Bishop Stubbs was one. He did not fulfil all the demands which the clergy made on him. But in the devotion of an old man to laborious duty, in the exact and methodical character of his government of his diocese and his conduct of business, in the wise counsel which he gave in times of difficulty, in his work for the nation and the whole Church, there was true greatness. That greatness may be seen in the four Charges which he gave to his diocese. 2 It is impossible to summarize these. I must content myself with a few quotations, without detailed reference to their contents. The very strong protest which the Bishop made on the subject of the Higher Criticism will not be forgotten ; and its impressive- ness was increased by the fact that it came from a man of trained historical and critical judgment, who was 1 Life, ii. 260. 2 Visitation Charges. Edited by E. E. Holmes (unfortunately with omissions), 1904. w.s. 193 o WILLIAM STUBBS accustomed to weigh his words ; but I need say no more of it here. When he first came to Oxfordshire he showed how well he knew the history of the See, and how clearly he saw the enormous difficulties of its administration. He said in his primary Charge (p. 9) — " The diocese consists of three counties of very similar size and population : Oxfordshire containing 739 square miles, and, by the census of 1881, a population of 179,650 ; Berkshire 752 square miles and 218,382 souls; Bucking- hamshire 738 square miles and 176,277 souls. All three counties, judging from a comparison of the successive censuses, are increasing in population ; but Berkshire, owing to the development of Reading and the Windsor neighbourhood, out of all proportion to the other two. Ecclesiastically, each of the counties forms an arch- deaconry, and each archdeaconry contains a different number of rural deaneries : Oxford ten deaneries with 240 benefices ; Berkshire nine deaneries with 192 parishes ; Bucks eleven deaneries and 213 livings. Each has a varied character of scenery, interest, and inhabitants, and each a varied sort of industrial interest ; each, I may add, has a different history, and historical and political associations of its own, nationally and ecclesiastically. " The county of Oxford has been for three centuries under its own Bishop, retaining little more than a tradi- tional connection with the mother church at Lincoln ; Buckinghamshire and Berkshire were within our own memory brought in, the former from Lincoln, and the latter from Salisbury. Oxfordshire, under a succession of eminent prelates, and to some extent because of its closer connection with the University, seems to have been, since the creation of the See, well cared for ; it has always had good churches, and a long series of eminent clergymen among its incumbents ; judging too from the mass of letters which my predecessors have left behind them, I should say that discipline has, as a rule, been carefully 194 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 administered. The same maybe said for Berkshire, which lay very conveniently under the eye of the Bishop of Salisbury. Buckinghamshire, owing doubtless to its distance from Lincoln or from the residence of the Bishop, was less well looked after, and perhaps the diversified character of its conformation and population may have made it difficult of communication. Since the Reformation, too, and especially since the great Rebellion, in which Buckinghamshire took a strong part on the side opposed to the king, the Puritan element in that county was stronger than in the other two ; and many illustrations of this inclination as still operative are traceable in remote effects." From his second Charge I will only quote three passages — the first on disestablishment, the second on the position of the English Church, the third on the English Reformers, belief in episcopacy. " I can but say, as I have said long ago in S. Paul's Cathedral : Disestablish and disendow the Church of England to-day, and such is my confidence in the good hand of my God upon her, and my belief in the mission of my people, that I am ready to say that in less than fifty years she would be more powerful in all ways than she is now — but the risk could be run only on the jeopardy of the millions of souls that would be left to ruin in the first stages of the experiment, and it cannot be incurred by us who are in trust, without a certain desertion of our duty, and disloyalty to the cause that we are sworn to serve. If the change is forced on us from without, we will face it manfully, and in faith continue our work on new conditions ; but it is no true honesty, and it cannot be true policy, to betray the citadel because our forces can be possibly better handled in the field." 1 He spoke thus strongly because of his firm belief in the Catholic Church. 1 Second Charge, p. 55. 195 O 2 WILLIAM STUBBS " Next, what is the Church of England ? The Church of England I hold to be a portion of this Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, One Church, which is the presentation of the same, to us and our nation and country, and in which we and our fellow Churchmen realise our own condition as members of the mystical body of the Lord. I believe that I am justified in this by the evidence which I have of the continuity of faith, of apostolic order and succession, of ministry and service, and I am desirous to uphold my belief, notwithstanding the claims and assumptions of attacking parties, Roman or Puritan. We unchurch no one, so far as I can see, but claim and hold fast what we have received." 1 And this belief he knew was shared by the leaders of the English Reformation. " Up to the period of the Reformation there was no other idea of episcopacy except that of transmission of apostolic commission ; that the ministry of the episcopal government could be introduced without such a link was never contemplated until Bugenhagen reconstituted a nominal episcopate in Denmark, and this was an example not likely to be taken in England ; nor was it so accepted. There is then no occasion to test the writings of the Elizabethan divines in search of traces of a belief in their own official existence." 2 His third Charge to the See of Oxford, in 1896, was notable for a careful discussion of the approaches that seemed to be made towards unity by an investigation of the authority of Anglican Orders, and for a noble defence of the marriage law of the Church. It contained, too, a passage, half autobiographical, which, for many reasons, is worth repeating to-day. " I think that, after ten years of an episcopal income, I can truly say, and am justified in saying it, that it does not place its earner in a position that on pecuniary grounds is 1 Ibid. p. 38. 2 Ibid. p. 50. 196 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 to be coveted : his income may be increased sevenfold, his liabilities are increased seventy and sevenfold ; when the absolutely inseparable charges and obligations are satisfied, the man who holds it finds himself, as the successful lawyer when he becomes a judge, considerably poorer than he might fairly reckon on being if he had chosen to retain the way of making his own living which, supposing himself to be a person qualified for his post, he may be understood to have held before promotion. The appropriation of the income of the See of Oxford to the increase of parochial incomes in the diocese would add an average sum of some £7 ior. to each ; and that would of course mean the cessa- tion of such work and help as the Bishop, who, on the theory of our critics, is an unnecessary excrescence in other respects, is expected to provide. I need not dilate on this ; for indeed, as you know, these speculations on the wealth of the Bishops and Chapters are all calculations on the theory that such offices are not only unnecessary but mis- chievous parts of ecclesiastical machinery ; with such a prejudice you, I conceive, have no sympathy." x It contained, too, an impressive answer to those who are always asking for union on the basis of a sort of fluid undenominationalism — " We cannot accept invitations to exhibit Unity by casting away beliefs that are an integral part of the deposition which we are trying to build ourselves up in the Lord, and whose history and development, at all events, is an integral part of that training by which we have been brought, so far as we have been brought, in the way of realizing the growing truth. From the one side and from the other comes the cry, ' Lo, here is Christ, or, lo, there.' From the one side the invitation, Cast away the discipline in which you have learned of Him as you have learned, and take up an ancient imperious, authoritative assumption that the whole Unity of past, present, and future is in the 1 Third Chdrge, p. 41. 197 WILLIAM STUBBS rock of S. Peter as it claims to be, forgetting that S. Peter's rock was Christ, and not less ours than theirs. We cannot follow. And on another side, Come, and we will build a tower that shall reach up to heaven, only cast away the dogmatic chains in which you have been trained, declare yourselves free from Creeds and Articles, and we shall present to the world a Unity that shall convince the world, a Unity — heaven help us — which, without one real convic- tion of its own, can carry confusion only worse confounded wherever it works. We cannot follow." l In 1899 several of the subjects already discussed claimed a new attention ; but there was added the disturbance of the so-called " Crisis." The Bishop's wise words on confes- sion, his sturdy refusal to follow a popular cry, his brilliant historical sketches — notably that of the Evangelical party — were thoroughly characteristic. Most characteristic of all were the noble words with which he concluded — the last words which he addressed as Bishop to his diocese — " Nothing in this world can justify the malice of controversy — no, not even the love of the Eternal Truth, if we could conceive it to operate in combination with it. No truth in the world is worth fighting for with weapons like these : nothing in the world is so certain as, and nothing in heaven more certain than, the authority of the law- of love." 2 Those who knew the Bishop only as an historian and an administrator might form a wholly inadequate conception of his character. The noble loyalty, the charity, the sympathy of the man, as well as his great learning, were conspicuous in his sermons. It is greatly to be wished that at least a selection from these may be given to the world. Four were printed privately in 1896, and the last sermon he ever preached, that on Queen Victoria, on " The Throne established by righteousness," was sent to a few friends not long before the preacher's death. The last was, as we shall have to say, a very special example of its 1 Ibid. pp. 19-20. 2 Fourth Charge, p. 63. 198 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 author's great powers. The other four have each their characteristic excellences. The first was preached before the British Association, and was a powerful and touching expression of the love of knowledge, the desire for truth, the sincerity of faith, which made the Bishop what he was. " Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things " was the text, and the thought was the final unity of all true work. " The lover of wisdom counts no sphere of knowledge as alien to or disconnected from his own ; and so he can despise no honest worker or field of work, being ready to wait till a time when all results shall be seen to combine that which is in part being done away." And the conclusion of the whole matter was found in the noble faith — " We have a revelation of God in the spiritual world, and he who would in the natural world seek Him, or seek that finality of wisdom which we can never think of except as an attribute of such a Being as in the spiritual world is revealed to us, must seek Him there in the same way. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way ; to him who does his work is more light given ; wisdom here is justified of her children ; the meek spirited are refreshed in the multitude of peace ; they find Him who seek Him with all their heart." The two following sermons were preached at his own Advent Ordinations in 1894 and 1895 — one on S. Thomas, a vindication, characteristic and original, of the province of faith ; the other, most beautiful, on the touch of Christ. The fourth sermon was preached to a great congregation at the Cuddesdon Festival of 1896, a very striking appeal for firmness in the ancient paths — " There must be no thought of fighting the world with its own weapons, with that sort of sword that they who use it perish by ; no playing with the sort of nets into which those fall who have set them for others ; none of the wisdom that is taken in its own craftiness ; none of the candour that leaves open questions that we know and feel to be closed ; 199 WILLIAM STUBBS none of the sympathy with doubtfulness that approaches halfway to meet the doubters." The sermons — many others, too, I remember, preached before the University of Oxford and in S. Paul's Cathedral — were indeed those of a great man, a deep thinker, a true father in God. Almost the first work to which the Bishop was called, when he was translated to Oxford, was to assist the Arch- bishop of Canterbury in the case of the Bishop of Lincoln. The case, and the Archbishop's attitude towards it, has been so fully and so lucidly explained by Mr. A. C. Benson in his Life of his father, that no detailed summary of the positions involved need be given here. It will only be necessary to explain, with some precision, the part which Bishop Stubbs played throughout the case. Some things may be said which some critics may consider indiscreet. I can only say that I feel deeply that what the Bishop wrote and felt deserves to be fully known. I believe that it will help us to a right view on many matters. The first question, raised early in June, 1888, was — whether the Archbishop had, in his own person and office, jurisdiction. And if he had jurisdiction, had he discretion as to using it. The question was one of grave constitu- tional importance. There were many who thought that the Archbishop had not such jurisdiction, or thought the claim extremely doubtful, the authority, as Mr. Benson tells us, "altogether nebulous"; among them was Dean Church. He expressed his strong sense of the difficulties that lay in the way of a course so bold as the Archbishop proposed to adopt ; and he expressed, in so doing, the opinion of Mr. Gladstone. Thus Dr. Stubbs wrote to the Archbishop, Chester, June 22, 1888. My dearest Archbishop. — Since our talk on Tuesday I have been thinking continu- ally and (in every sense) painfully about the subject of it, 200 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 but I should have waited longer before writing to you had I not received this morning a letter from the Dean of S. Paul's conveying to me the impression that I was in- tended to signify the bearing of it to you. " Mr. Gladstone is strong for the Archbishop having a discretion about en- tertaining the suit, and about using it." "Mr. Gladstone thinks the matter very grave and that a mistake on the Archbishop's part would be a serious matter." * With this latter sentence I am sure your Grace would be the first to agree. As to the former, you will not mind my saying that I think it deserves very serious consideration. Mr. Gladstone's judgment on a tactical point is most important, and I think more important than that of any lawyer. Might I suggest to you that it would be possible to follow this indication ? I recommend it, not with misgiving, but with a hesitation arising from my own uncertainty as to the precedent on which you would be expected to act — the Watson case. But if it could be made clear — (1) That you have the jurisdiction, and (2) that you have the discretion — would it not be the best thing at once to refuse to allow process to be issued, using your discretion, and justifying it by balancing the frivolous and vexatious character of the complaint against the perilous and grave results that would follow upon the prosecution of it : that is, in fact, giving, as your reasons for stopping the suit, the reasons which would determine your decision, if you had to come to a legal decision, on the grounds now sufficiently well known which would be placed before you. By taking this course you would be able to put the matter before the Church and People, on a larger and truer scale than the mere legal treatment would allow you to do — to weigh the importance of the theory of greater liberty, and even of enlightened policy — 1 Mr. Benson writes : — " Mr. Gladstone urged that merely as the in- culpated party the Bishop had a right to every point that could be given in his favour — that the discretionary power was one such point." — Life of Archbishop Benson, ii. 322. 201 WILLIAM STUBBS considerations which as Archbishop you would be justified in entertaining at this stage more reasonably than at a later one. If after this a mandamus was applied for, your jurisdic- tion would be placed beyond all doubt, and your discretion would be in no greater peril than before ; the responsibility of what follows would not lie upon you ; and it may be nothing serious would follow. If, on the other hand, you entertain the suit, and decide even in a modified way against the Bishop, you might either compel him to appeal and recognise by his appeal a juris- diction of the Privy Council which I am sure would be most painful, or to forsake the cause of the clergy who would forthwith be attacked, or, if the other way be even more painful and serious for him, to resign his See, and enable the complainants to obtain from the same Court a series of decisions even more fatal than those pronounced already. I am not putting this as a dilemma, because the Privy Council might decide otherwise, but the risks are enormous. It is most improbable that they would venture to desert the ground which they have so peremptorily taken up on the merits of the case, and the cause would be saved on some technical or side issue. Here the draught of the letter ends. The Archbishop, as we know, fortified by the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — the unanimous decision of five judges and five episcopal assessors — that he had the jurisdiction, decided to hear the case. Meanwhile the process of translation from Chester was on the point of being completed. On December 24 Dr. Stubbs was elected Bishop of Oxford. To the Dean of S. Paul's he wrote on January 10, 1889 : — My dear Dean, — Will you kindly advise me ? On Saturday the Archbp. of Canterbury wrote rather urgently to ask me to be assessor in his hearing of the charges against the Bishop of 202 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 Lincoln. 1 The same day I answered in a long letter, begging him not to put it upon me, and stating that the very fact of my being named as assessor would weaken the authority of the Court in the eyes of the hostile party, whilst my disbelief in the constitutional competency of his Court disqualified me from honestly acting as a member of it. To-day brings me a very urgent and personal appeal on the ground of regard and loyalty to him, with arguments on both points which I had put before him . . . [At this point the Bishop adds that his own opinion as to the com- petency of the Court is unaltered, and he concludes — ] Still, there may be something still to be said on the other side; and it is not like him to be unreasonable. If you could see your way to concentrate Yes or No intelligibly in a telegram, I would ask you to telegraph so that I may answer him to-morrow. Yours ever, W. CESTR. This was the Dean's answer, — Etteniieim, Torquay, January II, 1889. My dear Bishop, — I telegraphed at once what it seemed to me that I ought to say. I hope it was not made unintelligible in trans- mission. Certain things do not depend on us, as whether the trial should take place .... I don't think much of what the hostile parties might say. If anything is certain, it is that all England would be perplexed if your name was not among the Abp.'s assessors, if there are to be any assessors at all. I think that you were quite right in stating clearly your objections to the whole thing. The Abp. knows your mind, and what he is doing in asking you. If he repeats his invitation, and you decline, I think he might say that 1 On the question of the assessors see Life of Archbishop Benson, ii. 340-343- 203 WILLIAM STUBBS he was deserted at an extreme point by those on whose help he had a right to count, even if they did not agree with him. I know, my dear Bishop, that I am laying a burden on you, which I should very likely try to escape from if the case was mine. But, as far as I can see, I think I am advising right. I do not venture to say that you may pre- vent mischief, or do any good — that will be as it may be. But I do not think that you could safely say No to a second application from the Archbishop. Your refusal would be turned into an apology, beforehand, for anything that went wrong. I do not like applying Bible words to our trials and circumstances. But I confess that in the Morning Psalms of to-day (the nth Morning) I could not help reading into them a good deal of modern legal and ecclesiastical history. The Bp. of London's mandamus question is to be decided to-day, I hear. 1 I have been stunning my mind by a study of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Did you ever study it ? Ever yours afftly., R. W. Church. The Bishop of Chester at once yielded to the advice of his wise counsellor. Before the Lincoln case was in actual progress he was hard at work as Bishop of Oxford. On May II, 1889, the Archbishop delivered judgment as to the constitution of his Court, " stating that this judgment, which concerned his jurisdiction only, was his own judg- ment, and not to be looked upon as that of the episcopal assessors." On July 23 he began to hear the case. The assessors were — Bishops Temple (London), Stubbs (Oxford), Thorold (Rochester), Wordsworth (Salisbury), Atlay (Hereford). The judgment was delivered on November 21, 1890. 1 The question of the reredos at S. Paul's. 204 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 Only a few letters have even a distant reference to the case. Bishop Stubbs's intimate friend, the Dean of Chester, remembers how very chary he was of mentioning the subject, of giving any opinion ; how he said repeatedly, " It is not my subject : it is not in my line at all," and how greatly the case distressed him, " I think more than any other." During the eighteen months he wrote little to Dean Church, little to other friends, on the matter. Much corre- spondence reached him on the subject from every side. I need only quote from a letter of Bishop Mackarness. (2$tk March, 1889.) "... The Lincoln trial must be indeed a trouble to you ! I remember how distracted I was by the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission when I had pastoral work at home. It is melancholy to feel that no possible good can arise out of this trial. Church parties are too bitterly opposed to one another, and the great mass of Churchmen too idle or indifferent to supply the conditions for any settlement. The status quo would have lasted for a time : but when that is disturbed the fanatics and zealots on either side have too hot a temper to acquiesce in peace. Nor can I think that a Canterbury Papacy will hold long, if that should be the issue." A letter of December 17, 1889, refers to the questions of sympathy or intercommunion with the Moravians and the Old Catholics, mentioned in the Encyclical Letter of the Lambeth Conference of 1 897. From these the Old Catholic Church of Holland stood apart, but not in a wholly different position. It had, however, reported unfavourably on Anglican Orders. The Bishop was asked to consider the Report. He said that it " was a production the learning and logic of which are quite beyond me." He consented to " write to the Bishop of Salisbury and try to concert some measure with him that might be useful." And he added, " I suppose that John of Salisbury in his infinite 205 WILLIAM STUBBS chanty has a better opinion of them than I have ; but I am at this moment a little savage, being in the midst of the Moravian as well as the Jansenist doubts." It should be observed that the Old Roman Catholics of Holland, as they call themselves, strongly repudiate the name of Jansenists. The Bishop concluded thus — " I think that I will keep the papers until I have heard from the ' Doctor Ecumenicus ' — do not tell him that I called him so. " I will wish your Grace a happy Christmas. I should be glad to know, as soon as possible, when I am expected to bring up my faggot to Lambeth." x The Bishop of Oxford having consented to be an assessor in the Lincoln case, discharged the duty with the most constant attention. He took full and elaborate notes of the speeches, he studied books on the points in detail, and he placed all his knowledge unreservedly at the dis- posal of the Archbishop, for whom he had a deep affection, and in whom he was entirely confident. He attended the sessions diligently, and no one would have doubted that his mind was entirely fixed on the proceedings. But it is unquestionable that he was extremely bored. This was an attitude that was becoming not at all un- common with Bishop Stubbs. He took pleasure in show- ing impatience at what seemed to him to be trivialities by " shocking " people. These letters on the Lincoln case are a typical example. No one who knew him will imagine for one moment that he had the very smallest levity of thought in regard to great questions of theology, that he thought lightly of matters of Church discipline, or that he disregarded the difficulties which party spirit brings upon the Church of England. Very far indeed from it ! No man in England perhaps thought so deeply and earnestly and anxiously on such subjects, no man felt more deeply the distress which every good man must feel that the most 1 That is to say, carry, after the Marian fashion, a faggot to his own burning, i.e. take part in the case which he so much regretted. 206 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 sacred ordinances of religion should become the centre of controversy and partisan attack. Indeed, what he said with regard to one particular question in the Lincoln case represented his view of the whole matter : — " To the great majority of sound Churchmen to whom the point is entirely subordinate to the infinitely greater matter of the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ and the strengthening and refreshing of their souls by His Body and Blood, quarrels and bitter- ness, disputation upon this, as upon several of the other points of the judgment, are simply matters of wondering and sorrowing apprehension." Nothing then could be farther from the truth than to imagine that the Bishop of Oxford, sitting as an assessor when the Archbishop of Canterbury was hearing and deciding upon grave questions of sacramental usage, spent his time in writing squibs or pouring scorn upon the whole matter. He did write squibs, he did pour scorn, upon trivialities ; but upon trivialities. The fact is, that in many respects he had the point of view of what people call " the good layman." Indeed, he often said, " What a good lay- man I should have made ! " He meant that he was in- tolerant of minor matters, such as dress and posture and accessory ceremonial, when they seemed for a moment to stand in the way of weightier matters. He could not and would not put out of his mind the feeling that it was an outrage that a devoted bishop should be prosecuted for ceremonial in which he had taken part. His feeling may have been right or wrong, but it was an eminently serious one. He was shocked at discussions, which tended to become wrangles, on the most sacred truths of Christianity. In the Lincoln case he regretted and resented the whole proceedings. And though he did his duty honestly and seriously, he felt all along, with real bitterness of sorrow, how trifling were the matters on which so much animosity was displayed. Bishop Creighton said of the Vestiarian controversy in Elizabeth's time : " The unfortunate legacy 207 WILLIAM STUBBS of fighting great principles over outward trifles was be- queathed to the English Church." It was this damnosa hereditas which weighed upon Bishop Stubbs when he sat in the Lambeth library at the trial of one whom he honoured and loved. Fragments of his letters to his friend and chaplain, the Rev. E. E. Holmes, show how he concealed his impatience and relieved his feelings by scribbling notes and concocting humorous verses. " Here we are stupid and stuffy ; nobody listens to anything any one says, or believes it will make any difference to any one's opinion. His Grace is grace itself, and patience on a monument of books." Another day — "How does his Grace get his patience ? Is it from the Stores ? I sit and admire him, and then sleep it off." " I am miserable. The Archbishop put me on the Court (which is no Court) to keep me from saying anything about it." Or again — North End, Dearest H., — I am thinking of you ! The merits next of end and side How can his Grace decide on, Whilst arguments have ne'er an end, And counsel so much side on ? 'Tis true the question was discussed With most consummate learning ; But to the Court it seems to be A case of table turning. And as the Priest can't find a place, He must, as say the Q.C.'s, In lack of North, East, West, and South, Fall back on ancient uses. The use of Crossing next appears Too hard for our digestion ; The question of the Cross remains A very crucial question. w. o. And still again — " My dear Chaplain, — Stoles again ! Is it anything to do with ' Lincoln Green,' I wonder ? 208 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 Doesn't the hymn say something about these young curates — thousands meekly stoling — or is it stealing ? On the whole, I shd. prefer stealing. It wd. be appropriate to go to prison for meekly stealing, or having meekly stoled ; — and dear E. L. is as meek as Moses. Let him that stole steal no more, and bring an end to all this flummery. How shocked you will be ! Don't give up being shocked. It is my only recreation. With love, W. O." And again — " Dear Pedagogue, — We are discussing forms and cere- monies. Oh, the wearing weariness of it all ! Once the earth was without form and void, now it is full of forms and has not ceased to be void, judging by empty heads and hard chairs. Certainly this Court is quite informal and the subject void of all interest. One feels inclined to deal with forms without any ceremony and with ceremonies without much formality. When we are Archbps. we will reform the /^rformances of these high-jinksers ; — but I forget : you are one of them. You, my alter ego, my fidus Achates ! I will make you an Archdeacon, or Mother Superior, and keep you steady ! My love. " W. O." But all along his annoyance did not prevent his warm admiration for the Archbishop. " Benson is wonderful," he wrote. " He knows all about it, has his authorities on the spot at the right moment, and probably knows more than any of us about the case. Who cares about all these lights and crossings and ablutions ? He does ; and yet he is really great in many ways. What a puzzle he is ! I am very, very fond of him, and I think he likes me. He has a great grasp of the subjects before him, but these fellows won't accept anything he or any one else says if they don't like it. It's sheer waste of time, and the Court has not a shadow of real authority. The evil of it is that his suc- cessors may do badly what he is doing so well, unless we get a man like Stubbs ! or Creighton, or Davidson to succeed him. A joint committee of our three wives would W.S. 209 P WILLIAM STUBBS soon settle things. K . . . 's indifference to dress would appeal to the Protestants, and L. C. would fill any 4 position,' east or west. R. D.'s wife would keep them both in a good temper, and they would give a verdict for both sides, which both would accept, instead of a verdict for either, which neither will accept ! ! " With these little explosions, the Bishop got through the case to the end. To the end he kept saying (to himself) " It is not a Court ; it is an Archbishop sitting in his Library." He had no doubt at all that on the constitu- tional point the Archbishop was wrong — as to his possess- ing the jurisdiction, that is, apart from his suffragans ; but as I have not his reasons formally set out by himself, I must simply state the fact. But equally clear was his satisfaction at the decision. At first he wrote — " The Archbishop is thanking the learned prelates for the help we have given him. I entirely demur to being thought to agree with all his conclusions, though, after all, I don't know that I don't — or do ! " When the end of the trial came, writes the Dean of Chester — " the Bishop wished it ' to be distinctly understood ' that the judgment was entirely the Archbishop's own. When, however, I said to him I should act on the judgment before it went to the Privy Council, he cordially assented." He disclaimed all part beyond this : " The assessors, so far as I know — I can only speak for myself — followed up the details, and carefully criticised and talked over what was drafted, but no more. My contribution was the two words in the last clause of the judgment, ' exaggerated suspicion,' he wrote. 1 This he constantly repeated. For example, the report of a meeting of Rural Deans on April 10, 1891 (signed by the Bishop), states that the Bishop referred to the Archbishop's judg- ment, and " assured the clergy that, in spite of rumours to the contrary, the judgment was wholly the Primate's own ; the Bishop himself was answerable for but two words in it, 1 Life of Archbishop Benson, ii. 378. 210 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 although he expressed his hearty approval of all and every part of it." 1 The " hearty approval " was not merely in word. He carried out, in his conduct of Divine service, all that the Archbishop declared to be essential, and would not tolerate anything which the Archbishop decided to be illegal. In practice he gave his full assent to the judgment, and he gave it gladly and willingly. And he stated his opinions fully in his Second Visitation Charge, 1893. The letters from which I have been quoting, in regard to the Lincoln trial, were written to a new and now intimate friend. When the Bishop accepted translation to Oxford, the Rev. E. E. Holmes, who had for several years been chaplain to Bishop Mackarness, and who knew the diocese and its work most intimately, consented, by the pressing advice of several friends who well knew them both, and particularly of Dr. Liddon, to remain at Cuddesdon as the new Bishop's domestic chaplain. Before many months Bishop Stubbs became warmly attached to Mr. Holmes, and placed the most absolute confidence in him. In familiar letters, when he was travelling abroad, or when Mr. Holmes was away ill, as was often the case, the Bishop wrote freely of all diocesan matters, and of his own experi- ences and opinions. Mr. Holmes became to the Bishop " My dear Person," " Rev. and Dr.," " My dear Locum Tenens," " Dear Vizier," " Dear Monseigneur," " My dear Father," " My dear Patriarch," " My dear Oeconomus," " My dear Treasurer," " My dear Cardinal," and " My dear guide, philosopher, and friend." The troubles, little and great, which beset the Bishop were familiarly discussed with his friend : when they were separated, the tone often came to be, half in jest perhaps — as he wrote not very long before the end, on January 18, 1901 — " I am sorry that you have had a bad time ; I have had several." The heavy work of 1 It has been thought, however, that the Bishop also wrote a sen- tence in the earlier part of the judgment as to the "wish and intention of the minister," and a letter to Canon Holmes shows that his view is therein expressed ; but his own statement seems explicit. 211 P 2 WILLIAM STUBBS a large and difficult diocese told on the Bishop as the years went on, but it was lightened by the indefatigable assist- ance of Mr. Holmes ; and the letters show that, terribly though it weighed upon the Bishop, it was lightly written of. When one wrote to say " I think I believe, but I am doubtful even about my doubts," the Bishop sent on the letter to his chaplain, who was ill and away, with the words, " Can you amuse yourself with drafting a series of questions for this man ? " Or there were half-pathetic interjections in letters, such as " Bryce, M.P., has asked us to dine on Ash Wednesday," and " I got to Lambeth after an inconceivably tiring day — lunch at Buol's — at eight p.m. yesterday, with my Season Ticket on the Brain " ; and, when he was away in London, " The change of air and habit is doing us both good, but still anxieties make one anxious, only they make one still more so at Cuddesdon, where there is no means of shunting them " ; and " Here we are practically prisoners ; the roads are of glass. We are, however, like the nation that has no history, and I have had nothing to do since Christmas Day, except the flow of letters that make one incapable of doing any- thing else " ; and " The annoying letters have set in with their usual vigour as soon as you have quitted your post." But they were almost always turned off with a laugh. He wrote at a time of illness and anxiety, in the words of the famous comedian, " Let us all be unhappy together ! " Sometimes there was a tone of slight exasperation, as when the Bishop had found himself taking part in a service too " High " for his taste, or when the vicar of an important church in an important town " seems neither to read nor answer my letters, and at the same time seems ready to accuse me of shirking my work." In the last case the chaplain was directed to inform the clergyman, with a list of dates offered on which the Bishop could come to him, " that nothing whatever is gained by arguing as if I did not know what an important place ... is. I do not mind your telling him that I am much put out by the tone that 212 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 he takes, but you need not if you do not like." Such a feeling — it was characteristic of the Bishop — did not in the least disturb his appreciation of good work : a year and a half later he was writing to recommend this same clergyman to the Prime Minister for a Deanery which was then vacant. As is often the case with busy people, criticism was a great relief to the Bishop's feelings, and it is continual in his letters to Mr. Holmes. Thus, for example, he writes of a sermon : " . . . was exasperating ; the world could not have been saved but for the faith of the B.V.M., and miracles were impossible unless somebody or other had faith " ; and again of the same person : " . . . excelled himself on Sunday : five minutes' sermon in the morning, fifteen in the evening ; absolute trash ; no redeeming point at all, and dogmatic. Ugh /" It was with Mr. Holmes's aid that the Bishop embarked on the work of the large diocese to which he came in the spring of 1889. A detailed account of the Bishop's administration of the diocese need not be given here ; but a few letters, or passages from letters, may serve as examples of his opinions and of his action. It should be said that from All Saints' Day, 1889, when Archdeacon James Leslie Randall was consecrated Bishop of Reading, as his Suffragan, he was assisted by one whose friendship and whose devotion to duty he cordially appreciated, and who was beloved throughout the whole diocese. The Bishop, early in his tenure of the See of Oxford, expressed an opinion similar to that of all his predecessors with regard to the practice of Evening Communions, with which at Chester he had declined to interfere in any parish where the incumbent, after experience, had found them beneficial to his people. He now stated to his Rural Deans " that as a general rule his own feeling was extremely averse to such a practice, and he wished that his clergy should know this," and he spoke with emphasis on the 213 WILLIAM STUBBS subject in his Second Visitation Charge. Another Bishop at one time brought the question into prominence by- criticising the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a letter to The Times newspaper. The Bishop of Oxford expressed to his Rural Deans his regrets at this (1893), and " he regretted still more the avowed policy of the Church Association in encouraging the practice of Evening Com- munions by way of reprisals against the Lincoln judgment. He could hardly imagine a much greater desecration of the Holy Sacrament than that involved in this," states the report of the Conferences of Rural Deans. The Bishop was twice consulted on a question regarding the force of the rubrical direction of the Book of Common Prayer, "And there shall none be admitted to the Holy Communion, until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed." In 1897 a request was made to him for his opinion on the question whether a member of the Free Church of Scotland, qualified to receive Communion there, might be admitted to Com- munion in the English Church without giving up the membership of the body to which she belonged. He replied (June 21, 1897) — "I cannot say that I have ever laid down a rule in such cases, nor have I any conviction that the rubric in the Prayer Book applies to persons who are like what Mr. X. describes. So much depends on the circumstances of the case, i.e. whether the would-be communicant is making a new domicile or only a tem- porary sojourn. If the latter, then I do not think [it] wise to advise the clergyman to refuse. But I think that he should show the candidate the passage in the Prayer Book and explain the doctrine of Confirmation, explaining also that there is nothing in it about declaring or renouncing Communion, or religious profession. I am not sure that this is quite clear, but it is my experience." He added a private " P.S." — " I mean that I do not think that the Presbyterian was in the eye of the Church when the rubric was inserted, and that I think it more dangerous to repel a person from 214 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 the means of grace than to risk somewhat on his or her personal qualification according to the purification of the sanctuary." Again in 1900, in a somewhat similar case, when a master in a school applied for his instructions in the case of a Scots boy who desired to become a com- municant in the Church of England, without any intention of being confirmed, and while remaining a member of the Established Church of Scotland, he wrote — " If, after your pupil has been admitted as fully qualified to receive the Sacrament in the Scottish Kirk, he presents himself for Communion at ... , I should not raise any objections to his receiving it there. I really do not see that the point need be argued." Side by side with this illustration of his Interpretation of a rubric may be placed another. He was consulted, in the case of a small country parish (I quote a letter to me from the person who consulted him), "respecting the lawfulness of continuing the early celebration after the offertory, when only one or two were present at our church. He said at once, ' What does the Prayer Book say ? ' Of course I answered, ' Three.' ' Well,' he said, ' I think this is a case in which to sacrifice is better than to obey. I should certainly go on for two, and I am not sure that I should not for one. ' " In connection with this "dispensing" from rubrics, it may be observed that in another matter, that of fasting, the Bishop would never, as so many English Bishops have done since the Reformation, give a dispensation. For example : a Vicar in his diocese asking for a dispensation when the parish Festival — a saint's day — fell on a Friday, received this reply — " Dispensations of the kind you want I have never given and do not intend to give. If the fasting is a matter of conscience, I cannot pretend to dispense ; and if it is not, I see no reason why I should go through an unmeaning form. I should say, do as you think best in the circumstances." He would often joke on the subject. Once I was staying 215 WILLIAM STUBBS with him, and said "No, thank you" to roast beef. " I'll dispense you," he called out. In 1900 the Bishop's advice was asked with regard to the marriage of the "innocent party" after divorce. He thus replied — [draught letter.] The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, May 18, 1900. Dear Mr. . . . , — As to the precise points you put to me in your letter, I am sorry to be obliged to say that the Act which relieves an incumbent from penalties which would be incurred by refusing to marry the guilty party does not relieve him from such liabilities in the case of the innocent party. In publication of the banns, if it should be necessary to do it at all, the designation of bachelor or other might be omitted, as it does not occur in the Prayer Book form. As to the question you ask — " Would you advise me to refuse to marry?" — I can only say that I myself should certainly refuse, and that the fact that, in common with my predecessors, I have refused to allow the issue of licences for the purpose (in either case), compels me to advise that you should not perform such a ceremony. The scandal seems to me to turn, not on the guilt or innocence of the parties, but on the breach of the solemn engagement entered into in the first marriage. W. O. P.S. — You will believe that I am sincerely sorry for the predicament in which you are. Couldn't somebody persuade them to go to the Registry Office? This letter has considerable importance as expressing the Bishop's personal opinion, and expressing it to one of his clergy, in view of the discussions of the Lambeth con- ference on the subject of " re-marriage." 216 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 He certainly never failed to give true sympathy, as well as strong advice, to his clergy when they were in distress or perplexity. An aged clergyman in his diocese had had a disturbance stirred up against him, and doubted whether he ought not to resign his living. The Bishop concluded the correspondence on the subject thus — March 1, 1895. My dear Mr. . . . , — I think that after your telegram it is my duty, and certainly it is my pleasure, to advise you to think no more about resignation. The circumstances mentioned in the second letter are untoward and painful, but by no means peculiar to your case. I think that the less attention you pay to the annoyance, the sooner it will pass away. And I need not tell you how much harm would be done by surrender. If you find, after the present visitation is over- passed, that it gives you dangerous anxiety, you might reconsider the advisability of resigning ; but pray do not now. I am yours faithfully, W. Oxon. Another clergyman who was doing hard work in a difficult parish had met with much opposition when he was restoring his church, and was accused, by a gentleman who belonged to a Protestant League, of " Romanising." He, unfortunately, on one occasion lost his temper and spoke with unbecoming severity to his accuser ; he then wrote and told the Bishop of his error, and received this reply — July 8, 1891. My dear Mr. . . . , — I need scarcely tell you that I have read your letter with much interest and a great deal of sympathy. I do not wonder that your patience is tried. In fact, I should wonder if a man who has tried, as you have done, to do his 217 WILLIAM STUBBS duty faithfully, escaped the sort of misrepresentation that you find so hard to bear. Everybody in these days who does good work has something of the kind to undergo. It always has been so — the disciple is not above his Master — and I should think it always will be so. It is worth while, however, to consider that the persons who use the weapons of misrepresentation, whether in anonymous letters or in irritating newspaper articles, are using weapons which really hurt only themselves. No decent man will tolerate the writer of anonymous letters ; irritating newspaper attacks are certainly trying, but very few people are really interested or influenced by them. Anyhow, it is a great mistake, as the Duke of Wellington said, to read what is written about yourself in the papers in the idea that nobody reads anything else. Patience gets her perfect work with a good deal of trouble ; and somehow, as you grow older, you will find that the things worry you less. I am sorry if this business has any discouraging effect on you, or on your projects of restoration. I am sure that it will stimulate sympathy, and even that is a hopeful sign. Only do not show yourself too sensitive. I need not tell you that you must not meet the world with the world's weapons. I am, yours faithfully, W. Oxon. It may be added, as a comment on this letter, that the Bishop repeatedly advised his clergy, both at Chester and at Oxford, never to read partisan church newspapers, and never to write to the papers themselves. He had an abhor- rence of newspaper controversy, which he considered futile where it was not harmful. Among the little worries which if not wisely treated may grow into serious troubles, may be mentioned the corre- spondence in which the Bishop was involved in 1898 in regard to the Alcuin Club. This is a club "founded with the object of promoting the study of the history and use of 218 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-190 1 the Book of Common Prayer by the publication of tracts and other works that may seem desirable " ; and the Bishop was a member, and on June 16, 1898, was requested to be chairman of it. But a clergyman, not beneficed, but resident in the diocese of Oxford, happening, as he said, to meet with a book called The Secret History of the Oxford Movement, was led to conclude that it was engaged in work of a "Romanising" tendency, and was a continuation of a certain defunct " Society of S. Osmund." He wrote vehement denunciatory letters to the Bishop on the subject, making inferences as to the Bishop's acceptance of Roman doctrines and practices which can only be described as unwarrantable, uncharitable and impertinent. Whatever the club might have published the Bishop was no more committed to acceptance of the contents of the books than he was to the York Breviary or Missal published by the Surtees Society, of which he was president. But the aim of the founders of the Alcuin Club was to discounten- ance all that the S. Osmund's Society had done. The first chairman of the club wrote that he had " never heard of the circular to the members of the Society of S. Osmund inviting them to join the Alcuin Club until " he " saw it in Mr. Walsh's Comic History of the Tractarian Movement" ; while one of its most learned members, whom the Bishop consulted, replied — " I regard the Alcuin Club as a learned society, and do not feel at all bound to give an account of it or of myself to a Protestant controversialist. These people seem to have societies on the brain." The idea of any connection between the two societies, or of any " Romanising " on the part of the Bishop, was preposterous. It might have been thought that in view of misrepresen- tations which were at one time current the Bishop would have been much concerned with regard to the position of the House founded in Oxford in memory of Dr. Pusey. One letter of his may be quoted as showing his position, both as Bishop and as chairman of the governors of that insti- tution. When the present Bishop of Birmingham resigned 219 WILLIAM STUBBS the position of Principal Librarian, and the governors desired the Rev. R. L. Ottley (then Fellow of Magdalen College, now Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology) to be his successor, the Bishop wrote to him to express his strong feeling that the House ought not in any way to be con- nected with a "quasi political and quasi economical partisanship," or with any suspicion " of patronising the negative side of the historic criticism of the Old Testament," or with " a theory on the Incarnation which had been attributed to the retiring Principal " ; and he continued — " You know the point about Philippians ii. 7, and that I regard this as very critical. Now I know, from what you have told me yourself, that you are inclined to value the Higher Criticism more than I do ; but the more important and direct point touching the Incarnation I have no doubt of your sympathy upon, although you might not use exactly the same language that I should. It is in this assurance that I offer you my best sympathy in the task that you are thinking of taking up." A further letter from Mr. Ottley received the following reply — The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, May 19, 1893. My dear Ottley, — Thank you very much for your letter, which very much confirms my impressions of the line that you were likely to take in the Pusey House work, which is, I am sure, the right line. I have sent your note of acceptance to Hutton, to be notified to the members of the " governing body." I do not think that on either of the two important points mentioned in my letter and your answer there is likely to be between us any serious difference of opinion, but no doubt there is some difference of attitude. For mine I must refer you to my Charge, when I get it into print ; and if you will read it, you will see, I think, that I have tried fairly to state the attitude of criticism which seems to 220 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-190 1 me dangerous, and which, as you get pastoral experience, you will find, to say the least, needing very careful treat- ment. I do not think that, as Principal of the Pusey House, you could very well continue to be my examining chaplain — the reasons are obvious — but I do hope that you will let me call you one of my chaplains, and I am sure you will have no need to be ashamed of the company in which you find yourself. If so, I shall trust you to help us occasionally, at all events until I can find a successor — perhaps Moberly will consent to be put on active service again. Anyhow, I am most grateful for the service you have done me since Aubrey Moore's death, although you have sometimes looked severe. Wishing you all good wishes, I am, yours faithfully, W. Oxon. From a mass of letters, on every conceivable subject connected with diocesan work, much of interest might be gleaned ; but I think it may suffice to sum up most of them in the description the Bishop of Reading gives me of the letters which he himself received — "very characteristic, very short, always to the point, and always with some touch of humour, and showing, where occasion required, great discernment of character." The work of the diocese was varied by more general activities. The Bishop was consulted on every kind of historical as well as ecclesiastical subject, as the letters which follow may show. He was, for some part of each year, in residence at Lambeth Palace, in the Lollards' Tower, where his association with several of the Bishops was very close ; but few letters preserve any reminiscence of it. The present Archbishop of Canterbury says — " As we lived together in the Lollards' Tower, our intercourse was so close and personal that correspondence was less necessary." It was the same in regard to Archbishops Benson and Temple. Archbishop Davidson says — " He 221 WILLIAM STUBBS was in such constant communication with the Archbishops, either personally or through myself, that letters were less necessary, and were few and far between. . . . This was, of course, due not to the infrequency but to the frequency of his communications with both Primates." Of their association as neighbours in the Lollards' Tower Bishop Westcott once wrote — " It has been a happy thing that the Bishop of Oxford has been staying here all the time. He is always cheery, and so is Mrs. Stubbs." 1 I may add two personal reminiscences sent me by Mr. A. C. Benson. He writes — " The Bishop of Oxford came down to Eton for a Con- firmation, I think in 1897. I dined at the Provost's, and after dinner sate next the Bishop. He made me an ironical little bow as I sate down beside him, and began almost immediately to talk about Yorkshire with great interest and geniality. I had in the previous year sent him a little pedigree of my own family, with notes, which he mentioned, saying, ' Your pedigree book is a proof of what I believe to be a fact — that all eminent men trace their descent to some family that lived within ten miles of Ripon.' In the middle of our talk he stopped and said, ' But I must not go on like this — I dreamed the other night that Bishop Creighton came up to me, and said, " You have one fault — you talk too much : too much in public, and a great deal too much in private." ' I demurred to this, and he said, ' Oh, I have a great belief in dreams as revealing the weaknesses to which one is blind in waking hours.' " And he adds an extract from his diary — "In Nov., 1899, I went over to Wellington College on the occasion of the opening of the new aisle of the chapel — a memorial to my father . . . sate next the Bishop of Oxford at luncheon, who was very rosy and good- humoured — he was in a most amusing autobiographical 1 Life of Bishop Westcott, ii. 234. 222 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 vein. He said, ' I have only three rules of life — Never do anything underhand, never get your feet wet, go to bed at ten.' I asked whether he had always kept them. ' Yes,' he said, smiling. Some one (I think Sir G. Higginson) said, ' Then we must ask at what time you get up.' ' No, that is inquisitorial,' he said, 'and I must run away.'" To what Mr. Benson writes a little reminiscence from Dr. Wood may be a pendant — "Alas! I find very little remaining of any letters of the Bishop which would be at all useful. Old letters from him I seem to have destroyed, and in late years, though he always answered a question immediately by return of post, he did so very briefly, often on a card. Indeed, I often wondered how, with his incessant occupations as Bishop and Historian, and with all the correspondence which that involved, he could find time for general correspondence. His memory, however, was so powerful and clear that he could depend upon it without hesitation, even on the most sudden emergency. "I happened in 1893 to have an amusing illustration of this. I was endeavouring to find out something of the legend of S. Fremund in connection with the Parish of Cropredy, his name appearing in a bequest in a will of 1488 leaving some gifts to his 'shrine.' But I had failed to get any information about the Saint, apart from the scanty notice in Baring Gould's Lives of the Saints. Just then I met the Bishop at the reopening of Heyford Church, in our neighbourhood. The service was over, ending with the Bishop's sermon, and a crowd surrounded him on the Rectory lawn, where a band was playing. One person after another came up to speak to the Bishop or consult him. Now, I thought, is the chance of asking him a question to which he will be obliged to answer ' I don't know!' So I came up, and, with mock seriousness, said, ' May I speak to your Lordship for a moment ? ' ' What do you want ? ' he answered, with a smile, holding out his 223 WILLIAM STUBBS hand. ' Who was S. Fremund ? ' I blurted out, feeling sure he would have to confess his ignorance, for I had already asked that question of other historians who shall be name- less. ' Ah ! ' he said, ' there's a good deal of the legendary in his life.' ' Yes, I have got so far.' ' H'm ! he was con- nected with Mercia.' Then, after a moment's recollection, as if he had been present at the ceremony, ' he was buried at Dunstable.' And he added, ' When I get back to Cuddesdon I'll send you some references which you must look up.' " In 1 891 an Irish Bishop wrote to the Bishop of Oxford to ask his opinion on the relations with the Spanish Reformed body. He said — " In my correspondence with the Archbishop of Dublin, in reference to the ordaining in Ireland of the Spanish Bishops, and using their Ordinal, I doubted if a Clerk so ordained could legally officiate in the Anglican communion, and I also doubted the legality of the act, or at least its canonical character. In corres- ponding with the Bishop of . . . , he maintains it is lawful for a Bishop of one National Church to use a different ordination form, in ordaining a Clerk for another National Church, on the principle that the Form is immaterial, the essence being Imposition of Hands, and he quoted Pope Innocent IV as affirming this. I maintain that ordina- tion cannot be verified solely by Imposition of Hands, without a specified form of words. I believe there are instances in which it is acknowledged that ordination was conveyed without Imposition of Hands, and S. Jerome says it was added ' lest any one by silent and solitary prayer should be ordained without his knowledge.' Must we not, therefore, conclude that there must be always matter and form, and if a form of words is necessary, is it competent for a Bishop to ordain in any National Church using the ordinance of that Church, or is the form of words so immaterial that it can be dispensed with, or altered at pleasure ? " 224 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 The Bishop's reply was as follows : — The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, August 26, 1 89 1. My dear . . . , I got home from Germany yesterday, and have been reading and thinking over your letter of the 19th. I send you the following as my opinion, but as an opinion only. (1) I do not think that a Bishop can independently confer Orders at all except according to the rule of the Church to which he owes his own ordination. Although he might perhaps join in the laying on of hands on a Bishop-elect in another Communion, his act would be supplementary and not of original jurisdiction or authority. Of course I would recognise the power of the particular Church to vary its forms within certain limits, so as not to compel a Bishop to use in ordination a form which his Church had thought fit to revise. Hence, I think that a Deacon ordained by an Irish Bishop according to a Spanish or other rite (not formally recognised by his own Church) would be in such an irregular condition that he would not be legally qualified to work in our Church without supplementary or conditional reordination ; and I think that the Prelate who ordained him would be liable to legal or canonical censure. (2) As to the questions about matter and form — irrespec- tive of the point which I have just put — I have no doubt that both the imposition of hands and definite words of prayer are requisite for valid ordination — definite words, I mean, conveying the designation of the office or order for which the person to be ordained is intended. For although it may be shown that diversities of forms of prayer have been used in the same or different Churches during the long life of the Church, a designation of the special grace prayed for seems to be a sine qua non. I do not know where to find the references you mention, but as this is only an opinion, perhaps it does not matter. W.s. 225 Q WILLIAM STUBBS Even supposing that on general and equitable principles such a wild ordination as we have supposed could be regarded as valid, the acceptance or rejection of a person so ordained would be a matter for canonical scrutiny, and a Bishop who licensed him to officiate in his diocese would do so at his own peril — moral or legal — whatever that might mean in practice. Believe me, Your faithful friend, W. OXON. In 1895 the Bishop of Oxford referred again to the subject in addressing his Rural Deans : he said " that it was undesirable that strong and ex parte statements should be made [with regard to the consecration of a Spanish bishop] . . . but he could not but regard the consecra- tion as an arbitrary even if it were a legal act, while the school and tone represented by the Spanish Reformed Prayer Book were not such as commended themselves to the sympathy of Churchmen." The following letter to Bishop Creighton refers to the Pope's pronouncement on Anglican Orders. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, September 30, 1896. My dear Bishop, — Thank you for your second letter. Since I wrote to you on Saturday I have had time to read the Pope's and to gather up the point and meaning of it. I can see how the declarations of his predecessors which he quotes, as well as the Tridentine canons, are all posterior to the formation of our Ordinal, and, however authorita- tive with him and his, are not the standard by which the editors of the Ordinal can be judged. Yet I think that the Roman party have always been consistent in declaring that our form is insufficient or unlawful, although not on 226 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1 901 the grounds which the Pope now sets up. This evidently has the aim of dividing us on the Sacramental question as well as of defining the present Roman theory. This being so, I do not see that the occasional half-promises to con- sider the matter have ever been more than diplomatic subterfuges : I do not believe that any of them ever intended the due recognition, and doubt whether they ever were made. As for the Pope's argument, as opposed to his citations, I think that we may fairly say that our words of Ordina- tion to the Priesthood cover the whole ground of the Sacraments as understood from time to time in the Church from the beginning. " Be thou a faithful dis- penser," etc., would cover any theory of the Sacraments, whilst the Roman and very ancient prayers, especially the one in which the words panem et vinum in corpus et san- guinem transforment occur, do not limit the dispensing of that Sacrament by a definition which can scarcely be called primitive — and certainly is not inseparable from faith in the true presence of the Saviour in the Sacrament. And the rest of the papal letter is verbiage. As for Vaughan, I do not think that any man writing or speaking in the spirit of Christ would express himself as he did — but he is already doing more harm to his own cause than to ours .... However, none of these things can well be put into a draft of a letter for the Archbishop to put his name to; nor could he well go into a controversy to show that Eastern Liturgies which Leo regards as sufficient do not contain the defining words ; nor indeed that the Roman forms themselves do not insert them in the vital portion of their Ordinal. And if he did, the contention would not carry much weight with people outside. The alternative would seem to be what you put, a dis- tinct assertion of our historical and justifiable theological position. But how to frame this without getting into argu- ment I do not see. Still, the Bishop of Salisbury, like the 227 Q 2 WILLIAM STUBBS Archbishop himself, is a ready draftsman ; and I dare say you are too. I think that the Guardian will have an article to-night which may help the weak brethren — but as for the outside to which the Archbishop must speak, I can suggest nothing beyond what I have said already, in my Charge and in this letter. Ever yours faithfully, W. Oxon. During the last years of his life, the Bishop, though he constantly and half humorously complained that he never read anything — but he did read an amazing number of novels — was not far behind in all the advances of historical criticism. An extremely interesting letter to Professor W. E. Collins criticised in detail a suggested list of books to be issued by the Church Historical Society. " The suggestions are admirable, the selections questionable, and the criticisms risky." He read Professor Vinogradofr", Professor Maitland, Dr. Liebermann, and many more ; he found time to run through the books of young authors and send them words of kind encouragement ; he was always ready to consider new lights on constitutional history, and, if he thought it needful, to modify what he himself had written. And above all, he would always answer, fully and by return of post, the many inquirers who wrote to him on historical points. If, during the last years of his life, Dr. Stubbs was able to do no important historical work, he could still, in odd moments, devote himself to his favourite amusement, making pedigrees, and during the last ten years he made great progress in an exhaustive genealogical history of his own family. The book in which he embodied the results of his investigations of documents and printed volumes I have already mentioned. It is a most beautiful thing in itself — in penmanship, in arrangement, in all " externals " ; and it is the last example of the extraordinary minute- ness and accuracy of work in which the author of the 228 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 Constitutional History had no superior. Certainly one of the excellent Yorkshire Societies ought to print it : there has been no such contribution to the history of Yorkshire families for many years. The researches for it were, it may be said, the diversion of the Bishop's later life. In the spring of 1898 the Bishop's health first began seriously to fail. It was then, I think, that an undated letter to his chaplain must have been written. Shalstone Manor, Buckingham. [February 8, 1898.] My dear Canon, — I shall be glad to see you again. Also the Bishop of Reading, who is coming back this week, not, I fear, very much better. I have made a bad beginning at Buckingham, for I broke down entirely in the morning service and had to go to bed. However, I got up and had the Confirmation in the afternoon and went to bed again. Yesterday I got through the work and came on here, but it makes me very nervous, especially as without my Lord of Reading I cannot see my way through the arrangements for the week beginning Feb. 21. On Saturday, if all is well, we shall go up after the Confirmation at Monks Risborough, to London. How long we stay must depend on how I am ; and then comes the tug-o'-war. There is nothing much else to worry over . . . Yours ever, W. Oxon. But the Bishop rallied. In 1900 he took a summer holiday. In the autumn he was again ill, and the York- shire letters tell of the growing illness ; this to Dr. Collins, for example. 229 WILLIAM STUBBS The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, December 14, 1900. My dear Dr. Collins, — Thank you very much for your letter. I am thankful to say that I am gradually getting to my work again, but there is a difference in recuperative power between 6j and j6. I think it best to send you the enclosed cheque towards the expense of the Hampsthwaite Registers, to be expended entirely as you think best, either in payment for trans- cripts or for printing or anything hlse to the end in view. But I should like to see the transcripts as soon as they are made, if you can manage it for me. I should like very much to see any proof sheets of either branch of your work that you may like to send me ; and I will be very careful. My 4th son (the Ch. Ch. one) is to be ordained on the 2 1 st. Ever yours, W. Oxon. In these last years the loss of old friends was deeply felt. It is remembered that he was completely overcome at the funeral of his friend of so long time, his helper for the last six years, Archdeacon Palmer, whose " devotion, his wisdom, his profound unselfishness, his judgment for others, his readiness in resource, his fulness of information, his clearness of expression, his unflinching courage, his unfailing sympathy," were commemorated in the visitation charge of 1896. In later years the losses came very thickly, and the Bishop was left with hardly a single very near relation, and with very few of his old friends. The last months of his life were marked by repeated sorrows of bereavement. At the beginning of January, 1901, though the Bishop had been seriously ill, there was no sign of serious or 230 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 immediate danger ; and a letter to Dr. Collins shows that he set about his work for the year manfully. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, January 9, 1901. My dear Dr. Collins, — Thank you very much indeed for your interesting letter. Mind that you do not overwork yourself, or get so tired that you cease to like the work. I am truly grateful for your kind promise to keep me in touch with your books as they go through the press. I am getting on all right, I think, for my Spring campaign, but am overwhelmed with letters. The Clergy, confined to their houses by snow, discharge their responsibilities by writing to me about Confirmations. There is a sameness about this, to which I should greatly prefer a good Parish Register. So far this is the worst winter I have had here. In the former bad winters the snow did not come until Lent — bad enough then, but the days were longer and lighter. Here, now, I can do nothing but sit over the fire, and be glad that there is not much else to do but to burn old letters, and that is a cruel pleasure. Kindest regards. Yours faithfully, W. Oxon. The next week the death of Bishop Creighton came at a time when his own health was seriously breaking down ; and the last long letter he wrote was this deeply touching one — The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, January 16, 1901. My dear Mrs. Creighton, — I must write, terrible and miserable as the duty is to me, because I cannot be at the funeral to-morrow. I am not well enough to face it. But I am sure that you will believe that your sorrow is my sorrow. Of course you 231 WILLIAM STUBBS know that I knew something of the greatness and good- ness of your husband, and of the wonderful ability and excellence that outsiders even are recognising in the man we have lost. But you can hardly realise, as I scarcely think that even he himself did, the affectionate regard I have had for him for so many years — very especially since I heard him preach in Merton Chapel, — my admiration for his honesty, clearness of decision, and resolute attitude of suspensiveness where he could not decide, and the pride which, as so old a friend, I had in his successes, sympathy in his difficulties, and hopeful anticipations of what was to come. But I will not trespass on your patience ; only believe that now and ever, for his sake as for your own, I would remain, Yours faithfully, W. Oxon. The next two letters to his old Trinity friend tell the same tale of sorrow and illness — The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, January 16, 1901. My dear Wood, — I am my own Holmes just now. So thank you for your kind note. I shall hope to see you on the 5th of February, but I do not know that I shall have to tax you to help me. I am afraid that I shall not be able to do much in the way of Confirmation this year, for I am left weaker than water, and the journeys are appalling. But the Bishop of Read- ing and Bishop Mitchinson are both going to help me. Still I trust to make a beginning myself, and Princes Risborough is not far. About your candidates, please do what you wish. The Bishop of London's death is a terrible blow, and to 232 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 old friends a miserable loss. I do not know that he would have been the man for the time coming ; but who would ? I see your daughters occasionally, remembering who they are when the vision, hats, etc., has passed — pardon. Yours ever, W. Oxon. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, January 18, 1901. My dear Wood, Thank you for your very kind note. I can do all my hand and head work, but am weak in the moving about. But I live in hopes. Holmes will be back on Monday. Yours ever, W. Oxon. It was Tuesday, January 22, that a grievous national loss followed on the death of Bishop Creighton. The death of Queen Victoria was felt even more deeply by the Bishop than that of his personal friend. His health was now so gravely impaired that he could stand no serious shock ; and to the Queen he had been devoted for years with an increasing force of chivalrous loyalty and admiration. To hear his voice ring as he spoke of his Sovereign, in ordinary conversation as well as in some formal proposing of health, was a stirring evidence of the strength of his feeling. He felt for her not only something of the devotion which the men of the seven- teenth century felt for the Stewarts, but a deep and reasoned admiration based upon a just, critical, historical estimate of her wisdom and prudence, her political insight, her " incomparable judgment." Her death he felt as a grievous personal blow, and his illness almost immediately assumed a far more serious form. He received the command of the King to preach the sermon in S. George's Chapel the day after the Queen's 233 WILLIAM STUBBS funeral. Those near him felt that it was impossible he should obey, and thought they had induced him to accept the view of his physicians. But the Bishop was deter- mined, and he telegraphed his readiness. On February i, in grievous illness, he went to Windsor. On the 2nd his diary records : " Burial Service in S. George's, Windsor. Very long standing in Garter robes. Sir Thomas Barlow came to see me at the Deanery." The next day he preached, with a splendid courage, the sermon he had written four days before — the last great his- toric commemoration in a long gallery of English kings from the same master hand. It was a great effort on a great occa- sion. The few pages of fine historic judgment and of touch- ing pathos made a most powerful and striking sermon. It was preached, it should be remembered, to a congregation which included three Sovereign rulers, and three to whom Sovereign power will, in the providence of God, descend ; and no French preacher of the great age ever spoke to such an audience with more wisdom, sincerity, and tact. " All our thoughts to-day are about the same thing ; the same august and gracious personality, and the great good- ness of God in granting to us, to England and the Empire, the long experience, of which this day is one epoch, in a way of acknowledgment, of love and gratitude, sorrow and hope, happy memories, and great anticipations. What has the gift been ? . . . God's gift of her to us was the wonder- ful way in which He created for us, out of it all, the pure, honourable, energetic, continuous, judicious Mother and Ruler that we have known and loved ; . . . sixty-four years of consistent, wise administration, not without varia- tions, or changes of tactics or disappointments, it may have been, nor pressure on the helm, or violence of the waves, but never once the loss of governance, never once the alienation of hearts, never once the tolerated predominance of lines counter to the great course which, in the Providence of the ages, the Almighty has marked out for her guid- ance and ours. There never was, so far as I can remember 234 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 or imagine, such a long life of unbroken duty and service in such office. And some portion of the reward was in the knowing of how we loved her. For our loyalty has not been in the mere intellectual approbation of law and character exemplified in noble circumstances ; but in the belief and love of something of our own ; has not this been so ? Is it not so still ? I think that there never was such a life, so long, so brave, so devoted, so straight ; ' Behold the Handmaid of the Lord ' for such a burden. God help us all when we try to think of our own. I do not speak now of the industrious, laborious study of every sort of question of government or of detail ; . . . nor do I say anything further now of the true, fervent, regular and unpretentious piety which was the garb of a faith, which faith was the sustaining energy of the duty done as it was done. . . . Eighty-two years is a long life, a long period of contribution to the blessing of those whom we are to live to bless. Out of over sixty-four years' experience of loving kindness of the Lord, what are we bringing to the security and happiness of the next age ? — say of the next reign — for many of us, I think and hope that the next reign will be a time of abundant harvest." It is, indeed, impossible rightly to examine the past without looking forward to the future, to analyse a great character without seeking to estimate in anticipation its influence on the years that are to come, the lives of promi- nence that are still to be lived. So the great historian looked at the reign that was over, as he stood himself on the brink of death. He knew the years that are past, he knew the times and the men among whom he lived ; and it was this which gave a double emphasis to almost the last words that he uttered in public — the words in which in his sermon on the Queen he estimated the past and looked forward to the future — " Well, we thank God for the great deal that has been done, and that in direct relation to this matter ; the last three years have brought to our consciousness, primarily, 235 WILLIAM STUBBS one great element of the contribution of the active, prompt, sympathetic realisation of what we call our Empire. The unparalleled growth of this, quickened, vivified, energised, by the consciousness that, at the moment at which the strength and cohesion of the colonial world became in its extension and intercourse a matter amenable to practical statesman- ship, there should spring into existence the vitalising, sympathising force and instinct of nationality ; realising in the love of the Empire and its service the solidarity of a common lot. I could not presume to enlarge on that idea, it is now a fact, and a fact that without some such experi- ence as the late reign could scarcely have grown even into an idea. And of it we may be content to say that we are but at the beginning ; it will be for the generation that is coming now into the places of us departed ones, to make the brotherhood one of faith, religion, conscious, loving, and effective unity ; and surely the future of the whole earth may, must turn upon this, rightly viewed and administered." In the past of the reign that was ended the Bishop had played an unostentatious part, but one which future genera- tions will probably recognise to have been great in a great, scientific advance. In the reign to which he looked forward he foresaw that the work was " for the generation that is coming into the places of us departing ones." And the call has soon come to him to depart. " It will be for the generation that is coming now into the place of us departing ones," he said, "to make the brother- hood one of faith, religion, conscious, loving and effective unity " — the brotherhood of the English race at home and over sea, " the vitalising, sympathising force and instinct of nationality " which have been the growth of the reign and the work, to a large extent, of the life which was ended. It is probable, that he felt, as he thus spoke, that he was indeed of the " departing ones " — that he had already heard the call, and was ready to depart. And now when we remember him, we feel that his own work was not a small 236 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 one in linking together the Empire which had grown into so close a union in his lifetime. For indeed the work of a true historian is notably to make a great people recognise its kinship and its heritage in the past ; and as years went on those who knew the ideas which Dr. Stubbs had empha- sised again and again could see that they were slowly penetrating into the public mind and finding expression in public life. The great historian was a great educator, more than most men saw while he was yet living. His work in that regard will be noted and carried on in the generations that are to come. Something of this it may well be, as well as of admira- tion for the old man visibly failing who had stood forth so bravely to render the last service he could pay to his great Mistress, which made the new Queen come forward and take his hand, and the seventh Edward, on whom he had begged a sevenfold blessing, speak to him in the gene- rous words of a Sovereign and a friend. " King and Emperor," the Bishop wrote in his diary — the German Emperor to whose Prussian grandfather too he had given words of dignified historic commemoration — "came and talked to me about the order pour le merite." The King indeed showed the distinction to the Emperor. " You see, he wears your order." It was a fitting recognition, at such a moment, of fine work that was near its end. The Bishop went home to Cuddesdon. He could do a little work one day, none the next. He could read novels. He could write a little at his Yorkshire genealogies. In touching iteration they recur in the last letters. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, February 13, 1901. My dear Dr. Collins, — I am returning to you, with infinite gratitude, the MS. of the Hampsthwaite Marriages. I hope that you will get 237 WILLIAM STUBBS them safe. I am ordered rest, so hope that I may be mending ; but I am writing in cramp, so excuse Yours ever, W. OXON. Within the next few weeks came the death of another friend. On March 6, 190 1, Dr. William Bright, the last, save the Bishop himself, of the great Oxford historical scholars who had been closely linked in friendship, passed away. On the 9th was the funeral, a strain of sorrow the Bishop could hardly bear ; but, helped by his faithful friend and chaplain, he struggled on. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, March 19, 1901. My dear Dr. Collins, — I have received the proof of the first sheet of the Knares- borough Wills. Please accept my most sincere thanks. The mere coming of it into the house has acted on me like a tonic — in fact, has been one. But oh, the cold of this place ! Yours ever, W. Oxon. Qn February 27 he wrote thus to Mr. Charles W. Sutton, the Hon. Secretary of the Chetham Society. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, February 27, 190 1. My dear Mr. Sutton, — There is scarcely an honour that could come within my reach that I should value more highly than the election to succeed my old and good friend Chancellor Christie as President of the Chetham Society. And I would very gladly accept it if it is the wish of the Council to have me. As you tell me that no real work would be expected from me, you meet the one objection that presents itself in the 238 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 fact that I am just now recommended to take entire rest. Indeed I have been very ill, and my prospects of resuming active physical work are not altogether what I could wish. But if the offer of profound sympathy in the pursuits and objects of the Chetham Society might be regarded as a qualification, I gladly make it, and in such confidence accept the honour done to me. I am, yours faithfully, W. Oxon. On March 21 he was well enough to take the oath to the new King in the House of Lords. But it was a delusive rally. The last important letter he wrote showed the hope he still had of working on. The Church History Society asked him to be its President, in succession to Bishop Creighton. Thus he replied to Professor Collins — The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, March 22, 1901. My dear Professor, — I think that it is right that I should accept the election to the Presidentship of the Church History Society, which you tell me is the unanimous wish of the committee. I will not trouble you with subsidiary or occasional reasons. It will always be my endeavour to show active sympathy with the work, but I do not anticipate any chance of attending meetings, and, indeed, the ideal which is in my mind in accepting is very much that which you define in the last clause of your kind note. I will think my best and remember my best for the society. Fresh research I can hardly promise, but I might suggest even these sometimes. I am growing older than I ought to be, i.e. to feel so, but be assured of my zeal and sympathy. Ever yours, W. OXON. P.S. — If you see the third edition of my XVII Lectures, please note. 239 WILLIAM STUBBS On the same day that the Bishop wrote this letter, Sir Thomas Barlow decisively pronounced that he must resign his See. He accepted the verdict, and definitely decided to leave Cuddesdon at Midsummer. Then he set himself to arrange his manuscripts. Much he destroyed : some lectures, sermons, addresses, he set aside to revise and publish. But that work he was not to begin. The last letters that I have belong to the Yorkshire interests which were so dear to him. The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, April i, 1 90 1. Dear Mr. Lumb, — In the early days of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society it was proposed to have, at Leeds or Wakefield, a sort of volunteer depository for saving old deeds and papers that might go, according to the custom of the time, to the slaughterer. Three or four years ago I bought, out of a second-hand catalogue, for, I think, \^s. a very considerable bundle of deeds, leases, bonds, etc., relating to the neigh- bourhood of Pickering. These were arranged in bundles, and were not at all in a condition for promiscuous destruc- tion, but whoever disposed of them must have regarded them as entirely valueless. Was this voluntary repository ever established ? If not, what would you advise about the disposal of the things, which mostly concern small holdings of the 17th and 18th centuries? or is there a lawyer at Pickering to whom it would be worth while my writing in case there was an accident in the sale ? I am, yours faithfully, W. Oxon. Your zeal must find an excuse for my bothering you unnecessarily. 240 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-190 1 The Palace, Cuddesdon, Oxford, April 1, 1 90 1. Dear Mr. Lumb, — I am most grateful to you for your kind letter and for the pains that you have taken in helping me to get quit of the Pickering deeds. I cannot give a good account of myself. I have got an awkward weakness of the part of me in which Yorkshire has so large a share, and it will, sooner or later, make an end of me. So long as I last, I continue a devout Yorkshire man, and remain now, Yours very faithfully, W. Oxon. On April 15 the last entry in his diary simply mentions letters and illness. He was trying to the last to answer those who wrote. On Saturday, the 20th, he had a serious relapse. His illness assumed an aspect of pressing danger on Sunday, when prayers were offered for him in his cathedral church ; and on Monday, April 32, at ten o'clock, he passed away. On Thursday, the 25th, he was buried in the village churchyard of Cuddesdon, under the shade of a great tree, by the path which leads from the palace to the church. It was a simple, quiet, homely funeral, such as the man of simple life would have chosen. Among the many resolutions of regret and sympathy which were called forth by the Bishop's death from the learned bodies with which he was connected and from societies and associations of the Church and the diocese, none was perhaps so happily expressed as that conveyed by the Rev. E. R. Massey on behalf of the Claydon Rural Deanery, who put on record their " deep regret at the loss of a Bishop whose pro- found learning, clear judgment, and extreme kindness, were appreciated by all, and whose removal is not only widely lamented in this diocese but throughout the whole Church." Those were indeed the three qualities which those who best w.s. 241 R y WILLIAM STUBBS knew him will always associate with his name, — learning, judgment, and kindness. In all these he was indeed, as the Bishop of Lincoln called him, " the great Bishop." And no less truly did Sir Thomas Barlow, the physician who had advised him in his last illness, write of him — in almost the words that Charles I would always use of Juxon — as " the good old man." "It is a great man who has passed away," wrote Dr. Moberly, who was long his chaplain, " and a man who hoped manfully to the end, as a child hopes, in the name of Jesus Christ." When the life is told, it is seen that the Bishop took part, outwardly at least, in no great crises, and only indirectly was concerned in any great movement. His was the life of a scholar primarily, and only secondarily of an administrator. As a man of learning he belonged to that small class of those who have advanced in an eminent degree the standard of scholarship and knowledge. As Dr. George Prothero said in his Presidential Address to the Royal Historical Society on February 20, 1902, " Perhaps no English historian that ever lived did more to advance the knowledge of English history, and to set the study of it on a sound basis, than Dr. Stubbs." As a Bishop he was one of those whose lack Archbishop Benson so greatly deplored, who rise above parochial to really statesmanlike, national, and Catholic interests. Year by year the personality of the historian and Bishop had impressed itself more strongly on his generation. As for so long in Oxford, so in later years in a wider world, men came to look for the short, strong figure, the massive head, the broad white forehead, the great brow, the extra- ordinarily expressive eyes, now twinkling with humour, now keen with piercing enquiry, now soft with deep pathos and sympathy ; and to know that they were in the presence of a unique character which had grown in power with the years of study and work. As new workers arose, the historical school to which he belonged was treated by some 242 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 with scant respect, and the conclusions at which he had arrived were often challenged : but his own reputation, ratified by the titles and dignities and appreciations of foreign lands, was always treated with reverence. It was a reverence which was the reward of pre-eminently honest, minute, and accurate work, and work which was in the highest sense original.. Dr. Stubbs belonged — the letters and memories have shown how fully — to a school, the well- defined school of Oxford historians, which owed much of its original impulse in equal degrees to the great German scientific historians and to the Tractarian movement. But he was notably the most original, the greatest, of the workers of whom the world gradually recognised him to be the leader. Haddan, and Freeman, and Green, and Bright, each had characteristic powers, but he seemed to combine them all, accuracy, and a deep though often silent enthu- siasm, indomitable perseverance, and a wide outlook. The leadership which his friends were so proud to recognise came to him naturally not only from his great powers of mind, but still more from his character. Its absolute loyalty and conscientiousness, its sincerity, its courage, its tolerance made him a man to whom workers in the same field naturally looked for guidance. Certainly they were never disappointed. So it was outside the field of historical research, when he came to active labour among the leaders of English life. He worked thoroughly, and he worked to the end. Dis- liking all parade, and absolutely without affectation or pride, he made his influence upon statesmen and clergy felt by the eminent soundness of his judgment, the unselfishness of his aims and the strength of his will. Among all the characteristics of a very remarkable and impressive personality, perhaps that which was dominant was an intense and conscientious devotion to work. As a scholar and a teacher, he was assiduous beyond the capacity of most men ; as a Bishop, though his idea of the fit activi- ties of the episcopate was not always the one popular in 243 R 2 WILLIAM STUBBS clerical circles, he was devoted to the limits, and beyond the limits, of his strength. If he knew how to cut away unnecessary demands upon his time he certainly never spared himself. He had in a very marked degree the conscientiousness about things seemingly small — such as answering letters promptly and clearly — which has marked so many great workers, notably the Duke of Wellington. He had also the real patience which marks a true student. Extraordinarily patient in his own methods, and in the details of his own special interests, he was patient, too, with all those with whom he had to deal, when there was real need for patience. And patience was not only with him a practice ; it was a principle. It was part of his Conservatism and his Christianity. Thus his caution in expressing opinion was not of that kind which has been slightingly termed episcopal ; it was the caution of a wise and tolerant man, who knew the past of the human race and the depth of the human heart, too well ever to come to a rash con- clusion. Characteristic of this attitude of mind — it was an attitude of conscience also — was the letter in which he replied to an address presented to him by nearly four hundred of his clergy on the subject of the Archbishop's metropolitical authority in the trial of the case of the Bishop of Lincoln — " The circumstances of the time (he wrote) are such as to make imperative upon us, not only courage in the expression of conviction, but caution in the formation and declaration of opinion ; but, above all, earnest prayer that all our proceedings may be ruled, and over-ruled, to the benefit of the Church of Christ and the souls of the people committed to our charge." There could be no better example than that sentence of the Bishop's characteristic qualities — of his enthusiasm for bold utterance of conscientious conviction, if that conviction were both moral and intellectual, of the minuteness of the 244 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 qualifications in its literary expression, in which he had found a style peculiar to himself and extraordinarily apt for the conveyance of exactly balanced truth, and of his deep personal piety. The character of the Bishop was not a simple one. Those who did not know him well might easily go away with a false impression that he was only a scholar, or only a humorist, or only an ecclesiastical statesman, or only a teacher of simple Christian truths. He was all these, and very much more — more than even now it is possible to estimate or perhaps to recall. He appealed to many men in many ways, but to all he appealed as transparently genuine and sincere. A sermon of his on the text " Joyful gladness to such as are true-hearted " comes irresistibly to the minds of those who heard it when they think of him. He was indeed true-hearted. So all I have to tell is told, and such brief record of great work is made as I can make. But to estimate such a man there is needed more than a knowledge of him and what he did, which still stands outside his own position, his peculiar difficulties. The best and truest memorial the world can have of him comes from one who had for years association with him in many ways of friendship and of active labour, and who was called — as he himself would have chosen — to be the successor to his work. His words I print as he sends them to me : none could so truly present the Bishop and the man — CUDDESDON, December, 1903. My dear Hutton, — I will try to do your bidding, and to write down the thoughts that fill my mind as I set it thinking about Bishop Stubbs. When first you asked me so to write, it seemed that I must have much to say about those tokens of his work, his wisdom, his influence which meet me as I go about the field in which he laboured during the last thirteen years of 245 WILLIAM STUBBS his life. And there is much that I might say of what I have so learned ; of his faithfulness and toil and pains- taking and orderliness ; much, too, of certain fragments or glimpses which I have come upon, here and there — gleams out of a deep, strong heart — hidden acts of great kindness to some who, perhaps, were not having much kindness shown them ; bold and unhesitating severity where he felt sure that it was due ; ventures of unreserved encourage- ment to a man who was not getting fair play. But as I think over these things, I feel how little all that I could write about them would tell to those who did not know him, or to those who read your book when we are gone and his great work remains in lasting value and students of it ask what sort of man he was. I think that what I have come to know about him may have its main worth for the purpose of your book in that it brings out and enhances the positive meaning of that apparently negative result at which many have arrived in thought and speech about him — the sense, I mean, that he was not understood. In truth, he was a man of reserve ; at times, perhaps, provokingly so. But that quality of reserve, of tlpwveta (you will agree with me that the English word would not do instead of the Greek), is no terminus for a train of thought. We never speak of it without meaning that there is much beyond it ; we never hear of it without wanting to see or guess further. It cannot mean nothing, it may mean anything, good or bad, but not indifferent ; and the moral import of it turns on the character of that which it more or less hides, and more or less expresses. And so in this instance we get to the verge of knowing a great deal as we remind ourselves of the impossibility of suspecting in him of whom we are thinking the presence, behind his reserve, of any of those shady things which reserve sometimes masks. For no one could ever suspect in Bishop Stubbs a secret aim of selfishness ; nor a habit of ambition or worldly planning, furtively harboured ; nor a wish to be personally impressive ; nor a cold, self-centred, calculating 246 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1 889-1901 heart ; nor any indifference as to the issues either of individual lives, or of publie affairs, in Church or State ; nor any inner uncertainty, any irresolute confusion of know- ledge and ignorance, any concealed distrust of his own grasp on truth. All these are sometimes marked by reserve ; but no one who knew him at all could fancy his having things like these to hide ; we feel sure that the lifting of the veil would have shown us little or nothing that he really need have minded our knowing. But, after all, I do not think that it is strange or puzzling that he used great reserve. For his was a singularly strong and thoughtful and penetrating mind ; he looked often, and saw deep, into the pathos of life ; it seemed the element he most discerned and felt, as with an instinctive sympathy ; and those who so watch life have many thoughts they can- not freely talk of. And then his richness and thorough- ness of learning told in the same way ; he knew, as infinitely complex, things of which most men talked as simple — knew that most men were quite incapable of understanding the full answer to the questions they were asking : and know- ledge that one cannot share is an isolating sort of wealth. Such a mind as his is apt to deepen, sadly enough, the loneliness that many have to bear as they grow old under heavy burdens of responsibility. But perhaps what most of all helped people to misunderstand him was a nervous and almost morbid dread of anything like display. Almost morbid, I say : because I think that sometimes he came near displaying what was not real for fear of being tempted into displaying what was ; he ran the risk, not only of misrepresenting himself, but also of disappointing others ; because he was so resolved to think only of the reality as to be defiantly, aggressively careless about the appearance. But, if that dislike of show misled him sometimes, it was a splendid error. For it meant that he was so sure of the substance that he could let men think as they liked of the semblance. For instance, he did deeply and intensely care how things went ; he took things to heart, and felt 247 WILLIAM STUBBS disappointment bitterly and wearily: and knowing in him- self that he did care, so rightly, so certainly, he was not so solicitous as some of us are about the seeming to care. Again, he was really and faithfully patient ; patient, as a matter of business and of duty ; patient, as a man must be who has to toil on year after year, through evil report and good report, knowing the strange power for havoc-making that is allowed to human folly and wilfulness, yet still not losing heart : and, just because he was thus patient, thus sure in the possession of his own soul, he gave the less heed to seeming patient or impatient over little things. But, above all, I think, he was determined to do real work : and therefore he was not afraid of refusing to do what could only have been done by the surrender or the scamping of some more arduous task. In the general opinion of men the praise of work is apt to go to those who do a great deal of what is comparatively easy : but in reality, " when all treasures are tried," the true praise can only go to those who do the most they can of what is hardest ; for instance, of thinking with sincerity and accuracy. Such praise is not ours to withhold or give. But we cannot miss the note of distinction and of greatness in a life held strictly to that standard. It seems but little, I fear, that I have found to write in answer to your wish. But it is all that I can be fairly sure of. And little as it is, and soon as it thus ends, I am not quite easy about it. For I feel as though it were somewhat of an intrusion on one who, I believe, in simple awe, knew and remembered that he had to live for a very different sort of appraising from any that is likely to find expression in this world. And that, I suspect, was the real clue to much that men thought strange in him. Believe me, my dear Hutton, Very truly yours, F. Oxon. 248 BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1889-1901 Nine years before he died, when he preached to his can- didates for Ordination, Bishop Stubbs had translated into Christian thought the hymn of Cleanthes preserved by Epictetus. It was a motto for his own life — Lead me, Almighty Father, Spirit, Son, Whither Thou wilt — I follow — no delay. My will is Thine, and, even had I none, Grudging obedience, still I will obey : Faint-hearted, fearful, doubtful if I be, Gladly or sadly, I will follow Thee. Into the land of righteousness I go, The footsteps thither Thine and not my own ; Jesu, Thyself the way, alone I know ; Thy will be mine, for other have I none : Unprofitable servant though I be, Gladly or sadly, let me follow Thee. 249 APPENDIX WORKS OF WILLIAM STUBBS, D.D., BISHOP OF OXFORD [Soon after the Bishop's death I made a list of his printed works Part of this was improved and published by Dr. W. A. Shaw for the Royal Historical Society, 1903. I now print, with corrections and additions, what is, I believe, a complete list.] 1. Historical Works. (The first seven published by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.) Select Charters of English Constitutional History. Edition I, 1870; Ed. II, 1874; Ed. Ill, 1876; Ed. IV, 1881 ; Ed. V, 1883; Ed. VI, 1888; Ed. VII, 1890; Ed. VIII, 1895; Ed. IX, 1901. The Constitutional History of England. Vol. I. Edition I, 1873; Ed. II, 1S75 ; Ed. Ill, 1880; Ed. IV, 1883 ; Ed. V, 1891 ; Ed. VI, 1896. Vol. II. Edition I, 1875; Ed. II, 1877; Ed. Ill, 1882; Ed. IV, 1887; Ed. V, 1896. Vol. III. Edition 1,1878; Ed. II, 1880; Ed. Ill, 1884; Ed. IV, 1890 ; Ed. V, 1896. Library Edition, 1880. Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History. Edition I, 1S86 ; Ed. II, 1887; Ed. Ill, 1901. Registrant Sacrum Anglicanum. Edition I, 1858; Ed. II, 1897. Magna Charta. (A Reprint.) Edition I, 1868 ; Ed. II, 1S79. A Charter of Canute from the York Gospels, Text and Translation, J S73 (" in usum amicorum. W.S."). [With A. W. Haddan.] The Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, 1869 ; Vol. II, Part 1, 1871 ; Vol. Ill, Part 1, 1878; Part 2, 187S. (London.) The Early Plantagenets. (London, 1874.) Appendices to the Report of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts (London, 1883.) viz. : — 1. An Account of the Courts which have exercised Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in England before the Norman Conquest, from the Nor- man Conquest to the Reformation, from the Reformation to the year 1832. Vol. i. pp. 21 — 51. 2. A Calendar of the authenticated Trials for Heresy in England prior to the year 1533, stating in tabular form the names of the 251 APPENDIX accused, the date of the trial, the process by which it was initiated, the tribunal before which it was tried, the form of the sentence, and any further points that illustrate the nature of jurisdiction in such cases. Vol. i. pp. 52 — 69. 3. A Copy of the several formal Acts by which the Clergy recog- nised the Royal Supremacy. Vol. i. pp. 70 — 3. 4. A Collation of the Journals of the Lords with the Records of Convocation from 1529 to 1547, showing the dates and the processes by which the Convocations and the Parliament co-operated in ecclesiastical legislation and business ; with such further information on this point as can be obtained from the State Papers. Vol. i. pp. 74—141. 5. A Memorandum drawn up from the Journals of the Lords and Commons showing the occasions on which the Convocations are formally referred to in other than cases of subsidies. Vol. i. pp. 142 — 162. Evidence: Questions 1076 — 1198. Vol. ii. pp. 40 — 51. Lectures on European History, edited by A. Hassall, London, 1904. Lectures on Early English History, edited by A. Hassall, London, 1906. 2. Historical and other Works, edited. (The first nine for the Master of the Rolls.) Chronicles and Memorials of Richard I, Vol. I, 1864 ; Vol. II, 1865. Gesta Regis Henrici II [Benedict of Peterborough], Vols. I, II, 1867. Roger Hoveden, Vols. I, 1868; II, 1869; III, 1870; IV, 1871. Walter of Coventry, Vols. I, 1872 ; II, 1873. Memorials of S. Dunstan, 1874. Ralph de Diceto, Vols. I and II, 1876. Gervasius Cantuariensis, Vol. I, 1879 ; Vol. II, 1880. Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and II, Vol. I, 1883 ; Vol. II, 1883. William of Malmesbury, Vol. I, 1887 ; Vol. II, 1889. [Some of the prefaces to these have been collected by A. Hassall, London, 1902.] Hymnum secundum usum insignis et praeclarae Ecclesiae Saris- buriensis. (Littlemore, 1850.) The Tract " De Inventione Sanctae Crucis Nostrae in Monte acuto et de ductione ejusdem apud Waltham," now first printed from the Manuscript in the British Museum, with Introduction and Notes, 1861. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. (3 vols., London, 1863.) " Tractatus de veritate conceptionis beatissimae virginis. . . . compilatus per Patrem Joannem de Turrecremata." Oxford (London), 1869. An English translation of Sir John Fortescue's De titido Edwardi Comitis Marchiae. (An insertion dated January 29, 1877, in PP- 77-9° OI v °l- i- °f Lord Clermont's edition of Sir John Fortescue's works. 2 vols. 410, 1869.) Hardwick's History of the Christian Church, Middle Age. (London, 1872.) Hardwick's History of the Reformation. (London, 1872.) [With C. Deedes]. Origines Celticae, by E. Guest, LL.D., 2 vols., London, 1883. 252 APPENDIX 3. Minor Historical Writings. Those marked * not published, though some were reprinted in a revised form in the Lectures on Medieval and Modem History. 1861. On the Foundation and Early Fasti of Peterborough. (Pro- ceedings of the Archaeological Institute.) Archceol. Journal, xviii. pp. 193 — 211. 1862. The Cathedral, Diocese, and Monasteries of Worcester in the Eighth Century. (Proceedings of the Archaeological Insti- tute). Archceol. Journal, xix. pp. 236 — 252. Occasional Paper of the Eastern Church Association. No. 1. The Apostolical Succession in the Church of England. A letter to a Russian friend. London, Rivingtons, 1866. *i867- An Address delivered by way of Inaugural Lecture, Feb. 7, 1867. (Revised.) 8vo. *i876. Two Lectures, 48 pp. (Clarendon Press.) •187s. Two Lectures on Cyprus and Armenia, 60 pages, sm. 410. (Clarendon Press.) 1878. History of the Cornish Bishopric. Truro Diocesan Kalendar, 1878 (reprinted in an abbreviated form in all subsequent years). *i882. Remarks and Proposals — Ecclesiastical Courts. (Clar. Press.) *i882. Two Lectures on History of the Canon Law in England, 44 pp., sm. 4to. (Clarendon Press.) *i883. In the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, April 5, 1883. (Clarendon Press.) ♦1884. Last Statutory Public Lecture, 16 pp., sm. 4to. (Clarendon Press.) 1885. A Letter to the Rural Deans of the Diocese of Chester. [Chester, Reprinted (unfortunately not completely) Oxf. Dioc. Mag., March, 1902.] *i887. On the Joint Action of the Convocations, 36 pages, sm. 4to. (Clarendon Press.) •iSgo. Letter on the Faith, etc., of the Church of England. (Clar- endon Press.) •1890. Letter on the Moravian Episcopate. (Clarendon Press.) 1890. The Study of Church History, an Address. (Parker.) 4. Prefaces. The Annals of England. Oxford, 1875. The Great Roll of the Pipe, 1 165-6. London, 1888. (Vol. ix. of the publications of the Pipe Roll Society.) Gee and Hardy : " Constitutional Documents of the Church of England." London, 1896. Garry : " The Churchwardens' Accounts of the Parish of St. Mary, Reading." Reading, 1893. O. Ogle : " Royal Letters addressed to Oxford." Oxford, 8vo, 1892. York Minster Library Catalogue. 1896. Cheales : " The New Guide to Silchester." Reading, 1895. On the Publication and Preservation of Parish Registers, being the " Preface by . . . Bishop of Oxford, to the Registers of the Parish of St. Mary, Reading." Vol. i. 8vo, Reading, 1891. E. M. Holmes : " A Handbook to the Psalms." London (1894.) 253 APPENDIX 5. Contributions to the " Gentleman's Magazine." New Series. Vol. 12 (Jan. — June, 1862), p. 344 : Charter relating to the Canons of Waltham. (Dated at Navestock, Feb. 16, 1862.) ,, „ Vol. 13 (July— Dec., 1862), p. 307: [Notice of his reading of a paper on the " Early History of the Cathedral and Monasteries of Worcester," at the Worcester meeting of the Archaeological Institute, July 23.] „ „ Vol. 13, p. 616 : The Bishops of Man and the Isles. (Dated at Navestock, April 13, 1862.) Reprinted separately. „ „ Vol. 15 (July — Dec, 1863), p. 589 : [Notice of his reading of a paper on " The Ancient Connection between the Sees of Canterbury and Rochester " at the Rochester meeting of the Archaeological Insti- tute, Aug. 4] . „ „ Vol. 15, p. 621 : Bishop Savaric of Wells. (Dated at Navestock, Oct. 8.) „ „ Vol. 16 (Jan. — June, 1864), p. 633: Lambeth Degrees. (Dated at Navestock, April 9.) „ „ Vol. 17 (July — Dec, 1864), p. 624: The Foundation Statute of the Provostry of Wells. (Dated at Navestock, Oct. 6, 1864.) 6. Contributions to the Dictionary of Christian Biography (ed. Smith and Wace). Vol. I, 1877. Acca, Acha, Adda, Addi, Aetla, Agilbert, Alberht, Albums, Alch- fleda, Alchfrith, Alchmund, Alchred, Alcuin, Aldberht, Aldfrith, Aldhelm, Aldhun, Aldulf, Aldwin, Alheard, Alhun, Alric, Aluberht, Alwig, Anna, Arvaldus, Bacola, Bacula, Badenoth, Badudegn, Badulf, Baduvini, Baere, Balthere, Beaduheard, Beda, Bega, Begu, Bene- dictus, Biscop, Beonna, Beorchtgyth, Beorhtric, Beorwald, Berchthun, Berctgils, Berhtwald, Bernuini, Bertha, Betti, Billfrith, Birinus (S.), Bisi, Blaecca, Boisil, Bosa, Bosel, Botolphus, Botwine, Bregusuid, Bregwin, Brorda, Bugga, Cadda (2), Ceadda, Ceolmuud (2), Ceolred (part), Ceolwulf (2), Coenwalch, Coinwalch (part), Cuichelm, Cuth- red (4), Cuthwin (1 and 3), Cynberht (1 and 2), Cynegils (part), Cyneheard, Cynewulf (part), Cynwise, Damianus (6), Daniel (16), Deneberht, Denefrith, Dudd, Dun, Dunna. Vol. II, 1880. Eaba (1 and 2), Eadbald (2 and 3), Eadberht (7, 9, 10, n, 12), Eadbert (2 and 3), Eadbert Praen, Eadbert (7 and 9), Eadburga (1, 3, 4), Eadgar (1 and 2), Eadgyd, Eadhere, Eadred (3), Eadric (1 and 2), Eadulf (3, 4, 5, 6, 7), Eafa, Eahfrid, Ealheard, Ealhmund (1), Ealhun, Eanberht (2 and 3), Eanburga, Eanfrith (2 and 3), Eangheard, Eangitha, Eanhere, Eanmund, Eanswitha, Eanulf (1), Eanwald, Earcoinbert, Earcongota, Eardred, Eardulf (1, 3, 4), Earp- wald, East Angles (Kings of), East Saxons, Eata (3), Eborius (1), 254 APPENDIX Ecglaf, Ecgric, Ecgwald, Echfrith, Egbald (i, 2, 3), Egbert (1,2, 4), Egfrid (2), Egric (1), Egwin, Egwulf, Eldad (part), Elfleda (2), Elfrida (1), Elfthritha (1, 2, 3), Eobc, Eolla, Eormenburga (1), Eormengilda, Eonncnred, Eorpwin, Erkenwald, Esus, Ethelbald (1), Ethelbert (2, 3, 4), Ethelburga (1-8), Ethelreda (3 parts), Ethel- frith, Ethelhard (1, 2, 3), Ethelhere, Ethelhild, Ethelhun (1, 2, 3), Ethelmod, Ethelnoth (1 and 2), Ethelred (2, 3, 4), Ethelswitha, Ethelwalch, Ethelwald (1, 2, 4, 6), Ethelwin (1 and 2), Ethelwold (1 and 2), Ethelwulf (1, 2, 3), Etti, Eva (2), Felgeld, Felix (72), Feologeld, Folcberht (1 and 2), Folcbnrg, Folcred, Forthere (1 and 2), Forthred (2), Frehelm, Freothomnnd, Freothored, Freothubert, Frigyd, Frithegils, Frithegitha, Frithewald, Frithowald, Froda, Fuliburs, Fnllanus (2), Gebmund, Germanus (38), Giselhere, Goda, Gratiosns (3), Guba, Guda, Gutard, Gnthmund, Guttheard, Hadda, Hadde, Hadwin, Haeha, Haelric, Haenigils, Hagona, Halmund, Hathowald, Headda (1, 2, 3), Heahberht, Heahbert, Heahstan, Heamund, Hean, Heardred (1 and 2), Heared, Heathobald, Heatho- bert, Heatholac, Heathored (1, 2, 3, 4), Hecca, Hedda (1 and 2), Hemele, Hemgislns, Hereberht (1 and 2), Hereca, Herefrith (2), Heremod, Herewald, Hereward. Vol. Ill, 1882. Herred, Hewald, Hiddi, Higbert, Hilarius(io), Hilarus (9), Hildilid, Hilla, Hlotheri, Hodilred, Homolunch, Honorius(i6), Hooc, Hroth- wari, Hugo (6), Hnmberht, Huna, Hunbeanna, Hunferth(i, 2, 3), Hwiccii, Hwitta, Hygbald, Hyraldus, Hyseberht, Imma (1), Ini, Ingeld, Ingildus (1), Ingulfus, Ingwald, Ivor, Jaenbert, Jaruman, Joannes (521), Jnrwinus, Justus (22), Keneburga, Kenethrytha, Kent (Kings of), Kenulf, Lademund, Laurentius (25), Leuferth, Liudhardus, Lulla (1 and 2), Lullingc, Lullo, Lullus, Mailduf, Marcus (16), Mauganius, Megildufus, Mellitus, Mercelinus, Merewald, Milburga, Mildred, Milred, More, Muca. Vol. IV, 1887. Nathaniel (of Canterbury), Nothbald, Nothbert, Nothelm, Obinus, Offa (3), Offa(4), Oftfor, Ordbriht(i), Ordbriht (2), Osa, Oshere, Oslava, Osmund (1), Osmund (2), Osmund (3), Osric (2), Osthgyd, Oswald (2), Oswald (3), Peada, Penda, Podda, Putta, Redwald, Ricula, Komanus(i8), Romanus(ig), Saxulf, Sebbi, Sebert, Selred, Sexburga (1), Sexburga(2), Sexraed, Sigebert (4), Sigebert (5), Sige- bert^), Sigebert (7), Sigeraed (1), Sigeraed (2), Sigeric(3), Sigga(2), Sighard, Sigberi, Stidbert, Swithelm, Tatwin, Theodoras of Tarsus, Thomas (21), Tidferth, Tilhere, Tobias (2), Torctgyth, Torhthelm, Torhthere, Tota, Tyrhtel, Waldhere, Walhstod (2), Werburga (2), Werburga (3), Weremund (1), Weremund (2), Werenbert, Wig- bert (4), Wighard (2), Wigheln, Wigthen, Wihtburga, Wihtred, Wilfrid (3), Winfrith, Wini, Wiothun, Wulfhard, Wulfhere, Wulfred. 7. Sermons, Charges, etc. Zeal — for the Lord ? A Sermon preached in Brentwood Church on June 10, i860. Parker, Oxford, i860 255 APPENDIX Evil Days. A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, at S. Mary's Church, Nov. 3, 1867. Parker, Oxford, 1867 A Sermon preached on the Occasion of the Restoration of the Parish Church at Knaresborough, October 7, 1872. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1872 A Sermon preached at the Anniversary of the Consecration of Christ Church, Coatham, August 10, 1872. 1872 Clericalism : a Sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of S. Paul, London. London [Oxf.], 1881 A Sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of Chester, Nov. 16, 1884. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1884 A Sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of Chester, on the occasion of the Ordination, December 21, 1884. Text, 2 Cor. vi. 4. 8 pp. No printer's name A Sermon on the Consecration of the Church at Warburton. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1885 A Sermon, 8 pp., small 4to. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1885 Humility : a Sermon (The Anglican Pulpit of To-day, p. 49). 8vo. London, 1886 A Sermon preached in the Parish Church, Wrexham, Nov. 26, 1886. Wrexham, 1886 Church Extension in Stockport Deanery (Two Sermons preached Dec. 12, 1886). Stalybridge, 1886 Sermon on Ps. xxvi. 8-12. — Chester Diocesan Gazette, March 16, 1886 pp. n-13. Sermon on Tim. ii. 24. Chester Diocesan Gazette, July 17, 18 PP- 2-5- Sermon on 1 Cor. iii. 8, 9. Chester Diocesan Gazette, Jan. 15, 18 pp. 2-4. Sermon on 1 Cor. xi. i. Chester Diocesan Gazette, May 16, 18 PP- 3-5- Sermon on 1 Chron. xxix. 14. Chester Diocesan Gazette, July 23, 18 pp. 2-5- Sermon on Ephes. iv. 12, 16. Chester Diocesan Gazette, Oct. 21,18 . PP- 2 -5- A Sermon, 1 Cor. xiii. 8. Cambridge Review, Feb. 15, 1888. Sermon on Ps. xcvii. 11. Chester Diocesan Gazette, April 14, 18 pp. 50-52. A Sermon, S. Matt. viii. 27. Oxford Magazine, Feb. 13, 1889. A Sermon on Ps. xxvii. 8, and xxxvi. 1 ; in Expository Sermons and Outlines on the Old Testament, edited by C. Stanford, London, 1895 A Sermon, 2 Cor. v. 17, preached at the opening of the Chapel of S. Mary's Home, Wantage; 8vo. Nichols, Wantage, 1889 A Sermon on 1 John ii. 14, preached in Eton College Chapel. Drake, Eton, 1889 A Sermon preached at Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, on the Occasion of the Completion of the East Window and of the Reredos, Oct. 20, 1892. Printed for Author, Parker, 1892 A Sermon preached at the Consecration of the New Chapel of S. Peter's College, Radley. Parker, Oxford, 1895 Four Sermons. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1896 The True-hearted. [Sermon preached before the University of Oxford.] In vol. of University Sermons by various writers. [Ed. LI. J. M. Bebb.] London [Oxf.], 1901 256 APPENDIX Sermon, S. George's, Windsor, February 3, 1901. Privately printed, Clarendon Press A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese by William Stubbs, D.D., Bishop of Chester, at his primary visitation, October, 1886. Chester, Phillipson and Golder A Charge delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Diocese by William Stubbs, D.D., Bishop of Oxford, at his primary visitation, June, 1890. Oxford, printed at the University Press, 1890 A Charge ... at his second visitation, April and Ma}', 1893. Oxford (as before) A Charge ... at his third visitation, May and June, 1896. (as above) A Charge ... at his fourth visitation, May and June, 1899. (as above) Questions to be answered by Ordination Candidates. Privately printed, Clarendon Press, 1892 ; reprinted 1895, 1898 Ordination Addresses by the Right Reverend William Stubbs, D.D., late Bishop of Oxford. Edited by E. E. Holmes, Hon. Canon of Christ Church. London, igoi Visitation Charges delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Dioceses of Chester and Oxford. Edited by E. E. Holmes [with omissions.] London, 1904 w.s. 257 INDEX Ainslie, Archdeacon, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 Ancestors, of Stubbs, 1-6 ; his book on, 228 Anglican Orders, Stubbs's letter on, 226-227 Appendices to the Report of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 sqq. Atlay, Dr., Bishop of Hereford, one of the assessors in the Lincoln Trial, 114 B. Balliol College, Stubbs elected to an Honorary Fellowship at, 77 ; Chaplain at, ibid.; letter from Master of, 77-78 Barber, Archdeacon Edward, writes of Stubbs, 158-159 Barlow, Sir Thomas, 234, 240, 242 Bath, Marquess of, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114, 121, 130 Beaconsfield, Earl of, see Disraeli Benedict, see Gesta Benson, Dr., Archbishop of Canter- bury, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114; referred to, 119, 176 sqq., 193, 200 sqq. Benson, Mr. A. C, 200, 222-223 Berkshire, 194 Blachford, Lord, on the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114; referred to, 117, 120, 128, 136, 140 Bodleian Library, Dr. Pusey writes concerning the, 68 ; Stubbs elected a Curator of the, 69 Bright, Rev. Wm., Disraeli recom- mends him for the Ecclesiastical History Chair, 73 ; referred to, 59, 243 ; his letter to Stubbs, 74 ; his death, 1901, 238 Browne, Dr. Harold, Bishop of Winchester, writes to Stubbs, 113, 145, 196; on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 Bryce, Right Hon. James, M.P., 79, 142 n. ; letter from, 90-94 Buckinghamshire, 194 Burrows, Professor Montagu, 80 Canterbury, Archbp. of, see Long- ley, Tait, Benson and Temple Cartwright, Mr., Wm. Stubbs's schoolmaster at Knares- borough, 6 ; holds Stubbs and Wm. Kay up as examples at school, 8 Charges — (1) to the Diocese of Chester, 1886, 156-157. l6 7 (2) to the Diocese of Oxford, 1890, i94-!95 (3) to the Diocese of Oxford, 1893, 195-196 (4) to the Diocese of Oxford, 1896, 196-197 (5) to the Diocese of Oxford, 1899, 198 Charles, Sir A. C, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 Chester, Bishop of, see Jacobson, Stubbs, and Jayne Chichester, Earl of, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 Chichele Professorship of Modern History, Stubbs stands for, 39 Cholderton (Wilts), Wm. Stubbs accepts the living of, 1S75, and resigns, 1879, 76 Christ Church, Oxford, Stubbs obtains servitorship at, 12, 14 ; Stubbs's rooms at, 15 ; Dr. Kitchin makes friends with 259 INDEX Stubbs at, 17 ; Stubbs's great liking for the Library at, 20 ; continued affection for the House, 23, 184. See Strong Chroniclesand Memorials of Richard I., 41. 5i Church, Miss, Stubbs's letter to, 139-140 Church, R. W., Dean of S. Paul's, dining at Oriel, 140-141 ; his close and affectionate intimacy begins with Stubbs, 113 his letters to Stubbs, 120-122, 123-124, 128, 129, 138-139, 203-204 Stubbs's letters to, 117-120, 136- 137, 202-203 Claughton, Dr. T. L., Bishop of Rochester, afterwards Bishop of S. Albans, Stubbs's lines referring to, 25, 26 Cleanthes, the hymn of, Stubbs's translation of, 249 Coleridge, Lord, writes to Stubbs, 122-123 ; on the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114; Stubbs's letters to, 124- 128 Constitutional History of England, the work of Stubbs, 85 sqq. ; Gladstone's letters referring to, 94-96 Copeland, Rev. W., 25 Court of Final Appeal, 130 sqq. Creighton, Dr. M., Bishopof London, his letter to Stubbs, 148 ; Stubbs's letter to, 149 ; death ' of, 231 Creighton, Mrs. M., Stubbs's letter to, 231-2 Cross, Viscount, on the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 Cuddesdon, Stubbs ordained priest at, 26 ; description of, 175- 76; Stubbs's dislike to, 176 sqq.; correspondence with Abp. Benson about, 176 sqq. ; his verses relating to his life at, 180-182 ; his death at, April 22, 1901, 241 ; and burial, April 25, 1901, 241 D. Darby, Dr. J. L., Dean of Chester, writes of the memories of Stubbs, 164 sqq. Davidson, Dr. Randall T., Archbp. of Canterbury, 209, 221-222 ; letter from, 173 Deane, Sir J. Parker, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 Dellar, Catherine, afterwards the wife of Stubbs, 30, 31 Devon, Earl of, on the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 Dictionary of Christian Biography, Stubbs's connexion with, 85 Disestablishment, Stubbs's views on, 195 Disraeli, B., Earl of Beaconsfield, recommends Wm. Bright for the Professorship of Ecclesias- tical History, 73 ; letter to Stubbs concerning the vacant canonry of S. Paul's, 112 Divorce and re-marriage, Stubbs's views on, 216 Dunstan, Memorials of Saint, 42 sqq. E. Early Plantagenets, The, Stubbs author of, 87 Eaton, Rev. J. R. T., coaches Stubbs in classics, 20, 23 Ecclesiastical History Professorship, H. L. Mansel appointed to the, 73 EpistolcB Cantuarienses, one of Stubbs's contributions to the Rolls Series, 41 Espin, Chancellor, his reminiscences of Stubbs, 18 ; on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 " Evil Days " (Sermon), 72 Firth, C. H., LL.D., Regius Pro- fessor of Modern History at Oxford, pupil of Stubbs, 81 Fisher, Herbert W., lifelong friend of Stubbs, 21 Fraser, Dr. James, Bishop of Man- chester, writes to Stubbs, 145 Freeman, E. A., Stubbs fills the vacancy made by the marriage of, 23 ; and his lifelong friend- ship with Stubbs, 53 sqq. ; on the Royal Commission on 260 INDEX Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 ; writes of Stubbs's consecration, 150 Friend, Rev. F. A., writes of Stubbs's work at Navestock, 30 Froude, J. A., Stubbs's lines on, 102-103 Gaisford, Dr., Dean of Christ Church, his appreciation of Stubbs, 14 sqq. Gamon, Mr. John, writes of Stubbs, 162-164 Gesta Regis Henrici II. (Benedict of Peterborough), 45 sqq., 99 Gladstone, Rt. Hon.W. E., Stubbs's meeting, 113 ; Stubbs's letters to, 142-143 ; his letters to Stubbs, 94 sqq., 142 Goodwin, Dr. Harvey, Bishop of Carlisle, writes to Stubbs, 145 Gore, Canon Arthur, his account of Stubbs's work, 151-158 Green, John Richard, his review of Stubbs's inaugural lectures, 45 ; Stubbs relates his first meeting with, 54-55 ; referred to, 61 sqq.; Stubbs's letters to, 99-104, 106-108 Green, Mrs. J. R., Stubbs's letters to, no, 147 Gregory, Dr., Dean of S. Paul's, advises Stubbs to accept the Bishopric of Chester, 143 ; re- ferred to, 113 H. Henlock, Elizabeth, Wm. Stubbs's devotion to his grandmother, 5 Henlock, Mary Ann, afterwards wife of Wm. Morley Stubbs, 5 Henlock, William, father-in-law of Wm. Morley Stubbs, 5 Holmes, Canon E. E., Stubbs's domestic chaplain at Cuddes- n I don„2ii; Stubbs's letters to, 211 sqq. Hunter, Miss, a cousin of Stubbs, 9, 21 J- Jackson, Dr., Bishop of London writes to Stubbs, 146 Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, on Algernon Swinburne, 33-34 ; defeated by Stubbs for Council, 77 ; his letter to Stubbs, 77-78 K. Kay, Dr. William, schoolfellow and lifelong friend of Stubbs, 6, 8 ; Stubbs nominates him to preach the consecration ser- mon, 151 Kettel Hall, Oxford (the house where Stubbs resided for many years), 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 109, no, in, 144 King, Dr. Edward, Bishop of Lin- coln, his letter to Stubbs, 174; referred to, 202 sqq., 242 Kitchin, Dr. G. W., Dean of Durham, writes of Stubbs, 17 Knaresborough, Wm. Stubbs born at, 1 ; his ancestors among the folk of the royal forest of, 1 ; description of, 3-5 ; Stubbs at school at, 6-1 1 ; Stubbs's train- ing at the Castle of, 13 ; Stubbs preaches at, 75 L. Lang, Dr. C. G., Bishop of Stepney, 189 Lectures, Stubbs's, on Medieval and Modern History, 6i, 116, 150, 160, 239 Lee, Mr. Sidney, 183 Liddell, Dean, Stubbs attends the lectures of, 20 ; speaks warmly of Stubbs, 20 ; writes of Stubbs, 20, 22 ; his letter to Stubbs, 146 Liddon, Dr. H. P., Canon of S. Paul's, goes with reading party to S. David's, 27 ; rescues Stubbs from drowning, 27 ; his close and affectionate intimacy with Stubbs commences, 71, 72 ; his letters to Stubbs, 173-174 ; re- ferred to, 143, 166, 169, 184 Liebermann, Dr., 88-90 Lincoln Case, 202 sqq. ; Stubbs's approval of Archbp. Benson's decision in the, 210-211 Longley, Dr. C. T., Bishop of Ripon, Abp. of York, Abp. of Canter- bury, befriends Wm. Stubbs and obtains a nomination of servitor- ship at Christ Church, Oxford, 14-15 ; his advice to Stubbs, 22 sqq. ; his concern with the Lambeth Library, 38 ; Lord Derby writes to, 57 26l INDEX M. Mackarness, Dr., Bishop of Oxford, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 ; resigns the Bishopric of Oxford, 171 ; referred to, 177; his letters to Stubbs, 174, 205 Macray, Dr., one of the editors of the Rolls Series, 15, 21, 40 Mansel, Dr. H. L., elected Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 59 ; caricature of, 59, 60 ; made Dean of S. Paul's, 73 Marshall, Rev. George, Stubbs's tutor, 15 Memoranda Parochialia, extract from Stubbs's, 76 Memorials of S. Dunstan, 41-45 Moberly, Dr., Bishop of Salisbury, advises Stubbs to accept the living of Cholderton, 76 Modern History, Regius Professor- ship of, at Oxford, Goldwin Smith resigns the, 56 ; Stubbs's name submitted by the Prime Minister to the Queen for, 57 ; his tenure of, 57-58, 80 sqq. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 37 N. Navestock, Stubbs accepts the living of, 26 ; his work at, 29 sqq. Norris, Canon W. Foxley, 21 O. Ordination Addresses, Stubbs's, 190- 192 Oxford, Stubbs goes to, 14; Stubbs's life at, 15 sqq.; Stubbs ordained deacon at, 23 ; Stubbs's ballad pertaining to the Election at Trinity, 24 ; a reading party organised at, 27 ; Stubbs accepts the History Professorship at, 57 ; Stubbs takes up his resi- dence at, 59 ; Stubbs moves into Kettel Hall, at, 99 ; Stubbs made Bishop of, 171 sqq.; his speech at the High School at, 181 Oxford, Bishop of, see Wilberforce, Mackarness, Stubbs, and Paget Oxfordshire, Stubbs's description of, 194 Paget, Francis, Bishop of Oxford, letter from, 245 sqq. Penzance, Lord, on the Royal Com- mission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 Perowne, Dr., Bishop of Worcester, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 Phases of My Life, Dr. Pigou's, 10 Phillimore, Sir Robert, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesi- astical Courts, 114 Pigou, Dr., Dean of Bristol, school- fellow of Stubbs's, 10 Plues, Rev. W., Head Master of Ripon Grammar School, 11 sqq. Pusey, Dr. E. B., Stubbs as an undergraduate is known to, 19 ; the friendship of Liddon, Stubbs and, 71 ; his letters to Stubbs, 35. 68-69 R. Randall, Archdeacon J. L., conse- crated Bishop of Reading, 213 Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, the first published work of Wm. Stubbs, 31 sqq. Ripon, Bishop of, see Dr. C. T. Longley Ripon Grammar School, Wm. Stubbs goes to, 7 ; life at, 10 sqq. Rogers, J. E. Thorold, M.P., writes to Stubbs, 98 Rolls Series, proposed by the Master of the Rolls, 39 Round, J. Horace, pupil of Stubbs, 81 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, appointed on Mr. Glad- stone's advice, 114 sqq. Rubrics in the Prayer Book, Stubbs's views on, 214-216 S. S. David's, an Oxford reading party at, 27 S. Paul's, Stubbs made a Canon of, 112 Salisbury, Bishop of, see Moberly and Wordsworth Salisbury, Robert, Marquess of, 17 '] Stubbs's letter to, 172 ; his letters to Stubbs, 171, 179 262 INDEX Select Charters, 83, 85 Spanish Reformers, Ordination for, Stubbs's reply to an Irish Bishop on, 224 sqq. Stanley, Dr., Dean of Westminster, acknowledges the gift of Stubbs's Registrum, 32, 33 Stevens, Mrs., Stubbs attends the Bible lessons of, 8, 9 Strong, Very Rev. T. B., Dean of Christ Church, 184-185 ; his records of Stubbs at Christ Church, 15 sqq., 185 Stubbs, William, Bishop. — His birth, 1 ; his father and family, 1-2 ; his ancestors, 3-7 ; house in which he was born, 2, 5 First school at Knaresborough, 6 ; religious influences at Knares- borough, 8 ; reminiscences, 9, 10 At Ripon Grammar School, 9 ; influences at, 10 ; his work there, n-12 ; Bp. Longley's patronage of him, 13 sqq. Servitorship at Christ Church, enters Christ Church, 1844, 14 ; his life there, 14 sqq.; obtains first-class in classics, 21 ; his mother's death, 22 ; elected Fellow of Trinity, 23 ; ordained deacon, 23 ; writes a ballad on the election at Trinity, 24 ; or- dained priest at Cuddesdon and presented to the living at Navestock, 26 ; reading party at S. David's, 27-28 ; his work as vicar of Navestock, 29 sqq. ; his future wife and marriage, 30 ; his children, 31 ; writes of the origin of his Registrum Sacrum AngUcanum, 31-32 ; his life as Vicar of Navestock, 30 sqq. ; his appreciation of Algernon Swin- burne, 33 ; he defends the High Church clergy, 34 ; continues his historical studies and pub- lications, 37 sqq.; receives the Lambeth librarianship, 38 ; is unsuccessful in application for the librarianship of the British Museum, 38 ; has already embarked on the most impor- tant work of his life, 39 ; his magnificent work in connexion with the Rolls Series, 39 sqq. ; his " historic friendship " with Freeman, 53 ; speaks of his meeting with J. R. Green, 53 ; acquaints Freeman with Lord Derby's offer of the Modern History Professorship, 56 ; is appointed to it, 57 ; leaves Navestock to take up his resi- dence at Oxford, 58; his in- augural lecture, 60 sqq. ; his commemoration of Dr. Pusey, 70, 71 ; holiday in Yorkshire (1872), 74, 75 ; accepts living of Cholderton (Wilts) (1875), 76; elected Curator of the Bodleian Library and a Delegate of the Press, also made Honorary Fellow of Balliol, 77; his hard work at Oxford and his brief holidays, 79 ; honours con- ferred upon him at home and abroad, 87, 88 ; Disraeli's and Bishop Browne's letters to him, 113, 114; his quiet and studious life in London, 113 ; his work on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114 sqq. ; writes of Oriel Gaudy, 139-141 Bishop of Chester (1884-18S9).— Gladstone offers Stubbs the Bishopric of Chester, 142 ; and he accepts, 144 ; continues his lectures, 144 ; his farewell lecture at Oxford, 150 ; con- secrated at York, 1884, 150 ; enthroned at Chester, 1884, 151 ; Canon Arthur Gore's account of the valuable work of, 151 sqq. ; his work at Chester, 151 sqq. Bishop of Oxford (1889-1901). — Lord Salisbury asks Stubbs to become, 171 ; and he accepts, 172 ; his objection to living at Cuddesdon Palace, 175, 179 ; some of his epigrams, 1S0-185 ; the strain of his work, 179-1S0 ; his ordination addresses, 190- 192 ; his four Charges to his dio- cese, 193-19S sqq.; his sermons, 198-200 ; on the Lincoln trial, 200 sqq. ; his views on the Old Catholic Church of Holland, 205-206 ; his views on Divorce and re-marriage, 216; Dr. Wood's reminiscences of, 223- 224 ; on Anglican orders, 226- 228 ; his health begins seri- ously to fail in the spring of 1898, 229 ; his sermon at the funeral of Queen Victoria, 233-237 ; elected President of 263 INDEX the Church History Society, iqoi, 239 ; his medical adviser advises that he must resign his See, 240 ; his illness becomes dangerous, 241 ; and his death, Monday, April 22, 1901, 240 ; buried at Cuddesdon, April 25, 1901, 240 T. Tait, Dr. A. C, Archbp. of Canter- bury, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 114; referred to, 114 sqq. Temple, Dr. F., Archbp. of Canter- bury, 222 The Tract, De Invention Sancta Cruris Nostra in Monte acuta tt de ductione cjusdem apud Waltham, 37 Tout, T. F., Professor at Owen's College, Manchester, 81 Tractatus de veritate conceptions bea- tissimcB virginis . . . compil- atus per Patrem Ioannem de Turrtcrcmata, 69 Trinity College, Oxford, Stubbs elected to a Fellowship at, 26 ; makes many lifelong friends whilst at, 23 ; Stubbs vacates his Fellowship at, 26 Truro, Bishop of, see Archbp. Ben- son V. Victoria, Queen, 143, 151, 173 < the death of, 233 ; Stubbs's sermon at the funeral of, 233 sqq. W. Westcott, Dr. B. F., Bishop of Dur- ham, on the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 115 ; his letters to Stubbs, 134-136, Stubbs's letters to, 117 Wilberforce, Dr. Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, ordains Wm. Stubbs as deacon, 23 ; advises Stubbs to accept the living of Nave- stock, 26 Winchester, Harold, Bishop of, see Harold Browne Wood, Rev. Dr. Wm., writes of Stubbs as a Fellow of Trinity, 24 sqq, ; writes of the services at Navestock, 30 ; Stubbs writes to, 233 ; his reminiscence of Stubbs, 222-224 Wordsworth, Dr. John, Bishop of Salisbury, referred to, 206 ; one of the assessors in the Lincoln Trial, 204 York, Archbp. of, sec Longley ^0 " Zeal— for the Lord" (Sermon) 36 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. NOV 1 t9tt tf fi 2 •■ El \ > -URL ld nrt i - URL ^ *' tEC'D ID-UfSl DEC 1*1977 W^ft ^ RECEIVE MAY 3 1965 RKHAngE-UR -n [ A tD^gpEB 151982 10 AM Form L9-3At-8,'58(5876s4)444 AA 000 832 905 4 ipillililL 3 1158 00206 4318 PLEAS*: DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD I 8- i ^UlBRARY0/c ^0JnV3JO v University Research Library